From: Metrotog95@aol.com
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 13:01:43 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Counterpost Analysis

          Over the past few months ive been wondering if counterpost is 
still the best overall deck to play in the current type 2 enviorment. And 
after much consideration ive decided that its not.The following is a brief 
explanation of my strong opinion against using this deck.
          Type 2 has speeded up dramatically in the past 2 months.One 
thing a good CPost deck hates is a fast enviornment, due  to its sloth 
like playing style ,and extremely slow strategy. Ever since weatherlight 
entered the enviornment the vast majority of players have been using its 
resources to the fullest. Perhaps the scariest threath to Cpost recently 
has been Buried Alive , and the animator deck that is based around it.
In order for CPost to defeat a creature heavy deck , it must rely on its 
3 main creature removal cards: wrath of god,swords to plowshares, and
Quicksand. The problem with this is that the buried alive deck does not 
worry about wrath of god, or quicksand due to the fact that its creatures 
are constantly being recycled, and sacked to a hungry Krovikan Horror to 
deal a damage to the Cpost player .As well,anything plowed can be saced 
to the horror before it is removed from the game. This leaves counterpost 
with must counter buried alives.The second thing that makes buried alive 
pound on CPost is its use of the black knights, and orders. All 8 of the 
knights in the buried alive deck have protection from white, a strong 
commodity against CPost. The buried player will restrict himself to one 
knight in play at any given time , this is so the cpost player has to 
use up wrath of gods to stop 1 creature. So now counterpost has to deal 
with 8 knights, and creatures that he can only deal with by removing them 
from the game (ashen ghoul,nether shadow,krovikan horror). The final 
incentive that the buried deck has over the Cpost is Necropotence. As 
far as im concerned,  Necro is a MUST COUNTER card for the Cpost player.
      If the necro gets through, the buried player can use up his 
undamaged life total to draw burieds, knights, and anything else he 
needs to win the game.Thus counterpost has supreme problems with the 
Buried deck, due to too many must counter cards (buried alive,Necro,even 
krovikan horror,and prot.from white knights). So counterpost cant beat 
buried alive in its basic form. But, what about Buried alive with white 
for serenity and disenchant? Or Buried Alive with Red for lancers and 
incinerate? Or Blue for arcanes?Its obvious, even after cpost sideboards 
in furnace,and COP Black,it still has too much trouble dealing with Buried 
Alive.
          Another factor in the eventual demise of Counterpost is the 
extremely useful Weatherlight rare, Abeyance. At first glance this may 
seem like a great thing to add into cpost, but it is actually whites way 
of saying it would rather be in a burn deck. (heh) This card can do one 
of two things to CPost:

1)It becomes a must counter card so that you cant counter an armageddon.
2)It can be used as a way of stopping Cpost from doing anything on its 
turn (eventhough counterpost doesnt do much on his turn anyway)

The first use of abeyance vs CPost is self explanatory,(you counter my 
abeyance, now your tapped out to counter my geddon), or, (you counter 
my abeyance,now you dont have anymore counters to counter my geddon)
The second use of abeyance vs CPost is not as effective as the first,
(My abeyance gets through on your turn, now you can do less of what you 
were going to do,and i draw a card).
Its obvious this card is a headache for CPost,especially when added in a
good weenie or burn deck.
          In a nut shell counterpost has an easy time with only a few 
decks (red blue hammer, and maybe white weenie that doesnt use blue for 
arcs and sleights). Any deck that cant beat the majority of the playing 
field isnt worth playing. Alot of people feel that the slow Gerrards 
Wisdom is great for CPost, it is, but it just doesnt buy enough time 
for cpost to win against Buried Alive,or anything as fast.The enviornment
has to many buried decks,red white burn decks,swarm geddon decks,and 
over all too much speed to use counterpost as effectively as we may have 
been able to before. It is my opinion that you shouldnt use Counterpost 
due to its sloth like play,and slow strategy.

Metrotog95@aol.com