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SpikeyMikey
09-08-2011, 01:15 PM
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/modern/22722_Constructed_Criticism_Modern_Moving_Forward.html

Todd Anderson's article today discusses his take on the Modern banned list in the wake of the PT. I already expressed my feelings over there; I don't think you have much room to comment on the metagame when you admit that you had it pegged completely wrong to begin with. But I thought I would get some opinions here. What do you guys think about the banned list? Do you think anything should come off? Do you think Cloudpost and Twin should be nerfed? Do you think it's too early to tell, or that the metagame will self-adjust and settle into a state of flux the way Legacy's meta does?

Sims
09-08-2011, 01:33 PM
As someone who abandoned his SCG account long ago because the forums were pretty horrendous, you have me wishing I could log into them at work so I could tell the person how stupid this is. He's basically asking them to ban 12-post decks down, slow down combo via losing rite of flame, and then let the format turn into standard Pre-bannings of Jace and Stoneforge.

I didn't want to play that Standard then, I didn't enjoy it when Legacy turned into LAWL BLADECONTROLALAWLALALAWL.... why on earth would I want to play that Format again now in Modern? No thank you. The format is fine as it is currently. Maybe control needs better tools to fight combo so that the format can try to do the whole Rock, paper, scissors thing... but honestly I think it's too early to make that call and they should leave the format alone to grow and define itself. THEN take action if action need be taken.

tl;dr: Don't be a tool, I don't want to play another iteration of Caw-Blade.format

TheInfamousBearAssassin
09-08-2011, 01:59 PM
It's mind boggling that anyone would be unaware enough to think that they're even considering taking Jace, SFM, or even Mental Misstep off the banned list after the damage the first two did to Standard, and all the complaints they're getting about the latter ruining Legacy (which I think is overstated personally, but then I thought the flip cards from Kamigawa were cool.)

dahcmai
09-08-2011, 02:15 PM
Unban Necro, then ban everything until Necro is good. Then Ban Necro. lol

Admiral_Arzar
09-08-2011, 02:20 PM
This article is yet another example of some blue player whining about blue not dominating a format for once. He, like everyone else I've seen talk about bans lately, is completely jumping the gun. We need much more data before anything can be banned - the format has to settle into an actual metagame. Then, if combo still dominates, we can think of nerfing something/unbanning control cards.

rufus
09-08-2011, 02:23 PM
Not to mention they could print some strong combo hosers in the next set instead of messing with the ban list...

Sims
09-08-2011, 02:35 PM
If people are freaking out about Twin I would LOVE to see Zoo decks start boarding in shit like Root Maze to slow the combo down and then pummel them with removal while their lands are coming into play tapped and they have a harder time countering. Shit, i'd love to see people playing Root Maze, period.

Edit: Actually, it would probably fit better in Green Post... 8 of theirl ands come into play tapped anyways, minor modifications to the deck could easily make Root Maze a viable speedbump against combo that doesn't hinder post as badly.

SpikeyMikey
09-08-2011, 02:38 PM
This article is yet another example of some blue player whining about blue not dominating a format for once. He, like everyone else I've seen talk about bans lately, is completely jumping the gun. We need much more data before anything can be banned - the format has to settle into an actual metagame. Then, if combo still dominates, we can think of nerfing something/unbanning control cards.

I think combo will continue to do well and that control will continue to be non-existent. Zoo has tools to beat combo and so does GreenPost, but combo can still fight back. Actually, what does the best job of beating up on combo is Jund. You take a relatively quick clock and back it up with Thoughtseize and Blightning. But Jund loses to Zoo because Putrid Leech and Thoughtseize aren't cards you want to play against Wild Nacatl and Lightning Bolt.

Honestly though, even if they unbanned all of the blue cards on the list, control would still be dead in the water. The more of a stranglehold control puts on aggro and combo (and thus the less focus in sideboards on beating GreenPost), the more GreenPost would dominate. And honestly, despite the poor outing at the PT, GreenPost is still the best deck in the format. I would say that Splinter Twin beats it relatively consistently (which is why I felt Twin was the top deck going into Philly) but Persist and Zoo should beat Twin.

Tammit67
09-08-2011, 03:23 PM
I can't believe I read this poorly conceived bullshit

death
09-08-2011, 03:31 PM
or reprint Force of Will

GGoober
09-08-2011, 05:23 PM
It's an alright article, but what makes it TROLOLable is his choice of ban/unban:

Unbans: Jace, SFM, Mental Misstep
Bans: Rite of Flame, Cloud Post, combo etc

Seems like he REALLY just wants to play Stoneblade in Modern lol.

Personally I think Jace, MM, SFM can all come off, since without FoW/Daze, Stoneblade is alright, and is powerful but nowhere over the top. BBE/Zoo beats it all day (postboard Grips/Ancient Grudge). Tapping out on turn 4 for a Jace without FoW/Daze is like asking him to be destroyed.

But with Jace, SFM, MM unbanned possibly, banning Rite of Flame, Cloud Post, combo makes zero sense. The whole point of unbanning is to power certain decks, not to destroy good existing decks. Todd is the perfect example of someone how writes in a 'general' tone, but is in fact looking at the situation/format from a very narrow perspective, and that is he isn't really giving the format enough time to mature before making his decisions.

I mean, it's less than a few months into Modern, and we are acting like we know the format inside out. Who woulda thought infect make a debut in a sea of Cloudpost/Zoo/Ascension/Twin? It's called, the format is still too young, the banlist is like a virgin squeezed too tight for now, but adding more things onto the banlist is like asking Modern players to play Extended Standard all over again.

Last thing: It still seems that WotC THEMSELVES are treating Modern in the wrong light. Their intention with the initial list is to make it as conservative and promote a more direct/aggro environment. This clearly failed because any format with severly weakened control is just going to see a big boom of combo if it is viable. Modern has viable combo decks, and I think WotC just needs to stop treating their Pro Tour formats as Standard/limited formats. There is something to be said about an 'eternal' format where combo/aggro/control are all viable. Oh wait, it's called Legacy, but WotC doesn't really care as much for the only truly awesome format in the game.

Kanti
09-08-2011, 08:08 PM
I had wrote a wall of text but I lost it. Anyhow...

Banning Post should be on the table. It neuters so many strategies, many of them being blue decks that aren't combo. Spell Snare starts to look really meek vs Post. Spell Snare against the rest of the format? Pretty good. The fact that 12post just eats a NLB deck that has all the cards it needs and more legal to hold down a format infested with combo should be indicative of something.

Another option is unbanning Bitterblossom. Reintroducing Ub Faeries to modern might work as they would be the formats police force in dealing with combo decks. This would be better than introducing Uw Stoneforge as the control deck of the format as that would just create the biggest problems for Zoo, while Faeries would be a hell of a lot more manageable.

Something should be done but what is with that dude? Ban Rite of Flame? Ban Inkmoth Nexus? Give me a break.

Edit: Mental Misstep should not be unbanned. Yes it would make control stronger and it might make combo weaker, might since combo would play it, but it would kill Zoo. This should not happen.

Amon Amarth
09-08-2011, 08:45 PM
Haven't read the article but this quote lost me really early on:

"With that said, on to some real business: Modern. Possibly the fastest Pro Tour format in recent history, Modern displayed aggressive and consistent third turn kills, which is faster and possibly more degenerate than Pro Tour: Tinker early last decade..."

Like the amount of fucking stupid in that post just hurts.

Sims
09-08-2011, 09:17 PM
Wow... I cannot believe I missed that line while i was reading the article at work. If I had noticed it I would have stopped reading then and there. That is asinine.

Scordata
09-08-2011, 09:25 PM
What's wrong with a combo format?

honestabe
09-08-2011, 10:20 PM
Why is everyone's instinct to ban things?

Why not unban Bitterblossom and Ancestral Vision to let faeries beat the crap out of all the combo. Then zoo can just beat the crap out of faeries.

Seems like the most logical move to me; changes the format without having to ban more cards. Banning cards sucks

honestabe
09-08-2011, 10:20 PM
Why is everyone's instinct to ban things?

Why not unban Bitterblossom and Ancestral Vision to let faeries beat the crap out of all the combo. Then zoo can just beat the crap out of faeries.

Seems like the most logical move to me; changes the format without having to ban more cards. Banning cards sucks

Michael Keller
09-09-2011, 12:04 AM
There is something to be said about an 'eternal' format where combo/aggro/control are all viable. Oh wait, it's called Legacy, but WotC doesn't really care as much for the only truly awesome format in the game.

You're right, they obviously don't care much about a format that will be the cornerstone of two Grand Prix events in a single year - and has been for two years straight.

Zolek
09-09-2011, 05:12 AM
Wizards won't tolerate such a combo heavy format so you can bet on the banned list changing somehow. At the same time his suggestions are awful.

The two avenues open are attacking combo decks with more bannings, or unbanning blue and its partners in crime. One will happen. Which? Who knows.

Amon Amarth
09-09-2011, 05:42 AM
Wow... I cannot believe I missed that line while i was reading the article at work. If I had noticed it I would have stopped reading then and there. That is asinine.

Best way to start an article is to make inappropriate comparisons to Tinker, apparently.

Azel Orfat
09-09-2011, 06:05 AM
They'll surely nerf combo decks taking into account what they said: "we are going to allow turn-four combination decks, but not decks that consistently win the game on turn three" (IMO too aggresive rule because even some aggro decks break it). On the other hand nerfing combo will surely make the 12Post vs Control issue harder to resolve.

So, at first I was more in favor of just nerfing 12post (emrakul f.e.) but now I'm more about killing the deck. Emrakul is very hard for Control (I could even agree that it's too much inevitable) but I don't think that it's too much logical to be surprised about autolosing to a casted card of 15 mana (Other theme is Emrakul in combination with cards that break that cost barrier like Goryo's Vengeance). Then I think that the solution is more about killing the engine that it's not other than Cloudpost.

I mean that if not Emrakul other strong option against Control should be there. Such a big mana advantage should be enough to beat Control, otherwise I'd found it very rare. Maybe you can currently palliate the visible results of an unfair mana resource (banning Emrakul) and in future editions return to the same problem because you haven't atacked the root (Cloudpost).

But my problem is that I'm not entirely sure that 12post mana advantage is unfair enough or that Emrakul is fair enough even withouth 12post. What I can have clear is that the combination is veeeery hard :smile:. For example maybe now it's all ok with Cloudpost out and in a year we miss it because it was a nice way to regulate a heavy control metagame.

I just hope that wotc knows the right move.

DrJones
09-09-2011, 09:30 AM
Be it right or wrong, it will involve a kick in the nuts of some section of the audience. :smile:

KevinTrudeau
09-09-2011, 01:03 PM
By comparing the combo decks in Modern to Extended Tinker decks and propsing to ban Inkmoth Nexus, Mr. Anderson has certainly lost me as a reader forevermore. I don't mean to offend him in any way, but it makes me kind of upset when I see articles like that get published on large websites, yet see more intelligent propositions concerning Modern get relegated to forum posts.

JACO
09-09-2011, 01:17 PM
First of all, this article sucked. Yeah, let's take a new format with a huge ban list and add like 8 more cards to it. Great idea.

Second:
I think combo will continue to do well and that control will continue to be non-existent. Zoo has tools to beat combo and so does GreenPost, but combo can still fight back. Actually, what does the best job of beating up on combo is Jund. You take a relatively quick clock and back it up with Thoughtseize and Blightning. But Jund loses to Zoo because Putrid Leech and Thoughtseize aren't cards you want to play against Wild Nacatl and Lightning Bolt.

Honestly though, even if they unbanned all of the blue cards on the list, control would still be dead in the water. The more of a stranglehold control puts on aggro and combo (and thus the less focus in sideboards on beating GreenPost), the more GreenPost would dominate. And honestly, despite the poor outing at the PT, GreenPost is still the best deck in the format. I would say that Splinter Twin beats it relatively consistently (which is why I felt Twin was the top deck going into Philly) but Persist and Zoo should beat Twin.How do you come to the conclusion that GreenPost is still the best deck in the format? The 4C Zoo list can beat it (which is why LSV, Owen, Wrapter, and a ton of other people did well with Zoo in a field of 20% 12-Post), and it gets absolutely crushed by Splinter Twin, Blue Poison, and GrapeshotSwath. Splinter Twin is by far the best deck in the format, at least until people are heavily metagamed against it. Also, Zoo and Persist should not beat Twin with any consistency, and do not beat Twin with any consistency. The matchup comes down to mana bottlenecks and answers, and Zoo doesn't have nearly enough answers to reliably beat Twin, which can and often does pack anything from Dispel to Pact of Negation to Disrupting Shoal.

TheInfamousBearAssassin
09-09-2011, 01:38 PM
Over the long term it is nearly impossible for control to be non-existent in a format. Eventually the number of decks will settle down to where comprehensive strategies can be taken against the field. And if there's a deck that can't be answered effectively something in it will eventually be banned.

sporenfrosch1411
09-09-2011, 01:41 PM
Blazing Infect, even though it is a little inconsisten, also beats 12post and Splinter Twin relatively easy.
Zoo is there to hold the format together.

Even though i agree that Control is somehow missing (in a pure form), BUT never forget how young this format is. Control adepts to what it has to face, and working out a good control plan might take a little more effort than saying "Well, i'll take Nacatl, Goofy and some burn".
Dont get me wrong, im not ranting on Zoo, thats not my point, my point is that it just might take some more techs to be discovered to get a good control Pile up and running.

Give the format some time....

SpikeyMikey
09-09-2011, 02:34 PM
First of all, this article sucked. Yeah, let's take a new format with a huge ban list and add like 8 more cards to it. Great idea.

Second:How do you come to the conclusion that GreenPost is still the best deck in the format? The 4C Zoo list can beat it (which is why LSV, Owen, Wrapter, and a ton of other people did well with Zoo in a field of 20% 12-Post), and it gets absolutely crushed by Splinter Twin, Blue Poison, and GrapeshotSwath. Splinter Twin is by far the best deck in the format, at least until people are heavily metagamed against it. Also, Zoo and Persist should not beat Twin with any consistency, and do not beat Twin with any consistency. The matchup comes down to mana bottlenecks and answers, and Zoo doesn't have nearly enough answers to reliably beat Twin, which can and often does pack anything from Dispel to Pact of Negation to Disrupting Shoal.

Because the decklists at the PT were fucking jokes. The Zoo decklist wasn't even a Modern decklist, it's an old Extended Zoo. Bant Charm was in the deck because it answered both Marit Lage tokens and Thopter Foundry.

The 12Post lists that were played by and large sucked. They gave up their game against aggro in an attempt to beat combo by racing it with a deck that could not consistently race combo. I've been having the discussion in the GreenPost thread about Amulet of Vigor and Through the Breach. The best example I could give was that running Amulet of Vigor to race combo is akin to Deadguy (orB/W stoneblade, whatever you want to call it) running Ritual, Negator and Flesh Reaver to try and race storm. Not only does it not work, it fucks your aggro matchup. Sure, your deck is faster, but it just plain sucks.

The Persist lists were all minor variations of the MTGO version from the first DE which is fine in an all aggro field but is almost completely reliant on getting 1 of 4 Birthing Pods and packs 0 disruption - a sin of epic proportions in a combo-heavy environment. The shell of the deck is pretty small, green gives you 4 perfectly workable tutors for every piece of the combo (GSZ, Pod, Chord and Fauna Shaman) and decent construction leaves you with half a dozen to a dozen flex spots, MOST of which should be dedicated to screwing other combo decks in the chocolate alley because let's be honest, you're still faster than 12Post and Kitchen Finks go a long freaking way against Zoo.

Even the Splinter Twin deck and the other U/R combo decks that did well were poorly built. Oh, I won't say there weren't any card choices that I didn't consider or that I thought well of, there were definitely some good inclusions out there. But there is no excuse for not having 4xSpell Pierce in the 60 in the main. It wins more games than Pact and Shoal combined.

Don't get me wrong, I like Twin. I think it's a tier 1 deck. And I think that it beats 12Post consistently (although it should not beat 12Post as badly as it did in the PT, because 12Post should not be constructed as poorly as it was), which is why I flat out stated that it should win the PT. And I don't see Splinter Twin being marginalized, even if it faces a ton of hate, because it's consistent and fairly resilient. You've got a small shell with lots of room for customization. It's the Trix of our time. But Persist has an edge, especially the way the Twin decks at the PT were constructed. You've got Pact and Shoal. I've got Thoughtseize and Sculler. We both win turn 4-5 every game (although I can technically win turn 3 occasionally and you win turn 4 a little more consistently). My protection can not only serve to remove any threats to my combo but also to slow yours down. While Shoal can be used to slow my combo down, Pact certainly cannot. And you don't get to see what parts of my combo I have backup on. You're stopping spells blind while I'm getting to see your hand.

Edit: As far as Zoo vs. Twin... This is really one of those matchups where it depends on who wants to spend more space on hate. Twin has MD answers for a lot of Zoo's MD answers. Exarch is difficult to burn, Kiki gets around Teeg, Spellskite can stop a Pridemage from eating Splinter Twin, etc. But it's a matter of who has the right answers. If you've got Exarch to get around Bolt but have to use Kiki to get around Teeg, you haven't actually gotten around Bolt. So it's who draws what. What I think puts Zoo over the top in this matchup is Burning Tree Shaman. Everyone that researched the format knew that the 3 decks you'd have to beat to do well were 12Post, Twin and Zoo. 12Post because it's good and popular, Zoo because it's incredibly popular and Twin because it's incredibly good. So not having BTS in board for a Zoo deck going in is just an example of poor research. With BTS on the board, going lethal with Exarch is impossible. With Pestermite, it'll cost you 10 life. That's like cracking a double Fireblast on someone in response to them casting Ad Nauseam. Good luck with that. You can't just burn it, it takes two burn spells. The poorly constructed Twin decks at the PT by and large weren't running bounce, they just ran a full playset of Firespouts with maybe 1-2 Dismember. Yeah, U/R combo can dig, but Zoo isn't exactly a deck that gives you all day to search for answers. You find an answer to BTS in a turn, maybe two, or you lose. And that's assuming you managed to Firespout and wipe the rest of their board.

So yes, Zoo does beat Twin. Can Twin board to answer BTS? Sure. And if they're smart, the next go around, they'll have Gigadrowse in their board too. But there's only so much room and again, who draws what answers at what time? I think Zoo's got a definitive edge in the matchup as things that it naturally runs against everything are good against Twin whereas Twin has to deliberately construct a main with Zoo in mind.

Kanti
09-09-2011, 06:19 PM
tl;dr

If they do decide to ban cards they should at least make a PA about it. I'd hate to buy x4 Blazing Shoals at 7 dollars each just to watch them go down to 50 cent bin rares.

Amon Amarth
09-09-2011, 06:43 PM
I can't imagine them banning anything from the Infect deck. I've never played but just by eyeballing it the deck looks a really fragile pile.

crovakiet
09-09-2011, 11:43 PM
tl;dr

If they do decide to ban cards they should at least make a PA about it. I'd hate to buy x4 Blazing Shoals at 7 dollars each just to watch them go down to 50 cent bin rares.

That's the risk inherent in price speculation/'investing' in cards in a fledgling(currently crappy) format as volatile as Modern.

Mr. Safety
09-10-2011, 09:48 AM
If people are freaking out about Twin I would LOVE to see Zoo decks start boarding in shit like Root Maze to slow the combo down and then pummel them with removal while their lands are coming into play tapped and they have a harder time countering. Shit, i'd love to see people playing Root Maze, period.

Edit: Actually, it would probably fit better in Green Post... 8 of theirl ands come into play tapped anyways, minor modifications to the deck could easily make Root Maze a viable speedbump against combo that doesn't hinder post as badly.

Root Maze + Amulet of Vigor :wink: Amulet should probably see play in 12-post ANYWAYS, probably speeding up their fundamental turn by a full turn.

I think the right move is to unban Bitterblossom. That would give a solid option to fighting combo decks. Faeries could handle combo just fine, and the good aggro in the format (RDW and Zoo) can fight Faeries just fine, making Volcanic Fallout show up in sideboards again. I would really love to be playing Mistbind Clique in a format again, but it's just too slow against 12-post. Bitterblossom would put a lot of pressure on the 12-post decks by allowing you to play Spellstutter Sprite and other permission spells to stop the mana-ramping. Sprite is good against Explorer's Map anyways. I'd be maxing out on Ghost Quarters (using them to fix my own mana when not destroying Locuses instead of life-draining fetches)

rancOr_
09-10-2011, 11:32 AM
I really dont think they should change anything about the banned list.. for now.
Really why would u even consider taking Jace,SFM,MM or visions off. They are way too overpowered in current modern format.
About combo dominating modern atm,thats just ignorant.There are plenty of ways to stop combo,atleast if people try and not just copy paste the PT decklists.The format still needs to grow and I'm sure some people will come up with other decks aswell.
I've been playing Jund alot in modern with thoughtseize/confi/goyf/blightning/bloodbraid and plenty of removal and extra discard effects.It tears up all the current 'top' combo decks. Why almost nobody plays that deck I dont know,but thoughtseize is sooo good atm.

GGoober
09-10-2011, 12:41 PM
Jace is not overpowered in Modern. Tapping out for a Jace without 1U open for Remand/Mana Leak is asking Jace to die. There is no FoW/Daze to power out Jace earlier. This is a huge difference for Modern v.s. Legacy. MM/SFM are definitely going to be powerful if unbanned, but I disagree Jace will be too big of an issue. More people will play it because Jace is good, not because he's good in the format. And since people like trending to the flavor deck of the month, more people will keep playing Jace.

Also, Blood Braid Elf owns Jace all day, thank god no one plays BBE in Legacy :P (Once again the format determines which cards are powerful/viable). Jace is not a bad card in Modern, he's just not the most powerful ones, when you put him alongside with Goyf, Nacatl, Rite of Flame (yes Dark Ritual is still one of the most bonker spells in Eternal format, and Rite of flame has proved it :D)

Sims
09-11-2011, 09:28 PM
Jace is not overpowered in Modern. Tapping out for a Jace without 1U open for Remand/Mana Leak is asking Jace to die. There is no FoW/Daze to power out Jace earlier.

Didn't seem to bother standard when he was legal. They'd throw him out all day and he was STILL bonkers.

HSCK
09-12-2011, 01:44 AM
I really dont think they should change anything about the banned list.. for now.
Really why would u even consider taking Jace,SFM,MM or visions off. They are way too overpowered in current modern format.
About combo dominating modern atm,thats just ignorant.There are plenty of ways to stop combo,atleast if people try and not just copy paste the PT decklists.The format still needs to grow and I'm sure some people will come up with other decks aswell.
I've been playing Jund alot in modern with thoughtseize/confi/goyf/blightning/bloodbraid and plenty of removal and extra discard effects.It tears up all the current 'top' combo decks. Why almost nobody plays that deck I dont know,but thoughtseize is sooo good atm.

Because topdecking and winning is better than playing Jund and getting destroyed by Post, Zoo, and random combo decks. If you're casting BBE you're either in the driver's seat or you've lost already.

Astrix
09-12-2011, 03:34 AM
Wizards are not stupid to ban anything after only 1 tournament.they will wait because decks can adapt.
combo can be hated out easily with many ways.
I guess they can unban cards so they can make a diverse format and not another creature(goyf)
format like type2.Modern is the eternal format for the masses-the legacy with low cost.it should have combo.If they oblitarate combo a lot of people will get out of the format unwilling to play another standard...

Mr. Safety
09-12-2011, 09:45 AM
I re-read the article, and I like it even LESS now (not that i liked it before...)

Unbanning Jace would be somewhat of a mistake, I think. There is already speculation about Disrupting Shoal, and now a deck can concievably use Preordain/Ponder, Mana Leak, Thirst for Knowledge, Jace TM...and have Force of Will available.

I"m trying to make BUG control work in Modern, but I'm having a hard time because of the lack of *good* hard counters. Familiar's Ruse and Deprive are both 'meh' in my opinion, and trying to push Cryptic Command in a 3 or 4 color deck seems too difficult (at least to me.) I have the lands to make it work, but I don't really want to go there. I may HAVE to, but I'd rather just have a decent 2 mana hard counter.

I don't say bring back Force of Will...to hell with Cancel, bring back Counterspell!!!

TheDarkshineKnight
09-12-2011, 10:13 AM
The answer is to push the format back to Masques since it gives blue access to Counterspell, Daze, Standstill, Brainstorm, and more. The more love for blue there is, the harder a time combo's going to have.

umbowta
09-12-2011, 10:22 AM
The answer is to push the format back to Masques since it gives blue access to Counterspell, Daze, Standstill, Brainstorm, and more. The more love for blue there is, the harder a time combo's going to have.

...because clearly Brainstorm and Daze would suck for Splinter Twin?

I mean, tempo control decks would love it too but I think that's more harm than good.

Mr. Safety
09-12-2011, 10:40 AM
I agree with you there...I just want a reprint of Counterspell (or some other functional 2-mana hard counter.) I'm saying the semi-playable ones are conditional (Deprive, Familiar's Ruse). Remand works fine as long as you have a way to actually deal with the card after it actually does resolve (and it most likely will.)

Going back to Masques would be too much like 'legacy lite'...as degenerate as the combo-heavy format is right now, at least it has it's own identity.

SpikeyMikey
09-12-2011, 04:13 PM
...because clearly Brainstorm and Daze would suck for Splinter Twin?

I mean, tempo control decks would love it too but I think that's more harm than good.

Brainstorm would be significantly worse than Ponder and Preordain in Splinter Twin. The deck runs, at most, 4 shuffle effects (not including Ponder which is not all that fantastic after a Brainstorm) and is concerned primarily with how deep it can dig to go off on turn 4 every game. Minor sculpting of its hand is irrelevant.

This is the thing. People look at cards and go "man, this card is good in x, so it must be good in everything!" When there was discussion of where the format should start, I heard all kinds of people saying things like: 'OMG, Masques would mean Dark Ritual, that would have to immediately go on the banned list!' Except it wouldn't be all that good in combo. Without LED to activate IT consistently, Tendrils decks really wouldn't be much good. You're either packing 4xAd Nauseam (very painful in a format with no 0 mana accelerants) or some other half-ass tutor. But people don't *think* about how cards interact, they just make snap judgements. That's why the boys at Wizards did such a shitty job with the banned list in the first place.

I happen to agree with Darkshine that Masques should've been the cutoff for the format. Daze and Foil would go a long way towards curbing combo. Combo decks, by nature, contain less compact win-cons than control decks. A significant portion of the deck is going to be devoted to the win-con and the engine, whereas control does not need to allot as much space to winning. This means control can run more counters. If the counters in the format weren't all piss-poor, that might actually make control viable.

Disrupting Shoal is the closest thing to Force that the format has, but it's an absolute bear to construct around and requires you to hold cards you would otherwise want to cast in order to balance the CMCs in your hand. Foil, while more card disadvantage (and so thus also on the cusp of unplayability) is an unconditional counter. Good luck using Disrupting Shoal on the Blazing Shoal that just turned that Blighted Agent into BSC.

Tammit67
09-12-2011, 08:41 PM
Brainstorm would force/allow you to run more than 2 colors/4 shuffling effects. It would be amazing in modern, don't kid yourself.

Dark ritual might also be decent, depending if you can make a (non combo) list that wants to use it.

SpikeyMikey
09-12-2011, 08:51 PM
Brainstorm would force/allow you to run more than 2 colors/4 shuffling effects. It would be amazing in modern, don't kid yourself.

