Ok coming from my normal Legacy Viewpoint, so do not think I am trolling. This is a real question.
Mox in Legacy is used to power only a handful of decks. Of them only TES is a fast combo deck. Most of the decks it finds itself in are Prison decks that use the quick mana to lock down games. Cards like Moon and 3Sphere played in the opening turns to lock down the game.
It is in these situations also used alongside the SOL lands for optimum speed. Now since this format does not have SOL lands, is the card really that broken or am I looking at everything though my "Nothing is broken when everything is" lens again?
Chrome Mox's problem in Modern is the turn 4 rule. There are a bunch of turn 3-4 decks (Infect, Twin, and Griselbrand being the big three) that all becomes turn 2-3 decks after Mox gets unbanned. Sure, you can react to them, but it becomes a lot more draw and opening hand dependent than Wizards would like. Turn 1 Blighted Agent requires immediate removal. Turn 2 Looting-->Vengeance-->Griselbrand/Emrakul becomes a lot more regular. Don't have your answer in the first 8 cards? Pack up and go to the next game or match. That sort of randomness is something Wizards has tried to remove from Modern by banning cards like Song, Shoal, Hyper, and Rite.
Remember that this format lacks both Daze and FoW. it relies on players leaving mana open to reactively handle fast plays from those kinds of decks. As such, the "fair" decks are at the mercy of the "unfair" turn 2-3 decks, and that's not the sort of format that Wizards is encouraging.
My main worry with that article is that it's hard to take him seriously after he advocates for a Chrome Mox unban. I can't tell if he's doing that just to stir controversy and generate views, or if he legitimately thinks this card is unbannable in Modern. If it's the latter, he's so far off from the format's goals that the rest of his analysis falls into question. Wizards has made it very clear that turn 4 rule violators are going to be punished, and Mox threatens to do that with a ton of otherwise fair decks. Griselbrand, Twin, and Infect are the biggest offenders in this regard. There is just no way this card is getting off the banlist anytime soon, and there's no good reason to give CM a "low-to-medium" unban chance except to create controversy. I appreciate that it's hard to say anything new about the banlist topic, but I wish authors would just concede that fact and write more of what has already been written.
That said, most of the article is fine. I like that a chorus of pros have seconded a BB unbanning for the past few months. In two sentences, Conley succinctly summarizes why BB is probably fine in the format:
Bitterblossom is a really potent control card but unlike other cards on this list (Sword of the Meek), the method for it to actually win the game is very reasonable. The counterplay to a card like this is also much higher in Modern than it ever was in Standard.
Wizards may not be directly influenced by these articles, but just having staff read them or hear of them will put some ideas in their head. And unbanning BB is a good idea to have floating around.
Because I'm tired of being killed before I have 3 lands out by various nut draws. That's why. It's like, if you didn't draw two 1 mana removal in your hand, youre SOL. And SB in Ancient Grudge/Vandalblast/cheap sweepers/etc, and if you don't draw them , even through mulling, HEY still ****ed.
That's just not good for the format. What happened to the turn 4 rule? Why is a creature deck allowed to win turn 3, but not a spell deck? WTF WotC?!
As much as I don't like calling for bans at this point, I admit that it always struck me as odd that Plating Affinity is okay but Dread Return Dredge is not. I don't necessarily think Affinity is a big issue (it's solidly tier 1 but no moreso than Twin or Jund), but it is an inconsistency that bothers me.
BGx dosnt need banning it isnt degenerate. Its a good deck with few bad match ups that is consistant. Ofc its played a lot by pros.
Still think kitty needs an unban. Less sure about visions now and i fear bitterblossom would ruin tempo twin...
Adding to my last post, I could also see a Nacatl unban right now. Aggro is not in a good place right now, especially at large paper events. But perhaps Nacatl is too much and Wizards intends on helping out aggro through other, non-Zoo means. New cards in THS block, perhaps?
So then my money is on one of the following outcomes, in rough order of most to least likely.
Bitterblossom and GGT unbanned
No Changes (screw you Wizards)
Wild Nacatl and GGT unbanned
Wild Nacatal and Bitterblossom unbanned (WE CAN HOPE GUIZE!!)
My unban bets are now firmly on BB and GGT (or maybe even Dread Return in place of GGT). But BB is pretty clearly the unban that will happen, if any non-GGT unbans happen at all. It doesn't slot well into existing tier 1 decks, it enables a new strategy, and it helps out an underused archetype. Yeah, BB probably goes into BW Tokens, but that's not exactly the scariest deck in the format; heck, it could use the boost. BB might also make some Polymorph strategies more viable, in addition to the obvious inclusion in Fae.
