MTG Salvation

Faithless looting?
Really?
There go a bunch of competitive and fun-to-play decks.

It's a very sad day in modern, today.

Ding dong the Looting is dead!! I'm keeping the 3 Surgical in every sideboard because it does heavy lifting against a ton of decks, but it will be nice to not have to mainboard them

hmm not the biggest fan of the looting ban, a lot of fun decks used that. Cool to see stoneforge finally get set free though.

Today I get to post the 3 most satisfying words after "draw a card"

Told you so.

As a player who has two decks with looting, i can only say: "Thanks for the first step in the right direction."
Even after loosing a card from my decks i think, for the health of modern, that was necessary. Next time Mox Opal, random tron land and Ancient Stirrings getting banned please and free Punishing Fire.

faithless looting is dead. Long live modern.

With this ban does that mean Tron will be on the rise and become the dominate deck of the format? What also does this mean for the rest of modern with looting going away?

I think the bans were all spot on, to be frank. As for tron, the Urza lands need to get banned, but that is a completely different subject.

I have mixed feelings overall...

As a Dredge player, I don't care too much about the ban.

As a Mardu Pyromancer player, I'm sad to see the ban killing off my deck. However, I can now try to grind with SFM...so there's that.

i think you will see a rise in eldrazi tron and people shift back to humans and spirits. Urza is still well positioned and with gy based strats being hindered jund may see a resurgence.

Quote from Colt47 »

I think the bans were all spot on, to be frank. As for tron, the Urza lands need to get banned, but that is a completely different subject.

The card should be banning is ancient stirrings, not the urza land.

After sleeping on it, I think it's a good ban because it will nerf arclight phoenix.
It does feel bad that cheaper decks like dredge, hollow one, and mardu pyromancer took collateral damage.

UR Phoenix can still function, which is nice. But I think the mono red version might be killed off.
Urza likely gets much stronger with the addition of SFM.

Tron gets an indirect buff from lack of fast combo decks that kept it in check.

Modern loses a combo card and gains a midrange card. It's a double imbalance.
The format was very linear while control / midrange had to find its narrow spot in the mix. Now Wizards tells us "we want the opposite : midrange / control are here to fill the room, and combo decks need other ways to predate the metagame".

In my opinion that's a very interesting take.

The second intention seems to be : release the tension in the sideboards. This is a clear plus in favor of the format.

Finally, I like the fact they're not afraid to unban and observe what SFM can do. They can still ban it again like they did with Golgari Grave Troll. People (pros included) are very prolific and often mediocre at speculating about cards, but nothing's better than put the beast in the arena and look in the eye of Reality.

I as a Humans player will suffer from the Tron popularity and various SFM control decks, but I'll enjoy what is one of the biggest shift in Modern in long time.

I think banning looting is just reckless. If I understand this corectly, banning looting makes these decks unplayable:

- Mardu Pyromancer
- UR Phoenix/ Mono Red Phoenix
- Grixis Goryo's Vengence
- Dredge
- Hollowed One

This is going after way too many decks at the same time. I think they should have just banned Hogaak and unbanned stone forge and left it there.

Quote from motleyslayer »

Quote from alanyuan0408 »

I think banning looting is just reckless. If I understand this corectly, banning looting makes these decks unplayable:

- Mardu Pyromancer
- UR Phoenix/ Mono Red Phoenix
- Grixis Goryo's Vengence
- Dredge
- Hollowed One

This is going after way too many decks at the same time. I think they should have just banned Hogaak and unbanned stone forge and left it there.

I feel that while it's unfortunate that there were so many decks that had to suffer because of the sins of Hogaak, I feel that looting just caused too many decks to be absurd in dredge, Hogaak (by that dredge vine as well) and even Hollow one. TBH even though I had success playing Mardu Pyro, I certainly won't be missing the other decks being weakened by the ban

I think people are discussing izzet charm in izzet phoenix which is a lot slower but mono red might be out of luck

I think this might be my second favourite B and R update behind the JTMS/BBE unban

I also like to point out:

- Ancient Stirrings
- Mox Opal
(Explicitly mentioned in a B&R as dangerous cards)

- Cavern of Souls
- Goryo's Vengeance
(Discussed extensively on forums as potentially dangerous cards)

Considering how wide reaching this faithless looting ban is and how they have explicitly discussed Mox Opal and Ancient Stirrings as potentially dangerous cards, I think its not unreasonable to expect a Mox Opal/ Stirrings ban in the near future.

Now G's Vengeance is far from causing any issue !

We just have to wait & see what SFM brings to the meta and enjoy the new cards from Throne. Exciting times !

I'm not too unhappy about the bannings. Kind of surprised they didn't just ban Ancient Stirrings with Faithless Looting though. This banning makes it the most powerful cantrip in Modern. Ponder for 5 was pretty busted, it's a surprise it outlasted Faithless Looting! I would say that is the next most problematic card that gets axed. I'm not really worried about Mox Opal as much honestly. As powerful as it is, it's still Legendary artifact. Affinity burns through it's recourses pretty quick. Being able to use the extra mana or two to tutor out something from the top of your deck is the degenerate play pattern. I would argue Simian Spirit Guide is more problematic in the fast mana department. I don't actually play Affinity myself so maybe I am missing some perspective on it's power level.

Also, I can't wait to watch someone Leroy Jenkins a Stoneforge Mystic into a turn 3 Karn. It's going to happen and that's going to be hilarious!

