Everyone hates KCI and Tron, and keeping asking for better answers/a ban. Hence why no one wants to see Twin unbanned. It would just be KCI 2.0, but with 30 Control/Tempo cards surrounding said combo.
Yes, 30 Control/Tempo cards, has the combo Turn 4, opponents have no way to interact (because its not like we are blowing up lands here or extracting a GY, these are CREATURES we need to kill to stop the combo!) and its simply inevitable that Twin will win, 70/30, against the field clearly.
You know why people hate Tron? Its cheating mana, and has threats that are comically pushed. People dont want Twin unbanned because they dont want to be forced to respect the fact they cannot tap out all the time.
People hate KCI, because its slow as hell, even on MTGO. I mean honestly, we know people dont want to see it, but I could go through every single 'better than tier 2' Modern deck, by memory, and tell you why every.single.one sucks to play against.
Twin was never as dominate as other offenders, and Affinity should have eaten a ban at some point, was the major take away I believe, and there was no more diversity post ban, than there was pre-ban.
First, let's look at the actual numbers. 2015 Twin was 18.75% of GP/PT T8s for the entire year. 2014 Pod was 22%. Both years had eight GP/PT total. These are clearly comparable numbers, especially when we look at the distribution of other finishes. In both years, Affinity was the second most-played deck at the GP/PT level at 11% of BOTH the 2014 and the 2015 GP/PT T8 finishes. Pod and Twin were ahead of that second most-played deck by a longshot. Both decks were dominant, both decks got banned.
Second, and far more importantly, this argument doesn't matter for unbanning purposes. Wizards does not challenge their old ban rationale and reverse it because they were wrong at the time. They just assess how the unban would affect the current metagame regarding the terms on which it was banned.
The only reason we have blue diversity now, is Teferi (April 21, 2018), Search/Field of Ruin (September 23, 2017), and Jace (FEBRUARY 12, 2018). All cards made available in the last year, 2 and 3/4 years after Twin was banned.
Again, Wizards doesn't seem to care why a ban did or did not lead to a certain state of the game. They just care what the state was at the time of the ban and what the state currently is when they are considering an unban. For all we know, Twin's ban allowed those new cards to find homes in other decks. Or maybe a failure to ban Twin would have led to Twin adopting some of those cards and being even better. Or maybe Twin's ban allowed other decks to be better which in turn allowed the blue-based decks to adopt these new cards and find success. Who knows? It's so subjective. Every side can come up with dozens of reasonable sounding arguments that have no basis in data. This is probably why Wizards never seems to try to disentangle the causative and correlative mess in B&R updates. Such lines bring us back to the realm of subjective speculation. Instead, they probably just compare the objective diversity at one point to the objective diversity at another point.
I'll just present the numbers so we can discuss them. Here's the comparison between 2015 and 2018:
2015 GP/PT T8 data
Unique decks: 26
Decks that made T8 in 2018: 9
Decks that did not T8 in 2018: 17
2018 GP/PT T8 data
Unique decks: 26
Decks that did not T8 in 2015: 17
Decks that did T8 in 2015: 9
Okay then. So, Twin gets banned in 2016. Lots of stuff happened in between. 2.5 years later and all variables considered, the GP/PT T8 diversity is LITERALLY IDENTICAL.
So what is the upside for unbanning Twin? The best case scenario is preserving the net diversity we already have. We are unlikely to increase diversity because Twin-era diversity and current-era diversity are identical. We would just shuffle around the decks that are represented. The worst case scenario is potentially creating an instant Tier .5 or better deck that gained a lot of tools in the last 2.5 years. Why the heck would risk-averse Wizards take this chance?
I'll just present the numbers so we can discuss them. Here's the comparison between 2015 and 2018:
2015 GP/PT T8 data
Unique decks: 26
Decks that made T8 in 2018: 9
Decks that did not T8 in 2018: 17
2018 GP/PT T8 data
Unique decks: 26
Decks that did not T8 in 2015: 17
Decks that did T8 in 2015: 9
Okay then. So, Twin gets banned in 2016. Lots of stuff happened in between. 2.5 years later and all variables considered, the GP/PT T8 diversity is LITERALLY IDENTICAL.
Quoted, for eternity.
Whats the upside? Letting me play Twin, and dunking on decks that refuse to interact. Nothing more, nothing less.
I would like a Twin unban to force some interaction in today's linear decks but I have to admit that even playing Jund or Abzan, sometimes Twin could get free wins by forcing you to Abrupt Decay their creature in response to them tapping your land, then untap on their turn and deploy Blood Moon which usually meant GG
This is fine for me as it punishes greedy manabases but many people forget these games and maybe those are the reason why that matchup is not as favorable to Jund as most people would expect and leans more towards the 50/50 ktkenshinx was pointing out
Let's not forget that Jund and Abzan have gotten considerable upgrades over the past few years. Not the least bit are new cards like Collective Brutality, grindy cards like Tireless Tracker, and great cards like Bloodbraid Elf. When playing with a grip of discardspells and goodremoval backed by Goyfs and other great cards, BGx could actually be relevant again in this hypothetical context, instead of getting run over by the narrow and degenerate nonsense currently at the top of the format.
Yeah, I was not saying that as a reason not to unban Twin but to understand why that matchup was more like 50/50, they also got Fatal Push which is an excellent answer vs Twin
Seems people are bored...same twin Diskussion like 537 times bevore. Why you all do this again and again? Noone of you say anythink new in the last pages about twin. Waste of time again and again and again and....
The fear of twin is comical, in the face of all the things one can do and see and play against. Its Twin that is the Big Bad.
To say nothing of the comments on that article. OH NO A 4/4 on turn 3!
T3 Storm? Cool.
