So if all the podcasts are right and Surgical isn't a good answer for Phoenix, and you're not worried about your Dredge matchup, do you just go zero grave hate and play a Rending Volley or two in your board?
Surgical is a superb answer to Phoenix the card. It just doesn't single-handedly take down Phoenix the deck, because none of their other threats care about it. Think bringing in Explosives or Rest in Peace against Grixis Shadow. But assuming you can race/ignore/answer Thing, Crackling, and Pteramander, Surgical is hands-down the best answer to Arclight Phoenix.
Hey guys, wrote a piece about the possible banlist candidates from Phoenix, the implications of each card and reasons Wizards might hit it, and what it would take for an Izzet ban in the first place. Read it here: http://modernnexus.com/ashes-ashes-should-wizards-address-phoenix/
In a nutshell, I agree with most posters here that the deck won't be touched until May 20, and even then not unless it continues to put up results similar to those of GP LA and Bilbao. Manamorphose seems like the most elegant hit to me (sorry Storm!).
This is neither friendly to new users, nor respectful to other people's opinions.
Do you think that there is this minor possibility that some people have invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of their life into a format they once loved, only to see it transform in to an amalgamation of trash and frustration that bares no resemblance to what it once was?
I don't really understand this argument, although I do see it a lot. The cards from Twin held their value, and are in fact more valuable now than they ever have been. If you hate Modern, feel free to cash out for a profit!
So how do people approach big mana matchups? Tron's a little more clear cut, but my LGS has two Amulet Titan players and I always seem to get matched up with at least one of them. Any things in particular to keep in mind against an Amulet Titan player?
I have found this matchup to be very easy. Fast Chalice on 1 is great; on 0 is also powerful. TKS wrecks them as does Ghost Quarter. Ratchet fine to bring in post-board to deal with stray Amulets but mostly to power through Hornet Queen tokens if it comes to that; otherwise, the mainboard is well-equipped.
Thanks for the info! Random question, without hand info, which is better, Chalice on 0 or 1?
1 firs then 0. 1 Turns off Stirrings and Amulet which are their primary enablers. 0 counters Pact which is a payoff, and Explosives which removes Chalice, so you can wait a little before deploying it.
So how do people approach big mana matchups? Tron's a little more clear cut, but my LGS has two Amulet Titan players and I always seem to get matched up with at least one of them. Any things in particular to keep in mind against an Amulet Titan player?
I have found this matchup to be very easy. Fast Chalice on 1 is great; on 0 is also powerful. TKS wrecks them as does Ghost Quarter. Ratchet fine to bring in post-board to deal with stray Amulets but mostly to power through Hornet Queen tokens if it comes to that; otherwise, the mainboard is well-equipped.
This deck is just a few weeks old, from Feb. 15. Whether it "counts" as a "planeswalker deck" is for you to decide, but if War gives us more playable walkers, I wouldn't be surprised if some other Modern decks, especially control-aligned ones, ended up leaning this way as well.
I think other than exactly Jund and Rock, Huntmaster is just the best 4 drop currently in print for the deck. The value is great and it wins if it sticks, but it also does good stuff like damage through a Bridge, lifegain against the aggro decks, blockers for GDS ... It's just great. Hazoret is probably better against the Thoughtseize decks that don't have Path, but in all the other matchups, I'd rather go a little wider.
Went 2-1 last night. Lost to Phoenix 0-2, though the games were close. Beat both Dredge and Storm 2-0, and the Dredge games were both won by countering key discard outlets with either Shoal or Pierce, not through hate. Surgical wrapped up game 2 against Storm. I stuck a Grafdigger's Cage in over my general catch all, Delay, and never saw it and never wanted to. Phoenix killed me with Thing and Drake, and Cage doesn't do anything there. What I really wanted was another Flame Slash in the 75, so I may try that out next week.
I'm also learning that except in the ultra grindy matchups, I'm probably overboarding. Instead of the 7-10 cards I often sideboard in, I've been more like 3-6 lately and happier for it. The Shoal plan feels great right now against most of the top decks. I'm even going to cut a Blood Moon down to 2 I the board, which feels awful given how much I love that card, but all I want right now are extra Spell Pierces and removal that kills x/4s.
I was also toying with the idea of going down to 1 Snapcaster and playing a Nimble Obstructionist, Vendilion Clique, or even Savage Knuckleblade as my 15th creature. Snapcaster has just been a little slow and I want more ways to close the game faster that don't rely on recasting Bolts. Having a 9th ferocious enabler with Knucks is also super tempting. Thoughts?
I'm on Countercats but despite path I still have to win a game against Phoenix decks. I definitely need to test more, but it's not a great match up for tempo decks.
I feel that 2 moons are enough in this meta.
About knucks: I always love having it in the deck. It can have Haste and sometimes it may also dodge removals. And as a 6/6 can close the games really quickly. The only problem is that it isn't evasive.
