I like your article. I do a lot of 4booster as you, can you share your opinion about M13?
M13 card and booster are both cheaper than AVR. do you play M13?
I don't think NO/Progenitus is a potential problem at all, really. I fail to see why it wouldn't be desirable to have around. Progenitus is the least scary of all of those "Trifecta of Doom" guys. Progenitus can be raced by aggro, I have done it with Zoo against Bant in real legacy tournaments. There are numerous aggro decks in the tribal legacy wars format that would be capable of racing him. And control decks can either counterspell the NO, or use a board sweeper, or use Diabolic Edicts, Liliana of the Veil, etc. (How many guys do they have left to sac to edicts after the one they sac'ced to Natural Order? Not many if they went for a fast NO. I packed Warren Weirding in legacy goblins and never had any problem taking Proggy down.) There's also "hatebear" cards like Gaddock Teeg and Aven Mindcensor that can disrupt it. Only some durdle midrange decks with little disruption and nothing but spot removal would entirely fold to NO/Progenitus.
Decks aren't JUST about getting out Progenitus, he's not good enough to be THAT all-in. Progenitus is used in legacy as a Plan B. I would envision some base green deck with a mix of manadorks and utility guys and efficient beaters like KotR, a very small NO "toolbox" of Progenitus and Empyrial Archangel, and maybe even a GSZ toolbox. I would have fun playing that deck. It wouldn't ALWAYS be correct to go for Progenitus, I assure you. But the ability to go for him to close out a game is what would make that kind of deck competitive.
Sorry I didn't mean to imply that your objection was semantic but that my response wasn't precise enough. And I too was trying to decline to argue about this since I think you and I specifically have almost no common ground at all.
I wasn't negative. You know I always want to dot the I's and cross the T's. :)
And the fact that you (and AJ as well) were among the lucky (?) few to face Aluren is really amusing to me. :)
On a more serious note, it happens that a player always seem to get the worst matchups. I believe it happened a lot to KaraZorEl, for instance. It's hard to buy into the general statistics when your own personal history tells you otherwise. I get it. (I'm sure that if I had to compile the history of NemesisParadigm's matches with Wall-Drazi, we might find out some player got to face him a lot more often than any other player, despite everyone having the same basic odds. Which might result in that player being a lot more disheartened by it than a player who just faced it once or twice).
This reminds me I forgot I wanted to write WotC about unbanning Moat!
The weird part about that banning is that it's elsewhere very obvious that WotC doesn't care about Tribal Wars anymore. I mean, the rest of the official banned list is borderline absurd (and overall belongs to a past age of MTG): they allow for all the cards we have banned, but then they still think Peer Pressure is broken?
I'm pretty sure someone will play Doomsday (and the other unbanned, still not played cards) at some point just for the kicks of it (and probably because they already owned a playset). Then it'll disappear for months or years, because for players who have to play the same tournament in the same community every week, it's pretty boring to play Doomsday again and again. So in the end we just have the advantage of a more complete pool, and that's all.
I contemplated the unbanning of the Trifecta of Doom, but my conclusion was that it's too much of a delicate matter (they're popular cards that people would start playing immediately, unlike Doomsday & co.), so it was up to Blippy to decide. And to be honest, Progenitus is my favorite there, but the idea of only seeing him when Natural Order is involved, and vice versa only seeing Natural Order when Prog is involved (as it would be absurd not to) doesn't strike me as an interesting development. I'd prefer to keep them apart (I could be in favor of a rule that says they can't be in the same deck, but it would be awkward ruling). And if I had to choose between keeping Natural Order in the off-chance someone will use it to summon something else, or having Progenitus in the pool to be put onto the battlefield in some other way (and there are ways indeed), I'd choose the former, since it allows for more different scenarios.
