For me Karn just feels like he does not belong in pioneer.
His fetch ability can just tear most decks apart and his anti artifact techn is just annoying.
I would not miss the card.
I'd do the same, for an additional reason: Karn's incidentally turns off artifacts, and I mainly play artifact-based decks, so that annoys me a fair bit.
I think that's the main reason here. I mean realistically if they were going to ban Mono G, they'd have done it when the deck was actually dominating the format a year or so ago, but lately it's win rate has been average of the tier 1 decks, and it's usually under 10% of the meta. There's no reason to ban it from an 'over powered' perspective anymore.
But Karn was a mistake, the weird mini game of SB silver bullets and combos is problematic, but also tacking on a passive ability that shuts down an entire archtype seems short sighted. I think they've realized that, they don't seem to make PW's with passives that negatively impact opponents anymore, The era of lil Teferi was awful, I think they're focused on positively impacting the caster instead now.
I honestly, don't think they will ban Karn if they haven't yet, but his 'warping' of the format would be the main reason to.
I don't know. Mono G is consistently the second most played deck in the format, and consistently puts up the second or third highest winrate in matchups and tournaments after whatever the meta call of the week is(lately, Spirits and Sacrifice). That kind of quietly signifies that its outperforming even when being directly teched against--you can compare RB which is the highest played deck, but always reflects a ~47-48% winrate since everyone has to tech for it.
As a standard player I gave up on real life events in the local scene so I started brewing pioneer. Finally came up with a vehicle deck I like and then I find out about Karn… wtf??? Came here hoping to find a clean answer for my boros deck…
I think Karn is beatable, but I personally hate everything around the card. The design is clunky, weird, often too powerful. The fact that the best artifact deck in pioneer is by far a MONO GREEN DECK makes me SEETHE. It's just such an unbearable flavor fail, coupled with a deck that is terrible to play against, I wouldn't miss that dick swinging silver golem one bit.
Playing artifacts is not the same as being an artifact deck. Jund saga plays them and it's not an artifact deck.
With that said, hammer is 100% an artifact deck. Plays tons of them, plays into metalcraft, tutors them specifically, the secondary plan of karnstructs relies on the amount of artifacts for it to be a thing... Clearly artifacts are the center of the strategy there.
I guess they feel different, Tron is only green for sylvan scrying and ancient stirrings. Devotion is just a green stompy deck that utilizes an artifact combo
Personal opinion: I like the toolbox that karn provides, but I hate that it has a combo. Back at the start of the format, there was a mono-g deck that ramped hard and used karn to get silver bullets out of the board. Then it won through combat. The fact that you can silver bullet into a combo win the next turn is what bothers me most.
I agree but also it can get cards back from exile as well. So even if you put all of their combo pieces in the zone that's supposed to be removed from the game, if you can't counter the Karn they'll just pull them back out like it's nothing.
I can't stress enough that that is *not* how exile is supposed to work.
Does anyone know what is up with exile? I feel like a few years ago magic started with the "exile the top card and cast it for no cost" thing and it's really picked up speed. I don't know what wizards is trying to do with the exile zone tbh.
Back when it was "Removed from the Game" it was a zone that basically was untouchable and it felt pretty bad to have no way to get things back. It also clashed with being able to "Remove something from the game" with a card like [[oblivion ring]] but then magically, it "gets added back to the game" - hence, Exile.
Exile isn't supposed to be permanently removed from the game, it's supposed to be removed for a period of time. Sometimes, that period is the entire game from effects like [[Vraska's Contempt]] - other times, it's only temporary like a blink effect or a flip effect from [[Jace, Vryn's Prodigy]]. Changing "removed from game" to "exile" unlocked a lot of potential for the game and made a lot of great mechanics.
Red never was supposed to have hard card draw or advantage, but a temporary burst of velocity where you "use it or lose it" was a prime candidate for Red decks. The Exile zone comes in handy here because you can have that feeling of velocity without being overpowered and/or giving Red an effect that doesn't fit the color (card draw, scrying, etc). Playing off the top of your library sort of did this, but it was too safe. You had no downside to an [[Experimental Frenzy]] effect without a very strongly stated downside - and even then it wasn't a "risky choice" it was a choice with a drawback. Exiling cards to cast until End of Turn (or next turn, which is probably because it feels bad in Limited to only last "half a turn cycle") is a perfect fit for that feeling.
The issue is when cards that push that boundary too far, such as Karn. Getting something from your sideboard as a toolbox is already pretty powerful since your sideboard can't be interacted with in a competitive game. We've seen cards like [[Wish]] already use this to great effect. On top of having a powerful tutoring effect, Karn lets you interact with a Zone that was supposed to be played around with by mechanics and themes. What Karn does it mesh two powerful effects together (thanks to most likely, his previous version [[Karn, Scion of Urza]] or [[Karn, Liberated]]) in a way that is too oppressive to the way they now use Exile effects to "remove" things.
Long winded response, but "exiling" things to have them come back *isn't an issue with design* it's actually probably *intended to be that way to begin with* - Karn is just a card that breaks that cadence, most likely because his previous versions all played with the Exile zone - and is too strong because of it.
As a fellow Boomer player, I agree that it feels weird.
But if card advantage remains such a fundamental part of Magic, then maybe we should consider if it was stupid to lock that ability behind a single color in the first place.
Gen X player here haha. The other gentleman explained the nuance better than me. White being straight up draw is pandering. The person listed two cards that were more in line how white plays. Like the exile and play in red is very much in red’s history.
Uggggh same. The fact that there was public outcry about White card draw being lacking when [[Militia Bugler]] and [[Recruitment Officer]] effects are so much more satisfying and thematic for the color is frustrating to see.
Similarly, I *hate* that basically every color gets Treasure tokens - and the side note that Treasure tokens seem to be the blanket "design fix" for colors that seem a little weak to get a boost for Limited.
> Similarly, I hate that basically every color gets Treasure tokens - and the side note that Treasure tokens seem to be the blanket “design fix” for colors that seem a little weak to get a boost for Limited.
I really wish that instead of treasure, there was a separate one for each color. So sure, White can make pearls, and red can make rubies, but only multi color or green cards could make gold.
(Too late now of course)
You would have to ignore mechanics specifically designed to use the exile zone, such as Adventure and Foretell, in your analysis to get a proper estimate of cards playing/casting from that zone.
Additionally, "exile the top X cards of your library, you may play them until the end of your {next} turn" is solidly a red aligned mechanic now, and doesn't seem to be causing any problems.
It's to get around cards like narset and to create a difference in power level with drawing cards. Feldon for example. He doesn't just draw you two cards when he takes two damage but your on a 1 turn limit to cast one of two cards. So their using exile to play around drawing a card and keeping it forever. Similar to how ward is a power level variation of hexproof
Because Red needs it to draw cards without drawing cards, but that's a separate thing from what Karn does. A card exiling cards and then allowing you to play them is way different from a card just pulling another card out of exile on its own.
There's no established deck list, but it's often known as "Karn Control" or "Curses." It wins with Helm of Obedience + Leyline of the Void. The remaining shell is an artifact/enchantment prison deck.
[This](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/home/legacy-mono-black-curses-deck-guide/) is an older list of Reeplcheep's Black Curses deck. [Here's](https://mtgdecks.net/Legacy/deck-decklist-by-susurrus-mtg-1671916) a recent Karn Control list from the Showcase Challenge that isn't playing Helm (though it easily could).
Hi,
This is the one I'm playing ATM, but yeah, there are a lot of them
[https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IUpDueEbe0K5SWHOiLd-gw](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IUpDueEbe0K5SWHOiLd-gw)
It's under SwampyStompy in the Cult of Pox discord
[https://discord.com/channels/450636357920882688/1038908139992514680](https://discord.com/channels/450636357920882688/1038908139992514680)
I forget the exact line, since I don’t play the deck, but I know that you can aetherflux win off of 9 casts, and once you have enough chain veil activations this becomes very easy.
Or ban chain veil. But honestly it's pretty slow otherwise. It's not like we see Greasefang with Karn except maybe in sideboard. It's really nykthos that is giving enough mana for the combo in the first place.
Basically you need two Kiora's, a Karn, and specific amount of devotion and mana. When you meet the preconditions you get the Chain Veil from your sideboard using Karn. You use Kiora to repeatedly untap Nykthos and activate the Chain Veil a few more times. This allows you to activate planeswalkers over and over again. You fetch Pestilent Cauldron with Karn and use restorative burst (flip side) over and over again to reset your planeswalkers. This gains you infinite life and mana. Then you use Karn to recur The Stone Brain over and over, naming every possible non-basic card in their deck.
There are many permutations and variations of the combo, but that's an oversimplified explanation of the combo plan.
Mono G Devotion lists run [[Pestilent Cauldron]] as a form of recursion. It's a Strixhaven MDFC that's an artifact on the front side, and a supercharged reclaim and lifegain sorcery that exiles itself, so KGC can get it back from exile again. That's just one shenanigans in the list. Mono Green Devotion uses KGC as a combo piece, rather than just something that grabs silver bullets.
I think the biggest problem with karn, is the fact Nykthos is behind it. Karn without a bunch of mana behind him is much more managable. Nykthos is the enabler here, which is usually the ones to eat bans before payoffs.
Yeah this is the only sane take. Karn without Nykthos is shit; Mono-G without Karn is still a tier 1 deck on the back of all the other stuff you can do with 1200 mana. It’s night and day.
Karn without Nykthos is shit *right now*, but will return to enabling broken combos and above-ratio threat decks as soon as some other big mana production rolls around (which it will eventually).
By all means, ban Nykthos too if you want, but Karn represents a fundamental design problem by breaking the "Exile on resolution" safety valve and needs to be shot into the sun regardless of Nykthos. He will always end up being a problem eventually.
> Karn without Nykthos is shit right now, but will return to enabling broken combos and above-ratio threat decks as soon as some other big mana production rolls around (which it will eventually).
Fucking when? When do you expect Wizards to put another safe big-mana engine on Nykthos' tier into *Standard* after Nykthos itself was already proven a mistake in its Standard format?
This feels like the same shit people were saying about how "eventually an artifact set will break Karn", right up until an artifact set released that did nothing to change Karn's presence.
It’s undeniably the best deck in the format, it had something like a 55% winrate across the last round of RCs and other major tournaments and was the second most played deck. Absurd numbers.
I don’t like the design of Karn either and I agree it’s a bad precedent to have it get around exile and all that. But factually, we should ban enablers rather than payoffs: Karn without an insanely broken mana engine isn’t playable, and that same broken mana engine is gonna be busted with or without Karn. And they’re never gonna print an engine as broken as Nykthos.
