MTG Salvation

I'm pretty sure the Pros found colourless eldrazi when no one else did. Sure, with colourless eldrazi in the meta other eldrazi builds were ended up being superior - but those were found by pros as well.

I think it's a bit of a misunderstanding to claim that pros don't build decks in modern. That being said, it should really not be a surprise that a community of thousands or hundreds of thousands of members will create a higher volume of creative output (deck designs) than will a much smaller community of several hundred pros.

But the colourless eldrazi example really stands out.

Just like with professional chess, most of the pros were reasonably well-off before pursuing the 'career'. The expense (opportunity cost?) isn't the major consideration. Many players try to make it pro at chess as well, and I don't think its right for people to be called stupid for pursuing what they enjoy.

I was wondering if we were in bizarro world or something. Eldrazi tron doesn't rely on tron very much as it is - evidenced in how little effort the deck makes towards getting it online early.

Tron is fine in the meta. Just another set of powerful decks in good company of a meta where no one is really trying to be fair. Thoughtseize ----> Gofy ----> Lily isn't exactly using the kid gloves. Eldrazi tron wasn't even 8% of the top64 at vegas.

I would encourage people to focus on their own refining/brewing ventures to solve the meta "problems" instead of advocating bans.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/comments/6inuxi/modern_gp_vegas_top_64_metagame_xpost_rmodernmagic/

Super on-board with Dredge not being categorically "worse" for the meta than other linear decks that attack from distinct angles (such as affinity, etc). I've never understood why the "but it strains the SB" argument is held as valid (by some) when applied to Dredge, but not Affinity.

Quote from ktkenshinx »

Lies. That event was extremely entertaining in all the wrong and unintended ways. Wish I could find a clip that included Twitch chat, the audio issues, the video issues, and didn't miss a second of the action.

So much this. The whole experience was great, even if for completely different reasons than WotC intended. I thoroughly enjoyed the sheer cringe and unintentional humour. I'll never forget the video cord getting disconnected in the middle of the whole thing, or the stuttering audio after the video came back.

Quote from bizzycola »

Single most reasonable comment on what unbanning SFM would mean ......We don't know (gasps and screams fill the forum)

It's rather pedantic to note that the exact effect of SFM entering the format is unknown. Obviously, we can only playtest (as many have done) and theorize. I have never seen a report from an individual who, upon playtesting SFM, has concerns that the card itself is problematic insofar as the lines of play are concerned. Without exception, every single objection to SFM from individuals who test it have been reserved for how other decks would respond to SFM's presence - a topic with even more uncertainty than the direct effect SFM might have.

Contrast this with the admitted little-to-nothing WotC does for testing in modern, and you might see why individuals feel they have a better grasp on the issue than those purporting to manage the format.

If you hold everything up to the standard of "we must be 100% certain of the outcome before we unban" then nothing will ever fulfill that criteria. That is the same as saying nothing should ever be unbanned, a position with little support.

It has been discussed ad nauseam why SFM is theoretically safe, and all testing data I've ever seen has confirmed that. According to the testing data, SFM is broadly on the same level as cards seeing play in the tier 1 decks that might consider running SFM (meaning little or no net gain for tier 1 decks), with some more granular benefits and drawbacks when you go into the details. Where SFM really offers more to the metagame is when you consider the cards it would replace in tier 2-3+ strategies.

I don't understand how people can be optimistic about unbans for modern at this point. The fact that standard is a dumpster fire (how is this different from usual?) does not get them a pass.

Given the history of bannings and refusals to unban, I doubt Death's Shadow makes it past the next update unless is sees a significant drop-off. It would be stupid and warrantless, but consistent with their previous actions and statements.

It seems that WotC figured that since they had frustrated their Standard players to max with repeated failings, why not also frustrate the modern players by omission. After multiple statements describing future consideration towards UW (articles, twitter), we don't even get a "we're still looking at data" as an olive branch.

If WotC had banned something here, that would have been a huge mistake and completely unwarranted. I don't think they should get credit for avoiding that obvious failure - but the fact that people want to give them credit for not making a stupid mistake is fairly indicative of player confidence.

Points for not failing more? I don't think so.

edit: Note that they use the truly awful league data for stuff. That alone is a true indictment of this analytical abilities. Non-tournament structure events are highly problematic without including various tiebreaking metrics (which are functions of opponent's scores). It is very problematic to weigh a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all 0-xs along the way the same as a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all x-0s.

