As if the same people wouldn't have complained if they had changed the rules instead After all, it would've still registered as WotC "dumbing down the game" which is obviously TERRIBLE.
Comical people still going on as if it was 'complexity' that actually got this deck banned.
well it wasn't the only reason, but it's cited pretty clearly in the official statement from WotC, so it's definitely a reason. It was significant enough that they had to mention it as part of their decision-making.... so.... eh?
I like to think that most of us are intelligent enough to understand something once its seen. I'm not going to accept that the players who actually faced this deck enough (the day 2 later rounds GP folks) failed to grasp how it worked, especially when the part that is hard to understand is more an edge case than a fundamental part of how it plays.
At least, it always seemed simple to understand after I saw it done the first time. Its just a more extreme version of a cascade trigger in Living End. 'Oh I countered that but the cascade goes off...well I guess I learned that lesson.'
When I was a kid, my uncle would always punish me in games of Doom or Quake like that. 'Gotta die to be shown where the guns are', well sometimes you have to die to a combo to understand how to pick it apart.
I also question greatly, if Wizards didnt come here, or to Reddit, or pick out a few SCG articles, when putting that whole announcement together. It reads way too much like a 'top 10 hits against KCI' as written by us, the people who actually play Modern obsessively.
KCI had.
1. The best Match Win Rate at the GP level, and it wasnt close.
2. The most GP Top 8s.
3. A grossly disproportional Top 16 vs Day 2 representation.
4. Forced 'battle of the sideboards'.
5. Was RESILIENT to the hate that could come in.
6. Could win on Turn 3 with nut draws.
Oh.
7. Had some weird rules interactions.
Items 1 through 6 were way more than enough to get it banned in some way, and item 7 was just one more knock on the deck.
This has nothing to do with simplifying Magic or reducing complexity, even if that was a talking point lifted out of a community post/article.
Comical people still going on as if it was 'complexity' that actually got this deck banned.
well it wasn't the only reason, but it's cited pretty clearly in the official statement from WotC, so it's definitely a reason. It was significant enough that they had to mention it as part of their decision-making.... so.... eh?
I like to think that most of us are intelligent enough to understand something once its seen. I'm not going to accept that the players who actually faced this deck enough (the day 2 later rounds GP folks) failed to grasp how it worked, especially when the part that is hard to understand is more an edge case than a fundamental part of how it plays.
At least, it always seemed simple to understand after I saw it done the first time. Its just a more extreme version of a cascade trigger in Living End. 'Oh I countered that but the cascade goes off...well I guess I learned that lesson.'
When I was a kid, my uncle would always punish me in games of Doom or Quake like that. 'Gotta die to be shown where the guns are', well sometimes you have to die to a combo to understand how to pick it apart.
I also question greatly, if Wizards didnt come here, or to Reddit, or pick out a few SCG articles, when putting that whole announcement together. It reads way too much like a 'top 10 hits against KCI' as written by us, the people who actually play Modern obsessively.
KCI had.
1. The best Match Win Rate at the GP level, and it wasnt close.
2. The most GP Top 8s.
3. A grossly disproportional Top 16 vs Day 2 representation.
4. Forced 'battle of the sideboards'.
5. Was RESILIENT to the hate that could come in.
6. Could win on Turn 3 with nut draws.
Oh.
7. Had some weird rules interactions.
Items 1 through 6 were way more than enough to get it banned in some way, and item 7 was just one more knock on the deck.
This has nothing to do with simplifying Magic or reducing complexity, even if that was a talking point lifted out of a community post/article.
Other bullet points you missed:
Too esoteric for streaming audiences to understand
Abuses the equivalent of an obscure rules loophole
15+ minute turns
Solitaire gameplay
Complicated series of plays and actions taken that can be a waste of time if it fails.
Its literally a perfect storm of reasons why it is banned and no reason is less in importance than another.
I disagree on several of those, but its largely irrelevant. I didnt play it, dont like solitaire decks, but in the end its whatever, because its banned.
so when will splinter twin be unbanned then? Cant win until turn 4, opponent must be tapped out or they can respond to it, easy to disrupt and the decks of today are just faster.
so when will splinter twin be unbanned then? Cant win until turn 4, opponent must be tapped out or they can respond to it, easy to disrupt and the decks of today are just faster.
