MTG Salvation

Quote from Lord Seth »

Quote from Godec »

Quote from zerodown »

Jund didn't win, karma did.

Quote from Lantern »

And modern proves, yet again, that it has the tools to adapt to shifting metas.

Please tell that to all the anti-SFM ragers in the ban thread.

Karma for what? Players being bad?

Might have been a reference to Huang getting a Mountain off of a Polluted Delta, but I'm not sure.

he cracked scalding tarn also. he just did the order weird.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

Hell no, BBE definitely needs to be free

Abbot of Keral Keep is your Modern BBE. Lacks haste, but isn't a 4 drop either.

Quote from ktkenshinx »

Also, i dont want to hear a peep from the free bloodbraid crowd for at least six months.

I don't think this one result can make up for the general lack of success jund is having right now. The stars may have aligned for this one player but day 2 showings even at this event were poor for jund. Same goes for quite a few recent events.
If grishoalbrand had won overall, you wouldn't take that isolated player's result as an indicator that the deck was suddenly successful. Same here. Abzan is the true midrange success story of this tournament in terms of numbers. You yourself made a comment about day-2 decks being the best metric rather than concentrating just on the guy who wins.

Bloodbraid elf still needs to have the ban lifted. The metagame is no friendlier to jund, and it still feels like a massive underdog and mostly not worth playing in this landscape. Grats to the guy who was ballsy enough to take it all the way. Luck was definitely on his side.

Sorry, I just got back from the GP Oakland, so I missed what happened here.

Bloom is still just too good. It must have won on turn 2 on the play in every single match, but the Bloom players still decided to scoop to their opponents so they wouldn't feel badly. It still definitely needs a ban, being a much better deck than Twin/Affinity/Jund/Burn.

Or they had a turn 2 win every game on the play, but failed to see it because the deck is so difficult to play. Good pilots win on turn 2 no matter what.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

Sorry, I just got back from the GP Oakland, so I missed what happened here.

Bloom is still just too good. It must have won on turn 2 on the play in every single match, but the Bloom players still decided to scoop to their opponents so they wouldn't feel badly. It still definitely needs a ban, being a much better deck than Twin/Affinity/Jund/Burn.

Or they had a turn 2 win every game on the play, but failed to see it because the deck is so difficult to play. Good pilots win on turn 2 no matter what.

Yeah. I'm with you there. All this "ban"wagon nonsense with bloom is getting to be a running joke.

I heard it from 3 of the people I went with to GP Oakland all the way back. These are players that have played Modern less than a year. It is the popular opinion, as I can see.

Am I the only one who thinks this Top 32 is horrible? I mean, the only actual blue deck that did anything was UR Twin. There is absolutely no sign of anything resembling control, not even grixis at top 32. We barely have 12 copies of snapcaster in the top 32 and all come from UR Twin.

Top 32 looks like you either kill fast (affinity, burn, naya, naya), refuse to interact and do your own thing or go BGx. Nice exception are the 2 Kiki Chord decks.

Quote from TheMoonshield »

Quote from Ym1r »

Am I the only one who thinks this Top 32 is horrible? I mean, the only actual blue deck that did anything was UR Twin. There is absolutely no sign of anything resembling control, not even grixis at top 32. We barely have 12 copies of snapcaster in the top 32 and all come from UR Twin.

Top 32 looks like you either kill fast (affinity, burn, naya, naya), refuse to interact and do your own thing or go BGx. Nice exception are the 2 Kiki Chord decks.

If your metric for defining an healthy top is the % of snapcaster being played, no this isn't an ealthy top if, if the metric is the % of interactive decks i think that this top is better than others we have recently.
Also i consider naya company as a fair deck if not the most fair deck in the format, at least much fair than twin wich can combo you out on t4.

My metric is not the % of snapcasters. This is just an observation for people who claim that snapcaster is overpower.

However it is pretty clear that control has no place in modern right now. The ONLY control deck that made day 2 is a UB faeries deck (which I am pretty happy about) but we don't even know the list, it could be a less controlly and more aggressive version.

In terms of blue as a main color we only have 8 UR Twin, 3 Merfolk, 1 UR Delver, 1 UB faeries, 1 Mono Blue tron in the entire day 2 (I don't consider infect as a deck with U as a main color obviously).

If you want to play blue you play either combo (Twin) or aggro (Merfolk). This trend follows the previous SCG open where control is simply dying. I think this will also reflect in the pro tour.

Yes this is a, relatively, diverse top 32. Top 8 looks good because of 8 different decks, I don't think top 32 is as diverse because there is a lot of repetition. The lack of any possible control or reactive options is disturbing however.

