As long as we totally ignore the woes of blue reactive decks, Modern looks very cool and very diverse. Let's hope to see some help come to blue in Monday's announcement. And let's hope it's NOT in the form of banning down a deck from the top.
Whether it's Jace, Preordain, SFM, or Twin... something... ANYTHING would help.
And then there is Todd Stevens saying:
Even blue-based control decks, long the biggest complaint from a small group of players as what they want in Modern, have started to thrive.
There's Grixis Control, popularized by Corey Burkhart, that plays a full playset of Ancestral Vision and Cryptic Command. With the slower format now, it's more reliable to have time to resolve a suspended Ancestral Vision and use the card advantage to take over the game than it was previously. Sure, it plays two other colors to take advantage of the power of Kolaghan's Command, but this is definitely a blue-based control deck. This is the blue control deck that everyone knows about, but it's not your only option.
I am actually wondering if those SCG people feel bad for not backing up their stories with numbers AT ALL, or if they just don't even care about their articles being bad...
grixis delver is at 2.48%, within .1-.2 of each of the bottom run and even decks like tron only have 1.0 more representation in the meta game.
Grixis Control and Grixis Delver have been putting up consistent result more and more frequently.
Im not even sure what your implicating with the fist part of your reply. Are you referencing Twins total meta share? I just want to be sure, if that is what you are getting at then no I don't think that Uxx decks need to have 11% of the meta game share in a healthy format. Various blue decks are occupying about 8-9% of the meta currently which is pretty average over all given that most decks only have 2% regardless of how they preform.
I was asking if you meant you disagreed with having a single blue deck at Twin's old share level, ~11%, or having all blue decks combined closer to the levels when Twin was legal, ~25%. You seem to be talking about having all blue decks combine to be less than a single old deck's metashare, and I couldn't disagree more. One of WotC's reasons for banning Twin was to distribute part of its meta share to other blue decks, but they never stated that they wanted the blue archetype as a whole to go from 25% of the meta to 8%. I'm sure they foresaw it dropping a little, but they clearly didn't intend for the precipitous drop that we've seen because they've already unbanned two cards and have openly talked about unbanning another to help the archetype. The umbrella of all blue decks should add up to something close to 20% ideally, with at least one deck that's in the 5-6% range. This isn't happening because the archetype is too weak.
I think your point regarding spikes is completely off, what it does show is that Modern is more balanced than it has ever been previously. Spikes like settled meta-games they like to know what the best 2-3 decks are and play the deck that beats the deck they think will be the most represented. In the past Twin, Jund, and Pod where the best decks by a large margin and with two of them gone and Jund being somewhat diminished by the absence of them the meta game is much more rewarding to players who a-know their deck inside and out, this isn't a format which you can just pick up any deck and expect to do well it takes repetition, b- rewards players who understand what other decks exist and how they operate in order to understand how to win against them, and c- applies a and b to any deck that has been well constructed. I'm pretty sure pro's like Corey Burkhart want to win right, and he has been putting up consistent results with Grixis Control which if you listened to people in this forum would seem like a impossibility given that it is a U control deck. Spikes like formats like Eye Eldrazi because they have a obvious best deck and focus on that this is why pro's generally always hated Modern and prefer Standard the viable deck options in standard are less and hence it is easier to reliably spike those types of events.
Spikes play decks that they feel give them the best shot to win a tournament. I'm not just talking about some pros who only play Modern for a couple weeks when there's a GP coming up, I'm talking about all competitively minded players who don't have a strong personal bias on what they play. Corey Burkhart does not fit into this group because he's openly stated that he plays Grixis Control because he likes those colors and enjoys the gameplay, not because he thinks the deck is a wise competitive choice. His personal bias for playing something he enjoys overrides his spikyness to win at all costs. The spikes who care more about winning than anything else will play the decks that they perceive to be the strongest, and this is why meta shares generally correlate to power level. Most people gravitate towards stronger decks. If the spikes have mass abandoned your archetype, as I said before, it's because it's either actually weak or at least perceived as being weak. If the blue decks were better than people are perceiving them to be, we would see them overachieving in Day 2 and top 32s, but that is not the case.
Again I think Grixis Delver is competitive, its a deck that you can find 5-0ing online frequently, it put people into the top 8 of the recent modern classic and open, it also put handfuls of people into top 8's in the states events. I think that the real issue isn't that Grixis Delver isn't competitive its that so many decks are competitive. Modern is probably the only format in magic ever that if a random deck won an entire event you likely wouldn't be that shocked. Without hyper consistent instant win combo's like Pod and Twin dominating, the field has opened up to one that is IMO much more reflective of the goals set out by WotC to be a format that allows for a large variety of decks to be viable for people to compete with.
I do think Blue needs more proactive threats in future sets. We need a "True-Name Nemesis" style threat for modern. WotC have been pulling back the throttle on Blue since about 2007 while making most every other color much more aggressive and proactive. Creatures in nearly every color other than Blue have gotten much better, WotC have in many ways shifted aspects of the color pie around to allow other colors to do "blue" things like tutor, card draw while keeping blue highly fixed in its pre-2007 color pie segment while also scaling back the power in Blue over all set after set. I consistently read how WotC is trying to craft Card advantage that feels "green" "black" or "red" how about crafting a competitive threat that feels "blue" we all know they have making BG threats down to a art how about bleeding blue into those colors the same way they have bleed every other color into blue?
I agree with all of this. Where we're having a difference of opinion is that I think that the great diversity of decks we're seeing would be better if there were also a greater diversity of quality blue decks. There's not really great macro-archetype diversity. It's better than it was before because of the recent bans, but the blue tempo/midrange/control decks are still lagging behind everyone else, and need something to help them out. That's why I think Preordain is the best first step to take, since it helps out all of these decks incrementally. I think they need to also formulate another avenue to get cards into Modern legality, because cards like Counterspell and Baleful Strix would really help a lot, but they don't seem to want to print these in Standard.
I definitely don't agree with a lot of what Todd Stevens is saying, but I think there's a bigger point in the article. Modern is a wonderful format! For all the problems that we have in the format, it is still a wonderful format. I personally have felt this the whole time, outside of the Eye of Ugin period (where I played the deck, yes).
That's the main thing I got from the article. For all the *****ing and moaning you hear from players, it still is a terrific format. Or else we wouldn't be here. (and yes, I ***** and moan too)
Agreed. I hope this isn't lost in my critical comments, but I do really love Modern. I just think it could still be even better.
If you want to discuss semantics, then no, it is not 'similar' nor the 'same'. Have you played both decks? If you have and think they are 'similar' then there is no further point in discussing. Heck, there is little point in discussing anyway, this is the internet, where insults come free and with a upper-handed superior sense of morality.
It's pretty disingenous to claim that Pod and Abzan Company are not even similar. They share like 40-50 cards with each other.
