Why? They almost always wait 1 year after significant changes before doing anything. We have a new set releasing that will undoubtedly have Modern impact, including cards deliberately designed to benefit Modern players and decks. I don't see a reason to hate Wizards over an expected no-changes update when the format is in such good shape. It's yet another endorsement that Modern is stable and healthy.
That said, there are zero good reasons for a card to not be unbanned in February. Of course, barring major metagame shifts. That would be a fine time to look at SFM or GSZ. If Wizards doesn't act then, I think many players would be justifiably upset. But right now, Wizards just gave Modern a bevvy of new cards in Guilds and "no changes" continues our 2.5+ year running narrative of a healthy format despite the vocal criticisms and minority naysayers arguing to the contrary.
Yes, but what I'm also saying is that NOW with those gone, is Preordain still too good?
Infect thrived because of Twin's banning. Infect is still pretty good right now, to be honest. As long as your starting life total is 10 and there are good pump spells, it will always be considered broken by some.
There is always going to be a top deck in Modern. Look at right now; a time of the most variety ever. Many want KCI banned. "There shouldn't be a deck that is 2% better than the 2nd best deck," disguised as "the deck makes tournaments take an extra hour." I think most people can agree that there will always be complaints. That's a sign of a healthy meta. When complaints concur with attendance drops, like duing Eye of Ugin Winter and Treasure/Pod times, then something must be done.
*Or is it just not a good idea to unban cards that would see play? I'm curious as to what cards on the ban list would see play more than Lightning Bolt has seen?
I don't think Preordain is too good. I just don't think Wizards will unban a card that directly slots into a number of top-tier Modern decks. They have never done this before in Modern and I don't see them starting now, especially with all decks, colors, and archetypes enjoying such wide representation. Doubly so with a few viable top-tier blue decks that already run SV.
It was before my time as well, but I have brought this point up a number of times. Usually to deflecting answers or chirping crickets.
Chirping crickets is what I got too. I'm just curious because people seem to give an impression that Preordain is busted when it got banned to completely nuke those decks. I realize Storm exists still, has had new important cogs printed, and is pretty damn good. All those cards did was find the busted pieces.
I think consistency is feared a bit too much in Modern. I personally wouldn't mind it, especially after going from 3-0-1 (probably would have been 4-0 after analyzing the matchup better) to 0-4 with UW Control. Consistency added to Modern is not going to help Hollow One do triple Hollow One on turn 1, Humans doing Champ into double Champ into a million Thalia's Lieutenants, KCI killing on turn 2-3, UW doing Terminus turns 2-5, or mostly anything else considered broken. I love new cards being ported to Modern, but I don't think it is a reason or excuse not to do some unbannings, especially everyone's favorite little Kor Artificer.
P&P&P got banned in 2011 when Song, Probe, and Twin were all legal. The P&P&P versions of Storm (with all 3) and Twin (sans Probe) were, understandably, even more dominant than the versions without those cards. All of P&P&P were also in Shoal Infect.
Based on ban history, P&P did make Twin and Storm more powerful, but those decks still ate bans after P&P were gone. Probe then ate its own ban years later after enabling a history of busted strategies for about 5 years. The timing of those bans strongly suggest the strategies that played them were both problematic with the cards and still problematic after their banning.
It's unclear if Shoal Infect would still be good without P&P&P, but I don't think we will ever see Wizards unban a card that was so flagrantly violating the T4 rule at the time of its banning. Same for Song.
Also, I feel like other users, perhaps myself, answered this earlier in another version of this thread. I don't think it was the response that pro-unbanners wanted to hear, however, so it may have been forgotten.
A lot of discussion on reddit. One particular post we see a lot of the time that just doesnt seem right
I'd like to see the same simulation performed for Ponder and Preordain. I still say that if those are too good, then Stirring definitely should be banned, for consistency's sake.
The biggest problem with this argument is that it assumes P&P were only banned because they were consistency-enabling tools. This is not true. They were primarily banned because they featured prominently in "a large number of blue-red combination decks" that "kept the field less diverse." Once Wizards identified that UR plurality was itself the primary problem, they banned a number of cards to address it. This included Rite and P&P. Rasmussen also emphasized P&P's role as combo enablers in his 2015 article on the Modern banlist: Rite, Shoal, P&P "all sped up the format considerably."
