I was going to try and ladder a bit since I am stuck home with kids. The plan was to play the crap out of PO and try to get some 5-0 leagues. Then, Lavinia got released and the meta has shifted. I have found ways to deal with her but she is making the game less fun, at least for me.
I have considered trying a different deck or just taking a break but I am really not enjoying MTGO game play right now. Is this just me or has this had an impact on others too?
@moorebrother1 I find it a little bit (a lot, actually) ironic, you mention that you are not enjoying playing against Lavinia, when you are playing PO.
But seriously, I've felt a pretty strong shift towards boring combo decks lately, which leads me to thing probably xerox is in a good place to be in now. I seriously had stopped playing vintage a little bit because of that tedious feel to play against boring combo decks all day long. But then I went to play a little bit of pauper and got faced twice against inside out combo.
I was halfway out the door the last time I posted, but with the RNA printings I'm sucked right back in. Lavinia, and many of the other additions, have added a breath of fresh air to the metagame. I just hope my local paper events get reinvigorated because of it.
@gutocmtt You are correct that it is extremely ironic. I picked PO as the deck that I wanted to master and to be honest I have mastered it. I am very good with the deck. Lavinia has made playing the deck more complicated but she has made the meta game down right dumb.
I may go back to Blue Moon or just take a break for a bit. I was tinkering with Oath, since it is criminally under played. It might just be me and my very complicated relationship with MTGO.
From the actual card discussion on Lavinia:
@chubbyrain said in Single Card Discussion - Lavinia, Azorious Renegade:
Curious what people have thought of this card now that it's seen print.
I've been pretty happy with Lavinia. I think she does a good job slowing down games and forcing broken strategies to find answers to her, while still allowing those decks to function. I haven't encountered too many games in which she's been oppressive and I think she's pretty poor against fairer strategies like Xerox. Then again, I've adapted my sideboarding strategy to have more low cost and permanent based answers and go down on Force of Wills in matchups where she's likely to make an appearance. It's led to a pretty interesting metagame, at least initially.
Has that been the experience of others?
@smmenen That does not appear to be a fair choice. You guys picked Shops as deck of the year and PO is always up and down.
I’m happy for new cards in the meta but right now it feels very one sided.
I haven't had a lot of time to play since RNA dropped, but I did run into Lavinia with pitch dredge, so that was interesting. Not being able to really play Shops right now on Modo with the Foundry Inspector bug is kinda bummer, so I'm probably gonna fire up Fatestitcher Dredge for a while and see how I feel about it.
Maybe it's time for PO to find a more resilient strategy. Lean heavier on control maybe? The stock decks do have a good color combination for control after all. The ambition to draw out your entire deck before you win is a superfluous one. You only need to draw the right cards to win.
Also, it's not always easy to tell how effective Lavinia is being in a game if you're the one controlling it, because of the 'can't cast' clause. It's pretty oppressive for greedy mana combo decks. It would be easier to tell if you could see your opponent's hand often.
If I'm on PO, I'd rather be facing Lavinia than stony silence or Chalice of the void all day.
Lavinia is not an oppressive card in most games by any means. I'm sure the vast majority of TMDers will agree with me about enjoying the format in 4 lodestone golem 4 chalice metagames which were far more oppressive than Lavinia can ever hope to be.
It's better for wizards to release cards that "regulate" problematic cards rather than have those cards restricted. If anything, Lavinia opens up space in the metagame.
Metagame shifts happen all the time, it's a natural thing. Decks eventually adapt to new answers printed.
You don't hear oath players complaining about containment priest or dredge players about Rest in Peace which are a lot worse for them than Lavinia is for PO.
@macdeath I have several points of disagreement here, but I will just sum it fast.
Fast combo has always beat the Shops deck even when they have 4 Trinisphere. I played Death Long back in the day and never had an issue beating Shops. This is back when I play Brian Demars at our weekly events.
