I, and many others, would love to have Birthing Pod come back. Even without any combos, it's the ultimate toolbox deck.
I really am curious to know how well it would do in today's meta against humans, KCI, tron, and the rest of the field that did not exist in 2014.
Of course it would probably make more sense to unban Green Sun's Zenith first as that card has had even less time being legal than Pod. I like the idea of a green creature toolbox deck.
I am considering going down to 2 Pact of Negation and making space for 1 Slaughter Pact instead. The reason being that Slaughter Pact is a nice answer to cards from the humans deck like Thalia or Meddling Mage, whereas Pact of Negation is almost always a dead card vs that deck between them cheating creatures into play with Aether Vial or making them uncounterable with Cavern of Souls. Since humans is arguably the most popular deck right now, it makes sense to tune the deck towards beating that matchup (if possible).
Also, when sideboarding, which cards come out vs humans? Pact of Negation is the only one I am sure of, but what else? Should Lotus Bloom come out because it can be named with Meddling Mage while in exile?
I'm actually going to try this at my next outing. I can report.
How did it go trimming on Negation? I am currently thinking that Slaughter Pact is much more powerful in the current format than Pact of Negation. Jeskai is on the decline and UW plays more board wipes and spot removal than actual counters. Overall, the meta is not filled with very many counterspells, making negation not as good as it was before.
My only concern is that Stirrings ban might not neuter KCI enough. If KCI players simply shrug the ban off and switch to playing Glint-Nest Crane instead, what exactly have we accomplished?
I have no idea at this point if they will go for the throat and take out KCI itself as Emma Handy suggests(as we saw with Splinter Twin, Birthing Pod, Eggs), or just chip away at its main consistency enabler (Stirrings) and hope that is enough to knock it down a tier.
This is probably a bit hard to execute so I bring two versions. First is the "current templating" version:
Holder of the ward WW
Creature - Kithkin cleric
When Holder of the ward enters the battlefield, search your opponent's library for a card and exile it face down.
Sacrifice Holder of the ward: reveal the card exiled with Holder of the ward. Counter target spell with the same name as the revealed card. It's controller shuffles the exiled card into his library.
2/2
This is the the simple version the former is trying to accomplish.
Holder of the ward WW
Creature - Kithkin cleric
When Holder of the ward enters the battlefield, secretly write a card name and put it face down
Sacrifice Holder of the ward: reveal the chosen name. Counter target spell with the same name as the name chosen.
2/2
The whole point is to restrict the utility of the creature to a single spell while not giving it away so the opponent can't know it in advance. Writing the name down is the quickest choice but it is a logistical nightmare while the first version lacks this problem but it is way more tedious as it needs to search a library for a potential single card. I'd bite the bullet and go for the second version.
I really like this design. I think the second one is much cleaner, and I don't see why it couldn't be done this way. Great take on Meddling Mage.
Rite of Singularity 1B
Sorcery
Target player reveals their hand, then you choose a colorless card other than a basic land card from it. Search that player's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with the same name as the chosen card and exile them. Then that player chooses one of the cards that was exiled this way and shuffles it into their library.
This is an effective sideboard card against decks that rely heavily on a particular combination of colorless cards, such as Tron lands Lantern Control combo pieces. While it throws sand into their gears, it does not remove their ability to tutor for the last missing piece. Yet, the danger of somehow losing it is real, thereby increasing the viability of various sideboard cards that are currently often to slow to effectively answer one of these strategies (e.g. Fulminator Mage vs. Tron).
Edit: Adjusted the mana cost.
I don't think it needs the drawback part of the effect. It's fine as a 2 mana Memoricide that only hits colorless. Great Tron hoser.
I don't really see the trend continuing though, at least in the short-term. Tron is not nearly as well-positioned as it was 2 months ago when it was putting up tons of finishes, and KCI is not gonna be making many top 8s when every other deck is packing a set of Leylines and/or other hate to fight Bridgevine.