Dark ritual might also be decent, depending if you can make a (non combo) list that wants to use it.

It would not be amazing in Splinter Twin. It might be a good card in Modern, but I was talking specifically about someone saying Twin would want it. Twin wouldn't want it.

I think that ritual would excel in a disruptive black aggro deck. There's no Hymn to Tourach, but you've still got Thoughtseize and Sculler and going back to Masques would give you Vindicate as well.

Tammit67
09-13-2011, 12:25 PM
Splinter twin would want it because it is probably the best filter spell ever printed. There is no reason why they couldn't add more shuffle effects to better support this.

What I hear is analogous to "AnT doesn't want mind's desire, what do you cut to make it useful". Well no kidding, the deck is not built to abuse mind's desire, since it is not an option. If it was however, you can be sure as hell the archetype would use it. It isn't a simple -4 bullshit, +4 brainstorm. You have to rearrange more of the deck, but ultimately I think it would be worth it.

Tammit67
09-14-2011, 08:27 PM
Brainstorm... bad in combo... all Blue combo decks in Legacy play Brainstorm...

SpikeyMikey just do us all a favor and shut the hell up dude. Brainstorm would send combo decks over the roof. Ascension runs 8 fetch lands, hell most Splinter Twin runs 8 fetchlands.

Brainstorm being significantly worse than Ponder or Preo. Pffft, stop playing Magic.

There's no need to attack people, yo. And just beacuse legacy combo wants it does not necessitate modern to want it.

But they do.

SpikeyMikey
09-15-2011, 12:42 AM
Splinter twin would want it because it is probably the best filter spell ever printed. There is no reason why they couldn't add more shuffle effects to better support this.

What I hear is analogous to "AnT doesn't want mind's desire, what do you cut to make it useful". Well no kidding, the deck is not built to abuse mind's desire, since it is not an option. If it was however, you can be sure as hell the archetype would use it. It isn't a simple -4 bullshit, +4 brainstorm. You have to rearrange more of the deck, but ultimately I think it would be worth it.


Brainstorm would be significantly worse than Ponder and Preordain in Splinter Twin. The deck runs, at most, 4 shuffle effects (not including Ponder which is not all that fantastic after a Brainstorm) and is concerned primarily with how deep it can dig to go off on turn 4 every game. Minor sculpting of its hand is irrelevant.

There are two situations where Brainstorm is useful. One, when you want to sculpt your hand over the course of a long game. Brainstorm lets you turn dead draws into more useful draws and eke out incremental advantage through card quality. Two, when you have a lot of situational or inconsistent cards and need to quickly assemble a winning hand. In Legacy, there's a third time, which is when you absolutely need to Counterbalance something and don't have the proper casting cost in the top 3. But only the first 2 apply in Modern, as Sensei's Divining Top is banned and Counterbalance therefore sees 0 play.

Consistent decks do not need or want Brainstorm. If your deck has multiple redundancies and does the same thing every game, Brainstorm is subpar. See Legacy Merfolk, which doesn't want to redesign itself around Brainstorm. In fact, even when it's splashing a color and could run enough fetches to support Brainstorm, it still doesn't want the card. Because it's not sculpting for the late game and it's not looking for a game ending turn 1 or 2 play. It's consistent, redundant, and looking to end the game at an early aggro pace, not a storm combo pace.

As I said before, Splinter Twin doesn't need minor hand sculpting, and that's the advantage of Brainstorm over Ponder (instant vs. sorcery not withstanding). Ponder digs a card deeper (and has a built in shuffle for when you don't naturally have one) and Brainstorm lets you exchange extraneous cards in hand for potentially useful cards. But in Twin, you're running equal parts of combo piece a, combo piece b and free/cheap counterspells to force the combo through.

To be honest, it barely needs any dig at all. Say you're running a 6/6 split of blue and red pieces. In almost 30% of your games, you're going to naturally have both pieces in your opening grip. By turn 4, that number rises to just under half your games (49.27%). That's your chance to naturally draw the combo by turn 4. If you're running the full 8 of each piece (which most people don't, as it's generally overkill), you're looking at the combo in hand 42% of the time on your opening 7 and 65% of the time by turn 4. Most of the highly placing Twin decks ran a 7/6 split of blue/red. That works out to natural draw rates of 32.5% and 53%, opening and turn 4. Add a single Ponder into that and your numbers rise to 61% by turn 4. Brainstorm gives you 58.74% if you have the shuffle effect and 55.7% if you don't.

But like I said before people don't want to actually *think* about construction. It's much easier just to parrot what "everyone knows". All blue combo decks in Legacy play Brainstorm. And it's restricted in Vintage. But when it almost never saw play back in Ice Ages and saw very little play when it was in Standard during Masques (Counter-Rebels ran it, that was the only major deck to use it). Saying that card x is good in format z because it's good in format y is pointless. Mystic Remora is great in Vintage and shit in Legacy.

Tammit67
09-15-2011, 01:25 AM
Consistent decks do not need or want Brainstorm. If your deck has multiple redundancies and does the same thing every game, Brainstorm is subpar. See Legacy Merfolk, which doesn't want to redesign itself around Brainstorm. In fact, even when it's splashing a color and could run enough fetches to support Brainstorm, it still doesn't want the card. Because it's not sculpting for the late game and it's not looking for a game ending turn 1 or 2 play. It's consistent, redundant, and looking to end the game at an early aggro pace, not a storm combo pace.
But the deck doesn't consider all of its pieces equal. There is nothing worse than hitting a second red piece. Merfolk doesn't run the card because it wants to clock the opponent, has silvergill adept to avoid its clunkier draws, needs to keep a higher threat density, and the second force of will might be just as good as the first. It doesn't care if it draws 3 LoA in a row, and so it doesn't need to find ways not to have that happen. Just because you are redundant in your card's roles does not mean you cannot benefit from brainstorm.
In short, Merfolk doesn't want the card for reasons other than the deck is redundant. A good deck can never be consistent enough. Once you have a good angle on the meta, the focus must be staying consistent in spite of the field, a problem with staxx and dragon stompy.


As I said before, Splinter Twin doesn't need minor hand sculpting, and that's the advantage of Brainstorm over Ponder (instant vs. sorcery not withstanding). Ponder digs a card deeper (and has a built in shuffle for when you don't naturally have one) and Brainstorm lets you exchange extraneous cards in hand for potentially useful cards. But in Twin, you're running equal parts of combo piece a, combo piece b and free/cheap counterspells to force the combo through.

Keep ponder, it is a great card. If anything would be cut for brainstorm, I'd consider preordain/sleight of hand at the top of the list (http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/792). When your mainboard looks like that, you certainly have some cards that you had ought to find when you need them, and some that aren't always useful. Your counterspells/protection get much better when you can push them through because you have the mana up, instead of cantripping. Suddenly, you can remand from turn 2, and still filter your deck if need be. What if you hit your pestermite? Heck, flash it in and combo off during your main instead of waiting.
The point is, what we have seen of the format is a bunch of decks that absolutely maximize their mana every turn yet still play counterspells. These counters aren't free, and you have to choose between finding the cards you need and protecting your ass. Brainstorm does this.


To be honest, it barely needs any dig at all. Say you're running a 6/6 split of blue and red pieces. In almost 30% of your games, you're going to naturally have both pieces in your opening grip. By turn 4, that number rises to just under half your games (49.27%). That's your chance to naturally draw the combo by turn 4. If you're running the full 8 of each piece (which most people don't, as it's generally overkill), you're looking at the combo in hand 42% of the time on your opening 7 and 65% of the time by turn 4. Most of the highly placing Twin decks ran a 7/6 split of blue/red. That works out to natural draw rates of 32.5% and 53%, opening and turn 4. Add a single Ponder into that and your numbers rise to 61% by turn 4. Brainstorm gives you 58.74% if you have the shuffle effect and 55.7% if you don't.
You may barely need to dig to find your combo pieces individually. The same is NOT true about your protection suite. I think it is a little pointless for me to bring up times when you hit your red pieces without your blue or what have you when you need bolt/spout and not remand. Rather, what about postboard?
Your opponent has some hate for you, and you them. Any extra pieces you draw, including extraneous lands, can become protection or hate. Any card you didn't ship out that is less than stellar (but you couldn't board in enough to take it out), becomes any card in your top 3. You are already running the 7 fetches, make them work for you.

But like I said before people don't want to actually *think* about construction. It's much easier just to parrot what "everyone knows". All blue combo decks in Legacy play Brainstorm. And it's restricted in Vintage. But when it almost never saw play back in Ice Ages and saw very little play when it was in Standard during Masques (Counter-Rebels ran it, that was the only major deck to use it). Saying that card x is good in format z because it's good in format y is pointless. Mystic Remora is great in Vintage and shit in Legacy.

It doesn't matter whether or not Legacy decks play it or have played it. Brainstorm, combined with fetches, makes your deck very consistent. Not just in finding your combo pieces, but protecting them as well.
Their are no wrong threats, only wrong answers, yes? Brainstorm ensures that you can get the right answers, at the cost of shuffling away your wrong ones. Hell, the flavor text for Brainstorm might as well be the number for your nearest RadioShack.

SpikeyMikey
09-15-2011, 09:48 AM
Merfolk doesn't consider all its pieces equal either. Force of Will =/= Aether Vial =/= Lord of Atlantis. Drawing a 3rd Aether Vial is certainly less than ideal, as is (generally) drawing a 3rd Force of Will. You can live with any number of Lords, as long as you get a little counter action, but the same can be said for blue combo pieces in Splinter Twin. I'm never unhappy to see another Exarch or Pestermite, they're good utility. Stax and DStompy are naturally inconsistent because of the need for acceleration, disruption and the correct threat. I don't think they're analgous to Twin because Twin doesn't need the acceleration. One thing that DStompy does not have a problem with is constructing itself to have a turn 2 Moon effect every game because they have access to up to 8 Moon effects and 8 or more acceleration bits. Getting a specific 3rd piece would increase the difficulty significantly, but having 1 each of 2 different effects in hand by mid game is not difficult when you have redundant effects.

There is always some level of tension between consistency and speed. In fact, I would say that you could define "broken" as a deck where the tension between consistency and speed is at too low of a threshold. Sensei's Divining Top will always, over time, generate more incremental quality advantage than Brainstorm. But even if Top were blue (and therefore pitched to Force of Will), Brainstorm would still see more play, on average, than Top. Brainstorm gives a more immediate value, Top is built for the long game (or decks that don't run blue, I'm looking at you, Rock). And as far as that goes, if increased consistency is our only goal, Scroll Rack would be even better yet! But consistency, while important, is not the only factor in the power level of a utility card. The same thing applies here. You get more immediate value out of both Ponder and Preordain than you would out of Brainstorm and that additional speed is worth the minor loss of utility.

As far as Preordain vs. Brainstorm, the primary turn for this deck to dig is turn 1. That's the turn where you don't really have any other legitimate plays (other than Spell Piercing or Dispelling an opposing dig spell) and that's the turn you ideally want to spend digging. Turn 2, you want to be dropping Spellskite or Remanding whatever they play. The relevant part isn't that you countered something, it's that you're forcing them to replay it on 3, leaving you safe to play your blue piece EoT and finish them off with the red piece on turn 4. And Spellskite should be a 4-of because it's the best protection spell you've got; it comes down before you can drop any relevant combo pieces and it protects you from removal spells, blocks early creatures out of Zoo and forces Ascension to play around it. Personally, I run 4 Spellskites and 2 Remands as the former is more valuable than the latter. But either way, turn 3 you drop a blue combo piece, turn 4 you drop a red one and win. Sometimes, you have to wait until turn 4/5 to have counter back-up, but usually, your opponent is going to have to play something in order to stay relevant; if they give you too many turns to solidify your position, you'll just go off through whatever protection they're holding. What this means is that the only 2 times you're going to be dropping dig spells is on turn 1 or potentially turn 3 if you're waiting a turn to go off. Brainstorm on turn 1 is, I'm sure you'll agree, meh at best. You draw 3, you put 2 back, then redraw 1 the next turn. You've basically seen 2 cards deeper into your library than you would've otherwise (on par with Sleight of Hand and 1 less card than you'll potentially see with Preordain) if you've got the fetch. And again, if you don't have the fetch, you've just cantripped. Now on turn 3, if you're still holding a fetch at that point, then you get more value out of Brainstorm. So *if* you have Brainstorm and *if* you have a fetch in play and *if* your opponent does something on turn 3 that forces you to wait a turn to go off, then Brainstorm is *probably* better than Preordain. It's entirely possible that of the top 3, 2 of those cards are as irrelevant or more irrelevant than the worst 2 cards in your hand.

Estratti's list is, in my opinion, inferior to Josh Hakakian's listing and neither is perfect. I agree with you that the Sleight of Hand can go from Estratti's list. But adding in 1 Brainstorm in that slot doesn't really do much for you.


Your opponent has some hate for you, and you them. Any extra pieces you draw, including extraneous lands, can become protection or hate. Any card you didn't ship out that is less than stellar (but you couldn't board in enough to take it out), becomes any card in your top 3. You are already running the 7 fetches, make them work for you.

Running Brainstorm main to be able to shuffle away sub-optimal cards that you couldn't board out is a weak argument. If you've built a proper sideboard, most of the major decks you should have a very smooth board plan for. If you're using it as a crutch for poor construction, then I suppose it's good, but it'd be better just to build a decent sideboard to begin with.

Mr. Safety
09-15-2011, 12:55 PM
I think that Brainstorm would not neccessarily be a better choice than Ponder in modern. In legacy, folks don't hesitate to crack fetchlands...because the dual lands they are fetching don't hit them for 2 life. Brainstorm gets BETTER the later in the game you play it (in my experience) and in modern, fetching late game is usually not the smartest move, especially against RDW and Zoo. You want to fetch duals early (tapped if you can) to avoid life-loss.

I think the most important consideration in modern is that there are *zero* serious control decks ATM. The best use of Brainstorm in legacy is usually to dig for a Daze/FoW/answer when you don't have them, but doing it at the last minute means you can save it up for the best possible moment. I know I don't just arbitrarily play Brainstorm, and certainly not when I don't need to.

Ponder on the other hand (which also gains value the later it gets played) doesn't need fetchlands to work. It's a great card on it's own. Hell, Preordain is a solid cantrip. The best part about Preordain is that it's a 'fixed' Serum Visions by letting you scry BEFORE you draw. YET, Ponder is about 100% better than Brainstorm on turn 1 (I think most folks will agree with me.) With Brainstorm, you have the same 7 or so cards in hand and looking at the top 3. If you don't have a workable turn 1-3 with those 10 cards, Brainstorm did nothing to change that (unless you are also blessed with a fetchland, but that would be a workable pile of 10 to me.) Ponder shows you 3 cards, and if you don't have any real good plan for your turns 1-3, shuffle up your library and take your 1 random card. You have at least gotten 2 chances to save your early turns from being abysmal. The more you mulligan, the more important Ponder can be in the early game.

That's my take on it. Brainstorm is great, don't get me wrong, but it wouldn't be the pillar in Modern that it is in Legacy.

AriLax
09-16-2011, 07:57 AM
-snip-

Watch the Ad Hominem, please! If you need a 'clue' then check out the site rules.
-4eak

Brainstorm would be the best card in the format by actual miles. It isn't even a discussion.

I don't know if you've cast the card in the past decade or so, but the card is literally a fairy fucking godmother.

Hmm, lets seem I can keep this sketchy hand or no. Well, got a Brainstorm. I'll cast it on two with a fetch up and oh look, everything worked out again. Man, good thing that was there.

Oh wow, I've got two Twins/Pesters/too many Remands/Shoals. I'll Brainstorm and wow, did it again.

You are actually arguing almost the same thing as Brainstorm not being good in Reanimator.

Brainstorm is only useful in certain situations? Brainstorm is useful when you hand is not the stone cold nutter butter blade Ranchington Q. Farnsworth Esquire best. When Brainstorm is "dead", the game is already over.

And 4 shuffle effects in Twin, which already ran 7-8 just to support Ponder? And Melira beats Twin, aka the slower combo deck beats the one with Remand that actually goes bigger than it unless they assemble the Finks half? In a world where Twin had access to MD Bolt and Firespout?

Please, tell me, how does one open the portal to the world you live in? Is it permanent so you can run a hard line to access our internet, or does your satellite have the ability to broadcast tran-dimensionally?

Sims
09-16-2011, 08:03 AM
Slightly harsher terms than I would have phrased it, but yes, I basically agree with Ari here.

There is no way that, should it be reprinted or if modern was pushed back to Masques, that Brainstorm wouldn't be played. Existing decks would likely rework themselves to accomdate Brainstorm. Sometimes you need a combo piece but wanna hold Remand mana up, sometimes you need to shuffle away chaff, sometimes you need to hide your combo pieces from duress/seize/sculler/whatever, sometimes you just need to find that counterspell right-the-fuck now so you don't lose...

Brainstorm would likely be the nuts in the format if the card was suddenly legal.

Maveric78f
09-16-2011, 08:16 AM
There is no way Ponder might be superior to Brainstorm. And it's not by rephrasing their oracle text that you will demonstrate anything. Brainstorm deals with your hand not what you're going to draw. Brainstorm is instant-speed.

SpikeyMikey
09-16-2011, 09:18 AM
You are fucking clueless.

Brainstorm would be the best card in the format by actual miles. It isn't even a discussion.

I don't know if you've cast the card in the past decade or so, but the card is literally a fairy fucking godmother.

Hmm, lets seem I can keep this sketchy hand or no. Well, got a Brainstorm. I'll cast it on two with a fetch up and oh look, everything worked out again. Man, good thing that was there.

Oh wow, I've got two Twins/Pesters/too many Remands/Shoals. I'll Brainstorm and wow, did it again.

You are actually arguing almost the same thing as Brainstorm not being good in Reanimator.

Brainstorm is only useful in certain situations? Brainstorm is useful when you hand is not the stone cold nutter butter blade Ranchington Q. Farnsworth Esquire best. When Brainstorm is "dead", the game is already over.

And 4 shuffle effects in Twin, which already ran 7-8 just to support Ponder? And Melira beats Twin, aka the slower combo deck beats the one with Remand that actually goes bigger than it unless they assemble the Finks half? In a world where Twin had access to MD Bolt and Firespout?

Please, tell me, how does one open the portal to the world you live in? Is it permanent so you can run a hard line to access our internet, or does your satellite have the ability to broadcast tran-dimensionally?

Ari, I've been playing with Brainstorm for the last 11 years now. The card is overrated. I'm not saying that it's not good, just that it's not as good as you and most other people seem to think. I'm not going to go back over the reasons why it would be worse in Twin than Ponder or Preordain; I've already said my piece on that.

As far as Persist being slower than Twin, it's not. Twin has a hard cap of turn 4 win unless you run multiple acceleration pieces to be able to drop Pestermite on turn 2 and Twin on turn 3. There's no reusable acceleration that works on that time scale. Persist can win on turn 3 on a god hand and can gain an arbitrarily large amount of life on turn 3 with a number of different hands. And Persist can win through a lot of the hate that people board against Twin. It doesn't care about Spellskite (which Twin does unless you have Exarch and Kiki specifically), it doesn't care about Torpor Orb, it doesn't care about Ghostly Prison or Burning Tree Shaman. And I would rather have Thoughtseize than Remand in a format of combo vs. combo simply because being able to see your opponent's hand and game plan is so important. Can I tap out here? Do I have to play around Bolt? Which piece does he only have 1 copy of? That information is invaluable unless you're some sort of god at reading opponents' tells.

And don't ever insult me like that again. Just don't.

xeraseth
09-16-2011, 02:09 PM
Brainstorm is only useful in certain situations? Brainstorm is useful when you hand is not the stone cold nutter butter blade Ranchington Q. Farnsworth Esquire best. When Brainstorm is "dead", the game is already over.
-Sigged

Jeff Kruchkow
09-16-2011, 03:05 PM
In regards to your thought that Ponder or even Preordain is better than Brainstorm in twin. While you gave a good run down of the decks ideal first few turns (and in that scenario, yeah Ponder is probably better) you don't acknowledge the fact that unless you live in Magical Christmas Land, thats not the way its going to happen every game. Basing your card choices around ideal scenarios rather than based on actual utility is just wrong.

And as far as Persist being better than Twin, Blue will ALWAYS be a better color for a combo deck. Period. There are literally zero exceptions to this rule as blue offers everything a combo deck would ever need. As for wanting Seize over Remand in a combo format, I'm guessing you don't play much combo. Because I can tell you from several years of playing nothing but combo that I would rather play all day against decks packing Thoughtseize rather than decks packing Remand. Remand on stuff like seething song or Ascension might as well be a time walk and in most cases even possibly netting you card advantage if you interrupt a ritual chain. Whereas all thoughtseize does is MAYBE, and thats a huge maybe, buy you a turn.

Beatusnox
09-17-2011, 12:21 AM
Remand on stuff like seething song or Ascension might as well be a time walk and in most cases even possibly netting you card advantage if you interrupt a ritual chain. Whereas all thoughtseize does is MAYBE, and thats a huge maybe, buy you a turn.

apologies in advance for the snark. But doesnt time walk give you one more turn? Which is what buying an extra turn is?
Actually on topic i feel that jace could come off the list without issue. I feel that wizards will make the mistake of randomly banning cards from decks that did well to nerf them or ban cards that are shared between multiple archetypes like the cantrips. Or the will flip storm the bird and ban rite of flame.

dontbiteitholmes
09-17-2011, 01:53 AM
I'm sorry, did Ari Lax just call someone fucking clueless in a thread about banned list proposals?

Because I'm pretty sure this happened...
http://www.thestarkingtonpost.com/articles/_/1519

perm
09-17-2011, 04:52 AM
I'm sorry, did Ari Lax just call someone fucking clueless in a thread about banned list proposals?

Because I'm pretty sure this happened...
http://www.thestarkingtonpost.com/articles/_/1519

Are you saying that isn't an accurate assessment? Looks spot on to me.

also, for that mod, name calling != ad hominem, lol

perm
09-17-2011, 04:52 AM
double

Jeff Kruchkow
09-17-2011, 03:43 PM
apologies in advance for the snark. But doesnt time walk give you one more turn? Which is what buying an extra turn is?

Yes, thats why I said maybe. Remand is always going to be a time walk in modern for as long as the format stays fast. Thoughtseize, if well timed, can be a time walk but they can also just draw out of it or have 2 of whatever piece you are trying to hit (Acension, Swath, Twin, etc). And the main gist of it is that counterspells>discard in combo decks that can handle it. Look at every non LED combo deck in legacy and most the vintage combo decks for proof

SpikeyMikey
09-18-2011, 12:08 AM
It would be nice if people would consider what I say instead of dismissing it out of hand because they "know" too much to reassess things. But hey, I'm old, probably even senile. I'm not nearly as cool and trendy as our esteemed Mr. Lax. I haven't published an article since Brainburst shut down and I'm not a semi-pro on the SCG circuit. But I would like to point out that the last time Wizards created a new Eternal format, everyone on these forums "knew" that Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal and LED were going to lead to a busted Burning Long.format. Null Rod was supposed to be a 4 of main for everything. I called bullshit and went to work designing this aggro deck that people started calling Zoo. And 2 months later, I started working in another deck you might be familiar with, Deedstill. Everyone knew that Disk was better than Deed and that Monastery was useless. Oh, and i heard over and over about how bad Mystical Tutor was. I hear they ended up banning it a while back, so maybe I was right about it being good. But hey, that was a long time ago. I probably have no fucking clue anymore.

AriLax
09-18-2011, 01:10 PM
I'm not a semi-pro on the SCG circuit.

I (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptkyo09/standfinal) guess (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpsea09/welcome) that (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpnas10/welcome)makes (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpatl11/welcome)two (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptphi11/standFin)of (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Events.aspx?x=protour/standings/proplayersclub11) us (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Events.aspx?x=protour/standings/poy11).

Realistically, Preordain sees the same number of cards as Brainstorm and it is still amazing, so the number isn't the issue. UR Combo decks can run a ton of shuffle effects in fetch lands and still have functional low pain mana, so that isn't the issue. Brainstorm is even better at finding things than Ponder when you need two different cards, so that isn't the issue.

The current format is very elegant in terms of how large it is. The swap to the modern card frame is a simple way to know what is up. You also don't have to deal with Port existing as a card, and I'm also fairly sure Foil would not be what you think it would be at all. Most of the combo decks can fight through a single hard counter fairly easily as is.

Also, using the argument that one combo deck doesn't care about specific hate for another combo deck doesn't actually mean anything (PS: Interested in how you beat a Torpor Orb). The primary issue with Persist is that it is a three card combo with some odd tutor issues (ie. GSZ has to go for X=3 to find a sac outlet IIRC, you can't GSZ for a Persist guy that kills them on the spot, etc) that folds to the same removal as Twin, but doesn't have the blue spells.

Your argument that control doesn't exist in the format is also wrong. The NLBlue deck from the PT actually is very reasonable against combo and Zoo. Losing to Post is acceptable at this juncture, especially as all of the combo decks now beat post with Storm having Ascension or EtW instead of just Swath Shot. The deck I played at the PT (Brian Demars' KavuGeddon deck) was also very definitely a control deck and could easily be tweaked to be a bit more hateful against combo given that it inherently is very good against Post and Zoo.

That said, I wouldn't mind seeing Post go, if only because it strangles things a bit too much on the front end of design.

Mr. Safety
09-19-2011, 09:35 AM
-snip-

Watch the Ad Hominem, please! If you need a 'clue' then check out the site rules.
-4eak

Brainstorm would be the best card in the format by actual miles. It isn't even a discussion.

I don't know if you've cast the card in the past decade or so, but the card is literally a fairy fucking godmother.

Hmm, lets seem I can keep this sketchy hand or no. Well, got a Brainstorm. I'll cast it on two with a fetch up and oh look, everything worked out again. Man, good thing that was there.

Oh wow, I've got two Twins/Pesters/too many Remands/Shoals. I'll Brainstorm and wow, did it again.

You are actually arguing almost the same thing as Brainstorm not being good in Reanimator.

Brainstorm is only useful in certain situations? Brainstorm is useful when you hand is not the stone cold nutter butter blade Ranchington Q. Farnsworth Esquire best. When Brainstorm is "dead", the game is already over.

And 4 shuffle effects in Twin, which already ran 7-8 just to support Ponder? And Melira beats Twin, aka the slower combo deck beats the one with Remand that actually goes bigger than it unless they assemble the Finks half? In a world where Twin had access to MD Bolt and Firespout?

Please, tell me, how does one open the portal to the world you live in? Is it permanent so you can run a hard line to access our internet, or does your satellite have the ability to broadcast tran-dimensionally?

Dude, my tin-foil helmet lets me broadcast all over the place, including here! :wink: a little levity...

As far as being fucking clueless goes, yeah, that's happened before. It's my prerogative, bestowed upon me by the driver of the short-bus I ride every day. Tasty windows...

All I really meant to say (and if you read how 'soft' my language is, you would see that I'm not completely convinced nor am I making hard statements) is this: Ponder is better than Brainstorm on turn 1 in modern, theoretically. Fetchlands-into-shocklands causes life-loss which is significant in the format, which in turn causes the fetchland + Brainstorm engine slightly worse than a life-free one with Ponder. Instant speed is the nuts, especially in a control or combo shell. Some decks can make great use of it in modern, but not all decks. That's all I'm saying. There seems to be a significant legacy deck that doesn't use Brainstorm OR Ponder, something fish-flavored I believe. Not all decks playing blue in modern would want Brainstorm, at least I don't think so.

