Why Standard is not as broken as you think.
Standard forum
Posted on March 28, 2017, 5:33 p.m. by Ceondoc
We all know about the Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian combo that has taken over Standard at the moment, but I believe that it does not need to be banned, but rather that new ways to get around it need to be found. Take Lost Legacy. It's sort-of like a weaker Surgical Extraction, but I see nobody playing it. It seems like a really good card against those Saheeli Rai/Felidar Guardian decks, yet everyone does not think to play it. Everybody goes straight to "Ban this" and not "How can I deal with these bigger decks?" Also Disallow can stop the Saheeli trigger or the Cat itself, and Pick the Brain can help you get rid of those cards before they are even a problem, plus with a Surgical Extraction Delirium ability. Even Authority of the Consuls can help, by gaining you life whenever a Guardian comes in, so that they can't kill you without dealing with that first. So try using the less used card to your advantage before you call the format "completely broken."
pumpkinwavy says... #3
We have a four deck format where two are tier 1 and the other are a bit less popular. The top decks all have at least some play to them and have interesting interactions and matchups. Not the greatest standard format, but not the worst, and definitely not worth the huge hit to player confidence a ban would have.
March 28, 2017 7:40 p.m.
landofMordor says... #4
I'm with the original poster. Standard does have answers, and while CopyCat is currently ridiculously prevalent, I'm all in favor of creative ways to get around that. Though it may be a bummer in the short term, building to beat CopyCat and Mardu Ballista will ultimately train some killer deck-builders, I think.
March 28, 2017 10:13 p.m.
One of the Wizards developers posted a couple of days ago about how they realised Standard was problematic at the moment.
Particularly due to having a lack of answers for the top decks.
He said they should probably have had Naturalize be Standard legal at the moment.
You can put all the answers you like to combat Copy Cat ... and most of them will just be countered. That's part of the problem - the Jeskai colours give access to lots of Counter spells, and Spell Queller.
With Mardu Vehicles the relentless aggression and access to so many little threats, some of them being Vehicles, means that you can't spot remove everything, and a board wipe won't hit the biggest threat - Heart of Kiran. Lost Legacy can't find that card and Pick the Brain only grabs all copies once you have Delerium - impossible to achieve before it hits the field on Turn 2. Once again, Heart of Kiran will hit the field before you can play Pick the Brain.
I have beaten both of these decks, but never taken a match from them. You can't win by just stacking your deck full of answers. You also need some win cons.
The words you have chosen to use in your OP suggest to me that you don't have a lot of real world experience playing against the top decks. I do. They are extremely difficult to consistently beat. That's why the pros built them in the first place.
The way Mardu Vehicles works is that it uses Heart of Kiran to do most of its dirty work, having lots of Creatures to Crew it. There are enough of these Creatures to also attack with them, and Scrapheap Scrounger has recurrence. If there were easy ways to combat the deck we would have found them by now.
I am not calling for a ban. I'm asking for R and D to do a much better job of designing their sets in future.
March 29, 2017 3:27 a.m. Edited.
Even Shock or Grasp of Darkness or Harnessed Lightning with 1 energy in the tank or Unlicensed Disintegration or even Implement of Combustion is an answer to the CopyCat combo, but that does not make it less opressive.
But Dispel is an answer to all of those and that sucks, since you need more mana than them to asnwer thier combo than they need to answer your answer.
The answers vs threats is too imbalanced in favor of threats. Literally every standard standard deck is a midrange deck of some sorts with either aggressive or combo finishers. There has not even been a burn/monored viable deck since Kaladesh dropped! That is how low standard has gotten.
March 29, 2017 4 a.m.
Also, if you want to stop Copy Cat you have to constantly leave mana open, which then effects your win cons. More mana due to them Countering at least one of your spells.
The limited Player/Creature Burn cards in Standard just kills me.
Although the Creature Ramp options are slower, at least they are still there, like Beastcaller Savant and Deathcap Cultivator. You can also get big threats out early with Aetherworks Marvel.
Those strategies don't really work against the Tier 1 decks, though. Sad.
March 29, 2017 4:16 a.m.
I like Standard just fine now, I think it's very fun on a local level, but on the professional level you have to either play CopyCat or a deck to beat it. The main reason Mardu is so prevalent is because it has a great match-up vs the combo. Without the combo in standard, there may be a much more diverse meta.
However, as others mentioned Wizards kind of screwed the pooch on this. By having bans one week before Aether Revolt, they painted themselves into a corner where they could not have any more bans in such a short period of time without looking like complete idiots. I believe if they had not banned Copter, Emrakul and Reflector one week before AER, they absolutely would have banned either Felidar or Saheeli, or as part of a future ban. They've even admitted that the combo was a mistake that got through testing without being noticed, and that they do not want standard to be a turn 4 format.
Sure, there are cards to deal with the combo, but most of those cards are dead draws against any other type of deck. If you don't believe the meta is stale, just watch the coverage or look at the top 8s for recent Grand Prixs. Almost without exception the top placers are either CopyCat or Mardu which is the best match-up against CopyCat right now.
March 29, 2017 9:49 a.m.
Mardu Vehicles does well against a variety of decks, not just Copy Cat.
Last night at our FNM it came first, winning each of its four matches 2-0.
In other words, it didn't lose one game.
Our meta was very diverse last night. No Copy Cat and only one Mardu Vehicles deck.
It is an oppressively strong deck against just about any other kind of deck.
The big mistake Wizards made was not checking to see whether Players could consistently Crew Heart of Kiran on Turn 3.
April 1, 2017 3:09 a.m.
emrakulinsmugglers says... #10
a main issue is that it's very hard to make a deck that can beat BOTH mardu AND copycat.
April 3, 2017 8:39 p.m.
So Mardu Vehicles is the meta right with Felidar Guardian being banned and 5 of the top 8 at SCG Atlanta ran it. Something I don't understand is why no one has looked at green as the answer. As someone mentioned before, no you cannot just run spot removal and expect to win, but with the cards that green has right now (Eldritch Evolution, ramp cards Naga Vitalist and Servant of the Conduit, and the typical big scary tramply monsters) I just don't see how it could be that big of a deal. Now I'm not a master deck builder by any means and do not really compete in standard format (EDH player), but I feel like one of the world's master deck builders should have figured something out along these lines already.
May 1, 2017 8:26 a.m.
People have tried.
It's not as easy as you might think.
If you don't compete in Standard then you won't really understand how finely tuned and aggressive the deck really is.
If you waste your time ramping you will be dead before any of your big Creatures hit the field.
May 1, 2017 9:56 a.m.
Check out this decklist Green Midrange splash black. I just don't see it
MindAblaze says... #2
The definition of a broken card or deck is basically "build with it or build to play against it." When the format has begun so inbred that decks can only survive if the answers to the main pain in the ass deck fit into their 75, then we have a problem.
March 28, 2017 6:17 p.m.