That top 8 looks fine, 40% is a bit worrisome but those are pretty interactive decks
You have 2 Delver decks, 1 Pod deck, and 2 decks that are heavily underplayed but have awesome Pod matchups (RG Tron, RG Breach). So 5 of your top decks are there because of the struggle between Pod and Delver. Add to that all the data from the last 3 months, the last 2 GPs, and the day 2 metagame of this GP, and you have a format with some problems. Banning TC probably solves all those problems.
So what exactly should Tron and RG Breach be to be "healthy"? All of those decks are really strong in their own right, it's not like it's Machinehead from Worlds 2001 or Astral Slide with 4 MD Oxidizes.
What are you even talking about? No one is saying that RG Breach or Tron are an "unhealthy" format.... its the fact that going into Day 2, 40% of the field was playing Pod or UR delver... 40%!!! how is that healthy? That means if you played 7 rounds, you would have played 3 or 4 matches against pod or delver. I honestly dont think Modern has ever been so warped... even during the Jund with BBE/DRS days
Compare this to the metagame of earlier this year which had a healthy exchange between Affinity, Twin, Scapeshift, BGx Midrange, Pod, etc. Now, we have a GP where 40% of the day2 metagame is either TC decks or decks that beat TC decks.
Have you checked your calendar lately? On topic the meta is healthy, this is a small sample size.
That means if you played 7 rounds, you would have played 3 or 4 matches against pod or delver.
lol, so you might play against Delver once and Pod twice? You are likely to have to play against the best two (and they're very different decks) in the format once or twice, oh the humanity!
It's a slightly better than what was expected (UR delver being undoubtedly the best), but far from ideal. I mean, Pod is 23% of the day 2 meta. That's pretty awful and almost jund levels.
>7 different decks in the Top 8 (and diversity in the cards within the decks, this isn't a Legacy GP where 7 of the decks are running Brainstorm)
>People still try to come up with arguments this shows the format isn't healthy.
>7 different decks in the Top 8 (and diversity in the cards within the decks, this isn't a Legacy GP where 7 of the decks are running Brainstorm)
>People still try to come up with arguments this shows the format isn't healthy.
Okay.
Top 8 isn't representative of anything. This is a pretty poor argument in the face of 40% Delver/Pod in day 2.
>7 different decks in the Top 8 (and diversity in the cards within the decks, this isn't a Legacy GP where 7 of the decks are running Brainstorm)
>People still try to come up with arguments this shows the format isn't healthy.
Okay.
Ya just keep ignoring the Day 2 meta data.... its completely a healthy format when 40% of the day 2 meta is 2 decks.
Compare this to the metagame of earlier this year which had a healthy exchange between Affinity, Twin, Scapeshift, BGx Midrange, Pod, etc. Now, we have a GP where 40% of the day2 metagame is either TC decks or decks that beat TC decks.
Have you checked your calendar lately? On topic the meta is healthy, this is a small sample size.
No, this is yet another data point that confirms that the metagame is unhealthy. Delver has never dropped below about 17% of the metagame since October, and Pod has been rising since mid-October from about 2-3% of the paper metagame to 17%+. That is not healthy and it's all on the back of TC and Delver. This metagame is just another degree worse than the day 2 metagames at the previous two GPs.
That means if you played 7 rounds, you would have played 3 or 4 matches against pod or delver.
lol, so you might play against Delver once and Pod twice? You are likely to have to play against the best two (and they're very different decks) in the format once or twice, oh the humanity!
Isawa_Chuckles day 1 matches...
My Matches (7-2, no Byes):
Round 1: U/R Delver
Round 2: U/R Delver
Round 3: RUG Delver
Round 4: America Delver
Round 5: U/R Delver [Sam Black, got run over on camera :D)
Round 6: Affinity (My other loss)
Round 7: RUG Delver
Round 8: U/R Delver
Round 9: American Burn Cruise
If you figure the day 2 meta is probably more condensed and less of a chance to play that random rogue deck.. I would say the chance of multiple matches between Delver and Pod are likely.
Ended up 10-5 (no Byes), but had a lot of fun at the event. It was pretty shoddily run both days; pairings boards not working, wrong pairings listed, wrong *standings* listed (which got Shenhar to draw instead of playing, which put him in 9th), repairs, having people get free wins in the first 3-rounds of day 1 by playing against people with byes (Pretty magical to be 2-2 coming into the event round 3 :D), and 40 minutes of processing time per round.