I don't see any of the potential cards to be unbanned as creating diversity in blue decks. Jace would homogenize them even more than twin would, the cantrips I would like to be unbanned but I don't think that is a world WotC wants since the risk of spell based combo being the best thing to do is a real risk. I also don't think that the cantrips would do much in way of "helping" blue with any of the issues that people keep harping on about simply helping find the same things that another post people will complain are to weak to be good anyways. I want WotC to print new powerful blue spells again, nearly every single spell ran in any blue list in modern consist almost entirely of cards printed over a decade ago with snapcaster mage and delver being the only notable exceptions. It is not a good sign that counterspell has been compared to Dark Ritual by WotC in the past essentially implying that it is busted.
I don't think that the level of blue decks currently in the meta is a reflection of the color itself more than the ability for players to simply play almost anything and that newer more accessible cards that are Modern playable are generally not blue so many of the decks that newer and younger players are going to buy into are decks that utilize their previous Standard cards. I am not a person who agree's with the "jace cost to much so unbanning him is off the table" argument but card prices and product scarcity do impact the format in multiple ways. How many people do you think would like to play Jund but don't because they can't afford it? I would wager it is a good number.
I find this to be just ridiculous and offensive for blue players: we've alwayes struggled in a format where BGx decks can start with Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, tarmogoyf, Liliana of the Veil, and then have lightning bolt, Kolaghan's Command, abrupt decay, maelstrom pulse... and please note that liliana of the veil is more incisive in a midrange deck then jace is in a control one, because liliana actually helps in the process of lowing down the resources (and also comes down with cmc3), while jace requires an already stabilized board to actually be an effective CA engine (which anyway easly dies to bolt if only used with the brainstorm mode), and all of us here know that the main problem of U based reactive deck is the absence of a generic answer, so JTMS wouldnt even help control decks with the issue they suffer the most.
The financial problem is just pure hypocrisy, since a set of tarmogoyfs and lilianas cost something like 850$ (regular ones) and they are essential to any midrange deck, but this *reality of facts* is fine (no-one cares or complains about it), while the *possibility* of jace going up to 150-200 is worrying (and even if it would go up to 150 is just a little more than a tarmogoyf...).
I'm really fed up by this line of thinking
pretty sure any deck that is going Iok, TS, Fatal Push, Snap and Jace is going to run LotV. I get your feelings regarding BGx decks but I agree that Jace in a BUG list would probably be super oppressive it just lets BG get the game into a top deck war while being able to brainstorm every turn after you get your opponent hellbent.
Not to mention that like Mental Misstep, Jace is widely considered a design mistake the most pushed planeswalker of all time.
I don't buy into this "Blue needs to have a meta-share closer to the level of Twin" or something needs to be done.
Do you mean a single deck that's 11% of the meta, or blue decks as a whole being closer to 25%? I don't think any of us agree if you mean the first thing, but the second thing definitely should be an ideal. WotC didn't ban Twin because they wanted to gut blue decks' meta share.
Fist many of the players who where on Twin in the past where only on Twin because it was at least in their view the best deck in the format, and just like people who ran to Bloom Titan, DRSjund, Eye era Eldrazi, etc... a large number of that meta share is derived from spikes looking to spike not looking to play a specific style of deck. I've been on Grixis Delver and Grixis Control since the banning and they have been posting better and better results
If the spikes aren't playing your archetype, what does that tell you? It means they aren't good enough to be a wise competitive choice if you want to win.
I know all the blue mages that want Modern to be dominated by blue will be upset, but hey, thats how the other colored mages have felt for years with the other older formats. Its refreshing to not have blue king of the colors in Modern.
Not a single person in these threads has ever said that, so you can take your strawman arguments elsewhere.
Im not even sure what your implicating with the fist part of your reply. Are you referencing Twins total meta share? I just want to be sure, if that is what you are getting at then no I don't think that Uxx decks need to have 11% of the meta game share in a healthy format. Various blue decks are occupying about 8-9% of the meta currently which is pretty average over all given that most decks only have 2% regardless of how they preform.
I think your point regarding spikes is completely off, what it does show is that Modern is more balanced than it has ever been previously. Spikes like settled meta-games they like to know what the best 2-3 decks are and play the deck that beats the deck they think will be the most represented. In the past Twin, Jund, and Pod where the best decks by a large margin and with two of them gone and Jund being somewhat diminished by the absence of them the meta game is much more rewarding to players who a-know their deck inside and out, this isn't a format which you can just pick up any deck and expect to do well it takes repetition, b- rewards players who understand what other decks exist and how they operate in order to understand how to win against them, and c- applies a and b to any deck that has been well constructed. I'm pretty sure pro's like Corey Burkhart want to win right, and he has been putting up consistent results with Grixis Control which if you listened to people in this forum would seem like a impossibility given that it is a U control deck. Spikes like formats like Eye Eldrazi because they have a obvious best deck and focus on that this is why pro's generally always hated Modern and prefer Standard the viable deck options in standard are less and hence it is easier to reliably spike those types of events.
Again I think Grixis Delver is competitive, its a deck that you can find 5-0ing online frequently, it put people into the top 8 of the recent modern classic and open, it also put handfuls of people into top 8's in the states events. I think that the real issue isn't that Grixis Delver isn't competitive its that so many decks are competitive. Modern is probably the only format in magic ever that if a random deck won an entire event you likely wouldn't be that shocked. Without hyper consistent instant win combo's like Pod and Twin dominating, the field has opened up to one that is IMO much more reflective of the goals set out by WotC to be a format that allows for a large variety of decks to be viable for people to compete with.
I do think Blue needs more proactive threats in future sets. We need a "true-name nemesis" style threat for modern. WotC have been pulling back the throttle on Blue since about 2007 while making most every other color much more aggressive and proactive. Creatures in nearly every color other than Blue have gotten much better, WotC have in many ways shifted aspects of the color pie around to allow other colors to do "blue" things like tutor, card draw while keeping blue highly fixed in its pre-2007 color pie segment while also scaling back the power in Blue over all set after set. I consistently read how WotC is trying to craft Card advantage that feels "green" "black" or "red" how about crafting a competitive threat that feels "blue" we all know they have making BG threats down to a art how about bleeding blue into those colors the same way they have bleed every other color into blue?
It really depends what you want out of the format, if you want a format that is easier to spike a torney in then you want as few decks as possible to be viable and that is directly the opposite of the type of format that WotC wants it to be. Which is probably why most every Pro player was happy Modern was removed from the PT circuit.
I don't buy into this "Blue needs to have a meta-share closer to the level of Twin" or something needs to be done.
