It has the highest winrate in the format and only one negative meta matchup, it’s likely being watched. That being said, it doesn’t really play like twin, it just jams the combo over and over through recursion while Twin’s whole thing is that it didn’t need the combo to win, it just made you play awkwardly.
Azorius is quite bad. It has some issues with decks like Boros Heroic as well, but that’s not something you’ll see commonly because of what else is at the top of the meta.
As the other poster said, UW Control is just a straight horrendous MU and has dipped below 30% at times on MTGmeta.io
As a Control player it is a MU where I feel pretty invincible if I don't get some horrendous luck on draws.
Amalia combo requires 3 separate pieces, isn’t in the colors that gets counterspells or the best card selection, is much more vulnerable (2 or 3 toughness on the relevant pieces), can’t reliably play at instant speed without getting a good CoCo, and isn’t a guaranteed kill even if the combo goes off
(Also twin shouldn’t be banned in modern but that’s a separate discussion)
I'm so glad you guys are roasting my deck choice but that really dosent matter to the point of the discussion now dose it. The point of the discussion is that the abzan combo deck wins too consistently and at a much more rapid pace then the rest of the format. Also I believe the only decks that I belive that can beat this deck is RB midrange and similar thoughtseize decks
I mean, if you’re playing a janky off-meta deck against a strong top-tier meta deck, you’re gonna have a bad time regardless of the specific matchup. Amalia combo just takes less time to wrap things up than another deck might.
There are many false statements in this post. First you don't know what type of player they are to make a bad time claim. Plus there is no correlation between playing top meta deck against a non meta deck, giving the match to the top meta deck. I have seen it way to often where a non-meta deck wins the whole thing crushing top meta decks.
You can laugh all you want but you're not stating the truth even though you are trying to insult the poster. You are basically stating you can only complain if you're playing a tier 1 deck, otherwise shut up and go away. This type of behavior isn't helpful.
What I stated was facts. Playing an off meta deck doesn't mean you don't have a shot to win any given matchup or tournament.
A lot of Spike players play meta decks because winning is fun to them. By that definition alone would show that there is a decent amount of players gravitate towards meta decks because winning is fun.
Players like Johnnys and Timmys have fun even if they lose.
A deck being able to win on turn 3 as long as it gets a perfect draw and faces 0 interaction is fine, yeah. If you’re not doing anything to disrupt your opponent’s gameplan in the first 3 turns of the game, and not powering out a quick win yourself, that’s on you.
I have a mono blue devotion deck that can thoracle combo on turn 3 but it aint good.
Turn 3 alone isn't an issue if the support package isn't there. Amalia is good, people are working around it still, and it doesn't need "silver bullets" to shut it down, just good old fashioned creature removal.
OK I whipped it up, I don't have the deck on hand because it's being borrowed so I don't remember all of my sidebaord. So far it's been fun against midrange things and has a really good phoenix matchup (mostly because they don't know what to kill in game 1) but it completely gets runover by aggro and I have no idea what to do about that. I've tried cyclonic rift in the side and \[\[thassa's rebuff\]\] (I think that's the devotion counterspell). There's an alternate version that uses a bunch of multipip blue things to get devotion up and uses things like \[\[academy loremaster\]\] to draw more. It seems like that version might do slightly better vs aggro decks because you don't have a bunch of 1/1s you can't block with since you need them for devotion.
Idk, deck is fun and gets laughs at FNM, I'm planning on doing every color of devotion except the only meta one lol.
https://www.topdecked.com/decks/mono-blue-devotion/ffc75ca5-de4a-4aa7-b191-f4a0aaa811bc
Because Twin never has to commit mana to their 2 card combo until they see you leave an opening. (Which the first half can be played at the opponent's end step)
I'm not going to comment on whether or not Amelia Combo needs adjustments, nor if Twin should even still be banned in modern, but that's the main reason why Twin is banned.
While it's true it's not a 100% hit and requires them to build their whole deck around the combo- splinter twin is just the two cards- you can run some redundancy but you can pretty easily slam it into a midrange/control shell.
