We also look for decks that hold a large enough percentage of the competitive field to reduce the diversity of the format.
Looking at mtggoldfish, Twin holds 9.53% of the metagame (combined), followed by aff at 7.32, and if you count both Jund and Abzan they are ~11. According to GP pitt, 10.4 of Twin combined, Affinity 10.4, Jund 8.8 (and Abzan 5.9, if you like to count them together it's the most played archetype). So, that's large enough?
Hurting diversity? Yeah, people were totally not playing Grixis control right now because of Grixis Twin, right? Right? Like, totally. No Grixis control in a recent Top8. Regarding Jeskai and Temur, those decks were played before and were left behind because they couldn't perform, not because of Twin. Banning Twin because Jeskai control is not played as much as Jeskai Twin is like banning Scapeshift because Temur Control is worse than Temur Scapeshift (?)
Twin may not have been oppressive in the sense of being completely unbeatable but it did stifle format diversity by simply making nearly every other non-graveyard based combo deck completely obsolete.
It's inevitable that some other combo deck will eventually step in to take Twin's place.
I'm sorry, but evidence seems to disagree: RG Tron (if you call it combo), Amulet, Infect, Scapeshift, Ad nauseam aren't obsolete (well, maybe Amulet is now ). And I don't know why you are not counting GY based combo.
I believe WoTC's new policy is to make sure that every color can enjoy the exciting gameplay mechanic of making undercosted dudes and then turning them sideways. Clearly the future of magic.
Quote from "Kakaroto" »
Quote from "Disco Stu" »
Podríamos hacer un topic donde marquemos los peores horrores de ortografía.
I know it wont happen, but due to the fact that i like combo i think they should shoot the reserved list up their ***** and make Legacy Masters so we can play some legacy. Aint gonna happen though. It is true that with more people leaving Modern for a time, Standard goes sky high, and yes, they want more standard players.
I have never played Standard and bought a 1800 dollar deck in Jund, that would be 1800 dollars in Standard if Modern was crap 4 years ago.
I still love Modern, i just fear for my money.
Remember that format bashing is against both the forum rules and the banlist thread rules. It's fine to constructively criticize the ban decisions or even to draw some comparisons to other formats, but just attacking Modern, claiming it's dying, or similar posting will get warned/infracted accordingly.
If the Twin ban was more about shaking up the format to create excitement for the PT than anything else, and if you're unhappy about this, I'd recommend not watching the PT. (I already don't watch live MTG, so my absence will not matter.)
Or, if you must watch it, then at least spam chat with obnoxious anti-Tron or anti-Affinity memes. "Modern: big mana ramp or a million little dudes... how exciting!" Something like that. I'm not good at meme-crafting and Twitch chat is a cesspool that makes the living envy the dead, so who knows what will catch on there.
If "shake-up bans" are the bad part of the Faustian bargain that's necessary to have a Modern PT, is it possible to start a campaign to get rid of Modern PTs? "No Modern PT; Please, Think of the Format's Health." Like I said, I'm no good at sloganeering.
Twin made the format a lot more interactive. The question deck builders had to start with a lot of the time was: "can your deck answer a 3 mana creature with a 4 mana enchantment on it, at instant speed? If not, go home and add some more cards to your deck that care about what your opponent is doing."
And now that is lost.
I seriously hope modern doesn't just devolve into an uninteractive turn 3 infect/affinity/burn + tron format.
Twin made the format a lot more interactive. The question deck builders had to start with a lot of the time was: "can your deck answer a 3 mana creature with a 4 mana enchantment on it, at instant speed? If not, go home and add some more cards to your deck that care about what your opponent is doing."
And now that is lost.
I seriously hope modern doesn't just devolve into an uninteractive turn 3 infect/affinity/burn + tron format.
thank god it got banned then.
So, you want more uninteractive decks? What is harder to interact with, Twin or Burn/Affinity/Infect?
I believe WoTC's new policy is to make sure that every color can enjoy the exciting gameplay mechanic of making undercosted dudes and then turning them sideways. Clearly the future of magic.