Fist many of the players who where on Twin in the past where only on Twin because it was at least in their view the best deck in the format, and just like people who ran to Bloom Titan, DRSjund, Eye era Eldrazi, etc... a large number of that meta share is derived from spikes looking to spike not looking to play a specific style of deck. I've been on Grixis Delver and Grixis Control since the banning and they have been posting better and better results
Also many new and powerful decks have risen in Modern over the Last year, pretty much every block since Khans has injected either a critical mass of some powerful affect already present or introduced a completely new strategy into the format, it stands to reason that some of the players who had once played Twin would have moved onto one of the new decks. This is seen in just the overall increase in the amount of decks and the segment of the meta-game that they must occupy.
The last point also has a natural negative affect on traditional Draw-go style control. Threats are far to good now to play that style deck period.
Because tier 2 is not enought. It has to be tier 1. If that is not entitlement I don't know what it is.
It's not entitlement when an entire archetype is struggling the way blue decks are. If aggro decks didn't exist in Modern, people would be in an uproar, trying to find what is keeping them out of the format, but because so many people have an anti-blue bias they either don't care or are actually happy they're struggling. We aren't talking about a single deck like Twin being gone, we're talking about an entire macro-archetype being shut out of tier 1 and with just a couple on the lower fringes of tier 2. That's a clear indication of a problem with the blue decks that should be addressed. All macro-archetypes should ideally have at least 1 tier 1 representative and a couple tier 2s.
Sorry but with the Pod banning you shouldn't have felt any sense of a "warranty" for any deck exists, Pod was a very expensive deck to put together and many people lost out big on the banning ( yes CoCo came around but people are not psychic and many sold out for whatever they could get before its printing).
That's talking about one deck. There were plenty of other tier 1 midrange decks you could move to after the Pod ban, and then CoCo even provided a tier 1.5 remake of the deck. When Twin was banned, there was no tier 1 blue deck to move to. We had a couple tier 2s that have seen very limited success and have some pretty obvious flaws. It's nowhere close to going from Pod to Jund or Abzan.
I also find it odd that everyone is still harping about Uxx reactive decks when the most recent SCG events had 2 grixis lists in each Top 8 (as a grixis player very pleased to see this)
1. Classics mean nothing, Hoogland wins them with his Kiki-Chord deck all the time, but that doesn't mean that deck is good.
2. Those two in the top 8 of the Open were the only two blue decks in the entire top 32.
[quote from="Colt47 »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/764899-state-of-modern-thread-bans-format-health-reprints?comment=5534"]Well, ended up getting a playset of splinter twin. I just can't ignore the fact that Magic is in a downturn and WoTC is likely to undo any decision that was greatly disliked by the fan base right now. It doesn't even matter what people say in camp keep it banned if unbanning it happens to bring back players that left. As far as Death's Shadow, I doubt they are going to ban something again that they just printed in a modern masters unless they want a repeat of the Splinter Twin fallout.
Think about it, Splinter Twin was banned one year after a MM set. If they banned Death's Shadow, that would be within merely a week of the actual set release. They'd be insane to do it.
You keep spouting this line off, but you've still never answered my challenge to name 1 deck that Twin "invalidated" that suddenly became viable because it was gone. Just to answer the example you gave here, zoo was at 3% of the meta in 2015 and about 2.5% in 2016, according to MTGTop8.
Modern also has strong blue decks: merfolk and grixis delver
Why do the control decks necessarily need to be blue? This is true in legacy due to Force of Will, Brainstorm, and Counter-top. Without these legal in modern, there is less of a reason to use blue in control decks.
I would certainly lobby for more powerful control effects in modern but I don't think they need to be blue.
All things being equal, the best control deck in any format should include blue because blue is the primary control color. It's the color that gets counterspells, the best card draw, and the best filtering. If the best control deck in Standard doesn't include blue, like in BFZ/SOI when BW was the best, it's a clear indication that the blue cards are too weak.
They killed Pod Combo by banning Birthing Pod. Collected Company is entirely different deck, even if it fulfills the same role.
They killed Amulet Bloom by banning Summer Bloom. The deck sort of exists with CoralKnight or Sakura-Tribe Scout version, but it is below Tier 3.
They killed Twin by banning Splinter Twin. The deck sort of exists with Kiki/Chord, but it is below Tier 3.
WRONG
A lot of the cards and style of Pod ported directly to Abzan Company/Evolution, which is a tier 1.5ish deck. CoCo is clearly a successor to Pod.
Amulet Bloom evolved into a few different decks, only one of which is the Amulet Scout deck that people are playing. Breach Titan is another spiritual successor to Amulet Bloom, combining some of the play of the old Bloom deck with the Titanshift decks that were being developed back then. If they really wanted to kill anything that played like Amulet Bloom, they would have banned Primeval Titan. Banning Summer Bloom instead allowed people to still brew shenanigans with Titan.
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I would point to the statement made by Frank Lepore that in modern essentially every deck is viable now and tiers are near meaningless. Non Twin builds of Grixis where being moved away from in favor of grixis Twin it impossible to point to a longer trend because the banning happened so close to the release of the cards that made grixis viable to begin with. The reality is that the diverse out comes of events since twins banning wouldn't be the case if it was still around, it is a busted instant win combo whose real share of the meta game has been taken over by Ad Nauseam, I'm not saying that the decks play similarly I'm simply pointing out that it is the U/x instant win combo that has taken the shares that would have other wise been taken by the better faster Splinter Twin combo.
You do know that you quoted someone else and then demanded I reply. You quoted Colt47 above.
And disregarding the Pod banning is a complete willfulness to ignore facts that don't support your claim. No deck plays like Pod, CoCo decks can cobble together the combo if they are lucky on the top 6 and can draw multiple Cords but no Mid-range Creature Toolbox/infinite combo deck is on par with what Pod was and that has been a good thing for diversity in the format just like the Twin banning. If abzan CoCo is just as good as Pod than So is the URW Kiki/angel deck that won a few weeks back equal to Twin.
Nearly every one of my Twin Cards ported into my Grixis Delver and Grixis Control decks which are both putting up Top 8's and regularly 5-0ing leagues.
And while twin was a combo and tempo deck first, it also had a lot of matchups where the combo sucked and it transformed into a control deck with the bluff of a backup combo postboard
Mid-range can be control though.
Jund is a mid-range deck yes but it is a attrition/control deck in regards to the strategy it employees
I know some people will foo foo the article in the link I am going to post but I will point out that the guy who wrote it is one of the designers of the game now so a insight into the vision of what and how mid-range can play from a person who is actually one of the lead designers of the game is rather insightful(as in my opinion it reads more like a manifesto for modern MTG design generally)http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/midrange-archetype-2007-03-26
Except it isn't Thoughtseize and IoK that make those decks be the best control decks, it's Goyf, Flayer, Liliana, and now Death's Shadow, it's having a solid proactive plan to back up your disruption, that is what Blue lacks and Twin provided.
