Magic's Most Disliked Decks, Cards, & Strategies 

As someone who is definitely more casual of a player this feels like: “Here’s the decks people hate: all of them”

At the analysis part of the video, I realised why I love Pauper so much. The payoffs feel a lot less frustrating and there doesnt feel like theres anything I *can't* interact with. I recently played against a jund cascade player (i play rg ponza) and it was the most fun, interactive MU I've played in my life. I've had 1000% more fun in pauper than pioneer haha

"Cards like Teferi worsen a format forever." Couldn't have said it any better. And the analysis of the problems endemic in pioneer are spot on. That format is dreadful, but it's dreadful in a non-obvious way. Once you realize how fast and uninteractible the key cornerstones of the format truly are, the amount of sincerely viability archetypes goes down to a very small handful.

I agree that blood moon is bad. It should cost 2 mana, not 3!

I like how he represented Burn with a card most players are dropping from their decks currently.

3feri not being meant to shut off suspend and cascade is supported by the Alchemy version of the card reading "Your opponents can't cast spells during your turn" among other changes.

Yawgmoth is the most unfair, Fair deck there is. It's just an Evolution of classic Birthing Pod, Kiki-Chord lists.

Ah yes. Magic players and their least favorite thing; Every possible combination of magic cards that constitutes a deck. A true combo. Never change Magic players.

Very well articulated. I think R&Ds focus on “fun” and reducing feel bad moments led to many poor design decisions as well.

Burn Mirrors are Magic as Richard Garfield intended

Excited to hear more of those spicy takes at the end. I’m partial to the batshit insane game of chicken that is the Living End mirror, myself.

I've never heard anyone complain about dedicated ramp decks. I think they're inherently fair since you have to sacrifice tempo and board presence early on (sometimes relying on fragile mana dorks) in order to get to those big threats a little earlier. There are definitely some cases where some cards or iterations on ramp have been too much and green has been overstepping its bounds in the color pie for a while now, but I don't think I've ever seen someone say "Man I really hate mana ramp decks"

Ok so at first I just left a meming comment but this was actually a pretty well made video that I enjoyed. I agree mostly with your diagnosis of Pioneer, but also think most people are far more harsh on it than they should be. I like that Pioneer and Modern have different gamplay identites, and think a lot of people look at old modern with rosey goggles because it wasn't much better than what pioneer's cooking up now.

I have never heard people call a deck unfair, just because they don't like the deck. I see it used as merely a type of deck, to describe the different play patterns that emerge when facing a fair deck vurses an unfair deck.

I feel like unfair decks are the sort of competitive decks that get hosed by sideboard cards. Because they get hosed, they have to be very powerful otherwise. Personally I've heard storm, fast combo and dredge be described as such.

Which is hilarious because I'm okay with having zero player agency because I enjoy attending most events stoned ;)

Solidly saying I love pioneer right now. The main deck I have is Orzhov humans, and it performs really well, but I also have 12 pridemate and ignus combo to play whenever I feel humans gets stale.

I own a lgs/lcs and I once had a series of tournaments I called "The Brewmaster's Cup" only home brewed decks were allowed. Not even tuned decks, they had to be entirely homebrewed. We not only gave out a prize to the dinner ($500 and a Stanley Cupesque trophy) but also to the most unorthodox win strategy, quickest win, most time survived with only 1 life, and best show of gamesmanship. We're down on money since Covid, but we keep getting people that want us to bring it back. People really liked playing against xomething new and exciting!

In a game with as many choices as magic players are always incentived to reduce the agency of their opponent. No matter how bad or boring the cards are they will try this.

The long awaited Ammi Burn rant. I can't wait until it comes out.

i think pioneer needs a couple more years of evolution before it’s ready for Lighting Bolt, but Path to Exile seems like it could be a great addition to the format.

