Quote from Makaro »Quote from Shodai »Could someone inform me what Twisted Image is for in this deck? Is it really just there to be a cantrip and fill the graveyard for Cruise? Is there some sort of interaction I'm missing that makes it main deck material? I can only think of how it kills Spellskite, otherwise we are literally just play Reach Through Mists which doesn't seem like a card I want in my deck when I could Thought Scour.
kills Spellskite/Hierarch/Birds, does "damage" to creatures w/ higher power than toughness (getting Restoration Angel in to bolt range for example), sometimes protects your guys from removal, gives your Swiftspear 2 more power while drawing a card
There's also this really great interaction when someone flashes in Clique to block your flipped Delver and you make there Clique a 1/3.
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Yeah I think its more likely they will offer suggestions for "tweaks" to cards to be more Modern playable while still balanced in Standard. Don't really see them having much opportunity to Test for things like banned list issues.
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JtmS is a slow death, you died on turn 4 you just didn't realize it for a few turns.
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your right JtmS is in a completely higher echelon
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No I don't think people would look at CoCo and say "this is to strong" one is a always fantastic swiss army card, and the other is a complete build around that can whiff.
Ancestral wasn't fine until they banned out the deck that made it the case.
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gotta say that comparing JtmS to SSG or CoCo is pretty laughable.
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So what your saying is that we should unban Mental Misstep also.
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People way under value him
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Sure Opt would be fine in Modern, I just don't see them reprinting it for standard. They have no problem with 1cc blind cantrips but they really have pushed Anticipate as the standard acceptable variant for blue dig cantriping.
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Both Ramp and Big Mana are Mid-range strategies, Mid-range is a phase of the game not a particular strategy. It encompasses multiple strategies, Jund Mid-range is a aggro/control ( by means of attrition) deck the cards it looks to pivot the game into a winning position are LotV, whatever 3-4 drop creatures the build might be running and man lands. Ramp decks are mid-range decks that look to accelerate their mana in one way or another RG Titain/x decks do this with various green ramp spells Tron decks do it by assembling 3 specific lands in play both are looking to put their mana base in a position that has them with +2-4 position on Mana by as early as T3 to exploit some ahead of curve plays.
I think this has been lost in recent years because WotC has in Standard made it a point to almost always have some type of Mid-range Aggro/Control deck be viable in the format and has drawn back on Mid-range Ramp strategies ( like not printing 1c.c. mana dorks because they are to good at what they do for standard apparently). So when someone says "mid-range" they automatically associate that with Aggro/control decks that are looking to play sweet things in the mid-range phase of the game like 3-5 cc creatures and planeswalkers. Kind of similar to how when someone says "control" most players will auto assume you mean some Blue based counterspell and drawspell driven late-game deck. It also doesn't help that other non-ramp mid-range decks that are not in the BGx spectrum have not really performed well in Modern, decks like Big Zoo are solidly looking to play their pivotal spells in the mid-range phase of the game with strong 3 drops and 4 drops but they just don't have the tools that BGx has to make a flexible enough deck to ever compete with the BGx decks segment of the meta-game.
I would say that E-Tron is a even more hybrid strategy within that the spectrum, it is a Aggro/Attrition/Ramp deck IMO which means it covers even more ground and is more resilient because of it. The deck obviously likes to be in a position where it can play as many of its creatures a turn as possible but the built in 2 for 1 nature of the creatures it runs make it so that if the Ramp aspect of the deck doesn't line up it isn't nearly as impacting as when it doesn't line up for other Ramp strategies but I also think that the ramp aspect is secondary to the Aggro/Attrition aspect. I find it a bit odd that you would say that Bant Eldrazi is "definitely" mid-range while questioning that E-Tron is, other than the reality that both are mid-range strategies by the nature of the decks, I see the biggest difference being the method in which the decks intend to accelerate mana production, Bant obviously looks to do it Bird, Hierarch's etc.. and gains access to better removal spells for the color splash while E-Tron simply looks to do it with tron lands and Mind Stone (obviously both are running temple just looking at the differences) but also has less access to powerful non-creature spells sure they get to run Chalice but it always has the problem of "you play it for one, opponent has a bunch of 2-3 drops" other than that they get what Dismember? which while strong is always painful.
I didn't go look at the threads for what E-Tron is doing I looked at the decks that have put up results as often the case in the deck threads a lot of the "tech" people are running is much more local meta calls.