What the heck makes Jeskai more 'blue' than GDS? Vice versa?
Because the lines of play, options for play, desired outcomes, and kinds of cards to facilitate those lines are all completely different. This one in particular has always stood out because of the difference between relying on discard and cheap, big threats (like Jund) or with counterspells, burn, and incremental tempo plays using weak creatures (like Jeskai). They are so fundamentally different it is insulting to group them together.
I'm grouping them that way because they are categorically dismissed in that grouping.
You say you don't like people creating narratives then literally tell us you are grouping these together to support your own narrative.
The Modern we have is diverse with over two dozen totally viable decks that can take down major events. That's Wizards' vision for the format and that is why it is so extremely popular.
Modern's popularity and its ability to have a wide range of viable, competitive decks is nothing new, nor exclusive to post-Twin, post-Probe bannings. The only reason this feels so unique is because of how unbelievable awful and miserable all of 2016 and much of 2017 was.
And yet, the same top players consistently have as much success in Modern ... If Modern was as chaotic, unpredictable, and skill-less as the detractors would have us believe...
1. Who is saying it is skill-less?
2. The people consistently having success are likely due to their tight play, sure, but also due to being able to switch decks at the drop of a hat (sometimes day of the event) in order to get the best advantage over the field. Many "normal" players do not have this luxury.
3. They also usually come in with 2-3 byes, which is monumentally important for long term and consistent success.
I agree that this is likely exactly what Wizards wants out of the format, but I disagree that hiding behind data walls and causing chaos through masked information is the best way to do it. Especially when previous eras of Modern were equally heralded as healthy, diverse, and wildly popular.
Regarding poor matchups for Hollow One, Humans and Affinity. Outside of that, Bogles does super well. Storm probably does, but I don't know from personal experience. Company decks are similar enough to Humans to give them some trouble blocking as well, especially with multiple Kitchen Finks if Hollow One doesn't explode or do lethal before the Vizier Combo.
Nothing is really overwhelmingly bad, but since I can't give a statistic here (since it is my own anecdotal matchup analysis), I'll just leave it at that.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
What the heck makes Jeskai more 'blue' than GDS? Vice versa?
Because the lines of play, options for play, desired outcomes, and kinds of cards to facilitate those lines are all completely different. This one in particular has always stood out because of the difference between relying on discard and cheap, big threats (like Jund) or with counterspells, burn, and incremental tempo plays using weak creatures (like Jeskai). They are so fundamentally different it is insulting to group them together.
I'm grouping them that way because they are categorically dismissed in that grouping.
You say you don't like people creating narratives then literally tell us you are grouping these together to support your own narrative.
The Modern we have is diverse with over two dozen totally viable decks that can take down major events. That's Wizards' vision for the format and that is why it is so extremely popular.
Modern's popularity and its ability to have a wide range of viable, competitive decks is nothing new, nor exclusive to post-Twin, post-Probe bannings. The only reason this feels so unique is because of how unbelievable awful and miserable all of 2016 and much of 2017 was.
And yet, the same top players consistently have as much success in Modern ... If Modern was as chaotic, unpredictable, and skill-less as the detractors would have us believe...
1. Who is saying it is skill-less?
2. The people consistently having success are likely due to their tight play, sure, but also due to being able to switch decks at the drop of a hat (sometimes day of the event) in order to get the best advantage over the field. Many "normal" players do not have this luxury.
3. They also usually come in with 2-3 byes, which is monumentally important for long term and consistent success.
I agree that this is likely exactly what Wizards wants out of the format, but I disagree that hiding behind data walls and causing chaos through masked information is the best way to do it. Especially when previous eras of Modern were equally heralded as healthy, diverse, and wildly popular.
I am grouping them that way to challenge your narrative and the narrative of others. If you propose a narrative, we should all test that narrative with available data. In this case, the narrative is unfounded.
As for the diversity of the format, I don't know if it's more or less diverse than it once was. I never claimed it was/wasn't. I do know that the Pod era was probably less diverse just by virtue of having Delver and Pod at a collective 30%+ of the format.
Jeskai flash was a highly viable deck pre-unbans, and I'd argue it still is. People are just infatuated by JTMS. That being said, to say GDS isn't blue is nonsense. It's blue. It just isn't a slow plodding blue. So...it's a better blue because it has control elements and speed. Pardon me for thinking deck A just being fundamentally better than Deck B is more a slight against Deck B than the format in which they are played.
