Modern Banned List

Remember when Modern had fun and challenging combo decks? I do. The first deck I built when the format was announced was Eggs. Wizards bans out long-turn combo decks like Eggs and Storm because it's "boring" for the guy on the other side of the table and makes tournaments take too long, then lets dumb crap like pod/twin pull off no-skill minimal-interaction wins on turn 4. Who cares about fun or interactivity when we could get the side event drafts started a few hours early?

Joke's on them, I'm sleeving up KCI and Relic Quest now.

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Originally Posted by Pastorofmuppets

Remember when Modern had fun and challenging combo decks? I do. The first deck I built when the format was announced was Eggs. Wizards bans out long-turn combo decks like Eggs and Storm because it's "boring" for the guy on the other side of the table and makes tournaments take too long, then lets dumb crap like pod/twin pull off no-skill minimal-interaction wins on turn 4. Who cares about fun or interactivity when we could get the side event drafts started a few hours early?

Joke's on them, I'm sleeving up KCI and Relic Quest now.

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By "fun" and "challenging" you mean Shoal Infect and Ponder Twin? :eyebrow:

Storm is still playable and Combo-Twin has been on the fence since Tempo-/Control-Twin took over a long time ago. Where exactly was Eggs anywhere close to "interactive"? I played it myself, and I don't claim it to be "interactive" or really skill-intense. You also seem to be heavily misinformed on the reasoning for the bans you speak of. Eggs was banned because the long turns delayed the tournaments to a degree where it was not bearable. Storm was too consistent in their turn 3 kills.

Anyway, every format has "dumb" strategies and combos. Talk about SnT, Reanimator, Dredge, Oath, Flash or whatever.

Seething song didn't really grant consistent turn 3 kills. Sure you *could* turn 3 them but that's way different than you would do it consistently. To turn 3 in storm you needed your opponent to not interact with you in any way too like electromancer dying usually made it damn hard to turn 3 and ascension is pretty hard to turn 3 with short of a stacked hand involving 3 probes/manamorphoses to trigger ascension or 2 probes/morphose + another cantrip that is already present in the yard. They banned seething song because it took up too large of a metagame chunk online, but that was just the result of WotC failing to make the format more accessible/storm was and still is one of the cheapest decks online for modern.

Goblin E. made Storm and Seething Song in particular insanely good and we all know Wizards doesn't like to ban new cards.

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Originally Posted by JDK

Goblin E. made Storm and Seething Song in particular insanely good and we all know Wizards doesn't like to ban new cards.

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God this is so true. Its the reason Cruise won't be banned, its the reason DRS wasn't banned - can't ban something that's still being opened.

It's hard to justify a Treasure Cruise ban (at least by itself) when the actual top deck right now, Junk Pod, doesn't even play the card.

I think, that nothing will happen this B&R announcement since Wizard hates to ban new cards and both URx Delver and Pod (which shared 40% of the the day 2 metagame at the GP Ohama) to get the powerlevel of those decks down (Swiftspear and Cruise in Delver and Rhino in Pod). I think, it is more likely that some cards come of the list, e.g. Blood Braid Elf, GGT, AV and Sword of the Meek. AV is for the Conrol decks, Sword for Tezzerator or even for Control decks (although it needs to much slots, to get it reliable) and the first 2 were just mistakes (DRS was the real problem not BBE and GGT has no impact on modern, it is like Land Tax in Legacy).

Greetings,
Kathal

Or they could just ban Cruise, Pod, and DTT. So much for that new cards theory.

Oh holy crap I might actually play this format again. I've been complaining about Pod being the absolute best choice over everything else for at least a year now and it's finally gone. Having instawin combos without really paying for it was just better than every other option. Dig Through Time was probably fine but in a slower format I get where it might be a problem since everyone could find UU without really trying, unlike in Legacy.

Back to 4c Gifts Control, I think.