Try our sideboard, we like the Phoenix matchup okay:
Protip, if you are in post-board games against Bogles, and they manage a 1-drop before you put down Chalice, naming Gryf's Boon with Sorcerous Spyglass can result in a hilariously fun time where they don't have a 2drop enchantment outside of Cornet and can never get their chain started. Then an additional Chalice on 1, or one on 2 to shut off Seal of Primordium, makes clean-up easy peasy.
They rarely play more than 1 Boon and frequently play more than 1 Seal of Primordium, so I would name the latter in the dark. Besides, they sometimes have Unflinching Courage side, which gets around this plan.
this conversation is derailing. the point is that we know and wizards knows that reprints should happen at some point because its mutually beneficial. the masters line was the premier method of accomplishing this, and wizards has expressed plans to do a higher, but more evenly distributed, spread of reprints across products. horizons seemed like a decent place to include some, but wizards seems to have gone out of their way to forego that opportunity.
its still early in the year, and the product announcement timelines have changed. people get worried, but the best we can do for the moment is to wait and see how they handle the situation/issue/whatever you want to call it.
Derailing? "Modern Prices" are literally what this thread is about. "High price bad" is something parroted constantly here and I'd like to at last figure out how its parroters justify such a mentality to themselves when the rest of the world (Wizards included) seems to operate in the opposite way.
]Well, answer me this: do garbage men (or teachers) "deserve" to own sports cars?
I think that people who provide essential services to the community should be able to expect a certain level of discretionary income, yes. And while my teacher's salary is never going to buy me a new Ferrari (Vintage deck), I ought to be able to buy a used Porsche (Modern deck) with good money habits.
Basically, I think once Modern decks break out of the $500-$1000 range, they ought to get reeled back in a little bit. It's not too bad right now, by this metric: yeah, Tarns and Opals are expensive, but the days of the $2000 Jund or Jeskai decks are gone for good, I think. But it's taken some serious work to get there. All I want is a reprint schedule that mirrors the Khans - MM2017 era, where deck prices generally went down quite a bit. In there, you've got the fetches in Khans and MM17 and plenty of the big deal reprints like Karn, Goyf, and Hierarch in the various Masters sets. That window of reprints allowed me to build a 400 card cube with everything but power and duals, a few EDH decks, and two Modern decks. It took some doing because I'm a teacher and a young father, but once people who make less than $30-40k out of formats they want to play, I think you've got a problem.
I purposefully used his own vague language to ask a rhetorical question. I am not actually interested in making this a discussion about morals, which will get us about as far away from whatever Wizards is thinking as possible. Fixed version which also accounts for idSurge's presumed intent: does [person with no money] "deserve" to own sports cars?
No matter your belief system, I fail to see how your response to this question relates to Wizards' goals as a company, and therefore how a given individual's financial plights---which, according to the data which indicates that Modern is booming, do not accurately represent the financial situation of the company's target audience for their product---pose an "issue" that would be on Wizards' radar to "address." This was my initial question and still has yet to be answered.
- High prices on cards that can be and are reprinted further indicate that Modern is thriving
Is Legacy thriving?? Because quite a few cards in Legacy "can be and are reprinted", yet I don't believe Legacy is thriving at the moment. They also have extremely high prices, so I disagree that high prices = a thriving format. Tournament turn-out definitely shows that Modern is doing well, but Arena blows it out of the water by a large margin, I imagine.
For a format that is not being supported by Wizards at all, I would say that yes, Legacy is definitely thriving. The most expensive cards in Legacy are either Modern staples (covered by my claim), on the reserved list (out of contention), or very unlikely to be reprinted precisely because they are too strong for Modern (functionally out of contention).
- People paying that amount for the cards supports Wizards and incentivizes them to directly support Modern, i.e. with Masters or Horizons
No, people paying that amount supports Star City Games, who are also (not coincidentally) the reason Modern is thriving so hard. Singles don't support WotC. WotC barely has any tournaments that regularly force Modern, so SCG and local communities are most of what keep paper Modern thriving. As someone west of Missouri, I can basically just rely on my local community and a few yearly events to actually play Modern at all. So to grow the local community in a small town, in a midwestern state, prices can't be low-level Legacy, or the format is almost non-existent.
Nah. SCG is a large distributor, sure, but that also makes them a large consumer. Without a demand for singles, they don't buy the amount of product from Wizards that they currently do. This argument betrays a misunderstanding of how the Magic economy works. Besides, why care about growing the playerbase in a town with a small population at the cost of profits guaranteed by the larger playerbases in densely populated areas?
Yes, I understand that eastern US and larger cities in states where "middle class" is the majority and pay rates are generally much higher makes it a bit easier to justify $90 for a Scalding Tarn, but when $7.25 is Minimum Wage and the rent is about $700 a month, you cut out a very large portion of players who don't work in middle-class industries.