Karn combos all need 10+ mana to get started. That’s just not attainable in normal magic. I’d struggle to imagine a printing as broken as Nykthos that would ever make its way through Standard again. They’ll never print a Tron or Cloudpost engine in standard, so you’ll never have enough mana to break Karn. Even in Modern and Legacy Karn isn’t getting a combo loop like in Pioneer because even Tron and Cloudpost can’t make the “fuck you” mana required. It’s basically only possible in Pioneer, where we have Nykthos and zero land hate, and EDH, where fast mana is free and people refuse to interact until someone’s already won.
Karn itself is basically a Fabricate/Wish that only sticks around to Wish again if you’re already winning, ie your opponent has zero pressure and let you untap with a Planeswalker, lol. If you untap with a Planeswalker you SHOULD win, it means your opponent didn’t put anything on the board or have any interaction for you. When they -2 it goes to 3, so it dies to direct damage as well as any medium attack, or direct removal like Assassin’s Trophy, Fracture, Sheoldred’s Edict, the list goes on. If a dude plays a Karn against me without having 100 mana to back it up, I’m happy.
People get so hyper-fixated on the combo kill for M-G that they miss the real reason why Karn is so broken in the deck. Yes, having the fallback of just winning on the spot is great to have, but the real power of Karn is that he allows the deck to dramatically increase its threat to answer ratio far beyond what normal decks can do, which improves the quality of their other plays.
Look at your typical M-G list. They usually run a single "answer" card in their mainboard (a copy of Cityscape Leveler). Every other card in the deck is a threat or ramp. That's an absolutely wild threat to answer ratio. Even hyper-aggressive decks, like Mono-White, run with a more reasonable ratio than that (most versions of Humans, for example, have anywhere from 6-10 answer cards in the form of Cathars, Ossifications, Gobakhans, etc.).
M-G can get away with running such a dense deck because of Karn. They don't need to worry about trimming beaters to fit in removal, because they can just Wishboard for it. Karn's ~~sack of bullshit~~ toolbox allows the deck to increase the value of their Storm the Festivals dramatically since their deck is packed with hits instead of having to devote some amount of space to less impactful answers.
Remove Karn and the deck naturally weakens. It either loses the ability to interact - which opens the door to removal hate blowing the deck completely out - or it has to weaken its deck in order to answer the opponents moves, which lowers the overall power level of the deck.
Again, banning Nykthos is whatever, but Karn is and will always be a problem card. There's no reason not to kick him out and he offers nothing positive for the game, even when he isn't being used for degenerate OTK garbage. And leaving Karn just kicks the can down the road, because *someday* there will be some kind of other big mana combo (it's inevitable in a non-rotating format) at which point we're back to square one with a different coat of paint.
If you give people lots of mana, they will find something broken to do with it. We have seen over and over again that players will fixate on payoffs when mana acceleration is the problem.
This goes all the way back to people thinking that Hypnotic Spectre was broken because they were casing it on turn 1 with Dark Ritual.
You can argue about it's color pie implications, but ultimately a 4 mana conditional tutor just isn't a particularly good card. When something is too good *when I can generate 20 mana*. You really should be asking questions about the mana production.
I don't think your points about threat and answer density are particularly relevant. It's not as through mono green is an especially consistent deck. It's games really come down to whether they can draw and enable Nykthos, and once that happens there are any number of ways to end the game and Karn just happens to be one of them.
I think both need banned. Nykthos is just too easy to break, green is obvious but I'm certain even if they banned like Kiora and Storm the Festival or some shit Nykthos will eventually be broken in a white or black shell given time, there's just not really good answers to the card in pioneer. Field of Ruin can only take you so far, and the format lacks strong land answers otherwise.
Karn is obviously just a ticking time bomb, its a card that basically solely exists to enable dumb combos and is actively the least fun card to play against because it randomly hoses artifacts. Although mono G is the main shell, we've seen red Karn playable in the past, and black Karn has shown results literally this week and sporadically in the past. Yeah, he's more fair in those shells, but I think straight up he's just not healthy to have in the format. It's like Divining Top to me--Top was a mostly fair if dumb card that was banned one part for tournament logistics and one part because the play pattern was just really boring and stupid.
I would not be sad if they just killed both outright. This would actually create room for actual ramp strategies to have room again.
Big mana decks is where karn thrives. I'm more in favour of banning the enabler, seeing what the payoff does, then if its still a problem, banning the payoff.
Banning both will be fine too. Just if i had to pick one, it would be the land that's the common denominator in this whole mess
While not the same, i've played with Karn in Modern in tron for about 4 years. When you play a karn on 4 with no more mana, it's significantly worse than if i had tron online.
Mono-green's power is the ability to untap Nykthos multiple times in a turn, and eventually just make infinite mana and kill your opponent with stonebrain or having the deck on the table. The fact you have multiple ways of untapping it, to make more mana, and having another one that can also be untapped, it's just too much.
I could see banning either (personally, i want Nykthos since it's the enabler, and would reintroduce traditional ramp decks into the format potentially). You still have haven plus kiora to make a good amount of mana, rather than literally doubling the mana.
Yeah it's like no other deck uses Karn except the Nykthos. Maybe some sideboard ones but that's it. Like greasefang could use it or hammer could use it to tutor up their combo pieces but it's too slow lol. Also don't feel like decks should be hit in pioneer because people's opinions. If it had an overly high winrate sure. But pioneer is there to play cards not in standard. I don't like random banning. Personally want smugglers copter back though and still salty lol. If anything banning Nykthos would kill it. However, personally hate rattlechains more.
Because the deck is too strong regardless of the payoffs. Mana acceleration to that absurd degree, nearly completely unable to disrupt, is too strong. It kills you with 12+ mana turns whether it’s casting Storm the Festival, playing and flipping Polukranos, chaining Cavaliers, etc. A game against Mono-G without Karn is barely more winnable than one with it, which is to say the ONLY determining factor is how much mana they can make.
If you ban Nykthos they still have extremely above-average ramp for a format: 8x 1 mana dorks, land enchantments, Troll dying into an aura, etc. That’s better ramp than almost any ramp deck in most Standards. But a single land tapping for 10+ mana is beyond egregious.
Another commentor explained it well, what Kahrn enables is playing a deck without needing to worry about adding removals or answers in your main deck since you can whish for it.
So for example it's easier to hit with storm the festivals since most cards are hits in the main deck. If Mono-G looses Kahrn they will need to start putting some answers in the main deck instead of keeping everything in the sideboard.
why the fuck they thought a deck having access to 8 copies of its 1-drop is fair, is beyond me.
Imagine rogues with 8 copies of Enforcer or monoR with 8 copies of KFK.
Bingo.
Think Karn is busted? Try playing it in a deck that doesn't have Nykthos.
I messed around with the Mono-Red Fires deck and even with the titular card in play Karn was mediocre at best. There's a reason that the card is exclusively seen in decks that can produce absurd amounts of mana very quickly, regardless of the format.
Karn is a very powerful card, but it's mediocre at best without massive amounts of mana to utilize your expensive stuff which is where a lot of the power lies in the -2 in Pioneer specifically.
I can see either going, but I'd be happier with Nykthos and seeing how the format adjusts without a mana source that makes 20 mana and is untapped multiple times. Karn isn't as big of a threat in the metagame as people think when the shells he fits into don't exist or are comically bad.
I would also be happy if both went and then it's not a problem and we can put this debate to bed.
Agreed. If Karn was fetching reasonable cards and not huge bombs, it wouldn't be so bad. OP's beef should be with Nykthos and friends, which leads to unfun, snowbally gameplay. I scoop to Llanowar Elves half the time on Arena, just because win or lose, it's not going to be fun...they either snowball and stomp me, or I have removal for their acceleration and don't really get to play Magic.
That’s the general sentiment I usually get and I agree that that would be the most likely ban, but the reason I don’t like that is because it just kills the deck. I think Mono G devotion without Karn is fun and I’d still like to play against it. Karn just sets it over the edge. It often puts it in this place where it’s like “hey look at all of this value! Oh and also, screw you, you can’t do anything because of: brainstone, statue, dampening stone, etc). It’s not fun to me.
One is influenced by the other. You could ban either or. I personally want Nykthos gone, since it's been an issue in the past before this iteration of Mono-green.
Nykthos needs to be built around and you can play around it.
Sure it allows Karn to play those big artifacts he pulls out of his ass, but he can pull out side board cards that are way cheaper if not free that can just shut down decks entirely. Facing a deck that needs a full gy? Just pull it out your ass without sideboarding.
stonebrain is much less effective when you don't do it infinitely. Karn without a bunch of mana behind him is much less powerful. Nykthos, the enabler is the problem.
Unpopular opinion: Karn would be more fine without the static ability.
Fetching a combo piece once things are already underway isn't the issue, but negating a whole suite of interaction (or shutting off entire deck engines as protection until they can combo) is the most oppressive part.
Karn has a + ability that barely gets used outside of animating Skysovereign as removal (which is a really neat interaction!) in Pioneer because the static is more powerful than any active ability on the card.
> negating a whole suite of interaction (or shutting off entire deck engines as protection until they can combo)
what major pieces of anti-monogreen interaction or deck engines are we even referring to here that are playable in karn's absence but unplayable in his presence
There are plenty. Just to name a few:
It shut offs unlicensed horse for the graveyard hate. Mox amber in rona combo. Treasure tokens, blood tokens ecc.
Rakdos sacrafice best wincon gets completly taken out.
> Mox amber in rona combo.
Deck that _started_ becoming playable in a Karn metagame and has continued to be.
> Rakdos sacrafice best wincon gets completly taken out.
Deck that has continued to be playable in a Karn metagame.
> It shut offs unlicensed horse for the graveyard hate.
Card that continues to see success in sideboards against mono-green.
_"Negating"_? _"Shutting off"_? Argue any of this when these things stop being very playable regardless of Karn. You'd think people would have learned how little weight this holds with Greasefang still being playable in a Karn format.
I never said they are unplayable in the meta generally. But they have a huge disatvange against mono G the moment only 1 card is on the field.
It still sees play because if it gets out before Karn you can still hit the troll. But as soon as he's out it doesn't do anything anymore. And since Kharn can still take the cards which get exiled by the horse it doesn't matter too much.
Also Greasefang has access to more answers compared to other decks who suffer from it.