Played Pod (Rock), lost to Combo (Paper), beat Delver/Burn (Scissors) and other Pods, lost to Shenhar and Sam Black.
People in the room were not super excited to be there.
I live in Omaha, and I can tell you, it's stupid to schedule a GP there in January, especially a week after Denver, and a week before the Pre-releases.
Was a little salty at being 1168 players in the main event. 32 more people and I'd-a had some money today. Nice for the TOs though, I guess, good Entry-Fee-to-Payout ratio
Had Treasure Cruise cast against me 5 times in one game and still won the game. That's how bad Delver's match-up is against Pod
I'd give it another GP. The disconnect between the day 2 meta being supposedly unhealthy and the top 8 being quite diverse calls into question how trustworthy a snapshot of the format's health this GP is, at least on its own.
In that I have my doubts as to how much of this isn't just player behavioral trends, that TC's impact on the format is just one big hype train barreling through and that after a while it'll just fade out or something...
I'd give it another GP. The disconnect between the day 2 meta being supposedly unhealthy and the top 8 being quite diverse calls into question how trustworthy a snapshot of the format's health this GP is, at least on its own.
In that I have my doubts as to how much of this isn't just player behavioral trends, that TC's impact on the format is just one big hype train barreling through and that after a while it'll just fade out or something...
We have 3 day 2 GP metagames in the last period, each less healthy than the last. The T8 is also heavily defined by TC polarization, even if it doesn't actually have a lot of TC itself. When you add to that the general perception of the cards in this format, as well as all the events that led up to this point, the GP just becomes the capstone for what is already an unhealthy looking Modern.
>7 different decks in the Top 8 (and diversity in the cards within the decks, this isn't a Legacy GP where 7 of the decks are running Brainstorm)
>People still try to come up with arguments this shows the format isn't healthy.
Okay.
Ya just keep ignoring the Day 2 meta data.... its completely a healthy format when 40% of the day 2 meta is 2 decks.
Well, for starters, that's two decks, not one. If this was one deck performing that astoundingly well, that might be a problem, but we're talking about two.
Second, what is extremely important is not simply the Day 2 meta, but to what degree the Day 2 meta transitions to the Top 8. And the dramatically increased diversity indicates that Delver and Pod's high percentages in Day 2 likely comes more from simple popularity than the decks legitimately being overpowered.
The meta could improve a little, which is why I support unbans, but I don't think it's as bad as some people seem to be insisting.
Do you think they should ban Siege Rhino in standard? People are talking about how diverse the format is but it's still very much built around 1 card that has even worse day 2 percentages than what you are bringing up here.
Standard is different. Monoblack Devotion got percentages last Standard that would be banned in Modern.
Do you think they should ban Siege Rhino in standard? People are talking about how diverse the format is but it's still very much built around 1 card that has even worse day 2 percentages than what you are bringing up here.
Standard is different. Monoblack Devotion got percentages last Standard that would be banned in Modern.
Not to mention at one point, the top 10 spells played in Standard were all black.
Do you think they should ban Siege Rhino in standard? People are talking about how diverse the format is but it's still very much built around 1 card that has even worse day 2 percentages than what you are bringing up here.
Standard is different. Monoblack Devotion got percentages last Standard that would be banned in Modern.
Not to mention at one point, the top 10 cards played in Standard are all black.
That's absolutely impossible, because Mutavault was most certainly not Black, and that saw more play than any other card last Standard season.
#2-#10 being all Black wouldn't be inaccurate, though.
Do you think they should ban Siege Rhino in standard? People are talking about how diverse the format is but it's still very much built around 1 card that has even worse day 2 percentages than what you are bringing up here.
Standard is obviously a very different format from Modern for a number of reasons. As is Legacy. As is Vintage. So the way that we interpret their metagames would be very different from the way we might interpret ours. Would there be similarities? Sure! Would it be done in an identical way? Probably not.
All I know is that when Modern GPs look like this for a few months in a row, Wizards isn't happy. I would still like to see the T16, but that day 2 metagame is just horrible and it's hard to get around that fact.
