I'm not sure why it is so hard to understand what bizzy is saying, if the card is good and white, it is going to go into the existing white decks abzan and jeskai. Time and time again this concept has been shown, new cards bolster existing strategies they don't create new ones. It's not that the other strategies are bad it's just that the old ones are better, so they will make better use of the new cards. I also heavily dislike this arguing of Wxx vs xxW, the difference between the two is so matginal it really comes down to Semantics. Abzan and bant eldrazi are both tier 1 decks that run around 10 maindeck white cards and have sideboards comprised mostly of white cards. Considering that there's about 23 lands in each, they are both about 1/4 white cards. Those two decks alone make up over 10% of the mtggoldfish meta. I understand that white doesn't play as central of a role as some would like in modern, but arguing that eldrazi and abzan arent white decks when they run white cards is just getting nowhere
This is untrue. Collected Company is a card that has decks named after it and is relatively new. The same is true for Bant Retreat decks. Or that flash in the pan Bant Spirits deck we saw.
Furthermore Birthing Pod/Splinter Twin were new at one point and had decks built around them.
If white was ever to get an engine card that was distinctly white, it would spawn a white deck. Instead of wizards printing some goodstuff 2 drop that splashes into a deck, they could print a powerful white effect that would warrant building around that card, especially if it was a card with a heavier white cost. That would be a way to make a white deck.
Also, there is totally a difference between decks that splash white and are white. Abzan is a BG(w) deck, and hell Final Push might make that even more the case.
nah. Infect is still there. Gitaxian Probe was too good of a card and this is a right ban. They didn't kill my deck. It's TRONS time to own the meta now! Go get them, Karn!
Let's say your doomsaying is true, and tron starts dominating the field, won't that mean the meta is ripe for fast decks like Infect/Affinity to just wipe out our new tron overlords? It's not like Infect's kill speed got any worse. Wait a second, that means we might have some sort of cyclical meta with checks and balances! As opposed to a combo-agro infested meta!
Good job WotC.
Post was just an irony! But Fatal Push print and the Probe ban may be too much for those decks.
Affinity (and Burn while we're mentioning Tron foils) don't run Probe, they can and will do fine in the Tron matchup, and easily bring back meta percentages to a reasonable level. If the meta is infested with Tron/big mana decks, Infect can just run Street Wraith for the same kill speed as they had with probe.
Will Infect/Affinity/Burn specifically have a harder time against interactive decks? Sure, but they shouldn't have had a good time to begin with. Does that mean aggressive decks have lost their ability to thrive in a specific meta? Not at all. That's how it should be.
nah. Infect is still there. Gitaxian Probe was too good of a card and this is a right ban. They didn't kill my deck. It's TRONS time to own the meta now! Go get them, Karn!
Let's say your doomsaying is true, and tron starts dominating the field, won't that mean the meta is ripe for fast decks like Infect/Affinity to just wipe out our new tron overlords? It's not like Infect's kill speed got any worse. Wait a second, that means we might have some sort of cyclical meta with checks and balances! As opposed to a combo-agro infested meta!
Yeah no kidding. Any thoughts of buying into Jund, already on life support after banning of Twin, are just gone. Forget that noise. Same with Affinity, no chance. I have Dredge, but it didnt do it for me after a short while, I need my UR core...
Its interesting, and I saw a post in another area of the forum that reflects my thoughts pretty well. Wizards keeps digging a hole. They are not solving the issues that they themselves are creating.
'Well it feels bad to have your creature die.'
'Well discard feels bad.'
'Well counters feel bad.'
'Well combo's feel bad.'
If you design for the stereotypical 'safe place' millennial, you'll get whats coming to you eventually and it looks like we are finally getting there.
You know, I hadn't really considered the fact that Jund's best matchups just got significantly worse, and it's worst matchups just got a significant boost since. Maybe if the next major top 8 is 3 Tron, 3 Bant Eldrazi, 2 Valakut, they'll do a Bluthian "I've made a huge mistake."
I've been saying it for weeks, because it's incredibly obvious. Interactive players crying for bans on the only decks they were good against, and which coincidentally murder the decks those same interactive decks were brutalized by.
Genius move.
We'll talk about format health and how good interaction is in a month or two.
This is nonsensical.
Infect is still a tier 1 deck. Burn and affinity are still tier 1 decks. If tron has an uprising, that means less interactive decks do well and therefore more room for the low to the ground decks to take over. You know... just like it has always been.
The only really noticeable difference is that with dredge weakened fair decks might finally have some sideboard slots for decks like Tron. We also have to remember that control decks don't actually have as horrible of matchup against Tron as they used to with the Eye of Ugin ban and hate like Crumble to Dust now exists (though of course Tron is still favored, just not to the astronomical degree like before).
