MTG Salvation

I think Sword of the Meek was banned because the deck it was used in was also a Dark Depths deck

Quote from M1sgu1ded1 »

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

Part of my reservation of buying combo decks like that is that it doesn't really go into much else. One ban or just a deck/card to invalidate an entire deck makes me nervous.

Just from naturally playing GBx and whatnot I have most of the Arclight deck minus Arclight and Manamorphose. There's a bunch of the smaller pieces but they're not expensive.

UR Control dominated over the summer, just the recent graveyard decks is making it difficult to navigate.

Yea, same, arclight and manamorphose is pretty much all I need for UR arclight. I share your fears about a possible ban hampering KCI, but as long as it's not MOpal I figure I could also move into hardened scales.

This is the ultimate fear of any combo deck player in Modern, and quite frankly, it shouldn't exist, unless the deck is over dominate when it comes to meta share.

Fair decks should get more of a leeway when it comes to bannings. If a deck that promotes healthy interaction and gameplay, like humans, has a high meta share, they should be afforded some percentage points due to the policing nature of a deck like that. One of the stated goals, and rightfully so, of Modern was to make sure non-interactive combo decks didn't run rampant to avoid the two situations that arise:
1. both players ignoring each other, creating a dice roll format
2. The format becomes a sideboard war, whoever draws the sideboard cards first, or more of them, wins.

With keeping in mind of that goal, that doesn't give a responsible game designer a free pass on banning cards that would hinder top tier combo decks. I advocate so much for metagame share to be the "be all" rule when it comes to banning due to this sentiment of fear of constantly having your deck banned out. How could you possibly tell someone that thier $500+ deck is now unplayable because of some other reason? Meta game share is able to be proven empirically.

For example, I've yet to see any good reason why Mox Opal should be banned ever on this forum or on any other website other than "the card is powerful lul."

I like Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle. Unlike most of the cards on this list, it actually created a totally new archetype by itself. A while ago, RUG Scapeshift was super good, and Temur/Bring to Light Scapeshift is still played every so often. It's not an oppressive combo and while bing pretty uninteractive, I think it will forever be a balanced combo deck do to its limited speed and Wotc printing more and more land interaction in Modern like Field of Ruin, Alpine Moon, etc.

Damn. With a top 32 like that, they better ban Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal! Those cards are so oppressive its sick and are just so broken

I think it's laughable that the cantrips Ponder and Preordain are on the banned list. Besides Storm, what other blue combo decks even exist? At the end of the day it's just a cantrip, and the only real reason a card like Ponder or Preordain should be banned is to avoid the situation they have in Legacy where Brainstorm warps the meta, skewing Blue heavily. This is far from the case in Modern and realistically only would buff decks like Storm or Grixis Death's Shadow.

The real fear of Punishing Fire would bring is the total elimination of Aggro, which I can't see as a reality. Combine this with Umezawa's Jitte and/or Stoneforge Mystic and Aggro could easily fall heavily. This is especially concerning that Stoneforge is candidate #1 currently for unbanning, making Punishing Fire a little less appealing, at least for now. However, I'm on board with Jitte and SFM coming off soon, since these two card would probably add more diversity than killing it, as well as being less powerful than other things you could be doing in Modern at the moment.

Jitte also creates subgames that usually result in who ever gets Jitte online first wins, essentially warping any Aggro/Midrange matches around it.

Birthing Pod is in a similar vein as its old Modern Pillar partner Splinter Twin. I personally don't have strong feelings for these two cards staying on or coming off the banned list either way, but if you're going to make the argument, as the guy did in the article, that Splinter Twin "eliminated all other options in its class, as well as made enemy combo decks atrocious in comparison." Or in other words, lessened diversity and pushed out many decks due to its presence, you have to make the same conclusion for Birthing Pod as well. Imo, Pod is a much scarier card, especially since the printing of so many cards that would slot into the archetype since its banning, that if he's going to advocate for Splinter Twin staying on the banned list, he's gotta do the same for Birthing Pod.

