Tested Discovery // Dispersal as a 4-of in Abzan Traverse, Mardu Midrange, and GriselShoal Goryo's Vengeance, and it was great in all 3 decks. Mardu definitely feels more consistent now, and it was decent at helping fix Abzan Traverse's mana and hitting Delirium.
In the meantime, I predict Discovery // Dispersal will not see play in blue decks. Resembling Strategic Planning that much does hurt.
Hoogland specifically says that one of the appeals of the deck is that it can play as a proactive midrange deck or as a prison deck depending on whether the matchup calls for it and the deck is built right - specifically talking about the lists with Ensnaring Bridge in the board.
Mardu Pyro is also a deck that sits on the "fair" side of the fair-unfair continuum and doesn't really get free wins any more - Blood Moon is not particularly good at the moment, and it's the only way the deck can really just win on the spot. I play the deck because it's fun and viable in enough matchups to not feel like I'm taking a knife to an intercontinental ballistic missile fight.
I'd be happy with them making a new non-rotating format without the fetches, but banning them in Modern? Hell no. Fetching and shuffling can be really annoying and remove the flow from a game, but it's so integral to Modern and older formats as is that getting rid of it now would probably kill them.
With regards to cantrips, and the place of blue in Modern and the current design of Magic: blue's "slot" on the colour pie back in the day was interacting with spells on the stack and drawing cards. Current era design has the idea that players don't like interacting with spells on the stack very much (which I'd believe, listening to the local Standard players), and definitely not as efficiently as you'd need for Modern playability. So that's something we don't really get much of lately. As for drawing cards, well, they've shown they don't want particularly good cantrips in Modern or even in Standard, and when it comes to making bigger draw spells, it's an incredibly fine line between "busted" and "unplayable", especially since drawing cards is such a powerful effect. Treasure Cruise comes to mind, when compared to something like Divination. Drawing 3 cards even as a 3CMC spell? That's pretty damn powerful. Hell, I make use of it in my main Modern deck at the moment, which is Mardu Pyromancer. Since drawing cards like that can be so powerful, I feel like WotC is leaning towards the less powerful end of the spectrum and as such we end up with cards that just aren't... good enough for Modern.
So at the moment blue doesn't really to get to do either of the things that it's known for doing - well, apart from flying creatures, I guess, but there are flyers in pretty much every colour now and while blue creatures are better than they were, they don't compare with the black creatures which also have flying. Regardless, blue is at a crossroads where either everything it could do - drawing cards, for example - can be done by other colours which have more advantages anyway (better creatures, removal, etc) or where one of its defining features has been judged to be unfun and so we're not getting any new cards for it, let alone any that could fit into Modern. When Mana Leak is too powerful for Standard, I feel like something's gone a little awry.
One of the reasons that I love Mardu as a midrange deck over Jund is that the use of Faithless Looting and knowing what cards you have to prioritise in a certain matchup and what role you're playing gives it an element of play too it that I feel like traditional Jund lacks.
Now, this isn't at all based on ban list reasonings or the like that WotC have actually done.
But I think they dislike any deck that can play fair and unfair with a reasonable amount of consistency. The majority of combo decks in Modern are, if they're not comboing, trying to set up the combo or flailing around. Twin (and Pod) are examples of decks that could with a reasonable amount of consistency combo off and could play the fair game just as well as the other decks in the format.
If your deck can play a powerful fair game as well as combo with a decent amount of consistency (and that combo isn't a "soft" combo), I think it will eventually end up banned. It's just a pattern I've seen in Modern. Hell, Amulet Bloom kind of fit that criteria, if we stretch "fair"; yes, it could kill you quickly with Bloom + Amulet, but Bloom as a ramp spell would usually let you start slamming Titans soon enough to outgrind the fair decks in the format. Hell, taking out the Amulets is still a main sideboard plan against a deck like Jund.
You can play a combo deck, or you can play a fair deck. I think it's reasonably apparent from the bans that WotC has made that they don't want you to be able to easily do either or switch from one to the other, especially with a reasonably low opportunity cost in running the combo in your deck.
Jace and Teferi work hand in hand, in my opinion. It's pretty rare that I'd want to play one and not the other... but I'm also not a control player, so my opinion is quite useless here.