Thanks for churning out great content so consistently! 10k subs soon, probably gonna be a lot more in the future

Great video :) I used to play pioneer at the cycle of four decks. It was really tiring playing against the same decks as if it was a bad standard. Those bans came too late

This video inadvertently nails everything I hate about MH2, especially the Evoke elementals. Magic Aids also nailed it a while ago in his video on that topic specifically

Excellent video Ammi. As always, I greatly appreciate your insight!

if i sit down at pioneer nights and watch a green player get 100000000 mana on turn 4 one more time because I cant interact with them I'm gonna lose it

Honestly I can't say I agree with what you said about pioneer not being in a good state, outside of RakMid and NykRamp the format feels SUPER good to play overall, I've been playing both esper greasefang and jund food and having a really good time, not many decks feel uninteractive. And monoW humans has been one of my favorite decks to fight in any 60c format so far. Maybe I'm just biased, but in my amateur opinion pioneer feels quite good right now :)

Good video all around! I love you mentioned Yawg as a fair/unfair deck. The terms are definitely subjective and Yawgmoth is a good example of how it could be considered both. I’m curious as to the dislike of Blood Moon. I think it’s overrated in Modern right now but I think the design of the card is sweet

Excelent episode, thanks for your dedication making each video

This is why i love formats like EDH, Forgetful Fish, Judges Tower, and Cube. There is a feeling of Fairness in TCG's that i cant find elsewhere. for EDH i build decks that play well together, and then let my friends borrow them whenever we play games together. Forgetful Fish and Judges Tower both share the same deck and play by the same rules, so its intrinsically fair. and Cube is based around the idea that anyone can draft similar cards, so getting busted cards in Vintage Cube like Lotus or Moxes doesn't feel cheap, just only a bit more lucky then normal, and there are alot of ways to build a cube, so each one can be different than the last. playing Competitive magic can be fun, but its hard for 90% of the magic community to keep up with all the new cards coming out, and for most players its just a hobby they cannot justify dropping 2000+USD on so they can play competitively.

A very concise and opiniated piece, that a lot can be learned from. I am looking at this mostly from the perspective of a commander player, and what I can do to improve my own deckbuilding, and how to point at my frustrations better. Looking forward to your take on burn, especially because I have been thinking about a redgreen burn deck for commander playgroup. Cheers, and keep going! This is some of the best content for magic out there!

I started playong MTG around 6-8 weeks ago. My friend introduced me to Modern by Turn 1 Thoughtsieze and turn 2 Blood moon when I was playing a 4 colour deck, 2 games in a row. Fun cards.

Been watching your videos analyzing the game and I need to correct you on one thing. While of course some people just "don't like" their stuff being countered, I think you've mischaracterized the nature of that reaction. People often use the phrase you did of "there's no difference between removal and a counterspell." But the reality is this is almost never true. Sure the goyf example is mostly true, but like you mentioned there's tons of cards with ETB effects and things like that. Countering in that case is a massive difference. Not to mention that feeling when something gets countered comes less from some vague feel bad sort of emotion and more from the mentality of "I now have to consider counter magic in this game." It's a much bigger mental load to consider how to play around counters than it is to play around removal. It's not as if I only have to worry about my creatures, I have to worry about everything now. Every card and every sequence becomes a slower process mentally of determining which card to play and whether to play it. Let's say I play a goyf and you cast terminate on it. I can still protect it with a instant of some kind, but if it's countered 90% of decks have no answer to that. Even permanents without etb effects can still be triggered or activated before removal even gets put on the stack. The idea that counter magic is in any way similar to removal in all but the most corner cases is extremely reductive and I don't think it has any place in MTG discussion. I know me saying this won't change anything but I feel like it needs to be said. If we're going to have honest discussions about play patterns and card design we can't oversimplify things like this when it's such a big part of the game, especially at a competitive level. If counter magic were the same as removal blue would just have removal spells, or the other colors would have counters printed in every other set.

I'm hoping you talk about how actually good 3 mana land destruction/disruption is sorely lacking in pioneer at the moment. We don't need a full transplant of ponza a la blood moon, but the ability to set back big mana decks is important in my opinion at least partially why both non-interactive combo decks (mono green ect.) as well as 5 color turbo value midrange are so strong. LD would take those both down a peg, while also slightly buffing midrange strategies (both in that ponza is technically midrange, and ponza is, or least in my experience used to be easily preyed upon by other midrange if they destroy/disrupt the ponza early game)

I love Jund so freaking much. TBH I almost find it adorable how freaking fair it is. Instead of being normal and liking a roughly middle amount of fair and unfairness, I absolutely love the most broken unfair decks ever like Storm and reanimator but I also love super fair decks like Jund and goblins or whatever.