Just looking at UR Twin and the two UR Storm variants, UR combination decks made up 28% of the Day 2 metagame, 32% of the Day 2 metagame, and then 50% of the T8. If we add Shoal Infect, another blue-based T4 rule violator, we're at 32.6% of Day 1, 36.4% of Day 2, and 62.5% of the T8. Those are ridiculously dominant figures.
For the P&P principle to fully apply to Stirrings, we would need to see the Stirrings decks enjoying similar dominance to the blue-red combination decks that formed the basis of the P&P ban. We don't see that at all. Therefore, the argument does not currently apply. It applied much more earlier this year when the first and second most-played decks at GP T8s were both Stirrings decks, but the numbers are much more favorable now.
Note that with the addition of Guilds of Ravnica, we're aligning the pool of available cards on MTG Arena with Standard. When Open Beta starts, you'll be able to get the following sets: Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, Core Set 2019, and, of course, Guilds of Ravnica. We are committed to ultimately providing a format for MTG Arena post-rotations, so once we have settled on how set rotation works, next year we will likely return previous sets to the system, including Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, Amonkhet, and Hour of Devastation.
This is the first time I've seen Wizards actually go on record for a non-rotating Arena format: note that they say "post-rotations" plural, not just post-rotation singular. I think there was a vague reference earlier to the so-called rotation problem, but this kind of more explicit acknowledgement deserves discussion. I'm particularly nervous about how this would affect MTGO collections, in addition to its impact on Modern.
Arena is adding a pauper-style format that exists within the standard-legal sets but will allow only commons. Hence referencing multiple rotations.
Is there a source for this? That doesn't seem to resolve the so-called rotation problem at all, as only your commons would retain post-rotation value. This format almost certainly refers to a new post-Arena Modernesque format
Note that with the addition of Guilds of Ravnica, we're aligning the pool of available cards on MTG Arena with Standard. When Open Beta starts, you'll be able to get the following sets: Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, Core Set 2019, and, of course, Guilds of Ravnica. We are committed to ultimately providing a format for MTG Arena post-rotations, so once we have settled on how set rotation works, next year we will likely return previous sets to the system, including Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, Amonkhet, and Hour of Devastation.
This is the first time I've seen Wizards actually go on record for a non-rotating Arena format: note that they say "post-rotations" plural, not just post-rotation singular. I think there was a vague reference earlier to the so-called rotation problem, but this kind of more explicit acknowledgement deserves discussion. I'm particularly nervous about how this would affect MTGO collections, in addition to its impact on Modern.
From what I've seen, there are numerous illegitimate complaints about KCI (illegitimate insofar as they don't lead to bans) and one possible justification for worry. Illegitimate complaints include T4 rule violations (the deck appears to win on T3 even less than Infect or Storm, both of which are also top-tier), play experience being bad (subjective and this never mattered for top-tier Lantern), KCI being "too strong" (not played out in numbers as KCI has fallen off hard since earlier this year), the deck being non-intuitive (subjective, plus Modern is the format for weird decks to succeed and be viable), and others. Most of these failed critiques have a few commonalities: they are subjective, they don't have a banning precedent, and/or they aren't supported by GP/large event MTGO #s.
KCI's biggest concern is logistical. As the theory goes, a single KCI turn might take too long to play out. If a round has already gone to turns, this means a KCI pilot could get an untimed 15 minute turn that pushes the entire tournament behind. This would be even worse for an inexperienced KCI pilot who is fumbling through a winning turn. Tat said, this theory has yet to be proven, but it is at least a) provable through tournament and testing data, b) verifiable through on-the-ground tournament experience, and c) in line with the Sunrise precedent. I'd be interested in hearing objective and transparent analyses of this issue. Most other KCI complaints, however, are just typical Modern noise about certain players disliking certain decks.
that is probably true for most matchup evaluations one way or another. mostly because people are notoriously bad (myself included) at evaluating their own skill level and the skill level of their opponents.
That's mostly true, especially with skill evaluations. Notably, people report, probably honestly, 70%+ MWP on MTGO with their pet decks. I absolutely buy that for most content creators. But the best pros in the world hover in the low-to-mid 60% MWP. Some have format MWP in the high 50s and there's no single deck in either the large N 2015 or 2018 datasets that has 60%+ MWP. That said, there ARE matchups that are 30-70, such as Twin Affinity and Ad Naus Infect. So if someone is estimating their deck MWP or player MWP outside of that 40-60 band, call me skeptical. And if they are pegging a matchup outside that range, it better be really exceptional.