The argument that the format is somehow unhealthy is a shallow one that equates health to a diversity of decks.
While I can understand how boring this is to spectators and casual players devoted to the format, there is a difference
between that and what tends to happen with broken formats(ex: Ice Age+4th Ed.standard or Tempest+Urza's standard).
There are stagnant formats where there is a fair amount of homogeneity among top decks and I think that is what people are
griping about because unhealthy formats are ones that are defined by matches where the player who has the hot tech
is the only one who is actually able to play magic. For instance, if Modern's top decks were non-interactive combo engine
decks(ex: Eggs, Storm, Ascendancy, etc), or if the only decks that could hang are ones that run super-expensive cards, like Goyf or JtMS, then it would be unhealthy.
Another elephant in the room is how incredibly cheap cruise decks are(burn and delver come to mind), plus the fact that
pod has been a format mainstay since the format began. Looking at UR Delver, builds without tarns manage to 3-1 and 4-0
regularly online, which speaks volumes for the power of the deck and also its accessibility.
No, I do not even play Treasure Cruise decks- my perspective comes from having more important things to do than fret about
whether or not I'll be able to get away with playing a pet deck at my LGS and finish in packs.
Sure, the Modern format has been warped by Cruise, but the fact is that's how most competitive formats work: they
revolve around powerful cards and the decks that abuse them the best. This might be a lame time for people who spend more time reading and discussing Modern than playing it, but in the long run, the affordability of decks like fish, burn or delver are going
to help wet a lot of appetites for playing Modern that may not have been wet otherwise.
Long story short- people who dislike something trivial, like the state of a card game's format should just leave it that and get on with their day, rather than wasting time concocting empirical arguments to justify their tastes.
So 2 Cruise decks in the top 8 are an issue? Realistically the TC issue is more digital than paper. Big paper events have a % of TC decks. It isn't even as close to what DRS did. A few months ago I would have agreed on a ban but to me it looks like the format is self correcting. You only have to wait a little bit and this will be a known thing.
I'm happy with the Amulet deck getting to a finals. Please tell me the person who saw that coming?
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In case I didn't tell you, I don't care about your opinion I just want your facts. And not the facts that make you seem smart. I want the ones that are actual facts.
If you really want to shake things up then get rid of Treasure Cruise and Birthing Pod.
But oh wait Birthing Pod is fine, even though 1-2 Pod decks place every Top 8 and have been a higher percentage of the meta for years.
What are you even talking about? No one is saying that RG Breach or Tron are an "unhealthy" format.... its the fact that going into Day 2, 40% of the field was playing Pod or UR delver... 40%!!! how is that healthy? That means if you played 7 rounds, you would have played 3 or 4 matches against pod or delver. I honestly dont think Modern has ever been so warped... even during the Jund with BBE/DRS days
Have you checked your calendar lately? On topic the meta is healthy, this is a small sample size.
It's a slightly better than what was expected (UR delver being undoubtedly the best), but far from ideal. I mean, Pod is 23% of the day 2 meta. That's pretty awful and almost jund levels.
>People still try to come up with arguments this shows the format isn't healthy.
Okay.
Top 8 isn't representative of anything. This is a pretty poor argument in the face of 40% Delver/Pod in day 2.
Ya just keep ignoring the Day 2 meta data.... its completely a healthy format when 40% of the day 2 meta is 2 decks.
No, this is yet another data point that confirms that the metagame is unhealthy. Delver has never dropped below about 17% of the metagame since October, and Pod has been rising since mid-October from about 2-3% of the paper metagame to 17%+. That is not healthy and it's all on the back of TC and Delver. This metagame is just another degree worse than the day 2 metagames at the previous two GPs.
Isawa_Chuckles day 1 matches...
My Matches (7-2, no Byes):
Round 1: U/R Delver
Round 2: U/R Delver
Round 3: RUG Delver
Round 4: America Delver
Round 5: U/R Delver [Sam Black, got run over on camera :D)
Round 6: Affinity (My other loss)
Round 7: RUG Delver
Round 8: U/R Delver
Round 9: American Burn Cruise
If you figure the day 2 meta is probably more condensed and less of a chance to play that random rogue deck.. I would say the chance of multiple matches between Delver and Pod are likely.
