Wraithpk I think you're on to something, but I think we should be a tiny bit more nuanced. There is a similar issue with taking the top8s as taking the top32s: the cutoffs are arbitrary and give equal weight to different sized events. Instead, the TopX should be a function of the number of decks in day2. Just want to make sure that a 1000 person day 2's top8 isn't weighted the same as a 100 person day 2's top 8 (rhetorically speaking).
Something like the top quartile? So top25 for a 100 person day 2 should be the same value as top 250 for a 1000 person day 2, etc.
But this stuff is a lot of number crunching and scouring for data, so yeah just method suggestions that might not be based in reality lol.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Squelch and Trickbind exist already but see no play, so it seems likely that the effect is just not worth 2 mana. I recall reading something in a WotC article describing development being concerned that Disallow might be too annoying in modern given its interaction with fetchlands. If they were concerned at 3 cmc (even on a more flexible card), I just don't see how they print that effect at 1 cmc. And as I mentioned above, at 2 cmc it doesn't see any play.
This does present a tricky situation. The difference between 1 CMC and 2 CMC is gigantic, and here we're talking about a card that's pretty decidedly tempo - which is all about being low to the ground. I imagine Stifle is just way too good in the Modern environment. Maybe a Squelch variant that could hit triggered abilities would be good enough? I don't know. Either way, I don't think a good "Counter triggered/activated ability" is necessary to Modern Tempo; I just threw it out as an example of a cheap, maindeckable interaction that plays well in Tempo (of which the format doesn't have that many).
As long as we've got a fresh new thread, I have a question for the reactive Blue crowd. When we talk about empowering Blue/reactive decks, we usually mean Ux Control, often in a draw-go style. But I've started thinking that I'd be just as open - or even more open, even - to strengthening the Ux Tempo shell. We currently have a few Delver lists floating around Tier 2, and as a Knightfall pilot I'd say that deck plays a Tempo role in many matchups, but overall I'd say that the archetype has even worse representation than Control. Given WotC's aversion to printing Draw-Go cards, what would people think about the possibility of giving Blue its identity back through printing some new Tempo tools?
I started thinking about this because of Blue's status in in Standard. It feels like a confused, weak, do-nothing color at present because its usual wheelhouse - permission, filtering, draw, etc. - are things that WotC hates and has weakened or phased out (with a couple notablemistakes/exceptions and very narrow cards). But would the pro-Blue crowd be happy with shifting Blue more towards a Tempo bent? That just seems like a more likely to me, and I actually think it would do as much for the format as empowering reactive Blue Control. It also feels to me like Tempo would take fewer cards to bring up to speed just because its proactive gameplan meshes more with the tools available in the Modern cardpool.
Thoughts? Good idea/bad idea? And what kinds of cards would you like to see printed/reprinted to bolster tempo? Something Stifle-esque would be great, as would ways of trading card advantage for tempo advantage.
Also although I don't see it being printed anytime soon in Standard, what do you guys think about Daze in modern?
I wasn't sure if Infect would play it, but now that it's been nerfed...
The card is pretty much as tempo as it gets, it's a nice safety valve for highly linear strategies, especially fast combo decks, while it restricts you to play a certain amount of islands and actually tends to punish you a lot more than in legacy because of modern shockland based landbase.
Opinions?
Stifle Bug UG
When Stifle Bug enters the battlefield counter target activated or triggered ability
Flying
2/1
Or just make the UG Command cost UG and one of the modes is countering a triggered ability.
UG is hugely underplayed and one of the typical Tempo colour pairs.
Sorcery speed stifle is . Also, if you really make a 2cmc stone rain instant with a 2/1 flyer attached, I think you've made one of the most pushed cards in recent history.
Upps, meant to add flash obviously. Edited that.
The thing is not all modern decks play fetches and even then, just be more careful when to crack it, just play your non-fetchlands on the crucial turn 2/3 (most modern decks play 8 fetches and about 12-15 nonfetchlands) so it really isn't a Stone Rain with a 2/1 flying attached.
And on top of that it's in UG and thereby doesn't fit in any current tiered shell.
Obviously it's pushed, but I really doubt it's broken in modern and without fetches in Standard, there's really a lot less stuff it can do there.
Sheridan, do you think you could extend your data out to top 32 as well, just so we get a bigger picture?
Not enough data. Very few events report outside of T8. Those that do aren't typically reporting Day 2s or Round 1s. It only got worse after Wizards stopped publishing Day 2s and then even dropped the Top 100 in recent GP.
Sheridan, do you think you could extend your data out to top 32 as well, just so we get a bigger picture?
Not enough data. Very few events report outside of T8. Those that do aren't typically reporting Day 2s or Round 1s. It only got worse after Wizards stopped publishing Day 2s and then even dropped the Top 100 in recent GP.
Given the Standard environment for the past 2 years, I don't blame them. It does suck for our eternal formats though...
Squelch and Trickbind exist already but see no play, so it seems likely that the effect is just not worth 2 mana. I recall reading something in a WotC article describing development being concerned that Disallow might be too annoying in modern given its interaction with fetchlands. If they were concerned at 3 cmc (even on a more flexible card), I just don't see how they print that effect at 1 cmc. And as I mentioned above, at 2 cmc it doesn't see any play.