The metagame could certainly self-correct itself, but with an announcement coming up in a week Wizards only has past data to look at not speculative future data. Stirrings decks have consistently overperformed at large scale events during the months leading up to this announcement.
I would personally have no qualms with a Stirrings ban, but if Wizards instead decides KCI is guilty of causing rounds to go extra long ala eggs they may just ban KCI on those grounds instead.
We shall see.
In addition, I am always in favor of the Mox Opal <-> artifact lands swap, which would conveniently also neuter KCI. However, I have no idea if Wizards would be on board with this or is even considering this as a possibility
engineered explosives needs a reprint. i miss it when they were $8. will probably never happen again because they will bump rarity up to mythic. i miss $5 chalice of the voids and trinispheres too
Wrong thread, but yes it does. These increased prices just speaks to the popularity of the format.
Maybe after they kill KCI the price will drop, since that's the only deck that plays the card in the main
One thing that bugs me about Humans is that it took a few different decks -- Death and Taxes, Hatebears, Merfolk -- and rendered them obsolete. There's no reason to play a fish-style aggro-control deck these days that isn't Humans. Grixis Shadow did the same thing to midrange for a while, and there was some metagame response to it. What's going to happen, or is already happening, in response to Humans?
The difference between humans vs Death and Taxes / Merfolk is that it cannot play colored non-creature cards.
This whole narrative is very biased and we've seen it in this thread for literal months.
I've been playing Modern for a few years now, and the whole, "Blue needs help!" narrative has NEVER stopped, ktk.
And now it's Faithless Looting that's the problem?? NEGATIVE VALUE should be banned now?? Holy crap, this Thread just had another pitchfork sale, didn't it? I mean, Bridge could go, Stirrings could go, KCI could go, all for understandable reasons, but Looting?? Yeah, I think I'll leave this mob before they start lighting torches...
I'm surprised that even Faithless Looting is a target for banning. Are there too many graveyard decks abusing it right now?
I am not sure if you are aware, but there's a new "flavor of the week" graveyard recursion deck that happens to play Looting right now. The actual cards it abuses the most are Vengevine and Bridge from Below
After playing against Krark Clan today I think Ancient Stirrings is the only issue. The deck would not be consistent enough if you can't dig 5 cards deep for G.
Why even worry about it right now, is still a fringe deck. The true elephant in the room is a Tron shaped one, I really hope that is proven by this PT.
Seriously, when is enough enough with Tron? For a while it was "well this deck is just inconsistent and has polarized matchups". Then it became "well it never puts up major tournament results". Like where is the justification now? A good number of it's bad matchups have been pushed from the format, it still has insanely good matchups running around, it's no longer inconsistent, it's been putting up tournament results in droves now and part of that is even with new hate cards like Damping Sphere in the format.
Hitting Stirrings will help because then you at least have a choke point for them. Hit all their threats out of hand. They'll easily get mana still but hitting their threats and they'll have to rely on draws and eggs to find their threats. Then if the deck still puts up these kinds of results. Swing the hammer.
Yup. Axeing Stirrings will certainly help power down both Tron and KCI. I think this is enough without having to ban anything else from KCI. It is a very wise choice indeed, even if a lot of pros are divided on this issue
Re: KCI
Handy's article is a refreshingly serious take on Modern as opposed to some of the offensive clickbait we've seen in a few past articles. That said, I don't find her argument very persuasive. These anecdotal logistical examples didn't even impact the tournaments in which they happened. If Handy had given an example in which KCI took 15 minutes to win in T5 of extra turns, delaying Round N of a GP for 15 minutes, that would be a very legitimate argument. But here, we would need to extrapolate these tangential examples to an end-of-round hypothetical that she can't even cite. It's too far removed to use the Sunrise precedent. I'm totally open to the argument and others should be too, but Handy doesn't argue it successfully. Props to her, however, for aiming at very limited bans and not the sweeping Opal or Stirrings suggestion (even if I think Stirrings should go or Preordain should return). Handy also commits one of the cardinal errors of ban arguments, which is mixing your criteria and not sticking to a point. For instance, when I and a few others argued that Bloom should be banned, we focused solely on its T4 rules violations. Handy is all over the place with logistical challenges, deck power, the "unfun" factor, etc. Minus extra points for stating that Shoal is banned for being unfun when it's literally cited as banned for violating the T4 rule. Moral: DON'T MIX BAN CRITERIA IN ARGUMENTS. It reads unprofessionally.