Yeah, its as ktk say's, if you think you have a good match up, subtract 5% from it, and check again. 1 for 1 removal is not sufficient, especially if Freebooter and Meddling Mage come into play.
Yep, this this this. Hopefully everyone in the thread internalizes this, and I wish I could post it to every thread in the forum and discussion on Reddit. Humans is 52% MWP overall and tends to perform about 5% better in every matchup. If one thinks they have a positive Humans matchup, it's probably even. If one thinks they have a very favorable Humans matchup, it's probably no better than 45-55. If one thinks they have a bad Humans matchup, it's probably even worse than they think at 40-60. That said, both KCI and Tron do have good Humans matchups.
Yeah, but even then you need worse match ups...at the moment cannot See this worse match ups for human. Even against mardu it seems favored if we look data and people still think its mardu. UW? Still humans...where are Bad match ups?
KCI and Tron are both unfavorable matchups for humans.
Don't remember the KCI matchup, but can confirm in the large MWP dataset, Humans is very unfavored against Tron. It's at least 45-55 and probably 40-60.
2 Humans
2 Burn
1 Living End
1 Hardened Scales
1 UW Control
1 Storm
Burn and Grishoalbrand missed on breakers. From a format perspective, I'm comfortable affirming that the format is in a really great spot with viable decks across all archetypes and colors. I'm really excited for Guilds to offer some excellent Modern tech to boost up even more decks. From a B&R perspective, Stirrings decks have really fallen off since earlier this year, and that ban talk makes decreasing sense from a numbers perspective. The only unban that looks to be completely off the table is Preordain, given the success of various blue decks that will adopt Preordain to varying extents and with varying impact. 2018's overall results continue to suggest that GSZ could still be in the conversation, but I see both the risks and benefits of the card. SFM is less risky and would still probably be fine, but I can see likely scenarios where Wizards doesn't want more white cards at top tables to blunt aggressive strategies.
Mardu was good in the Humans-shaped meta, but control has shifted the meta to a spot where Mardu is less good, even though it's not bad against control itself. It'll be interesting to see how the meta shifts when Guilds comes out. If BGx rises back to prominence, Mardu could find itself well positioned again.
Mardu is 43.9% against Humans in the GP/SCG Open sample with 66 matches total. This is surprising to me and could represent some variance, but I also stand by a statement I made in another thread: Humans is a lot better than people think. I'm of the mindset that whatever you think your Humans matchup is, it's probably >5% worse than that if we really had a large sample. I expect the true Mard vs. Humans MWP is probably much closer to 50-50 than the Mardu pilots admit. As another example, Humans vs. UW Control is about 51% in Humans' favor with N=70 and that's supposed to be a good matchup. The only truly unfavorable matchup I've seen Humans hit is Jeskai vs. Humans, which is about 55% in Jeskai's favor (N=86). But that's still "only" a 45-55 slightly unfavored matchup when I expect many Jeskai pilots probably sell it as a 60-40 matchup. I think this all just speaks to the power of Humans and how people are less favored against Humans than they might believe.
@ktk, twin is red, lol. /sarcasm
Fully agreed. 7 out of 8 decks are blue. Blue is literally the best colour atm.
Also, white in too many decks. Not sure about sfm.
Green and toolbox decks are literally dying for more than a year and GSZ at this point seems logical, but new creatures are going to be printed for sure.
And we know SCG will have a UWx deck or 2 in the top. Preordain and sadly SFM are likely nonstarters.
Yeah, I think all those cards are nonstarters for various reasons, ranging from perceived to actual issues. Blue and white-based decks just seem to be doing so well. But I do think that GSZ is an increasingly interesting and viable unban topic. Again, I'm not convinced it's a net benefit to the format. I'm a little worried about Elves, and don't think Titanshift and/or Amulet necessarily need to explore that possible upgrade. BG Rock with GSZ also feels strong. But it might give all those decks enough of a boost to make them more competitive than they are now. I don't know; I'm curious about arguments on both sides.