No it is IoK Thoughtseize into LotV any BGx threat after a batter of those cards would tend to do the trick since they shred your hand into garbage. Those decks just keep getting great new cards to add to the mix while UR is stuck in the "it was so good over 15 years ago we can never print anything good for that color segment again", Prophetic Bolt is to good to ever see reprint but BG gets a new toy seemingly every set.
Deaths Shadow is far more fair than Twin, Deaths Shadow is just a beater and its silly to compare a instant win combo to a fair creature threat.
Lantern and RW are foremost combo/prison decks that then use control to win a game
Merfolk is a tempo/aggro blue deck that just happens to be blue.
And Billiondegree, if thats the case, then you're pretty much conceding that Junk/Jund are Moderns control decks, because sadly, two midrange decks are about as close to control in tier 1 that we've had in over a year, and that's sad.
Or how about Jund/Junk are the best control decks in modern because Black is the best Control color and Green is the strongest color to pair it with? BGx decks have always been the best control decks, Twin was never a control deck but a tempo/combo deck and Thoughtseize and IoK are simply the best interaction spells in the format. Just look at the DSzoo deck, it is functionally the "delver" of modern potent fast threat backed up with the best interaction to protect it.
I mean I would hope that anyone who has been playing this format for any amount of time would have realized this basic aspect of the nature of the format by now, yes Jund/Junk decks are and have always been the best control decks in modern.
Well, ended up getting a playset of splinter twin. I just can't ignore the fact that Magic is in a downturn and WoTC is likely to undo any decision that was greatly disliked by the fan base right now. It doesn't even matter what people say in camp keep it banned if unbanning it happens to bring back players that left. As far as Death's Shadow, I doubt they are going to ban something again that they just printed in a modern masters unless they want a repeat of the Splinter Twin fallout.
Think about it, Splinter Twin was banned one year after a MM set. If they banned Death's Shadow, that would be within merely a week of the actual set release. They'd be insane to do it.
Standard is unpopular right now, Modern is the most popular its ever been. You want to see a bunch of angry MTG players imagine all the people playing Zoo variants and any other random fringe deck that has enjoyed a competitive playable status be out raged after WotC unbans Twin and invalidates tons of decks.
Because tier 2 is not enought. It has to be tier 1. If that is not entitlement I don't know what it is.
Hold up, this is stunning. If someone buys into a tier 1 deck, then it is not tier 1 solely because of Wizards, and not the game evolving, I do think that's a problem. One is artificial evolution of the format, and the other is generally considered natural.
If I go and buy a vehicle with a warranty, then that warranty is just taken away because the corporation chose to do so with whatever bad reasoning they provide, then that's a court case.
I also understand Wizards needs to be press wise "hands off" from the secondary market, but that alone is recognition of its existence.
Sorry but with the Pod banning you shouldn't have felt any sense of a "warranty" for any deck exists, Pod was a very expensive deck to put together and many people lost out big on the banning ( yes CoCo came around but people are not psychic and many sold out for whatever they could get before its printing).
I also find it odd that everyone is still harping about Uxx reactive decks when the most recent SCG events had 2 grixis lists in each Top 8 (as a grixis player very pleased to see this)
I don't like the idea that we need to have any deck be a T1 deck to validate a strategy in Modern currently, the entire Tier ranking system is only a reflection of a popularity contest not a true reflection of how competitive the deck actually is. Ad Nauseam has been putting up great results lately but it will likely never be a T1 popular deck because it is far more complicated to pilot to those finishes, Twin was a much more average skill level deck that was accessible to more players and would be more popular simply based on that alone. Grixis Control and to some extent Grixis Delver are closer to Ad Nauseam than to Twin in play skill needed to win and will likely always suffer in the popularity contest end.
Talking about linear aggro decks, " bolt is really the only good card Twin has against such strategies first game, in my experience these are the types of match ups in which it was better to board into a more traditional control deck."
Lol, are you serious dude? You must have been the worst Twin player in the world if you actually did that. You don't board into a traditional control deck against the linear aggro decks, you lean on the combo against decks like that. You board into control against grindy matchups where you can't reliably land the combo. That's just so weird, I've literally never heard anyone say they did that before because it's so obviously wrong.
The linear aggro rise was slow and steady after the banning of Pod which again actually made such decks terrible to play at all with the infinite life gain combo and the natural anti-infect package built into the deck. All a instant win combo does is promote going under the combo, if anything other than the combo was so good against them then Grixis Control would have a much better game 1 against such decks but it doesn't.
It's possible that the banning of Pod contributed more to the linearity in Modern now, but that's not what we're talking about. And you're wrong about how to beat instant win combos. First, about Twin, it was difficult to try to just go under them because they could bolt your first creature, remand your second, then Exarch untap and kill you. Trying to go under them was not a recipe for success. You won by grinding them out while preventing the combo. In the same way, you don't beat Cheeri0s by trying to go under them. You disrupt them to death.
Given that Blood Moon is a known quantity in the format since forever getting BM out so hard that you cannot play a single spell for the rest of the game shows that you make bad mana bases. I've played against 3 color decks like Jund with Blue Moon and had Blood Moon be the first card to get cut, because the Jund Player built a mana base that could easily play through it no Soothsaying needed he just ran a good amount of basics and drew out. Other times I've Blood Mooned a UW control player and he scooped and told me 25 lands no basics, he typed it all caps which i believe intended to mean anger, in reality a 2 color deck should have been a terrible match for a Blood Moon deck. Blood Moon only punishes players for having greedy mana bases. I've had more times where Blood Moon did nothing because my opponent wasn't stupid enough to be exploited by it than have had opponents dumb enough to build a deck so poorly that they fold to it so completely.
My point about Blood Moon is that you were complaining about how Twin makes people play ineffeciently with their mana since they need to bluff removal. Blood Moon accomplishes the same thing by sometimes screwing the opponent's fixing. You don't always completely lock them out of the game, but you often do limit how many spells they can play in a turn because they don't have the right colors. Before the Probe ban, this was one of the best ways that the UR Battle Rage deck beat Jeskai and Grixis Control. Chalice accomplishes the same by just not letting the opponent cast cards in their hand. So my point is that there are many effects in Modern that tax your mana or disrupt how you can play the game. That's not a good reason to keep Twin banned if all these other things are ok.
On the removal issue, Decay was the most common removal that would kill it. Path would do the job but the decks that played path like UW control or Junk had different issues. I'm not in the camp of people that say Twin just killed you on turn 4 every game, I played the deck a lot and more often than not you would combo kill between turn 5-7 it was only a dire thing to do against fast aggro decks which would kill you game 1 if you didn't combo. Against other fair decks it was often better to durdle around and maybe even wait until you draw a extra combo creature and sacrifice one early to give a false sense of security and trick them into doing something stupid like tap out.
Ok, this is all true. I'm not really sure if you're making a point about something here, though, this is all common sense.
Im surprised that you want Twin unbanned given that your painting a picture of it as a terrible deck that every deck could beat easy pessy lemon squeezy.