The Chalice/Lodestone meta would be a dream for a PO player. You just resolve Hurkyl's then combo out - game over.
Stony Silence is tricky but PO needs to play Fragmentize or Disenchant. When I played at SCG Con I ran Fragmentize main and Disenchant on the board. I never lost to Null Rod or Stony Silence.
Lavinia by her self is not much to overcome. You need a bounce spell to play through like playing against Leovold. The difference is that she is a 2 drop not a 3 drop like Leovold or a 4 drop like Notion Thief. The control decks that support her run 12 counters plus Snapcaster making removal an uphill battle and if she is on the board you cannot use your own FOW.
She creates a lopsided game state when playing to use skill becomes more a game of chance. Can I find my one card, and get through 12 counters with recursion.
@moorebrother1 So I'm guessing you didn't give a shot at Karakas yet?
And BTW, Lavinia is nowhere near leovold in terms of locking out. With leovold, you can't even dig for answers. When I played her instead of leovold, I felt waaaaaaaay more vulnerable. I don't play PO, but it doesn't seem that dificult to play against her. Maybe the jeskai matchup got worse, but you were already on the opressive deck of the meta, so it's certainly a good thing that PO's winrate lowered a little bit.
@gutocmtt That may be true in the Survival or Bug decks. I have seen the Survival decks run her and I'm not sure why. That deck works better with Thalia and Manglehorn. She does not make every deck better but the Jeskai decks did get a stronger answer to PO.
People do not seem that bothered here maybe it's only me. So, I'll stop whining and move on.
@moorebrother1 I didn't want to post here before now because I am not interested in spreading negativity, but I wanted to reply to your last statement - I also don't enjoy the current Vintage metagame.
It seems that there are several people who do enjoy the format, and I'm very happy for those people. As long as those people are in the majority, I'll probably carry on mostly keeping quiet, and try to appreciate the format for what it is.
@jeb-springfield I also do not want to spread negativity. I am seeing a downturn in content here and I thought it may have been the time of year but with the VSL going and a new set out I thought that I would see more content.
As, I said before I'll stop whining and brew a bit. I want to play paper and take a break from MTGO. I think that will help me see the format in a different light.
@moorebrother1 I'm also a fan of playing Oath, and people running out Lavinias on T1 certainly helps the Oath game plan, though there are several counterbalancing influences on Oath's chances in the metagame:
Have you thought about possible Oath target configurations? The "classic" non-legendary (or otherwise Karakas-immune) Oath targets are
Combo-Oath options Tidespout Tyrant, Rune-Scarred Demon, and Auriok Salvagers are all also notably non-legendary.
The downturn in TMD content could be because the internet, as a whole, is moving away from bulletin boards towards Facebook and Reddit for discussion. Even the big dogs like MTGSalvation and The Source are slowly dying away.
@baishuu said in Is anyone enjoying this new meta?:
The downturn in TMD content could be because the internet, as a whole, is moving away from bulletin boards towards Facebook and Reddit for discussion. Even the big dogs like MTGSalvation and The Source are slowly dying away.
This has been true for at least a decade; though. Has there really been a significant chance in the last year?
Incidentally I hate Facebook for in-depth discussions. It's difficult to format posts, embed multiple images, search content, and is less user-friendly in general.
@baishuu said in Is anyone enjoying this new meta?:
The downturn in TMD content could be because the internet, as a whole, is moving away from bulletin boards towards Facebook and Reddit for discussion. Even the big dogs like MTGSalvation and The Source are slowly dying away.
Facebook? I mean, I get the others (reddit, discord), but facebook I thought was slowling dying already. I actually saw that happening to TheSource, the topics I was following were really dying, while the deck's discord was on a rise. I don't know about reddit, but on discord the discussions were too shalow. I don't know, I feel like forums like TMD are better placed for more profound discussions. Discord is more like a big whatsapp group (which is definitely not something good).
