I know PTQ Season is starting Mid-2014, but if they change the banlist now, the metagame is most likely still not settled with the start of the season. That's why I think they will wait for the new set's impact on Modern and PT's metagame, before changing the list again.
Clearly. However, that was only part of my message, showing how, for the decks that don't care about the creature types, Lingering Souls is just way more powerful.
But here's the thing. That's a bit powerful. You know what else is powerful? The rest of the format. Turn 3 Karn Liberated. The crazy starts Affinity can pull off. Jund's sheer efficiency (and the occasional turn 2 Liliana). Birthing Pod's ability to tutor up answers or just win the game on the spot while being a decent beatdown deck even if it doesn't get the Pod. Splinter Twin's ability to be an effective tempo deck that can also pull out an instant win out of nowhere. Infect's potential turn 2 wins. Faeries with Bitterblossom is certainly good, but is it actually better than the other things in the format, or even equal to them?So why is BB banned? It's of type "Faerie" and makes things of type "Faerie". Faerie decks don't care about spirit tokens. And you only have to tap out mainphase of turn 2 to play it and then you never have to commit mainphase mana again, which is amazing for a UB control deck. It alone lets you Spellstutter @ 2, 1U for Spell Snare+Mental Misstep and a 1/1 flying body. Including the tokens, you can Spellstutter @ infinity, which is pretty amazing. The tokens also benefit from one of the best lords ever printed (Flash +shroud seems good) and kind of kill you while the Faerie player spends the next 5 turns countering everything you try to do.
Actually test out "fully-powered" Faeries (that is, with Bitterblossom and Ancestral Vision) against the current decks in Modern and you might be very surprised by how not overpowered it tends to actually be. There are entire decks or powerful cards it never had to deal with in Extended that are very effective against it.
This Just In: Decks are powerful when they get the nut draws and curve out perfectly.Ancestral Visions is mediocre in general, but it's amazing in a deck that wants to go T1 Visions, T2 Blossom, T3 counter stuff, T4 counter stuff + draw, T5 Ancestral recall? cool, counter more stuff.
Regardless, the question is not whether it would be safe to unban. It's whether or not they will unban them. I think Bitterblossom is probably the most likely unban because it goes into none of the top decks and was banned on simple speculation rather than concrete data showing it was overpowered in Modern. I don't think they're likely to simultaneously unleash Ancestral Vision and Bitterblossom, though.
If you have to redefine "the nut draws" to mean having 1 Ancestral Visions and 1 Bitterblossom in their starting 8 I think you're arguing on the side of BB being too strong. Remand, Mana Leak, Condescend, and Spellstutter provide tons of ways to counter stuff in a deck running BB, and that's not even digging deeper into what counterspells could be played in modern (Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, Cryptic Command, etc.). BB isn't better than Lingering Souls because of token generation, it's better because it keeps your mana much freer than any other threat generator. It's like why people play Goyf in blue decks. Also, Lingering souls dies to a pyroclasm whereas BB really doesn't.
Are you implying that the unbanning of a card will make the format unstable? Aren't there also two set releases before the PT season as well? Are we just assuming that those sets will have absolutely nothing of good use that couple potentially shake up the meta? Why would unbanning a card next month ruin a PTQ season that is 6 months from now?
I think the argument trying to be made here isn't that bitterblossom isn't powerful. It's that it's power level isn't too high for the format. Is modern that fragile of a format what is essentially a standard deck is too powerful to be played?
Great Furnace, Vault of Whispers, Seat of the Synod, Ancient Den, and Tree of Tales all wave.
No, the nut draw was not having Ancestral Vision and Bitterblossom in their starting 8, though you're already a bit lucky if you pulled that. The nut draw was having Ancestral Vision and Bitterblossom in their starting 8 and hitting the first four land drops perfectly and drawing a non-Cryptic Command counterspell by turn 3 that will actually counter whatever is being played and a Cryptic Command by turn 4. That seems a pretty nut draw to me.
Not to mention the fact that even that nut draw let the opponent do whatever the heck they wanted on turns 1 and 2, which can mean a lot of fairly dangerous things are already happening while the Faeries player has been durdling around. I can think of tons of stuff Jund could have done by that time that leaves Faeries feeling really flummoxed, especially if Jund has an Abrupt Decay ready to take out any threats.
Again, test it out. Grab an old Faeries deck, make a few modifications (seriously, Faeries hasn't gained much from the transition, unlike other decks like Jund, Urzatron, or Affinity), and play it out against some of the big Modern decks. Faeries doesn't exist in a vacuum in Modern, it exists in a deck with a lot of decks that are doing really powerful things, about a third of which are running Abrupt Decay. I know I keep harping on that, but Abrupt Decay is extremely effective against Faeries and its influence on the format should not be overlooked.Remand, Mana Leak, Condescend, and Spellstutter provide tons of ways to counter stuff in a deck running BB, and that's not even digging deeper into what counterspells could be played in modern (Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, Cryptic Command, etc.). BB isn't better than Lingering Souls because of token generation, it's better because it keeps your mana much freer than any other threat generator. It's like why people play Goyf in blue decks. Also, Lingering souls dies to a pyroclasm whereas BB really doesn't.
