MTG Salvation

Quote from MrMime133 »

Quote from Tiro of Meletis »

404

What video is everyone watching that has these reveals?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygs0kHhczXo


That is the video you are looking for.

Dinosaurs, Vraska and Pirates on Ixalan!!!

Quote from Billiondegree »

First post should be updated to say when the actual next announcement will be.

It still says it will be April 24th. I believe the next one is June 13th, right?

14th if I'm not mistaken

Why is everybody saying a Stoneforge unban would push DnT? Yes it's an important card for the deck in Legacy but in modern Leonin Arbiter is a key card for DnT isn't it? And Arbiter + Stoneforge seems pretty much like a no go.
I haven't played DnT in a while but could somebody please elaborate?

Yes all 4. We really don't care if Abzan uses removal on Snap, E-Wit, or Clique, we got our value from them. The only thing that is relevant to stay alive is Goyf and that's mainly because it's the best answer we have for theirs Goyfs.

Interesting to hear on Garruk, but Huntmaster seems more solid overall.

Bant Eldrazi is easily our worst MU. I haven't found a card that was really good against them. Spreading Seas is solid, Stone Rain can be good but is sometimes actually too slow. I don't think it's worth it to play cards dedicated to your strategy in the SB, just use hate you would play anyway like land destruction or Ceremonious Rejection and pray they don't draw Caverns.

Cavern of Souls certainly is a very annoying card and it single handedly makes Bant Eldrazi one of my hardest MUs.
But statements like 'it should have never been printed' and 'it prevents control from being good in modern'...seriously?
The card has been legal in the format for a long time and was never a problem in decks like Elves or Merfolk.
It's a problem in Eldrazi decks. And the real card at fault there is obviously Eldrazi Temple and not Caverns.
Heck Eldrazi Tron, the most dominant Eldrazi deck currently, commonly plays a SINGLETON Cavern of Souls.And yes they can tutor for it but that means they don't tutor to get Tron online or a Temple.
Modern would profit from more flexible answers and a better answer to lands is definitely one of the more needed ones.
But making Cavern of Souls responsible for control having a tough time in modern is nonsense. Modern is just too wide open for dedicated control decks to do consistently well if you don't have a way to close the game out fast. Even Legacy only had a dedicated 'durdle' control deck because of some very busted interactions (1 mana wraths and the countertop lock).

Don't side out Bolt against DS, it's one of our best ways to win (in combination with Snap/more Bolts/E-Wit or Cryptic obviously).
Against normal Abzan (and Jund) I side out the Vials and bring in Land Destruction instead, exactly because of the better topdecks (against grindy blue decks vial is too good, securing us that we land our 2 for 1 creatures). But against Death Shadow Jund I think the tempo and especially surprise counterattacks we gain from Vial are way to good to pass up on.

I disagree in that we are favorable in the Abzan MU, it's certainly beatable but our answers have to line up correctly as pretty much every card they play provides a problem for us (Discard, Lili, Goyf, Lingering Souls etc.).

Pia and Kiran seems worse than Huntmaster to be honest, especially with being able to vial it in and instant flip. Garruk Relentless seems interesting. I have actually never played with that card. If we get him to flip he seems like an ideal card against DS and solid against multiple other creature based decks.
The questions is how do you flip it against Death's Shadow Jund? Besides Souls tokens (which will kill him pretty fast) they don't play creatures that don't kill him when he fights them.
But give him some testing and tell me how it goes!

Thanks for the report!
Did you really not board in Anger against tokens? Or just forgot it?
How has Huntmaster been against Death's Shadow for you? Being two and potentially more bodies is nice but he doesn't kill any of their creatures flipping and can only chump against their attackers. Haven't tried him yet though.
Also I think boarding out 1x Vial is never correct, either all or nothing, especially against a deck that runs Decay and K-Command.
I think you forgot one game against UR Tron (or lost 0-2 and not 1-2).
Learning from mistakes always works out best, so just remember your mistakes next time you play against Abzan and win that thing!

You got me thinking about Spellskite and actually, he's not even that good anymore. I have the card in my SB since before Twin was banned but since then, Infect is on an all time low, I haven't seen a Bogles deck in months and Death Shadow Zoo and Suicide Bloo died with the banning of Gitaxian Probe.
The interaction with Huntmaster is nice but comes up rather rarely. Even Bant Eldrazi is pretty low currently.
Against which MU is it still really good against?
If it turns out good against Shadow decks, another Huntmaster seems like a decent replacement.
Other possibilities would be Kozilek's Return (good against Elves and Affinity) or Forked Bolt.
Any suggestions for what could be better?

