upcoming Ban list votes ChristophO

[Kenshin]

Insert The First Avenger: Civil War Meme here.

(I wish we had a forum that was a tiny bit more up to date...)

[Maqi]

The banning of sdt should already have been a slight blow to the academy.dec. I think we mustn't discard the possibility, that if the deck was overpowered, it maybe isn't anymore already.

[Silberhase]

Ok, I will continue now my thoughts about this discussion. Many people see the academy decks as too strong for our format, other people also see TPS as problematic. But what about other combo decks? Vadru mentioned, that Scapeshift is really dominant, too. It won the last tournament at the HLL and also got great performence at the last MGMs. And I guess he is also right. I also think, this deck is underplayed and could be even more dominant, when more people decide to play this. I watched Payron some games and it felt, he could combo out consistently about turn 6. And the most games also were nearly non interactive. Christoph also mentioned, that reanimator is also dominant, but I don't think so. It appears sometimes in the top 8 of big tournament, but aren't a real problem imo. I also think that cards like phyrexian furnace etc. are too much underplayed in our format, especially cause of the delve cards (And it could also weaken Y-Will ). But all in all we seem to have a problem with combo deck in general. So what we can do? I really wonder, why noone came to the idea to unban the tutor spells, especially Demonic and Mystical Tutor. Imo they are too powerful beeing healthy for any format. Two cards, that can win mid-lategames on its own, even in combo decks. Demonic Tutor is played in every deck, that plays black. There are also various decks like UW control that splash black only for this tutor. Can such a card be healthy for our format and generate various meta? The answer is simply no. This card says you play every card in your deck twice. Mystical Tutor into Demonic says you play every card 3 times. Merchant Scroll into mystical 4. And I'm also playing muddle the mixture who can find demonic. So do you all see, how problematic these cards are?

[Vazdru]

I really wonder, why noone came to the idea to unban the tutor spells, especially Demonic and Mystical Tutor. Imo they are too powerful beeing healthy for any format. Two cards, that can win mid-lategames on its own, even in combo decks. Demonic Tutor is played in every deck, that plays black. There are also various decks like UW control that splash black only for this tutor. Can such a card be healthy for our format and generate various meta? The answer is simply no. This card says you play every card in your deck twice. Mystical Tutor into Demonic says you play every card 3 times. Merchant Scroll into mystical 4. And I'm also playing muddle the mixture who can find demonic. So do you all see, how problematic these cards are?

Thanks for your input. I absolutely agree!

Actually my votes would look like:

Watchlist:

* Demonic Tutor (+ vote for Ban / power-level)
* Mystical Tutor (+ vote for Ban / power-level)
* Tainted Pact (+ vote for Ban / meta-reasons, weaken multicolor-goodstuff strategies)
* Fastbond
* Tolarian Academy
* Mana Drain
* Oath of Druids

* Gifts Ungiven
* Stoneforge Mystic
 

[ChristophO]

Hey everyone. I had a great weekend at the MKM event playing Highlander (and Legacy). As you might have seen in Vazdru's report from the torunament http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=1206.0 We had 2 reanimator players and a slightly different take on the 5c artifact combo deck in the in the top 8 with the finals being 5c artifacts vs. reanimator. So people claiming those deck types not really being viable (at least not in southern Germany) have certainly experienced something different in that tournament.

Judging the format from that tournament alone the format feels pretty good with lots of of different strategies being represented in the 66% (or more) match win bracket. Watching the semis of 4c blood vs artifacts really showed the problem of Fastbond/Draw 7 effects couple with Academy. Even single turns lasted upwards of 10 minutes and made the 4c blood comment on the lack of engagement/fun he was having ("Man, es macht echt keinen Spaß gegen dein Deck zu spielen." I think was said in german).

I also had nice chats with Dalibor and Maqi and a longer talk with derStefan82. I really like Stefan's notion of not banning Oath but instead opting to go after LED/or Will as an alternative to weaken spell based combo.

