As these forums drift to the internet graveyard, I would like to share a few parting thoughts. I joined this website nearly a decade ago, when Modern was announced. I spent a lot of time reading these forums, and little bit of time posting on these forums. I played through all the bannings and unbannings, each and every one, and I have to say that Modern is fine. It was always fine and it will always be fine. Formats don't last for ten years if they aren't fine. That Origins forward format that no one remembers? Gone. Didn't even last a year. Modern has the ability to correct itself and when it doesn't, Wizards takes action. These forums, at one place, were a veritable hive of real discussion. And to those people, I say;
Modern is fine, and will be fine.
This website is a veritable treasure trove of deck lists, deck musings, deck theory, and it's all nicely categorized for anyone who wanted to seek this information. Mad respect to the people who contributed in a meaningful and the organizers who made the meaningful things easy to find. My hat is off to all of your collective hard work for the past ten years. Sheridan is a goddamn treasure, and his writings here and on modern nexus are real gems in a sea of low effort deck list 'articles' by people who play the game for a living. I have nothing but respect for you Sheridan. You do the good work.
However, the people on these forums, idSurge and cfusionpm and the other handful of the rest of them that drive their agenda down peoples throats and parrot the same tired lines with their free time for the better part of the past ten years saying that Modern is awful and stifling meaningful discussion; You guys won't be missed. You've wasted all of your time, and by extensions a lot of our time with your regurgitated, entitled, petulant crap. The amount of pure garbage that the group of you used to domineer conversations that could have otherwise been productive is staggering, to say the least. Whatever platform you find yourselves on after this ship sinks, know that the lot of you are at least in part responsible for driving participation down and costing the website views purely to satiate your internet egos.
MTGSalvation, goodnight. Sleep well.
- DaveJacinto
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Member for 11 years, 5 months, and 23 days
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Earthbound21 posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Posted in: Modern Archives -
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BloodyRabbit_01 posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 08/07/2019)If you ban Looting, you kill half the format. Is totally unreasonable, and Wizards knows it.Posted in: Modern Archives -
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idSurge posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)I believe the last 3 years prove that they know that was a mistake, it's the only deck that actually died.Posted in: Modern Archives
Amulet (nerfed due to clips of turn 2 insanity) still around and viable.
Dredge - laughs in Creeping Chill.
Infect - still fine.
Storm - still fine.
KCI - legit too good, with a comical win rate, but it was only banned once SCG grinders (and vocal twitter users that they are) decided to play it instead of the tier 2 stuff they prefer. I believe Nass had an 80% win rate at one point?
Just watch the trends driven by the twitter/SCG/cfb types and you'll have a decent idea of what's going to get hit.
Wizards has even lifted common arguments in their announcement straight up from tweets by those people.
It's not about data and competitive integrity, how could it be when they don't understand the format? -
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idSurge posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from BloodyRabbit_01 »So. In this metagame:
- Izzet Phoenix is good
- Mono Red Phoenix is good
- Urza’s Prison is good
- Bridgevine is good
- Human is the usual beast
- UW Control has game against everyone
- Eldrazi Tron and Creature Toolbox are on the resurgence
We have, more or less, every strategy covered. Can someone explain to me how playing in this environment isn’t fine?
You'll have to forgive me, as my post history would probably show that I came to this realization late.
Objectively? Nothing is wrong with Modern right now. Even Jund appears to have found some upgrades, and if your objective is to play X type of deck, there is one for nearly everyone.
What I feel is the basis of most arguments right now, even if its not explicitly stated is that SUBJECTIVELY, people do not like the decks that make up much of Modern. People will wrap it up as if there is something wrong with the format, I myself was guilty of this, because we find the decks distasteful, but thats not a flaw, thats perception.
Surgical is our FoW, there is nothing wrong with that. -
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LeoTzu posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Why should the graveyard be the exception? In certain metagames, it's completely reasonable to play 4 Fatal Push, but that's a sign of a healthy metagame, but 4 Surgical Extractions main is for some reason a symptom of unhealthy decks. If you get run over by a creature deck… but you don't have a single piece of creature removal, the response is really "Sorry, Charlie. You should've packed some creature removal in your mainboard. Them's the breaks!" If you get run over because someone goes buckwild with their graveyard it's, "The format is a hot dumpster fire." That's the part I have difficulty with.Posted in: Modern Archives
Hogaak takes it too far, that's for sure. That's a deck abusing a zone beyond the limits of what the format can handle. I doubt we see that deck for too much longer in the format. But is it immediately wrong to have to pack grave hate, perhaps even mainboard? Most decks utilize their graveyard as a resource, so maybe we should be more open to interacting with it in general. Graveyard usage and creature prevalence both seem to be high. What truly separates them? Because we're just more comfortable with creatures being a core mechanic?
