@wfain Yeah I know, I usually board it in as an outcome counterspell and I think that's usually worth it. But I just don't think that gives a reasonable edge in the game. I mean, you have to hold 2 mana up for something that may not even be the counterspell we need (they often times also have recall, dig, etc).

But you're right, it's surely to be considered. Hurkyl vs rod is like saying do you prefer getting a better % against shops or PO? If you rather have better tools against shops go with hurkyl, otherwise go with null rod.

I don't like the grafdigger's idea a lot, but if you stop to think about it, it's kind of a more vulnerable containment priest. I like containment priest to have clocks against decks where it's supposed to be a lock (we're not always gonna have priest + active survival or stuff like that against oath/dredge).

About leyline, a lot of people prefer it and I didn't like it when I tested it for some leagues. But I think it's worth to have it as a possibility, and maybe try it yourself. I had totally forgot about hurkyl's, I think it sounds great against shops, and I think that's what I needed. I'm gonna try a copy of it instead of the null rod. Maybe only 1 stony against PO is madness, but the matchup feel so good and there are so few things I want to cut for the matchup that using that a slot against shops sounds better.

@p3temangus said in Proposed New Mulligan Rule for Mythic Championship London:

Also (chuckles to self) the idea that MODO would program the new mulligan + Serum Powder interaction correctly out of the gate is low probability as well.

I don't think so, they probably have a mulligan counter or something and that doesn't move up if you use powder, which wouldn't change with the new rule.

BTW, if that happens MTG will be very different. I don't know yet how every piece will move, at least G2/G3, decks that have very key pieces (dredge, survival, to some extend shops, etc) will have more chance to find their pieces, as well as their opponents will have more chances of finding hateful keepable hands. The only thing I'm sure about is that it would change things a lot.

@aeonsovarius That's debatable. I like both cards, against dredge I don't like mulliganing to leylines where you can draw rav naturally. That makes for very weird games IMO as we can mulligan to few cards and then opp has some nature's claim and we have nothing. With rav trap they can therapy us too, but having the possibility of keeping a fast hand that can eventually draw into it seems like a better plan than mulligan to few cards.

Against the mirror leyline is better. But as I have had very positive results in the mirror and ok/bad results against dredge, I rather prioritize where I have room to improve.

Dark confidant can still be a thing, I haven't picked up the dark version because of the meta, but if we go down in combo that may be a possibility. It's a good version, but in this meta I prefer bug.

I don't think it's good to play chalice in the bug or dark version, maybe it's possible in those with lavinia but I don't have experience with that version to back me up.

@aeonsovarius I don't like Lavinia without some setup for her. Lavinia + leovold would be 4 colors, and if you play at least 2 of each, you would probably want at least access to 2 of each secondary color. I don't like the idea of having that many colors against wasteland decks (the bug survival against wasteland decks is just BUG -> no white cards come in those matchups). In BUG lavinia underperformed comparing to Leovold, so I'm using the 3rd copy of leo instead of the first of Lavinia.

About the other versions, they are just worse. I feel like people are getting there, there were lots of results with those lists mostly because there were a lot of people copying the decklist that won the asia champs or some variation of that. There is more than 1 valid version, probably even 3 or 4, but the initial thalia versions are probably the worse we have right now. Mostly now that there are tons of xerox decks out there, and that version wasn't too favored, and bug is way way favored in that matchup (the lavinia version I guess probably is too).

@wretchling If you like the thrill of competition and monetizing your game, there isn't another digital alternative. And the thing is, you will probably lose some money in the beginning, but after a while if you improve you can start getting back what you spent on the game. Also, when you are not playing for money you constantly face people that really don't want to pretend like they care for the game. And I'd rather go play anything else than online MTG with nothing on the stakes. I've done that a few times and only got bored.

I know there are some bugs, but I see very few bugs in vintage. Like, really few. I think the last one was DRS being summoning sick on my opp turn when it wasn't supposed to (happened a few times, then never again). I hear people complaining about that, I hear people swearing at the program for things they had set up to be like that, like the GY popping up when something there has become castable, but very few times really bugs.

BTW, I'm not sure where 'Wizards is not incentivized to keep on life support' came from. There's arena now, but to make all the logic for all MTG there would be a huge amount of work. And having only standard and limited, it's... limited. There are a lot of people playing MTGO that bring money to wizards and that wouldn't migrate to arena, both for not having older formats than for it's design (which for a lot of people is way worse than MTGO, but that reaches their target audience for the program).

In terms of quality from MTGO I think for a piece of software it's somewhere close to the best we can get at simulating a magic game. There are still some problems with the program itself but mostly with how much we can simulate a magic game with a software. I enjoy a lot it's interface, it's very easy, we have all the information we need, we can even buy more good-looking versions of cards if we want to. And considering the 'alternative' is MTGArena, sounds like MTGO is the best interface we will get and for me it's not a bad thing.

