The reason KCI was so powerful was due to it being very strong against any hate. At first glace the deck seems like it should lose to graveyard hate and artifact hate. However, due to it maindecking 3-4 Engineered Explosives, easily slotting in any number of Nature's Claim and similar effects in the sideboard, and due to the deck's main point of recurring artifacts from the graveyard at instant speed, it basically dealt with everything. Ancient Stirrings only made the deck consistent, but the true power was in the core of the shell, nothing else. The question we need to ask is if Stirrings and Mox Opal make the deck broken or not, and in most cases, even in KCI I would say it isn't the case. I think in the same vein, one could even argue the same for Faithless Looting in the graveyard decks. Its the argument of enablers vs payoff.
However, Wotc did ban Looting because of the implications it could have on the future meta game, and how a card like looting can enable decks like Dredge to be super powerful and format warping. While I'd personally argue that Izzet Phoenix, while once the top deck or one of the top decks, it was on its last legs as a top tier deck at the time of the banning even with Hogaak gone. But by banning looting it overall slows down the format, so I guess its warranted to slow down the format and could, and probably so, will create a better format overall.
The thing is about banning cards in an eternal format, I am for only one criterion of banning: format warping. This is slightly vague but I will give two other criteria under the "format warping" title. (1) Meta game share and (2) homogenization of deck construction strategy. Hogaak is a good example of the first. It's obvious success across pretty much every tournament since its printing had a huge share of not just the overall meta game, but also the winning meta game. As for the second, we can look to cards like Ponder and Preordain for an example.
I'll reply to your quote:
I dont think its fair that blue gets all of its good cantripping spells banned while green can keep this powerful one even if it is one you have to build around
The reasoning here is incorrect. You even said it later yourself and how you can't simply put Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal in any (green) deck, and how Serum Visions doesn't go into ever blue deck. While you are right about Opal and Stirrings, I think you are wrong about blue decks and its cantrips. Serum Visions doesn't go into every blue deck because there aren't as many "pile" decks in Modern. The decks that do care about drawing do play Serum Visions, and there's a good chance that even the blue decks that don't currently run it would play a card like Ponder or even Preordain due to the immense increase in power compared to Serum Visions. In how the mechanics work with Fetch Lands, Serum Visions becomes a vastly inferior card compared to the other two. If we look to pretty much every blue deck that isn't a specific critical mass deck (e.g. Urza wants critical mass of artifacts, spirits wants creatures, etc), then I'd argue that they all would play Ponder or Preordain, as they all already are playing Serum. This then becomes format warping as we see in Legacy where most decks start with 52 cards after Brainstorm and Ponder.
Going back to my original criterion about banning cards, i'd like to share a quote I have shared in the past from Brian Kibler to show why I believe this is the only valid criterion:
"This is the problem with eternal formats. New interactions are going to keep coming up, new powerful things are going to keep happening If you're response is 'we're going to get rid of that one', then you are going to lose the point of having an eternal format. In Modern, people can't play the decks they've put together that they like and they want to play, which is really a lot of the appeal of the format to a lot of people."
7:13
We need to ask ourselves what is the point of an eternal format like Modern. To Kibler's point, Modern is there for us to play cards that were printed from 8th edition. If we take some other criterion than what I proposed, they we will continue to ride the ban carousal and continue to keep banning what ever deck is on top (e.g Pod, Splinter Twin), or what cards people simply don't like. As he says, new interactions will keep coming up, and yes, we sometimes need to ban these under strict criteria, but in the case of weaker arguments such as potential enabling of a certain strategy, we have to avoid that way of thinking.
Format looks bad. People are acting like just one hogaak deck in a top 8 is a good thing.