But hey, I'm fucking clueless. I need to adjust my tin-foil helmet so I can get better reception over here...

EDIT: I now realize that your comment may not have been intended for me, but maybe for SpikeyMikey. Either way, my post stands in direct opposition to your juvenile amount of chest hair.

Maveric78f
09-19-2011, 09:45 AM
Ponder is better than Brainstorm on turn 1 in modern, theoretically.

How is it format dependent? Every good legacy player knows that you don't want to BS on turn 1 except if you're forced to (discard, spell that we need to counter, ...). I believe in metagame and stuff but library manipulation is the same whatever the format is. I can hear that Splinter Twin is very well curved and you probably want to play Spellskite on turn 2, a creature on turn 3 and Splinter Twin on turn 4. But it's the best case scenario and you can afford (and want) to lose one turn to be able to instant-speed brainstorm into a counterspell when you need it. Anyway, Brainstorm would probably come in in place of Preordain, so I don't see why you want to benchtest ponder against brainstorm.

In every other deck, Brainstorm is just far better.

Mr. Safety
09-19-2011, 10:03 AM
My post was mostly just to bait the discussion. I know Brainstorm is better than Ponder in almost every situation. The one time where I'd rather have Ponder over Brainstrom I have already described: turn 1 with a borderline opening hand. It gives me 2 chances to dig for land.

Mr. Safety
09-19-2011, 10:36 AM
I'm sorry, did Ari Lax just call someone fucking clueless in a thread about banned list proposals?

Because I'm pretty sure this happened...
http://www.thestarkingtonpost.com/articles/_/1519

I just read this article...and I guess I'm not the only one that is fucking retarded. I laughed out loud at some of the suggestions (Wild Nacatl? Seriously?) I do have to give him a little slack though, as this was obviously printed pre-SotF banning.

(nameless one)
09-19-2011, 11:18 AM
I have a feeling that Emrakul will see the banhammer tonight.

Though I think Blightsteel Colossus will just take its place in a lot of ramp and cheat-into-play strategies.

I don't think they'll ban any red rituals, especially when they just printed a red Dark Ritual/Cullling of the Weak in Innistrad.

tsabo_tavoc
09-19-2011, 01:47 PM
I have a feeling that Emrakul will see the banhammer tonight.

Though I think Blightsteel Colossus will just take its place in a lot of ramp and cheat-into-play strategies.

I don't think they'll ban any red rituals, especially when they just printed a red Dark Ritual/Cullling of the Weak in Innistrad.

Fixed for you.

It would be interesting to see them banning Emrakul, by doing which they acknowledge the boundary of fatty designs.

(nameless one)
09-19-2011, 02:25 PM
Fixed for you.

It would be interesting to see them banning Emrakul, by doing which they acknowledge the boundary of fatty designs.

Thanks for fixing it.

As for the combo decks in the format, I think cantrips have a more chance of getting banned, though that would also hurt control decks, which are already fighting an uphill battle.

Zolek
09-20-2011, 02:29 AM
Aaaaand Nuked from orbit

fyrisen
09-20-2011, 05:17 AM
I was seriously going to take up Modern. But after the bannings I think I'll just stick to Legacy. Good job Wizards!

Maveric78f
09-20-2011, 05:31 AM
I was seriously going to take up Modern. But after the bannings I think I'll just stick to Legacy. Good job Wizards!

Can you explain?

The bans look equally restrictive to me. Pox, U-based control and mana ramp decks might see play. It should be more difficult for combo though. Only Splinter Twin seems to have the redundancy to survive the loss of the best cantrips.

Amon Amarth
09-20-2011, 06:21 AM
Aaaaand Nuked from orbit

ROFL. Pretty much this. I kinda expected this. Seriously though, Modern needs some time to adjust. I really hope they don't go ape-shit again and go ban crazy in December but the precedent is set: they probably will.

Mr. Safety
09-20-2011, 08:22 AM
I am surprised that they banned both Preordain AND Ponder. Leaving one without the other seems like a better option to me. Ponder was better in the combo decks, so let Preordain live in the format so control can at least have a semblance of the library manipulation it would need to function. Hell, just restrict both like Vintage does with Brainstorm/Ponder. Why always the ban? Why not pull out the restrict?

Cloudpost makes sense, even if you don't agree. That card was like playing Tolarian Academy, and everyone knew it. Rite of Flame, ditto. It fueled storm like lighter fluid on charcoal, making their fundamental turn too fast for Wizards liking (turn 3 reliably rather than turn 4.) The cantrips just fed it even more.

Blazing Shoal was a mistake, I think. That deck is already a glass cannon, so banning Blazing Shoal was a little over-the-top to me. I think infect will go back to G/u, similar to legacy. That seems ok, but Blazing Shoal wasn't broken, considering you had Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, Rune Snag, and Mana Leak to combat it, all of which are splashable quite easily.

We'll see if modern gets nuked from orbit. My gut says 'yes', but I'm hoping it isn't. I was so excited about the format...and it's just turning into a bad version of extended.

whienot
09-20-2011, 09:16 AM
Blazing Shoal was a mistake, I think. That deck is already a glass cannon, so banning Blazing Shoal was a little over-the-top to me. I think infect will go back to G/u, similar to legacy. That seems ok, but Blazing Shoal wasn't broken, considering you had Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, Rune Snag, and Mana Leak to combat it, all of which are splashable quite easily.

Sudden Shock, Grim Lavamancer, Spellskite, Melira, Sylvok Outcast and to an extent Ethersworn Canonist. Permanent based solutions are much better against the deck. But, Marrow Shards gets an honorable mention since it also deals with EtW tokens.

The "turn 4" combo rule seems pretty short-sighted for an eternal format. Banning Cloudpost would have likely been enough. Perhaps Rite of Flame since Yawgmoth's Flashback will be entering the format.

Mr. Safety
09-20-2011, 09:40 AM
Nice post, and include Path to Exile, Lightning Bolt, Smother, Dismember, Searing Blaze, Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, and Rule of Law to that list, lol.

I tend to agree with you, save I think axing ONE of the cantrips would have been enough (most likely Ponder and let Preordain live to see another day...)

perm
09-20-2011, 09:09 PM
I am curious as to why they didn't just ban Vesuva... 4 cloudpost 4 glimmerpost really isnt even that good

Beatusnox
09-20-2011, 10:45 PM
I am curious as to why they didn't just ban Vesuva... 4 cloudpost 4 glimmerpost really isnt even that good

4 cloudposts alone is still 16 mana. That is still a turn 4 or 5 emrakul if it goes off

perm
09-20-2011, 11:14 PM
Sure, if you start the game with 4 cloudpost in your hand, but in magical godhand land there are much more broken things we can do. But maybe they didn't want to deny johnny's the opportunity to use vesuva in other cool ways

AriLax
09-21-2011, 07:44 AM
Pre-Titan, the card Cloudpost is fairly marginal. The deck was actually 100% a Titan deck, basically just Valakut. Without Vesuva, it still does mostly the same thing.

Maveric78f
09-21-2011, 08:10 AM
The only difference I see is the fact that the cloudpost craziness is less inevitable if vesuva is banned. Control decks will discard/counter the titan and the cloudpost player won't be able to find 15 manas. With Vesuva, it was too easy to reach 15 manas and thus impossible to play control (without a strong LD game plan) against 12-post.

Mr. Safety
10-04-2011, 08:17 AM
So, now that Modern has gotten it's new face, I'd like to start a discussion with a few questions:

1) With such a hefty ban-list now, will WotC now look to un-ban cards rather than further ban cards? While the format is still finding it's identity, it's a little daunting (even for a modern-bandwagoner like me) to see such a long list of bans.

2) What do you feel is now safe to unban? I know folks have already piped in on what they would like to see happen (myself included) but I'm curious if we can get a somewhat 'objective' discussion going on what tech would help control actually get a foothold (this doesn't automatically mean it should be blue...control as an archetype)

On a side note, the format is looking almost like paper, rock, scissors. Splinter Twin beats Zoo, Zoo beats everything else, if you design a deck to beat Twin it loses to zoo. I believe that control is viable as a more board-control setup rather than a permission-based setup. This is fine with me, I get to dust off my Damnations/Wrath of God/Engineered Explosives. The fact that the viable control in the format isn't primarily blue doesn't bother me at all (and I love blue!) If you want heavy-duty blue control, I suggest playing legacy.

Thoughts?

Admiral_Arzar
10-04-2011, 09:17 AM
So, now that Modern has gotten it's new face, I'd like to start a discussion with a few questions:

1) With such a hefty ban-list now, will WotC now look to un-ban cards rather than further ban cards? While the format is still finding it's identity, it's a little daunting (even for a modern-bandwagoner like me) to see such a long list of bans.

2) What do you feel is now safe to unban? I know folks have already piped in on what they would like to see happen (myself included) but I'm curious if we can get a somewhat 'objective' discussion going on what tech would help control actually get a foothold (this doesn't automatically mean it should be blue...control as an archetype)

Thoughts?

1. I would hope that they would look for unbans first, otherwise they're won't be any good cards left in the format in a year.

2. The only unban I would really like is Chrome Mox. Jace would be nice, as I feel he is (like in Alara standard) rather slow, and easily kept in check by the decks that are good. I strongly doubt they will unban him though. I could really care less about the rest of the cards on the list.

Mr. Safety
10-04-2011, 09:46 AM
1) agreed

2) No love for Bitterblossom and Ancestral Visions, eh? I'd love to be slinging U/b faeries in modern.

perm
10-04-2011, 09:52 AM
there's no reason for ancestral vision to remain banned, I think it would actually give blue control a tool to compete.

Admiral_Arzar
10-04-2011, 09:55 AM
there's no reason for ancestral vision to remain banned, I think it would actually give blue control a tool to compete.

I would much rather have Chrome Mox, honestly. It enables Thirst for Knowledge, which is an excellent draw engine.


1) agreed

2) No love for Bitterblossom and Ancestral Visions, eh? I'd love to be slinging U/b faeries in modern.

I think people hate Bitterblossom too much for it to ever come off. I'm kinda meh on Ancestral Visions (I personally like TfK better, but that card needs Mox to be good).

perm
10-04-2011, 09:55 AM
we can have both, I don't think there's one unban slot or anything

Admiral_Arzar
10-04-2011, 09:57 AM
we can have both, I don't think there's one unban slot or anything

I doubt they will unban more than 1-2 cards at a time, if Legacy gives us any clue.

DragoFireheart
10-04-2011, 10:43 AM
Ancestral Vision getting banned is pretty stupid. It should most definitely come off the banned list.

Wereodile
10-04-2011, 11:34 AM
Ancestral Vision getting banned is pretty stupid. It should most definitely come off the banned list.

I have thought that since the list was posted, I think it was placed on the banned list because Faeries played it but that deck is completely neutered. I cannot think of too many deck that can abuse it, nothing more then solid card draw IMHO.

SpikeyMikey
10-04-2011, 02:34 PM
So, now that Modern has gotten it's new face, I'd like to start a discussion with a few questions:

1) With such a hefty ban-list now, will WotC now look to un-ban cards rather than further ban cards? While the format is still finding it's identity, it's a little daunting (even for a modern-bandwagoner like me) to see such a long list of bans.

2) What do you feel is now safe to unban? I know folks have already piped in on what they would like to see happen (myself included) but I'm curious if we can get a somewhat 'objective' discussion going on what tech would help control actually get a foothold (this doesn't automatically mean it should be blue...control as an archetype)

On a side note, the format is looking almost like paper, rock, scissors. Splinter Twin beats Zoo, Zoo beats everything else, if you design a deck to beat Twin it loses to zoo. I believe that control is viable as a more board-control setup rather than a permission-based setup. This is fine with me, I get to dust off my Damnations/Wrath of God/Engineered Explosives. The fact that the viable control in the format isn't primarily blue doesn't bother me at all (and I love blue!) If you want heavy-duty blue control, I suggest playing legacy.

Thoughts?

There are a number of things that could've stayed off the banned list to begin with. Hypergenesis was actually kind of meh. I think it's gotten significantly better with GreenPost out of the picture (don't have to worry about opposing Eldrazi) but it's a potential down the road. Right now, where the metagame is at, I don't think it's the best thing to unban although I'm sure Twin would keep it down at least somewhat. But you don't really need another deck cementing Twin in the "must play" position.

Jace, TMS, Bitterblossom and Ancestral Visions could all come off. Yes, Faeries was powerful in Extended. But Faeries was never a real deck in Legacy. Modern, while it obviously looks nothing like Legacy, is similar in terms of speed. The difference is that aggro-control is a joke in Modern, whereas in Legacy, the format's best decks tend to run to that category. I don't think those 3 would make non-combo blue tier 1, but I think it would go a long way towards making it competitive. In the same vein:

Sensei's Divining Top was a mistake. Yes, it's slow. I know. And people hate it. But Top allows slower decks to exist. In a format where both combo and aggro have "must answer now" threats, you have to have the answer to everything or you have to ignore your opponent and fish them out. Sensei's Divining Top allows you to filter your draws, gaining incremental advantage over the long game. Unlike Ponder, which fits best in combo decks digging for a specific card, Sensei's Divining Top is at home in control decks that are looking to go long. Otherwise, those decks will have stretches where they draw dead and their opponent does not, costing them games. This is not to say that combo decks wouldn't use Top if it were available, but simply that it would not be as good as Ponder was. Also, by creating a real control deck, not this tapout permanent-based bullshit, you can help rein in combo.

Another one to look at in a "down the road, let's see where the format goes for now" category is the artifact lands. With a brand new wanna-be Null Rod, Affinity would go back to being a bit of a glass cannon. The only reason I would hesitate is because the new Null Rod is white, making it unusable for many decks. If they print another good, broad artifact hoser in blue or black, I'd say the artifact lands would be safe to come off.

Mr. Safety
10-04-2011, 04:22 PM
I completely agree on the SDT's. CounterTop wouldn't even really be that hard to play around, TBH. It would give Zoo and Twin fits (which is good!) so I say let the dog loose.

I think these can safely come off the list, too:

Umezawa's Jitte
Golgari Grave-Troll


Dredge without Dread Return is 'meh'. Grave Troll could be huge...but there's plenty of hate available for it, I think.

Jitte is good, but not bannable I don't think. It would give non-Zoo decks a great tool to fight zoo with. I'm not even sure many decks would play Jitte if they had it available. With the format being fairly slow (and no Mystics to cheat it) Sword of A & B seems to be a better option to play for equipment.

The only thing I (slightly) disagree with is letting Chrome Mox off the list. What the combo decks lost with Rite of Flame, they would gain back with Mox. Sure they lose a card to play it, but they are back to having a serious source of free mana-acceleration. To be truly honest, I'd be playing Chrome Mox in a ton of builds, combo and non-combo, if it were available. This makes me a little undecided on whether to unban it or not. I worry about the combo decks taking the card and dominating to a degenerate amount (especially All In Red, and Splinter Twin wouldn't hesitate to play it either.)

Sims
10-04-2011, 04:32 PM
Give the format time to actually shake out. I understand it's an online format and that metagame can adapt and catch up quickly, but come on... It's only October 4th. Innistrad has been legal and the new bans in effect for FOUR days, and people are already talking of unbans?

Seriously, give the format some time to breathe and develop. If the format shows healthy numbers and nothing combo-esque dominating dailies and paper tournaments, then I would expect at least 1 to 2 banned rotations of "no changes" before we see any action on the unban side. The DCI is going to want to make sure that the foundation for the metagame and format is concrete before they start unbanning cards and letting people play with their brews. If something proves overly dominating, then they will ban it.

Don't fall victim to the clamoring for instant gratification of things being banned or unbanned, otherwise the format will fail because it will never be given time to actually stablize and develop properly.

nedleeds
10-04-2011, 11:39 PM
The biggest problem now is that there aren't enough IRL tournaments being played and attended to "give" the format some new decks. 90% of the folks that show up are just copying whatever they find online card for card. You need more time and more tourneys for the people who still build decks to ... well ... build decks that beat the 3 most popular decks. We get 25-30 for legacy tourney ... free, $100 payout, we maybe get 10 for a free, $100 payout, modern tourney. Out of those 10 8 are just playing card for card (excluding cost issues of Tarmogoyf and shocks) something from the last PT / PTQ / MOL Daily.

Mr. Safety
10-05-2011, 07:49 AM
Give the format time to actually shake out. I understand it's an online format and that metagame can adapt and catch up quickly, but come on... It's only October 4th. Innistrad has been legal and the new bans in effect for FOUR days, and people are already talking of unbans?

Seriously, give the format some time to breathe and develop. If the format shows healthy numbers and nothing combo-esque dominating dailies and paper tournaments, then I would expect at least 1 to 2 banned rotations of "no changes" before we see any action on the unban side. The DCI is going to want to make sure that the foundation for the metagame and format is concrete before they start unbanning cards and letting people play with their brews. If something proves overly dominating, then they will ban it.

Don't fall victim to the clamoring for instant gratification of things being banned or unbanned, otherwise the format will fail because it will never be given time to actually stablize and develop properly.

Repeated for posterity. Nicely worded.

Wereodile
10-05-2011, 11:09 AM
Give the format time to actually shake out. I understand it's an online format and that metagame can adapt and catch up quickly, but come on... It's only October 4th. Innistrad has been legal and the new bans in effect for FOUR days, and people are already talking of unbans?

Seriously, give the format some time to breathe and develop. If the format shows healthy numbers and nothing combo-esque dominating dailies and paper tournaments, then I would expect at least 1 to 2 banned rotations of "no changes" before we see any action on the unban side. The DCI is going to want to make sure that the foundation for the metagame and format is concrete before they start unbanning cards and letting people play with their brews. If something proves overly dominating, then they will ban it.

Don't fall victim to the clamoring for instant gratification of things being banned or unbanned, otherwise the format will fail because it will never be given time to actually stablize and develop properly.

I agree with you I just wanted ask don't you think that there are cards on the Banned list that should not have been there right off the bat?

Sims
10-05-2011, 11:26 AM
I agree with you I just wanted ask don't you think that there are cards on the Banned list that should not have been there right off the bat?

Possibly.

I've played long enough in various formats to realize that because something is broken in one format doesn't mean it's broken in another, but I also know that certain types of cards have a potential to be way more powerful when the cardpool is a certain size.

For example: Rite of flame is inferior to Dark Ritual, arguably Cabal ritual as well, but in a format where there aren't many 1 mana ritual effects and the most explosive ritual is Seething Song... Rite of Flame suddenly fuels broken plays. It's not really degenerate in Legacy, it wasn't really degenerate (as i recall) in standard. But we could see in Modern it had enough cards it wanted to accelerate into that Rite was a perfect fit in almost every combo deck (even ones like non-storm ascension and hive mind were running Rite)

So I am trying to be very objective when I look at the modern banned list. Would GGT be safe with DR banned? I'm not sure, there is a zombify with flashback in Innistrad, maybe it wouldn't be safe. Maybe it would fuel a powerhouse Dredge-Vine/Ruinator deck.

Would Jitte be fine? Well it's typically head and shoulders above Swords of A and B in aggro metagames, and even warped a standard/block format to being "play jitte just to kill enemy jittes." Would it be too powerful? Maybe not. But if it started warping the format into control decks with 4 creatures running jittes to kill opposing jittes and increase their clock, that's a pretty heavy slant towards format warping. Would it happen? That remains to be seen.

I can make a pretty logical argument for just about every card on the Modern banned list, and I can make an argument for most of them to come off. I'd just really like to see the format stabalize and start to flesh itself out before we clamor for more bannings or unbannings. In my opinion, while some of the initial banned cards from Modern and it's first banned sweep might have been a surprise, I don't think they went far enough. Rite of Flame at the very least should have gone with mind sculptor and Stoneforge, because anyone looking at the b/r list and available sets could tell there were viable Red based ritual storm decks and combo decks that were going to run rampant... But again, they're trying to get the format to a point where it's stable and has a solid foundation before they're going to think about giving us anything that is even possibly remotely dangerous from that list.

Wereodile
10-05-2011, 12:54 PM
I can make a pretty logical argument for just about every card on the Modern banned list, and I can make an argument for most of them to come off. I'd just really like to see the format stabalize and start to flesh itself out before we clamor for more bannings or unbannings.

Your whole answer was great but this part really straightened me out, it's true all those cards can go one way or the other. Thanks again.

Phoenix Ignition
10-05-2011, 04:37 PM
I know I'm in a huge minority, but I don't understand so much bitching about cards being on the banned list, maybe someone could explain it better. To me it sounds like the complaints are all from people who love pet cards and want to play with them in a non-legacy format. Why should I care about Ancestral Visions being on the banned list? Sure, it might be fun to play with, but is it really stifling your fun to bring another deck or use a slightly different card?

I have more fun deckbuilding than I do playing, it's always been my thing. Bannings are good for me in that respect because I get a whole new pool of usable cards after any one card is banned. After they banned Survival in legacy I could then look towards attrition cards that black runs, as they got slightly more high powered. The same is true for any modern banning, other cards that were off the radar pop up.

Now as for people who only are players of the game for wins instead of for fun, you can continue to play whatever deck is the best netdecked one you can fine. Banning something just means you have to look for the new best deck and play that. No big deal, right?

If you like dabbling in both activities or playing the game for the fun of it (like I do as well) then these cards might have some sentimental value to you and you may just really want to play Ancestral Visions. My argument here is to just find a different fun deck/card to play that's fun. There are plenty of flavorful cards that are playable (Death cloud, Gifts Ungiven, Bloodbraid Elf).

Maybe I really am in the minority, but I don't see the relevance of having giant discussions on unbanning cards unless it really is a pet card of yours. Unbanning banned cards is a huge hassle for WotC, because they don't know how bad the format can get by just the addition of a single card (See: Legacy with Mental Misstep). The card pool changes enough just from the addition of new sets.

Mr. Safety
10-06-2011, 07:11 AM
No offense meant here Phoenix Ignition, but it's more annoying when people say 'why the pointless discussion blah blah blah...'

We're talkin' shop. Nothing more, nothing less. We enjoy the conversation for it's own sake. We aren't changing anything (duh) just sharing opinions and slinging arguments back and forth in a civilized way. No harm in that, and tbh, it's more about fun than anything else (just like magic as a whole.) It isn't bitching...it's discussion. There's a big difference, and the way to tell is by the attitude demonstrated in the post.

Maveric78f
10-06-2011, 07:41 AM
That has never looked like a chat to me. We're in the Format Discussion forum here, not in the phantasmagorical format of each individual. It's generally all about banning our bad MUs and unbanning our pet cards. It's motivated by frustration and expressed with bitterness.

Mr. Safety
10-06-2011, 09:49 AM
It's a forum...everything posted is 'just a chat'. The only time it goes from being a 'chat' to being 'out of line' is when flaming starts happening and people take things personal. Then it's just ridiculous.

Message from Earth: it's a forum about a card game. It doesn't really change your life circumstances.

Phoenix Ignition
10-06-2011, 10:09 PM
No offense meant here Phoenix Ignition, but it's more annoying when people say 'why the pointless discussion blah blah blah...'

We're talkin' shop. Nothing more, nothing less. We enjoy the conversation for it's own sake. We aren't changing anything (duh) just sharing opinions and slinging arguments back and forth in a civilized way. No harm in that, and tbh, it's more about fun than anything else (just like magic as a whole.) It isn't bitching...it's discussion. There's a big difference, and the way to tell is by the attitude demonstrated in the post.

What a terrible response. "It's more annoying" to whom? The annoying thing is seeing a thread about the banned list be exclusively about people complaining about getting cards off of it and others trying to justify their "Legacy is better, it has a smaller banned list" positions. Why not have a thread with actual thought provoking posts as to how the banned list affects the metagame, or how certain cards actually gained a lot of value by taking rival cards out of the picture?

I understand that would be adding content and using brainpower for the betterment of magic society, which isn't easy when you're on an anonymous online forum and can instead say "Let's unban everything, I miss Legacy cards," but my real question was, 'why bitch so much about things you can't have, let's do something with the things we do have.'

This is exactly what I am thinking:


That has never looked like a chat to me. We're in the Format Discussion forum here, not in the phantasmagorical format of each individual. It's generally all about banning our bad MUs and unbanning our pet cards. It's motivated by frustration and expressed with bitterness.

Instead, I'd love to have a "talkin' shop chat" about how to use the information we have to our advantage. I already said why I think the unbanning discussion is not useful from any perspective, so if you have an actual reason other than "we just talk because talking is talking" then let me know.


Message from Earth: it's a forum about a card game. It doesn't really change your life circumstances.
Do you understand how infuriating it is to read this?

Message from The Source: This is a forum about a card game. If people are posting here it's because they identify some part of themselves with their past times, enough to actually do a google search and begin a discussion. Just because you want to play it down as if it is nothing doesn't mean anyone else does.

I'm proud of liking this game, even if I have less than 5 hours a week to spend on it. Everyone I'm friends with for long enough knows I play this game. I value my precious free time enough to let the things I do during it affect my life circumstances. If you don't, I feel sorry for you, but other people do value things that you don't, and that may be why they're writing here in the first place.

4eak
10-06-2011, 11:24 PM
A friendly reminder to everyone: please stay on topic ('banlist' threads tend to devolve) and be civil.


-4eak

perm
10-07-2011, 12:51 AM
-snip- Stay on topic.

-4eak

Anyway, has Ancestral Vision ever been a problem card in any format ever? Was it a big deal in faeries in TSP/LOR standard? I don't really remember

Maveric78f
10-07-2011, 02:56 AM
Why not have a thread with actual thought provoking posts as to how the banned list affects the metagame, or how certain cards actually gained a lot of value by taking rival cards out of the picture?
Let me give an attempt and deliver my analysis:
- Cloudpost: this ban is here to kill a specific archetype. I'm not even sure it has completely invalidated the cheat-Emrakul-from-my-hand plan. There is still the Urza-tron mana ramp that can be efficient (through Primeval Titan). Banning GSZ is another big blow to this archetype. Even if I did not play it anymore, I suspect I would have played it back for the Overgrown Battlement mana ramp plan. There are still a long list of Emrakul cheaters such as (by decreasing order of efficiency) Summoning Trap, Quicksilver Amulet, Through the Breach, Elvish Piper, ... According to me, Cloudpost was not banned because 12-post (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21781-Deck-Green-Urzatron-%28formerly-12-Post%29) was dominant in the previous metagame but because it was harmful to the balance of the metagame. It had auto-win against control decks. Those latter were thus absolutely not competitive. I'm not sure that 12-post (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21781-Deck-Green-Urzatron-%28formerly-12-Post%29) was the only reason for the non-existence of control in the metagame and I don't expect to see much of them post banning.
- Ponder and Preordain: those cantrips were judged too good in slow combo decks (turn 3/4 kill). The overall goal of the magic R&D is to (at least) reduce the combo strategy in Modern. The problem I see is that they were the only weapon for U-based control decks as well. My analysis is that U without counterspells and efficient cantrips cannot endorse the control role. If any competitive control deck there is, it will be discard/black based. The impact on the main combo decks is not that huge, since they can replace them with Sleight of Hand and Serum Visions. Splinter Twin (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21773-Deck-Splinter-Twin) has still a lot of redundancy, and actually cantrips were played in this deck simply in order to do something else that draw/land drop during the first turns. Pyromancer Ascension (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21746-Deck-Pyromancer-Ascension) relies a bit more on its cantrips to find the eponymous enchantment and also it needed 3 different cantrips and I'm not sure which could be the 3rd one now. Eggless Omelet (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21759-Deck-EDNAE-%28Eggs-Disclaimer-No-Actual-Eggs%29) is not viable anymore according to me, but I might be wrong. I probably don't know the deck enough. As far as I know, the other combo decks with cantrips have never been competitive.
- Rite of Flame: R&D said clearly that they did not want any combo before turn 3, and Rite of Flame was a real danger to achieve this goal. I've never found Red Storm consistent enough to give it more attention than that. I am also among those who think that Rite of Flame was good in Pyromancer Ascension (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21746-Deck-Pyromancer-Ascension) and that it is a another blow for this archetype.
- Green Sun's Zenith: this ban should affect G-creature based aggro-control decks more than Melira Combo (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21737-Deck-Melira). In Melira, Chord of Calling is better than GSZ, because we want to tutor non-green creatures and because we want an instant speed response to any removal (Chord on Spellskite or Dauntless Escort are great outs against any removal).
- Blazing Shoal: once more, R&D did not want to have turn 2 kills in the Modern format and Infect could perform this on god hands on turn 2 and quite regularly on turn 3. I'm not sure it was really necessary. There was a lot of ways to cut the combo (Melira, Sylvok Outcast/Spellskite/Gaddock Teeg/Path to Exile/...) and the Infect deck did not seem to have the weapons to struggle against all this. Anyway, Infect is probably dead with this ban, so that we can consider it's not anymore in the metagame.

