Messages

@vazdru: I think the idea of a online league without fetchlands is cool, but I don't if people are willing to do this because you also want to test your deck for the actual environment with fetchlands.

There has been some support for the bannings (and so far no one who completely disagrees ). Will the council discuss this idea (or start a poll or whatever)?

"nevertheless this approach doesn' t have a majority neither in the council nor in the community"

Could  you explain to me why the council is against a fetchland ban please? Just asking because your comments makes it seem like you support my arguments against the fetchlands.
Thank you

@bobzord:

took me a while to answer you but I have send you a PM.
I'm ready for our game. Just send me a PM and we'll figure it out

This is just for me to see how far off I am with my opinion regarding the fetchlands I don't know if this has been discussed before, I just would like to hear peoples take on this.

I think the fetchlands (Onslaught flooded, Strand, Polluted Delta, etc and Zendikar Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats, etc) aren't good for the format.

Reasons:

1. shuffling takes waaaayyyy too much time. Shuffling before games is already a time consuming activity with a 100 card deck. I don't have a study to back me up on this, but I have the feeling that in 3 games against a 3 or 4 colour deck 10 minutes are devoted to shuffling. That sounds like an exaggeration, but think about your last game against 4 colour Blood. Think about the shuffling before the game, the cutting/shuffling you do with your opponents deck, mulligan shuffling, first fetchland searching/shuffling, cutting/shuffling your opp.'s deck, second fetchland searching/shuffling, cutting/shuffling your opp.'s deck, tutor searching/shuffling, cutting/shuffling your opp.'s deck, third fetchland.... I'll stop here. Playing a lot on cockatrice makes you forget how time consuming these actions really are. But in a real life card game you are forced to watch your opponent shuffle for a loooooong time. Don't get me wrong, shuffling will always be a part of the game with all its various tutor effects, but the Fetchlands take this to another level by adding an additional 7-10 fetch effects to almost every deck playing at least two colours ( for example even Izzet decks often play delta, strand, tarn, foothills, mesa, mire, rainforest)

2. banning the fetchlands would strengthen peoples deck-/manabase-building skills. Right now you can just jam all the on-colour duals and x fetchlands in your deck and call it a day because fetchlands work as duals and basic lands at the same time.

3. It would weaken multicolour decks by creating a downside to playing multiple colours. We all know that 4 colour blood is the best deck in the format because it combines incredibly powerful cards from 4 different colours with perplexing consistency. I find it weird that a deck with 4 colours is perhaps the most consistent in the format. Having access to 4 colours allows this deck to play so many threats that basically do the same (undercosted powerful creatures, powerful planeswalkers, really good removal, etc), therefore bypassing the thought of highlander as a format where every game feels different.

4. It wouldn't kill multicolour decks, they just have to adapt to playing different lands. There are so many sets of duals and dual coloured manlands out there that building a multi colour manabase is still easily possible without having fetchlands around.Furthermore there are enough signets, talismans, keyrunes, etc around to give you colour fixing/ramp without playing green.

(5. It would weaken dredge cards. Without fetchlands filling up the yard, DTT and TCruise would be reduced to an acceptable powerlevel) -> this is just my hate for TCruise.  Think of it as an extra argument

To draw a conclusion, I think the fetchlands make people wait for searching/shuffling instead of playing magic for an unnessecarily long period of time and have created an environment in which there is absolutely no downside to playing 3 or 4 colours (I know that blood moon, back to basics, etc are in the format, but they've been for quite some time and it hasn't slowed Blood decks down/stopped them from winning tounaments one bit). The latter has the affect that creatures like siege rhino, which have their multicolour casting cost as their only downside, are basically cards without downside at all, creating a disadvantage for every deck which limits itself to fewer colours. Right now, this isn't problematic because we have a diverse metagame (in part thanks to people playing their pet decks instead of the strongest) but I doubt that this will hold with multicolour decks (especially Blood) winning more and more tournaments all the while Wizards is printing more and more powerful multicolour cards.


Thank you in advance for your answers.

Hey, thank you both for the fast answers. Before I start with my comments to your responses, I just want to say that I'm not trying to just be anti everything you just metioned. If the deck is a real problem, I want it banned before someone starts playing it in my area. So far I've come to understand some problems with the deck. Other things I'm not sure about yet and I would really like to hear your take on it.

