The GDS vs. Burn matchup mostly depends on how good the Burn player is. If the Burn player is bad to mediocre, it's probably a positive matchup for GDS, but against a good Burn player who knows how to play the matchup, it's probably a bad matchup. The real key is to hold your burn spells and not burn them below 13, and try to set up a turn where you hit them with a flurry of burn on their end step, and then untap and kill them. Bad Burn players will just cast their spells on curve like they're used to doing against everyone else, and that's bad against an opponent playing Death's Shadow and Temur Battle Rage.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
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This is an excellent article and analysis. I look forward to more like this in the future. Some quick takeaways from an overall format health perspective:
1. Unban SFM.
2. Phoenix decks are the real deal. Expect more. I expect pros will run this deck because it's very consistent (literally 1/3 of the deck cantrips), can be picked up without too many reps and still succeed, and rewards greater levels of mastery with higher MWP ceilings.
3. Preordain is unsafe. Izzet Phoenix is already running both SV/Sleight and would readily switch to Preordain for at least a slight boost. Izzet Phoenix does not need more help. Storm also doesn't need more help. This is too bad because other blue decks would like the cantrip, but the combo risks outweigh the control benefits.
4. Unban SFM. All of the white-based decks that we fear might play it could use a boost in this aggressive metagame (e.g. UWx Control and Midrange, Abzan, D&T, Company decks, etc.). The only reason to not unban SFM is if you think it would go into Humans or Bant Spirits, which is a shaky argument at best.
5. KCI is still really good, with significant overrepresentation into Day 2.
6. GSZ is probably safe. Unfortunatley, the realistic upside might just be that Elves gets the most benefit because the other green decks are lagging. Modern does not need another T3-T4 aggressive strategy that is consistently in the top-tier. But if this also means other Company and creature-based decks get a boost too, that's an overall benefit to the format. Notably, no top-tier strategies really benefit from GSZ's unbanning, making it a strong candidate.
7. Judging by the GP Day 2, the Modern pillars are mostly balanced. I excluded the 7 "other" decks from this category because they are unknown.
Looting decks: 19.8%
Stirrings decks: 28.6%
Hierarch decks: 23.5%
Other decks: 28.1%
8. Unban SFM. How can anyone look at this metagame and make a serious argument that SFM would break it?
Interesting article. I agree that SFM is comical on the ban list, but it is neat to see all the success Phoenix had. I dont think it has the same level of raw power as something like KCI though.
The only argument against the Stoneforge mystic unban is that every white deck would run it, thus warping the usage of the card. BUT, most 1 drops are used already in tons of decks, like Noble hierarch and Faithless looting.
Would a Preordain unban be more realistic if Manamorphose was banned? I'm not normally a fan of any swap ban arguments, but Manamorphose is a key card for the Arclight Phoenix decks as well as Storm. If the Phoenix decks in particular end up dominant, I would expect Manamorphose to be one of the first cards on the chopping block, as it's one of the most critical pieces to explosive early turns.
Now it's way too early to be actually advocating for Manamorphose (or anything) to be banned, but if it was to happen down the road, getting Preordain back would dull that sting, while also giving decks like UW Control and GDS more options.
And yeah...SFM can come back anytime now. Maybe the late Spring/early Summer supplemental set next year will be the Modern-legal for the first time set Wizards polled about; if it is, we can expect SFM (and key equipment) to be in, which would be the perfect time to unban her.
Would a Preordain unban be more realistic if Manamorphose was banned? I'm not normally a fan of any swap ban arguments, but Manamorphose is a key card for the Arclight Phoenix decks as well as Storm. If the Phoenix decks in particular end up dominant, I would expect Manamorphose to be one of the first cards on the chopping block, as it's one of the most critical pieces to explosive early turns.
Manamorphose is orders of magnitude more powerful than Preordain in those decks.
It can be shown mathematically that Preordain's gains over the current cantrip suite available to Modern is minimal at best. Just more fear and doomsaying.
From Phoenix being a good deck and Preordain improving it slightly to Preordain isn't safe to unban goes a long way.
I don't know the definite answers to any of these questions, but I know that spreading the fear of unbanning something like Preordain that could have potential effect in so many different decks and archetypes, will lead to a place where no generic good card will ever be unbanned.
Would a Preordain unban be more realistic if Manamorphose was banned? I'm not normally a fan of any swap ban arguments, but Manamorphose is a key card for the Arclight Phoenix decks as well as Storm. If the Phoenix decks in particular end up dominant, I would expect Manamorphose to be one of the first cards on the chopping block, as it's one of the most critical pieces to explosive early turns.