T3 Karn? Gravy.
T4 Ugin? Even better.
T2/3 KCI combo? Fine.
T2/3 Infect? Great.
T1/2 Multiple Free 4/4s? Fair.
T1/2 Multiple Free 2/2s and 4/3 Haste? Just as Garfield intended.
T3 4/4 Artifact creature that takes 4 mana investment over 2 turns and requires creature to live? WAY TOO GOOD.
T4 Fragile creature combo? TOTLLY BROKEN OPPRESSIVE UNFAIR GET OUT OF MY FORMAT.
Laughed at the "just as Garfield intended" part. It made me think if he helped design Core 19? Hmm, although I think it's just Return to Dom that he designed.
On the Bridgevine, it is sometimes multiple 3/2's and a 5/3 + a bushwacker that is also attacking, and me = dead or almost dead.
However, their deck is not really consistent.. there are games where I have no chance, but there are also games they only make a a few zombies that I kill with Malestrom Pulse or the two Crime // Punishment I have in the sideaboard. Stitcher's Supplier makes their deck strong, but they don't always have it.
The fear of twin is comical, in the face of all the things one can do and see and play against. Its Twin that is the Big Bad.
To say nothing of the comments on that article. OH NO A 4/4 on turn 3!
T3 Storm? Cool.
T3 Karn? Gravy.
T4 Ugin? Even better.
T2/3 KCI combo? Fine.
T2/3 Infect? Great.
T1/2 Multiple Free 4/4s? Fair.
T1/2 Multiple Free 2/2s and 4/3 Haste? Just as Garfield intended.
T3 4/4 Artifact creature that takes 4 mana investment over 2 turns and requires creature to live? WAY TOO GOOD.
T4 Fragile creature combo? TOTLLY BROKEN OPPRESSIVE UNFAIR GET OUT OF MY FORMAT.
Laughed at the "just as Garfield intended" part. It made me think if he helped design Core 19? Hmm, although I think it's just Return to Dom that he designed.
On the Bridgevine, it is sometimes multiple 3/2's and a 5/3 + a bushwacker that is also attacking, and me = dead or almost dead.
However, their deck is not really consistent.. there are games where I have no chance, but there are also games they only make a a few zombies that I kill with Malestrom Pulse or the two Crime // Punishment I have in the sideaboard. Stitcher's Supplier makes their deck strong, but they don't always have it.
Hopefully, we get SFM in modern someday.
The game as Garfield intended followed a more organic design where a player could technically win turn 2, but there were aggressive and easy ways to stop winning on turn two so no one ever bothers with it due to it being a glass cannon. The reason modern magic feels different is because the designers started intentionally designing cards to prevent winning on any turn before turn 4 most of the time and made weaker answers, since the game itself is designed to only allow wins at a later point. That's why a lot of people don't like modern magic or standard now and say that the game feels different.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I'm simply asking Twin defenders to look at that current diversity and compare it to the diversity of Twin era, and then assess Twin's likely impact on that relative diversity. I maintain that the diversity is comparable or slightly higher today.
That's exactly what I did. I would say that the diversity is definitely higher right now than it was in 2015, but I don't think that has anything to do with Twin not being around. It's because Fatal Push made fair decks that weren't red or white viable. It's because of Prized Amalgam, Hollow One, Stitcher's Supplier, Field of Ruin, Search for Azcanta, Teferi, Tireless Tracker, Collective Brutality, all the spirits in SOI, Scrap Trawler, Unclaimed Territory, Bedlam Reveler, and on and on. Wizards has been knocking it out of the park when it comes to printing cards that impact Modern over the last several sets. That is why the diversity is good right now.
This is a rhetoric-based argument with no data. Why can't the Twin proponents just compare the GP/PT T8s/T16s/T32s decks between years and make their argument? I'm not saying this argument can't be made. I'm sure it can! I'm saying that no one makes it.
How can I make an argument with data that Twin would be fine in the current meta? There's no real way of knowing for sure unless it was unbanned. The best argument I could make is that the top decks in 2015 were Twin, Jund, and Affinity, and both Jund and Affinity have almost disappeared. That seems to suggest that the overall power level of the format has risen substantially since 2015, so it's likely that Twin is fine now, and most likely wouldn't even be the best thing to be doing in Modern.
Again, this is only one of the two reasons Twin was banned. Even if one were to conclusively prove that blue decks did not diversity (which no one has remotely TRIED, let alone succeeded at ), they would also have to prove that overall diversity would not be affected. Can this case be made? Potentially! There's a lot of data out there. But the endless memes and subjective appeals do not make that case.
Again, there's not much we can do here but make subjective appeals. None of us know for sure what would happen if Twin was unbanned. I think it's a convincing argument to consider how much the overall power level of the format has risen in the last 2.5 years, and combine that with the fact that many people didn't feel Twin was ban-worthy as it was in early 2016. Even if we're conservative and say that Twin was slightly over the line of being ban-worthy in early 2016, I feel it's a hard sell to say it would still be at the same level today. The only real upgrade the deck's gotten since its ban is probably Opt over Serum Visions, and that's a very minor upgrade. You would probably play a couple JTMSs in the sideboard for fair matchups, but that's pretty much it.
Dying on turn 3 or 4 in Modern is one issue, but blowing up their combo in their face, and they can just draw a card on their next draw phase like nothing ever happened was the worst of how Twin operated.
Except that's not exactly how it was. If you went for the combo kill and got blown out, your odds of winning the game plummeted. Especially against aggressive decks where you were forced to just go for it because you were going to die in a turn or two, if you got blown out you wouldn't have enough time to reassemble the combo. Twin was not a good control deck, the best you could do was delay your opponent for a few turns, and if you didn't find both pieces of the combo again, you just died.
