|
Post by yugular on Sept 17, 2011 12:09:37 GMT -5
What are your opinions on current metagame? I haven't been playing pauper outside tournament practice for few months, well I just last week played one game in 2man-queue but only that one match. Therefore my evaluation of metagame isn't very optimal but I have a strong feeling that to hit a top spot in a tournament or to achieve >60% win ration in queueus you need to be very fast and consistent.
Two dominating decks can finish games in round two and therefore pauper is faster than modern or even legacy! Mono Green Infect and Grixis Storm can win games in round 2/3 which makes the format very fast. Granted that doesn't happen all the time, but regularly still.
Competitive deck needs to have a clear focus and good clock. Also sideboard choices against certain strategies are needed.
|
|
|
Post by grumpyoldgamer on Sept 18, 2011 18:52:41 GMT -5
Eternal formats are always very fast and Classic Pauper isn't different. Infect and the various Storm decks are partially responsible for this as they are the fastest decks around and forces the other decks to speed-up.
In a sense, I think that the Storm decks aren't too bad since they are less reliable than their Legacy/Modern counterparts. They fizzle a lot and as such regulate themselves because of it.
Infect is more problematic IMHO. There's a ton of good pump spells at Common rarity. The same cannot be said of discard spells, removal and counterspells. An early Infect creature followed by a barrage of pump is impossible to handle for many decks. I haven't played Pauper in a few weeks, since I've been tinkering with the new Modern format, but last time I played I felt that Infect was becoming problematic in a fashion similar to how Familiar Storm was before the banning of Frantic Search. I don't know how things are now though.
|
|
|
Post by yugular on Sept 19, 2011 6:35:14 GMT -5
Infect is really strong indeed. And there is pretty much nothing that can be banned from the list! Well Invigorate is "a free spell" so banning it could be reasonable if infect becomes too problematic. If you ban any creature or other pump spell, it doesn't matter.
|
|
|
Post by kraus911 on Sept 19, 2011 22:49:32 GMT -5
At the competitive level, the problem is aside from cards that are even faster than a turn two kill (?!) or new cards that lock out the strategy somehow, you're not going to get better than Infect or Storm. What's cool about this in a way is that all of Magic is a huge puzzle you're trying to solve by finding the most efficient decks in a format. If those have been found in pauper, maybe it's time to move on...
I don't have a storm deck, but I have an infect (without invigorate) that wins on turn two or three plenty of times. But I don't really play it. Where's the fun in that? Hey, I'm playing the fastest deck there is, and guess what, you're dead! I don't really understand why people play those decks in the casual room on MTGO. I ran into a storm deck yesterday and I lost on turn two. Yay. I'm playing in the casual room because I want to have an enjoyable game of Magic, not because I want to see a turn 2 kill deck.
When a card is banned, it starts the puzzle solving over again. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It irritates those who have tuned their killer decks and play them well, but really this is a game for the masses, not for the elite. The same could be said for the pauper format. I'd say the honorable thing to do would be to at least not play those top tier decks in the casual rooms, unless you're working on your rep as a jerk.
|
|
|
Post by yugular on Sept 20, 2011 1:06:33 GMT -5
I could see myself playing infect/storm in casual room if I build the deck and practice for event. That is what the casual rooms are for also? And you can always mention in the description if you dont want to play against those... But yeah, those are not casual decks by any means But hey, pauper isn't only casual format! I like also that there is that competitive side in the format, it brings a little of something to the format.
|
|
|
Post by RockBass on Sept 21, 2011 9:28:10 GMT -5
It's also worth noting that almost all decks have sideboarded in ways to deal with Infect. That's some serious proof it's shifting the metagame.
|
|
|
Post by grumpyoldgamer on Sept 22, 2011 8:21:48 GMT -5
It's also worth noting that almost all decks have sideboarded in ways to deal with Infect. That's some serious proof it's shifting the metagame. Hence the problematic. You should build a Sideboard for a Metagame, not for a single deck. The issue I feel is that mechanics like Infect or Storm are inherently risky. In a controlled environment like Standard, they are not so bad. Once they go Eternal however, they can easily be broken. And Pauper being what it is, some of the answers to these mechanics are just not available because of card rarity. Is Invigorate Pauper's Blazing Shoal? I don't know. The card obviously puts the Infect deck over the edge but banning it might be only a short term solution. The more I play the format, the more I feel that the Banlist should be a bit more fleshed-out. I'm not a fan of how Wizards is handling Modern's Banlist, but I understand what they're trying to accomplish. Pauper could probably use some of that medicine in my opinion.
|
|
|
Post by gabochido on Dec 2, 2011 1:04:22 GMT -5
It looks like the current dailies metagame is well balanced between a number of decks : Storm variants (grixis, Izzet and monored) green infect Izzet Cloudpost Goblins Monoblack rats MonoBlue delver control white weenie Affinity Burn Familiar Storm
Even counting the three storm variants as a single deck, that's 10 different decks. It is, however, true that storm and infect are the least fun to play against because of the coin flip type game. I think they can ban the infect elf and invigorate to put the infect deck in the right place. For the storm decks I think wizards would have to print a few more powerful but cheap and subtle answers in the style of cards like benevolent unicorn or Suture priest (preferably in other colors) or they would have to ban about 3-5 cards and completely cripple the deck.
|
|
|
Post by gabochido on Dec 2, 2011 1:07:51 GMT -5
I could see myself playing infect/storm in casual room if I build the deck and practice for event. That is what the casual rooms are for also? I would say that's what the Tournament Practice room is for. Those two decks should definitely never leave that room.
|
|
|
Post by grumpyoldgamer on Dec 2, 2011 18:11:13 GMT -5
This one annoys me. It's a new deck and a new strategy and players will have to learn to play with and against it, but I can definitely see it becoming a problematic deck on the level of Infect or Storm.
|
|
|
Post by gabochido on Dec 5, 2011 16:24:33 GMT -5
Strange that a single new card which just happens to be an efficient creature, has affected the metagame so much. Everybody and their mothers are playing this deck, and its definitely powerful.
Makes me wonder if this deck could have existed before just with a less powerful 1 mana creature.
|
|
|
Post by yugular on Feb 2, 2012 4:02:53 GMT -5
|
|