Manamorphose is orders of magnitude more powerful than Preordain in those decks.
It can be shown mathematically that Preordain's gains over the current cantrip suite available to Modern is minimal at best. Just more fear and doomsaying.
I should have been clearer. I personally think Preordain is probably fine. I was simply stating the Wizards position. I do not envision a scenario where Wizards looks at Modern's top-tier decks and 2018 stats, looks at the banlist, and picks Preordain as the unban. SFM and GSZ are much more plausible. It seems very unlikely that the risk-averse Wizards, which waited until spring 2018 to unban the exceedingly safe BBE/JTMS, will look at the 2018 metagame and decide Preordain is the card that needs unbanning. This is especially true with UR Phoenix being a current top-tier deck. The unban looks even less probable when Wizards looks at other top 2018 performers (Storm, UWx Control), adds in the newly reprinted Opt, and then assesses how Preordain would further help those decks. With SFM still on the banlist, does anyone really think Preordain of all cards is on the table?
Also, I've heard people cite this Preordain vs. SV/Sleight math comparison before, but I don't think I've seen it. I've seen simulations of how the cantrips affect your likelihood of finding cards (see stuff like http://www.joseprio.com/blog/2013/04/24/ponder-vs.-preordain-vs.-the-rest/), but I have not seen how this plays out in actual games or metagame standings. If someone has that analysis, I'd love to see it. If the only analysis we have is how Preordain gains margins over SV, however, then that's not a very useful analysis for unbanning purposes; it's not the case that if Preordain digs N% better than SV, that decks which benefit from Preordain gain N% metagame share. Rather, they gain X% metagame share, and the relationship between N and X is totally unknown.
Also, I've heard people cite this Preordain vs. SV/Sleight math comparison before, but I don't think I've seen it. I've seen simulations of how the cantrips affect your likelihood of finding cards (see stuff like http://www.joseprio.com/blog/2013/04/24/ponder-vs.-preordain-vs.-the-rest/), but I have not seen how this plays out in actual games or metagame standings. If someone has that analysis, I'd love to see it. If the only analysis we have is how Preordain gains margins over SV, however, then that's not a very useful analysis for unbanning purposes; it's not the case that if Preordain digs N% better than SV, that decks which benefit from Preordain gain N% metagame share. Rather, they gain X% metagame share, and the relationship between N and X is totally unknown.
I have never seen that site, but have done my own numbers analysis with very similar results. As far as results in game, MN did a long look and saw little to no meaningful impact: http://modernnexus.com/testing-preordain-qualitative-qualitative-results/ And this makes sense when rationalizing the tiniest of tiny gains it offers vs the current cantrips. It's affect is extremely minimal on its own. When it was banned, Storm was playing Seething Song, Twin had this AND PONDER, and Infect digging for Blazing Shoal. This was also was 7 years ago, and in today's Modern, Ancient Stirrings and Faithless Looting are the most popular cards in the format. So it feels pretty silly to have Preordain still banned in 2018, going on 2019.
Would I like Preordain in Modern? Yep. Would I play it? Yep. Would it make good Serum Visions decks imperceptively better? Probably. Would it make any meaningful impact for struggling Serum Visions decks? Probably not. Is it worth fighting over to unban? Not in my eyes. Which is probably why it remains banned.
Burn seems like a pretty good choice vs uw/tron/gds too, especially if you go hard on stuff like firecraft.
Burn is positive in the dataset against Gx Tron and GDS. It's around 44% vs. UW Control with about 75 matches recorded. Most GDS pros seem to think Burn is actually about even with GDS too, so the true MWP might be lower. Complicating matters further, Nassif thinks UW Control is actually unfavored vs. Burn, so that's another discrepancy with the data. Most of the better players I could find on Reddit/Twitter put it more in the "even" category.
As for Bant Spirits vs. Tron, I've looked at a bunch of pro articles, Reddit comment threads, and forum discussions. The consensus seems to be it's about even overall and worse in G1 than in G2/G3 where Spirits can win back percentage points: see Mengucci, Stevens, Strasky, and PVDDR for pros who echo that sentiment. Baumeister rated it as favorable, but he's less experienced with the deck than people like Strasky, so I don't credit his opinion too heavily.
