This is your opinion and your definition of "oops I win", which doesn't have an objective definition. For me personally it's oops I win, when they draw a Snapcaster Mage to double bolt me, when I have a stronger board. Or topdecking Abrupt Decay to destroy my Ensnaring Bridge, when I could ulti Elspeth next turn. Or drawing Wrath of God when I have lethal on board, only to finish me off two turns after that. Or drawing Proclamation of Rebirth to recur two Martyr, that I stripped from his hand, sac them to get to more than 30 life and bash in with 6/6 flying lifelink creatures. Or topdecking Lingering Souls to get 4 3/3 flying tokens, after I wrathed the field twice.
Exactly.
In standard, I've been playing various aggro decks, mostly zombie variants. I'd say 75% of games I've lost have been due to thragtusk. Usually I can fight through one, but there's a whole lot of games where they draw 2 (or 3), or the next turn I see restoration angel, and suddenly they're 10 life higher and I'm facing 3+ hefty bodies, so I lose. As much as thragtusk/angel drives me crazy, I have to admit that if they weren't in standard, zombies would be a LOT more powerful. And if that were the case, they'd be played by a lot more people. Playing the zombie mirror all day wouldn't be fun either.
If you're playing against any good deck, there's going to be a whole lot of situations where the opponent can topdeck from a loss to a win. Topdecking the last combo piece is no different from topdecking the ONE card in your deck that you needed at the time when you're playing aggro.
I mean right now Modern is looking for an identity. That identity will be found in one of two ways. Either through bannings or unbannings. Ideally I'd like to see more unbannings than bannings but I think the card pool isn't large enough yet for the format to be able to self adjust, hence certain cards and interactions are pretty broken.
My whole point with this thread is to say that by removing clock decks that don't allow for adequate interaction there would be an opportunity for other kinds of decks to emerge. One kind of deck that is a pretty good example is mill. Currently there are a couple ideas going on with Mindcrank but mill has been almost entirely abandoned in no small part, I assume, because of the clock. Now that's not to say all decks with a clock should be eliminated, certainly not. I mean Zoo has a 3/4 turn clock but what makes it different is the amount of interaction in the game.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
My whole point with this thread is to say that by removing clock decks that don't allow for adequate interaction there would be an opportunity for other kinds of decks to emerge. One kind of deck that is a pretty good example is mill. Currently there are a couple ideas going on with Mindcrank but mill has been almost entirely abandoned in no small part, I assume, because of the clock. Now that's not to say all decks with a clock should be eliminated, certainly not. I mean Zoo has a 3/4 turn clock but what makes it different is the amount of interaction in the game.
Mill doesn't exist because it is a bad deck in a format where over half the decks benefit from having cards in the graveyard. If you want to make mill viable, you'd have to ban snappy, all flashback cards, necrotic ooze, drs, goryo's vengeance, the legendary eldrazi (am I forgetting anything?) and you'd still have a bad deck because its easier to do 20 damage than 60.
Also, according to your own definition, how is mill NOT qualify as an uninteractive combo? Topdecking the last glimpse the unthinkable you need isn't "oops I win"?
Umm that's not my definition. I never defined the oops thing.
And mill was just the first casual deck that came to mind using an alternate win condition.
And honestly top decking any card that could win the game can never be prevented(from a rules standpoint). What I 'm talking about is losing on turn 2 in a 4 turn format and don't say it can't happen because it does and if your top decking by then well that's a feat in and of itself.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
And honestly top decking any card that could win the game can never be prevented(from a rules standpoint). What I 'm talking about is losing on turn 2 in a 4 turn format and don't say it can't happen because it does and if your top decking by then well that's a feat in and of itself.
Every turn 2 combo deck I can think of is extremely unreliable and very vulnerable to disruption of any kind. That is also true of turn 3 decks. Here are a few I can think of. It isn't an exhaustive list, but it is representative. Some of these combos aren't even from real decks, but rather just illustrative examples.
All of these combos have two things in common apart from them being theoretical turn 2-3 wins.
First, they all involve 3+ cards. On turn 2, you have a roughly 7% chance of having all of your pieces assembled. It goes up to about 10% on turn 3. So even on the goldfish, you are only going to get that 3 card win every 1 in 10 games. The Storm hand would be even less likely; you would be lucky to see that in 1 in 20 games.