And then there's around 20 more decks with 2-4 matches. So I guess if I was to create popularity tiers based on this, Tier 1 would be Humans, Hollow One, Jund, Tron, Affinity and Burn.
Add a few (3-5) UWR, and UW decks, and this is any number of Day 2 events, or within spitting distance.
Jeskai flash was a highly viable deck pre-unbans, and I'd argue it still is. People are just infatuated by JTMS. That being said, to say GDS isn't blue is nonsense. It's blue. It just isn't a slow plodding blue. So...it's a better blue because it has control elements and speed. Pardon me for thinking deck A just being fundamentally better than Deck B is more a slight against Deck B than the format in which they are played.
Geist has been increasingly poor in the face of go-wide aggro (or really any blocker bigger than a 1/1). And with the resurgence of Lightning Bolt, Queller has become much, much worse. I played Jeskai tempo variants (usually with Geist) almost exclusively since about summer of last year, but have completely switched to Blood Moon variants in the last few months. Somewhat because of Jace, but also because Geists and Quellers were getting wrecked.
But it is blue. It's not a blue reactive control deck, but it is a blue deck. Jund is a green deck, as well as black and red, even though it only plays like 10 green cards.
But it is blue. It's not a blue reactive control deck, but it is a blue deck. Jund is a green deck, as well as black and red, even though it only plays like 10 green cards.
If you want to call it that, sure. But it has much less in common with what are traditionally considered "blue" decks, and much more with what are traditionally considered "black" decks (and specifically BGx midrange) in terms of construction and play style. I have the entire deck built, mostly with foils and signed cards. I played it for months and months (including GP Vegas last year) and that is my view of the deck.
The theory of "what color" a deck is is very easy; look at its manabase and the breakdown of pips in its cards, combined that tells you what color a deck is. Jund is black, GDS is black, Jeskai is blue, Humans is white, Bogles is white, Mardu is black (but as close to even split as you can get just about). Tron is brown, affinity is brown, titanshift is green, RUG scapeshift is blue.
Splashes are interesting, but you can see by the different decks the black midrange shell is used in that it is what's strong, and the splash cards are less important (mardu and Jund for example have quite a lot of overlap).
What archetype is a different question that's very muddy. Most control decks in modern for example have many midrange elements. Which is fine, no judgment there just commentary. The archetype system is not particularly pure in modern because it's got a lot of weird stuff, and nobody can ever categorize a big mana deck consistently
You can still pretty much qualify most decks as midrange-control, combo, big mana and aggro fairly easily and that's mostly how I think about it.
The more I've been thinking about it, I'm not sure my feelings on color imbalance are really accurate or appropriate.
(Lots of the below is feelings based not quantitative, sorry)
First, I'll admit to being biased toward white, specifically. I dig white weenie decks, and I like Stoneforge mystic. I played D&T in legacy for a long while. So when I look at modern, i see that really the only legitimately viable white decks there have ever been are Humans and Bogles. Every other white deck is medium at best; none of the D&T decks ever really place consistently and they just suck to play -- too inconsistent, low power level, etc. And honestly I've played Bogles a lot...it's medium. It only takes a minimum of hate to drive it out of the meta.
So fundamentally the only good white deck in modern's history has been humans. White sees splashes, etc. Humans is an aggro-control deck that's relatively linear and has the play style it has.
Before humans, I think I was right; I think White was an awful color, there's never been a core white deck that was any good. The control cards were bad, the midrange cards were bad, the aggro and combo cards were bad, and it had no real support for big mana.
With humans I'm not sure what to think, I think maybe I'm imposing my desire for a white based midrange deck and maybe it's just fine that White is primarily good at aggro-control in modern and black is great at midrange, and blue is pretty good at control, etc.
Early on it seems like blue and red are the most represented colors in modern, but I haven't normalized those to say how many different cards are seeing play or anything yet. Even then I'm not sure what to draw from it.
I might do manabases next after I get a nice list of decks.
But it is blue. It's not a blue reactive control deck, but it is a blue deck. Jund is a green deck, as well as black and red, even though it only plays like 10 green cards.
If you want to call it that, sure. But it has much less in common with what are traditionally considered "blue" decks, and much more with what are traditionally considered "black" decks (and specifically BGx midrange) in terms of construction and play style. I have the entire deck built, mostly with foils and signed cards. I played it for months and months (including GP Vegas last year) and that is my view of the deck.
