Combo is hard to play well. Aggro isn't really. I play combo because it is more of an intellectual challenge than beating with doods is, and I am sometimes rewarded because of it. I mean, I don't think Solidarity is good in the current metagame, but I still goldfish it just for the challenge. You don't have to be an asshole to enjoy outwitting your opponent.
Ahah, while we're not all "special kind of assholes", though I find that what you just said is the reason why ANT is not the "to ban! to ban!" deck. I always said and always will say that it'll carry on being a strong deck as long as ignorant people-who seem to have joined this thread, also- mull aggressively to find an hate bear because they're sure that "ANT always kills on the second turn". This is fucking untrue, since the nature itself of a combo deck often wants you to open quite shitty hands unbalanced on cantrips or on mana acceleration, where you get at topdeck mode and can even be raced by, say, a Goblin god-hand. I had people against me at tournaments mull to 5 and telling me explicitely "i have to get the t1 chalice or against you I'm pretty done", while I was laughing to them in my mind.
On the other hand, I've seen the usual netdeckers copypasting a random list from Deckcheck and then getting furious because at a tournament they sucked hard, and then they came over with something like "bleah that deck is a shit, it only depends on how luck you have while flipping on Ad Nauseam".
People should learn how to properly fight it and properly know how it works, rather than whining about its "brokeness" or "unfairness" and praying Wizards to ban LED or AdN.
Play 4 Mindbreak Traps sideboard, if you really want. At least they're unexpected.
Well... did you? Your picture only tells the first part of the story!
Goldfishing your deck in front of your opponent != outwitting your opponent. Sure, you can throw some Jedi mind tricks in there and outwit them that way, but you might as well, you know, play Magic with them at that point, and who wants to do that?
I think Piceli just made my point for me. AnT has the *capability* to go off turn 1 or 2 but I wouldn't call it consistent in any sense of the word until turn 3., i.e. a turn faster than Solidarity. I've gone off turn 2 with Solidarity, but realistic fish was 4-5. AnT is slow in the sense that Tendrils could be as fast as Belcher, but chooses not to be for reasons of resilience and consistancy. That's what made AnT different from previous storm incarnations; it packs 8 protection spells plus reliable removal main. But it's far slower than it could be. As long as CB is in the format to keep Tendrils decks honest, it can't cheat and pack more accel and draw without autolosing to blue.
If you think that AnT is such an unbeatable monster, why isn't it posting monster #'s at major events?
Yes, I did. I had something like a bunch of mana (no LED), BS and Mystical. EOT BS, upkeep Mystical for another Ritual, play Petal/second land, play all the mana and Infernal into Ad Nauseam and win.
He had no chance despite having the most broken start that the deck could have. I suppose a Wasteland could have been a problem, and Thorn of Amethyst would delay me enough for him to win (probably). But he didn't have it... easiest match in the championship by far.
I stopped reading after the first sentence. That is an absolutely preposterous claim.
Honestly, this is one reason that I love Merfolk so much. I still get to play an aggro deck, but it's an aggro deck that gets blue toys to play with. So basically, you become a little less consistent in your level of aggressiveness in order to not be a sitting rape victim to ANT and all that whatnot like you would be if you were running Zoo.
Humorously enough, Merfolk's biggest problem tends to be other decks that play more fair than it does, like Zoo or Goblins (although I consider Goblins more capable than Zoo of producing broken plays, despite that it's probably the worse deck compared to Zoo right now- interestingly enough.)
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
You guys can mock all you want, it doesn't bother me a bit. I've been around the block a time or twelve and seen *truly* format dominating/warping decks like Megrim/Jar, Tinker, Counter-Rebels, Affinity, the original T1 Dragon, etc. Dragon is perhaps a bad example because a lot of people played bad versions and Entomb was restricted before it got truly format-warping, but the version I ran packed more disruption and as fast or a faster clock than modern AnT.
In any case, AnT isn't even close to as busted as any of those decks. As far as aggro goes, if you don't think that it's faster, you haven't been paying attention. Compare modern Naya Zoo to San Diego Zoo or modern Fish to Ux aggro control 4 years ago when Nimble Mongoose was the epitome of aggressive cheap critters. The FT has decreased by 3 to 4 turns.
