Re: idSurge's post and the Twitter quote
Wizards did not intend to nuke Twin. They definitely did nuke the archetype when the dust settled, but it wasn't their intention. We can blame Wizards for failing to select the card that wouldn't nuke the archetype, but not for banning Twin in a different way than they handled subsequent bans that were themselves designed to not destroy decks.
Then their incompetence knows no bounds. Anyone and everyone who had even the most basic knowledge and understanding of the deck knew that it would cease to exist with Splinter Twin gone. And nearly everyone agreed that it could continue to exist, at a weaker level, in multipleotheriterations, with a ban of Deceiver Exarch instead. The fact they actually believed this wouldn't nuke the deck from orbit is infuriating in of itself. The fact they haven't fixed this in 3 years just adds fuel to that frustration.
Yes, Wizards was incompetent in 2016. We already knew this. Eldrazi was a product of 2015 design, Twin was a product of 2015 shakeup bans, and AF was on record believing Sword would go in Lantern. Incompetence abounded. Their incompetence in 2015 should not inform our reception of their 2018 policies. Most of these have been addressed, either through unbans, better ban rationale, new hiring and team design, etc. Righting an old wrong is not a reason to unban cards. The best argument I have seen to unban Twin is that it is of an appropriate power level for Modern, i.e. the Bitterblossom case reapplied to Twin. All the other arguments aren't in dialogue with Wizards' known unbanning criteria and/or fall short of an unban goal.
Absolutely false, and I could go look up the Top 8's to prove it, but its irrelevant.
idSurge is correct that the Twin ban hurt the UR archetype far more than any other ban hurt other decks. This shouldn't matter, however, because Wizards does not reverse bans to right an old injustice. It does matter in the sense that we should not assume Twin's ban accomplished any of its stated goals, which by all measures I have seen and calculated it did not.
Standard is bad- nochanges we need to fix standard.
Standard is good- no changes we want people to play standard.
Modern is bad- no changes we want people to play standard.
Modern is good- we should keep an eye on things so we can push people into playing standard.
This kind of pithy comment is all too common in the Twitch chat and Reddit age. It sounds good and garners upvotes, but it doesn't remotely describe what literally happened this year. See BBE and JTMS being unbanned when Modern was good and Standard was bad just to improve Modern more. When you have a literal counterexample to your allegation in the last 12 months, it's clearly an allegation that needs reworking.
Good point should have added we printed new cards that we can make money off modern - we'll unban that card and something that evens it out a bit.
This is a no-win situation for Wizards when you frame it like that. Either Wizards unbans cards without reprints and gets blasted for the secondary market prices, or they unban cards with reprints and get blasted for rigging unbans to promote sales. Again, these kinds of arguments are byproducts of the Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter communication age, which favors sensationalist and memorable quotables over rigorous and meaningful analysis. Thankfully, for the most part Wizards has not caved to this kind of outrage. Their B&R updates since 2016 have included more thoughtful analysis of formats and rationale, and they don't respond to the general clamor for bans/unbans that infests online channels. Their more measured approach will likely pay off with an SFM unban in 2019, which will likely be met with similar meme-based responses from users who are generally dissatisfied with most things that Wizards does.
i believe people deep down dont really want such decks to be disappear, it just a matter of dosage. ultimately it brings up something that people dont want to acknowledge or admit: that certain decks or strategies are more suited to being the 'better' things to be doing. it doesnt have to be all or nothing. being unhappy with the state of things doesnt have to mean you want modern to be some midrange/control grindfest; it could just mean you'd like to see more of that than there is right now.
Before I read some inane post 'you all just want to have control mirrors and kill combo' thats not the case at all. tronix, as usual, has it right.
I dont want ANYONES deck to die. Not even Tron. Having 'your' thing taken from you is quite literally one of the worst experiences in gaming.
BGx, Burn, Infect, and even Affinity (a legit 70-30 dog to Twin) all existed WITH Twin. Lets just keep that in mind, when we look at what today is an objectively faster, more powerful, more explosive, format that has but eliminated BGx from the top end of the metagame in favour of highly resilient aggro/combo decks.
By all means, ban nothing. 2 Unbans change everything, without a single person 'losing' their deck.
my hope is that wizards will push harder for generic answers; ones that dont seem ridiculous to play main deck. deathrite shaman is an example of the extreme, but i think scavenging ooze is an acceptable power level. get more modal cards floating around like abrade, or a catch all answers with a manageable downside like assassin's trophy (such as a decent cheap counterspell suited to non-rotating formats). a high enough density of such things might shift the format towards more interactivity and longer games.
I honestly don't think we will have to worry about that as much. I obviously haven't caught up to everything that happened while I was away but I could have sworn I heard somewhere that Wizards admitted that letting threats get too good while not printing good enough answers is a mistake they made and are now correcting. I mean BG/x got Fatal Push and Assassin's Trophy and I can't imagine that there were many people out there who thought that Wizards could push a spell even more than Abrupt Decay but they did.
Azorius is also still to come and they might get some goodies this time too. I mean the last time they gave them Supreme Verdict, Sphinx's Revelation and Detention Sphere. Some of the best if not the best versions of those effects ever made. Two of them have seen Modern and Legacy play and if Midrange and Control would be all there was Revelation would certainly see play too.
Did you catch the one, single, and glaringly obvious format staple missing from your list? The one that never saw its replacement for 3+ years? That thousands of players have tried for years to replace, replicate, or find anything like it, and failed every time? Or did that one just slip your mind during this trip down memory lane?
Delver (Ponder + Preordain, Treasure Cruise, Probe)? Loam + Bug Midrange/Control (Deathrite)? Zoo (Note: they unbanned Nacatl after close to 4 years being banned)? Gifts Control (Seething Song, DTT)? Pod (Company is not Pod...)?
I could list even more decks (Infect till the printing of Become Immense, Second Breakfast till now KCI,...) but Twin is anything but a special snowflake in this regard...
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Before I read some inane post 'you all just want to have control mirrors and kill combo' thats not the case at all. tronix, as usual, has it right.
