[Article] Rebuttle to Chalice: The New Black Void

[CrazyCarl]

Random Rebuttle from a Random Player

I personally liked the title best.

Discuss.

[Dante]

I see a horde of Type 1 Timmies clammoring to lynch Carl because they don't realize their decks were already obsolete [Long.dec] and that only type 1 goblins are really hosed...

Dante

[chaosdjinn]

In Type 1, the chalice will do exactly what it was meant to do-
1. Blur the line between "tier 1" & "tier 2" and level the playing field for more people to enter the format.
2. Increase the complexity of deckbuilding; thereby resuscitating the format to include even more representation of viable archetypes.
3. Give aggro and control a way to NEUTER and/or PREVENT BROKEN COMBO(ie: long.dec)  

I know that the card was designed and developed over a year ago and long.dec wasn't even a thought in our minds, but an intuitive projection to the future would result in seeing that combo was ALWAYS just a few cards away from dominating the format.\n\n

[mrieff]

I agree.

T1 seems to be too fast right now. Especially Long is a deck that should not be, imo. Consistently playing draws 7's in a single turn while drawing enough fast mana is too much.

Imo, the principles behind Long deck are so fundamentely opposite Magic's basic nature, that even from a T1 perspective the deck feels wrong.
Granted, in T1 broken things happen. But this deck breaks every rule that ever applied to Magic. From a theoretical perspective alone, Long follows a strategy that should not be avalible in magic.

The chalice forces this deck to  . Which I'm happy with, since Long should not be.
The only reason to attack Long without extra bannings is Chalice. And we certainly want LED around for Madness, to keep a viable budget/aggro deck alive .

Chalice may also force more variety of cards in T1, as decks have to look beyond 1 and 2 mana spells.  

The only thing I dislike about the Chalice is its impact it has on aggro decks like sligh.
Sligh, not by any means a top contender right now, is forced to adapt significantly in a negative way. Its a shame to see decks weakened that are already not Tier 1.
In the article it is said that sligh will adapt, but at what cost?

This could have been prevented by making chalice counter non-creature spells only. You'd get the good effect of killing Long without the unwanted negative effect on cheap aggro.

That said, for now I'm in favor of chalice x 4. But only time will tell whether its the right call for the format.

***Insert warning***

People, remember the Beserk fiasco? BE CAREFULL WITH YOUR OPINION.
If we all randomly ask for a restriction on chalice, without having felt its true impact, we might screw ourselves big time.
There seems to be at least some evidence that restricting chalice is not the way to go. Its still uncertain. Don't post a radical opinion too soon, but think and wait untill you have the evidence to back up your statement

[Bastian]

One thing Stephen was right about: if budget decks were somewhat bad before they're downright unplayable now.

I'm divided on what to say about the Chalice.

The cons:
-it makes rich people richer. The format isn't a readily accessible one and cheap decks are now even worse because the chalice helps the powered decks more. This is bad and unlike someone said isn't going to help at all the introduction of new players to type 1.

-it may be the beggining of something similiar to the impact of unrestricted Black Vise some years ago.

The pros:
-like Carl said, it forces decks into diversity. This may be a good thing. I believe that a more diverse mana curve that dares to go beyond the 2cc spells (in aggro's case) can be a good thing. Players will begin to make use of other colors in order to fight back the Chalice.

The verdict: right now I still think the Chalice is on the verge of brokenness, and it may make more difficult to play type 1, which, for unpowered players is a bad thing.
On the other hand it just might be the card we needed. An ironic twist of the chalice is that it can stop powered decks and it can stop opposing players from playing their chalices as well.

I don't believe it should be let unrestricted... But for now I'll just sit and wait until I see the impact this has overall.

[MoreFling]

Quote Outside of Workshop based decks, however, who's getting six mana during their main phase

Land, Ritual, Lotus, Chalice for 3. Hah! Oh wait, I just neutered my Negator.

