They are in one deck (CawBlade) and not very good there anyway.
I think if you have time to make a creature stick and give it a sword, you were winning anyway.
Uh, if standard caw blade taught people anything it was that birds with swords are pretty good. And by pretty good, I mean really good. Though I will say they aren't a necessity and more of a taste, they're almost always relevant assuming your playing a deck with creatures in it. It's often used in delver variants, b/w tokens, and modern caw blade. Also, they're used in a few tier 1.5/2 decks such as modern knights and other forms of tribal aggro. Of course, you shouldn't stuff a deck with a whole bunch of swords (even legacy stoneblade doesn't do that), but one or two would benefit quite a bit of decks. As for which one, they're all really powerful, but in my experience, fire and ice is probably the most powerful, closely followed by feast and famine. They're also really great in aggro heavy meta, especially as sideboard cards in an aggro deck.
Uh, if standard caw blade taught people anything it was that birds with swords are pretty good. And by pretty good, I mean really good. Though I will say they aren't a necessity and more of a taste, they're almost always relevant assuming your playing a deck with creatures in it.
Uhh, If modern has taught you anything is that you shouldn't compare old irrelevant formats with current ones. You are talking about a whole seperate context with quite a few essential cards that developed the format to make Birds and Swords the best thing to be doing. This is not a JTMS + SFM format. SFM made a huge impact on the playability of Equipment in general, as "Vial"ing in Swords is a decent plan. Jace was just broken and a pseudo-Ancestral Recall with Squadron Hawk.
Modern looks nothing like this. Decks combo consistently on t4 (Twin, Storm, Pod), kill you on t4 (RDW and Boros variants), disrupt you (Jund), or just plain go bigger than you (Trons) t4....No real time in this format, in general, to cast a hawk t2 and a sword t3....if you getinto the late game and can cast Hawks with counter magic you are winning anyway. Swords are NOT in any deck but CawBlade right now, and CawBlade is no where near the power level that it had in Standard.
It's often used in delver variants, b/w tokens, and modern caw blade. Also, they're used in a few tier 1.5/2 decks such as modern knights and other forms of tribal aggro. Of course, you shouldn't stuff a deck with a whole bunch of swords (even legacy stoneblade doesn't do that), but one or two would benefit quite a bit of decks. As for which one, they're all really powerful, but in my experience, fire and ice is probably the most powerful, closely followed by feast and famine. They're also really great in aggro heavy meta, especially as sideboard cards in an aggro deck.
I have never seen a Sword in a Delver deck in Modern. Maybe early before people knew what they were doing, but they are not now. I also remember recently that someone did okay in a few dailies with a basically Standard Delver list with Path to Exile as the only addition from the Modern card pool...not sure how this is better than Caw Blade except the fact that the deck has Invisible Stalker...
Modern Knights? lol. Nice example.
They are not great in an aggro heavy meta. You need time to cast and equip them. Most of the time, if they are in your hand early game, you miss out on drawing something relevant to either counter or kill what your opponents are throwing at you. Managing your life total is important in an aggro heavy meta, and haging a sword that I can't do anything with, reliably, until maybe t5 does not sound like something I want to be doing...
Okay..so Batterskull is one exception. Maybe. But Batterskull is a good card by itself.
The swords are too slow for this format, barring a couple of niche decks and I don't think they are even good there.
Fae does not use swords. If they do, it is a bad fae list.
Caw does, think I said that. Delver does not. I would like to see these jank lists you guys keep dreaming up.
Bant is not even a real deck.
Martyr does not nees swords if it runs emeria.
Nice try. Your format understanding seems solid
I play all of these decks you guys claim use swords. Pretty successfully I might add. So yeah...
My Caw Blade has been shifting away from non Batterskull swords in favor of Vedalken Shackles for obvious reasons.
I played and 3-1'd and 4-0'd dailies at the beginning of the season with an Esper Fae list. Since Mono U was developed, there has not been another Fae list with Swords.
EDIT: just combed the last two weeks of Dailies and, yeah, guess I am wrong...
