Modern Banned List

[iamajellydonut]

That too, I forgot about them having Punishing Fire too. GSZ pushed the format into "green or combo" though, at least from what I remember of my meta in the time. Maybe tron was a thing then too, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm not sure if someone was insinuating that bans don't shake up the format or what, but you are correct.

How did the bans "shake up the format"? True, Zoo is as dead as Mussolini , but did its death spark the creation of new decks? Enable any decks? Did its death do anything other than shift Deck C from Slot 2 to Slot 1 and Deck L from Slot 3 to Slot 2 and so on and so forth? The correct answer is "no". The deck simply ceased to exist.

[Megadeus]

That's one thing I've noticed with modern. Bans generally haven't really made more decks appear. They have just made certain decks disappear and maybe a slight shift in the meta

[Davran]

That's one thing I've noticed with modern. Bans generally haven't really made more decks appear. They have just made certain decks disappear and maybe a slight shift in the meta

This is kind of interesting if you think about it. If the purpose of bans is to keep things fair by giving multiple strategies a fighting chance, why haven't the repeated changes to the ban list contributed to the development of new decks and/or made existing decks significantly better? Maybe the missing piece is the Onslaught fetches and we're in for a real shakeup.

[iamajellydonut]

This is kind of interesting if you think about it. If the purpose of bans is to keep things fair by giving multiple strategies a fighting chance, why haven't the repeated changes to the ban list contributed to the development of new decks and/or made existing decks significantly better? Maybe the missing piece is the Onslaught fetches and we're in for a real shakeup.

That's pieces being introduced to a format. Not the other way around.

[nedleeds]

Because the cards that were unbanned aren't good or are no better than other cards, Nacatyl is a 3/3 in a format where Lightning Bolt is the best card, where even the 'storm' decks play Lightning Bolt. Bitterblossom again just isn't great in a format with no Stoneforge Mystic and playing sorcery speed stuff on the draw (that doesn't do anything until your next turn) on your second turn isn't impressive. Bitterblossom usually reads, 'Place this card in your graveyard all your opponents Tarmogoyfs gain +2/+2'.

I would actually argue that if they are going to allow the 4 mana (3 for pod) oops I win the game cards (Twin, Pod, Scrapeshit) exist they could actually unban a few more cards. I think the modern list is roughly grouped into a few buckets


Dark Depths
Hypergenesis
Blazing Shoal
Rite of Flame
Seething Song
Chrome Mox


Oops I won on my second turn. Could one of the last 3 come off, probably. Chrome Mox has the most commitment and could be played in creature decks.



Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Tree of Tales
Vault of Whispers
Great Furnace


Affinity is competitive as is and we aren't reprinting Wasteland or Powder Keg. I actually think it's less about these being artifacts and more about how it would solve any color issues Affinity had. Unsure if these would break the format, Sinkhole with Flashback for {g} is a beating. Stony Silence is Stasis for you. I think the dumbest card in Affinity is actually just Cranial Plating. Take that out and add the arty lands in and see if that deck is insane.


Cloudpost


The current Urza based ramp deck can get Karn out by turn 3 is this any faster? I suppose it's more resilient. More ways to cast Emrakul aren't needed.


Mental Misstep
Green Sun's Zenith
Deathrite Shaman
Stoneforge Mystic
Skullclamp
Umezawa's Jitte


56 card format. These cards are so good at what they do they'd just make deck building dumb. Are you playing creatures and not playing maindeck Stony Silence then you are playing Jitte and Clamp. Are you playing white and planning on attacking? Stoneforge. Are you playing any amount of green creatures? GSZ. Are you playing green or black? DRS. Are you playing modern? 4 Misstep.


Dread Return
Glimpse of Nature
Ponder
Preordain
Second Sunrise


We hate Combo. Second Sunrise is we hate combo combined with we hate dumb players taking minutes to resolve turns.


Sensei's Divining Top
Punishing Fire


We hate inevitability. Both these cards unchecked just mean the controller will win the game since they always have something to do. Fires makes for a soft lock on board vs. mid range creature decks, and counter top makes a soft lock on the stack for those same decks. Top also suffers from ubiquity, and slow play problems.


Bloodbraid Elf
Sword of the Meek
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Golgari Grave-Troll
Ancestral Vision


Some number of these could probably come off. I get that SotM is a two card combo that sort of wins the game but there's no SFM, no Enlightened tutor, they are both fucking dreadful by themselves. Abrupt Decay exists now and there is beaucoup artifact hate in most decks thanks to Cranial Plating.

