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ILikePancakes

tfg76 said:

It's a combo that requires three to four pieces to (maybe) instantly win. I think having that in the game is healthy. We should be able to have both combo decks, beatdown decks and control decks be viable. If you pack some support destruction, you shouldn't be hurt too often by this type of deck in the hands of the AI.

But support destruction isn't targeted. Just played an event match where the ai had one support on the board they had cast and the other supports controlled were the permanent event supports. I cast three demolish in one turn. Every single one hit the perma supports. That is a problem, also when support destruction goes after servos. River's Rebuke is the only reliable support removal (glad I have it). 

There should not be card combos that cause an instant win without any counter. What Octagon needs to do is introduce instants that you can play out of your hand during your opponent's turn, but make them costly and *not* autocast. Such as destroy all your creatures and target spell/support/creature is exiled. Or lose 30 life. Something. Instant "I Win!" buttons are not good for the game. It only advantages people lucky enough to have the right cards and kills strategy.

morgue427

i hate to say it but i tried it on my samut deck and while it took a while to get it.(last round to get all the pieces together and working it was devastating i had an 88/88 elemental and 30/something wildgrowth walker in one round from like 16/16  and 6/10 to start with) it may need to be adjusted somehow, i will have to keep trying to find out if it can compete since it is lacking kill power and defense until it goes critical. If interested i will list what i have in this deck and will try on kiora.

Gormhaus

morgue427 said:

i hate to say it but i tried it on my samut deck and while it took a while to get it.(last round to get all the pieces together and working it was devastating i had an 88/88 elemental and 30/something wildgrowth walker in one round from like 16/16  and 6/10 to start with) it may need to be adjusted somehow, i will have to keep trying to find out if it can compete since it is lacking kill power and defense until it goes critical. If interested i will list what i have in this deck and will try on kiora.

While this is a new looping deck with new mechanics i dont think it is any more effective than the previous ones that already existed. Used with nissa and kiora and got some very big creatures that were immediated destroyed with creature removal and my supports had already self destructed so i had to set up the loop again.

wereotter

You can do some pretty crazy stuff with it, but it does take the right setup, it is a combo deck in a more true form. You opponent still light play all their pieces in one turn, but chances are good they won't be able to use it until a turn or two later since it does require a green landfall to trigger.

Also the combo likely can be addressed if Zendikar's Roil gets fixed. And by that I don't mean not triggering off tokens, but it seems that the support is making four tokens on triggering instead of two like it's supposed to.

Mainloop25

Yeah it's a potent combo once  it's pulled off, but I don't think it's as easy as it sounds either. I prefer Hangarback Walker personally. 

madwren

A genuine unspoken problem, which is endemic to the game, is green gem converter spells.

They're the root cause of 95% of the infinite/looping/combo issues, because it's so easy to chain them for unlimited mana.

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but ..

morgue427

tested a bit more, still out powerful and hard to set up it seems so far

morgue427

that seems to be the limiting factor need to have the gem changers along with path and roil, path isnt hard to get so most everyone can use it for at least some decent effect. no where near what omini is or even baral. depends on how loud everyone yells really and if it is worth the effort for octagon to worry about it, but bigger problems with the other bugged cards for now

Dodecapod

With limited experience so far, I'm finding the Roil + Path loop comparably powerful to the myriad Baral/Rashmi variants available prior to the recent Standard rotation, but somewhat less consistent than the best of those, although admittedly my sample size is very small and I likely haven't tested an optimal version yet.  Overall, I tend to agree with the opinions several others have expressed that a nerf may be premature because it's difficult to discern the impact of bugs on the potency of the combo, but after those are resolved (or the developers clarify that the current functionality is intended behavior), the question will probably be worth revisiting to see where the dust settles.

