You didn't mention the sideboard, but I think silent gravestone would work pretty well here. You don't target any of your own graveyard, and it at least gives you protection against surgical.
In regards to the "if you don't like modern don't play" mentality:
I was one the players that loved the twin/jund/pod meta, both before and after I started playing twin. I didn't play legacy, and standard was losing its appeal to me. When the banned twin, the whole format shifted for me and I just didn't have any fun, so I started building a legacy deck and resigned myself that modern was no longer the format for me. With the Jace unbanning, I'm excited to try to get back in to it. But when someone says, "if you don't like it, don't play it" I always get a little annoyed. If you love modern, you also need to accept that the banlist is much more fluid than in legacy, and you have to accept that the format might warp to something you don't like anymore due to bannings/unbannings. It's also a brush off answer that basically says, "don't have an opinion if it's a negative one" which isn't helpful.
@BlueTronFTW: I'm not trying to single you out specifically, you just made me think of it <3
No, they probably wouldn't have unbanned him without a reprint planned, but I don't think that's specifically to sell packs, more of a good opportunity to do it. I'm giving WotC the benefit of the doubt as wanting the game to thrive more than they want to move packs of a reprint set. And as I said, people dumping cash to buy a card that only stays off the ban list for a few months is a problem, but it's no more of a problem of someone buying in to jund/pod/twin/any expensive deck and having a card get banned. And jace being $160 is rough, but goyf cracked $200 if I remember right. Magic is an expensive and risky hobby. We know it going in to the game.
Disclaimer: I have jace's already, so I am arguing from a place of not needing them. That said, I stand by my arguments, but might be a little saltier if I hand't already bought them.
I think Jace is pretty risky (as psyched as I am to get to play him in modern), but I also prefer a WotC that takes risks with the ban list. They have an accelerated timeline for the announcements, so if Jace doesn't work out, they can always reban him, and I much prefer that to a format where things take forever to be freed from the list. That said, I feel for people who dump money on a playset of whatever (in this case Jace) only to have him rebanned, but frankly, that's the risk you take with any card in modern (in any TCG, really).
Also, let's assume that WotC is trying to sell packs of M25 (I'm not conceding this is their reasoning for Jace, but hypothetical): Them messing with their current most popular format for 1 set seems risky, but also don't we want WotC to sell packs? They are a business, and magic stops making them money, the game will die very quickly.
I'll speak to my personal feelings on some of these things.
I got in to modern with UWR control, and eventually shifted to the various flavors of twin, while still coming back to control depending on the day. I really enjoyed the meta while twin was legal; twin just fit my play style. With it gone, I was definitely in the camp of 'modern sucks' for a while. I definitely think the format has improved since then, I've come to the realization that I just don't enjoy the format as much anymore. I know blue based control is viable, but I just don't enjoy playing against the current best decks (exception being DS, since that feels the most like a hybrid of control vs twin and control vs gbx).
Additionally, I felt like I could brew a little better when the meta was more stable in the twin days (keeping in mind I'm a terrible deck builder haha). When building a new deck I would come up with my core and then I would ask, "How do I deal with twin/affinity/jund etc?" And then proceed from there. Now there are too many angles of attack. When brewing, you are basically trying to do something linear and faster than those. I liked brewing interactive decks, so this is not good for me personally. So I say again, format is not for me, and that's fine. I've since made the dive in to legacy.
As for the matchup lotto idea: I think modern is guilty of this to some extent. Standard just doesn't have enough decks to make this a problem, and legacy has better universally useful cards/answers that you can win bad matchups without drawing hate. In modern, some matchups are defined by whether to see sideboard cards or not (I'm thinking specifically of uwx control vs dredge). It just feels bad to win or lose based on sideboarding. I think with enough games, the better player will come out on top, but there are a lot of 'bad feels' in modern for me. If you guys love the format, that's awesome. I want to love it again (really hoping for some fun unbans). I like deck diversity, but I like strategic diversity more, and I don't think a long standing, stable meta game is inherently bad. I enjoy those types of formats. I'm a current modern detractor, but if the format isn't for me going forward, that's fine. I don't like standard, but I won't ever complain that it should be changed to fit how I think it should be.
A common problem that I've seen with people who tend to dismiss this sort of harassment is they look at each event individually. "Oh, some guy made a lewd comment? Whatever, that's not a big deal." Since that one thing isn't a big deal, the hypothetical person here just ignores it and forgets it. Then the next one happens, and they do/say the same thing. They are ignoring the fact that for the person on the receiving end, this is the sum of years of comments, and that adds up.
