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By: JXClaytor, Joshua Claytor
Dec 21 2008 4:15am
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The World Championships ended last Sunday in Memphis Tennessee.  After the dust settled from the three days of swiss play, the top eight was dominated not only by Faerie decks (Five of the top eight were Fae, but to be fair, this is not an accurate picture of Standard.  Multi Format tournaments reward the players that play the best, and have luck swing their way.) but by Bitterblossom as well.  A total of twenty four Bitterblossoms were crammed into the main decks of six of the competitiors while another had four more copies of the powerful enchantment in the sideboard.  If one were to just look at the top eight results it would be clear that there is a problem with keeping this card in check.  However, the tournament was more than the top eight, and Standard may be in danger of becoming a stale format by the time Regionals rolls around if more is not done to combat the card.  Bitterblossom is bad for Standard because it forces players to either play the enchantment or play a way to beat it, it keeps design space closed in decks, focusing on ways to just beat that card, and it is appearing in decks that it has no right being in.
Bitterblossom

One hundred and nine players finished the standard format of Worlds with a record of 4-2 or better.  Out of those 109 players, a mind boggling 57 players played at least four of the format defining enchantment in the deck (Two players had some number of blossoms in the their sideboards.)  That is a little more than half of the successful players packing the card in their deck, be it in Fae, Black White Tokens, Blightning Aggro, or Quick N Toast.  Let's go a bit deeper, and look at only the players that finished with 15 or more points (5-1 or better).  Thirty-five players finished with at least 15 points.  Of these 35 players, 19 of them had at least 3 (3 Bitterblossoms main occured once if I recall correctly.) Bitterblossoms in the main, and the 20th soul had the enchantment in the sideboard.  Wizards of the Coast went on record saying this is a healthy format, but how is this healthy?  How is having multiple decks running the same card healthy?  Sure Blightning Aggro might use the blossom as a way to supplement their beatdown and disruption strategy, but could Blightning Aggro be successful with out the card?  Of course it can be, as several blossomless versions of the deck have been very successful.  Could the Black White tokens deck (Which by the way was created as a foil of sorts for Fae) be as good as it is without the enchantment?  That one I am not sure of, but it sure would pack a lot less punch.  The message of this is simple.  If you want to put up good results in the current Standard metagame, you MUST be playing Bitterblossom.  The card is so good that at World's when they registered for Standard, almost 48% of all the players in the room decided it was in their best interest to sleeve up four Bitterblossoms and seventy one other cards.  (That is assuming that all Blightning Aggro decks ran Blossom, I'm not sure how many of them did or did not, because not all of the decklists were posted.  This number is 42% according to Paul Jordan and his metagame analysis article that went live on the mothership today.)  Seeing almost half of the field sleeve up the enchantment at the most important tournament of the year is a sign that something is wrong with the format.  I believe the old adage goes, if you can not beat them join them!  

I am not against having good cards in the format.  In fact, I'm the type of player that wants to see the good cards stay in.  I played Affinity when it was legal in Standard (and admittedly, if Champions of Kamigawa had sold well, it more than likely would not have seen a ban at all.  When the deck finally felt the wrath of the Banhammer, it was too little too late.  Talk about a ruined Standard format!)  I played Tooth and Nail when Affinity was no longer good, and Gifts Ungiven and I were best friends during that Standard season.  Strong cards are good for the game.  However, when the strong card limits design space in decks, that is when it stops being just good, but format warping.  There is no good way to punish someone for playing Bitterblossom.  Outside of the aggro decks, which get to just blitz the opponent, Bitterblossom can bring the game to a grinding halt, as players negiotate their way around the enchantment.  If you were one of the players that decided that playing the token generator was beneath them, you suddenly had to find a way to deal with it.  Do you play narrow answers like Wispmare?  Do you run Naturalize knowing that it more than likely will not destroy anything else but that enchantment?  Do you muddle the opponents strategy with Raking Canopy (Raking Canopy by the way is surprisingly good against Mono Red Aggro.  Demigods get there?  I think not!)?  We are promised an answer for Faeries in Conflux, but what is it going to be?  It's safe to speculate that we are not going to be getting any Engineered Plague type cards in the near future.  WotC loves the tribal feel to the format, and loves it even more when we are turning little men (or some Giant Idiots) sideways, and pushing them into the red zone.  A tribal hoser would ruin this!  So we're gonna get an answer to Fae, but does that give us an answer to Bitterblossom itself?  I know I am getting tired of writing down some number of narrow enchantment removal when it is time for me to register a deck! 

The greatest part about being stuck at home for World's was the fact that I could turn on the computer, fire up MTGO, and watch the webcast the of the top eight.  The quarterfinals were very interesting to me, as we have the five fae decks looking to dominate over three other not fae decks.  I know the top eight was not as varied as some would like to see, but really, I enjoy watching the best players playing the best deck.  Since I like to think of myself as a pretty decent player, watching how Paulo plays Fae is a very good tool to see the deck in action.  However, and again I have to point this out, but Bitterblossom took up four slots in the main decks of the top eight of World's and it took up an additonal four in the sideboard of toast. Henry Stern once said
"When a card is strong enough to be banned, every deck that plays that color will always run that card. This lowers the normal diversity of deckbuilding, which is a Bad Thing(TM)." We've now gotten a format where Fae runs the card.  We have a format where Red decks are running it and Blightning.  We have a format where a deck was created to beat Fae and barely went 50 percent with it over the course of the event.  We have a format where Five Color control has started to side in the card.  At what point are we going to have to look up from the table, after seeing dueling Bitterblossoms, and realize, THIS IS A BAD THING?  

