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So, I was playtesting a planned deck for Gatecrash with an aquaintance today, although I ended up having to deal with his commander deck and thus face stuff like an instant kill turn 3 Tezzeret, but still the deck performed quite well and ended up consistently having 4-5 5/5's out by turn 4, turn 5 at most. However he kept trying to downplay the deck with the argument that it was too slow (its a ramp deck that wins by drawing almost endless cards, pouring out heavy hitters and either mind controlling, bouncing, or simply killing off the opposing army), and pointing to Gruul and Boros as exemplars of speed.

Now, based on my own experience with standard, even fast aggro decks don't kill you until turn 4 and i start getting my 4+ toughness creatures out by turn 3, and even the fastest decks ive seen need turn 4 or 5 before they actually kill you off. Even moreso, from what I have seen, boros does low dmg in the first 3 turns (cards like boros elite need batallion to kick into gear) and gruul, while able to pump, are not all that fast either in block constructed, and if they want to use a pump spell in the early turns, it still means they only have 1 creature out due to needing mana for bloodrush, and that one creature wont kill you by turn 3.

So, the question is; is a turn 3-4-5 (turn 5 being where the 9/9 starts hitting the floor) ramp deck fast enough for standard, or will most decks, like he says, kill you by turn 3?

Jan 22, 2013 -- 5:37PM, Shendran wrote:

So, I was playtesting a planned deck for Gatecrash with an aquaintance today, although I ended up having to deal with his commander deck and thus face stuff like an instant kill turn 3 Tezzeret, but still the deck performed quite well and ended up consistently having 4-5 5/5's out by turn 4, turn 5 at most. However he kept trying to downplay the deck with the argument that it was too slow (its a ramp deck that wins by drawing almost endless cards, pouring out heavy hitters and either mind controlling, bouncing, or simply killing off the opposing army), and pointing to Gruul and Boros as exemplars of speed.

Now, based on my own experience with standard, even fast aggro decks don't kill you until turn 4 and i start getting my 4+ toughness creatures out by turn 3, and even the fastest decks ive seen need turn 4 or 5 before they actually kill you off. Even moreso, from what I have seen, boros does low dmg in the first 3 turns (cards like boros elite need batallion to kick into gear) and gruul, while able to pump, are not all that fast either in block constructed, and if they want to use a pump spell in the early turns, it still means they only have 1 creature out due to needing mana for bloodrush, and that one creature wont kill you by turn 3.

So, the question is; is a turn 3-4-5 (turn 5 being where the 9/9 starts hitting the floor) ramp deck fast enough for standard, or will most decks, like he says, kill you by turn 3?

That's an excellent meta analysis, and I find it very helpful for my upcoming prerelease.

Jan 23, 2013 -- 2:42AM, Wynzerman wrote:

This is fairly anecdotal, but I think the sluggish pace of this past standard format is going to come to a close- But I don't think that's because of any decks with epic goldfishing. Rather, the reactive cards introduced in GTC are very strong, but they punish the Thraglol vs SuperRed meta we've been groaning at for the last two and a half months. The Spreading Seas punishes slow decks that jam sandbags and use lands as win conditions- and the super-edict just blows out the dumb threats. Boros Charm also decreases the worth of sandbagging strategies, which is pretty sweet. What I mean to say is- Hope for a less polarized pace in the future meta, but don't get your hopes up about getting to goldfish or answer everything all of the time.

The "black Spread Seas" as you call it is a reprint, that saw very little play the first time around,and only saw play in conjunction with Spreading Seas. And considering that the Seas deck only saw play because Jund had horrid mana the first time around (the best play on T1 was to play a CIPT land)

Jan 23, 2013 -- 4:53AM, Jman22 wrote:

Jan 23, 2013 -- 2:42AM, Wynzerman wrote:

This is fairly anecdotal, but I think the sluggish pace of this past standard format is going to come to a close- But I don't think that's because of any decks with epic goldfishing. Rather, the reactive cards introduced in GTC are very strong, but they punish the Thraglol vs SuperRed meta we've been groaning at for the last two and a half months. The Spreading Seas punishes slow decks that jam sandbags and use lands as win conditions- and the super-edict just blows out the dumb threats. Boros Charm also decreases the worth of sandbagging strategies, which is pretty sweet. What I mean to say is- Hope for a less polarized pace in the future meta, but don't get your hopes up about getting to goldfish or answer everything all of the time.

The "black Spread Seas" as you call it is a reprint, that saw very little play the first time around,and only saw play in conjunction with Spreading Seas. And considering that the Seas deck only saw play because Jund had horrid mana the first time around (the best play on T1 was to play a CIPT land)

Weird, I didn't think it was actually Contaminated Ground , just something functionally similar. The point of mentioning it regardless isn't because it punishes bad manabases and tapout decks, but because it's functional removal against the sluggish decks that have to resort to Kessig Wolf Run and Nephalia Drownyard in the late game. Similar to Ghost Quarter , I don't think it's good enough to completely haze out land vic-cons, but it's good enough to trip up decks that pigeonhole their win-cons so that they can out sandbag everything.

Also, yay- the Gatherer is finally updated.

Jan 23, 2013 -- 8:48AM, FIRE_REIGN_2_02 wrote:

Jan 23, 2013 -- 8:04AM, Catotheyounger wrote:

Having "draw a card" on it went a ways towards making spreading seas playable. 

This. I tried a black variant of Spreading Seas with RoE Contaminated Ground and Evil Presence . Let's just say the deck was pretty awful without the cantripping abilities and Cascade. Cascade guaranteed you hit Seas in a good number of the Spread 'Em builds.

Cascade and Spreading Seas made the deck, but you still needed Contaminated Ground to hit your critical mass of mana denial. Cascade was the most important part though.

Jan 23, 2013 -- 8:31AM, Wynzerman wrote:

Weird, I didn't think it was actually Contaminated Ground , just something functionally similar. The point of mentioning it regardless isn't because it punishes bad manabases and tapout decks, but because it's functional removal against the sluggish decks that have to resort to Kessig Wolf Run and Nephalia Drownyard in the late game. Similar to Ghost Quarter , I don't think it's good enough to completely haze out land vic-cons, but it's good enough to trip up decks that pigeonhole their win-cons so that they can out sandbag everything.

Also, yay- the Gatherer is finally updated.

Pretty sure the lands still have all abilities if you just change the basic land type.