I'll just say this about Birthing Pod: I think it will be banned at some point in the future when who knows, but this has show and tell syndrome written all over it in that the potential for stupid brokenness is there and as such potential banning is possible. I think however it won't be banned for some time. this card reminds me too much of Survival of the Fittest and we all know where that went. I can see this card becoming more problematic as new cards enter modern but as of right now I would say keep it on the "watch list" not ban it yet.
I think just about everyone would agree with this. It will be banned eventually, simply because something will break it, or it becomes the only game in town. Until then - pod, pod away.
I don't quite know how to say this...
There isn't enough graveyard hate. Sure, there's graveyard hate, but if you're relying on interacting with thopter/sword via the graveyard you're going to lose. Decks that play thopter/sword aren't planning on getting it out as soon as possible, they're planning on playing the control game for a bit and then getting it out when there's a window. Graveyard hate doesn't do a whole lot to that strategy, and unless you have Rest in Peace, your dream scenario is to remove the Sword before they can bring it back, in which case they still have the Foundry and can just draw into another one. You're literally just trading 1-for-1. And, as we found out time and time again in testing, trading 1-for-1 to disrupt the combo in a thopter control deck is not a winning strategy. In fact, we couldn't find a winning strategy. Aggro decks fold to it, midrange decks fold to it, combo decks can't play through it (once you get the combo, you can just play draw-go, counter the key spells, and spend all excess mana on thopters), and control would rather just play it. The only deck we found that could break through and win against it was infect, because when you think of a healthy modern format, you think of infect.
I'm sure there are other decks that could beat a thopter/sword control deck. The metagame would adapt, it always does. But unless we missed a HUGE piece of tech, Sword of the Meek needs to stay on the banned list.
I just started ignoring people who thought it was safe. Made my life easier.
SCG will almost certainly sell their overflow stock. (don't think anything's wrong with that- increases the number out there if people want them.) They were not buying playmats like the other dealers.
I'm not so sure there's going to be overstock. They're printing extras to ship to people because they didn't print enough in time for the GP. I don't think they can sell them because they were licensed specifically for the GP richmond event. Wizards isn't helping them so that they can make some extra money, Wizards is promoting the event, like FNM promos. If they could just print and sell playmats like that, they would've done it in Las Vegas. A $100 playmat that costs $10 to make that they can make infinite copies of.. you don't think that would sell?
They likely printed 5500-6000 of them to ensure enough for judge staff and players. What else would they do with the overstock? (And it's not a bad thing- better to sell them off than destroy things people on the market want.)
Some of you may remember my team did some (sadly, limited) testing of possible unbans, testing which managed to predict with some accuracy what would happen given their January unbans (Bitterblossom would be too weak to perform in modern, and Nacatl would be strong enough, but still a safe unban). That testing, which we've done a bit more of, says the following about possible unbans:
Golgari Grave-Troll is the safest unban you can get. It's absolutely unplayable in its historic decks, and no current deck wants it. We got some decent results with a Goryo's Vengeance reanimator deck using a dredge engine to draw, but it was still unimpressive, and if it were modern legal the results we got were not good enough for me to pursue the deck further.
Ancestral Vision is a safe unban. It's not unplayable like Grave-Troll, and indeed I found it to be quite strong, but it's not banworthy. We got solid results with it in UW/X control (esper and UWR), and it would certainly be worth playing there, but the results still weren't amazing enough to make the deck too dominant. We also did some limited U/B faeries testing with it, but still didn't get strong enough results for us to worry about it. I'm going to say this explicitly: I don't believer faeries is a good deck in modern. It's playable now, and might be decent with Ancestral Vision, but unless we missed a major card choice that significantly ups its power level, Faeries will not be tier 1.
Bloodbraid Elf is probably a safe unban. We got some scary results with Jund (a little bit better than our testing with Nacatl), but it didn't feel particularly scary. The most notable thing was that it had a quite poor matchup against UWR and especially UWR twin, which suggests that there's a fundamental check on the power of Jund in the format with Deathrite Shaman gone. I'd definitely want to see more testing of this card before I felt comfortable unbanning it, were I the DCI, but it's certainly not inherently dangerous.
Seething Song is debatable. We tried storm with seething song, and found it to be quite powerful, probably powerful enough to make it a recurring contender in the format. However, we found a 15% turn-3 goldfish rate so far, and this was done against our standard modern gauntlet with no sideboard changes. Given that it performed well but not incredibly well (worse, for instance, than zoo with Nacatl did during our testing), it would probably only mean people would have to devote more sideboard hate to storm. From a format dominance and enjoyability perspective, Seething Song is not a threat. From a turn-4 rule perspective, it could be in violation, but I don't think it has a high enough percentage. It's also worth noting that I am a longtime storm combo player, as are two other members of my team, which in my opinion gives this testing more credence (we're less likely to misplay a storm deck).
Sword of the Meek is NOT a safe unban. Dear god is this not a safe unban. The combo is so good, a control shell that can consistently get it out by turn 4 (not that hard if you play any Muddle the Mixtures) doesn't really have to worry about aggro matchups, so they can just play a ton of counters and discard with Snapcasters and Thirst. We tried it in UWR, Esper, and U/B tezzeret. Every single one was extremely strong, with Tezzeret testing roughly equally to zoo with Nacatl and the other two testing vastly better. Note: this does not mean that Sword is absolutely not unbannable. It's entirely possible we missed a couple of powerful hate cards or interactions that make Thopter/Sword weaker, or that new printings over the next couple months will make it weaker. What it does mean is that it's not a safe unban, meaning that, based on our testing, there are real and credible risks that sword will be dominant.
There are other cards we've done minimal testing for (Mental Misstep, Chrome Mox, and Blazing Shoal), but none of those are actually for potential unbans, but rather for reasons of figuring out more general things about approaching banned lists. We haven't done enough testing for those to be relevant, so I can't make any predictions about them.
Honestly, I don't think you needed testing. :-P Those are definitely the best unban candidates, (in the order BBE, GGT, AV, w/ Song possibly coming off some day if Past in Flames goes away) and Sword, like P. Fire, is never going to be safe to unban.
SCG will almost certainly sell their overflow stock. (don't think anything's wrong with that- increases the number out there if people want them.) They were not buying playmats like the other dealers.
I think just about everyone would agree with this. It will be banned eventually, simply because something will break it, or it becomes the only game in town. Until then - pod, pod away.
I just started ignoring people who thought it was safe. Made my life easier.
They likely printed 5500-6000 of them to ensure enough for judge staff and players. What else would they do with the overstock? (And it's not a bad thing- better to sell them off than destroy things people on the market want.)
Honestly, I don't think you needed testing. :-P Those are definitely the best unban candidates, (in the order BBE, GGT, AV, w/ Song possibly coming off some day if Past in Flames goes away) and Sword, like P. Fire, is never going to be safe to unban.