Second, and this relates to the first point, they are all extremely fragile. A single removal spell messes up all of the creature based combos, whether a Path to Exile or a Lightning Bolt. Both Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek also ruin all of these combos. On the draw, you would also have to face down Mana Leak, Izzet Charm, and a variety of other CMC 2 disruption tools.
When you combine the fragility of the combos with their draw dependence, you have a bunch of decks that are just too inconsistent to cause format damage. Not only do you need to draw your combo pieces by turn 2-3 (a ~10% chance for 3+ card combos), but you need to hope your opponent doesn't draw a single disruption spell when he is probably running at least 6. Assuming he's running 6 (say, 3 Paths/3 Bolts or something), he would be likely to draw at least 1 in his opening hand in about 50% of games. So you would only be able to combo off unimpeded in less than 5% of all your own hands.
There is nothing wrong with losing to combo in 5% of games off a god draw, just as there is nothing wrong with getting locked out of the game by control with similar hands in at least 5% of their games.
EDIT: Simplified the Melira Pod combo to its 3 card version.
Question: Why play the BOP in the pod combo. If your talking best case scenario you only need seer melira and finks. You need the BOP for the Redcap but infinite life is pretty much gg against any deck that's not running an infinite damage combo. (That's the combo I nearly pulled off last night. And on top of that I had another seer and an e witness in my hand to back it up. But, alas I went of turn 5 because of being short one land.)
I understand they are fragile but at the same time it only takes one card to make them stable, so the fragile argument is a lot like the dies to removal one.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
If you think the deck that you're playing against is not interactive, maybe you're the one who needs to play a more interactive deck and stop playing combo. After all, everything is combo.
Question: Why play the BOP in the pod combo. If your talking best case scenario you only need seer melira and finks. You need the BOP for the Redcap but infinite life is pretty much gg against any deck that's not running an infinite damage combo. (That's the combo I nearly pulled off last night. And on top of that I had another seer and an e witness in my hand to back it up. But, alas I went of turn 5 because of being short one land.)
I edited the post and just included the infinite life combo.
I understand they are fragile but at the same time it only takes one card to make them stable, so the fragile argument is a lot like the dies to removal one.
It is not just that these combos are fragile. It is that they ALSO require 3+ cards, AND that at least 1 of those cards tends to be a creature.
The big difference between 2 and 3 card combos is consistency. You can see a two card combo in about 20% of games by turn 2-3, but that's only a problem if that combo is actually winning on those turns.
If you have a 2 card combo threatening to win 20% of its games on turn 2 and 3, it's too fast for a turn 4 format. It doesn't matter if that combo is theoretically fragile; the speed factor alone means that it will often outrace even dedicated hate. Blazing Shoal is a particularly bad offender in this regard because it didn't even cost any mana. Hypergenesis is another equally bad because you could effectively run 10 copies of a 1 card combo (the cascade engines).
Once we bump the card requirements up to 3, however, we only have the combo in 10% of games. This makes it twice as unlikely to draw, and 50% more vulnerable to disruption.
This is compounded by the fact that all of Modern's 3 card combos are creature-based. Creature removal is everywhere in this format, both in the maindeck and sideboard. You are likely to face at least 6-8 removal spells in game 1 alone, which reduces your win chance to only around 5% off a dumb-luck 3 card draw.
If all the numbers seem a bit abstract, then I just encourage you to test them out in practice. Run the 3 card combo decks through your testing gauntlets. Sometimes they will win, sometimes they will not, and you are likely to see win rates hovering around 50/50 in most matchups. See how many turn 3 kills you get over the course of dozens of games against various decks. Try it against good players too, not just non-competitive decks and opponents. Admittedly, Pod is a bit of an oddity because it is a combo deck that tends to lose to other combo decks, but you will still get a better sense of deck strengths and weaknesses in the format.
Banning all game-ending combos isn't realistic in the slightest. Do you ban Mindcrack for comboing with Duskmantle Guildmage? Do you ban every single infect and/or pump spell? What about that Nivmagus Elemental deck that can win on T2? Or Griselbrand for causing Tin Fins? What exactly is the piece that makes Eggs a turn 4 deck? That list up above is just a number of options. Heck, even an aggro deck with just a moderately nutty draw can win on T3.