But it's equally possible that Wizards does nothing. Again. The format looks fairly healthy right now and Wizards might just want to see what BNG does to things. Personally, I think healthy formats are the ideal formats in which to unban cards and try them out, but I don't know if Wizards agrees with that.
Owww UWR control (with creatures) just won the GP.
This is when you accept I was right and Vision is NO THX.
You aren't right; AV is still the card that most helps out blue-based CONTROL, an archetype that did not do well at the tournament and continues to fail online. Sadly, because blue-based MIDRANGE won the event, there is basically no chance that AV is going to come off the list. And before anyone says "well, I knew that UWR Midrange was in a good spot", I'm gonna call bull**** in advance. That deck sucked for months online and at most large paper events. But because it won this event, an AV ban is basically off the table. We disagree on the reasons as to why it won't be unbanned (you think it's too powerful, I think that Wizards will be too scared), but in the end we agree that AV is not going to be unbanned.
I'll take any excuse to stop this ridiculous fetchland ban talk. But I suppose that you have a point. However, this isn't under the right circumstances, so it should be infractable.
From my perspective, it just comes with the terrain when we have 15 days to go until the ban announcement and everyone has ants in their pants. We all just want some news and something to talk about so things are bound to get a bit spammy.
The results of GP Praue are going to be critical in informing the next ban announcement. At GP Bilbao a year ago, the T16 results (on top of months of MTGO data) were the nail in BBE's coffin. We will have to see if a similar situation arises here. Given the publicity of GPs and their T8s/T16s, these are likely to disproportionately influence ban and unban decisions. GP Prague will likely be no exception, both for decks that might be overrepresented and in danger of bans (BGx shell), and for decks that might be underrepresented and needing of a boost (blue-based control). My suspicion is that the latter will be more likely than the former, but we will have to see.
Banning the fetchlands would be banning more than 2-3 cards, and is thus not allowed (though I probably should have just reported him). I also asked both Lantern and the cardfather about this, and they said that it isn't allowed.
I think of it differently. Let's assume that the artifact lands were currently legal and Affinity was out of control. Talking about those 5 lands as a set would be just as acceptable as talking about banning Plating/Ravager/Inkmoth/etc. In that case, we would just be looking for the broken part of the broken deck. You wouldn't just need to say "ban Seat" or "ban Vault". You could say "ban artifact lands". That is to say, interchangeable and extremely similar cards can, under the right circumstances. be viewed as a set. The key there is "under the right circumstances".
In the fetchland case, however, it's really silly to discuss their ban. There's really nothing banworthy about them. We just don't have anything new to talk about so we recycle old topics and bring up new and increasingly ridiculous ones.
No, and talking about adding a bunch of cards to the Modern Banned List in this thread will get you an infraction.
Well, if we are getting technical here, talking about the fetchlands doesn't get you infracted because it's a bunch of cards. The reason we shouldn't talk about banning fetchlands is that it's pretty nonsensical, up there with banning Leyline of Sanctity, Lightning Bolt, and other similar cards. I think that people forget the reasons for banning cards, although in fairness, Wizards has made it difficult with their somewhat arbitrary bans in this format.
What about worlds. Plus I see it all the time in daily events online. They place at 4-0 constantly.
It has enough power already. We don't need a bunch of dominating UWR decks with vision.
BB? I don't see faeries doing well. I don't see faeries at all. And don't plan to see them dominating with BB. But we already agree on this.
Worlds was a highly insular metagame. Bogles did so well specifically because it was a deck that was selected to exploit the extremely limited metagame of the event; we can't really extrapolate anything about the overall metagame because of this event, especially because it happened 6 months ago.
As to MTGO, that's just anecdotal. Since 12/12 (when MTGO dailies restarted), UWR Control has only made up 4% of the online metagame as estimated from the publicly reported MTGO dataset. You can add UWR Midrange decks to that and bring the share up to 6.5% (which isn't really the same deck...), and that still brings the total UWR share to less than HALF of Affinity, Jund, or Twin. This deck isn't doing nearly as well now as it was over the summer, which might just be a metagame shift, but it could also speak to the relative weakness of control in the format.
No no no no no and one houndred times no!
AV won't be unbanned with the current power of UWR lamego.
And yes you got it right with BB :D.