This does present a tricky situation. The difference between 1 CMC and 2 CMC is gigantic, and here we're talking about a card that's pretty decidedly tempo - which is all about being low to the ground. I imagine Stifle is just way too good in the Modern environment. Maybe a Squelch variant that could hit triggered abilities would be good enough? I don't know. Either way, I don't think a good "Counter triggered/activated ability" is necessary to Modern Tempo; I just threw it out as an example of a cheap, maindeckable interaction that plays well in Tempo (of which the format doesn't have that many).
As long as we've got a fresh new thread, I have a question for the reactive Blue crowd. When we talk about empowering Blue/reactive decks, we usually mean Ux Control, often in a draw-go style. But I've started thinking that I'd be just as open - or even more open, even - to strengthening the Ux Tempo shell. We currently have a few Delver lists floating around Tier 2, and as a Knightfall pilot I'd say that deck plays a Tempo role in many matchups, but overall I'd say that the archetype has even worse representation than Control. Given WotC's aversion to printing Draw-Go cards, what would people think about the possibility of giving Blue its identity back through printing some new Tempo tools?
I started thinking about this because of Blue's status in in Standard. It feels like a confused, weak, do-nothing color at present because its usual wheelhouse - permission, filtering, draw, etc. - are things that WotC hates and has weakened or phased out (with a couple notablemistakes/exceptions and very narrow cards). But would the pro-Blue crowd be happy with shifting Blue more towards a Tempo bent? That just seems like a more likely to me, and I actually think it would do as much for the format as empowering reactive Blue Control. It also feels to me like Tempo would take fewer cards to bring up to speed just because its proactive gameplan meshes more with the tools available in the Modern cardpool.
Thoughts? Good idea/bad idea? And what kinds of cards would you like to see printed/reprinted to bolster tempo? Something Stifle-esque would be great, as would ways of trading card advantage for tempo advantage.
Also although I don't see it being printed anytime soon in Standard, what do you guys think about Daze in modern?
I wasn't sure if Infect would play it, but now that it's been nerfed...
The card is pretty much as tempo as it gets, it's a nice safety valve for highly linear strategies, especially fast combo decks, while it restricts you to play a certain amount of islands and actually tends to punish you a lot more than in legacy because of modern shockland based landbase.
Opinions?
I think daze is about as far as you can push tempo counters. Shock lands make returning an island a pretty substantial downside. It would help the tempo blue decks like faeries. Though I honestly dont know if that archetype truly needs that much help.
I think that the article on modern nexus about Esper is a rather good assessment of the position of the deck currently. I also think that one line in the entire article sum's up how control works in modern " at least for the short term" I don't think modern is a format in which a true control deck can be viable for a extended period of time.
The post by ktkenshinx knocked on Grixis which personally I don't really think is warranted. Grixis did what control decks in modern do, it was good for a few events until aggro decks shifted to compensate for the rise in control decks.
The normal "cycle" for control in Standard is , New set is released control is bad and aggro decks battle for the status of best aggro build, once this is done the format has settled on what the best aggressive strategy is and control decks can be built to defeat it, new set is released and the cycle begins anew. In Modern this type of cycle is not actually possible because so many aggro decks are on par as far as goldfishing a kill and when players gravitate toward one aggro deck in significant enough numbers control players can and do build a 75 that can deal with it. It is just far to easy in modern for a handful of events in which Control did well to signal aggressive players that the need switch to different aggressive builds invalidating the prior constructed Control deck. In periods which no deck of the week aggro deck hypes itself up sufficiently to gain enough and aggro players are spread wide on different builds "Control" is nearly impossible to achieve.
In the first years of Modern UWR control regularly did well not because the cards were any better but because the scope of the format was far more narrow. UWR Control could ignore random T3 decks because they had been such a bad choice in the face of Twin, Pod, and Jund. Tier 2 wasn't much better off with Burn and Infect being the only randomly okay things but very much suppressed by Pod, Tron being the worst T2 match up that could reasonably make life miserable. With two of the most restrictive decks banned out of the meta-game suddenly decks that failed the Pod and Twin test became viable options and the meta-game went from 4-5 consistent T1 decks to 9-12 at any given time, and control simply cannot sustain T1 status in the face of so many variables that just isn't how Control works in regards to the game theory of MTG, while aggro decks can achieve a Nash Equilibrium in regards to outcomes this is not True for control at any given event their entire strategy can certainly gain by a change in strategy while most aggro decks are decided by the die roll or if you or your opponent top decks their alpha strike cards but neither player feels as though the actually strategy they employed needs to radically changed if at all.
Control decks are by their very nature playing a Asymmetric Game in which the opponents strategy dictate the payoff for the control player. The nature of MTG events with the multiple rounds of unique players to face all of which could be employing radically different strategies the ability of a reactive control deck to actually react and control such a wide variety of unique strategies is very difficult or even impossible in a given situation.
I think that this is the status quo for control decks in Modern, be able to perform well at a few events until aggro adapts and wait for how ever long it takes aggro to gravitate towards a smaller range of strategies and then be good again for few events until it is recognized again and so on. I think this is the "cycle" of control in Modern. Control is never just going to be "good" because that isn't how control wins it must be near oppressively good when its good and if not its bad and it is not in a state of equilibrium.