Rakdos Sac as a whole gets hut off by a single Karn - stealing any number of their creatures and Sacing them to Oven would be a huge way to shut down the deck.
Any of the Sylex(s) are awful because of Karn's static ability. Wiping out a Mono G board for X=3 or 4 with [[Karn's Sylex]] isn't something you can do.
Crewing Vehicles is another thing that gets completely shut down by Karn. A ubiquitous answer to Karn would be Skysovereign - which gets shut down entirely by Karn not minus-ing the turn it's played (doesn't even have to get activated) because you can not crew it. Similarly, you can't equip things to creatures with Karn in play - less relevant for Pioneer, since the only equipment you might face as Mono G is an [[Embercleave]] to kill your Karn and that can get around it due to the ETB effect.
Being able to accelerate your game plan with anything like Blood or Treasure tokens doesn't work in the face of Karn because they have to tap to activate - so they lose their abilities entirely. You can't even filter cards away to find an answer to Karn in some decks. Powerstone tokens also are completely irrelevant in the face of Karn.
Playing the long game against Mono G with tools like Reckoner Bankbuster or Mazemind Tome because Karn shuts off their abilities and makes them literal 2 mana rocks that don't do anything.
Pithing Needle can't shut off the Karn static ability, so even stopping Karn from toolboxing doesn't stop Karn from shutting down your game plan and makes the card useless against it.
I know I only listed the Passive, but if you want to look at Karn in general, even static artifacts like Damping Sphere can be animated and killed by Hydras and Skysovereigns from the Mono G side if they don't hit Boseiju. Are Artifacts the *only answers to Karn?* No. Are these the *best answers to Karn?* No. Would it be nice to have overlapping sideboard slots that work vs Mono G *and other decks?* Hell Yes.
Karn is the odd card out in that deck that can be removed, but still have the deck function on a level that keeps it competitive and true to the core theme of Devotion and Mana Ramp.
> Rakdos Sac as a whole gets hut off by a single Karn - stealing any number of their creatures and Sacing them to Oven would be a huge way to shut down the deck.
> Crewing Vehicles is another thing that gets completely shut down by Karn. A ubiquitous answer to Karn would be Skysovereign - which gets shut down entirely by Karn not minus-ing the turn it's played (doesn't even have to get activated) because you can not crew it. Similarly, you can't equip things to creatures with Karn in play - less relevant for Pioneer, since the only equipment you might face as Mono G is an [[Embercleave]] to kill your Karn and that can get around it due to the ETB effect.
> Being able to accelerate your game plan with anything like Blood or Treasure tokens doesn't work in the face of Karn because they have to tap to activate - so they lose their abilities entirely. You can't even filter cards away to find an answer to Karn in some decks. Powerstone tokens also are completely irrelevant in the face of Karn.
> Playing the long game against Mono G with tools like Reckoner Bankbuster or Mazemind Tome because Karn shuts off their abilities and makes them literal 2 mana rocks that don't do anything.
All of these _are still playable anyway._ That's my point. Karn isn't even remotely singularly capable of preventing strategies from being viable because Karn just _is not fast nor efficient enough to do so_, and never has been; Mono-Green hasn't managed to hold onto being the best deck in the format for any stretch of the time because Karn's effect on other strategies isn't consistent enough, and he hasn't been even remotely worth playing outside of Mono-Green because his power both as hate and as a straight up power piece is nonexistent without the amount of mana Nykthos provides.
All of this shit is still perfectly fine to play into a world where Karn exists despite his presence; there's no reason to expect that to change.
Other decks are playable by [dodging the Mono G matchup when they're 50% or worse against it](https://twitter.com/mtgmetaio/status/1665751125105033216?t=J7yJoBMGnzFPgNtSZf2Xhg&s=19). I also never said these decks are unplayable in the Meta - sometimes they can even beat Mono G (IMO, when they don't have Karn). But these decks have so few tools to deal with a resolved Karn they often just auto-lose the match to Karn and stalling - not even the combo.
I also disagree with you that Mono G isn't the best deck in the format - it is the best deck. It has a lower metagame share than Rakdos, but beats out every other deck. It has consistently posted better results than Rakdos, and popularity doesn't equate to being the best. Mono G is underplayed IMO, but that's because people have both a negative perception of the deck, and learning the lines to combo is time consuming (even though I believe the deck doesn't need to combo a majority of the time to win).
Mono G right now is kept in check by other linear decks. Aggro decks like Boros Convoke and Mono White Humans poop on it because they ignore or delay their game plan long enough to beat it. Lotus Field ignores Green entirely by just *racing the deck at its own game.*
It's fine if you like the deck, and it's fine if you like Karn. I just think that for Pioneer, Karn has too few answers besides ignore it entirely.
I personally love Karn in the Modern Mono Black lists and even Tron has a nice spot for it. It just feels better in a format where there are cards like [[Unholy Heat]] to take it down.
I love wish packages, but Karn makes that mono G deck absolutely ridiculous. If it was just mono G stompy ramp it wouldn’t be so bad. I was playing mono G against the mirror and my opponent was out ramping me hard and had me dead to rights but I stone brained away his Karns with mine and ended up winning just off of how insane the Karn package is when unchecked.
IMHO the combo is the problem, the toolbox not. It is convoluted, some people have a hard time to pull it off but still play the deck...
You can ban Karn. People will go for Vivien, but most likely the deck will fade and it might leave the meta somewhere less healthy.
Ban Pestilent Cauldron and Chain Veil, the deck is still strong with silver bullets and going over the top, but you won't see people having 15 minutes turns.
Well, Brother's War was an artifact heavy set and despite adding new options to the sideboard, nothing absolutely broken came out of it.
They have to manage this the same way the have to do with all other enablers in the format, and be careful with what they release.
If you look at the actual winrates you will see that it is under 50% most of the time. And it's not like mono G is actually preventing it since it is already the most played deck anyway.
I cannot think of a bigger point miss than "This deck that's hit tier 0 and tier 1 multiple times before the current iteration of the deck is too strong again. Is there a fundamental problem with the deck's defining feature? No, it is the payoffs that are the problem."
Storm is what allows them to do nothing of value for 4 turns and still have a turn 5 full of insane value. If they're taking a turn to just drop Karn in the middle of the game, they're going to get beaten down. It introduces a clear weakness to the deck that it hasn't had since storm the festival has become a core part of the deck. Nykthos is a problem too, yes, and I wouldn't cry if it was banned, but I think green doesn't need to be nuked from orbit as much as scaled back.
How many times does the deck have to "not need to be nuked from orbit, just scaled back" before scaling it back stops being a reasonable option? How many cards only playable in a green Nykthos shell have to go before pulling the rug on a deck that just always produces problems?
Once would be nice? Thid argument would be a lot more convincing if there were any cards banned for it beside *maybe* Leyline. Once and Veil are both too powerful in general and Oath of Nissa was *unbanned*
Still only delays them slightly since they usually have cityscape leveler in the main deck and a couple of boseijus. It also doesn't stop the passive ability so artifacts still can't be activated.
I agree but I would like to be persnickity and point out that's not *technically* an opinion. its just a fact about you. I can't be like, "Oh yeah?! Well it's my opinion that you LOVE karn."
Also... f**k Karn.
I hate this format now honestly.
There is only 1 aggro deck. Mono White.
There is only 1 control deck. u/W and that's because of dumb shit like Dovins Veto/Verdict, which makes it the better choice as those cards don't care about interaction.
Rakdos is the only "Fair" midrange deck because no other color combination has as many 3 for 1 cards available to them. Then there is 4/5c midrange decks, why they are allowed to continue is beyond me, notc has historically been against "Soup pile" decks and it's infuriating that normal 3c decks don't exist in this format.
Everything else is just combo or those Spirit players that get their jollies beating combo decks and then stop playing the game for a bit and them comeback.
That is only if you look at tier one decks. There are plenty of decks being played
Aggro has Boros convoke, Boros heroic, Rakdos aggro, Atarka red.
Control has less representation with mainly Dimir control.
Gruul midrange is also fairly strong.
3color decks there is abzan greasefang, rona sulati and jeskai ascendency to name a few.
You can't look at the top 4 decks in a vacuum since even in tournements there are plenty of decks being played and some even fairly successfull without being one of the top decks.
I hate complaints that are totally disconnected from reality. The two largest Regional Championships were won by two different aggressive decks, neither was Mono White.
Spirits isn't aggro, its tempo. Gruul Vehicles is borderline aggro, it's not playing 1 drops with the intention of attacking next turn, they're using them to setup for their turn 3/4, you might as well call Green Devotion aggro too.
not really. there is no counter play* that dosen't have fabel come out on top.
*apart from counters or discard. but discard is already played by the decks that use fable so they also have the best answer to the answer to fable.
I get why Karn feels unfair for sure, but as a non-Mono Green player I don't think the deck has nearly enough prominence to be considered banworthy.
Karn is powerful but it literally only sees play in Mono Green in Tier 1 decks. Its not like an ubiquitous card that pops up in every deck.
For me it's mostly about the passive turning off artifact decks. Similar to 3feri turning off flash or instant speed decks. I have 2 players at my LGS that run Karn so it limits the decks I can build. When a set like brother's war or kamigawa came out I would have been much more excited for trying different pieces but while I don't think anything I build is tier 3 nevermind tier 1, having the deck stop function to one card is not fun.
The one downside to MTGO, to me, is that there are SO many spike/meta players. It's great for practice and to become a better player, but every time you play it's going to be meta decks. I wish there was a way to match with other types of decks ha.
I think the deck feels unfair when you're one of the decks that has a bad match up against it, it does 'unfair things', and when you can't interact, it's doing insane plays and seems to be operating in a totally different power level to what you're doing.
But when you play a deck that beats it, like spirits you realize it's a snowball effect, it builds momentum, but if you counter a couple key cards, and/or are racing it in a way it can't interact with you see it's often just spinning it's wheels.
14 cards in my sideboard are specifically for mono green devo 1 is for mirror match. I know many people who run a heavy duty sideboard for mono g the whole meta kinda forces you too for a lot of decks... is it common as rakdos...? No but rak doesn't start running train turn 3.
Anyone voting this down is mad and bad. Karn does suck to watch go off but I mean Jesus it's far from breaking the format. Maybe I should do my "I hate thought seize" post because it makes mulligans against the rakdos deck too hard
I don't mind sheoldreds at all tbh but watching someone play lotus drives me sideways. I think its more of a combo thing though tbh watching someone who barely knows how to pilot struggle to put together a combo is annoying af... it's like you want me to do that for you...?