You said the things you lose on digital magic, but there are lots and lots of things we win. For me being able to play whenever I want and without losing time (a.k.a. playing 12 matches divided however you want in the same amount of time as a 4 rounds champs). But you guys are very different from me in terms of the paper magic feeling. Maybe because I couldn't afford vintage and the most iconic cards in magic, and even though we had FoW and dual lands I didn't have that feeling with my legacy decks (which I sold).

I, as someone who dropped paper magic to play only digital magic am probably very biased for it. But anyways, I enjoy a lot MTGO, and for me considering every aspect, even if we took the financial side out of the equation, the magic online experience for me is way better than paper magic. I've made a very big post not so long ago defending digital magic, and I don't want to repeat that as I know this is kind of different. But I just felt like MTGO deserved this defense.

Being able to go to your pc and play it when you don't have many other things to do and you are in the mood instead of having to play when you have lots of other things to do (FNMs, weekend champs) and you are not always on the mood. I mean... I rather play MTGO when I'm in good mood and want to, than play paper tournaments only when I'm able to.

#peace

I've been wondering that myself for quite a while, so bug survival belongs to the fish archetype?

@gnargoyles Yeah, I'm usually on that plan myself. I'm usually cutting some survival, hollow ones, shaman, and bringing in what is good against PO (except for energy field that I'm just not sold on). I'm bringing in assassin's trophy instead of nature's claim (claim just doesn't do enough against the mass they create, it's slot is better as some counter or creature to pressure).

I'm having a hard time against good shop players. I feel like bug survival is probably the deck I've felt the most the difference between facing good or bad players in general, which is curious to say the least. But good shop players are hard to beat. How are you guys doing against shops and in which version?

I'm still running the same SB as before:
4 containment priests (against oath and dredge, and I Usually bring 1 against grixis thieves);
3 rav. trap
1 null rod
1 stony silence
1 assassin's trophy
1 nature's claim
2 energy flux
1 leovold
1 mindbreak trap

I just don't really know what I could bring in besides what we have. I feel like there should be something else, and 2 energy flux is enough as a bomb, but more than that will be even more clunky. A lot of sideboard games that I lose is with energy flux in hand where if it was something cheaper maybe I could win. But at the same time, there were a lot of times where I won because I played it and nothing else would save the game. What I mean is that 2 is perfect probably.

Nature's claim could be another good card for the matchup. Trophy is good but clunky. Null rod sometimes hit us more than them, and sometimes it's just not good. Sometimes it's nuts (I'd have won on a game on the spot yesterday with 4 mana rocks and 2 steel overseer T1 from my opp). I just feel like we are probably missing something.

@moorebrother1 Isn't jeskai a Lavinia deck by itself now?

Survival is pretty cool, lavinia is good against it, but decks that play lavinia are good matchups for bug survival in general.

@gnargoyles Nice!

I think I was usually not running 3 null rods. I don't like null rods that much against shops, sometimes it hurts us more than them, and sometimes it's awesome, depending on which half of the deck they drew. That being said, we still need some null rod effects for PO, which is why I was running 1 null rod (for both) and 1 stony (is better against PO, they usually run hurkyl's to bounce null rod and hollow ones). I don't think we need 3 null rod effects, I'm feeling a little bit favored against PO lately.

Those hands were really some nut draws, and sometimes we get them too
Seems like you were on the good side of variance, this deck tends to mulligan quite a few times. But it's still pretty awesome.

Congrats on the result, and keep up with the training, this deck is hard to master but it's very rewarding. The hard part of it is exactly what you said, the judgement calls we have to take in regards to what matters, how low we can go on cards with bazaar, etc.

About energy flux, it's awesome when it gets into play but it's hard for that to happen when we are not in a good position. I'm actually liking more nature's claim to pick some lock pieces so that we have some chance to fight, so that we can land stuff like... energy flux.

Nowadays there are lots of Lavinias out there. Which is ironically pretty good for us. Lavinia is good against survival, no doubt about that. But decks that run lavinia are favored to us even with Lavinia, so the rise of that kind of deck makes me feel good about running bug survival.

@john-cox it can be, but it can also be burn. Burn doesnt play many generic mana, so I guess it can be lotus and ruby and blue power. Burn without attacking creatures is too risky. You would need 6 or 5 burn spells to resolve, which takes lots of time.

You need either bazaar or survival active to make good use of pharaoh. As wfain said, that's usually how we lose games. It can help sometimes. But as a matchup-specific card I think energy field does a better job.