Also, as a community, can we do away with the term SJW? If you see something *****ty, stand up and say something. It's not being a SJW, it's just being a decent human being. This isn't in response to anything specific, just felt like I wanted to say it.
I know you never have enough sb room for any meta, but it felt (emphasis on felt) like the answers you needed in 2015 were more universal or had utility beyond the deck you had them for. Since this was pre delve threats, decay was just a good answer to most things, not just twin. As far as brewing is concerned, with twin you had to worry about twin: splash a color for decay, run that red uncounterable spell (I'm blanking on the name) things like that. Now the question is, "what about scapeshift? and tron? and dredge? and storm?" This seems way tougher to go rogue than simply 'what about twin?'
I think we're saying the same thing, but representing the opposite sides of the coin. And as you say, this is all anecdotal. I just know that for me I haven't been psyched on modern for some time.
One thing I don't quite understand is how adamantly people will say that the problem with the current modern meta is losing to decks, not players, and then reference 2015. Sometimes specifically saying the "twin beats affinity beats tron beats jund beats twin" meta. There's always going to be a degree of rock-paper-scissors action going on, and I think we need to acknowledge it is part of any game's meta. There are some random MU's that will be borderline unwinnable (MFTB's burn vs ad naus. is a great example), but I don't think they are as prominent as some people make it out to seem.
Like Spsiegel said, knowledge and skills are still very much important in modern, especially when you have the potential to run into any one of 30 different decks at a given FNM. Knowing the MU's and how to SB appropriately is what gives a player their edge. But reducing modern to something as simple as "it's all a coin flip" is disingenuous to the format.
I think the difference, at least for me, between the meta then and the meta now is that during the twin-affinity-tron-jund-twin... meta you described, is that during that time, each match-up felt winnable with the exception of tron (that one felt pretty lopsided in favor of tron vs jund, and against vs twin), but then again, tron has always been a pretty lopsided deck. Aside from that, each of the top decks could take steps in their sideboard to shore up some of their worse match-ups, and you rarely felt like you had a bye (I'm willing to concede rose-tinted glasses on this).
Further, the answers you needed in your sideboard for your bad match-ups had uses outside of those match-ups, with the exception of a few cards here and there. The current rock paper scissor meta feels like you have to gamble on your sideboard, since the top decks require pretty specific answers. There's not enough room in your board to shore up every match-up, and as such you have to take a gamble and hope you don't run in to something too often.
Finally, while deck diversity is strong, I actually think this sort of meta is worse for brewing rogue decks. During the pod/jund/twin/etc meta, you knew what to expect from a meta game, and could brew a deck with those in mind (again because the answers required for a lot of them weren't required to be as narrow). Currently, if you brew a deck, it comes back to the problem I mentioned earlier, that there are too many narrow strategies to prepare for, which makes the process far more difficult. Granted, I'm not a particularly good brewer, but I've been trying to find my twin substitute for some time, since none of the 'viable' decks that pop up really appeal to me. I'll also reiterate the rose tinted glasses, along with anecdotal evidence, but this has how modern has felt to me over the past few years. As much as I would love to return to the 2015 meta, I'm ok with it being gone, but I do prefer that style of meta over what we have now.
edit: In regards to brewing: the 5-c humans deck that has popped up is a good example of this. The most successful brewing seems to be pretty linear, since having answers to all the top decks is asking too much.
I don't see the issue with those numbers. Sure, twin had the highest meta share of urx decks (although I would be willing to bet some of that was because it was an easy choice. Not an easy deck to play properly, but that if you didn't know what to bring to a given event, twin was a safe choice but that's just conjecture on my part) but clearly there were plenty of ur decks you could play and do well. The jeskai and grixis control had good matchups vs twin and gbx decks of the field at the time, and once twin was banned, they dropped off the map for a long time. The new jeskai is a very different deck (which is totally fine), but right now what do we have for ur? death's shadow, storm, and jeskai. That seems like much worse diversity in ur than during twin's time. I love twin, I'd love to see it come back, but I've accepted that it's not coming back any time soon. I just wish people would a) accept that wizard's reasons were fairly silly, and b) stop pretending that it was not this absurdly busted deck that just steamrolled everything in it's path. It all comes back to twin never getting a good replacement as a play style (although shadow can scratch that itch even if I never found it to my liking) which is why twin fans tend to be pretty vocal in their complaints.
That said, I definitely would like to see some unbans (BBE, Jace, SFM) but Gustavito makes a good point that I haven't thought of before: that WOTC doesn't want the power level to reach a point that standard cards can't break in to modern. I don't agree with this as a thought process, and as a format gets older and older, it's just the nature that newer cards have a harder time breaking in, but I at least can see the reasoning there, even if I disagree with it. WOTC doesn't look at modern like a competitive format, they look it as a format to market and want to make money off of it, otherwise there's not much incentive to keep it alive.
