So you want to play Control with acceleration? You know your card draw sucks, if you make -1 for mana. No control deck wants to use cards to accelerate and rely on it. Cards like Memoricide don't win the game, because people aren't stupid enough to only play one win-condition/combo-piece. 4-Mana to slow combo down? Even turn 3 this can be too late, if you are on the draw.
Please pardon my bull-headed approach, but I disagree because I don't take Memoricide/Cranial in a vacuum. Plenty of decks can last long enough against combo decks to get to four mana. Something as simple as Remand coupled with targeted discard can provide enough time to play Memoricide. If its against Splinter Twin, name Splinter Twin and save your targeted removal for Kiki-Jiki. That takes care of both halves of the combo. I realize that this takes a lot of mana to pull off...back to acceleration.
If you're looking for card quality, there is no reason why you couldn't use Forbidden Alchemy or Thirst for Knowledge. Even Telling Time has promise as a decent instant-speed dig spell. More important than draw or dig is having the right mix of control factors in the first place. Pure control plays few threats and a ton of ways to neutralize the board/hand of opponents. This is not only possible but I feel probable in the near future. The meta-game is still defining itself in modern...someone, maybe Wafo-Tapa, will break out with a decent control list.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
You can disagree all you want and call it "vacuum" (which is ironic, because I actually take into account how combo currently works in Modern), but there is a reason for those cards not being boarded in against combo. They are slow, don't always get you the value you want them to give you and you basically have to spend your whole turn 3+ (most critical turn against combo) for it. If you are into that kind of "hate", then be my guest.
Within the last week, two of SCG's best writers (Sam Black and Brian Kibler), as well as Carrie Oliver from CFB have written articles about the poor state of Modern, the lack of identity in the format, how Jund is screwing up the format a bit, and how it needs to be fixed. Specific suggestions include the unbanning of Nacatl, GSZ, Visions, Jace, Bitterblossom, and the banning of BBE. Interesting stuff. I think I agree with literally everything they wrote. Thoughts?
Links to these articles would be nice.Originally Posted by TonyRo
No one can type in www.starcitygames.com and www.channelfireball.com and find them for themselves?
Kibler on Modern
Sam Black on Modern
Carrie Oliver on Modern
If you reference something, link it. That's common courtesy.
Thanks.
I can't see the premium articles and hope they are not as bad as the ChannelFireball one suggesting banning Bloodbraid Elf. It is not like some unbans would hurt the format. That said, I would not mind WotC screwing up the format and drive people to Legacy.
On the Sep 2011 Ban List Updates,
I honestly think un-bannings would be best for the format, not adding more to the list. Sensei's divining top, Jace, Ponder/Preordain, the Dredge cards, Nacatl, misstep, the artifact lands & Dread Return, are all cards I would like to see unbanned, before they even try to ban something else.
I know some of these open up the "unfair" decks (eg. the dredge deck would become a real thing), but the format is really not looking good right now, and bringing in some of these cards would add some new life to it I think.
The unbannings I mentioned would mean Control is a real thing, Counter-top becomes a potential deck, combo gets better cantrips, dredge becomes a deck, Zoo gets another good 1-drop, Affinity gets it's artifact lands, & Dread Return reanimation/combo becomes a potential deck.
Obviously there could be problems and re-banning might be in order, but these cards I think would be fine for the format.
Playing Legacy:Landstill
ProsperAtog
ArmageddonStax
@Jenni: I disagree. The banned list should stay as is. It effectively creates a different format than Legacy (with decks not so easily ported) minus revised dual lands and free counterspells.
I attribute the ~30% participation of Jund decks at the recent PT a sign of lazy deck builders and players. It's folks not taking time to either craft an effective deck, or learn how to play another option well. Goodcard.decs aren't great against a tuned opponent. There were 6 different decks in the top 8, that's more than enough diversity for the playerbase to experiment with.
The lack of U draw-go control is not a bad thing. If there are people dissatisfied with the format for the lack of U.dec abuse, lack of dredge, or lack of Jace, TMS - there's another format for you, it's called Legacy.
I don't think Bloodbraid Elf needs to be banned.