I dont want ANYONES deck to die. Not even Tron. Having 'your' thing taken from you is quite literally one of the worst experiences in gaming.
right. the difference between our views comes down to twin. i played twin, and would welcome it back with open arms; but im also more understanding of wizards ban list philosophy. as in im failing to see a state where wizards moves to twin as an answer, when the other option of shifting the format with new printings is on the table.
in twins credit i think there is so much dissonance within twin proponents arguments because there is this simultaneous belief that twin would be fine, but also noticeably shift the format; and more importantly keep it that way. i recognized early on after twins banning and i wasnt winning as much; that partly why i loved the deck was merely based on the fact that it was so freaking good. it was just better than so much stuff going on, and i could feel secure in my deck choice in any environment. however the format has shifted away from that kind of mentality, and some number of people dont want it to go back.
if you truly believe twin would be a just another good deck, that means its falling into how we categorize good decks right now. somewhere maybe in the 3-5% range, and subject to cycling in and out of favor depending on the decks trending at the moment.
note: if you are someone who thinks twin would rise to its former 10+ percent status (or higher), nothing anyone can say will convince you otherwise outside of testing results.
based on this i understand why some are hesitant when they hear 'yeah twin wasnt oppressive and wouldnt be now, but if it comes back it can police all of the unfair decks while letting reactive decks rise up'. here is how you can rationalize it:
twin is a creature combo with low(ish) deckbuilding cost meaning it can play a decent amount of reactive elements of its own. if its good it asks opponents to play more removal, so decks flush with removal or other efficacious interaction (discard, countermagic, etc) rise up to meet it.
what are two of the top decks right now? humans and spirits. these decks ask similarly interactive decks to rise up while also preying on linear/whatever decks; but they arent an overly large portion of the field. we have seen a clear case just this year when humans was at its hottest, both jeskai and mardu rose up to meet it. or earlier than that when GDS was prominent, UW control (spreading seas version) rose up as well. so its one more deck floating near or at the top that these interactive decks get to eat up; hence the shift towards more interactive games.
the diversity in modern is currently a function of how it cycles. twin is doing what these other currently existing decks do, but by working on a different axis. this axis means a different matchup spread; a notable one being (presumably) good against big mana; but there are more. so with twin in the format not only would we get more cycles where its less hostile to the fair decks, but those cycles also look different than they do now; which in turn further promotes the type of diversity wizards has been pushing.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
All more cards like Damping Sphere do, is push us into sideboard games even further. Like unless you ACTUALLY account for it in your main deck (aka warping) no fair deck has game against Dredge Game 1, yet are probably favoured Game 2 because of the massive amount of hate that can be directed at the GY or Exile zone.
Thats literally Modern design right now.
None of you want to hear it, or you can respond with 'thats curing Cancer with Ebola' as I have seen on Twitter but Twin, and the pressure it puts on the format to interact, leading to a rise in Jund/Junk/UW/GDS LITERALLY fixes this overnight.
I'm not wrong!
Regarding "fair" deck vs Dredge: Humans, Counter-Cat and Kiki-Chord all have even-ish match-ups pre board (at least pre Chill printing, would need to test again to see, how it currently looks like).
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Byes are accounted for. No-bye players have the same MWP on average in Modern events as Standard and Legacy ones. This includes top players who start off the year with fewer byes, and everyday players who just don't have a lot of byes to begin with. Moreover, having byes is no more predictive of reaching top tables in Modern than in other formats.
It would be interesting to crunch the MWP numbers (without counting bye rounds) for each format based on the number of byes people were awarded. Then we could compare the performance of the people with 3 byes vs the other players for each format taking only in account the matches that were actually played.
The higher the variation, the more skill-intensive the format would be (we are asuming people with 3 byes are, on average, better players than people with less byes so they should perform better when their decisions have more impact in the result). If Modern is a sideboard war, there should be less variation on performance between the pros and the rest of us. On the other hand, if the numbers are on par with the other formats it would indicate that skill-based decisions really have an impact on the format.
This analysis would be far from perfect but I think it would be a good reference for discussion of the format and to settle the ground with actual data. Here is an example of how it could look like (the numbers are made up but it's purpose is to illustrate the idea, I don't know how the numbers would look like)
In this example (see attached image), people with 3 byes would perform 21% better than the rest of the field in Standard, 11% in Modern and 17% in Legacy and that could indicate that Standard is more skill intensive for that period of time.
Note that it would be very important to chose adequately the dates to include in the analysis to better understand the impact of bans/unbans and new prints have in the format so you shouldn't be analysing pre-rotation standard and current Standard as a whole.
Unfortunately, crunching all these numbers would be too much work for us to do and I am not even sure we could access all that information, that's the kind of thing I would expect WotC to discuss in their announcements, even if they decide no changes is the way to go.
And sfm unban will came with a reprint likely. You work it out the way you want and I’ll work it out the way I do. Are you implying if not for twitch, redit, and the likes I wouldn’t feel how I do?im not a bot I can think for myself and those are my thoughts on the matter no matter how you prefer to push yours.
Okay, so let me get this strait: Wizards had a ban announcement with no changes, and this has resulted in five pages of discussion that has gone through an unban twin discussion, a momentary lapse into unbanning Rampaging Ferocidon in standard, and finally we've come around to unbanning SFM again?
...
I'm the lonely individual that still hopes for GSZ.
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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!
Okay, so let me get this strait: Wizards had a ban announcement with no changes, and this has resulted in five pages of discussion that has gone through an unban twin discussion, a momentary lapse into unbanning Rampaging Ferocidon in standard, and finally we've come around to unbanning SFM again?
...
I'm the lonely individual that still hopes for GSZ.
If SFM and Twin are not coming off and all formats are 'looking good' to paraphrase Forsythe, you can forget about GSZ.
Okay, so let me get this strait: Wizards had a ban announcement with no changes, and this has resulted in five pages of discussion that has gone through an unban twin discussion, a momentary lapse into unbanning Rampaging Ferocidon in standard, and finally we've come around to unbanning SFM again?
...
I'm the lonely individual that still hopes for GSZ.
If SFM and Twin are not coming off and all formats are 'looking good' to paraphrase Forsythe, you can forget about GSZ.
I know it's probably never happening, but the child in me keeps hoping that it will come back someday.
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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 think itll depend on where wizards draws the line for 'competitively viable' decks. for example i think GSZ is good enough to collapse the green creature toolbox archetype into a smaller set of decks; however its not like such decks are a major presence to begin with.
so its sorta like twin. how wizards balances the scales of diversity could completely change how a card is evaluated.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Okay, so let me get this strait: Wizards had a ban announcement with no changes, and this has resulted in five pages of discussion that has gone through an unban twin discussion, a momentary lapse into unbanning Rampaging Ferocidon in standard, and finally we've come around to unbanning SFM again?
...
I'm the lonely individual that still hopes for GSZ.
Okay, so let me get this strait: Wizards had a ban announcement with no changes, and this has resulted in five pages of discussion that has gone through an unban twin discussion, a momentary lapse into unbanning Rampaging Ferocidon in standard, and finally we've come around to unbanning SFM again?
...
I'm the lonely individual that still hopes for GSZ.
If SFM and Twin are not coming off and all formats are 'looking good' to paraphrase Forsythe, you can forget about GSZ.
This. If Wizards is not even close to considering Stoneforge Mystic, then some people don't see a point in discussing Green Sun's Zenith. I do in fact think it should be unbanned and would NOT be overpowered by any means. But, honestly I do think that the 2 cards that should be closest to unbans are in fact Stoneforge Mystic and Splinter Twin. I don't believe that Wizards sees it this way, but honestly "what Wizards thinks" is anyone's guess at this point, lol.
*I could write here which cards I personally believe should be unbanned, but at this point I'm just shouting card names while "No Changes" is the Ban announcement time and time again.
**And I also can see and completely understand the frustration of many in these Ban announcements if that is not clear from my sentence above.