@tony:
1. I get that the deck is capable of doing very powerful things very fast. I also get that my scapeshift comparison was wrong. Would you also consider this deck vastly different from TPS regarding it's ability to do unfair things (would you say that the artefact combo deck is more unfair/less fun to play against than TPS)? I ask this specifically because TPS is also a deck which is played way more in Berlin than anywhere else.

2. " Paul Templin is a completely different animal with this deck! Now you say "so its the player?" It is not the player, it is the deck, that gets flawlessly by this certain player."

I would like you to elaborate on this subject. Isn't it possible that Paul T. is just a very skilled combo deck player and once you'd ban the cards for his pet combo deck he would switch to TPS or another combo deck, master this deck over a certain time period as well and dominate the Berlin fmn scene again?

3. " He plays mishras workshop into double talisman into senseis divining top. You know what? From this spot, it is INCREDIBLY HARD for me to win this game of magic. And i dont win -  with the amount of mana he generates he has an insane of topdecks that I NEED TO COUNTER to not lose on the spot (time spiral, wheel, will, wargate, rings, staff, + about 10 other spells)."

This example confuses me. The problematic card here is workshop, ain't it? This start would still be possible after the banning of academy and/or fastbond, right? Or am I missing something?

4. "game two he goes fastbond turn 1 into 4 lands turn 1 into those rings of tralala. Turn 2 he plays memory jar cracks it gets academy and finds lands and ressources /tutors to infinite combo me Turn 2."

That is a sick start no one wants to play against. That was my first thought. Here's my second thought: 1 fastbond, 1 land to play it, 4 lands from fastbond, ring, memory jar. That's 8 cards. On turn two. So you can't tell me this a regular occurance. Even Paul T., who plays this deck very often, would admit that this exact combination of cards is unusual I believe. How often does this deck really go off in the early turns? I think that is really important to know. Turn 2 has to be magical christmasland. And if it does consistently goldfish turn 4, would you regard that as too fast?
Furthermore let's not forget that only the jar really wrecks you in this example. If you have spell Pierce, Wasteland, Thoughtseize, etc so he can't play the jar, he has just 5 Lands, one fastbond, one ring and no cards in his hands....
Still, 5 lands on turn one is sick and not something you'd want in the game. At the same time I see that there is a downside. You don't have many hand cards left. If you go 5 Lands on turn one there aren't many business spells left in your hand and you're in topdeck mode really quickly.

5."The cards that make this deck so busted are SUPER HARD TO INTERACT with. The academy that comes off the top or gets tutored out in response to my clique with crop rotation"

Weird to say you can't interact with this stuff and then immediately mention tutors (like crop rotation) which definetly can be interacted with. I play crop ro myself in my highlander deck and I have been wrecked pretty hard by mental misstep numerous times by now. Also this doesn't happen super early in the game (like crop ro turn one or something), does it? So there is time for you to get counterspell mana up.

6. "It WILL CREATE those 5-6 mana, sometimes 43-44 (untap academy twice etc, i saw him generate about 50 mana with it yesterday vs scapeshift) and there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO"

That's a really unpleasant situation. I guess you can stop untap shenanigans with wasteland or tec edge but you will not be able to stop the first activation. I don't actually know if there's a good way to compare it to another card. The closest thing would probably be gaea's cradle and elfs finishing with craterhoof. Both cards that fuel the land (academy/cradle) make mana on their own (talisman/elfs) and create an unfair situation. The problem being that creature removal (especially mass removal) is much more prevalent than artefact mass removal. Sounds unfair to me.
So as far as I understand it, he has to deploy some of his resources to ramping/lands and it is hard to interact with him while he is creating fast mana. so you have to hit his business spells tomake him pay for this. I get that you can't counter lands (I'm not stupid) and that interaction with his ramp cards is not possible (which should probably be a red flag on its own for the council), but he doesn't have a limitedless amount of payoff cards. I'm missing why it isn't possible to discard/counter those and make him rely on topdecks (like in the jar situation you described; counter his jar and he has only topdecks)
AGAIN: I'm not trying to undermine your opinion. It is valuable to me because I haven't played against this deck just once. So please stay calm.

