MTG Salvation

Bonus points if you donate both Platinum Angel and Immortal Coil to your opponent and take out their graveyard.

EDIT: It's not Modern legal, but for people interested in giant mandatory loops, someone has actually managed to construct a universal turing machine out of magic cards (basically, a computer that, using interactions between creature tokens and the stack, can compute basically any necessary problem).
Version 5, which requires some players to always say "yes" to may triggers, can be found here: http://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/About.html
An explanation of version 6, which removes the may triggers and makes the machine impossible to disrupt.

Because this turing machine built from magic cards can be used to calculate anything, it is actually possible to dedicate the machine (essentially, a giant infinite loop) to an unanswerable problem (say, whether all even numbers can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers). That would actually make a game state where it's IMPOSSIBLE to tell whether the loop is infinite, and therefore whether the game is a draw.
Unfortunately, the machine needs 5 players, so we can't do this in a tournament. However, I believe all the cards necessary for the machine are legacy-legal, so if they ever make a Legacy-Emperor Grand Prix, we would hypothetically be able to make the head judge hate us forever.

Some of you may remember my team did some (sadly, limited) testing of possible unbans, testing which managed to predict with some accuracy what would happen given their January unbans (Bitterblossom would be too weak to perform in modern, and Nacatl would be strong enough, but still a safe unban). That testing, which we've done a bit more of, says the following about possible unbans:

Golgari Grave-Troll is the safest unban you can get. It's absolutely unplayable in its historic decks, and no current deck wants it. We got some decent results with a Goryo's Vengeance reanimator deck using a dredge engine to draw, but it was still unimpressive, and if it were modern legal the results we got were not good enough for me to pursue the deck further.

Ancestral Vision is a safe unban. It's not unplayable like Grave-Troll, and indeed I found it to be quite strong, but it's not banworthy. We got solid results with it in UW/X control (esper and UWR), and it would certainly be worth playing there, but the results still weren't amazing enough to make the deck too dominant. We also did some limited U/B faeries testing with it, but still didn't get strong enough results for us to worry about it. I'm going to say this explicitly: I don't believer faeries is a good deck in modern. It's playable now, and might be decent with Ancestral Vision, but unless we missed a major card choice that significantly ups its power level, Faeries will not be tier 1.

Bloodbraid Elf is probably a safe unban. We got some scary results with Jund (a little bit better than our testing with Nacatl), but it didn't feel particularly broken. The most notable thing was that it had a quite poor matchup against UWR and especially UWR twin, which suggests that there's a fundamental check on the power of Jund in the format with Deathrite Shaman gone. I'd definitely want to see more testing of this card before I felt comfortable unbanning it, were I the DCI, but it's certainly not inherently dangerous.

Seething Song is debatable. We tried storm with seething song, and found it to be quite powerful, probably powerful enough to make it a recurring contender in the format. However, we found a 15% turn-3 goldfish rate so far, and this was done against our standard modern gauntlet with no sideboard changes. Given that it performed well but not incredibly well (worse, for instance, than zoo with Nacatl did during our testing), it would probably only mean people would have to devote more sideboard hate to storm. From a format dominance and enjoyability perspective, Seething Song is not a threat. From a turn-4 rule perspective, it could be in violation, but I don't think it has a high enough percentage. It's also worth noting that I am a longtime storm combo player, as are two other members of my team, which in my opinion gives this testing more credence (we're less likely to misplay a storm deck).

Sword of the Meek is NOT a safe unban. Dear god is this not a safe unban. The combo is so good, a control shell that can consistently get it out by turn 4 (not that hard if you play any Muddle the Mixtures) doesn't really have to worry about aggro matchups, so they can just play a ton of counters and discard with Snapcasters and Thirst. We tried it in UWR, Esper, and U/B tezzeret. Every single one was extremely strong, with Tezzeret testing roughly equally to zoo with Nacatl and the other two testing vastly better. Note: this does not mean that Sword is absolutely not unbannable. It's entirely possible we missed a couple of powerful hate cards or interactions that make Thopter/Sword weaker, or that new printings over the next couple months will make it weaker. What it does mean is that it's not a safe unban, meaning that, based on our testing, there are real and credible risks that sword will be dominant.