Quote from "Kakaroto" »
Quote from "Disco Stu" »
Podríamos hacer un topic donde marquemos los peores horrores de ortografía.
Twin made the format a lot more interactive. The question deck builders had to start with a lot of the time was: "can your deck answer a 3 mana creature with a 4 mana enchantment on it, at instant speed? If not, go home and add some more cards to your deck that care about what your opponent is doing."
And now that is lost.
I seriously hope modern doesn't just devolve into an uninteractive turn 3 infect/affinity/burn + tron format.
thank god it got banned then.
So, you want more uninteractive decks? What is harder to interact with, Twin or Burn/Affinity/Infect?
twin. now you just adjust your deck accordingly to the new meta. ezpz
This format and game as whole is heading in a direction I no longer wish to partake in. I've been on the fence about selling out for a while and now its settled, I can hardly find a legacy tourney and modern is garbage imo, there is nothing keeping my interest. I'll be happy if I can get 50% of 35k+ worth of legacy and modern staples, I'll get more joy out of a new rolex deep sea.
I just hope this means more cards can be unbanned in the future. If this ushers in a golden age of unbannings, then maybe it was worth it; but until then I will be skeptical.
Twin made the format a lot more interactive. The question deck builders had to start with a lot of the time was: "can your deck answer a 3 mana creature with a 4 mana enchantment on it, at instant speed? If not, go home and add some more cards to your deck that care about what your opponent is doing."
And now that is lost.
I seriously hope modern doesn't just devolve into an uninteractive turn 3 infect/affinity/burn + tron format.
thank god it got banned then.
Thank god the card that was making the format a much more interactive one got banned? Are you confused or something? Unless you like uninteractive goldfish magic, in which case fair enough, but most don't.
do you mean how stale the format is forced into playing a certain way? are you confused or something?
Twin made the format a lot more interactive. The question deck builders had to start with a lot of the time was: "can your deck answer a 3 mana creature with a 4 mana enchantment on it, at instant speed? If not, go home and add some more cards to your deck that care about what your opponent is doing."
And now that is lost.
I seriously hope modern doesn't just devolve into an uninteractive turn 3 infect/affinity/burn + tron format.
thank god it got banned then.
Thank god the card that was making the format a much more interactive one got banned? Are you confused or something? Unless you like uninteractive goldfish magic, in which case fair enough, but most don't.
do you mean how stale the format is forced into playing a certain way? are you confused or something?
No, I literally meant: "the card Splinter Twin significantly increases interaction in the modern format of magic the gathering by altering people's card and deck choices in order to combat it."
Do you agree with this statement or not?
Don't try and avoid the issue by bringing something else up like you did in the post I'm quoting.
i did? try reading :^)
Public Mod Note
(ktkenshinx):
Warning for trolling -ktkenshinx-
I wanted to analyse the rationale behind banning Splinter Twin throught their explanation of changes. Take note, I'm not very good in numbers and just wanted to compare the explanation that Wizards has provided for us and my own interpretation.
We also look for decks that hold a large enough percentage of the competitive field to reduce the diversity of the
format.
Antonio Del Moral León won Pro Tour Fate Reforged playing Splinter Twin, and Jelger Wiegersma finished third; Splinter
Twin has won two of the four Modern Pro Tours. Splinter Twin reached the Top 8 of the last six Modern Grand Prix. The last
Modern Grand Prix in Pittsburgh had three Splinter Twin decks in the Top 8, including Alex Bianchi's winning deck.
Not only is it bad to compare deck diversity through its top 8 appearances, as the sample size of a top 8 is significantly smaller than a metagame share over a year or 6 months, Twin's metagame share also does not reflect its number of Top 8 appearances. If the modern GP in Pittsburgh has three
Splinter twin decks in the top 8, shouldn't it occupy a large share of the metagame?
Yet, Twin's metagame share combined (UR Twin, Grixis Twin and Jeskai Twin) was a paltry 11.5% of the metagame (from Modern Nexus metagame breakdown). At the height of banning, Abzan Pod had 16% of the metagame alone while Jund had 25%. Also, if you were to look at the decks individually, UR Twin itself occupies a 6.2% of the
metagame, largely falling behind Affinity, which is the top dog of the format, at 8.3% of the metagame.
