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1 year ago ::
Apr 23, 2012 - 10:09PM
#171
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Date Joined:
May 18, 2002
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[tl;dr: "Dammit, Blue! Stop hoarding all the counterspells!"]
Yup.
That's pretty much the problem, right there.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 23, 2012 - 11:30PM
#172
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Date Joined:
Jan 22, 2010
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So when I went over to GP Orlando a few months ago, Zac Hill was there gunslinging. Having dropped out near the end of Day 1 due to a horrid win/loss ratio, I decided to hang out near that table. Fun stories.
Like how he defended Delver, said it was very good, but said he didn't think R & D made it too powerful.
Like how he mentioned that when they tested Snapcaster in FFL they apparently forgot to write Flash on the card and since he was the one that worked with Tiago on it he was the only one who played it like it had Flash.
He also talked about how the FFL wasn't infallible, and that while they had Squadron Hawk decks and Stoneforge decks, nobody ever put together a CawBlade-esque shell.
He then followed up the CawBlade comment by mentioning how they didn't get much time to test with the whole set in FFL, because it changes so much before it's finalized.
...WotC R&D straight out admitted that they changed Mindsculpter to Fateseal from mill then shipped him off.
So in conclusion:
TL;DR- FFL really needs improvements, because as is it isn't doing its job good enough.
"Testing" as pitiful as this (especially the part I bolded) would really help explain how disgusting cards like Delver and Geist are seeing print. I wasn't quite sure if Development has been trying to push for even blue creatures to be this stupidly aggressive or if they were just completely incapable of realizing that they were printing better blue creatures than non-blue ones; your post shows it's the latter. Great. Horribly mistaken new design/development philosophies can hopefully be corrected eventually when they watch UW ruin yet another year of Standard and learn from their mistakes, but insufficient and bad playtesting isn't so easily fixed.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 24, 2012 - 1:54AM
#173
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In Standard, yes, there is blue aggro. But if Delver were white, the deck would still exist in much the same form. It would be exactly the same deck, yet somehow, I doubt that we'd hear as many complaints.
Here's a latest high-finishing decklist:
sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/di...
It plays 10 basic islands. 0 basic plains. 4 lands that provide  on the first turn. Without all those islands, it wouldn't be able to Snapcaster a Vapor Snag while keeping Mana Leak open consistently, etc. This isn't a legacy manabase. Saying the deck would exist in much the same form is insane.
My main issue is all the complaining about Delver dominance we get. The deck is not that hard to beat. Play any deck that uses Lingering Souls  if you want a boost against Delver, it is very hard for them to deal with the tokens. You could play one of the two Edict  variants  available to you in order to deal with their hexproof creatures. Or fast  removal  . Or just blank nearly all of their threats with one card  . The options are numerous, and proper deck building will get you there. Delver just takes the format by storm whenever we start to get lazy and don't properly prepare for it. That is a normal phenomenon, it happens in every format, and it's never going away.
Delver decks have consistent high-ranking finishes. It's not dominating or unhealthy or anything, but don't say it's "not hard to beat". All those pros aren't dumb or lazy.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 24, 2012 - 8:55AM
#174
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How many of these 'Delver' decks are able to score high finishes without Snapcaster Mage  ? Delver of Secrets  only works well if the entire deck is built around it with a critical mass of instants and sorceries. Snapcaster Mage is what enables a deck with that many instants and sorceries to be competitive. Snapcaster Mage is the Rite of Flame  in a Dragonstorm  analogy.
"Char you." ~Craig Jones Spoiler:
Show
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1 year ago ::
Apr 24, 2012 - 4:37PM
#175
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[tl;dr: "Dammit, Blue! Stop hoarding all the counterspells!"]
Yup.
That's pretty much the problem, right there.
I said nothing of the kind. Why would you summarize my position as the exact opposite of what I said?
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1 year ago ::
Apr 24, 2012 - 5:14PM
#176
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Date Joined:
May 18, 2002
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[tl;dr: "Dammit, Blue! Stop hoarding all the counterspells!"]
Yup.
That's pretty much the problem, right there.
I said nothing of the kind. Why would you summarize my position as the exact opposite of what I said?
Must have quoted the wrong thing. Oops.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 25, 2012 - 6:20AM
#177
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Date Joined:
Oct 12, 2010
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Leaving aside that any creature with more than 1 power functions perfectly well in a goldfish match, how exactly does he contend that spells are better than creatures just because they aren't delayed by a single turn? Spells only happen once. Would you print a spell that says "Deal 20 damage to target player"? Well, every creature is potentially such a spell. I'd say that's a much bigger advantage than just happening a little faster. Card advantage is a thing, remember?