There are other cards we've done minimal testing for (Mental Misstep, Chrome Mox, and Blazing Shoal), but none of those are actually for potential unbans, but rather for reasons of figuring out more general things about approaching banned lists. We haven't done enough testing for those to be relevant, so I can't make any predictions about them.

I don't know if I speak for the rest of the Modern community, but my personal take is that the more players there are, the better, and that we as competitive players are also the ambassadors of our format. So, if you were to show up with a tier-1 deck and were still learning the ropes, I'd make sure that you learned as much and had as much fun as possible. If you had a question about lines of play, I would try to help you with actual honesty and not try to sabotage you, and I'd be sure to make myself available after the match to talk about how to use your deck to its full potential.
Then again, not everyone shares my view, so don't expect everyone to act like that.

It's things like that that make me thoroughly doubt that you know what you're talking about. Maybe your lists are just drastically better than my team or anyone on the pro scene from Old Extended could ever dream up, but I doubt it. And Dredge is thoroughly incapable of going off on turn 1 in Modern, and is terrible in the unbanned format anyways, which you would know if you had played 3 matches with it against an adequate control or even zoo player. Hypergenesis requires an actual god draw and to be on the play. Shoal Infect is a terrible deck. You are right about Elfball, at least, as it was perfectly capable of going off on turn 2 with the right hand, but it's also trivially easy to disrupt, which you would ALSO know if you had played enough matches for your level of statistical confidence. Similarly, with Storm, you're right in that it's a powerful and viable combo deck, but it's also not a turn 1-2 deck in the least. And you CERTAINLY would know how few decks actually want to run Mental Misstep in this format.
Again, though, I've never claimed to be infallible, and it's not like we're team CFB over here. How about you send me your turn-2 dredge deck that can beat Rest in Piece out of Miracles? Post it here, PM it to me, doesn't really matter. Actually, send me any of your combofest lists you have. If you're right about their goldfish consistency, I'll crush my teammates next wednesday. It's a $5 buy-in, so I'll make a fair bit of cash that way.

On further consideration, I'd like to change mine:
I forgot about my monoblack stax deck. Phyrexian Etchings+Descent into Madness+Vampire Hexmage. The games I won with that thing were amazing. Both of them.

Thanks.
I'd like to also register my skepticism that local LGS's were in on Modern and allowed to test it early. We competitive magic players aren't exactly the most secretive of people, and if Wizards were arranging a test format for specific people, word would have gotten out. Can we please see an official announcement saying that Wizards did this? Or the name of one of these test locations? Or any evidence that they exist?

Sorry to have taken so long to come back to this, everyone, but I spent most of the last month forgetting about magic and concentrating on one of my other great gaming loves, Starcraft. I wanted to get as many games as I could in before the Beta for Heart of the Swarm turned into a pumpkin.
I've been working with my list, and it's still good, but I've also been turning away somewhat towards other decks of a similar overall strategy. My teammates (we're 6 people, 4 of whom have used this deck extensively over the last year or so) have been testing to good results. One of us actually won a local modern tourney with it. If he writes a tournament report, I'll see to it that it gets posted here.
I won't be making many posts, here or on my blog, for a couple days. I need to refamiliarize myself with this deck, and really with magic in general, since it's a very different game from what I've been doing recently (much tougher decisions, with much more time to make them), but I'll be discussing how to play the deck after the bannings in detail soon.
That's right. I'm back.

Seething Song is banned

.

....Seriously?

My first blog entry is up!
I'm going to be writing irregular articles on my MTGS blog, which there is a link to right below an avatar. I'll also be putting a link in my sig. My first article, how to build Ritual Gifts, is all about selecting the cards in your maindeck to best maximise YOUR chances for victory, and should provide some guidance for how to approach the deck. I'll be following it up with articles on the sideboard and tweaking the list to fit your metagame, a short one on manabases (which you all should already be pretty good at), and then a series of ones about playing it. I'm gonna try to avoid talking too much about certain matchups, though I will discuss how to figure out your strategy against any given archetype, but I will have a large thing on knowing when to go off, how to play Gifts Ungiven, and much more. If it catches on and people stay interested, I may make it a regular feature.

EDIT: I've actually now finished the whole guide to building Ritual Gifts! It's not the best writing in the world, but I think it gets the point across. People, please give any feedback you have to me, whether you want me to keep going with this, and if I'm going into enough detail. Also, the really complex stuff is still to come...