@Nev: I get the pet deck thing. And think it is remarkable that even you, somebody who doesn't think is excessively strong, admits that it is capable of infinite mana as early as turn two. So it probably is right to ban it.  


edit says: @tony: Look at vazdrus post -> These results are exactly why people question this decks power. If I would tell you about a deck that just about wins every fnm at my local shop and then doesn't win one of the big tournaments or perform well in the online league wouldn't you be suspicious as well?

[Why are the academy/fastbond decks worse than other combo decks like scapeshift (2 out of 2 in top 8!!!) or TPS (9th, 11th played by 2 people) which had much better records at the metagame masters and are doing unfair things (fast mana) as well?]

Regarding the tolarian academy/Fastbond votes, I have some questions. I'd really, really like to get some of the Berlin Players to answer me. I Don't mean any harm, I'm just curious, because the problem doesn't exist in Frankfurt.

Why are these cards such a nuisance to you? I read that you think they are not very interactive, but it seems to me (from an outsiders position I remind you) that you don't face them that often and decks using these cards are not dominant even in your area. Before you burn me alive, please here me out.

I personally would ban Treasure Cruise if I had the power to do so. I hate the card because it made it impossible for non blue decks to outvalue blue decks. Even if you maneuver your deck in a way that sees you making a lot of favorable trades, when your opponent suddenly goes sorcery speed ancestral recall you're almost always going to be facing an uphill battle again. What rubs me the wrong way is that every blue deck has to play that card. It is just too strong. In our testing for the GP it was a pretty safe bet that in a match of blue deck vs blue deck the dude with the resolved treasure cruise would win (just look at the metagame masters top8; 6 blue decks, 5 playing treasure cruise, the exception being the fastbond deck).

This detour brings me to the cards suggested for the ban: Fastbond and Academy. As far as I can tell (http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=1182.0) 4 people played an artifact combo deck involving the two named cards at the metagme masters in Berlin.
They finished in places 5, 22, 35 and 39. That's not very dominant. I mean either the deck is not very consistent or it is so hard to play that it denies most pilots easy wins. If the cards had placed a high percentage of the people playing in the top 8 or even near it...ok, but this way, I don't even know if the 4 decks combine for a winning record. 4 Decks out of 45 is also not that much.

I played against the 5c Academy combo deck at the highlander GP (don't remember the guy's name anymore) and the games were ok. He comboed me out the first game, i was too fast the second one and in the third he won by casting armageddon (which was the only time I felt it wasn't fair). Apart from that, it wasn't any different than all the other combo decks. Combo decks are doing unfair things. That's their nature. This is why they are build.

So please be gentle with me and explain to me, why you want these cards banned so badly. Why are the academy/fastbond decks worse than other combo decks like scapeshift (2 out of 2 in top 8!!!) or TPS (9th, 11th played by 2 people) which had much better records at the metagame masters and are doing unfair things (fast mana) as well?

You always struck me as kind of a weird yet nice dude, but this tournament report just baffles me, Jochen.

Quote:

Match 1: Martin Zimmermann with Mono Blue Control  2-1

Game 1: Turn 2 Martin played Sygg, River Cutthroat and turn 4 Gush into Master of Waves. I had Venser, Shaper Savant to delay the 4 2/1 Mefolk/Elementals for another 2 turns. I could defeat the Master but lost too much lifepoints against Serendib Efreet and Bonesplitter. One turn before I hoped to cast Scapeshift I was shot down with a Psionic Blast.

Game 2: Turn 3 Martin had Sygg, River Cutthroat and Thada Adel, Acquisitor. I had only one removal which I used for Thada, even if had played out all my artifacts in my deck by playing Sensei's Divining Top. My plan to stop Sygg from working didn't work since Martin played Mutavault next to Sygg. I struggled several turn especially against Sygg and his card advantage, but several turns later when Martin was tapped out I could cast the final Scapeshift for the win.


This is wrong. What I mean is, this game never happened that way. How do I know? Well first of all, Martin Zimmermann is pretty well known as the mono U control player (also finished in the Top 8 of the last Highland GP http://mtgpulse.com/event/22764#314983). His list never included sygg, river cut throat, thada adel, serendib efreet, master of waves, gush or bonesplitter. He is also known for owning just one highlander deck for the last 1o-12 years. This deck being mono U control. Second, Martin is one of my best friends and we talked about that tournament. He never mentioned changing his deck. So after I read this report, I asked him if he really played the cards you mentioned, which he denied!He played the exact same list he took to the Highlander GP!