Revising the ban list would create a more interesting and skill defining format as opposed to the Fisher Price format we have now. What do you think would happen if a format similar to Legacy was created; devoid of expensive cards on the reserve list? You'd probably have a wildly fun and extremely popular format. I find it laughable that individuals on this forum seem to think Modern in it's current state will start to leach players from Vintage and Legacy, as Modern in it's current form is a huge joke.
I think the format would be different from legacy either way. some decks would be ported, but I think the weaker mana bases and the lack of brainstorms, force of wills, dazes, etc. would keep them from being as good in modern as they are here. Miracles might be a deck with diving top unbanned, for example, but without brainstorm they need to stick a jace to put miracles in hand back into their library.
Personally I think it is a bad thing that there aren't any very good U/x heavy-control decks. One of the things keeping me from really taking modern seriously is their absence since control and prison decks are by far my favourite decks to play, and the ones most suited to my play style.The lack of U draw-go control is not a bad thing. If there are people dissatisfied with the format for the lack of U.dec abuse, lack of dredge, or lack of Jace, TMS - there's another format for you, it's called Legacy.
Playing Legacy:
I find Kibler's reasoning on GSZ to suffer from the classic flaw of thinking that the best decks won't play new unbanned cards. If GSZ were legal, then Jund would slot four copies in pretty darned quickly.
I wonder how much actual tournament Modern people commenting here are playing. Granted, I don't have Modern events here locally, but I played at GP: Columbus. All of my opponents said that they liked the format. Having the same power level across most decks leads to the better player winning, too.
You haven't thought about that enough. Bloodbraid Elf and GSZ are terrible in the same deck, and it's not close. People tried Jund at the first Modern PT, and none played GSZ for obvious reasons, e.g.:
https://www.wizards.com/magic/magazi...tphi11/decksae
Look for Ryan Carpenter's or Andrea Casda's list.
In regards to manabases, how much weaker is Modern than Legacy?
Answer: the duals cost 2 life if you want it untapped, there are not allied fetches, only 1 artifact land instead of 6.
Different format, different trade-offs. There are still "single land, dual type" options. There is a lack of Wasteland & Price of Progress, which punish greedy manabases in Legacy. Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge are the leading LD options in Modern, and they're not "super-duper-everywhere." For these reasons, I think if you craft your deck around getting shocked occasionally, you can build just as effective a manabase in Modern as Legacy to fit a need (Sol-lands obviously excluded, just like Impulse or Elvish Spirit Guide, etc.)
If someone wanted to jam Miracles hard enough, there are ways to manipulate your draw still. It's called scry.
In contrast, I hate losing to U/x heavy-control & prison decks. I find them as anathema to Magic as Dredge, in the sense that one stops another player from participating, and the other eschews the typical code of play for non-interactivity.
I'd be much more agreeable if R/G LD was a thing, as it had once been, like pre-Urza, so long ago. That's a form of control, but Magic has decided that LD wasn't fun and basically got rid of that play style.
The lack of these type decks in Modern make the format exciting and fun. I still enjoy Legacy, playing a weird Team Italia deck or Belcher.
Cheers,
different strokes for different folks
For those of you who don't have SCG Premium, will post a few statements from what the pros think (if it isn't okay to post these snippets, I can edit the post away):
"Modern looks like a diverse format because people show up with decks that look different, but many of them ultimately feel the same. It's still funny to me that cards like Wild Nacatl and Green Sun's Zenith are banned. The goal of banning Wild Nacatl was to increase the diversity of aggressive decks in the format. Where is that diversity?
I'll be playing in the upcoming Modern GP in Chicago, but I'm not excited about it. As it stands right now, all I want to do is play a deck designed to go toe-to-toe with Jund in resource exchange with a sideboard packed full of hate cards for the unfair decks. Maybe some kind of little kid G/W deck—who knows. I haven't started testing because I'm sick to death of the format.
I'm not sure what the best way to shake up Modern is, but I think unbanning Green Sun's Zenith is a good start. Don't worry—I'm not selfish. I could see Ancestral Visions, Jace, or Bitterblossom finding their way off the banned list as well. All I know is that something needs to happen because another tournament full of Jund and combo decks does not sound like my idea of a good time."