Either Jace or Visions could maybe come off. Right now the control decks are just flash decks, they are pretty miserable to play against if you get behind because it's tough to beat a resolved Cryptic Command. Some main phase blue cards would be interesting. Maybe the same dumb twin deck would just jam jaces or visions and be even dumber.

GGT reads "Do nothing because Dread Return is still banned, Cabal Therapy isn't reprinted, and I'm not even black or a zombie".

BBE into? A random card? Maybe a simul-unban of this and Jace. I guess it's a really good creature and leads to some random blowouts, but back to my list of 4 mana derp I win the game cards. Scrapeshit just wins. Twin just wins. This is a 3/2 with haste that might find you something good and applicable. But it and the cascade can be countered, it has 2 toughness, no evasion.

[Davran]

Stuff

I honestly think either GGT and/or Dread Return could come off the list and the format would be fine. I get that someone over at WotC hates that dredge is a thing, but without Ichorid, Cabal Therapy, Putrid Imp, Breakthrough, LED etc. the deck is merely OK. Like Bitterblossom, the cards were snap banned when they announced the format instead of given a chance to prove that they deserve it.

Further, modern as a format is full of utility creatures and midrange dorks that excel at exiling your Bridge From Below, not to mention the solid graveyard hate that's been printed since the banlist's inception.

[TraxDaMax]

Even if that were the case, I don't see the problem. What's the issue with weird rogue strategies actually being playable? Like how is it possibly a bad thing if I can slap together a combination of cards that no-one has seen before and actually win a small tournament?

Exactly. The people whining about this should just play standard imo. Smaller cardbase, doesn't hurt their brains that much.
And even then, the cardbase of Modern isn't even that fascinating. Some day it will be when a couple more sets come out, and hopefully that will bring more complexity.

[Noctalor]

I tryed to build a decent modern dredge, the main issues are:

1) Lack of sac outlet, being force into narco + bloodghast demand a sac outlet in order to abuse bridge, only viable choices are gargadon and self-conflagrate
2) only one decent enebler, faithless looting
3) broken cards cost 3 mana, not one (shattered perception mainly)

this is what i was goldfishing in the end

4 Bloodghast
4 Bridge from Below
4 Faithless Looting
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Darkblast
4 Narcomoeba
3 Lingering Souls
4 Shattered Perception
3 Dakmor Salvage
4 Mana Confluence
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Swamp
2 Mountain
2 Blood Crypt
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Dangerous Wager
2 Conflagrate
2 Rally the Peasants

And was far from being decent (super slow basicly) and still on heavy changes needed, GGT would not help much, DR would be nice but the real problem is not be able to play at least 8 faithless.

[Rook1e]

So I wrote a 2-part blogpost about modern and the B&R list (second post will be posted tomorrow). Give it a look and let me know what you think


http://deliriousobsessions.wordpress...r-list-part-1/


If this is against the rules, then I'm sorry and you can't just delete/ignore this post.

- Rook

[Rook1e]

So I wrote a 2-part blogpost about modern and the B&R list (second post will be posted tomorrow). Give it a look and let me know what you think


http://deliriousobsessions.wordpress...r-list-part-1/


If this is against the rules, then I'm sorry and you can't just delete/ignore this post.

- Rook

Part 2 is up and live.

http://deliriousobsessions.wordpress...r-list-part-2/

[TraxDaMax]

Part 2 is up and live.

http://deliriousobsessions.wordpress...r-list-part-2/

Nice articles. I'm pretty much 90% on board with those bans/unbans.

[Mr. Safety]

Great read, thanks. I agree for the most part. I feel that Dread Return (a free reanimation spell) would be too good without a free counterspell. That is one card that is too good. Also, Glimpse is too good. I plaued extended when Elves was far and away the best deck. It loses a few key dudes (Birchlore Ranger, wirewood symbiote) but there are enough one mana elves to make uo for it...not to mention Summoners Pact. It was a consistent turn 2-3 deck that was absurd.

[Lord Seth]

I'm sorry, but I think these blog posts of yours indicate considerable unfamiliarity with the format. That's not to say there aren't any valid points, but too much of it isn't very well thought out. The whole thing smacks of a big article on Legacy being written by someone whose impression of the format is that all the decks win on the first few turns. It just shows lack of knowledge of what the format is actually like or why cards are banned, which is problematic when someone is trying to argue what should be done to the format.

For example, let's look at some of the rather dubious claims being made:

Next up is this little guy. He was unfortunate enough to be the scapegoat when Jund was dominating Modern.