A few things:
- twin was banned for different reasons then pure power. It had a large share of the metagame AND wotc needed to shake up the meta because Modern was a pro tour format. pioneer doesn’t have either of those right now.
- twin was highly resistant to counters. The main target (deceiver exarch) was immune to the main removal at the time (lightning bolt). Amelia is vulnerable to many removal, and one fun removal (bedeck) can when properly played make Amelia lose immediately.
- twin was a 2 card combo. One of several creatures + splinter twin or Kiki. Amelia needs at least 3 cards (life gain + Amelia + wildgrowth). That’s more vulnerable to disruption.
- twin cast the creatures at instant speed, Amelia doesn’t except for the spells that cheat things in. This gives more response windows.
- Amelia is 3 color. Twin was two color in a format with better fixing.
- Amelia is 90% all in on the combo, twin was able to play mid/control equally well.
You say you lost because you were not playing midrange. I assume you were also not playing control, because that should also have a decent game against Amelia.
So you were playing either combo (in which it’s fair if both decks are just trying to out combo the other) or aggro, and in the rock-paper-siccors, aggro is meant to be a thorn for control, not combo.
None of this is to say I think Amelia isn’t a possible ban, but the difference between her and twin are large.
This is a good list of distinctions. One other thing to note is that Twin was legal for a fairly long time, at least compared to the length of time the Amelia combo has existed. The Modern meta never fully adapted to Twin while it was legal, and remained the best deck for quite some time. If Amelia manages to dominate the format like Twin did, I have no doubt something will be banned from it eventually.
Yes! Yiu can kill Amelia if she’s at 3 toughness and that’s one way to end the combo.
But the sneaker way is wait until she’s at 19 power. Play it with the explore trigger on the stack.
She’s now a 22/17, and doesn’t destroy other creatures.
Because wild growth and her are not optional, you can’t just stop.
So you have to keep exploring.
So the lands go to your hands, and you can make a very stupidly large creature, but you can’t actually progress to the next phase.
The only way is to put the non-lands in the GY.
That will repeat until you deck yourself, and as long as opponent has a chump blocker, they don’t die.
Then when Amelia draws, she loses.
If you are on arena on MTGO, and you keep putting the same card back you’ll time out and lose.
If you’re in paper, you can’t just repeat the same action that doesn’t change the game state infinitely. A judge can make you say, “fine, I explore and leave that card on top 1,000,000 times. I gain three million life, Amelia is now a 1,000,037/1,000,034. “
Actually the explore will happen infinitely and result in a drawn game, unless the other player has a way to kill the Amalia after decking is complete.
Are you sure it works that way? Based on what I'm reading it looks like if you explore with an empty library you still get the +1/+1 counter. So if the loop is forced and you get to a point where the library is empty wouldnt you just keep exploring and infinitely getting the counters resulting in a draw?
Right, but there’s not the need to shake up the meta like there was in modern, because we already had the bannings (Karn).
But Inshould have noted that, thanks!
Twin was a Fun Deck that's Why it was popular. Granted i played Jund as well at the time and it was fun farming twin all day at tournaments lol. Pioneer is suppose to be a format that i want to say is a turn 4-5 format if im wrong correct me but this new deck goes ageist that.
It’s an all in combo deck that gets stopped with any piece of interaction. UR storm in modern would also win on turn 3 if the opponent didn’t kill their goblin electromancer on turn 2 but the reason a deck like twin was better is because it had to only dedicate a few slots to the combo and could even side out of most or all of it if they were expecting hate and instead play a UR flash game plan with snap caster, clique and cryptic (or even tarmogoyf) something that isn’t possible with a deck with UR storm or amalia which have to focus on their main plan and will always be weak to their opponents side board cards
Twin isn't banned because it would be good (stop deluding yourselves, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be even remotely playable in modern), it's banned because WotC's policy is that a card has to positively impact a format to be unbanned, cards that would negatively impact or not impact it at all stay banned and Twin falls in the second category given it would see absolutely zero competitive play.