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
The fact that people are arguing that Twin decks got completely neutered and turned into a pile of worthless trash despite still having Kiki-Jiki (as bad as he is, he's clearly not Twin and will never be) while also arguing that Infect is still top tier and functioning after the Probe ban or that Dredge did anything relevant before multiple broken printings in Standard sets is laughable.
As I said before, Twinposting should be a banned topic again IMO. So sick of it already.
Go ahead and ban Twin talk in this thread, I've asked for it many times. You are plainly wrong if you think post GGT-Dredge was on the same level as Kiki-Mite, or that Infect NOW is worse than Kiki-Mite.
Like, not opinion based, you are simply WRONG.
Oh, and Amulet is also better.
No deck took as hard a hit as Twin. To claim otherwise is ignorant.
Infect now is on par with Kiki-mite. *snip*
I have no dog in this Twin fight, but...uh what now? While there are some itching to discuss Twin at the drop of a hat, it's more understandable when there are crazy, easily repudiated claims like this.
I have no dog in this Twin fight, but...uh what now? While there are some itching to discuss Twin at the drop of a hat, it's more understandable when there are crazy, easily repudiated claims like this.
While this is an outrageous claim, I think that Twin defenders kind of need to let it go. Just ignore claims like this or else it will keep going.
I play Modern quite a bit. I actually did feel that Infect was hurt just as much as the Twin deck was (more by the printing of Fatal Push). But then I played against Infect. I am pretty biased because Infect is the one deck I can never beat in Modern, but Infect honestly feels almost the same as before. They are missing Gitaxian Probe. That's it. Fatal Push play has gone down because it's pretty bad against some decks, like KCI for example.
But then it doesn't matter much how much a deck was hurt or killed completely due to a ban. There's literally no way that Wizards can make it even and just for everyone. There just isn't.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Okay, so let me get this strait: Wizards had a ban announcement with no changes, and this has resulted in five pages of discussion that has gone through an unban twin discussion, a momentary lapse into unbanning Rampaging Ferocidon in standard, and finally we've come around to unbanning SFM again?
...
I'm the lonely individual that still hopes for GSZ.
That's hoping for candy to fall from the sky. Would certainly improve the deck of my playtest buddy who has a Craterhoof Elves deck. ^__^
Well, a little seriously now... it would probably slot into a lot of decks if ever unbanned. Summoning any green creature from the deck into play, for just an additional G seems a strong effect for Modern. And let's not forget the mythical turn one fetching of Dryad arbor.
That's hoping for candy to fall from the sky. Would certainly improve the deck of my playtest buddy who has a Craterhoof Elves deck. ^__^
Well, a little seriously now... it would probably slot into a lot of decks if ever unbanned. Summoning any green creature from the deck into play, for just an additional G seems a strong effect for Modern. And let's not forget the mythical turn fetching of Dryad arbor.
If you take out the Dryad interaction, GSZ would sit on a similar power level as Chord of Calling:
Sorcery vs Instant -> Instant is usually better
Green creature vs any color -> Any creature is strictly better
GGG vs G -> Triple green is a lot more than single green, however, having convoke leverages the extra cost quite nicely
Shuffle vs graveyard -> Shuffling is a powerful effect so you are more likely to draw new copies more frequently but you have less shenanigans with effects like Eternal Witness
The reason Chord is ok but GSZ is not, is that Chord is not something you can play on Turns 1 or 2 so it becomes a bit more clunky in the early game. The real issue with GSZ is that T1 Dryad Arbor play, which makes the card good both on early and late game. the only way they could unban GSZ without banning Dryad Arbor is by making the land colorless instead of being green and that's not going to happen. Fetching any green creature by paying 1 extra G seems fair to me, adding the possibility to fetch a land and ramp on T1 with little to no deckbuilding cost? No, that's not ok
GSZ is basically a multiple split card. On 1 you can fetch an arbor, on 2 something else, etc. And the effect grows stronger and stronger. And it is being shuffled back.
The potential upside is that it would make toolbox decks better, and those decks are doing poorly for several months now.
Possible downsides are the fact that it will slot into a lot of different green decks and potentially produce the effect that Ancient Stirrings is producing(don't forget that it requires no build in limitations).
That's what WOTC thinks probably.
For me, this potential downside is not right. Would 4c Shadow want to play this over Traverse? No. Would Abzan Company prefer this over coco/chord? I am not sure, because some combo pieces are black/white.
The potential risk is linear decks getting the card and upgrading their power level. Decks like Titanshift, Elves, etc.
All in all, I think if toolbox decks are to get better, we need more cards like Knight of Autumn. That's what's needed for those kind of decks.
Just stop. GSZ is better than Chord. Period.
Does anyone feel as though modern is---bad right now? My entire meta is in on a graveyard deck or aggro. MTGO is pretty much graveyard linear decks, humans/spirits, Tron, which isn't utilizing the graveyard and loving this meta, or KCI/Affinity.
This modern is very much shaping to feel like the summer of Dredge/Infect. I really hope the meta isn't like this 8 months from now. Modern is looking very ugly and unhealthy, and I have no clue what should be done.
This thread is again going off the rails. I feel this happened last time too; we had a "No Changes" update, people went crazy in the thread, and after a few weeks of venting, everything chilled out. By October, the thread was largely a ghost town of some sporadic Twin arguments and discussions about Stirrings and Preordain. Now we're back at the anger cycle where people are making wild accusations and allegations about the format and Wizards' format management.
After a long time of being mostly happy with the state of modern I'd now want several cards banned even though not much has really changed for modern since then other than having a good standard to conpare it to. So many matchups in modern end up being "can you beat my sideboardcard" now, and I've really started to see these matches as a chore I have to finish before I actually get to go have fun and play the game I went to FNM for. I've been an exclusive modern player for so many years it is an odd realisation to look at a good standard and think "wait a minute, insta-losing to blood moon actually doesn't have to be 'just how it goes' at all!".
I thought this comment was going to be about the battle of sideboards element that got GGT banned. Then I read about Blood Moon and realized it's the typical Modern complaints we've seen and debunked for years. Moon is not a strong card. That's why few top decks use it. If it was the kind of insta-losing SB tech you allege, we would see it more. We would see Blue Moon played more as a deck, and we would see more Grishoalbrand (a deck that should check off all your boxes of what makes a powerful Modern deck). We don't see any of those things, however, because the "broken" Modern you allege exists is not the overall experience of the format. It might be your personal experience due to the deck you play, the area you play in, and/or the game decisions you make, but it's nothing Wizards will develop banlist policy based on. It hasn't been for 3 years now. Nothing about cards like Moon has changed in that time. Might Modern have issues? Yes, and those issues could be with Dredge (see stuff like MD RIP in UW Control) and Stirrings. But unless someone has an actual data-driven case about other issues to make, I haven't seen anything else worth discussing from a ban perspective.