I've done the gatherer search many times and come up with that same list, but other than leviathan and sky-swallower, and red Akroma if we're being charitable, none of those have even a prayer of winning you the game fast enough to justify the effort needed to get them into play. At the low end, the derms and Sigarda are hard-castable, though only barely by legacy standards, and they can be chumped all day. Above 5cmc is really pushing it in this format, and most of these offer little reward for the mana and little incentive to cheat them into play. Sphinx of Jwar Isle was only barely good enough for standard, and only for a few months in dedicated control decks light on creatures. Gaea's Revenge was at best a sideboard card against UB control, because it just gets chumped against anything else, especially in tribal wars. Uril, who is very cool, is unfortunately a build-around-me card stuck in a tribe that is not helpful.
So, much like current Type 2, the only fatties worth the effort are the ones like Elesh Norn, Griselbrand, and titans, because you get value from them even if your opponent kills it immediately with their one untapped plains. I'm not so much faulting StP for existing. I grew up with it. I just wish WotC had printed better pro-stp dudes over the years, and that we hadn't banned the good ones.
It wasn't just "your wording", I disagreed with the content of your argument, which was clear. Unless you meant to denote something completely different with "AND it is an answer not a threat. If it were also a threat the ban would be more understandable."
And I never said that I don't agree or disagree on the banning of Moat, I just said that I am not arguing for it in that post.
I don't really understand this threat/answer dichotomy, especially in the context that if something is a threat, the ban is more understandable.
Card that says "Your opponent can't tap lands for mana" is technically an answer, and 1/1 creature that costs 5 mana is technically a threat, but such categorization is irrelevant in determining the *actual* threat level of a card.
Moat is a huge threat against the decks with ground creatures that can't answer it (and also against the decks that pack like 2 enchantment removals) - it basically wins you the game eventually (assuming you have flyers or other win conditions in your deck, which you obviously have). Classifying it as an "answer" and saying that the ban is less understandable as a result of this, is a pretty weak argument, since as I have shown, such classification is irrelevant on it's own. The more useful category in this sense would be "a narrow answer", since such categorization would actually imply that the effect card has on the decks in the format is very inconsistent, and could therefore indeed be used as a support against the banning of the card. But Moat is obviously not exactly a narrow answer in Tribal metagame.
BTW, I am not arguing that Moat should remain banned (don't want to go into this again), just commenting on this threat/answer logic.
I agree on Doomsday: Having faced the deck back in the day that earned the banning, it is a deck which conforms strongly to my comment on decks to which the tribe is irrelevant.
We do have access to STP-dodging fatties: Off the top of my head, simic sky swallower, inkwell leviathan, red Akroma, Ishan's Shade, Blastoderm, Calciderm, Empyrial Archangel, Kodama of the north tree, Sphinx of Jwar Isle, Plated Slagwurm, Sigarda, Uril and Gaea's Revenge. I'd quite like to stick Proggy in Hydra and Avatar decks, but removal diversification doesn't wash.
I'm going to repost here as I am not sure the Facebook option is the best way.
First of all,I really dont want to be negative. As I have stated I thought your deck was strong,your sideboarding was well rounded,deduced and you explained all changes well. They also paid off for you.
Your mulliagsn were always correct, even when you had to go down to 5 you didn't second guess yourself or complain how unlucky you were
Trying not to be too subjective or using hindsight here.
R1 G1. 1 min 58 You could send the knight in as well I feel. Keep up the agro, it was clear he had a poor start and you had solid defense with scorpion. Maybe subjective.
2 min 40 "M...ust not have a deck" Came across as bit arrogant, not sure if you were joking or not.
R1 G2 5mins 11 You could play Anjani and pump it up (states up to one creature)and hope to defend it by drawing creatures. Not sure if that would have been a play or not but could have had more discussion, might have been people watching who don't know Ajani can gain loyalty with an empty board.
5.54 Missed out a point of damage thru Serra and griffen as you said.
7.52 Misclick Serra. Not sure how much this mattered but I saw right away Serra wasn't attacking. Yes it's lag and a rubbish system, but you are a quick player. It should only happen once in a mtgo players life and then they know to pause for a second before hitting ok.