Overall, matchup estimations are pretty messy. I rarely find clear answers to these questions, and I'm only confident in the MWP numbers that are >100 matches. In the dataset, that really limits it to stuff like Humans vs. Gx Tron, Humans vs. Burn, and UW Control vs. Humans. Karsten wrote a great article on using smaller Ns to estimate matchups (https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/magic-math-how-many-games-do-you-need-for-statistical-significance-in-playtesting/), demonstrating how we don't need 10,000 games to actually have a good sense of the matchup odds. By those metrics, we'd probably find a lot of matches closer to even than we think. Some would still remain polarized, such as the notoriously bad Jeskai vs. Gx Tron, Gx Tron vs. Infect, and others.
I have not looked at the data, but to my knowledge, burn is good against tron, even-ish against gds (I think play skill matters a lot here, but I think if you're willing to heavily sideboard for 3 matchups, burn can really swing this one), and I agree with nassif, that burn is good vs UW control. In my experience, a vast majority of my wins as UWX against burn are won because my opponent made mistakes. Nonetheless, this is another matchup that can be swung with enough sideboard cards if you wanted to. I'd happily play 4 firecrafts in my board if I were focusing on such a narrow field.
On a related note: I once read (can’t remember where) some statistics from a player with an enormous amount of matches on the same deck reporting a ~5% (from memory) winrate decline when comparing Friendly League results with those of Competitive Leagues. In other words, a pilot whose winrate is 60% over the course of many Friendlies could reasonably expect to clock in around 55% in Comps.
Does anyone here have supporting or countervailing data/experiences?
Interesting you should bring that up, as I set out to test that exact thing this month. I recently talked to a Storm grinder a bit who had reported a 68% win rate in Friendly over around 1000 matches, and it really piqued my interest; it seemed almost too good to be true. The vast majority of my recorded games with Tron prior to this month have been played in Comp leagues (around 1900) and my winrate in that sample is right around 60%. In December I've played the deck exclusively in the Friendly room, and over 240 matches so far my winrate is 65.5%. So I can definitely see the ~5% figure being accurate. For me it's closer to 6% as things stand now.
In terms of why it's that much easier, I've noticed a few things:
There's a higher percentage of homebrew/rogue decks. Not tons, but it's maybe 6% in Friendly as opposed to like 3% in Comp. I'm talking about decks like Mono Blue Boomerangs or GW Midrange with Search For Tomorrow and Farseek to "synergize" with Tireless Tracker and Courser of Kruphix, with no disruption of any kind. These are almost always free wins, and there are more of them.
There's a higher occurrence of loose/suboptimal plays. Quite a few times this month I saw my opponents do things like crack fetches main phase getting a tapped shockland, or firing off instant speed burn spells main phase, when they could hold the mana up and represent any number of things. I don't often see things like that in the Comp leagues.
There's also a higher occurrence of people playing meta decks but with some suboptimal card choices for the sake of interest or fun. That's all well and good, but the cards are suboptimal for a reason, and you will be handing your opponents some percentage points as a result.
On the whole though, ~5% is not a massive difference. It's still mostly good players playing good decks.
What about the EV though? Using the Goatbots EV calculator, about 7% is the key number when comparing Comp and Friendly. If your Comp winrate is 58%, and your Friendly winrate is 65%, that's basically the equilibrium point. +3.46 for Comp, and +3.42 for Friendly. If your Comp winrate is 59% and Friendly is 66%, you're better off playing Comp, as it becomes +4.09 vs +3.69, and the gap continues to widen as your winrate increases. On the flipside, if your Comp winrate is only 57% and you get 64% in Friendly, the EV is +2.83 vs +3.15 in favor of Friendly, and the gap continues to widen as your winrate goes down. 7% is a fairly big difference though, and given my experience that would seem hard to sustain. So if you can consistently achieve 59% win in Comp, that's the better EV play.
The only argument against the Stoneforge mystic unban is that every white deck would run it, thus warping the usage of the card. BUT, most 1 drops are used already in tons of decks, like Noble hierarch and Faithless looting.
Every white deck? Company can't afford to play equipment (misses on CoCo), uwr and uw can't afford to cut slots, and it's too slow in stuff like uwr tempo and mardu pyro. SFM only powers up decks like taxes, abzan, and other lacking decks. And to argue that humans/spirits could play it? There is no way that humans could run a non-human maindeck, and spirits can't play another noncreature for CoCo.
The only argument against the Stoneforge mystic unban is that every white deck would run it, thus warping the usage of the card. BUT, most 1 drops are used already in tons of decks, like Noble hierarch and Faithless looting.
Every white deck? Company can't afford to play equipment (misses on CoCo), uwr and uw can't afford to cut slots, and it's too slow in stuff like uwr tempo and mardu pyro. SFM only powers up decks like taxes, abzan, and other lacking decks. And to argue that humans/spirits could play it? There is no way that humans could run a non-human maindeck, and spirits can't play another noncreature for CoCo.