I want WotC to return to the turn 4 rule with a vengeance. I would not mind seeing a large list of bans, just straight up ending storm, tron, dredge, KCI and the likes. There are so many decks and cards in modern that solely exist to create non-games where the pre-sideboard game is basically irrelevant. They are much, MUCH more obnoxious than twin ever was which, although powerful, at least was a matchup where both players got to play cards and interact with eachother without needing enchantments out of the sideboard.
T4 rule misinterpretations are a clear sign to me that the thread is going off the rails. Decks must be both top-tier AND consistently winning pre-T4 to violate this rule. No decks are currently doing this.
Standard is bad- nochanges we need to fix standard.
Standard is good- no changes we want people to play standard.
Modern is bad- no changes we want people to play standard.
Modern is good- we should keep an eye on things so we can push people into playing standard.
This kind of pithy comment is all too common in the Twitch chat and Reddit age. It sounds good and garners upvotes, but it doesn't remotely describe what literally happened this year. See BBE and JTMS being unbanned when Modern was good and Standard was bad just to improve Modern more. When you have a literal counterexample to your allegation in the last 12 months, it's clearly an allegation that needs reworking.
Let me put it in another way; the way current modern works, it pushes the influence of variance in the game to the absolute maximum. You HAVE to accept you will have 80-20 matchups no matter what you play, and you HAVE to accept that plenty of games will end up revolving around maybe 8 out of your 75 cards and the entire game is decided around drawing those few cards. Of couse variance is always a factor in a card game, but modern ends games before they start with much fewer degrees of freedom on these luck factors.
There are no top-tier 80/20 matchups in Modern. There haven't been for 3 years. I have debunked this outrageous claim numerous times. To reiterate, top players have the same MWP in Modern as in other formats. They also have the same MWP variance and MWP ceiling. Notably, they further have the same Modern MWP as they do in BOTH Legacy and Standard; the only outliers are player-specific (e.g. Reid Duke is better at Modern than Standard), but across the board, the averages and spread are identical. If Modern was packed with 80/20 matchups as you and hoards of Modern critics have alleged, this would not be the case.
I understand that people are dissatisfied with a "No changes" update, and I understand that people want more communication from Wizards. Those are reasonable desires; arguing for an SFM unban or better Wizards updates and transparency are great topics. A meaningful "battle of sideboards" discussion through the lens of GGT might be fine too. Or Stirrings analysis. But fuming about long-debunked Modern issues is not the way to go, even if it happens every time Wizards does a "No changes" update on a metagame that some people perceive issues with.
It is not powerlevel that I complain about - I would honestly say that Blood Moon is a poor card to run right now in Modern. What I have gotten tired of is the amount of matches I sit down for that are very often immediately ended once it is established my opponent is playing a certain archetype. There are currently many Modern decks that demand hard sideboard hosers that are often almost impossible to interact with without these kinds of cards and I think this creates poor gameplay.
When I talk about good and bad gameplay I would say R&D agrees with me; I'd want modern to be more in line with the current design philosophy, shying away from abilities like intimidate and protection that are hard to balance since they are game ending in some matchups whilst being completely inconsequential in others. I use Blood Moon as an example of this not because I deem the powerlevel too high, but because I think this design adds poor gameplay; imagine making a new card game from the ground up, would you design a card like Blood Moon? Blood Moon does either nothing, or ends the game on the spot. I would say this is poor and frustrating game design. The same goes for the plethora of decks that demand sideboard hosers; you will not hear me claim that storm is in any way overpowered, but if I sit down at FNM and play 3 rounds of storm in a row (this happened once) I do not feel like I got to play the game I wanted to play. Yes, that is anecdotal, but there are so many decks in modern right now that promote this kind of "do you have the one relevant card" matchups, regardless of that matchup is bad or good, that it has worn me down after 5+ years of playing Modern.
"80/20" matchups are more of a way of saying "very poor" matchups than an actual statistic and I shouldn't have used it. But if I compare what is deemed a poor matchup in current standard and a poor matchup in modern, in standard at least you most of the time still get to play a game of magic instead of praying for your sideboard hosers to stick. It is true that some pros consistently thrive in Modern and thus are doing something right, but it is also true that plenty of pros have complained about the matchup lottery in modern making it very hard to prepare for.
Apart from maybe dredge, I would not argue any of the current decks in modern are inherently too powerful. But for years I've taken the mindset of just accepting non-games due to matchup lottery as a fact in Magic, when it really doesn't need to be. This doesn't mean modern is "ruined" or even bad, I still go to Modern FNM every other week. However it definitely is a big flaw of modern and judging from the last few pages it seems I have people who agree with me on this.
GSZ is basically a multiple split card. On 1 you can fetch an arbor, on 2 something else, etc. And the effect grows stronger and stronger. And it is being shuffled back.
The potential upside is that it would make toolbox decks better, and those decks are doing poorly for several months now.
Possible downsides are the fact that it will slot into a lot of different green decks and potentially produce the effect that Ancient Stirrings is producing(don't forget that it requires no build in limitations).
That's what WOTC thinks probably.
For me, this potential downside is not right. Would 4c Shadow want to play this over Traverse? No. Would Abzan Company prefer this over coco/chord? I am not sure, because some combo pieces are black/white.
The potential risk is linear decks getting the card and upgrading their power level. Decks like Titanshift, Elves, etc.
All in all, I think if toolbox decks are to get better, we need more cards like Knight of Autumn. That's what's needed for those kind of decks.
Just stop. GSZ is better than Chord. Period.
Does anyone feel as though modern is---bad right now? My entire meta is in on a graveyard deck or aggro. MTGO is pretty much graveyard linear decks, humans/spirits, Tron, which isn't utilizing the graveyard and loving this meta, or KCI/Affinity.
This modern is very much shaping to feel like the summer of Dredge/Infect. I really hope the meta isn't like this 8 months from now. Modern is looking very ugly and unhealthy, and I have no clue what should be done.
Out of curiosity. What decks do you like to be roaming around Modern right now instead of the "graveyard deck or aggro"?
I think there's nothing we can do except wait for things to progress on their own. Maybe some interesting decks will be discovered as more cards enter Modern from new sets.
I am completely okay with control being the least represented archetype in modern. It is the most boring deck to play against, by far. Midrange is close behind. Just because wizards printed counterspell once upon a time doesn't mean that draw/go is entitled to exist anywhere, let alone with the backing of an infinite combo to go "okay counter your spell...bolt that thing...okay now I win in one turn, sucks to be you." That style can stay away forever.
This thread is again going off the rails. I feel this happened last time too; we had a "No Changes" update, people went crazy in the thread, and after a few weeks of venting, everything chilled out. By October, the thread was largely a ghost town of some sporadic Twin arguments and discussions about Stirrings and Preordain. Now we're back at the anger cycle where people are making wild accusations and allegations about the format and Wizards' format management.
After a long time of being mostly happy with the state of modern I'd now want several cards banned even though not much has really changed for modern since then other than having a good standard to conpare it to. So many matchups in modern end up being "can you beat my sideboardcard" now, and I've really started to see these matches as a chore I have to finish before I actually get to go have fun and play the game I went to FNM for. I've been an exclusive modern player for so many years it is an odd realisation to look at a good standard and think "wait a minute, insta-losing to blood moon actually doesn't have to be 'just how it goes' at all!".
