Delver decks were playable and Tier 1 without Ponder and Preordain in Modern. The problem was the Ravnica block and the rising of Jund. Jund was very strong against those decks, especially because it packed Abrupt Decay. Supreme Verdict didn't help as well, though it didn't changed the format like Decay did.
Although different, some old card wouldn't hurt the format. I'm thinking about Opt here.
Except Raka decks without Delver are better.
If a deck is decent but a version of the deck that doesn't run it is better, it's not actually playable.
In any case, I'd like to see Stifle, CSpell, Ancestral Visions and Innocent Blood in the format, personally. Y'know, nice fair cards that benefit control more than the rest of the world.
Extort is placed on the stack when you casting the sphere triggers it.
It's already on the stack by the time any player has priority again, and therefor goes on the stack before cancel can be cast.
As such, Cancel would resolve first, but since the extort ability is on the stack already, the fact that the spell which triggered it is gone doesn't prevent it from resolving.
When the extort triggered ability resolves you'll be allowed to pay if you so choose.
I'd grab some boardwipes and just play last man standing FFA for a while.
It may seem more "fair" and have less waiting around, but that's like letting people just cut after using a fetch land - the costs outweigh the benefits.
Here's holding out hope that EE gets banned once it's out of print, allowing storm back.
Right now we've got the kiki/melira/pod school of decks available for combo, and those decks are more toolbox midrange with a potential combo finish than anything else. It's rather depressing really, even though this means my long, hard, rather unsuccessful bid to tune Affinity into something that has a t3 goldfish often enough to allow me to avoid running any eggs hate at all can get flushed.
This format needs to be opened up more. I wish they'd balanced the banning with an unban or something.
Prismatic Omen speeds you up consistancy-wise and wargate makes for a great slightly overcosted ramp/tutorbox.
I'd also run something like a pair of KotRs. It gives you a solid blocker/toolbox/beater which comes in a lot of use and synergizes amazingly with the Prismatic Omen and gives you inevitability even if you can SS (count to 6, grab a Valakut, get 2 bolts for your trouble is good, after all).
I'd probably also run less combobox enablers and more "solids". One Bojuka Bog in the board, etc., would work wonders.
From a format perspective, there isn't a real need for them, they would be nice but I can't think of any established deck begging for them (minus the UWR midrange decks),
You seem to misunderstand which decks "need" them and which ones are doing just fine.
The wedge decks already have access to 8 fetches, which means they can either hit a pair of each shock they want with attendant basics or just stock waaaaaay up on manlands, intensive mana costs, etc.
It's the shard decks that desperately need them. Shard decks have access to one set of decent/usable fetches, puting them at a disadvantage over wedges.
:symw::symu::symr: might see a marginal boost from replacing it's Arid Mesa's with flooded strands, since hitting triple blue is a thing for them and fetching up basic mountains isn't a thing they particularly care about most of the time, but it's a deck that's a chief example of wedge decks benefiting under the current arrangement.
This is not how the card is intended to work, so that's not the answer you're going to actually end up with.
So? It's a combo that requires a static pump, two copies of a 6-drop that relies on the static pump to survive (well, techically the new one can become something else if need be), an upkeep, and then an etb that matters/a sac effect that matters/another untap step/haste of some sort.
Are we really that worried about a 3-card "plus something else or else it'll take forever" combo that involves 2 copies of the same 6-drop?
I mean, I can set up a 4-card combo with experiment Kraj, anything that turns artifacts into creatures, anything that turns permanents into artifacts and any planeswalker... or if I'm willing to not win on the spot I can nuke the world with just Kraj and the new Gideon. Or you can make it a 3-card "I win" with Kraj, Tez (AoB) and a way to make Tez an artifact.
Weird, janky, ridiculously overkill victory wins are fine. I doubt anyone meant for the stick to be able to abuse split cards quite so much. Life goes on.
Doubtful: We never saw the evidence on seething song.
Sure we did, or rather we got the secondary account of the evidence: MTGO data showed EpEx winning t3 more than they were happy with. I'm fine with Wizards looking at data they won't publish and telling us...
It's just that EpEx was the worse of the two builds, so pushing yourself to an "unacceptable" number of t3 wins in exchange for less total wins seems rather... eep. Silly and shortsighted.
also, if they do reprint it, it doesn't even have to enter standard, i mean, they're doing modern masters, etc.
and if they decide to reprint it after shocks rotate out, that'd probably be fine... they'd just act like every other two color land that's been in standard, but with a bit of thinning added in
Modern Masters is only reprinting cards that are already Modern legal. If they don't put it into a "real" set it doesn't get to make it to Modern.
I know the card pool is a little different but I think it'd have the same effect if it hit Modern, yes there are answers to Bitterblossom but Wizards doesn't want a format to revolve around having answers to it maindeck.
The card pool is a lot different. It's the best cards of all time, give or take some bans. The answers are more powerful and fluid and there are a lot less decks that stumble for the first two turns.
BG shell is going "DRS/thoughtseize", "goyf/bob/lilli (if the DRS lived), etc.
That's as much disruption as fae and a 4/5 swinging into those tokens or a card draw engine going online.
Geist of saint win is a better tempo deck than fae. It's got a much more immediate and hard to deal with threats and packs plenty of burn.
(gr) Tron maindecks pyro and drops hard to deal with bombs one after another once it's online. Fae has issues with that settup.
Affinity has the ability to out-tempo fae (just like it did the last time the two went head to head) and fae has worse access to hate than the other top decks. Expect the hand quality and who goes first to be what matters.
The combo decks need a predator. Decks that make combo have a hard time decreases their dominance. I'm all for less people wanting combo bans.
Plus... the fact that people ran MD hate in the past isn't an argument against MD answers existing now. Running MD hate is a meta call and makes you worse against other decks. I can run 2x MD whipflare because I'm expecting a lot of BW tokens/soul sisters/boggle/whatever and the like, but when I'm playing against pod and I want to remove a blocker the fact that my removal costs twice as much as dismember it hurts.
Abrupt decay, on the other hand, is MD because it's one of the key BG shell removal spells. It mocks counters and kills anything with a cmc 3. There's no opportunity cost in running it. Folks are already running illness in the ranks, folks are already running Maelstrom Pulse as a 2-of.
We're already playing in a format that deals with openings as backbreaking as fae's ever would, and the manabase plus presence of burn is going to be painful for fae.
Silkbind faerie is not the best common, thats either Burn Trail or Power of Fire depending on how your deck looks like. Also, Turn to mistb is way worse now that damage doesn't stack.
Any of the antidomains are total bombs.
That being said, the hybrid matters theme is also huge. I'd probably aim for monocolored packs 1 and 2 while aiming for a shard/wedge that you can "splash" into.
Yes it sucks but if it's the only one give it some time. The owners just dumped a ton of money to open the place. I've seen New small stores be stingy at first.
Stingy would be if he declined the dubious honor of running tournaments at a loss.
For FNM, if the owner puts all of the money from constructed entrance fees into the pool he's still coming out ahead. Charging $7 to enter and then giving the winner that much value in prize support (ie, entrance fee goes to prize support) and the owner, in the case of 14 people entering a tournament, 98$ worth of packs being sold.
People getting together to agree to buy a bunch of packs to distribute them amongst the winner(s) isn't something to be stingy about. Siphoning off that money amounts from stealing from the very concept of people competing for prizes.
Mind you, some stores go *better*. Mine values packs at $3.00 for the purposes of prize support and entrance fee's (that is to say, you get a "discount" on your entrance versus heading off to draft on your own) so that a $12 draft is "your packs and one pack/$3 credit in support". The downside is that they don't let you save up credit (which makes saving up credit for staples a bit of a whiff in many cases) and they value packs at the theoretical wholesale of ~$2.50 for entering a later event. Still, it's a square deal.
Except Raka decks without Delver are better.
If a deck is decent but a version of the deck that doesn't run it is better, it's not actually playable.
In any case, I'd like to see Stifle, CSpell, Ancestral Visions and Innocent Blood in the format, personally. Y'know, nice fair cards that benefit control more than the rest of the world.
It's already on the stack by the time any player has priority again, and therefor goes on the stack before cancel can be cast.
As such, Cancel would resolve first, but since the extort ability is on the stack already, the fact that the spell which triggered it is gone doesn't prevent it from resolving.
When the extort triggered ability resolves you'll be allowed to pay
It may seem more "fair" and have less waiting around, but that's like letting people just cut after using a fetch land - the costs outweigh the benefits.
Right now we've got the kiki/melira/pod school of decks available for combo, and those decks are more toolbox midrange with a potential combo finish than anything else. It's rather depressing really, even though this means my long, hard, rather unsuccessful bid to tune Affinity into something that has a t3 goldfish often enough to allow me to avoid running any eggs hate at all can get flushed.
This format needs to be opened up more. I wish they'd balanced the banning with an unban or something.
I'd also run something like a pair of KotRs. It gives you a solid blocker/toolbox/beater which comes in a lot of use and synergizes amazingly with the Prismatic Omen and gives you inevitability even if you can SS (count to 6, grab a Valakut, get 2 bolts for your trouble is good, after all).
I'd probably also run less combobox enablers and more "solids". One Bojuka Bog in the board, etc., would work wonders.
You seem to misunderstand which decks "need" them and which ones are doing just fine.
The wedge decks already have access to 8 fetches, which means they can either hit a pair of each shock they want with attendant basics or just stock waaaaaay up on manlands, intensive mana costs, etc.
It's the shard decks that desperately need them. Shard decks have access to one set of decent/usable fetches, puting them at a disadvantage over wedges.
:symw::symu::symr: might see a marginal boost from replacing it's Arid Mesa's with flooded strands, since hitting triple blue is a thing for them and fetching up basic mountains isn't a thing they particularly care about most of the time, but it's a deck that's a chief example of wedge decks benefiting under the current arrangement.
So? It's a combo that requires a static pump, two copies of a 6-drop that relies on the static pump to survive (well, techically the new one can become something else if need be), an upkeep, and then an etb that matters/a sac effect that matters/another untap step/haste of some sort.
Are we really that worried about a 3-card "plus something else or else it'll take forever" combo that involves 2 copies of the same 6-drop?
I mean, I can set up a 4-card combo with experiment Kraj, anything that turns artifacts into creatures, anything that turns permanents into artifacts and any planeswalker... or if I'm willing to not win on the spot I can nuke the world with just Kraj and the new Gideon. Or you can make it a 3-card "I win" with Kraj, Tez (AoB) and a way to make Tez an artifact.
Weird, janky, ridiculously overkill victory wins are fine. I doubt anyone meant for the stick to be able to abuse split cards quite so much. Life goes on.
Sure we did, or rather we got the secondary account of the evidence: MTGO data showed EpEx winning t3 more than they were happy with. I'm fine with Wizards looking at data they won't publish and telling us...
It's just that EpEx was the worse of the two builds, so pushing yourself to an "unacceptable" number of t3 wins in exchange for less total wins seems rather... eep. Silly and shortsighted.
Modern Masters is only reprinting cards that are already Modern legal. If they don't put it into a "real" set it doesn't get to make it to Modern.
Plus BBE was like Finks in that it was an uncommon modern staple that desperately needed a reprint preban... just like PtE and a few others.
You're thinking of Stone Rain there. 2cc LD is powerful. 3cc LD is an answer to specific spel-lands.
The card pool is a lot different. It's the best cards of all time, give or take some bans. The answers are more powerful and fluid and there are a lot less decks that stumble for the first two turns.
BG shell is going "DRS/thoughtseize", "goyf/bob/lilli (if the DRS lived), etc.
That's as much disruption as fae and a 4/5 swinging into those tokens or a card draw engine going online.
Geist of saint win is a better tempo deck than fae. It's got a much more immediate and hard to deal with threats and packs plenty of burn.
(gr) Tron maindecks pyro and drops hard to deal with bombs one after another once it's online. Fae has issues with that settup.
Affinity has the ability to out-tempo fae (just like it did the last time the two went head to head) and fae has worse access to hate than the other top decks. Expect the hand quality and who goes first to be what matters.
The combo decks need a predator. Decks that make combo have a hard time decreases their dominance. I'm all for less people wanting combo bans.
Plus... the fact that people ran MD hate in the past isn't an argument against MD answers existing now. Running MD hate is a meta call and makes you worse against other decks. I can run 2x MD whipflare because I'm expecting a lot of BW tokens/soul sisters/boggle/whatever and the like, but when I'm playing against pod and I want to remove a blocker the fact that my removal costs twice as much as dismember it hurts.
Abrupt decay, on the other hand, is MD because it's one of the key BG shell removal spells. It mocks counters and kills anything with a cmc 3. There's no opportunity cost in running it. Folks are already running illness in the ranks, folks are already running Maelstrom Pulse as a 2-of.
We're already playing in a format that deals with openings as backbreaking as fae's ever would, and the manabase plus presence of burn is going to be painful for fae.
Any of the antidomains are total bombs.
That being said, the hybrid matters theme is also huge. I'd probably aim for monocolored packs 1 and 2 while aiming for a shard/wedge that you can "splash" into.
Wastelend? Heck no!
Stifle, Price of Progress, Dust Bowl, that sort of thing would be what is called for.
I'd love to see it, but it'd do rather a lot to the format.
A reprint of Sink Hole that only hits only nonbasics would be pretty tech as well.
Stingy would be if he declined the dubious honor of running tournaments at a loss.
For FNM, if the owner puts all of the money from constructed entrance fees into the pool he's still coming out ahead. Charging $7 to enter and then giving the winner that much value in prize support (ie, entrance fee goes to prize support) and the owner, in the case of 14 people entering a tournament, 98$ worth of packs being sold.
People getting together to agree to buy a bunch of packs to distribute them amongst the winner(s) isn't something to be stingy about. Siphoning off that money amounts from stealing from the very concept of people competing for prizes.
Mind you, some stores go *better*. Mine values packs at $3.00 for the purposes of prize support and entrance fee's (that is to say, you get a "discount" on your entrance versus heading off to draft on your own) so that a $12 draft is "your packs and one pack/$3 credit in support". The downside is that they don't let you save up credit (which makes saving up credit for staples a bit of a whiff in many cases) and they value packs at the theoretical wholesale of ~$2.50 for entering a later event. Still, it's a square deal.