Why are you arguing? did i not make myself clear that i also want SFM unbanned? jesus christ
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7. Judging by the GP Day 2, the Modern pillars are mostly balanced. I excluded the 7 "other" decks from this category because they are unknown.
Looting decks: 19.8%
Stirrings decks: 28.6%
Hierarch decks: 23.5%
Other decks: 28.1%
I just wanted to call this point out because it's something I find really interesting. Modern more than any other format is defined by the premier 1-drop that enables the deck. I think it's because there's a lot less reaction happening than in legacy, although legacy is different because of the busted cheap mana sources (city, tomb, lotus petal, etc.).
In order for a deck to become good in modern it needs at least 8 cards (and preferably 11) it can play that are great for its strategy on turn 1.
Historically the decks that've been good in modern are (with some overlap)
* wild nacatl/goblin guide decks
* serum visions decks
* noble hierarch decks
* Aether vial decks
* thoughtseize/IOK decks
* looting decks
* stirrings decks (and expedition map)
And a few more I'm missing I'm sure.
No real conclusions to draw there except that GSZ is more likely to have an impact on the format in a cool way than SFM because of this (it makes Search for Tomorrow+GSZ a legitimate set of 1-drops for some kinda green deck, or GSZ+Thoughtseize as opposed to GSZ+Noble Hierarch).
Mostly I just think it's really interesting conceptually - and something I've talked about before. non-green D&T lists have historically struggled more because of their lack of a quality 1-drop other than Aether Vial than for any other reason I can think of, and that's not something people talk about a lot.
Mother of Runes doesn't get a lot of credit for enabling D&T to be a thing in legacy but it's probably as important as any 2+ drop other than Thalia.
See, i just hate the logic behind the "we can't unban x because the unfair decks would abuse it". Maybe the problem isn't the cantrip but the combo deck. No offense to anyone making that argument of course. I just don't get it, you ban the offender not the enabler. That being said i see no reason to unban preordain. The upgrade for the fair u(x) decks is pretty marginal and ban swaps never happen.
I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the stirrings,looting and vial/hierarch decks are performing significantly better than the rest of the field in both win and conversion rates. I think both stirrings and looting could be banned and the format would be better for it. It makes no sense to me that red and green have the best card filtering while blue is using cards like serum visions and opt. Now ill fully admit to preferring midrange/control so im def biased. But modern has gotten super linear over the past year or so. People always say "oh you can't ban those cards what will those decks play?" And i say, something else. Would those decks be slower? Yea. Would they less consistent? Sure. Maybe thats what the format needs. Decks like jund and amulet titan have lost powerful cards, gotten less consistent and they've found a way to remain relevant.
I think sfm would be fine to unban but what deck does it really push over the edge? Uwx? Junk? Does it do anything to fix matchups like tron or dredge? Probaly not. Maybe it makes the aggro game a bit better for those decks but sfm dies to literally every piece of removal in the format and every top deck has access to premium artifact hate so will it really make a difference? I dont think so. Now if you want make the argument that it shouldn't be banned simply for that reason, sure. But the decks i see getting more use out of sfm are ones like spirits that don't meed the help in the first place. Worse you risk hurting the fair aggro decks that get demolished to cards like sfm. That being said its pretty laughable compared to some of thr other cards on the list like skullclamp or glimpse.
The more i think about it the more i come to the conclusion that twin needs to be unbanned. I was a big proponent of the twin ban when it happened but i think the format has evolved enough that twin would simply be another good deck. Now idk if wotc sees it that way but a deck like twin is exactly the kind of thing you need to force some of these uninteractive decks to play removal and make the format more honest. Midrange decks thrived when twin was legal specifically because they ran interaction. Maybe twin would eat up some of the metagame shares from decks like tron sure, but those decks would still have a big place in the format because they beat up on the fair decks. My only worry about a twin unban is would their be a point to play anything else but twin if you're in blue? Maybe not. But honestly theirs not a ton of diversity amongst the blue tempo/control archetypes anyway. Really the only thing that keeps uw afloat is the power of cards like terminus.
I look at alot of these cards on the banned list and they just dont seem fast enough. Gsz would help elves,boggles,infect and company decks but would it be enough to push the meta to be more interactive? Even cards like pod have way tighter deck building constraints them stirrings/looting. And again in a format with turn 3 karns and double hollow ones on turn 1 is tapping out on turn 3 then waiting a turn to cycle a creature really good enough? Even with a potential toolbox and a combo kill hidden away in deck?