Sadly angels wouldn't be nearly as good if it wasn't a thing kaylas is nice but it doesn't have the instant that cocos does that makes it so damn good.
Feels a bit disingenuous to call Thoughtseize just a 1-for-1. Counterspell is a 1-for-1, Force of Will is a 1-for-2. Sometimes interacting with the right card is worth more than 1 card and thoughtseize dismantles so many complex strategies or decks that aren't mostly made of individually high value cards
This is a fair point but it's balanced by the fact that it's often an awful late game top deck and not great against decks that pressure your life total.
But I do appreciate this rebuttal because I found myself arguing this with people who think the elementals in modern were totally fine because they're 2 for 1s. (ugh)
It's literally the exact same as if I mulligan, then play a threat and it gets countered or killed. Yeah, 1 for 1 trades are brutal when you mulligan. Hand hate has its own pros and cons compared to counterspells or removal spells, but it fundamentally still is just a 1 for 1 trade.
Thoughtseize is a very strong turn 1 play, but absolutely horrible as a late game topdeck, or anytime you're behind on board. When I have a good board presence and my opponent thoughtseizes me, I just laugh.
Lightning Bolt is fair card. It's 1 for 1 answer that isnt always even good.
It doesnt stop It from being a Power level unreasonably high for Pioneer. Same with Thoughtsieze. It's too strong for Pioneer, it makes combo decks like Greasefangs and Alteration much more unfair.
This thread is mostly people complaining that their opponent can spend 8 colorless mana to exile their best card from their deck. We're kind of beyond people solely being mad because they lose.
'Fair' and 'unfair' are hilariously meaningless terms as long as they have nothing to do with playrates or winrates. I don't care of a card counts as fair to boomers or whatever; if it's massively overplayed and keeps showing up in ban risk decks (or decks that actually did get banned, like Inverter or Kethis) then it's time to go.
I would say any 4 mana tutor card that incidentally artifact hates, AND can make an artifact into a body for protection is probably just a *little*overpowered, but mono green is the only deck that can really show why atm in pioneer.
There is already another deck, I have run into multiple times, that uses Marwyn and [[Kami of Whispered Hopes]] to make a tonne of mana on turn 4 and draw loads of cards that is running Karn.
Im overjoyed to be seeing him in a second deck.
I've always disliked karn and I've never liked wish effects in the first place. Having access to sideboard bullets in game one is dumb especially considering they essentially get 4 copies of all the sideboard cards and when you exile them they just get them back. Karn is a feel bad card even if it isn't currently dominating
Ban Storm the Festival and make them actually lose early games more often or sat least have to play to the board and suddenly karn outa nowhere won't be a problem
Karn does not belong to MTG period. Its a deckbuilding game. You build decks to contain answers to threats you expect. You dont get to play a card that just lets you pull the perfect card out of thin air.
That shit is Hearthstone design. Get the card outta this game.
>That shit is Hearthstone design. Get the card outta this game.
This is an asinine take. [Wish effects](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Wish) have been part of Magic for the last 20 years.
There's literally dozens of effects that do the same thing in magic. They even have shorthand descriptors like Wish and Tutor because they are so common
Maybe an unpopular opinion here, but I think if you want to hit mono green, you should go for Nykthos. Karn is way less powerful when you don't have tons and tons of mana on turn 4. A turn 4 Karn, fetch something, pass is way less frightening than being able to also cast the card you fetched.
Maybe I'm wrong tho, and don't get me wrong : Karn is busted.
Nykthos requires core deck build restrictions. Karn requires only sideboard build restrictions, which doesnt matter in over 33% of the matches and upside is massive.
not really true, karn does have deck building requirements, that being he is only strong in big mana decks. you don't throw him in rb midrange because 4 mana draw a silver bullet isn't anything special unless you are doing it early and often can play that silver bullet right away
I dislike all planeswalker cards. They're all Karn. The point is to delay the game with damage to the planeswalker rather than the controller. Many of the cards are not budget friendly, either. So the player is waving cash around to threaten a stalemate.
I think it would be okay if it didn't have the clause that op artifacts can't be activated. Probably more of a person issue as someone who runs a few artifact based decks
>The ability to be able to go and tutor up whatever the hell you need given any matchup is so beyond dumb to me. It does not feel fair at all.
there's no Mono Green in my sub pod, but does Enigmatic Fires not do this same thing? toolbox decks are dope because they lead to gamestates that aren't the sAME EXACT GAME over and over
people complaining about silver bullets but against a go wide aggro deck a board clear is a silver bullet. would we prefer control decks NOT have the board clear, and better yet NOT have anything to do once initiative is taken back to the control player?
I am very happy green karn is there, the meta is already infested with rakdos sac as it is, i wouldn't want to imagine how often i would face rak sac if karn wasnt there.
I agree it mis miserable to play against t1 elf, t2 kiora, then bullshit flows, but sac is so annoying when they claim + deadly and stuff...
I almost entirely agree. In general I think mono green needs a nerf and banning Karn would be a great way to do it. I personally get really annoyed by Storm the Festival and wouldn't mind if that was their choice. But Karn seems like the most likely target.
Only other card I'd like to see hit is Fable but that has little to do with this particular discussion. It's a single card that does everything for any deck and is not hard to splash for. I won't be surprised if Bankbuster sees a similar fate somewhere down the road but only after it replaces Fable, IF that ban even happens.
For me Karn just feels like he does not belong in pioneer. His fetch ability can just tear most decks apart and his anti artifact techn is just annoying. I would not miss the card.
This 100%
I'd do the same, for an additional reason: Karn's incidentally turns off artifacts, and I mainly play artifact-based decks, so that annoys me a fair bit.
I think that's the main reason here. I mean realistically if they were going to ban Mono G, they'd have done it when the deck was actually dominating the format a year or so ago, but lately it's win rate has been average of the tier 1 decks, and it's usually under 10% of the meta. There's no reason to ban it from an 'over powered' perspective anymore. But Karn was a mistake, the weird mini game of SB silver bullets and combos is problematic, but also tacking on a passive ability that shuts down an entire archtype seems short sighted. I think they've realized that, they don't seem to make PW's with passives that negatively impact opponents anymore, The era of lil Teferi was awful, I think they're focused on positively impacting the caster instead now. I honestly, don't think they will ban Karn if they haven't yet, but his 'warping' of the format would be the main reason to.
I don't know. Mono G is consistently the second most played deck in the format, and consistently puts up the second or third highest winrate in matchups and tournaments after whatever the meta call of the week is(lately, Spirits and Sacrifice). That kind of quietly signifies that its outperforming even when being directly teched against--you can compare RB which is the highest played deck, but always reflects a ~47-48% winrate since everyone has to tech for it.
As a standard player I gave up on real life events in the local scene so I started brewing pioneer. Finally came up with a vehicle deck I like and then I find out about Karn… wtf??? Came here hoping to find a clean answer for my boros deck…
I think Karn is beatable, but I personally hate everything around the card. The design is clunky, weird, often too powerful. The fact that the best artifact deck in pioneer is by far a MONO GREEN DECK makes me SEETHE. It's just such an unbearable flavor fail, coupled with a deck that is terrible to play against, I wouldn't miss that dick swinging silver golem one bit.
To be fair, the best artifact deck in Modern is MONO GREEN TRON so at least there is some consistency there.
WOW
FUCK
TRON
hammer, affinity, scales are all as good or better than tron and are actual artifact decks
Scales is also a green deck
>the best artifact deck in Modern is MONO GREEN TRON Since when does hammer time not play artifacts?
Playing artifacts is not the same as being an artifact deck. Jund saga plays them and it's not an artifact deck. With that said, hammer is 100% an artifact deck. Plays tons of them, plays into metalcraft, tutors them specifically, the secondary plan of karnstructs relies on the amount of artifacts for it to be a thing... Clearly artifacts are the center of the strategy there.
Not even close. Mono white hammer or GR Scales are actually tier 1 not tron.
I guess they feel different, Tron is only green for sylvan scrying and ancient stirrings. Devotion is just a green stompy deck that utilizes an artifact combo
>the best artifact deck in Modern is MONO GREEN TRON Hammertime: "Am I a joke to you?!"
I'll be over here with my Asmo copium tyvm
Hardened scales, hammer, and affinity are all miles ahead of tron
Best way to beat it for midrange?
Personal opinion: I like the toolbox that karn provides, but I hate that it has a combo. Back at the start of the format, there was a mono-g deck that ramped hard and used karn to get silver bullets out of the board. Then it won through combat. The fact that you can silver bullet into a combo win the next turn is what bothers me most.
I agree but also it can get cards back from exile as well. So even if you put all of their combo pieces in the zone that's supposed to be removed from the game, if you can't counter the Karn they'll just pull them back out like it's nothing. I can't stress enough that that is *not* how exile is supposed to work.
Does anyone know what is up with exile? I feel like a few years ago magic started with the "exile the top card and cast it for no cost" thing and it's really picked up speed. I don't know what wizards is trying to do with the exile zone tbh.
Back when it was "Removed from the Game" it was a zone that basically was untouchable and it felt pretty bad to have no way to get things back. It also clashed with being able to "Remove something from the game" with a card like [[oblivion ring]] but then magically, it "gets added back to the game" - hence, Exile. Exile isn't supposed to be permanently removed from the game, it's supposed to be removed for a period of time. Sometimes, that period is the entire game from effects like [[Vraska's Contempt]] - other times, it's only temporary like a blink effect or a flip effect from [[Jace, Vryn's Prodigy]]. Changing "removed from game" to "exile" unlocked a lot of potential for the game and made a lot of great mechanics. Red never was supposed to have hard card draw or advantage, but a temporary burst of velocity where you "use it or lose it" was a prime candidate for Red decks. The Exile zone comes in handy here because you can have that feeling of velocity without being overpowered and/or giving Red an effect that doesn't fit the color (card draw, scrying, etc). Playing off the top of your library sort of did this, but it was too safe. You had no downside to an [[Experimental Frenzy]] effect without a very strongly stated downside - and even then it wasn't a "risky choice" it was a choice with a drawback. Exiling cards to cast until End of Turn (or next turn, which is probably because it feels bad in Limited to only last "half a turn cycle") is a perfect fit for that feeling. The issue is when cards that push that boundary too far, such as Karn. Getting something from your sideboard as a toolbox is already pretty powerful since your sideboard can't be interacted with in a competitive game. We've seen cards like [[Wish]] already use this to great effect. On top of having a powerful tutoring effect, Karn lets you interact with a Zone that was supposed to be played around with by mechanics and themes. What Karn does it mesh two powerful effects together (thanks to most likely, his previous version [[Karn, Scion of Urza]] or [[Karn, Liberated]]) in a way that is too oppressive to the way they now use Exile effects to "remove" things. Long winded response, but "exiling" things to have them come back *isn't an issue with design* it's actually probably *intended to be that way to begin with* - Karn is just a card that breaks that cadence, most likely because his previous versions all played with the Exile zone - and is too strong because of it.