Lastly, Glimpse of Nature most likely just adds another degenerate linear combo deck in the top of the meta. Is that something we really need in Modern right now?

He strangely doesn't even mention Green Sun's Zenith when going over cards remaining ont he banned list. He says " The artifact lands, free spells, card draw that should have never been printed, fast mana, and mana boosts should all be kept out of a format that's currently infested with turn 3 and 4 wins." Yet, GSZ doesn't fit on any of these, but he's advocating for a obvious combo enabler with Glimpse of Nature, so I'm kind of confused by this. I advocate that Birthing Pod is a stronger card than GSZ in general in regards to Modern, so my conclusion is that GSZ should be in consideration for unbanning way before we begin to talk about Birthing Pod.

Quote from idSurge »

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

Does anyone feel as though modern is---bad right now? My entire meta is in on a graveyard deck or aggro. MTGO is pretty much graveyard linear decks, humans/spirits, Tron, which isn't utilizing the graveyard and loving this meta, or KCI/Affinity.

This modern is very much shaping to feel like the summer of Dredge/Infect. I really hope the meta isn't like this 8 months from now. Modern is looking very ugly and unhealthy, and I have no clue what should be done.

*raises hand in the back*

Yes. To me, its literally unplayable. You are playing Stirrings, or Looting or Vial, or you are kidding yourself (as per my signature) and making your life more difficult by not playing them.

Its easily the worst its been since Eldrazi Winter, and its not even close. I'm not even playing it. The last match I had was the Hollow One player who lamented his own deck doing what it was supposed to, because it just feels lame to pump out multiple hollow ones on Turn 1, and essentially lock up the game. His own words, about his own deck!

Its a joke, and the gameplay in Standard is MILES better.

Quote from Shwivle »

Quote from idSurge »

By all means, ban nothing. 2 Unbans change everything, without a single person 'losing' their deck.

I have to disagree here, if an unban suddenly brings forth a solid tier 1 deck, especially combo, and it just invalidates your pet deck giving it feel bad losses as Twin does, then for me it is almost the equivalent of losing your deck. That is for example the case every time Dredge rises to prominence, it generates feel bad games where you feel powerless if you are playing midrange.dec and you end up wondering why in the world you are even playing your deck.

I would take having to warp my deck (like UW and UWR warped) to account for a toxic meta (if it could even get that toxic...) than literally not having the option of playing, every day, all day.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/scg-modern-iq-roanoke-2018-11-25#paper
2 Jeskai top 8
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/scg-modern-iq-toronto-2018-11-25#paper
2 UW top 8

Quote from Bearscape »

I want WotC to return to the turn 4 rule with a vengeance. I would not mind seeing a large list of bans, just straight up ending storm, tron, dredge, KCI and the likes. There are so many decks and cards in modern that solely exist to create non-games where the pre-sideboard game is basically irrelevant. They are much, MUCH more obnoxious than twin ever was which, although powerful, at least was a matchup where both players got to play cards and interact with eachother without needing enchantments out of the sideboard.

"I dont want combo to exist"

Quote from Ym1r »

Quote from gkourou »

I think Twin comes with not so many upsides, but SFM would help create W's idendity and open up diversity.
Instead, Twin and diversity do not come hand in hand, as we probably know.

Why play Ur Phoenix, blue moon, or Through the breach, if Twin is always the best combo? This is basically the Wizard's argument. There is no reason because it will (probably) reduce diversity, while there doesn't seem to be a direct upside.

To be honest, I think this is a legitimately good reason to keep Splinter Twin on the ban list. I feel that a card like Arclight Phoenix would never be able to breath in Modern due to Splinter Twin. People could go on about how Arclight Phoenix only creates another linear combo deck with little interaction and how we need Splinter Twin to police the format so it doesn't just become Two Ships Sailing Past one another silently in the night, but I really don't think that's the case. I think the un-interactivity of Modern is blown out of proportion by people that deep down just want to go back to the "Pillar Format" (pointed out in Kathal's amazing post in the previous thread) but it just can't happen anymore.