Yeah no kidding. Any thoughts of buying into Jund, already on life support after banning of Twin, are just gone. Forget that noise. Same with Affinity, no chance. I have Dredge, but it didnt do it for me after a short while, I need my UR core...
Its interesting, and I saw a post in another area of the forum that reflects my thoughts pretty well. Wizards keeps digging a hole. They are not solving the issues that they themselves are creating.
'Well it feels bad to have your creature die.'
'Well discard feels bad.'
'Well counters feel bad.'
'Well combo's feel bad.'
If you design for the stereotypical 'safe place' millennial, you'll get whats coming to you eventually and it looks like we are finally getting there.
Ah yes, instead of playing decks that respect interaction (you know, actual conflict), combo players need a safe space so they can combo freely. Who is the real "millennial"?
Also millennials are people who were born around 1980. Magic's first set, Alpha, came out in 1993. I would posit the majority of players that play magic are millennials, even the ones that played "hardcore" magic back in the day.
It's just super funny to me they print Fatal Push, everyone gets super hyped about it's potential... Then they ban off the decks Push was gonna be so good against. Hahaha.
Infect will still be tier 1, push is still good against infect.
Push is also great against the litany of threats that come from Jund and other interactive/midrange decks.
The biggest losers are tier 2 zooicide (the only real deck that fatal push loses prey on) and tier 3 decks like prowess and storm.
In other words, the threats for Fatal Push to hit are still there, the hype train is still real, choo choo.
Infect has received a great tool in Blossoming Defenses (not including the speed Become Immense provides) to counteract the removal provided in Fatal Push. Giving agro-combo decks a free go ahead with the information provided by Probe was too good combined with all their recent tools. All this ban causes is that combo players now have to respect open mana, or at least invest mana in finding out what your opponent has. It isn't pulling out any essential/important tools from the deck, and isn't preventing the deck from functioning like the Summer Bloom ban. The deck's potency or ability to actually kill a player is unaffected.
It really just adds more skill to the format, which should be good for everyone (unless of course someone is just looking to goldfish).
Also (as I've stated previously) I believe this ban will be a good segue into a Preordain ban, which will help the decks that were hurt through the collateral damage of the probe ban (like storm).
Open mana is not as scary to some players who have played the format for years. You either have a protect spell or you don't. You don't go all-in on the kill unless your opponent is threatening to kill you next turn. This becomes much easier without Exarch into Twin in the format. People are seriously overstating the importance of knowing your opponent's hand. When your opponent has left open mana for a few turns in a row, they probably don't have something. Or they're taking unnecessary poison to try to next level you 3 turns down the road. Infect is rarely an all-in deck against decks with interaction in their deck list. Do I really have to see my Grishoalbrand opponent's hand or Dredge opponent's hand when their graveyard is free information?
If this is the case then Infect can replace Gitaxian Probe with Street Wraith and have no differences in terms of speed and the ban would amount to nothing. This probably isn't the case however, and having information is a lot more powerful than you give it credit for (at least in terms of the infect matchup).
No, I didn't say Infect was dead. It will still remain barely Tier 1, yes even through Push. They currently play 4 Vines of the Vastwood and 4 Blossoming Defenses. They may have to slow down a bit to play the creature without perfect information. But some players won't like to play a deck that has been neutered when it was clearly not above Tier 1. It was a Tier 1 deck. It was not unbeatable by any stretch of the imagination. Become Immense did more for the deck in many situations than Git Probe did. I know I talked out about goldfish kills, which I still attest to, but in a meta with some interactive decks, this deck won't ever get above Tier 1 IMO.
Taking important cards out of decks is often essentially the same as killing the deck. When Summer Bloom was banned, I'd venture out to estimate that a good 90% of Bloom players stopped playing the deck. Is it still a deck? Yes. I've killed people on turn 3 many times without Summer Bloom, but to many players, they simply don't want to play a lesser version of the deck they loved so much. So, essentially, banning Summer Bloom was the same to them as banning Summer Bloom, Amulet of Vigor, and Azusa, Lost but Seeking. Either way, they were never going to play the deck again.
And I don't think that people don't have the right to be upset over this announcement. How many people were upset about Eye of Ugin being banned? Not much. How many people were upset when Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek were unbanned? Hardly anyone. In fact, most people felt the same way that I did on that one. They were happy about it because it meant that the Ban Format that we play all of a sudden may not be a ... ban format. There was hope at the end of the rainbow - a reason for us putting up with so much bull***** this whole time. Or people felt indifferent to Sword/Ancestral.