First, let's look at the actual numbers. 2015 Twin was 18.75% of GP/PT T8s for the entire year. 2014 Pod was 22%. Both years had eight GP/PT total. These are clearly comparable numbers, especially when we look at the distribution of other finishes. In both years, Affinity was the second most-played deck at the GP/PT level at 11% of BOTH the 2014 and the 2015 GP/PT T8 finishes. Pod and Twin were ahead of that second most-played deck by a longshot. Both decks were dominant, both decks got banned.
First of all, your numbers are off. There were 8 GPs and a PT in 2015. Twin totalled 16.6% of all top 8s in the year. BUT, if you exclude the last GP, GP Pittsburgh (which was when Amulet Bloom had begun to warp the meta), Twin was only 14% of all top 8s for the year before that tournament. And guess what? That was only tied for the most, as GBx midrange also was 14% of the top 8s in those tournaments. So why did Twin get something banned, but the GBx decks didn't?
The same thing that's the upside for any unban: letting people play with sweet cards that they want to play with. SFM and Twin are basically memes at this point, the way BBE was before she finally got unbanned. If these cards can successfully fit within the power level of Modern, they shouldn't be banned. Some of us don't think that Twin was too far out of the power level of Modern when it got banned, and now 2.5 years later the format has gotten a lot more powerful, so it's kind of ridiculous to assert that Modern couldn't handle Twin right now. I'm not even sure if the deck would even be that good, because it would get eaten alive by the likes of Humans, Spirits, GDS, Mardu Pyromancer, and UW Control.
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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
The fear of twin is comical, in the face of all the things one can do and see and play against. Its Twin that is the Big Bad.
To say nothing of the comments on that article. OH NO A 4/4 on turn 3!
T3 Storm? Cool.
T3 Karn? Gravy.
T4 Ugin? Even better.
T2/3 KCI combo? Fine.
T2/3 Infect? Great.
T1/2 Multiple Free 4/4s? Fair.
T1/2 Multiple Free 2/2s and 4/3 Haste? Just as Garfield intended.
T3 4/4 Artifact creature that takes 4 mana investment over 2 turns and requires creature to live? WAY TOO GOOD.
T4 Fragile creature combo? TOTLLY BROKEN OPPRESSIVE UNFAIR GET OUT OF MY FORMAT.
Laughed at the "just as Garfield intended" part. It made me think if he helped design Core 19? Hmm, although I think it's just Return to Dom that he designed.
On the Bridgevine, it is sometimes multiple 3/2's and a 5/3 + a bushwacker that is also attacking, and me = dead or almost dead.
However, their deck is not really consistent.. there are games where I have no chance, but there are also games they only make a a few zombies that I kill with Malestrom Pulse or the two Crime // Punishment I have in the sideaboard. Stitcher's Supplier makes their deck strong, but they don't always have it.
Hopefully, we get SFM in modern someday.
The game as Garfield intended followed a more organic design where a player could technically win turn 2, but there were aggressive and easy ways to stop winning on turn two so no one ever bothers with it due to it being a glass cannon. The reason modern magic feels different is because the designers started intentionally designing cards to prevent winning on any turn before turn 4 most of the time and made weaker answers, since the game itself is designed to only allow wins at a later point. That's why a lot of people don't like modern magic or standard now and say that the game feels different.
Turn 4 format is alright, my subjective opinion. I don't like the fast turn 2 / turn 3 wins in legacy. I remember one legacy game where I created around 10 goblins turn 1 with a Storm deck on the draw, that's a god hand. Opponent plays an SFM turn 2, and then concedes... he seemed to have sided out Batterskull. I won, but not a very fun game for both of us. Have not yet faced the deck, but I heard Modern KCI combo earliest wins are turn 4 - and that's fine for me.
First, let's look at the actual numbers. 2015 Twin was 18.75% of GP/PT T8s for the entire year. 2014 Pod was 22%. Both years had eight GP/PT total. These are clearly comparable numbers, especially when we look at the distribution of other finishes. In both years, Affinity was the second most-played deck at the GP/PT level at 11% of BOTH the 2014 and the 2015 GP/PT T8 finishes. Pod and Twin were ahead of that second most-played deck by a longshot. Both decks were dominant, both decks got banned.
First of all, your numbers are off. There were 8 GPs and a PT in 2015. Twin totalled 16.6% of all top 8s in the year. BUT, if you exclude the last GP, GP Pittsburgh (which was when Amulet Bloom had begun to warp the meta), Twin was only 14% of all top 8s for the year before that tournament. And guess what? That was only tied for the most, as GBx midrange also was 14% of the top 8s in those tournaments. So why did Twin get something banned, but the GBx decks didn't?
This part reminds me that time when Bloom Titan was flexing it's muscle. The super scary hive mind kill. Summer Bloom and Splinter Twin both banned. Bloom Titan was able to slowlly recover to become the still competitive Amulet Titan... while Splinter Twin decks died.
I think the organic model is the better experience as long as the answers are not restrictive in availability. Modern has s big problem due to the answers being expensive. Engineered explosives, chalice of the void, and leylines are all cards that should not be rare prints in the modern format, just like force of will and wasteland shouldn't be rare in legacy. The company is run by people that see playability as a qualifier for rarity upshifts, which is why we are in such a mess with the market right now.
I don't see why modern can't have the same appeal of legacy where you get a pet deck and tweak + build upon it. The only thing preventing this and making it less attractive than legacy is the way the card pool is supported. I would have gone with the GW approach of having core parts of a deck hold the value such as the win conditions, while sideboard and deck enablers are more heavily printed. The model adopted unintentionally by wotc is the inverse. The deck enablers are holding the value and the win conditions are cheap. This makes the gameplay environment toxic and leads to cheating, complaining on social media, and violent price spikes from speculators because they know people need certain cards to even play the game.