None of those combos are even truly tier one, but all of them can happen, and all of them can kill by or before T3. Can they do it with any kind of consistency? No, and especially not with Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek in the format. The T4 rule should only apply to the truly dominant decks. It's good that glass cannon decks can win earlier, because that means that you need to be able to interact with them, which makes for a more interactive format. Otherwise, stuff like Tron would dominate, because the decks that would otherwise punch them in the face for not running Turn 1 and 2 interaction don't exist. Then you have to ban them. Guess what's left? Standard, with a slightly larger card pool.
It's why Legacy has managed to be such a successful format. Do you complain when ANT or Dredge gets a nut draw and kicks the crap out of you on turn 1? No, because you've prepared for that. Sideboard in storm and graveyard hate, deal with their crucial spell, and watch them fold. It's worth noting that the older the constructed format, the longer that the average games tend to be.
But see its also so limiting in that you have to take up either main deck slots or sb slots to deal with specific deck strategies. I mean I really think that's why dredge and Affinity are more or less neutered in modern. But the same can be said for any consistent combo. Sure you can hate them out but if it severely hinders your decks purpose, how is that fun?
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
The format already looks incredibly childish banning a ton of fun cards but arbitrarily allowing other powerhouses to exist. It needs less bans to gain diversity and be interesting, more bans will kill the fragile creature.
Sounds like Modern is not the format for you. Many are enjoying the format as it is.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Combo should be in every format. It is good for modern unless it takes 15 minute turns and is incredibly boring. For example, splinter twin is fine for modern.
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"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not." - John Lennon
I'm personally not a fan of combo. Yes, others enjoy playing it, but it's personally not my favourite. One thing I enjoy from a game is interaction, and combo is very much anti-interaction. In addition, it frequently requires some exotic card you probably don't have in your side board in order to protect yourself. Milling, infinite lifegain, or simple 'I win' cards are annoying to deal with, as the only universal answer to them is counterspelling (and maybe hand disruption).
What I much prefer is decks with synergy: cards that work well together but don't require some weird combination to win. Splinter Twin doesn't automatically win when it combos off, nor does it set some condition where it is impossible to for them to lose. And there are many ways of fighting splinter twin beyond counter spell, and those cards are actually useful enough to be included in a normal deck.
I'm not advocating a change to the format, this is only my opinion.
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Things WotC cares about:
-making certain Standard cards can be played in Modern, therefore increasing their value and increasing WotC's profit margin
Things WotC does not care about:
-keeping the ban list as short as possible
-taking chances with an entire format for the benefit of a single card
-catering to play styles that newer players generally don't like and will lose them more players than it will gain
-keeping the meta balanced between archetypes/colors/whatever
-keeping cards on the secondary market cheap (available yes, but not cheap)
-keeping the meta diverse (as long as a single deck doesn't threaten the popularity of the format)
@Bocephus- I only put that because I read many of your posts on the banned thread and I believe you have advocated for a much more expansive ban list as a means to help create modern's identity. While not certain I agree, it would be a way to shepherd in a fledgling format.
Now when you say oppressive, that's kinda what I'm trying to get at with the entire combo archetype. I mean by its very design, combo is oppressive. Whether its through non interaction or turns allowed.
@A.J.-Thanks for your opinion. That's more or less what I'm looking for.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
A deck can be oppressive, but not oppressive to the format. The combo deck also has to work with in the guidelines of the format its being played in. The natural desire for combo players is to break the format with a deck, but then they get upset when said deck gets something banned out of it bringing back with in the guidelines.
The other thing when talking about combo and combo players, a good combo player can ensure they win a match up 2-0 or 1-0. Good combos work the clock, which a good combo player understands. Its much like a good top player can control the speed of a match to ensure a win.
I am an advocate for more bans, tome its the only way to regulate this format. But banning things just to ban is not the way to go. If it opens up a spot to multiple cards, I am all for that.
But see its also so limiting in that you have to take up either main deck slots or sb slots to deal with specific deck strategies. I mean I really think that's why dredge and Affinity are more or less neutered in modern.