Anyway, it was well written, but the part I quoted is the most important sentence of the article, and leads to an actual discussion in itself, which I'm sorry you haven't touched upon: Will this put Workshop over the top?

[Milton]

Great article.  Nice job.  Challice isn't broken.  Challice, in my opinion, is a hoser, not a format-defining card.

And, Bastian, you are wrong.  Challice greatly helps budget decks far more than it helps expensive decks.  Fish, for example, could very easily run four maindeck Challices.\n\n

[Rico Suave]

Quote (Dante @ Oct. 08 2003,12:45)I see a horde of Type 1 Timmies clammoring to lynch Carl because they don't realize their decks were already obsolete [Long.dec] and that only type 1 goblins are really hosed...

Dante

Already obsolete?

Perhaps you'd care to provide an explanation for that.

[Bastian]

Chalice helps the players who can get it the fastest and those who can have a lot of mana as fast as they can. Keeper, Hulk, Workshop decks all fit these decriptions. Whos going to win? The budget deck or the powered one?

And fish alone doesn't represent all budget decks so, one deck alone doesn't set an example.

[Matt The Great]

Quote (Rico Suave @ Oct. 08 2003,13:18)

Quote (Dante @ Oct. 08 2003,12:45)I see a horde of Type 1 Timmies clammoring to lynch Carl because they don't realize their decks were already obsolete [Long.dec] and that only type 1 goblins are really hosed...

Dante

Already obsolete?

Perhaps you'd care to provide an explanation for that.

No budget deck except possibly Fish (of which I am thorougly ignorant) had even a 35-65 game against Long, and no budget deck had (has) even a 50-50 game against Hulk or Workshop*.

*Unless you want to hate out one deck and die to the other two.

[CrazyCarl]

Quote (MoreFling @ Oct. 08 2003,10:35)

Quote Outside of Workshop based decks, however, who's getting six mana during their main phase

Land, Ritual, Lotus, Chalice for 3. Hah! Oh wait, I just neutered my Negator.

Anyway, it was well written, but the part I quoted is the most important sentence of the article, and leads to an actual discussion in itself, which I'm sorry you haven't touched upon: Will this put Workshop over the top?

I would have gone into the whole Workshop thing if I a) playtested or b) knew anything about Workshop based decks.

That said, I'd have written a longer article, however, I wrote this up at around 2 or 3 AM

Carl

[rozetta]

A deck with 4 Chalice of the Void and 4 Black Vise would be fun

Unrestrict Black Vise!  

(And no, I'll never be through reminiscing about the old 4 Strip Mine, 4 Black Vise and restricted Ivory Tower days...)

[Rico Suave]

Quote (Matt The Great @ Oct. 08 2003,14:42)No budget deck except possibly Fish (of which I am thorougly ignorant) had even a 35-65 game against Long, and no budget deck had (has) even a 50-50 game against Hulk or Workshop*.

*Unless you want to hate out one deck and die to the other two.

Oh, I misunderstood then.  I thought he implied Long was obsolete.

Nevermind.

[Petey4335]

If Chalice becomes a staple to alot of decks, I basically see Meltdown becoming a staple to anything running Red.
-pete

[Smmenen]

I have no idea why Carl even wrote this.  

My article basically is aligned with Carl's in terms of my opinion of Chalice.  And I was more than a little dissapointed that he didn't even run it by me first.

Steve\n\n

[Eastman]

Stephen you compared Chalice of the Void to Black Vise.

Say what you will about the two being similarly pervasive artifacts, that 'Headline' had a negative implication... as did much of the article.

What I'm hearing from Carl is that he does agree with you about what was perhaps the central purpose of your article... that Chalice will cause a wide range of changes in the format, but that he disagrees with the negative light in which you painted those changes and wanted to make it clear to the public: "It's not necessarily bad"\n\n

[Smmenen]

I chose that title becuase a) it was a Jay Pee Meyer quote and b) becuase it was flashy.  If it has any meaning at least it is that it will have a big impact.

