Tolarian Academy

[MarcMagic]

Take any of your beloved board control decks, rdw, boros, ww, ug or goblins or pretty much any non-goodstuff deck for example. Is something like Creeping Corrosion or Shatterstorm played? How about Wrath, DoJ, Damnation, Firespout etc?

Although I do not wanna join the flamewar (at least some posts go in this direction) and throw around with invalid arguments I have to respond to some things.

Why should any deck run cards like Creeping Corrosion or Shatterstorm when you just need to play Tin-Street Hooligan or Vithian Renegades and have kind of the same effect as WoG vs Aggro. That's the point why ppl are discussing TA. Those Aggro/Goodstuff/whatever decks often only need to remove a single card while on the other hand control has to sweep the board to just get some more time. It is not the case that control wins the game after massremoval or sth it just buys some time. Ofc I know how to build good control decks even right now, just play similar cards like aggro and add more cardadvantage in exchange for speed. If I have to build a good meta-ed control based deck I'd probably play sth like Grixis with lots of good utility creatures, some big late gamer (wurmcoil, grave titan, planeswalker) and maximized (cheap) cardadvantage maybe I'd try to play Shackles and Sorin Markov (which is imo one of the best ways to handle beatdown), throw in some cheap rampartifacts and play cards like B2B and Moons. But it does not matter because you can build sth similar or even better with white or real aggro control with green.

To me the best part of the game is deck building and highlander cardpool is so huge so you can build dozens and dozens of viable decks. Still people go with the regular stuff which is sad

I cannot agree with that. I can agree that the most fun part is the cardpool and the deck building @ HL but to build strong decks you have to follow a common pattern e.g. play with all those "autoincludes". If you build 4c Goodstuff you got lots of slots to choose between cards but about 20-30 (non-land) cards will be always the same or very similar. There are staples in HL which have to be included in every strong deck for example manaelves for big Bant/UGx Control etc. I guess ppl know what cards I'm referring to. Ofc you can play way different like moving the manacurve, add more cheap CA, less removal, more creatures etc but you are much more restricted as what it seems. For me for example building a deck follows two different patters: 1.) I want to beat specific decks while having maximum possible positive results versus other decks or 2.) I want to play a specific deck with specific colors and mechanics and try to tune this deck to do fine versus these "decks to beat" etc. If I go with the first one I end up building very similar most of the time. This is the explanation to my point mentioned earlier "being restricted although we got an endless cardpool". Ofc it is similar with other formats or even worse but I wanted to give you my view on your quote.

Some off-topic speculation:
Goodstuff decks are good no-doubt but like I have said before, you can always play control too. Problem with old-school board control decks is not only creatures but also Planeswalkers against which they have very little answers. Now creatures are both good with and good against walkers so naturally playing creatures is the easiest way to go. Now board control decks could try to abuse this by maybe playing more control magic effects for example? Before WotC prints more playable Walker-removal, you are pretty limited to Fetters, Needle, Pulse, Vindicate and Oblivion Ring which all takes the focus of board control deck to a more utility based control. One still overlooked fact is that in control Sword of Feast and Famine is an effective Mirari's Wake, only better one (has pseudo-haste and built-in disruption). The only problem with it is that you have to play more creatures to abuse that fact. In a midrange world, decks that resemble caw-go or faeries have the edge (actually dedicated combo decks mostly have problem with very fast aggro so if format warps in even more midrange direction then combo could become more viable).

That underlines my argument even more. You have to add specific cards to do fine. I end up adding or splashing white to nearly every deck just because PtE, StP, O-Ring, Stoneforge Mystic etc. Doesn't matter whether it is control or aggro

Yeah. I am desperately trying to prove you that this is a broken card. I like building decks to abuse Academy, I like playing decks like this, and I like winning games, but if Academy gets unbanned, I really doubt my opponents will have enjoyable time.