Enduring Renewal/Heartless Summoning/Perilous Myr if you want to go really deep and/or make any really old players love you forever.

Vintage is a game of Pillers, your either playing one and beating planing for the other 2, or your Combo. Why the hell is this ever being discussed here? I was only wishing to state that in a format where everything is Legal, do not be shocked that things are legal. Saying that something is legal in Vintage is not a shock to anyone.

Oh and of course Fast mana, Tutors, Card draw and the Power Nine are broken. That's the draw of the format. Now, care to drop back to Modern guys or are you guys going to rant on about a format most of you don't play?

Quote from bocephus

He says he agrees with what they said. He starts out paraphrasing the article, then admits they are right, then moves on to what they were thinking when they printed it. I think you need to re watch it.

The only thing he says they are right on is "we shouldn't have done that". He then spends the rest of the video explaining why they shouldn't have done that. You have misinterpreted him to say "They're right" in reference to the Tinker/NO comparison, when that is so obviously not what he means. If you seriously believe that AF thinks Tinker, NO, and SFM have the same power level, then either AF needs to be fired (which he doesn't because he's not saying that), or you need to rethink how card evaluation works.

I actually agree with the conclusion of this argument, which is that SFM should stay banned. I don't want that card in Modern and I think t would be incredibly unhealthy for the format. But to agree with that statement I don't also need to believe that Tinker has the same power level as Stoneforge Mystic. That's like saying Jarad's Orders has the same power level of Entomb, or that Polymorph has the same power level as Oath of Druids.

Quote from NessOnett

As for PF, I haven't researched it enough to talk too confidently on it. All I see is a very slow and grindy card primarily based on creatures, and the format being super fast, combo heavy, and spell-centric. I can't envision it doing anything detrimental in this environment.

My big fear with PF is actually the same reason that Wizards had for banning it; it pushed out a lot of aggro decks from the format. Soul Sisters, Merfolk, Infect, and Goblins (!!) are all very much a thing on MTGO right now, and I can't imagine that they survive a PF unbanning. I don't think the format gains much from PF, but I do think that aggro diversity loses out a lot.

Honestly, I think that the reason we are even discussing a PF unban (let alone the other half dozen cards under consideration) is because a lot of us would rather talk about MOAR UNBANNINGZ then just analyze the effects of the current ones. We are still very much in a time of reflection; we don't even know what the metagame is because it changes significantly from week to week. We have people advocating for P+P unbans when Twin sees almost double the play as the next most-played MTGO deck. We have people advocating for Electromancer/Grapeshot/Manamorphose bans because it did well at one event and some pros cried about it. We all just need to relax, think critically about where Modern is now, and, above all, wait.

Quote from NessOnett

(perhaps slightly off topic but...)
Reprints are one of the strongest things that Wizards could do to help the problems with Modern. Counterspell? I'd like to see it(and this is from someone who despises draw-go), but I doubt it's going to happen. So what can we do? Well, we look at the past(where all the reprints come from), and we find some of the popular strong decks from the past(that weren't combo) and see what we can do to revive them.

In the past, what has been able to deal with combo well? While being fun, interactive, and interesting. And simultaneously not oppressive. (This isn't a rhetorical question for once, it's late, I'm tired, and I can't think of any). And is it feasible to bring part or all of it back into being?

And it's not just combo. Manabases too, very greedy, very little punish. The obvious solution is to reprint PoP(which I'd be super happy with personally), but there's tons of ways they can address this problem too.


The point is, there's way better ways for Wizards to balance Modern than with knee-jerk bans on whatever is doing well this week(And yes, I realize that I am preaching to the majority of the choir, but it seems to need repeating since some still aren't getting this).

I think this is the point where wizards is failing more in modern, i think the ban list management is not the worst problem with modern development, but the new prints/reprints. We aren't get enough supply of cards to shake up the meta on the new sets, most sets lately only brought cards to already estabilished decks. Theros/Born of the Gods had a lot of potential, but it was all ruined by the cowardice of the development team, that tunned down many interesting cards.

People probably won't agree with but, in my opinion, the main blame of what can be called poor modenr ban list management falls on Standard. Wizard on this reverse power creep to slowdown standard is making new sets too weak to shake modern. Then, due to the stagnation, some decks ends up to showing too much and then the bans come.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins

I would love for someone to show me Storm
even reaching top 16 in any major event.