What I'm hoping, is that the UWx decks make a move out of fringe.
Because it has the tools to beat and contain Shadow decks.
I mean isn't that the goal of having a strong control deck in the meta? To allow us to police ourselves?
Wizards will definitely print something that will help UWx. The question of what that something is remains to be seen and if the pleas for stronger counters, better card draw options, and a stronger blue walker all hit home soon enough to affect what gets put into the fall quarter of 2017. The one catch is if they can find some way to strengthen blue in modern without messing up whatever new non-rotating format they decide to come up with.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The post by ktkenshinx knocked on Grixis which personally I don't really think is warranted. Grixis did what control decks in modern do, it was good for a few events until aggro decks shifted to compensate for the rise in control decks.
I don't think Grixis was ever as good as some people seemed to think it was. It was literally the same deck people were playing a year ago to very little success before everyone abandoned it for Jeskai Nahiri. Granted, the Burn matchup is better now with Collected Brutality in the deck, but not much else has changed. It was really just a bandwagon as a result of Corey's top 8.
I love Esper Control, though. I think that's on the dl the best blue control deck in Modern. It's surprisingly good against decks you would think have good control matchups, like the Valakut decks. I remember we were having the discussion about the Valakut decks against control the other day, and the consensus is that Valakut beats control unless you can get a fast clock going, but when I asked PimpDonny (probably the biggest Esper streamer on Twitch) how he felt about the matchup, he said it's one of his best matchups. That pretty much matched what I had seen while watching his stream.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Unless a UW control deck is going against nothing but Shadow decks it will not make an impact. Because if it hits against bant eldrazi or tron that's it.
If Death's Shadow can be considered for banning because of diversity, than what about Tarmogoyf which sees play in more decks and forces less deck building restrictions ?
Jund and Junk are going the way of the dodo, they are no longer tier 1. And then, the literal only place Tarmogoyf will have in Modern is being the low-quality sidekick of Death's Shadow.
Why is that a bad thing? Didn't we all expect this to happen? This is exact evidence that Modern will always creep closer to Legacy, where Jund is a tier 2 deck. Delver of Secrets supplanted both Tarmogoyf and Wild Nacatl in Legacy. If Death's Shadow is Modern's Delver of Secrets, that's fine.
...
I'm aware its shares are still modest in the grand scheme of things, but you just have to play online and watch streams to see what's happening.
Modest? Just the grixis and jund variants already make up 21% of MTGO's published 5-0s.
But that's the thing about 5-0s, not all of them get published so impossible to see the whole picture.
The deck is obviously good and it's interactive and let's you have tons of decisions. It's what many people want to play.
It's still the 'new hot thing' give the meta some time to adapt. Burn lists will up their instant speed spells and players will learn how to play against the deck, Affinity can either switch their Galvanic Blasts for Dispatch or start playing Shrapnel Blast for some serious burn reach etc. Good MUs against Death Shadow decks and Bant Eldrazi may give people some Tier 2 hard control options in UW and Esper, which is something many have asked for.
With Jund falling off so hard, maybe we actually get to play with BBE again (I think most people agree that the only reason to not unban it was that Jund was Tier 1 already anyway).
Could we just wait 1-2 months morr, collect more data and see how the meta adapts before starting ban talk at least once?
...
I'm aware its shares are still modest in the grand scheme of things, but you just have to play online and watch streams to see what's happening.
Modest? Just the grixis and jund variants already make up 21% of MTGO's published 5-0s.
But that's the thing about 5-0s, not all of them get published so impossible to see the whole picture.
The deck is obviously good and it's interactive and let's you have tons of decisions. It's what many people want to play.
It's still the 'new hot thing' give the meta some time to adapt. Burn lists will up their instant speed spells and players will learn how to play against the deck, Affinity can either switch their Galvanic Blasts for Dispatch or start playing Shrapnel Blast for some serious burn reach etc. Good MUs against Death Shadow decks and Bant Eldrazi may give people some Tier 2 hard control options in UW and Esper, which is something many have asked for.
With Jund falling off so hard, maybe we actually get to play with BBE again (I think most people agree that the only reason to not unban it was that Jund was Tier 1 already anyway).
Could we just wait 1-2 months morr, collect more data and see how the meta adapts before starting ban talk at least once?
Just for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not advocating any bans, in fact, I'm very much on the opposite side of that argument.
But, its undeniable that we are indeed reaching a silly point, because arguments previously used to ban cards, like efficiency or meta-share are continuously coming around to bite wotc in the ass.
Unless a UW control deck is going against nothing but Shadow decks it will not make an impact. Because if it hits against bant eldrazi or tron that's it.
Wrong. Well built UW is favored vs Bant Eldrazi and very slightly unfavored vs Tron. I'm not talking about my own experience, which could be biased and not trusted. But I thought the same thing until I was proven otherwise with data.
Yeah, from the esper players I've watched, it also seems pretty favored against Bant Eldrazi and the Tron matchup is actually not miserable. A lot of them run a couple Crumble to Dust in the sideboard that they splash off a single Steam Vents.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
I'm starting to believe Death's Shadow will get banned. And I'm also starting to believe it's the right thing to do.