Splinter Twin (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21773-Deck-Splinter-Twin) and Melira Combo (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21737-Deck-Melira) are the big winners of this ban list according to me. Pox (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21748-Deck-Pox-Death-Cloud) is the only control deck I can see perform with Smallpox, Liliana of the Veil and maybe Death Cloud. As for aggro strategies, I still think that Zoo (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21740-Deck-Zoo) is not good enough in a combo metagame (even creature-based). Big Zoo has lost GSZ. And I don't see the point of playing Sligh Zoo when you can play RW Landfall (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?22170-Deck-RW-Landfall). RW Landfall (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?22170-Deck-RW-Landfall) is an aggro deck that can have comboish kills. It did not lose anything form the bans and goldfishes very fast. I think it can perform well. Jund (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?21742-Deck-Jund) is a deck I don't know well, but I suppose it can disrupt efficiently with Thoughtseize and Blightning. In addition to that, it can play the best current removal: Go For The Throat, because it can't be redirected on Spellskite.

Ps: I did not find a Red Storm thread. I'm quite surprised because I thought I had seen it here at some point.
PPs: The only Infect deck I found is monogreen and it's not the archetype that did a result which is mono blue. I'm less surprised about that because I did not know the deck before it was published.
PPPs: Whatever, those decks are dead right now.

Mr. Safety
10-09-2011, 08:55 AM
Do you understand how infuriating it is to read this?

Message from The Source: This is a forum about a card game. If people are posting here it's because they identify some part of themselves with their past times, enough to actually do a google search and begin a discussion. Just because you want to play it down as if it is nothing doesn't mean anyone else does.

I'm proud of liking this game, even if I have less than 5 hours a week to spend on it. Everyone I'm friends with for long enough knows I play this game. I value my precious free time enough to let the things I do during it affect my life circumstances. If you don't, I feel sorry for you, but other people do value things that you don't, and that may be why they're writing here in the first place.

I apologize for infuriating you...it was not my intent. I was just trying to put some perspective on this. I see the forum as a place for discussion. People shouldn't feel 'afraid' to post because their post doesn't have enough 'brainpower' for the 'betterment of magic society'. Some people post on forums to share experience, others to hopefully garner discussion so they can learn from that experience.

I play magic and identify myself with this game. I also happen to have a wife and 2 children that are far and above more important to me than magic. That is all I meant by 'not actually affecting life circumstances.' My free time is just as precious, and I use it for magic as well. I think we have a simple misunderstanding.

Once again, my apologies. I value your input greatly. You may or may not remember, but you helped me shape my BUG Gifts deck into a winning combination, a contribution I haven't forgotten.

Intet's Attendant
10-18-2011, 05:21 PM
What would happen if....the fetchlands were banned. How much would that change things for zoo and other decks?

Also, Chrome Mox should definitely be unbanned. It is mana acceleration but for a cost. It's not actually that good, but it helps slower decks to race faster decks.

Aspirin
10-18-2011, 05:50 PM
Actually, it would help faster decks to race slower decks a turn (or two) earlier.

Sims
10-18-2011, 06:19 PM
What would happen if....the fetchlands were banned. How much would that change things for zoo and other decks?

Also, Chrome Mox should definitely be unbanned. It is mana acceleration but for a cost. It's not actually that good, but it helps slower decks to race faster decks.

That would be the about as bad as letting Rite of Flame back into the format as far as storm combo goes.

SpikeyMikey
10-18-2011, 10:21 PM
That would be the about as bad as letting Rite of Flame back into the format as far as storm combo goes.

Rite of Flame is 1 card, +1 mana. Chrome Mox is 2 cards, +1 mana. Chrome Mox is acceleration, but like, for instance, Mox Opal (which might be playable with Chrome Mox in the format), it's not acceleration which lends itself well to Modern storm. Twin might use 1-2 Chrome Mox, but without a way to reliably draw a fuckton (that's the official term) of cards, the card disadvantage would be more than the boost was worth.

Think back to when Legacy was first split from the T1 banned list. Everyone on this forum was pissing and moaning about how Long was going to be unstoppable and how anything that wasn't storm was going to have to pack 4 Force and 4 Null Rod just to have a chance. Then they realized that running 4 Mox Diamonds and 4 Chrome Mox and 4 Petals and 4 LEDs didn't work with the cheap draw in the format.

Now Modern does have access to Ad Nauseum and Infernal Tutor, but it doesn't have Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, LED or IGG. So Tendrils style storm isn't really viable. And U/R doesn't have a draw engine that will let them generate a lethal Grapeshot storm if they're spending 2 cards to generate a single mana. Because remember, you're not getting lethal storm out of your opening hand. Best case scenario, you're going to want 6-7 storm, Grapeshot, Past in Flames, Grapeshot. Or a lethal Ignite Memories, but that's a little harder to judge, since it's random. That's a full hand worth of cards though. What do you do when two of your opening 7 are Chrome Moxes? Having 2 Rites in your opening hand was like asking to win turn 2, having 2 Chrome Moxes means you're probably pitching it back.

Mr. Safety
10-19-2011, 07:40 AM
Well reasoned, as I hadn't thought completely through what Chrome Mox would do to the format.

So, is it safe to say that while Chrome Mox would help slower decks, it would also help faster decks... therefore not really helping the slower decks at all?

Sims
10-19-2011, 08:19 AM
While I understand the issue of using Chrome mox as an acceleration piece it does the one thing that current Modern combo decks currently lack: It bridges the 1 to 2 mana gap. The combo decks don't run enough artifacts to turn on Opal, so Chrome would be the next best thing to fill Rites shoes in that regard.

In many cases a U/R storm deck, if i were building one, would probably be similar to the pauper storm style decks. I would utilize Ideas Unbound, Manamorphose, Thirst for Knowledge, Past in flames, etc. and wouldn't necessarily go off turn 1. But If you know your opponent is playing heavy disruption for instance and you have the following opener:

Song
Desperate
Desperate
ETW
chrome
mountain
IU

I'd keep that and just pump the tokens out and pass as it's likely going to get there. Even if the second desperate ritual was another chrome, still +1 storm even if it's +0 mana. Now, I know the card isn't as good without a critical mass of cheap rituals, but I think it would still fill an important role for Storm, and especially for combos such as Ascension that are trying to hit 2 mana turn 1 to drop their namesake before hand disruption or countermagic come online.

Again, I understand it isn't Rite of Flame, but i think that crossing the 1 -> 2 mana gap without having to pass the turn can be huge.

SpikeyMikey
10-19-2011, 08:44 AM
While I understand the issue of using Chrome mox as an acceleration piece it does the one thing that current Modern combo decks currently lack: It bridges the 1 to 2 mana gap. The combo decks don't run enough artifacts to turn on Opal, so Chrome would be the next best thing to fill Rites shoes in that regard.

In many cases a U/R storm deck, if i were building one, would probably be similar to the pauper storm style decks. I would utilize Ideas Unbound, Manamorphose, Thirst for Knowledge, Past in flames, etc. and wouldn't necessarily go off turn 1. But If you know your opponent is playing heavy disruption for instance and you have the following opener:

Song
Desperate
Desperate
ETW
chrome
mountain
IU

I'd keep that and just pump the tokens out and pass as it's likely going to get there. Even if the second desperate ritual was another chrome, still +1 storm even if it's +0 mana. Now, I know the card isn't as good without a critical mass of cheap rituals, but I think it would still fill an important role for Storm, and especially for combos such as Ascension that are trying to hit 2 mana turn 1 to drop their namesake before hand disruption or countermagic come online.

Again, I understand it isn't Rite of Flame, but i think that crossing the 1 -> 2 mana gap without having to pass the turn can be huge.

It can be big. Before Modern was announced as an official format, I played, in addition to 12Post, All In Red. And of course, having Rite and SSG to get you to two mana where you can play one of your 8 rituals is important. I've had some pretty ridiculous hands with that deck; I had a turn 1 EtW for 16 one game and once had turn 1 Magus of the Moon and Koth of the Hammer. But I also know that if those SSG's or RoF's had been Chrome Moxes, a lot of those hands would've been trash. It's like Dragon Stompy in Legacy. Sometimes, it's just retardedly fast/strong/whatever. Turn 1 there's a Rakdos Pit Dragon, turn 2 they have hellbent and there's a Moon and a Taurean Mauler on the table.

Would it be helpful for storm? Yes, absolutely. But I just don't think it would boost storm enough to make it scary; I thought the deck was strictly inferior to Twin prior to the updated banned list and I don't think this would change that. Especially since it doesn't interact well with storm's other new toy, Past in Flames.

Sims
10-19-2011, 08:56 AM
Would it be helpful for storm? Yes, absolutely. But I just don't think it would boost storm enough to make it scary; I thought the deck was strictly inferior to Twin prior to the updated banned list and I don't think this would change that. Especially since it doesn't interact well with storm's other new toy, Past in Flames.

We are in agreeance here, perhaps with me being a bit more on the side of not wanting to risk it.

Mr. Safety
10-19-2011, 09:50 AM
Not to sidetrack the thread, but speaking of Past in Flames...does it get storm to tier 1 now, being only inferior to Twin in regards to combo decks?

Lemnear
10-19-2011, 10:04 AM
Not to sidetrack the thread, but speaking of Past in Flames...does it get storm to tier 1 now, being only inferior to Twin in regards to combo decks?

You now have Past in Flames but lost Preordain, Ponder and Rite of Flame so I doubt it

Mr. Safety
10-19-2011, 10:09 AM
Tier 1.5-2 then? I think Past in Flames makes for a very resilient version of storm. I hear whisperings of Brain Freeze fueling Past in Flames in legacy...is there a self-dredge mechanic that PiF can take advantage of? Ideas Unbound comes to mind, as well as Glimpse the Unthinkable. What it lost in speed (Rite of Flame) it can make up for by filling in those slots with disruption (Delay, Remand, Echoing Truth) to get to the mid-game where they can combo out.

Thoughts?

SpikeyMikey
10-19-2011, 10:18 AM
Not to sidetrack the thread, but speaking of Past in Flames...does it get storm to tier 1 now, being only inferior to Twin in regards to combo decks?

My impression of Past in Flames is that it helps storm count but does not speed up the deck to an appreciably faster kill. The only Past in Flames storm deck I've played against on MWS was a fairly sad affair; there was no Ascension or Swath, meaning it needed a ridiculous amount of storm to kill with. So generally speaking, no I don't think it's advanced to tier 1.

Sims: I've heard people say that Chrome Mox would make control viable. I don't know enough about the tap-out style control decks of the last half decade to really want to comment on that. I'm a stubborn old fart and as far as I'm concerned, it's not control unless it's running a dozen counterspells at least. But it seems reasonable; U/W Landstill died in the transition from 1.5 to Legacy because the loss of Drain slowed the deck down a turn. Maybe speeding up a turn would make Modern control viable. At the same time, like you said, there's a risk that it would make storm too good and so there's no need to upset the applecart just yet.

Of course, I still don't know what out there beats Twin consistently without a fair bit of dedicated hate in board, so maybe we need to do something to make control viable if for no reason other than to keep Twin down. It's been mentioned that Soul Sisters gives the deck fits, but from what I understand, Soul Sisters isn't really that great against the rest of the format, so...

Sims
10-19-2011, 11:01 AM
Soul Sisters doesn't lose much in the transition from the Legacy list to Modern, but what it does lose is huge: Mother of Runes and Stoneforge Mystic.

Knowing your matchup and being able to Mystic -> Batterskull or Sword of X/Y to put your opponent on a clock makes it bad against most combo decks in the format. The Sisters themselves if you have enough (1 vs exarch, 2 vs. mite, 3 to just laugh) shut down the Twin combo barring no removal. Not having Mom to protect against bolts or other removal sucks.

Against aggro I can see the deck doing well, to an extent, as with enough of the 1 drops you can out-gain the damage output frrom some decks and you still have Proc of Rebirth to bring your sisters/ascendants back. Has trouble with punishing fires though, that alone with enough mana will shut down the sisters.

Chrome might speed control up enough to be able to compete, I'm just wary of unbanning a card most of it's applications since release have been in combo oriented decks. I still think the biggest problem for non-tapout control in Modern is the lack of good countermagic. Remand is decent at harassing and your best hardcounters are highly conditional (dispel, spell snare) or cost too damn much to be relevant early (cryptic, dissapate, hinder)...

Ultimately you may be right, Chrome Mox would allow control to speed up it's counter ability at the cost of a card, but it can make those cards up later with TFK, Think Twice, Etc.. and even pitch extras to TFK.

risk vs. reward as far as making traditional control viable.

4eak
10-19-2011, 12:13 PM
Soul Sisters has been pretty decent for me. It has performed well against not just Zoo, Sligh, general aggro and friends, but even combo decks which rely upon creatures. My modern list has diverged greatly from my Legacy list, and not just because I lack SFM and Mom. I've found playing 16 sisters has changed how that deck works, what it answers, and what it worries about; it consistently gets 2 or 3 sisters into play, and targeted removal on my sisters aren't nearly as problematic anymore, especially with the CA engine I've been using (Mentor and Ranger). The infinite life combo has been very strong for me - a significant portion of the format scoops to it.

Mark of Asylum and GY-hate have been useful against Punishing Fire (and Murderous Redcap), and Mark + Auriok Champion make the deck fairly resilient to all forms of burn, including Firespout (which is a common answer people attempt).

Soul Sisters fails against most of the combo decks in the format. It fails against decks which ramp into very large creatures, especially if there are many of them or they have evasion or trample (Affinity is a solid example). It also has varying degrees of failure against well built and played control decks.



peace,
4eak

Mr. Safety
12-14-2011, 10:05 AM
Any thoughts on potential changes to the ban list on December 20th? I've seen a few comments saying folks don't think anything will change. I tend to agree with that (even though it makes me sad, and I'm borderline ready to rage-quit the format.)

SpikeyMikey
12-14-2011, 12:17 PM
I hope it doesn't change. I've heard buzz about Nacatl and Punishing Fires. That would be a big mistake. If you think Zoo dominated Modern is a pain, wait until you play Affinity dominated Modern. The deck is more inconsistent, but its also got more turn 3 kills than Zoo does.

Mr. Safety
12-14-2011, 04:22 PM
Did anyone see the Teachings Control deck posted on the mothership today? Seems pretty good, actually. I may be convinced to ride this sinking ship a little bit longer if a viable control deck becomes available to play. I like Gifts Ungiven and all, but that Teachings deck was pretty hot, dontcha think?

honestabe
12-14-2011, 04:30 PM
I built it and have played about 13 matches with it. Good Lord, is it awful. seriously, don't waste your time

hi-val
12-14-2011, 04:56 PM
It's really hard to make colorable arguments for Teachings when Gifts and Snapcaster exist. The cardpool is so deep that you can double up on Gifts targets, too. The best argument for Teachings that I can concoct is that you are resistant to GY hate, but that's nowhere in maindecks.

Mr. Safety
12-15-2011, 04:21 PM
Points made, and I hear you...I had already dismissed Teachings, but on a daily event the deck in question did rather well. This doesn't prove anything...the player pool was maybe 8.

Shawon
12-16-2011, 08:41 PM
I really don't get why Chrome Mox is on the banned list for Modern. WotC has a known history of being paranoid of the card. They restricted Chrome Mox in Vintage before it even saw print in Mirrodin. Every other format it was legal in (Legacy, Extended, Standard), it NEVER proved itself to be degenerate or too fast.

I don't know if they banned Chrome Mox because of their overall paranoia with combo or simply they hate the card.

[/$0.02]

Bastian
12-18-2011, 11:26 AM
Chrome Mox would add consistency to combo decks in Modern, while it might not be the best option to Storm, Splinter Twin combo decks would welcome it with open arms. It pretty much accelerates the deck a full turn, which is something that they don't want to. They want Modern combo going around turn 4.

I'd love to have Chrome Mox around, but I really don't see it happen.

SpikeyMikey
12-18-2011, 11:32 AM
Chrome Mox would add consistency to combo decks in Modern, while it might not be the best option to Storm, Splinter Twin combo decks would welcome it with open arms. It pretty much accelerates the deck a full turn, which is something that they don't want to. They want Modern combo going around turn 4.

I'd love to have Chrome Mox around, but I really don't see it happen.

Chrome Mox would not be that great for Modern storm decks. Like other available options (Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual) it's +1 mana, but unlike the rituals or even a card like Simian Spirit Guide, it costs 2 cards. And unlike the Rituals, it cannot be used with Past in Flames. Storm is not looking for reusable mana, it's looking for 1 big storm turn and Chrome Mox is the worst accelerant it could have on the "go off" turn. Grapeshot requires a lot of storm to win with and Chrome Mox would make the deck dangerously unstable in terms of being able to generate lethal storm. I could see the deck running 1-2 maybe, as a hedge against having too many cantrip effects in hand during the go-off turn, but the fact that PiF turns every instant/sorcery into card advantage makes every non-instant, non-sorcery card in the deck a liability.

As for Splinter Twin, it doesn't solve their biggest problem, which is Combust. Until they come up with a good plan for beating that sideboard card, the deck is going to have issues.

Mr. Safety
12-18-2011, 12:58 PM
Concerning Storm: I've been toying with the idea of using Empty the Warrens as the primary Win-condition and using Grapeshot as a pseudo-wiper to get dudes off the table in order to swing in with the gobbos. I'm testing the deck in legacy, and I wiped off a Bob and Goyf in order to swing with 14 gobbos (storm count of 6 when I played Grapeshot). It seems pretty sexy...and can be a way to incorporate redundancy. The reason I say this is because I typically see Swath/Grapeshot or Warrens/Bushwhacker...why not Warrens x4 and Grapeshot x 3-4? Curious about other peoples thoughts...But I tend to agree that Chrome Mox isn't the right card for storm.

Also, will there be an announcement on Monday on banlist changes?

jjjoness'
12-18-2011, 01:59 PM
Concerning Storm: I've been toying with the idea of using Empty the Warrens as the primary Win-condition and using Grapeshot as a pseudo-wiper to get dudes off the table in order to swing in with the gobbos. I'm testing the deck in legacy, and I wiped off a Bob and Goyf in order to swing with 14 gobbos (storm count of 6 when I played Grapeshot). It seems pretty sexy...and can be a way to incorporate redundancy. The reason I say this is because I typically see Swath/Grapeshot or Warrens/Bushwhacker...why not Warrens x4 and Grapeshot x 3-4? Curious about other peoples thoughts...But I tend to agree that Chrome Mox isn't the right card for storm.

Also, will there be an announcement on Monday on banlist changes?

I don't know about Empty as a primary wincondition in a format that is dominated by aggro. Not only are there lots of blockers but also LOADs of boardsweepers like Volcanic Fallout, EE, Pyroclasm etc.

SpikeyMikey
12-18-2011, 04:19 PM
Concerning Storm: I've been toying with the idea of using Empty the Warrens as the primary Win-condition and using Grapeshot as a pseudo-wiper to get dudes off the table in order to swing in with the gobbos. I'm testing the deck in legacy, and I wiped off a Bob and Goyf in order to swing with 14 gobbos (storm count of 6 when I played Grapeshot). It seems pretty sexy...and can be a way to incorporate redundancy. The reason I say this is because I typically see Swath/Grapeshot or Warrens/Bushwhacker...why not Warrens x4 and Grapeshot x 3-4? Curious about other peoples thoughts...But I tend to agree that Chrome Mox isn't the right card for storm.

Also, will there be an announcement on Monday on banlist changes?

Most of the listings I've played against have run both, but Grapeshot is always the preferable kill con.

Mr. Safety
12-18-2011, 06:04 PM
Well, I'm thinking 4x Warrens, 3x Bushwhacker, 2x Grapeshot in the maindeck. Sideboard with 4x Pyro-Swath and 2 more grapeshots.

If what you guys are saying is true, and that the aggro and aggro/control decks are packing low-level wipers, then I think Past In Flames must by default become the engine for storm combo with Grapeshot. It seems that if you can play a fistful of rituals and then flash them all back, you'd have enough storm to cast a lethal Grapeshot.

Is Pyromancer's Swath still being used? I've used it myself, but as I mentioned, I'm testing the maindeck Warrens/Whacker strategy first.

nwong
12-19-2011, 05:41 AM
What about Burning Vengeance in the side as a way to dodge Warrens hate.

Basically you drop it and then win by Past in Flames -> flash stuff.

Mr. Safety
12-19-2011, 07:35 AM
Burning Vengeance would give the deck some resilience, for sure...and it would actually make the Grapeshot win condition a lot better with Past in Flames. The only real problem is that it's a 3-card combination after building up storm, where Pyromancer's Swath and Grapeshot is a 2-card combination after building up storm. It would be interesting to see what Burning Vengeance and Past in Flames could do on their own though. I think if Wizards somehow smiles on us and reprintes Brain Freeze, it could be an insane engine. Build up storm, Brain Freeze yourself, flashback Past in Flames, Brain Freeze for the kill. Burning Vengeance allows for an alternative method of slow-rolling Past in Flames by allowing you to just flashback cards for 2 damage each. I think Burning Vengeance is more suited to a control sort of build, and I can't really think of a reason to use BV over Pyromancer Ascension in a slow-rolled combo deck.

All I'm doing is testing Warrens maindeck...if it doesn't work out, i'll go back to Swath/Grapeshot in the main and sideboard Warrens/Bushwhacker. I'm going to squeeze in 2x Grapeshot in the maindeck so I can have a little more flexibility with my sideboard (which is tough in a combo deck already...)

KevinTrudeau
12-20-2011, 12:08 AM
Well, Punishing Fire and Wild Nacatl are now both banned. Modern was already kind of a joke, and this pretty much seals the deal on that claim.

dschalter
12-20-2011, 12:18 AM
Well, Punishing Fire and Wild Nacatl are now both banned. Modern was already kind of a joke, and this pretty much seals the deal on that claim.

This is a fantastic decision, one card that leads to incredibly unfun games and stifles the format and another that makes ton of decks unplayable. Props to R&D for making it.

kwelts
12-20-2011, 12:35 AM
im actually inclined more to make a modern zoo deck now. dunno why. For the record my guess is that goyf gets a reprint. if he wasnt gonna get one soon, they'd have banned him over nacatl.

Fossil4182
12-20-2011, 12:40 AM
Well, Punishing Fire and Wild Nacatl are now both banned. Modern was already kind of a joke, and this pretty much seals the deal on that claim.

I would identify as a Vintage enthusiast and former Legacy enthusiast but I've refused to get involved in Modern. By involved, I mean I refuse to invest in the format (I'll borrow cards to play). I think the banning of Punishing Fire is fine since it really did dismiss the possibility of gaining any value or long term advantage from creatures with a toughness of two or less. However, my two main complaints about this format are as follows:

1. WotC has banned more cards in Modern than it has with any other format history with the exception of the creation of Legacy (which banned some 60 odd cards). Additionally, WotC has banned at least two cards with every update since the creation of the format; with the exception of this latest banning, previous announcements have banned at least four cards. It would appear that WotC has some very defined ideas about what this format is supposed to look like. However, the way they're shaping these ideas is a very liberal use of the ban hammer. WotC has not given the format time to "settle" so it can begin the process of developing a metagame as the basis for future deck designing. The constant additions to the B&R list makes it a very unstable format which leads me to # two....

2. The instability of the format makes investment unappealing. Some cards like the dual lands are fairly safe investments because even if they're reprinted will still command a decent price since they will obviously see play in Standard. However, one has a disincentive to purchasing the powerful cards in the format because they're likely to get banned; Grove of the Burnwillows being the obvious example since its price will likely drop by as much as +60% with the banning of Punishing Fires. Even though the cards are not as expensive as Legacy or Vintage staples, a hallmark of eternal formats is the investment you make in format staples is one which will keep value over time. I can't reliably conclude that such an investment will hold overtime because of the tendency to ban the best apparent deck.

I understand WotC wanting to careful craft a format that can be a worth and financially viable alternative to Legacy and Vintage and something that will actually get played (unlike Extended). I would also imagine that WotC's desire to create a balanced format quickly is driven by the impending PtQ season. However, they need to let tournament results play out for a while so the format can develop some defined decks and then players can begin adapting to those archetypes.

Meekrab
12-20-2011, 12:48 AM
So basically every fun card is banned in Modern? Cool format, bro.

menace13
12-20-2011, 01:07 AM
So basically every fun card is banned in Modern? Cool format, bro.
Lol, everyone of my friends says the same thing. Like, I mean at this point if they are banning zoo pieces WOTC has lost all direction they thought they had.

Is Jund now the best deck or Gifts something?

honestabe
12-20-2011, 01:24 AM
Aaaand, Modern is 2 cards closer to being a completely dead format

4eak
12-20-2011, 01:28 AM
I'm fine with the banning (for Legacy, I'd be in favor of unbanning a large number of cards - so don't count me a whiner). Large shifts early, in the infancy of a format, are easiest to handle. Zoo was retarded good. It isn't the fact that there is a 'best' card, but also how disproportionately 'best' the card is. Wild Nacatl especially deserved it. I still have my eye on a few cards which aren't just good, but too good.

EDIT: I should add that I'm glad they are willing to ban creatures and neuter aggro decks when necessary. For a while there, I thought this was simply going to be Zoo.format (it sounded like they would allow strict dominance), which would bore me to tears.

I also like the wild-west this format presents.

For those who are worried about what to invest in (assuming more bans are possible), invest in the mana-base of the format. Lands are highly unlikely to be banned, and highly likely to remain relevant regardless of future bannings.


peace,
4eak

Phoenix Ignition
12-20-2011, 01:54 AM
I still don't understand why people who have no affiliation with Modern whatsoever like to come to the Modern forums and say "Banning cards is stupid, that's why Modern is going to fail." and then leave.