ONE (!) RUG Delver deck had 2 MD Swords of FaF
ONE(!) RUG Delver had 1 Sword of WaP SB
Holy pile of pretentiousness, apaulogy. Thank-you for your totally fair, in-depth analysis of swords in Modern. /sarcasm
Maybe we need a list of decks that actually placed in PTQs and GPs (tho it would be hard to really call those lists relevant right now). I don't think anyone questions that Caw uses swords more than any other deck. Your assessment in this regard is not inaccurate. The use of swords is not very broad, thanks to the lack of SFM, but they're still used sparsely, smattered across a variety of competitive decks.
Holy pile of pretentiousness, apaulogy. Thank-you for your totally fair, in-depth analysis of swords in Modern. /sarcasm
Maybe we need a list of decks that actually placed in PTQs and GPs. I don't think anyone questions that Caw uses swords more than any other deck. Your assessment in this regard is not inaccurate. The use of swords is not very broad, thanks to the lack of SFM, but they're still used sparsely, smattered across a variety of competitive decks.
But they are BAD is what I am saying.
Also, I may be pretentious, but isn't it equally pretentious to assume someones' format knowledge based off of one post?
So I guess that the OP has an answer to all his/her questions then?
I don't play modern, so I'm asking. But what is the current state of sword usage in Modern such as Sword of Fire and Ice.
I provided what I thought was an accurate answer to the question. I assumed he/she meant competitively and not decks that almost no one plays.
Are the swords considered a little too slow?
I offered my opinion of this, for which I was flamed. I think they are slow and there are better ways to survive/propel your game to the next stage of the game.
Are they in high use? Occasionally used?
Again, I thought my answer to this was covered and reasonable. Others didn't.
My thoughts exactly. That post was certainly noteworthy of it's smugness, so much in fact that I applaud it. However, you really should try to be less condescending when trying to make a point on a forum so people are more likely to discuss the point rather than rage and flame at you. That's called trolling, and you can get banned for that.
****-slinging aside:
It doesn't matter whether it's best to run a sword or not, people still run them because they're good. I didn't say they were the best, but people still do it, so arguing that no one uses them is just ignorant, regardless of what you see in the dailies on MTGO. You may not see that many top lists running swords, but I see plenty of swords in modern both in paper and online.
Also, have you ever played tribal knights? It's a real deck and is therefore a very reasonable example of a deck that employs swords. Just because it's not tier 1 doesn't mean we can't use it as an example here. As a jund player, my biggest nightmare is a mirran crusader with a sword of fire and ice on it and I've definitely lost a few games against my buddy for that reason.
I think the question has been sufficiently answered. "I don't play Modern" = "I should be in Market Street".
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
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Are the swords considered a little too slow?
Are they in high use? Occasionally used?
You can find me on MTGO. My username is gereffi.
CG
I think if you have time to make a creature stick and give it a sword, you were winning anyway.
Uh, if standard caw blade taught people anything it was that birds with swords are pretty good. And by pretty good, I mean really good. Though I will say they aren't a necessity and more of a taste, they're almost always relevant assuming your playing a deck with creatures in it. It's often used in delver variants, b/w tokens, and modern caw blade. Also, they're used in a few tier 1.5/2 decks such as modern knights and other forms of tribal aggro. Of course, you shouldn't stuff a deck with a whole bunch of swords (even legacy stoneblade doesn't do that), but one or two would benefit quite a bit of decks. As for which one, they're all really powerful, but in my experience, fire and ice is probably the most powerful, closely followed by feast and famine. They're also really great in aggro heavy meta, especially as sideboard cards in an aggro deck.
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Thanks for demonstrating no understanding of the format whatsoever, and with style at that.
Sword uses:
Fae, Caw, & Delver - F&F and F&I
Bant - W&P & F&I
Martyr Proc - L&S
Draft My Cube!
Uhh, If modern has taught you anything is that you shouldn't compare old irrelevant formats with current ones. You are talking about a whole seperate context with quite a few essential cards that developed the format to make Birds and Swords the best thing to be doing. This is not a JTMS + SFM format. SFM made a huge impact on the playability of Equipment in general, as "Vial"ing in Swords is a decent plan. Jace was just broken and a pseudo-Ancestral Recall with Squadron Hawk.