What current power? The deck sees less online play than Merfolk and Kiki Pod right now. It hasn't gotten T16 at a GP in over 6 months (UWR Midrange got it once out of 4 GPs), and it barely shows up in large paper events. To me, there's no difference between hating on BB because of Faeries' old image as an oppressive deck, and people disliking UWR Control without evidence.
To my knowledge, there is no indication that Wizards makes bans or unbans based on prices. There's plenty of anecdotal ("I heard someone from Wizards say it on some webcast before!"), rhetorical ("It makes sense to me that WotC would ban on prices because price affects game enjoyment"), and circumstantial ("JTMS was banned! Obviously price was a factor") evidence. But there's nothing concrete. Besides, the whole point of Modern is that Wizards can worry less about prices if they can just reprint cards without a Reserve List to hold them back. Of course, reprinting cards to drive down prices must be balanced against the increased demand that might result from product/format hype; that's exactly what happened in Modern Masters with Bob and Goyf. From a banning perspective, however, prices really aren't a consideration.
I guess shaman would be the correct ban next, but if they do it makes it even more unlikely to unban Golgari Grave troll, which I think could be done now that Shaman is in the format.
The only way that anything gets banned is if GP Prague's T16 is full of Melira Pod, BG Souls, and/or Jund, in which case DRS is history. Twin might also be scrutinized, but only if there are something like 5 Twins in the T8/16. But otherwise, by most metrics that Wizards would use, the format is pretty healthy. It's true that certain archetypes, colors, and strategies are underrepresented, but that leads to an imperative of "make the format healthier!" rather than "deal with existing problems in the format". As such, deck-enabling unbans are much likelier than deck-depowering bans.
I know that people want either Ponder or Preordain unbanned, but it just won't happen. Twin benefits too much from them, and there is just no way that Wizards doesn't notice that interaction. Sword of the Meek also seems unlikely, for fear (whether justified or not) that it will push out all of the borderline aggro decks that are just starting to see a lot more traction. Remember that Wizards isn't really testing these unbans thoroughly. They probably have meetings and talk about anecdotal evidence, but they are unlikely to do any rigorous experiments like we do here.
The likeliest unbans are probably BB and AV in that order (GGT too but I don't think we need to discuss him). BB only fits in a narrow selection of decks but goes a long way towards helping out that narrow group of blue-based control. It's not hard to envision Wizards justifying its unban by mentioning cards like Abrupt Decay, which were all but designed to handle a card such as BB. AV also helps blue control but Wizards might be worried about its impact on Twin, which is largely untested. It certainly helps out a wider range of decks than BB, but that range might be too wide as to unbalance the metagame to blue-heavy decks.
(Personally, the unban I want to see is Dread Return, but my breath isn't held)
Also, Kenshin could I see the list you were testing. I'm assuming our lists are are similar cause we're both using crab + ruskalka to push out early dredging, but I can't seem to hit the same turn 3 consistency that you have. It happened, but it didn't happen 36% of the time.
It was really fun to test that deck because it was so explosive. But it was also insanely fragile. Either graveyard hate or removal of almost any kind would have caused problems with that particular build. You could also do a more spell-based build with Looting/Ideas/Glimpse, but it would be much more luck based and a lot less consistently explosive in the goldfish.
The other issue with Dredge is that no matter how fast the deck is, Wizards might not want the Dredge "subgame" to be present in Modern period. I don't really think this is a valid reason to ban a deck, especially when so many decks are maindecking graveyard hate, but it's another point to consider.
Remember that the turn 4 rule isn't a hard and fast rule. It only applies to TOP TIER decks that CONSISTENTLY violate the turn 4 rule. Affinity is certainly top tier but, because it avoids bans, clearly isn't consistently winning on turn 3. Griselbrand and Infect are two decks that have a slightly higher turn 3 win rate, but they are neither top tier nor consistent enough to warrant bans.
It would obviously be nice if Wizards told us what "consistently" meant from a numbers perspective. Based on the performance of pre-SS ban Storm, we can infer that it's around 33% or so for turn 3 wins. That deck was winning around turn 3 in roughly half of its games, and that wasn't even on the goldfish. The Infect turn 3 win percentage in real games, not just solitaire tests, is somewhere between 20-25%, so it avoids the banhammer.