In my opinion, they just wanted to reduce the power level of the field... Now that Pod, cruise and Dig are gone I'm really curious of the direction that Modern will take.

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Originally Posted by Spam

In my opinion, they just wanted to reduce the power level of the field... Now that Pod, cruise and Dig are gone I'm really curious of the direction that Modern will take.

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More Affinity, I presume.

Was this a little modest for unbannings? Or is it just me?

I for one am very sad Pod is gone... to quote Hedonism Bot: "But I'm not done vomiting!"

I definitely never really felt like the deck was overpowered, it was both fun and tough to pilot and you had to earn you wins most of the time. Now BGX is just going to dominate and all those diverse, useful creatures everyone was playing in Pod won't even see the light of day anymore.

Welcome to Siege Rhino.meta folks

I think one of of the reasons I like a pod ban is because it is always fucking EVERYWHERE. I'm tired of seeing lists of pod deck after pod deck in top 16s. Yes it is a good deck, albeit a little too resilient for my tastes. Overpowered is debatable, I'm not sure that's why it was banned (if I interpret the announcement correctly.) It just pushed aggro out of the meta too far (zoo, affinity, etc.) I have noticed a sharp decline of both Tron and robots, two strong pillars of modern. I think both would help to balance out the format again post delve bans. Pod being gone is a relief, not because it was overpowered (opinion) it just took up too much space. Its like a good song that became annoying because the radio station played it 100 times a day.

Edit: regarding siege rhino.meta, I expect to see a ton more blood moons (which also happens to hurt ascendancy, scapeshift, and any other 3+ color deck)

The difference between Siege Rhino meta and Pod Meta is that SR meta can get wrath of godded and not make the opponent laugh when he gets back 2x kitchen finks, 1x Voice of Resurgence Token, and a Murderous Redcap. Control just wasn't able to do its thing with all of the creature recursion, and now that those cards aren't part of a combo that capitalizes on recursion we'll see much less of them.

I really think people are underestimating how much of the format Pod shut out. Now that Supreme Verdict can be played we may see a gigantic shift in playable decks.

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Originally Posted by Phoenix Ignition

The difference between Siege Rhino meta and Pod Meta is that SR meta can get wrath of godded and not make the opponent laugh when he gets back 2x kitchen finks, 1x Voice of Resurgence Token, and a Murderous Redcap. Control just wasn't able to do its thing with all of the creature recursion, and now that those cards aren't part of a combo that capitalizes on recursion we'll see much less of them.

I really think people are underestimating how much of the format Pod shut out. Now that Supreme Verdict can be played we may see a gigantic shift in playable decks.

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It's true across formats. People have a harder time thinking about the things that aren't happening because a particular card is limiting the range of playable options. That was always the problem with TC in the eternal formats. It isn't strictly a question of how many decks are playing the card, and it's not strictly a question of how powerful the card is, considered in a vacuum. It's also about how many decks/cards were no longer seeing play because of it. No more Jund, no more no more attrition strategies, no Wastelands, no BUG decks of any kind--hell, even DRS couldn't find a good home outside of Elves, and it's arguably the best 1-drop creature ever printed. Sure, you can always see the new builds that are coming along (like the stupidly awkward RUG builds that would percolate to the surface occasionally), but only Ascendancy was arguably even new, while half a dozen other decks and some of the best cards in the format were just shoved out of the meta for as long as that thing was around. So it's what you weren't seeing that was the real problem.

In the case of Pod in Modern, there was basically no reason to build a creature shell since nothing you did with them would be as good as what Pod was doing with its creatures (which were really just functioning like spells with P/T). Add Cruise to the mix and suddenly, you can't run attrition strategies either, and control just doesn't work against the field at all. Nobody wanted another PT that was dominated by Pod decks, and if they weren't careful they could have had just another Pod/Twin/Affinity stream that you could have watched a year ago without seeing any real difference. So banning the Delve cards wasn't ever going to be enough on its own. Pod had to go so that other kinds of creature decks could find some breathing room and so that removal would actual work for control decks.