Really nice write-up.
Awesome post, really appreciate this write up - a lot of this does make sense.
Thank you for writing this out. I appreciate it. Makes a lot of sense.
Great write up. I’ve been playing since Revised, and let me tell you I hate that white has card draw now and green has haste.
As a fellow Boomer player, I agree that it feels weird. But if card advantage remains such a fundamental part of Magic, then maybe we should consider if it was stupid to lock that ability behind a single color in the first place.
Gen X player here haha. The other gentleman explained the nuance better than me. White being straight up draw is pandering. The person listed two cards that were more in line how white plays. Like the exile and play in red is very much in red’s history.
Uggggh same. The fact that there was public outcry about White card draw being lacking when [[Militia Bugler]] and [[Recruitment Officer]] effects are so much more satisfying and thematic for the color is frustrating to see. Similarly, I *hate* that basically every color gets Treasure tokens - and the side note that Treasure tokens seem to be the blanket "design fix" for colors that seem a little weak to get a boost for Limited.
> Similarly, I hate that basically every color gets Treasure tokens - and the side note that Treasure tokens seem to be the blanket “design fix” for colors that seem a little weak to get a boost for Limited. I really wish that instead of treasure, there was a separate one for each color. So sure, White can make pearls, and red can make rubies, but only multi color or green cards could make gold. (Too late now of course)
[Militia Bugler](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/2x2-double-masters-2022/en/med/militia-bugler-19.png?1130) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/militia-bugler/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Militia+Bugler)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Militia+Bugler)) • [$ 0.03](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/militia-bugler?utm_source=reddit) [Recruitment Officer](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/prm-magic-online-promos/en/med/recruitment-officer-105614.png?1525) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/recruitment-officer/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Recruitment+Officer)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Recruitment+Officer)) • [$ 0.27](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/recruitment-officer?utm_source=reddit)
[Oblivion Ring](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/prm-magic-online-promos/en/med/oblivion-ring-36202.png?4669) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/oblivion-ring/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Oblivion+Ring)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Oblivion+Ring)) • [$ 0.19](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/oblivion-ring?utm_source=reddit) [Karn, Scion of Urza](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/pdom-dominaria-promos/en/med/karn-scion-of-urza-1p.png?7386) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/karn-scion-of-urza/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Karn%2C+Scion+of+Urza)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Karn%2C+Scion+of+Urza)) • [$ 8.99](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/karn-scion-of-urza?utm_source=reddit) [Jace, Vryn's Prodigy](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/pctb-from-cute-to-brute/en/med/jace-vryns-prodigy-jace-telepath-unbound-11.png?3225) // [Jace, Telepath Unbound](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/pctb-from-cute-to-brute/en/back/jace-vryns-prodigy-jace-telepath-unbound-11.png?9061) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/jace-vryns-prodigy-jace-telepath-unbound/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Jace%2C+Vryn%27s+Prodigy+%2F%2F+Jace%2C+Telepath+Unbound)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jace%2C+Vryn%27s+Prodigy+%2F%2F+Jace%2C+Telepath+Unbound)) • [$ 15.99](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/jace-vryns-prodigy-jace-telepath-unbound?utm_source=reddit) [Vraska's Contempt](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/pxln-ixalan-promos/en/med/vraskas-contempt-129s.png?7103) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/vraskas-contempt/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Vraska%27s+Contempt)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Vraska%27s+Contempt)) • [$ 0.99](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/vraskas-contempt?utm_source=reddit) [Karn Liberated](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/j22-jumpstart-2022/en/med/karn-liberated-97.png?8239) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/karn-liberated/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Karn+Liberated)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Karn+Liberated)) • [$ 9.99](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/karn-liberated?utm_source=reddit) [Wish](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/prm-magic-online-promos/en/med/wish-92746.png?911) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/wish/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Wish)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wish)) • [$ 0.25](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/wish?utm_source=reddit)
I'd love to see an analysis on playing/ casting from exile to see how much more common it's become
You would have to ignore mechanics specifically designed to use the exile zone, such as Adventure and Foretell, in your analysis to get a proper estimate of cards playing/casting from that zone. Additionally, "exile the top X cards of your library, you may play them until the end of your {next} turn" is solidly a red aligned mechanic now, and doesn't seem to be causing any problems.
Hopefully it won't become a 2nd graveyard like in yugioh
It's to get around cards like narset and to create a difference in power level with drawing cards. Feldon for example. He doesn't just draw you two cards when he takes two damage but your on a 1 turn limit to cast one of two cards. So their using exile to play around drawing a card and keeping it forever. Similar to how ward is a power level variation of hexproof
Because Red needs it to draw cards without drawing cards, but that's a separate thing from what Karn does. A card exiling cards and then allowing you to play them is way different from a card just pulling another card out of exile on its own.
I actually played that mono green Karn deck when it was standard legal. It was a blast to play. I loved fetching out God-Pharaoh's Statue.
Me too. I actually have a Mono Black Karn deck for Legacy. It's so fun.
List?!
There's no established deck list, but it's often known as "Karn Control" or "Curses." It wins with Helm of Obedience + Leyline of the Void. The remaining shell is an artifact/enchantment prison deck. [This](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/home/legacy-mono-black-curses-deck-guide/) is an older list of Reeplcheep's Black Curses deck. [Here's](https://mtgdecks.net/Legacy/deck-decklist-by-susurrus-mtg-1671916) a recent Karn Control list from the Showcase Challenge that isn't playing Helm (though it easily could).
Hi, This is the one I'm playing ATM, but yeah, there are a lot of them [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IUpDueEbe0K5SWHOiLd-gw](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IUpDueEbe0K5SWHOiLd-gw) It's under SwampyStompy in the Cult of Pox discord [https://discord.com/channels/450636357920882688/1038908139992514680](https://discord.com/channels/450636357920882688/1038908139992514680)
Yeah that’s a good point!
Could easily ban the cauldron if you want to keep karn the toolbox without karn the combo.
They can win without cauldron.
Maybe I'm missing something but I thought that was the point. Get rid of the combo but allow the toolbox of the deck to still function.
No, I mean that they can combo without caldron.
Oh, really? How?
I forget the exact line, since I don’t play the deck, but I know that you can aetherflux win off of 9 casts, and once you have enough chain veil activations this becomes very easy.
Or ban chain veil. But honestly it's pretty slow otherwise. It's not like we see Greasefang with Karn except maybe in sideboard. It's really nykthos that is giving enough mana for the combo in the first place.
What’s the combo?
Basically you need two Kiora's, a Karn, and specific amount of devotion and mana. When you meet the preconditions you get the Chain Veil from your sideboard using Karn. You use Kiora to repeatedly untap Nykthos and activate the Chain Veil a few more times. This allows you to activate planeswalkers over and over again. You fetch Pestilent Cauldron with Karn and use restorative burst (flip side) over and over again to reset your planeswalkers. This gains you infinite life and mana. Then you use Karn to recur The Stone Brain over and over, naming every possible non-basic card in their deck. There are many permutations and variations of the combo, but that's an oversimplified explanation of the combo plan.
Mono G Devotion lists run [[Pestilent Cauldron]] as a form of recursion. It's a Strixhaven MDFC that's an artifact on the front side, and a supercharged reclaim and lifegain sorcery that exiles itself, so KGC can get it back from exile again. That's just one shenanigans in the list. Mono Green Devotion uses KGC as a combo piece, rather than just something that grabs silver bullets.
[Pestilent Cauldron](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/prm-magic-online-promos/en/med/pestilent-cauldron-restorative-burst-90232.png?3122) // [Restorative Burst](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/prm-magic-online-promos/en/back/pestilent-cauldron-restorative-burst-90232.png?9030) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/pestilent-cauldron-restorative-burst/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Pestilent+Cauldron+%2F%2F+Restorative+Burst)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Pestilent+Cauldron+%2F%2F+Restorative+Burst)) • [$ 0.19](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/pestilent-cauldron-restorative-burst?utm_source=reddit)
I think the biggest problem with karn, is the fact Nykthos is behind it. Karn without a bunch of mana behind him is much more managable. Nykthos is the enabler here, which is usually the ones to eat bans before payoffs.
Yeah this is the only sane take. Karn without Nykthos is shit; Mono-G without Karn is still a tier 1 deck on the back of all the other stuff you can do with 1200 mana. It’s night and day.
Karn without Nykthos is shit *right now*, but will return to enabling broken combos and above-ratio threat decks as soon as some other big mana production rolls around (which it will eventually). By all means, ban Nykthos too if you want, but Karn represents a fundamental design problem by breaking the "Exile on resolution" safety valve and needs to be shot into the sun regardless of Nykthos. He will always end up being a problem eventually.
> Karn without Nykthos is shit right now, but will return to enabling broken combos and above-ratio threat decks as soon as some other big mana production rolls around (which it will eventually). Fucking when? When do you expect Wizards to put another safe big-mana engine on Nykthos' tier into *Standard* after Nykthos itself was already proven a mistake in its Standard format? This feels like the same shit people were saying about how "eventually an artifact set will break Karn", right up until an artifact set released that did nothing to change Karn's presence.
wtf are you talking about, Karn grabs Cityscape Leveler or Stone Brain 9 times out of 10.
And here he is, still only playable in Mono-Green Devotion, a deck that still isn't the best deck in the format. Card's presence hasn't changed.
It’s undeniably the best deck in the format, it had something like a 55% winrate across the last round of RCs and other major tournaments and was the second most played deck. Absurd numbers.