It is very obvious that the metagame tells a different story than the top 8. But why do Wizards use the top 8, which have a smaller sample size then the entire metagame of the year? Shouldn't they use the metagame breakdown, since they have more data about the metagame then what we are analyzing here? That alone is very suspicious to me.
Decks that are this strong can hurt diversity by pushing the decks that it defeats out of competition.
In Grand Prix Singapore on June 28 2015, There is only a Twin deck in the top 8, and another five within the Top 32. Twin combined occupied 20.8 % of the day 2 metagame, and following behind were Burn and Affinity at 19.4% of the day 2 metagame each respectively. The reporter on site compiling these information cited that "he don't think he has ever seen a metagame as diverse as Modern right now." The Winner of that event is Affinity.
In the most recent Starcitygames Open at Charlotte on 9th January 2016, there is only one Twin deck out of the top 8 and another two Twin decks in the top 32 of that format. Twin took only 11.7% of that format with 68 players in day 2, following up with Abzan with 10.2 % of the metagame. The winner of that event, was Jund.
Even though these are two separate events, it shows very clearly that Twin does not consistently "put three decks into the top 8". It does not push out decks from competition from the low number of participation of Twin in the top 32, and does not have an overarching metagame share between its competitors.
They can also reduce diversity by supplanting similar decks. For instance, Shaun McLaren won Pro Tour Born of the Gods playing this Jeskai control deck. Alex Bianchi won our most recent Modern Grand Prix playing a similar deck but adding the Splinter Twin combination. Similarly, Temur Tempo used to see play at high-level events but has been supplanted by Temur Twin.
To understand why the combo was used and supplanted in similar decks, we have to understand that Modern is dominated also by linear decks like Affinity, Tron and Amulet Bloom that require very specific answers to answer them or else you lose to those decks.
The Splinter Twin combo was used best against linear decks because of their inability to interact via removal against the combo. The threat to combo on turn 4 slows the linear decks down to respect the combo or else they lose. Splinter Twin combo thus becomes a powerful combo that allows those blue decks to end the game against Linear decks such as Affinity (8.3% of the metagame) and RG Tron (6.9% of the metagame) without using specific answers that are used to answer the linear decks normally.
Non-Twin Blue decks like Temur Tempo and Grixis Control thus are strong when there is a strong Twin presence in the format. The notion of "siding out part of the combo" against those decks has become ubitiquous as those decks are notoriously able to interact with the Twin decks by removing the threats shown. The way to win those non-Twin blue decks, is not by winning by combo, but by uninteractive nonbasic hate like Blood Moon as well as indestructible threats like Keranos to grind out against them.
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.
In fact, by banning Splinter Twin, we are actually discouraging non-Twin Blue decks from the format because they lost Twin as a good matchup and also had to incorporate those specific answers to answer the Linear decks else they lose. Linear decks thus dominate because they no longer have the Splinter Twin combo that they have to respect or lose. Kiki-Jiki no longer becomes a replacement as the deck needs to fit Kiki to the deck and most importantly, the deck will only win
on turn 5, which is too late as the critical turn of Modern is turn 4.
From the analysis, it is very clear that Wizards banned the Splinter Twin without mention of the metagame and has used Top 8s results of the Pro Tour to give the impression that Twin is dominating. That will have unforeseen consequences for the Modern metagame in the future.
TL:DR: Wizards has banned Splinter Twin through its
explanation, without consideration of the diversity of Modern
and has used skewed information by mentioning top 8 records
that show Twin dominating, to justify the ban.
Yes but this level of interactivity kills potential for most decks and twin's metagame percentage is way too high.
Twin's metagame share as a whole was totally fine for much of the year. Affinity was even HIGHER for a while, as was Abzan. Wizards appears to only care about the deck's share in Top 8s, which totally changes how we need to view banlist updates and predict what will happen.