Modern is super diverse and it always has been. But right now their are clearly decks that stand leagues above the rest in power level. Maybe an unban is what the format needs to shake things up.
See, i just hate the logic behind the "we can't unban x because the unfair decks would abuse it". Maybe the problem isn't the cantrip but the combo deck. No offense to anyone making that argument of course. I just don't get it, you ban the offender not the enabler. That being said i see no reason to unban preordain. The upgrade for the fair u(x) decks is pretty marginal and ban swaps never happen.
I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the stirrings,looting and vial/hierarch decks are performing significantly better than the rest of the field in both win and conversion rates. I think both stirrings and looting could be banned and the format would be better for it. It makes no sense to me that red and green have the best card filtering while blue is using cards like serum visions and opt. Now ill fully admit to preferring midrange/control so im def biased. But modern has gotten super linear over the past year or so. People always say "oh you can't ban those cards what will those decks play?" And i say, something else. Would those decks be slower? Yea. Would they less consistent? Sure. Maybe thats what the format needs. Decks like jund and amulet titan have lost powerful cards, gotten less consistent and they've found a way to remain relevant.
I think sfm would be fine to unban but what deck does it really push over the edge? Uwx? Junk? Does it do anything to fix matchups like tron or dredge? Probaly not. Maybe it makes the aggro game a bit better for those decks but sfm dies to literally every piece of removal in the format and every top deck has access to premium artifact hate so will it really make a difference? I dont think so. Now if you want make the argument that it shouldn't be banned simply for that reason, sure. But the decks i see getting more use out of sfm are ones like spirits that don't meed the help in the first place. Worse you risk hurting the fair aggro decks that get demolished to cards like sfm. That being said its pretty laughable compared to some of thr other cards on the list like skullclamp or glimpse.
The more i think about it the more i come to the conclusion that twin needs to be unbanned. I was a big proponent of the twin ban when it happened but i think the format has evolved enough that twin would simply be another good deck. Now idk if wotc sees it that way but a deck like twin is exactly the kind of thing you need to force some of these uninteractive decks to play removal and make the format more honest. Midrange decks thrived when twin was legal specifically because they ran interaction. Maybe twin would eat up some of the metagame shares from decks like tron sure, but those decks would still have a big place in the format because they beat up on the fair decks. My only worry about a twin unban is would their be a point to play anything else but twin if you're in blue? Maybe not. But honestly theirs not a ton of diversity amongst the blue tempo/control archetypes anyway. Really the only thing that keeps uw afloat is the power of cards like terminus.
I look at alot of these cards on the banned list and they just dont seem fast enough. Gsz would help elves,boggles,infect and company decks but would it be enough to push the meta to be more interactive? Even cards like pod have way tighter deck building constraints them stirrings/looting. And again in a format with turn 3 karns and double hollow ones on turn 1 is tapping out on turn 3 then waiting a turn to cycle a creature really good enough? Even with a potential toolbox and a combo kill hidden away in deck?
Modern is super diverse and it always has been. But right now their are clearly decks that stand leagues above the rest in power level. Maybe an unban is what the format needs to shake things up.
I think all of those are reasonable, to varying degrees, reasons to unban various cards. But those are extremely illegitimate reasons to ban Looting or Stirrings. If three pillars are all performing about equally, enabling a range of vastly different strategies even within each pillar, there is no way you can make a legitimate banning argument for those cards. Doubly so if about 30% of the format is still using none of those cards. They clearly aren't reducing diversity. This isn't the TC or DRS case, where a single deck within a pillar pushed 20% of the format. No individual deck even exceeds 10%. That's a no-ban metagame if I have ever seen one.
Players need to stop the ban talk in this current metagame. It is completely unjustified by every known standard and data source we have. There are ample unban discussions we could make with legitimacy, many of which would even address the linear allegations in Modern. But the ban talk needs to stop unless there are significant new data points that change the format picture.
This is fair. Again I am biased to a format with more midrange and control i fully admit that lol. Do you think wotc sees the data points the same way and pushes for no bans anyway though? The only reason I say that is all of the comments from wotc employees about modern have been that they dont think modern needs any changes. Again yes no individual stirrings/lootings decks is above 10% but to me green and red having better card filtering than blue just seems weird. Plus wizards has banned cards that haven't preformed above that threshold. Summer bloom comes to mind. Yea you could make the point about the turn 4 rule but amulet still can kill before t4 so their certainly seems to be caveats to their ban decisions.