R1 G3 Misplay on double strike. Didn't matter but I would have just pumped a creature +1
R2 M1 25 seconds Plains first for Sunstriker
4.29 I would have kept the plains in hand as a bluff eg murder,verdict,passage. You have 5 land in play, if you draw hulk, then you can play the land and cast it. As soon as you emptied your hand you lost your bluffing power.
2.15 Attack falls off again. No excuses for it happening, you had time, you knew there was lag.
R3 M1 I may have killed the wolf eot here. It means you don't fear Ajani dying as much if you don't get a creature, you still have removal in hand, he has only 2 cards in hand. Problem is I am using hindsight here, there were only a few cards you could draw that meant you didn't have murder mana as well. Serra was one of them.
4 mins 48 Killed shade far too fast as you spotted. I get the feeling he would have sunk a lot of mana into it had you waited.
R3 G2 1 min 20 seconds You said you were suprised deadly recluse did not block duty bound.But aven swings for 2 next turn if spider does block and die and that's harder to deal with in the air.
4 min 5 Attacking Duty into spider. Everyone does a combat goof from time to time.
6 mins 52. You seem to be beating yourself up over losing duty still. It would have died to mutilate by now!
10 mins 35 don't play murder here, your already killing the guy, he is running out of outs to kill you! I know you hadn't seen spider before but even so! Keep your resources flexible
R3 M3 3 mins 3 seconds Attack with scorpion,then drop ox. Try and get those points of damage in.
04 45 Subjective one, I might have taken the wolf. He can play wurm, but you have 2 death touch guys to block. Taking wolf out stops him making the same block next turn. Of course he could have dropped another creature down. This one is very subjective to hindsight.
05 mins 25 "I should have left murder mana open" Why? You have no cards in hand!
05 mins 42 Attack with scorpion here you have enough defence
05 40 A well reasoned argument but if slime does come down it hits a land meaning hulk is stuck in hand for a bit. At this point your deck is the aggressor so keep playing creatures. Also slime will hit a swamp,with only 2 out won't that hurt your deck even more?
8 mins 5 seconds when calculatting your all out attack you state 2 will go thru. Which is great, but one of them is your 0/2 duty...
Lots of these things you picked up on, I enjoyed the draft, would love to see more, thought the reflection was good. I just would have liked to have seen a little humilty at the end,achknowledging you made some mistakes on the way!
Hey Naoto,
Enjoyed the match, but was longing for some commentary (would be good to hear your insight live).
Agree with you outlook on new tech, but wonder about Talrand. Can't imagine what slot he would take in a control deck as it is already incredibly tight.
Have been testing significantly with Staff of Nin and like the card quite a bit. The card draw is what I have missed in Stax, let alone the 1 damage (unflipped delvers, dark con, lavamancer, Oath tokens, etc). I think it is legitimate. Menendian as already shown the power of Baleful Strix and that goes without saying.
Good to see you writing again and gl in rest of tournament.
While a penny might be a bit low if there were enough supply for any card to not cost over say $10 there would be MORE creativity and diversity in the game, not less. Who knows what "poor genius" out there cannot afford to buy 4 x $100 cards so they can pair them with some combination of cards that no one else has, yes you can make the argument that all decks are made within weeks of a sets release but whose to say this "poor genius" wouldn't break a format first. I don't have a problem with certain cards being worth much more than others, but the problem with the limited supply of some of the best cards when paired with the greedy businessmen types who have the money to hoard dozens and dozens of playsets is a major factor in killing or stifling a format. I would LOVE if WotC had their own "bot" and just sold mythics for $5, rares for $2, uncommons for .50 and commons for .10 (or some facsimile of that)
Agreed, Doomsday is similar to Charbelcher (not just mechanically) because it exludes the rest of your deck from participating. But while Charbelcher is more expensive to cast BBB is much more narrow a cost to deal with. You almost always have to play doomsday with a monoblack mana base which excludes some very good interactions if the main combo fails to go off. (With the notable exception of Academy Rector into it. So maybe that was the thinking. Narrow I win card == less bannable than expensive I win card
Progenitus is one of those creatures that people hate facing, particularly new blood. Regardless of play skill if proggy hits the table you better have that wrath/sweeper IN hand. Same with Emrakul (assuming a cheat.) I agree there should be more ways to foil spot removal but it is difficult finding a balance once bans start happening in the first place.