I agree

The critical mass of ur twin is definitely why somehow jund won. It's pretty weird to even say it, but jund was a massive underdog in this entire tournament. Even that matchup against Cho was a VERY bad for Jund

But all this shows is that sometimes you get lucky in the pairings. Jund had performed very poorly these past few months. If anything, Junk was the big winner of this tournament, they're definitely the future and Jund will be in tier 2 despite winning this tournament if things continue like this

It's too bad UR Twin is the closest thing to control modern has. It's why I really hope stoneforge is unbanned, I imagine esper decks, azorious decks, and jeskai decks would emerge

BBE was still a card that should have never been banned. I'm surprised to hear kenshin really say anything, he's always going by numbers and statistics, was she too broken? Is she still?

Why are people even discussing things like, "BAN TRON LANDS", "BAN SERUM VISIONS" "BAN THE ELDRAZI"

Take the awful ban suggestions to the other threads. I hate Tron. HATE IT, it's one of my least favorite decks in modern, but it's absolutely fine. It can't do anything to combo, it helps police the meta, and without it, decks like UR Twin would be getting beaten down by GBx decks

I like that the Naya Company list is close to Kibler's take on Naya Zoo.

Quote from TheMoonshield »

Well my comment was sarcastic i'm pretty sure that no one would realisticaly base the healthness of a top on the number of snapcasters; however i was refering to your assertion of considering a deck fair only if it's blue/control/draw-go and not considering fair decks bw tokens, naya company and abzan company.
Speaking of control decks is unrealistic that one of them could do well in a meta filled with tron and now also eldrazi.deck but this is nothing new control is lacking from modern is a concern that cannot be solved simply by unbanning vision/jace 'cause the meta is evolving in a detrimental position for control. Maybe the only way to make it come back is the ban of urza's lands but this is out of discussion unless tron reaches higer meta shares.

I didn't say we lack fair decks, there obviously are some fair decks in day 2 and yeah naya company is generally a fair deck, although it can be pretty aggressive. I don't see abzan company as a really fair deck but that is a different story.

What I am pointing out is not only the lack of control but also the lack of blue based decks which can do well.

In the past opens a lot of people have claimed that control is not dead because grixis control has shown up some results here and there. Also a lot of people have claimed that Snapcaster is a ban-able unfair card.

I am saying that right now, as it was pretty clear from 2 consecutive events 1) you can't go reactive or control, 2) if you are blue based, you better be twin or merfolk.

I obviously am biased towards blue because I play mainly blue decks, and I'll continue to do so. However the data here have nothing to do with my bias. The last 2 opens and the current modern meta-game is so much against any blue-based and/or control-aggro/control strategies that it leans towards not being healthy.

I agree that blue needs some kinda help without making Twin so much better

I wouldn't classify Abzan Company as a fair-deck, it CAN beat you down, but it's not what it's trying to do

Abzan company was just gold-fishing against Naya Zoo and Goryos vengeance in the top 8. So boring to watch

That Zoo player had a great game against UR Twin, at least that involved fun interactions and good plays by both players, even though Zoo absolutely spanked Twin

I didn't even feel bad about the pithing needle issue, I was bored with the solitaire both players were doing and just wanted to see Twin v Jund

It's not just RG Tron

Modern, as of now, is not a very good reactive format. linear aggro decks and combo's are too proactive and efficient

The only reason Twin works is because of the threat of the combo

Im not sure why people are looking at the results and saying "controls dead, unban/print better control cards." Thats not how metas work. Control isnt "great" in modern because there are too many decks that beat it. That doesnt mean control needs to be powered up, but either the decks that beat it need to be powered down or the decks that beat the decks that beat control need to be powered up.

Zoo was doing terriblely in modern. Modern wad filled with pod. Pod got banned. Zoo suddenly was a deck. The power level of zoo didnt change that much (collected company replaced walkers, thats about it) just the deck that beat it got nerfed.

On sort of the same note, hate bears was doing pretty bad until the printing of k command. While that card helped jund, the fact that twin suddenly surged in numbers, so did hatebears. Hate bears got nothing to power it up, but the decks it beats did.

Thats how a meta works. So if eldrazi, tron become awesome? Cool, combo decks can prey on it and get better. Then control has a reason to be played.

Control as its powerlevel stands is fine, as proven by grixis already being a thing less than half a year ago. What it lacks is decks for it to beat, thus a reason to play it.

This is now officially a satellite of the banlist thread, so I'm locking it down. Please continue the discussion in that official thread.

Thread locked