Pro Tour Philadelphia, Grand Prix Turin, Grand Prix Lyon, and Grand Prix Portland.

Bloodbraid elf: the biggest boon from her ban was opening up BG/x from being strictly jund or jund/x.

Birthing pod: if it sees a ban it will be because of the increase in the formats creatures. Its naive to believe it should never be banned.

Path of exile: that land makes it a difficult spell to use early which contradicts the low casting cost.

For every person that hates the banned list or banned list process for modern there are people who love it. I am one of those people. My confidence grows with the format it seems with each update. They are willing to take things off. They aren't scared to touch popular decks if they have a component that is too good. I really feel like as time goes forward they will continue their goal for the format.

Sorry if the post is poorly spelled and what not, they blocked mtgs from my work PC and its difficult topost long posts with solid proof reading.

This is a great thread, providing many chuckles and reminds me of the truly creative side of magic that is often overlooked

Quote from bocephus

No worries Nix, I am done talking about it. If people didnt play when Elfball was going off turn 1 or 2 or Storm was truly a turn 1 or 2 deck, not my problem. Even in the watered down ban list format Wotc felt Storm went off before turn 4 too often and had to ban more rituals. I have come to the realization some people must play against the miserable decks before they understand. No problem there, have fun. I am done banging my head against the wall. Unban them all and enjoy!

By the way, you need an extremely tuned deck to play that fast.

What do I know, some may enjoy that type of Magic. Its not for me.

Bocephus, I just have to say, no one takes you seriously anymore in this thread. You repeatedly have made claims that are either completely inaccurate or not backed up by any evidence at all. Here are the ones that I remember.

Valakut being unbanned would kill midrange.
Nacatl being unbanned would destroy the format.
Stoneforge Mystic is a stronger card than Tinker.
Reprinting any card or making a functional reprint of any card not in Modern would destroy the purity of the format.
If everything except for Skullclamp was unbanned in Modern, it would be a turn 1 format.
Freed From the Real and Archive Trap should be banned because it is physically possible to win before turn 4 with them.
Every ban was right because if it wasn't, Wizards wouldn't have done the ban.
Anyone who thinks that the format should change should go play Legacy because Modern is Wizards's sandbox and it will never change.

Please, start providing actual arguments. Right now, you are just being a troll. You tell other people that they are wrong and refuse to back up your claims with even a tiny shred of evidence or with evidence that is taken so completely out of context that the original meaning is lost. Provide an argument. Otherwise there is no point to you being in this thread.

Quote from Earthbound21

You don't seem to understand that increasing answer diversity will allow an increase in threat diversity.

I want to touch on this one more time, now that I've thought about it a bit. This isn't about any one card in particular, it's about design philosophy. Having good answers allows a variety of threats to be played. This is the sole reason why both Legacy and Standard work. Standard is designed in a way that answers itself. Wizards is careful about this. Legacy works because of things like Force and Daze. By allowing these answers to be present in the their respective formats, you are also allowing what strategies are able to exist within a format. I will use Legacy as an example only because I am unfamiliar with Standard currently.

Think of the decks that Force of Will and Daze stop. Reanimator, Show and Tell, Dredge, Storm (to an extent) Belcher, Elves, and so on. If Force of Will was banned, or just not in the format, All of these decks would be blatantly better than the others. However, because those two cards exist, these decks are allowed to see play. These strategies are allowed to see play.

What takes their place in Modern? Lightning Bolt. But because Lightning Bolt is Modern's catch all answer, it is limiting what decks and strategies are allowed in. However, Lightning Bolt is limited in it's scope, the decks that are allowed to see play must be answered by Lightning Bolt, or they are deemed too powerful. Take for example Modern's best control deck, American. The core of this deck is



Do you see how our best control deck is running the same things as the best Zoo decks? How American is actually just a burn deck in disguise?

Not having diversified answers means that the meta game and the best decks are also not diversified in a meaningful way.

So what is the point? I'm not saying Force of Will or Daze or things like that be put into Modern. But something that would play they same role as they do would be a huge boon to this format, allowing a wider diversity of decks and threats within those decks.