That simplistic theoretical thinking is what Wizards figured in the early days as well. That didn't work out that well.
I disagree with you on undrying and miracle, but I totally agree on hexproof. I had the good fortune of having both an Invisible Stalker and a Butcher's Cleaver in my pool during the Innistrad prerelease, and drawing those two together was nuts and would end the game then and there. That just turns the game into a race. It's the least interactive game state I've ever seen. For all the crap that shadow gets, Wizards is extremely comfortable printing cards which have about as much interactivity as shadow (because, really, who's going to keep his Stalker on the defense?).
Wizards is NOT okay with Stalker, they see it as a mistake.
Here's the problem I see: Wizards has made removal a lot worse by printing so many insanely good hexproof creatures. And what works very well against hexproof? Counters, because they're the only real way to interact with them. Thrun is the only uncounterable creature in Standard right now. I can name half a dozen hexproof creatures from the top of my head, and I don't even know my standard sets that well. I personally think they've gone too far with hexproof (shroud is a lot fairer, in my opinion). Cavern of Souls addresses the issue (the fact that countermagic has become a lot more powerful) but not the underlying reason.
I feel the problem is Hexproof in blue. How many of the cards with Hexproof causing problems in Standard are blue, and how many of those are green?
this...
Blue shoulnt have gotten hexproof, period. Blue already has counters to save their guys in a pinch from removal, hexproof "trollshroud" should stay as mostly a green thing, since after all green is the creature color and the one hurt most by ;
1) its inability to protect its creatures
2) the fact the the best fatties are no longer green only
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1 year ago ::
Apr 26, 2012 - 9:49AM
#178
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Date Joined:
Nov 18, 2003
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The more I read this article, the more angry and betrayed I feel. Not because they printed Cavern, I can deal with that as part of the changing nature of the game, but because a person of his importance in development seems to dismiss one of the ways that I enjoy the game as not good for a format. If Mr. Hill got his way and could go back and "fix" Snapcaster then Modern would still not have a counter based control deck anywhere near tier 2. His "problem cards" are enabling a way of playing that a portion of the constructed players really enjoys, and it feels like moving in to the future he will work to not print such cards. This will make playing counter based control (which he actually admits is needed to balance big splashy creatures) increasingly difficult which will alienate a lot of players, and it will force players to lean on subpar cards like Memoricide  to try and keep the meta balanced. Memoricide type cards are just bad answers to the problem of Titanesque creatures because what you have done is paid 4 mana and one card (and very likely an entire turn) in order to exile some cards that may never have been seen in the first place. This essentially is giving your opponent an extra turn, and since no good deck would have only one win condition, your opponent gets an extra turn to work on plan B. Mr. Hill actually promotes this as a good answer to the problem, which shows how little he understands what a control deck needs in order to compete. Now, I do not play Standard (too expensive), so I will continue to have the existing tools in Modern to play any of the deck styles I enjoy, but I am still concerned. A balanced and diverse Standard format is good for the game over all, since it is generally the first competitive constructed format new players are exposed to. In addition I would like to think that as new sets are developed Modern will get new tools to deal with new threats, and if counter-magic is so dismissed and dimnished then Modern counter control will get stale fast. As to the Hexproof question, I would not expect that to be a problem in the future. MaRo has stated that he did not want as much Hexproof as was printed, but development tacked in on a bit liberally after it left his hands. They now see how problematic it is in it's current numbers and incarnations, so as new sets are released I would imgine the number of creatures with hexproof will be substantially diminished.
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1 year ago ::
Jun 16, 2012 - 10:43PM
#179
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Date Joined:
May 21, 2006
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I am mostly a Red playing but I have dabbled in blue time to time. But Gone are the days I worry about casting spells when there are 2 U on the board untapped and a card in my oppunites hand.... Standard has been all about agro for way to long. Honestly I dont even see Delver as control beause its pretty agro with a touch of control if that. I wish they would make the game go back to when you have to think out your turns more. Decks now feel like they play themselves rather than playing vs your oppunites brain.
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1 year ago ::
Jun 16, 2012 - 10:44PM
#180
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Date Joined:
May 21, 2006
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I am mostly a Red playing but I have dabbled in blue time to time. But Gone are the days I worry about casting spells when there are 2 U on the board untapped and a card in my oppunites hand.... Standard has been all about agro for way to long. Honestly I dont even see Delver as control beause its pretty agro with a touch of control if that. I wish they would make the game go back to when you have to think out your turns more. Decks now feel like they play themselves rather than playing vs your oppunites brain.
BTW what I was getting out is mana leak is quite weak.
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