I will honestly be shocked if there is anything banned or unbanned in Modern. I believe the extra announcement is more for Standard not any other format. They can be more lax with testing and catch things in the second ban announcement. With no huge events coming up for Modern, I dont see the need to change anything at the moment. I know all the blue mages that want Modern to be dominated by blue will be upset, but hey, thats how the other colored mages have felt for years with the other older formats. Its refreshing to not have blue king of the colors in Modern.
You were surprised when Valakut was unbanned, when Wild Nacatl was unbanned, when Bitterblossom was unbanned, when Ancestral Vision was unbanned, when Sword of the Meek was unbanned, and IIRC when Golgari Grave-Troll was unbanned. I have a feeling that you are going to be surprised again.
All these great reprints makes me think this might be the last Masters set.
This was exactly my thought as well.
Count me in as well.
Why? Someone explain this logic to me. So far all I've seen are people make this statement with no logic or evidence to substantiate it.
How do you think wizards is going to keep in print the extreme volume of unique cards in modern right now? The format reached its critical turning point just before return to ravnica and even commander is hard to fully support due to the legality of legacy cards.
Modern is also filled with a lot of stuff the designers today dislike and pros have been complaining about for years.
The only people who like modern are non-pro players who were around for a while and own the card pool to play the format. Online things are a little better, but still.
To be fair, no one has liked the last few seasons of Standard either and Modern is the second-most popular format.
I definitely would have chosen something else since Wizards clearly doesn't want Pyromancer's Ascension to be playable in Modern and it isn't playable in Limited.
I think it should be unbanned. All of the decks that abused it have been banned and blue control and midrange decks won't become unbeatable if it is unbanned. The only thing that I might be concerned about is Ad Nauseum, and I honestly don't think we should let a boring, uninteractive combo deck keep a Control card from being unbanned. If Ad Nauseum abuses Dig Thropugh Time, ban something from it, not a card that other fair blue decks use.
Ad Nauseum was the deck I was most concerned with too, but I just looked at the lists from late 2014, and Ad Nauseum wasn't playing DTT back then. I think my assumption in my original post was correct; Ad Nauseum can't fill up their graveyard fast enough to play DTT.
Then in that case, I see no problems with unbanning Dig Through Time.
I think [Dig Through Time] should be unbanned. All of the decks that abused it have been banned and blue control and midrange decks won't become unbeatable if it is unbanned. The only thing that I might be concerned about is Ad Nauseum, and I honestly don't think we should let a boring, uninteractive combo deck keep a Control card from being unbanned. If Ad Nauseum abuses Dig Thropugh Time, ban something from it, not a card that other fair blue decks use.
Note: the following assumes Ad Naus would even run Dig Through Time. Which, as wraithpk pointed out, it did not even when it was legal. So entirely irrelevant, but worth bringing up anyways.
Banning Pact of Negation, which has no purpose in Modern other than protecting all-in combo decks from the control decks that are supposed to police them, would almost certainly be sufficient. Ad Naus would go from being an intermittent Tier-2 deck to Tier 1.5 or 1, and reactive blue decks would keep it in check by going from intermittently Tier-2 to Tier 1.5 or 1. Storm would still suffer from having all of its best cards banned and not being able to Delve away cards. Seems totally fine to me.
And the "Jund splashing U for Cruise" problem would be kept in check by the basement UU cost.
Exactly. Would anyone even really care if Pact of Negation had to be banned?
I was giving Dig Through Time some thought too. The card is certainly broken, but let's face it, Modern's best cards are conceptually broken.
The two more outstanding problems i can think of are: 1)Would it make Reactive blue decks too good?. The card generates crazy consistency and as a player who played a lot of RUG Scapeshift, UR Twin and UWR Control with it i can say that, obviously, the least broken user was Jeskai but in a world where the aforementioned combos where Tier 1 decks. Which leads me to...
2)Temur Scapeshift. The last remaining Combo-Control deck. Epitome of 'Unfair' in MTG. I think this is the deck that triggers worries everytime R&D review their banlist. I'm mostly sure that RUG Shift would be Tier 1 in a world with DTT. It is quite intuitive since every good card in this format ends up in a broken or unfair strategy. Would control decks beat Scapeshift with DTT for both sides? Seems pretty dificult. Control decks give you a lot of time to build you hand with combo pieces and counterspells. 1 Dig resolved could mean enough.
Aside from those i don't see why DTT couldn't be legal but i may be missing something.
I really doubt Dig is powerful enough to single-handedly make blue control decks and Scapeshift increase from tier 3 to unbeatable monsters.
I am against dtt because i feel it is a massive over correction. Yes, blue needs help i agree. Yes, dtt would help blue. But the amount of help it provides is beyond what the color needs, i strongly believe it brings blue decks just way above what other decks are doing. I understand that the card can look innocent on the surface, i really do, and I've thought about it a few times myself. But then i play with it and remember how absurd it is in real games. It very often ends up reading UU: demonic tutor at instant speed, and even when it doesn't, it is still beyond absurd. Honestly the card would be fine if it was a sorcery, but it's an instant, it provides way to much value, and should remain on the ban list. I would much rather discuss jace, twin, ponder or Preordain than dig
Dig definitely is an overcorrection. Moreover, I don't understand how players can believe that WotC would sooner unban Dig Through Time than Preordain. Both cards serve similar decks, but one is also clearly much stronger than the other. Why would
WotC go with Dig first and not Preordain?
We have to start with the most innocuous cards first before moving onto more powerful ones imo.
I am not saying that there is any reason to believe that Wizards would choose to unban Dig over Preordain or Jace. I am saying that Dig has no evidence or data to back up its banning, that Dig almost certainly wouldn't single-handedly manage to make blue interactive decks so powerful that they dominate the format, and that all of the unfair decks that would abuse Dig have already been banned. It would be good enough to make interactive blue decks strong in Modern and likely wouldn't break the format. It isn't a likely unban, but that doesn't mean that it would be the wrong choice.
I played against Esper Dragons standard with my Jund deck and I was getting thrashed. DDT let him give 7 cards deep at the end of my turn for 2 cards advantage for any perfect answer or threat, now let's think about that in a format thats nothing but efficient piles of cards. 2 Mana for all that, then we start snap casting it back, Dank Dweller or whatever the hell it is, Scapeshift tutoring for anything they want
Yeah, no, no thank you. DDT was too powerful for legacy, for different reasons, but I think that's because DDT is not, "oh! it's modern fun broken" it's a broken ass card, period.
I can't provide you in what context DDT will be used, I'm just most certainly sure it's too powerful
Dig being too powerful in Legacy and you anecdotally losing a game to a Standard deck doesn't mean that Dig is too powerful for Modern.
Blue doesn't need help. It is still the strongest color in modern. No unbannings are needed. Modern is supposed to be diverse enough that most deck concepts can compete. Accept storm ,Wizards hates combo.
This is simply not true and you know it. Blue only has 3 playable Modern cards right now other than Merfolk.
Blue is a support color, more than anything else. Maybe thats not a bad thing? I enjoy the way I use blue right now. Sure, it could be better to help me out more, but I dont think any of us are talking about blue being able to stand on its own two feet, are we? Isnt the whole point of the color pie that colors have strengths and weaknesses? Isnt the whole point of color mixing that what you give up in mana consistency issues, you make-up for in having more powerful tools at your disposal?
What strengths do blue and white even have in Modern though? Blue has Snapcaster Mage and some mediocre library manipulation while white has Path to Exile and a few sideboard cards. Other than that, what else is playable in those colors (not counting Lingering Souls, which is basically multicolored, and Merfolk)?
Blue doesn't need help. It is still the strongest color in modern. No unbannings are needed. Modern is supposed to be diverse enough that most deck concepts can compete. Accept storm ,Wizards hates combo.
Blue is the strongest colour in modern? Hmm, I thought that was black or green. I don't think your opinion is shared by most.
Yeah, that is laughable. Black, then colorless, then green, then red, then blue with white not that far behind it. Blue has Snapcaster and not a whole lot else.
I honestly think that both Delve cards should be unbanned. Cruise Delver really wasn't that bad, it was just a meta thing. With Pod (which I also think should come back) gone the bad matchups for Delver would come back and I don't see it being any worse than any other deck. I played against it quite a bit and I wasn't impressed. It was strong, but if it becomes a problem, Tron lays waste to it. The meta just wasn't given time to fix itself
Unbanning Treasure Cruise would obviously be the wrong choice. It was broken even when Pod was lgal, and Pod was the deck with the best matchup against Cruise decks. It would be absurd now.
Dig through at the very least 13% of your deck (it gets progressively better for each card you draw before casting DTT), and then choose 29% of those cards and put them into your hand? All for UU? Yea, its not coming off the ban list.
Yes, Dig is powerful. However, there are many powerful cards in Modern. Do you have any evidence that Dig is too powerful?
(Funny enough MM is not "that" big of an player in Modern NBL, which is quite surprising, when you think about how broken that card is).
Regarding DTT and what influence it will have:
There are three primary winners, and a lot of secondary ones. Primary ones are obvious Jeskai Ascendency (the UWR Tempo/Combo version), RUG Scapeshift (the secretly "best" deck in the TC/DTT area, since it had both a good Delver as Pod match-up) and Control (especially Esper Control would love that card). For the secondary ones only Delver decks have to get noticed, since it would allow the deck to be a solid Tier 2 deck, even though it struggles with a lot of things.
Jeskai Ascendency was a good deck, especially since it was not an all in combo deck + played a relative high amount of interaction (6-8 removal spells and 4-6 counters). The earliest win was on turn 3 thanks to Probe, which is now no longer possible. Hence, the earliest kill would be a turn 4 kill which is more than okay (Modern is a turn 4 format), especially since you can interact quite easily with the combo elements (Bolt/Path vs Fatesticher, Decay/Remand vs Ascendency). Would develop into a solid Tier 2 deck, sometimes dipping into the Tier 1 scene, when the Meta is soft to it, sometimes going down to Tier 3.
RUG Scapeshift would be the real winner. Everybody who followed the deck back in the DTT times knew, how good it was. However, the main reason, why it was so good was mainly of how the interaction from the deck aligned with the current meta. Anger was MVP (both against Delver as Pod), especially when you were able to cast it on turn 3 with counter back up. It still had a decent clock and the goldfish with a perfect draw was at turn 4 (needs a perfect hand and you cannot play anything else but ramp spells basically). Again, no problem with the Turn 4 rule. However, what the deck CAN do is, that when correctly build it can offer a decent choice against both big mana decks (as long as they do not sling Caverns and Ulamogs at you) due to the counter suite and have a decent match-up vs midrange esque decks. However, on the other side the control (lots of air) and aggro (again lots of air) match-ups are not great, this is especially true in the current RUG version. Hence, would establish as a solid Tier 1.5, sometimes dipping down to Tier 2 when there is more aggro and control and being at Tier 1 when there are more targets for multifunctional interaction spells (like Anger back in the days).
Last but not least Control. I can only speak from my personal experience with UW Control back with DTT, have not played Jeskai or Esper Control with that card, so if somebody, who has played with DTT in the respective deck, can correct me if I'm wrong, please go ahead.
In UW Control Dig was a okay-ish card. The problem was, that filling up the Graveyard was an actual problem. Due to the nature of the deck of playing more board based interaction spells (Wall of Omens, Detention Sphere, Vedillion Clique, Runed Halo,...) and the low number of Fetchlands (5 is the max you usually want to run) you had problems to get a "early" Dig off. Most of the times Turn 4 was a realistic Dig for 4 mana turn, which was nice but not close to game breaking. Hence, you had to build the UW Control deck still with the early game in mind hand had the Digs as a late game tutor for the silver win con bullets (be it WSZ or Rev in the more draw and go version or the Planeswalkers in the more tapout version).
However, Dig would improve both Esper and Jeskai a great deal and would give them a real shot of beating things like the ramp decks or something like Cavern of Souls.
Overall, while Dig is a broken good card (as most of the modern powerhouses) it would be INTERESTING to have it in the current Modern format and look, how it would develop from there. I honestly doubt, it would result into huge problems, it would just force a shift in the comfort levels from the players.
Greetings,
Kathal
PS: And totally agree, MM3 is absolutely bonkers ^^
Agreed. Dig is a very powerful card, but so are Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf, Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, Path to Exile, Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Mox Opal, Arcbound Ravager, Cranial Plating, the Tron lands, and many other cards. Dig would not break the format, so why not unban it?
Absolutely no to DTT, I would literally rather risk unbanning Jace, BBE, Preordain and SFM all at once than unban DDT, I'm 100% against the idea of even entertaining the idea of DDT.
I'm not sure why hellfire is going on this, his proposal is just making GBx better, I'd be fine cutting Fulminator Mages and slotting in 3 cards dedicated to fair matchups that are absolute bombs.
I think if Jace gets unbanned it's just going to go into Sultai midrange and it'll be lulzy to blue control once again
Absolutely no to DTT, I would literally rather risk unbanning Jace, BBE, Preordain and SFM all at once than unban DDT, I'm 100% against the idea of even entertaining the idea of DDT.
I'm not sure why hellfire is going on this, his proposal is just making GBx better, I'd be fine cutting Fulminator Mages and slotting in 3 cards dedicated to fair matchups that are absolute bombs.
I think if Jace gets unbanned it's just going to go into Sultai midrange and it'll be lulzy to blue control once again
Agree on your first two points for sure, unbanning dtt would be a disaster. Banning ramp might help blue but at the cost of the format as a whole. I disagree about sultai though, i dont think jace does enough for that archetype to make it better than grixis, although i do agree that it brings it from unplayable to playable
Can you please actually explain why you think Dig Through Time would be a disaster? Neither of you provided arguments against it.
1. The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to believe that Dig Through Time is the card that blue reactive decks actually need to be competitive. The problem with them in Modern is that so many decks attack from so many different angles, and we don't have good enough general answers. We do have pretty good specific answers, however, so what these decks need is a better way to find their specific answers in time. This lets blue decks run more 1-ofs to cover themselves from corner cases.
An aspect of the argument for/against this card that I realized the other day, which I don't think I've seen mentioned here before, is that most of the decks we fear becoming too broken by receiving DTT just got a huge nerf by the Probe ban. Cheeri0s can't really fill their graveyard fast enough to use the card. Scapeshift can, but I'm not sure DTT is better than BTL in that deck. Delver decks don't have Probe anymore to rapidly stock their graveyard, and DTT would fight with Tasigur and Angler over the graveyard, so it's not a free roll like the TC Delver decks. Storm probably doesn't want the card, their graveyard is too valuable and Gifts is probably better. I don't think Ad Nauseum fills their graveyard fast enough to make it too busted in that deck, but someone who plays the deck might know better. Twin is gone, so don't have to worry about that one anymore. Maybe a Grixis Goryo's deck abuses it, but that deck is barely seeing any play, and I'd rather just have Goryo's Vengeance banned than DTT if that's the only deck we have to fear abusing the card.
The only decks that can really get the most out of DTT in a Probeless meta is the slower blue decks. I wonder if the changes to Modern since it was banned are enough to make it a perfectly safe card now.
I think it should be unbanned. All of the decks that abused it have been banned and blue control and midrange decks won't become unbeatable if it is unbanned. The only thing that I might be concerned about is Ad Nauseum, and I honestly don't think we should let a boring, uninteractive combo deck keep a Control card from being unbanned. If Ad Nauseum abuses Dig Thropugh Time, ban something from it, not a card that other fair blue decks use.
That really isn't a good argument against unbanning Jace. What blue planeswalkers other than Jace, Vryn's Prodigy (which would have been viable even with jace in the format and sees little play today) and Jace, Architect of Thought (which sees barely any play) are even remotely playable in Modern? in fact, what planeswalkers see a significant amount of play in Modern other than Liliana of the Veil and Karn Liberated?
Ugin the Spirit Dragon, Liliana the Last Hope, and Nahiri the Harbinger.
I forgot about Ugin, but Liliana the Last Hope sees little play (IIRC, it only sees play in Death's Shadow and all of the Death's Shadow decks that made top 8 at GP Vancouver ran Liliana of the Veil instead) and Nahiri hasn't been good in Modern for several months.
You were surprised when Valakut was unbanned, when Wild Nacatl was unbanned, when Bitterblossom was unbanned, when Ancestral Vision was unbanned, when Sword of the Meek was unbanned, and IIRC when Golgari Grave-Troll was unbanned. I have a feeling that you are going to be surprised again.
1. Unlikely
2. There is an absolutely 0% chance of that happening.
This doesn't mean that Preordain won't be unbanned. Weren't the cards in this set were finalized almost a year ago?
To be fair, no one has liked the last few seasons of Standard either and Modern is the second-most popular format.
Then in that case, I see no problems with unbanning Dig Through Time.
Exactly. Would anyone even really care if Pact of Negation had to be banned?
I really doubt Dig is powerful enough to single-handedly make blue control decks and Scapeshift increase from tier 3 to unbeatable monsters.
I am not saying that there is any reason to believe that Wizards would choose to unban Dig over Preordain or Jace. I am saying that Dig has no evidence or data to back up its banning, that Dig almost certainly wouldn't single-handedly manage to make blue interactive decks so powerful that they dominate the format, and that all of the unfair decks that would abuse Dig have already been banned. It would be good enough to make interactive blue decks strong in Modern and likely wouldn't break the format. It isn't a likely unban, but that doesn't mean that it would be the wrong choice.
Dig being too powerful in Legacy and you anecdotally losing a game to a Standard deck doesn't mean that Dig is too powerful for Modern.
This is simply not true and you know it. Blue only has 3 playable Modern cards right now other than Merfolk.
What strengths do blue and white even have in Modern though? Blue has Snapcaster Mage and some mediocre library manipulation while white has Path to Exile and a few sideboard cards. Other than that, what else is playable in those colors (not counting Lingering Souls, which is basically multicolored, and Merfolk)?
Unbanning Treasure Cruise would obviously be the wrong choice. It was broken even when Pod was lgal, and Pod was the deck with the best matchup against Cruise decks. It would be absurd now.
Yes, Dig is powerful. However, there are many powerful cards in Modern. Do you have any evidence that Dig is too powerful?
Having a deck that is having 0 tournament success and saying that it is good is a terrible argument for banning or unbanning anything.
Agreed. Dig is a very powerful card, but so are Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf, Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, Path to Exile, Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Mox Opal, Arcbound Ravager, Cranial Plating, the Tron lands, and many other cards. Dig would not break the format, so why not unban it?
Can you please actually explain why you think Dig Through Time would be a disaster? Neither of you provided arguments against it.
Agreed. I definitely am going to draft this set and I didn't draft either of the first 2 Modern Masters sets.
I think it should be unbanned. All of the decks that abused it have been banned and blue control and midrange decks won't become unbeatable if it is unbanned. The only thing that I might be concerned about is Ad Nauseum, and I honestly don't think we should let a boring, uninteractive combo deck keep a Control card from being unbanned. If Ad Nauseum abuses Dig Thropugh Time, ban something from it, not a card that other fair blue decks use.
I forgot about Ugin, but Liliana the Last Hope sees little play (IIRC, it only sees play in Death's Shadow and all of the Death's Shadow decks that made top 8 at GP Vancouver ran Liliana of the Veil instead) and Nahiri hasn't been good in Modern for several months.