MTG Salvation

Quote from BlueTronFTW »

Except you can interact with Scapeshift...you can counter everything except the lands coming into play. Again, these complains are mostly midrange players who don't want bad matchups. The meta is not warped around Valakut ramp. Now players, like you, make comments that sound as if you just want a bad game one followed by a devastating hate card. Or, you could just play disruption plus a clock like I did back with Grixis Delver...which was not a massive dog to Scapeshift. Or you can play Burn, or Affinity, or Shadow Zoo.

You're barking up the wrong tree. I've played a variety of decks, some with great Scapeshift match-ups and others not. I don't want to see it banned or neutered. It really is as simple as believing that threats should at least have sideboard-able answers in a couple colors. That becomes even more important when a deck exploits an unfamiliar axis of attack (e.g. Dredge or Affinity).

Quote from Stille_Nacht »

Again, the original argument was requesting a, as defined by the user "answer it or lose" card. We were saying that unless the deck was dominating, it's silly to want something like that. Nobody that I've read is particularly saying there should never be hate, everyone was just pointing out that some reasonable answers do in fact exist. I don't think anyone in the thread is broken up about some new slightly better hate coming out.

I didn't see anyone actually arguing the point you seem to be making, which is any and all hate for big mana is bad. There are simply pointing out that this discussion needs to be based on some actual goal of making the meta healthier.

Why is tron uninteractable? Not only does it play creatures you can kill, there ARE ways to interact with it in the sideboard(ceremonious rejection, spreading seas, blood moon, ensnaring bridge). Again, we aren't arguing for an immunity to side-board hate. We're just saying the original idea that lands-based decks require affinity level hate doesn't really seem justified.

Honestly it doesn't seem like a straw-man. You find a specific strategy "frustrating" because you dont like the side-board cards enough. I could make that claim about literally any deck. I don't think there is a good enough side board card against lantern. I hate that deck. It simply isn't enough to declare something "frustrating", you have to explain why, in the context of the meta, we are making these changes. That is the purpose of the meta discussion thread.

If you want to argue for tron suppressing a greater variety of midrange that's one thing. But a lot of statements being thrown around seem to presuppose the idea that tron is just automatically something they need to print better hate for just because.

That was an original argument, not necessarily mine. I'm not going to carry the torch for @idSurge, but his suggestions for "answer it or lose" are hardly overpowered analogues. Again, Choke or Boil don't see play and Stony Silence can definitely be played through. Click back a couple pages --
several people responded that nothing else is needed because there is plenty of existing land hate which is a frankly baffling belief.

Let me rephrase -- there is no way to interact with the ETron or Scapeshift lands at anything close to parity or without gearing your entire deck to fight them. Other decks that exploit an unfamiliar axis of attack (Dredge, Affinity) have hate cards that can be sideboarded. Why? Because threats need answers, otherwise they inevitably lead to excessive power creep and then bannings. Re-read my first paragraph you're responding to. There are several reasons to encourage answers even before a strategy becomes "dominating"; it's called proactively managing the format.

Lantern is quite possibly the worst example you could bring up. It's quite possibly my least favorite deck to play against it but there is plenty of sideboard hate, basically everything that hits Affinity. There is absolutely no argument to be made that it needs more answers. You're missing my point here; my arguments here have nothing to do with whether I think any particular strategy is frustrating. The problem is that these land-based strategies in particular are already immune to the existing sideboard options. Ceremonious Rejection isn't any more an answer to ETron than Celestial Purge is to Dredge, Spreading Seas/Ensnaring Bridge require building an entire strategy around, etc.

I think the challenge with JTMS that you unwittingly highlight (and it's been brought up before) is that it's great against other "fair" decks and weak to combo/big mana. Unbanning JTMS has the potential to suffocate other options, unintentionally cannibalizing other "fair" archetypes and pushing the remaining players towards the linear options if they want to be competitive.

This does not get rid of the echo chamber; it simply makes it even less accurate by making some voices louder.

Quote from sisicat »

It certainly means nothing to him, you don't see him celebrating about that finish on social media. I wouldn't exactly be thrilled with that finish either if I was pursuing money and pro points. Magic doesn't reward you enough for consistent medium finishes. No one remembers your finishes outside of the top 8, the tournament structure is built in such a way that spiking and being lucky pays you off more than having consistent medium finishes. I hsve to make top 32 20 times to match the same amount of prize money as first place in a GP.

