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Roat17
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« on: February 12, 2009, 03:14:45 am » |
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I have been out of Magic for roughly two years now. The last deck I played, can't remember the name, was essentially togless tog, comboing out with tendrils/warrens. The field I played against was Flash, Tog, Bomberman, and all the staples (Stax, Fish, Aggro! etc...)
Anyhow, upon hearing about the new restrictions and the fact that their is a local tourney for a lotus soon, I wouldn't mind coming out and playing for kicks. Reading these forums over tremendously the past couple days, it seems that the vast majority of successful decks are drain decks that combo out (Tez, Painter). I'm not trying to take away anything from people who are successful with other decks, but those two seem to be the most...resilient right now in a 5 round tournament. Other decks can obviously do well (Ad naus, Mystic Remora, Stax, Ichorid, Fish style decks) but the seem to be less prevelant amongst top 8s. It brought me around to thinking about the inherent weaknesses of decks.
To me, it seems like the days of tog all over again. The best deck at beating tog was other tog style decks. Or at least decks with similar tools (ie duress, Forces, Y. Will).
Theory crafting I would think that aggro decks have the advantage over drain decks. However this poses another problem a friend and I were discussing. Fish/aggro decks don't go broken. They seem like they are winning, the as Steve Menendian pointed out about TPS (I think it was), they win the turn before their opponent does.
Therefore what does a non-blue control/combo deck in order to be successful. A fast clock, and lock down elements. To me, this would insinuate playing black for duress and hard hitting beats like negator. However these cards become worse in matchups like fish. Not to mention these blue decks can easily recover thanks to their card drawing power!
So now you need constant disruption and beats in order to beat the big blue machine. Or in a blue vs blue combo/control mirror, you need to be able to out counter/top deck/bluff your opponent.
This leads me to the point I wanted to discuss. How does one effectively deal with drain decks. I want to say r/b would be a strong counter between duress/rebs but you still have to offer a threat and draw answers to theirs. Mana denial was the old route to victory, but with the decks being almost solely reliant on blue, I am at a loss for a way to handle drains without making myself vulnerable to fish/stax.
Anyhow, what beats drains? What are the best critters/disruption combos?
Negator and goyf? Things like Mindcensor/Teeg? Or is blue really the best way to battle blue? I can't wrap my mind around what could possibly beat a proper drain deck, without using a drain deck, unless you top deck like mad.
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