MTG Salvation

According to ktkenshinx's document (linked in his sig) "MTGSalvation Modern Metagame Analysis - MTGO and Paper Data (September 2014 - January 2015)", the "Post KTK" paper meta has 4.19% Jund and 2.97% B/G rock.

Sorry if you don't think that is high enough representation, but I think that categorically disproves your assertion that it is not viable.

edit: Here's how you know your source is bad: it says burn is 4.75% of the meta. Come on, at least try to vet your data a little.

I'm not sure why people have the impression that turning burn spells into 2 damage spells instead of 3 is a thing that is only relevant in the mirror.

Dragon's claw can be jammed by anyone playing any deck that feels like it is too slow for burn - provided the problem is big enough to justify SB slots. Whether it should be 4 of your sideboard depends on the meta of course, but lets not pretend like there are no printed answers to the deck.

And lets not go down the "dies to removal" line of thinking - almost everything dies to removal!

The effect severely slows down the Burn deck as it relies on the speed of 3 damage per card effects. When this goes down to 2 damage per card, you need a few more draw steps to close out the game, which incidentally is what other decks need to stabilize or just kill the burn deck.

I'd really like to hear people elaborate more on which parameters create a format staple, versus which create a format warping card... are they really any different? Is "warping" simply a term used until it becomes an accepted staple?

Quote from LEH »

WotC just need to print some anti-burn cards that all colors can use and the metagame will sort itself out.

You sure that they have not done this already?

Seriously, boros charm and skullcrack are not good burn spells?

You mean two spells that feature in most or all of high placing modern burn decks?

A card doesn't have to be a bolt or better to be a "good burn spell".

Quote from soebek »

Treasure Cruise has to be banned, and soon. It's obscenely broken and is utterly destroying the online meta. UR Delver the second most successful deck and only growing? Jesus H Christ.

And now Burn is starting to splash blue just to play it...

Absolutely farcical that a card like TC could get past R&D. It's destroying the Modern metagame. It should have been 5UUU at the least.

At least5UUU? Even a single more coloured at 4UUUU would make it categorically worse than Concentrate, and I've never seen concentrate played. So i guess what you're saying is that you want draw 3 spells to be completely unplayable? And R&D are the ones who are clueless?

Hyperbole isn't going to help anything.

One might argue that this card would still be pushed enough to see play at 6UU, and be more or less ignored at 5UUU. Cool heads please

I like how red's answer is blood moon - an enchantment that comes down after they have their mana dorks and likely even already combo'd out (less likely if they are on the draw though).

I think it's a bit disingenuous to sell blood moon as an answer to ascendency storm.

edit: the red answer is Eidolon of the great revel

I really like ash zealot in metas wherein you see lots of snapcaster mage, and I think you are giving up a lot by not playing vexing devil. hellspark elemental is the first thing I would cut - that card never really did much for me when i ran it.

edit: Also, consider cutting a smash to smithereens in your sideboard for a single shattering spree. You probably don't need the 4th artifact hate except against affinity, when the shattering spree is huge.

You are missing the point, remand doesn't take away a card from your opponent, and costs you a card and gives you a draw (net zero cards). So there is no card advantage - you played a card that cost your opponent zero cards and gained you a card, meaning the number of cards in hand/play did not change.

Dismiss is categorically different since it removes a card from your opponent, with the same (effectively) zero card cost to yourself, so +1 card advantage.

On the other hand, remand is often TEMPO advantage if you remand a spell that costs more to play than remand. If you are not able to use the extra mana you gain then it is tempo neutral, which is still desirable if you have an advantage in board state.

I'm sorry, but remand simply is not card advantage. It's a tempo spell, and normally just neutral tempo at that.

Quote from frozencajun »

I still think Combust is better as it hits one of the best and most played creatures in Siege Rhino. BSA is also a problem card it doesn't kill.

Rhino isn't a problem Having Twin tap down an open land with an Ex arch leaving you unable to cast Combust in response to Splinter Twin, is.

I can certainly see your point.

I just think as a matter of most matchups having more in the board will likely be more beneficial.

I am super open to testing.

We should get a gauntlet started to be sure.

WOTC banlist commentary to lighten the mood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYrslokS2Ac&feature=youtu.be

Quote from Lord Seth »

Because having nothing but Standard Pro Tours is horribly boring.

This is my primary reason. Modern's the only way we're ever going to get a Pro Tour showcasing more than the last 3 sets.