I thought this comment was going to be about the battle of sideboards element that got GGT banned. Then I read about Blood Moon and realized it's the typical Modern complaints we've seen and debunked for years. Moon is not a strong card. That's why few top decks use it. If it was the kind of insta-losing SB tech you allege, we would see it more. We would see Blue Moon played more as a deck, and we would see more Grishoalbrand (a deck that should check off all your boxes of what makes a powerful Modern deck). We don't see any of those things, however, because the "broken" Modern you allege exists is not the overall experience of the format. It might be your personal experience due to the deck you play, the area you play in, and/or the game decisions you make, but it's nothing Wizards will develop banlist policy based on. It hasn't been for 3 years now. Nothing about cards like Moon has changed in that time. Might Modern have issues? Yes, and those issues could be with Dredge (see stuff like MD RIP in UW Control) and Stirrings. But unless someone has an actual data-driven case about other issues to make, I haven't seen anything else worth discussing from a ban perspective.
I want WotC to return to the turn 4 rule with a vengeance. I would not mind seeing a large list of bans, just straight up ending storm, tron, dredge, KCI and the likes. There are so many decks and cards in modern that solely exist to create non-games where the pre-sideboard game is basically irrelevant. They are much, MUCH more obnoxious than twin ever was which, although powerful, at least was a matchup where both players got to play cards and interact with eachother without needing enchantments out of the sideboard.
T4 rule misinterpretations are a clear sign to me that the thread is going off the rails. Decks must be both top-tier AND consistently winning pre-T4 to violate this rule. No decks are currently doing this.
Standard is bad- nochanges we need to fix standard.
Standard is good- no changes we want people to play standard.
Modern is bad- no changes we want people to play standard.
Modern is good- we should keep an eye on things so we can push people into playing standard.
This kind of pithy comment is all too common in the Twitch chat and Reddit age. It sounds good and garners upvotes, but it doesn't remotely describe what literally happened this year. See BBE and JTMS being unbanned when Modern was good and Standard was bad just to improve Modern more. When you have a literal counterexample to your allegation in the last 12 months, it's clearly an allegation that needs reworking.
Let me put it in another way; the way current modern works, it pushes the influence of variance in the game to the absolute maximum. You HAVE to accept you will have 80-20 matchups no matter what you play, and you HAVE to accept that plenty of games will end up revolving around maybe 8 out of your 75 cards and the entire game is decided around drawing those few cards. Of couse variance is always a factor in a card game, but modern ends games before they start with much fewer degrees of freedom on these luck factors.
There are no top-tier 80/20 matchups in Modern. There haven't been for 3 years. I have debunked this outrageous claim numerous times. To reiterate, top players have the same MWP in Modern as in other formats. They also have the same MWP variance and MWP ceiling. Notably, they further have the same Modern MWP as they do in BOTH Legacy and Standard; the only outliers are player-specific (e.g. Reid Duke is better at Modern than Standard), but across the board, the averages and spread are identical. If Modern was packed with 80/20 matchups as you and hoards of Modern critics have alleged, this would not be the case.
I understand that people are dissatisfied with a "No changes" update, and I understand that people want more communication from Wizards. Those are reasonable desires; arguing for an SFM unban or better Wizards updates and transparency are great topics. A meaningful "battle of sideboards" discussion through the lens of GGT might be fine too. Or Stirrings analysis. But fuming about long-debunked Modern issues is not the way to go, even if it happens every time Wizards does a "No changes" update on a metagame that some people perceive issues with.
It is not powerlevel that I complain about - I would honestly say that Blood Moon is a poor card to run right now in Modern. What I have gotten tired of is the amount of matches I sit down for that are very often immediately ended once it is established my opponent is playing a certain archetype. There are currently many Modern decks that demand hard sideboard hosers that are often almost impossible to interact with without these kinds of cards and I think this creates poor gameplay.
When I talk about good and bad gameplay I would say R&D agrees with me; I'd want modern to be more in line with the current design philosophy, shying away from abilities like intimidate and protection that are hard to balance since they are game ending in some matchups whilst being completely inconsequential in others. I use Blood Moon as an example of this not because I deem the powerlevel too high, but because I think this design adds poor gameplay; imagine making a new card game from the ground up, would you design a card like Blood Moon? Blood Moon does either nothing, or ends the game on the spot. I would say this is poor and frustrating game design. The same goes for the plethora of decks that demand sideboard hosers; you will not hear me claim that storm is in any way overpowered, but if I sit down at FNM and play 3 rounds of storm in a row (this happened once) I do not feel like I got to play the game I wanted to play. Yes, that is anecdotal, but there are so many decks in modern right now that promote this kind of "do you have the one relevant card" matchups, regardless of that matchup is bad or good, that it has worn me down after 5+ years of playing Modern.
This setiment I see all the time on this fourm. Its the idea of "what I want Modern to be" vs what Modern actually is. Modern is an Eternal format, thats it. Its a way to play with a gigantic pool of cards from sets that span across many years of magic. It isn't the fantasy land that Jeff Hoogland wants it to be, where Thoughtseize becomes Thought Erasure, and Blood Moon doesn't exist. Super weird, unique, and sometimes "toxic" interactions of cards are eventually bound to come about. Lantern of Insight + Codex Shredder, who would of thunk? Amulet of Vigor + Simic Growth Chamber, who thought of this? Street Wraith + Burning Inquiry = Hollow One. That's the beauty of Modern, it's the reality of Modern, the reality of thousands of cards printed from 15 years of magic. Maybe we need a police card like Force of Will, like Legacy, maybe we don't. But unlike Legacy, we don't have turn 1 or 2 kills.
"80/20" matchups are more of a way of saying "very poor" matchups than an actual statistic and I shouldn't have used it. But if I compare what is deemed a poor matchup in current standard and a poor matchup in modern, in standard at least you most of the time still get to play a game of magic instead of praying for your sideboard hosers to stick. It is true that some pros consistently thrive in Modern and thus are doing something right, but it is also true that plenty of pros have complained about the matchup lottery in modern making it very hard to prepare for.
This forum in particular has proven with statistical evidence that the "matchup lottery" is more myth than reality. The mindset I see with new or bad players in Modern when building their 75, is that they look to their sideboard to silver bullet cards. Stony Silence for KCI and Hardened Scales, Alpine Moon for Tron. If you build your 75 to only function that way, then of course it feels like a lottery. The way to be successful in Modern is understand your deck's matchups, and squeeze those percentage points in losing machups as hard as you can, because at the end of the day, your opponent is playing magic, not chess, and you can always out play and out draw them. If this wasn't the case, the players like Caleb Scherer of Benjamin Nikolich wouldn't constantly be at the top of the points leaderboards for the SCG tour so consistently.