It is not "limiting" to use sb slots to deal with specific deck strategies. That is the POINT of sideboards. Sideboards exist specifically to deal with certain deck strategies, so we better hope that they are packed with customized answers. It's just as annoying to stick Pyroclasm in the board to deal with aggro, or Dispel to deal with control.
Now, if the maindeck was full of anti-combo cards, that would be a problem. Thankfully, that just isn't the case in Modern. The spells that work against combo are also just the best in their class period.
All of these spells would be at the top of their game even if there wasn't a single Pestermite, Blighted Agent, or Griselbrand in the format. Yes, there are some removal spells that are more combo specific, Sudden Death being the most obvious on this category, and Combust being another example. But the vast, vast majority of creature removal spells in this format are played not because they mess up combo, but because they are just plain good. It's just an incidental advantage that they also screw with combo plans.
Another list of cards that are just plain good independent of combo's existence. Yes, we don't exactly have our own Force of Will to hold the format together and keep things honest. But we do have this list of strong control staples, cards which work against every deck in the format. They are just as effective against Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary as they are against Birthing Pod and Splinter Twin.
Again, if decks were forced to maindeck cards dedicated to stopping combo, that would be a problem. Affinity is an excellent example of such a deck; you either played Affinity or maindecked garbage like Molder Slug just to stop it. Dredge wasn't quite as bad, but it warped maindeck choices towards combo-specific hate. Modern does not have any of this going on currently.
I agree with what ktkenshinx said, most solution to combo pieces are found with cards that are already in the deck, unless you don't run any when running a specific colour, eg playing white but not playing path to exile then its not the combo deck's fault.
Its like playing burn without lightning bolts. =\
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Combos are a necessary part of the game. The main reason they're so common in modern is that good countermagic is so scarce. If we had counterspell or daze, along with strong draw like ancestral visions, combo would have a much tougher match up against certain decks. But in the absence of that, if you took the combo out of modern, all you'd have left is midrange.
But see its also so limiting in that you have to take up either main deck slots or sb slots to deal with specific deck strategies. I mean I really think that's why dredge and Affinity are more or less neutered in modern. But the same can be said for any consistent combo. Sure you can hate them out but if it severely hinders your decks purpose, how is that fun?
Part of your sideboard should be dedicated to combo hate. I think it's fair; you can have 6 cards for aggro, 5 for control and 4 for combo. It sure beats something like 8 cards for aggro, 7 for control and 0 for combo (if combo decks didn't exist) - you have so many slots for every deck in the format, there would never be difficult deck-building decisions where you have to choose between packing hate for X but losing to Y as a consequence and vice versa. I feel that that's a good thing for tournament play: not being able to beat every deck with your 75 forces you to predict the meta, knowing which decks will be less popular, as well as knowing which matchups are so hopeless for your deck that you play 0 hate and hope to avoid them instead of trying to sideboard against them.
Everyone starts off learning to play with creatures, so they know how to deal with creatures - play kill spells. When they encounter combos for the first time, they're at a loss, because most combos don't use creatures. A little delving into the inner workings of a combo will tell you that counterspells, discard and grave hate do a lot against them.
A good player picks this up, and applies it to his deck. He plays combo hate in his sideboard, and utility cards which hate on combo in his maindeck (e.g. aforementioned counters & discard, Aven Mindcensor, Vendilion Clique, Deathrite Shaman, or Relic of Progenitus in Tron). A bad player is unwilling to learn or change, so he whines about how combo is broken, unfun, or that there are no good counters against that strategy.
The bottom line is that combo decks need to be fast and consistent enough to race aggro decks, but still slow and fragile enough that the answers in the format will allow control decks to defeat them with disruption, counters, or removal etc.
If the aggro decks are too fast or control's answers too slow, eventually the format stagnates as more and more people move towards combo if the expected win % vs. the field is advantageous. The format then pushes towards a combo, gets rebuffed by an anti-combo-deck, the anti-combo wanes in popularity as it reaches critical mass of metagame share, then combo takes over again and the cycle starts anew. That's the definition of format warp.
We haven't see anything that bad in Modern yet, but Skullclamp in Extended and Legacy was definitely in this downward spiral before it got banned, and Affinity was similar in Block and Standard before its core was banned.