Pioneer now is the golden age of modern 6 years ago. Its one weakness is that the "Jund" of the format, rakdos midrange, is over-represented (even though ironically it doenst have a high winrate, people just like it). Lightning bolt is a terrible idea to print into the format, just because it warps the format around it. Spike even said this. Pioneer should keep it out to preserve its identity. You're just making bad modern 2 at that point, which shouldn't be the idea. Path would be fine though. The example you cited was greasefang, being not interactive. On the contrary, greasefang is extremely interactive. It's a creature based reanimator deck, what more fair interaction potential could you ask for. And the threat doesn't even stick around. Reanimator decks are suppose to be not tolerable and hard to fight once they get their payoff, that's the point. It's all about the sideboard and game skill to counter. Lotus field is also another example of a healthy format. It's specifically built to pray on creature heavy noninteractve decks, and loses to interactive decks with clocks (spirits etc). You're suppose to have paper scissor rock like that. You can't expect every match to be midrange mirror, that would be even worse than stagnant. Blood moon is the most necessary hate stax ever created. It's necessary to keep greedy manabases in check, otherwise you have nothing to stop that. It's entirely a skill-based issue whether the greedy player choses to play around it. And considering there's fetches for basics in modern, no one has an issue with this. I feel like you're projecting a you-problem than anyone else. Also a meta is healthy when burn can be viable. that's the most fair and classic archetype there is. No one can hate it. It keeps lots of decks in check, and is straightforward and distinct as an archetype since magic's beginning and is well respected. People who hate burn shouldn't play magic honestly.

Banger video, keep up the good work

Great video. If appreciate knowing what is a good removal spell went why. Reason: why paying 2 to remove a 3cmc perm is bad and "no one likes removal tribal"

I'm sure I'm wrong given Pioneer has thousands of people refining decks, but I feel like decks should be playing more charms and commands. I have a grixis deck that plays izzet charm, kolaghan's command, and prismari command and they are all great to see in a game. You beat threats that 2-for-1 you by playing answers that 2-for-1 your opponent.

I don't completely agree with "Pioneer sucks right now" but I'll definitley concede the lack of "good answers" in the format. I think the fundamental problem with getting those good answers into Pioneer is that they have to go through Standard first, that's not to imply that Standard can't have good answers, but the cards in Standard are mostly designed within the context of the Standard environment they're in, you can't just drop Lightning Bolt or Path to Exile into it out of nowhere just because Pioneer needs them, there's an entire ecosystem that needs to be balanced and designed around their existence. This isn't a hopeless situation, eventually we could land on a Standard environment where cards like Bolt and Path could be included, but it's probably going to take a while before it happens.

I appreciate that you represented my argument well in the video (though I’m positive I wasn’t the only person who made it).

my first experience with fair vs unfair is when i went in my first modern tournament with a proxied slivers deck and my first opponent was splinter twin: looking from the outside it was basically two matches where we waited for my opponent to reach turn 4

Give us some sort of 2 mana counters and instant removals! No need for counterspell but mana leak or memory lapse lv cards are fine, maybe a version of the delve one that would start at pay 1, anything that stop make me feel that my best counter is in my opt slot(censor)

A lot of this also comes to when people started playing. My first fnm someone cast Armageddon, that was just my introduction to magic, and i have been on modern storm for a decade and a half so getting thoughtseize'd or someone casting duress is something I just accept as normal and part of the game, or casting blood moon turn 1 or 2, or whatever. What i absolutely HATE is decks that get to break a lot of the old established rules, omnath decks get to just make 4 extra mana every turn and draw 30 cards while playing the best cards in the format, but my deck has to pay the deckbuilding cost for it by playing low impact cantrips and taking massive card disadvantage with ritual, or decks like scam that get to rip two cards out if my hand turn 1 and interact in such a universal way more quickly and efficiently than someone sideboarding specifically to beat me or any other deck. Even coming from legacy, scam feels like something you just shouldn't be able to do because there isnt enough downside or counterplay, especially on the draw.

Imo, Pauper is a relatively good format. Initiative kinda mucked things up for a bit, but with a bulk of it gone, the format is amazing. I love playing dumb decks like Pestilence and Turbo Fog, stuff that probably couldn't exist elsewhere due to the sheer slowness of the decks.