The real issue is the design of cards nowadays. I mean, we got DRS, geist, snapcaster, loxodon smiter, delver, young pyromancer, scavenging ooze, and countless other incredible creatures all within the span of a few years, and these creatures are good enough that they're seeing play in legacy, and pushing the format deep into midrange and fair decks. Hell, some of those cards see vintage play. At the same time, the most noteworthy counterspell we got in the same period was swan song, which is just... a bad card by most measures. The number of good non-creatures is staggeringly low, to the point where a lot of the strategy has homogenised. We have hyper-efficient midrange decks, and a number of decks that do some very unfair things (but it's creature based, so it's okay!), but no real answers that can keep up with this influx of threats. You ever notice that most of the delver decks in modern run fewer instants and sorceries than standard delver decks? Well, that's because most modern delver decks are pushing towards midrange. Same with control, and even combo like the pod decks are all midrange decks. If they aren't going for midrange, then they're going infinite like twin and pod.

The threats in modern are way, way, way out of whack with the answers, and the problem is, as the number of cards in the cardpool approaches infinity, so too does the potential number of combo interactions. Modern doesn't have the tools to regulate itself, because it's a format where a turn 3 karn or turn 4 infinite combo is fine, but counterspell is too powerful. I mean, consider that the most interactive deck in modern (jund) doesn't stand out for its level of interaction in legacy. Or the fact that modern combo is like playing solitaire, whereas legacy combo will actively interact with you before going off. There just isn't as much incentive, because the costs aren't high enough. The lack of real counterspells makes cards that aren't particularly good in and of themselves completely broken. I mean, no one gives a ***** about blazing shoal in legacy, and yet it's one of the more broken cards on the modern list. Anyone see what I'm getting at here?

The secret is that cards like force of will and counterspell aren't broken, and are necessary for the game to balance itself out. Even the mighty force of will can only be used once, and costs you an additional card in doing so. If you don't have these cards, you don't get a diversity of strategies, and then you end up with a stagnant metagame. In this case, the combo strategies that eat midrange are banned out of modern, and they have to be, because of the arbitrary turn 4 rule, and the lack of good counters. As a consequence, we get these absurd midrange metas where jund is just a better deck, because the strategies that beat goodstuff.deck aren't as effective in the format.

For anyone who's interested, there's a similar thing happening in legacy at the moment, thanks to TNN. TNN is a case study in what poor design can do, and in magic, it's particularly bad because the power of creatures tends to be subtle and overlooked (as opposed to non-creatures, which break the game outright when they get too strong). TNN is so good at connecting that he forces deck to either ignore him (combo), have a reliable way of dealing with him (GBx), or play him (U tempo). TNN makes blue tempo decks much better against the powerful midrange decks that traditionally beat the crap out of delver. At the same time, delver has a strong matchup against combo by virtue of all its disruption. Because of this, the format has veered hard into blue, and delver decks are taking a lot of top 8 slots. Sure, they're different flavours of delver, but let's be honest, the disruption and draw package is largely the same, making up almost 50% of the deck. From the outset, it doesn't really look like there's a problem, because TNN is "just a creature", when really he's such a good threat that his effect is being felt throughout the meta. Since he's entered the format, the diversity among the top decks has statistically declined, and will probably do so further from this point on, until he's either banned, or a better answer comes along.

The reason I brought this up is because many games with TNN actually feel like modern games in the way they play out. You can't quite answer what it is your opponent is doing, but it's not quite broken either, so people are kind of willing to accept it. You can't really articulate why that card should be banned, because at the end of the day, it's just a creature, right? I mean DRS died to a stiff breeze, and could only do one thing per turn, so he's fair, right? Well, he has the same effect on the format that any creature does when it's too strong, which is limit the variety of interactions, and hate out certain decks just by virtue of existing. I mean, just because TNN exists, death and taxes is now struggling, purely due to the increase in maindeck and sideboard hate. DRS had a similar effect in that his presence in the format hated out pretty much any dedicated graveyard strategy, just because he was legal.

I'm all for the modern banlist shrinking, because there are many cards on there that I genuinely love, and want to play with. At the same time, those cards can't come off, because the card design nowadays emphasises threats rather than answers, and that means that things break much, much easier. Daze and force of will are the difference between storm being insanely broken, and a balanced and diverse format. Even then, there's a point at which creatures will get too good, and warp the meta by virtue of their very existence, but their status as "fair" cards often prevents them from being banned when they should.

Anyway, my rant is done.