I think the impact is heavily negative.  And to the extent that carl says he "rebutted" my article, he failed terribly.  It was a 3 paragraph post on TMD tranplanted to SCG.  Essentially, he said what people in the SCG forums (yes, scg forums) said: that it will force creativity and thought in deckbuilding.

If you ask me, that's just a code word for: a) cheap aggro is dead, deal with it, and b) control is super good, deal with it - I love type one now.  Which is how Carl feels.  You must realize that that is a bad thing if we want more players to play type one who are now shut out.  

It might also mean that Workshop is going to be restricted.  

If that happens, it would be have been better for all Chalice had never been born, and LED was restricted instead.

Carl is just upset that Long is so good - but frankly, he didn't discover the deck until almost everyone else was ready to put it to bed.  So who is really building with creativity here?  Also, it is clear that he is biased against combo, - but why not have a clear bias for control?  

Steve Menendian

[Dante]

Quote (Matt The Great @ Oct. 08 2003,13:42)

Quote (Rico Suave @ Oct. 08 2003,13:18)

Quote (Dante @ Oct. 08 2003,12:45)I see a horde of Type 1 Timmies clammoring to lynch Carl because they don't realize their decks were already obsolete [Long.dec] and that only type 1 goblins are really hosed...

Dante

Already obsolete?

Perhaps you'd care to provide an explanation for that.

No budget deck except possibly Fish (of which I am thorougly ignorant) had even a 35-65 game against Long, and no budget deck had (has) even a 50-50 game against Hulk or Workshop*.

*Unless you want to hate out one deck and die to the other two.

Matt hit it on the head, mostly about Long, but MUD too...in a metagame with Hulk, Dragon, wMUD, and Long, the only budget deck (pre Mirrodin) that has a shot of winning is Fish. (Madness isn't really a budget deck, it needs the 0 CC acceleration to compete with the other fully powered decks above.).

@Matt - Fish also can go 50/50 vs Hulk or wMUD, depending on the Fish build (and pre-chalice wMUD builds)..

Besides, what budget decks are we really talking about: Sligh/Goblins and suicide.  All of those decks above are bad matchups already for Mono-red, meaning even if you Top 8, winning 3 straight matches will be very tough, assuming other good decks are in the Top8.  Now with chalice, goblins will have to figure something else out.  Suicide currently has bad matchups to anything with bazaars or workshops and Long and Hulk are tough matchups as well.

dante

[Smmenen]

But there are environments that don't play Hulk, Mud, and Long pre-chalice as my huge thread on the t1 metagame demosnstrated when I was lambasted for saying that those were the three best decks.

If that's the case - then presumably budget aggro could thrive in those metagames, but now are destroyed by Tundra, Mox, Chalice, go.

Carl's closing comment : this is what the format needs and wants to survive is pure nonsense.  It's what KEEPER needs and wants to survive.  I would never have played Keeper instead of Tog - now I clearly would.

EDIT:  one ironic thing from all of this is that TNT may need to come back.  But the ironic thing is that by diversifying your mana costs you are playing a deck that costs over $2000 instead of the budget aggro.  Do you now see how that is a bad thing?  Also, who is going to want to play that over Mud anyway?

Steve\n\n

[Jacob Orlove]

Quote  Also, who is going to want to play [TnT] over Mud anyway?

I am so there.

[CrazyCarl]

Smmenen: Sorry I didn't run it by you first dude.  I just felt you were putting Chalice in a negative light.  No hard feelings, I was just putting in my 2 cents.

But you're right about the Long.dec thing.  I hate the deck.  I feel it's waaaaaaay too good.  The fact that Chalice all but kills it is a good thing.  A very good thing.  I'm not a big fan of Workshop decks either, but I don't let it get to me.  The whole 3/4ths of the Top 4 being Long just didn't settle well with me.