And speaking of desperation, it's desperate to think that one disenchant, that costs three no less, is going to wreck the Academy deck. It most definitively slows them down if you manage to do it in first few turns, but you are spending your whole turn blowing up one of their artifacts, so it's not like you can put a convincing clock either.

Here is a prototype I built to test with, it's far from perfect, might have too few lands, might need some more disruption, might miss some very obvious cards. Deck is blast to play and focuses on finding Academy ASAP by mulliganing aggressively. Plays a bit like a storm combo deck.

http://pastebin.com/q6zcwjde

I'd already built a similar deck but it turned out not to be that much stronger than other viable combo decks. TA is more of a combo enabler than a real combo part but still my testings didn't do more broken things than my Cephalid Breakfast or Dreamhalls did. And building such decks and seeing interaction with different non-played cards could be worth unbanning TA. But I'd still not support the unbanning of it tbh^^.

[Tiggupiru]

To me the best part of the game is deck building and highlander cardpool is so huge so you can build dozens and dozens of viable decks. Still people go with the regular stuff which is sad

I cannot agree with that. I can agree that the most fun part is the cardpool and the deck building @ HL but to build strong decks you have to follow a common pattern e.g. play with all those "autoincludes". If you build 4c Goodstuff you got lots of slots to choose between cards but about 20-30 (non-land) cards will be always the same or very similar. There are staples in HL which have to be included in every strong deck for example manaelves for big Bant/UGx Control etc. I guess ppl know what cards I'm referring to. Ofc you can play way different like moving the manacurve, add more cheap CA, less removal, more creatures etc but you are much more restricted as what it seems. For me for example building a deck follows two different patters: 1.) I want to beat specific decks while having maximum possible positive results versus other decks or 2.) I want to play a specific deck with specific colors and mechanics and try to tune this deck to do fine versus these "decks to beat" etc. If I go with the first one I end up building very similar most of the time. This is the explanation to my point mentioned earlier "being restricted although we got an endless cardpool". Ofc it is similar with other formats or even worse but I wanted to give you my view on your quote.

This is actually a much more interesting discussion than the whole Academy banning thing. 

I'm with so_not on this one. You can build different decks and you can try to port a deck from another format to HL and have a reasonable success with it. The reigning trend in German deckbuilding seems to be the "play only established cards" and "don't worry about the synergies", thus many decks end up being relatively close to each other and are 3-5c "Goodstuffs". I am not saying it's wrong or anything, but this is practically the opposite way that I make most of my decks. I look for synergies that push the relatively weaker card better by playing other cards to pair it with, and the end result is often quite far from cards that many consider being "autoinclude". I am not saying every deck I have is a monster that uses only roguish cards, in fact most of them are bad, but every once in a while I do have success with cards that are definitely not automatic inclusions.

For example, if the general consensus is that Bribery is an auto-include, you are better off not playing Baneslayer Angel as your high curve card in your aggro deck. On the other hand, if world is full of BSA and no Bribery, you probably want to include Bribery in your deck.

Some off-topic speculation:
Goodstuff decks are good no-doubt but like I have said before, you can always play control too. Problem with old-school board control decks is not only creatures but also Planeswalkers against which they have very little answers. Now creatures are both good with and good against walkers so naturally playing creatures is the easiest way to go. Now board control decks could try to abuse this by maybe playing more control magic effects for example? Before WotC prints more playable Walker-removal, you are pretty limited to Fetters, Needle, Pulse, Vindicate and Oblivion Ring which all takes the focus of board control deck to a more utility based control. One still overlooked fact is that in control Sword of Feast and Famine is an effective Mirari's Wake, only better one (has pseudo-haste and built-in disruption). The only problem with it is that you have to play more creatures to abuse that fact. In a midrange world, decks that resemble caw-go or faeries have the edge (actually dedicated combo decks mostly have problem with very fast aggro so if format warps in even more midrange direction then combo could become more viable).