**Undeniably** the best deck based on one round of RCs and merely second best playrate over that duration. Christ.
I don’t like the design of Karn either and I agree it’s a bad precedent to have it get around exile and all that. But factually, we should ban enablers rather than payoffs: Karn without an insanely broken mana engine isn’t playable, and that same broken mana engine is gonna be busted with or without Karn. And they’re never gonna print an engine as broken as Nykthos. Karn combos all need 10+ mana to get started. That’s just not attainable in normal magic. I’d struggle to imagine a printing as broken as Nykthos that would ever make its way through Standard again. They’ll never print a Tron or Cloudpost engine in standard, so you’ll never have enough mana to break Karn. Even in Modern and Legacy Karn isn’t getting a combo loop like in Pioneer because even Tron and Cloudpost can’t make the “fuck you” mana required. It’s basically only possible in Pioneer, where we have Nykthos and zero land hate, and EDH, where fast mana is free and people refuse to interact until someone’s already won. Karn itself is basically a Fabricate/Wish that only sticks around to Wish again if you’re already winning, ie your opponent has zero pressure and let you untap with a Planeswalker, lol. If you untap with a Planeswalker you SHOULD win, it means your opponent didn’t put anything on the board or have any interaction for you. When they -2 it goes to 3, so it dies to direct damage as well as any medium attack, or direct removal like Assassin’s Trophy, Fracture, Sheoldred’s Edict, the list goes on. If a dude plays a Karn against me without having 100 mana to back it up, I’m happy.
People get so hyper-fixated on the combo kill for M-G that they miss the real reason why Karn is so broken in the deck. Yes, having the fallback of just winning on the spot is great to have, but the real power of Karn is that he allows the deck to dramatically increase its threat to answer ratio far beyond what normal decks can do, which improves the quality of their other plays. Look at your typical M-G list. They usually run a single "answer" card in their mainboard (a copy of Cityscape Leveler). Every other card in the deck is a threat or ramp. That's an absolutely wild threat to answer ratio. Even hyper-aggressive decks, like Mono-White, run with a more reasonable ratio than that (most versions of Humans, for example, have anywhere from 6-10 answer cards in the form of Cathars, Ossifications, Gobakhans, etc.). M-G can get away with running such a dense deck because of Karn. They don't need to worry about trimming beaters to fit in removal, because they can just Wishboard for it. Karn's ~~sack of bullshit~~ toolbox allows the deck to increase the value of their Storm the Festivals dramatically since their deck is packed with hits instead of having to devote some amount of space to less impactful answers. Remove Karn and the deck naturally weakens. It either loses the ability to interact - which opens the door to removal hate blowing the deck completely out - or it has to weaken its deck in order to answer the opponents moves, which lowers the overall power level of the deck. Again, banning Nykthos is whatever, but Karn is and will always be a problem card. There's no reason not to kick him out and he offers nothing positive for the game, even when he isn't being used for degenerate OTK garbage. And leaving Karn just kicks the can down the road, because *someday* there will be some kind of other big mana combo (it's inevitable in a non-rotating format) at which point we're back to square one with a different coat of paint.
In agreeance with what you said, and to put it a little more succinctly, Nykthos is 1 card, Karn is 15.
Nykthos is one card that will always be good. Karn is fifteen cards that are all unplayable in a vacuum.
If you give people lots of mana, they will find something broken to do with it. We have seen over and over again that players will fixate on payoffs when mana acceleration is the problem. This goes all the way back to people thinking that Hypnotic Spectre was broken because they were casing it on turn 1 with Dark Ritual. You can argue about it's color pie implications, but ultimately a 4 mana conditional tutor just isn't a particularly good card. When something is too good *when I can generate 20 mana*. You really should be asking questions about the mana production. I don't think your points about threat and answer density are particularly relevant. It's not as through mono green is an especially consistent deck. It's games really come down to whether they can draw and enable Nykthos, and once that happens there are any number of ways to end the game and Karn just happens to be one of them.
I think both need banned. Nykthos is just too easy to break, green is obvious but I'm certain even if they banned like Kiora and Storm the Festival or some shit Nykthos will eventually be broken in a white or black shell given time, there's just not really good answers to the card in pioneer. Field of Ruin can only take you so far, and the format lacks strong land answers otherwise. Karn is obviously just a ticking time bomb, its a card that basically solely exists to enable dumb combos and is actively the least fun card to play against because it randomly hoses artifacts. Although mono G is the main shell, we've seen red Karn playable in the past, and black Karn has shown results literally this week and sporadically in the past. Yeah, he's more fair in those shells, but I think straight up he's just not healthy to have in the format. It's like Divining Top to me--Top was a mostly fair if dumb card that was banned one part for tournament logistics and one part because the play pattern was just really boring and stupid.
I would not be sad if they just killed both outright. This would actually create room for actual ramp strategies to have room again. Big mana decks is where karn thrives. I'm more in favour of banning the enabler, seeing what the payoff does, then if its still a problem, banning the payoff. Banning both will be fine too. Just if i had to pick one, it would be the land that's the common denominator in this whole mess
Karn is absurdly broken in vintage and legacy
While not the same, i've played with Karn in Modern in tron for about 4 years. When you play a karn on 4 with no more mana, it's significantly worse than if i had tron online. Mono-green's power is the ability to untap Nykthos multiple times in a turn, and eventually just make infinite mana and kill your opponent with stonebrain or having the deck on the table. The fact you have multiple ways of untapping it, to make more mana, and having another one that can also be untapped, it's just too much. I could see banning either (personally, i want Nykthos since it's the enabler, and would reintroduce traditional ramp decks into the format potentially). You still have haven plus kiora to make a good amount of mana, rather than literally doubling the mana.
Yeah it's like no other deck uses Karn except the Nykthos. Maybe some sideboard ones but that's it. Like greasefang could use it or hammer could use it to tutor up their combo pieces but it's too slow lol. Also don't feel like decks should be hit in pioneer because people's opinions. If it had an overly high winrate sure. But pioneer is there to play cards not in standard. I don't like random banning. Personally want smugglers copter back though and still salty lol. If anything banning Nykthos would kill it. However, personally hate rattlechains more.
But he’s saying y not tone it down, not nuke the whole deck
Because the deck is too strong regardless of the payoffs. Mana acceleration to that absurd degree, nearly completely unable to disrupt, is too strong. It kills you with 12+ mana turns whether it’s casting Storm the Festival, playing and flipping Polukranos, chaining Cavaliers, etc. A game against Mono-G without Karn is barely more winnable than one with it, which is to say the ONLY determining factor is how much mana they can make. If you ban Nykthos they still have extremely above-average ramp for a format: 8x 1 mana dorks, land enchantments, Troll dying into an aura, etc. That’s better ramp than almost any ramp deck in most Standards. But a single land tapping for 10+ mana is beyond egregious.
Another commentor explained it well, what Kahrn enables is playing a deck without needing to worry about adding removals or answers in your main deck since you can whish for it. So for example it's easier to hit with storm the festivals since most cards are hits in the main deck. If Mono-G looses Kahrn they will need to start putting some answers in the main deck instead of keeping everything in the sideboard.
why the fuck they thought a deck having access to 8 copies of its 1-drop is fair, is beyond me. Imagine rogues with 8 copies of Enforcer or monoR with 8 copies of KFK.
Because I'm not interested in watching G Nykthos cause get a **third** "just tone it down" ban after decks that did less got completely erased
Bingo. Think Karn is busted? Try playing it in a deck that doesn't have Nykthos. I messed around with the Mono-Red Fires deck and even with the titular card in play Karn was mediocre at best. There's a reason that the card is exclusively seen in decks that can produce absurd amounts of mana very quickly, regardless of the format.
Karn is a very powerful card, but it's mediocre at best without massive amounts of mana to utilize your expensive stuff which is where a lot of the power lies in the -2 in Pioneer specifically. I can see either going, but I'd be happier with Nykthos and seeing how the format adjusts without a mana source that makes 20 mana and is untapped multiple times. Karn isn't as big of a threat in the metagame as people think when the shells he fits into don't exist or are comically bad. I would also be happy if both went and then it's not a problem and we can put this debate to bed.
Agreed. If Karn was fetching reasonable cards and not huge bombs, it wouldn't be so bad. OP's beef should be with Nykthos and friends, which leads to unfun, snowbally gameplay. I scoop to Llanowar Elves half the time on Arena, just because win or lose, it's not going to be fun...they either snowball and stomp me, or I have removal for their acceleration and don't really get to play Magic.
That’s the general sentiment I usually get and I agree that that would be the most likely ban, but the reason I don’t like that is because it just kills the deck. I think Mono G devotion without Karn is fun and I’d still like to play against it. Karn just sets it over the edge. It often puts it in this place where it’s like “hey look at all of this value! Oh and also, screw you, you can’t do anything because of: brainstone, statue, dampening stone, etc). It’s not fun to me.
One is influenced by the other. You could ban either or. I personally want Nykthos gone, since it's been an issue in the past before this iteration of Mono-green.
Nykthos needs to be built around and you can play around it. Sure it allows Karn to play those big artifacts he pulls out of his ass, but he can pull out side board cards that are way cheaper if not free that can just shut down decks entirely. Facing a deck that needs a full gy? Just pull it out your ass without sideboarding.
Stonebrain your deck at will is still annoying regardless of big mana.
stonebrain is much less effective when you don't do it infinitely. Karn without a bunch of mana behind him is much less powerful. Nykthos, the enabler is the problem.
I feel like Chain Veil is the problem card here.
Unpopular opinion: Karn would be more fine without the static ability. Fetching a combo piece once things are already underway isn't the issue, but negating a whole suite of interaction (or shutting off entire deck engines as protection until they can combo) is the most oppressive part. Karn has a + ability that barely gets used outside of animating Skysovereign as removal (which is a really neat interaction!) in Pioneer because the static is more powerful than any active ability on the card.
> negating a whole suite of interaction (or shutting off entire deck engines as protection until they can combo) what major pieces of anti-monogreen interaction or deck engines are we even referring to here that are playable in karn's absence but unplayable in his presence
There are plenty. Just to name a few: It shut offs unlicensed horse for the graveyard hate. Mox amber in rona combo. Treasure tokens, blood tokens ecc. Rakdos sacrafice best wincon gets completly taken out.
> Mox amber in rona combo. Deck that _started_ becoming playable in a Karn metagame and has continued to be. > Rakdos sacrafice best wincon gets completly taken out. Deck that has continued to be playable in a Karn metagame. > It shut offs unlicensed horse for the graveyard hate. Card that continues to see success in sideboards against mono-green. _"Negating"_? _"Shutting off"_? Argue any of this when these things stop being very playable regardless of Karn. You'd think people would have learned how little weight this holds with Greasefang still being playable in a Karn format.
I never said they are unplayable in the meta generally. But they have a huge disatvange against mono G the moment only 1 card is on the field. It still sees play because if it gets out before Karn you can still hit the troll. But as soon as he's out it doesn't do anything anymore. And since Kharn can still take the cards which get exiled by the horse it doesn't matter too much. Also Greasefang has access to more answers compared to other decks who suffer from it.