Im not a huge fan of everything hoogland says but he put together a decent pie chart about modern's speed after farming some data over some past big events if that's kind of interesting.
Now obv his sample size isn't massive but he makes a decent point about how much the format has sped up. Especially including decks like tron into the "ending the game" by turn 3 category. While yes technically they don't win the game on the spot on turn 3, casting karn/wurmcoil against a fair deck is lights out a massive amount of the time. His point also, wasn't banning a bunch of cards but unbanning cards like pod/twin which again i totally agree with.
Anyone who Hoogland hasn't been blocked for nearly no reason care to copy and paste that status here?
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I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
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
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/phoenixes-over-portland-massive-modern-metagame-analysis/?_ga=2.3277744.1089761048.1546011417-112431521.1546011417
This is an excellent article and analysis. I look forward to more like this in the future. Some quick takeaways from an overall format health perspective:
1. Unban SFM.
2. Phoenix decks are the real deal. Expect more. I expect pros will run this deck because it's very consistent (literally 1/3 of the deck cantrips), can be picked up without too many reps and still succeed, and rewards greater levels of mastery with higher MWP ceilings.
3. Preordain is unsafe. Izzet Phoenix is already running both SV/Sleight and would readily switch to Preordain for at least a slight boost. Izzet Phoenix does not need more help. Storm also doesn't need more help. This is too bad because other blue decks would like the cantrip, but the combo risks outweigh the control benefits.
4. Unban SFM. All of the white-based decks that we fear might play it could use a boost in this aggressive metagame (e.g. UWx Control and Midrange, Abzan, D&T, Company decks, etc.). The only reason to not unban SFM is if you think it would go into Humans or Bant Spirits, which is a shaky argument at best.
5. KCI is still really good, with significant overrepresentation into Day 2.
6. GSZ is probably safe. Unfortunatley, the realistic upside might just be that Elves gets the most benefit because the other green decks are lagging. Modern does not need another T3-T4 aggressive strategy that is consistently in the top-tier. But if this also means other Company and creature-based decks get a boost too, that's an overall benefit to the format. Notably, no top-tier strategies really benefit from GSZ's unbanning, making it a strong candidate.
7. Judging by the GP Day 2, the Modern pillars are mostly balanced. I excluded the 7 "other" decks from this category because they are unknown.
Looting decks: 19.8%
Stirrings decks: 28.6%
Hierarch decks: 23.5%
Other decks: 28.1%
8. Unban SFM. How can anyone look at this metagame and make a serious argument that SFM would break it?
Spirits
Now it's way too early to be actually advocating for Manamorphose (or anything) to be banned, but if it was to happen down the road, getting Preordain back would dull that sting, while also giving decks like UW Control and GDS more options.
And yeah...SFM can come back anytime now. Maybe the late Spring/early Summer supplemental set next year will be the Modern-legal for the first time set Wizards polled about; if it is, we can expect SFM (and key equipment) to be in, which would be the perfect time to unban her.
Manamorphose is orders of magnitude more powerful than Preordain in those decks.
It can be shown mathematically that Preordain's gains over the current cantrip suite available to Modern is minimal at best. Just more fear and doomsaying.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I should have been clearer. I personally think Preordain is probably fine. I was simply stating the Wizards position. I do not envision a scenario where Wizards looks at Modern's top-tier decks and 2018 stats, looks at the banlist, and picks Preordain as the unban. SFM and GSZ are much more plausible. It seems very unlikely that the risk-averse Wizards, which waited until spring 2018 to unban the exceedingly safe BBE/JTMS, will look at the 2018 metagame and decide Preordain is the card that needs unbanning. This is especially true with UR Phoenix being a current top-tier deck. The unban looks even less probable when Wizards looks at other top 2018 performers (Storm, UWx Control), adds in the newly reprinted Opt, and then assesses how Preordain would further help those decks. With SFM still on the banlist, does anyone really think Preordain of all cards is on the table?
Also, I've heard people cite this Preordain vs. SV/Sleight math comparison before, but I don't think I've seen it. I've seen simulations of how the cantrips affect your likelihood of finding cards (see stuff like http://www.joseprio.com/blog/2013/04/24/ponder-vs.-preordain-vs.-the-rest/), but I have not seen how this plays out in actual games or metagame standings. If someone has that analysis, I'd love to see it. If the only analysis we have is how Preordain gains margins over SV, however, then that's not a very useful analysis for unbanning purposes; it's not the case that if Preordain digs N% better than SV, that decks which benefit from Preordain gain N% metagame share. Rather, they gain X% metagame share, and the relationship between N and X is totally unknown.