-Kibler
"As for Modern, I think it's a frustrating format. It looks relatively diverse because there are a lot of decks, but they're either extremely fragile unfair decks that can't beat a prepared opponent, or they're fair decks. The problem with the fair decks is that they're all basically the same. With no real card draw or library manipulation, every deck is forced to play an extremely similar curve and land ratio. You can basically choose whichever colors you want and play any of the "good cards" in those colors as long as you have a reasonable curve, but all the cards are mostly the same thing as all the other cards of their casting costs and the disruptive elements are strong enough that you can't play cards that are based on loose synergies.
Basically, I feel like the decks lack real identities and that the "good cards" have been played so much throughout history that it's all fairly bland."
-Sam Black
That is certainly a lot of complaining from the pros.
I see 2 issues with what they're saying, the first is the idea of "only one midrange deck."
The decks I think are good in Modern right now:
Non-combo decks, in order of speed (not necessarily accurately):
1. Affinity
2. Red/black bump burn (less good than others, but it can just win games like mono-red burn in Legacy)
3. UWR delver
4. Jund
5. RUG delver
6. UW Control
7. Yasooka's RUG control
Combo or similar decks (not including the burn one since it's more of a sligh):
8. Tron (This is my least favorite deck of all)
9. Eggs
10. UR Storm
11. Scapeshift
So in terms of "only being 1 midrange deck" I guess they mean 1 midrange aggro, but even then UW control plays a lot of creatures (clique, finks, Restoration angel), and Yasooka's list was pretty mid-late game oriented. Granted it won off the backs of Snapcaster + Witness, but I'd consider it a mid-late game deck.
The second issue I have is them saying "nothing to sideboard against it." Well, what do you sideboard against decks like Junk in Legacy? It's just an all around good deck that has close to 50% matchups vs. the field. I'd say Jund takes much less skill to pilot to win a tournament with, but it's the same idea. Jund doesn't have a lot of matchups it just outright beats and similar for its losses. Against Jund there are definitely some things that will help you, but none that just beat it outright.
With RUG control I was sideboarding in 3x Huntmaster of the Fells, which is just incredible. I would also side in a 3rd Vedalken Shackles which is SEVERELY UNDERPLAYED. They have 2-3 cards in the deck to beat it, but you get to stall for almost literally every turn they are waiting to draw it. Jund is a deck that you want to use card advantage to beat. Kitchen Finks are pretty good against them, along with anything else that gives you extra life or creatures. I've used Thragtusk against them in my Deathcloud deck to such incredibly winning results it's stupid. Like I said before, Huntmaster is amazing, giving you a 2-3 for 1 even if they kill him right away. No card will auto win against it like graveyard hate against dredge, you just have to play with cards that have more inherent card advantage.
Finally, I would always take pro tour deck selection and whining with a grain of salt. These guys don't regularly go out of the box to pick a deck, and a lot of the time that's exactly what they should be doing. They'll play the same boring, safe decks that generally produce results around 50% and then complain about how boring the format is, instead of taking risks and playing lesser known decks. That's basically why Civka won, eggs isn't overpowered, it's just not well known among people who aren't playing modern frequently.
Ah, you are so right. I concede the point.
For the record, I don't think unbanning anything is going to make the format more interesting for people who don't already play it. I don't see people saying "I would LOVE Modern except there's no Blazing Shoal! As soon as that's legal, I'll sleeve up a deck." The people who want to play Modern are playing it and an unbanning of JTMS or Skullclamp won't likely spice things up enough to get uninvolved people to engage.
Regarding "what do I side in against Jund?," there are plenty of goodies! PI just listed some great ones - Shackles is, indeed, the cat's ass against Jund. So is Celestial Purge, which rips out the most powerful portions of their deck. Jund is very, very creature-light in the sense that they only have a few dudes that can actually kill you. I was tearing up Jund with Path + Snapcaster, for example. At its core, it's just a mediocre grind deck with some broad options. It's got some expensive removal, expensive dudes and lands, and good discard. Killing 2-3 of their guys is really a fine strategy.
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