Oh, we also changed our Thursday tourney to use Mirrodin

Carl

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

No one will be able to convince me, that a format where games between the top-decks last for 2 turns on a regular basis and are decided solely on the starting hands is healthy. So I'll have to agree, Chalice IS actually good for the format.
On the money-issue, it's not like you'll have a good chance to win with budget decks currently, if your meta is powered. The only thing, funny as it is, is pure hate Sui getting the right matchups and maybe Fish. Seems like that stays exactly the same, just that aggro-players won't have to sit around being comboed out first turn as often. Sui even gets better, as Sligh leaves the arena, allowing them to SB more against actually good decks. It's not like a lot more Workshops will get played, at least people are short on those, as opposed to LED.

/edit:

Quote But there are environments that don't play Hulk, Mud, and Long pre-chalice as my huge thread on the t1 metagame demosnstrated when I was lambasted for saying that those were the three best decks.
If that's the case - then presumably budget aggro could thrive in those metagames, but now are destroyed by Tundra, Mox, Chalice, go.

How does budget aggro thrive in a meta of long, WMud and Hulk? It can hate one and looses to the other two then. Doesn't sound exactly viable to me....
Chalice doesn't force you to run 4 CC spells in Sligh and other budget now. I think CC2 is actually acceptabel against Drain (Ankh was good against Control, wasn't it?) and running a deck that just uses efficient cards at a cc of 1 AND 2 will bypass a single Chalice quite often.
I don't think that'll help U-based Control to much. Just think of Sui, do you really think casting Chalice 2 against it is that great if you're running Mana Drain and possibly AK or Impulse? Chalice will force budget to adapt, but I think that's easier to do than adapting to regular turn 2 kills/lockdowns that's susceptible to totally different hate. The increased artifact-hate because of Chalice might even give aggro a chance at beating workshops.

I'm definitly not sure Chalice will do to much harm, especially after Smmenen said this:

Quote Mishra's Workshop is very good.  But you must beleive I have tested it alot.  I know how good it is.  But it's not as dominant as I thought it would be.

Steve

WMud and Long were the decks I was really worried about after reading the mirrodin spoiler. If Chalice really kills long and Workshop still isn't too strong, we might actually get games instead of die-rolls and mulligans. And the game lasting more than 2-3 turns is what budget-decks need to have at least a chance at existing.\n\n

[Bastian]

Quote It's not like a lot more Workshops will get played, at least people are short on those, as opposed to LED.

There should be just as many players able to play workshop decks as those playing long.dec, where the presence of LED is felt. So that's really pretty irrelevant.

[hippie tourach]

Quote (Mon, Goblin Chief @ Oct. 08 2003,18:39)No one will be able to convince me, that a format where games between the top-decks last for 2 turns on a regular basis and are decided solely on the starting hands is healthy.

But in the new format games between Long and anything with Chalice will be decided by opening hands to the extent that the player with Chalice might seriously consider mulliganing to one...

If they don't find it, the game will last for 2 turns. If they do, and I was playing Long, it would last for 1 turn.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Quote There should be just as many players able to play workshop decks as those playing long.dec, where the presence of LED is felt. So that's really pretty irrelevant

What I meant to say was, that Workshops aren't common enough, that all players who can build Long can now switch to WMud. The number of MUDs will most likely only increase by a small fraction, as a lot of players who have workshops already do play them.
There are just a lot more players being fully powered than players having 4 Workshops. I personally know at least three.

[Os-Vegeta]

Regarding both sides of the issue here:  Really, I'd say that both Steve and Carl are making good points about Chalice.  For a while, though I never spoke out about it (and this was a while back when Chalice was first introduced in the Mirrodin spoiler), I had been thinking that Chalice was going to completely change the format, so much that it would distort it compared to what the format is now.  I still have a feeling that Chalice will create a negative impact, but I'm seeing Carl's points about how it can create somewhat of a positive impact.  