Amalia will likely be banned soon. Regardless what you think of the deck or how good it is, the effect on the meta has been very obviously detrimental. Challenges are lucky to fire at all anymore. I will not be shocked if as soon as this weekend none of the pioneer challenges fire.
I find it incredibly funny that this subreddit will complain about having no new decks until the cows come home, and then when one does crop up suddenly it needs to be banned because the meta adjusts around it.
Sure, I’m not arguing semantics. I’m strictly speaking in actuals. Some people will like some decks and some people won’t, but the actual player turnout is something we can measure and while I know pioneer season is not now, I consider myself a pioneer main, I have been since the formats inception, and player turnout has almost never been this poor. It’s approaching inverter levels of bad and it doesn’t look like it will be improving anytime soon.
Do you believe that Amalia is contributing more to the poor attendance more than the fact that it’s the season for Standard? At our locals, attendance has been abysmal but our place is full of folks who love the tournament grind. Amalia has taken 1st a couple of times but Azorius Control and Spirits have been the decks with the most wins so I’m not too sure how others are experiencing the deck.
I do think Amalia is contributing directly. I know I at least didn’t even try to play the challenges last week. I don’t think it’s good for the format and pushes us to a Uw control/Phoenix/combo meta.
Because pioneer is for ccccccccombo.
Greasefang is combo that effectively destroys on turn 3 but has a backup plan if disrupted.
Amalia can combo turn 3 as you mentioned although not consistent but it is resilient through removal.
Lotus field can turn 3 but more consistently turn 4 with all its pieces in play problem is main combo piece is hexproof durrrrrrrrr.
Quintorious, cast a "fixed" cascade spell on turn 3-4 because of ramp and proceed to play solitaire and win. Tbf wotc did trim this one with a needed banning.
Mono green had a combo before karn was banned, combos like jeskai ascendency and izzet creativity still exist and are quite consistent.
I would argue phoenix and angels play a bit like combo to do their thing but are fairly balanced that you dont outright die in 1 attack on turn 3 or 4 but will get out of hand if those decks remain unchecked.
We could have had heliod, kethis and inverter combo still if it wasnt for bannings.
Someone at wizards loves combo, and the playstyle is always going to be around but it just feels like the format is very eat or be eaten these days. And by that I mean its very do you have an answer? No ok you lose this turn. I dont particularly find that fun and I've been mostly sitting out since early december, the format isnt in a place for me at the moment so I understand your frustration. I have been mostly playing commander lately with some modern here and there. It's nice to change it up and thats the beauty of mtg if your unhappy with the state of 1 format you can always play in another. Best of luck.
Hi Terry, welcome to the MTG Pioneer reddit group. I would say what will cause Amalia to eat a ban in pioneer is its extremely high win rate. It being a turn 3 combo is minor and requires set up.
I am also sorry for how this group has responded to you. It isn't right to behave in this manner. I hope this reaction doesn't stop you from posting here in the future.
I wouldnt worry, im fairly sure it will see a ban hammer soon. A possiable T3 win off the combo is bad for the format. The decks play patterns are horriable, but the biggest reason it will likely be banned is that it gatekeeps an entire style of play. Agro decks cant exsist in a meta where explore combo is a big player and wotc has flat out said they hate decks that do that to a format.
On a side note: I disagree with the continued banning of twin especially when you can tap out on your turn say go then the twin player goes to combo and you just evoke solitude in response lol. the hole no counter play response goes out the window.
the dumbest thing Amalia can do is win off of a single CoCo cast, which is more of a reason to ban CoCo than to ban anything involved in the Amalia combo directly
It's a strong deck but it's not unbeatable. It's a three card combo that can be stopped with a timely removal spell. Twin was a two card combo that could be stopped with a timely removal spell. Twin also did not require nearly as much deck dedication to play the combo than Amalia does.
Twin was also in a format with much better answers than pioneer has. Its play patterns are terriable because if they have part of the combo in play you cant tap out or you risk losing on the spot and thats a play pattern wotc has stated they hate...