I'm curious to see the reasoning on why we should have such opposition to having to run gravehate. On a personal level, I don't enjoy having to run so much gravehate in the main or side. I'd be fine if most of the heavy grave-abusing formats left the format, but I just wonder if our mindset is what needs adjusting, instead of trying to force the format into a box that it used to fit inside of.
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BloodyRabbit_01 posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Top Tier: Humans, BridgeVine, UW Control, Mono Red Phoenix, Izzet Phoenix, Tron, Dredge.Posted in: Modern Archives
Mid Tier: Amulet Titan, Eldrazi Tron, Burn, Titanshift, Infect, Hollow One, Affinity, Death’s Shadow, Bant Spirits.
Lesser Tiers: Jund, Jeskai Control, Blue Moon, Collected Company, Whirl Prison and so on.
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Metagame is VERY balanced, right now. If you want to play interactive decks, there are some you can definitely pick out. If you want to play your 75-cards aficionado is another thing. -
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BloodyRabbit_01 posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Posted in: Modern ArchivesWhy do you say that? Jund has been fantastic from the new set. Wrenn is very much the real deal. Seasoned Pyromancer is huge value. BBE has been cut down to 2, some are debating on 0. Jund's actually feeling better than it has in a very long time.
Jund has plenty of new toys to meddle with. None of them, though, answer in the slightest this deck’s major issues. Which is being too soft against half of the Tier 1. It preys on middle to low Tiers, but struggles too much vs the top dogs (and anything which ramps). -
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BloodyRabbit_01 posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)By the way, right now Jund isn’t even a competitive Magic deck.Posted in: Modern Archives
If I'm going to prioritize a main deck card, I would prefer Veto or Pierce. I think both of those are better and more versatile than Force. Seems fine in the side, but far from "modern's saving grace on a pedestal" that people make it out to be. I didn't realize that was so damn controversial.
Let’s keep it at facts. Facts say that Dovin’s Veto is the less versatile between the cards you mentioned, cause it has a fringe application only against Ux based strategies. You know what stops people from doing unfair things in Modern? A cc 0 Force of Negation.
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k0no posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Haha.Posted in: Modern Archives
I just want to state, before the site gets archived forever, that the nonsense mental gymnastics people are doing, in order to get riled up and call for bans for a card that isn't even released yet are staggering.
I hate it. I hate the knee-jerk "everything's a problem" mentality every time a new set comes out, or a deck happens to do well at a tournament. I hate the inscrutable need some people have to just complain and call for bans at every turn, completely ignoring the twenty, thirty times when they did exactly the same thing but everything was fine after the format adjusted.
It's completely exhausting being surrounded (in a community sense) by players who instead of appreciating new things or incorporating new variables into the landscape have to see every new thing as a terrible, insurmountable threat.
It's baffling and frustrating that players of a format like modern will spend their mental energy creating a philosophy which argues against the natural churn of the format and retreat into stagnant ban-talk, complaining that things aren't staying the same instead of innovating and altering their approach.
If there's one thread I'll be glad to see disappear from the face of the planet, it'll be this one. For most of the last half-decade it's been the more or less the same small-ish crew of complainers, endlessly riling each other up in an echo chamber of perceived problems and issues that only exist if you lack imagination.
End of an era. We'll miss the primers and the genuine discussion about how to improve and innovate on the constant shifting metagame. We'll miss the people who put in effort and time to help others understand this complex game. Those generous people who lent their knowledge and expertise will be remembered. Nobody will miss the fragmented ban-driven panic and negativity. Its a complete waste of everyone's time and when this site bites the dust next month, I'll feel content to say goodbye to this thread forever. Good riddance.
Here's to a more positive discourse and the faint hope that the new website in the works curates spaces that engender positive, useful discussion instead of a blank slate for useless uninformed negativity to rule.
And with that, I'm out. If you've spent the last five years being angry at modern for a different reason every couple of weeks, ask yourself what you were really angry at, because it sure wasn't modern.
It's been a ride. I wish you all the best. -
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Lord Seth posted a message on The State of Modern Thread (B&R 20/05/2019)Posted in: Modern Archives
Because people hate, hate, hate mana screw. It's possibly the single most disliked thing about Magic. And they especially hate getting mana screwed so hard they have to mulligan down to 5 or less and effectively lose the game before it's begun. It's why susbsequent TCGs have either eliminated the possibility of mana screw entirely (e.g. Hearthstone) or at least made it dramatically harder to occur (Pokemon TCG). I saw Richard Garfield say in a lecture he was giving that he regrets the way the mana system created mana screw.Quote from Colt47 »What does the mulligan fix, and why is it better than the old way?