Actually, Bloodbraid Elf was the scapegoat, not Deathrite Shaman. Deathrite Shaman wasn't a scapegoat; it was legitimately the problem, which is why it had to get banned a year later. There's really no purpose to bring this back, especially with Junk being quite good without it right now.

When talking about Cloudpost, it is easy to compare it to the Tron lands – so lets do that. The perfect turn 3 with Tron leaves you with 7 colorless mana. The perfect turn 3 with Cloudpost leaves you with 6 mana. When we move on Cloudpost slowly overtakes the Tron lands. As of this moment I can’t remember the last time a Tron deck put up any respectable results? To be honest, I don’t think that Tron is a top tier deck and also it is pretty far from it. By unbanning Cloudpost we suddenly make ramp-into-big-awesome-things a top tier strategy. Even with the subpar land destruction we have in Modern already, I believe that this strategy can be kept under control.

Comparing 12-Post to Urzatron (I assume we are referring to GR Tron, which has the most in common with 12-Post) is like comparing Wasteland to Ghost Quarter. You can try to find some corner cases where the latter is better, but the former is obviously way better so much across the board they're not really comparable in power.

One of those corner cases is that a "perfect turn 3" gives more mana in Urzatron. Yeah, but that perfect turn doesn't happen that often. On average, 12-Post will have more mana on turn 3 than Urzatron will. You also overlook that it's far more difficult to disrupt (12-Post is like an Urzatron deck that requires only Urza's Tower to get the acceleration going) and has a much bigger edge against aggro thanks to Glimmerpost.

Another huge advantage of 12-Post is that it requires much less support to work. Because Urzatron needs a copy of each Urza land to get its mana acceleration, it has to run a ton of cards to make sure that happens. 4x Sylvan Scrying, 4x Expedition Map, 4x Chromatic Star, 4x Chromatic Sphere. Because 12-Post doesn't require you to find a copy of Cloudpost, Glimmerpost, and Vesuva, it's able cut down significantly on those cards and run better ones in their place. And the inherent lifegain of Glimmerpost makes cards like Pyroclasm less required. 12-Post is able to cut a lot of the "chaff" from Urzatron and become more powerful as a result.

Indeed, 12-Post was part of the reason the format was so warped in its infancy. Granted, the overpowered nature of the combo decks was a problem in and of itself, but 12-Post ensured that slower control or midrange decks would have no shot. The only way to beat the deck was to just win faster than it could.

I could understand saying that a weakened version of 12-Post would be acceptable, i.e. just banning Green Sun's Zenith or Vesuva. But you're proposing we allow fully-powered 12-Post around. I'd actually love to play that deck in Modern, but it would be a huge problem.

This relates somewhat to your argument for Seething Song:

I already discussed this in my last post when I discussed why Rite of Flame had to stay on the bench for know. This card will put Storm back on the radar and provide Modern with what I perceive as a ‘real’ combo deck, but the uprise in control will help keep its dominance down and the lack of interaction (compared to its Legacy counterpart) will continue to make Storm an easy deck to disrupt. So stop crying, make a better sideboard and get on with it.

Uptick in control? There will be a downtick in control as long as 12-Post is so good.

Even if we roll back on Cloudpost, your argument for unbanning it doesn't address the whole reason it was banned in the first place: With Seething Song, the deck simply won too fast. Now, to be fair, maybe under the new banned list it wouldn't be as good (decks only get banned for winning too fast if they also are top tier) and wouldn't need a ban, but then that seems to kind of make the unban pointless to begin with.

You mention sideboarding, but it's also worth pointing out that Seething Song actually made it harder to sideboard for Storm. Seething Song allowed Storm to run Epic Experiment instead of Pyromancer Ascension, making it significantly less vulnerable to graveyard hate.

Punishing Fire is also a mystery for me. People say that it would invalidate creature strategies. I don’t believe that is the case. In Modern each creature is already undergoing the “Bolt Test”, meaning that every creature with toughness below 4 has to be really efficient, have a value EtB trigger or something third. I don’t believe that spending 5 mana to kill a Wild Nactl or Kitchen Finks is too broken. This would help other creature strategies prevent Birthing Bod decks from out-valuing them and also help keep creature based combo decks (like Elves) and Planeswalkers in check.

A mystery? Did you not see what the format was like when Punishing Fire was around? It's not for nothing that Zoo was like 28% of the field at Worlds before it got banned. Sadly, Wild Nacatl got misblamed for this and ended up on the banned list for a while until they finally realized that it was only Punishing Fire that was the problem, as shown by the fact that Zoo has not been that kind of a monster since.