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Chrome Mox's problem in Modern is the turn 4 rule. There are a bunch of turn 3-4 decks (Infect, Twin, and Griselbrand being the big three) that all becomes turn 2-3 decks after Mox gets unbanned. Sure, you can react to them, but it becomes a lot more draw and opening hand dependent than Wizards would like. Turn 1 Blighted Agent requires immediate removal. Turn 2 Looting-->Vengeance-->Griselbrand/Emrakul becomes a lot more regular. Don't have your answer in the first 8 cards? Pack up and go to the next game or match. That sort of randomness is something Wizards has tried to remove from Modern by banning cards like Song, Shoal, Hyper, and Rite.
Remember that this format lacks both Daze and FoW. it relies on players leaving mana open to reactively handle fast plays from those kinds of decks. As such, the "fair" decks are at the mercy of the "unfair" turn 2-3 decks, and that's not the sort of format that Wizards is encouraging.
My main worry with that article is that it's hard to take him seriously after he advocates for a Chrome Mox unban. I can't tell if he's doing that just to stir controversy and generate views, or if he legitimately thinks this card is unbannable in Modern. If it's the latter, he's so far off from the format's goals that the rest of his analysis falls into question. Wizards has made it very clear that turn 4 rule violators are going to be punished, and Mox threatens to do that with a ton of otherwise fair decks. Griselbrand, Twin, and Infect are the biggest offenders in this regard. There is just no way this card is getting off the banlist anytime soon, and there's no good reason to give CM a "low-to-medium" unban chance except to create controversy. I appreciate that it's hard to say anything new about the banlist topic, but I wish authors would just concede that fact and write more of what has already been written.
That said, most of the article is fine. I like that a chorus of pros have seconded a BB unbanning for the past few months. In two sentences, Conley succinctly summarizes why BB is probably fine in the format:
Wizards may not be directly influenced by these articles, but just having staff read them or hear of them will put some ideas in their head. And unbanning BB is a good idea to have floating around.
As much as I don't like calling for bans at this point, I admit that it always struck me as odd that Plating Affinity is okay but Dread Return Dredge is not. I don't necessarily think Affinity is a big issue (it's solidly tier 1 but no moreso than Twin or Jund), but it is an inconsistency that bothers me.
Adding to my last post, I could also see a Nacatl unban right now. Aggro is not in a good place right now, especially at large paper events. But perhaps Nacatl is too much and Wizards intends on helping out aggro through other, non-Zoo means. New cards in THS block, perhaps?
So then my money is on one of the following outcomes, in rough order of most to least likely.
But it's equally possible that Wizards does nothing. Again. The format looks fairly healthy right now and Wizards might just want to see what BNG does to things. Personally, I think healthy formats are the ideal formats in which to unban cards and try them out, but I don't know if Wizards agrees with that.
You aren't right; AV is still the card that most helps out blue-based CONTROL, an archetype that did not do well at the tournament and continues to fail online. Sadly, because blue-based MIDRANGE won the event, there is basically no chance that AV is going to come off the list. And before anyone says "well, I knew that UWR Midrange was in a good spot", I'm gonna call bull**** in advance. That deck sucked for months online and at most large paper events. But because it won this event, an AV ban is basically off the table. We disagree on the reasons as to why it won't be unbanned (you think it's too powerful, I think that Wizards will be too scared), but in the end we agree that AV is not going to be unbanned.
From my perspective, it just comes with the terrain when we have 15 days to go until the ban announcement and everyone has ants in their pants. We all just want some news and something to talk about so things are bound to get a bit spammy.
The results of GP Praue are going to be critical in informing the next ban announcement. At GP Bilbao a year ago, the T16 results (on top of months of MTGO data) were the nail in BBE's coffin. We will have to see if a similar situation arises here. Given the publicity of GPs and their T8s/T16s, these are likely to disproportionately influence ban and unban decisions. GP Prague will likely be no exception, both for decks that might be overrepresented and in danger of bans (BGx shell), and for decks that might be underrepresented and needing of a boost (blue-based control). My suspicion is that the latter will be more likely than the former, but we will have to see.
I think of it differently. Let's assume that the artifact lands were currently legal and Affinity was out of control. Talking about those 5 lands as a set would be just as acceptable as talking about banning Plating/Ravager/Inkmoth/etc. In that case, we would just be looking for the broken part of the broken deck. You wouldn't just need to say "ban Seat" or "ban Vault". You could say "ban artifact lands". That is to say, interchangeable and extremely similar cards can, under the right circumstances. be viewed as a set. The key there is "under the right circumstances".
In the fetchland case, however, it's really silly to discuss their ban. There's really nothing banworthy about them. We just don't have anything new to talk about so we recycle old topics and bring up new and increasingly ridiculous ones.