I never said it was a terrible deck that was easy to beat, I said that every deck had access to maindeckable ways to interact with it. This is where it differs from Dredge. Of course Twin was a really good deck, it wouldn't have been banned if it wasn't. It just wasn't the unbeatable tier 0 format warping wrecking ball that revisionist historians on these threads have been making it out to be over the past year. And it certainly wasn't so bad that they needed to completely kill the deck, tuning it down by banning Exarch would have been sufficient.
the point about removal is that Jund really was the only deck with a strong game 1 against Twin, Junk/abzan which generally looks very similar to Jund had a slightly higher curve on average and it made all the difference.
If you look at the treands in the meta game share from the banning of Treasure Cruise/ DDT to the banning of Twin you see a spike in Grixis decks in general with Grixis Twin slowly absorbing all the meta shares of the other decks. I tried the various grixis builds during that time and like most every other player realized that nothing in Grixis was as strong as adding the instant win combo to the deck.
Cheeri0's is a way easier combo to disrupt than Twin, a Shock literally kills any of the essential peaces.
Blood Moon taxes your mana in that if I have a 1 swamp 1 plains and 1 godless shrine, you can play a spell for B1 and a W or a W1 and B spell you are mooned out of any single double color spell at that moment. Against Twin you cannot play anything with W assuming you have a path, so you would need to wait until you have WW available just to cast the first half of lingering souls. Blood Moon complicates what you can cast per turn but doesn't demand that you not tappout what is available to you.
Against linear Aggro you wouldn't side into things like anger of the gods? You certainly would board into a more traditional control deck which are you know traditionally good at killing linear aggro decks.
I never said it was some T0 deck but I don't think Dredge was either, go look at how the deck was performing before the reban of GGT it was dropping off but it demanded in a similar way to Twin a lot of sideboard cards dedicated to just it. In many ways it did warp the format in a similar way as dredge did, taxed every SB even more thinly and presented a consistent win condition that was difficult for most decks to interact with in a with any many deckable answers. And I always here that Ki-ki was supposed to take its place but never did but when ki-ki decks actually do well like taking down the SCG Modern classic in Baltimore it is ignored and people just keep acting like it hasn't happened.
Going under Twin was still a very strong option because they had to have a very set of specific cards or chance just folding. Remand is bad against 1c.c. 2.cc creatures generally you had to find the combo in game one or your answers would start to be out paced by the velocity at which your opponent can flood the board. Game 2 you get to board in anger and other such dedicated control cards and improve those match ups substantially.
Burn and Infect (kind of the grand daddy of linear strategies in Modern) all started to see increases in meta-shares month after month after Pod was banned, when Pod was still a deck those decks were T2 at best jank . I think that if Tron becomes a super dominate deck (which if it keeps up doing what its been doing in regards to 5-0ing dailies) then Twin would be the obvious unban to help reverse that since Twin has historically been good at beating the decks that look to go over the top of Jund
edit: I also like the what Frank Lepore said about Tiers in Modern in last weeks Magic TV, para phrasing 'in modern Tiers are almost meaningless you can play a "fringe" deck that as long as its well constructed and hammered out you can have reasonable expectations of being competitive and even winning a GP'. This is a environment that WotC has stated they want to exist for the format and Pod/Twin being banned certainly aided in its viability.
On a different note, after having seen a lot of the new Death's Shadow and after testing I am convinced that Traverse The Ulvenwald is a Green Sun's Zenith in this deck.
I so badly want to enter MTGO with this deck, but I just do not know. I am super convinced it's one of the best decks I have ever seen in Modern. Its consistency is in broken levels certainly with an insane Traverse in power level, and a crazy 8 cyclers that help you deploy your DS as well and letting you play a small amount of lands as a result and still rarely flooding out, or getting screwed.
I found Abzan Midrange to be 40/60, Jund to be 50/50, Grixis Control to be 40/60 pre-sideboard, 60/40 with 4 Lingering Souls post sideboard, 50/50 against Burn, 50/50 against big mana decks(Bant Eldrazi is a bad matchup and a problem though, it's more like 40/60). It just wins combos as well, most of the creature based strategies except Eldrazi, most aggro decks, etc.
Do you want to play Modern and have a SCARY deck and a SCARY win rate now? Do you want to have a deck with little to non bad matchups? You should be on this deck. It's better than any other deck in the format, and I can say that having experience with many Modern decks(maybe not that much with spell based combos). If Splinter Twin was the best deck back then, this new Death's Shadow deck IS the best deck as well. Expect many more top 8 s from the deck. It's a BEAST.
Does it have weaknesses? Graveyard hate is surely one. Junk and maybe Bant Eldrazi are two 40/60 matchups. I do not think there are many more.
PS: @H0lydiva, you were just right.
I think you're overexaggering a bit. We are talking a Jund variant that's only real noticeable difference between it and base Jund is that it runs a creature that only becomes a creature when the owner is at 12 life or below, and only becomes truly threatening when the owner is in double Lightning Bolt death range. It's similar to Goyf in that it can be huge, but things need to happen first (more so for DS) and it lacks evasion.
If anything, it just shows how good Traverse is.
100% agree with this, Play URx decks and DSjund has been one of the easiest match ups for a long time.
I think the out comes of the Vancouver GP reflected more on the fact that players made very bad assumptions about what the format looks like post banning and post Fatal Push.
Just look at Corey Burkhart's Grixis Control list from that event not even a single fatal push in the 75, even the DSjund players had 1-3 copies (3 in Utter-leyton's winning deck). The best preforming control deck didn't run a single copy of the best removal spell against the exact types of decks that showed up to the event.
No cheeri0s essential components all die to the most common removal spells. This is not True for Twin.
Lol, what? Did you ever actually play with or against Twin, or are you just repeating something someone told you? The combo creatures died to all the removal in the format with the exception of Exarch not dying to a single Bolt. If they do the swap ban that I think they should do, most of us would play Temur colors, where all the combo creatures die to Bolt.
Your list of main deck worthy cards only points to the fact that BGx decks are the only decks with real answers against Twin. Counterspells that is a joke, what other U deck was worth even playing while Twin was legal? None that is exactly why I played Twin, You could build other blue decks to beat twin and then lose to every other type of deck or vise versa. Also the Side board options didn't do anything to help because it became a gamble of did the Twin player sideboard out the combo and thus invalidate your post sideboard plan
Every deck had answers against Twin because every deck can play Dismember. And remember, Spellskite was the most played creature in Modern when Twin was legal, so there's another main deck answer every deck can play. And you seem to forget that Grixis Control was a tier 1 deck with Twin legal, and both Grixis Delver and Jeskai Control were tier 2. You don't have to "build other blue decks to beat Twin," they naturally beat Twin because they were better control decks. And what "sideboard plan" are you even using against Twin as a control deck? You just keep playing your control game. If they don't side out the combo you can still just blow them out by killing their creature in response to Twin, which is why Twin pretty much always sided out the combo and tried to fight on the control axis to give them a better chance.