A stirrings ban might be enough to weaken the consistency of the KCI deck and make it a non-factor in the format, without needing to gut KCI itself.
I also still believe Mox Opal is not an unreasonable card to eliminate from the format, in return for the five artifact lands. This kills the KCI combo while still allowing affinity to soldier on with different tools at its disposal. The Hardened Scales affinity deck, which doesn't rely as heavily on Mox Opal anyway, gains Tree of Tales.
What do you mean? Jace's defeat counters Jace and Gideon's defeat exiles an attacking Gideon.
I really am curious to know how well it would do in today's meta against humans, KCI, tron, and the rest of the field that did not exist in 2014.
Of course it would probably make more sense to unban Green Sun's Zenith first as that card has had even less time being legal than Pod. I like the idea of a green creature toolbox deck.
Can we simply replace them with Oath of Nissa or is that card too much worse because it only digs 3 deep and doesn't hit any of our artifacts?
How did it go trimming on Negation? I am currently thinking that Slaughter Pact is much more powerful in the current format than Pact of Negation. Jeskai is on the decline and UW plays more board wipes and spot removal than actual counters. Overall, the meta is not filled with very many counterspells, making negation not as good as it was before.
I have no idea at this point if they will go for the throat and take out KCI itself as Emma Handy suggests(as we saw with Splinter Twin, Birthing Pod, Eggs), or just chip away at its main consistency enabler (Stirrings) and hope that is enough to knock it down a tier.
In any case, we shall see in one weeks time.
I really like this design. I think the second one is much cleaner, and I don't see why it couldn't be done this way. Great take on Meddling Mage.
I don't think it needs the drawback part of the effect. It's fine as a 2 mana Memoricide that only hits colorless. Great Tron hoser.
The metagame could certainly self-correct itself, but with an announcement coming up in a week Wizards only has past data to look at not speculative future data. Stirrings decks have consistently overperformed at large scale events during the months leading up to this announcement.
I would personally have no qualms with a Stirrings ban, but if Wizards instead decides KCI is guilty of causing rounds to go extra long ala eggs they may just ban KCI on those grounds instead.
We shall see.
In addition, I am always in favor of the Mox Opal <-> artifact lands swap, which would conveniently also neuter KCI. However, I have no idea if Wizards would be on board with this or is even considering this as a possibility
Bridge from Below should be banned instead. That card is just plain stupid in the vengevine deck
Wrong thread, but yes it does. These increased prices just speaks to the popularity of the format.
Maybe after they kill KCI the price will drop, since that's the only deck that plays the card in the main
The difference between humans vs Death and Taxes / Merfolk is that it cannot play colored non-creature cards.
No Stony Silence, no Rest in Peace, no spreading seas, no counterspells.
You could argue they are not needed, but it is still a difference.
I am not sure if you are aware, but there's a new "flavor of the week" graveyard recursion deck that happens to play Looting right now. The actual cards it abuses the most are Vengevine and Bridge from Below
Yup. Axeing Stirrings will certainly help power down both Tron and KCI. I think this is enough without having to ban anything else from KCI. It is a very wise choice indeed, even if a lot of pros are divided on this issue
A stirrings ban might be enough to weaken the consistency of the KCI deck and make it a non-factor in the format, without needing to gut KCI itself.
I also still believe Mox Opal is not an unreasonable card to eliminate from the format, in return for the five artifact lands. This kills the KCI combo while still allowing affinity to soldier on with different tools at its disposal. The Hardened Scales affinity deck, which doesn't rely as heavily on Mox Opal anyway, gains Tree of Tales.