Great video even if I disagree with a lot of your personal opinions, to the point of being almost inverse. Burn and Storm are my absolute favorite archetypes and I absolutely despise Jund and other similar Midrange decks. I understand why so many "spikes" love those but I personally do not. With the exception of removal all the traits you listed for "fair" decks represent what I find to be the most boring parts of magic and the general indifference to synergy in pursuit of raw card power displayed by many Midrange decks is utterly non-compelling to me.

I will say on the spirit point, i think it being prefaced as a deck that takes a while to win is a bit off. Spirits can usually aggro pretty well with a bunch of random 1/1 evaders. So aslong. As your tempo game is going well you can win on turn 6-8 I’m probably biased tho

My favorite deck to play is RDW or U/R Tempo because they are often less expensive to put together and can send people with hundreds of dollars invested in their mana base alone packing. That just feels good

19:25 I’m from the future but pioneer is in a really medium spot right now but I don’t like how good answers have gotten. Get lost is too good, I think mana leak would be great and there is a 1 mana deal 4 to a creature (who’s name I forgot) I think that those are more healthy since they don’t just answer everything

Never knew Tron was such a controversial deck. I run both mono green and eldrazi tron and they can snowball out if someone doesn't/can't answer the threats, but if that ball doesn't get rolling then the decks flop around and get shut out. I moved over to legacy recently after getting fed up with seeing ragavan and wren/six everywhere.

I think something key to this discussion that must be understood is that the ubiquity problem is the ultimate evil at the end of the day. Every other unfair/alternately interacting deck not only divides a fair deck’s attention, it makes various fair decks have merit over others. This greatly varies the format. Without the unfair decks, modern would be nothing but grindy, 5 color money piles. Same goes for any format. All would be tier 0 1/2-deck formats. If you want an example of this, check out the goat format Yugioh meta

Me, a Pioneer Green Devotion and Modern Tron player: YES, SING ME THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE

"It doesn't matter if your format has 20 viable decks if they're all combo decks" Ouch... as a yugioh player that stings

Blood moon is the greatest card ever printed. On peper it forced people to play basics and fences off greeds mana bases. Which I think is incredibly important.

I've thought for a solid while that they could print lightning bolt in standard and it would be fine. Maybe just print it as is but it can't hit players though, cause like you said, burn is awful.

Listen I totally understand the blood moon hate. but i can't help but feel sad about it because goddamn if it doesn't have one of the most amazing arts in the game. so pretty.

Brilliantly put and amazing content.

This is a unique pessimistic view on mtg gameplay. Very interesting

I would say Yawgmoth is a fair deck with unfair elements, a feature many decks need to survive in modern. Interaction is too good for secks to be fully unfair, but the quality of cards has been increased so much it's difficult to play a completely fair strategy. I play hammer and consider it similarly. Its kinda clunky creature deck that usually ends up playing a somewhat fair saga/sentinel game that transitions to something unfair as you start equipping hammers. But sometimes it's an unfair deck when I go t1 aid thopter turn 2 hammer hammer gg. Murktide is very similar. Fair (though very powerful) interaction and threats that prop up a very unfair threat (2 mana 8/8 flier). I agree with your point tho that fairness is a spectrum. Pioneer has way more room for fully fair decks to succeed but in modern imo your deck needs some unfair elements to help it compete. I think that's why elementals fell off so much post-yorion. Yes it lost the ability to play all the cards it wanted but it also lost it's unfair companion and is now forced to try to play a clunky fair value game.

Different formats in magic are introduced to quiet players that don't like losing a certain way.

This is precisely why I only play limited: it's generally kind of like playing jund mirrors (as you put it) forever. It's mostly about creature combat and "fair" value-oriented play patterns. But in my opinion having played a lot of magic, the one thing that really should not be allowed is *non-deterministic* combos that take 20+ minutes to _resolve_ with no meaningful interaction in between, but where the opponent is forced to make you play it out because it could still fail. In general, I believe that at any time in the game you should either (in order of how enjoyable it is): a) have some meaningful agency left in the game b) be dead _reasonably soon_ after that point, if a) is no longer true. c) if not b), at least know for certain that you should concede and save meaningless non-interactive time You should NOT be forced to wait 15 minutes to know whether the opponent's second dawn combo succeeds (you had to make him play it out all the way, no way to know whether he would succeed for sure), or to find out whether UW Teferi (running no actual wincon, justTeferi's -3) will deck you "eventually" (maybe in half an hour) unless the control player draws 15 lands in a row (in which case maybe you can comeback to win by random topdecks while he runs out of counters). I actually played a lot of Teferi back in DOM standard, but always had an actual, resilient finisher as all traditional control decks used to do (specifically, chromium or the sea serpent thing) because waiting for the opponent to eventually deck is stupid, not to mention wholly dependent on how much time the match/tournament allows for.