Faeries is not that amazing in this format. In fact, I'd argue that it needs Bitterblossom and/or Ancestral Vision to be playable... they don't make it amazing, they just makes it playable rather than the Tier 2.5/3 deck it currently is.
But Affinity in Modern isn't a Standard deck. Let's take a look at some of the cards it runs:
Ornithopter
Signal Pest
Vault Skirge
Etched Champion
Steel Overseer
Memnite
Galvanic Blast
Mox Opal
Springleaf Drum
Inkmoth Nexus
You know what all of these cards have in common? They weren't legal when Mirrodin was in Standard! Yeah, Modern Affinity has access to a lot of great cards that the original Affinity didn't have access to. It may have lost the artifact lands, but it's able to be a Tier 1 deck because it's gained all of the stuff I just listed. Faeries, meanwhile, has gained... what? I mean, Snapcaster Mage is good and all, but he doesn't really power up the deck much.
*5 months
The unbanning of cards *could* shake up the metagame and no one can say when it's going to settle down - most likely it takes month to figure out new decks, integration and adjustments. Wizards designs new sets with Modern in mind and they know what's coming up and have a better grasp on what is going to have an impact on the format before the PTQ season, but of course there could be some format warping cards in it. I doubt it, though.
Faeries wouldn't result in a more diverse format, it would just force other decks out of existence.
I just don't buy into the assumption that unbanning a card next month could result in a possibly volatile meta in 5 months. Sure there aren't large tournaments, but there are still modern locals, MTGO, and lots of in house play testing that can be done. And like I said, there honestly might be a card in either this or the next set, since both come out before the next modern season, that could have potentially format or at least archetype defining cards
Hell if nothing else and everything falls apart, there is another time that they could ban the offending card again before the season starts
"By this argument we should never unban anything ever" - No, because not every card/deck is the bane of several others and the format is constantly growing, with every new set (read: a time may come, when a banned card is not as powerful or threatening anymore - like Valakut in the past).
" and should re-ban Valakut to bring back the decks it forced out of existence" - Valakut/Scapeshift wasn't a monster (anymore) when it got unbanned - guess what, that's why it got unbanned. It was an addition to the format that resulted in another archetype, but without forcing others out of existence.
My take on a full fledged Faerie.dec in Modern is, that it would be too well equipped to handle all kind of decks, making it the blue BGx.dec and leading to fewer competitive decks.
Unbans should add new perspectives to the format, while not lessening diversity - I believe that Bitterblossom would do the latter.
I don't think it's that unreasonable to have 1 Ancestral Vision, 1 Bitterblossom, 1 Remand/Manaleak/(other conditional counterspell such as Spell Pierce/Snare or Spellstutter Sprite), and 4 lands by turn 4. But this is a ridiculously silly thing to be talking about the statistics of hypergeometric distributions involving arbitrary decklists that don't even exist.
Do you believe what you said? I'm just curious because you could actually look at decklists and determine what cards have changed since Faeries in Standard and come to the conclusion that it is different.But Affinity in Modern isn't a Standard deck. Let's take a look at some of the cards it runs:
Ornithopter
Signal Pest
Vault Skirge
Etched Champion
Steel Overseer
Memnite
Galvanic Blast
Mox Opal
Springleaf Drum
Inkmoth Nexus
You know what all of these cards have in common? They weren't legal when Mirrodin was in Standard! Yeah, Modern Affinity has access to a lot of great cards that the original Affinity didn't have access to. It may have lost the artifact lands, but it's able to be a Tier 1 deck because it's gained all of the stuff I just listed. Faeries, meanwhile, has gained... what? I mean, Snapcaster Mage is good and all, but he doesn't really power up the deck much.
First of all, manabase, which is a HUUUUGE boost to any multicolored decks. Modern lets you run 3 colors without really getting hurt by it, or it lets you run 2 colors and a few utility lands (Tectonic Edge, Mutavault). UBr gives you access to quick removal and reach in the form of Lightning Bolts and Terminates. Green gives you catch-alls in your own Abrupt Decays or fast clocks with Goyf. The 2 color GB deck has shown how powerful taking a color out of Jund is as long as you get some mana disruption in there to boot.
