Black Lotus

Anyways: Any deck that's faster really. Dual Mayor beats it, Dual Cathedral Inkmoth beats it, Energy Field Beats it, Dual Storage Karn or Ugin beats it. Leyline Krakas, 2 power creature beats it.

Outrace it. Deal more than 3 damage per turn on average. The Kuldotha Rebirth deck did it last round, as did recursive Sarcomancy. Mayor of Avabruck would have. If not for ForceFoilFear, I might have run City of Traitors / Mana Vault / Eater of Days last round.

You can skip your upkeeps. The funhouse mirrormatch against Gibbering Descent.dec does not favor The Rack.

The Rack being 'damage' lets you get away with Energy Field and the like, but that doesn't save you from Shrieking Affliction variants.

The Necrotic Sliver deck.

Free stuff that stays in your hand

Inkmoth Nexus/Selesnya Sanctuary/Rune of Protection: Artifacts

And in contrast to that, I'll play Swamp/Carrion Feeder/Gravecrawler

Nah man, Thesbian's Stage, City of Traitors is better...that's the basis of my fun deck! It's not vulnerable to IoK, it lets you beat Leyline/Karakas by copying Karakas and bouncing their Leyline, and it can still net you 4 mana.

The only down side is that it's two turns slower...but it also doesn't ping you to death.

Bouncing Leyline? How does that work? Karakas only bounces Legendary Creatures. Leyline makes itself Legendary, but still not a Creature.

Copying Karakas is cute and all, but a turn 3 play is suicide. Even a turn 2 play ain't great, but you could get that with any 2-mana tapped land (Peat Bog cycle, Havenwood Battleground cycle, Tinder Farm cycle) plus City.

In 3CM I've found that quite often, anything you *can* do on T1, you really shouldn't put off til T2. Discard and countermagic and 'land destruction' (even in the form of Evil Presence) just make counting on a first turn land to lead into a second turn spell to be open to too many avenues of disruption.

Oh, I haven't read Karakas again since I realized Stage no longer blows up Karakas when you copy it. I assumed it bounced any Legendary permanent. Oh well, I thought my fun deck still beat it, it no longer does...

Thespian's Stage
City of Traitors
Phyrexian Processor

Looks like its waiting for the right round now...

Dammit. Now I have to find a new zombie-combo deck!

Eh. I think I'm done. This is already as boring as lotus lotus fatty.

I don't see it as much different than the lotus rounds honestly, there is a slight upturn in the viability of silly decks, but not much...and still not much reason to play them unless you're just having fun.

That said...I think I submitted a pretty fun one this round.

Too late I realize that Dark Depths is a real and viable deck. My deck beats it, but it's still cool.

Huh, yeah, I guess you can even do it with Thespian Stage to get around Inquistion and FoW decks that don't play Snapback.

Yeah, losing to Snapback is the main drawback. If DD didn't take SO MUCH MANA to work, you could even potentially get around that with a storage land.

I hope somebody plays Crucible/Cavern of Souls/Awesome Dragon.

It is banned in vanilla and alt rounds.

No, you don't. What? I did really well with Hokiri Horobi in a Lotus round. The Rack/Affliction decks have exactly the same variety of options as in Lotus, unless some strange list was going to use Lotus and a 2-drop. Storage lands did work in the early vanilla rounds, too. If Show and Tell had gotten unbanned while Lotus was legal, there would be serious metagaming on the matter of whether to use Lotus or Storage. I feel like if you don't have equally long lists of decks in Lotus rounds, that's laziness on your part, not a problem with Lotus.

You are absolutely right on Lotus being unoriginal and without much room for innovation as an archetype. But your vision on what the rounds become "about" seems a bit off.

FoW is a much stronger deck in a lotus round because it has a stronger chance of "hitting" against a dual lotus deck.
Mayor is essentially Dual Lotus Grave Titan when Lotus is banned.

The same decks that are competitive when Lotus is legal are competitive when Lotus isn't legal...even moreso arguably. I mean, plug Dual Lotus Titan into a random slot last round and it doesn't do much better than anything else. Look at the scoresheet of Season 3 round 1. The top scoring decks from that round are all in this Season...except Bridge cause Mishra is banned. Look at the redux. The third placing deck was the number two deck of the first round of Season 5. You might argue that Dual Lotus still won...except the deck didn't do much better without Lotus. The only real difference is your clever tweak to the deck would have lost horribly in the Lotus rounds.

I just don't think anything is much different without Lotus. A small amount of fringe tweaks are valid without Lotus. A small amount of different decks are valid with it (like Anurid Scavenger deck.)

I will say this though: Dual Lotus can do some pretty sick things in the Epic round...

Hello.

Is there any reason I can't play black lotus + time walk + gudul lurker this round?