I think we're at a confident "No changes" for the upcoming B&R and have a visibly diverse metagame with tons of viable options. We'll see how the Modern-focused cards in Guilds changes the scene and check back in for B&R changes in early 2019.
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Why? They almost always wait 1 year after significant changes before doing anything. We have a new set releasing that will undoubtedly have Modern impact, including cards deliberately designed to benefit Modern players and decks. I don't see a reason to hate Wizards over an expected no-changes update when the format is in such good shape. It's yet another endorsement that Modern is stable and healthy.
That said, there are zero good reasons for a card to not be unbanned in February. Of course, barring major metagame shifts. That would be a fine time to look at SFM or GSZ. If Wizards doesn't act then, I think many players would be justifiably upset. But right now, Wizards just gave Modern a bevvy of new cards in Guilds and "no changes" continues our 2.5+ year running narrative of a healthy format despite the vocal criticisms and minority naysayers arguing to the contrary.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/october-1-2018-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2018-10-01
I don't think Preordain is too good. I just don't think Wizards will unban a card that directly slots into a number of top-tier Modern decks. They have never done this before in Modern and I don't see them starting now, especially with all decks, colors, and archetypes enjoying such wide representation. Doubly so with a few viable top-tier blue decks that already run SV.
P&P&P got banned in 2011 when Song, Probe, and Twin were all legal. The P&P&P versions of Storm (with all 3) and Twin (sans Probe) were, understandably, even more dominant than the versions without those cards. All of P&P&P were also in Shoal Infect.
Based on ban history, P&P did make Twin and Storm more powerful, but those decks still ate bans after P&P were gone. Probe then ate its own ban years later after enabling a history of busted strategies for about 5 years. The timing of those bans strongly suggest the strategies that played them were both problematic with the cards and still problematic after their banning.
It's unclear if Shoal Infect would still be good without P&P&P, but I don't think we will ever see Wizards unban a card that was so flagrantly violating the T4 rule at the time of its banning. Same for Song.
Also, I feel like other users, perhaps myself, answered this earlier in another version of this thread. I don't think it was the response that pro-unbanners wanted to hear, however, so it may have been forgotten.
Lily Last Hope is a 1-of in the MD of most BGx decks with at least another SB copy. GDS also runs 1-2 in the SB.
The biggest problem with this argument is that it assumes P&P were only banned because they were consistency-enabling tools. This is not true. They were primarily banned because they featured prominently in "a large number of blue-red combination decks" that "kept the field less diverse." Once Wizards identified that UR plurality was itself the primary problem, they banned a number of cards to address it. This included Rite and P&P. Rasmussen also emphasized P&P's role as combo enablers in his 2015 article on the Modern banlist: Rite, Shoal, P&P "all sped up the format considerably."
We have some idea of UR's dominance from the published data. We know that UR combination decks made up 50% of the T8. P&P were in a 5th T8 deck, Shoal Infect, as well. We also know the Day 1 and Day 2 metagames: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/event-coverage/metagame-breakdown-modern-day-two-2011-09-03
Just looking at UR Twin and the two UR Storm variants, UR combination decks made up 28% of the Day 2 metagame, 32% of the Day 2 metagame, and then 50% of the T8. If we add Shoal Infect, another blue-based T4 rule violator, we're at 32.6% of Day 1, 36.4% of Day 2, and 62.5% of the T8. Those are ridiculously dominant figures.
For the P&P principle to fully apply to Stirrings, we would need to see the Stirrings decks enjoying similar dominance to the blue-red combination decks that formed the basis of the P&P ban. We don't see that at all. Therefore, the argument does not currently apply. It applied much more earlier this year when the first and second most-played decks at GP T8s were both Stirrings decks, but the numbers are much more favorable now.
Is there a source for this? That doesn't seem to resolve the so-called rotation problem at all, as only your commons would retain post-rotation value. This format almost certainly refers to a new post-Arena Modernesque format
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/mtg-arena-open-all-starting-september-27-2018-09-19
This is the first time I've seen Wizards actually go on record for a non-rotating Arena format: note that they say "post-rotations" plural, not just post-rotation singular. I think there was a vague reference earlier to the so-called rotation problem, but this kind of more explicit acknowledgement deserves discussion. I'm particularly nervous about how this would affect MTGO collections, in addition to its impact on Modern.