I don't think Modern has ever hit this kind of problem, though it is highly possible that full-power Storm, elves, affinity, etc could do such a thing. WotC was pretty proactive in addressing it with bans at the outset of trouble, so we'll never know. Gut feeling is the Turn 4 Rule for banning is going to be a necessity until answers - especially the hard counters - get stronger and come down sooner.
If the aggro decks are too fast or control's answers too slow, eventually the format stagnates as more and more people move towards combo if the expected win % vs. the field is advantageous. The format then pushes towards a combo, gets rebuffed by an anti-combo-deck, the anti-combo wanes in popularity as it reaches critical mass of metagame share, then combo takes over again and the cycle starts anew. That's the definition of format warp.
Isn't this cycle exactly descriptive of Dredge in Legacy?
I feel that "format warping" is only attained when you have to be able to beat X, or your deck is immediately unviable. Just like Jund before BBE's ban. Regular ups and downs in a deck's popularity are OK.
If "the field" consists of regular decks that have a chance against X by dedicating 4 SB slots, then that's OK. What's not OK is having an entire deck focused on beating X. GW Hatebears as the anti-Jund was an indication that Jund was too good to be unrestrained.
What is bad for Modern is the ban list. The format becomes unhealthy when you are constantly destroying the meta over and over. How is BBE worth banning? Jitte? Bitterblosom? Ancestral Visions? Wild Nacatl (this one is so funny)? From the list the only 2 cards I consider probably too much OP are Mental Misstep and Jace. The rest of the cards are very fun cards that enable amazing decks.
I don't like being told what is fun and what is "broken". Give us new tools to fight the meta instead of destroying it.
My 2 cents
From the list the only 2 cards I consider probably too much OP are Mental Misstep and Jace.
The only 2 cards on the banned list that are broken are mm and jace, lol
skullclamp and hypergensis are way more broken then mm and jace
back on topic i think that combo can play a vital role in the meta game of course if combo becomes too strong deck building has to become too reactionary and it just leads to a cycle not unlike dredge in legacy and vintage
i think that most creature based combos are very much safer to be running free in an relatively low powered format like modern and i think thats where the bannings have been pushing the format to one based more around aggro decks, tempo/control decks, midrange decks, and creature based combo decks and i while i have a blast playing TES in legacy non interactive decks of that kind are a bit much in what i see WotC going with modern
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Exactly.
In standard, I've been playing various aggro decks, mostly zombie variants. I'd say 75% of games I've lost have been due to thragtusk. Usually I can fight through one, but there's a whole lot of games where they draw 2 (or 3), or the next turn I see restoration angel, and suddenly they're 10 life higher and I'm facing 3+ hefty bodies, so I lose. As much as thragtusk/angel drives me crazy, I have to admit that if they weren't in standard, zombies would be a LOT more powerful. And if that were the case, they'd be played by a lot more people. Playing the zombie mirror all day wouldn't be fun either.
If you're playing against any good deck, there's going to be a whole lot of situations where the opponent can topdeck from a loss to a win. Topdecking the last combo piece is no different from topdecking the ONE card in your deck that you needed at the time when you're playing aggro.
My whole point with this thread is to say that by removing clock decks that don't allow for adequate interaction there would be an opportunity for other kinds of decks to emerge. One kind of deck that is a pretty good example is mill. Currently there are a couple ideas going on with Mindcrank but mill has been almost entirely abandoned in no small part, I assume, because of the clock. Now that's not to say all decks with a clock should be eliminated, certainly not. I mean Zoo has a 3/4 turn clock but what makes it different is the amount of interaction in the game.
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I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Mill doesn't exist because it is a bad deck in a format where over half the decks benefit from having cards in the graveyard. If you want to make mill viable, you'd have to ban snappy, all flashback cards, necrotic ooze, drs, goryo's vengeance, the legendary eldrazi (am I forgetting anything?) and you'd still have a bad deck because its easier to do 20 damage than 60.
Also, according to your own definition, how is mill NOT qualify as an uninteractive combo? Topdecking the last glimpse the unthinkable you need isn't "oops I win"?
And mill was just the first casual deck that came to mind using an alternate win condition.