Edit: GW means Games Workshop and not green white in case anyone got confused by that use of the abbreviation.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Now, this isn't at all based on ban list reasonings or the like that WotC have actually done.
But I think they dislike any deck that can play fair and unfair with a reasonable amount of consistency. The majority of combo decks in Modern are, if they're not comboing, trying to set up the combo or flailing around. Twin (and Pod) are examples of decks that could with a reasonable amount of consistency combo off and could play the fair game just as well as the other decks in the format.
If your deck can play a powerful fair game as well as combo with a decent amount of consistency (and that combo isn't a "soft" combo), I think it will eventually end up banned. It's just a pattern I've seen in Modern. Hell, Amulet Bloom kind of fit that criteria, if we stretch "fair"; yes, it could kill you quickly with Bloom + Amulet, but Bloom as a ramp spell would usually let you start slamming Titans soon enough to outgrind the fair decks in the format. Hell, taking out the Amulets is still a main sideboard plan against a deck like Jund.
You can play a combo deck, or you can play a fair deck. I think it's reasonably apparent from the bans that WotC has made that they don't want you to be able to easily do either or switch from one to the other, especially with a reasonably low opportunity cost in running the combo in your deck.
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Well, I can saw a woman in two, but you won't wanna look in the box when I'm through.
People don't want Twin unbanned because they don't want to not be ABLE to tap out at any time. That's a bug, not a feature, and it's a terrible way to play Magic. "You can't tap out anymore, and eventually, I'll have enough mana to play my combo AND have Remand mana up," is a Catch 22 situation that leads to dull, uninteractive games of chicken.
I don't care about any of the reasons for twin anymore. All I can say is I'm glad to never see a turn three question at your end step that if you can't answer 1-1 (at instant speed) kills you...from a deck packing 8-10 counterspells and 6-8 pieces of card advantage and oh yeah it sideboards into a full control deck in 7 cards.
Tapping your removal Mana at your end step to dodge the 2-1 from going for it is the worst and I just never want to play against it again.
It's nothing like any combo deck and acting like it's remotely similar to kci or storm is disingenuous.
Modern still have a turn 4 combo deck in Saheeli + Felidar... but it's more easy to disrupt, creature doesn't have flash, needs a 3 color manabase, and cannot tap opponent lands eot. I have the combo pieces already, but cannot really build the deck anywmore because already sold off tarns.
I'm simply asking Twin defenders to look at that current diversity and compare it to the diversity of Twin era, and then assess Twin's likely impact on that relative diversity. I maintain that the diversity is comparable or slightly higher today.
That's exactly what I did. I would say that the diversity is definitely higher right now than it was in 2015, but I don't think that has anything to do with Twin not being around. It's because Fatal Push made fair decks that weren't red or white viable. It's because of Prized Amalgam, Hollow One, Stitcher's Supplier, Field of Ruin, Search for Azcanta, Teferi, Tireless Tracker, Collective Brutality, all the spirits in SOI, Scrap Trawler, Unclaimed Territory, Bedlam Reveler, and on and on. Wizards has been knocking it out of the park when it comes to printing cards that impact Modern over the last several sets. That is why the diversity is good right now.
The GP/PT diversity is the same. MTGO might be higher but no one has checked the numbers. This is why it is important to look at actual numbers and not just speculate on whether diversity is or is not higher. You made a bunch of rhetorical cases here for why diversity was higher due to new cards, but we know that the GP/PT T8 diversity is the same.
First, let's look at the actual numbers. 2015 Twin was 18.75% of GP/PT T8s for the entire year. 2014 Pod was 22%. Both years had eight GP/PT total. These are clearly comparable numbers, especially when we look at the distribution of other finishes. In both years, Affinity was the second most-played deck at the GP/PT level at 11% of BOTH the 2014 and the 2015 GP/PT T8 finishes. Pod and Twin were ahead of that second most-played deck by a longshot. Both decks were dominant, both decks got banned.
First of all, your numbers are off. There were 8 GPs and a PT in 2015. Twin totalled 16.6% of all top 8s in the year. BUT, if you exclude the last GP, GP Pittsburgh (which was when Amulet Bloom had begun to warp the meta), Twin was only 14% of all top 8s for the year before that tournament. And guess what? That was only tied for the most, as GBx midrange also was 14% of the top 8s in those tournaments. So why did Twin get something banned, but the GBx decks didn't?
They are not off. You have counted a pre-Pod and pre-TC/DTT ban GP in the dataset. I am deliberately excluding that event because it was a radically different format. I am only looking at the numbers after three cards got banned. It's possible you just forgot about that ban timetable when including this event. But I am comfortable saying that anyone who deliberately includes GP Omaha in a 2015 GP/PT dataset to try and prove a point about Twin is intentionally or unintentionally disingenuous. This was a COMPLETELY different format.
The same thing that's the upside for any unban: letting people play with sweet cards that they want to play with. SFM and Twin are basically memes at this point, the way BBE was before she finally got unbanned. If these cards can successfully fit within the power level of Modern, they shouldn't be banned. Some of us don't think that Twin was too far out of the power level of Modern when it got banned, and now 2.5 years later the format has gotten a lot more powerful, so it's kind of ridiculous to assert that Modern couldn't handle Twin right now. I'm not even sure if the deck would even be that good, because it would get eaten alive by the likes of Humans, Spirits, GDS, Mardu Pyromancer, and UW Control.