Quote from motleyslayer »

I think that mox opal and ancient stirrings have been cards that people have complained about for almost as long as I started playing modern in 2015, so maybe if looting got the ban hammer then their time is coming soon

I would like to see cavern get banned as it makes weird gameplay IMO and makes control a bit worse against tribal decks but I think it's MUCH lower than the first 2 cards

I think Goryo might be alot safer now without Faithless Looting.

Its pretty clear that with the Faithless Looting Ban/ Standard Energy + Ramnup Bans, Wizards is willing to more aggressively go after decks.

I can see Valakut coming back now

Why is it that no one complains about Mox Opal until something broken comes up or affinity does well. People have not stopped playing affinity and hardened scales and i dont hear anyone complaining. These decks still show up now and then and its totally fine with everyone. Its not until something like KCI comes up or affinity top 8s that people start complaining. This shows me that Mox Opal isnt the culprit its the cards that allow for broken things to happen as well as ppl only complain when they lose to a deck containing the card.

Ancient stirrings also isnt "broken" or OP. The main issue I see that people have with it is that green has too much power across many game mechanics, in this case cantripping being the one. I dont think ancient stirrings is too strong but I dont think its fair that blue gets all of its good cantripping spells banned while green can keep this powerful one even if it is one you have to build around. Most cantrips have to be built around anyways or youd see serum and opt in any deck that runs blue and thats not the case.

whats odd is theres a deck that uses both cards right now and no one has said a word about it.

I think the bannings were fair but leaning more towards the side of heavy handedness which isnt necessarily a bad thing. I just wish they were heavy handed in unbannings too not just with bannings.

Lastly, I think ppl already asking for ancient stirrings and mox opal bannings are simply whining at this point. Those two cards havent done anything and it remains to be seen what will come of the decks that run them. We just got some serious changes and asking for more right away is so typical of the community to never be satisfied with what is happening. I remember when people wanted death's shadow and bauble banned when the deck started making an appearance and thank God wotc ignored those pleas. I think everyone needs to chill out, enjoy the new meta and reevaluate their deck choice if they fear a tron meta.

The reason KCI was so powerful was due to it being very strong against any hate. At first glace the deck seems like it should lose to graveyard hate and artifact hate. However, due to it maindecking 3-4 Engineered Explosives, easily slotting in any number of Nature's Claim and similar effects in the sideboard, and due to the deck's main point of recurring artifacts from the graveyard at instant speed, it basically dealt with everything. Ancient Stirrings only made the deck consistent, but the true power was in the core of the shell, nothing else. The question we need to ask is if Stirrings and Mox Opal make the deck broken or not, and in most cases, even in KCI I would say it isn't the case. I think in the same vein, one could even argue the same for Faithless Looting in the graveyard decks. Its the argument of enablers vs payoff.

However, Wotc did ban Looting because of the implications it could have on the future meta game, and how a card like looting can enable decks like Dredge to be super powerful and format warping. While I'd personally argue that Izzet Phoenix, while once the top deck or one of the top decks, it was on its last legs as a top tier deck at the time of the banning even with Hogaak gone. But by banning looting it overall slows down the format, so I guess its warranted to slow down the format and could, and probably so, will create a better format overall.

The thing is about banning cards in an eternal format, I am for only one criterion of banning: format warping. This is slightly vague but I will give two other criteria under the "format warping" title. (1) Meta game share and (2) homogenization of deck construction strategy. Hogaak is a good example of the first. It's obvious success across pretty much every tournament since its printing had a huge share of not just the overall meta game, but also the winning meta game. As for the second, we can look to cards like Ponder and Preordain for an example.
I'll reply to your quote:

I dont think its fair that blue gets all of its good cantripping spells banned while green can keep this powerful one even if it is one you have to build around

The reasoning here is incorrect. You even said it later yourself and how you can't simply put Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal in any (green) deck, and how Serum Visions doesn't go into ever blue deck. While you are right about Opal and Stirrings, I think you are wrong about blue decks and its cantrips. Serum Visions doesn't go into every blue deck because there aren't as many "pile" decks in Modern. The decks that do care about drawing do play Serum Visions, and there's a good chance that even the blue decks that don't currently run it would play a card like Ponder or even Preordain due to the immense increase in power compared to Serum Visions. In how the mechanics work with Fetch Lands, Serum Visions becomes a vastly inferior card compared to the other two. If we look to pretty much every blue deck that isn't a specific critical mass deck (e.g. Urza wants critical mass of artifacts, spirits wants creatures, etc), then I'd argue that they all would play Ponder or Preordain, as they all already are playing Serum. This then becomes format warping as we see in Legacy where most decks start with 52 cards after Brainstorm and Ponder.

Going back to my original criterion about banning cards, i'd like to share a quote I have shared in the past from Brian Kibler to show why I believe this is the only valid criterion:

"This is the problem with eternal formats. New interactions are going to keep coming up, new powerful things are going to keep happening If you're response is 'we're going to get rid of that one', then you are going to lose the point of having an eternal format. In Modern, people can't play the decks they've put together that they like and they want to play, which is really a lot of the appeal of the format to a lot of people."
7:13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CMY2KH_SlU&t=492s

We need to ask ourselves what is the point of an eternal format like Modern. To Kibler's point, Modern is there for us to play cards that were printed from 8th edition. If we take some other criterion than what I proposed, they we will continue to ride the ban carousal and continue to keep banning what ever deck is on top (e.g Pod, Splinter Twin), or what cards people simply don't like. As he says, new interactions will keep coming up, and yes, we sometimes need to ban these under strict criteria, but in the case of weaker arguments such as potential enabling of a certain strategy, we have to avoid that way of thinking.