I am still baffled by the official banning (without a word of explanation two years later...) of Moat. We can guess that its sweeping application vs a long list of non-fliers makes it unfun for simpleton decks but it is removable the same as most other enchantment based threats/answers. AND it is an answer not a threat. If it were also a threat the ban would be more understandable. The silence would still be baffling however. The one area I consistently find WOTC lacking in is well thought out communication.
This isn't an attack on Aluren so please don't take such a strongly negative position on this. I simply do not care that much for combos that Ive seen dozens of times before showing up in Tribal Wars. I feel the same way about elves, goblins and psuedo goblinesque tribes. I get great joy out of many of Vantar's builds and there are certainly many great innovators in the apocalypse so there is plenty of praiseworthy effort going on in it.
That there are boring decks that win? Not a surprise nor particularly noteworthy imho. That's all.
I like your article. I do a lot of 4booster as you, can you share your opinion about M13?
M13 card and booster are both cheaper than AVR. do you play M13?
Video should be up and running. Maybe if I don't do well in the tourney I can at least hope to figure out how to use technology lol.
I like this idea - strange that no one has already thought of it, since it seems really elegant solution to me.
I've got it! Put Progenitus on the same tier as Stoneforge Mystic! Only playable in its own tribes, but there if you want to give it a go.
Whoops. My bad guys. I will take a look at that as soon as I get home.
I don't think NO/Progenitus is a potential problem at all, really. I fail to see why it wouldn't be desirable to have around. Progenitus is the least scary of all of those "Trifecta of Doom" guys. Progenitus can be raced by aggro, I have done it with Zoo against Bant in real legacy tournaments. There are numerous aggro decks in the tribal legacy wars format that would be capable of racing him. And control decks can either counterspell the NO, or use a board sweeper, or use Diabolic Edicts, Liliana of the Veil, etc. (How many guys do they have left to sac to edicts after the one they sac'ced to Natural Order? Not many if they went for a fast NO. I packed Warren Weirding in legacy goblins and never had any problem taking Proggy down.) There's also "hatebear" cards like Gaddock Teeg and Aven Mindcensor that can disrupt it. Only some durdle midrange decks with little disruption and nothing but spot removal would entirely fold to NO/Progenitus.
Decks aren't JUST about getting out Progenitus, he's not good enough to be THAT all-in. Progenitus is used in legacy as a Plan B. I would envision some base green deck with a mix of manadorks and utility guys and efficient beaters like KotR, a very small NO "toolbox" of Progenitus and Empyrial Archangel, and maybe even a GSZ toolbox. I would have fun playing that deck. It wouldn't ALWAYS be correct to go for Progenitus, I assure you. But the ability to go for him to close out a game is what would make that kind of deck competitive.
Unban Prog and give me some time to earn enough to build the deck, and I'll run Landless Avatars to hardcast Progenitus.
Sorry I didn't mean to imply that your objection was semantic but that my response wasn't precise enough. And I too was trying to decline to argue about this since I think you and I specifically have almost no common ground at all.
That is definitely a cool combo and applicable across multiple formats. Not sure how tourney worthy it is but it is certainly worth a few looks at it.