Not at all. Right now we are just waiting for it to get banned. No one in my local scene is playing the deck because no one wants to buy into a deck that that's just going to get banned. Without Hogaak the meta actually is pretty good to be honest. Yeah there's still Dredge, but its not as good as it was once. Once Hogaak is gone, I can see a lot more people being happy about Modern
The whole "Leyline of the Void was the most played card" doesnt mean too much when people say things like "imagine Hogaak in a world where of Leyline wasn't the most played card." The reason is because Leyline was being played in Hoggak itself for the mirror, which skews the numbers. So we are talking about the most played sideboard card in the most played deck
I don't think modern has the cantrips to compliment FoN as a main deck inclusion. I only see this being played against spell based combo decks. The cost of Negate is 2 mana, not an extra card alongside it
The set so far seems to basically be a Modern Sideboard set and an actual Commander set lol. I really think FoN is just terrible and I don't see the point in playing it over Flusterstorm in a sideboard.
to answer stuff that isnt instants or sorcery would be my guess. regardless of how you rate the playability of either FoN or flusterstorm, they wouldnt be competing for slots
It won't be competing in slots because its not going to be played
The set so far seems to basically be a Modern Sideboard set and an actual Commander set lol. I really think FoN is just terrible and I don't see the point in playing it over Flusterstorm in a sideboard.
It also works with Delay. My brother was trying to brew a deck using the new Teferi, Spell Queller and Delay. Seems pretty cool but I feel decks like this struggle vs fast aggro decks like Phoenix and Dredge.
I wonder if God-Pharaoh's Statue would be good in Tron. I feel like Tron got a lot of tools and can see a huge upsurge in Tron since the new Karn seems really good
The idea of the deck is that it is burn style deck that have an infinite combo using the new planeswalker Ral, Storm Conduit and Expansion // Explosion. How the combo works:
Cast 1cmc spell and hold priority
Cast Expansion copying that spell
Cast another Expansion copying the first Expansion
With the copy of the 2nd Expansion, copy the original Expansion
This with create another copy of Expansion and will create an infinite loop of Expansions as long as you copy the original Expansion. Ral, Storm Conduit's static ability triggers on copies as well as spells, hence infinite damage.
Things I like about this idea for Modern:
1. No use of graveyard. Most combo decks require graveyards and dodging potential hate like Surgical Extraction or even Rest in Peace is just huge, especially in the current meta
2. The combo doesn't ask much out of the deck. Requiring only Ral, Storm Conduit and Expansion // Explosion means the way we can approach deck building could be very flexible.
Things I don't like about this idea for Modern:
Reliance on a 4cmc planeswalker. This is a pretty big con for the deck. Most likely we would need to untap after resolving Ral since we need 5 mana to go off. Unlike something like KCI where u can just slam a permanent and not worry about it dying to creatures, Planewalkers have this big downside.
However, Wotc did ban Looting because of the implications it could have on the future meta game, and how a card like looting can enable decks like Dredge to be super powerful and format warping. While I'd personally argue that Izzet Phoenix, while once the top deck or one of the top decks, it was on its last legs as a top tier deck at the time of the banning even with Hogaak gone. But by banning looting it overall slows down the format, so I guess its warranted to slow down the format and could, and probably so, will create a better format overall.
The thing is about banning cards in an eternal format, I am for only one criterion of banning: format warping. This is slightly vague but I will give two other criteria under the "format warping" title. (1) Meta game share and (2) homogenization of deck construction strategy. Hogaak is a good example of the first. It's obvious success across pretty much every tournament since its printing had a huge share of not just the overall meta game, but also the winning meta game. As for the second, we can look to cards like Ponder and Preordain for an example.
I'll reply to your quote:
The reasoning here is incorrect. You even said it later yourself and how you can't simply put Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal in any (green) deck, and how Serum Visions doesn't go into ever blue deck. While you are right about Opal and Stirrings, I think you are wrong about blue decks and its cantrips. Serum Visions doesn't go into every blue deck because there aren't as many "pile" decks in Modern. The decks that do care about drawing do play Serum Visions, and there's a good chance that even the blue decks that don't currently run it would play a card like Ponder or even Preordain due to the immense increase in power compared to Serum Visions. In how the mechanics work with Fetch Lands, Serum Visions becomes a vastly inferior card compared to the other two. If we look to pretty much every blue deck that isn't a specific critical mass deck (e.g. Urza wants critical mass of artifacts, spirits wants creatures, etc), then I'd argue that they all would play Ponder or Preordain, as they all already are playing Serum. This then becomes format warping as we see in Legacy where most decks start with 52 cards after Brainstorm and Ponder.