The bar for unbans has never been "letting people play with sweet cards that they want to play with." The bar is diversity. Would the unban help, hurt, or have no effect on format diversity? The Twin camp keeps repeating that it would help diversity, but as we see, the GP/PT T8 numbers show the exact same diversity in 2015 and 2018. Twin's existence did not enable more decks. It just appeared to enable a different set of decks. Wizards has never unbanned a card to shuffle around diversity so I don't see why they would do that now, especially if they are worried about Twin being too good with all its new tools.
I don't care about any of the reasons for twin anymore. All I can say is I'm glad to never see a turn three question at your end step that if you can't answer 1-1 (at instant speed) kills you...from a deck packing 8-10 counterspells and 6-8 pieces of card advantage and oh yeah it sideboards into a full control deck in 7 cards.
Tapping your removal Mana at your end step to dodge the 2-1 from going for it is the worst and I just never want to play against it again.
It's nothing like any combo deck and acting like it's remotely similar to kci or storm is disingenuous.
Thank you,
This best summarizes why I never want to play in a modern with Splinter Twin. Most of us have had a deck nerfed into oblivion by a ban that we liked (I was enjoying Kiln Fiend with probe). Blue is no longer an endangered species in modern. Grixis shadow offers a tempo-oriented midrange deck featuring blue. UW Miracles offers a slower-paced traditional control deck. For those who argued banning twin virtually banned blue, that is no longer the case.
Kiln Fiend/Thing 'UR Bloo' is still amazing, especially now that Black based decks that interact are going extinct.
My issue with Pokken's post is....how at all did Jund compete against such a mythical beast? In fact you know what this is? In MMA circles there are 'Mythical Fighters' based on real people. Like 'Motivated BJ Penn' or 'Sea Level Cain'.
Thats what Twin has become in the minds of so many. 'Oh I tapped out on Turn 3, I've lost, scoop it'. Twin didnt win that often. Yes you had to interact, but its not like it was 60/40 vs Jund.
People don't want Twin unbanned because they don't want to not be ABLE to tap out at any time. That's a bug, not a feature, and it's a terrible way to play Magic. "You can't tap out anymore, and eventually, I'll have enough mana to play my combo AND have Remand mana up," is a Catch 22 situation that leads to dull, uninteractive games of chicken.
There are so many decks like this, its mind boggling. I ONLY play decks which interact. I'm well aware of what it means to need to have your mana available. Why do you think Teferi is so damn good?
I also maintain that Wizards won't risk that with a Twin unban. They are EXTREMELY risk averse with unbans.
Yet, the briefly unbanned GGT and unbanned Jace, BBE, against the opinions of many pros and many other on various forums who predicted the sky would fall. They are not as averse as you claim.
OTOH, I would never expect them to cleanly admit past ban mistake. If only not to look silly if the unban turn out ugly and they need to re-ban, liek what happened with GGT.
Okay then. So, Twin gets banned in 2016. Lots of stuff happened in between. 2.5 years later and all variables considered, the GP/PT T8 diversity is LITERALLY IDENTICAL.
Given that Wizards seem to ban any deck that gets near 20%, how could the diversity be otherwise? Decks are kept to 10% or lower. Combined with variance it is certain that we will get such a meta-game as long as Wizards police the Modern format as they do now. Actually, there were multiple instances in the intervening years were the meta-game diversity got lower and that's when Wizards acted with bans.
So, the argument rather shows that they should unban twin since the meta numbers seem unaffected by its presence or absence.
People don't want Twin unbanned because they don't want to not be ABLE to tap out at any time. That's a bug, not a feature, and it's a terrible way to play Magic. "You can't tap out anymore, and eventually, I'll have enough mana to play my combo AND have Remand mana up," is a Catch 22 situation that leads to dull, uninteractive games of chicken.
There are so many decks like this, its mind boggling. I ONLY play decks which interact. I'm well aware of what it means to need to have your mana available. Why do you think Teferi is so damn good?
Except there aren't so many decks like this, or ever, outside of Twin! Every time Storm is about to go off, I'm aware that they have maybe 5 pieces of interaction to prevent me from stopping them from going off. KCI has about 0, with 4 in the Board. None of them happen at your End of Turn.
Twin was a deck with an infinite, instant-win combo, AND a mid-range(ish) tempo deck with tons of interaction available to stop you from preventing said combo! All of the versions of it that work nowadays (Blue Moon or Breach Emmy variants) give you about 5-6 turns to set up a clock through some interaction, and THEN deal with their combo. Twin gave you less time to put them on a clock, required you to stop playing Magic to keep them honest, and had a solid Plan B. No current combo decks can make those claims, nor should they be able to, IMO.
People don't want Twin unbanned because they don't want to not be ABLE to tap out at any time. That's a bug, not a feature, and it's a terrible way to play Magic. "You can't tap out anymore, and eventually, I'll have enough mana to play my combo AND have Remand mana up," is a Catch 22 situation that leads to dull, uninteractive games of chicken.
Twin was so dominant because the combo was bolt proof with Deceiver Exarch. Now we have fatal push, and abrupt decay can ignore remand, or duress/thoughtseize/inquisition/collective brutality can make them discard the remand. Blue decks can hold up annul for Twin or dispel for remand. White has path to exile, hushwing griff, Linvala, and runed halo. All decks can play torpor orb. There’s also Supreme Verdict.
Humans has meddling mage, Thalia, and kitesail freebooter, who are all uncounterable with a cavern of souls. Eldrazi can have an uncounterable thought-knot seer. Red has Combust. Decks that abuse the graveyard have Lightning Axe. Lantern control has ensnaring bridge.
Grixis DS can play fatal push, stubborn denial, thoughtseize, inquisition, dismember, terminate, combust, and annul. Jund can play fatal push, abrupt decay, terminate, inquisition, TS, Liliana, and combust. American control can play path, combust, mana leak, annul, Supreme Verdict, and cryptic command. If they unban SFM also, deadguy ale would have fatal push, path to exile, Lily, inquisition, thoughtseize, etc.
