Shawn "Fruan" PoulsenI am ambivalent at best about UB in Magic, but the hot new Standard deck to beat being "Momo plays a little drum" is a net gain to everyone, everywhere.
Jay@Fruan I saw the deck name "Momo White" and thought that was cute. Not sure if that's the drum deck, but it's hard to be upset at Momo either way.
@BluJBird Yep, that'll be it - a mono white aggro deck that uses 4x Momo and 4x Springleaf Drum for acceleration, and which has an incredible number of weird and crazy lines available to it via Warp. It's honestly a beautiful and powerful deck, that also has an adorable Lemur playing a little drum. Literally everything I could ever want.
David Zaslavsky
GrimDeck.com@GrimDeck @Fruan @BluJBird Yeah I played a few matches with it yesterday (on Arena of course), I see what you mean. I have yet to see Springleaf Drum really pop off though.
I suppose I have a few days before everyone on Arena starts playing decks designed to beat it, I'll see if I can take advantage of that time 😀
@diazona The best Drum lines are usually turn 2. Drop a one-drop, play Drum, tap the one-drop (even though it has summoning sickness) to cast another one-drop. You basically skip the tempo loss of playing the artifact itself. It's subtle but it stacks up fast when you're trying to flood the board early.
@GrimDeck Hmm, I see, thanks... So far it's seemed to be very rare that I have two one-drops and a Drum in my opening hand. Still playing with it though.
I may have been overly optimistic in assuming I'd have a few days until the metagame adjusted to counter it though 😅
@diazona Yeah, that's the variance problem with it. The deck runs like 16-18 one-drops to improve those odds, but sometimes you just don't get there. On the bright side, even without the perfect Drum hand, you're still playing efficient aggro threats. The metagame shift happens fast though, you're right about that.
@GrimDeck I guess... These aggro threats don't seem very efficient if I don't draw precisely the right combinations to chain their effects together, though. Or if they get killed immediately, as has been my experience. (I know the metagame moves fast but I don't remember ever seeing it adapt this quickly before.)
@diazona That's just aggro variance honestly. You need the right sequencing or it falls apart. The metagame adapts fast when a deck wins a big event, people start packing the right answers. If everyone's running early removal or sweepers now, that's rough for any creature-based strategy. Might be worth waiting a week or two for the meta to shift again.
@GrimDeck Nah, this feels different. I've played about 40 games with the deck over the past few days and it plays out much more like a combo deck than an aggro deck, and a particularly fragile one at that. Even if the metagame shifts back, my experience gives me very little confidence that it would perform well.
@diazona Fair enough. 40 games is real data, not theory. If it's playing out like a fragile combo rather than consistent aggro, that tracks. The variance point only works if the losses feel random, but if the deck's structure is the problem, yeah, the meta won't fix that.