KCI's biggest concern is logistical. As the theory goes, a single KCI turn might take too long to play out. If a round has already gone to turns, this means a KCI pilot could get an untimed 15 minute turn that pushes the entire tournament behind. This would be even worse for an inexperienced KCI pilot who is fumbling through a winning turn. Tat said, this theory has yet to be proven, but it is at least a) provable through tournament and testing data, b) verifiable through on-the-ground tournament experience, and c) in line with the Sunrise precedent. I'd be interested in hearing objective and transparent analyses of this issue. Most other KCI complaints, however, are just typical Modern noise about certain players disliking certain decks.
That's mostly true, especially with skill evaluations. Notably, people report, probably honestly, 70%+ MWP on MTGO with their pet decks. I absolutely buy that for most content creators. But the best pros in the world hover in the low-to-mid 60% MWP. Some have format MWP in the high 50s and there's no single deck in either the large N 2015 or 2018 datasets that has 60%+ MWP. That said, there ARE matchups that are 30-70, such as Twin Affinity and Ad Naus Infect. So if someone is estimating their deck MWP or player MWP outside of that 40-60 band, call me skeptical. And if they are pegging a matchup outside that range, it better be really exceptional.
Yep, this this this. Hopefully everyone in the thread internalizes this, and I wish I could post it to every thread in the forum and discussion on Reddit. Humans is 52% MWP overall and tends to perform about 5% better in every matchup. If one thinks they have a positive Humans matchup, it's probably even. If one thinks they have a very favorable Humans matchup, it's probably no better than 45-55. If one thinks they have a bad Humans matchup, it's probably even worse than they think at 40-60. That said, both KCI and Tron do have good Humans matchups.
Don't remember the KCI matchup, but can confirm in the large MWP dataset, Humans is very unfavored against Tron. It's at least 45-55 and probably 40-60.
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/150918_syracuse.html
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/4438_top_16_modern_open_decklists.html
2 Humans
2 Burn
1 Living End
1 Hardened Scales
1 UW Control
1 Storm
Burn and Grishoalbrand missed on breakers. From a format perspective, I'm comfortable affirming that the format is in a really great spot with viable decks across all archetypes and colors. I'm really excited for Guilds to offer some excellent Modern tech to boost up even more decks. From a B&R perspective, Stirrings decks have really fallen off since earlier this year, and that ban talk makes decreasing sense from a numbers perspective. The only unban that looks to be completely off the table is Preordain, given the success of various blue decks that will adopt Preordain to varying extents and with varying impact. 2018's overall results continue to suggest that GSZ could still be in the conversation, but I see both the risks and benefits of the card. SFM is less risky and would still probably be fine, but I can see likely scenarios where Wizards doesn't want more white cards at top tables to blunt aggressive strategies.
Mardu is 43.9% against Humans in the GP/SCG Open sample with 66 matches total. This is surprising to me and could represent some variance, but I also stand by a statement I made in another thread: Humans is a lot better than people think. I'm of the mindset that whatever you think your Humans matchup is, it's probably >5% worse than that if we really had a large sample. I expect the true Mard vs. Humans MWP is probably much closer to 50-50 than the Mardu pilots admit. As another example, Humans vs. UW Control is about 51% in Humans' favor with N=70 and that's supposed to be a good matchup. The only truly unfavorable matchup I've seen Humans hit is Jeskai vs. Humans, which is about 55% in Jeskai's favor (N=86). But that's still "only" a 45-55 slightly unfavored matchup when I expect many Jeskai pilots probably sell it as a 60-40 matchup. I think this all just speaks to the power of Humans and how people are less favored against Humans than they might believe.
Yeah, I think all those cards are nonstarters for various reasons, ranging from perceived to actual issues. Blue and white-based decks just seem to be doing so well. But I do think that GSZ is an increasingly interesting and viable unban topic. Again, I'm not convinced it's a net benefit to the format. I'm a little worried about Elves, and don't think Titanshift and/or Amulet necessarily need to explore that possible upgrade. BG Rock with GSZ also feels strong. But it might give all those decks enough of a boost to make them more competitive than they are now. I don't know; I'm curious about arguments on both sides.
I think we're at a confident "No changes" for the upcoming B&R and have a visibly diverse metagame with tons of viable options. We'll see how the Modern-focused cards in Guilds changes the scene and check back in for B&R changes in early 2019.