Also, I think time has shown that people who invest time and test for the format really do a lot better than people who don't, and that makes me enjoy it even more. People talk all the time about people choosing decks last-minute and doing well, but the people who do well in Modern are the people who consistently play it (Lee Shi Tian, Karsten, Dickmann, etc). Not to restart the ongoing debate in the PV thread, but I really feel that pros think they can cram 2 weeks of testing and think they can collectively come up with the "best 75," and that really comes back to bite them. Modern's a format that cares more about you knowing your opponents' decks than your own, and a lot of players just don't take enough time to familiarize themselves with the format as a whole.

I think if I was a pro I may be annoyed that I'd be forced into this whole new deep realm of Magic by WotC, but I'm a viewer and not a pro. Just like I don't expect them to champion my viewpoints, I don't feel any expectation to champion theirs. As a viewer, I want to see Modern played at the highest of levels, and a Pro Tour is the perfect place to showcase that (as well as WotC's commitment to the format).

If the Pro Tour is supposed to be about the old guard and basically doing a favor for the players in the Players' Club (as opposed to all those qualified in the event) by holding a $40k event, then maybe 4 Standard PTs are the way to go. But if your goal is to showcase Magic's history and to create a great viewing spectacle, then I think holding at least 1 Modern PT/year is a great way of doing so.

Also, the fact that WotC has to keep the banlist more updated due to the PT is a good thing. Having broken cards in the format and "hoping that no one notices the broken decks" is worse than forcing WotC to make the hard bannings due to that PT's existence.

So this thread got created in Deck Creation a few days ago: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/tier-2-modern/596576-abzan-liege.

I've moved it up to Tier 2 and that is where all the Abzan Liege discussion will take place. This will be a place for more "dedicated" Hatebears discussion. Although this technically knocks this archetype down to Developing Competitive for the 1/23 - 2/9 date range, GW Hatebears is currently on track to be a Tier 2 deck for the 2/9 - 3/2 date range update. So I think it's fine to just leave Hatebears here until then, when it will probably be staying anyway.

Hopefully this clears up any archetype confusion! Please let me know if you have any comments or feedback on this, either via PM or in this thread.

Needless to say, this thread is getting locked. But I will happily speak to all of these points.

1. "Constructively *****ing about cards"
***** all you want. I can't think of a single instance where it's not okay to constructively complain about anything. Of course, there's a difference between saying "rofl card sux" and "This card is inferior to Cards X and Y for the following reasons."

2. "Can't talk about bans"
You can talk about bans all you want in the ban thread. Why can't you talk about it elsewhere? Two reasons. First, you can't talk about it in deck threads because it detracts from deck development. Second, you can't start new threads on it because then we have dozens of ban threads all discussing the same thing. By keeping it centralized, we can at least attempt to keep the discussion productive (as much as that is possible in such a conversation).

3. "Don't call people bad names"
This shouldn't come as a surprise. If you call someone a "****head", then yeah, that's flaming. No productive discussion ever came from that. But if you just think that someone is an idiot or stupid, feel free to explain that in a constructive way. Just insulting people is not okay. Basically, you shouldn't be talking to people here any differently than you would talk to them if we were all brewing up decks at our LGS.

4. "Don't talk about future card spoilers outside of the thread"
As with bans, it's not really productive if we have an SCD thread for every single new card, especially if those threads end up having 2-3 posts per thread. It's much better to have everyone centralized talking about spoilers in one place. Once the cards are released, you can even start SCD threads as you see fit. But doing that during spoilers season tends to lead to dozens of kneejerk reaction threads that end up dying out in a few hours.

5. "Don't talk about Standard in the Modern subforum"
That seems pretty self-explanatory to me. If you want to talk about Standard, go there. If you want to talk about Modern, stay here. If you want to draw comparisons between the formats, you can do that as much as you want in a metagame sense (in the metagame thread) or as a Modern-variant of a standard deck (in Deck Creation).


As for the "dwindling" userbase, this is patently untrue. Modern, the Rumor Mill, and the EDH subs have more users than ever before.

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The luck. Is real.

GG

Just FYI, staff and I are working to improve the spreadsheet system and the forum organization schedule. Part of this will be more regular updates. Another part of this will be more intention around "Tiering" decks based on their performance across some metrics. A final part of this will be more regular data-sharing, mostly around graphs and the like. Expect to see this thread and the SCG thread updated to reflect these changes, as well as updates to the Proven/Established criteria.

Living end. If it works for Travis Woo, should work for 7 Year old.