There's always going to be people who agree with what Wizards did. There are people who agree with the Twin banning at the time. Obviously there's no choice but to move on (while secretly considering the list of 20 other probable cards to ban next time) from it. It just hurts, especially that last DIG at UR Storm.
Infect has received a great tool in Blossoming Defenses (not including the speed Become Immense provides) to counteract the removal provided in Fatal Push. Giving agro-combo decks a free go ahead with the information provided by Probe was too good combined with all their recent tools. All this ban causes is that combo players now have to respect open mana, or at least invest mana in finding out what your opponent has. It isn't pulling out any essential/important tools from the deck, and isn't preventing the deck from functioning like the Summer Bloom ban. The deck's potency or ability to actually kill a player is unaffected.
It really just adds more skill to the format, which should be good for everyone (unless of course someone is just looking to goldfish).
Also (as I've stated previously) I believe this ban will be a good segue into a Preordain ban, which will help the decks that were hurt through the collateral damage of the probe ban (like storm).
What are you realistically waiting for? These things will always happen similarly to this.
It's tough for Modern outsiders who hve 2 choices - 1) Play a Tier 1 deck until it is banned, then sell the cards back for 1/2 of what you paid or less ooor 2)Play a worse deck (could potentially be by not much) and give yourself a handicap from the beginning.
The number one thing I personally took from the ban list is this - Standard and Modern players need to stop playing Tier 1 decks. We need to be filthy casuals. And I mean that in the least offensive way.
Why are you under the assumption that Infect is now dead? It will easily still be a top-tier contender. It was a deck before Become Immense, and this ban only takes away the free information aspect away from the deck.
You should not be able to look at your opponents hand for zero mana.
You shouldn't be able to generate an additional mana every turn by an artifact that costs 0.
You shouldn't be able to generate mana through an uncounterable abiity of a card, at instant speed.
You shouldn't be able to generate 2 mana off a land for a creature type.
You shouldn't be able to generate 7 mana on turn 3 and escalating towards 10 from that point.
There's a lot of thing wrong in this format. The fact is that WOTC pays attention to what they want, and lack transparency. Probe is broken, so are other 10 cards in the format. Banning cards can be dangerous and it can sprial down very fast.
Banning cards can conversely be very good for the format, and in this case I think these bans are pointing the format in the right direction.
I also think the Gitaxian Probe ban might pave the way for a Preordain unban, as the biggest reasons against it were for fast combo decks, but those just took a hit.
Overall really excited for the format, and I seriously doubt all the Tron doomsaying as it still has natural checks (and you can just use the space freed up from your dredge hate for Tron if you're scared).
Is the lifelink on Gifted Aetherborn worth the double black cost as opposed to using something like Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim who is easier to cast for the same stats (trade lifelink for ability)?
I'm definitely going to Fatal Push out in my W/B sideboard instead of Dismember. Hits most of the problem creatures we want to hit outside of cards like Tasigur, and works against pump spells like mutagenic growth or become immense, and that's without having to trigger revolt.
As for the card being good against our deck, it's not to much different than bolt, though variants running Thought-Knot Seer might get hurt a bit more. More traditional DnT strats won't be hurt by it any more than they were by bolt, and most decks aren't going to run four copies of both.
We generally have a pretty smooth control matchup, especially when their manabase is greedy.
Fatal Push was clearly printed because Standard sucks so bad now, and they want instant speed removal for Smuggler's Copter. because it's a creature that has hexproof in the opponent's turn essentially.
But! In Modern it will be even better. It's a kind of Abrupt Decay policing card. Sultai, Esper and Abzan Midrange, Grixis Control are the clear winners, because black did not have such a tool. Grixis Delver and Jund can and will play it a lot. I dare to say the next banlist announcement will be NO CHANGES(except even Dredge now). This is a step in the right direction.
Wizards well done, but I am sad that Smuggler's Copter warping the format so bad was the reason that pushed them to do this. We will take this anyways and improve our beloved format!
Aether Revolt was probably already finished printing and waiting for distribution by the time Smugglers Copter was first released into standard. Wizards plans years in advance and can't make snap prints or changes. They didn't expect copter to be doing *that* well. This card was planned from the start and wasn't done in response to Standard.
I'm excited to see how the format reacts to a new removal spell, especially one that hits current top decks. It could bolster a lot of fringe color combinations/archetypes.
This is untrue. Collected Company is a card that has decks named after it and is relatively new. The same is true for Bant Retreat decks. Or that flash in the pan Bant Spirits deck we saw.
Furthermore Birthing Pod/Splinter Twin were new at one point and had decks built around them.
If white was ever to get an engine card that was distinctly white, it would spawn a white deck. Instead of wizards printing some goodstuff 2 drop that splashes into a deck, they could print a powerful white effect that would warrant building around that card, especially if it was a card with a heavier white cost. That would be a way to make a white deck.