That's why this report is extremely weird.

Option 1:

The report is a lie. I don't know why you would ever do this. You really did win that game, just not in the way you described, mostly because none of the cards you mentioned were actually in Martin's deck! There is nothing to gain by lying on a forum such as this.

Option 2:

You couldn't remember what actually happened and decided to make a game up you would've liked to be a part of. That's definitely not as bad as lying but still weird as hell. Why not write "I don't remember the details of that game other thane me using scapeshift ftw". Instead you chose to make up all those situations you described in detail and all those cards that never actually got played, just to write a report (which no one forced you to do). That's just bat-shit crazy, man! This would mean you'd value this report of you winning a really small tournament so highly, that you couldn't accept the fact that it might be incomplete. To that, I can only say, REALLY DUDE??

Option 3:

It is a misunderstanding. You played a game like the one you described some time ago and your mind swapped that memory with the game you played against Martin. This sounds like the most understandable option of the three; but think about it. Really think about.
Martin Zimmermann is easily one of the most memorable German Magic players just by appearance. Tall and one of the most muscular dudes I've ever seen entering a Magic tournament. it takes a lot to confuse him with another player. Read the tournament report again. There a so many deatils in the description of that game. How messed up does your mind have to be, to confuse a game with sygg, adel, gush, master of waves and so on for a game against a mono u control opponent who has creatures like silent arbiter, augur of bolas or spellskite in his deck in a game that happened 4 days ago? How vivid must that sygg river cutthroat memory be implemented in your mind to confuse these two situations? If the report were less specific like "I think he attacked with sygg and stuff, but I don't really know" - ok. But you describe in detail, what he played. Including sequences (gush into master of waves) and your own interactions with his plays (using venser to bounce master)!!!!!!!! That's so fucking crazy as well!!!


Jochen,   , which option is it?

Deckcode: tf87qsle

Paid the starting fee this morning and will sent decklist/post deckcode tomorrow. Thanks for having me

X

and this time I promise work won't keep me from actually participating/answering messages.

X

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Sad to see that all the cards I had thought of were already tested and didn't perform well.

I will definitely add the Plateau and test some more. I have to play more against aggro decks I think.

I really thought hard about adding abrupt decay, because it felt very bad to loose against ooze (+ clock) or back to basics. As you said, there is no card you have to scoop to immediately and I agree that I don't want to see decay or anything like it in my opening hand taking away the speed and consistency of the deck. Maybe it's just the nature of the deck I'm not used to because I mostly play monoGreen or UW Control where Tutors and answers to specific cards are necessary.

Another question:

Is it me, or is the deck really hard to play? I mean sometimes you have one combopiece in hand and just dig/search for the other or you are generating value/cycle turns with the eggs, but from time to time I'm completely lost. When to sac a certain egg or use/cycle a spellbomb requires planning ahead for some turns while keeping in mind all the possible draws over the next turns. Do you have the same feeling?

I tested the deck and I'm impressed too. It is a lot more resilient than I thought and because you have so much cycling, you get to see a big part of your deck every game. This is something very special in highlander seeing as the "100 cards, but only one of every card"-rule normally prevents you from doing so.

I encoutered three problems while playing the deck:

1. I too had the feeling that one has to take too many mulligans due to the low land count.
2. Scavenging ooze is a real problem. It disrupts scepter foundry as well as the sunrise/eggs combo and Salvagers stuff. I would love to have more ways than just aether spellbomb, capsize and piryte Spellbomb to fight it (especially because the green decks will tutor for it once they know what you are up to)
3. Many people have included blood moon, back to basics and other nonbasic hate in their decks (at least where I play), because 4c Blood is the best aggro deck (and one of the best decks overall) right now. It is really hard to win against these hate cards (sometimes blood moon is not that bad because of eggs and mox, but back to basic is a pain in the ...).

Therefore I would love to up the land count by two (or more effects like ponder/preordain like Tabris suggested) and include some kind of "catch all" answer in the deck. Maelstrom Pulse or vindicate seem obvious, but i think that abrupt decay would maybe be enough because it hits all the hatebears and nonbasic hate cards and is searchable via mystical and muddle.

But I don't know what to cut.