I am decidedly against this ban since I thought both decks were fine. Bloom I understand much more, but I was hoping they wouldn't relegate it to a ramp deck since with tron and Eldrazi we have enough of that IMO. Twin is WAY too conservative a ban for me, this officially lends credence to the just banning top decks thing. That's pretty much the only reason.
While I do like the trend toward standard over legacy, this is just kinda not okay. I do hope this opens up unbans for blue like AV, and I hope this helps people realize SFM is NOT coming off anytime soon. It's just too high power level for what they want for the format.
Does anyone know if this is good for blue moon? I don't know the deck well but I've always liked it and wouldn't mind shifting to it if it became a viable deck, especially since I own UR twin and the staples cross over.
I think its wrong of us to say 'look now they can unban things' when thats not the reason Twin was banned. Twin wasnt banned because it made blue too good. It wasnt banned because of an overwhelming metashare (top 8, over cheerypicked events maybe, but not metawide) and it wasnt banned because it broke any of the rules of the format.
It was banned because its the fallback deck for Pro's who dislike the format anyway, and Wizards wanted to shake things up. I truly believe that to be the case as there is no historical logic to explain this ban.
I would not expect unbans at all, whats the point? They can just ban the top dog next year and THAT will shake up the format. Thats the intent. Its not to let you play the type of cards you want, its not to let you play a non-rotational stable format, and its not to remove something that is too powerful.
Its intent is to shake up the format for the Pro Tour, and anything else is just obfuscation, lies and misdirection.
I already have burn. Wizards doesnt want to allow the most thoughtful deck in the format to exist? Fine. Burn, Infect, Tron, Lily (I mean BGx).
I'm sorry, but evidence seems to disagree: RG Tron (if you call it combo), Amulet, Infect, Scapeshift, Ad nauseam aren't obsolete (well, maybe Amulet is now ). And I don't know why you are not counting GY based combo.
With B<> Eldrazi on the rise I'm not sure yard based combo is well positioned. Tron also isn't really combo so much as ramp. But, semantics aside, hopefully the banning will open up some sweet Ux combo decks that couldn't exist because red splash + Twin was superior to any other option. I get the rationale for the Twin ban but I really wish they put a powerful option for control back in rotation.
I'm sorry, but evidence seems to disagree: RG Tron (if you call it combo), Amulet, Infect, Scapeshift, Ad nauseam aren't obsolete (well, maybe Amulet is now ). And I don't know why you are not counting GY based combo.
With B<> Eldrazi on the rise I'm not sure yard based combo is well positioned. Tron also isn't really combo so much as ramp. But, semantics aside, hopefully the banning will open up some sweet Ux combo decks that couldn't exist because red splash + Twin was superior to any other option. I get the rationale for the Twin ban but I really wish they put a powerful option for control back in rotation.
Which is funny, Twin got banned for "suppressing" other decks. Eldrazi supresses Living End, Restore Balance, Loam and so many other decks involving both the graveyard and exile zones.
From what I've read, Blue Moon doesn't have a very good Tron matchup (counterintuitive, I know). Does Blue Moon have a good matchup against Affinity, Infect, or Burn? If not, then this is not good for Blue Moon.
People trying to justify WOTC's decision to ban Twin are kidding themselves. WOTC 'shook up' the format, just like the pros have been wanting. This is because it is a pro tour format. This means that we have to hope like hell that our deck doesn't win a tournament, because that is now on WOTC's radar. I have lost a lot of faith and Wizards.
I'm unsure if this is what the pros have been wanting. The main complaints by pros about the format have typically been:
1) Complaints about really powerful and hoser cards like Blood Moon and Choke.
2) Complaints about the format being dominated by linear and uninteractive strategies outside of Twin and Jund.
Banning Splinter Twin does nothing to address #1 and actually makes #2 worse.
Waiting for the response from WOTC after the tourney "See BFZ made an archetype in modern!* The set is awesome! Buy more packs," *because we killed the decks that beat it
Yes, I am salty at WOTC right now
People trying to justify WOTC's decision to ban Twin are kidding themselves. WOTC 'shook up' the format, just like the pros have been wanting. This is because it is a pro tour format. This means that we have to hope like hell that our deck doesn't win a tournament, because that is now on WOTC's radar. I have lost a lot of faith and Wizards.