Really, why is everyone so opposed to running maindeck hate? Look at some Vintage aggro decks, where maindeckable creatures are things like Canonist, Teeg, Mindcensor (SUCH a beating), Pridemage, Shusher, Kataki, Gorilla Shaman, etc. Some have even maindecked Choke, and they almost always run Null Rod.
I'm not saying that these same cards are what Zoo or whatever should be playing. I'm just saying that Zoo players have to realize that they either have a bad match against combo, or that they can make some changes. Just don't cry about it. It's how the format works.
ANT was in a very good position to win GP Madrid, Flipping the 1 out that killed Do Anh at 4 life, Tendrils. If he'd flipped anything else, he wins the biggest Legacy tournament ever. Consistent top 8's in major tournaments overseas, and a very consistent turn 1-2 Goldfish. I'd say you're lucky to get to turn 3 against Storm. That's much much faster than Solidarity could ever dream of being. That deck wants to build up Islands.
Look, my point was that AnT doesn't compare to those other decks. I'm not playing a game of "my epeen is bigger than your epeen". There are plenty of people out there that have been playing longer than me. I started playing in Urza's and really started playing competitively in Masques and didn't hit the Eternal scene until just before Invasions came out. I'm just saying, I've seen them all and against that list, AnT doesn't scare me. Is it a legitimate deck? Yes. But I remember hearing this same "sky is falling" talk when the Legacy banned list split from the T1 restricted list. People went nuts about Legacy Long. OMG, Tendrils is going to rape the format, if you're not playing Tendrils, better pack 4 FoW and 4 MD Null Rods! It wasn't just a few crackpots, it was 90% of the people on this site. It's all they talked about. While everyone was going nuts about how busted 4 Chrome Mox/4 Petal/4 LED was, I was quietly building this eventual DTB called San Diego Zoo (ok, little epeen there). Because people were overstating Tendrils' consistency and speed, and I knew that a deck that ran it's mana base off of 12 card disadvantage cards and somehow still needed to generate a storm of at least 9 was destined for the scrap heap.
Now I'm not saying that AnT is the same as the failed attempts at a 1.5 Long, but my point is that people are overstating AnT's abilities. It's a competitive deck. I'm not saying that I don't expect to see it in T8's. Hell, if I'd have had the cards (or the money to buy the cards), I'd have played it at Chicago, because I think it's a strong deck. But Troop, the thing is, placing in T8's does not make a deck wildly busted. If you want to say AnT > format, show me some T8's that are 5+ AnTs. Because the way it places now is not any better than any other Tier 1 deck. So I'm not going to rush to throw AnT together on Workstation, because it's a good deck, but it's not breaking the format wide open, no way, no how. It's not knocking aggro right off the map. Zoo is still a Tier 1 deck, with or without the presence of Tendrils.
Ok, here's the GP Madrid metagame breakdown for day 2. The problem is that there's no real data available for day 1. The sample data from the day 1 coverage is obviously incorrect. Is there another source I'm not aware of?
Anyway, these figures show that fair aggro decks can still compete in Legacy.
"Fundamentally, the problem with most of Legacy's aggressive decks is that it is nearly impossible to use creatures with generally combat-oriented abilities to generate favorable interactions against most of Legacy's combo decks."
Sea Drake
Ponder/BS/Top/Mystical/pass
SoFI, lose eight, drop CotV@0, go
in response: jaw dropage
Skirk Prospector
Ponder/BS/Top/Mystical/pass
Prospector -> E. Squad
Dark Ritual, Thoughtseize + Hymn
Mox
Goyf
desperate search for land
take four
desperate search for land
Deed away your sole mana producer, take five, good luck with AdN
Tomb, Mox, Trinisphere
scratches his head
CotV@1
vomits
CotV@2
gg
City, Mox, Magus
Island, Top
Song, Slogger
upkeep spin Top, play Mountain
beat down
I've seen them all. Yawn...
My most favourite was mulligan to four (no-landers, not that I am tard to mull into FoW), open with Turn1 Trinket Mage ->CotV@0, Turn 2 Cotv@1, Turn 3 SoLS + equip. Mage went the distance with me safely above twenty life.
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