Well, if we are getting technical here, talking about the fetchlands doesn't get you infracted because it's a bunch of cards. The reason we shouldn't talk about banning fetchlands is that it's pretty nonsensical, up there with banning Leyline of Sanctity, Lightning Bolt, and other similar cards. I think that people forget the reasons for banning cards, although in fairness, Wizards has made it difficult with their somewhat arbitrary bans in this format.
Worlds was a highly insular metagame. Bogles did so well specifically because it was a deck that was selected to exploit the extremely limited metagame of the event; we can't really extrapolate anything about the overall metagame because of this event, especially because it happened 6 months ago.
As to MTGO, that's just anecdotal. Since 12/12 (when MTGO dailies restarted), UWR Control has only made up 4% of the online metagame as estimated from the publicly reported MTGO dataset. You can add UWR Midrange decks to that and bring the share up to 6.5% (which isn't really the same deck...), and that still brings the total UWR share to less than HALF of Affinity, Jund, or Twin. This deck isn't doing nearly as well now as it was over the summer, which might just be a metagame shift, but it could also speak to the relative weakness of control in the format.
That said, we basically agree on BB.
What current power? The deck sees less online play than Merfolk and Kiki Pod right now. It hasn't gotten T16 at a GP in over 6 months (UWR Midrange got it once out of 4 GPs), and it barely shows up in large paper events. To me, there's no difference between hating on BB because of Faeries' old image as an oppressive deck, and people disliking UWR Control without evidence.
The only way that anything gets banned is if GP Prague's T16 is full of Melira Pod, BG Souls, and/or Jund, in which case DRS is history. Twin might also be scrutinized, but only if there are something like 5 Twins in the T8/16. But otherwise, by most metrics that Wizards would use, the format is pretty healthy. It's true that certain archetypes, colors, and strategies are underrepresented, but that leads to an imperative of "make the format healthier!" rather than "deal with existing problems in the format". As such, deck-enabling unbans are much likelier than deck-depowering bans.
I know that people want either Ponder or Preordain unbanned, but it just won't happen. Twin benefits too much from them, and there is just no way that Wizards doesn't notice that interaction. Sword of the Meek also seems unlikely, for fear (whether justified or not) that it will push out all of the borderline aggro decks that are just starting to see a lot more traction. Remember that Wizards isn't really testing these unbans thoroughly. They probably have meetings and talk about anecdotal evidence, but they are unlikely to do any rigorous experiments like we do here.
The likeliest unbans are probably BB and AV in that order (GGT too but I don't think we need to discuss him). BB only fits in a narrow selection of decks but goes a long way towards helping out that narrow group of blue-based control. It's not hard to envision Wizards justifying its unban by mentioning cards like Abrupt Decay, which were all but designed to handle a card such as BB. AV also helps blue control but Wizards might be worried about its impact on Twin, which is largely untested. It certainly helps out a wider range of decks than BB, but that range might be too wide as to unbalance the metagame to blue-heavy decks.
(Personally, the unban I want to see is Dread Return, but my breath isn't held)
Here's the old post from an older version of this thread:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=10228328&postcount=1430
It was really fun to test that deck because it was so explosive. But it was also insanely fragile. Either graveyard hate or removal of almost any kind would have caused problems with that particular build. You could also do a more spell-based build with Looting/Ideas/Glimpse, but it would be much more luck based and a lot less consistently explosive in the goldfish.
The other issue with Dredge is that no matter how fast the deck is, Wizards might not want the Dredge "subgame" to be present in Modern period. I don't really think this is a valid reason to ban a deck, especially when so many decks are maindecking graveyard hate, but it's another point to consider.
Remember that the turn 4 rule isn't a hard and fast rule. It only applies to TOP TIER decks that CONSISTENTLY violate the turn 4 rule. Affinity is certainly top tier but, because it avoids bans, clearly isn't consistently winning on turn 3. Griselbrand and Infect are two decks that have a slightly higher turn 3 win rate, but they are neither top tier nor consistent enough to warrant bans.
It would obviously be nice if Wizards told us what "consistently" meant from a numbers perspective. Based on the performance of pre-SS ban Storm, we can infer that it's around 33% or so for turn 3 wins. That deck was winning around turn 3 in roughly half of its games, and that wasn't even on the goldfish. The Infect turn 3 win percentage in real games, not just solitaire tests, is somewhere between 20-25%, so it avoids the banhammer.