Maybe it's just because I've been working with budget decks (really, the issue here is if Chalice killed "budget" decks) that I really see the negative impact here (ie, Sligh has to get its shit together or die, and that's going to be VERY difficult, and Workshop could really just mess up other budget decks if they aren't built prepared for both Chalice AND Sphere), but I'm also seeing the positive impact as well with budget decks -as Zherbus has been seeing the possibilities for Chalice in a black deck, and I have been seeing the possibilities in my Br Sui build.    

So, yeah, I guess I am fence-sitting in a way, but really this is not a clear-cut issue at all.  The only answers we'll find is the ones that present themselves once Mirrodin become legal.    

Quote On the money-issue, it's not like you'll have a good chance to win with budget decks currently, if your meta is powered. The only thing, funny as it is, is pure hate Sui getting the right matchups and maybe Fish. Seems like that stays exactly the same, just that aggro-players won't have to sit around being comboed out first turn as often. Sui even gets better, as Sligh leaves the arena, allowing them to SB more against actually good decks. It's not like a lot more Workshops will get played, at least people are short on those, as opposed to LED.

Seeing how I've been doing testing with Chalice in Sui, I would definitely agree with you here.  For a while now, I've been making my sideboard quite a bit lighter against Sligh (I know the deck like the back of my hand, so I usually have few or no problems when playing vs. it), leaving just Masticore to deal with Fish, Sligh, and other weenie aggro.  Now that I'm testing Chalice maindeck, I'm finding that I can easily cut Masticore in favor of more bombs in the sideboard.  

One thing that Sui and Fish will have to watch out for is Madness, as with the higher numbers of LED's around you can easily put together Madness if you can scrounge up Bazaars.    

Quote How does budget aggro thrive in a meta of long, WMud and Hulk? It can hate one and looses to the other two then. Doesn't sound exactly viable to me....

Here's something I've found when playing aggro "hate" decks - Don't make a deck that hates out one other deck; make one that aims to shut down the other deck (in general, no specific deck here) first in game one, and then just bring in the appropriate bombs for games 2 and 3 to make sure you can shut down the opponent.  Granted, now it won't be the easiest thing against wMUD since an opposing Chalice will be painful, but with the right sideboarding and multiple turn 1 ways to get rid of opposing Chalices (a few of which also are turn 1 prevention against Sphere) you can have a chance.\n\n

[VideoGameBoy]

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that Wizards created a couple of cards that are going to be auto-restricted - namely Spoils of the Vault and Chrome Mox - but Chalice was created specifically to turn the format on it's head and reformat every existing archetype.

I forget where I read it, but I seem to remember somebody quoting Buehler saying that he is disappointed at the crawl at which T1 deck innovation moves at - so R&D intentionally creates a card that literally fits in every deck and, first and foremost, punishes stagnancy.

In light of this revelation, I don't think LED will be restricted since Long will still be nothing more than an oddity once Spoils and Chrome Mox are restricted.

[urza's child]

Quote (VideoGameBoy @ Oct. 09 2003,00:58)fits in every deck

does anyone remember when chapin started working for wotc (i think it was him, about 2-3 years ago) he said that there is a card that EVERYONE will be playing in their decks? Some people thought that card was a new fetchland, but IMO, it's chalice of the void, or he was thinking of chrome mox but hes wrong. just an idea

[brianb]

I'm all for shaking up the format, but this wasn't the way to do it.  Chalice takes the super-redundant mana curves and smacks them upward with a hammer.  That in itself would be fine.  I would love to play a sligh deck with a diversified mana curve.  Ball lightning is a really good spell.  Hell, red even has 4-drops that could be considered.  But that would be forgetting the reason that ball lightning never sees play now.  The anvil: mana drain.  Mana drain has been stifling the format by smashing mana curves down for way too long now.  If it were restricted, it would be not so much a loss for the decks that run it (counterspell would fit the bill fine), but a relief for all the other deckbuilders who now have to build their decks knowing that planning to cast 3cc non-instant spells is too risky unless you have ecceleration.