16 counterspell decks are the only problem. Nobody wants to sit there while their opponent just says land go, and their board stays empty for 15 minutes of countering your spell and drawing cards when you pass turn. If my opponent puts threats on the board and says deal with it or lose, I can't be mad about that.

My first deck in modern was dnt. I love dnt still. People don't get mad at me tho since they understand dnt takes skill to win with

So magic players hate all aspects of the game if they're losing, but enjoy winning against an opponent that doesn't know how to build a deck, doesn't buy singles/rares, doesn't understand or manipulate the stack. Sounds about right. All styles of play are broken/boring if its not my deck.

glad to see mill wasn't in the list for hated. I love my mill

The most relevant point of information I feel was ironically in the very beginning of the video during the counter spell portion. Both long combo (not 2 card combos or simple infinites) and control sre frustrating because the amount time in between them de facto winning the game and them actually mechanically winning the game is so long. The game is for all intents and purposes over but the deck still has to spin its wheels. Either the non control player watches them spin their wheels which is a boring non game for them or they scoop and the control player doesn't get to realize their own gameplay. I dont know how you fix this problem though since grinding out the game is the entire point of control. Fragile control where the enemy player has a chance to break out of the control player's control would be healthy when we talk about time between de facto and actually winning but would never see play because its by definition bad at being a control deck.

This argument transcends MTG and applies to games as a human pastime. Well done, well done.

I agree pioneer's answer quality to threat quality ratio is horrible and it really needs to be fixed, however saying the format sucks feels a bit dramatic and a bit bandwagonny. There are plenty of decks with solid matchup spreads and pioneer really rewards good sideboarding. There are some miserable brutal matchups but I believe theyre more a symptom of a metagame people perceive as solved, with the most recent RC results showing that the percieved power of certain decks is not necessarily accurate. One thing I think could help pioneer (besides printing better answers) is more open decklist tournaments. Pioneer sufferes a lot from the Thoughtseize-Push problem where a lot of decks' opening hands are awesome in certain matchups (fatal push vs ramp) and horrible in others (push vs lotus field). Open decklists help reward skilled players who mulligan well and help punish more linear "unfair" decks that often have less gameplay agency. I would also argue that it doesn't even come at the cost of squashing creativity as we saw plenty of upsets and brews preform well in open decklist environments (UW Lotus Control and UR Drakes being the standouts).

My only problem with azorius is its the most luck dependent archetype, it needs perfect reactive spells to survive early, and being on the receiving end is annoying af

I gave it some thought and I can't say I disagree with you on pioneer, even though I enjoy the decks I'm running.

Path Mana Leak and Bolt would be so awesome in pioneer and it would make the format a lot more fair

I think in a good card game, you should use at least half your deck in an average game. So in a 60 card game, about 30 cards are used. Used as in, the actual unique content of the card affects the outcome of the game, rather than simply being discarded or exiled. In a longer game, pure luck becomes less of a factor. But MTG is much too fast for that. People would probably hate these changes, but here we go. If we greatly increase each player’s life total, limited all activated/triggered abilities to “once per turn”, and removed all alternate win conditions, the game would slow down a TON requiring each player to slowly whittle down their opponent to zero and use much more of their deck to do it. OR if we like the fast tempo, then we have to accept all the strategies that try as best they can to avoid the other player from stopping them.

I agree with just about everything in this vid and it sums up pretty well why I’ve quit magic (at least for now). I came to arena from other digital tcgs because I liked the idea of a non rotating format, which unfortunately meant my only choice really was explorer. Quickly learned that I hate losing turn 3 to greasefang (or just turn 1 to thoughtseize), or playing against mono green’s infinite value + karn, or azorius control decks in general, or spirits etc. Found myself getting saltier each game and just not having much fun. The format is kind of a dumpster fire and since I don’t have an lgs paper isn’t an option for me.

