Before Roanoke, the general consensus was that Ichorid and Hulk will see a lot of tournament play this summer unless some major component of each deck is restricted. At this weekend's event, I counted 2 Hulk decks and 10 Ichorid decks (about 20% of the field). This is about the same representation that Control Gifts had near the end of 2006 and Waterbury. The difference is that instead of slow Fish decks emerging to balance the metagame, we're getting fast combo decks. All of this could potentially be bad for Vintage by putting it into a state that every critic say it is already in: infested with first and second turn kill decks.
The simultaneous arrival of two “handle-me-or-lose” decks is certainly enough to distort the metagame, but not beyond recovery. Back in 2002, a deck named Dragon posted similarly (relative to the metagame) powerful results. The deck was being used by almost everyone playing in competitive tournaments and didn’t actually begin to diminish until people realized how to combat the deck effectively. More and more fish decks started to show up and crush Dragon with Stifles, Swords to Plowshares, Tormod’s Crypts, and bounce spells and pushed the deck toward becoming a minority.
Hulk and Ichorid seem like decks with a lot of inherent inconsistency problems that will eventually be exploited and even though they are fairly resilient to their current respected hosers, will be at the mercy of some card. Ichorid and, to a lesser degree, Hulk still have that problem of trading skill for percentage, making a long tournament a rumble pit against fatigue; with Ichorid there is no way to exploit skill differences and you can potentially lose games to bad players. Nonetheless, Hulk and Ichorid are decks that no one wants to play against so the logical thing to do is prepare for them.
For right now, if your deck isn’t maining Force of Wills or Leyline of the Voids, your reason for not doing so probably isn’t good enough. These decks, including the decks are being played because of Ichoird and Flash, are consistently goldfishing by turn two; you need to be able to prevent what they could have from winning the game so you can initiate your strategy. Echoing
Josh Silvestri, turn one Mana Drain isn’t reliable enough to stop “fast combo” on it’s own. It can’t be the only counterspell in addition to Force of Will (in mid-range decks) because it is too slow. Disrupt and Daze are one mana alternatives that are already gaining popularity.
My friend, Dan Herd, played two or three Disrupts in Bomberman and missed 9th by a close Bomberman round 6 mirror match against JR Goldman. I saw his Twister slip away when Dan overvalued an Ancestral Recall (a common mistake). But nonetheless, he said that Disrupt was amazing all day. It was unexpected and effective, which propelled the unpracticed Dan into a position, where if he didn't make a mistake, would have been 4-1-1.
Disrupt in decks that
aren't tapping out within their first few turns and Daze in decks that
are tapping out within their first few turns can give slow, non-mana denial decks like Slaver or Intuition AK the tools to survive until the late game, where they're more comfortable to play naturally. Can these quick, "one-shot" counterspells rebalance the format?