Apart from maybe dredge, I would not argue any of the current decks in modern are inherently too powerful. But for years I've taken the mindset of just accepting non-games due to matchup lottery as a fact in Magic, when it really doesn't need to be. This doesn't mean modern is "ruined" or even bad, I still go to Modern FNM every other week. However it definitely is a big flaw of modern and judging from the last few pages it seems I have people who agree with me on this.
Dredge is powerful, but not the best deck in Modern. The only problem that exists with Dredge is it's "sideboard battle" gameplay, where it tells you to draw your sideboard cards or die. This might seem contrary to my above comment where I said Modern isn't sideboard lottery. But this is the single case where it happens to be true. This is the only reason Dredge is a toxic deck, and the only reasonable point of why there can be a chance that a card from dredge could be banned in the future.
I have no dog in this Twin fight, but...uh what now? While there are some itching to discuss Twin at the drop of a hat, it's more understandable when there are crazy, easily repudiated claims like this.
While this is an outrageous claim, I think that Twin defenders kind of need to let it go. Just ignore claims like this or else it will keep going.
I play Modern quite a bit. I actually did feel that Infect was hurt just as much as the Twin deck was (more by the printing of Fatal Push). But then I played against Infect. I am pretty biased because Infect is the one deck I can never beat in Modern, but Infect honestly feels almost the same as before. They are missing Gitaxian Probe. That's it. Fatal Push play has gone down because it's pretty bad against some decks, like KCI for example.
But then it doesn't matter much how much a deck was hurt or killed completely due to a ban. There's literally no way that Wizards can make it even and just for everyone. There just isn't.
As a former Infect player I can confidently state that Infect is miles away from what it was before, not being able to play 4 Become Immense, which is by far the best pump spell even having subtle upsides like dodging Chalice on 1 and not triggering Eidolon, and not having enough fuel for even the first BE early while also lacking that crucial information of "can I play my only Infect creature out without the fear of removal", makes a huge difference.
I tried picking up the deck a few months ago and another subtle yet very relevant difference is that you are now not playing a 56 card deck anymore, which is extremely relevant when you only have 12 threats you desperately need to find.
Of course Infect is still one of the faster goldfishing decks so if the meta is lacking interactive decks and things go your way you can make decent results.
By all means, ban nothing. 2 Unbans change everything, without a single person 'losing' their deck.
I have to disagree here, if an unban suddenly brings forth a solid tier 1 deck, especially combo, and it just invalidates your pet deck giving it feel bad losses as Twin does, then for me it is almost the equivalent of losing your deck. That is for example the case every time Dredge rises to prominence, it generates feel bad games where you feel powerless if you are playing midrange.dec and you end up wondering why in the world you are even playing your deck.
Does anyone feel as though modern is---bad right now? My entire meta is in on a graveyard deck or aggro. MTGO is pretty much graveyard linear decks, humans/spirits, Tron, which isn't utilizing the graveyard and loving this meta, or KCI/Affinity.
This modern is very much shaping to feel like the summer of Dredge/Infect. I really hope the meta isn't like this 8 months from now. Modern is looking very ugly and unhealthy, and I have no clue what should be done.
*raises hand in the back*
Yes. To me, its literally unplayable. You are playing Stirrings, or Looting or Vial, or you are kidding yourself (as per my signature) and making your life more difficult by not playing them.
Its easily the worst its been since Eldrazi Winter, and its not even close. I'm not even playing it. The last match I had was the Hollow One player who lamented his own deck doing what it was supposed to, because it just feels lame to pump out multiple hollow ones on Turn 1, and essentially lock up the game. His own words, about his own deck!
Its a joke, and the gameplay in Standard is MILES better.
By all means, ban nothing. 2 Unbans change everything, without a single person 'losing' their deck.
I have to disagree here, if an unban suddenly brings forth a solid tier 1 deck, especially combo, and it just invalidates your pet deck giving it feel bad losses as Twin does, then for me it is almost the equivalent of losing your deck. That is for example the case every time Dredge rises to prominence, it generates feel bad games where you feel powerless if you are playing midrange.dec and you end up wondering why in the world you are even playing your deck.
I would take having to warp my deck (like UW and UWR warped) to account for a toxic meta (if it could even get that toxic...) than literally not having the option of playing, every day, all day.
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UW Spirits
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Yes, Wizards was incompetent in 2016. We already knew this. Eldrazi was a product of 2015 design, Twin was a product of 2015 shakeup bans, and AF was on record believing Sword would go in Lantern. Incompetence abounded. Their incompetence in 2015 should not inform our reception of their 2018 policies. Most of these have been addressed, either through unbans, better ban rationale, new hiring and team design, etc. Righting an old wrong is not a reason to unban cards. The best argument I have seen to unban Twin is that it is of an appropriate power level for Modern, i.e. the Bitterblossom case reapplied to Twin. All the other arguments aren't in dialogue with Wizards' known unbanning criteria and/or fall short of an unban goal.
idSurge is correct that the Twin ban hurt the UR archetype far more than any other ban hurt other decks. This shouldn't matter, however, because Wizards does not reverse bans to right an old injustice. It does matter in the sense that we should not assume Twin's ban accomplished any of its stated goals, which by all measures I have seen and calculated it did not.
This is a no-win situation for Wizards when you frame it like that. Either Wizards unbans cards without reprints and gets blasted for the secondary market prices, or they unban cards with reprints and get blasted for rigging unbans to promote sales. Again, these kinds of arguments are byproducts of the Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter communication age, which favors sensationalist and memorable quotables over rigorous and meaningful analysis. Thankfully, for the most part Wizards has not caved to this kind of outrage. Their B&R updates since 2016 have included more thoughtful analysis of formats and rationale, and they don't respond to the general clamor for bans/unbans that infests online channels. Their more measured approach will likely pay off with an SFM unban in 2019, which will likely be met with similar meme-based responses from users who are generally dissatisfied with most things that Wizards does.
Before I read some inane post 'you all just want to have control mirrors and kill combo' thats not the case at all. tronix, as usual, has it right.
I dont want ANYONES deck to die. Not even Tron. Having 'your' thing taken from you is quite literally one of the worst experiences in gaming.
BGx, Burn, Infect, and even Affinity (a legit 70-30 dog to Twin) all existed WITH Twin. Lets just keep that in mind, when we look at what today is an objectively faster, more powerful, more explosive, format that has but eliminated BGx from the top end of the metagame in favour of highly resilient aggro/combo decks.
By all means, ban nothing. 2 Unbans change everything, without a single person 'losing' their deck.
Spirits
I honestly don't think we will have to worry about that as much. I obviously haven't caught up to everything that happened while I was away but I could have sworn I heard somewhere that Wizards admitted that letting threats get too good while not printing good enough answers is a mistake they made and are now correcting. I mean BG/x got Fatal Push and Assassin's Trophy and I can't imagine that there were many people out there who thought that Wizards could push a spell even more than Abrupt Decay but they did.
Azorius is also still to come and they might get some goodies this time too. I mean the last time they gave them Supreme Verdict, Sphinx's Revelation and Detention Sphere. Some of the best if not the best versions of those effects ever made. Two of them have seen Modern and Legacy play and if Midrange and Control would be all there was Revelation would certainly see play too.