Blood Moon does not lock players out of the game in the way that Twin did, if you fetched basics etc.. Twin just kills you for playing the game.
Blood Moon absolutely does lock you out of playing the game, that's the whole point of the card. Sure, sometimes you can see it coming and fetch some basics, but sometimes you don't see it coming and can't play any more spells for the rest of the game, or sometimes you can't get all your colors in time or don't have the fetches to find basics.
Just to put it in perspective, my best friend, who I do most of my paper playing with, hates Blood Moon and gets salty when I play it against him. On the other hand, he loved playing against Twin and has been asking me to put Twin back together for casual play.
The idea that Twin would do anything to stop the hyper aggressive kill you as fast as possible decks is also a joke because they are exactly the types of decks that would get a bigger push. Going under Twin has always been a legit strategy and Twin did nothing to stop people from playing decks like Infect
Yeah, this pretty much confirms that you have no idea what you're talking about. Twin was favored against the linear aggressive decks because they could disrupt them in the first couple turns and then kill them as early as turn 4 if the linear decks didn't run any removal. How would adding a deck back into the format that had a universal good matchup against linear aggro give these decks a "bigger push?" Explain that logic to me.
It stifled the amount of decks that are viable to be played in the format, WotC has stated that is a goal for modern as a format it needs to stay banned to keep that aspect of modern.
Name one deck that wasn't viable when Twin was around that's seeing top tier play now, not including decks that became viable because of new cards printed. Just one deck.
Well you continue to no not true etc.... I played nothing but Twin for the majority of the existence of the Format, I would switch between Jund and Twin for the first year and a half of Modern and just stopped playing Jund as much unless it was a obvious.
Decks that were not viable, Grixis Delver, Grixis Control, Monkey Grow, Knightfall decks, essentially any other "fair" deck that wasn't BGx based.
URx Decks currently have a hard time dealing with aggressive decks in the early turns of the game. You didn't see decks like this start to take competitive forms in the Format until after Pod was banned. Pod was actually the deck that hated these types of decks out because the consistent infinite life combo was impossible for them to beat. Burn was really the first deck to start to shine after Pods banning, it was a janky deck that only had a few matches it could win in the more narrow viable deck range of Pod/Twin Modern. Once Pod is banned you start to see a increase in these types of decks. Why? Because they are well built to compete against Twin and BGx and very good against Tron, against BGx their redundant spells that are essentially filling 1 of a very limited amount of functions in the deck make dedicated discard less impactful and against Twin the threats are cheap enough to actually reach critical mass quicker than Turn 4 and hopefully out race the deck. Bolt is really the only good card Twin has against such strategies first game, in my experience these are the types of match ups in which it was better to board into a more traditional control deck.
I think you are simply repeating claims that people who desperately want the combo back in the format expound with no real evidence. The linear aggro rise was slow and steady after the banning of Pod which again actually made such decks terrible to play at all with the infinite life gain combo and the natural anti-infect package built into the deck. All a instant win combo does is promote going under the combo, if anything other than the combo was so good against them then Grixis Control would have a much better game 1 against such decks but it doesn't.
Given that Blood Moon is a known quantity in the format since forever getting BM out so hard that you cannot play a single spell for the rest of the game shows that you make bad mana bases. I've played against 3 color decks like Jund with Blue Moon and had Blood Moon be the first card to get cut, because the Jund Player built a mana base that could easily play through it no soothsaying needed he just ran a good amount of basics and drew out. Other times I've Blood Mooned a UW control player and he scooped and told me 25 lands no basics, he typed it all caps which i believe intended to mean anger, in reality a 2 color deck should have been a terrible match for a blood moon deck. Blood Moon only punishes players for having greedy mana bases. I've had more times where Blood Moon did nothing because my opponent wasn't stupid enough to be exploited by it than have had opponents dumb enough to build a deck so poorly that they fold to it so completely.
On the removal issue, Decay was the most common removal that would kill it. Path would do the job but the decks that played path like UW control or Junk had different issues. I'm not in the camp of people that say Twin just killed you on turn 4 every game, I played the deck a lot and more often than not you would combo kill between turn 5-7 it was only a dire thing to do against fast aggro decks which would kill you game 1 if you didn't combo. Against other fair decks it was often better to durdle around and maybe even wait until you draw a extra combo creature and sacrifice one early to give a false sense of security and trick them into doing something stupid like tap out.
Im surprised that you want Twin unbanned given that your painting a picture of it as a terrible deck that every deck could beat easy pessy lemon squeezy.
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Modern is fine
grixis delver is at 2.48%, within .1-.2 of each of the bottom run and even decks like tron only have 1.0 more representation in the meta game.
Grixis Control and Grixis Delver have been putting up consistent result more and more frequently.
I don't see any of the potential cards to be unbanned as creating diversity in blue decks. Jace would homogenize them even more than twin would, the cantrips I would like to be unbanned but I don't think that is a world WotC wants since the risk of spell based combo being the best thing to do is a real risk. I also don't think that the cantrips would do much in way of "helping" blue with any of the issues that people keep harping on about simply helping find the same things that another post people will complain are to weak to be good anyways. I want WotC to print new powerful blue spells again, nearly every single spell ran in any blue list in modern consist almost entirely of cards printed over a decade ago with snapcaster mage and delver being the only notable exceptions. It is not a good sign that counterspell has been compared to Dark Ritual by WotC in the past essentially implying that it is busted.
I don't think that the level of blue decks currently in the meta is a reflection of the color itself more than the ability for players to simply play almost anything and that newer more accessible cards that are Modern playable are generally not blue so many of the decks that newer and younger players are going to buy into are decks that utilize their previous Standard cards. I am not a person who agree's with the "jace cost to much so unbanning him is off the table" argument but card prices and product scarcity do impact the format in multiple ways. How many people do you think would like to play Jund but don't because they can't afford it? I would wager it is a good number.
pretty sure any deck that is going Iok, TS, Fatal Push, Snap and Jace is going to run LotV. I get your feelings regarding BGx decks but I agree that Jace in a BUG list would probably be super oppressive it just lets BG get the game into a top deck war while being able to brainstorm every turn after you get your opponent hellbent.
Not to mention that like Mental Misstep, Jace is widely considered a design mistake the most pushed planeswalker of all time.
Im not even sure what your implicating with the fist part of your reply. Are you referencing Twins total meta share? I just want to be sure, if that is what you are getting at then no I don't think that Uxx decks need to have 11% of the meta game share in a healthy format. Various blue decks are occupying about 8-9% of the meta currently which is pretty average over all given that most decks only have 2% regardless of how they preform.