And honestly top decking any card that could win the game can never be prevented(from a rules standpoint). What I 'm talking about is losing on turn 2 in a 4 turn format and don't say it can't happen because it does and if your top decking by then well that's a feat in and of itself.
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I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Every turn 2 combo deck I can think of is extremely unreliable and very vulnerable to disruption of any kind. That is also true of turn 3 decks. Here are a few I can think of. It isn't an exhaustive list, but it is representative. Some of these combos aren't even from real decks, but rather just illustrative examples.
INFECT
Turn 1: Glistener Elf
Turn 2: Groundswell/Might of Old Krosa, Assault Strobe
SOULEATER
Turn 1: Simian Spirit Guide, Immolating Souleater
Turn 2: Assault Strobe, pay 18 life, swing.
GRISELBRAND
Turn 1: Faithless Looting --> discard Griselbrand
Turn 2: Goryo's Vengeance, draw 14 cards, 2 Fury of the Horde + 4 red spells.
STORM (Can be done on turn 3 with one less card)
Turn 2: Tap lands (UR let's say)
Simian Spirit Guide (URR)
Pyretic Ritual (URRR) (Storm 1)
Desperate Ritual (splicing second) Desperate Ritual (RRRRRR) (Storm 2)
Desperate Ritual (RRRRRRR) (Storm 3)
Past in Flames (RRR) (Storm 4)
GY Pyretic Ritual (RRRR) (Storm 5)
GY Desperate Ritual (RRRRR) (Storm 6)
GY Desperate Ritual (RRRRRR) (Storm 7)
Pyromancer's Swath (RRR) (Storm 8)
Grapeshot (R) (Storm 9)
MELIRA POD
Turn 1: Viscera Seer
Turn 2: Melira
Turn 3: Kitchen Finks
All of these combos have two things in common apart from them being theoretical turn 2-3 wins.
First, they all involve 3+ cards. On turn 2, you have a roughly 7% chance of having all of your pieces assembled. It goes up to about 10% on turn 3. So even on the goldfish, you are only going to get that 3 card win every 1 in 10 games. The Storm hand would be even less likely; you would be lucky to see that in 1 in 20 games.
Second, and this relates to the first point, they are all extremely fragile. A single removal spell messes up all of the creature based combos, whether a Path to Exile or a Lightning Bolt. Both Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek also ruin all of these combos. On the draw, you would also have to face down Mana Leak, Izzet Charm, and a variety of other CMC 2 disruption tools.
When you combine the fragility of the combos with their draw dependence, you have a bunch of decks that are just too inconsistent to cause format damage. Not only do you need to draw your combo pieces by turn 2-3 (a ~10% chance for 3+ card combos), but you need to hope your opponent doesn't draw a single disruption spell when he is probably running at least 6. Assuming he's running 6 (say, 3 Paths/3 Bolts or something), he would be likely to draw at least 1 in his opening hand in about 50% of games. So you would only be able to combo off unimpeded in less than 5% of all your own hands.
There is nothing wrong with losing to combo in 5% of games off a god draw, just as there is nothing wrong with getting locked out of the game by control with similar hands in at least 5% of their games.
EDIT: Simplified the Melira Pod combo to its 3 card version.
I understand they are fragile but at the same time it only takes one card to make them stable, so the fragile argument is a lot like the dies to removal one.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
L1 Judge
I edited the post and just included the infinite life combo.
It is not just that these combos are fragile. It is that they ALSO require 3+ cards, AND that at least 1 of those cards tends to be a creature.
The big difference between 2 and 3 card combos is consistency. You can see a two card combo in about 20% of games by turn 2-3, but that's only a problem if that combo is actually winning on those turns.
If you have a 2 card combo threatening to win 20% of its games on turn 2 and 3, it's too fast for a turn 4 format. It doesn't matter if that combo is theoretically fragile; the speed factor alone means that it will often outrace even dedicated hate. Blazing Shoal is a particularly bad offender in this regard because it didn't even cost any mana. Hypergenesis is another equally bad because you could effectively run 10 copies of a 1 card combo (the cascade engines).
Once we bump the card requirements up to 3, however, we only have the combo in 10% of games. This makes it twice as unlikely to draw, and 50% more vulnerable to disruption.