Does anyone else have problems with the Storm matchup? The primer lists it as favourable, but I've had real difficulties with them answering my hate and going off - or, if they can't immediately answer my hate pieces, having a lack of a clock to be able to pressure them before they can dig for their answers to my hate and go off.
Admittedly, I'm down a single Kambal in the board, which doesn't help, but I still feel like the matchup is unfavourable.
I know this is changing topics, but does anyone else find it odd that enchantments are the only permanent type that can only be destroyed/exiled by two colors of the color pie instead of 3+? It's something I've been aware of for a long time, as I tend to gravitate towards Grixis decks, and Grixis colors have 0 ways to permanently deal with a resolved enchantment. Enchantment destruction is only in white and green. Meanwhile, Creatures can be destroyed in all 5 colors to some degree; artifacts by red, white, and green; Planeswalkers by black, red, green, and white; and lands by white, red, and green.
I thought of this again when I read a comment in the ban/unban thread about Blood Moon, how part of the problem of Blood Moon is that red can't destroy enchantments, so Blood Moon kind of protects itself. I think I would actually like to see enchantment destruction given to blue. Blue can't really deal with anything else after it's resolved, so it would give it a new angle since they've powered down everything else that blue does these days. Also, enchantments are kind of like persistent magical spells, so blue destroying them would be like them dispelling the persistent spell, so it works on a flavor level. Any thoughts?
I do think this is odd. You might want to bring it up with Rosewater on his tumblr, since he's very big about the colour pie.
What were your cuts in each of the decks?
With regards to cantrips, and the place of blue in Modern and the current design of Magic: blue's "slot" on the colour pie back in the day was interacting with spells on the stack and drawing cards. Current era design has the idea that players don't like interacting with spells on the stack very much (which I'd believe, listening to the local Standard players), and definitely not as efficiently as you'd need for Modern playability. So that's something we don't really get much of lately. As for drawing cards, well, they've shown they don't want particularly good cantrips in Modern or even in Standard, and when it comes to making bigger draw spells, it's an incredibly fine line between "busted" and "unplayable", especially since drawing cards is such a powerful effect. Treasure Cruise comes to mind, when compared to something like Divination. Drawing 3 cards even as a 3CMC spell? That's pretty damn powerful. Hell, I make use of it in my main Modern deck at the moment, which is Mardu Pyromancer. Since drawing cards like that can be so powerful, I feel like WotC is leaning towards the less powerful end of the spectrum and as such we end up with cards that just aren't... good enough for Modern.
So at the moment blue doesn't really to get to do either of the things that it's known for doing - well, apart from flying creatures, I guess, but there are flyers in pretty much every colour now and while blue creatures are better than they were, they don't compare with the black creatures which also have flying. Regardless, blue is at a crossroads where either everything it could do - drawing cards, for example - can be done by other colours which have more advantages anyway (better creatures, removal, etc) or where one of its defining features has been judged to be unfun and so we're not getting any new cards for it, let alone any that could fit into Modern. When Mana Leak is too powerful for Standard, I feel like something's gone a little awry.
But I think they dislike any deck that can play fair and unfair with a reasonable amount of consistency. The majority of combo decks in Modern are, if they're not comboing, trying to set up the combo or flailing around. Twin (and Pod) are examples of decks that could with a reasonable amount of consistency combo off and could play the fair game just as well as the other decks in the format.
If your deck can play a powerful fair game as well as combo with a decent amount of consistency (and that combo isn't a "soft" combo), I think it will eventually end up banned. It's just a pattern I've seen in Modern. Hell, Amulet Bloom kind of fit that criteria, if we stretch "fair"; yes, it could kill you quickly with Bloom + Amulet, but Bloom as a ramp spell would usually let you start slamming Titans soon enough to outgrind the fair decks in the format. Hell, taking out the Amulets is still a main sideboard plan against a deck like Jund.
You can play a combo deck, or you can play a fair deck. I think it's reasonably apparent from the bans that WotC has made that they don't want you to be able to easily do either or switch from one to the other, especially with a reasonably low opportunity cost in running the combo in your deck.
Cheerio, I'll be over here having some Scotch and playing my Mardu deck.
Admittedly, I'm down a single Kambal in the board, which doesn't help, but I still feel like the matchup is unfavourable.
I do think this is odd. You might want to bring it up with Rosewater on his tumblr, since he's very big about the colour pie.