I wasn't negative. You know I always want to dot the I's and cross the T's. :)
And the fact that you (and AJ as well) were among the lucky (?) few to face Aluren is really amusing to me. :)
On a more serious note, it happens that a player always seem to get the worst matchups. I believe it happened a lot to KaraZorEl, for instance. It's hard to buy into the general statistics when your own personal history tells you otherwise. I get it. (I'm sure that if I had to compile the history of NemesisParadigm's matches with Wall-Drazi, we might find out some player got to face him a lot more often than any other player, despite everyone having the same basic odds. Which might result in that player being a lot more disheartened by it than a player who just faced it once or twice).
This reminds me I forgot I wanted to write WotC about unbanning Moat!
The weird part about that banning is that it's elsewhere very obvious that WotC doesn't care about Tribal Wars anymore. I mean, the rest of the official banned list is borderline absurd (and overall belongs to a past age of MTG): they allow for all the cards we have banned, but then they still think Peer Pressure is broken?
I'm pretty sure someone will play Doomsday (and the other unbanned, still not played cards) at some point just for the kicks of it (and probably because they already owned a playset). Then it'll disappear for months or years, because for players who have to play the same tournament in the same community every week, it's pretty boring to play Doomsday again and again. So in the end we just have the advantage of a more complete pool, and that's all.
I contemplated the unbanning of the Trifecta of Doom, but my conclusion was that it's too much of a delicate matter (they're popular cards that people would start playing immediately, unlike Doomsday & co.), so it was up to Blippy to decide. And to be honest, Progenitus is my favorite there, but the idea of only seeing him when Natural Order is involved, and vice versa only seeing Natural Order when Prog is involved (as it would be absurd not to) doesn't strike me as an interesting development. I'd prefer to keep them apart (I could be in favor of a rule that says they can't be in the same deck, but it would be awkward ruling). And if I had to choose between keeping Natural Order in the off-chance someone will use it to summon something else, or having Progenitus in the pool to be put onto the battlefield in some other way (and there are ways indeed), I'd choose the former, since it allows for more different scenarios.
The video is listed as private.
So many mirror matches in this thing. Nice write up. One small question. Am I the only one that gets a private message when I try to play game 2?
I've done the gatherer search many times and come up with that same list, but other than leviathan and sky-swallower, and red Akroma if we're being charitable, none of those have even a prayer of winning you the game fast enough to justify the effort needed to get them into play. At the low end, the derms and Sigarda are hard-castable, though only barely by legacy standards, and they can be chumped all day. Above 5cmc is really pushing it in this format, and most of these offer little reward for the mana and little incentive to cheat them into play. Sphinx of Jwar Isle was only barely good enough for standard, and only for a few months in dedicated control decks light on creatures. Gaea's Revenge was at best a sideboard card against UB control, because it just gets chumped against anything else, especially in tribal wars. Uril, who is very cool, is unfortunately a build-around-me card stuck in a tribe that is not helpful.
So, much like current Type 2, the only fatties worth the effort are the ones like Elesh Norn, Griselbrand, and titans, because you get value from them even if your opponent kills it immediately with their one untapped plains. I'm not so much faulting StP for existing. I grew up with it. I just wish WotC had printed better pro-stp dudes over the years, and that we hadn't banned the good ones.
It wasn't just "your wording", I disagreed with the content of your argument, which was clear. Unless you meant to denote something completely different with "AND it is an answer not a threat. If it were also a threat the ban would be more understandable."
And I never said that I don't agree or disagree on the banning of Moat, I just said that I am not arguing for it in that post.
OK so you don't agree or disagree on the moat banning but you felt my wording was insufficiently persuasive? Fair enough...
I don't really understand this threat/answer dichotomy, especially in the context that if something is a threat, the ban is more understandable.
Card that says "Your opponent can't tap lands for mana" is technically an answer, and 1/1 creature that costs 5 mana is technically a threat, but such categorization is irrelevant in determining the *actual* threat level of a card.