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There's a few points about Humans being the #1 deck we have discussed a lot on this forum, but to be brief, its a lot different than Dredge. Dredge is a "must draw sideboard card" deck, Humans isn't.

Creature removal isn't a narrow interaction, while graveyard hate is

An aura is controlled by the player who put it on the battlefield, like any other permanent. It enchanting something that player does not control does not change that fact. So if you destroy the aura, which your opponent controls, he gets the token. If you destroy the land, which you control, you get the token.

Tonight I went 4-0 with this deck.



I really like the addition of Roast, and Spreading Seas. I also think Porphery Nodes and Relic do work well on the SB. I didn't use Crumble to Dust tonight due to my match ups but it will help us immensely versus TitanShift/Valakut and Tron. I also think 3 Serum Vision is fine when running 2 Spreading Seas, Azcanta, and Jace.

Here's a more organized version of the deck: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1019892#paper

One of the issues I have with h0ly's posts has nothing to do with whether she is right/wrong about certain decks being good/bad. Instead, it's her chosen medium. Based on what I read here, see on her Twitter, and see on her stream, her opinions are based overwhelmingly on MTGO. This heavily skews her conclusions towards MTGO events, which aren't always (often?) translatable to paper events. We know this because even when we did have full MTGO data in previous years, there were significant differences between MTGO and paper metagames. This is true of both deck prevalence and also play experience. Many of these differences heavily skew MTGO towards linear decks that h0ly trumpets, as opposed to the fairer decks we see in paper. It's tempting to believe this is because the decks are better when in reality, it often has to do with MTGO's unique environment.

I played a LOT of MTGO in 2017 and here are two great examples of this difference in action.

1. MTGO rewards you for earning the greatest number of wins in the shortest time. The only limit to the number of Leagues you can play, and the number of wins you can earn, is you. This means you want to play decks that secure fast wins AND secure fast losses. By "fast losses," I mean decks that don't eat up a lot of time and then still result in losses. The linear decks h0ly prefers are capable of both fast wins and fast losses. By contrast, paper events don't care about how many games you can theoretically win in 50 minutes. You get 50 minutes to play your round period.

2. MTGO has a timer system that makes linear decks more attractive than non-linear ones. This is also true in paper events but the experience is heightened on MTGO. Remember the decks that most frequently went to time in that last major event analysis? It was UW Control and other blue-based control. If you're playing MTGO and trying to maximize your earnings, going 1-2 in a match because you ran out of time and an opponent had 7 minutes left is a bad strategy. This is still a factor in paper but it's much less of a factor because the timer is shared, not a back-and-forth chess timer.

These are just two examples of significant factors which make MTGO a different environment than paper. It means that h0ly is not necessarily wrong in her statements; it just means she is focusing on MTGO realities that might not mirror paper realities. Of course, MTGO also has some key advantages over paper which make its data very reliable. For instance, MTGO allows you to get in a lot of reps against real opponents (many of whom are very skilled/experienced), which means you can iterate on decks easily. This can definitely translate to real world success (see Hollow One, an MTGO creation given paper life). But it also means that if you never grind out the decks that have problems with #1 and #2 above (e.g. blue decks), one thinks they are bad when in reality they are just not suited for a max-EV MTGO metagame.

I think a Disrupting Shoal but with "X or less" and "you lose X life" would be totally fair. Or a Logic Knot effect where again X = the pitched card's CMC and you lose X life.

nah jace isnt underperforming. 4 copies in the top 8 at the GP, and plenty in the top 32. its showing up in decks all over the place on mtgo leagues, and has been influential on all the paper tournaments thus far.

has it been underperforming relative to the claims that it would single handedly reshape modern around it? sure. but anyone who sat down and played with the card for a couple of hours could come to a similar conclusion.

jace is still probably the most powerful effect of its type available to fair(ish) decks playing blue. i dont see it disappearing from decks based on that alone.

blue reactive decks arent in trouble. they are in the same place they have always been. poorly positioned when the meta is in flux, and plagued by having to choose from a set of conditional responsive cards that can easily not line up with what your opponent is doing.