Comon WotC, give this guy his Bant Stoneblade deck! You know it's the hero modern needs!


<----- This guy is biased.

Quote from ashtonkutcher »

JW, with Jeskai doing very well in the standings in events this weekend (especially at the Open but to a lesser extent at the Classic), where are the All Control Decks Matter people?

It's interesting to look at all the different decklists. One had kiki combo, another had 4 snap + 2 torrential gearhulk. Another had 4 geist of saint trafts while another similar list choose spell queller instead.

I think this supports the same position I've had for a long time (meta's hostility to control still waxes and wanes, of course): Control decks in modern are difficult to build and master, but a variety of builds have a skill ceiling that are high enough to permit skilled pilots to take them to the top of a large event. I don't find that underlying concept problematic since decks (obviously) have different skill ceilings and skill floors.

There is a large pool of cards that work for UW/Esper/Jeskai control decks, which gain and lose value with the shifting meta. No coincidence that Kiki showed up at place 9 in an event where Fatal Push was being chosen over Lightning Bolt in many decks.

Quote from Polac94 »

Hey guys. I'm not a modern player but I follow entusiastically the format. I'd like to ask what do you think about unbanning cards that belong to non-played (or lightly played deck) in order to make a shake-up of the format.
I'm referring to powerful cards such as Stoneforge, Bloodbraid elf, Deathrite and punishing fire (maybe even Jitte). These are fair cards for midrange/tempo strategies, which aren't oppressive actually. Would they destroy the format?

Pretty sure the only content you'll find here outside of opinions on those exact topics is metagame analysis. If you want to see what people think about that, why not read back a few pages rather than ask people to produce more pages on those topics?

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I found some more data - the MTGO PTQs. There are only 4 so far this year, but still it's decent chunk of data. The lists are updated.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZRLhtRToCI2VkJ-xYVwwvYuYtFmCLyMyRH1pbjCdBg8

None of the deck databases online seem to have the paper PTQs. I don't think they are available, f anyone knows where to find them, please let me know.

Burn, Ad Nauseam and Storm don't produce non games?

Storm was literally solitaire all throughout this weekend.

All I see is personal agendas that want to be fulfilled.

Burn and Affinity haven't left tier 1 in over 2 years, AD Naus has never been tier 1 except for a short duration

UR Storm is bordering on tier 1, if not already


No one cares what you find more enjoyable, you're not stating arguments, you're just stating your biases and preference because Eldrazi Tron, Titanshift and Grixis Shadow seem to offend you.

You clearly complained about UR Storm and a number of unfair decks and then said the format hasn't felt fun, I'm not misrepresenting your words.

You then listed that you wished the format looked like XYZ, which was a bunch of fair, midrange/control decks.

I'm a midrange player at heart, but you can't just snub all these unfair decks.


This thread is incredibly frustrating, half the posters are calm, reasonable posters, and the other half are people who clamor for bans the moment a deck does well. If we had it everyone's way Shadow would have been banned in the last announcement and the format would probably be super combo/aggro based.

Modern is 2017 has been just as fun to me as 2015. 2016 was crap, but being better than 2016 is not why I feel the format is "passably good".

There's no deck currently that feels too good to me. Out of the top 15 decks right, all but 2 of them are doing busted things, UW Control and Jeskai are the only decks I can think of not doing anything broken.

I really think SFM and BBE would be great to unban this month


I think Jund continues to be a garbage deck without BBE, and I'm not sure BBE can really catapult the deck back to the top.

I think BBE really needs to come off now, the card is severely not dangerous anymore.

I'd like to see DNT wreck those decks, too.

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How does one attack ETron? Other than "hope they stumble" or "damage race," what can decks actually do? Mind you that, as I mentioned last page, answers like Ceremonious Rejection are handled by their 4x, main deck Chalice of the Void. Hitting their lands doesn't really hurt them, all their creatures are hugely-advantageous 2-for-1s, they pack one-sided board wipes that get rid of all your non-land permanents, they have access to tons of graveyard hate, countermagic for sorceries, additional board wipes, and a top end that nobody can compete with, all with a pain-free manabase that gets to run multiple sol lands and utility lands at no detriment to color fixing.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like when this deck loses, it's only because it loses to itself or to an explosive hand out of a hyper aggro deck.