Delver (Ponder + Preordain, Treasure Cruise, Probe)? Loam + Bug Midrange/Control (Deathrite)? Zoo (Note: they unbanned Nacatl after close to 4 years being banned)? Gifts Control (Seething Song, DTT)? Pod (Company is not Pod...)?
I could list even more decks (Infect till the printing of Become Immense, Second Breakfast till now KCI,...) but Twin is anything but a special snowflake in this regard...
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
right. the difference between our views comes down to twin. i played twin, and would welcome it back with open arms; but im also more understanding of wizards ban list philosophy. as in im failing to see a state where wizards moves to twin as an answer, when the other option of shifting the format with new printings is on the table.
in twins credit i think there is so much dissonance within twin proponents arguments because there is this simultaneous belief that twin would be fine, but also noticeably shift the format; and more importantly keep it that way. i recognized early on after twins banning and i wasnt winning as much; that partly why i loved the deck was merely based on the fact that it was so freaking good. it was just better than so much stuff going on, and i could feel secure in my deck choice in any environment. however the format has shifted away from that kind of mentality, and some number of people dont want it to go back.
if you truly believe twin would be a just another good deck, that means its falling into how we categorize good decks right now. somewhere maybe in the 3-5% range, and subject to cycling in and out of favor depending on the decks trending at the moment.
note: if you are someone who thinks twin would rise to its former 10+ percent status (or higher), nothing anyone can say will convince you otherwise outside of testing results.
based on this i understand why some are hesitant when they hear 'yeah twin wasnt oppressive and wouldnt be now, but if it comes back it can police all of the unfair decks while letting reactive decks rise up'. here is how you can rationalize it:
twin is a creature combo with low(ish) deckbuilding cost meaning it can play a decent amount of reactive elements of its own. if its good it asks opponents to play more removal, so decks flush with removal or other efficacious interaction (discard, countermagic, etc) rise up to meet it.
what are two of the top decks right now? humans and spirits. these decks ask similarly interactive decks to rise up while also preying on linear/whatever decks; but they arent an overly large portion of the field. we have seen a clear case just this year when humans was at its hottest, both jeskai and mardu rose up to meet it. or earlier than that when GDS was prominent, UW control (spreading seas version) rose up as well. so its one more deck floating near or at the top that these interactive decks get to eat up; hence the shift towards more interactive games.
the diversity in modern is currently a function of how it cycles. twin is doing what these other currently existing decks do, but by working on a different axis. this axis means a different matchup spread; a notable one being (presumably) good against big mana; but there are more. so with twin in the format not only would we get more cycles where its less hostile to the fair decks, but those cycles also look different than they do now; which in turn further promotes the type of diversity wizards has been pushing.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Regarding "fair" deck vs Dredge: Humans, Counter-Cat and Kiki-Chord all have even-ish match-ups pre board (at least pre Chill printing, would need to test again to see, how it currently looks like).
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
It would be interesting to crunch the MWP numbers (without counting bye rounds) for each format based on the number of byes people were awarded. Then we could compare the performance of the people with 3 byes vs the other players for each format taking only in account the matches that were actually played.
The higher the variation, the more skill-intensive the format would be (we are asuming people with 3 byes are, on average, better players than people with less byes so they should perform better when their decisions have more impact in the result). If Modern is a sideboard war, there should be less variation on performance between the pros and the rest of us. On the other hand, if the numbers are on par with the other formats it would indicate that skill-based decisions really have an impact on the format.
This analysis would be far from perfect but I think it would be a good reference for discussion of the format and to settle the ground with actual data. Here is an example of how it could look like (the numbers are made up but it's purpose is to illustrate the idea, I don't know how the numbers would look like)
In this example (see attached image), people with 3 byes would perform 21% better than the rest of the field in Standard, 11% in Modern and 17% in Legacy and that could indicate that Standard is more skill intensive for that period of time.
Note that it would be very important to chose adequately the dates to include in the analysis to better understand the impact of bans/unbans and new prints have in the format so you shouldn't be analysing pre-rotation standard and current Standard as a whole.
Unfortunately, crunching all these numbers would be too much work for us to do and I am not even sure we could access all that information, that's the kind of thing I would expect WotC to discuss in their announcements, even if they decide no changes is the way to go.
...
I'm the lonely individual that still hopes for GSZ.
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!
If SFM and Twin are not coming off and all formats are 'looking good' to paraphrase Forsythe, you can forget about GSZ.
Spirits
I know it's probably never happening, but the child in me keeps hoping that it will come back someday.
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!
so its sorta like twin. how wizards balances the scales of diversity could completely change how a card is evaluated.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)This. If Wizards is not even close to considering Stoneforge Mystic, then some people don't see a point in discussing Green Sun's Zenith. I do in fact think it should be unbanned and would NOT be overpowered by any means. But, honestly I do think that the 2 cards that should be closest to unbans are in fact Stoneforge Mystic and Splinter Twin. I don't believe that Wizards sees it this way, but honestly "what Wizards thinks" is anyone's guess at this point, lol.
*I could write here which cards I personally believe should be unbanned, but at this point I'm just shouting card names while "No Changes" is the Ban announcement time and time again.
**And I also can see and completely understand the frustration of many in these Ban announcements if that is not clear from my sentence above.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)I have no dog in this Twin fight, but...uh what now? While there are some itching to discuss Twin at the drop of a hat, it's more understandable when there are crazy, easily repudiated claims like this.
While this is an outrageous claim, I think that Twin defenders kind of need to let it go. Just ignore claims like this or else it will keep going.
I play Modern quite a bit. I actually did feel that Infect was hurt just as much as the Twin deck was (more by the printing of Fatal Push). But then I played against Infect. I am pretty biased because Infect is the one deck I can never beat in Modern, but Infect honestly feels almost the same as before. They are missing Gitaxian Probe. That's it. Fatal Push play has gone down because it's pretty bad against some decks, like KCI for example.
But then it doesn't matter much how much a deck was hurt or killed completely due to a ban. There's literally no way that Wizards can make it even and just for everyone. There just isn't.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)2. There is a way to make it even for everyone, give it back.
Done and done.
Spirits
That's hoping for candy to fall from the sky. Would certainly improve the deck of my playtest buddy who has a Craterhoof Elves deck. ^__^
Well, a little seriously now... it would probably slot into a lot of decks if ever unbanned. Summoning any green creature from the deck into play, for just an additional G seems a strong effect for Modern. And let's not forget the mythical turn one fetching of Dryad arbor.