We have trouble dealing with Delve threats that effectively cost 1 mana more than we have trouble with CoCo, as Stone Rain can slow down a CoCo immensely, whereas it does very little to Delve threats. Cage is the same; stops CoCo, but doesn't stop Delve, and that's the exact opposite of what we need, IMO.

Quote from Pistallion »

My theroy of what Hypergenesis should be would include Trinisphere main or post board. Resolved Trinisphere main is an insta scoop for storm. Against Delver it is also very good.

Ideas like "you need certain creatures in your hand to be good" I think is wrong. Most builds I've seen are too glass cannon. Instead of rushing the combo with a bad card like Chancellor of the Tangle, you play things like Tinisphere to deal with hate + faster combo decks, you play Terastodon, Angel of Despair, and/or Ashen Rider to combat hate cards.

The reason I think the deck could be very powerful is because it really hardly needs anything to win. All it needs is 1 cascade spell and 1 good creature. That's not asking much out of a starting hand

The deck is very under explored, but I think it can be improved on heavily.

Well... if you really want to try it, here's where I'd start:


The main problem with the deck is that you can't run any card with a CMC of 2 or less. That's like 99% of the good, unconditional answers. You can use the Expertise spells from AER, or As Foretold, but it's way too slow and just ends up requiring you to run too many combo pieces to go off consistently. This deck will be shut down if your opponent resolves a Chalice on 0, Ethersworn Canonist (and similar effects), Meddling Mage (and similar effects), Thorn of Amethyst (and similar effects), Trinisphere, or if your opponent can interact with the stack. Torpor Orb (and similar effects) will shut off your interactive bombs, which bears mentioning. Targeted discard is something this archetype cannot stand up to, which is why you run Leylines in the main. If they make you discard any card other than your interaction, they're getting massive returns on their investment. While technically this deck is a 1 card combo, in practice it's more a 3-5 card combo, since you need bombs to drop during Hypergenesis.

Cards I didn't include that are pretty okay:
Chancellor of the Dross: It's pretty decent, but Hellkite wins faster, especially in multiples.
Chancellor of the Annex: Leyline is just a better card, but Chancellor of the Annex can help you survive to turn 2 against Storm if they get a weak hand. Can be worked around very easily with all of the free spells in the format.
Through the Breach: Not a terrible plan B, but I generally favor consistency over a plan B.
Progenitus: Emrakul is better, and I value negating my opponent's plays higher than his protection from everything- which has a nasty habit of being worked around.


Best of luck. I've never really found a good mix of sideboard cards, so I'm afraid I can't offer much advice there. I'd probably start with 4 Mindbreak Traps, 4 Leyline of the Void, and maybe some Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. Your best matchups are Elves, Dredge, and Eldrazi Aggro, since they don't run much interaction you care about. Your worst matchups are Tezzerator, Any Countertop deck, Death and Taxes, Breachpost, Storm, and Belcher.

Quote from Pistallion »

Yeah but I dont think that should be a reason to ban a card from Death's Shadow because its better than Jund, and same for Strom vs any other combo deck. The deck has clear weaknesses as show by it only being around 3-4% of the meta.

I see your point about it being dangerous, but Wizards has printed so many cards over the years to combat combo decks like Rule of Law effects, Sphere effects, etc. (And yeah, hand disruption is very good against the deck, that's the reason why GDS is its worst MU after Burn, and why GBx decks have always done good vs Storm in the past.)

The reason i said that it seems like you dont want Combo to be tier 1, is because, like Wizards, whenever a combo deck does become tier 1, it just gets banned, simple as that.

It has to satisfy the criterion of the "turn 4 rule" at the same time being resilient enough to battle through the other tier 1 decks that will either tear their hand apart or counter every spell it ever puts on the stack turns 1-3.

This makes me come to the conclusion that a tier 1 modern combo deck cannot exist unless it has the current power of the Storm deck. I think the current power of the storm deck is the healthiest power level any combo deck that has reached tier 1 in Modern has ever become. If it becomes more powerful due to a new printing, then ban it. But if the current power level becomes nerfed, then it will fall into the same catergory as Counters Company in tier 1.5ish or Ad Naus in solid tier 2.

