If Legacy were a pro-tour format, we'd have seen bans on the scale of Caleb or Shaheen's wish lists! Sometimes obscurity can be a blessing.Quote:
Originally Posted by nedleeds
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If Legacy were a pro-tour format, we'd have seen bans on the scale of Caleb or Shaheen's wish lists! Sometimes obscurity can be a blessing.Quote:
Originally Posted by nedleeds
By Eternal standards, it is a complete derp deck. But in Modern, there are plenty of matches where the most interactivity you'll get is "play my shockland tapped against Burn", so Splinter Twin is incredibly interesting in comparison.Quote:
Originally Posted by nedleeds
Good point. Modern card pool is deep and interesting, losing Twin improves the deck building challenge and makes for a more interesting (YMMV) format.Quote:
Originally Posted by lordofthepit
It was actually a fairly unique deck. It had a combo in it, but played out like a tempo/control deck a lot of the time. I can't really think of any other decks that worked like that, that used their combo more frequently as a threat than the actual win condition.Quote:
Originally Posted by nedleeds
But even ignoring that, Twin played an important role in the format: It was very good against uninteractive decks. There's a number of complaints about Modern that are often voiced, but a big one is often that too many decks just want to do their own thing and hope that wins before the opponent does their own thing. Twin was a deck that was good against all the uninteractive decks because they wouldn't have a good way to stop the combo (while Twin played its own suite of disruption to stop them) while being weaker against the interactive/nonlinear decks (as they have removal and disruption to stop its combo while being able to outclass its creatures). By taking it out, there's much less reason to play a nonlinear deck and a greater reason to play a linear one. Banning Twin removes an encouragement for interactive decks and thus makes the format less interactive.
Twin's "derp turn four I win" were actually fairly rare, particularly against any deck that played actual interaction. Turn 3 Exarch into turn 4 Splinter Twin just begged the opponent to cast their removal spell and 2-for-1 you.Quote:
You either allow all the turn four derp I wins or you don't. I thought it should have gone when Pod went. Derp, turn 4, I win. Look you had nothing because the format has no sylvan, tutors, cantrips, pitch magic with text.
I don't see how it's even comparable to Birthing Pod. Birthing Pod was at over 20% of the metagame and was certain to only get better with new sets, and that is why it was banned. Splinter Twin wasn't anywhere near that.
And ignoring the fact calling Twin a "derp, turn 4, I win" is kind of dumb in and of itself, it's even dumber to apply that to Birthing Pod. Not only was its combos slower, a lot of the Birthing Pod decks at the time of its banning weren't even running a combo, like the deck that won Grand Prix Omaha.
Maybe, just maybe this will put to bed the notion that "Modern is an eternal format" and "Modern is a cost effective alternative to Legacy"
I realize that this may start a shit storm even though I'm on the side of it that would prefer nothing banned. But..
I find this.. interesting. While I'm content with Legacy.. I feel like this statement smacks of the type of arguments that frequent these places.Quote:
In the interest of color diversity, Cloud of Faeries is banned from Pauper.
It may just be because I imagine pauper is dual-color at best for good decks. Legacy has plenty of color diversity, albeit mostly centered on blue; and it does sound like a specific deck archtype was bad for the format. But the phrasing is interesting regardless IMO.
Well in recent memory they've really needed to ban 3 cards (cruise, dig, misstep), two of them pretty much banned off the bat, and in 'return' we got land tax, black vise and worldgorger, pretty much 3 obsolete cards that were doa.Quote:
Originally Posted by CorwinB
The argument they used to ban Cloud was due to a 3-color midrange/combo deck - the format's equivalent of Elves or Lark-Blink or Pod.Quote:
Originally Posted by tescrin
The big thing I feel sad about is that Pauper decks are turning more and more into piles of cards - they're slowly but surely killing engines from the format.
Twin banned in modern? Color me not shocked. Here's banning criteria for modern. If it does good enough for a long enough time, wins a couple PTs and has some 'unreasonable' top 8 percentage at GPs and PTs a card gets banned from it. They just reprinted twin for crying out loud, which is a double whammy considering twin did NOTHING for that limited environment without zealous conscripts, pestermite, and deceiver in the set.