Not exactly because DS decks are busted (they are), but because they are going to eat a good quarter of the meta soon. We have the "classic" Jund version, we also have more abzan leaning ones, Grixis Shadow is seeing a lot of play and even Esper Shadow is seeing play. Basically, everyone is trying to apply, to other decks, the same logic someone applied to GBx. Which is, cut all the fat, keep the super cheap and efficient interaction in the colors you happen to be playing, and build the rest around DS.
And what this logic has done is put Jund DS at basically TWICE the metagame share Jund and Junk have... combined. Those decks are a nightmare for a good number of decks. They are a nightmare for any spell based combo decks on discard spells alone. They are a complete nightmare for any aggro-combo decks (or what's left of them after the bans). They completely destroy the need for any other midrange deck at all, outclassing all flavors of BGx along with stuff like Hatebears, Grixis Delver and others.
They have good or even matchups vs all the big mana decks too. The only saving grace of this all is they get completely brutalized by any good, pure control decks, and by good pure control decks I mean UW and Esper.
Yes, they can be beaten by some decks, and you can tell by how the numbers move that something is happening. So yeah, I think they are going to eat a ban and the ban is going to be Death's Shadow itself. And I can repeat that it will not be based on them being overly oppressive, but more on DS eating too much deckbuilding space. Kind of like how blue decks were doing it wrong by not playing Twin? Only instead of having a small portion of the meta gravitating towards a card (blue decks) now you have a much larger chunk of the meta. In the end, that's the same as being too powerful, because if format staple decks and generally a whole archetype is getting scratched to play the different superior DS versions, well, there's a reason for that.
And again, yes, there are some specific decks that are good vs DS decks, but they are mostly fringe decks, and when you have to dig into the fringes to look for answers it reminds me of the Eldrazi Winter when stuff like Living End and Lantern was suddenly amazing.
So yeah, I officially call it now: Death's Shadow is going to get banned because the Modern community, after some years, has finally found the way to build optimal, rock-solid, interactive decks, filled to the max with cheap, busted cards that are almost always good. And those decks will eat the format alive.
I'm aware its shares are still modest in the grand scheme of things, but you just have to play online and watch streams to see what's happening.
This is a really thoughtful post, and I agree with you
This happening does not just mean that shadow itself is too powerful, but now it feels so crucial that it needs to be slotted into most interactive archetypes to be viable, and that itself is an issue.
Abzan and Jund itself have slid into tier 2, which is surprising.
I also think this once again says something about blue itself, they have such awful options for not being proactive, so now they're slotting into blue and cutting the fat (which blue has too much of), this to me screams, "blue needs help!"
Let's see the results, but yeah, this doesn't look good, if the meta adapts by playing Shadow itself it will without a doubt eat a ban---if that happens, I'll promptly be selling my 8x copies of Death's Shadow and 4x Mishra Bauble, because there's no way WOTC will let that slide
I do think Shadow itself is good in that it stops ramp and spell based combo from being dominant (which will definitely be an issue if Shadow itself eats a ban).
Kinda sucks, I like it as a police deck, but it being slotted into so many decks is an issue, and if it keeps posting top 8's, that's an issue. Let's see what happens, but I do agree
I'm also frustrated that Ramp decks/Eldrazi/Tron flavors will rule the format when that scenario takes place.
I'm starting to believe Death's Shadow will get banned. And I'm also starting to believe it's the right thing to do.
Not exactly because DS decks are busted (they are), but because they are going to eat a good quarter of the meta soon. We have the "classic" Jund version, we also have more abzan leaning ones, Grixis Shadow is seeing a lot of play and even Esper Shadow is seeing play. Basically, everyone is trying to apply, to other decks, the same logic someone applied to GBx. Which is, cut all the fat, keep the super cheap and efficient interaction in the colors you happen to be playing, and build the rest around DS.
And what this logic has done is put Jund DS at basically TWICE the metagame share Jund and Junk have... combined. Those decks are a nightmare for a good number of decks. They are a nightmare for any spell based combo decks on discard spells alone. They are a complete nightmare for any aggro-combo decks (or what's left of them after the bans). They completely destroy the need for any other midrange deck at all, outclassing all flavors of BGx along with stuff like Hatebears, Grixis Delver and others.
They have good or even matchups vs all the big mana decks too. The only saving grace of this all is they get completely brutalized by any good, pure control decks, and by good pure control decks I mean UW and Esper.
Yes, they can be beaten by some decks, and you can tell by how the numbers move that something is happening. So yeah, I think they are going to eat a ban and the ban is going to be Death's Shadow itself. And I can repeat that it will not be based on them being overly oppressive, but more on DS eating too much deckbuilding space. Kind of like how blue decks were doing it wrong by not playing Twin? Only instead of having a small portion of the meta gravitating towards a card (blue decks) now you have a much larger chunk of the meta. In the end, that's the same as being too powerful, because if format staple decks and generally a whole archetype is getting scratched to play the different superior DS versions, well, there's a reason for that.
And again, yes, there are some specific decks that are good vs DS decks, but they are mostly fringe decks, and when you have to dig into the fringes to look for answers it reminds me of the Eldrazi Winter when stuff like Living End and Lantern was suddenly amazing.
So yeah, I officially call it now: Death's Shadow is going to get banned because the Modern community, after some years, has finally found the way to build optimal, rock-solid, interactive decks, filled to the max with cheap, busted cards that are almost always good. And those decks will eat the format alive.
I'm aware its shares are still modest in the grand scheme of things, but you just have to play online and watch streams to see what's happening.
This is a really thoughtful post, and I agree with you
This happening does not just mean that shadow itself is too powerful, but now it feels so crucial that it needs to be slotted into most interactive archetypes to be viable, and that itself is an issue.
Abzan and Jund itself have slid into tier 2, which is surprising.
I also think this once again says something about blue itself, they have such awful options for not being proactive, so now they're slotting into blue and cutting the fat (which blue has too much of), this to me screams, "blue needs help!"
Let's see the results, but yeah, this doesn't look good, if the meta adapts by playing Shadow itself it will without a doubt eat a ban---if that happens, I'll promptly be selling my 8x copies of Death's Shadow and 4x Mishra Bauble, because there's no way WOTC will let that slide
I do think Shadow itself is good in that it stops ramp and spell based combo from being dominant (which will definitely be an issue if Shadow itself eats a ban).
Kinda sucks, I like it as a police deck, but it being slotted into so many decks is an issue, and if it keeps posting top 8's, that's an issue. Let's see what happens, but I do agree
I'm also frustrated that Ramp decks/Eldrazi/Tron flavors will rule the format when that scenario takes place.
isnt that what ive been saying all along? the plethora of big mana decks are pushing the game into race them or join them. and now with death shadow having a possible target on its head it will die for its sins, which are to police this big mana fiasco we have currently.
Mark my words; if deaths shadow gets banned we will need to start banning some big mana decks.
This only fortifies my theory earlier, blue may need help, but its going to take more than unbans/reprints to help it. its going to take a different tier 1/meta. heck even traditional bgx is suffering from this big mana format, its tier 2!
If Death's Shadow can be considered for banning because of diversity, than what about Tarmogoyf which sees play in more decks and forces less deck building restrictions ?
Tarmogoyf sees play in 3 decks from the top 40 decks in Modern. Right now, half of the Tarmogoyfs in Modern online are played in DS.
Tarmogoyf is the bad creature in DS. Let that sink in. It plays them because it has to play some more creatures and Tarmogoyf is the next best thing. For all intents and purposes, clear for anyone with a decent experience vs DS, Tarmogoyf is a straight worse creature that costs twice as much.
Jund and Junk are going the way of the dodo, they are no longer tier 1. And then, the literal only place Tarmogoyf will have in Modern is being the low-quality sidekick of Death's Shadow.
"Jund and Junk are going the way of the dodo, they are no longer tier 1"
this, a sign of lack of health in the format. people, its happening, let that sink in.
first it could be argued that with the lack of blue in tier 1 the game is fine because we have bgx! but now we dont......
Of course if your one who loves a linear top tier with a lack of archetype diversity then this format is for you!
I'm starting to believe Death's Shadow will get banned. And I'm also starting to believe it's the right thing to do.
Not exactly because DS decks are busted (they are), but because they are going to eat a good quarter of the meta soon. We have the "classic" Jund version, we also have more abzan leaning ones, Grixis Shadow is seeing a lot of play and even Esper Shadow is seeing play. Basically, everyone is trying to apply, to other decks, the same logic someone applied to GBx. Which is, cut all the fat, keep the super cheap and efficient interaction in the colors you happen to be playing, and build the rest around DS.
And what this logic has done is put Jund DS at basically TWICE the metagame share Jund and Junk have... combined. Those decks are a nightmare for a good number of decks. They are a nightmare for any spell based combo decks on discard spells alone. They are a complete nightmare for any aggro-combo decks (or what's left of them after the bans). They completely destroy the need for any other midrange deck at all, outclassing all flavors of BGx along with stuff like Hatebears, Grixis Delver and others.
They have good or even matchups vs all the big mana decks too. The only saving grace of this all is they get completely brutalized by any good, pure control decks, and by good pure control decks I mean UW and Esper.
Yes, they can be beaten by some decks, and you can tell by how the numbers move that something is happening. So yeah, I think they are going to eat a ban and the ban is going to be Death's Shadow itself. And I can repeat that it will not be based on them being overly oppressive, but more on DS eating too much deckbuilding space. Kind of like how blue decks were doing it wrong by not playing Twin? Only instead of having a small portion of the meta gravitating towards a card (blue decks) now you have a much larger chunk of the meta. In the end, that's the same as being too powerful, because if format staple decks and generally a whole archetype is getting scratched to play the different superior DS versions, well, there's a reason for that.
And again, yes, there are some specific decks that are good vs DS decks, but they are mostly fringe decks, and when you have to dig into the fringes to look for answers it reminds me of the Eldrazi Winter when stuff like Living End and Lantern was suddenly amazing.
So yeah, I officially call it now: Death's Shadow is going to get banned because the Modern community, after some years, has finally found the way to build optimal, rock-solid, interactive decks, filled to the max with cheap, busted cards that are almost always good. And those decks will eat the format alive.
I'm aware its shares are still modest in the grand scheme of things, but you just have to play online and watch streams to see what's happening.
This is a really thoughtful post, and I agree with you
This happening does not just mean that shadow itself is too powerful, but now it feels so crucial that it needs to be slotted into most interactive archetypes to be viable, and that itself is an issue.