This is an astonishingly bad take; you're confusing several things. If we're evaluating the impact of skill, repeated finishes in the top 1% of the field over a longer tournament supports that. It does not matter how much it pays nor how a given pro feels about it when we're solely discussing skill. The Atlanta Falcons (or take your pick from sports, say Tottenham Hotspur or Cleveland Cavaliers) are most certainly disappointed in finishing second and receive significantly less money, but that doesn't mean their final spot isn't an indicator of their skill.

Imagine a hypothetical where every month every person on earth played in a winner-take-all chess tournament. If one person finishes in the 50-100 range for an entire year, they'll be incredibly disappointed and have no winnings to show for it. But that doesn't mean that we can't assume that they have a lot of skill to consistently finish in such a high percentile.

See there's this whole debacle when pros make claims. Even the pro community is split on this issue. We went through this same song and dance way back with hellfire and sisicat. Quoting what pros say only devolves the thread into so-and-so pro said this therefore my opinion is validated while dismissing the other bunch of pros who say differently. For every pro who wants twin in, there's likely one who wants twin out. And let's be real, they're not going to able to prove anything anyway. Articles like these are just that, theories.

Appeal to 'authority' should have no place in these discussions or be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Quote from BlueTronFTW »

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

To be honest, "No Changes" comes off as horribly lazy, especially for a format that has proven itself to be one of the most popular, if not the most popular, in all of Magic.

The format being as popular as it is is literally evidence to NOT screw with it to satisfy a small vocal minority.

So if the format was good and Rite of Replication was banned, then it should stay banned? "No changes?"

We see it differently then. Just because a format is deemed good or I should say popular as you put it, that doesn't mean that cards that won't hurt that popularity shouldn't be unbanned. I personally felt that every single Modern format was good outside of Eye of Eldrazi. Does that mean that I can't see the sensibility of other bans? Nope. Admittedly I hated most of them at the moment, but I can understand most of the bans that happened. And Modern has been popular since it started. I only remember 2 times when it became not so popular on a local level - Eye of Eldrazi and Treasure Cruise/Birthing Pod.

Also I somehow doubt that IdSurge, CfusionPM, and myself are the only Modern players that believe Stoneforge Mystic should have been unbanned a while ago. Please correct me if I'm wrong here. Maybe we are the only 3?

Some people think about it like "why mess with a good thing?" I think about it like why not make a good thing "even better."

Quote from tronix »

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.

Quote from Galerion »

There is no deck that is dead against an Ancestral Vision.
There are decks that will be basically dead and can scoop up their cards against a turn 3 Batterskull

Path.
Abrade.
Push.
Vapor Snag.
Nature's Claim.

Any deck that is dead to a Turn 3 4/4 Artifact (singular!) Deserves to die.

Quote from Ym1r »

IT has started getting funny how some people take the B&R announcements so personally. I mean, every announcement we see people making grand statements about how Wizard's sucks and how they will stop play the format and how is it possible to keep playing this trash format, and here we are now, still playing and the same people discussing the same things with the same reactions.

I mean literally EVERY year, for the most part we get no changes. We never get a ton of bans/unbans a year. Maybe once or twice but that's that. If anything no changes should be expected by now.

While I agree that the cyclical pissing/moaning following B&R announcements can get overly dramatic, I don't believe all the hate / negativity is due to the actual fact that nothing was banned/unbanned. Rather, much of it is due to WotC's reluctance to use the opportunity for a "State of the Union" message addressing the health of the format. IMO, it's perfectly reasonable for players to be pissed off considering there's only a handful of times per year where the mothership has a chance to officially address format health and instead of explaining why there were no changes, they basically said, "Yup, nothing to see here. Now go **** off until January when we may/may not tell you to go **** yourself again". I'm pretty sure most rationale players don't actually expect changes every time; most of the time they just expect some morsel of insight from the jabronis who run the show. It might surprise some folks, but WotC decision makers aren't totally incompetent; whether it's from pros or monitoring forums/reddit/social media/etc, they're aware of how players currently perceive the format and their concerns/lack thereof.

Acknowledging those perceptions/concerns and discussing their take on the state of the format is the very least they could do to communicate with players. And that's why we ***** and moan, because at the end of the day, this company/subsidiary continues to demonstrate their ineptitude. With all the mass communication tools we have in today's day and age, there's zero reason not to engage players if you're a company attempting to grow your player base and deliver a quality experience. I've never threatened to stop playing the game, because I've accepted that's how WotC chooses to treat consumers, but I have and will continue to say "Wizards sucks".

Quote from LeoTzu »

Although I do agree with your sentiment that people are too quick to conspiracy talk, it is rather convenient that AV, Bitterblossom, and Jace were reprinted right around the time of their unbanning. Of course, that’s not really sufficient evidence that they’re using the ban list as a tool for boosting sales on product.