Dismissing ceremonious rejection due to chalice would be like dismissing kor firewalker against burn due to skullcrack. Yeah, they have a 4-of that can answer the problem, but that problem still needs to be answered. In the rejection/e-tron case, we're talking about a a chalice that can't be cheated out turn 1 can can be stopped by the very card that answers the rest of the deck.

Between Chalice and Cavern of Souls, you can't reliably count on Rejection to save you. It's definitely good, but it's not even back-breaking. It's more of a speed bump.

Remember, Chalice is a 4x main, meaning they'll have one to play on turn 2 nearly 50% of the time. Chalice also shuts off lots of cards from lots of decks, not just Rejection. The card wrecks hard and is played in the main deck with virtually no downside.

Yet Eldrazi Tron is not putting up nearly the same numbers as its eye of ugin predecessor. Its just good against some decks.

So you would advise waiting for it's metagame share to be greater then the combined share of all the other tier one decks before considering bans? Pretty slick.

The problem with rejection Vs chalice is what happens when they draw and cast chalice before you find your counter. SSG is still a card which those decks can play if they prioritize chalice enough, like they did at the pt.

Yes. I want a deck that doesn't violate the turn four rule to be tier zero before banning.

I've been working on this in my spare time for a couple days and thought I would share it with you all. With the recent changes to MTGO "5-0" data sharing to a smaller, non-random sample, there is no longer a good source for tier and general meta analysis data.

Being a software developer with the skills to pull it off in a relatively short amount of time, I decided to go ahead and take on this project to do a meta analysis. It will only take me a few minutes to update this when new data comes available, and I plan to keep it up to date for as long as I'm following the Modern competitive scene. I may turn it into a website with more features later, but for now a spreadsheet is fine.

The data includes a tier list with a raw meta share, weighted score, and some other stats. My methodology is explained below the analysis link.

Without further ado, the results can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZRLhtRToCI2VkJ-xYVwwvYuYtFmCLyMyRH1pbjCdBg8

Meta Description

The paper meta analysis covers all major tournaments. All tournaments feature at a minumum:

• Hundreds of players
• 9 Swiss rounds
• Top-8 playoff
• At least 16 placement results posted

The types of tournaments currently included are:

• Grand Prix
• SCG Open
• SCG Invitational
• SCG Classic

The online meta analysis covers weekly Modern Challenge events. Only decks with at least 5 wins in the tournament are included. 4-3 decks are not included. Usually anywhere from 17-25 decks will have 5 wins or more in the 32 results posted.

All software was written by a professional software developer who specializes in big data analytics. All code is written using industry best practices and includes rigorous unit tests.

Archetype Definitions

Most of the archetypes are obvious, but some concessions had to be made for the sake of clarity in the lists. This was the hardest part of the whole process because each deck had to at least be glanced at before being categorized because the naming is often inconsistent or even flat out wrong. I've captured the published name in addition to my curated name so it's available for future analysis.

"Scapeshift" - All variants, including the current favored deck featuring Valakut, Primeval Titan and Scapeshift in addition to the Into the Breach version.

"U/Bx DS" - Grixis Death's Shadow plus the odd Esper Death's Shadow, which differ only slightly (red or white splash) and have the same plan.
"G/Bx DS" - Jund, G/B and the odd four-color Death's Shadow variants with white splash (but not blue), and not Abzan.

"Jund" - Encompasses non-Death's Shadow Jund Midrange and similar G/B Midrange decks.

"Abzan" - All non-Death's Shadow variants with or without Traverse.

Jeskai - There are three distinctions:

• "Jeskai Control" - All control-oriented variants, including Queller, Nahiri, etc but not U/R variants.
• "Jeskai Saheeli" - Semi-control variant running 4x Saheeli Rai and 4x Felidar Guardian for the "Oops, I win" combo.
• "Four-Color Saheeli" - There is also a variant running green that's more all-in on the combo and is a distinct deck.

"Gx Tron" - G/B, G/R, and G/W variants of the traditional Tron deck.

"Death and Taxes" - The mono-white deck only, no B/W or G/W variants.