Why is only blue this way though. I can make a black deck like jund, death shadow, an aggro deck, or a tribal deck or even a faeries. I can make a green deck like tron or scapeshift, or ponza, or value town. Why do we limit blue by saying that all blue decks have to be reactive control decks otherwise they aren't blue no matter what cards they play. I mean what color is Merfolk?
If those decks were good people would play them regardless of how long it takes to go through a league. Every 3 months there's a couple weeks when people think jeskai is good, normally after some of those 3 dudes did well at an Open and the leagues are plagued with them. 2 weeks later everyone has realized the deck sucks and no one plays it any longer.
Same for UW, when it bashed DS decks into a good winrate you saw them all the time, regardless of the 4 hours per league.
Same for Lantern.
We are talking about a metagame dominated by Humans, Hollow One, Burn and Affinity, and people still don't play Jeskai.
So in my head Jeskai has a losing matchup against all of those except humans, which is probably fairly close to 50/50
Obviously that's just my opinion based on playing it but whatever.
i wouldnt get caught up on the colors. many, including myself, have been using the term 'blue decks' to refer to the classic control archetype. this is probably a mistake as now we are arguing aimlessly about what decks constitute being whatever color based on whether it aligns with everyones internal definition of color philosophy.
take a step back and look at playstyles and archetypes. if you think something is missing, underrepresented, or weak then start from there.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
This came up long long ago, where Twin wasnt 'blue'.
Its just a difference of definition. Blue as a play style, vs Blue as the primary colours, etc.
Either way, looking forward to the GP.
That's why it's particularly funny about GDS. It neither fits the playstyle nor the primary colors. But since it runs Snapcasters and cantrips, it's "Blue"
I'd argue the first step is to determine whether every playstyle and archetype can ever exist simultaneously at the top of a format. I say its impossible with a limited card pool, even a large one. If we only lose one type of deck in the form of plodding blue-based control...i'm cool with that. I like control, but I maintain that midrange fits the role of control in the format by offering disruption and a clock together.
If we only lose one type of deck in the form of plodding blue-based control...i'm cool with that.
Wasn't one of the biggest, and most controversial bans in the history of the format touted as specifically the thing to allow blue-based control to flourish? And that multiple successive unbans were to allow blue-based control to flourish? And hasn't Wizards specifically said they want such an archetype to continue and succeed in Modern? I mean, if we're just talking about what we don't want in the format, I'm cool with never seeing Urza lands or Eldrazi Temple ever again...
If we only lose one type of deck in the form of plodding blue-based control...i'm cool with that.
Wasn't one of the biggest, and most controversial bans in the history of the format touted as specifically the thing to allow blue-based control to flourish? And that multiple successive unbans were to allow blue-based control to flourish? And hasn't Wizards specifically said they want such an archetype to continue and succeed in Modern? I mean, if we're just talking about what we don't want in the format, I'm cool with never seeing Urza lands or Eldrazi Temple ever again...
Now that is pretty blatant cherrypicking of a post. Did you not realize that my point was that, in the absence of a perfect format with equal representation of all deck types and styles, losing just one narrow category is something I consider an acceptable outcome? Because, in fact, I'd be okay with that situation if it was creature aggro that barely existed, or spell based combo, or synergy-driven glass cannons, or three color goodstuffs, or incremental valuetowns.
There are certain mechanics that are just better than others when it comes to winning within a certain game.
For example Tempo/Turbo Xerox innately is just going to be better in magic than a creature based aggro deck.
If a deck is pushed out of the meta, sometimes its just because the cards aren't powerful enough to compensate for its innate power level. When Wild Nacatl was unbanned, it showed that creature based aggro wasn't there yet in terms of meta shifting cards.
When it comes to banning an unbanning cards, what is the goal of our format? Do we want to just play with as many cards as we can? Do we want the most interactive games possible? What about a combination of both?
If unban, lets say, Stoneforge Mystic, and lets say that creature based aggo dies, we need to identify if it was really that good in the first place, or was it because something like Stoneforge is really that powerful? Or Twin? In what Twin was doing, was that the most powerful thing that a deck can do when it comes to the Modern Format? (When I say powerful, I mean trying to reach a 50%+ average win rate across the board)
These are just some thoughts i was thinking about when I read the previous few posts
If we only lose one type of deck in the form of plodding blue-based control...i'm cool with that.
Wasn't one of the biggest, and most controversial bans in the history of the format touted as specifically the thing to allow blue-based control to flourish? And that multiple successive unbans were to allow blue-based control to flourish? And hasn't Wizards specifically said they want such an archetype to continue and succeed in Modern? I mean, if we're just talking about what we don't want in the format, I'm cool with never seeing Urza lands or Eldrazi Temple ever again...