That Junk is really bad against Twin, which showed that he knows nothing about Modern.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Played Pod (Rock), lost to Combo (Paper), beat Delver/Burn (Scissors) and other Pods, lost to Shenhar and Sam Black.
People in the room were not super excited to be there.
I live in Omaha, and I can tell you, it's stupid to schedule a GP there in January, especially a week after Denver, and a week before the Pre-releases.
Was a little salty at being 1168 players in the main event. 32 more people and I'd-a had some money today. Nice for the TOs though, I guess, good Entry-Fee-to-Payout ratio
Had Treasure Cruise cast against me 5 times in one game and still won the game. That's how bad Delver's match-up is against Pod
In that I have my doubts as to how much of this isn't just player behavioral trends, that TC's impact on the format is just one big hype train barreling through and that after a while it'll just fade out or something...
He basically said you can't trust French or Portuguese players, they are most likely to cheat.
We have 3 day 2 GP metagames in the last period, each less healthy than the last. The T8 is also heavily defined by TC polarization, even if it doesn't actually have a lot of TC itself. When you add to that the general perception of the cards in this format, as well as all the events that led up to this point, the GP just becomes the capstone for what is already an unhealthy looking Modern.
Second, what is extremely important is not simply the Day 2 meta, but to what degree the Day 2 meta transitions to the Top 8. And the dramatically increased diversity indicates that Delver and Pod's high percentages in Day 2 likely comes more from simple popularity than the decks legitimately being overpowered.
The meta could improve a little, which is why I support unbans, but I don't think it's as bad as some people seem to be insisting.
Standard is different. Monoblack Devotion got percentages last Standard that would be banned in Modern.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
#2-#10 being all Black wouldn't be inaccurate, though.
Standard is obviously a very different format from Modern for a number of reasons. As is Legacy. As is Vintage. So the way that we interpret their metagames would be very different from the way we might interpret ours. Would there be similarities? Sure! Would it be done in an identical way? Probably not.
All I know is that when Modern GPs look like this for a few months in a row, Wizards isn't happy. I would still like to see the T16, but that day 2 metagame is just horrible and it's hard to get around that fact.
While I can understand how boring this is to spectators and casual players devoted to the format, there is a difference
between that and what tends to happen with broken formats(ex: Ice Age+4th Ed.standard or Tempest+Urza's standard).
There are stagnant formats where there is a fair amount of homogeneity among top decks and I think that is what people are
griping about because unhealthy formats are ones that are defined by matches where the player who has the hot tech
is the only one who is actually able to play magic. For instance, if Modern's top decks were non-interactive combo engine
decks(ex: Eggs, Storm, Ascendancy, etc), or if the only decks that could hang are ones that run super-expensive cards, like Goyf or JtMS, then it would be unhealthy.
Another elephant in the room is how incredibly cheap cruise decks are(burn and delver come to mind), plus the fact that
pod has been a format mainstay since the format began. Looking at UR Delver, builds without tarns manage to 3-1 and 4-0
regularly online, which speaks volumes for the power of the deck and also its accessibility.
No, I do not even play Treasure Cruise decks- my perspective comes from having more important things to do than fret about
whether or not I'll be able to get away with playing a pet deck at my LGS and finish in packs.
Sure, the Modern format has been warped by Cruise, but the fact is that's how most competitive formats work: they
revolve around powerful cards and the decks that abuse them the best. This might be a lame time for people who spend more time reading and discussing Modern than playing it, but in the long run, the affordability of decks like fish, burn or delver are going
to help wet a lot of appetites for playing Modern that may not have been wet otherwise.
Long story short- people who dislike something trivial, like the state of a card game's format should just leave it that and get on with their day, rather than wasting time concocting empirical arguments to justify their tastes.
I'm happy with the Amulet deck getting to a finals. Please tell me the person who saw that coming?
Cockatrice username: Blackcat77
But oh wait Birthing Pod is fine, even though 1-2 Pod decks place every Top 8 and have been a higher percentage of the meta for years.
I Stream MTGO on Twitch: broodwarjc
I also post recordings of those streams on Youtube: broodwarjcavidgamer
Standard Deck:
BUPirates
Modern Deck:
B8-Rack
I called it about halfway through Day 1. Granted, my opinion matters very little, and the only people that heard me express this were my wife and dog.