I'm unsure if this is what the pros have been wanting. The main complaints by pros about the format have typically been:
1) Complaints about really powerful and hoser cards like Blood Moon and Choke.
2) Complaints about the format being dominated by linear and uninteractive strategies outside of Twin and Jund.
Banning Splinter Twin does nothing to address #1 and actually makes #2 worse.
I doubt it was done to placate pros or players. It was done to create buzz and new decks around the Pro Tour. Wizards wants new decks and new strategies instead of old fallbacks. That's fine in a rotating format like Standard but bad in one like Modern. At least, unless Wizards recreates Modern as a rotating format based on the artificial banlist-induced rotation, which looks like the plan going ahead.
Twin made the format a lot more interactive. The question deck builders had to start with a lot of the time was: "can your deck answer a 3 mana creature with a 4 mana enchantment on it, at instant speed? If not, go home and add some more cards to your deck that care about what your opponent is doing."
And now that is lost.
I seriously hope modern doesn't just devolve into an uninteractive turn 3 infect/affinity/burn + tron format.
thank god it got banned then.
Thank god the card that was making the format a much more interactive one got banned? Are you confused or something? Unless you like uninteractive goldfish magic, in which case fair enough, but most don't.
do you mean how stale the format is forced into playing a certain way? are you confused or something?
No, I literally meant: "the card Splinter Twin significantly increases interaction in the modern format of magic the gathering by altering people's card and deck choices in order to combat it."
Do you agree with this statement or not?
Don't try and avoid the issue by bringing something else up like you did in the post I'm quoting.
I do not agree with this statement.
Twin by nature of it's combo pieces stifles any attempt to interact with the combo through the sheer fact that exarch and pestermite attack the mana base of an opponent, and force all decks to take a huge tempo and board development loss in order to deal with the combo. This is especially backbreaking when Twin was on the play. In fact it should be quite telling that the best way to deal with twin is Abrupt Decay, an uncounterable spell. The only other main deck spell effective against Twin was Path, and white decks have been pushed out of the format because of Twin, despite path.
I feel that with the twin ban we will see more 3cmc+ spells that were unplayable main deck in the twin meta resurge into the limelight. One example being wraths, which are quite good against the new eldrazi deck.
Banning Twin was a good move for the overall health of Modern and opens up a lot of deck design/strategies. I believe other less combo oriented interactive decks will rise to take twin's place, despite all of the doomsayers. This the best thing for tune format since pod's ban.
Sorry for the disjointed feel of this response but I'm on my phone!
this is ridiculous
Looking at mtggoldfish, Twin holds 9.53% of the metagame (combined), followed by aff at 7.32, and if you count both Jund and Abzan they are ~11. According to GP pitt, 10.4 of Twin combined, Affinity 10.4, Jund 8.8 (and Abzan 5.9, if you like to count them together it's the most played archetype). So, that's large enough?
Hurting diversity? Yeah, people were totally not playing Grixis control right now because of Grixis Twin, right? Right? Like, totally. No Grixis control in a recent Top8. Regarding Jeskai and Temur, those decks were played before and were left behind because they couldn't perform, not because of Twin. Banning Twin because Jeskai control is not played as much as Jeskai Twin is like banning Scapeshift because Temur Control is worse than Temur Scapeshift (?)
This is the Wild Nacatl ban all over again.
I'm sorry, but evidence seems to disagree: RG Tron (if you call it combo), Amulet, Infect, Scapeshift, Ad nauseam aren't obsolete (well, maybe Amulet is now ). And I don't know why you are not counting GY based combo.
I have never played Standard and bought a 1800 dollar deck in Jund, that would be 1800 dollars in Standard if Modern was crap 4 years ago.
I still love Modern, i just fear for my money.
Please report this if you see it.
Carry on!
Or, if you must watch it, then at least spam chat with obnoxious anti-Tron or anti-Affinity memes. "Modern: big mana ramp or a million little dudes... how exciting!" Something like that. I'm not good at meme-crafting and Twitch chat is a cesspool that makes the living envy the dead, so who knows what will catch on there.