Tutor discussion:
I think good tutors are needed to enable non-goodstuff decks to do their thing. Of course Demonic tutor is a great card and played a lot. If we push non goodstuff decks to play even more very mediocre Transmute tutors or higher costed tutors those decks will lose a lot. That being said I really like the notion of watchlisting Tainted pact since the plays like Demonic nr 2. in midrange decks but is a lot worse in many (most?) combo decks which can not afford to exile many cards since they lack the redundancy midrange decks posess.   

[tonytahiti]

I was glad when I saw an Academy deck won. Maybe it will make some people realize some things (especially the people who are sooo obsessed with "it hasnt won a 50 person tournament yet").

To not take anything away from the deck Tom Fischer played (I think his performance lately is unbelievable etc.): we had two very skilled players playing that Eggs-Academy Deck in 2015, the list was only 4 cards different - and the deck, while being strong, was not on the level of the Artifact deck that is dominating here now. It was Thoralf Severin, probably one of the top10 Players in Germany and a Pro Tour Regular and Jonny aka Tabris, a player that IMO can pick up any deck and play it close to flawlessly. They actually worked on that deck together. Turns took 10 Minutes and it won a few events but also fell to its own consistency issues (issues the 5c artifact deck that does not have). It was the first time, we, as Berlin players, realized that Academy is not healthy in this format and it was also very frustrating to play against (a Blood player complained about 10 min turns, we had that for months with eggs and still have that sometimes with artifacts and we keep saying that and we keep complaining and we keep sending SOS-signals). That deck was really unfun to play against and not enjoyed by the whole community - and to be honest thats why Thoralf and Jonny sometimes did not play it. Imagine that: a council legalizes a broken card, keeps it legal and the only thing a community can do to have fun FNMs is to not play the deck and doing it AS A FAVOR for the community. Thats messed up. Thoralf is not a HL regular and he only liked to play decks like that (eggs, high tide etc, not because he likes to make opponents furious, but because he likes complex puzzles and likes to get away from the abc magic standard and modern has to offer). Jonny also put that deck down - while having broken draws (academy draws), it was not the most consistent and also opponents would fault him for choosing that deck. So then a few months passed, Paul invented 5c Artifacts (a deck where 1-2 Counterspells is not enough to win, unlike Eggs) and we are now enduring that for 12 months now.

Just to give you an overview, how baffling it is for us that MAYBE only now people start realizing that academy is a problem.

[TaZi]

hi guys, I got some questions and suggestions

- it would be nice, if somebody could send me a copy of this 5c artifacts list. (just pm me)

- I played some games vs. eggs and also goldfished with it a lot. I think its viable, but you are quite dependent on how good your opp. knows what you are trying to do (which is nothing I like to rely on). So eggs is ok for me at the moment.

- brief comment on the league performance of Silberhase (as mentioned by Vazdru). There were two 2:0 games included, where one of it, was against monoB which is not really a viable deck I think, and one match was against Gerry's 7-9 year old son with a deck thats also not really viable. (that said, this data is only a very limited indication and not statistically significant. Nevertheless it is an indicator)

- I would encourage the Berlin players to upload their FNM results to mtgpulse

- I think the format is perfectly healthy at the moment. (For me it would even be ok, to unban stoneforge mystic and natural order)

- Could it be possible to easily adjust a 4c blood deck to this MU (taking in tidehollow sculler, reclamation sage, some other hatebears)?

- I think any ban that makes 4c blood better is a bad ban (like mana drain for example).

- I somehow could imagine a ban of tainted pact as being helpful, as its mostly played in 4c Blood and helps this decktype by far the most.

[Bat]

I watched the Eggs decks play in round 3 or 4, he got very lucky in a couple of situations. Zero cards in hand topdecking Tolaria West for Zuran Orb into endless life/mana against Izzet Control who just had the wrong counterspells in hand (remand/venser). Any other card on top and he is out of top8 range.

Of course the people were talking about the eggs deck at the tournament. But so far as i witnessed it, everybody, even Tom, said thats its not a broken deck, its just a good deck.
Now Eggs has won a 46 player tournament, so has Blood, UW, UR, UWR, Reanimator and many more.

I agree with Tazi, for me the format is perfectly healthy at the moment. (pls dont unban stoneforge and natural order ^^)

[tonytahiti]

This is exactly what has to stop.