Also, there is totally a difference between decks that splash white and are white. Abzan is a BG(w) deck, and hell Final Push might make that even more the case.
Affinity (and Burn while we're mentioning Tron foils) don't run Probe, they can and will do fine in the Tron matchup, and easily bring back meta percentages to a reasonable level. If the meta is infested with Tron/big mana decks, Infect can just run Street Wraith for the same kill speed as they had with probe.
Will Infect/Affinity/Burn specifically have a harder time against interactive decks? Sure, but they shouldn't have had a good time to begin with. Does that mean aggressive decks have lost their ability to thrive in a specific meta? Not at all. That's how it should be.
Let's say your doomsaying is true, and tron starts dominating the field, won't that mean the meta is ripe for fast decks like Infect/Affinity to just wipe out our new tron overlords? It's not like Infect's kill speed got any worse. Wait a second, that means we might have some sort of cyclical meta with checks and balances! As opposed to a combo-agro infested meta!
Good job WotC.
This is nonsensical.
Infect is still a tier 1 deck. Burn and affinity are still tier 1 decks. If tron has an uprising, that means less interactive decks do well and therefore more room for the low to the ground decks to take over. You know... just like it has always been.
The only really noticeable difference is that with dredge weakened fair decks might finally have some sideboard slots for decks like Tron. We also have to remember that control decks don't actually have as horrible of matchup against Tron as they used to with the Eye of Ugin ban and hate like Crumble to Dust now exists (though of course Tron is still favored, just not to the astronomical degree like before).
Ah yes, instead of playing decks that respect interaction (you know, actual conflict), combo players need a safe space so they can combo freely. Who is the real "millennial"?
Also millennials are people who were born around 1980. Magic's first set, Alpha, came out in 1993. I would posit the majority of players that play magic are millennials, even the ones that played "hardcore" magic back in the day.
Push is also great against the litany of threats that come from Jund and other interactive/midrange decks.
The biggest losers are tier 2 zooicide (the only real deck that fatal push loses prey on) and tier 3 decks like prowess and storm.
In other words, the threats for Fatal Push to hit are still there, the hype train is still real, choo choo.
If this is the case then Infect can replace Gitaxian Probe with Street Wraith and have no differences in terms of speed and the ban would amount to nothing. This probably isn't the case however, and having information is a lot more powerful than you give it credit for (at least in terms of the infect matchup).
Infect has received a great tool in Blossoming Defenses (not including the speed Become Immense provides) to counteract the removal provided in Fatal Push. Giving agro-combo decks a free go ahead with the information provided by Probe was too good combined with all their recent tools. All this ban causes is that combo players now have to respect open mana, or at least invest mana in finding out what your opponent has. It isn't pulling out any essential/important tools from the deck, and isn't preventing the deck from functioning like the Summer Bloom ban. The deck's potency or ability to actually kill a player is unaffected.
It really just adds more skill to the format, which should be good for everyone (unless of course someone is just looking to goldfish).
Also (as I've stated previously) I believe this ban will be a good segue into a Preordain ban, which will help the decks that were hurt through the collateral damage of the probe ban (like storm).
Why are you under the assumption that Infect is now dead? It will easily still be a top-tier contender. It was a deck before Become Immense, and this ban only takes away the free information aspect away from the deck.
Heaven forbid a deck has to play around answers.
Banning cards can conversely be very good for the format, and in this case I think these bans are pointing the format in the right direction.
I also think the Gitaxian Probe ban might pave the way for a Preordain unban, as the biggest reasons against it were for fast combo decks, but those just took a hit.
Overall really excited for the format, and I seriously doubt all the Tron doomsaying as it still has natural checks (and you can just use the space freed up from your dredge hate for Tron if you're scared).
Is the lifelink on Gifted Aetherborn worth the double black cost as opposed to using something like Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim who is easier to cast for the same stats (trade lifelink for ability)?
As for the card being good against our deck, it's not to much different than bolt, though variants running Thought-Knot Seer might get hurt a bit more. More traditional DnT strats won't be hurt by it any more than they were by bolt, and most decks aren't going to run four copies of both.
We generally have a pretty smooth control matchup, especially when their manabase is greedy.
Aether Revolt was probably already finished printing and waiting for distribution by the time Smugglers Copter was first released into standard. Wizards plans years in advance and can't make snap prints or changes. They didn't expect copter to be doing *that* well. This card was planned from the start and wasn't done in response to Standard.
I'm excited to see how the format reacts to a new removal spell, especially one that hits current top decks. It could bolster a lot of fringe color combinations/archetypes.