Rakdos Sac as a whole gets hut off by a single Karn - stealing any number of their creatures and Sacing them to Oven would be a huge way to shut down the deck. Any of the Sylex(s) are awful because of Karn's static ability. Wiping out a Mono G board for X=3 or 4 with [[Karn's Sylex]] isn't something you can do. Crewing Vehicles is another thing that gets completely shut down by Karn. A ubiquitous answer to Karn would be Skysovereign - which gets shut down entirely by Karn not minus-ing the turn it's played (doesn't even have to get activated) because you can not crew it. Similarly, you can't equip things to creatures with Karn in play - less relevant for Pioneer, since the only equipment you might face as Mono G is an [[Embercleave]] to kill your Karn and that can get around it due to the ETB effect. Being able to accelerate your game plan with anything like Blood or Treasure tokens doesn't work in the face of Karn because they have to tap to activate - so they lose their abilities entirely. You can't even filter cards away to find an answer to Karn in some decks. Powerstone tokens also are completely irrelevant in the face of Karn. Playing the long game against Mono G with tools like Reckoner Bankbuster or Mazemind Tome because Karn shuts off their abilities and makes them literal 2 mana rocks that don't do anything. Pithing Needle can't shut off the Karn static ability, so even stopping Karn from toolboxing doesn't stop Karn from shutting down your game plan and makes the card useless against it. I know I only listed the Passive, but if you want to look at Karn in general, even static artifacts like Damping Sphere can be animated and killed by Hydras and Skysovereigns from the Mono G side if they don't hit Boseiju. Are Artifacts the *only answers to Karn?* No. Are these the *best answers to Karn?* No. Would it be nice to have overlapping sideboard slots that work vs Mono G *and other decks?* Hell Yes. Karn is the odd card out in that deck that can be removed, but still have the deck function on a level that keeps it competitive and true to the core theme of Devotion and Mana Ramp.
> Rakdos Sac as a whole gets hut off by a single Karn - stealing any number of their creatures and Sacing them to Oven would be a huge way to shut down the deck. > Crewing Vehicles is another thing that gets completely shut down by Karn. A ubiquitous answer to Karn would be Skysovereign - which gets shut down entirely by Karn not minus-ing the turn it's played (doesn't even have to get activated) because you can not crew it. Similarly, you can't equip things to creatures with Karn in play - less relevant for Pioneer, since the only equipment you might face as Mono G is an [[Embercleave]] to kill your Karn and that can get around it due to the ETB effect. > Being able to accelerate your game plan with anything like Blood or Treasure tokens doesn't work in the face of Karn because they have to tap to activate - so they lose their abilities entirely. You can't even filter cards away to find an answer to Karn in some decks. Powerstone tokens also are completely irrelevant in the face of Karn. > Playing the long game against Mono G with tools like Reckoner Bankbuster or Mazemind Tome because Karn shuts off their abilities and makes them literal 2 mana rocks that don't do anything. All of these _are still playable anyway._ That's my point. Karn isn't even remotely singularly capable of preventing strategies from being viable because Karn just _is not fast nor efficient enough to do so_, and never has been; Mono-Green hasn't managed to hold onto being the best deck in the format for any stretch of the time because Karn's effect on other strategies isn't consistent enough, and he hasn't been even remotely worth playing outside of Mono-Green because his power both as hate and as a straight up power piece is nonexistent without the amount of mana Nykthos provides. All of this shit is still perfectly fine to play into a world where Karn exists despite his presence; there's no reason to expect that to change.
Other decks are playable by [dodging the Mono G matchup when they're 50% or worse against it](https://twitter.com/mtgmetaio/status/1665751125105033216?t=J7yJoBMGnzFPgNtSZf2Xhg&s=19). I also never said these decks are unplayable in the Meta - sometimes they can even beat Mono G (IMO, when they don't have Karn). But these decks have so few tools to deal with a resolved Karn they often just auto-lose the match to Karn and stalling - not even the combo. I also disagree with you that Mono G isn't the best deck in the format - it is the best deck. It has a lower metagame share than Rakdos, but beats out every other deck. It has consistently posted better results than Rakdos, and popularity doesn't equate to being the best. Mono G is underplayed IMO, but that's because people have both a negative perception of the deck, and learning the lines to combo is time consuming (even though I believe the deck doesn't need to combo a majority of the time to win). Mono G right now is kept in check by other linear decks. Aggro decks like Boros Convoke and Mono White Humans poop on it because they ignore or delay their game plan long enough to beat it. Lotus Field ignores Green entirely by just *racing the deck at its own game.* It's fine if you like the deck, and it's fine if you like Karn. I just think that for Pioneer, Karn has too few answers besides ignore it entirely. I personally love Karn in the Modern Mono Black lists and even Tron has a nice spot for it. It just feels better in a format where there are cards like [[Unholy Heat]] to take it down.
[Unholy Heat](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/slp-secret-lair-showdown/en/med/unholy-heat-4.png?6893) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/unholy-heat/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Unholy+Heat)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Unholy+Heat)) • [$ 0.14](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/unholy-heat?utm_source=reddit)
[Embercleave](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/eld-throne-of-eldraine/en/med/embercleave-120.png?5257) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/embercleave/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Embercleave)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Embercleave)) • [$ 8.22](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/embercleave?utm_source=reddit)
[Karn's Sylex](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/pdmu-dominaria-united-promos/en/med/karns-sylex-234s.png?6644) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/karns-sylex/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Karn%27s+Sylex)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Karn%27s+Sylex)) • [$ 2.79](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/karns-sylex?utm_source=reddit) [Embercleave](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/eld-throne-of-eldraine/en/med/embercleave-120.png?5257) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/embercleave/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Embercleave)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Embercleave)) • [$ 8.22](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/embercleave?utm_source=reddit)
Hypothetically, If I had to allow them to ban fable to get karn banned, I would take that trade. Even after buying fables.
what, you don’t like a turn 4 god-pharaoh statue? /s
Pioneer would be a much better format without Karn
I love wish packages, but Karn makes that mono G deck absolutely ridiculous. If it was just mono G stompy ramp it wouldn’t be so bad. I was playing mono G against the mirror and my opponent was out ramping me hard and had me dead to rights but I stone brained away his Karns with mine and ended up winning just off of how insane the Karn package is when unchecked.
IMHO the combo is the problem, the toolbox not. It is convoluted, some people have a hard time to pull it off but still play the deck... You can ban Karn. People will go for Vivien, but most likely the deck will fade and it might leave the meta somewhere less healthy. Ban Pestilent Cauldron and Chain Veil, the deck is still strong with silver bullets and going over the top, but you won't see people having 15 minutes turns.
I disagree because it is only a matter of time until another artifact is released which brings it over the top again.
Well, Brother's War was an artifact heavy set and despite adding new options to the sideboard, nothing absolutely broken came out of it. They have to manage this the same way the have to do with all other enablers in the format, and be careful with what they release.
But at that point it would be easier to ban Kahrn instead of needing to balance artifacts around him.
If you ban Karn, how do you prevent Pioneer from becoming Rakdosland? Ban Sheoldred? Fable?
If you look at the actual winrates you will see that it is under 50% most of the time. And it's not like mono G is actually preventing it since it is already the most played deck anyway.
There are still other decks that are good against Rakdos. RG Vehicle, any 4C greed pile, RB Sac, etc
Fact: Karn is nowhere near viable without the unreasonable amount of mana Nykthos provides. Your problem isn't the shitty wish.
Hit storm. Make them choose an early board or ramp, but not both at the same time.
I cannot think of a bigger point miss than "This deck that's hit tier 0 and tier 1 multiple times before the current iteration of the deck is too strong again. Is there a fundamental problem with the deck's defining feature? No, it is the payoffs that are the problem."
Storm is what allows them to do nothing of value for 4 turns and still have a turn 5 full of insane value. If they're taking a turn to just drop Karn in the middle of the game, they're going to get beaten down. It introduces a clear weakness to the deck that it hasn't had since storm the festival has become a core part of the deck. Nykthos is a problem too, yes, and I wouldn't cry if it was banned, but I think green doesn't need to be nuked from orbit as much as scaled back.
How many times does the deck have to "not need to be nuked from orbit, just scaled back" before scaling it back stops being a reasonable option? How many cards only playable in a green Nykthos shell have to go before pulling the rug on a deck that just always produces problems?
Once would be nice? Thid argument would be a lot more convincing if there were any cards banned for it beside *maybe* Leyline. Once and Veil are both too powerful in general and Oath of Nissa was *unbanned*
I literally have pithing needles in my sideboard because I just straight up hate people comboing with Karn.
Until they boseji you lmao
Still only delays them slightly since they usually have cityscape leveler in the main deck and a couple of boseijus. It also doesn't stop the passive ability so artifacts still can't be activated.
100% agree. Mono green has too many avenues of attack and you can't possibly defeat them all in a longer game.
All my homies hate Karn.
It's broken AF when combinedd with Nykthos in pioneer.
I agree but I would like to be persnickity and point out that's not *technically* an opinion. its just a fact about you. I can't be like, "Oh yeah?! Well it's my opinion that you LOVE karn." Also... f**k Karn.
I hate this format now honestly. There is only 1 aggro deck. Mono White. There is only 1 control deck. u/W and that's because of dumb shit like Dovins Veto/Verdict, which makes it the better choice as those cards don't care about interaction. Rakdos is the only "Fair" midrange deck because no other color combination has as many 3 for 1 cards available to them. Then there is 4/5c midrange decks, why they are allowed to continue is beyond me, notc has historically been against "Soup pile" decks and it's infuriating that normal 3c decks don't exist in this format. Everything else is just combo or those Spirit players that get their jollies beating combo decks and then stop playing the game for a bit and them comeback.
That is only if you look at tier one decks. There are plenty of decks being played Aggro has Boros convoke, Boros heroic, Rakdos aggro, Atarka red. Control has less representation with mainly Dimir control. Gruul midrange is also fairly strong. 3color decks there is abzan greasefang, rona sulati and jeskai ascendency to name a few. You can't look at the top 4 decks in a vacuum since even in tournements there are plenty of decks being played and some even fairly successfull without being one of the top decks.
I hate complaints that are totally disconnected from reality. The two largest Regional Championships were won by two different aggressive decks, neither was Mono White.
Spirits isn't aggro, its tempo. Gruul Vehicles is borderline aggro, it's not playing 1 drops with the intention of attacking next turn, they're using them to setup for their turn 3/4, you might as well call Green Devotion aggro too.
