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Jan 14, 2013 -- 4:50PM, dh50 wrote:

But as hopeless as playing RG is against MM, it's equally hopeless playing MM against DP - MM might get lucky occasionally but a good DP build will destroy it regularly.

Luckily, over half the people who play DP on Steam are utter dolts...

MM is beatable but I wish they didn't add it to the set.  The main issue that I see with MM is that it matches up very well against a large percentage of the decks out there, to the point where players that are worse in skill level can easily beat better players if they choose the wrong deck.  All decks have good and bad matchup but MM has a lot of extremely good matchups and just a few bad ones.

I personally like the GM matchup best against MM because it has a lot of paths to victory.

Blightning, Hellhole Rats, and Blazing Specter are all very disruptive through discard and wrecking Ball gives you the option of winning via land destruction.  Demigod of Revenge is the "I win" card against MM though, since the only good counter to it in MM is bant charm.  I think I could probably get a 70% win rate against MM using GM.
 
I could see SS matching up decently too, but it seems like the path to victory there would be to use regenerating creatures like Troll Ascetic and Spiritmonger.  Keeping up the free mana to keep those creatures alive is a lot extra work though, as you ideally want to be able to regenerate twice to really keep them safe.

The matchups against many of the other decks are downright unplayable.  Goblins could probably win a decent percentage of the time but I don't know that it is a favorable matchup overall.  Jace might be a decent matchup but I hate playing that deck because its got too many other bad matchups.  BoF seems like it would be a good matchup.  I think all other matchups probably fall somewhere between bad and unplayable, with more being unplayable than just plain bad.

Jan 14, 2013 -- 4:59PM, fluffyburrito wrote:

Jan 14, 2013 -- 4:50PM, dh50 wrote:

You need to work on your builds if you're having trouble consistently beating MM with GM and DP (or BF or Mindstorms).  Check out Gegliosch's DP and Mindstorms builds.  Your BF build should have very few creatures.  Low creature builds with creatures that only have ETB effects or haste are the best way to deal with heavy removal decks - almost all of their removal will be useless to them.

For GM, make sure you play the ogres and hellhole rats, and both reanimates - reanimating a rat or an ogre is worth 6-7 damage at a time if you play them at the right time (watch for when they don't play a land - then they can't discard one, and whatever's left in their hand will probably be expensive).  Also save your removal for creatures and don't destroy their lands unless the MM player is really struggling getting the right colors in play (but let's face it - MM doesn't struggle with this at all so using a Wrecking Ball on a land is usually a waste of removal).  Also make sure not to overextend yourself - you should COUNT on a Day of Judgement coming the next turn, always - so plan for that.  GM can deal a steady amount of damage each turn and easily remove MM's early threats.  The only real threatening cards are Empyrial Archangel and the Sphinx that has lifelink and protection from red.  

You won't win 100% of the time with the above decks against MM (although so far I have - but I'm sure it's a matter of time before that changes) but you should win substantially more with them than you will lose.

I agree with you that MM is quite overpowered against a lot of decks.  I can't really see Sky and Scale or Rogues Gallery ever really beating it outside of some extreme luck.  But as hopeless as playing RG is against MM, it's equally hopeless playing MM against DP - MM might get lucky occasionally but a good DP build will destroy it regularly.

Got a link by any chance?  I'll try putting my rats back into GM and re-working my jayce for more discard and taking out a few things that probably won't stick.  (Like dreamborn muse)

Gegliosch just posted his most recent DP build here:
community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...

The muses are fine even if they don't stick - you should keep them in.  The most probable case is that they mill whatever cards were in MM's hand at the time, then MM kills it.  You get one use out of it but with all the other mill machinery in the deck, that one use is enough.

Gegliosch's MS build is here (although I would probably take out the Wands and put in Insurrection if you're building it for MM):

community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...

I don't have a link for BF or GM but basically:

--for BF, the only creatures you should have are Chandra's Pheonixes, the Spitfire (it will die but it can come out early enough that you might get a use out of it), and then, maybe, the 1/1 pumpable haste creatures and possibly the Magma Pheonixes.  I like Magma Pheonix in this matchup - it's a blocker and the worst case is they kill it but they still take 3 damage.  

--for GM - you don't need anything in the deck over 5cc.  For things under 5cc - probably use all the removal, the blightenings, the reanimates, all the haste creatures, the ogres, the lieges, the 3/1 creatures that damage your opponent when other creatures die, the goblins and both witches (spiteflame witch is your friend in this matchup - it's about doing as much damage as early as possible and not really caring about your own life).  

EDIT - and especially use Heat Shimmer in GM.

Edit - also use the gougers.

Jan 14, 2013 -- 4:42PM, ItsTheDukester wrote:

Jan 14, 2013 -- 4:13PM, Splattercat wrote:

Why would you post anecdotal evidence at all? It's meaningless by definition.

Actually, it's not. Your "definition" needs some updating.

Apologies, my comment was incomplete as written:
Anecdotal evidence is meaningless against the MM in AI because of the reasons above. MM doens't have any sort of advanced build like the core/Expansion decks so you can't adequately test against it. The fact that you went 20-0 against it with a deck you specifically built to beat it is like me stripping out all the artifact and enchantment removal out of a deck specifically to take on Goblins. it doesn't say anything about Goblins if you're tailoring your deck specifically to beat the AI, especially when it's not the Revenge Deck.

That's what i meant when I said the anecdotal evidence was meaningless.   

Jan 14, 2013 -- 4:42PM, ItsTheDukester wrote:

A better question, though, is why everyone is getting so worked up about it. I can't be the only person who tests new decks with 2-3 games against the AI. I don't want to jump straight into multiplayer with a deck that might have some serious issues (which would happen at least half the time, if we're being honest about it). AI games are just low-pressure opportunities to do some testing. I certainly don't take them seriously; why do you?

No, I do the vast majority of my testing against the AI. However, I make a deck then test it against as many different decks as my time and/or patience allows, and I test it against Revenge Campaign and Planeswalker difficulty (as close as you're giong to get to an actual player since, cheating aside, even the Revenge decks don't have all the promo unlocks that are available to actual players).

Making a deck specifically to face one deck with a base-deck build isn't evidence of either deck's potential or capability. That's my point.

Jan 14, 2013 -- 7:54PM, DroneOn wrote:

If you build this deck right it's an absolute beast.  Hell, a turn 3 Vindicate by itself is often enough to fix the match in your favor, depending on what you're playing against.

Yes, I am under the impression vindicate just says "destroy target land" tbh. But seeing as it rarely works against me, you'd think people would learn. Oh well.