"B/W Eldrazi" - A distinct Eldrazi variant, sometimes called "Eldrazi and Taxes". Some similarity to the mono-white Death and Taxes but different enough to be separated.

Bant and G/W Company - There are a several variants, and the naming in deck lists is often quite mixed up:

• "Counters Company" - All Devoted Druid/Vizier of Remedies combo variants. These decks are named lots of different things in deck lists, but they are consolidated here under one name.
• "Knightfall" - Knight of the Reliquary variants whether G/W or Bant w/Retreat to Coralhelm or counterspells.
• "G/W Hate Bears" - A distinct deck from the above, also distinct from but similar to Death and Taxes.

"Turns" - All Ux color variants.

Meta Share Calculation

Meta share is calculated as a raw percentage of all placements in all tournaments analyzed for the last 90 days with no weighting. It is not analagous to overall meta share since it only considers top finishers, but it is certainly a reasonable proxy for meta share at the top of the competitive meta.

Tier Calculation

Tiers are determined using the community standard metric of overall meta share. The cutoffs are fixed as follows:
Tier 1: >= 4.0%
Tier 2: >= 2.0%
Tier 3: >= 1.0%
Tier 4: >= 0.5%
Untiered: < 0.5%

Weighted Tier List Calculation

Results are weighted using scaling functions on two dimensions. The first dimension is placement in the tournament results, with a higher placement scoring a little more and with bonus points for each Top-8 win. The second dimension is time, with more recent tournaments scoring highest and more distant tournaments scoring an increasingly reduced amount.

Archetypes are weighted not just by placing in the top of the tournament but also by where they place and whether they won additional Top-8 games. The scaling function is linear and relatively flat such that the 32nd place deck gets 1 point, the 8th place finisher gets 2 points, and the 1st place finisher gets 2.5 points. Decks that win Top-8 games (i.e. the first through 4th finishers) get an additional .5 points for each win (.5, 1 or 1.5 points).

For some tournaments, there are only 16 finishers given. In this case, the scaling still works from a base of 32, so the 16th place deck would get the same number of points (1.6) that the 16th place deck would get in a 32-finisher result set. The same applies to every placement up to 1.

The numbers given above apply only to the most recent tournament, and more distant tournaments scores will be deducted a percentage amount depending on how distant they are. All tournaments being scored are in the last 90 days. Scoring deduction amounts scale linearly from a base date of the most recent tournament date, with the most distant tournament placements (90 days older than the most recent) having their scores reduced by about 50%. Scores that are one week older than the most recent event would be reduced by only about 3.89%, and so on.

I disagree completely that removing pillars is a good thing, a required thing, and that it was that which opened up the format.

The only one that could be is Pod.

Affinity is still here, and Jund died from new cards.

Its new sets which provides innovative decks, not bans. Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeriod.

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Quote from Zorakkiller »

This disappoints me so much. If anything game quality had been undervalued at due to this diversity at any cost attitude. I'm starting to think that people that the reason people are accepting of current modern is that in the recent past modern was terrible and people are just happy to have a not terrible but far from perfect modern format back

I've been saying that for nearly a year. Things only seem great now because we still have scars and PTSD from how utterly horrible basically all of 2016 was. We should have higher standards than "well, it's better than the worst time in Modern's history!"

I started to dislike Modern as soon as Birthing Pod got banned. It literally allowed Burn and Infect to become viable decks and also meant that there were very few oppurtunities to leverage playskill when both of those decks let you take very few game actions in a given game. When Modern was Affinity, Jund, Splinter Twin and Birthing Pod, I won a lot more during that period of time than I do now just because those were 4 decks that you knew was really good in the format and everything else was basically several levels below them. And it wasn't like one deck was an overwhelming favorite over another, you literally had to know how to approach each matchup with each deck.

So what I am gathering.....is that the format and metagame changed and you couldn't keep up and now you're whining about it. Okay then.

Modern prize support doesn't scale with the amount of work you have to put into it, why even bother? I'd rather become enslaved in a third world country and pick cotton off a field than subject myself to rolling dice in Modern. I can do less work in Standard and get the exact same amount of reward and I also have more opportunities at playing high level Standard than I do at Modern. It's not like Modern rewards my ability to metagame enough to dedicate time to it.

Have fun with the cotton then. See ya later!