Do garbage men not "deserve" to play Magic now?
Well, answer me this: do garbage men (or teachers) "deserve" to own sports cars?
Probably won't though. WotC has never shown they're willing to address the issue in a timely and efficient manner, and I don't expect them to start now.
How is card availability an issue in Modern? The format regularly caps events. It's Magic's biggest format by almost any metric. There is no way Wizards sees having some expensive cards as a "problem;" if anything, it lets them print sets like Masters and charge more than a normal booster knowing that people will buy it up, so it's all upside. In short:
- High prices directly correlate with demand for the product
- High prices on cards that can be and are reprinted further indicate that Modern is thriving
- Sustained high prices indicate that people are willing to pay that amount for the cards
- People paying that amount for the cards supports Wizards and incentivizes them to directly support Modern, i.e. with Masters or Horizons
- Prices will fall if people stop buying cards at those prices
- When that happens, Wizards gives up on Modern because it's no longer making them money
As far as I can tell, high prices = good for the format. And it's not like it's impossible to find rare cards you need; with the internet, any card can be bought at any time. If someone wants to explain to me how prices and card availability are an "issue," I'm all ears. It seems to me like a problem that only affects a vocal minority of players that frankly don't matter at all when it comes to format enjoyment by the middle class (the game's target audience) or, more importantly, to Wizards' bottom line. Yet it seems to dominate this thread year after year, in spite of all the progress and popularity gains Modern has made and continues to make.
I'm awfully tired of playing against decks that get stuff back from the yard for free, because we just don't have the tools to do much about it unless we warp the sideboard with like 2 Surgicals and 2 Crypts or something.
Why not just do that though? I have been very happy on triple Surgical in this metagame.
http://modernnexus.com/karn-great-creator-colorless-eldrazi
And in case you just want to scroll to the decklist, here's that:
4 Eldrazi Mimic
4 Eternal Scourge
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
3 Endless One
4 Simian Spirit Guide
Planeswalkers (2)
2 Karn, the Great Creator
Artifacts (8)
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Serum Powder
4 Dismember
Lands (23)
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Gemstone Caverns
4 Zhalfirin Void
4 Ghost Quarter
3 Mutavault
3 Blinkmoth Nexus
2 Wastes
4 Relic of Progenitus
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Torpor Orb
1 Lightning Greaves
3 Spatial Contortion
1 Gut Shot
1 Surgical Extraction
In a nutshell, I agree with most posters here that the deck won't be touched until May 20, and even then not unless it continues to put up results similar to those of GP LA and Bilbao. Manamorphose seems like the most elegant hit to me (sorry Storm!).
2 Dovin, Grand Arbiter
2 Gideon of the Trials
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
Creature (2)
2 Snapcaster Mage
Sorcery (6)
4 Terminus
2 Timely Reinforcements
Instant (15)
4 Cryptic Command
2 Logic Knot
4 Opt
4 Path to Exile
1 Spell Snare
1 Crucible of Worlds
Enchantment (2)
2 Search for Azcanta
Land (25)
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Field of Ruin
4 Flooded Strand
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Hallowed Fountain
5 Island
2 Plains
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Celestial Purge
1 Disenchant
2 Dispel
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Lyra Dawnbringer
2 Negate
4 Rest in Peace
1 Settle the Wreckage
Dread Return? Enabler
Skullclamp? Enabler
Blazing Shoal? Enabler
2 Damping Sphere
2 Pyroclasm
2 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Hazoret the Fervent
1 Shapers' Sanctuary
1 Negate
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Destructive Revelry
No matter your belief system, I fail to see how your response to this question relates to Wizards' goals as a company, and therefore how a given individual's financial plights---which, according to the data which indicates that Modern is booming, do not accurately represent the financial situation of the company's target audience for their product---pose an "issue" that would be on Wizards' radar to "address." This was my initial question and still has yet to be answered.
- High prices directly correlate with demand for the product
- High prices on cards that can be and are reprinted further indicate that Modern is thriving
- Sustained high prices indicate that people are willing to pay that amount for the cards
- People paying that amount for the cards supports Wizards and incentivizes them to directly support Modern, i.e. with Masters or Horizons
- Prices will fall if people stop buying cards at those prices
- When that happens, Wizards gives up on Modern because it's no longer making them money
As far as I can tell, high prices = good for the format. And it's not like it's impossible to find rare cards you need; with the internet, any card can be bought at any time. If someone wants to explain to me how prices and card availability are an "issue," I'm all ears. It seems to me like a problem that only affects a vocal minority of players that frankly don't matter at all when it comes to format enjoyment by the middle class (the game's target audience) or, more importantly, to Wizards' bottom line. Yet it seems to dominate this thread year after year, in spite of all the progress and popularity gains Modern has made and continues to make.