Best take in the video "Burn is awful" lol

Tarmogoyf isn't even the best example of why players don't like counterspells The problem with counterspells is that they are the only form of play denial that completely negates the value of casting a spell. Permanents with ETBs or LTBs don't get to do their thing like they would against a typical kill spell. It also doesn't help that only one colour gets them and gets even worse when the counterspell for some reason draws cards or costs nothing

I play almost exclusively modern and I've seen my fair share of decks that I hate, hate, hate! Eldrazi, Hogaak, Lantern, KCI--but few decks rub me in a more annoying way than Scam. My hatred for that deck is untethered and knows no bounds.

19:36 ...and why Chalice of The Void is one of the best

I feel like blood moon is the problem and the answer. It does won thing, stop multicolor greedy manabase/"land decks" from playing the game or it does almost nothing. like dredge, blood moon decks come and go in legacy. The card is obnoxious but in red it is by far the simplest answer to the most unfair of decks in its format. when bring of "fair" and "unfair" I think of blood moon. It is a "fair" card the stops you form mostly doing "unfair" things which makes it not only not very fair because it can only win you the game or is a dead card. I love blood moon as someone who wants to get into legacy and want to play chalice stax red or black decks but I understand why it is unloved. However if we are talking legacy I would say it is no worse then the force's. ironically the forces hold the format together.

As an esper control player, jund is the best form of magic and by far the cleanest game

Graveyard decks are kinda always problematic because the opponent has such a bad matchup pre sideboard

I have played MTG since Morningtide and I have never experienced a "perfect format". The closest thing was probably pre-innistrad Legacy. The best format in a card game is Edison in yugioh. I highly recommend trying it out

👍 Great video as always. 👍

I used to drive 30 minutes each way to play modern FNMs. I quit going after they printed T3fari. It was no longer worth my time or gas money to sit and watch my opponent play the game

My bad times with Magic: Necropotence run for 4 years in a row Wintern Combo in Urza Saga Rebels Affinity days First dredge Caw Blade for SO LONG Energy Yeah pretty much

I was hopeful 8 rack was gonna get a mention in the "early hand destruction" section but then I realized you have to win games in order to be hated LMAO

Im 12 seconds in and like to make a guess which decks are hated. Is it all of them?

This video seems to be display incredibly anecdotal evidence like its representative of anything.

I wonder what your opinion on limited formats will be

bro i just bought a pioneer deck and it turns out it sucks?

While I don't disagree with anything you've said in particular, I feel it's unfair to put a lot of these same decks on equal footing for being disliked, in both casual and competitive formats. Like if you bring an over-the-top style deck to commander, that's par for the course. If you bring a prison deck, you're not going to be invited back. I would say for the competitive aspects, unless it's a new format that has yet to fix it's problems as you're saying is the case with pioneer, I don't see many people having problems with it. Sure going into a legacy tournament and facing U/R Delver is annoying if they have the perfect draw on the play and lock you out every turn, but it's also typically a back and forth game regardless, full of many small decisions that truly matter, and not unbeatable despite it being reputed as the number one deck for a long time.

I kn9w no one in my play group is gonna say it but I know they hate "sword of feast and famine- aggravated assault" combo lmao

The only reason why I play blue control. If I have €20 and have to fight versus threeferi, tron, titan, and all sorts of broken combos, I either play red or blue. And I play red as well, but less frequently. The only way to have interactions sometimes is to be a bigger @sshole than your opponent.

"And why Burn is awful." Now I know what to play next time, Ammi. 😘

You want mana leak in a format where you have make disappear.... Thats a weird Take

Love videos like this!

I dont know if Ammi just doesnt play pauper or if pauper is in a good place. The lack of complaints is welcome

i disagree compleatly about the new pioneer take. greasefang and other problem decks like lotus field have decent answers already. I think that the deck diversity and nature of the format make up for the issues it has

200% agree on Pioneer state :\

What's an example of a healthy format? (format in a certain time)

Pauper wasn't mentioned even once. Must be because it's the perfect format!!! X-D