Sword of the Meek is one of the cards on the current B&R list the the lowest powerlevel and I have a hard time seeing it warping Modern in any way. It might be used as wincon in some control builds or in a Tezzeret shell, but that’s it.

This one is true.

Now as to Top and Second Sunrise:

First of all, I wanna make it clear that the reasoning behind the banning of these cards are BS.

Sorry, but it's not "BS". They both are banned for very good reasons. Again, the fact you don't seem to understand these reasons shows your lack of familiarity with the format you're professing to know what's best for.

That said, Wizards of the Coast was not the greatest in their explanation for Sensei's Divining Top (seriously, copy/pasting the rationale for its Extended ban would have been better than what they said for its Modern ban). The problem isn't simply that it makes games take too long. The problem is that it does that and would see a whole lotta play. In Legacy, really only Miracles and 12-Post plays Top. In a format like Modern, it'd see far more play which would result in more problems. There's also the problem of its rather absurd level of power as well, which honestly I would say warrants banning regardless of timing problems.

Now for Second Sunrise:

First of all, I want to stress that the people forcing players to ‘play out’ their entire combo are entitled to do so, but my problem is with those who at the same time complain that rounds go to time. Like any other modern engine deck (Storm and Ascendancy) Eggs can easily be disrupted. Eggs are even disrupted by cards already in people’s sideboards like graveyard- and artifact hate.

Okay, see, the problem here is that you're not actually interacting with the reason for why it was banned. You're right you can disrupt it with graveyard and artifact hate. The deck really wasn't overpowered; it was just a really good deck. But you're basically making an argument against something that wasn't the reason it was banned.

Eggs got itself banned because it made tournaments take hours longer. Hours. This was a serious problem for tournament logistics. It's not a matter of it being boring (though it was), it's a matter of the fact that tournaments were taking hours longer to finish up. That's a big problem. It wasn't even players who hate the greatest hate for the card (though there was hate from players); it was judges and tournament runners.

And Eggs wasn't a fringe deck like High Tide is in Legacy. It was, at the time of its banning, Tier 1 or at least Tier 1.5. A fringe deck spending a huge amount of time one particular turn isn't an issue, which is also why Eggs escaped a ban for a while and why High Tide isn't banned in Legacy. But when you have a deck that's good enough that a lot of people are playing that's like Eggs, you run into the aforementioned problems.

You reject the reason for it being banned as "BS" (with no real explanation) and then offer an argument that doesn't actually address the reason it was banned. Eggs was a serious problem for simple logistics purposes. There really isn't any need to bring it back.

Now, the first post was a bit more reasonable, but I do wish to respond to these:

The keen observer might have noticed that I not only removed cards from the B&R list, I also added one: Cranial Plating. My reasoning for banning Cranial Plating is that I feel that the Artifact Lands + Plating would be too good and I would rather get to play with and against the Artifact Lands since they could enable other strategies than affinity alone. I also feel that this card basically boils the affinity MU down to if the affinity player “has it or not”.

Okay, this isn't really a great example of what I was talking about, but I did want to respond. I feel dubious about the necessity of this change. Affinity would be too good with artifact lands and cranial plating, but your reasoning seems poor. Cranial Plating doesn't boil the Affinity matchup down to whether they have it or not. They have other cards that are about as good, like Arcbound Ravager or Steel Overseer. In fact, I actually dread seeing Arcbound Ravager from Affinity more than I dread seeing Cranial Plating. Maybe i have a slanted perspective here because I play GR Tron (Oblivion Stone and Pyroclasm are effective answers to Cranial Plating but are far less impressive when it comes to Arcbound Ravager), but I don't think your claim on Cranial Plating is accurate.

The claim that other decks could run the artifact lands is a little more plausible, but I don't know if it'd necessarily be that much to their benefit, especially because they do have Darksteel Citadel.

This change just seems to be too much a case of a change for the sake of a change. Affinity is fine right now; we don't need to make a ban/unban swap to change anything in it.

The last card on the list is Ancestral Recal …ehm Treasure Cruise. Even though I am an advocate of raising the powerlevel of Modern, there has to be boundaries. And this card is just too good for Modern and it also helps keeping the Ascendancy deck in check.

Why is Treasure Cruise "too good" for Modern? I can understand the argument it's too good right now--even if I don't necessarily agree--but it definitely wouldn't be with some of the kinda crazy bans you're advocating. The card's weaker than some of the cards you're advocating we remove from the banned list!

EDIT: This edit comes quite a bit after I wrote up the post, but something I realized: You are completely incorrect that the perfect turn 3 for 12-Post produces only 6 mana! It can also get 7 mana. Turn 1 Cloudpost, turn 2 Cloudpost, turn 3 Glimmerpost produces 7 mana.