Now that is pretty blatant cherrypicking of a post. Did you not realize that my point was that, in the absence of a perfect format with equal representation of all deck types and styles, losing just one narrow category is something I consider an acceptable outcome? Because, in fact, I'd be okay with that situation if it was creature aggro that barely existed, or spell based combo, or synergy-driven glass cannons, or three color goodstuffs, or incremental valuetowns.
It would be very different if Wizards had similar words and actions for literally any other archetype over the past two and a half years since banning the premiere example of that very archetype.
January 2016 "We considered what one would do with the cards from a Splinter Twin deck with Splinter Twin banned. In the case of some Jeskai or Temur, there are very similar decks to build. In other cases, there is Kiki-Jiki as a replacement."
April 2016 "While there are some control decks that would use Ancestral Vision, it is an underplayed portion of the metagame. To allow for an increase in the number of blue-based control or attrition decks, we are unbanning Ancestral Vision." Also "To allow for an increase in the number of controlling combo decks in the format, we are unbanning Sword of the Meek."
January 2017 "[Gitaxian Probe] hurt the ability of reactive decks to effectively bluff"
February 2018 "In watching the format evolve, we've observed that decks seeking to control the game have struggled against the speed and variety of threats present in the format... Our hope is that Jace will ... give controlling decks an alternative way to close out prolonged games."
And based on their most recent statements of goals, hopefully more unbans are on the horizon to help: "And so, in the aftermath of this Pro Tour, rather than making bans to weaken the best-performing or winning decks, we've instead chosen to open up additional options, primarily to decks that were not among the most popular."
There are certain mechanics that are just better than others when it comes to winning within a certain game.
For example Tempo/Turbo Xerox innately is just going to be better in magic than a creature based aggro deck.
If a deck is pushed out of the meta, sometimes its just because the cards aren't powerful enough to compensate for its innate power level. When Wild Nacatl was unbanned, it showed that creature based aggro wasn't there yet in terms of meta shifting cards.
When it comes to banning an unbanning cards, what is the goal of our format? Do we want to just play with as many cards as we can? Do we want the most interactive games possible? What about a combination of both?
If unban, lets say, Stoneforge Mystic, and lets say that creature based aggo dies, we need to identify if it was really that good in the first place, or was it because something like Stoneforge is really that powerful? Or Twin? In what Twin was doing, was that the most powerful thing that a deck can do when it comes to the Modern Format? (When I say powerful, I mean trying to reach a 50%+ average win rate across the board)
These are just some thoughts i was thinking about when I read the previous few posts
WOTC has made diversity of decks a clear goal. That can benefit any deck or style in terms of decision-making. When you talk about interactive games, that almost always means favoring midrange and control. My goal is to win the game lol, whether I grind my opponent out long enough to attack one last time, stop them from accomplishing their goal entirely, or just get the "i win" cards together quick enough doesn't matter much to me.
Why is only blue this way though. I can make a black deck like jund, death shadow, an aggro deck, or a tribal deck or even a faeries. I can make a green deck like tron or scapeshift, or ponza, or value town. Why do we limit blue by saying that all blue decks have to be reactive control decks otherwise they aren't blue no matter what cards they play. I mean what color is Merfolk?
Because that's just what people mean when they use the term "blue deck." Don't get too hung up on the actual colors played, it doesn't have anything to do with that. Basically, all "blue decks" play blue, but not all decks that play blue are "blue decks." It's just a short-hand term for "mostly-fair, somewhat-reactive, spell-based control or tempo deck." There's a pretty wide range of decks that meet that description, like Twin, Delver, Grixis Shadow, Jeskai Flash, UW Control, etc. Merfolk doesn't really meet that description because it's not a reactive deck really at all, and it's mostly creature-based.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
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No changes and it's not even close. There's way too much format stability at this point.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Because the lines of play, options for play, desired outcomes, and kinds of cards to facilitate those lines are all completely different. This one in particular has always stood out because of the difference between relying on discard and cheap, big threats (like Jund) or with counterspells, burn, and incremental tempo plays using weak creatures (like Jeskai). They are so fundamentally different it is insulting to group them together.
You say you don't like people creating narratives then literally tell us you are grouping these together to support your own narrative.
Modern's popularity and its ability to have a wide range of viable, competitive decks is nothing new, nor exclusive to post-Twin, post-Probe bannings. The only reason this feels so unique is because of how unbelievable awful and miserable all of 2016 and much of 2017 was.