On another note, I will be writing a new primer for this deck (as this one is terribly outdated).
I will hopefully post a draft here in a few days and am happy to get some feedback then!

Thanks!
Being able to protect my Huntmaster with Spellskite against Burn was pretty sweet!
Although it's on an all time low Lightning Bolt is still an all star in this deck and enough reason for me to stay in RUG. He's a major reason we can switch so easily between control/CA mode and tempo/beatdown.
I brought in Threads of Disloyalty against Grixis Shadow (because it's my new tech for DS) just to realize it's a lot worse against Grixis than Jund, you can only target 4 of their main threads and even then, sometimes my life total would be 13+ so the card is actually pretty niche against Grixis. It's obviously better against Jund, but overall I don't like that I can bring it in against pretty much only one deck in the current meta so that goes out.
Back to finding a nice SB card against DS. Next card I'll try is...Redirect.
I saw somebody suggesting it on reddit and really want to try it out. While I wish it would cost one less, it still seems like a must-discard-card for them because playing around it is pretty tough when so many cards of their deck get affected by it. You wanna Thoughtseize me? Nah, I'd rather see your hand and have you discard a card. Push my Goyf? Nope, push your Goyf! You wanna snipe my Snap and let me discard a card? How about you get 2 damage and discard a card!
Also I can bring in Redirect against other decks too. Burn wants to Searing Blaze me? How about no. And I'm already looking forward to the face my opponent will make when I redirect his Ancestral Vision!

The awesome thing about Stone Rain and the likes is that they are actually pretty good against midrange decks too. Keeping UW controls land count lower is good and actually one of the best answers to Celestial Colonnade..I agree on Valakut though and start to think that Spreading Seas is actually the best land hate for us in the current meta.

I brought the deck to FNM again yesterday and won the whole thing!
This is the list I was playing:

And here's a report:
Match 1: Grixis Shadow 2-0
Game 1: Keep Vial, 2x Snaps, 2x Bolts, 2x lands on the play. He continues to play targeted discard but gets stuck on 1 land for 2 turns. A tempo loss he can’t compensate. Remand is brutal if you opponent is on 1 land.
Game 2: Keep Goyf, 2 SV, Cryptic and 3 lands. He discards my Cryptic, Pushes my Goyf. Discards my Threads of Disloyalty and uses Surgical on my Goyf, knowing I have another one in hand. I use Traverse to find Eternal Witness and can exile his Surgical and a Push with Scooze, which gets Terminated. My opponent sees that E-Wit+Traverse easily spirals out of control and uses Snap+Thoughtseize to get rid of it, going down to 3 life in process (talked with him afterwards about it, I think the play was correct, because even with 5 life if I topdeck a bolt he’s dead to it plus E-Wit and Traverse would have found me another Traverse, then a Snap which all would kill him if I had drawn a Bolt over the next few turns). He lands a Tasigur afterwards but my Remand draws me into the Bolt that wins the game after he tapped out to cast Tasigur again.

Match 2: Elves 2-0
Game 1: Keep Bolt, Vial, Snap, Remand, 3 lands on the draw. Bolt his dork, Snap->Bolt his Archdruid on turn 3. Electrolyze+Familiar’s Ruse on his Company, getting back Snap to play Electrolyze again leaves him with no board and only 1 card in hand. He never gets back into the game.
Game 2: Keep Bolt, Anger, Snap, Cryptic, Spell Snare, 2 lands. Spell Snare his Rest in Peace and Bolt his Heritage druid to keep him from spiraling out of control. Then cast Anger on turn four with Dispel up, which counters his Chord. A topdecked Company keeps him in the game for a while but Snapcaster->Anger of the Gods ends his efforts.

Match 3: Naya Burn: 2-1
Game 1: Keep Vial, Scooze, E-Wit, SV and 2 lands on the play. He lands 2 Swiftspears and has me quickly down to 9 but I can Bolt one and Spell Snare his Atarka’s Command next turn. My vialed in Scooze gains me 1 life and eats a Bolt. Next turn Snap->Bolt kills the other Swiftspear and leaves me at 8. Draw and play Goyf, counter his Boros Charm with Spell Snare thanks to vialed in E-Wit which is enough to get there in 2 attacks.
Game 2: Mull to 5 keep 2 lands, Bolt, Dispel, E-Wit. I try to fight back but draw 3 lands in a row and get overrun by 2x Goblin Guides followed by Atarka’s Command, Boros Charm and Bolts.
Game 3: Keep 7 of Bolt, Spellskite, Huntmaster, SV and 3 lands. My opponent opens with a Swiftspear and gets then stuck on one land for a few turns and simply Lava Spikes me twice. I play Huntmaster with Spellskite on the field and start flipping him while keeping up Cryptic. Too much for him.