That underlines my argument even more. You have to add specific cards to do fine. I end up adding or splashing white to nearly every deck just because PtE, StP, O-Ring, Stoneforge Mystic etc. Doesn't matter whether it is control or aggro

Splashing for cards like those is practically inevitable, because it is so easy, and so hard to punish well enough, but there are decks that doesn't want Mystics, StP or even O-Rings, so they are not 100% auto-inclusions.

I'd already built a similar deck but it turned out not to be that much stronger than other viable combo decks. TA is more of a combo enabler than a real combo part but still my testings didn't do more broken things than my Cephalid Breakfast or Dreamhalls did. And building such decks and seeing interaction with different non-played cards could be worth unbanning TA. But I'd still not support the unbanning of it tbh^^.

I think this is way better than any of the combodecks I've seen or played, or it will be if it is polished. Dream Halls for example has a symmetric effect, making it a potential liability, where as the TA has no such liabilities and is uncounterable. The discussion about it being more of an enabler than a combo piece is true, but good enabler is way more valuable than a generic combo piece as you can have different cards to pair your enabler with, and it doesn't limit your card choices nearly as much.

[LasH]

Here is a prototype I built to test with, it's far from perfect, might have too few lands, might need some more disruption, might miss some very obvious cards. Deck is blast to play and focuses on finding Academy ASAP by mulliganing aggressively. Plays a bit like a storm combo deck.

http://pastebin.com/q6zcwjde

I'd already built a similar deck but it turned out not to be that much stronger than other viable combo decks. TA is more of a combo enabler than a real combo part but still my testings didn't do more broken things than my Cephalid Breakfast or Dreamhalls did.

#2

Can only repeat myself. Face gaddock and conceed. Your list is a pure combo deck with only FoW, 3 discard + capsule to handle your opponents threads. This makes your deck extremly susceptible for any of the my mentioned cards.

Dream Halls is the most compareable combo deck list to your deck atm. It kinda looses to the same cards. Maybe your deck is A BIT more consistent, but i still think its definitly not stronger than dreamhalls. Thats what my testings proved, too. BUT i have to admit that i'm not used to play combo decks, that's why i won't take my analysis to prove anything here, its just my result and that's actually why i did a post here, to get more opinions. But so far i don't see any card combinations or deck build's which are viable, to handle all new dangerous creatures and be simultaneously able to win by combo in a very fast way. Futhermore i don't see any valid arguments other than "im scared that it COULD be broken".

Some1 else alrdy said, timetwister COULD be broken, but its not played in nearly any list. Same for Worldgorger dragon, power artifact etc etc. Futhermore, academy just gives the basic's to play combos. I dont see the problem for combo decks in getting mana, it makes them more consist, because they can play in the best case - more cards. If mana would be the problem, why is no list running Powerartifact MoM and metal worker/Monolith to generate ridiculous amount of mana? You can still cast your braingeyers or strokes or timetwister and get colored mana via MoM + any Land.

And if you really suceed to cast MoM + Tolarian Academy, few mana artifacts and your X Spells, i think you deserve to win. Whats the difference in playing 2 card combo MoM + TA or dreamhalls to end the game?
Pattern can go off in turn 3 or 4. Dreamhalls too. Any TA deck would not be faster (consens?). In the BEST case, its more consistent, but i really don't see that in the posted lists.

[Nastaboi]

People who claim combo decks "losing to card X" have never actually played combo.

[LasH]

People who claim combo decks "losing to card X" have never actually played combo.

I played dreamhalls for about half a year. It kinda does not loose to card X, it looses to cards YXZ YXZ YXZ YXZ YXZ YXZ or wins. We kinda don't need to speak in that way.

Proof me wrong or don't flame. A consistent deck does not loose to a single card, thats fore sure, but i alrdy said, neither of this lists is consistent, and as long as you dont build a sucessfull, consistent dreamhalls combo, dont talk that derogativ about "people".