Abzan and Jund itself have slid into tier 2, which is surprising.
I also think this once again says something about blue itself, they have such awful options for not being proactive, so now they're slotting into blue and cutting the fat (which blue has too much of), this to me screams, "blue needs help!"
Let's see the results, but yeah, this doesn't look good, if the meta adapts by playing Shadow itself it will without a doubt eat a ban---if that happens, I'll promptly be selling my 8x copies of Death's Shadow and 4x Mishra Bauble, because there's no way WOTC will let that slide
I do think Shadow itself is good in that it stops ramp and spell based combo from being dominant (which will definitely be an issue if Shadow itself eats a ban).
Kinda sucks, I like it as a police deck, but it being slotted into so many decks is an issue, and if it keeps posting top 8's, that's an issue. Let's see what happens, but I do agree
I'm also frustrated that Ramp decks/Eldrazi/Tron flavors will rule the format when that scenario takes place.
isnt that what ive been saying all along? the plethora of big mana decks are pushing the game into race them or join them. and now with death shadow having a possible target on its head it will die for its sins, which are to police this big mana fiasco we have currently.
Mark my words if deaths shadow gets banned we will need to start banning some big mana decks.
If death's shadow had slowly built up over time, gradually improving and showing itself to be decent until reaching current metagame levels (which are fine, by the way, and I can back this up with historical metagame data), then maybe, maybe you'd have a point here.
As it is though, many people across the Internet are putting their "thing in a vacuum" hat on when talking about shadow jund. You can't ignore the stardom-factor here, the deck had a well-judged breakout performance seemingly out of nowhere, and suddenly many many people (myself included I must admit) have picked the deck up and are giving it a test, seeing how it runs, and practicing. There's no surprise, then that we have seen an initial pickup of interest and a slow decline since that initial spike. Shadow's metagame share is currently falling slowly, and may yet spike again a little bit if people see it doing well in their region or every time it appears in a top-8. But it's not even worth considering as a reasonable choice for banning, because it's not doing anything broken. It's not breaking any speed rules, it isn't forcing a war of sideboards, it isn't brutalising other fair decks out of the format (although we've seen a drop in jund's share this is due to pilots hopping over to the new deck rather than death's shadow actually having a good matchup. I believe the data so far has shown OG jund to be slightly favoured due to the additional removal and card advantage it runs) and if anything, shadow jund is acting as a nice policeman for the format's more "unfair" combo decks. This, may I remind others here, is something that has been wanted for over a year, and there's been thousands of words written just on this forum about how unfair decks need policing, and linear aggro needs a speed-bump. Well, it's here, and it's a fair deck that just plays discard & cheap threats in a midrange-lite type of shell.
May I remind you that the last time a midrangey, "fair" deck was in anyone's crosshairs in terms of bans was when birthing pod had slowly, relentlessly gained metagame share until it was sitting at approx 20% of the meta. This is world's away from what we are seeing here (which is hype and excitement for a new deck). Pod had none of the hype, wasn't the "new hotness" and just gained meta share from being the absolute best deck in the format. Death's shadow isn't that, and it isn't worthy of ban-mania type discussions where anything good suddenly gets slammed by negative naysayers
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
If Death's Shadow can be considered for banning because of diversity, than what about Tarmogoyf which sees play in more decks and forces less deck building restrictions ?
Tarmogoyf sees play in 3 decks from the top 40 decks in Modern. Right now, half of the Tarmogoyfs in Modern online are played in DS.
Tarmogoyf is the bad creature in DS. Let that sink in. It plays them because it has to play some more creatures and Tarmogoyf is the next best thing. For all intents and purposes, clear for anyone with a decent experience vs DS, Tarmogoyf is a straight worse creature that costs twice as much.
Jund and Junk are going the way of the dodo, they are no longer tier 1. And then, the literal only place Tarmogoyf will have in Modern is being the low-quality sidekick of Death's Shadow.
"Jund and Junk are going the way of the dodo, they are no longer tier 1"
this, a sign of lack of health in the format. people, its happening, let that sink in.
first it could be argued that with the lack of blue in tier 1 the game is fine because we have bgx! but now we dont......
Shadow is GBx, just a bit more aggressive version.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Something like the top quartile? So top25 for a 100 person day 2 should be the same value as top 250 for a 1000 person day 2, etc.
But this stuff is a lot of number crunching and scouring for data, so yeah just method suggestions that might not be based in reality lol.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
This does present a tricky situation. The difference between 1 CMC and 2 CMC is gigantic, and here we're talking about a card that's pretty decidedly tempo - which is all about being low to the ground. I imagine Stifle is just way too good in the Modern environment. Maybe a Squelch variant that could hit triggered abilities would be good enough? I don't know. Either way, I don't think a good "Counter triggered/activated ability" is necessary to Modern Tempo; I just threw it out as an example of a cheap, maindeckable interaction that plays well in Tempo (of which the format doesn't have that many).
Daze would be great for Modern, IMO.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
Upps, meant to add flash obviously. Edited that.
The thing is not all modern decks play fetches and even then, just be more careful when to crack it, just play your non-fetchlands on the crucial turn 2/3 (most modern decks play 8 fetches and about 12-15 nonfetchlands) so it really isn't a Stone Rain with a 2/1 flying attached.