This is compounded by the fact that all of Modern's 3 card combos are creature-based. Creature removal is everywhere in this format, both in the maindeck and sideboard. You are likely to face at least 6-8 removal spells in game 1 alone, which reduces your win chance to only around 5% off a dumb-luck 3 card draw.
If all the numbers seem a bit abstract, then I just encourage you to test them out in practice. Run the 3 card combo decks through your testing gauntlets. Sometimes they will win, sometimes they will not, and you are likely to see win rates hovering around 50/50 in most matchups. See how many turn 3 kills you get over the course of dozens of games against various decks. Try it against good players too, not just non-competitive decks and opponents. Admittedly, Pod is a bit of an oddity because it is a combo deck that tends to lose to other combo decks, but you will still get a better sense of deck strengths and weaknesses in the format.
None of those combos are even truly tier one, but all of them can happen, and all of them can kill by or before T3. Can they do it with any kind of consistency? No, and especially not with Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek in the format. The T4 rule should only apply to the truly dominant decks. It's good that glass cannon decks can win earlier, because that means that you need to be able to interact with them, which makes for a more interactive format. Otherwise, stuff like Tron would dominate, because the decks that would otherwise punch them in the face for not running Turn 1 and 2 interaction don't exist. Then you have to ban them. Guess what's left? Standard, with a slightly larger card pool.
It's why Legacy has managed to be such a successful format. Do you complain when ANT or Dredge gets a nut draw and kicks the crap out of you on turn 1? No, because you've prepared for that. Sideboard in storm and graveyard hate, deal with their crucial spell, and watch them fold. It's worth noting that the older the constructed format, the longer that the average games tend to be.
Cubetutor Link
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Sounds like Modern is not the format for you. Many are enjoying the format as it is.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I have no problem with combo, as long as its not a dominate deck or oppressive to the format, just as I feel about any other archetype of decks.
What I much prefer is decks with synergy: cards that work well together but don't require some weird combination to win. Splinter Twin doesn't automatically win when it combos off, nor does it set some condition where it is impossible to for them to lose. And there are many ways of fighting splinter twin beyond counter spell, and those cards are actually useful enough to be included in a normal deck.
I'm not advocating a change to the format, this is only my opinion.
-making certain Standard cards can be played in Modern, therefore increasing their value and increasing WotC's profit margin
Things WotC does not care about:
-keeping the ban list as short as possible
-taking chances with an entire format for the benefit of a single card
-catering to play styles that newer players generally don't like and will lose them more players than it will gain
-keeping the meta balanced between archetypes/colors/whatever
-keeping cards on the secondary market cheap (available yes, but not cheap)
-keeping the meta diverse (as long as a single deck doesn't threaten the popularity of the format)
Now when you say oppressive, that's kinda what I'm trying to get at with the entire combo archetype. I mean by its very design, combo is oppressive. Whether its through non interaction or turns allowed.
@A.J.-Thanks for your opinion. That's more or less what I'm looking for.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
The other thing when talking about combo and combo players, a good combo player can ensure they win a match up 2-0 or 1-0. Good combos work the clock, which a good combo player understands. Its much like a good top player can control the speed of a match to ensure a win.
I am an advocate for more bans, tome its the only way to regulate this format. But banning things just to ban is not the way to go. If it opens up a spot to multiple cards, I am all for that.
It is not "limiting" to use sb slots to deal with specific deck strategies. That is the POINT of sideboards. Sideboards exist specifically to deal with certain deck strategies, so we better hope that they are packed with customized answers. It's just as annoying to stick Pyroclasm in the board to deal with aggro, or Dispel to deal with control.
Now, if the maindeck was full of anti-combo cards, that would be a problem. Thankfully, that just isn't the case in Modern. The spells that work against combo are also just the best in their class period.
REMOVAL
All of these spells would be at the top of their game even if there wasn't a single Pestermite, Blighted Agent, or Griselbrand in the format. Yes, there are some removal spells that are more combo specific, Sudden Death being the most obvious on this category, and Combust being another example. But the vast, vast majority of creature removal spells in this format are played not because they mess up combo, but because they are just plain good. It's just an incidental advantage that they also screw with combo plans.