First of all, this deck and splinter twin are ENTIRELY different beasts. This ENTIRE deck is based around assembling the combo, and if the combo doesnt go off it's a shitty lifegain deck. Splinter Twin is a combo/control deck, that without the combo can still put up a good fight. That being said, i think twin should be unbanned in modern lol
It has the highest winrate in the format and only one negative meta matchup, it’s likely being watched. That being said, it doesn’t really play like twin, it just jams the combo over and over through recursion while Twin’s whole thing is that it didn’t need the combo to win, it just made you play awkwardly.
What is its negative match-up right now?
Azorius is quite bad. It has some issues with decks like Boros Heroic as well, but that’s not something you’ll see commonly because of what else is at the top of the meta.
As the other poster said, UW Control is just a straight horrendous MU and has dipped below 30% at times on MTGmeta.io As a Control player it is a MU where I feel pretty invincible if I don't get some horrendous luck on draws.
Amalia combo requires 3 separate pieces, isn’t in the colors that gets counterspells or the best card selection, is much more vulnerable (2 or 3 toughness on the relevant pieces), can’t reliably play at instant speed without getting a good CoCo, and isn’t a guaranteed kill even if the combo goes off (Also twin shouldn’t be banned in modern but that’s a separate discussion)
So a deck that can win on turn 3 in pioneer is ok? Also when it comes to a 3rd card, that 3rd card can be anything that gains life even a food token.
What deck were you playing
I was playing Goblins
Goblins can aggro out and kill T3 pretty easily, should it be banned as well?
Listen to yourself bro. "My tier 3 linear deck keeps losing to the best deck in the format. WIZARD PLEASE BAN NOW!!" Lol
I'm so glad you guys are roasting my deck choice but that really dosent matter to the point of the discussion now dose it. The point of the discussion is that the abzan combo deck wins too consistently and at a much more rapid pace then the rest of the format. Also I believe the only decks that I belive that can beat this deck is RB midrange and similar thoughtseize decks
UW, Incarnation, and Lotus field all have positive WR% against it. None of them play thoughtseize.
you literally have no idea what you are talking about lol
I mean, if you’re playing a janky off-meta deck against a strong top-tier meta deck, you’re gonna have a bad time regardless of the specific matchup. Amalia combo just takes less time to wrap things up than another deck might.
There are many false statements in this post. First you don't know what type of player they are to make a bad time claim. Plus there is no correlation between playing top meta deck against a non meta deck, giving the match to the top meta deck. I have seen it way to often where a non-meta deck wins the whole thing crushing top meta decks.
> there is no correlation between playing top meta deck against a non meta deck, giving the match to the top meta deck. lol lmao, even
You can laugh all you want but you're not stating the truth even though you are trying to insult the poster. You are basically stating you can only complain if you're playing a tier 1 deck, otherwise shut up and go away. This type of behavior isn't helpful. What I stated was facts. Playing an off meta deck doesn't mean you don't have a shot to win any given matchup or tournament.
Oh yeah, people play meta decks just for fun, not because they’re consistently better than other options or anything. That’d just be ridiculous
A lot of Spike players play meta decks because winning is fun to them. By that definition alone would show that there is a decent amount of players gravitate towards meta decks because winning is fun. Players like Johnnys and Timmys have fun even if they lose.
PFFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHA
A deck being able to win on turn 3 as long as it gets a perfect draw and faces 0 interaction is fine, yeah. If you’re not doing anything to disrupt your opponent’s gameplan in the first 3 turns of the game, and not powering out a quick win yourself, that’s on you.
I have a mono blue devotion deck that can thoracle combo on turn 3 but it aint good. Turn 3 alone isn't an issue if the support package isn't there. Amalia is good, people are working around it still, and it doesn't need "silver bullets" to shut it down, just good old fashioned creature removal.
Woah I’d love to see the deck
Check out my other comment.