Holding up 1 mana for a fatal push, path to exile, lightning axe, annul, ect. Isn’t a bug. Those cards are instants, and are meant to be able to be played during your opponent’s turn.
People don't want Twin unbanned because they don't want to not be ABLE to tap out at any time. That's a bug, not a feature, and it's a terrible way to play Magic. "You can't tap out anymore, and eventually, I'll have enough mana to play my combo AND have Remand mana up," is a Catch 22 situation that leads to dull, uninteractive games of chicken.
There are so many decks like this, its mind boggling. I ONLY play decks which interact. I'm well aware of what it means to need to have your mana available. Why do you think Teferi is so damn good?
Except there aren't so many decks like this, or ever, outside of Twin!
So you are OK tapping out against Storm? KCI? Infect? Tron? Burn? etc?
You see where I'm going with this and why the "I can't tap out against them!" is a horrible and meaningless excuse?
Every single time I have ever tapped out to do something against any of these decks I will say, out loud, as I pass the turn: "Am I dead?"
For some reason I'm getting the impression that the reason people are really afraid of unbanning anything is because everyone is hyperfocused on the dangers vs the benefits. It's likely a carry over from media dramatizations done by professional articles and group think. There is a reason KTK keeps pointing out the meta data when discussing the subject: people are emotionally driven a lot of the time. It is especially true for younger players and entrenched veterans.
At least, this is what looks to be happening here with twin.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Just plucked from Jeff Hoogland's stream where he talks about how glad he is that Magic R&D has kept us safe from the tyranny that is Stoneforge Mystic. As he casually hardcasts a turn 3 Emrakul.
Just plucked from Jeff Hoogland's stream where he talks about how glad he is that Magic R&D has kept us safe from the tyranny that is Stoneforge Mystic. As he casually hardcasts a turn 3 Emrakul.
Yes, 30 Control/Tempo cards, has the combo Turn 4, opponents have no way to interact (because its not like we are blowing up lands here or extracting a GY, these are CREATURES we need to kill to stop the combo!) and its simply inevitable that Twin will win, 70/30, against the field clearly.
You know why people hate Tron? Its cheating mana, and has threats that are comically pushed. People dont want Twin unbanned because they dont want to be forced to respect the fact they cannot tap out all the time.
People hate KCI, because its slow as hell, even on MTGO. I mean honestly, we know people dont want to see it, but I could go through every single 'better than tier 2' Modern deck, by memory, and tell you why every.single.one sucks to play against.
Whats one more?
Spirits
First, let's look at the actual numbers. 2015 Twin was 18.75% of GP/PT T8s for the entire year. 2014 Pod was 22%. Both years had eight GP/PT total. These are clearly comparable numbers, especially when we look at the distribution of other finishes. In both years, Affinity was the second most-played deck at the GP/PT level at 11% of BOTH the 2014 and the 2015 GP/PT T8 finishes. Pod and Twin were ahead of that second most-played deck by a longshot. Both decks were dominant, both decks got banned.
Second, and far more importantly, this argument doesn't matter for unbanning purposes. Wizards does not challenge their old ban rationale and reverse it because they were wrong at the time. They just assess how the unban would affect the current metagame regarding the terms on which it was banned.
Again, Wizards doesn't seem to care why a ban did or did not lead to a certain state of the game. They just care what the state was at the time of the ban and what the state currently is when they are considering an unban. For all we know, Twin's ban allowed those new cards to find homes in other decks. Or maybe a failure to ban Twin would have led to Twin adopting some of those cards and being even better. Or maybe Twin's ban allowed other decks to be better which in turn allowed the blue-based decks to adopt these new cards and find success. Who knows? It's so subjective. Every side can come up with dozens of reasonable sounding arguments that have no basis in data. This is probably why Wizards never seems to try to disentangle the causative and correlative mess in B&R updates. Such lines bring us back to the realm of subjective speculation. Instead, they probably just compare the objective diversity at one point to the objective diversity at another point.
I'll just present the numbers so we can discuss them. Here's the comparison between 2015 and 2018:
2015 GP/PT T8 data
Unique decks: 26
Decks that made T8 in 2018: 9
Decks that did not T8 in 2018: 17
2018 GP/PT T8 data
Unique decks: 26
Decks that did not T8 in 2015: 17
Decks that did T8 in 2015: 9
Okay then. So, Twin gets banned in 2016. Lots of stuff happened in between. 2.5 years later and all variables considered, the GP/PT T8 diversity is LITERALLY IDENTICAL.
So what is the upside for unbanning Twin? The best case scenario is preserving the net diversity we already have. We are unlikely to increase diversity because Twin-era diversity and current-era diversity are identical. We would just shuffle around the decks that are represented. The worst case scenario is potentially creating an instant Tier .5 or better deck that gained a lot of tools in the last 2.5 years. Why the heck would risk-averse Wizards take this chance?
Quoted, for eternity.
Whats the upside? Letting me play Twin, and dunking on decks that refuse to interact. Nothing more, nothing less.
Spirits
Yeah, I was not saying that as a reason not to unban Twin but to understand why that matchup was more like 50/50, they also got Fatal Push which is an excellent answer vs Twin
Laughed at the "just as Garfield intended" part. It made me think if he helped design Core 19? Hmm, although I think it's just Return to Dom that he designed.
On the Bridgevine, it is sometimes multiple 3/2's and a 5/3 + a bushwacker that is also attacking, and me = dead or almost dead.