Modern looks nothing like this. Decks combo consistently on t4 (Twin, Storm, Pod), kill you on t4 (RDW and Boros variants), disrupt you (Jund), or just plain go bigger than you (Trons) t4....No real time in this format, in general, to cast a hawk t2 and a sword t3....if you getinto the late game and can cast Hawks with counter magic you are winning anyway. Swords are NOT in any deck but CawBlade right now, and CawBlade is no where near the power level that it had in Standard.
I have never seen a Sword in a Delver deck in Modern. Maybe early before people knew what they were doing, but they are not now. I also remember recently that someone did okay in a few dailies with a basically Standard Delver list with Path to Exile as the only addition from the Modern card pool...not sure how this is better than Caw Blade except the fact that the deck has Invisible Stalker...
Modern Knights? lol. Nice example.
They are not great in an aggro heavy meta. You need time to cast and equip them. Most of the time, if they are in your hand early game, you miss out on drawing something relevant to either counter or kill what your opponents are throwing at you. Managing your life total is important in an aggro heavy meta, and haging a sword that I can't do anything with, reliably, until maybe t5 does not sound like something I want to be doing...
Okay..so Batterskull is one exception. Maybe. But Batterskull is a good card by itself.
The swords are too slow for this format, barring a couple of niche decks and I don't think they are even good there.
Fae does not use swords. If they do, it is a bad fae list.
Caw does, think I said that. Delver does not. I would like to see these jank lists you guys keep dreaming up.
Bant is not even a real deck.
Martyr does not nees swords if it runs emeria.
Nice try. Your format understanding seems solid
I play all of these decks you guys claim use swords. Pretty successfully I might add. So yeah...
My Caw Blade has been shifting away from non Batterskull swords in favor of Vedalken Shackles for obvious reasons.
I played and 3-1'd and 4-0'd dailies at the beginning of the season with an Esper Fae list. Since Mono U was developed, there has not been another Fae list with Swords.
EDIT: just combed the last two weeks of Dailies and, yeah, guess I am wrong...
ONE (!) RUG Delver deck had 2 MD Swords of FaF
ONE(!) RUG Delver had 1 Sword of WaP SB
2 Decks out of maybe 150. Split hairs much?
Maybe we need a list of decks that actually placed in PTQs and GPs (tho it would be hard to really call those lists relevant right now). I don't think anyone questions that Caw uses swords more than any other deck. Your assessment in this regard is not inaccurate. The use of swords is not very broad, thanks to the lack of SFM, but they're still used sparsely, smattered across a variety of competitive decks.
CG
Thank god..
Draft My Cube!
But they are BAD is what I am saying.
Also, I may be pretentious, but isn't it equally pretentious to assume someones' format knowledge based off of one post?
So I guess that the OP has an answer to all his/her questions then?
I don't play modern, so I'm asking. But what is the current state of sword usage in Modern such as Sword of Fire and Ice.
I provided what I thought was an accurate answer to the question. I assumed he/she meant competitively and not decks that almost no one plays.
Are the swords considered a little too slow?
I offered my opinion of this, for which I was flamed. I think they are slow and there are better ways to survive/propel your game to the next stage of the game.
Are they in high use? Occasionally used?
Again, I thought my answer to this was covered and reasonable. Others didn't.
Really, dude?
Did I stwike a newve about what I said about your wittwe swordz? lol
My thoughts exactly. That post was certainly noteworthy of it's smugness, so much in fact that I applaud it. However, you really should try to be less condescending when trying to make a point on a forum so people are more likely to discuss the point rather than rage and flame at you. That's called trolling, and you can get banned for that.
****-slinging aside:
It doesn't matter whether it's best to run a sword or not, people still run them because they're good. I didn't say they were the best, but people still do it, so arguing that no one uses them is just ignorant, regardless of what you see in the dailies on MTGO. You may not see that many top lists running swords, but I see plenty of swords in modern both in paper and online.
Also, have you ever played tribal knights? It's a real deck and is therefore a very reasonable example of a deck that employs swords. Just because it's not tier 1 doesn't mean we can't use it as an example here. As a jund player, my biggest nightmare is a mirran crusader with a sword of fire and ice on it and I've definitely lost a few games against my buddy for that reason.
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