[so_not]

Take any of your beloved board control decks, rdw, boros, ww, ug or goblins or pretty much any non-goodstuff deck for example. Is something like Creeping Corrosion or Shatterstorm played? How about Wrath, DoJ, Damnation, Firespout etc?

Although I do not wanna join the flamewar (at least some posts go in this direction) and throw around with invalid arguments I have to respond to some things.

Why should any deck run cards like Creeping Corrosion or Shatterstorm when you just need to play Tin-Street Hooligan or Vithian Renegades and have kind of the same effect as WoG vs Aggro. That's the point why ppl are discussing TA. Those Aggro/Goodstuff/whatever decks often only need to remove a single card while on the other hand control has to sweep the board to just get some more time. It is not the case that control wins the game after massremoval or sth it just buys some time. Ofc I know how to build good control decks even right now, just play similar cards like aggro and add more cardadvantage in exchange for speed. If I have to build a good meta-ed control based deck I'd probably play sth like Grixis with lots of good utility creatures, some big late gamer (wurmcoil, grave titan, planeswalker) and maximized (cheap) cardadvantage maybe I'd try to play Shackles and Sorin Markov (which is imo one of the best ways to handle beatdown), throw in some cheap rampartifacts and play cards like B2B and Moons. But it does not matter because you can build sth similar or even better with white or real aggro control with green.

That's exactly my point. Decks play less targeted artifact than creature removal and no mass artifact removal whatsoever-> it's harder for the current decks to remove artifacts-> can't compare Cradle and Academy (which was my original point). If Academy was the deck to beat, this could result in much heavier artifact-removal packages but would also lead to a pretty awkward format. But anyway it's pretty hard to predict the exact result.

Grixis sounds tempting but would probably need to have a very specific plan against rdw (Sorin does help, although it does seem a bit slow and it doesn't affect the board as much as Titans for example). I would actually say Grixis has very good matchup against the goodstuff decks especially bant.

To me the best part of the game is deck building and highlander cardpool is so huge so you can build dozens and dozens of viable decks. Still people go with the regular stuff which is sad

I cannot agree with that. I can agree that the most fun part is the cardpool and the deck building @ HL but to build strong decks you have to follow a common pattern e.g. play with all those "autoincludes". If you build 4c Goodstuff you got lots of slots to choose between cards but about 20-30 (non-land) cards will be always the same or very similar. There are staples in HL which have to be included in every strong deck for example manaelves for big Bant/UGx Control etc. I guess ppl know what cards I'm referring to. Ofc you can play way different like moving the manacurve, add more cheap CA, less removal, more creatures etc but you are much more restricted as what it seems. For me for example building a deck follows two different patters: 1.) I want to beat specific decks while having maximum possible positive results versus other decks or 2.) I want to play a specific deck with specific colors and mechanics and try to tune this deck to do fine versus these "decks to beat" etc. If I go with the first one I end up building very similar most of the time. This is the explanation to my point mentioned earlier "being restricted although we got an endless cardpool". Ofc it is similar with other formats or even worse but I wanted to give you my view on your quote.

Similar looking decks can have very different game plans so you can't put all decks with 30 same cards into same category. There are no such things as auto-includes or common patters (or at least there shouldn't be). Deck building is hard but it doesn't help if you think this way. You have to keep your mind open and really stick to your game plan. Every route you take has its pros and cons. Like the elves you mention could give alternative routes to build UG/heavy bant. You could change your mana-acceleration to something non-elvish. That would slow you down a bit but on the other hand you wouldn't lose to mana screw due to forked bolt or something like that. You obviously have to have a plan against the most common enemies, which gives some limitations, but the worst case scenarios are limited.

Your case number 1 should automatically move the metagame. People should build decks to beat the current decks that leads to new decks beating the old ones. That isn't happening in highlander at the moment.
Number 2 is harder but that really is the scenario where you have to forget all limitations and stick to your plan. At least that is how I think new competitive decks are formed. Some decks will work better than others but sometimes you hit the jackpot and the format warps.