Game 4: Eldrazi Tron 2-0
Game 1: Keep Vial, E-Wit, Goyf, Remand, SV, 2x lands on the draw. He starts with a Temple and Map but misses his second land drop which gives me enough time to Remand his turn 4 TKS while I start beating down with Goyf to get the Cryptic lock online on my turn 4, which I ride to victory.
Game 2: Keep 7 of Remand, Goyf, Clique, Ancient Grudge and 3 lands. I Remand his turn 3 TKS and Clique him next turn at the end of his draw step to stare down 2x Smashers, Karn, All is Dust and a Map. I choose the TKS and map finds his 2nd Tron piece. I topdeck a Snapcaster, which buys me another turn and 2 draws, one of them is Cryptic, I counter draw his Smasher. SV finds me another Cryptic which counters his All is Dust, I have him down to 7 when he resolves Karn and exiles Clique. I attack him for 2 and play Goyf with a Bolt in hand, knowing all I need is another Snap, E-Wit or Bolt to win this. He drops Smasher and Endbringer, has me down to 3 when I topdeck Vapor Snag, return my own Snap to hand and bolt him for the win.
Super intense game and awesome finish for a super fun and successful night!

Baleful Snake UG
Creature - Snake
Deathtouch
When Baleful Snake enters the Battlefield draw a card.
1/1

Obviously similar to Baleful Strix, but a lot more likely to be printed because it's not a coloured artifact and a little worse (no flying) but in colours that are not represented very well in modern currently.

I largely agree with this article. It's why players like Craig Wescoe T8 a GP with a deck they've been playing for years. Or why Daniel Wong got to the Vegas T8 with Taking Turns. Or why Todd Stevens and his beloved Eldrazi Tron have so much recent success. Just take a look at some of the MTGO regulars who play their decks all the time and routinely repeat 5-0 performances in the Leagues, whether in this current metagame or in past ones. The format is significantly more skill-rewarding than many claim.

In Legacy, you have fewer matchups and overall less diversity, so skill plays out in choices on Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, FoW, Daze, Wasteland, Therapy, etc. These cards are hugely skill-tesitng, and the matchups between the top decks reflect the skill in using those cards effectively. In Modern, you don't have those same kinds of skill-testing cards (indeed, we don't have any of the above cards) but you have significantly more deck diversity. This requires more knowledge of more decks, their sideboards, your sideboarding plan against them, and your/their overall gameplan. It means you need to change how you use your cards every game.

I've watched the pros and vocal streamers that complain about variance, and when I see their games, I see endless misplays and small errors that result in losses. Slamming TS on T1 against decks with no significant T1 or T2 plays and then moaning about a topdeck that won the opponent the game. Mindlessly Bolting dorks before losing to Druid combo. Picking the wrong card off IoK/TS. Choosing the wrong mode on Esper Charm, K-Command, or Cryptic for the matchup. Killing a Baral and then tapping out with more removal in hand and getting wrecked by a T4 Electromancer into the combo after an opponent cantripped three times in the match. Keeping Affinity or Elves hands with no business spells against decks with sweepers. Making awful sideboard decisions like Leyline of Sanctity against Ad Nauseam. Choosing to stay on the play against discard decks like 8Rack. Endless misplays and misjudgments of opposing decks.

Then I watch the games of more technical pilots with deeper format knowledge and see them pick up huge margins from format knowledge. They don't tilt, complain, or blame external factors, and they break down all their choices against opposing possibilities. I don't remember the player, but I recently watched a game where a streamer was in G2 or G3 against a Storm deck. Without even looking up the opposing list, he was worried about the opponent boarding in a Blood Moon plan B and he mulliganed his first hand because it didn't have fetchlands. He kept his second and fetched an Island to Serum Visions on the draw. Sure enough, the opponent rituals into a Moon on their second turn. This is where players in that first category I described above would rage about swingy Modern cards but this guy already knew it and already had the out. Modern needs more of that play and clarity, not the complaining.