DISRUPTION
Another list of cards that are just plain good independent of combo's existence. Yes, we don't exactly have our own Force of Will to hold the format together and keep things honest. But we do have this list of strong control staples, cards which work against every deck in the format. They are just as effective against Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary as they are against Birthing Pod and Splinter Twin.
Again, if decks were forced to maindeck cards dedicated to stopping combo, that would be a problem. Affinity is an excellent example of such a deck; you either played Affinity or maindecked garbage like Molder Slug just to stop it. Dredge wasn't quite as bad, but it warped maindeck choices towards combo-specific hate. Modern does not have any of this going on currently.
Its like playing burn without lightning bolts. =\
Modern : Huh?
EDH : UBGW Thrasios / Tymna Combo UBGW // GRW Mayael Big Stuff GRW // GU Edric Timewalkers GU
Part of your sideboard should be dedicated to combo hate. I think it's fair; you can have 6 cards for aggro, 5 for control and 4 for combo. It sure beats something like 8 cards for aggro, 7 for control and 0 for combo (if combo decks didn't exist) - you have so many slots for every deck in the format, there would never be difficult deck-building decisions where you have to choose between packing hate for X but losing to Y as a consequence and vice versa. I feel that that's a good thing for tournament play: not being able to beat every deck with your 75 forces you to predict the meta, knowing which decks will be less popular, as well as knowing which matchups are so hopeless for your deck that you play 0 hate and hope to avoid them instead of trying to sideboard against them.
Everyone starts off learning to play with creatures, so they know how to deal with creatures - play kill spells. When they encounter combos for the first time, they're at a loss, because most combos don't use creatures. A little delving into the inner workings of a combo will tell you that counterspells, discard and grave hate do a lot against them.
A good player picks this up, and applies it to his deck. He plays combo hate in his sideboard, and utility cards which hate on combo in his maindeck (e.g. aforementioned counters & discard, Aven Mindcensor, Vendilion Clique, Deathrite Shaman, or Relic of Progenitus in Tron). A bad player is unwilling to learn or change, so he whines about how combo is broken, unfun, or that there are no good counters against that strategy.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
If the aggro decks are too fast or control's answers too slow, eventually the format stagnates as more and more people move towards combo if the expected win % vs. the field is advantageous. The format then pushes towards a combo, gets rebuffed by an anti-combo-deck, the anti-combo wanes in popularity as it reaches critical mass of metagame share, then combo takes over again and the cycle starts anew. That's the definition of format warp.
We haven't see anything that bad in Modern yet, but Skullclamp in Extended and Legacy was definitely in this downward spiral before it got banned, and Affinity was similar in Block and Standard before its core was banned.
I don't think Modern has ever hit this kind of problem, though it is highly possible that full-power Storm, elves, affinity, etc could do such a thing. WotC was pretty proactive in addressing it with bans at the outset of trouble, so we'll never know. Gut feeling is the Turn 4 Rule for banning is going to be a necessity until answers - especially the hard counters - get stronger and come down sooner.
Speculate less. Test more.
Isn't this cycle exactly descriptive of Dredge in Legacy?
I feel that "format warping" is only attained when you have to be able to beat X, or your deck is immediately unviable. Just like Jund before BBE's ban. Regular ups and downs in a deck's popularity are OK.
If "the field" consists of regular decks that have a chance against X by dedicating 4 SB slots, then that's OK. What's not OK is having an entire deck focused on beating X. GW Hatebears as the anti-Jund was an indication that Jund was too good to be unrestrained.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
I don't like being told what is fun and what is "broken". Give us new tools to fight the meta instead of destroying it.
My 2 cents
The only 2 cards on the banned list that are broken are mm and jace, lol
skullclamp and hypergensis are way more broken then mm and jace
back on topic i think that combo can play a vital role in the meta game of course if combo becomes too strong deck building has to become too reactionary and it just leads to a cycle not unlike dredge in legacy and vintage
i think that most creature based combos are very much safer to be running free in an relatively low powered format like modern and i think thats where the bannings have been pushing the format to one based more around aggro decks, tempo/control decks, midrange decks, and creature based combo decks and i while i have a blast playing TES in legacy non interactive decks of that kind are a bit much in what i see WotC going with modern