However, their deck is not really consistent.. there are games where I have no chance, but there are also games they only make a a few zombies that I kill with Malestrom Pulse or the two Crime // Punishment I have in the sideaboard. Stitcher's Supplier makes their deck strong, but they don't always have it.
Hopefully, we get SFM in modern someday.
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The game as Garfield intended followed a more organic design where a player could technically win turn 2, but there were aggressive and easy ways to stop winning on turn two so no one ever bothers with it due to it being a glass cannon. The reason modern magic feels different is because the designers started intentionally designing cards to prevent winning on any turn before turn 4 most of the time and made weaker answers, since the game itself is designed to only allow wins at a later point. That's why a lot of people don't like modern magic or standard now and say that the game feels different.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
How can I make an argument with data that Twin would be fine in the current meta? There's no real way of knowing for sure unless it was unbanned. The best argument I could make is that the top decks in 2015 were Twin, Jund, and Affinity, and both Jund and Affinity have almost disappeared. That seems to suggest that the overall power level of the format has risen substantially since 2015, so it's likely that Twin is fine now, and most likely wouldn't even be the best thing to be doing in Modern.
Again, there's not much we can do here but make subjective appeals. None of us know for sure what would happen if Twin was unbanned. I think it's a convincing argument to consider how much the overall power level of the format has risen in the last 2.5 years, and combine that with the fact that many people didn't feel Twin was ban-worthy as it was in early 2016. Even if we're conservative and say that Twin was slightly over the line of being ban-worthy in early 2016, I feel it's a hard sell to say it would still be at the same level today. The only real upgrade the deck's gotten since its ban is probably Opt over Serum Visions, and that's a very minor upgrade. You would probably play a couple JTMSs in the sideboard for fair matchups, but that's pretty much it.
Except that's not exactly how it was. If you went for the combo kill and got blown out, your odds of winning the game plummeted. Especially against aggressive decks where you were forced to just go for it because you were going to die in a turn or two, if you got blown out you wouldn't have enough time to reassemble the combo. Twin was not a good control deck, the best you could do was delay your opponent for a few turns, and if you didn't find both pieces of the combo again, you just died.
First of all, your numbers are off. There were 8 GPs and a PT in 2015. Twin totalled 16.6% of all top 8s in the year. BUT, if you exclude the last GP, GP Pittsburgh (which was when Amulet Bloom had begun to warp the meta), Twin was only 14% of all top 8s for the year before that tournament. And guess what? That was only tied for the most, as GBx midrange also was 14% of the top 8s in those tournaments. So why did Twin get something banned, but the GBx decks didn't?
The same thing that's the upside for any unban: letting people play with sweet cards that they want to play with. SFM and Twin are basically memes at this point, the way BBE was before she finally got unbanned. If these cards can successfully fit within the power level of Modern, they shouldn't be banned. Some of us don't think that Twin was too far out of the power level of Modern when it got banned, and now 2.5 years later the format has gotten a lot more powerful, so it's kind of ridiculous to assert that Modern couldn't handle Twin right now. I'm not even sure if the deck would even be that good, because it would get eaten alive by the likes of Humans, Spirits, GDS, Mardu Pyromancer, and UW Control.
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
Turn 4 format is alright, my subjective opinion. I don't like the fast turn 2 / turn 3 wins in legacy. I remember one legacy game where I created around 10 goblins turn 1 with a Storm deck on the draw, that's a god hand. Opponent plays an SFM turn 2, and then concedes... he seemed to have sided out Batterskull. I won, but not a very fun game for both of us. Have not yet faced the deck, but I heard Modern KCI combo earliest wins are turn 4 - and that's fine for me.
This part reminds me that time when Bloom Titan was flexing it's muscle. The super scary hive mind kill. Summer Bloom and Splinter Twin both banned. Bloom Titan was able to slowlly recover to become the still competitive Amulet Titan... while Splinter Twin decks died.
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I don't see why modern can't have the same appeal of legacy where you get a pet deck and tweak + build upon it. The only thing preventing this and making it less attractive than legacy is the way the card pool is supported. I would have gone with the GW approach of having core parts of a deck hold the value such as the win conditions, while sideboard and deck enablers are more heavily printed. The model adopted unintentionally by wotc is the inverse. The deck enablers are holding the value and the win conditions are cheap. This makes the gameplay environment toxic and leads to cheating, complaining on social media, and violent price spikes from speculators because they know people need certain cards to even play the game.
Edit: GW means Games Workshop and not green white in case anyone got confused by that use of the abbreviation.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
But I think they dislike any deck that can play fair and unfair with a reasonable amount of consistency. The majority of combo decks in Modern are, if they're not comboing, trying to set up the combo or flailing around. Twin (and Pod) are examples of decks that could with a reasonable amount of consistency combo off and could play the fair game just as well as the other decks in the format.
If your deck can play a powerful fair game as well as combo with a decent amount of consistency (and that combo isn't a "soft" combo), I think it will eventually end up banned. It's just a pattern I've seen in Modern. Hell, Amulet Bloom kind of fit that criteria, if we stretch "fair"; yes, it could kill you quickly with Bloom + Amulet, but Bloom as a ramp spell would usually let you start slamming Titans soon enough to outgrind the fair decks in the format. Hell, taking out the Amulets is still a main sideboard plan against a deck like Jund.
You can play a combo deck, or you can play a fair deck. I think it's reasonably apparent from the bans that WotC has made that they don't want you to be able to easily do either or switch from one to the other, especially with a reasonably low opportunity cost in running the combo in your deck.
Tapping your removal Mana at your end step to dodge the 2-1 from going for it is the worst and I just never want to play against it again.