If you don't want to play Modern, don't! The banning in my eyes is a very good thing, zoo was a bit ridiculous, and Modern is still in its infancy. It's going to need bans to get it to where WotC thinks it should be at. Nacatl was the best creature and needed to go. Punishing fire was too good and was abuse-able by zoo. Happy to see it happen.

hi-val
12-20-2011, 01:57 AM
1. WotC has banned more cards in Modern than it has with any other format history with the exception of the creation of Legacy (which banned some 60 odd cards). Additionally, WotC has banned at least two cards with every update since the creation of the format; with the exception of this latest banning, previous announcements have banned at least four cards. It would appear that WotC has some very defined ideas about what this format is supposed to look like. However, the way they're shaping these ideas is a very liberal use of the ban hammer. WotC has not given the format time to "settle" so it can begin the process of developing a metagame as the basis for future deck designing. The constant additions to the B&R list makes it a very unstable format which leads me to # two....

2. The instability of the format makes investment unappealing. Some cards like the dual lands are fairly safe investments because even if they're reprinted will still command a decent price since they will obviously see play in Standard. However, one has a disincentive to purchasing the powerful cards in the format because they're likely to get banned; Grove of the Burnwillows being the obvious example since its price will likely drop by as much as +60% with the banning of Punishing Fires. Even though the cards are not as expensive as Legacy or Vintage staples, a hallmark of eternal formats is the investment you make in format staples is one which will keep value over time. I can't reliably conclude that such an investment will hold overtime because of the tendency to ban the best apparent deck.


The problem is that we haven't gotten many tournament results yet. I have a feeling that when PTQ season comes around, you'll see Modern blowing up in articles and on forums. Remember, we'll get 2 or more PTQs each week! That's a heck of a lot of data.

I agree that it's a little silly to see two cards on the list after each update. I think this will slow down and we won't see anything banned in March. The added advantage is that you'll get to see dominant decks get answered, week by week. I loved Extended season before and I know I'm going to love Modern season. I love every last bit of tech that comes out!

As far as not playing with fun cards, I can cast Cruel Ultimatum in this format. That's unreal.

pippo84
12-20-2011, 06:35 AM
This ban made my day! Really, when I read about it I started laughing so hard!

This format is total nonsense.

SpikeyMikey
12-20-2011, 07:09 AM
I'm disappointed. I'm not shocked, since Wizards hasn't shown any common sense in years. But disappointed. Banning Wild Nacatl doesn't stop this from being an aggro-driven format. It simply moves the crown down the road a bit to Affinity. The thing is, Affinity is far less fun to play against because it's faster and more swingy. But Affinity had a poor Zoo matchup, so it wasn't going to be a huge factor in the metagame.

Any reasonable banning committee would've learned from the mistakes they made prior to PT: Philly and realized that when they ban things based on conjecture, they don't take the theory craft far enough and end up with a format that looks nothing like they think it would. In essence, they're thinking 0 levels ahead, playing whack-a-mole and banning symptoms instead of looking at how the format as a whole fits together. And these are the people who decide what's balanced for play.

Admiral_Arzar
12-20-2011, 10:16 AM
This ban made my day! Really, when I read about it I started laughing so hard!

This format is total nonsense.

I'm actually very happy with Nactatl getting the axe, and equally happy that they realized the problem wasn't actually Tarmogoyf. I don't expect anyone who didn't play control in early modern to understand why this ban is a good thing.

honestabe
12-20-2011, 10:50 AM
I'm actually very happy with Nactatl getting the axe, and equally happy that they realized the problem wasn't actually Tarmogoyf. I don't expect anyone who didn't play control in early modern to understand why this ban is a good thing.

I played control. I just think it's stupid to ban a vanilla 3/3. Zoo wasn't too good, the rest of the format was too weak. If I were suddenly put in charge, I'd have unbanned Ancestral Vision and Chrome Mox to give control and midrange some balls, and waited to see what happened. There were already a lot of people who weren't playing the format because of how big the banned list was, last night only made things worse.

I live in RI, where there are 2 major stores that run tournaments, and are DCI sanctioned. Both of them have tried running Modern, but have stopped, since literally nobody was showing up for them. The biggest complaint they were getting was the banned list. One of the workers in one of the stores showed me one of his decks, and when I had to tell him his deck was illegal because preordain is "too good" he laughed at me, and didn't believe me until I showed him on his iPhone. A friend of mine from Vintage asked me "Isn't that the format where all the fun cards are banned?" I'm no design expert, but I can't help but feel like when people are literally laughing at your banned list, it's not good for the format.

I don't know what WoTC's end game is for this format, but I garuntee that people will only be playing this format because they have to for PTQs unless they unban a lot of cards.

GtF
12-20-2011, 10:57 AM
I'm disappointed. I'm not shocked, since Wizards hasn't shown any common sense in years. But disappointed. Banning Wild Nacatl doesn't stop this from being an aggro-driven format. It simply moves the crown down the road a bit to Affinity. The thing is, Affinity is far less fun to play against because it's faster and more swingy. But Affinity had a poor Zoo matchup, so it wasn't going to be a huge factor in the metagame.

Any reasonable banning committee would've learned from the mistakes they made prior to PT: Philly and realized that when they ban things based on conjecture, they don't take the theory craft far enough and end up with a format that looks nothing like they think it would. In essence, they're thinking 0 levels ahead, playing whack-a-mole and banning symptoms instead of looking at how the format as a whole fits together. And these are the people who decide what's balanced for play.

They weren't playing whack a mole, they were going off years of data about what was good and what has been "too good" in various formats. In Philly, they didn't go far enough, then they tried to fix it and the worlds format looked a lot better. They have an idea of a format that people will want to play, and they are trying to make that format. This format is completely new, the fact that they are banning a lot of cards at the beginning is good, because they are trying to make it a fun format by the time PTQ season rolls around instead of waiting until a PTQ season is essentially ruined by a deck that is too dominant, which they have done, oh, a million times before (See thepths/hypergenesis extended, stoneforge mystic standard, affinity in block for just a few examples of the data clearly show that a deck was busted and had cards banned, but only after the season was over or almost over). I am glad they are learning from their mistakes.
If you read Erik Lauer's reasoning, it makes sense - both nacatl and fire/grove vastly reduced the number of viable strategies by just trumping them.

SpikeyMikey
12-20-2011, 11:40 AM
They weren't playing whack a mole, they were going off years of data about what was good and what has been "too good" in various formats. In Philly, they didn't go far enough, then they tried to fix it and the worlds format looked a lot better. They have an idea of a format that people will want to play, and they are trying to make that format. This format is completely new, the fact that they are banning a lot of cards at the beginning is good, because they are trying to make it a fun format by the time PTQ season rolls around instead of waiting until a PTQ season is essentially ruined by a deck that is too dominant, which they have done, oh, a million times before (See thepths/hypergenesis extended, stoneforge mystic standard, affinity in block for just a few examples of the data clearly show that a deck was busted and had cards banned, but only after the season was over or almost over). I am glad they are learning from their mistakes.
If you read Erik Lauer's reasoning, it makes sense - both nacatl and fire/grove vastly reduced the number of viable strategies by just trumping them.

You know how the easiest way to beat an aggro deck is to play an aggro deck one size up? Like how regular Zoo beats Cat Sligh and how Big Zoo with Baneslayer/Gideon/Elspeth and extra KotRs beats regular Zoo? Well Zoo in general was like that with Affinity. It was fast enough that it didn't lose to the fast Affinity draws, but enough bigger that it could grind them out when Affinity started drawing irrelevant cards (Memnite, Ornithopter, Vault Skirge, etc. vs. 4/5 Tarmogoyf or Knight). If you take Zoo out of the format, what you get is a format that's even *more* aggro-centric and even harder to deal with for midrange or control decks because you've just sped the format's aggro up between 1/2 a turn and a full turn.

Was Zoo incredibly strong? Yes. But there were decks out there that smacked it around, like Martyr Proc. The format would've stabilized with Zoo accounting for somewhere around half the field saturation that it had at Worlds (so roughly Legacy Merfolk levels) at which point it wouldn't be a threat to the format's health. The banned list they had going into Worlds wasn't ideal, but at least it had the potential to become a stable iteration of Modern. The current changes have destabilized things.

Affinity is going to warp the format around itself. The way every deck has to run Combust or have issues with Twin every deck is now going to need Ancient Grudge or Nature's Claim or have issues with Affinity. This may even put Twin back in the driver's seat.

Eric Lauer's reasoning can pretty much suck my left nut. The last time there was a brand new Eternal format, I designed two tier 1 decks while everyone else was worrying about phantom threats that just didn't materialize (Long.dec, Full English Breakfast, a dominance of Survival). One of those decks was - wait for it - Zoo. You know, the deck that became so widespread that it became a catchall name for every RGW aggro? So while it may sound cocky, the fact of the matter is I understand new formats in a way that few other people can claim. Because I'm not just looking at what cards or decks are performing well, I look at how various meta-strategies fit together and what holes that leaves for exploitation. That's how I could tell everyone that Splinter Twin was going to win Philly a week before it happened. I'm not always right, but I'm right often enough to be confident in my assertions.

Wizards had already proved that they aren't capable of predicting what the results of their bannings are going to be. They've proven that they have no idea what this format actually looks like. Saying "x is good in another format" is absolutely fucking meaningless. Dark Confidant is amazing in Legacy and fantastic in Vintage. It's complete and total fucking ass in Modern. Mystic Remora. Primeval Titan. Dark Depths. All cards that are/were incredibly strong in 1 or more formats that are unplayable in other formats. Those "years of data" you're talking about? Useless as tits on a nun. There has been exactly 1 major relevant Modern tournament, and that was Philly. Since there were half a dozen bannings in the wake of that tournament, we essentially have no real metagame data to go off of.

Worlds, with Modern as the last format of a multi-format event was incredibly skewed (moreso than Philly was with its two formats) by position going into day 3. Additionally, the decks that were played at Worlds were primarily last-minute piles thrown together. That kind of environment naturally favors aggro and Zoo is, as I mentioned before, pretty ubiquitous.

GtF
12-20-2011, 12:07 PM
Your assumption that wizards has "taken zoo out of the format" is just wrong, or at least we don't know for sure that it's right. But many people, including LSV in his modern video, think zoo will still be very good, even with wild nacatl banned. So there's an unwarranted assumption right off the bat.
I think you are way overestimating affinity. Also not every deck has to run combust to fight twin - it did pretty badly at worlds overall.
I am not even sure what your argument is. Are you saying they shouldn't have banned these two cards? They shouldn't have banned anything in modern to start out with? That you should be in charge of the b/r list because you designed so many good decks?
For my part, I wasn't saying "these cards were good in these formats, so that's why they banned them." I was saying, it makes sense to try and get a good, balanced format that people want to play BEFORE the PTQ season happens, not after it's already happened and been ruined by a degenerate deck.

Dreg
12-20-2011, 12:23 PM
I'm thinking about modern just like a "competitive casual". It is the format of the tuned pet decks and such. With the frenzied banning policy wizard is carrying on, you cannot rely on anithing really competitive nowadays.

SpikeyMikey
12-20-2011, 12:37 PM
Your assumption that wizards has "taken zoo out of the format" is just wrong, or at least we don't know for sure that it's right. But many people, including LSV in his modern video, think zoo will still be very good, even with wild nacatl banned. So there's an unwarranted assumption right off the bat.
I think you are way overestimating affinity. Also not every deck has to run combust to fight twin - it did pretty badly at worlds overall.
I am not even sure what your argument is. Are you saying they shouldn't have banned these two cards? They shouldn't have banned anything in modern to start out with? That you should be in charge of the b/r list because you designed so many good decks?
For my part, I wasn't saying "these cards were good in these formats, so that's why they banned them." I was saying, it makes sense to try and get a good, balanced format that people want to play BEFORE the PTQ season happens, not after it's already happened and been ruined by a degenerate deck.

There are two important factors in a deck's impact. One is actual performance and one is perceived performance. Of the two, perceived performance is often the more important. Take Mental Misstep for example. The perception was that it dominated Legacy while it was legal and that only the banning prevented it from completely destabilizing the format. But if you look at the two most oppressive decks of the Misstep era, you see that Misstep was *bad* against them. NO RUG had 3 spells it had to resolve, Tarmogoyf, Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order. The spells Misstep hit were largely irrelevant; Hierarch, Lightning Bolt and GSZ for Arbor. Misstep could provide some limited tempo against NO RUG but it could not affect their actual strategy. It was the same for U/W Stoneblade. Here, the relevant spells were Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Again, Misstep could provide a little tempo against them, stopping StP or Brainstorm, but it did nothing against the underlying strategy of the deck. Running Misstep vs. those two decks was like running Tormod's Crypt to beat CounterTop because it makes their 'goyfs smaller. Yet every other deck in the format insisted on running Misstep when Pierce or Snare was a clearly superior choice because the perception was that Misstep was god's gift to Magic. Perception of Mental Misstep being an unbeatable force lead to the fulfillment of that self-same prophecy. In a similar fashion, the loss of Nacatl will cause people to drop Zoo. Less saturation of Zoo will further hamper its results causing more people to drop it. Whether or not losing Nacatl actually kills Zoo, the perception will be that it does and that will be enough.

I would argue that because Wizards track record with Modern is so poor, they should've sought out experts on the format before making any changes. I'm not saying that I should be in charge of the B&R list. I AM saying that someone like myself or a Doug Linn or a Gavin Verehy should've been consulted. Just because you don't think that what's happening is ideal doesn't mean you should change it if the most likely possibility is that you'll make it worse...

Mr. Safety
12-20-2011, 12:42 PM
I don't like the bannings...but I can see how they will allow more freedom to develop other options. In the short run, disappointing...in the long run, probably a good decision. I think the real 'downer' of modern is that the theoretical card pool allows for some insanely powerful interactions and decks...but all of those powerful interactions have been banned. In light of no unbans, these bans make sense. However...I'd rather have unbans rather than more bans.

1) I wouldn't ban Wild Nacatl...I'd unban Bitterblossom, Sword of the Meek, or Jace.

2) I wouldn't ban Punishing Fire...I'd unban Glimpse of Nature or Ancestral Vision.

That's just my opinion.

Rather than worry about an overly-efficient beater like Wild Nacatl, let Sword of the Meek loose on the format and have zoo worry about continual life gain. All of a sudden Qasali Pridemage is just as important in modern zoo as it is in legacy zoo.

Rather than worry about a recurring removal engine with Punishing Fire, let Ancestral Vision loose on the format so decks can at least attempt to match the card advantage that Punishing Fire gives with a good draw option. Jace would be similarly advantageous by also providing a manipulation option, but one that doesn't appear until turn 4 at the earliest. Hell, Jace seems pretty fragile in a format where Punishing Fire can be recurred a couple times to kill him off.

Glimpse of Nature would put a lot of pressure on decks trying to slow-roll Punishing Fire as a removal engine. It becomes too mana-intensive when a ton of elves can get on the table earlier than P-Fire gets online. All of a sudden Engineered Explosives is powerful again and fringe control options like Ratchet Bomb, Crime//Punishment, and Pyroclasm are playable again, and even neccessary.

I know folks won't agree with me entirely, but I think unbanning is more profitable than banning.

GGoober
12-20-2011, 02:23 PM
I think the ban is a fair one IF AND ONLY IF WotC is approaching Modern to be a relatively unpowered and balanced format without strategies that win with powerful cards i.e. Legacy/Vintage. From that standpoint, Nacatl and PFires seem a natural fit to join the crew.

PFire ban was great because the engine single-handedly kills many possible archetype: Faeries/Elves/Merfolk. Sure, you have Volcanic Fallout etc, but it is much easier to pack the PFire engine and win with it, than it is to win with 4 Volcanic fallouts taking up maindeck slots that don't do much against other matchups.

Nacatl ban may seem weird at first, but this to me is a direct response that Zoo is overpowered right now, and hitting Tarmogoyf will weaken other possible decks such as Rock/GWb/GW/UG-aggro-control/Next-level.deck. Therefore Nacatl ban makes sense to me.

But from a side point of view, the banlist is only going to make sense if Modern is built on the basis that you don't get to play broken/powerful strategies. That for myself, is a deterrent to playing the format, but I'm sure there are many others who enjoy that kind of format. So instead of whining about the huge banlist and growing banlist, maybe the people who don't understand Modern's situation (this includes myself in the past), should just not bother with the format :P

GtF
12-20-2011, 02:26 PM
There are two important factors in a deck's impact. One is actual performance and one is perceived performance. Of the two, perceived performance is often the more important. Take Mental Misstep for example. The perception was that it dominated Legacy while it was legal and that only the banning prevented it from completely destabilizing the format. But if you look at the two most oppressive decks of the Misstep era, you see that Misstep was *bad* against them. NO RUG had 3 spells it had to resolve, Tarmogoyf, Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order. The spells Misstep hit were largely irrelevant; Hierarch, Lightning Bolt and GSZ for Arbor. Misstep could provide some limited tempo against NO RUG but it could not affect their actual strategy. It was the same for U/W Stoneblade. Here, the relevant spells were Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Again, Misstep could provide a little tempo against them, stopping StP or Brainstorm, but it did nothing against the underlying strategy of the deck. Running Misstep vs. those two decks was like running Tormod's Crypt to beat CounterTop because it makes their 'goyfs smaller. Yet every other deck in the format insisted on running Misstep when Pierce or Snare was a clearly superior choice because the perception was that Misstep was god's gift to Magic. Perception of Mental Misstep being an unbeatable force lead to the fulfillment of that self-same prophecy. In a similar fashion, the loss of Nacatl will cause people to drop Zoo. Less saturation of Zoo will further hamper its results causing more people to drop it. Whether or not losing Nacatl actually kills Zoo, the perception will be that it does and that will be enough.

I would argue that because Wizards track record with Modern is so poor, they should've sought out experts on the format before making any changes. I'm not saying that I should be in charge of the B&R list. I AM saying that someone like myself or a Doug Linn or a Gavin Verehy should've been consulted. Just because you don't think that what's happening is ideal doesn't mean you should change it if the most likely possibility is that you'll make it worse...

Doesn't Gavin Verhey work for wizards now? Is it possible he was consulted about these most recent changes?
I thought the reasoning behind misstep wasn't that it was good against those top two decks, but that it was so good in them against all the other fringe strategies that it made the format extremely stale, and exterminated a lot of deck archetypes.
The comparison of crypt for goyf with misstep for swords/brainstorm/bolt/hierarch is a stretch. One actually counters a spell, even if it's an unimportant spell - the other does basically nothing. I do agree that misstep was overhyped and overvalued, but I still think it was fine to ban because of the reasons given above.
You're changing your story from "zoo is unplayable" to "people will think zoo is unplayable." But setting that aside, is that really what we know people will think? Isn't it a bit premature to say that? I mean yes, zoo lost wild nacatl but control decks also lost punishing fire. It might not be a wash but it's not completely one-sided either.
"Just because you don't think that what's happening is ideal doesn't mean you should change it if the most likely possibility is that you'll make it worse..."
You still haven't really given a reason why it will be worse, or why it's the most likely possibility. Do you really think affinity will dominate the upcoming PTQ season? Do you think they should have started out the format without banning anything?
Basically I'm asking, if you think they've done such a terrible job with a brand new format, what would have been the ideal approach to take?
My .2 cents is that if they hadn't banned anything, PT Philly still would have been full of degenerate combo decks. Then they would have either had to suck it up and say "this is what the format will be like" and watch everyone walk away, reprint force of will, which is what prevents legacy from being like modern, or ban a bunch of cards. Except they probably would have missed something, and modern from worlds would have been like philly was. Then by the time PTQ season rolled around, they wouldn't have had a format in the best state it could be. By doing it before the PT, they gave themselves extra tournaments to achieve their stated goal: An interactive format with an average turn 4 goldfish kill/win at the earliest.

honestabe
12-20-2011, 02:34 PM
Doesn't Gavin Verhey work for wizards now? Is it possible he was consulted about these most recent changes?
I thought the reasoning behind misstep wasn't that it was good against those top two decks, but that it was so good in them against all the other fringe strategies that it made the format extremely stale, and exterminated a lot of deck archetypes.
The comparison of crypt for goyf with misstep for swords/brainstorm/bolt/hierarch is a stretch. One actually counters a spell, even if it's an unimportant spell - the other does basically nothing. I do agree that misstep was overhyped and overvalued, but I still think it was fine to ban because of the reasons given above.
You're changing your story from "zoo is unplayable" to "people will think zoo is unplayable." But setting that aside, is that really what we know people will think? Isn't it a bit premature to say that? I mean yes, zoo lost wild nacatl but control decks also lost punishing fire. It might not be a wash but it's not completely one-sided either.
"Just because you don't think that what's happening is ideal doesn't mean you should change it if the most likely possibility is that you'll make it worse..."
You still haven't really given a reason why it will be worse, or why it's the most likely possibility. Do you really think affinity will dominate the upcoming PTQ season? Do you think they should have started out the format without banning anything?
Basically I'm asking, if you think they've done such a terrible job with a brand new format, what would have been the ideal approach to take?
My .2 cents is that if they hadn't banned anything, PT Philly still would have been full of degenerate combo decks. Then they would have either had to suck it up and say "this is what the format will be like" and watch everyone walk away, reprint force of will, which is what prevents legacy from being like modern, or ban a bunch of cards. Except they probably would have missed something, and modern from worlds would have been like philly was. Then by the time PTQ season rolled around, they wouldn't have had a format in the best state it could be. By doing it before the PT, they gave themselves extra tournaments to achieve their stated goal: An interactive format with an average turn 4 goldfish kill/win at the earliest.

If they didn't ban Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, Jace and Misstep, I really, really doubt combo would have done so well.

I mean, they banned control, so combo dominated, so they banned combo, so aggro dominated, so they banned aggro (though aggro definitely got off easier than control and combo). I was really hoping to see some unbannings to raise the power level of the other decks to beat Zoo, than some banning of Zoo cards that in actuality isn't going to do too much to the deck. Zoo is still top dog by a long shot.

Phoenix Ignition
12-20-2011, 03:14 PM
I would argue that because Wizards track record with Modern is so poor, they should've sought out experts on the format before making any changes. I'm not saying that I should be in charge of the B&R list. I AM saying that someone like myself or a Doug Linn or a Gavin Verehy should've been consulted.


The last time there was a brand new Eternal format, I designed two tier 1 decks while everyone else was worrying about phantom threats that just didn't materialize (Long.dec, Full English Breakfast, a dominance of Survival). One of those decks was - wait for it - Zoo. You know, the deck that became so widespread that it became a catchall name for every RGW aggro? So while it may sound cocky, the fact of the matter is I understand new formats in a way that few other people can claim. Because I'm not just looking at what cards or decks are performing well, I look at how various meta-strategies fit together and what holes that leaves for exploitation. That's how I could tell everyone that Splinter Twin was going to win Philly a week before it happened. I'm not always right, but I'm right often enough to be confident in my assertions.


Wow... you seem like kind of a big deal!

If I ever meet you in real life... can I... can I have an autograph?

Mr. Safety
12-20-2011, 04:19 PM
If they didn't ban Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, Jace and Misstep, I really, really doubt combo would have done so well.

I mean, they banned control, so combo dominated, so they banned combo, so aggro dominated, so they banned aggro (though aggro definitely got off easier than control and combo). I was really hoping to see some unbannings to raise the power level of the other decks to beat Zoo, than some banning of Zoo cards that in actuality isn't going to do too much to the deck. Zoo is still top dog by a long shot.

This is a fantastic summation of the format, in my honest opinion. Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, Jace, and Misstep would have given control a foothold. Zoo can still beat that lineup (it does it frequently in legacy, just sub in Force for MM) but it would still be a top deck. Combo decks can beat that lineup (they do it in legacy, again sub in Force for MM) but there would still be opportunities for control to win the matchup.

I don't understand this 'turn 4 interactive format' bullshit that Wizards is forcing modern to be. Doesn't standard meet that criteria already...you know, the format that makes them the most money? I say let modern be what it could be: a super-fast format with a great card pool.

GtF
12-20-2011, 04:48 PM
Of the four cards you mention, ancestral and jace do nothing before turn 4, which is a turn later than the combo decks were killing and/or setting up unbeatable board positions. Bitterblossom can make a faerie and allow you to play a spellstrutter for 2 or 3 if you have a mutavault. In exchange all you have to do is tap out on your second turn and risk dying on the spot. So mental misstep is really the only viable candidate for staving off the broken combo decks. It's something, bit I don't think it would be enough. Saying misstep would just do for modern what force of will does for legacy is ludicrous. Most of the combo decks could either shrug off a mental misstep or ignore it completely. I'm pretty sure the reason it was banned was to make wild nacatl decks more viable. However, if they successfully nerfed combo like they wanted after philly, I could have seen an argument for unbanning misstep and maybe bitterblossom instead of banning nacatl and punishing fire.

SpikeyMikey
12-20-2011, 05:49 PM
Wow... you seem like kind of a big deal!

If I ever meet you in real life... can I... can I have an autograph?

Was I being arrogant? Yes. Was it justified? Certainly. I am an expert on this format. I am an excellent theorist. I could be passive about it and just go, "oh, guys, but, yeah, umm, I don't really think, and I mean, I could be wrong, but I don't think that's right." Or I could say look, I've got the credentials. I've been with this format since the Community Cup. I have the history of deconstructing new formats and solving them. I did predict how Philly was going to fall out. And Wizards doesn't. They haven't been testing Modern. They don't have a history of figuring out Eternal formats (we're still not playing with Great Sable Stag). They couldn't have been more clueless about Philly. So yes, I am going to say that I know better than they do.



Doesn't Gavin Verhey work for wizards now? Is it possible he was consulted about these most recent changes?
I thought the reasoning behind misstep wasn't that it was good against those top two decks, but that it was so good in them against all the other fringe strategies that it made the format extremely stale, and exterminated a lot of deck archetypes.
The comparison of crypt for goyf with misstep for swords/brainstorm/bolt/hierarch is a stretch. One actually counters a spell, even if it's an unimportant spell - the other does basically nothing. I do agree that misstep was overhyped and overvalued, but I still think it was fine to ban because of the reasons given above.

Prior to Misstep, the best flavor for Natural Order decks was Bant. After Misstep, it was RUG. That switch was not just a random fluctuation. Prior to Misstep, Natural Order was bad vs. Fish. With Force, Daze and Pierce, NO was unlikely to ever resolve. You needed to have a real aggro plan, especially since you're running Islands and giving them free unblockability. You can't rely on Green Sun's Zenith into a billion Tarmogoyfs because GSZ is just as vulnerable to Pierce. Does it completely break the matchup? Of course not. They're only going to see their Pierce in maybe 45-50% of the games. But can it swing the matchup 8-10%? Absolutely. If they see Pierce half the time and 1/5th of the time, it wins the game by countering a Natural Order or Green Sun's Zenith that would've otherwise won, that's a 10% shift in GWP right there. And that's not at all a stretch.

Once Fish stops running Pierce, say your matchup vs. them with RUG improves that 10%. Now you're at say 55% vs them. And you've got a natural edge in the "mirror" because you've got the burn to remove your opponents mana dorks whereas all they have is 4xStP. And Pridgemage is good, fine and great, but a random assortment of Bant creatures is not as good, on the whole, as consistently having 3-4 Tarmogoyfs every game. Especially when Grim Lavamancer gives you a bigger advantage in the 'goyf battle than a few exalted creatures on their side.