Moat is a huge threat against the decks with ground creatures that can't answer it (and also against the decks that pack like 2 enchantment removals) - it basically wins you the game eventually (assuming you have flyers or other win conditions in your deck, which you obviously have). Classifying it as an "answer" and saying that the ban is less understandable as a result of this, is a pretty weak argument, since as I have shown, such classification is irrelevant on it's own. The more useful category in this sense would be "a narrow answer", since such categorization would actually imply that the effect card has on the decks in the format is very inconsistent, and could therefore indeed be used as a support against the banning of the card. But Moat is obviously not exactly a narrow answer in Tribal metagame.
BTW, I am not arguing that Moat should remain banned (don't want to go into this again), just commenting on this threat/answer logic.
It is something we should seek to keep that way. I appreciate the work put in to get hard statistical data for this.
I agree on Doomsday: Having faced the deck back in the day that earned the banning, it is a deck which conforms strongly to my comment on decks to which the tribe is irrelevant.
We do have access to STP-dodging fatties: Off the top of my head, simic sky swallower, inkwell leviathan, red Akroma, Ishan's Shade, Blastoderm, Calciderm, Empyrial Archangel, Kodama of the north tree, Sphinx of Jwar Isle, Plated Slagwurm, Sigarda, Uril and Gaea's Revenge. I'd quite like to stick Proggy in Hydra and Avatar decks, but removal diversification doesn't wash.
I'm going to repost here as I am not sure the Facebook option is the best way.
First of all,I really dont want to be negative. As I have stated I thought your deck was strong,your sideboarding was well rounded,deduced and you explained all changes well. They also paid off for you.
Your mulliagsn were always correct, even when you had to go down to 5 you didn't second guess yourself or complain how unlucky you were
Trying not to be too subjective or using hindsight here.
R1 G1. 1 min 58 You could send the knight in as well I feel. Keep up the agro, it was clear he had a poor start and you had solid defense with scorpion. Maybe subjective.
2 min 40 "M...ust not have a deck" Came across as bit arrogant, not sure if you were joking or not.
R1 G2 5mins 11 You could play Anjani and pump it up (states up to one creature)and hope to defend it by drawing creatures. Not sure if that would have been a play or not but could have had more discussion, might have been people watching who don't know Ajani can gain loyalty with an empty board.
5.54 Missed out a point of damage thru Serra and griffen as you said.
7.52 Misclick Serra. Not sure how much this mattered but I saw right away Serra wasn't attacking. Yes it's lag and a rubbish system, but you are a quick player. It should only happen once in a mtgo players life and then they know to pause for a second before hitting ok.
R1 G3 Misplay on double strike. Didn't matter but I would have just pumped a creature +1
R2 M1 25 seconds Plains first for Sunstriker
4.29 I would have kept the plains in hand as a bluff eg murder,verdict,passage. You have 5 land in play, if you draw hulk, then you can play the land and cast it. As soon as you emptied your hand you lost your bluffing power.
2.15 Attack falls off again. No excuses for it happening, you had time, you knew there was lag.
R3 M1 I may have killed the wolf eot here. It means you don't fear Ajani dying as much if you don't get a creature, you still have removal in hand, he has only 2 cards in hand. Problem is I am using hindsight here, there were only a few cards you could draw that meant you didn't have murder mana as well. Serra was one of them.
4 mins 48 Killed shade far too fast as you spotted. I get the feeling he would have sunk a lot of mana into it had you waited.
R3 G2 1 min 20 seconds You said you were suprised deadly recluse did not block duty bound.But aven swings for 2 next turn if spider does block and die and that's harder to deal with in the air.
4 min 5 Attacking Duty into spider. Everyone does a combat goof from time to time.
6 mins 52. You seem to be beating yourself up over losing duty still. It would have died to mutilate by now!
10 mins 35 don't play murder here, your already killing the guy, he is running out of outs to kill you! I know you hadn't seen spider before but even so! Keep your resources flexible
R3 M3 3 mins 3 seconds Attack with scorpion,then drop ox. Try and get those points of damage in.