Going back to my original criterion about banning cards, i'd like to share a quote I have shared in the past from Brian Kibler to show why I believe this is the only valid criterion:
We need to ask ourselves what is the point of an eternal format like Modern. To Kibler's point, Modern is there for us to play cards that were printed from 8th edition. If we take some other criterion than what I proposed, they we will continue to ride the ban carousal and continue to keep banning what ever deck is on top (e.g Pod, Splinter Twin), or what cards people simply don't like. As he says, new interactions will keep coming up, and yes, we sometimes need to ban these under strict criteria, but in the case of weaker arguments such as potential enabling of a certain strategy, we have to avoid that way of thinking.
Slagstorm cannot hit planeswalkers. Yes, Wood Elves can get Stomping Ground and Cinder Glade for that matter.
Not at all. Right now we are just waiting for it to get banned. No one in my local scene is playing the deck because no one wants to buy into a deck that that's just going to get banned. Without Hogaak the meta actually is pretty good to be honest. Yeah there's still Dredge, but its not as good as it was once. Once Hogaak is gone, I can see a lot more people being happy about Modern
It won't be competing in slots because its not going to be played
The original post was a Standard deck. I was just showing where I got the inspiration for
3 Chemister's Insight
1 Doublecast
4 Expansion // Explosion
3 Ionize
8 Island
4 Lightning Strike
7 Mountain
2 Negate
4 Opt
1 Ral's Outburst
4 Ral, Storm Conduit
2 Search for Azcanta
4 Shock
1 Skewer the Critics
4 Steam Vents
4 Sulfur Falls
2 Fiery Cannonade
2 Lava Coil
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Negate
2 Niv-Mizzet, Parun
2 Rekindling Phoenix
3 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
The idea of the deck is that it is burn style deck that have an infinite combo using the new planeswalker Ral, Storm Conduit and Expansion // Explosion. How the combo works:
Cast 1cmc spell and hold priority
Cast Expansion copying that spell
Cast another Expansion copying the first Expansion
With the copy of the 2nd Expansion, copy the original Expansion
This with create another copy of Expansion and will create an infinite loop of Expansions as long as you copy the original Expansion.
Ral, Storm Conduit's static ability triggers on copies as well as spells, hence infinite damage.
Things I like about this idea for Modern:
1. No use of graveyard. Most combo decks require graveyards and dodging potential hate like Surgical Extraction or even Rest in Peace is just huge, especially in the current meta
2. The combo doesn't ask much out of the deck. Requiring only Ral, Storm Conduit and Expansion // Explosion means the way we can approach deck building could be very flexible.
Things I don't like about this idea for Modern:
Reliance on a 4cmc planeswalker. This is a pretty big con for the deck. Most likely we would need to untap after resolving Ral since we need 5 mana to go off. Unlike something like KCI where u can just slam a permanent and not worry about it dying to creatures, Planewalkers have this big downside.
So how I see it, we can have multiple ideas for the deck. We can be more like a Blue Moon style deck, playing a control deck utilizing Remand. We can play a midrangy deck with the combo build in, using Young Pyromancer or Saheeli, Sublime Artificer. We could do a Phoenix style deck using Archlight Phoenix, Faithless Looting and/or Pyromancer Ascension. Or a glass cannon style with a bunch of cantrips and rituals and even Simian Spirit Guide. Maybe even with Grapeshot or even Pyromancer's Swath like a storm style deck, I'm not sure yet, just throwing out ideas.
What do you guys think?