There are other factors as well, but in the interest of keeping this relatively short, we'll call that an example and move on. It's not like Misstep was any good vs. Fish to begin with. NO RUG isn't trying to keep Aether Vial off the board and Vial and Misstep were the only CMC1 spells the deck ran. Think about that for a minute. Misstep was usually dead against Fish for NO RUG (it's a little different for U/W Stoneblade where Vial was a big enough factor in the outcome that they *had* to counter it). It wasn't Misstep being good in RUG that put it over the top, it was that Misstep was bad vs. RUG and people who ran it lowered their percentage against RUG.



You're changing your story from "zoo is unplayable" to "people will think zoo is unplayable." But setting that aside, is that really what we know people will think? Isn't it a bit premature to say that? I mean yes, zoo lost wild nacatl but control decks also lost punishing fire. It might not be a wash but it's not completely one-sided either.

Punishing Fire was useless vs. Zoo. The relevant creatures had toughness' high enough that they weren't dying to a single Fire anyway. And if you're a control deck with 5 mana available and nothing better to do with it than answer a single 1 mana creature, you were winning anyway. Most of the time, at that point in the game you're still scrambling to find a Damnation or some other way to avoid dying right fucking now[/]. Yes, Punishing Fire helps put games away, but it does so only in the very late game when you've already broke to parity on the board. And in the early game, where you most need the help vs. real aggro decks, it's a millstone around your neck because it's too much mana and not enough damage. With the high cost of reusing (or even getting initial value out of) Punishing Fire, it was really only effective vs. an empty board where you could kill the 1 creature they dropped in a turn.

What Punishing Fire did for control decks like Shuhei's Gifts was it gave them some sort of incremental advantage that provided inevitability vs. midrange recursive strategies. Because those are the decks that you really don't want representing your top end inevitability.

It's not that Zoo is suddenly completely unplayable. But it was overrated to begin with. It posted a 51% overall GWP at Worlds in a loose field that naturally favors aggressive decks like Zoo. Take the Snapcaster versions out of that and you move to 56%, which makes it the low end of tier 1. It's not like, say Survival in Legacy, which was over 60% overall GWP over the course of numerous tournaments in a settled field. But like I said, perception is more important sometimes than actual performance. Punishing Fire didn't perform at Worlds either; it showed up in 25% of the 4-2 and better decks and was a stretch in some of those. But the perception was that Zoo was too dominating and the perception was that Punishing Fire was good.


"Just because you don't think that what's happening is ideal doesn't mean you should change it if the most likely possibility is that you'll make it worse..."
You still haven't really given a reason why it will be worse, or why it's the most likely possibility. Do you really think affinity will dominate the upcoming PTQ season? Do you think they should have started out the format without banning anything?

If I were in charge of Modern, it would've started with Masques. But there's no point in rehashing that argument; that was talked to death when they first announced the format. I said, when we were still using the CC banned list, that the format was going to be equal parts Elves, Hypergenesis and 12Post. Note that it's not because I felt those were the strongest 3 but because everyone perceived Hypergenesis as the best combo deck. So rather than play something like Twin or Hive Mind or Ad Nauseam, they'd play Hyper. Hyper was kind of like Belcher in that it was pretty easy to disrupt (CotV for 0 was a problem for them and quite often a single Oblivion Ring would be enough to render them manageable) but also incredibly fast. Glimpse Elves was the 1 combo deck in the format that could race Hypergenesis (sometimes) but had a game outside of the combo (they could just aggro out). 12Post lost to Elves but beat Hypergenesis (because it ran more Eldrazi and got to swing first after Hypergenesis resolved). There was your classic Rock/Paper/Scissors. There were, of course, other decks. People tried playing Zoo and Bant Stoneblade and Living End and even Restore Balance. But Zoo was crushed by Hypergenesis and had issues with 12Post and Bant lost to 12Post and Elves. Living End and Restore Balance were kind of joke decks, even then. They were slower than other combo decks and did less. They were strictly sub-par. I would like to note that I was very impressed with All-In Red back then, since Blood Moon was fantastic vs. both Hypergenesis and 12Post.

In any case, no, I wouldn't have gone into Philly without a banned list. But I can guarantee that Jace, Visions and Bitterblossoms would not have been on it. None of those cards were viable with the CC banned list. Banning cards that weren't good enough to play in the first place is just stupid, especially when those cards could, given the right bannings, impact the format in a positive way (by, you know, restoring control to a viable archetype). Jitte wouldn't have been on it either.

I doubt that you're going to see Affinity dominating come the very start of January. But I think it's going to put up results and it's going to snowball as people realize that there's not really an effective board strategy to deal with the deck. It's something that not every color combination can deal with and it's going to seriously hamper the development of the format. By the time the GP rolls around, I think you're looking at 12-16% metagame saturation and a 55% GWP vs. the field.


Basically I'm asking, if you think they've done such a terrible job with a [I]brand new format, what would have been the ideal approach to take?
My .2 cents is that if they hadn't banned anything, PT Philly still would have been full of degenerate combo decks. Then they would have either had to suck it up and say "this is what the format will be like" and watch everyone walk away, reprint force of will, which is what prevents legacy from being like modern, or ban a bunch of cards. Except they probably would have missed something, and modern from worlds would have been like philly was. Then by the time PTQ season rolled around, they wouldn't have had a format in the best state it could be. By doing it before the PT, they gave themselves extra tournaments to achieve their stated goal: An interactive format with an average turn 4 goldfish kill/win at the earliest.

The ideal approach? The ideal approach would've been to do a little research and testing on the format. The ideal approach would've been to talk to the Modern community at MTGSalv and MTGModern about a banned list prior to creating one for Philly. They recognized, when they took over EDH, that they didn't know the format and weren't qualified to administer the banned list. They should've recognized it with Modern as well. Read Tom LaPille's article on the Philly banned list. It's a whole lot of "this was good in one iteration of Extended or Standard, so we decided not to chance it." They had no clue. They were flying by the seat of their pants. And it showed. They looked as incompetent at Philly as they have looked at any point in the history of the company, including Combo Winter.

sporenfrosch1411
12-20-2011, 05:51 PM
I think the banning of Nacatl is very consistantly following what wizards seems to be planning. Basically Modern is wanted to be a slower Legacy, at least it looks like that if you keep in mind what wizards is doing at the moment. Cripple Combo, take some aggro - slow it down overall. The format still is young and they are still on the way to shape it like its planned to look like. Give them another announcement, and watch the PT next year. I bet the format can still be interesting. Of course the biggest cuts in any format need to be made when its new - what did you expect. Modern wont stand out from that.


And please.... everytime anything gets banned, its the god damn army of trolls coming from under every rock screaming how dead something is now. Relax, test and think again.

SpikeyMikey
12-20-2011, 05:58 PM
Of the four cards you mention, ancestral and jace do nothing before turn 4, which is a turn later than the combo decks were killing and/or setting up unbeatable board positions. Bitterblossom can make a faerie and allow you to play a spellstrutter for 2 or 3 if you have a mutavault. In exchange all you have to do is tap out on your second turn and risk dying on the spot. So mental misstep is really the only viable candidate for staving off the broken combo decks. It's something, bit I don't think it would be enough. Saying misstep would just do for modern what force of will does for legacy is ludicrous. Most of the combo decks could either shrug off a mental misstep or ignore it completely. I'm pretty sure the reason it was banned was to make wild nacatl decks more viable. However, if they successfully nerfed combo like they wanted after philly, I could have seen an argument for unbanning misstep and maybe bitterblossom instead of banning nacatl and punishing fire.

Sorry to DP, but I wanted to answer this.

Imagine that you can create a deck that goes toe to toe with Zoo for the first 3 turns. The problem is, after that, you're left depleted. You need to continue to draw the right things to answer their threats. In order to do that, you either need to be incredibly lucky or you need some sort of card advantage engine. Whether it's Sensei's Divining Top to improve your long term card quality or just raw card advantage in the terms of a card like Fact or Fiction, you've got to have something to allow you to generate an advantage once you stalemate the board. That's where a card like Jace comes in. You can't shove it into an existing deck and go "hey, this beats Zoo now because it has Jace in it" but Jace can allow you to construct a deck that beats Zoo by giving you a way to recover in the mid-to-late game.

Now I'm not saying that I think Jace and Visions would suddenly make control good. I think they'd need to do a lot more than just unban those two. But that's how a card with no obvious impact on a matchup can actually have a pretty serious impact.

GtF
12-20-2011, 06:06 PM
Thanks Spikey I get how a control is supposed to beat an aggressive deck, but that wasn't what was being addressed in my post.

SpikeyMikey
12-20-2011, 06:11 PM
Thanks Spikey I get how a control is supposed to beat an aggressive deck, but that wasn't what was being addressed in my post.

Yes, you were speaking more about combo than aggro. But it's kind of the same principle. Again, I'm not disagreeing with you that Jace and AV wouldn't suddenly make combo bad at Philly or make control good. But there exists the potential for cards that don't directly deal with an issue to deal with the issue indirectly by opening another line of attack.

GtF
12-20-2011, 06:45 PM
Sure, I mean it's hard to disagree with that in principle. As for your other post, you do raise a lot of good points about wizards not consulting with the modern/overextended community enough, if in fact they did not, before PT philly.
I think you are misunderstanding what I was saying about the analogy between misstep vs. tormod's crypt (which is as simple as one does something, while the other does nothing) but maybe not. I am not seeing how discussing the slight percentages of the merfolk vs. NO RUG matchup is an argument against banning misstep, since there is still the matter of all the other decks in the format to contend with, but ok.

Completely disagree that punishing fire was worthless vs. zoo. Yes, I understand you still need other removal and it doesn't do enough against their best draws, but that doesn't make it worthless. Killing their topdecked tarmogoyf/nacatl in the midgame is totally relevant.
Even if it was useless there, that doesn't change the argument that it severely constrains other aggro and aggro control strategies, just like wild nacatl did.

The discussion about hypergen/elves/12post is interesting but it makes pretty obvious the problems with modern they had to contend with. They made an effort to prevent the rock/paper/scissors meta from consisting of 3 combo decks, but they didn't succeed quite well enough. So they banned more cards afterwards.
Basically it sounds like you expected them to have it completely right from the start, which while it would be nice, doesn't seem totally realistic considering that the format was new. Taking as a given that they will be wrong about some things, doesn't it seem better for them to have painted with a broad brush (or hammer) and then subsequently remove things if necessary (like they've been doing with legacy), rather than underbanning?

SpikeyMikey
12-20-2011, 07:50 PM
Nah, I don't expect them to have it right the first time around. Cocky as I am, I wouldn't expect to get it right the first time around. Blazing Infect, for example, was completely off my radar. I mean, I'd heard whispers, but I hadn't seen a Blazing Shoal deck that I thought was anything more than semi-casual jank. Like Kavu Predator decks in Legacy. You might lose some games to nut draws, but overall just a weak concept. And I really didn't expect as much U/R storm as there was simply because Splinter Twin was more stable. But had they talked to the people that knew the format, they'd have gotten a lot closer to a "fair" format than they did. Anyone who'd played for a week or two could've told you that 12Post was a stifling deck. It represented a level of inevitability that was simply too strong.

I threw the Tormod's Crypt out there just because it's kind of the same thing. There *is* some logic to it, i.e. it does exactly what you say you want it to do, but it doesn't do what you need it to do. Merfolk insisted on running Misstep because they said they wanted a way to counter Swords to Plowshares. But it was a red herring. It didn't do what they needed it to do. I just used Folk as an example because it made up the largest percentage of the metagame, RUG and UW not withstanding. There were other decks using Misstep of course that shouldn't have been, and overall, Misstep did do small things to the percentage points for UW and RUG but the bigger effect was the detrimental effect it had on the other decks that ran it over Daze/Pierce/Snare.

Perhaps a better example would be Snapcaster Mage in Modern Zoo. It sounds good in theory; recasting burn spells gives you more reach while increasing your board presence. But in actuality, it was bad. Tribal Zoo was 12% better vs. the field than Tribal Zoo with Snapcaster because Snapcaster represents a move away from what actually makes Zoo good; the fact that it's so goddamn fast without giving up all its resiliency. Snapcaster increases resiliency, but at the cost of tempo. Running Snapcaster in Zoo is kind of like maining Krosan Grip. Yeah, sometimes it's tits, but it's not really what the deck wants to be drawing in most matches. Until Qasali Pridemage comes along, you just settle for losing G1 to artifacts and enchantments and throw 4 Grips in your board. That's what Mental Misstep was for most decks. It was Krosan Grip in Zoo. And people would talk about the problems it solved but not the problems it caused when you weren't getting value out of it.

If you've managed to clear the board against Zoo and run their hand size down to where you can effectively Fire lock them, great. But at that point, you've already got control of the game. All it does there is make sure that you don't lose a game that you already have won. It's no good if you're behind or even with Zoo. If they're uptempo of you (and they ought to be, it's Zoo), Punishing Fire is too slow to be of consequence. Take Shuhei Gifts for example. I don't play with it (I wasn't a huge fan of the style) but I've played enough games against it to know that Fire/Grove/Raven's/LftL is a Gifts package you only grab in the late game. Early game, you're too busy trying to do things that are relevant.

The things that weren't relevant because of Punishing Fire (say Bob or Meddling Mage) are still not relevant because of Shrapnel Blast, Galvanic Blast, Lightning Bolt and Lightning Helix. This format really revolves around ass ends of 4+ because Lightning Bolt is so prevalent. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a creature I wouldn't play with Fire legal that I would play now that it's banned.

To be completely honest, Wizards has kind of hamstrung themselves with the sets they used to make this format. Modern set design does not lend itself well to large formats. Without a strong presence of counterspells or land destruction, big, inevitable effects become too strong. And you can ban all the accelerants and filter spells, but you'll be banning for a long time if you want to keep combo from overrunning the format. As much as people bitch about blue, blue is a necessary evil if you want a format that changes. If you want a format that doesn't settle into a single state, you need control to be viable, because that's where the changes come from. Decks adapt to beat the current iteration of control, control adapts to regain superiority. That's the balance. You can't do that with combo because beating combo is more often about bringing enough hate to bear, not changing the strategy of your deck. The hate for counterspells just isn't good enough, and that's what keeps Legacy healthy. As long as aggro control is the top dog, there's room to exploit its soft underbelly. When something like Dredge is top dog, either there's enough hate to deal with it or there's not. There is no other line of play that "trumps" Dredge, you either hate it out or lose to it.

hi-val
12-20-2011, 09:06 PM
I would argue that because Wizards track record with Modern is so poor, they should've sought out experts on the format before making any changes. I'm not saying that I should be in charge of the B&R list. I AM saying that someone like myself or a Doug Linn or a Gavin Verehy should've been consulted. Just because you don't think that what's happening is ideal doesn't mean you should change it if the most likely possibility is that you'll make it worse...

For what it's worth, I emailed relevant parties at WOTC about a week and a half ago with my thoughts on the matter. I can only hope that some of my ideas were considered.

On a larger note, I don't think the idea that WOTC is crazy and out of control should be answered with statements that are crazy and out of control ("dead format!" "banning all the best cards!" "Zoo is dead!"). There's a serious cadre of players who compete for PTQs, no matter what the format is. That will guarantee a vigorous turnout for the season. You'll be up to your eyes in Modern coverage for three months. There's a GP in two months. I think Modern will catch on where Extended didn't in the casual scene because Modern doesn't have the two-turn reputation of Extended. Nobody wants a game of Magic to be their opponent dropping an Urborg, Chrome Mox, Hexmage and then Depthing and it being all over. Modern is a little slower, a little more interesting. I'm astounded that people react so negatively to a format where you get to see a lot of cards in your deck and make some pretty interesting play decisions. I'd hope that People Who Like To Play Magic look at this as another opportunity to play Magic.

I'm interested in Modern for both business and personal reasons. I run a website that sells subscriptions for trading advice and card tips. A robust Modern format means that we have a lot more to talk about and there are greater swings in prices. That aside, I still love Modern. I like having a little bit of room to develop a strategy and maybe play a deck that can lace together something more complicated or robust. I'd wager that a lot of players, for example, like triple Innistrad limited, where you can regularly flash back expensive spells, over triple Zendikar limited, where games lasted four turns.

Finally, I'll reiterate that with a PTQ season or SCG events, we simply don't have enough public information and exposure to Modern yet. Give it time.


I can't, off the top of my head, think of a creature I wouldn't play with Fire legal that I would play now that it's banned.

Dude, Withered Wretch is absurd.

SpikeyMikey
12-20-2011, 10:12 PM
Funny you should mention that one. I was tinkering with an odd variant of the old Eternal Witness/Crystal Shard deck that also happened to run Bloodbond March and so I was using Wretch as a way to break the symmetry of March. And, let's face it, it's damn good against Martyr/Proc. But I abandoned it after a day. The deck durdled with the best of them, but never really seemed to *do* anything.

I agree. The format's not dead, not by a long stretch. Because it's a PTQ format, people will play it. But I don't really see it being any more popular than Extended. Even before Extended was run over by Thopter/Depths, it was unpopular. Has *been* unpopular ever since they started it rotating and axed the dual lands. My guess is, at the time they were looking to bring the costs down, since duals were starting to cost as much or more than chase Standard rares, but it tanked the popularity of the format which had never been all that high to begin with. And once they split Legacy off into its own format...

I doubt Wizards listened. The problem with WotC is that because so many people have Chicken Littled in the past and because the sky has yet to fall, they assume that every time there's negative feedback that it's just people blowing shit out of proportion again. But really, they are doing a terrible job.

hi-val
12-20-2011, 11:06 PM
The realpolitik of the situation is also that they didn't want 3mo of PTQs for their new format to be Wild Nacatls and Fire lockdowns/battles. I don't blame them for that. You've sometimes got to do what you think is in the best interest of the company...

Mr. Safety
12-21-2011, 07:20 AM
Yes, you were speaking more about combo than aggro. But it's kind of the same principle. Again, I'm not disagreeing with you that Jace and AV wouldn't suddenly make combo bad at Philly or make control good. But there exists the potential for cards that don't directly deal with an issue to deal with the issue indirectly by opening another line of attack.

Thank you for saying what I was trying to say...lol, read my signature and you'll understand where I'm coming from.

honestabe
12-21-2011, 08:15 AM
People will always play Modern, if for no other reason than PTQs and GPs.

BUT

If WoTC ever wants the format to catch on in the way that Standard, Legacy, and Commander did and Vintage used to (SCGs, small local tournaments, and people playing just for fun), they're really going to have to unban the cards that people really enjoy playing with. One of the draws of Legacy and Vintage is that you get to play with the "fun" cards. This is what initially brought me to Modern around the time of the community cup. I loved the fact that there was a format where I could play cards that weren't good enough for Legacy, but still really good, such as Bitterblossom and Scapeshift. The bannings have killed just about all interest I have in the format. I'm testing for a local tournament that I think is going to be soft, and an easy way to win a set of Goyfs, but I'm not buying the deck, and I really doubt I ever will buy any Modern staples, or really embrace the format in any way if this is the attitude WoTC is going to have. I know I'm not alone, as the only people I see who are really in favor of bannings also have a "Now I can play my mono green treefolk deck" at the end of their post.

@ SpikyMikey

I pretty much agree 100% of what you've been saying. I'm really surprised they've continued such liberal bannings, considering how conservative Gavin was with Overextended, and how he even said he expected the Modern banned list to be half of what it was in a year's time after the FIRST bannings, nevermind the 2 banning sprees they went on after that. Really makes me think if he has any say in what's going on, or if WoTC simply knows something we don't.

Mr. Safety
12-21-2011, 09:39 AM
People will always play Modern, if for no other reason than PTQs and GPs.

BUT

If WoTC ever wants the format to catch on in the way that Standard, Legacy, and Commander did and Vintage used to (SCGs, small local tournaments, and people playing just for fun), they're really going to have to unban the cards that people really enjoy playing with. One of the draws of Legacy and Vintage is that you get to play with the "fun" cards. This is what initially brought me to Modern around the time of the community cup. I loved the fact that there was a format where I could play cards that weren't good enough for Legacy, but still really good, such as Bitterblossom and Scapeshift. The bannings have killed just about all interest I have in the format. I'm testing for a local tournament that I think is going to be soft, and an easy way to win a set of Goyfs, but I'm not buying the deck, and I really doubt I ever will buy any Modern staples, or really embrace the format in any way if this is the attitude WoTC is going to have. I know I'm not alone, as the only people I see who are really in favor of bannings also have a "Now I can play my mono green treefolk deck" at the end of their post.

@ SpikyMikey

I pretty much agree 100% of what you've been saying. I'm really surprised they've continued such liberal bannings, considering how conservative Gavin was with Overextended, and how he even said he expected the Modern banned list to be half of what it was in a year's time after the FIRST bannings, nevermind the 2 banning sprees they went on after that. Really makes me think if he has any say in what's going on, or if WoTC simply knows something we don't.

You sir summed up exactly how I feel about modern, almost 100%. I play legacy for the same reason, and I wanted modern to be what you described. I've gone back to investing in legacy (safe bet, I think) and just ripping up the kitchen table.

I also think you're on to something with your last line...WotC most likely does know something we don't, and that reasoning may be reprints (Goyf possibly) or newer, better creatures that require some actual synergy to work (unlike Nacatl that only needs the ever-present fetchlands/duals to make it good.)

Bastian
12-21-2011, 09:41 AM
I agree they've went overboard with the bannings, but I'm guessing come 20th March they'll start to unban things.

I think they didn't unban anything this time because they were still banning stuff and they'd rather not introduce bans and unbannings simultaneously into the format. I bet we'll start seeing stuff getting unbanned just like we did in Legacy. A lot of stuff initially banned in Legacy was eventually unbanned. I have faith Modern will follow the same path.

Dsch
12-21-2011, 10:20 AM
I am not a Zoo player and never played Nacatl in my whole life (really hate the fast aggro archetypes, it is just not my playstyle), however I did not liked the ban. Nacatl was responsable for a big part of the metagame, and preparation for tournaments was kinda easy when it comes to deckbuilding haha (Sadly, most of the players do not think like this, what justifies wizards). For me, it was just a matter of time until the meta changed for a Zoo-less one. And if it stayed like this, I would not mind.

The Punishing Fire ban was understandable. Now there will be more creature-based strategies avaiable, and if the ban turns deckbuilding less linear, then it is a good ban.

nedleeds
12-21-2011, 10:54 AM
When something like Dredge is top dog, either there's enough hate to deal with it or there's not. There is no other line of play that "trumps" Dredge, you either hate it out or lose to it.

... or you shoot your own grim lavamancer ... it's not like they even tried to let modern dredge get rolling; they must know something about these last 2 sets of the block.

GGoober
12-21-2011, 01:44 PM
On a related but non-Modern related note:

I thought WotC likes to ban engines/enablers rather than specific cards? In the case of Vengevine/Survival, they chose to ban Survival despite the fact that the enabler is argubly Vengevine that broke the Survival.archetype that has been stable for years.

I just feel that if they are so willing to ban cards that are responsible for format stagnation and imbalance, they could apply the same principle to banning Vengevine and unbanning Survival. I want to play with my jank and fun Survival deck!

/rant

GtF
12-21-2011, 01:58 PM
I wish they had banned vengevine and not survival. That was a case where the explanation from wizards was complete BS (Lauer stating that there were survival decks doing well that didn't run the vengevine plan, which was just not true).

Phoenix Ignition
12-21-2011, 05:26 PM
WotC doesn't want to ban new cards, they want to ban old ones. From a money making standpoint, they would much rather you still buy their new mythic rare for some weird deck than a 2nd hand Survival of the Fittest.

Also banning new cards must be very embarrassing for them. Again, rather ban the old than the new.

GGoober
12-21-2011, 06:13 PM
I agree with you PI, but the modern banlist has shown that they have somewhat went against the principles on banning engines/enablers. They banned:

Jace, SFM, Wild Nacatl, GSZ, Bitterblossom all of which are new cards. A lot of the banlist in Modern don't even fall under the category of enablers/engines. Many are just powerful cards that are argubly still underpowered in the Modern card pool e.g. Bitterblossom/Jace. Granted that SFM/GSZ could be classified as enablers, but that is an argument of semantics, because in Legacy's case, Vengevine was the enabler of the Survival archetype (or engine if you prefer to call it). The Survival archetype/engine was perfectly fine until the enabler (Vengevine) came to push the archetype towards being dominant.

In the case of SFM/GSZ, they are enablers, but in all honesty, they are just tutors, because they don't enable anything overly broken except fetching up good cards e.g. Batterskull/Goyf. Vengevine was much more an enabler than SFM/GSZ could ever be.

What I feel unjustified is that the Modern banlist philosophy came after the time when they stated that they prefer to ban enablers/engines instead of the culprit cards, but it seems to me that the whole Modern banlist philosophy is about banning cards that are responsible for decks to become overly dominant. This is why I feel that Survival faced a sad tale in Legacy. It was clearly a powerful engine, but became too powerful when they printed Vengevine. Had Vengevine been printed post-Modern banlist philosophy formation, I would bet that there may be a likely chance Vengevine is banned instead of Survival. Here's hoping someone from WotC/DCI agrees with some of us on the issue and we may yet to see the return of an archetype to Legacy.

Sorry to derail the thread a little but I guess my point in the thread is to state that the banning principles for Modern are very different thanLegacy, so we shouldn't compare how it's dumb card X/Y was banned in Modern therefore Modern sucks. It's not true, WotC has a different approach and idea for Modern, whether it sucks, that's up to the player-base to decide.

Phoenix Ignition
12-21-2011, 07:43 PM
My comment only dealt with Survival of the Fittest and does not pertain to modern. All of the cards that get banned in Modern are going to be (relatively) new ones. That's all the format is.

I still don't understand all the hate for banning cards, especially for the people who don't play the format. I, myself, invested in Grove of Burnwillows assuming that they would be a Modern staple. They got banned. I don't have a lot of money, but I'm pretty sure I'm one of the least upset people on this forum about it. And I know most people hadn't bought the cards already.

Banning in the beginning of a new format needs to happen. That's all there is too it. It's not even a bad thing.

Nelis
12-22-2011, 03:49 AM
Grove of the Burnwillows is not banned in modern. I take it you mean they are hardly of use now because Punishing Fires is banned.

Hireax
12-22-2011, 05:43 AM
I reckon this is all largely due to the fact that this is a new format and these things take time to settle. The banning of these cards (and others that were banned earlier for that matter) is simply to take the format into a healthy starting position.

If it were to be a truly defined format at the start of its very existence then WotC would not have to ban cards like Umezawa's Jitte

Frankly I think WotC have been printing enough hate cards to ensure that several cards are not too broken i.e. Stoneforge Mystic and several artifacts.

I think that WotC has done everyone a favor by banning several cards in Modern's early days, the banning of these two cards shows that they don't want this to be an all creature aggro format.

SpikeyMikey
12-22-2011, 07:22 AM
I reckon this is all largely due to the fact that this is a new format and these things take time to settle. The banning of these cards (and others that were banned earlier for that matter) is simply to take the format into a healthy starting position.

If it were to be a truly defined format at the start of its very existence then WotC would not have to ban cards like Umezawa's Jitte

Frankly I think WotC have been printing enough hate cards to ensure that several cards are not too broken i.e. Stoneforge Mystic and several artifacts.

I think that WotC has done everyone a favor by banning several cards in Modern's early days, the banning of these two cards shows that they don't want this to be an all creature aggro format.