04 45 Subjective one, I might have taken the wolf. He can play wurm, but you have 2 death touch guys to block. Taking wolf out stops him making the same block next turn. Of course he could have dropped another creature down. This one is very subjective to hindsight.
05 mins 25 "I should have left murder mana open" Why? You have no cards in hand!
05 mins 42 Attack with scorpion here you have enough defence
05 40 A well reasoned argument but if slime does come down it hits a land meaning hulk is stuck in hand for a bit. At this point your deck is the aggressor so keep playing creatures. Also slime will hit a swamp,with only 2 out won't that hurt your deck even more?
8 mins 5 seconds when calculatting your all out attack you state 2 will go thru. Which is great, but one of them is your 0/2 duty...
Lots of these things you picked up on, I enjoyed the draft, would love to see more, thought the reflection was good. I just would have liked to have seen a little humilty at the end,achknowledging you made some mistakes on the way!
Keep up the videos!
Hey Naoto,
Enjoyed the match, but was longing for some commentary (would be good to hear your insight live).
Agree with you outlook on new tech, but wonder about Talrand. Can't imagine what slot he would take in a control deck as it is already incredibly tight.
Have been testing significantly with Staff of Nin and like the card quite a bit. The card draw is what I have missed in Stax, let alone the 1 damage (unflipped delvers, dark con, lavamancer, Oath tokens, etc). I think it is legitimate. Menendian as already shown the power of Baleful Strix and that goes without saying.
Good to see you writing again and gl in rest of tournament.
While a penny might be a bit low if there were enough supply for any card to not cost over say $10 there would be MORE creativity and diversity in the game, not less. Who knows what "poor genius" out there cannot afford to buy 4 x $100 cards so they can pair them with some combination of cards that no one else has, yes you can make the argument that all decks are made within weeks of a sets release but whose to say this "poor genius" wouldn't break a format first. I don't have a problem with certain cards being worth much more than others, but the problem with the limited supply of some of the best cards when paired with the greedy businessmen types who have the money to hoard dozens and dozens of playsets is a major factor in killing or stifling a format. I would LOVE if WotC had their own "bot" and just sold mythics for $5, rares for $2, uncommons for .50 and commons for .10 (or some facsimile of that)
Agreed, Doomsday is similar to Charbelcher (not just mechanically) because it exludes the rest of your deck from participating. But while Charbelcher is more expensive to cast BBB is much more narrow a cost to deal with. You almost always have to play doomsday with a monoblack mana base which excludes some very good interactions if the main combo fails to go off. (With the notable exception of Academy Rector into it. So maybe that was the thinking. Narrow I win card == less bannable than expensive I win card
Progenitus is one of those creatures that people hate facing, particularly new blood. Regardless of play skill if proggy hits the table you better have that wrath/sweeper IN hand. Same with Emrakul (assuming a cheat.) I agree there should be more ways to foil spot removal but it is difficult finding a balance once bans start happening in the first place.
I am still baffled by the official banning (without a word of explanation two years later...) of Moat. We can guess that its sweeping application vs a long list of non-fliers makes it unfun for simpleton decks but it is removable the same as most other enchantment based threats/answers. AND it is an answer not a threat. If it were also a threat the ban would be more understandable. The silence would still be baffling however. The one area I consistently find WOTC lacking in is well thought out communication.
This isn't an attack on Aluren so please don't take such a strongly negative position on this. I simply do not care that much for combos that Ive seen dozens of times before showing up in Tribal Wars. I feel the same way about elves, goblins and psuedo goblinesque tribes. I get great joy out of many of Vantar's builds and there are certainly many great innovators in the apocalypse so there is plenty of praiseworthy effort going on in it.
That there are boring decks that win? Not a surprise nor particularly noteworthy imho. That's all.