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Jace, the Mind Sculptor being a degenerate card, while a Sol Land, or an Ancient Tomb without you taking damage, but for only a specific type of creatures(and the most powerful in the game) is ok is beyond me!

If JTMS is not fine, then cards like Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, or heck even Collected Company are not fine as well.

Temple is narrow because it only affects Eldrazi. In any other deck it is worthless. SSG is card disadvantage. CoCo is tempo advantage but not degenerate because it is answerable. If I am playing someone who is showing they are playing Green and have 4 mana open, I expect it. Creatures are also the easiest permanent to remove in the game. Most decks that have a problem dealing with CoCo need to pack board wipes. It is just like any other deck. JTMS is almost impossible to deal with unless you remove it the turn it comes out. U has the best support to protect it and if it lives more than 1 turn, you lose the game in a grind. Every deck in the format would need to dedicate hate for it or they lose. The power level of it is backbreaking if left unchecked unlike any of your above mentioned cards.

Yeah like fow, counterspell... oh wait that's legacy. So you can't give examples of how Jace is bad currently but can for the other cards mentioned? Decks need to play more wraths to deal with creatures but Jace is seemingly impossible to deal with? A sol land is narrow because it requires running arguably the best tribe in mtg (guess eye never should have been banned and it was even legendary)? Those aren't good arguments imo of cards power levels.

Jace is answered by burn to the face, having more than 1 creature, combining off before it remotely matters, stripping it out of opponents hand, making opponents sac it, counter it... I don't get how you could argue like it's the best card in the game or even the modern format. Maybe Ds lands a shadow then fames it welp sweet Jace you had. There are plenty of cards to fight Jace just like anything else and decks would adapt.

You act as if U has no answers for creatures? How many JTMS are going to be played in Mono U? None. How many mono U decks are in format? 1.and Fish doesn't want or need it. Any control deck in format is either going to T4 wipe, turn 5 Jace or vise versa. Burn is Jace's worst enemy yes but it is easily countered with life gain and counter support. This is not Legacy where a deck goes off turn 1 and you shrug and keeps a card like JTMS at bay. This is Modern where this as a turn 4/5 play with proper support wins you games.

Blue has basically no answers for creatures, you just proved that. Jace being UU is a real cost to that too. What deck are you wiping and then casting Jace and straight winning against right now? Affinity? Didn't need the Jace there, eldrazi? Assuming the wrath/Jace wasn't hit with tks, Ds? Maybe they start playing claim//fame, Valakut, can't keep them off everything, dredge? Don't think they care about a nonexililing wrath, regular tron? Don't think they care too much, coco, zoo, fish sure I'll give you that but that's fine. I wasn't saying burn as the deck I was just saying a burn spell but yes burn is another deck that won't care too much about Jace. Nothing in t1 currently really will imo. Isn't that what you want in modern a t4/5 threat that you are hoping sticks around to win you the game because if it's not that and not an infinite combo are you just saying control should never have a way to win before they take 25 min in g1(I believe Jace would help this not hurt)? This is why I said we need real proof because your idea of how it plays out and mine are very different.

? For people on here, do you think modern would even be a format if not for the reserve list/price? I ask this because so often price, legacy power level, and just results in other formats are arguments for and against cards. So if everyone had access to legacy do you think people would play modern? Everyone I talk to loves legacy, now I don't play it too much myself because our store only has like 8-12 people and modern have 20+ every night, and tons of things seem viable right now. So would a legacy lite be that bad?

Quote from NZB2323 »

Yeah, I mean every deck has its weaknesses, but a lot of times BW tokens can come back from a ratchet bomb or EE with a lingering souls from the GY, a bitterblossom, or a Sorin.

I'm not saying BW tokens is the best deck in the format, I'm just surprised it's not even tier 2.

As someone who has been jamming fair decks for a few months, I think BW Tokens is a) better than its tiering and b) incapable of doing really busted things. UW Control's and BW Tokens' most unfair and broken plays are still pretty fair. I think this is because these decks don't cheat on mana so their power/explosiveness ceiling is pretty low. This translates to few, if any, free wins, and even your average win can be relatively hard-fought. You also need lots of reps to pick up those matchups and margins. All of this pushes BW Tokens down the charts, but I'm sure you could be pretty successful with it if you committed.