And there is nothing wrong with bannings. Nothing. If they are bannings done intelligently. When it's merely Wizards throwing up their hands and going, "we don't have a clue", that's a problem. These guys are supposed to be experts. They get PAID to be experts. And they know less about this format than your average kitchen table player. That's unacceptable. The original banned list was a bunch of "we thought this card was too strong in another format so we're banning it here." But as I've mentioned before, context is everything. Dark Confidant is great in every format it's legal in... Except Modern. Because, surprise, surprise, Modern format dynamics are not the same as any other format. Then the second banned list was a knee-jerk reaction to the unpleasant field in Philly. And they weren't ideal changes, but they weren't terrible. But these changes were just as bad as the pre-Philly bannings.

Mr. Safety
12-27-2011, 12:27 PM
So what's next? Lightning Bolt? lol...

honestabe
12-27-2011, 06:54 PM
I could realistically see Dark Confidant, Bloodbraid Elf, or Gifts Ungiven getting the ax at some point in the future

TheInfamousBearAssassin
12-27-2011, 06:58 PM
It's highly unlikely they'll ban anything next time. First off it was obvious after the last rounds that Zoo was left as the best deck, and there's nothing that's obviously the best left in Modern now that I'm aware of. Maybe Splinter Twin is the closest but there's lots of answers to that deck.

Second off it would just send a bad signal to be banning cards at every opportunity, they probably want a six month stable period in Modern, especially as they're probably gearing up to try and do GPs and Pro Tours with the format.

SpikeyMikey
12-27-2011, 10:59 PM
It's highly unlikely they'll ban anything next time. First off it was obvious after the last rounds that Zoo was left as the best deck, and there's nothing that's obviously the best left in Modern now that I'm aware of.

51% vs. the field at Worlds. Just saying. Not banworthy numbers by any stretch of the imagination. The format definitely revolved around Zoo; any deck that makes up 28% of the metagame is going to warp the format around itself. Hell, Merfolk has a tendency to warp the field around itself in Legacy and it's usually less than half that popular. But *best* deck? not really. Tier 1? Probably, if you discount the Snapcaster variants; then you're looking at 56% vs. the field. But still not Vengevival type numbers. Not Academy type numbers. Not "ban something" numbers. And it wasn't format warping the way that 12Post was. There are multiple angles you can attack Zoo from.

My guess is that 3 months from now, they'll have something else that they need to ban. I think they're still missing too many things to have a healthy format. If I had to pick a card now that I think will get the axe, I'd probably say Mox Opal. Affinity can be too fast for existing hate. Ancient Grudge is great and all, but if you're Grudging the same turn a lethal Atog is coming your way, it's a bit late. Sorry Abe, but Dark Confidant doesn't see play in Modern and will not see play in Modern any time in the next year. The format is too suicidal with the available mana bases and without Top or even Brainstorm to help avoid damage, Bob is just not good enough. The format isn't about incremental advantage, it's about maximum tempo advantage. I could see Gifts banned, not because it deserves it, but hey, they banned Punishing Fire, Jace TMS and Bitterblossom. At this point, I could see them banning anything that even smells of control.

honestabe
12-28-2011, 11:04 PM
51% vs. the field at Worlds. Just saying. Not banworthy numbers by any stretch of the imagination. The format definitely revolved around Zoo; any deck that makes up 28% of the metagame is going to warp the format around itself. Hell, Merfolk has a tendency to warp the field around itself in Legacy and it's usually less than half that popular. But *best* deck? not really. Tier 1? Probably, if you discount the Snapcaster variants; then you're looking at 56% vs. the field. But still not Vengevival type numbers. Not Academy type numbers. Not "ban something" numbers. And it wasn't format warping the way that 12Post was. There are multiple angles you can attack Zoo from.


True, but everyone went into that tournament KNOWING Zoo was the best deck in the format. The fact that it had such a huge target on its back and still did so well is a testament to how good the deck was, and even still is. Before the December bannings, Zoo was playing on a level that no other deck was on.



My guess is that 3 months from now, they'll have something else that they need to ban. I think they're still missing too many things to have a healthy format. If I had to pick a card now that I think will get the axe, I'd probably say Mox Opal. Affinity can be too fast for existing hate. Ancient Grudge is great and all, but if you're Grudging the same turn a lethal Atog is coming your way, it's a bit late. Sorry Abe, but Dark Confidant doesn't see play in Modern and will not see play in Modern any time in the next year. The format is too suicidal with the available mana bases and without Top or even Brainstorm to help avoid damage, Bob is just not good enough. The format isn't about incremental advantage, it's about maximum tempo advantage. I could see Gifts banned, not because it deserves it, but hey, they banned Punishing Fire, Jace TMS and Bitterblossom. At this point, I could see them banning anything that even smells of control.

Bob's looking really good in Zoo right now and has already proven himself in Jund; I think you're wrong on that one. I could see Opal being banned, and Gifts banned for no other reason than Gifts-->Unburial Rites/Iona makes n00bs cry.

SpikeyMikey
12-29-2011, 09:08 AM
Actually, Twin was the deck with the target on it's back. Zoo was just the deck everyone defaulted to because they didn't know what to play. It was definitely expected to be popular, but if you look at the board hate, Combust and Torpor Orb were a lot more prevalent than Firespout or Kitchen Finks. There were a number of decks that beat the tar out of Zoo; they were just relatively under the radar. Melira/Pod, for one. The Martyr/Proc listings tore it a new asshole. I was/am 65+% against the field with my Bant listing with somewhere on the order of 175 games played.

I wouldn't say that Bob has "proven himself" in Jund. I've seen people squeeze him into Jund, but I'm not impressed with him there. I watched a Jund player lose a game he otherwise had locked up against my mono-red because he flipped 7 points of Bob damage over 3 turns (Inquisition, Bob, BBE, in that order). You simply cannot afford that in a format where your opponent can be hitting you for 7-8 damage on turn 2. I think people are making the mistake of thinking that the format is slower than it was 6 months ago. It's not. If anything, it's faster, as the stable iterations of combo and aggro have been pushed out of the format.

Normally, stable is better than fast. TES and ANT are better than Belcher and SI. And Modern may swing back in a stable direction. But right now, I don't want to be playing anything that doesn't win over half of its games by turn 4. People say that Zoo isn't dead. But nobody is actually playing it. So it's irrelevant whether or not it's a viable deck. Some Zoo players went to Jund, some to Affinity, others to Bant. But I just don't see Zoo out there. It's not making much headway on MTGO, it's nowhere to be seen on MWS and Cockatrice and everyone I've talked to is working on other things. Because Zoo was the deck that was best equipped to deal with faster aggro (as a +1 aggro deck), the disappearance of Zoo from the metagame leads to the troubling analysis that there's no reason not to play fast aggro. I was goldfishing a new version of my SAW listing and had 12 turn 3 kills in 30 fishing attempts (5/15 on the play and 7/15 on draw). The average fish was turn 3.8 with a 40% turn 3 fish. Would I play it if I expected to see Zoo? No. But if the expected meta is Jund? Absolutely.

Most of the Jund listings I've seen aren't even playing Lightning Bolt and none of them have a relevant turn 1 creature. It's not like they've got the early cards to trade to keep a fast aggro deck from reaching critical mass. Some of them aren't even keeping the full 4 Ancient Grudge in board. Whether it's Affinity or Burn or some sort of homebrew like my list, the format is incredibly fast and the combination of shock duals and Bob is a recipe for disaster.

SpikeyMikey
01-27-2012, 10:19 AM
My guess is that 3 months from now, they'll have something else that they need to ban. I think they're still missing too many things to have a healthy format. If I had to pick a card now that I think will get the axe, I'd probably say Mox Opal. Affinity can be too fast for existing hate. Ancient Grudge is great and all, but if you're Grudging the same turn a lethal Atog is coming your way, it's a bit late.

Affinity has made up 25% of the PTQ T8's so far and 44% of PTQ winners. Who's a brilliant theorist? I really ought to get paid for this. I'm extending my prediction to either Opal or Cranial Plating. Opal is the smarter pick as it would kill Kuldotha Red too (which I feel is actually stronger than Affinity, just off-radar for 95% of the people out there) but Plating is the card that gets more hype. Then again, I was surprised when Wizards had the presence of mind to ban Cloudpost, so perhaps they'll surprise me again and get it right here. Either way, they can either let the format sit as a turn 3/4 format or they can ban more to try and push it back to turn 4/5.


I doubt that you're going to see Affinity dominating come the very start of January. But I think it's going to put up results and it's going to snowball as people realize that there's not really an effective board strategy to deal with the deck. It's something that not every color combination can deal with and it's going to seriously hamper the development of the format. By the time the GP rolls around, I think you're looking at 12-16% metagame saturation and a 55% GWP vs. the field.

To be fair, I did underestimate how quickly Affinity would dominate. I don't know numbers for meta saturation since those aren't shared on the Wizards website, but 25% of the T8's would imply that it's seriously overperforming that 55% GWP mark. I can't imagine that 25% of the field at a given PTQ is Affinity, so it's definitely the DtB.

Jamaican Zombie Legend
01-30-2012, 02:01 AM
Affinity has made up 25% of the PTQ T8's so far and 44% of PTQ winners. Who's a brilliant theorist? I really ought to get paid for this. I'm extending my prediction to either Opal or Cranial Plating. Opal is the smarter pick as it would kill Kuldotha Red too (which I feel is actually stronger than Affinity, just off-radar for 95% of the people out there) but Plating is the card that gets more hype.

My (uneducated) guess is that Plating gets the axe, as I'm sure Wizards is none too eager to ban Opal, as it would mean:

-Banning a $20 Mythic from a recent set, hitting a lot of the more cash-strapped players and making new cards seem (slightly) less secure.

-Taking a big hit to their egos. Banning a card from Ye Olde Mirrodin block, that was part of the Affinity deck is just closing the door on an old mistake, one that everybody already knows about. Banning Opal makes it look as though they screwed up again.

Of course, I am the 95% (geez, sound like I'm part of some #occupygreatfurnace movement) in that Kuldotha Red is off my radar, so I could be totally off.

mahou_shoujo
06-25-2012, 12:49 PM
I've never disagreed with a ban list more than the Modern list. It encourages me to avoid the format. Punishing/grove was understandable, but not Nacatl. That's just perplexing.

Though It does give me a silver of hope that we could one day see an ban list switcheroo of Survival for Vengevine. Give us the fun card and ban the silly creature. I can dream, can't I?

Zupponn
06-26-2012, 01:10 AM
Looking at the current banned list, I really don't see any cards that stick out like a sore thumb. I can look at each one of those cards and come up with reasons why the card is banned. What Wizards might be doing is trying to make Modern a format that has a distinctly different flavor than either Standard or Legacy by having unique decks of its own and not just ports from other formats.

Now, thinking about future bannings, Affinity is most likely the "Best Deck" in the format, but it is a very beatable deck and therefore I don't see anything being banned from it in the near future. Outside of the "Best Deck", I could see Gifts Ungiven or Ad Nauseam banned just because they are very similar to many of the banned cards in how they feel when you're playing against them.

Menteith
07-06-2012, 11:31 AM
Looking at the current banned list, I really don't see any cards that stick out like a sore thumb. I can look at each one of those cards and come up with reasons why the card is banned.

Sure, but that doesn't mean I agree with those reasons, or understand why they didn't let the format naturally weed out certain decks. Decks like 12post were vulnerable to many different strategies, and certainly had trouble competing against combo or disruptive aggro. A single Breach-Post deck T8ed at PT Philly, and they still banned Cloudpost - yeah, there was a lot of 12post, but the deck wasn't dominating the format. Or a card like Preordain; again, there's a reason it's banned, but seriously, did you take a look at the format and say, "yup, Preordain, that thing's just way too good"?

I was actually really excited to play Modern back during Philly, but the artificial metagame changes they keep forcing (which can get damn expensive if they decide they don't like your deck that month) have completely turned me off from the format. Oh well....

SpikeyMikey
07-07-2012, 02:48 PM
Sure, but that doesn't mean I agree with those reasons, or understand why they didn't let the format naturally weed out certain decks. Decks like 12post were vulnerable to many different strategies, and certainly had trouble competing against combo or disruptive aggro. A single Breach-Post deck T8ed at PT Philly, and they still banned Cloudpost - yeah, there was a lot of 12post, but the deck wasn't dominating the format. Or a card like Preordain; again, there's a reason it's banned, but seriously, did you take a look at the format and say, "yup, Preordain, that thing's just way too good"?

I was actually really excited to play Modern back during Philly, but the artificial metagame changes they keep forcing (which can get damn expensive if they decide they don't like your deck that month) have completely turned me off from the format. Oh well....

That's because Breach Post was trash. Trust me, 12Post was bad for the format. It represented a hard cap at the top end of the format. If you could not race it, you could not beat it. It didn't care about counterspells and once people figured out that trying to race combo rather than disrupt it was a fool's errand, the only deck that would have been able to handle it would've been Splinter Twin.

Menteith
07-08-2012, 11:19 PM
That's because Breach Post was trash. Trust me, 12Post was bad for the format. It represented a hard cap at the top end of the format. If you could not race it, you could not beat it. It didn't care about counterspells and once people figured out that trying to race combo rather than disrupt it was a fool's errand, the only deck that would have been able to handle it would've been Splinter Twin.

I would have liked to have more evidence that it was a problem before snap banning it. It did (relatively) badly at an event where it was heavily represented, and in a brand new format, it's difficult to predict exactly how things would have progressed. I'm not saying that it was a good thing in the format - the argument I just made could be said about Hulk-Flash in Legacy, which everyone hated - but I'd have liked to see the players forming a metagame without the heavy hand of the DCI making changes after every event.

Phoenix Ignition
07-09-2012, 02:57 AM
I would have liked to have more evidence that it was a problem before snap banning it. It did (relatively) badly at an event where it was heavily represented, and in a brand new format, it's difficult to predict exactly how things would have progressed. I'm not saying that it was a good thing in the format - the argument I just made could be said about Hulk-Flash in Legacy, which everyone hated - but I'd have liked to see the players forming a metagame without the heavy hand of the DCI making changes after every event.

Ehhhh, that deck was too good. I think just the fact that some of the lands would give them enough life to outrace even the most aggro of decks meant that they needed a banning. The things they cast were uncounterable, so control had relatively no shot of beating them, and they outraced aggro. It was really just combo deck or 12 post.

You have to remember that non basics in Modern have almost 0 drawback. What's someone going to do? Tectonic Edge one of them? :laugh: Since Wasteland isn't a thing it leaves you with Blood Moon or something much worse (Sowing Salt? Fulminator Mage? Ghost Quarter?). Ghost Quarter hurts you to use, it barely slows them down when you take into account you gimp yourself.

There just wasn't enough to hate it, and if you really wanted to you ended up having a format where literally every deck other than combo had to have 6+ cards dedicated to just dealing with nonbasic lands.

Menteith
07-09-2012, 11:44 AM
Briefly, as I feel like we've gone afield of my original point;

(I believe) that 12post/Breach Post couldn't speed itself up significantly. I also believe that the deck couldn't significantly increase its protection/disruption without damaging its mana base or threat base, both of with were fragile. Most lists couldn't function with greater efficiency than a sealed deck without resolving Primeval Titan/Green Sun's Zenith, both of which are vulnerable to countermagic. Beyond (maybe) Beast Within, the deck cannot proactively stop problem cards, of which there are many. While the deck was indeed a reasonable choice against slow control decks that refuse to make metagame alterations (as I consider Pyromancers Ascension and SplinterTwin, depending on build, to be control decks with decent finishers as opposed to combo lists - anything packing both Mana Leak and Firespout seems like control to me), I don't believe that it could have been significantly improved enough to deal with the metagame that emerged.

Now, I could have been wrong. Maybe a piece of tech would have emerged that fixes the deck's problems against fast aggro, or makes it more robust against disruption (random note - back in testing, I found that a single Cranial Extraction in a black deck with Beseech the Queen to find it would basically win against 12post). There might have been a card that both doubles as acceleration and protection that no one noticed, or some other unlikely situation. But the deck wasn't an unbeatable juggernaut that forced everyone to run narrow cards maindeck to beat it. The metagame had clearly adapted to the deck, and had found ways to beat it down already, without Wizards making a single change. And I think that letting a metagame find solutions (and I'm not even saying it was a problem) is a much better choice than making sweeping changes on some very limited evidence.

Look, Solidarity represented a hardcap on similar style decks for a very long time in Legacy. Counter heavy control decks with slow win conditions, or unprepared control decks in general had huge problems beating it. This wasn't inherently a good or bad thing, and Solidarity was for a long time a pillar of legacy. I think that solutions to 12post would have been found, just as solutions to Solidarity were found without the heavy handed actions of the DCI.

AriLax
07-09-2012, 11:15 PM
Briefly, as I feel like we've gone afield of my original point;

(I believe) that 12post/Breach Post couldn't speed itself up significantly. I also believe that the deck couldn't significantly increase its protection/disruption without damaging its mana base or threat base, both of with were fragile. Most lists couldn't function with greater efficiency than a sealed deck without resolving Primeval Titan/Green Sun's Zenith, both of which are vulnerable to countermagic. Beyond (maybe) Beast Within, the deck cannot proactively stop problem cards, of which there are many. While the deck was indeed a reasonable choice against slow control decks that refuse to make metagame alterations (as I consider Pyromancers Ascension and SplinterTwin, depending on build, to be control decks with decent finishers as opposed to combo lists - anything packing both Mana Leak and Firespout seems like control to me), I don't believe that it could have been significantly improved enough to deal with the metagame that emerged.

Now, I could have been wrong. Maybe a piece of tech would have emerged that fixes the deck's problems against fast aggro, or makes it more robust against disruption (random note - back in testing, I found that a single Cranial Extraction in a black deck with Beseech the Queen to find it would basically win against 12post). There might have been a card that both doubles as acceleration and protection that no one noticed, or some other unlikely situation. But the deck wasn't an unbeatable juggernaut that forced everyone to run narrow cards maindeck to beat it. The metagame had clearly adapted to the deck, and had found ways to beat it down already, without Wizards making a single change. And I think that letting a metagame find solutions (and I'm not even saying it was a problem) is a much better choice than making sweeping changes on some very limited evidence.

Look, Solidarity represented a hardcap on similar style decks for a very long time in Legacy. Counter heavy control decks with slow win conditions, or unprepared control decks in general had huge problems beating it. This wasn't inherently a good or bad thing, and Solidarity was for a long time a pillar of legacy. I think that solutions to 12post would have been found, just as solutions to Solidarity were found without the heavy handed actions of the DCI.

As someone who played in and extensively tested for that Pro Tour, you are blatantly wrong.

1. You say 12Post had an issue with fast aggro. It did not at all. The fastest Affinity lists were reasonable because A) they could combo on 3 and B) they could Poison post-Glimmerpost, but even those were great. The best Zoo lists were still dogs to the deck. The reason the CFB list was good against it (or even close to good) involved Knight of the Reliquary. Glimmerpost was that dumb.

2. It was way to easy to just get Boseiju and ignore counter magic. You could also just manual an Emrakul.

3. You clearly have no idea how fast this deck was if you suggest Beseech into Extraction as an out. If I didn't have a Titan on turn four, it was a bad game. In fact, the amount of turn three Titans with just normal sequencing was even higher than anyone realized.

4. No tech that sped it up? Did you not notice the Through the Breach list or the Amulet Bounceland one? The later might have been going a little deep, but the Breach list legitimately was that much faster.

5. Pyro and Twin being control is comical. They were combo decks with the 8-10 interactive slots you see in other formats. It just happens that you needed to interact with other combo and things like Pridemage.

I played a literal LD deck at that PT and still lost a match to Breach-Post. Adaptation to it was not a realistic option. It could be done, but the answer was honestly just play on a different axis and combo it out. Without those decks it would be oppressively good. Hell, even the Tron decks now are borderline oppressive.

Menteith
07-10-2012, 12:18 AM
It was way to easy to just get Boseiju and ignore counter magic. You could also just manual an Emrakul.

Worth pointing out that the only list that actually T8ed didn't pack a single Boseiju between main or side. It's certainly helpful in some matchups, but on a list who can only fetch nonbasics via Primeval Titan, it's less than helpful (as the card you really want to resolve is PT/GSZ).


If I didn't have a Titan on turn four, it was a bad game. In fact, the amount of turn three Titans with just normal sequencing was even higher than anyone realized.

I'll keep referencing the T8 list for this, unless you'd like to supply a different one. It packs a total of 13 mana acceleration (17 with GSZ for Dryad Arbor). It has no way of fetching Cloudpost outside of PT. It's not impossible to pull off a T3 Titan, but it requires a great deal of luck, and it's even less likely that one could GSZ one out then. Turn 4 is more reasonable, but it's still not something that would occur in every game. If you'd actually like the deck I was working on for awhile (that packed BtQ), I'd be happy to PM it to you for reference.


No tech that sped it up? Did you not notice the Through the Breach list or the Amulet Bounceland one? The later might have been going a little deep, but the Breach list legitimately was that much faster

Yup, which is why it's the one I'm working off of. I meant beyond the existing modifications that were showcased at the event. For reference, http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptphi11/top8decklists


Pyro and Twin being control is comical. They were combo decks with the 8-10 interactive slots you see in other formats. It just happens that you needed to interact with other combo and things like Pridemage

Enh, definitions. We're clearly working off a different way of defining the decks - While the decks certainly can win out of the blue, their increased mechanisms for interaction in a given game (as compared to say, ANT or Fetchland Tendrils) cause me to classify them differently. You clearly disagree with that assessment, and I doubt we're going to come to a consensus on it.

And again, I'll cede that you might be entirely correct. My objection is that the DCI made the decision to change the format based on what I see as insufficient evidence - and I originally objected more to Preordain being banned than Cloudpost.

Zupponn
07-10-2012, 01:20 AM
Ancestral Vision - Too good? I'm not sure. I don't have too much experience with this card.
Ancient Den - Affinity.
Bitterblossom - Faeries.
Blazing Shoal - Infect.
Chrome Mox - Fast mana.
Cloudpost - 12Post.
Dark Depths - Hexmage/Depths combo.
Dread Return - Dredge.
Glimpse of Nature - Could get out of hand.
Golgari Grave-Troll - Dredge.
Great Furnace - Affinity.
Green Sun's Zenith - Was proven to be too good.
Hypergenesis - Probably way too powerful.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor - Do I need to comment on this one?
Mental Misstep - Eh, was banned in Legacy, maybe could be okay in Modern. I guess they just wanted to be safe.
Ponder - Look the old Pyromancer's Ascension decks. They are filled with around 20 cards that pretty much only draw cards. Is this good deckbuilding? And to think that there are cards that they can still use to fill these slots decently. This was banned to slow the dumb combo decks down a bit.
Preordain - See Ponder.
Punishing Fire - Combo with Grove.
Rite of Flame - Fast mana.
Seat of the Synod - Affinity.
Sensei's Divining Top - Way too good.
Stoneforge Mystic - See Jace.
Skullclamp - No comment.
Sword of the Meek - Thopter/Sword combo.
Tree of Tales - Affinity.
Umezawa's Jitte - Way too good.
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle - Scapeshift combo.
Vault of Whispers - Affinity.
Wild Nacatl - Zoo.

Looking at the list and the reasons I provided, I can't find a card that doesn't belong on the list. Maybe my reasons are wrong, but I've thought them through fairly well and I like them. If you disagree with them, I cannot hold that against you, but know that I will not change my views on the banned list.

Also, a single top eight cannot define what the format looked like at the time. I've played the format pretty well and remember hating playing against many of these cards, (although dropping a first turn Warren Instigator through Rite of Flame was really fun). I think the format is meant to be fun, and none of those cards are really too fun for all players.

Preordain and Ponder might also be banned along similar lines of how most tutors are banned in Legacy. You probably could use many of the arguments for keeping those 2 as for unbanning Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor.

Menteith
07-10-2012, 01:51 AM
Looking at the list and the reasons I provided, I can't find a card that doesn't belong on the list. Maybe my reasons are wrong, but I've thought them through fairly well and I like them. If you disagree with them, I cannot hold that against you, but know that I will not change my views on the banned list.

Cool, but could you post a bit more on your views? Saying that Bitterblossom would be played in Faeries isn't exactly an argument for its banning - are you implicitly stating that a deck like Faeries would be harmful to the format in some way, and if so, how would it be harmful?

Additionally, it bothers me that there's a trend in banning the more widely used cards, rather than the niche cards that enable "broken" strategies. For example, Punishing Fire might actually have seen sideboard play against something like Soul Sisters - but instead of banning Grove (which is very unlikely to see play without Punishing Fire), they banned the useful card. The same could be said of Valukut instead of Scapeshift or Ponder/Preordain instead of Pyromancer's Ascension.


Preordain and Ponder might also be banned along similar lines of how most tutors are banned in Legacy. You probably could use many of the arguments for keeping those 2 as for unbanning Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor.

Yeah, except for the fact that they're magnitudes less powerful. I could apply the same argument to Diabolic Tutor, but that doesn't make it any more reasonable. There's nothing inherently overpowered about tutoring - are you simultaneous claiming that Preordain was such a powerful tutor that it needed to be banned for the health of the format, and that Serum Visions (which, while worse, is a very similar card filling the exact same role) didn't?

AriLax
07-10-2012, 08:31 AM
Menteith:

Literally the stockest of the stock builds of Post was making turn four titans the vast majority of the games we played. That's not even counting if you went deep and found Summoner's Pact to play 9-10 Titans. I don't have the list as we all decided to next level the deck instead of play it and all the similar ones bombed out of the much faster PT environment, but some of the keys were 1 Oracle of Muldaya, Ancient Stirrings being awful, some number of Sylvan Scrying and Reap and Sow. I think we found room for ~2 Beast Within, and I don't remember our exact ramp dude split.

Seriously, trust the person who spent weeks before the PT plus a week working full time on the format in Philly on this one.


On the banned list:

UB Faeries would completely crush almost every single major deck in the format. Jund, Blue-Tron, and Affinity might survive, but that's about it. The resulting metagame would not be nearly as interesting. Faeries has and always will be captain of the fun police.

If you unbanned Nacatl, that would be a different story, but then there's the whole "no reason to not play Zoo" issue.

On Pun Fire-Grove, Pun Fire is the actual engine generating the advantage. Grove is just a durdly land with an atypical drawback.

Of the list, the only cards I could see coming off as of now are Valakut, Visions, and Zenith and even then I'm wary of them.

The best Valakut argument I can make is that Valakut is no worse than Tron. Realistically this probably means you should ban Tron, not unban Valakut.

Visions pushes a lot of boundaries on the already good UW decks and probably doesn't allow for anything new.

GSZ is mostly because I think a fair number of the current non-GSZ green decks would be fine in a GSZ meta, while the card would help deal with Tron. I can easily see Jund and Loam staying around. The Knight of the Reliquary decks have notably been missing as well. Of course, people just wouldn't build new green decks then, which is the same problem that got it banned in the first place.

Menteith
07-10-2012, 10:13 AM
Literally the stockest of the stock builds of Post was making turn four titans the vast majority of the games we played. That's not even counting if you went deep and found Summoner's Pact to play 9-10 Titans. I don't have the list as we all decided to next level the deck instead of play it and all the similar ones bombed out of the much faster PT environment, but some of the keys were 1 Oracle of Muldaya, Ancient Stirrings being awful, some number of Sylvan Scrying and Reap and Sow. I think we found room for ~2 Beast Within, and I don't remember our exact ramp dude split.

