It's anew season! War of the Spark has hit Magic Online and with it a whole slew of new commons. Let's see which ones made waves on April 28!
Oh.
The headline here is that there were 32 copies of Augur of Bolas in the Top 8. Every deck in the Top 8 ran 4. There were 13 copies of Dimir Delver in the the Top 32, 8 of which finished in the Top 16. Nine of the decks with a 4-2 record or better were Dimir Delver. If you've followed me you know that I believe that Gush is a problematic card and warrants a ban and that to balance this the Monarch needs to go as well. But there is a vocal contingent that believes Augur of Bolas deserves to get the axe instead. The numbers from Sunday ask us to take a look at the merfolk and examine the merit of the argument.
Augur of Bolas gets a lot of credit for the decline in aggressive strategies. It is not just the fact that Augur is a good blocker with three toughness, but also that it can find a removal spell and help to keep the board clear. In this mode, Augur stops two creatures - the one it kills and the one it blocks. Unlike Elvish Visionary Augur doesn't die to a stiff breeze. Coming down on turn two makes it that much harder for a deck like Stompy, loaded with 2/2s, to push through early damage. That is to say nothing of when Augur finds a card like Daze and helps to choke the aggressive deck on deployment.
None of this is inherently false. Augur sees play because it is an excellent 2-for-1 and helps you find key cards. There is no doubt that the ubiquity of Augur has contributed to aggro's struggles. But it is not the lone culprit. At the same time that Augur came to prevalence, Palace Sentinels hit the scene which pushed Prismatic Strands from a sideboard all-star to a maindeck card. The presence of Strands in the main 60 has also put a dent in aggressive decks ability to win games. Similarly Tron decks gained access to a Dinrova Horror endgame. Horror-Ghostly Flicker became on the best ways to utilize Tron mana and surviving to that point became a high priority. As such these decks adopted additional copies of Moment's Peace as a way to buy time. No one of these would be enough to spell the end of beatdown but combined they do more than enough to make attacking a losing prospect.
Augur of Bolas does have one attribute that the triumvirate against beatdown otherwise lacks - it is blue. Blue decks - specifically Delver decks - were weak to Stompy and other beatdown decks until the advent of Augur of Bolas. The ability to block and draw a piece of interaction gave Delver decks access to a piece of defense they previously lacked.
The problem with this is less that Augur of Bolas is a blocker and less that it draws a card, it's more the cards it does draw. One of the allures of Augur of Bolas is that it does a great job of drawing other extremely powerful cards - that shouldn't be a strike against Augur but against the cards it draws. To be clear, Augur of Bolas finding a Skred or a Snuff Out might be a powerful play but it is within the realm of the overall power of the format.
Finding Gush, or Ponder, or Preordain however is another story altogether. Augur of Bolas does a fantastic job of finding other powerful blue cards which in turn do an excellent job of finding other powerful cards. Augur is often the first step on this road to card advantage but it is the only one that sticks on the board, sneering at a Burning-Tree Emissary. It is evidence hiding in plain sight that attacking is for losers.
Does Augur of Bolas deserve a ban? Maybe, but it isn't where I would start. Augur should be a 2-for-1 as those are the backbone of Pauper. If part of the problem is the fact that Augur of Bolas digs for broken cards, let's make the first step taking out one of the most egregiously powerful cards available in the format.
Gush, I'm talking about Gush.
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