If "shake-up bans" are the bad part of the Faustian bargain that's necessary to have a Modern PT, is it possible to start a campaign to get rid of Modern PTs? "No Modern PT; Please, Think of the Format's Health." Like I said, I'm no good at sloganeering.
So, you want more uninteractive decks? What is harder to interact with, Twin or Burn/Affinity/Infect?
Not only is it bad to compare deck diversity through its top 8 appearances, as the sample size of a top 8 is significantly smaller than a metagame share over a year or 6 months, Twin's metagame share also does not reflect its number of Top 8 appearances. If the modern GP in Pittsburgh has three
Splinter twin decks in the top 8, shouldn't it occupy a large share of the metagame?
Yet, Twin's metagame share combined (UR Twin, Grixis Twin and Jeskai Twin) was a paltry 11.5% of the metagame (from Modern Nexus metagame breakdown). At the height of banning, Abzan Pod had 16% of the metagame alone while Jund had 25%. Also, if you were to look at the decks individually, UR Twin itself occupies a 6.2% of the
metagame, largely falling behind Affinity, which is the top dog of the format, at 8.3% of the metagame.
It is very obvious that the metagame tells a different story than the top 8. But why do Wizards use the top 8, which have a smaller sample size then the entire metagame of the year? Shouldn't they use the metagame breakdown, since they have more data about the metagame then what we are analyzing here? That alone is very suspicious to me.
In Grand Prix Singapore on June 28 2015, There is only a Twin deck in the top 8, and another five within the Top 32. Twin combined occupied 20.8 % of the day 2 metagame, and following behind were Burn and Affinity at 19.4% of the day 2 metagame each respectively. The reporter on site compiling these information cited that "he don't think he has ever seen a metagame as diverse as Modern right now." The Winner of that event is Affinity.
In the most recent Starcitygames Open at Charlotte on 9th January 2016, there is only one Twin deck out of the top 8 and another two Twin decks in the top 32 of that format. Twin took only 11.7% of that format with 68 players in day 2, following up with Abzan with 10.2 % of the metagame. The winner of that event, was Jund.
Even though these are two separate events, it shows very clearly that Twin does not consistently "put three decks into the top 8". It does not push out decks from competition from the low number of participation of Twin in the top 32, and does not have an overarching metagame share between its competitors.
To understand why the combo was used and supplanted in similar decks, we have to understand that Modern is dominated also by linear decks like Affinity, Tron and Amulet Bloom that require very specific answers to answer them or else you lose to those decks.
The Splinter Twin combo was used best against linear decks because of their inability to interact via removal against the combo. The threat to combo on turn 4 slows the linear decks down to respect the combo or else they lose. Splinter Twin combo thus becomes a powerful combo that allows those blue decks to end the game against Linear decks such as Affinity (8.3% of the metagame) and RG Tron (6.9% of the metagame) without using specific answers that are used to answer the linear decks normally.
Non-Twin Blue decks like Temur Tempo and Grixis Control thus are strong when there is a strong Twin presence in the format. The notion of "siding out part of the combo" against those decks has become ubitiquous as those decks are notoriously able to interact with the Twin decks by removing the threats shown. The way to win those non-Twin blue decks, is not by winning by combo, but by uninteractive nonbasic hate like Blood Moon as well as indestructible threats like Keranos to grind out against them.
In fact, by banning Splinter Twin, we are actually discouraging non-Twin Blue decks from the format because they lost Twin as a good matchup and also had to incorporate those specific answers to answer the Linear decks else they lose. Linear decks thus dominate because they no longer have the Splinter Twin combo that they have to respect or lose. Kiki-Jiki no longer becomes a replacement as the deck needs to fit Kiki to the deck and most importantly, the deck will only win
on turn 5, which is too late as the critical turn of Modern is turn 4.
From the analysis, it is very clear that Wizards banned the Splinter Twin without mention of the metagame and has used Top 8s results of the Pro Tour to give the impression that Twin is dominating. That will have unforeseen consequences for the Modern metagame in the future.