I think your point regarding spikes is completely off, what it does show is that Modern is more balanced than it has ever been previously. Spikes like settled meta-games they like to know what the best 2-3 decks are and play the deck that beats the deck they think will be the most represented. In the past Twin, Jund, and Pod where the best decks by a large margin and with two of them gone and Jund being somewhat diminished by the absence of them the meta game is much more rewarding to players who a-know their deck inside and out, this isn't a format which you can just pick up any deck and expect to do well it takes repetition, b- rewards players who understand what other decks exist and how they operate in order to understand how to win against them, and c- applies a and b to any deck that has been well constructed. I'm pretty sure pro's like Corey Burkhart want to win right, and he has been putting up consistent results with Grixis Control which if you listened to people in this forum would seem like a impossibility given that it is a U control deck. Spikes like formats like Eye Eldrazi because they have a obvious best deck and focus on that this is why pro's generally always hated Modern and prefer Standard the viable deck options in standard are less and hence it is easier to reliably spike those types of events.
Again I think Grixis Delver is competitive, its a deck that you can find 5-0ing online frequently, it put people into the top 8 of the recent modern classic and open, it also put handfuls of people into top 8's in the states events. I think that the real issue isn't that Grixis Delver isn't competitive its that so many decks are competitive. Modern is probably the only format in magic ever that if a random deck won an entire event you likely wouldn't be that shocked. Without hyper consistent instant win combo's like Pod and Twin dominating, the field has opened up to one that is IMO much more reflective of the goals set out by WotC to be a format that allows for a large variety of decks to be viable for people to compete with.
I do think Blue needs more proactive threats in future sets. We need a "true-name nemesis" style threat for modern. WotC have been pulling back the throttle on Blue since about 2007 while making most every other color much more aggressive and proactive. Creatures in nearly every color other than Blue have gotten much better, WotC have in many ways shifted aspects of the color pie around to allow other colors to do "blue" things like tutor, card draw while keeping blue highly fixed in its pre-2007 color pie segment while also scaling back the power in Blue over all set after set. I consistently read how WotC is trying to craft Card advantage that feels "green" "black" or "red" how about crafting a competitive threat that feels "blue" we all know they have making BG threats down to a art how about bleeding blue into those colors the same way they have bleed every other color into blue?
It really depends what you want out of the format, if you want a format that is easier to spike a torney in then you want as few decks as possible to be viable and that is directly the opposite of the type of format that WotC wants it to be. Which is probably why most every Pro player was happy Modern was removed from the PT circuit.
Fist many of the players who where on Twin in the past where only on Twin because it was at least in their view the best deck in the format, and just like people who ran to Bloom Titan, DRSjund, Eye era Eldrazi, etc... a large number of that meta share is derived from spikes looking to spike not looking to play a specific style of deck. I've been on Grixis Delver and Grixis Control since the banning and they have been posting better and better results
Also many new and powerful decks have risen in Modern over the Last year, pretty much every block since Khans has injected either a critical mass of some powerful affect already present or introduced a completely new strategy into the format, it stands to reason that some of the players who had once played Twin would have moved onto one of the new decks. This is seen in just the overall increase in the amount of decks and the segment of the meta-game that they must occupy.
The last point also has a natural negative affect on traditional Draw-go style control. Threats are far to good now to play that style deck period.
I would point to the statement made by Frank Lepore that in modern essentially every deck is viable now and tiers are near meaningless. Non Twin builds of Grixis where being moved away from in favor of grixis Twin it impossible to point to a longer trend because the banning happened so close to the release of the cards that made grixis viable to begin with. The reality is that the diverse out comes of events since twins banning wouldn't be the case if it was still around, it is a busted instant win combo whose real share of the meta game has been taken over by Ad Nauseam, I'm not saying that the decks play similarly I'm simply pointing out that it is the U/x instant win combo that has taken the shares that would have other wise been taken by the better faster Splinter Twin combo.
You do know that you quoted someone else and then demanded I reply. You quoted Colt47 above.
And disregarding the Pod banning is a complete willfulness to ignore facts that don't support your claim. No deck plays like Pod, CoCo decks can cobble together the combo if they are lucky on the top 6 and can draw multiple Cords but no Mid-range Creature Toolbox/infinite combo deck is on par with what Pod was and that has been a good thing for diversity in the format just like the Twin banning. If abzan CoCo is just as good as Pod than So is the URW Kiki/angel deck that won a few weeks back equal to Twin.
Nearly every one of my Twin Cards ported into my Grixis Delver and Grixis Control decks which are both putting up Top 8's and regularly 5-0ing leagues.
Mid-range can be control though.
Jund is a mid-range deck yes but it is a attrition/control deck in regards to the strategy it employees
I know some people will foo foo the article in the link I am going to post but I will point out that the guy who wrote it is one of the designers of the game now so a insight into the vision of what and how mid-range can play from a person who is actually one of the lead designers of the game is rather insightful(as in my opinion it reads more like a manifesto for modern MTG design generally)http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/midrange-archetype-2007-03-26
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/m-files-aether-revolt-part-1-2017-02-03 look in the click to reveal part at the start to see him listed as a designer.
No it is IoK Thoughtseize into LotV any BGx threat after a batter of those cards would tend to do the trick since they shred your hand into garbage. Those decks just keep getting great new cards to add to the mix while UR is stuck in the "it was so good over 15 years ago we can never print anything good for that color segment again", Prophetic Bolt is to good to ever see reprint but BG gets a new toy seemingly every set.
Deaths Shadow is far more fair than Twin, Deaths Shadow is just a beater and its silly to compare a instant win combo to a fair creature threat.
Or how about Jund/Junk are the best control decks in modern because Black is the best Control color and Green is the strongest color to pair it with? BGx decks have always been the best control decks, Twin was never a control deck but a tempo/combo deck and Thoughtseize and IoK are simply the best interaction spells in the format. Just look at the DSzoo deck, it is functionally the "delver" of modern potent fast threat backed up with the best interaction to protect it.
I mean I would hope that anyone who has been playing this format for any amount of time would have realized this basic aspect of the nature of the format by now, yes Jund/Junk decks are and have always been the best control decks in modern.
Standard is unpopular right now, Modern is the most popular its ever been. You want to see a bunch of angry MTG players imagine all the people playing Zoo variants and any other random fringe deck that has enjoyed a competitive playable status be out raged after WotC unbans Twin and invalidates tons of decks.
Sorry but with the Pod banning you shouldn't have felt any sense of a "warranty" for any deck exists, Pod was a very expensive deck to put together and many people lost out big on the banning ( yes CoCo came around but people are not psychic and many sold out for whatever they could get before its printing).