Quote from Lilijuana »

Their reason for banning probe was as succinct and to the point as it gets...and correct. I don't see how tournament reports are necessary when they are addressing how the card influences gameplay.

You mentioned the Delver deck above. It runs 17 lands and essentially 56 cards b/c Probe enables such a composition to be viable when normally it would not.

This rationale is arbitrary and applies to dozens of cards in the format. Gameplay reasons are all subjective. That is why we should prefer objective reasons like T4 rule violations and format diversity violations. Name a Tier 1 staple in Modern and I'm sure half a dozen people in this thread could knit together a rhetorical argument about why that card is busted because it is too strong in gameplay. We cannot have Wizards start banning cards for those reasons because it's completely unpredictable and doesn't necessarily improve the format.

Here's the Probe rationale I would have written, assuming I had their data:

"Looking at the results of Modern games on MTGO, we found that no single top-tier deck was consistently winning before turn four and violating the turn four rule. That said, many players complained about how fast the format was. We did a deeper dive and also found that too many overall games were ending before turn four as a result of numerous fast, linear, aggressive strategies, although no single deck was to blame. Rather than ban individual cards from each of these decks (no one of which was alone in violation), we looked at cards shared between all of them to decrease the overall number of games won before turn four. Probe was the most offensive of those shared cards, appearing in the greatest percentage of pre-turn four wins relative to any other shared card.

This finding is supported by Probe's gameplay: it gives perfect information, draws a card, fuels delve, and even pumps creatures for basically no investment. Although it is unfortunate other decks will suffer from Probe's removal (e.g. Delver, U/R Storm), we believe Probe's banning will have a net positive on the format as it overall decreases the chance of fast, top-tier decks winning before turn four. Those decks will likely also find replacements and stay viable. In the interest of the turn four rule, Gitaxian Probe is banned."

This took me ten minutes to write and probably summarizes Wizards' analysis of the card. It also would have preemptively addressed most of the anger around the ban.

The anger at this announcement is unusually overblown and unwarranted, even considering the general Modern outcry at such changes. Although there are definitely some legitimately scary elements of the ban update, most people are complaining about elements that are totally fine, or even heartening.

The GGT ban is perfectly fine. It keeps the deck a top-tier contender without leaving it a Tier 1 mainstay. This lets other GY decks return (remember old faithful Abzan Company?) and lets everyone free up SB slots to fight other decks. The "scary" part about this ban is that it's a reversal of a previous ban, which is unprecedented but not really that scary. I'm fine with companies and organizations changing their minds based on new realities. In these regards, the GGT ban gets top marks from me.

Probe ban gets a B-. Yes, it's effective at taking a little bit off the top of most fast decks without killing any of them outright. In that regard, it's a solid A. Unfortunately, it does this at the expense of very fair Delver decks, which were great for format health. That's C-, unintended consequence ban territory. More importantly, these kinds of silly bans just underscore Modern's problems: WHERE THE HECK ARE OUR GENERIC ANSWERS AND POLICING CARDS/STRATEGIES?? You don't see these absurd bans in Legacy because the format has internal regulation from cards, not external regulations from bans. I'm not saying we need Legacy's exact answers, but we do need answers and we needed them a year ago. Push is a good step in the right direction, but it can't be the final step. If we don't get these kinds of cards, we'll keep stomaching more corner-case bans like Probe and keep inciting even more ban mania and format instability.

So, if the bans themselves aren't that terrible, what's the real problem?

The problem is the update itself. It doesn't cite tournament finishes, doesn't refer back to format guidelines and rules, doesn't anticipate objections to the bans, and overall doesn't build format confidence. It looked like the article was thrown together in less than an hour, when I'm sure Wizards did mountains of testing and analysis before deciding on some of those bans. If Wizards communicated this to their audience, people wouldn't be so up in arms about these changes. Especially if they threw us a bone about how they want to see how the new format shakes out before deciding on possible unbans. That would have been great! Instead, we got a very elementary update with extremely basic reasons. No wonder people are upset: Wizards hasn't done anything to try and build confidence after a big banlist shakeup.

I hope we get some clarification in the coming weeks. I'm sick and tired of delving through AMAs and Twitter posts to figure out Wizards' banlist policy and process. This lack of transparency makes it very difficult to advocate on behalf of the format and entice players to join. With ban mania everywhere, it's hard to stay evidence-based and level-headed, particularly when Wizards doesn't give us any tools to help that fight.

I actually wasn't a huge fan of exarch. The key situations came up slightly less frequently than the mana caused problems.