The question here is: are you doing anything better than monored prison? I don't mean to be mean, but I don't see it being better in any aspect. This is kinda funny actually, you got like null rod and eidolon that are great against PO (seems like it's the baseline for your deck actually, to beat PO), misstep that is good against... blue? fork also for blue decks, burn for shops. But they aren't backbreaking (except against shops). If you want to hit everything, you want to have backbreaking spells against the decks so you compensate the cards that are bad for the matchups.

Maybe, just maybe you are looking it at the wrong direction. You want a deck that beats PO, shops, blue, etc. Maybe burn is supposed to be just burn, not a deck to beat those. The deck that should be beaten. To try to impose your gameplan, ignoring as much as possible your opponents'. Make the famous lists of 10 creatures, 16-ish lands, some moxen, blue power (recall, cruise, dig, timewalk) and like 26-30 burn spells.

It would be like legacy burn with power. But maybe that's enough? I mean, eldrazi here is like eldrazi stompy with power (and it's adjustments), and espiatrianero was the trophy leader last season with it. Sometimes, legacy with power is enough for vintage

This doesn't seem so much as a burn deck, more like the monored prison splashing a few burn spells. With that few burn spells (I mean, to count to something like 18 you need 6 burn spells) I'm not sure burn is correct there. Wouldn't it be better to have some creatures with potential to do 4-10 damage per game? BTW, this I'm saying is basically what monored prison is. If you are going to the burn plan, I think you should go focusing on the burn.

I thought about fiery confluence (the card is insane), but with that few lands I'm not sure you would be able to rely on that.
I think your deck looks way more like a normal red aggro deck running shocks to clear the way to... 6 weak creatures than a burn deck.

Maybe you should try using more artifact mana (at least ruby and lotus) to be more explosive, and cut null rod for extra eidolons (they are also PO hate after all). Null rod is only great against PO, it's ok against shops (depending on the hand it's insane, but it's more likely ok), and against the rest of the field they probably would feel good that you are playing this spell. Maybe you could go all in in eidolon effects and get scab-clan berserker too. They are awesome in vintage too.

BTW, if you are using burn to the shops matchup, price of progress would be insane.

Dice is lame. Take 10 tokens with you and some d20 in case things get out of control. Some nice tokens btw. If you are already playing paper vintage you should make some effort for things to look cool. That should be an official format rule, even for unofficial games.

But yeah, at least 3 + dices to represent different states in case you have no shame.

Peace.

It has been discarded as an idea already, but pithing needle is awesome AGAINST survival. I really mean it, it's painful to play against it, can name any of the 2 engines and stop any amount of copies with it. In regards to card advantage, wfain is precise there, if you want it you can get more copies of squee. And wonder is awesome. I think I'd rather cut one of the combo creatures (VV, rootwalue and hollow one) than the copy of wonder. It does... wonders.

One thing I'd recommend you to be cautious about. Don't consider good results as necessarily an indicator that it's a good version of the deck. I'm not saying it's not. All I'm saying is that survival is an awesome deck, and it's way above the median of the vintage decks. The deck is so good that tere are bad versions of survival that can do fine in the metagame. I think for you to really be able to understand and brew correctly it'd be good to play the other versions of the deck. See what works in each of them, and what are the metagame each one is better at. For example, for me there are 2 builds of survival that are insane, and each one of them works better in certain enviroments. And each one of them has it's own pros and cons. Besides looking for a better version (say a version that is better than A against any deck) you can look for a version that goes better against X and worse against Y.

I don't know how you feel about that, but we already talked about something between 5 and 10 versions of survival in the main thread. Maybe it would be a nice discussion to have there too, as the versions have lots in common, and maybe when talking about one of them we can have ideas for the other one.

@moorebrother1 I think as long as there are championships, it will be competitive. There may be players who like to go to championships to play casually, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there will always be people playing it competitively. Even commander 1x1 can be competitive. I knew some people that had some pretty expensive and well built x1 decks around here, and there was also the league on MTGO.

I think they are 2 things: the incentives for people to take the format competitively (PT, GPs, even MTGO Leagues, Format Championships, etc) and the people itself. The format doesn't give by itself incentives to become competitive (well... not for me in Brazil anyways). But there are competitive people playing it (as there are in almost every format, I guess).

@fsecco Yeah, I agree completely. I've played with survival against lavinia and it's good at slowing survival down and it can even blank some hands we keep.

So, for maindecking sounds like Lavinia is better if you have access to the 4 colors. Leovold is a completely different thing for xerox decks, I'd run it sideboard in the very least (if you want to improve that matchup).

BTW fsecci is right, I didn't pay attention to that. Vengevine triggers on cast, and lavinia counters cards that weren't paid mana to cast, so they are still casted. Lavinia + cage or something like that completely shuts off survival's free creatures engines.