Twin actually did kill diversity. There were zero URx decks besides twin, and a twin unban with a storm ban would lead to zero URx decks besides twin, as opposed to our current jeskai flash/grixis shadow/storm existence. Just a quick reminder that there are decks that beat storm, like those other two URx builds. Again, just because storm beats someone's preferred deck does not make storm a juggernaut. I maintain that its low price point is the main reason storm is very popular, and when you have a significant portion of the players joining modern to play a cheap, good deck, that high play volume will lead to more high results.
Well this is just not true. We had Jeskai control (the more classic hard control deck as opposed to tempo style we have today), various flavors of delver, storm existed (in it's old school ascension style), grixis control, and rug scapeshift were all around. Even blue moon popped up from time to time.
I agreed with a bunch of Ingram's points, but saying SFM is unsafe is crazy to me. How is turn 3 batterskull/swords too strong when your opponent untaps and plays reality smasher? I'm not even sure if you'd be able to get skull down in the world of modern discard. People would just sandbag the thoughtseize/thought-knot and wait for you to fetch it up. There is so much artifact hate available in most top decks that the equipment wouldn't be much of a problem if it gets down. Even burn would just play more destructive revelry in the board to deal with it. I'm definitely bias, as I want to play me some stoneblade in modern, but like ancestral or SOTM, I think this is a case of people being overly paranoid to a card that will not have much negative impact to the format.
As much as I would love it, twin likely won't come off for the rebood of the modern PT. If they are going to unban something, it would likely be something new (Jace, SFM) or something that has been on the banlist for a long time (BBE).
Force of Nature: This card is terrible, but it was the first rare I got with my very first starter deck back in revised. It will always hold a special place in my heart
I was one the players that loved the twin/jund/pod meta, both before and after I started playing twin. I didn't play legacy, and standard was losing its appeal to me. When the banned twin, the whole format shifted for me and I just didn't have any fun, so I started building a legacy deck and resigned myself that modern was no longer the format for me. With the Jace unbanning, I'm excited to try to get back in to it. But when someone says, "if you don't like it, don't play it" I always get a little annoyed. If you love modern, you also need to accept that the banlist is much more fluid than in legacy, and you have to accept that the format might warp to something you don't like anymore due to bannings/unbannings. It's also a brush off answer that basically says, "don't have an opinion if it's a negative one" which isn't helpful.
@BlueTronFTW: I'm not trying to single you out specifically, you just made me think of it <3
No, they probably wouldn't have unbanned him without a reprint planned, but I don't think that's specifically to sell packs, more of a good opportunity to do it. I'm giving WotC the benefit of the doubt as wanting the game to thrive more than they want to move packs of a reprint set. And as I said, people dumping cash to buy a card that only stays off the ban list for a few months is a problem, but it's no more of a problem of someone buying in to jund/pod/twin/any expensive deck and having a card get banned. And jace being $160 is rough, but goyf cracked $200 if I remember right. Magic is an expensive and risky hobby. We know it going in to the game.
Disclaimer: I have jace's already, so I am arguing from a place of not needing them. That said, I stand by my arguments, but might be a little saltier if I hand't already bought them.
Also, let's assume that WotC is trying to sell packs of M25 (I'm not conceding this is their reasoning for Jace, but hypothetical): Them messing with their current most popular format for 1 set seems risky, but also don't we want WotC to sell packs? They are a business, and magic stops making them money, the game will die very quickly.
I'll speak to my personal feelings on some of these things.
I got in to modern with UWR control, and eventually shifted to the various flavors of twin, while still coming back to control depending on the day. I really enjoyed the meta while twin was legal; twin just fit my play style. With it gone, I was definitely in the camp of 'modern sucks' for a while. I definitely think the format has improved since then, I've come to the realization that I just don't enjoy the format as much anymore. I know blue based control is viable, but I just don't enjoy playing against the current best decks (exception being DS, since that feels the most like a hybrid of control vs twin and control vs gbx).
Additionally, I felt like I could brew a little better when the meta was more stable in the twin days (keeping in mind I'm a terrible deck builder haha). When building a new deck I would come up with my core and then I would ask, "How do I deal with twin/affinity/jund etc?" And then proceed from there. Now there are too many angles of attack. When brewing, you are basically trying to do something linear and faster than those. I liked brewing interactive decks, so this is not good for me personally. So I say again, format is not for me, and that's fine. I've since made the dive in to legacy.