It is interesting to see different kind of views people have about deck building and it's good to have conversation about it. That also tells us how complicated this game is which probably is the reason people like it so much.

[so_not]

Tiggupiru kind of nath'd me in the last post

About combo decks in general, I think they are hard to build but even harder to play. For example I also built an Angry hermit-Cephalid deck and I think it's already decent but the deck is just so friggin difficult to play. Most of your hands consist of only tutors, lands and card draw and depending on what opponent does, what lands, tutors and other stuff you have, you could play many many different ways and make at least as many mistakes because you have to make an estimate about your opponent's options related to your own resources. Every turn.

[Tiggupiru]

Can only repeat myself. Face gaddock and conceed. Your list is a pure combo deck with only FoW, 3 discard + capsule to handle your opponents threads. This makes your deck extremly susceptible for any of the my mentioned cards.

Capsule can be found with numerous tutors, including Trinket Mage, so Gaddock (or any other creature for that matter) is not something you scoop to. Wurmcoil Engine can still win the game even if Gaddock stays on the board, or at least it can stall the game long enough for you to find a tutor/capsule. Not to mention, Gaddock isn't very good creature atm, because it shuts down your own Elspeth, Gideon, Green Sun's Zenith, Garruk and possibly other stuff that GW decks really want to play. Also, they have to find it and play it before the fifth turn, or they just lose.

Dream Halls is the most compareable combo deck list to your deck atm. It kinda looses to the same cards. Maybe your deck is A BIT more consistent, but i still think its definitly not stronger than dreamhalls. Thats what my testings proved, too. BUT i have to admit that i'm not used to play combo decks, that's why i won't take my analysis to prove anything here, its just my result and that's actually why i did a post here, to get more opinions. But so far i don't see any card combinations or deck build's which are viable, to handle all new dangerous creatures and be simultaneously able to win by combo in a very fast way. Futhermore i don't see any valid arguments other than "im scared that it COULD be broken".

Like I said, Dream Halls is a card that creates a symmetrical effect and it can be destroyed with Pridemage, get counterd or discarded, but Academy is immune to all that. It is good against counters as it really doesn't rely on resolving a single spell, any Draw 7 while Academy is going, will win you the game. Any card draw will put you closer to that goal.

Some1 else alrdy said, timetwister COULD be broken, but its not played in nearly any list. Same for Worldgorger dragon, power artifact etc etc.

Yes, someone said that, I was fine with those unbans, and I am fine with Y. Will, but Academy is something I don't think is going to create healthy format.

If mana would be the problem, why is no list running Powerartifact MoM and metal worker/Monolith to generate ridiculous amount of mana? You can still cast your braingeyers or strokes or timetwister and get colored mana via MoM + any Land.

Because Power Artifact and MoM are bad cards, if you don't have the other piece of the combo, and they can be disrupted with a timely naturalize/counterspell/discard. Power artifact is also a three card combo.

Metalworker is a creature and an artifact, so it not only has summoning sickness, it also dies to anything.

And if you really suceed to cast MoM + Tolarian Academy, few mana artifacts and your X Spells, i think you deserve to win. Whats the difference in playing 2 card combo MoM + TA or dreamhalls to end the game?

This quote tells me that you are playing that deck wrong. The goal is not to get MoM and Academy into play. It is to play a few artifacts, find Academy, generate mana, and draw your way until you find the MoM, which seals the deal. You don't actively try to find MoM, in fact you always mulligan it away because it does nothing until you have the game locked up. I probably would cut the MoM entirely as it serves no real purpose other than randomly winning out of the blue.

[Sturmgott]

TA must be banned because Staxx is the best deck of the format
Doesn't apply any longer.

Read this. Then read it again. Then repeat the process, until you understand the obvious.

[LasH]

TA must be banned because Staxx is the best deck of the format
Doesn't apply any longer.

Read this. Then read it again. Then repeat the process, until you understand the obvious.

The obvious is, that this was 4 years ago.