[JDK]

My only complaint is that Burn is now a real deck in both Modern and Legacy. I hate burn. I really really hate burn and I will hate to play against you 100% of the time if you play burn – and fell free to quote me on that.

It is not unlikely to read posts like this “I want to ban [Card] because it is so boring and I hate playing against it“. This is a completely fair opinion to have and I can respect that people can have different views of what they believe is fun. But why should we negate one players fun for the sake of the other? Can’t we find space to embrace all kind of play styles/preferences? Apparently not, or at least it seems like that.

Quoted, as you asked for.

Now spare us the double standards. And let the shitty Miracle players (let's be honest, there are far too little good and fast players - go watch Einherjer) waste everyone's time with multiple Top activations in Legacy only.

[nedleeds]

Decent read, I don't necessarily agree though. Also we all agree mass unbannings aren't happening WotC just doesn't do it anymore, they peel one at a time. What you are proposing is to essentially try to bump the power level of the format up in one big jump with a pile of unbannings across archetypes.

Re: Jitte. Jitte can't be unbanned in the world of the new legend rule. I mean every deck with 12+ creatures would play 2-4 jitte. You really would have to think hard about ever tapping out if your creature wielding opponent would have 4 mana on their turn. Now the counter argument is that there are a bunch of 4 mana derp I win spells running around in modern now anyway, so why is 2 mana jitte 2 mana equip any worse? I'd argue ubiquity. Twin requires some other shitty cards. Scrapeshit requires some shitty lands and some ramp. Jitte would just get jammed in any deck intending to attack a few times to win the game.

[Lord Seth]

By the way, I found this interesting. It's an interview with Mark Rosewater on a Spanish site, and he was asked about the Modern banned list. Here's the relevant portion:

¿Y la Banned list? La próxima lista sale el 21 de enero. ¿Veremos algún cambio?
Veremos, cada carta que está en esa lista desequilibra el formato hacia un claro arquetipo.

Bueno pero hoy en día, el DIG through time y el Cruise están dominado el formato ¿Habrá que hacer algo?
Nosotros queremos que la gente tenga las cartas para jugarlas, no queremos meter más cartas en el la lista. En un principio, nos gustaría ir sacando cartas poco a poco. Hay muchas cartas que ahora podrían combatir bien los cruises como "Cloudpost o BloodBraid elf".

I'm not fluent in Spanish, but I took enough years that I can attempt a probably overly literal translation:

And the banned list? The next list is released on January 21. Will we see any changes?
We'll see, each card that's on the list would balance the format towards a particular archetype.

Good but at the moment, Dig Through Time and Cruise are dominating the format. Will anything be done?
We want people who have cards to play with them, we don't want to put more cards to the list. At first, we would want to remove cards little by little. There are many cards that could now do well against the Cruises like Cloudpost or Bloodbraid Elf.

This must be taken with a grain of salt because Mark Rosewater has basically nothing to do with bannings or unbannings, but I'm sure he has an idea of what the people who make those decisions believe. Obviously the "we don't want to put more cards on the list" is the classic R&D double-talk where if they do ban cards they're free to go back and say "well we didn't want to, but we had to" so you can only put so much stock into the indication there won't be bans, but I did find it interesting that Bloodbraid Elf and Cloudpost were the examples chosen for cards to potentially unban.

[YamiJoey]

I swear to god if they unban cloudpost I will fucking kill somebody. I play Miracles in Legacy, Modern is my escape from that crap.

[Phoenix Ignition]

I swear to god if they unban cloudpost I will fucking kill somebody. I play Miracles in Legacy, Modern is my escape from that crap.

Gotta agree, aside from the homicide. Unless they print better nonbasic destruction in Modern we absolutely do not need to see 12-post's return. I'd be interested in a better Tec edge in the format, probably not to the power level of wasteland, but it really would topple the format as we know it. I'm fine with seeing neither, though.

[apple713]

I swear to god if they unban cloudpost I will fucking kill somebody. I play Miracles in Legacy, Modern is my escape from that crap.

if they unban cloud post in modern i might actually start playing modern. It won't be awesome though because we don't get crop rotation

[Megadeus]

Gotta agree, aside from the homicide. Unless they print better nonbasic destruction in Modern we absolutely do not need to see 12-post's return. I'd be interested in a better Tec edge in the format, probably not to the power level of wasteland, but it really would topple the format as we know it. I'm fine with seeing neither, though.

tectonic edge without the 4 land clause? Or maybe with like a serra avenger clause.