It probably won't.
At the time, the ban caught people off-guard because despite there genuinely being an issue, people had grown accustomed to there being a defacto best deck in modern. It was a surprise, but the reasoning was sound at the time.
Its role as a 'police' deck is something people like to bring up but it's kind of a vague label at the best of times (means different things to different people) and doubtful that it would provide a similar function now. Possible but doubtful. Modern is different.
Despite this difference, there's no doubt that twin would still be really good, so therein lies the nub. If it's still good enough to fulfil the same bannable rationale, and may not even be able to 'police' the format anymore, it presents a risk if it were to be unbanned. You may personally disagree on how good it could be, and how much it could 'police', but we can't know or prove you to be correct, and we can know and prove how good it was at the time of banning. It warped the format and drove diversity down in a measurable way. Not all of the objectives of their ban were met by removing twin from the format (they figured Kiki would be a serviceable replacement), but the data is undeniable.
A few years from now, who knows. Maybe in a fever dream they'll go nuts, but in every metric we know about, we see WotC using unbans as a gradual drip-feed way to excite and build hype for modern in the long term. They aren't just gonna dump everything on our plate all at once and there are far less risky cards to unban at this point in time.
im pretty sure that unbanning twin would be incredibly bad. imagine playing vs that ur phoenix deck. except now you not only got to play around 7/9 that flip the board up, you also gotta be conscious of losing on t4. should stay banned. dunno why were still having that conversation.
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I like to think that most of us are intelligent enough to understand something once its seen. I'm not going to accept that the players who actually faced this deck enough (the day 2 later rounds GP folks) failed to grasp how it worked, especially when the part that is hard to understand is more an edge case than a fundamental part of how it plays.
At least, it always seemed simple to understand after I saw it done the first time. Its just a more extreme version of a cascade trigger in Living End. 'Oh I countered that but the cascade goes off...well I guess I learned that lesson.'
When I was a kid, my uncle would always punish me in games of Doom or Quake like that. 'Gotta die to be shown where the guns are', well sometimes you have to die to a combo to understand how to pick it apart.
I also question greatly, if Wizards didnt come here, or to Reddit, or pick out a few SCG articles, when putting that whole announcement together. It reads way too much like a 'top 10 hits against KCI' as written by us, the people who actually play Modern obsessively.
KCI had.
1. The best Match Win Rate at the GP level, and it wasnt close.
2. The most GP Top 8s.
3. A grossly disproportional Top 16 vs Day 2 representation.
4. Forced 'battle of the sideboards'.
5. Was RESILIENT to the hate that could come in.
6. Could win on Turn 3 with nut draws.
Oh.
7. Had some weird rules interactions.
Items 1 through 6 were way more than enough to get it banned in some way, and item 7 was just one more knock on the deck.
This has nothing to do with simplifying Magic or reducing complexity, even if that was a talking point lifted out of a community post/article.
Spirits
Spirits
It probably won't.
At the time, the ban caught people off-guard because despite there genuinely being an issue, people had grown accustomed to there being a defacto best deck in modern. It was a surprise, but the reasoning was sound at the time.
Its role as a 'police' deck is something people like to bring up but it's kind of a vague label at the best of times (means different things to different people) and doubtful that it would provide a similar function now. Possible but doubtful. Modern is different.
Despite this difference, there's no doubt that twin would still be really good, so therein lies the nub. If it's still good enough to fulfil the same bannable rationale, and may not even be able to 'police' the format anymore, it presents a risk if it were to be unbanned. You may personally disagree on how good it could be, and how much it could 'police', but we can't know or prove you to be correct, and we can know and prove how good it was at the time of banning. It warped the format and drove diversity down in a measurable way. Not all of the objectives of their ban were met by removing twin from the format (they figured Kiki would be a serviceable replacement), but the data is undeniable.
A few years from now, who knows. Maybe in a fever dream they'll go nuts, but in every metric we know about, we see WotC using unbans as a gradual drip-feed way to excite and build hype for modern in the long term. They aren't just gonna dump everything on our plate all at once and there are far less risky cards to unban at this point in time.
So don't die waiting. Enjoy modern now, it's fun.