I have never seen that site, but have done my own numbers analysis with very similar results. As far as results in game, MN did a long look and saw little to no meaningful impact: http://modernnexus.com/testing-preordain-qualitative-qualitative-results/ And this makes sense when rationalizing the tiniest of tiny gains it offers vs the current cantrips. It's affect is extremely minimal on its own. When it was banned, Storm was playing Seething Song, Twin had this AND PONDER, and Infect digging for Blazing Shoal. This was also was 7 years ago, and in today's Modern, Ancient Stirrings and Faithless Looting are the most popular cards in the format. So it feels pretty silly to have Preordain still banned in 2018, going on 2019.
Would I like Preordain in Modern? Yep. Would I play it? Yep. Would it make good Serum Visions decks imperceptively better? Probably. Would it make any meaningful impact for struggling Serum Visions decks? Probably not. Is it worth fighting over to unban? Not in my eyes. Which is probably why it remains banned.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I have not looked at the data, but to my knowledge, burn is good against tron, even-ish against gds (I think play skill matters a lot here, but I think if you're willing to heavily sideboard for 3 matchups, burn can really swing this one), and I agree with nassif, that burn is good vs UW control. In my experience, a vast majority of my wins as UWX against burn are won because my opponent made mistakes. Nonetheless, this is another matchup that can be swung with enough sideboard cards if you wanted to. I'd happily play 4 firecrafts in my board if I were focusing on such a narrow field.
In terms of why it's that much easier, I've noticed a few things:
There's a higher percentage of homebrew/rogue decks. Not tons, but it's maybe 6% in Friendly as opposed to like 3% in Comp. I'm talking about decks like Mono Blue Boomerangs or GW Midrange with Search For Tomorrow and Farseek to "synergize" with Tireless Tracker and Courser of Kruphix, with no disruption of any kind. These are almost always free wins, and there are more of them.
There's a higher occurrence of loose/suboptimal plays. Quite a few times this month I saw my opponents do things like crack fetches main phase getting a tapped shockland, or firing off instant speed burn spells main phase, when they could hold the mana up and represent any number of things. I don't often see things like that in the Comp leagues.
There's also a higher occurrence of people playing meta decks but with some suboptimal card choices for the sake of interest or fun. That's all well and good, but the cards are suboptimal for a reason, and you will be handing your opponents some percentage points as a result.
On the whole though, ~5% is not a massive difference. It's still mostly good players playing good decks.
What about the EV though? Using the Goatbots EV calculator, about 7% is the key number when comparing Comp and Friendly. If your Comp winrate is 58%, and your Friendly winrate is 65%, that's basically the equilibrium point. +3.46 for Comp, and +3.42 for Friendly. If your Comp winrate is 59% and Friendly is 66%, you're better off playing Comp, as it becomes +4.09 vs +3.69, and the gap continues to widen as your winrate increases. On the flipside, if your Comp winrate is only 57% and you get 64% in Friendly, the EV is +2.83 vs +3.15 in favor of Friendly, and the gap continues to widen as your winrate goes down. 7% is a fairly big difference though, and given my experience that would seem hard to sustain. So if you can consistently achieve 59% win in Comp, that's the better EV play.
Every white deck? Company can't afford to play equipment (misses on CoCo), uwr and uw can't afford to cut slots, and it's too slow in stuff like uwr tempo and mardu pyro. SFM only powers up decks like taxes, abzan, and other lacking decks. And to argue that humans/spirits could play it? There is no way that humans could run a non-human maindeck, and spirits can't play another noncreature for CoCo.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Why are you arguing? did i not make myself clear that i also want SFM unbanned? jesus christ
I just wanted to call this point out because it's something I find really interesting. Modern more than any other format is defined by the premier 1-drop that enables the deck. I think it's because there's a lot less reaction happening than in legacy, although legacy is different because of the busted cheap mana sources (city, tomb, lotus petal, etc.).
In order for a deck to become good in modern it needs at least 8 cards (and preferably 11) it can play that are great for its strategy on turn 1.
Historically the decks that've been good in modern are (with some overlap)
* wild nacatl/goblin guide decks
* serum visions decks
* noble hierarch decks
* Aether vial decks
* thoughtseize/IOK decks
* looting decks
* stirrings decks (and expedition map)
And a few more I'm missing I'm sure.