There are a lot of possible cards for the deck like basalt and grim monolith, power artifact + braingeysir, inkmoth and blinkmoth nexus, krak clan ironworks, myr incubator, baleful strix,  Tezeret, agent of bolas, meekstone, ancient stirrings, etc. Has anyone tested some of these cards yet? I like the thought of the extra planeswalkers as another grind option/win condition/tutur. And ancient stirring seems sweet too.

@tabris: could you please post your lands list? Working on something similar myself
Thank you

Wow, both Tabris creature combo deck and the eggs deck look copmpletely insane and very hard to play. I'll ty to test them, if I have time.

Inspired by this threat I tested combo decks like dream halls (with omniscience and enter the infinite as new additions), TPS and Heartbeat of Spring (with green dictate), but unfortunately they all sucked. I mean, it was really bad. I don't know how the metagame looked the last time combo was good, but it seems, a lot has changed. Hardest obstacles to overcome for me while testing:

- no spoils mulligan. I thought it would matter, but it matters a lot more for combo decks than I thought
- better creatures. Combo decks without good defensive mechanisms are unplayable imho. Long gone are the times when people tried to kill with savannah lions and stuff. Now your opponent will slam 2 mana 3/3 and 3 mana 4/4 all day. Their clock is way faster. And it's not like they are just two or three of these creatures per deck. There are a lot of creatures out there with good stats for the same mana cost, meaning aggro strategies will almost always have a good start/curve (just count the number of 2 power one drops in white and red or black nowadays)
- And that's just the "vanilla" creatures. The new/newer hatebears are insane. Gaddock Teeg, Aven Mindcensor, Thalia, Scavenging Ooze,Eidolon of great revel, Spirit of the Labyrinth, and so on. And the old combo killers in form of winter orb or armageddon are of course still around
- Additionally there's some aggro decks like 4c Blood who have access to non creature hate like thoughtseize, liliana or hymn to tourach.
- And burn decks feel like a whole new level of bad. Their arsenal got better over time as well and combo can't defend well against a good mix of cheap (haste) creatures and "to the face" burnspells

In my games heartbeat provided the best results (although still bad), because you had some amount of defense (I played with wrath, wall of blossoms, wall of omens and timely reinforcements), but it felt like a watered down version of control. Between combo elements, defensive cards and ramp there was almost no space for counters or anti-control cards like abeyance, silence, etc. and most definitely no space at all for "fun" cards like time stretch, panoptic mirror, mindslaver, etc that I used to play when I had a heartbeat deck some years ago.

Fighting control also didn't feel good. Planeswalkers gave control a new angle from which they can win the game. 10 years ago control would maybe tap out on one turn for something like mophling (which needed additional mana invested every turn, or was just a little slow), giving you time to win or they would play draw-go, which you could beat by casting instant stuff (fact or fiction) and then using abeyance, etc. for one big combo turn.

Today control decks will play an early planeswalker against combo (insert any 1UU or 2UU jace here) an then beat you with the ard advantage generated by this planeswalker (for free every turn) or threaten a lethal ultimate. In addition to that, newer uw control decks can just combo you out! As soon as they have a decent amount of mana and something like sensei's diving top you risk getting mystical tutor-into-entreat-the-angel'd-eot when tapping out (maybe uw miracle control, maybe with helm and thopter foundry are the best combo decks today. As weird as that sounds). Furthermore Wizards may not be reprinting counterspell as a card but the counterspells they did print can totally ruin your day. Counterspell, Mana Drain, Force of will always be around to mess with your combo turn but the newer cheap counterspells in form of spell snare, spell pierce, mental misstep, remand are equally bad for you.
And then there is cryptic command or venser/karakas and of course snapcastermage and vendillion clique (beats and disruption !!)

Conclusion: Not enough love for spell based combo in the form of potent cards from Wizards in the last years and too many tools for every other deck. Either combo is not viable at the moment or it has to be some kind of creature based control like tabris' build or the UR decks which feature the pestermite/kiki-jiki combo (my money is still on uw miracles(helm combo as the best combo deck).

I haven't tested the finnish high tide list yet, which I will do, but I doubt that the mentioned hate cards and problems don't hit it as hard as the other combo decks (right now I think it's success is due to the lack of 4c blood and such in the meta but I hope I'm proven wrong).

I think unbanning imprial seal could be a step in the right direction (dream halls felt like it could use more tutors). But I have no idea what else could help.