1. Who is saying it is skill-less?
2. The people consistently having success are likely due to their tight play, sure, but also due to being able to switch decks at the drop of a hat (sometimes day of the event) in order to get the best advantage over the field. Many "normal" players do not have this luxury.
3. They also usually come in with 2-3 byes, which is monumentally important for long term and consistent success.
I agree that this is likely exactly what Wizards wants out of the format, but I disagree that hiding behind data walls and causing chaos through masked information is the best way to do it. Especially when previous eras of Modern were equally heralded as healthy, diverse, and wildly popular.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Nothing is really overwhelmingly bad, but since I can't give a statistic here (since it is my own anecdotal matchup analysis), I'll just leave it at that.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)I am grouping them that way to challenge your narrative and the narrative of others. If you propose a narrative, we should all test that narrative with available data. In this case, the narrative is unfounded.
As for the diversity of the format, I don't know if it's more or less diverse than it once was. I never claimed it was/wasn't. I do know that the Pod era was probably less diverse just by virtue of having Delver and Pod at a collective 30%+ of the format.
Add a few (3-5) UWR, and UW decks, and this is any number of Day 2 events, or within spitting distance.
This as well. I've gone close to time or lost to time, with UWR more than I have Turns.
Spirits
Geist has been increasingly poor in the face of go-wide aggro (or really any blocker bigger than a 1/1). And with the resurgence of Lightning Bolt, Queller has become much, much worse. I played Jeskai tempo variants (usually with Geist) almost exclusively since about summer of last year, but have completely switched to Blood Moon variants in the last few months. Somewhat because of Jace, but also because Geists and Quellers were getting wrecked.
And those saying "GDS isn't blue" aren't just saying it because the core of the deck is black discard spells, black creatures, black card draw, black removal, black utility spells, and black planeswalkers. It's because the fundamental philosophy and play of the deck is completely different than what is normally associated with "blue reactive" decks.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
If you want to call it that, sure. But it has much less in common with what are traditionally considered "blue" decks, and much more with what are traditionally considered "black" decks (and specifically BGx midrange) in terms of construction and play style. I have the entire deck built, mostly with foils and signed cards. I played it for months and months (including GP Vegas last year) and that is my view of the deck.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Splashes are interesting, but you can see by the different decks the black midrange shell is used in that it is what's strong, and the splash cards are less important (mardu and Jund for example have quite a lot of overlap).
What archetype is a different question that's very muddy. Most control decks in modern for example have many midrange elements. Which is fine, no judgment there just commentary. The archetype system is not particularly pure in modern because it's got a lot of weird stuff, and nobody can ever categorize a big mana deck consistently
You can still pretty much qualify most decks as midrange-control, combo, big mana and aggro fairly easily and that's mostly how I think about it.
The more I've been thinking about it, I'm not sure my feelings on color imbalance are really accurate or appropriate.
(Lots of the below is feelings based not quantitative, sorry)
First, I'll admit to being biased toward white, specifically. I dig white weenie decks, and I like Stoneforge mystic. I played D&T in legacy for a long while. So when I look at modern, i see that really the only legitimately viable white decks there have ever been are Humans and Bogles. Every other white deck is medium at best; none of the D&T decks ever really place consistently and they just suck to play -- too inconsistent, low power level, etc. And honestly I've played Bogles a lot...it's medium. It only takes a minimum of hate to drive it out of the meta.
So fundamentally the only good white deck in modern's history has been humans. White sees splashes, etc. Humans is an aggro-control deck that's relatively linear and has the play style it has.
Before humans, I think I was right; I think White was an awful color, there's never been a core white deck that was any good. The control cards were bad, the midrange cards were bad, the aggro and combo cards were bad, and it had no real support for big mana.
With humans I'm not sure what to think, I think maybe I'm imposing my desire for a white based midrange deck and maybe it's just fine that White is primarily good at aggro-control in modern and black is great at midrange, and blue is pretty good at control, etc.
If anyone is curious I started some work on mana symbol breakdowns in top decks, though I need a better list of decks to pull from honestly:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vUtMpYGd6h6LgFwFYsjlN54mzYIkXeExSIVxkcY16Hg/edit?usp=sharing
Early on it seems like blue and red are the most represented colors in modern, but I haven't normalized those to say how many different cards are seeing play or anything yet. Even then I'm not sure what to draw from it.