I am normally just a lurker interested in seeing other people's opinions, but this assertion has been bothering me and no one has actively addressed it yet. And it isn't just you, so I don't mean for this to seem like I'm picking on you in particular. With that out of the way, this is false. Jace is the only card that has been reprinted close to its unbanning. A look through the unban history will show this, and I will put every card unbanned to prove it.

Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle:
Unbanned: Sept 2012
Closest reprint: None

Wild Nacatl:
Unbanned: Feb 2014
Closest reprint: Sept 2011 (AVB)

Bitterblossom:
Unbanned: Feb 2014
Closest reprint: May 2015 (MM2)

Golgari Grave-Troll:
Unbanned: Jan 2015
Closest reprint: Sept 2012 (IVG)

Sword of the Meek:
Unbanned: Apr 2016
Closest reprint: None

Ancestral Vision:
Unbanned: Apr 2016
Closest reprint: Nov 2017 (IMA)

Bloodbraid Elf:
Unbanned: Feb 2018
Closest reprint: Nov 2016 (PCA/C16)

Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Unbanned: Feb 2018
Closest reprint: Mar 2018 (A25)


Bloodbraid Elf was weird in that it was printed in 2 different products in the same month but neither product put a large supply of BBE into the market relative to an actual set, but her printing is kind of irrelevant. The important take away is that the only card reprinted close to its unbanning was Jace. The other 2 cards took over a year to be reprinted. I know a set can take a while to hit market after it begins being designed, but planning to ride a financial wave off a reprint that wss unbanned over a year prior is just foolish.

Quote from LeoTzu »

I do, however, wish people would stop speaking with such certainty about banlist decisions. The reality is that all of us have opinions about the banlist, most of them based on intuition over any sort of conclusive evidence. I think that’s okay as long as we’re all willing to admit that our intuitions are subject to being wrong. My thoughts were certainly wrong about Jace, the Mind Sculptor when all the unbanning talk was happening.

Modern Nexus thought, with testing, Jace was too good.

I'm sorry, but the bar for quality testing and data is FAR higher than is reasonable to ask of any one group or team.

WIZARDS DOESN'T TEST IN MODERN.

That is stated fact. Given that, why is it at all reasonable when they hide data, to expect 5 friends to grind out 400 matches x 5 of the top decks, to get a reasonable data set?

The whole line of thought is insulting.

I've brought data to this thread, and it's been dismissed.

I've made accurate predictions and some inaccurate ones.

Over the year I have played literally hundreds of matches against the 'diversity' of Modern, but because I don't have a team testing, I'm not going to assume my results mean anything.

But because I've not followed the scientific method, and published a paper on how SFM would get laughed out of the room by every single good deck in the format I get to be dismissed?

'Noted'

Yeah not really even sure why this guy bothered creating a thread when his deck is clearly perfect and he never loses. Everyone should play this deck. As is. No suggestions necessary.

Have fun double and triple posting your FNM results because nobody is going to bother to reply anymore.

Quote from gkourou »

I replied to Hoogland saying:
"You spoke about Modern decks lasting less than 3 rounds and mocked Modern, then we see a grindfest.
Then you talked about Tron beating a fair midrange deck, then we see Faeries winning Tron. Don't be so hasty judging Modern"

I earned a ban for that friendly and engaging comment, because obviously I can't understand "result based thinking".


Hoogland on the other hand, was requesting Tasigur, Angler, Storm, Tronlands, and at least 10 more bans and a Treasure Cruise unban, without presenting any numbers or data. Also, during every new set, he is requesting a new ban.

He has slowly and steadily become a "ban Tron" meme-caricature by now.

Jeff Hoogland is the emptiest vessel making the loudest noise. He's a sounding board for populist opinions in M:tG to get likes on social media, and therefore presumably more views on his streams.

People start talking about a Tron ban? There he is wanting it banned.

A fire starts about paper modern being expensive? There he is saying reprint everything until it is 10c a card because he doesn't care about all the value he'll lose because he's such a great guy.

Dredge comes into vogue? You'd better believe he's bemoaning the state of the format.

And guess what? He wants twin unbanned as well. Dare go against the hive mind with evidence and reason and blocked you go. I don't know why people take him so seriously.

Quote from Zephyr Scarlet »

You talk as if topdecking a Terminus when you're dead on board requires any amount of skill.

So what, do you think control just shouldn't be able to win against explosive aggro decks? Like, if Hollow One flops out three H1s on turn 1, UW just shouldn't have any possible top deck that could save them, they should just lose the game on the spot? No man, that's bull*****. If your deck can do a busted thing in the first couple turns of the game, my deck should have a chance to do a busted thing to answer it.