It's nothing like any combo deck and acting like it's remotely similar to kci or storm is disingenuous.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
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The GP/PT diversity is the same. MTGO might be higher but no one has checked the numbers. This is why it is important to look at actual numbers and not just speculate on whether diversity is or is not higher. You made a bunch of rhetorical cases here for why diversity was higher due to new cards, but we know that the GP/PT T8 diversity is the same.
They are not off. You have counted a pre-Pod and pre-TC/DTT ban GP in the dataset. I am deliberately excluding that event because it was a radically different format. I am only looking at the numbers after three cards got banned. It's possible you just forgot about that ban timetable when including this event. But I am comfortable saying that anyone who deliberately includes GP Omaha in a 2015 GP/PT dataset to try and prove a point about Twin is intentionally or unintentionally disingenuous. This was a COMPLETELY different format.
The bar for unbans has never been "letting people play with sweet cards that they want to play with." The bar is diversity. Would the unban help, hurt, or have no effect on format diversity? The Twin camp keeps repeating that it would help diversity, but as we see, the GP/PT T8 numbers show the exact same diversity in 2015 and 2018. Twin's existence did not enable more decks. It just appeared to enable a different set of decks. Wizards has never unbanned a card to shuffle around diversity so I don't see why they would do that now, especially if they are worried about Twin being too good with all its new tools.
Thank you,
This best summarizes why I never want to play in a modern with Splinter Twin. Most of us have had a deck nerfed into oblivion by a ban that we liked (I was enjoying Kiln Fiend with probe). Blue is no longer an endangered species in modern. Grixis shadow offers a tempo-oriented midrange deck featuring blue. UW Miracles offers a slower-paced traditional control deck. For those who argued banning twin virtually banned blue, that is no longer the case.
My issue with Pokken's post is....how at all did Jund compete against such a mythical beast? In fact you know what this is? In MMA circles there are 'Mythical Fighters' based on real people. Like 'Motivated BJ Penn' or 'Sea Level Cain'.
Thats what Twin has become in the minds of so many. 'Oh I tapped out on Turn 3, I've lost, scoop it'. Twin didnt win that often. Yes you had to interact, but its not like it was 60/40 vs Jund.
There are so many decks like this, its mind boggling. I ONLY play decks which interact. I'm well aware of what it means to need to have your mana available. Why do you think Teferi is so damn good?
Spirits
Yet, the briefly unbanned GGT and unbanned Jace, BBE, against the opinions of many pros and many other on various forums who predicted the sky would fall. They are not as averse as you claim.
OTOH, I would never expect them to cleanly admit past ban mistake. If only not to look silly if the unban turn out ugly and they need to re-ban, liek what happened with GGT.
Given that Wizards seem to ban any deck that gets near 20%, how could the diversity be otherwise? Decks are kept to 10% or lower. Combined with variance it is certain that we will get such a meta-game as long as Wizards police the Modern format as they do now. Actually, there were multiple instances in the intervening years were the meta-game diversity got lower and that's when Wizards acted with bans.
So, the argument rather shows that they should unban twin since the meta numbers seem unaffected by its presence or absence.
Except there aren't so many decks like this, or ever, outside of Twin! Every time Storm is about to go off, I'm aware that they have maybe 5 pieces of interaction to prevent me from stopping them from going off. KCI has about 0, with 4 in the Board. None of them happen at your End of Turn.
Twin was a deck with an infinite, instant-win combo, AND a mid-range(ish) tempo deck with tons of interaction available to stop you from preventing said combo! All of the versions of it that work nowadays (Blue Moon or Breach Emmy variants) give you about 5-6 turns to set up a clock through some interaction, and THEN deal with their combo. Twin gave you less time to put them on a clock, required you to stop playing Magic to keep them honest, and had a solid Plan B. No current combo decks can make those claims, nor should they be able to, IMO.
Twin was so dominant because the combo was bolt proof with Deceiver Exarch. Now we have fatal push, and abrupt decay can ignore remand, or duress/thoughtseize/inquisition/collective brutality can make them discard the remand. Blue decks can hold up annul for Twin or dispel for remand. White has path to exile, hushwing griff, Linvala, and runed halo. All decks can play torpor orb. There’s also Supreme Verdict.
Humans has meddling mage, Thalia, and kitesail freebooter, who are all uncounterable with a cavern of souls. Eldrazi can have an uncounterable thought-knot seer. Red has Combust. Decks that abuse the graveyard have Lightning Axe. Lantern control has ensnaring bridge.
Grixis DS can play fatal push, stubborn denial, thoughtseize, inquisition, dismember, terminate, combust, and annul. Jund can play fatal push, abrupt decay, terminate, inquisition, TS, Liliana, and combust. American control can play path, combust, mana leak, annul, Supreme Verdict, and cryptic command. If they unban SFM also, deadguy ale would have fatal push, path to exile, Lily, inquisition, thoughtseize, etc.
Holding up 1 mana for a fatal push, path to exile, lightning axe, annul, ect. Isn’t a bug. Those cards are instants, and are meant to be able to be played during your opponent’s turn.
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
So you are OK tapping out against Storm? KCI? Infect? Tron? Burn? etc?
You see where I'm going with this and why the "I can't tap out against them!" is a horrible and meaningless excuse?
Every single time I have ever tapped out to do something against any of these decks I will say, out loud, as I pass the turn: "Am I dead?"
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
The issue to you is that half the combo is cast turn 3 EOT? That it is 'instant speed' and your window to interrupt is short?
I just don't see what makes it so different from Burn and Infect, both decks that coexisted at Tier 1, with UR Twin, and Jund.
Spirits
At least, this is what looks to be happening here with twin.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
https://clips.twitch.tv/CredulousHorribleMomDoggo
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Thank GOD, that wasnt a Turn 3 Pestermite.
Spirits