I might do manabases next after I get a nice list of decks.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Why is only blue this way though. I can make a black deck like jund, death shadow, an aggro deck, or a tribal deck or even a faeries. I can make a green deck like tron or scapeshift, or ponza, or value town. Why do we limit blue by saying that all blue decks have to be reactive control decks otherwise they aren't blue no matter what cards they play. I mean what color is Merfolk?
So in my head Jeskai has a losing matchup against all of those except humans, which is probably fairly close to 50/50
Obviously that's just my opinion based on playing it but whatever.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
take a step back and look at playstyles and archetypes. if you think something is missing, underrepresented, or weak then start from there.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Its just a difference of definition. Blue as a play style, vs Blue as the primary colours, etc.
Either way, looking forward to the GP.
Spirits
Also looking forward to the GP.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
EDIT: And yeah, GDS was never 'blue' to me.
Spirits
Wasn't one of the biggest, and most controversial bans in the history of the format touted as specifically the thing to allow blue-based control to flourish? And that multiple successive unbans were to allow blue-based control to flourish? And hasn't Wizards specifically said they want such an archetype to continue and succeed in Modern? I mean, if we're just talking about what we don't want in the format, I'm cool with never seeing Urza lands or Eldrazi Temple ever again...
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Now that is pretty blatant cherrypicking of a post. Did you not realize that my point was that, in the absence of a perfect format with equal representation of all deck types and styles, losing just one narrow category is something I consider an acceptable outcome? Because, in fact, I'd be okay with that situation if it was creature aggro that barely existed, or spell based combo, or synergy-driven glass cannons, or three color goodstuffs, or incremental valuetowns.
For example Tempo/Turbo Xerox innately is just going to be better in magic than a creature based aggro deck.
If a deck is pushed out of the meta, sometimes its just because the cards aren't powerful enough to compensate for its innate power level. When Wild Nacatl was unbanned, it showed that creature based aggro wasn't there yet in terms of meta shifting cards.
When it comes to banning an unbanning cards, what is the goal of our format? Do we want to just play with as many cards as we can? Do we want the most interactive games possible? What about a combination of both?
If unban, lets say, Stoneforge Mystic, and lets say that creature based aggo dies, we need to identify if it was really that good in the first place, or was it because something like Stoneforge is really that powerful? Or Twin? In what Twin was doing, was that the most powerful thing that a deck can do when it comes to the Modern Format? (When I say powerful, I mean trying to reach a 50%+ average win rate across the board)
These are just some thoughts i was thinking about when I read the previous few posts
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
It would be very different if Wizards had similar words and actions for literally any other archetype over the past two and a half years since banning the premiere example of that very archetype.
January 2016 "We considered what one would do with the cards from a Splinter Twin deck with Splinter Twin banned. In the case of some Jeskai or Temur, there are very similar decks to build. In other cases, there is Kiki-Jiki as a replacement."
April 2016 "While there are some control decks that would use Ancestral Vision, it is an underplayed portion of the metagame. To allow for an increase in the number of blue-based control or attrition decks, we are unbanning Ancestral Vision." Also "To allow for an increase in the number of controlling combo decks in the format, we are unbanning Sword of the Meek."
January 2017 "[Gitaxian Probe] hurt the ability of reactive decks to effectively bluff"
February 2018 "In watching the format evolve, we've observed that decks seeking to control the game have struggled against the speed and variety of threats present in the format... Our hope is that Jace will ... give controlling decks an alternative way to close out prolonged games."
And based on their most recent statements of goals, hopefully more unbans are on the horizon to help: "And so, in the aftermath of this Pro Tour, rather than making bans to weaken the best-performing or winning decks, we've instead chosen to open up additional options, primarily to decks that were not among the most popular."
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
WOTC has made diversity of decks a clear goal. That can benefit any deck or style in terms of decision-making. When you talk about interactive games, that almost always means favoring midrange and control. My goal is to win the game lol, whether I grind my opponent out long enough to attack one last time, stop them from accomplishing their goal entirely, or just get the "i win" cards together quick enough doesn't matter much to me.
Because that's just what people mean when they use the term "blue deck." Don't get too hung up on the actual colors played, it doesn't have anything to do with that. Basically, all "blue decks" play blue, but not all decks that play blue are "blue decks." It's just a short-hand term for "mostly-fair, somewhat-reactive, spell-based control or tempo deck." There's a pretty wide range of decks that meet that description, like Twin, Delver, Grixis Shadow, Jeskai Flash, UW Control, etc. Merfolk doesn't really meet that description because it's not a reactive deck really at all, and it's mostly creature-based.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW