If some users are serious about doing some testing to evaluate potential unbans, I'm all for it. I think that would be fun.
The problem is that you'd need a fairly large sample size to actually be able to say anything though, right? I'm no statistics expert but I think you can estimate the margin of error in an estimated win % "p" according to:
E = Z*SQRT(p*(1-p)/n)
Where n is the sample size (i.e., number of matches tested).
If you take Z as 1.96 (for 95% confidence), then you'd have to test more than 300 matches just to get an estimated win % with a margin of error of less than 5%!
Am I missing something there, ktkenshinx?
We aren't looking for perfection, just enough to get a feel of what sfmodern would look like, whether it helps the proposed problems, whether the concerns prove to be true. You could test 5000 matches against every t1-t3 deck and still have someone dismiss your results for not enough testing, so shooting for the perfect sample size is moot, along with impractical
A bit off topic, but what us the consensus on seething song? That card seems fair to allow. After all, storm is practically dead, and it would help revive some old archetypes.
The problem is storm with seething song was a t4 violator, along with a deck that wizards has repeatedly demonstrated they dont want viable in modern. You would have to do extensive personal testing with the card and report back before this thread would even begin to take this unban with any degree of seriousness
Yes, but it's important to make sure the results are meaningful. Like if we test 10 matches of UWR vs. Burn with and without SFM, we couldn't really make any sort of meaningful conclusion about how much SFM improves UWR's matchup against Burn. If you really tested 5000 matches, than people would be wrong to dismiss your result, because that's an incredibly high sample size, and assuming that both players are of equal proficiency, would provide a pretty damn good estimate of each's decks win probability.
I'm not saying the sample size has to be massive, but it would just be nice to able to put the results in perspective, and I was hoping ktkenshinx or someone else more familiar with statistical inference could maybe give some insight on this.
If some users are serious about doing some testing to evaluate potential unbans, I'm all for it. I think that would be fun.
The problem is that you'd need a fairly large sample size to actually be able to say anything though, right? I'm no statistics expert but I think you can estimate the margin of error in an estimated win % "p" according to:
E = Z*SQRT(p*(1-p)/n)
Where n is the sample size (i.e., number of matches tested).
If you take Z as 1.96 (for 95% confidence), then you'd have to test more than 300 matches just to get an estimated win % with a margin of error of less than 5%!
I'll put up or shut up though: You build your best stoneforge deck and I will bring whatever deck you want to test against in Xmage, or RUG/BTLw Scapeshift on MTGO.
We've had this conversation with you so many times now.
that's easy to say when its not you who has to now sell there blue staples ( which is very hard to do even on ebay) that you payed a couple thousand for. some people feel there could be improvement int the format, still love modern, and aren't going to quit just because some one like you told them to.
man whats with the rude, condescending, arrogance in this forum sometimes? there is no need.
well said below by shmanka:
We need to stop this "If you don't like playing Russian Roulette GTFO" mentality.
So, do you think Modern is a Russian Roulette? If you do not find your sideboard you lose against all those linear decks you re describing etc? There is no interaction etc?
modern is not all russian roullette. But an uncomfortable amount of times it feels like your sideboard cards carry too much weight in certain macthups and that modern is only getting bigger with every new set added. modern has alot of interaction thats not my personal issue with it. we need better MB generic answers as this format grows and as new combo aggro decks pop up to keep things relatively under control. modern can, and should be improved if possible by wizards for these very reasons.
"New comboaggro decks"? What's those? Zooicide is an aggro deck at heart. Infect is an aggro-combo deck but it exists since the inception of Modern. This is the banlist thread. Do you realize that? You should be talking about things like Preordain unbanned or Mox Opal banned etc. You are not here to discuss Counterspell/generic answers reprint.
Explanation: Nothing is horribly broken, and everything has 3 or 4 bad matchups. Nothing is breaking consistently the turn 4 rule and the decks that can win turn 3 or turn 4 can be easily dealt by various mainboard asnwers you should anyways have in your deck(Lightning Bolt/Path To Exile/Abrupt Decay/Kolaghan's Command etc)
Mox Opal: Affinity had some top 8's but it is one of the best decks and it will always be, but format can keep it off balance and we saw that
Become Immense: Decks that play this card have 0 or 1 GP wins(Infect has 1 over 3 years and DS Aggro 0). Just Lightning Bolt/Path To Exile something or Inquisition Of Kozilek/Thoughtseize and turn 4 win is off the books(unlike Amulet Bloom where this was useless) Maybe you can even win then. They fall to Jund, Burn, Junk, Jeskai, Grixis and other strategies. They make sure your maindeck interaction won't be often tossed in a pile of garbage. They keep various uninteractive decks off balance(such as Tron, Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand/Living End) meaning decks that traditionally have a good matchup vs fair decks. Should this card be banned, I would expect to be seeing less and less Lightning Bolt + Path To Exile copies and more combo decks and Tron. Kind of what Twin did, only in a bigger degree.
Unbans: No unbans.
Explanation: Not just yet. We should wait the next GP and on January's banlist announcement various cards should be re-examined, such as Bloodbraid Elf, Preordain and Stoneforge Mystic.
Jace, The Mind Sculptor should not be up for discussion IMO. It would do more harm than good, because it would make other fair decks's lives a living hell and force people to play faster, linear/combo decks.
Why exactly do we need to wait until January? There has been more than enough time to assess the health of the format since the AV/Sword unbans. It's been almost 6 months since then.
We have three cards (BBE, SFM, Preordain) rotting on the banlist that seem like perfectly safe unbans (especially Preordain). Sure, there's a very small risk of one of those cards breaking the format, but now is the time to take risks, while the format isn't in such a good position.
tbh i believe that preordain is mostly a victim of Ponder and decks like the full power Storm, amulet bloom and Twin, now that they're all gone there's nothing keeping this card ban save design choices
also i have some trouble believing that it helps that much fringe combo decks like AN (which falls on the slow side anyways) and Griselbrand whose main variant doesn't even run blue
AN would probably get a significant boost from Preordain. Sleight of Hand -> Preordain is a pretty big upgrade, actually.
However, I don't think that keeping Preordain banned is the right approach to slowing down combo in Modern. I'd rather see Wizards take the approach they usually do, which is banning fast mana and combo enablers, and not banning card selection.
If Preordain really turns Ad Nauseam and Grishoalbrand into turn 4 rule breakers, then just ban SSG. But Preordain at least deserves a chance to be in the format, and with the format being rather unhealthy right now I'd say it's a fine time to just see what happens.
On another note how do you think the new lands change our manabase?
Well Abzan will become better against aggro decks but I think Jund will be still favourite against those-at least as long Abzan doesn't get (if) one 1 mana Bolt like removal. I honestly don't know which lands will go in favour of fast lands, probably basic plains and maybe Twillight Mire, or maybe some copy of manland. I even don't know which one will see play but I guess B/W has better chances since it gives you an option of turn 1 Path which admittedly is not good on turn 1 usually but it could be an option on the draw sometimes (by killing opposing Goyf for example) while B/G doesn't provide much (you don't need green on turn 1). That said testing will be required in my opinion to see which configuration is the best.
Versions with Noble Hierarch will almost for sure want the B/G fastland as a 4-of, I think, since it allows a turn 1 discard or Hierarch. Versions without Hierarch, I'm not sure, but I think B/G is still better because it allows plays like turn 1 discard -> turn 2 colorless land + Goyf. White mana is typically not super important until turn 3, except against Infect where we don't care about our life total too much anyway. Suicide Zoo is the only deck against which we would really benefit from having a turn 1/2 pain-free white source.
I agree with LSV on Tron, it's almost impossible to beat it with fair deck like Jund when they got tron online.
Btw plenty of Abzan decks there which I didn't expect.
Who cares if it's hard to beat? The deck isn't even good right now and has plenty of weaknesses. Decks aren't banned because they beat up your pet deck. They are banned because they are format problems and Tron doesn't remotely qualify right now. Going after Tron is just going after a symptom of the problem: the lack of Modern generic answers. Banning a dozen linear cards is just a temporary solution that angers a lot of players, one that only lasts until the next broken thing happens.
For some reason Tron is always the scapegoat for there not being enough fair interactive decks in Modern. When Amulet Bloom was the real problem, people still blamed Tron. When the lack of a decent URx shell was the problem (before Nahiri was printed and after Twin was banned) people still blamed Tron. And now that Eldrazi and Dredge are the real problem if there is one, what do you know, people still blame Tron!
Yes, Tron destroys fair decks, but has never been prevalent enough in the metagame for it to be oppressive to those decks.
I find it very hard to be true, but hey, if they go for it, let's take the dust off them and give it a spin.
There is certainly some appeal to unbanning BBE now that Visions is legal. I have an extremely hard time believe that a BBE + Visions RUG deck would be too good as Wizards seemed to suggest in their rationale for unbanning Visions. I hope they reconsider that, because it doesn't seem like they really though it through. On the other hand, another fair archetype being viable is pretty much exactly what this format needs.
The bigger question is does it make Jund too good, which I would say the answer is no, since it's not that much better than the 4-drops we currently play, TBH.
Bant Eldrazi is starting to scare me a bit. It actually has the 2nd highest metagame share on MTGO and just put 3 copies in the top 8 of the SCG open.
To be clear I'm not saying it needs a ban right now, obviously, but I was part of the group that was in favor of banning both Eye and Temple back in April, because I think Temple is still a pretty busted card, tapping for 2 with no drawback is pretty insane still.
Again, not saying it needs a ban now, but if I had to choose a card that I thought would be the most likely to be banned by years' end, Temple would be it.
Data was pulled from the last Modern Nexus update. Of course you might disagree with my labeling of some of the decks as linear or nonlinear (a lot of people thought Abzan CoCo should be considered linear, and Merfolk nonlinear for example) but for the majority of decks it's pretty easy to say one way or another.
It seems like MTGO is indeed significantly more linear than paper, so perhaps the perceptions of online and paper players is very different and that could contribute to why we get such differing opinions on the health of the metagame. Still, I think that anything above 50% linear decks is pushing it and its something that could be improved on.
The problem with Grafdigger's Cage is that it doesn't actually shut down all of the dredge deck. They can still dredge stuff into the yard with it in play, and they can still cast Loam. Eventually they'll start hard casting 20/20 indestructible Grave Trolls. You all may laugh, but I have lost multiple games to Dredge this way. If they run Ghost Quarter they can straight up Loam lock you out of the game as well. Also, if Cage get's Decayed the dredge player can immediately get going usually, since it leaves the yard intact.
What is your opinion on Rest in Peace in the deck as a whole?
Rest in Peace is a great card against Living End and Dredge, since shutting off Tarmogoyf and Souls isn't likely to matter when your opponent's entire gameplan as been shut down by your RiP. However in general I would not want to be bringing it in against decks like Grixis or Abzan CoCo, so it has limited utility.
Nihil Spellbomb is still my GY hate card of choice for this deck, if you want to run 1-2 pieces of hate. If you want to run 3-4, I think Leyline is the best option.
The problem with Grafdigger's Cage is that it doesn't actually shut down all of the dredge deck. They can still dredge stuff into the yard with it in play, and they can still cast Loam. Eventually they'll start hard casting 20/20 indestructible Grave Trolls. You all may laugh, but I have lost multiple games to Dredge this way. If they run Ghost Quarter they can straight up Loam lock you out of the game as well. Also, if Cage get's Decayed the dredge player can immediately get going usually, since it leaves the yard intact.
as long as we can rembember that we already had 2 GPs post Eldrazi and they were great, for some reason folks want to just pretend they never happened, now we're up for more
if it wasn't for Dredge i'd say that the meta is getting better and better for Jeskai (with some minor tuning it can easily be favored against Jund,Infect,Affinity while Tron is finally dropping) but i'm concerned about Dredge and the stupid GGT unban, as if any good could ever come of this card... but no BL has to be short... long BL is bad for the eyes...
The GGT unban was not stupid and in fact was long overdue; it really shouldn't have been banned in the first place. Juggernaut being banned back in Extended (yes, this happened) was less of a joke than the Golgari Grave-Troll ban was.
I am not fond of Dredge myself, but any problems related to Dredge are due to the newer cards that were printed, not GGT.
While I don't think that Dredge needs a ban, what else could you possibly ban from the deck that's reasonable other than GGT?
I'm not sure what newer cards you refer to, but banning Insolent Neonate or Prized Amalgam would be pretty silly in my opinion. Those are pretty fair magic cards. Sure they are what enabled the deck to be good, but the its real power lies in the ability to dump several cards at a time into your graveyard from your deck.
In what world is Prized Amalgam a "fair" Magic card? It's about as fair as Scapeshift is.
I do think pre-emptively banning Grave Troll was not necessary, and unbanning it was the right move, but there's no doubt IMO that it should be the card sent back to jail if Dredge becomes too good.
And then watch as it accomplishes basically nothing in making Dredge not too good. There's a reason they didn't just ban Golgari Grave Troll and that was it; they then realized that it didn't really accomplish much in punishing Dredge and so they banned the much more problematic Dread Return to fix Dredge, but then apparently forgot to unban Golgari Grave-Troll until three years later.
If Dredge is too good, it won't be the fault of Golgari Grave-Troll and banning it won't fix the problem. The absence or presence of Golgari Grave-Troll is not, not has it ever, been the key deciding factor in whether Dredge is good. It certainly didn't become better after it was unbanned; Dredge appeared a little at first when people tried it out, then everyone realized the deck still sucked and dropped it.
I'm not sure how you can say that when every successful dredge deck ever has played 4 GGT. I don't have much experience with Modern Dredge, but I've been playing Legacy dredge for a long time, and I think the deck would be unplayable without Grave Troll. There's a pretty big difference in power level between dredging 6 cards a turn and dredging 4 (with Golgari Thug, which is what the Modern dredge deck would have to run without GGT).
Prized Amalgam is certainly not fair in the sense that you'd play it in a fair deck, but it's a pretty innocuous card that's clearly only "broken" in this case because you can dump a bunch of them into the graveyard quickly by abusing the Dredge mechanic.
Nevertheless, I sort of hate these kinds of arguments where we go back and forth about what card is the "problem" or "fault" of a certain deck, I mean, its sort of like asking "what makes a car work, the wheels or the engine?".
as long as we can rembember that we already had 2 GPs post Eldrazi and they were great, for some reason folks want to just pretend they never happened, now we're up for more
if it wasn't for Dredge i'd say that the meta is getting better and better for Jeskai (with some minor tuning it can easily be favored against Jund,Infect,Affinity while Tron is finally dropping) but i'm concerned about Dredge and the stupid GGT unban, as if any good could ever come of this card... but no BL has to be short... long BL is bad for the eyes...
The GGT unban was not stupid and in fact was long overdue; it really shouldn't have been banned in the first place. Juggernaut being banned back in Extended (yes, this happened) was less of a joke than the Golgari Grave-Troll ban was.
I am not fond of Dredge myself, but any problems related to Dredge are due to the newer cards that were printed, not GGT.
While I don't think that Dredge needs a ban, what else could you possibly ban from the deck that's reasonable other than GGT?
I'm not sure what newer cards you refer to, but banning Insolent Neonate or Prized Amalgam would be pretty silly in my opinion. Those are pretty fair magic cards. Sure they are what enabled the deck to be good, but the its real power lies in the ability to dump several cards at a time into your graveyard from your deck.
I do think pre-emptively banning Grave Troll was not necessary, and unbanning it was the right move, but there's no doubt IMO that it should be the card sent back to jail if Dredge becomes too good.
Yes, but it's important to make sure the results are meaningful. Like if we test 10 matches of UWR vs. Burn with and without SFM, we couldn't really make any sort of meaningful conclusion about how much SFM improves UWR's matchup against Burn. If you really tested 5000 matches, than people would be wrong to dismiss your result, because that's an incredibly high sample size, and assuming that both players are of equal proficiency, would provide a pretty damn good estimate of each's decks win probability.
I'm not saying the sample size has to be massive, but it would just be nice to able to put the results in perspective, and I was hoping ktkenshinx or someone else more familiar with statistical inference could maybe give some insight on this.
The problem is that you'd need a fairly large sample size to actually be able to say anything though, right? I'm no statistics expert but I think you can estimate the margin of error in an estimated win % "p" according to:
E = Z*SQRT(p*(1-p)/n)
Where n is the sample size (i.e., number of matches tested).
If you take Z as 1.96 (for 95% confidence), then you'd have to test more than 300 matches just to get an estimated win % with a margin of error of less than 5%!
Am I missing something there, ktkenshinx?
This sounds fun, I'd be up for it.
Why exactly do we need to wait until January? There has been more than enough time to assess the health of the format since the AV/Sword unbans. It's been almost 6 months since then.
We have three cards (BBE, SFM, Preordain) rotting on the banlist that seem like perfectly safe unbans (especially Preordain). Sure, there's a very small risk of one of those cards breaking the format, but now is the time to take risks, while the format isn't in such a good position.
AN would probably get a significant boost from Preordain. Sleight of Hand -> Preordain is a pretty big upgrade, actually.
However, I don't think that keeping Preordain banned is the right approach to slowing down combo in Modern. I'd rather see Wizards take the approach they usually do, which is banning fast mana and combo enablers, and not banning card selection.