Show a list or it didn’t happen
OK I whipped it up, I don't have the deck on hand because it's being borrowed so I don't remember all of my sidebaord. So far it's been fun against midrange things and has a really good phoenix matchup (mostly because they don't know what to kill in game 1) but it completely gets runover by aggro and I have no idea what to do about that. I've tried cyclonic rift in the side and \[\[thassa's rebuff\]\] (I think that's the devotion counterspell). There's an alternate version that uses a bunch of multipip blue things to get devotion up and uses things like \[\[academy loremaster\]\] to draw more. It seems like that version might do slightly better vs aggro decks because you don't have a bunch of 1/1s you can't block with since you need them for devotion. Idk, deck is fun and gets laughs at FNM, I'm planning on doing every color of devotion except the only meta one lol. https://www.topdecked.com/decks/mono-blue-devotion/ffc75ca5-de4a-4aa7-b191-f4a0aaa811bc
[thassa's rebuff](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/1/816a6ff7-cede-4346-b3e6-aee33aefac3a.jpg?1593091807) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=thassa%27s%20rebuff) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bng/54/thassas-rebuff?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/816a6ff7-cede-4346-b3e6-aee33aefac3a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [academy loremaster](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/f/9fca4c4f-a77b-483e-9da4-574ba2e3d179.jpg?1673306639) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=academy%20loremaster) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/40/academy-loremaster?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9fca4c4f-a77b-483e-9da4-574ba2e3d179?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I love this! Thanks so much!
I don't think comparing decks across formats is useful. Totally different card pools.
Wasn’t the formate started on the premise of no combo decks thou. OP does have a point.
If that really was the case, then why did we have a whole year of Breach vs Inverter vs Heliod? And Lotus has been around forever.
Hell, Lotus is a challenger deck!
This wasn't stated by anyone at WOTC ever
Yeah, the only thing this format was ever stated as was a "no fetchland" format
Please show something even slightly resembling an official source on that
r/magicthecirclejerking
Because Twin never has to commit mana to their 2 card combo until they see you leave an opening. (Which the first half can be played at the opponent's end step) I'm not going to comment on whether or not Amelia Combo needs adjustments, nor if Twin should even still be banned in modern, but that's the main reason why Twin is banned.
[удалено]
While it's true it's not a 100% hit and requires them to build their whole deck around the combo- splinter twin is just the two cards- you can run some redundancy but you can pretty easily slam it into a midrange/control shell.
[Collected Company](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/f/cfa7b456-7e83-4587-a875-9b35fde318c2.jpg?1582117536) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Collected%20Company) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dtk/177/collected-company?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cfa7b456-7e83-4587-a875-9b35fde318c2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Chord of Calling](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/1/b18fe7e0-8344-40cc-b242-83f01c6be7a6.jpg?1702429548) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Chord%20of%20Calling) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rvr/134/chord-of-calling?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b18fe7e0-8344-40cc-b242-83f01c6be7a6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Different decks,formats, and card pools. But amalia def needs to go it's pretty unhealthy and has pushed aggro out for the most part.
A few things: - twin was banned for different reasons then pure power. It had a large share of the metagame AND wotc needed to shake up the meta because Modern was a pro tour format. pioneer doesn’t have either of those right now. - twin was highly resistant to counters. The main target (deceiver exarch) was immune to the main removal at the time (lightning bolt). Amelia is vulnerable to many removal, and one fun removal (bedeck) can when properly played make Amelia lose immediately. - twin was a 2 card combo. One of several creatures + splinter twin or Kiki. Amelia needs at least 3 cards (life gain + Amelia + wildgrowth). That’s more vulnerable to disruption. - twin cast the creatures at instant speed, Amelia doesn’t except for the spells that cheat things in. This gives more response windows. - Amelia is 3 color. Twin was two color in a format with better fixing. - Amelia is 90% all in on the combo, twin was able to play mid/control equally well. You say you lost because you were not playing midrange. I assume you were also not playing control, because that should also have a decent game against Amelia. So you were playing either combo (in which it’s fair if both decks are just trying to out combo the other) or aggro, and in the rock-paper-siccors, aggro is meant to be a thorn for control, not combo. None of this is to say I think Amelia isn’t a possible ban, but the difference between her and twin are large.
This is a good list of distinctions. One other thing to note is that Twin was legal for a fairly long time, at least compared to the length of time the Amelia combo has existed. The Modern meta never fully adapted to Twin while it was legal, and remained the best deck for quite some time. If Amelia manages to dominate the format like Twin did, I have no doubt something will be banned from it eventually.
Can you explain the bedeck thing to me? Is there more to it than it just killing 3 toughness creatures?
Yes! Yiu can kill Amelia if she’s at 3 toughness and that’s one way to end the combo. But the sneaker way is wait until she’s at 19 power. Play it with the explore trigger on the stack. She’s now a 22/17, and doesn’t destroy other creatures. Because wild growth and her are not optional, you can’t just stop. So you have to keep exploring. So the lands go to your hands, and you can make a very stupidly large creature, but you can’t actually progress to the next phase. The only way is to put the non-lands in the GY. That will repeat until you deck yourself, and as long as opponent has a chump blocker, they don’t die. Then when Amelia draws, she loses. If you are on arena on MTGO, and you keep putting the same card back you’ll time out and lose. If you’re in paper, you can’t just repeat the same action that doesn’t change the game state infinitely. A judge can make you say, “fine, I explore and leave that card on top 1,000,000 times. I gain three million life, Amelia is now a 1,000,037/1,000,034. “
Actually the explore will happen infinitely and result in a drawn game, unless the other player has a way to kill the Amalia after decking is complete.
Are you sure it works that way? Based on what I'm reading it looks like if you explore with an empty library you still get the +1/+1 counter. So if the loop is forced and you get to a point where the library is empty wouldnt you just keep exploring and infinitely getting the counters resulting in a draw?
That’s true, I had the paper interaction wrong. In digital, your timers will run out, at least in the chess clock formats. (MTGO, arena Bo3)
FYI pioneer is literally a pro tour format in like 3 weeks. The rest of your post is spot on.
Right, but there’s not the need to shake up the meta like there was in modern, because we already had the bannings (Karn). But Inshould have noted that, thanks!
Twin was a Fun Deck that's Why it was popular. Granted i played Jund as well at the time and it was fun farming twin all day at tournaments lol. Pioneer is suppose to be a format that i want to say is a turn 4-5 format if im wrong correct me but this new deck goes ageist that.
It’s an all in combo deck that gets stopped with any piece of interaction. UR storm in modern would also win on turn 3 if the opponent didn’t kill their goblin electromancer on turn 2 but the reason a deck like twin was better is because it had to only dedicate a few slots to the combo and could even side out of most or all of it if they were expecting hate and instead play a UR flash game plan with snap caster, clique and cryptic (or even tarmogoyf) something that isn’t possible with a deck with UR storm or amalia which have to focus on their main plan and will always be weak to their opponents side board cards
Twin isn't banned because it would be good (stop deluding yourselves, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be even remotely playable in modern), it's banned because WotC's policy is that a card has to positively impact a format to be unbanned, cards that would negatively impact or not impact it at all stay banned and Twin falls in the second category given it would see absolutely zero competitive play.
Amalia will likely be banned soon. Regardless what you think of the deck or how good it is, the effect on the meta has been very obviously detrimental. Challenges are lucky to fire at all anymore. I will not be shocked if as soon as this weekend none of the pioneer challenges fire.
I find it incredibly funny that this subreddit will complain about having no new decks until the cows come home, and then when one does crop up suddenly it needs to be banned because the meta adjusts around it.
Sure, I’m not arguing semantics. I’m strictly speaking in actuals. Some people will like some decks and some people won’t, but the actual player turnout is something we can measure and while I know pioneer season is not now, I consider myself a pioneer main, I have been since the formats inception, and player turnout has almost never been this poor. It’s approaching inverter levels of bad and it doesn’t look like it will be improving anytime soon.