A person asks me for the artifact combo list (implying he has not seen it, is not familiar with it, has not played vs. it etc.) and then 5 sentences later says "the meta is perfectly healthy". How can you say that? You are obviously missing some information (and you just said you do..and then you said everything is fine..wtf). A meta is not "healthy" because your local store has nobody going rampant with a deck. I mean..i seriously dont understand how anybody can say those two sentences in the same post. This is super close minded, "locally minded" if you will.

Then another player says Eggs got lucky and meta is perfectly healthy. Eggs is the inconsistent stepchild of Artifact Combo. Eggs is not even operating in the same sphere/universe as Artifact Combo. Artifact Combo is a totally different animal. And IF Egss, which, admittely is a inconsitent combo deck, cna win a tournament that big, it speaks volumes about Artifact Combo. What qualifies me to make that assumption? I played vs. both decks for years now, i tried to beat both decks, I have seen every kind of deck being thrown at those decks, i see it every friday.

But the guy, who asks me for the artifact combo list and the guy, who saw eggs in action now, are saying the metagame is fine. It is fine.

[MacGyver]

- it would be nice, if somebody could send me a copy of this 5c artifacts list. (just pm me)

- I would encourage the Berlin players to upload their FNM results to mtgpulse

I think there is no other local group that publishing decklists more seriously than the Berliners (also nearly every result has been posted in this forum). 16 out of the 26 front page events on mtgpulse are from Berlin. Moreover, Artifact Combo even has its own archetype on mgtpulse (with 2 Top8s on big tournaments)!

And sorry, but assuming that mtgpulse (as the central platform for HL-decklists) is one of the major tools to investigate the HL-meta you haven't done your homework. I know it's only your personal opinion, but I don't get how you can say, that the meta is healthy at the moment without knowing "the meta".

[Vazdru]

This is exactly what has to stop.

A person asks me for the artifact combo list (implying he has not seen it, is not familiar with it, has not played vs. it etc.) and then 5 sentences later says "the meta is perfectly healthy". How can you say that? You are obviously missing some information (and you just said you do..and then you said everything is fine..wtf). A meta is not "healthy" because your local store has nobody going rampant with a deck. I mean..i seriously dont understand how anybody can say those two sentences in the same post. This is super close minded, "locally minded" if you will.

hmmm?

A meta is "unhealthy" because your local store has someone going rampant with a certain deck? This is super close minded, "locally" minded if you will.


Tazi has at least some connections to different metas while playing the online league where players from different parts of Germany and even Austria and Finland take part. Ok - that's obviously limited experience but when do you have had your last hl experience outside your local playgroup in Berlin?

[Tabris]

@Christoph I agree with stefan here. Banning LED/Will would hurt spell based combo way more than banning oath esp. in the grizzel list from kötter (which is inferior to the creatureless version but thats not the point and he still made easily top8 three times (and lost in the  quartefinals against UR which he would have won if he didnt have grizzel in his list...but again thats not the point)

@Tazi/Bat as MacGyver already stated you can find most of the berlin lists (including pauls 5c artifacts) on pulse and the berlin community has its own thread about weekly tournament which gives a nice insight about the development of the local meta.

Now to the eggs deck and artifacts in general. The remark that Tom got lucky is close to a tautology in this context since every deck/player needs to have some luck to get to t8. Every t8 participant can tell you about the one game were he/she got that lucky topdeck/missed lethal by opponent/ one outer silver bullet on the starting hand and so on. So diminishing Toms result by saying "he got lucky" (which I imagine is not your intention but your proposition implies that) does not help when we try to acess how strong those single cards are. I played with and against the deck many times I ve tested different builds with Toffel and had some discussions with Tiggu who presented the deck some time ago in the forum. So my experience with it is sufficient I would say and while I dont think the deck is on the same
level as the 5c artifact combo decks (due to consistency issues and the all in approach) its still very strong (rendering a lot of cards in the opposing deck useless and having sometimes 8+ mana on t2/3) While I agree that knowing what the deck wants to do take some win percentage away it doesnt mean you magically beat the whole "I laugh about your Lightning Bolt/Flametongue Kavu/Swords/Path/ etc." approach. You still need to have specific answers right on time to beat eggs. Now as Luca already said its only the stepchild and it brings other problems to the table besides the obvious ones (academy fastbond)