And on top of that it's in UG and thereby doesn't fit in any current tiered shell.
Obviously it's pushed, but I really doubt it's broken in modern and without fetches in Standard, there's really a lot less stuff it can do there.
Not enough data. Very few events report outside of T8. Those that do aren't typically reporting Day 2s or Round 1s. It only got worse after Wizards stopped publishing Day 2s and then even dropped the Top 100 in recent GP.
Given the Standard environment for the past 2 years, I don't blame them. It does suck for our eternal formats though...
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I think daze is about as far as you can push tempo counters. Shock lands make returning an island a pretty substantial downside. It would help the tempo blue decks like faeries. Though I honestly dont know if that archetype truly needs that much help.
Because it has the tools to beat and contain Shadow decks.
I mean isn't that the goal of having a strong control deck in the meta? To allow us to police ourselves?
Spirits
The post by ktkenshinx knocked on Grixis which personally I don't really think is warranted. Grixis did what control decks in modern do, it was good for a few events until aggro decks shifted to compensate for the rise in control decks.
The normal "cycle" for control in Standard is , New set is released control is bad and aggro decks battle for the status of best aggro build, once this is done the format has settled on what the best aggressive strategy is and control decks can be built to defeat it, new set is released and the cycle begins anew. In Modern this type of cycle is not actually possible because so many aggro decks are on par as far as goldfishing a kill and when players gravitate toward one aggro deck in significant enough numbers control players can and do build a 75 that can deal with it. It is just far to easy in modern for a handful of events in which Control did well to signal aggressive players that the need switch to different aggressive builds invalidating the prior constructed Control deck. In periods which no deck of the week aggro deck hypes itself up sufficiently to gain enough and aggro players are spread wide on different builds "Control" is nearly impossible to achieve.
In the first years of Modern UWR control regularly did well not because the cards were any better but because the scope of the format was far more narrow. UWR Control could ignore random T3 decks because they had been such a bad choice in the face of Twin, Pod, and Jund. Tier 2 wasn't much better off with Burn and Infect being the only randomly okay things but very much suppressed by Pod, Tron being the worst T2 match up that could reasonably make life miserable. With two of the most restrictive decks banned out of the meta-game suddenly decks that failed the Pod and Twin test became viable options and the meta-game went from 4-5 consistent T1 decks to 9-12 at any given time, and control simply cannot sustain T1 status in the face of so many variables that just isn't how Control works in regards to the game theory of MTG, while aggro decks can achieve a Nash Equilibrium in regards to outcomes this is not True for control at any given event their entire strategy can certainly gain by a change in strategy while most aggro decks are decided by the die roll or if you or your opponent top decks their alpha strike cards but neither player feels as though the actually strategy they employed needs to radically changed if at all.
Control decks are by their very nature playing a Asymmetric Game in which the opponents strategy dictate the payoff for the control player. The nature of MTG events with the multiple rounds of unique players to face all of which could be employing radically different strategies the ability of a reactive control deck to actually react and control such a wide variety of unique strategies is very difficult or even impossible in a given situation.
I think that this is the status quo for control decks in Modern, be able to perform well at a few events until aggro adapts and wait for how ever long it takes aggro to gravitate towards a smaller range of strategies and then be good again for few events until it is recognized again and so on. I think this is the "cycle" of control in Modern. Control is never just going to be "good" because that isn't how control wins it must be near oppressively good when its good and if not its bad and it is not in a state of equilibrium.
Wizards will definitely print something that will help UWx. The question of what that something is remains to be seen and if the pleas for stronger counters, better card draw options, and a stronger blue walker all hit home soon enough to affect what gets put into the fall quarter of 2017. The one catch is if they can find some way to strengthen blue in modern without messing up whatever new non-rotating format they decide to come up with.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I don't think Grixis was ever as good as some people seemed to think it was. It was literally the same deck people were playing a year ago to very little success before everyone abandoned it for Jeskai Nahiri. Granted, the Burn matchup is better now with Collected Brutality in the deck, but not much else has changed. It was really just a bandwagon as a result of Corey's top 8.
I love Esper Control, though. I think that's on the dl the best blue control deck in Modern. It's surprisingly good against decks you would think have good control matchups, like the Valakut decks. I remember we were having the discussion about the Valakut decks against control the other day, and the consensus is that Valakut beats control unless you can get a fast clock going, but when I asked PimpDonny (probably the biggest Esper streamer on Twitch) how he felt about the matchup, he said it's one of his best matchups. That pretty much matched what I had seen while watching his stream.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Edit - Otherwise I think you're right h0lydiva. Without intervention soon that card will eat a diversity ban, sadly.
Why is that a bad thing? Didn't we all expect this to happen? This is exact evidence that Modern will always creep closer to Legacy, where Jund is a tier 2 deck. Delver of Secrets supplanted both Tarmogoyf and Wild Nacatl in Legacy. If Death's Shadow is Modern's Delver of Secrets, that's fine.
Modest? Just the grixis and jund variants already make up 21% of MTGO's published 5-0s.
But that's the thing about 5-0s, not all of them get published so impossible to see the whole picture.
The deck is obviously good and it's interactive and let's you have tons of decisions. It's what many people want to play.