As for the matchup lotto idea: I think modern is guilty of this to some extent. Standard just doesn't have enough decks to make this a problem, and legacy has better universally useful cards/answers that you can win bad matchups without drawing hate. In modern, some matchups are defined by whether to see sideboard cards or not (I'm thinking specifically of uwx control vs dredge). It just feels bad to win or lose based on sideboarding. I think with enough games, the better player will come out on top, but there are a lot of 'bad feels' in modern for me. If you guys love the format, that's awesome. I want to love it again (really hoping for some fun unbans). I like deck diversity, but I like strategic diversity more, and I don't think a long standing, stable meta game is inherently bad. I enjoy those types of formats. I'm a current modern detractor, but if the format isn't for me going forward, that's fine. I don't like standard, but I won't ever complain that it should be changed to fit how I think it should be.
Actually, Kess is fine with this. She doesn't target anything
Also, as a community, can we do away with the term SJW? If you see something *****ty, stand up and say something. It's not being a SJW, it's just being a decent human being. This isn't in response to anything specific, just felt like I wanted to say it.
I think we're saying the same thing, but representing the opposite sides of the coin. And as you say, this is all anecdotal. I just know that for me I haven't been psyched on modern for some time.
I think the difference, at least for me, between the meta then and the meta now is that during the twin-affinity-tron-jund-twin... meta you described, is that during that time, each match-up felt winnable with the exception of tron (that one felt pretty lopsided in favor of tron vs jund, and against vs twin), but then again, tron has always been a pretty lopsided deck. Aside from that, each of the top decks could take steps in their sideboard to shore up some of their worse match-ups, and you rarely felt like you had a bye (I'm willing to concede rose-tinted glasses on this).
Further, the answers you needed in your sideboard for your bad match-ups had uses outside of those match-ups, with the exception of a few cards here and there. The current rock paper scissor meta feels like you have to gamble on your sideboard, since the top decks require pretty specific answers. There's not enough room in your board to shore up every match-up, and as such you have to take a gamble and hope you don't run in to something too often.
Finally, while deck diversity is strong, I actually think this sort of meta is worse for brewing rogue decks. During the pod/jund/twin/etc meta, you knew what to expect from a meta game, and could brew a deck with those in mind (again because the answers required for a lot of them weren't required to be as narrow). Currently, if you brew a deck, it comes back to the problem I mentioned earlier, that there are too many narrow strategies to prepare for, which makes the process far more difficult. Granted, I'm not a particularly good brewer, but I've been trying to find my twin substitute for some time, since none of the 'viable' decks that pop up really appeal to me. I'll also reiterate the rose tinted glasses, along with anecdotal evidence, but this has how modern has felt to me over the past few years. As much as I would love to return to the 2015 meta, I'm ok with it being gone, but I do prefer that style of meta over what we have now.
edit: In regards to brewing: the 5-c humans deck that has popped up is a good example of this. The most successful brewing seems to be pretty linear, since having answers to all the top decks is asking too much.
I don't see the issue with those numbers. Sure, twin had the highest meta share of urx decks (although I would be willing to bet some of that was because it was an easy choice. Not an easy deck to play properly, but that if you didn't know what to bring to a given event, twin was a safe choice but that's just conjecture on my part) but clearly there were plenty of ur decks you could play and do well. The jeskai and grixis control had good matchups vs twin and gbx decks of the field at the time, and once twin was banned, they dropped off the map for a long time. The new jeskai is a very different deck (which is totally fine), but right now what do we have for ur? death's shadow, storm, and jeskai. That seems like much worse diversity in ur than during twin's time. I love twin, I'd love to see it come back, but I've accepted that it's not coming back any time soon. I just wish people would a) accept that wizard's reasons were fairly silly, and b) stop pretending that it was not this absurdly busted deck that just steamrolled everything in it's path. It all comes back to twin never getting a good replacement as a play style (although shadow can scratch that itch even if I never found it to my liking) which is why twin fans tend to be pretty vocal in their complaints.
That said, I definitely would like to see some unbans (BBE, Jace, SFM) but Gustavito makes a good point that I haven't thought of before: that WOTC doesn't want the power level to reach a point that standard cards can't break in to modern. I don't agree with this as a thought process, and as a format gets older and older, it's just the nature that newer cards have a harder time breaking in, but I at least can see the reasoning there, even if I disagree with it. WOTC doesn't look at modern like a competitive format, they look it as a format to market and want to make money off of it, otherwise there's not much incentive to keep it alive.
Well this is just not true. We had Jeskai control (the more classic hard control deck as opposed to tempo style we have today), various flavors of delver, storm existed (in it's old school ascension style), grixis control, and rug scapeshift were all around. Even blue moon popped up from time to time.