If Preordain really turns Ad Nauseam and Grishoalbrand into turn 4 rule breakers, then just ban SSG. But Preordain at least deserves a chance to be in the format, and with the format being rather unhealthy right now I'd say it's a fine time to just see what happens.
Versions with Noble Hierarch will almost for sure want the B/G fastland as a 4-of, I think, since it allows a turn 1 discard or Hierarch. Versions without Hierarch, I'm not sure, but I think B/G is still better because it allows plays like turn 1 discard -> turn 2 colorless land + Goyf. White mana is typically not super important until turn 3, except against Infect where we don't care about our life total too much anyway. Suicide Zoo is the only deck against which we would really benefit from having a turn 1/2 pain-free white source.
For some reason Tron is always the scapegoat for there not being enough fair interactive decks in Modern. When Amulet Bloom was the real problem, people still blamed Tron. When the lack of a decent URx shell was the problem (before Nahiri was printed and after Twin was banned) people still blamed Tron. And now that Eldrazi and Dredge are the real problem if there is one, what do you know, people still blame Tron!
Yes, Tron destroys fair decks, but has never been prevalent enough in the metagame for it to be oppressive to those decks.
There is certainly some appeal to unbanning BBE now that Visions is legal. I have an extremely hard time believe that a BBE + Visions RUG deck would be too good as Wizards seemed to suggest in their rationale for unbanning Visions. I hope they reconsider that, because it doesn't seem like they really though it through. On the other hand, another fair archetype being viable is pretty much exactly what this format needs.
The bigger question is does it make Jund too good, which I would say the answer is no, since it's not that much better than the 4-drops we currently play, TBH.
To be clear I'm not saying it needs a ban right now, obviously, but I was part of the group that was in favor of banning both Eye and Temple back in April, because I think Temple is still a pretty busted card, tapping for 2 with no drawback is pretty insane still.
Again, not saying it needs a ban now, but if I had to choose a card that I thought would be the most likely to be banned by years' end, Temple would be it.
Data was pulled from the last Modern Nexus update. Of course you might disagree with my labeling of some of the decks as linear or nonlinear (a lot of people thought Abzan CoCo should be considered linear, and Merfolk nonlinear for example) but for the majority of decks it's pretty easy to say one way or another.
It seems like MTGO is indeed significantly more linear than paper, so perhaps the perceptions of online and paper players is very different and that could contribute to why we get such differing opinions on the health of the metagame. Still, I think that anything above 50% linear decks is pushing it and its something that could be improved on.
Rest in Peace is a great card against Living End and Dredge, since shutting off Tarmogoyf and Souls isn't likely to matter when your opponent's entire gameplan as been shut down by your RiP. However in general I would not want to be bringing it in against decks like Grixis or Abzan CoCo, so it has limited utility.
Nihil Spellbomb is still my GY hate card of choice for this deck, if you want to run 1-2 pieces of hate. If you want to run 3-4, I think Leyline is the best option.
I'm not sure how you can say that when every successful dredge deck ever has played 4 GGT. I don't have much experience with Modern Dredge, but I've been playing Legacy dredge for a long time, and I think the deck would be unplayable without Grave Troll. There's a pretty big difference in power level between dredging 6 cards a turn and dredging 4 (with Golgari Thug, which is what the Modern dredge deck would have to run without GGT).
Prized Amalgam is certainly not fair in the sense that you'd play it in a fair deck, but it's a pretty innocuous card that's clearly only "broken" in this case because you can dump a bunch of them into the graveyard quickly by abusing the Dredge mechanic.
Nevertheless, I sort of hate these kinds of arguments where we go back and forth about what card is the "problem" or "fault" of a certain deck, I mean, its sort of like asking "what makes a car work, the wheels or the engine?".
While I don't think that Dredge needs a ban, what else could you possibly ban from the deck that's reasonable other than GGT?
I'm not sure what newer cards you refer to, but banning Insolent Neonate or Prized Amalgam would be pretty silly in my opinion. Those are pretty fair magic cards. Sure they are what enabled the deck to be good, but the its real power lies in the ability to dump several cards at a time into your graveyard from your deck.
I do think pre-emptively banning Grave Troll was not necessary, and unbanning it was the right move, but there's no doubt IMO that it should be the card sent back to jail if Dredge becomes too good.
Btw, does "Through the Breach" refer to RG Valakut?