The first time I proposed the ban of Academy was because of the experience with this deck (at that point I never played against but with it). Since its very non interactive (which was the reason why I loved this deck so much. You are most of the time playing a solitaire game and laugh about the silly midrange value cards from your opponent) and time issues (even if you are lightning fast and experienced with this deck (sidenote: no one knows how to play that deck to its full potential) you will face turns which will take 10 minutes or more if you get your "crack egg crack egg into draw 7 into untap into crack 3 eggs into sunrise into draw 7 draws" (which are the draws which will win you the game) during tournaments. Now I dont want to repeat myself. I wrote about the deck some time ago and now it got even stronger with Fastbond (having the side-combo with infinite life or infinite mana is icing on the cake ) and let me assure you we are not some lazy scrubs who dont know how to play against combo decks in fact berlin had always a strong "combo" field so to assume we are just too dumb/inexperienced (while paul is crushing us in his local meta he can only beat 8ys old and tier4 decks online) is  very short sighted. It would require a lot of "metagame warping" to fight this deck, making your deck weak against 75% of the rest of the field and I would say if Artifact Combo decks had the same numbers in appearance as Blood or Ux Value decks a lot more people would rise their voices. As I alrady said in the other thread about banning/unbannings WotC to this day thinks fast mana is the worst thing you can do to the game and with good reason they try to stay away from it. The opportunity costs to enable academy are just way too low

[TaZi]

I suggested the Berlin guys should upload their lists had the following reasons:
- before my post, I read the full 3 pages here and there were some statements like "if we would post anytime, Paul is winning with the deck in FNM, you would see whats going on". that made me think "ok, then maybe you just do so"

- I checked the last 10 or so FNMs from Berlin on mtgpulse and there was not a single copy of the artifact deck in there (i know, its in the MGM turney)

[tonytahiti]

Again, Vazdru, you are oversimplifying things.

We have all decks present in Berlin, not every Friday, but overall in the community, everything is present, very diverse metagame, and we follow other communites, we actually check mtgpulse etc. and we see nothing completely new. But there is this +1 deck, the deck that we have here that is played close to nowhere else. So we have a complete meta (blood, rdw, reanimator, scapeshift, uwx midrange, oath, gruul, high tide, eggs even, everything you can think of) + 1! PLUS ONE, Vazdru. THE PLUS ONE DECK IS THE PROBLEM. So it is not locally minded at all, it is only local in the regard that only we, locally, have this deck. But this problem would be a problem EVERYWHERE if every city had a skillful artifacts player.

And you with your question about me. I have played the last 5 Metagame Masters tournaments here in Berlin, a tournament in Berlin, where more than half the players are not from berlin. Very nonlocal meta etc. You should check it out, we have Erfurt people here, Halle, Leipzig, even Mannheim Players like Maqi and Ronald L. made the trip. I am actually a little surprised you as a council member who is "so in touch with all the communities" havent participated in one of those tournaments, its the second biggest HL series in Germany. Maqi as a council member made an effort at least, and we appreciated that. There is a 6th Installment of the tournament on 4th of June. Come by, say hello to the community, "keep in touch". It is quite important for a council member to understand and follow what is going on in the cities and judging your arguments (lack there of)and the problem you have grasping the root of this problem it might have to do with you not "keeping in touch" with the communities enough.

[derStefan82]

What I don't like on this thread is that there is that there is no real discussions about changes.

Besides a post from Christof and some comments from Jonnie there is no discussion about what to do.

Only crying and battling.

I shared my ideas about thinking about LED/Fastbond to weaken combo decks but not destorying archetypes but there was less (nearly no) discussion.

As well there were not any suggestions.

Do you want to have Academy banned (Berlin players)?

Or do you think like me that Academy and Oath are 2 cards which enable broken strategies but are also enablers for quite a number of archetypes.

That's why my hope was more in discussing cards like LED/Will/Fastbond which create higher consistency of those decks but not destroy them if they get the hammer.