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Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
If you take out the Dryad interaction, GSZ would sit on a similar power level as Chord of Calling:
Sorcery vs Instant -> Instant is usually better
Green creature vs any color -> Any creature is strictly better
GGG vs G -> Triple green is a lot more than single green, however, having convoke leverages the extra cost quite nicely
Shuffle vs graveyard -> Shuffling is a powerful effect so you are more likely to draw new copies more frequently but you have less shenanigans with effects like Eternal Witness
The reason Chord is ok but GSZ is not, is that Chord is not something you can play on Turns 1 or 2 so it becomes a bit more clunky in the early game. The real issue with GSZ is that T1 Dryad Arbor play, which makes the card good both on early and late game. the only way they could unban GSZ without banning Dryad Arbor is by making the land colorless instead of being green and that's not going to happen. Fetching any green creature by paying 1 extra G seems fair to me, adding the possibility to fetch a land and ramp on T1 with little to no deckbuilding cost? No, that's not ok
Just stop. GSZ is better than Chord. Period.
Does anyone feel as though modern is---bad right now? My entire meta is in on a graveyard deck or aggro. MTGO is pretty much graveyard linear decks, humans/spirits, Tron, which isn't utilizing the graveyard and loving this meta, or KCI/Affinity.
This modern is very much shaping to feel like the summer of Dredge/Infect. I really hope the meta isn't like this 8 months from now. Modern is looking very ugly and unhealthy, and I have no clue what should be done.
It is not powerlevel that I complain about - I would honestly say that Blood Moon is a poor card to run right now in Modern. What I have gotten tired of is the amount of matches I sit down for that are very often immediately ended once it is established my opponent is playing a certain archetype. There are currently many Modern decks that demand hard sideboard hosers that are often almost impossible to interact with without these kinds of cards and I think this creates poor gameplay.
When I talk about good and bad gameplay I would say R&D agrees with me; I'd want modern to be more in line with the current design philosophy, shying away from abilities like intimidate and protection that are hard to balance since they are game ending in some matchups whilst being completely inconsequential in others. I use Blood Moon as an example of this not because I deem the powerlevel too high, but because I think this design adds poor gameplay; imagine making a new card game from the ground up, would you design a card like Blood Moon? Blood Moon does either nothing, or ends the game on the spot. I would say this is poor and frustrating game design. The same goes for the plethora of decks that demand sideboard hosers; you will not hear me claim that storm is in any way overpowered, but if I sit down at FNM and play 3 rounds of storm in a row (this happened once) I do not feel like I got to play the game I wanted to play. Yes, that is anecdotal, but there are so many decks in modern right now that promote this kind of "do you have the one relevant card" matchups, regardless of that matchup is bad or good, that it has worn me down after 5+ years of playing Modern.
"80/20" matchups are more of a way of saying "very poor" matchups than an actual statistic and I shouldn't have used it. But if I compare what is deemed a poor matchup in current standard and a poor matchup in modern, in standard at least you most of the time still get to play a game of magic instead of praying for your sideboard hosers to stick. It is true that some pros consistently thrive in Modern and thus are doing something right, but it is also true that plenty of pros have complained about the matchup lottery in modern making it very hard to prepare for.
Apart from maybe dredge, I would not argue any of the current decks in modern are inherently too powerful. But for years I've taken the mindset of just accepting non-games due to matchup lottery as a fact in Magic, when it really doesn't need to be. This doesn't mean modern is "ruined" or even bad, I still go to Modern FNM every other week. However it definitely is a big flaw of modern and judging from the last few pages it seems I have people who agree with me on this.
Out of curiosity. What decks do you like to be roaming around Modern right now instead of the "graveyard deck or aggro"?
I think there's nothing we can do except wait for things to progress on their own. Maybe some interesting decks will be discovered as more cards enter Modern from new sets.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
This setiment I see all the time on this fourm. Its the idea of "what I want Modern to be" vs what Modern actually is. Modern is an Eternal format, thats it. Its a way to play with a gigantic pool of cards from sets that span across many years of magic. It isn't the fantasy land that Jeff Hoogland wants it to be, where Thoughtseize becomes Thought Erasure, and Blood Moon doesn't exist. Super weird, unique, and sometimes "toxic" interactions of cards are eventually bound to come about. Lantern of Insight + Codex Shredder, who would of thunk? Amulet of Vigor + Simic Growth Chamber, who thought of this? Street Wraith + Burning Inquiry = Hollow One. That's the beauty of Modern, it's the reality of Modern, the reality of thousands of cards printed from 15 years of magic. Maybe we need a police card like Force of Will, like Legacy, maybe we don't. But unlike Legacy, we don't have turn 1 or 2 kills.
This forum in particular has proven with statistical evidence that the "matchup lottery" is more myth than reality. The mindset I see with new or bad players in Modern when building their 75, is that they look to their sideboard to silver bullet cards. Stony Silence for KCI and Hardened Scales, Alpine Moon for Tron. If you build your 75 to only function that way, then of course it feels like a lottery. The way to be successful in Modern is understand your deck's matchups, and squeeze those percentage points in losing machups as hard as you can, because at the end of the day, your opponent is playing magic, not chess, and you can always out play and out draw them. If this wasn't the case, the players like Caleb Scherer of Benjamin Nikolich wouldn't constantly be at the top of the points leaderboards for the SCG tour so consistently.
Dredge is powerful, but not the best deck in Modern. The only problem that exists with Dredge is it's "sideboard battle" gameplay, where it tells you to draw your sideboard cards or die. This might seem contrary to my above comment where I said Modern isn't sideboard lottery. But this is the single case where it happens to be true. This is the only reason Dredge is a toxic deck, and the only reasonable point of why there can be a chance that a card from dredge could be banned in the future.
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As a former Infect player I can confidently state that Infect is miles away from what it was before, not being able to play 4 Become Immense, which is by far the best pump spell even having subtle upsides like dodging Chalice on 1 and not triggering Eidolon, and not having enough fuel for even the first BE early while also lacking that crucial information of "can I play my only Infect creature out without the fear of removal", makes a huge difference.
I tried picking up the deck a few months ago and another subtle yet very relevant difference is that you are now not playing a 56 card deck anymore, which is extremely relevant when you only have 12 threats you desperately need to find.
Of course Infect is still one of the faster goldfishing decks so if the meta is lacking interactive decks and things go your way you can make decent results.
I have to disagree here, if an unban suddenly brings forth a solid tier 1 deck, especially combo, and it just invalidates your pet deck giving it feel bad losses as Twin does, then for me it is almost the equivalent of losing your deck. That is for example the case every time Dredge rises to prominence, it generates feel bad games where you feel powerless if you are playing midrange.dec and you end up wondering why in the world you are even playing your deck.
*raises hand in the back*
Yes. To me, its literally unplayable. You are playing Stirrings, or Looting or Vial, or you are kidding yourself (as per my signature) and making your life more difficult by not playing them.
Its easily the worst its been since Eldrazi Winter, and its not even close. I'm not even playing it. The last match I had was the Hollow One player who lamented his own deck doing what it was supposed to, because it just feels lame to pump out multiple hollow ones on Turn 1, and essentially lock up the game. His own words, about his own deck!
Its a joke, and the gameplay in Standard is MILES better.
I would take having to warp my deck (like UW and UWR warped) to account for a toxic meta (if it could even get that toxic...) than literally not having the option of playing, every day, all day.
Spirits