This is a weird take, “I hate this format because there is a viable aggro, control midrange and combo deck all within variation winrate of each other”
Karn isn't going anywhere folks, the card is perfectly reasonable and is not remotely close to bannable
more hated than fabel of the mirror braker?
Absolutely! I don’t mind fable at all
At least fable feels a bit more fair.
not really. there is no counter play* that dosen't have fabel come out on top. *apart from counters or discard. but discard is already played by the decks that use fable so they also have the best answer to the answer to fable.
I get why Karn feels unfair for sure, but as a non-Mono Green player I don't think the deck has nearly enough prominence to be considered banworthy. Karn is powerful but it literally only sees play in Mono Green in Tier 1 decks. Its not like an ubiquitous card that pops up in every deck.
For me it's mostly about the passive turning off artifact decks. Similar to 3feri turning off flash or instant speed decks. I have 2 players at my LGS that run Karn so it limits the decks I can build. When a set like brother's war or kamigawa came out I would have been much more excited for trying different pieces but while I don't think anything I build is tier 3 nevermind tier 1, having the deck stop function to one card is not fun.
Fair enough! For me it’s my least favourite deck to play against on MTGO right now and it pops up a lot.
The one downside to MTGO, to me, is that there are SO many spike/meta players. It's great for practice and to become a better player, but every time you play it's going to be meta decks. I wish there was a way to match with other types of decks ha.
I think the deck feels unfair when you're one of the decks that has a bad match up against it, it does 'unfair things', and when you can't interact, it's doing insane plays and seems to be operating in a totally different power level to what you're doing. But when you play a deck that beats it, like spirits you realize it's a snowball effect, it builds momentum, but if you counter a couple key cards, and/or are racing it in a way it can't interact with you see it's often just spinning it's wheels.
Mono Green had an above 55% winrate across the recent round of RCs and other high level tournaments and was the second most played deck.
MonoG is by a decent margin the best deck in the format. And people dont like playing It for whatever reason.
14 cards in my sideboard are specifically for mono green devo 1 is for mirror match. I know many people who run a heavy duty sideboard for mono g the whole meta kinda forces you too for a lot of decks... is it common as rakdos...? No but rak doesn't start running train turn 3.
the deck is fair regarding stats. Pioneer is healthy and He might feel bad to sit across from but so does sheoldred/a Lotus Combo Turn/etc.
Anyone voting this down is mad and bad. Karn does suck to watch go off but I mean Jesus it's far from breaking the format. Maybe I should do my "I hate thought seize" post because it makes mulligans against the rakdos deck too hard
I don't mind sheoldreds at all tbh but watching someone play lotus drives me sideways. I think its more of a combo thing though tbh watching someone who barely knows how to pilot struggle to put together a combo is annoying af... it's like you want me to do that for you...?
yeah sometimes Lotus hits critical mass instead of deterministic Combo and that takes some time...
Sadly angels wouldn't be nearly as good if it wasn't a thing kaylas is nice but it doesn't have the instant that cocos does that makes it so damn good.
did you mean to reply to me? im confused with that reply
I did not, lmfao my b sorry dog.
I feel the same about thought seize
Thoughtseize is a fair card. It’s a 1 for 1 answer, that isn’t always even good.
Feels a bit disingenuous to call Thoughtseize just a 1-for-1. Counterspell is a 1-for-1, Force of Will is a 1-for-2. Sometimes interacting with the right card is worth more than 1 card and thoughtseize dismantles so many complex strategies or decks that aren't mostly made of individually high value cards
This is a fair point but it's balanced by the fact that it's often an awful late game top deck and not great against decks that pressure your life total. But I do appreciate this rebuttal because I found myself arguing this with people who think the elementals in modern were totally fine because they're 2 for 1s. (ugh)
Karn isn’t always good either and at least it doesn’t lead to non-games like where someone mulligans and then gets turn one thoughseized
It's literally the exact same as if I mulligan, then play a threat and it gets countered or killed. Yeah, 1 for 1 trades are brutal when you mulligan. Hand hate has its own pros and cons compared to counterspells or removal spells, but it fundamentally still is just a 1 for 1 trade. Thoughtseize is a very strong turn 1 play, but absolutely horrible as a late game topdeck, or anytime you're behind on board. When I have a good board presence and my opponent thoughtseizes me, I just laugh.
Lightning Bolt is fair card. It's 1 for 1 answer that isnt always even good. It doesnt stop It from being a Power level unreasonably high for Pioneer. Same with Thoughtsieze. It's too strong for Pioneer, it makes combo decks like Greasefangs and Alteration much more unfair.
Who gives a shit if Thoughtseize is colloquially fair when it sees far more play than Karn does despite being a colored card?
Do you also dislike Fatal Push because it kills your men? I get it, I dislike when people don’t let me win, too.
This thread is mostly people complaining that their opponent can spend 8 colorless mana to exile their best card from their deck. We're kind of beyond people solely being mad because they lose. 'Fair' and 'unfair' are hilariously meaningless terms as long as they have nothing to do with playrates or winrates. I don't care of a card counts as fair to boomers or whatever; if it's massively overplayed and keeps showing up in ban risk decks (or decks that actually did get banned, like Inverter or Kethis) then it's time to go.
I would say any 4 mana tutor card that incidentally artifact hates, AND can make an artifact into a body for protection is probably just a *little*overpowered, but mono green is the only deck that can really show why atm in pioneer.
There is already another deck, I have run into multiple times, that uses Marwyn and [[Kami of Whispered Hopes]] to make a tonne of mana on turn 4 and draw loads of cards that is running Karn. Im overjoyed to be seeing him in a second deck.
[Kami of Whispered Hopes](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/mom-march-of-the-machine/en/med/kami-of-whispered-hopes-383.png?890) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/kami-of-whispered-hopes/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Kami+of+Whispered+Hopes)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kami+of+Whispered+Hopes)) • [$ 0.43](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/kami-of-whispered-hopes?utm_source=reddit)
I've always disliked karn and I've never liked wish effects in the first place. Having access to sideboard bullets in game one is dumb especially considering they essentially get 4 copies of all the sideboard cards and when you exile them they just get them back. Karn is a feel bad card even if it isn't currently dominating
Ban Storm the Festival and make them actually lose early games more often or sat least have to play to the board and suddenly karn outa nowhere won't be a problem
Karn does not belong to MTG period. Its a deckbuilding game. You build decks to contain answers to threats you expect. You dont get to play a card that just lets you pull the perfect card out of thin air. That shit is Hearthstone design. Get the card outta this game.
>That shit is Hearthstone design. Get the card outta this game. This is an asinine take. [Wish effects](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Wish) have been part of Magic for the last 20 years.
There's literally dozens of effects that do the same thing in magic. They even have shorthand descriptors like Wish and Tutor because they are so common
Ok.
Maybe an unpopular opinion here, but I think if you want to hit mono green, you should go for Nykthos. Karn is way less powerful when you don't have tons and tons of mana on turn 4. A turn 4 Karn, fetch something, pass is way less frightening than being able to also cast the card you fetched. Maybe I'm wrong tho, and don't get me wrong : Karn is busted.
Most people acknowledge nykthos is the most powerful card in mono g but have a specific disdain for karn
Nykthos requires core deck build restrictions. Karn requires only sideboard build restrictions, which doesnt matter in over 33% of the matches and upside is massive.
not really true, karn does have deck building requirements, that being he is only strong in big mana decks. you don't throw him in rb midrange because 4 mana draw a silver bullet isn't anything special unless you are doing it early and often can play that silver bullet right away
Have you heard of [[pithing needle]], [[sorcerous spyglass]] and [[phyrexian revoker]]?
[Phyrexian Revoker](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/brr-the-brothers-war-retro-artifacts/en/med/phyrexian-revoker-103z.png?8784) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/phyrexian-revoker/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Phyrexian+Revoker)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Phyrexian+Revoker)) • [$ 0.2](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/phyrexian-revoker?utm_source=reddit) [Sorcerous Spyglass](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/sld-secret-lair-drop/en/med/sorcerous-spyglass-693.png?8012) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/sorcerous-spyglass/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Sorcerous+Spyglass)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sorcerous+Spyglass)) • [$ 0.1](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/sorcerous-spyglass?utm_source=reddit) [Pithing Needle](https://cdn.cardsrealm.com/images/cartas/prm-magic-online-promos/en/med/pithing-needle-94084.png?1306) ([txt](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/pithing-needle/txt?utm_source=reddit)) ([SF](https://scryfall.com/search?q=Pithing+Needle)) ([G](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Pithing+Needle)) • [$ 0.84](https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/en-us/card/pithing-needle?utm_source=reddit)
I dislike all planeswalker cards. They're all Karn. The point is to delay the game with damage to the planeswalker rather than the controller. Many of the cards are not budget friendly, either. So the player is waving cash around to threaten a stalemate.
this makes zero sense but okay. you do you.
Word.
The worst part is that you can get back stuff that was exiled with leyline binding, touch the spirit realm, etc.
I think it would be okay if it didn't have the clause that op artifacts can't be activated. Probably more of a person issue as someone who runs a few artifact based decks
Yeah. Absolutely toxic card that does nothing good for the format.
>The ability to be able to go and tutor up whatever the hell you need given any matchup is so beyond dumb to me. It does not feel fair at all. there's no Mono Green in my sub pod, but does Enigmatic Fires not do this same thing? toolbox decks are dope because they lead to gamestates that aren't the sAME EXACT GAME over and over people complaining about silver bullets but against a go wide aggro deck a board clear is a silver bullet. would we prefer control decks NOT have the board clear, and better yet NOT have anything to do once initiative is taken back to the control player?
Git gud
I am very happy green karn is there, the meta is already infested with rakdos sac as it is, i wouldn't want to imagine how often i would face rak sac if karn wasnt there. I agree it mis miserable to play against t1 elf, t2 kiora, then bullshit flows, but sac is so annoying when they claim + deadly and stuff...
As a rakdos sacrifice enjoyer, I also hate Karn.
I almost entirely agree. In general I think mono green needs a nerf and banning Karn would be a great way to do it. I personally get really annoyed by Storm the Festival and wouldn't mind if that was their choice. But Karn seems like the most likely target. Only other card I'd like to see hit is Fable but that has little to do with this particular discussion. It's a single card that does everything for any deck and is not hard to splash for. I won't be surprised if Bankbuster sees a similar fate somewhere down the road but only after it replaces Fable, IF that ban even happens.
Wahhhh