There's a certain class of player who despises combo decks being good because they feel like they didnt get to play magic when they lose to them. I've never been able to grasp how it feels better to die to aggro at the same speeds but c'est la vie. People who state things like Ad Naus being the combo decks they want in the format are simply saying (like you pointed out) they don't want tier 1 combo. Ad naus is neither fast enough nor resilient enough to be a viable top tier deck. Maybe I'm wrong to, but I don't put ramp decks like tron or shift in the same category as a combo deck like storm (even though wizards often equates combo with ramp). Either way, shift isn't a good deck and currently Tron and Storm are the only "combo" decks that are top tier, with storm being the only traditional combo deck. You look down to tier 2 and below and you see things like Ad Naus and Shoal and Amulet that are missing speed, resiliency or consistency to be competitive. Killing storm isn't going to magically make other combo decks more playable. Killing storm is killing combo because the speed and disruption of decks like Shadow and Humans are working wonders holding down combo (including storm).Honestly, it seems to me that people complaining about storm have never piloted the deck versus something like shadow or humans.

I responded to you, which is weird because I agreed with everything you said...so I guess I'm really responding to the guy you originally quoted.

Quote from idSurge »

I also think if you asked these frustrated spikes what they want, it may be when BGx and URx policed the lower tier decks.

That's simply not happening now.

Who knows. There may be a strong case of memory bias and rose tinted glasses happening.

Go back far enough and jund was rattling around at the top of the pile, routinely in every top8 and fluctuated around a pretty high tide-mark in terms of metagame share, up to 15%. Maybe even a little more on occasion (I got bored of looking haha).

That's over double the share of the current most played deck in modern.

Go back a few years, modern was more obviously stratified. There were a handful of decks which were far-and-away better than everything else, and much like standard there were a couple of huge targets to build sideboards for.

In that way, I feel it may have been a psychologically easier prospect for that cohort of players who feel they need to win, or need to feel like they have an obvious avenue to victory 'on paper' when doing tournament prep. Then they'd chalk up losses and bad tournaments to 'lousy topdecks' or something equivalent, essentially passing the buck away from lack of reps, opponent skill or lack of the pilot's own skill. For certain I've seen this behaviour numerous times to varying degrees, so I'm not speculating or unfairly projecting here.

It's a tired story now, although it's still persistent in the magic community. The tone of it has changed though, more towards the popular trashing of variety and variance within modern as the reason for someone's anecdotally bad run at a tournament. Forget their practice, deck choices, play skill, mulligan decisions etc. - The *real* reason they bombed at that last tournament was because "there's too many decks in modern" or sometimes it's more specific such as "there's too many linear decks in modern" (or equally "there's not enough midrange" or any number of similar statements like "big mana" which has gained popularity over the last 12 months as a nucleus for blame). Either way they are piling on metaphorical heaps of cognitive dissonance and trying to free themselves of any responsibility for poor performances, because it's easier to blame some vague intangible format-wide plague that means everyone's just losing all the time and nobody can consistently do well because modern's just *so* high variance.

Well, those assertions are weak but we still hear them. What's troubling is that we get this rhetoric from salty pro players through certain large websites with huge audiences and deep influence in the community. I don't want to be that guy saying "with great power, responsibility blah blah" because if they want to write crappy opinion pieces full of hyperbole, misunderstandings and salt, that's their prerogative! We can't and shouldn't stop them. But jeez, if we shouldn't shake them a bit and say "hey dude just use your damn brain for two seconds and take a more reasonable view on things"

*shrug*

I mean... Provably modern's fine. The 'variance argument' implying it's impossible to plan and consistently do well in the format is spurious and misleading.