TL:DR: Wizards has banned Splinter Twin through its
explanation, without consideration of the diversity of Modern
and has used skewed information by mentioning top 8 records
that show Twin dominating, to justify the ban.
Twin's metagame share as a whole was totally fine for much of the year. Affinity was even HIGHER for a while, as was Abzan. Wizards appears to only care about the deck's share in Top 8s, which totally changes how we need to view banlist updates and predict what will happen.
RGB Jund BGR
WGB Junk/Abzan Company WGB
LEGACY
RUGB Delver GURB
EDH
UW Geist of Saint Traft Aggro-Control WU
RUG Riku of Two Reflections Combo GUR
BBB Skithiryx Control BB
While I do like the trend toward standard over legacy, this is just kinda not okay. I do hope this opens up unbans for blue like AV, and I hope this helps people realize SFM is NOT coming off anytime soon. It's just too high power level for what they want for the format.
Does anyone know if this is good for blue moon? I don't know the deck well but I've always liked it and wouldn't mind shifting to it if it became a viable deck, especially since I own UR twin and the staples cross over.
It was banned because its the fallback deck for Pro's who dislike the format anyway, and Wizards wanted to shake things up. I truly believe that to be the case as there is no historical logic to explain this ban.
I would not expect unbans at all, whats the point? They can just ban the top dog next year and THAT will shake up the format. Thats the intent. Its not to let you play the type of cards you want, its not to let you play a non-rotational stable format, and its not to remove something that is too powerful.
Its intent is to shake up the format for the Pro Tour, and anything else is just obfuscation, lies and misdirection.
I already have burn. Wizards doesnt want to allow the most thoughtful deck in the format to exist? Fine. Burn, Infect, Tron, Lily (I mean BGx).
Great.
Spirits
With B<> Eldrazi on the rise I'm not sure yard based combo is well positioned. Tron also isn't really combo so much as ramp. But, semantics aside, hopefully the banning will open up some sweet Ux combo decks that couldn't exist because red splash + Twin was superior to any other option. I get the rationale for the Twin ban but I really wish they put a powerful option for control back in rotation.
Fish
0 Affinity 0
Blue Moon
Which is funny, Twin got banned for "suppressing" other decks. Eldrazi supresses Living End, Restore Balance, Loam and so many other decks involving both the graveyard and exile zones.
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"
From what I've read, Blue Moon doesn't have a very good Tron matchup (counterintuitive, I know). Does Blue Moon have a good matchup against Affinity, Infect, or Burn? If not, then this is not good for Blue Moon.
1) Complaints about really powerful and hoser cards like Blood Moon and Choke.
2) Complaints about the format being dominated by linear and uninteractive strategies outside of Twin and Jund.
Banning Splinter Twin does nothing to address #1 and actually makes #2 worse.
Yes, I am salty at WOTC right now
I doubt it was done to placate pros or players. It was done to create buzz and new decks around the Pro Tour. Wizards wants new decks and new strategies instead of old fallbacks. That's fine in a rotating format like Standard but bad in one like Modern. At least, unless Wizards recreates Modern as a rotating format based on the artificial banlist-induced rotation, which looks like the plan going ahead.
Twin by nature of it's combo pieces stifles any attempt to interact with the combo through the sheer fact that exarch and pestermite attack the mana base of an opponent, and force all decks to take a huge tempo and board development loss in order to deal with the combo. This is especially backbreaking when Twin was on the play. In fact it should be quite telling that the best way to deal with twin is Abrupt Decay, an uncounterable spell. The only other main deck spell effective against Twin was Path, and white decks have been pushed out of the format because of Twin, despite path.
I feel that with the twin ban we will see more 3cmc+ spells that were unplayable main deck in the twin meta resurge into the limelight. One example being wraths, which are quite good against the new eldrazi deck.
Banning Twin was a good move for the overall health of Modern and opens up a lot of deck design/strategies. I believe other less combo oriented interactive decks will rise to take twin's place, despite all of the doomsayers. This the best thing for tune format since pod's ban.
Sorry for the disjointed feel of this response but I'm on my phone!