Just to add one more example for context in terms of what the loop can do currently, this Standard-legal Samut deck took 4 attempts to execute a full one-turn-lethal stack of tokens against RAtC Tezz; the ceiling for the combo seems on par with some other (non-cycling) pseudo-infinite setups, but I wouldn't have risked this specific version in a serious event (though it's entirely possible that, as with Baral and Rashmi, there's a far more stable, only slightly less explosive variant that can produce overwhelming event results in human hands and may have a nontrivial capacity to go off when piloted by the AI).  The video excerpt was part of a turn that lasted over 20 minutes and eventually resulted in the board state depicted in the screenshot when my turn ended; while I've omitted the full video on the assumption that most would have little interest in it, I'd be happy to share on the off chance anyone wants to PM me via the forums or contact me via Slack or Discord.

Samut
Zendikar's Roil
Path of Discovery
Vanquisher's Banner
Hour of Promise
Thunderherd Migration
Harvest Season
Commune with Dinosaurs
Verdant Sun's Avatar
Wayward Swordtooth
Regisaur Alpha

(Links to RIX cards are unavailable at the time of posting, although I've added the links that will presumably correspond to their respective https://mtgpq.info/ entries when the site is updated)

The Dinosaurs and specific gem conversion spells are largely arbitrary; the key is the combination of the 3 supports in play simultaneously, and the remaining 7 cards can probably be improved upon (perhaps with a different PW) as a support system to initiate the loop as quickly and reliably as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cDC6A-VG0

Kinesia

I just want to say ahead of time that if there is any tweaking to this I hope it doesn't add "non-token" as part of it, that some other way is found.

Merfolk tokens love this with Deepwater and they don't get huge or abusive, it's just a nice nice bonus, perfectly suited for a merfolk deck.


One possibility, you could make it "The first time any _specific_ creature enters each turn it explores 1", which enables the basic use but stops it steamrolling. It'd even work fine with the "play a merfolk, get a token, they both explore 1".

andrewvanmarle

Let's see what happens when Roil is fixed
Right now it explores 4 for 1 land fall. 

I think when it explores 2 for 1 landfall it won't be so infinite.

The other option is to change Roil to give 1 4/4 instead of 2 2/2

morgue427

think that may be a workable idea still powerful but not obnoxious, from what i have seen the whole combo is fairly hard to set up by mistake for the ai but people can(hopefully be able to do it fairly consistently).

Indymon

I don’t think it’s an issue now and that will be doubly true once roil gets fixed. It takes set up. The supports get destroyed in the process. 

If if there is a nerf, and I hope there isn’t (other than fixing roil), I really hope tokens aren’t removed from path. Path is largely useless without the token component. 

gogol666

I agree with the position that says path to Discovery is a problem. It is actually a baral level problem, because when it loops it takes minutes to end and even though you can beat it you have to wait for it to end and that is just obnoxious

Gormhaus

The big loops do take time but it is a fun build. Hardly game breaking. It takes a lot of set up and doesnt always work. I say leave it as it is.

wereotter

gogol666 said:

I agree with the position that says path to Discovery is a problem. It is actually a baral level problem, because when it loops it takes minutes to end and even though you can beat it you have to wait for it to end and that is just obnoxious

It's not as bad as Baral was. Path of Discovery or Zendikar's Roil will eventually break itself on the board as you convert gems. Baral would literally go infinitely as the AI didn't ever know not to cast a spell once it drew it, and would only end once it ran through the library a couple times, drawing 6 copies of Baral.

Baral was also a win as soon as he dropped whereas this combo takes more of a setup. Haven't played against it, and only played it in story mode, but so far I'm inclined to believe that just because a combo deck exists doesn't automatically mean its OP and has to be removed.

Kinesia

I've tried it in a bunch of things and, really, it's Roil that breaks it. Everything else it's a nice bonus, powerful even, but with roil it _is_ abusive. 

But, yeah, like other people have said it's hard to set up and delicate.

In _legacy_ it's a much bigger problem than standard. With Rishkar's Expertise and adding it to other loops it's horrid, but in standard it's way less of a problem.

The suggestion I had above would still be my recommendation. Don't take it away from tokens completely.

morgue427

The biggest thing about this is that it is difficult to set up, against fast decks you are getting abused before you can set it up. Then it ends up which of you to gets there first,if you dont lose.

Gideon

I still say leave it alone.

Mainloop25

Gideon said:

I still say leave it alone.



Well, they should still fix the bug that makes more tokens than it should, regardless.