No real conclusions to draw there except that GSZ is more likely to have an impact on the format in a cool way than SFM because of this (it makes Search for Tomorrow+GSZ a legitimate set of 1-drops for some kinda green deck, or GSZ+Thoughtseize as opposed to GSZ+Noble Hierarch).
Mostly I just think it's really interesting conceptually - and something I've talked about before. non-green D&T lists have historically struggled more because of their lack of a quality 1-drop other than Aether Vial than for any other reason I can think of, and that's not something people talk about a lot.
Mother of Runes doesn't get a lot of credit for enabling D&T to be a thing in legacy but it's probably as important as any 2+ drop other than Thalia.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the stirrings,looting and vial/hierarch decks are performing significantly better than the rest of the field in both win and conversion rates. I think both stirrings and looting could be banned and the format would be better for it. It makes no sense to me that red and green have the best card filtering while blue is using cards like serum visions and opt. Now ill fully admit to preferring midrange/control so im def biased. But modern has gotten super linear over the past year or so. People always say "oh you can't ban those cards what will those decks play?" And i say, something else. Would those decks be slower? Yea. Would they less consistent? Sure. Maybe thats what the format needs. Decks like jund and amulet titan have lost powerful cards, gotten less consistent and they've found a way to remain relevant.
I think sfm would be fine to unban but what deck does it really push over the edge? Uwx? Junk? Does it do anything to fix matchups like tron or dredge? Probaly not. Maybe it makes the aggro game a bit better for those decks but sfm dies to literally every piece of removal in the format and every top deck has access to premium artifact hate so will it really make a difference? I dont think so. Now if you want make the argument that it shouldn't be banned simply for that reason, sure. But the decks i see getting more use out of sfm are ones like spirits that don't meed the help in the first place. Worse you risk hurting the fair aggro decks that get demolished to cards like sfm. That being said its pretty laughable compared to some of thr other cards on the list like skullclamp or glimpse.
The more i think about it the more i come to the conclusion that twin needs to be unbanned. I was a big proponent of the twin ban when it happened but i think the format has evolved enough that twin would simply be another good deck. Now idk if wotc sees it that way but a deck like twin is exactly the kind of thing you need to force some of these uninteractive decks to play removal and make the format more honest. Midrange decks thrived when twin was legal specifically because they ran interaction. Maybe twin would eat up some of the metagame shares from decks like tron sure, but those decks would still have a big place in the format because they beat up on the fair decks. My only worry about a twin unban is would their be a point to play anything else but twin if you're in blue? Maybe not. But honestly theirs not a ton of diversity amongst the blue tempo/control archetypes anyway. Really the only thing that keeps uw afloat is the power of cards like terminus.
I look at alot of these cards on the banned list and they just dont seem fast enough. Gsz would help elves,boggles,infect and company decks but would it be enough to push the meta to be more interactive? Even cards like pod have way tighter deck building constraints them stirrings/looting. And again in a format with turn 3 karns and double hollow ones on turn 1 is tapping out on turn 3 then waiting a turn to cycle a creature really good enough? Even with a potential toolbox and a combo kill hidden away in deck?
Modern is super diverse and it always has been. But right now their are clearly decks that stand leagues above the rest in power level. Maybe an unban is what the format needs to shake things up.
I think all of those are reasonable, to varying degrees, reasons to unban various cards. But those are extremely illegitimate reasons to ban Looting or Stirrings. If three pillars are all performing about equally, enabling a range of vastly different strategies even within each pillar, there is no way you can make a legitimate banning argument for those cards. Doubly so if about 30% of the format is still using none of those cards. They clearly aren't reducing diversity. This isn't the TC or DRS case, where a single deck within a pillar pushed 20% of the format. No individual deck even exceeds 10%. That's a no-ban metagame if I have ever seen one.
Players need to stop the ban talk in this current metagame. It is completely unjustified by every known standard and data source we have. There are ample unban discussions we could make with legitimacy, many of which would even address the linear allegations in Modern. But the ban talk needs to stop unless there are significant new data points that change the format picture.
https://twitter.com/jeffhoogland/status/1073037384407793664
Now obv his sample size isn't massive but he makes a decent point about how much the format has sped up. Especially including decks like tron into the "ending the game" by turn 3 category. While yes technically they don't win the game on the spot on turn 3, casting karn/wurmcoil against a fair deck is lights out a massive amount of the time. His point also, wasn't banning a bunch of cards but unbanning cards like pod/twin which again i totally agree with.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
The only useful information was Energy might break the format but you kinda expect more format analysis then that.
I wonder if anything that hit the standard ban list would get auto banned in Standard Plus.
Spirits
Here it is.
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