What I have noticed though is that a transformation happens. Newer players (talking the win-obsessed spikes mainly, and pros who are dipping into the format and mainly run standard or limited) will try modern or be forced into playing it (maybe for the pro tour or a GP) and will initially have this "ahhh too much variance" knee jerk reaction. What happens next is interesting; either these players retreat from modern entirely, failing to understand it properly and they'll just borrow decks off their teammates or friends when they have to play it, or,.. They immerse themselves more fully into the format and their opinion mellows significantly once they come to understand the nuance and flow of it (and the idea that mastering a specific deck or two is a good way to increase your format capital).

In a way, modern is the Go to standard's Chess. Standard has a simpler initial condition, less pieces, less going on and of course the games can be challenging and engaging. Modern has a far more complex initial condition, requires more pre-learning of the underpinnings and can still give those challenging and engaging games, but requires you to put in the time/reps to learn the ins and outs of the format to a much greater level of detail first, in a way that standard doesn't.

Obviously modern and standard are both still Magic. The principles are the same, you do the same stuff. A good "magic player" (vague as that is) can do well in any format, right? That's where I've seen pros get caught out though. I've seen them venerate Legacy and reference the high ceiling in terms of skill, putting it on a pedestal of "knowing your deck" and similar ideas, but in the same breath slate modern for 'variance' or something without affording it the same treatment. Then, they are summarily disappointed when they find their performances lacking in modern. The reason is simple; modern requires the same treatment and knowing your deck approach as legacy. Clearly this isn't ingrained in the collective conscious yet though. Over time, I believe more people are coming round to it, and I can see improvement from the tiny fragment of the MTG community which posts stuff online.

I'd say the picture is getting better. I'm optimistic.

Oh hey. I wrote a wall of text :S.

Quote from Mikefon »

Last article of Brian DeMars on channelfireball about modern is very clear and a good summary of many things were said on this thread I think. I agree with almost all he wrote there.

I don't disagree with a lot of what he said, but he always comes off as so clickbaity. His articles tend to be framed in such a polarizing, all-or-nothing kind of way. I can't tell if it's just his writing style or if he's just doing it to cause a stir. But as we've talked about before, the content bar in Magic writing is pretty low and we regularly see unresearched, unsupported, unmeasured articles and claims by all kinds of authors. This isn't to say everyone needs to approach their articles like Frank Karsten. It just means we could use less Brennan DeCandio and Brian De Mars-styles of writing.

I will say that the "Frustrated Spike" archetype, even if it's an aggressive way of describing certain Modern critics, is fairly accurate in my experience. Like we've said in this thread for years (literally years, i.e. since January 2016), there is a subset of players who want a deck without bad matchups. They want their deck to be 50/50+ against everything, and are maybe comfortable with some 45/55s... but only as long as they can leverage their own skill and experience to eliminate those 45/55 matchups too. Unlike De Mars, however, I don't think this has to do with merely winning tournaments. I think this has to do with a psychological profile that many Magic players fit into, in which winning at this game becomes a personal validation of some inner narrative players hold about themselves. I don't think this is true of all Modern critics. But I do think it is at the core of many Modern criticisms if we unpack a few layers deeper. For example, blue mages who maintain "I don't care about winning or losing, I just want a viable blue deck that doesn't get crushed by ___ archetype" may unconsciously be fixating on blue decks because they are the kind of player who views mastery of mechanics and board state as a personal expression of worth. Not everyone fits here, but many more do than I think realize it.

To start testing this, I'd go to a giant event and ask people what deck they played, what kind of deck they would want to play in Modern in an ideal world, what Magic profile they think they fit in, and what they think their record should have been. Add in questions to assess their psychology around winning/losing/why they play. All questions would obviously be word-smithed beforehand. Then we could compare the record they want to the record they got. I suspect we would find Spikes disproportionately believe their record should have been better than what it was, and I also suspect that this would be even more acute among Spikes who want to play blue-based strategies.

EDIT: As further proof of all this, we see that most of the criticisms against his article read in that article a personal attack that needs to be defended. Rather than engage the arguments, which are totally engagable, they accuse Brian of condescension and personal attack. Almost as if "Frustrated Spike" is viewed as a personal attack.