Should I play the awesome hate-deck or the awesome deck that hates the hate-deck?

I lost all hope of doing well by missing round 3, so just doing a random thing.

I failed pretty miserably on my round of hate deck hating. Its a bit of a risky play since hate-hate decks are generally more vulnerable to non-hate decks.

I guess it comes down to what you consider to be "hate" this round and how well it stands up to the targeted decks.

I just aim for a 3 point average.

6/5 edit
Reminder not to respond to spambots. It means we have to delete more stuff due to continuity and all

Continuity is over-rated...also, sorry.

Anyone find a faster uh...kill...than turn 5?

My deck is so slow. I doubt I'll get to that 3 point average. But I just had to try to use this card for once.

The round seems slow, most decks I found win or virtually win around turn 7/8. I find it very hard to find decks that are broadly competitive in this format though. It seems more paper-rock-scissors than usual.

If only Ajani, Mentor of Heroes cost one less, I would have played Ajani/Lotus/Dryad Arbor.

Ajani/Lotus/Leonin Squire would be usually-better.

I agree that there is a lot of diversity in the format and equally viable decks. I like the format a lot for that actually, more than I thought I would.

The decks I've identified in this format are vulnerable in unique ways that seems to make it difficult to have a well positioned deck.

For instance: Ajani Goldmane looks pretty strong, but in addition to being vulnerable to your classic creature attack, The Rack forces a tie all on its own. In a usual game, Ajani could compete with the Avatar alone.

Then there are wild card wincons that compete against "lifegain hate", making hate decks less reliable than usual.

Control decks are still viable, but their wincons are more limited than usual. Again, just throwing The Rack into any deck with a lifegainer is pretty much sufficient.

If you don't have a fast wincon, there are a good amount of combo wincons...although Vizkopa Guildmage and Exquisite Blood (if it were playable) end in a draw because you need to gain 30 life, not 20.

Sheltered Valley pretty much ties any unblockable creature or Curse of the Pierced Heart type card.

It's just a weird round is all.

You can continue to lose life after falling to 0 life. You can't *pay* life you don't have, but you can lose it. If you go from -8 to -10 life, you have lost 2 life. Best as I can tell, that combo could get you to 50 life.

Interesting...I completely forgot that you could have negative life totals. Another strange twist to this round.

SO, Channex...which really didn't get played last time it was unbanned keeps Lotus in check. Tabbie hits creatures hard because wasteland is banned. Bridge is viable. Shrieking Affliction is still around...looks like a fun round.

3xTangle? Brutal!

Probably, most people would only build around one Channex (if they built around it at all). I was already looking at City of Traitors, Lotus, Walker.

I haven't started looking around (too much) yet, but this doesn't feel like a round where there's much room for innovation. It almost feels like a downside round where the question is: lands.dec or shriek.dec?

Feels like the scores will be pretty flat all in all.

What about Lotus.dek and Chancellor.dek?

Maybe I'm undercutting it...but Lotus feels real weak this round. Grave and Frost are both banned, Bridge and Tabbie are both available, Channex is available.

Discard feels highly relevant, but affliction kills it (and I think lands.dec does too). Encroach may have put a challenge to shriek but its banned.

I honestly think storageland.dec is a better call than Lotus.dec this round, the question being: can it race shriek and lands?

Same

So we are all going to pretend that gut shot, lotus lotus fatty, and ensnaring bridge.dek aren't going to rule the roost here?

Okay. I can pretend too. *winks*

My theory is that ensnaring bridge, scalding tongs, mishra's factory is just stupidly hard to stop this season, since wasteland is not a thing. There are very few decks that can BEAT, not tie, but BEAT it with wasteland gone, meaning we are basically going to be reliant on shrieking affliction and a few jankier decks to keep it in check? I'm not that confident in hate decks though to be honest, so what we are really reliant on is that it will see enough 2-2 ties that people won't want to run it due to things like channex and FOW and so on. The real issue behind that is people are going to be afraid to run those decks becasue everyone is going to stupidly freak out and try to play around channex again, with gut shot being sleeper op because people are going to try to be running smaller threats to get around it. And lotus lotus fatty is going to basically be a "let's hope not enough people hate on this" type of hate deck this round, where people might run some of the more interesting fatties like kodama of the north tree or such