Cloud of faeries ban was a long time coming. Seriously, has any good come of urza untappers in any format? Don't quite recall. That 'high tide' pauper deck was monstrous and a big time waster as combo'ing out took forever when you were milling so little cards for how many clicks you needed to execute it.
The thread is already liable to become a shitstorm at a moments notice, lets not and say we did.
Dice
Instead of "color balance" they should have said "time wasting", like when SDT was banned. There is nothing enjoyable about sitting on either side of the table when someone is forced to resolve Ghostly Flicker 60-ish times (first to generate enough extra mana, then to draw into Sage Row or another win con, then to actually win). The combo is almost as bad as 4 Horsemen for the whole "yes, I know you have assembled Das Win, but it might take 7000 clicks for you to actually get there."Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie
Nope, there is nothing enjoyable watching opponent play magic.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
Wouldn't that be more a case where you are wasting time because you have lost and did not concede yet? Or are you hoping you opponent times out at that pointmQuote:
Originally Posted by FTW
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Extremely solid analysis. From a perspective of format health, the Twin ban makes no sense. Contra Wizard's announcement, there aren't a ton of U/x/y decks in Modern that can fight against big-mana and fast aggro but were just waiting for a Twin ban to shine; a good Twin matchup is what generally made a lot of Blue decks more playable in the meta.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Seth
But I guess trying to make sense of how Wizards manages formats is a fool's errand every since we've been privy to ban jurisprudence such as the "Gentleman's Agreement" or whatnot. Maybe Look At Me, I'm the DCI lets on more than I thought...
They used to have a faster win con in Fissure, but that got banned (At least I'd imagine that it's faster, I play on paper for the most part so I don't have to deal with MTGOs click nonsense).Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
This sums it up in a nutshell. I play a lot of Modern and the format is very spikey - BGx and Twin have always been the primary options for spikes and net-deckers. I'm glad Twin is gone because (a) it was obnoxious to play against a control deck that could randomly kill you on turn 4 and (b) that deck attracted an obnoxious demographic of players anyway (blue-playing spikes who think they're hot shit because they play blue and get to bluff counters everytime you cast a spell, primarily). I've found the format to be incredibly interesting simply because I force myself not to play boring tier one decks - there's tons of fun stuff that wins available to play/brew.Quote:
Originally Posted by nedleeds
The lack of interaction in Modern is a huge misconception. There's less interaction on the STACK, because countermagic isn't free (Pact of Negation and Disrupting Shoal see play but aren't common) but there's plenty of it elsewhere. The issue is less the lack of interaction and more how many lopsided matchups there are.Quote:
Originally Posted by lordofthepit
Indeed. Losing Twin dramatically diversifies the U/x/x part of the format, because Twin was by far the best thing to do with Snapcaster Mage and company. I'm actually a little excited to see what kind of control decks come out of this upheaval, and I think everyone knows I don't like blue very much.Quote:
Originally Posted by nedleeds
The problem is Tron - which will now be everywhere - crushes controls deck since it can land more devastating cards / is inevitable faster / makes a joke out of the better counterspells in the format (leak, remand).
It's similar to 12 post vs Miracles except Tron isn't a fringe deck + everyone isn't playing Wastelands + there's far less pure combo to randomly punish it.
There's very little payoff for playing pure control in Modern. There are countless builds that can be 45% vs everything, but people weren't playing them because they could play Twin, they weren't playing them because when they did play them they did poorly.
So I don't think this opens up control decks at all, they are perhaps even worse off now that Twin isn't keeping ramp decks in check. It might open up a new two card combo + snapcaster/remand deck though.
Please guys, take the talk to the Modern ban thread. I will meet you there and happily vent about how I feel this was a dumb choice, but just not here.
I think the big take away from this announcement is to be careful what we wish for.
Most of us at this point should be very happy that WotC handles the Legacy banned list differently than the Modern list; and that they don't "care" about this format!
I'm still genuinely surprised that they cared enough to ban DTT. (Thank god.)
And we should appreciate the fact that WotC doesn't "care" about Legacy. If they do, disaster will happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead