MTG Salvation

Quote from bocephus »

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.

Quote from Wraithpk »

Quote from Valanarch »

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.

Quote from rogue_LOVE »

Quote from Valanarch »

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.

Quote from GustavitoHouses »

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.

Quote from bfrie »

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

Quote from wpgstevo »

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.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

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

Quote from ElderZurran »

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.

Quote from Kovo »

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?

Quote from Melkor »

Quote from wpgstevo »

Quote from ElderZurran »

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

Quote from Kovo »

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.

Quote from idSurge »

Hah, my deck with Snaps, Push, and Decay already feels secretly great. Give me Dig or TC and its lol...

Quote from Kathal »

Quote from gkourou »

Maybe we can unban Mental Misstep to help blue

Good joke man

(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 ^^

Quote from Shmanka »

I just had a conversation the other day about Chronicles and MM3, the person who was playing back then, said it was really bad for the game overall because everything that was nearing 20$ ended up being 3-5$ that was notable. So I asked him, was the problem the 15$ drop, or the 75% drop? His response was interesting, and he said he had never looked at it from that perspective before. So I want to know, are you guys fine living in a world where we may have 50$ Goyfs again? is that too much? Remember, Goyf was barely 80$ before the first MM. We already know that MM3 is going to be bigger and better than the predecessors combined when it comes to price and accessibility.

Quote from ashtonkutcher »

Please don't take what I said out of context. I'm not arguing against a Jace unban. My post merely explains why I believe Wizards goes first to bans to fix Modern and not to unbans, and why they actually only unban cards in times of relative stability. Whether you agree with them, or agree with me about what I perceive their thought process to be, is another issue.

Quote from rogue_LOVE »

Quote from Valanarch »

The second, unstated part of my argument is this. Preordain and Dig Through Time would help interactive blue decks more than they help combo decks. Those decks would help keep the combo decks in check. And I really doubt that either of them is individually powerful enough to cause blue interactive decks to dominate the entire format. How do you think Dig Through Time would break the format?

Ah, I see where you're coming from.

I almost agree with you. But IMO, as long as the format lacks an adequate, main-deckable way of spell-based combo decks, I'm afraid that Dig Through Time will push those decks much further than the decks that would keep them in check. Really, what keeps combo in check is aggro; Control's tools are too weak or too niche to do an adequate job. Otherwise, I think you'd be spot-on.

I guess there's a chance that access to Dig would make more traditional permission-based blue control (like your Esper Draw-Go) viable in the wider meta, which would increase the number of decks that could keep spell-based combo in check. But without better ways of interacting with the stack, I think combo benefits way more than control. Especially when Control would be digging for Five-Turn Clock and/or Negate, while combo would be searching out I Win Right Now and/or Force of Will With No Downside.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I can't believe dig through time is even being entertained, although for very different reasons, that card was too powerful for legacy. I played my jund deck against a standard deck with ddt and it absolutely stomped me. It can look through 7 cards at the end of my turn for 2 mana. Like, are you kidding me? You can forgot about those combo decks taking a crap on them.

Just because a deck doesn't violate the turn 4 rule doesn't mean it can't be oppressive. If ddt I would be furious, that's the only unban that would make me want to leave modern

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I can't believe dig through time is even being entertained, although for very different reasons, that card was too powerful for legacy. I played my jund deck against a standard deck with ddt and it absolutely stomped me. It can look through 7 cards at the end of my turn for 2 mana. Like, are you kidding me? You can forgot about those combo decks taking a crap on them.

Just because a deck doesn't violate the turn 4 rule doesn't mean it can't be oppressive. If ddt I would be furious, that's the only unban that would make me want to leave modern

Honestly, I think it's because people are realizing that Preordain and Jace will do too little to actually help the reactive blue decks in today's meta and they're looking for ANYTHING ELSE that's not Splinter Twin.

For some perspective: I would take DTT over Twin ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Dig Through Time is stupid good. Maybe too good? Would definitely better than Twin ever was.

Quote from gkourou »

A Dig Through Time unban is simply a joke in WOTC's eyes. Yes, they will discuss Preordain, Splinter Twin and Jace, The Mind Sculptor, maybe even Stoneforge Mystic, but this card signifies a broken Modern era.

Do I believe they made a mistake in not banning only Treasure Cruise and let the format be with DTT and if need be reban it in 4 months's time? Yes. But they chose to ban TC and DTT together and after leaving DTT in Legacy the card broke the format. Now, again, do I believe the reason Dig Through Time broke Legacy is mostly Omniscience combo? Yes, I do.

But ultimately lists like THIS list from yesterday's MODO, or lists like UR Delver, or lists like RUG Scapeshift or all kind of controls and maybe 1 off in decks like Infect or other combo decks to come(not sure about Ad Nauseam or/and Bloom Titan as well) would take it. The card will be 2-4 off in too many decks, that's the problem in WOTC eyes.

Again, even if I think the laugh with this idea, with the banning of Gitaxian Probe the card is probably safer and I would entertain the idea. But honestly, it's not going to come.

Again, I am sure it's Splinter Twin or nothing in WOTC's eyes.

Quote from rogue_LOVE »

Quote from Valanarch »

Quote from idSurge »

Thats the thing, I do not realistically believe we will get FoW, or any new pitch cards. Free things are powerful things, and likely too powerful for Standard now.

We need a real control deck that can help slow the format, and I think we are getting closer by every release. If Jace is free from the banlist, well some high level control players think that will be too good. So lets just see what happens.

Preordain, boosts combo, far more than Jace does, so if the answer is 'we want to empower Control' Jace is the only realistic answer for now.

How would Preordain boost Combo in a way that would break the turn 4 rule?

Quote from Valanarch »

Scapeshift and Ad Nauseum would get a lot more consistent, but neither of those decks breaks the turn 4 rule. Ritual Gifts would get more consistent, but it would still need to keep a creature that dies to every removal spell in the format in play for a turn. I don't think any other combo decks could easily use it.

You keep repeating this line of thinking that combo (or maybe any deck?) is A-OK as long as it doesn't violate the Turn-4 Rule. That's not how it works; numerous banlist decisions debunk that idea. "It wouldn't break the Turn-4 Rule" doesn't overrule any concern of balance, consistency, oppressiveness, etc. You need to find other rebuttals to have an argument.

Quote from idSurge »

A bit crazy to talk about dig isnt it? Like, am i alone in thinking that card would be nuts?

Quote from Colt47 »

Well, on a completely different note: We all got what we wanted guys! They reprinted Domri Rade in Modern Masters 2017! That leaves one slot left for a walker reprint that we actually need and given it likely has to be from innistrad we got a russian roulette as to what it is going to be. I thought for sure they would cram value into this set and especially the walkers, but given they reprinted Domri I'm starting to have a bad feeling about this.

Come on good luck tree sapling, we need the power of the gods right now channelling through you for this MM2017. And if anyone is wondering what I'm talking about I'm actually growing a tree sapling right now for good fortune this coming year. Silly tradition, but I figure I might as well add Modern Masters 2017 onto the wishing card.

Quote from krisdaschwab912 »

Cut ...To ribbons? That's a weird name given the rest of these.

Quote from enollava »

Mutagenic growth is back, but color shifted!!! Where are my flying men?

Quote from MinaHarcourt »

Urgh. All the blue mages are out in force, I see.

Countering spells is not interaction. It's not working around things. It's preventing them from ever happening.
It's no wonder wizards is cutting down on those things. Besides, why are you complaining? You are the primary card draw color! You have the option to get more options more than the rest of us do!

Quote from Firevine »

There will be a day when I refer to the Serpicopepperpotts as Madcoil, and someone will actually get the reference. One day...

I got it, Cutter. I got it...

Quote from gkourou »

I would be SO curious to learn if mr. Aaron Forsythe and mr. Sam Stoddart are aware of the issues all of the Blue based control/attrition decks are facing at the moment. If they don't think they are facing any problems, I believe we would like to know as well.

• Where do they stand on blue based control/attrition decks in Modern? Do they think those decks need help or not?
• Is there a chance an incoming unban is to come to help them out?
• What do they believe about the Splinter Twin banning? Did it fail/did it succeed?

I was trying to reach mr. Forsythe on Twitter(well, the same question was asked by a lot of users), but he did't answer us up to now.

I believe it's crucial to collectively ask him alltogether. At least us blue mages. Please try to contact him @ twitter if you would like to.