One of my mates runs this deck with Jace and Ojutai's Command, it has legs but I do not know if it can match Grixis.
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Twitter. From on high.
If this is true (BIG 'if'), Eldrazi will probably stay Tier 1/Tier 2. You can swap in Vesuva for Eye and still have a functioning deck. It just won't be nearly as broken (Turn 2 TKS is still a possibility, but very rare; no more multiple Mimic openings). No one should be surprised though, since Aaron Forsythe came out saying they weren't going to make the deck unplayable.
This also has a bit of splash damage to Tron, which is probably a good thing since everyone predicted it to be the DTB after the Splinter Twin ban.
So the price of Temple and Vesuva will probable go up, while Eye will tank. Gonna have to pick up some foils.
Related: Why Eye of Ugin is the Ban (MTGPrice)
I really have a hard time seeing them banning "just" Eye of Ugin. I'm almost 100% certain Temple gets hit too. Every time wizards has decided they need to kill a deck, they've KILLED it. Think about what happened to Affinity, or Caw-Blade. Does anyone really think WotC wants to come back in three months and do this again with Vesuva/Temple based Eldrazi running rampant? I mean, Green/x Tron probably just becomes the new Eldrazi mid-range deck after this, given the power level of Reality Smasher and Thought-Knot Seer + Ancient Stirrings/Sylvan Scrying. It's basically a much better version of the old, and very strong, "Troll and Nail" decks. Except now it will be "Eldrazi and Karn" decks.
So I guess I just don't understand why people think only one of the lands is going to take a beating here.
Forsythe explicitly said they don't want to totally kill Eldrazi as a deck and banning both lands does that.
It's historical precedent versus the word of the director of MTG R&D.
We'll see very soon what ends up being false.
Eye enables the broken plays. With Temple it may still be Tier 1 until the meta adapts, but it's still just an aggro deck with a weak manabase and no reach. With neither lands there's no point to playing the deck since Zoo and Jund do the same thing better.
I guess that's what I meant about "eldrazi and karn" becoming the new deck. Things just get a lot more mid-rangey that way, but you've still got people able to play with their smashers and seers and whatnot.
I mean:
4x TKS
4x Reality Smasher
4x Karn Liberated
2x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
3x Oblivion Stone
3x Wurmcoil Engine
4x Chromatic Star
4x Chromatic Sphere
4x Ancient Stirrings
4x Expedition Map
3x Sylvan Scrying
4x Urza's Tower
4x Urza's Power Plant
4x Urza's Mine
4x Wooded Foothills
3x Forest
1x Mountain
1x Stomping Ground
I mean, that's a pretty solid deck that's very Eldrazi-ish, and can run without Temples or Eyes, but it isn't overpowered like the current Eldrazi decks, because even though it does lots of broken things, and can do them every turn, it doesn't start doing them until turn 3, and it can be disrupted. The Eldrazi decks only have to devote a few land slots to their broken mana engine, which lets them run lots of things like Cavern of Souls that further power up their dudes.
Vesuva/Temple/Cavern is the same number of slots as full tron, and just like the cloudpost engine, it comes online a heck of a lot more reliably and faster.
You've just subbed Eldrazi for Wurmcoil. That doesn't seem like an improvement to me.
I agree morgan, that deck seems strong and I would definitely vote for banning both lands. (Hell I'd ban the Tron lands too.) I just think Forsythe was pretty clear that they wanted Eldrazi to stick around as a deck so it's very unlikely. They feel like Modern needs a regularly shifting meta and new cards.
I'm guessing you weren't around during the era when Tooth and Nail transitioned into Troll and Nail then. Basically, the way everyone fought TNN was mixes of counters, discard, ld and extraction effects. The thing is, some TNN players realized that they could win just fine with only ONE big combo set of targets for TNN, instead of running like 8 different things for different situations, then they used the space freed up to run a bunch of midrange green creatures, like Troll Ascetic. This made the deck a nightmare to play against because even if you stopped the "combo" you still had a bunch of big monsters kicking in your teeth.
Same thing with that list. Less one-of nonsense and counterplay silliness, way more "kick in your teeth". It's the ultimate expression of the philosophy of fire, or combo in mid-range form. Basically, you're saying "i'm going to get out absurd amounts of mana, then cast lots and lots and lots of big, resilient threats. Deal with it or lose".
Oh, and it still has Wurmcoil, the Eldrazi are in addition to that. What got cut is crap like Spellskite, Painter's Servant, and the 10+ mana one-ofs.
I don't think the problem with Eldrazi was that they played a 4/4 for 4 mana on turn 4 or Reality Smasher around then, the problem was that they'd do it on turn 2 and you'd basically have only 1 turn to stop it. TKS is a great card but it doesn't oppress the format when played on turn 4, and that's all your list (and other tron ones like it) would be able to do unless you go 1-2-3 tron, and if that's the case I'm wayyy less scared of a TKS than a Karn or Wurmcoil. By then you could have already died to infect, elves, affinity, whatever. Control can still work against this type of deck since they're actually able to get a couple turns to set up.
In that tron list the thing I'd be most worried about is a turn 3 Karn, and that doesn't really change much. Without ridiculous mana ramp into TKS it's just a good card, not bonkers insane. Losing Eye of Ugin really makes Tron worse in the long game, so incorporating a few powerful Eldrazi will help them but looking at it from my control list's point of view I'm a lot more comfortable going into the end game against that.
Oh, yeah, no, it's totally worse than the current Eldrazi list with Temple and Eye. I just wanted to show that you could ban both lands and still have an "eldrazi" deck. I mean, it took awhile, but even after the artifact land bannings, we still have a pretty dang good affinity deck out there.
Did you read my post? I gave some pretty definite proof that Caw-Blade was not killed, because a deck that's killed doesn't get three copies of it into the Top 8 of a Grand Prix. So in what way am I "dense" unless you're arguing the Grand Prix somehow didn't happen? As a side note, you're wrong that the only key card to survive was Squadron Hawk. Even ignoring the rather important supporting cast (e.g. Mana Leak, Preordain), Sword of of Feast and Famine was still around. Both the "Caw" and the "Blade" were still legal.
Eye of Ugin banned.
Ancestral Vision unbanned.
Sword of the Meek unbanned.
This is a clear signal they want to see blue as a contender. Depowering both Eldrazi and RG Tron, while giving us back Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek (even to test with, could turn out to be garbage), does nothing but bolster blue's positioning. Very good day for Modern format.
Well while I lost Shops, Grixis in Modern just got a kick up the ass.
A lot of twitter speculation that Mox Opal is on the Watch list for banning...
Not looking forward to all of the places Sword of the Meek fits into, but hey, I'm happy overall.