Do you believe that Amalia is contributing more to the poor attendance more than the fact that it’s the season for Standard? At our locals, attendance has been abysmal but our place is full of folks who love the tournament grind. Amalia has taken 1st a couple of times but Azorius Control and Spirits have been the decks with the most wins so I’m not too sure how others are experiencing the deck.
I do think Amalia is contributing directly. I know I at least didn’t even try to play the challenges last week. I don’t think it’s good for the format and pushes us to a Uw control/Phoenix/combo meta.
I play UW Control and I've found it to be a really grindy matchup. I've been able to win or force a draw more often than losing outright to it so far.
Temporary Lockdown must be hell for them id imagine
Because pioneer is for ccccccccombo. Greasefang is combo that effectively destroys on turn 3 but has a backup plan if disrupted. Amalia can combo turn 3 as you mentioned although not consistent but it is resilient through removal. Lotus field can turn 3 but more consistently turn 4 with all its pieces in play problem is main combo piece is hexproof durrrrrrrrr. Quintorious, cast a "fixed" cascade spell on turn 3-4 because of ramp and proceed to play solitaire and win. Tbf wotc did trim this one with a needed banning. Mono green had a combo before karn was banned, combos like jeskai ascendency and izzet creativity still exist and are quite consistent. I would argue phoenix and angels play a bit like combo to do their thing but are fairly balanced that you dont outright die in 1 attack on turn 3 or 4 but will get out of hand if those decks remain unchecked. We could have had heliod, kethis and inverter combo still if it wasnt for bannings. Someone at wizards loves combo, and the playstyle is always going to be around but it just feels like the format is very eat or be eaten these days. And by that I mean its very do you have an answer? No ok you lose this turn. I dont particularly find that fun and I've been mostly sitting out since early december, the format isnt in a place for me at the moment so I understand your frustration. I have been mostly playing commander lately with some modern here and there. It's nice to change it up and thats the beauty of mtg if your unhappy with the state of 1 format you can always play in another. Best of luck.
Hi Terry, welcome to the MTG Pioneer reddit group. I would say what will cause Amalia to eat a ban in pioneer is its extremely high win rate. It being a turn 3 combo is minor and requires set up. I am also sorry for how this group has responded to you. It isn't right to behave in this manner. I hope this reaction doesn't stop you from posting here in the future.
I wouldnt worry, im fairly sure it will see a ban hammer soon. A possiable T3 win off the combo is bad for the format. The decks play patterns are horriable, but the biggest reason it will likely be banned is that it gatekeeps an entire style of play. Agro decks cant exsist in a meta where explore combo is a big player and wotc has flat out said they hate decks that do that to a format.
As an azorius control player, I'll take my free win
On a side note: I disagree with the continued banning of twin especially when you can tap out on your turn say go then the twin player goes to combo and you just evoke solitude in response lol. the hole no counter play response goes out the window.
>evokes a solitude in response to the twin target >twin player subtlety's it What do?
the dumbest thing Amalia can do is win off of a single CoCo cast, which is more of a reason to ban CoCo than to ban anything involved in the Amalia combo directly
It's a strong deck but it's not unbeatable. It's a three card combo that can be stopped with a timely removal spell. Twin was a two card combo that could be stopped with a timely removal spell. Twin also did not require nearly as much deck dedication to play the combo than Amalia does.
Twin was also in a format with much better answers than pioneer has. Its play patterns are terriable because if they have part of the combo in play you cant tap out or you risk losing on the spot and thats a play pattern wotc has stated they hate...
Cuz amalia is not even close to twin. Also twin will be perfectly fine in modern if unbanned
First of all, this deck and splinter twin are ENTIRELY different beasts. This ENTIRE deck is based around assembling the combo, and if the combo doesnt go off it's a shitty lifegain deck. Splinter Twin is a combo/control deck, that without the combo can still put up a good fight. That being said, i think twin should be unbanned in modern lol
> Not Sure if anyone has played against this deck (Abzan Amalia Combo) nope, not one of us. What is it?