Looking at the standard mana bases:
This manabase is horse shit compared to a bunch of fetchlands and dual lands. Creeping Tar Pit is the best manland in the format. I don't really even want to go more into depth on this subject since I really hope it's obvious how much a manabase can make or break a deck.Originally Posted by Sam Black's Faeries Circa 2008
How about the utility spells?
good so far, though I'd consider cutting down a Cryptic in the faster format of today.4 Ancestral Visions
4 Bitterblossom
4 Cryptic Command
Yech. So maybe back in the day these were good enough, but Rune Snag is kinda shitty and Terror is only good if you don't have to worry about black creatures. Certainly some much better all around cards like Remand improve decks? I mean it is the most played counterspell in Modern after all, and no one could argue that Remand helps a lot more than normal when you generate tokens every turn.4 Rune Snag
4 Terror
Creatures?
Well I'm pretty sure Vendilion Clique is the best stand alone faerie out there (there's a reason he costs ~$100) and that wasn't in the Standard faerie decks. If we look to Legacy faerie decks as any indication of what high level cards might be played in there you'd find that Tombstalker is a pretty big fatty that complements them nicely. You mentioned Snapcaster Mage as it is also a great source of card advantage. In fact, you'd probably run 0 Scions, 0 Pestermites (unless you splash Splinter Twin Combo), and 0 Mistbinds in any good list. You're probably only keeping the Spellstutters from those lists.4 Mistbind Clique
3 Pestermite
4 Scion of Oona
4 Spellstutter Sprite
So yeah, aside from the entire manabase, at least 2/5ths of the spells, and over half of the creatures you'd be playing, I guess you're right that Modern Faeries decks would be the same as the old Standard ones.
Faeries would, without doubt, be a good deck.
However, the new BGx decks would have a really easy time faeries up. Faeries would be strong against combo, but would be really sad vs bgx decks.
Okay, now here's the problem. You're under the incorrect assumption I was talking about Standard Faeries. I was talking about Extended Faeries. I suppose I could've done a better job explaining that as I was talking about Standard Affinity just a moment before, but I was talking about Extended Faeries. And outside of the better manabase (which I don't count as relevant because that benefits everyone) and Snapcaster Mage, every card you listed was available to that deck. Maybe they didn't necessarily play it, but they had access to those cards and chose not to run them.
The point is, your argument can be used against any unban. Even something as bad as Golgari Grave-Troll could possibly throw a few Tier 3 decks out the window because everyone playing them would switch to a slightly less awful Tier 2.5 deck.
And, what do you know, some people predicted that Valakut would force other decks out of existence. And to a certain extent any new deck must, because people playing those decks are people not playing another deck." and should re-ban Valakut to bring back the decks it forced out of existence" - Valakut/Scapeshift wasn't a monster (anymore) when it got unbanned - guess what, that's why it got unbanned. It was an addition to the format that resulted in another archetype, but without forcing others out of existence.
"All kinds of decks"? Try "some decks." Faeries gets eaten alive by some of the strategies in Modern. It's exactly the kind of deck that Jund smashes. Melira Pod seems extremely strong against it as well, because a Birthing Pod in play negates a lot of counterspells, Voice of Resurgence gives card advantage to the Melira Pod player when Faeries tries to counter spells, and Abrupt Decay is... well, Abrupt Decay. Guess what, Faeries in Modern with Bitterblossom and/or Ancestral Vision has its good matchups and its bad matchups. Just like... every deck in the format. And if a deck would not be too powerful--and I stick by my opinion that "full-powered" Faeries would not be--then it should not be banned out of the format.My take on a full fledged Faerie.dec in Modern is, that it would be too well equipped to handle all kind of decks, making it the blue BGx.dec and leading to fewer competitive decks.
I'm not sure why I'm so gung-ho about unbanning these cards considering Faeries is actually pretty good against the deck I play, but it has enough bad matchups against top decks that I really can't see it as overtaking the format.
If Faeries leads to lower diversity, I highly doubt it'll be because Faeries is such a powerful deck it would push other things out. More likely, the lack of diversity would be the fact it's such a dog to Jund that it indirectly makes Jund even better.Unbans should add new perspectives to the format, while not lessening diversity - I believe that Bitterblossom would do the latter.
I don't know about you, but I think one well-rounded strategy like BGx.dec is enough for the format to handle.
The card pool and format changes and decks possibly get new tools to fight currently banned cards/strategies. To some extent you can also predict, if such a card/strategy will have this kind of impact or not. So no, it cannot.
You forget that a new deck doesn't only make people switch decks, but also join the format. There's also a difference between "I like the new deck better" and "I cannot play my deck anymore, because the new one just wrecks it".
"some people" - mkay
Decay isn't back-breaking to Faeries and a resolved Pod is good against any deck.
We think differently about Faerie's potential, that's fine. In the end, it doesn't matter anyway, since we don't make the calls, so there is no point in further elaborating it.
I'd be happy to see a non-BGx well-rounded deck in Modern.
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