Not only is it not fun to be the player, it's not particularly fun to watch someone on coverage lose a game due to having to mulligan repeatedly.
Unfortunately, the mana system is so engrained in the game you can't truly fix mana screw. Ideas like giving people guaranteed lands don't work because unlike Hearthstone, the game's balance is based around not being guaranteed to make all your land drops. But they can at least try to make it feel less punishing and not "well, I lost the game before my turn even started", which this mulligan rule is trying to do. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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Maybe this decks only looks this dumb because nobody wants to play MB GY hate and feels that they shouldn't but probably is the right way to go. As a UW Control Player it feels super bad when I'm paired against a mirror match and all I drew was Paths and Wipes and they have the walkers and the counters. Adding more potential blanks feels strange but I'm positive that probably this is the way forward. Modern has a lot going on for it that we all enjoy and love. It's the reason why I play it over Standard. It would be somewhat hypocritical if I said that I like Modern because there are a lot of weird and cool decks that play from strange angles but I don't want them to be any good because I'd have to play actual interaction for them.
Playing more with the Legacy analogy, if we actually think about it, Legacy is the "normal people" format where the real busted stuff can happen. Larger card pool meaning more dumb stuff... But playing it feels really good. At least I always enjoyed it a lot. Most of that was due to FoW and its role. If Surgical or GY Hate does this in Modern, the degenerate decks will have to settle down on the dumbness and be more down to earth. It will make for more interesting games because you're not just free to do your goldfish because there's the real risk of the losing the game on the spot if you overextend into the GY hate. This all would result in the format slowing down a lot and making for more compelling gameplay.
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Regardless, the discussion was that the deck that was in number one on the Challenge was a UW Control with 4 snapcasters and 2 surgicals mainboard. One of my friends reply to that was that if we are mainboarding hate it means that the format is busted. That made me wonder...
Is the format broken? If we look at legacy... Force of Will is the safety valve of the format, a free spell that interacts with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format. In legacy the stack is where the degenerate decks win from... In modern our stack is the graveyard. Can't we accept that maybe we should just be playing Surgicals main?
If we really think about it Surgical is 100% analogue to Force of Will in legacy. It's card disadvantage, free, instant speed, costs life, deals with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format while being somewhat mediocre to bad in the fair match ups. It's also a card that we sideboard out in a lot of matches.
Probably I'll get some bash over this but it's a different point of view. To be honest it eases my mind looking at things this way. My only grief is that surgicals are super expensive (same as force of will) and playing 4 is a big hit in the budget.
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Like Humstuck said we have way better answers than this one. Counters are generic enough that we can deal with every type of permanent on the stack.
I can't agree with you. Overloading the spell sounds cool and all but overall it's a mediocre spell. It's a 2 mana sorcery that ramps them. It has the same drawback of Path, costs more and is a sorcery... Path is the best we have and it's not on par with the power level of the format... This one goes three steps further. If you want to remove creatures and need Path 5/6, go for On thin Ice, Oust or Condemn. There's no reason to choose anything else.
On Archmage's Charm, you do have to give up a bit to play it but with a mana base like the one I posted a few posts before you're well set to cast it on curve. If you're willing to up the count to 26 lands you can play 4/5 colorless lands with no sweat.
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My LGS everyone is super competitive and only plays T1/T1.5 decks... Sometimes it's cool but can be a nuisance if you're looking to brew something new you'll just get stomped really hard. Then since it's super diverse, almost GP level diversity, you can't build your deck around that (specially important when playing UW Control which is one my main decks).
What should I take from this? Is this supposed to be a bad meta and thus Modern be a bad format? Should this be a good meta and Modern should be understood as being amazing?
In reality, I believe the format is ok, even though I hate playing against Dredge and Tron (specially when I know they are bad players...). What matters is what Wizards sees with the paper and online results and that's the objective discussion I believe we should have when addressing this issue. Even if our LGS has a stupid and obnoxious meta.
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Regarding the Charm, I'm super hyped for it but we'd need 23 U sources to play it on curve. With my build I have exactly 18+4 cantrips which amount to the 20 needed for CC on curve. To play the charm I'd have to cut one of the colourless lands for another basic or dual, play 26 lands and probably two extra cantrips. We can always assume that the Charm will be played like a CC is and then our manabase is just fine. I'm super in love with the effects. They are relevant the entire game and in all matchups. I'm not that hyped over the fact that the 3cmc is super cluttered...
The 1of Pool in the main I'm super positive about. The second copy on the sideboard is way more difficult to justify. I certainly had to cast it without the T3feri... and it felt incredibly bad. I would have to play Opts to mitigate the fact that it's super awkward because typically the opponent has the advantage. I'm super focused on the Tron matchup and that could be a mistake but I really feel that it's a winnable matchup if we dedicate enough resources to it. Dredge is probably the worst one but with 2/3 Rips and 1/2 Surgicals and some agressive mulliganing you can almost even it out.
I've seen it discussed people trading the second Teferi, HoD for a singleton Karn to get the Lattice lock and win on the spot. It does a similar job to the Pool combo and it's more consistent. On the other hand... Lattice is extremely bad as a magic card and it takes one sideboard slot necessarily. The Pool combo could be on the maindeck and sided in and out with lower opportunity cost, imho.
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The goal is to spark some discussion on my individual card choices that may be a bit unorthodox for some. Feel free to ask about some of my sideboard plans. Specially since I'm not really settled on how to approach all of the matchups because having so more planeswalkers gets really strange when it's time to sideboard.
2-0 - 4C DShadow
2-0 - GTron
2-0 - GTron
2-1 - UTron
1-2 - Amulet
2-0 - GTron
2-0 - BR Midrange
2-0 - Burn
1-2 - UW Midrange
1-2 - BW Eldrazi&Taxes
2-0 - UG Delver
0-2 - Jund
2-1 - Dredge
0-2 - UR Control
2-1 - GTron
0-2 - UW Control
1-0 - UB Control
2-1 - GW Vizier Combo
2-0 - GR CoCo
2-0 - Ad Nauseam
2-1 - Merfolk
2-1 - Humans
2-0 - Living End
2-0 - U Control
4 Celestial Colonnade
3 Field of Ruin
4 Flooded Strand
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Hallowed Fountain
6 Island
2 Plains
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Narset, Parter of Veils
2 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Knowledge Pool
4 Path to Exile
1 Settle the Wreckage
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Terminus
1 Wrath of God
3 Cryptic Command
2 Dovin's Veto
1 Logic Knot
1 Mana Leak
1 Spell Pierce
4 Serum Visions
1 Timely Reinforcements
2 Celestial Purge
2 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Disdainful Stroke
1 Dovin's Veto
1 Knowledge Pool
1 Lyra Dawnbringer
2 Rest in Peace
1 Spell Pierce
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Vendilion Clique
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It was more than obvious that until everything settles a couple of months after MH actually is released, they will do absolutely nothing other than bans to the format.
We can like it we can hate it but this is the reality of the format.
One thing that puzzles me though is people that threaten to stop playing the format every single time an announcement is made but they continuously come back or don't actually leave at all. To be fair, this threat is actually one of my guilty pleasures. Even when I wasn't playing Magic quite as much, during and after Eldrazi Winter, I still came here just to have a giggle or two. But after a while hearing all the time the same rhetoric, the same non-arguments, the same topics always deriving the conversation out of the main goal of the threat, you actually kinda get tired of it.
Back on topic... I was happy that they made the alert about Karn TGC and Neoform, but it took me by surprise their mention of the other combo that to my knowledge never actually was a thing. I may be mistaken but aside from the GerryT's article that combo never had any notoriety at all, right?
About Nimble Mongoose, it was a card that I "predicted" with my friends but now that it's out it got me thinking. It's a mechanic that we don't actually ever deal with in Modern. Do you think it has any legs to get crazy? I'm all for UGx Delver starting to become a thing but Shroud is such a non-fun mechanic that I wonder...
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The fact that it can cost 0 mana on your opponent's turn means that it does a poor job at protecting our threats and only works as a reactive card against the development of our opponent. For me that's exactly the type of card I'm not looking for.
Unless the gameplan changes to a more reactive approach, which is likely given that the format is becoming more hostile towards our deck, I don't see us rocking this card.
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Anyway the metagame image you get from those sites means next to nothing. The fact is that War of the Spark brought little for us, instead it powered up UW which was a really bad matchup, powered up Tron which wasn't an amazing matchup to begin with, impacted very little Humans and Dredge which are two tough decks for us. Phoenix is about even and it's a deck that is here to stay.
You may call it an hyperbole all you want and I'll still play GDS because I like the deck, but we're on a tough spot and it will only get harder unless we get Force of Will or Daze. Deluge will help but I doubt it's enough.
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It has its merits and its flaws. Jace is a good filter but it's susceptible to removal so I avoid getting it out on curve, while the Looting doesn't have that problem.
On SV thing, I hate the card with so much passion, but it works wonderfully on this deck. I play UW Control and I refuse to play it ever since Opt got printed. On GDS it's a really amazing card. The drawback of drawing before scrying is mitigated by the fact that we are super mana constrained that it has little impact. For a Control deck it's way more important to draw the right card right away, but for us it doesn't matter. Sleigh of Hand feels really subpar, it's a combo card because there's not enough good cantrips in the format. That's my take on it.