I also find it odd that everyone is still harping about Uxx reactive decks when the most recent SCG events had 2 grixis lists in each Top 8 (as a grixis player very pleased to see this)
I don't like the idea that we need to have any deck be a T1 deck to validate a strategy in Modern currently, the entire Tier ranking system is only a reflection of a popularity contest not a true reflection of how competitive the deck actually is. Ad Nauseam has been putting up great results lately but it will likely never be a T1 popular deck because it is far more complicated to pilot to those finishes, Twin was a much more average skill level deck that was accessible to more players and would be more popular simply based on that alone. Grixis Control and to some extent Grixis Delver are closer to Ad Nauseam than to Twin in play skill needed to win and will likely always suffer in the popularity contest end.
the point about removal is that Jund really was the only deck with a strong game 1 against Twin, Junk/abzan which generally looks very similar to Jund had a slightly higher curve on average and it made all the difference.
If you look at the treands in the meta game share from the banning of Treasure Cruise/ DDT to the banning of Twin you see a spike in Grixis decks in general with Grixis Twin slowly absorbing all the meta shares of the other decks. I tried the various grixis builds during that time and like most every other player realized that nothing in Grixis was as strong as adding the instant win combo to the deck.
Cheeri0's is a way easier combo to disrupt than Twin, a Shock literally kills any of the essential peaces.
Blood Moon taxes your mana in that if I have a 1 swamp 1 plains and 1 godless shrine, you can play a spell for B1 and a W or a W1 and B spell you are mooned out of any single double color spell at that moment. Against Twin you cannot play anything with W assuming you have a path, so you would need to wait until you have WW available just to cast the first half of lingering souls. Blood Moon complicates what you can cast per turn but doesn't demand that you not tappout what is available to you.
Against linear Aggro you wouldn't side into things like anger of the gods? You certainly would board into a more traditional control deck which are you know traditionally good at killing linear aggro decks.
I never said it was some T0 deck but I don't think Dredge was either, go look at how the deck was performing before the reban of GGT it was dropping off but it demanded in a similar way to Twin a lot of sideboard cards dedicated to just it. In many ways it did warp the format in a similar way as dredge did, taxed every SB even more thinly and presented a consistent win condition that was difficult for most decks to interact with in a with any many deckable answers. And I always here that Ki-ki was supposed to take its place but never did but when ki-ki decks actually do well like taking down the SCG Modern classic in Baltimore it is ignored and people just keep acting like it hasn't happened.
Going under Twin was still a very strong option because they had to have a very set of specific cards or chance just folding. Remand is bad against 1c.c. 2.cc creatures generally you had to find the combo in game one or your answers would start to be out paced by the velocity at which your opponent can flood the board. Game 2 you get to board in anger and other such dedicated control cards and improve those match ups substantially.
Burn and Infect (kind of the grand daddy of linear strategies in Modern) all started to see increases in meta-shares month after month after Pod was banned, when Pod was still a deck those decks were T2 at best jank . I think that if Tron becomes a super dominate deck (which if it keeps up doing what its been doing in regards to 5-0ing dailies) then Twin would be the obvious unban to help reverse that since Twin has historically been good at beating the decks that look to go over the top of Jund
edit: I also like the what Frank Lepore said about Tiers in Modern in last weeks Magic TV, para phrasing 'in modern Tiers are almost meaningless you can play a "fringe" deck that as long as its well constructed and hammered out you can have reasonable expectations of being competitive and even winning a GP'. This is a environment that WotC has stated they want to exist for the format and Pod/Twin being banned certainly aided in its viability.
100% agree with this, Play URx decks and DSjund has been one of the easiest match ups for a long time.
I think the out comes of the Vancouver GP reflected more on the fact that players made very bad assumptions about what the format looks like post banning and post Fatal Push.
Just look at Corey Burkhart's Grixis Control list from that event not even a single fatal push in the 75, even the DSjund players had 1-3 copies (3 in Utter-leyton's winning deck). The best preforming control deck didn't run a single copy of the best removal spell against the exact types of decks that showed up to the event.
Well you continue to no not true etc.... I played nothing but Twin for the majority of the existence of the Format, I would switch between Jund and Twin for the first year and a half of Modern and just stopped playing Jund as much unless it was a obvious.
Decks that were not viable, Grixis Delver, Grixis Control, Monkey Grow, Knightfall decks, essentially any other "fair" deck that wasn't BGx based.
URx Decks currently have a hard time dealing with aggressive decks in the early turns of the game. You didn't see decks like this start to take competitive forms in the Format until after Pod was banned. Pod was actually the deck that hated these types of decks out because the consistent infinite life combo was impossible for them to beat. Burn was really the first deck to start to shine after Pods banning, it was a janky deck that only had a few matches it could win in the more narrow viable deck range of Pod/Twin Modern. Once Pod is banned you start to see a increase in these types of decks. Why? Because they are well built to compete against Twin and BGx and very good against Tron, against BGx their redundant spells that are essentially filling 1 of a very limited amount of functions in the deck make dedicated discard less impactful and against Twin the threats are cheap enough to actually reach critical mass quicker than Turn 4 and hopefully out race the deck. Bolt is really the only good card Twin has against such strategies first game, in my experience these are the types of match ups in which it was better to board into a more traditional control deck.
I think you are simply repeating claims that people who desperately want the combo back in the format expound with no real evidence. The linear aggro rise was slow and steady after the banning of Pod which again actually made such decks terrible to play at all with the infinite life gain combo and the natural anti-infect package built into the deck. All a instant win combo does is promote going under the combo, if anything other than the combo was so good against them then Grixis Control would have a much better game 1 against such decks but it doesn't.
Given that Blood Moon is a known quantity in the format since forever getting BM out so hard that you cannot play a single spell for the rest of the game shows that you make bad mana bases. I've played against 3 color decks like Jund with Blue Moon and had Blood Moon be the first card to get cut, because the Jund Player built a mana base that could easily play through it no soothsaying needed he just ran a good amount of basics and drew out. Other times I've Blood Mooned a UW control player and he scooped and told me 25 lands no basics, he typed it all caps which i believe intended to mean anger, in reality a 2 color deck should have been a terrible match for a blood moon deck. Blood Moon only punishes players for having greedy mana bases. I've had more times where Blood Moon did nothing because my opponent wasn't stupid enough to be exploited by it than have had opponents dumb enough to build a deck so poorly that they fold to it so completely.
On the removal issue, Decay was the most common removal that would kill it. Path would do the job but the decks that played path like UW control or Junk had different issues. I'm not in the camp of people that say Twin just killed you on turn 4 every game, I played the deck a lot and more often than not you would combo kill between turn 5-7 it was only a dire thing to do against fast aggro decks which would kill you game 1 if you didn't combo. Against other fair decks it was often better to durdle around and maybe even wait until you draw a extra combo creature and sacrifice one early to give a false sense of security and trick them into doing something stupid like tap out.
Im surprised that you want Twin unbanned given that your painting a picture of it as a terrible deck that every deck could beat easy pessy lemon squeezy.