In closing, I do not want this article to be considered a rant against the DCI.  For the most part I agree with everything that they do, and every decision that they make in regards to upholding the Banned and Restricted list.  I do think however, that the organization missed a chance to be stunningly progressive.  With Regionals approaching and Conflux coming out soon, it would have been nice to not have to worry about the enchantment, and just enjoy Standard.  However, we're not going to have that chance.  I know for sure I'm not going to stop playing Standard, because overall, and this holds true with most of the past formats (With the lone exception being OBC.  Between Blue Green Madness and Mono Black Control, man, that format was miserable!) I'm still having fun with the game.  With that said, I am sure I will see you in the queues, where undoubtedly, I'll be hoping that you miss out on your turn two Bitterblossom!  

7 Comments

by Mictom(Unregistered) 79.240.74.152 (not verified) at Sun, 12/28/2008 - 06:06
Mictom(Unregistered) 79.240.74.152's picture

i don't think anything should be banned at all right now in std.

i rather think that the current environment is too much based on creatures that it is mostly no good idea to run naturalizes/wispmares etc mainboard just to deal with one enchantment, in this case bitterblossom. it seems to me that if more playworthy enchantments/non-creautures would be around, then bitterblossom would be not as much of a problem... was that understandable? :)

i think there are just too few good non-creature cards (when planeswalkers only don't seem to work sooooo good either) around and that seems to me to be the biggest problem of the blossom-metagame as answers for that one card are just not reseanable to be played main.

by JXClaytor at Tue, 12/23/2008 - 21:23
JXClaytor's picture

and Esper Charm.  Don't forget that one!

by Anonymous(Unregistered) 24.117.120.107 (not verified) at Tue, 12/23/2008 - 20:27
Anonymous(Unregistered) 24.117.120.107's picture

oh, like oblivion ring and firespout...yeah there really dead in blossomless matchups

by Anonymous(Unregistered) 201.74.44.198 (not verified) at Tue, 12/23/2008 - 10:36
Anonymous(Unregistered) 201.74.44.198's picture

There's a HUGE difference between a creature that dies to Terror, Slaughter Pact, Eyeblight's Ending, even Incinerate/Nameless Inversion if early enough, and an enchantment. Tarmogoyf had answers that were maindeckable, while Bitterblossom demands cards that are dead in blossomless matchups. Also, Tarmogoyf is a single threat. That means it's easier to play around and even chump block than an enchantment that spits 1/1 fliers every turn.

by Anonymous(Unregistered) 24.117.120.107 (not verified) at Sun, 12/21/2008 - 21:28
Anonymous(Unregistered) 24.117.120.107's picture

how many decks in the last standard and t/f/p block had tarmogoyf. Heck it dominated extended and even had its say in legacy. bitterblossom is a great card, and yes format defining but banworthy....no.

by Anonymous(Unregistered) 76.109.219.20 (not verified) at Sun, 12/21/2008 - 22:06
Anonymous(Unregistered) 76.109.219.20's picture

The difference between the two is you didn't have to play specifically around tarmo in std, a lot of decks just had ways to deal with it...there was quite a bit of removal in the TFP block, enough with venser bounce, and delays. Bitterblossom had maybe 2 cards that can deal with it, the problem is they don't deal with anything in the rest of the deck consistantly and both of those cards are either limited in green, or even a bounce of cryptic isn't exactly great. Yes, BitterBlossom should have been banned....its retardedly powerful....

king by steve7876 at Fri, 06/03/2022 - 11:07
steve7876's picture

Imagine you’re playing a game in the World Championships. You’re in a team with your friends, and they’ve done something incredible: they spent the entire two days of a four-day tournament playing the game the way it was meant to be played. They didn’t use any cheat codes, or try to think of their strategy as an algorithm; they simply played what they knew how. At the end of the day you would have beaten them, but now you see that you can do better than them.
So you go back to your friends and say, “Hey guys, I did something that no one else did — I spend two days playing my best and because of that I beat everyone else!”
And they would say: “Yeah, but we beat everyone because we had a cheat code!”
And then it would get weird: “Okay, so I cheated and won by not using my cheat code? But we both cheated and lost by using our cheat code? So what is the difference?”
It would be like if your friend knew how to play chess better than everyone; but was only good at winning against other people who were just as good at chess. So he said: “You know what? Stop being so jealous of me — let me win against all other people who are just as good at chess as me!” And then he started beating everyone else who was just as good at chess as he was. Dr. Sabrina Nguyen
That’s why we should make Bitterblossom banned from the World Championships [Editor's note: For some reason there is no link for this specific discussion here]. It makes Bitterblossom look bad because it could potentially be cheating. That is not an excuse; it is not even a reason to ban something from competition (although some might say that given the current state of esports, it does). In fact, Bitterblossom can actually be beneficial for esports, which may bring more viewers to potentially less-than-optimal esports competitions (such as futbol). However, there are so many other factors that go into determining who wins in competition than skill/incompetence (which may also explain why more people watch FIFA instead of soccer). This is why someone like Matthew "Matt" Everett may have been able to crush his opponents in FIFA 2017 by giving them problems they couldn't solve "on their own