[coldcrow]

Do you really say that Academy will make Stax the best deck in the format again, Sturmgott?
I am not seeing it.

[Sturmgott]

That's what I would expect. Exactly.

[LasH]

First impressions:

We tested a tps list (played by coldcrow) and some kind of your proposed decklist (played by payron).

Not much to say about the TPS list so far by me, he kinda won the matches, but without academy and yawgmoth's will.

Payrons deck is quite boring once it goes off. The mainproblem in my eyes is not the strength of the deck, but the turns last to long. Its like the player is searching 5 minutes for stuff without changing the bord alot, and this goes on turn by turn, making games last 20 mins or more for like 5 turns in gameplay (condition: you have the TA + untap ingame). One thing is surely our inexperience with the deck, but some1 alrdy said, combo is not that easy to play and it takes alot of time to think and proceed.

So my first conclusion after these games would be, that you need to ban other cards by unbanning academy. Candelabras of tawnos is the strongest of all untappers, because it's an artifact by itself + very low costs + very easy to tutor (even trinket mage can find it).

Without to many ways to untap the TA, turns would not last so long. The question is also, if you play the dreamhalls-combo or even pattern, turns by your opponnent last very long too, till they finally kill you (if you play it out). The difference for me: The academy deck you proposed has nearly every turn a long turn (condition: you have the TA + untap ingame)while it does not straight kill your opponent. On the other hand - pattern and dh only do this in their "last turn". Since there is already time-based problematic for this format, i think that might be the greatest issue so far (not the powerlevel).

Maybe the player's can share some of their experiences, because i only saw a few mu's so far.

p.s.: my usual stax list had no impressive boost by TA, but i did not play it as combo deck (lock with nethervoid, winter orb etc).

[Mir]

Well just check High Tide/MOM archetype decks. I know a lot of replacements which can produce quite a lot of mana per tap.

For example
Winter Orb/Static orb with Tolaria seems to me as another really nice way for a lock an oponnent. But its not a 2 card lock. to make it really good another two artifacts will do the job... like Artifact lands. And this seems really evil

But ... I have seen mono green elven deck which uses Winter Orb and Static orb, while elves and/or lands produce quite a lot of mana... Gaea's Cradle is used instead of Tolarian Academy.

Its true that it has not so high power as the Tolaria has in the blue artifact combinantion. Its because that many artifacts can be indestructible (Darksteel citadel), while creatures are really much more vulnerable (a single Prodigal sorcerer? )

For me personally (my main deck "HL+EDH Teferi") the Tolaria does not make a big difference unless I splash more artifact. to be honest it would not harm the deck at all, another multiple blue mana per untap will help of course, but It will be single land while I have another 7 possibilities how to produce more mana per tap.

With current usage of Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, and other mana producing artifacts , and some indestructible artifacts the Tolaria can cause big mana boost byt dropping single land into play. +5 blue mabybe more. Thats a great accelleration for anything.

[Kassow-Rossing]

This is, to my surprise ( ), still a very interesting discussion! I think most of what Lash said is pretty damn straight! Lash I've also given you TWO applauds for your testing work And that's even though you keep spelling "too" like this: "to" hehe

OT
However I'm not quite sure other cards would really have to get the hammer for Academy to get unbanned. It looks like a dangerous card in a combo deck, but wouldn't the format simply warp and adapt to the new decks to beat? I mean having stuff like Relic of Progenitus and Nihil Spellbomb would just be seen more often or am I completely off? (To beat Hermit)

I disagree with Sturmgott, which doesn't happen very often, about if Staxx would become the deck to beat if T.Academy suddenly got removed from the ban list. I think it will be a great land but not better than Library was or only tiny bits better than Workshop and Academy Ruins. And come on how cool would it be to have Tolarian Academy and Academy Ruins on the battlefield at the same time?? Sorry for being silly this afternoon. Real Madrid just had it's first draw result against Barcelona i more than two years..