It's still the 'new hot thing' give the meta some time to adapt. Burn lists will up their instant speed spells and players will learn how to play against the deck, Affinity can either switch their Galvanic Blasts for Dispatch or start playing Shrapnel Blast for some serious burn reach etc. Good MUs against Death Shadow decks and Bant Eldrazi may give people some Tier 2 hard control options in UW and Esper, which is something many have asked for.
With Jund falling off so hard, maybe we actually get to play with BBE again (I think most people agree that the only reason to not unban it was that Jund was Tier 1 already anyway).
Could we just wait 1-2 months morr, collect more data and see how the meta adapts before starting ban talk at least once?
Just for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not advocating any bans, in fact, I'm very much on the opposite side of that argument.
But, its undeniable that we are indeed reaching a silly point, because arguments previously used to ban cards, like efficiency or meta-share are continuously coming around to bite wotc in the ass.
Yeah, from the esper players I've watched, it also seems pretty favored against Bant Eldrazi and the Tron matchup is actually not miserable. A lot of them run a couple Crumble to Dust in the sideboard that they splash off a single Steam Vents.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
This is a really thoughtful post, and I agree with you
This happening does not just mean that shadow itself is too powerful, but now it feels so crucial that it needs to be slotted into most interactive archetypes to be viable, and that itself is an issue.
Abzan and Jund itself have slid into tier 2, which is surprising.
I also think this once again says something about blue itself, they have such awful options for not being proactive, so now they're slotting into blue and cutting the fat (which blue has too much of), this to me screams, "blue needs help!"
Let's see the results, but yeah, this doesn't look good, if the meta adapts by playing Shadow itself it will without a doubt eat a ban---if that happens, I'll promptly be selling my 8x copies of Death's Shadow and 4x Mishra Bauble, because there's no way WOTC will let that slide
I do think Shadow itself is good in that it stops ramp and spell based combo from being dominant (which will definitely be an issue if Shadow itself eats a ban).
Kinda sucks, I like it as a police deck, but it being slotted into so many decks is an issue, and if it keeps posting top 8's, that's an issue. Let's see what happens, but I do agree
I'm also frustrated that Ramp decks/Eldrazi/Tron flavors will rule the format when that scenario takes place.
isnt that what ive been saying all along? the plethora of big mana decks are pushing the game into race them or join them. and now with death shadow having a possible target on its head it will die for its sins, which are to police this big mana fiasco we have currently.
Mark my words; if deaths shadow gets banned we will need to start banning some big mana decks.
This only fortifies my theory earlier, blue may need help, but its going to take more than unbans/reprints to help it. its going to take a different tier 1/meta. heck even traditional bgx is suffering from this big mana format, its tier 2!
decks playing:
none
"Jund and Junk are going the way of the dodo, they are no longer tier 1"
this, a sign of lack of health in the format. people, its happening, let that sink in.
first it could be argued that with the lack of blue in tier 1 the game is fine because we have bgx! but now we dont......
Of course if your one who loves a linear top tier with a lack of archetype diversity then this format is for you!
decks playing:
none
If death's shadow had slowly built up over time, gradually improving and showing itself to be decent until reaching current metagame levels (which are fine, by the way, and I can back this up with historical metagame data), then maybe, maybe you'd have a point here.
As it is though, many people across the Internet are putting their "thing in a vacuum" hat on when talking about shadow jund. You can't ignore the stardom-factor here, the deck had a well-judged breakout performance seemingly out of nowhere, and suddenly many many people (myself included I must admit) have picked the deck up and are giving it a test, seeing how it runs, and practicing. There's no surprise, then that we have seen an initial pickup of interest and a slow decline since that initial spike. Shadow's metagame share is currently falling slowly, and may yet spike again a little bit if people see it doing well in their region or every time it appears in a top-8. But it's not even worth considering as a reasonable choice for banning, because it's not doing anything broken. It's not breaking any speed rules, it isn't forcing a war of sideboards, it isn't brutalising other fair decks out of the format (although we've seen a drop in jund's share this is due to pilots hopping over to the new deck rather than death's shadow actually having a good matchup. I believe the data so far has shown OG jund to be slightly favoured due to the additional removal and card advantage it runs) and if anything, shadow jund is acting as a nice policeman for the format's more "unfair" combo decks. This, may I remind others here, is something that has been wanted for over a year, and there's been thousands of words written just on this forum about how unfair decks need policing, and linear aggro needs a speed-bump. Well, it's here, and it's a fair deck that just plays discard & cheap threats in a midrange-lite type of shell.
May I remind you that the last time a midrangey, "fair" deck was in anyone's crosshairs in terms of bans was when birthing pod had slowly, relentlessly gained metagame share until it was sitting at approx 20% of the meta. This is world's away from what we are seeing here (which is hype and excitement for a new deck). Pod had none of the hype, wasn't the "new hotness" and just gained meta share from being the absolute best deck in the format. Death's shadow isn't that, and it isn't worthy of ban-mania type discussions where anything good suddenly gets slammed by negative naysayers
Shadow is GBx, just a bit more aggressive version.
BGx decks are not good
deaths shadow is BGx ... its just a streamlined version of the classic jund deck, it has the same game plan and play pattern, its just more efficient.