Seriously, trust the person who spent weeks before the PT plus a week working full time on the format in Philly on this one.

Fair enough. My comments have been off of the only Breach Post list to actually post results, which notably lacked Sylvan Scrying or Reap and Sow (though it did have 3 Beast Within).



On Pun Fire-Grove, Pun Fire is the actual engine generating the advantage. Grove is just a durdly land with an atypical drawback.

Wait, explain to me how Punishing Fire is an actual engine without Grove? Because it's not an engine without that "durdly land" bring it back - instead it's just a piece of mana inefficient burn that's useful against little animals who gain life, which is sort of what it was designed for.


Of the list, the only cards I could see coming off as of now are Valakut, Visions, and Zenith and even then I'm wary of them.

Honestly speaking, I'd be fine with Ancestral Visions, Green Sun's Zenith, Mental Misstep, Ponder/Preordain, Punishing Fire, Umezawa's Jitte, and Valakut coming off. At this point though, any changes to the banned list would be more frustrating than just leaving it alone, so meh.

EDIT
With Grove and Scapeshift being banned.

hi-val
07-10-2012, 02:06 PM
Regarding 12post, the same factor at work with why I'm focusing on Tron these days can be applied to 12post. It's a two-axis thing:

1. Wizards will keep printing good high-mana spells. You can look at Karn Liberated and all the green Genesis-Wave style spells as well as things like Eldrazi. M13 has a lot of giant and dumb spells, and giant dumb spells that are reasonable to cast if you have The Biggest Mana are pretty good. I'm not saying it's an actual strategy but casting Diabolic X-Tutor from M13 for X=4 off of four lands is a pretty steep discount. Casting Karn off of three lands is also a similarly good discount.

2. Wizards will never print nonbasic land hate that is better than what we're seeing right now. Dwarven Miner is just too good to reprint. Let that one sink in. Modern's best nonbasic hate is and will always be stuff like Sowing Salt, Blood Moon and Tectonic Edge. No Wasteland, no Miner, nothing like that.


So big mana decks will get better over time as the card pool deepens and ways to hate the manabase will never improve.

AriLax
07-10-2012, 04:35 PM
Honestly speaking, I'd be fine with Ancestral Visions, Green Sun's Zenith, Mental Misstep, Ponder/Preordain, Punishing Fire, Umezawa's Jitte, and Valakut coming off. At this point though, any changes to the banned list would be more frustrating than just leaving it alone, so meh.

EDIT
With Grove and Scapeshift being banned.

Misstep is just no. I would rather not go down that path with this format. The number of playable one drops is too high to make them all unplayable.

Ponder/Preordain make combo too good. Way too good.

Scapeshift is actually not the issue with Valakut. The Shift combo decks were interactive and interesting. The problem card is Primeval Titan, which is the exact opposite of interesting.

Jitte I've thought a lot about, but I think creature battles are more interesting without it. With it they become Jitte or bust, and it's better to see people actually have to try.

Menteith
07-10-2012, 05:06 PM
Misstep is just no. I would rather not go down that path with this format. The number of playable one drops is too high to make them all unplayable.

Ponder/Preordain make combo too good. Way too good.

Scapeshift is actually not the issue with Valakut. The Shift combo decks were interactive and interesting. The problem card is Primeval Titan, which is the exact opposite of interesting.

Jitte I've thought a lot about, but I think creature battles are more interesting without it. With it they become Jitte or bust, and it's better to see people actually have to try.

And I'm willing to admit I might be totally off base on that, and what I think is good for the metagame is awful. I'm of the mind that things need to prove that they're seriously unhealthy for a format before banning, as rapidly shifting a metagame with high prices due to speculation isn't exactly good for stimulating abiding interest in a format.

mossivo1986
07-11-2012, 01:45 AM
I agree with ari on this one. Actually I dont even mind mistep. I do not however think any part of the zenith synergy or p funk combo are too format imbalancing.

xfxf
09-05-2012, 06:50 AM
I never paid any attention to the format and don't think of it highly. But I just realized that the allied fetchlands are not legal in the format while the enemy fetchlands are legal so wtf? Is that true? That's the most ridiculous asymmetrical anomaly an eternal format can have. It's even worse than I thought.

JDK
09-05-2012, 07:50 AM
Not a big deal, because you can still fetch all you need.

kwis
09-07-2012, 04:00 AM
Perhaps we will see a reprint of the old fetch-lands in an upcoming set to balance the colors out.

Phoenix Ignition
09-07-2012, 04:45 PM
The colors don't really need it. Legacy was just fine before Zendikar fetches, and I'd say Modern is even better off than Legacy was just because Wasteland and other forms of non-basic hate aren't problems at all.

ween
09-20-2012, 01:02 AM
Oooooh baby! Valakut's back!

Pity i sold my Primeval Titans or i could have an almost direct port of the old Standard deck.

Phoenix Ignition
09-20-2012, 03:16 AM
I'll be interested to see if any decks come out because of this. I'm worried decks built around it will get crushed hard by Tron, but perhaps if it is built like the strange legacy Nic Fit style then it can do well. There's so few cards that actually kill the number of lands you control in the format that it could work.

Keep in mind Prismatic Omen to speed up the deck so that you only need 6 lands in play when you Scapeshift to kill someone.

Mr. Safety
09-24-2012, 05:36 PM
Already brewing a Valakut/Seismic Assault/Loam/Prismatic Omen/Treasure Hunt deck...and playing roughly 30 lands. Maindecking 4x Scapeshift for sure. I'm just not sure what to use to ramp/dig out lands. So far I have:

Explore
Harrow
Treasure Hunt


Any thoughts on what that kind of deck could do? I'm pretty stoked, but it might just flop.

EDIT: wtf, I forgot Mulch...

bowvamp
09-24-2012, 08:18 PM
Yeah, I'm trying it out with Summer Bloom. It can be fairly explosive, but it requires a lot of tuning/balls to be any good.

Mr. Safety
09-24-2012, 09:03 PM
Summer Bloom seems really good, especially after a big Treasure Hunt. My biggest quandry is whether to include Primeval Titan or not...he could be right, but could also be wrong. Not sure yet...

bowvamp
09-24-2012, 09:15 PM
Yeah, in testing I've found
Ideas Unbound
Seismic Assault
Life from the Loam
Lotus Cobra
Manamorphose
Prismatic Omen
to be the best shell. Idk, going combo is a really hard route and the main combo decks of the format do it better.

somethingdotdotdot
09-24-2012, 09:33 PM
How about trade routes? Since you're playing so many land, you can cycle them to find actual fuel. You can also dredge like crazy with loam, and if you happen to Titan and already have a valakut active, you can guarantee a trigger/turn. Lastly, you can return every land and assault for the finish.

Mr. Safety
09-25-2012, 05:49 PM
Yeah, in testing I've found
Ideas Unbound
Seismic Assault
Life from the Loam
Lotus Cobra
Manamorphose
Prismatic Omen
to be the best shell. Idk, going combo is a really hard route and the main combo decks of the format do it better.

Curious, how many lands? I've been pushing as many as 30 to make sure I can have Seismic Fodder.

Current rough list:

4x Treasure Hunt
4x Summer Bloom
4x Life from the Loam
4x Scapeshift
4x Seismic Assault
4x Prismatic Omen
30x-ish Lands, including a playset of Horizon Canopy

Cards on my radar screen:

Mana Leak (to delay)
Explore (just more synergy)
Countryside Crusher (RUG aggro loam in modern?)
Lotus Cobra (I was thinking the same thing...this could really get big plays down fast, and fast Titans could be what the deck needs.)
Firespout (maindeck...I'm not sure if the deck can be competitive if it doesn't have a way to wipe the board early)
Raven's Crime/Flame Jab (Loam can make them good-great in the right matchups...)

I've been testing against a stock Jund list I net-decked on MWS (goldfishing) and so far it isn't looking great. Prismatic Omen is a neccessity to get a combo going (so I can grab 4 Valakuts and a couple Mountains/lands for 24 damage.) Seismic Assault is a really solid alternative plan with Loam.

rxavage
09-25-2012, 05:59 PM
Mana Leak (to delay)


What about using the actual card Delay? Thats what I'm testing, it's the best and cheapest, along with Dispel, to ensure Scapeshift resolves.

DragoFireheart
10-16-2012, 02:55 PM
I still don't understand why Ancestral Vision is banned.

Bignasty197
10-16-2012, 03:07 PM
I still don't understand why Ancestral Vision is banned.

I heard it was because Suspending it on T1 gives the control decks an opportunity to counter/kill any relevant spells for the first turns and then get a refill. Considering how underpowered the control decks are in the format, they could probably use some kind of boost. Personally, I think the point was to eliminate Bloodbraid Elf cascading into it and also to stop Faeries from having access to it. --If you played Type 2 during Lorwyn block, you know what I mean.

Fizzeler
10-16-2012, 04:53 PM
I still don't understand why Ancestral Vision is banned.
I heard it was because Suspending it on T1 gives the control decks an opportunity to counter/kill any relevant spells for the first turns and then get a refill. Considering how underpowered the control decks are in the format, they could probably use some kind of boost. Personally, I think the point was to eliminate Bloodbraid Elf cascading into it and also to stop Faeries from having access to it. --If you played Type 2 during Lorwyn block, you know what I mean.

This is the reason, but by same virtue this is also why they can unban Ancestral Visions since control is very weak, I think RTR was supposed to help fix this with Detention Sphere, Supreme Verdict, and Jace, Architect Of Thought

Bitterblossom is banned as a result of the same Faeries deck no? (I wasn't playing during that Standard)

DragoFireheart
10-16-2012, 05:33 PM
...and also to stop Faeries from having access to it. --If you played Type 2 during Lorwyn block, you know what I mean.

- Oh yes. It's why Volcanic Fallout exists.

trivial_matters
10-16-2012, 08:01 PM
- Oh yes. It's why Volcanic Fallout exists.

And GREAT STABLE STAG.

DragoFireheart
10-17-2012, 10:55 AM
And GREAT STABLE STAG.

Did that stupid Stag actually do anything to faeries?

Bignasty197
10-17-2012, 11:27 AM
Did that stupid Stag actually do anything to faeries?

Not exactly what it was supposed to do for the decks that needed it. It could swing past everything but Mutavault, which was good. At least until they chumped with Mutavault then flashed in Scion and killed the Stag. I played UB Faeries during that Standard.

As far as the B&R list goes, I think Visions can probably come off but Bitterblossom can never be unbanned. Ever.

DragoFireheart
10-17-2012, 11:37 AM
Not exactly what it was supposed to do for the decks that needed it. It could swing past everything but Mutavault, which was good. At least until they chumped with Mutavault then flashed in Scion and killed the Stag. I played UB Faeries during that Standard.

As far as the B&R list goes, I think Visions can probably come off but Bitterblossom can never be unbanned. Ever.

- Yeah I had that feeling about GSS when I looked at it. It looked too terrible to be effective for what it was intended to do.

Will Ponder/Preordain ever come off? Serum Visions is... ok, but not amazing. Other than that, the rest of the banned list looks fine, though it is funny seeing Wild Nacatl on that list. :laugh:

TeenieBopper
10-17-2012, 11:55 AM
Will Ponder/Preordain ever come off? Serum Visions is... ok, but not amazing. Other than that, the rest of the banned list looks fine, though it is funny seeing Wild Nacatl on that list. :laugh:

I highly doubt it. They're allowed to get away with the power creep the past few years in Standard because the format is small enough that a critical mass of broken can't be reached. We saw a year ago that this clearly wasn't the case when two blocks became seven. Twin/Storm weren't that much slower than Legacy combo, but were just as consistent and didn't have to deal with Force of Will. The only way Ponder and/or Pre-ordain come off the list is if Force of Will gets reprinted for Modern. Even then, I'd argue that the constraints of the format forced the combo decks to be more resilient to control and Force of Will wouldn't make that much of a difference.

Actually, thinking about it a little, I wonder what would happen if they unbanned Ponder or Pre-ordain, but banned Grapeshot, Empty the Warrens, and Splinter Twin. A U/R combo deck would still exist (Dragonstorm), it would be consistent enough to be playable, but it would be slow enough for both aggro and control to keep up. I still think the format needs a real counterspell, though (like, say, Counterspell).

JDK
10-17-2012, 12:11 PM
Dragonstorm without an alternative Kill (Grapeshot, Empty) and Rite of Flame doesn't work well enough. Also, there's no point in banning a completely fine archetype just to make other (DTB-) decks (Delver) significantly stronger.

DragoFireheart
10-17-2012, 12:25 PM
I still think the format needs a real counterspell, though (like, say, Counterspell).

- I agree. The current line-up of counterspells in Modern are far too weak or situational. If WotC expects the game to not be won until after turn 4 (IIRC, this is their goal), then mana leak style of counterspells are going to be bad.

Is Spell Pierce even playable in Modern? Without land destruction it seems like a very bad counter spell and you may as well just run Negate or something.

JDK
10-17-2012, 01:15 PM
Counterspell would be far too strong in Modern. People are already playing Deprive in some Delver decks, CS would get autoincluded in most blue decks. It's just too strong for this format, imo.

Bignasty197
10-17-2012, 01:21 PM
... Also, there's no point in banning a completely fine archetype just to make other (DTB-) decks (Delver) significantly stronger.

I can agree with this. Delver needs to be powered DOWN if anything. The reasoning behind the banning of Nacatl was that it is too efficient for its cost. IMO, Delver needs to go for this very reason. RUG and URW Delver are clear Tier 1 decks based on recent tournament finishes. Adding Ponder or Preordain into the mix just makes these decks more consistent, which is exactly what we don't want.

Lord Seth
10-17-2012, 01:38 PM
I can agree with this. Delver needs to be powered DOWN if anything. The reasoning behind the banning of Nacatl was that it is too efficient for its cost. IMO, Delver needs to go for this very reason. RUG and URW Delver are clear Tier 1 decks based on recent tournament finishes. Adding Ponder or Preordain into the mix just makes these decks more consistent, which is exactly what we don't want.No it wasn't. Wild Nacatl wasn't banned because it was too good. It was banned because it was really good and forced you into Zoo and made it so there was little point in playing other aggro decks. It was for format diversity. Delver of Secrets does not constrain the format in the same way Wild Nacatl did. Wild Nacatl was a powerful card that brought down diversity. Delver of Secrets is a powerful card that, well, doesn't (you even pointed out two different decks it can go in).

This "if Wild Nacatl got banned, why doesn't Delver of Secrets?" question that's always brought up misses the point of why Wild Nacatl was actually banned. You're free to disagree with the rationale or the banning, but the "if Nacatl why not Delver" is essentially a strawman.

TonyRo
10-17-2012, 01:43 PM
I have a bunch of fundamental gripes about the Modern format that mostly revolve around the banned list:

1. I think if you have to ban cards like Ponder/Preordain, Wild Nacatl, GSZ, and perhaps even Sword of the Meek (though I do get this one to a certain extent), then the "physics" of the format are fundamentally screwed up. If card pool doesn't allow players to deal with 1 mana filtering spells (worse than Brainstorm by a mile), a one mana conditional 3/3 (Delver is allowed though!?), or a slow, hard to tutor combo that you can disrupt with a very large pool of accessible and generally very good/common sideboard cards anyway, you've got some issues to solve.

2. I hate that Jund is basically the best deck, and noticeably so, since it's literally just a pile of the best cards in the format. When the smorgasbord of best cards in the format are the best deck, there's not much you can do, there's not much to conjure up and create, and the format is boring. Jund has more efficiency, raw power, and card advantage than any other deck in the format at every spot in the curve, and it's not close. People are realizing this, and the MODO Daily results are exceptionally depressing.

3. The card draw/filtering in this format is horrific. With Visions banned, the best Blue has is probably Thirst for Knowledge. Yep, Thirst for Knowledge.

4. I think it's terrible that a GR deck has the most inevitability in Modern. Tron is very tough to interact with, very fast (T3 Karn being about as fast as it gets) and goes bigger than any fair deck can hope to go. In my opinion, this warps the format. They banned Cloudpost earlier because of this, but Tron stays? This fact along with #3 above wipe Control as an archetype right out of the format, basically making Modern a bunch of decks that turn creatures sideways, and a random assortment of combo/combo-ish decks that attempt to race them. That's boring as hell. I love that Magic provides players a huge number of ways to express themselves, but to me, Modern lacks this.

Perhaps it's just me, but the above list really reduces my interest in the format by a lot.

Bignasty197
10-17-2012, 02:51 PM
No it wasn't. Wild Nacatl wasn't banned because it was too good. It was banned because it was really good and forced you into Zoo and made it so there was little point in playing other aggro decks. It was for format diversity. Delver of Secrets does not constrain the format in the same way Wild Nacatl did. Wild Nacatl was a powerful card that brought down diversity. Delver of Secrets is a powerful card that, well, doesn't (you even pointed out two different decks it can go in).

This "if Wild Nacatl got banned, why doesn't Delver of Secrets?" question that's always brought up misses the point of why Wild Nacatl was actually banned. You're free to disagree with the rationale or the banning, but the "if Nacatl why not Delver" is essentially a strawman.

You say Nacatl wasn't banned because it was too good, then go on to give reasons why it was too good. Players were forced into Zoo because the best creature fits perfectly into it. Yes, this hurts diversity because you can follow up the best 1-drop with the best 2-drop or 2 more 1-drops and ride them to victory while holding Bolt/Path/Helix to clean up blockers and life total. That fact is--it restricted the diversity of the format because it was too good. Delver has efficiently jumped into the driver's seat and may eventually be as oppressive as Nacatl. The only thing I see that contradicts this is the printing of Abrupt Decay. Delver decks can no longer just hold up Spell Pierce mana to deal with removal and just swing away. Why would anyone want to play a deck that doesn't play 1-mana, 3 power flyers that makes you play cards like Bolt/Path/Helix/counterspells to support it? If you have played the format recently, you understand what I'm talking about with Delver.

Lord Seth
10-17-2012, 03:02 PM
You say Nacatl wasn't banned because it was too good, then go on to give reasons why it was too good.No, I gave reasons why it was good and why it wasn't just good, it was actually warping the format.

Admittedly, perhaps we are operating under different definitions of "too good." To me, "too good" means it's just flat-out too powerful. A card can be good but not "too good" but restricts archetypes and thus needs to be banned.

Regardless, the point is, it isn't just power alone that got it banned. Thus trying to appeal to Delver on that basis is ignoring the reason it was banned, because the other reasons don't apply to Delver of Secrets.


Players were forced into Zoo because the best creature fits perfectly into it. Yes, this hurts diversity because you can follow up the best 1-drop with the best 2-drop or 2 more 1-drops and ride them to victory while holding Bolt/Path/Helix to clean up blockers and life total. That fact is--it restricted the diversity of the format because it was too good.All right, this is pretty similar to what I said...


Delver has efficiently jumped into the driver's seat and may eventually be as oppressive as Nacatl.Those are some pretty key words there, and again a major thing that separates them. Wild Nacatl was oppressive and warping. Delver of Secrets is just a really good card. In other words, you're agreeing with me.

Again, if someone thinks that Wild Nacatl wasn't really that warping or didn't deserve banning, that's one thing. But, again, trying to make the Delver of Secrets comparison is just missing a key reason it was banned.

Fizzeler
10-17-2012, 04:13 PM
Not exactly what it was supposed to do for the decks that needed it. It could swing past everything but Mutavault, which was good. At least until they chumped with Mutavault then flashed in Scion and killed the Stag. I played UB Faeries during that Standard.

As far as the B&R list goes, I think Visions can probably come off but Bitterblossom can never be unbanned. Ever.

I kinda agree, maybe if there were better hard counters available Bitterblossom would be safe, but Spell Snare and Spell Pierce do see quite a bit of play, on the flip side Bitterblossom does just out tempo your opponent fairly quickly

I would argue unbanning Sword Of The Meek for reasons such as the combo being slow, disruptable, and harder to tutor for, the combo also gives control decks a viable win condition and helps them stabilize

Ponder/Preordain were banned because of combo decks, look at the format before those cards (and Rite Of Flame) were banned

Blame Sam Black for getting Blazing Shoal banned :wink:

DragoFireheart
10-17-2012, 11:13 PM
4. I think it's terrible that a GR deck has the most inevitability in Modern. Tron is very tough to interact with, very fast (T3 Karn being about as fast as it gets) and goes bigger than any fair deck can hope to go. In my opinion, this warps the format. They banned Cloudpost earlier because of this, but Tron stays? This fact along with #3 above wipe Control as an archetype right out of the format, basically making Modern a bunch of decks that turn creatures sideways, and a random assortment of combo/combo-ish decks that attempt to race them. That's boring as hell. I love that Magic provides players a huge number of ways to express themselves, but to me, Modern lacks this.

Perhaps it's just me, but the above list really reduces my interest in the format by a lot.

- You're kidding, right?

Show me the number of Tier 1 Legacy decks that win without turning a creature sideways.

TonyRo
10-17-2012, 11:31 PM
No need to get so fired up. Perhaps I should rephrase:

When I look at the top decks, or even popular decks in Legacy, there are a very large number of decks that have incredible identity to them. The decks resonate with me, and all of them are very interesting. The mana denial and card advantage engines in Goblins, turn two Griselbrands, Show and Tell/Omniscience, the CounterTop engine with Miracles or Thopters, BUG Control grinding people out with Liliana/Jace/Life From the Loam/Deed, Dredge being....Dredge.

Yes, Dredge, Goblins, Reanimator, and possibly Miracles win by turning creatures sideways, but it doesn't feel boring like Modern does. Maybe it's just me, but Modern feels like a powerful standard environment, like it's Delver vs. Zombies every game. The lack of grindy control decks feels weird to me as well.

That's all I meant.

JDK
10-18-2012, 05:29 AM
Yeah, Show and Tell, Dredge and miracling are super interesting...right. It seems you didn't even take a closer look at Modern and mentioning some of the most boring and straight-forwarded decks in legacy makes this even more weird.

The DTBs are pretty diverse (Jund, Tron, RUG, UWR, Storm, Affinity). Some of the decks are similar to legacy decks, like Splinter Twin / Tron and SnT (2-Card Combo, cheating fatties in play), Storm and, well, Storm etc.

Of course the format is more limited than Legacy. That is the fucking idea behind it, which makes it more accessible, while still enabling decks with "identity" (as you put it).

TonyRo
10-18-2012, 08:39 AM
I've played the format extensively - I have (or have had depending on the list) a very large # of the decks built on MODO, including RUG & UWR Delver, UW Tron, Storm, Loam, Tezzerator, Soul Sisters, and so forth. This is a discussion about the banned list, which was how my post started. Everyone is going to have an opinion on the format and the decks that are in it. I don't find Jund, Tron, or any of the Delver lists interesting, and I'm not going to take that back. You apparently do, and that's okay with me too - an opinion is an opinion.

BTW, a deck can be straightforward but can still be interesting and have identity. I think most great Dredge players would ardently disagree that it's an easy deck to play. I'll concede that Show and Tell probably isn't the hardest combo deck to play. I simply chose a few of the decks in Legacy that I thought were the best. I've played Reanimator, Elves, Goblins, UWr Miracles and BUG Control on MODO quite a bit, and I don't find any of them particularly boring - maaayyybe Goblins.

Let's let this rest - sorry to upset a few people here with my comments, that wasn't the idea. I mostly just wanted to talk about the bullet points in my original post. I'll refrain from any further opinions on anything here, as apparently Modern is a particularly touchy subject! :rolleyes:

DragoFireheart
10-18-2012, 10:56 AM
- I'm not upset at you. That's just the way I argue (aggressively). If i was upset at you, you'd see MANY more profanities. :laugh:




BTW, a deck can be straightforward but can still be interesting and have identity. I think most great Dredge players would ardently disagree that it's an easy deck to play. I'll concede that Show and Tell probably isn't the hardest combo deck to play. I simply chose a few of the decks in Legacy that I thought were the best. I've played Reanimator, Elves, Goblins, UWr Miracles and BUG Control on MODO quite a bit, and I don't find any of them particularly boring - maaayyybe Goblins.

Let's let this rest - sorry to upset a few people here with my comments, that wasn't the idea. I mostly just wanted to talk about the bullet points in my original post. I'll refrain from any further opinions on anything here, as apparently Modern is a particularly touchy subject! :rolleyes:

- You keep using that word, but it seems meaningless to me.

Other than decks like Storm and Dredge, I see a lot of deck crossover from Legacy to Modern. I do agree with you on one point: Control in modern is shit and the control archtype as a whole is too weak.

TonyRo
10-18-2012, 01:31 PM
Yeah, perhaps the word is vague to those not in my head. I mostly just mean that when I see those decks, they feel unique to me, like they're doing special things no other deck does - they feel interesting and awesome. UWR, RUG Delver, Jund, MonoRed, the UW Midrange decks - that's a large portion of Modern, and they don't feel special to me - they're all basically just list with a bunch of sweet creatures that beat down. It all feels mostly interchangeable. That's just my perception, my opinion. I understand that Jund fans would take offense to that, I just don't get excited by any of those options. Modern missing Control is also a big miss for me, as I love the Rock Paper Scissors type feel of Legacy's metagame, which Modern lacks. This is a separate topic, but while we're there, in my opinion Control is missing for a few reasons:

1. Filtering and card draw in Modern is garbage.

2. Jace and Sword of the Meek (this is more niche of course, but in Extended UW Gifts/Tezzeret the Seeker decks were quite good if I recall) are banned.

3. It's impossible to beat Tron with any Control deck that people are trying these days. Perhaps Grixis has a chance with Thoughtseize, Counterspells, and Sowing Salts, but you're still likely fighting for only games 2 & 3. I don't think I've seen more lopsided games of MTG than a deck like Gifts or Mystical Teachings of any sort vs. GR Tron. It's just completely unwinnable - it's just way to hard to interact, and Tron has the inevitability. Mystical Teachings/Gifts decks can't switch roles to be the beatdown all that easily.

heathen
10-18-2012, 05:47 PM
Guys, remember that Modern is still a fairly new format. There are new, innovative decks still being brewed. Just because there isn't a top-shelf control deck at the moment doesn't mean it won't/can't be created.

Also, GR Tron isn't that good. Even if you end up playing for games two and three against them, that's the way it is against Dredge for a lot of decks in Legacy. GR Tron is "doing special things no other deck does" in Modern, like casting a turn three Karn. Kinda' like how Dredge does "special" things no other Legacy deck does.

I'm confident there is a good, competitive control deck possible in Modern. It may just not be popular yet, or it may be in a form that doesn't fit what you expect.

JDK
10-18-2012, 05:54 PM
Just because you reduce Modern and its decks to "tapping creatures sideways" doesn't make them less unique or give them little "identity".
Your posts seem like rants about how Tron is mean because you think your control MU sucks (guess what, there are unbeatable MU with almost any competitive deck in any format) and how Modern decks are all the same (if they don't have an identity, they must feel the same, right?).

I just don't get your point. You don't like the format. That's okay, but "lack of control decks" was the only reasonable argument for that. The rest was just "I don't like it, because...it's not special to me". If your message was to unban Ancestral Visions and Ponder/Preordain, I can just scratch my head, because it would make some decks pretty much unbeatable.

Sorry, if this sounds aggressive, but that's like posting into the Legacy B&R thread about how broken Goblins are and that you want Ancestral Recall back, because your Miracle MU sucks.