For those complaining that the whole format will be Siege Rhino, I'd say let's wait and see. I honestly don't see how that's a lot worse than every third deck being yet another Pod deck. We've watched that move before. Many, many, many times. For years on end now. It's a little rich to start complaining that the format is going to be the same thing over and over, since you've gotten to abuse the same degenerate tutor effect over...and over...and over, ever since Modern has been in existence. You should consider the possibility that Modern has an extremely rich card pool with tremendous potential for brewing and innovation. The next few months are probably going to be the most exciting it's ever been, unless I miss my guess.

I appreciate your optimism Elu!

I can definitely see Zoo coming back as a viable option, as well as an expansion of what's possible in the UWR range, from 'tempo' to control. Pheonix, you make a good point about Supreme Verdict.

It just sucks that they are approaching this in a way where they cut down the best performers instead of trying to balance via unbans. People are getting locked out of the decks they want to play via bannings, which is harsh and different than a deck being/becoming unplayable because a shifting meta makes it suck.

I've got some brews up my sleeve though so I'm also eager to see how things shake out!

I don't think they could get away with unbans to fix anything. Pod is basically the best creature strategy, always. There are very few cards that will help non-pod (creature) decks without just helping pod as well, which is a problem. Bloodbraid elf may have been one of them, but I think it's a somewhat dangerous area to be in.

Treasure Cruise just doesn't make sense -- It gives tempo non-attrition decks to get (arguably) the best attrition card for almost no investment. This means that the decks that should beat these tempo decks, e.g. attrition ones can't actually compete very well. A single Cruise is very powerful, but double cruise is just so insane for a lot of decks to compete with. Again, this is an area where I don't think unbans will really help--cruise is just so much better at an attrition war than the options modern has available. This is not the only problem though. In addition to draw three just being one of the absolute best type of cards to win attrition wars, cruise gives the player casting it resources so much earlier in the game (and at a much reduced cost) than another other option available. Spending your 5th turn and all mana to cast Jace's Ingenuity (not that this card is what would compete with cruise) versus paying 1 on your 4th turn for treasure cruise is a world of difference.

This "analysis" is quite limited of course, but I think is a huge indicator of why these cards had to go instead of just unbanning cards to fix the problem.

Pod was modern's sotf, and I remember how I would play every other match against survival at one point in time. Boring.

I am really excited to see what happens. Will zoo be good again? Will faeries become better? Are there decks that can enter the format that will make some waves? Time will tell and I'm looking forward to it.

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Originally Posted by MrShine

It just sucks that they are approaching this in a way where they cut down the best performers instead of trying to balance via unbans. People are getting locked out of the decks they want to play via bannings, which is harsh and different than a deck being/becoming unplayable because a shifting meta makes it suck.

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This just doesn't work. What are they going to do, unban Stoneforge Mystic and then everyone plays that? Some cards are just so good you can't omit them from decks in good conscience. It's logical that some cards are just too good at what they do and therefore would either take over the format or need to be banned. Unbanning others wouldn't help balance the format unless all you want is Pod vs. Cloudpost vs. UR combo.

One of the biggest problems in Modern is that manabases can be so greedy without solid punishment since stuff like Pod can play under BloodMoon just fine and therefore incorporate all of the best cards without even trying. Bloodbraid would go into Pod for more value if they weren't able to get Pod out, Deathrite Shaman would totally go into pod, Stoneforge Mystic is an easy choice for Pod.

Some things may be safe to unban, but some things would be overwhelming and other cards wouldn't be able to "balance" them.

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Originally Posted by iGrok

God this is so true. Its the reason Cruise won't be banned, its the reason DRS wasn't banned - can't ban something that's still being opened.

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At the risk of sounding overly cynical, I feel like this rule might still be in play. Cruise was common, so it wasn't moving product.