Since Modern isn't on the pro tour anymore what is the chance that wizards ever bans another card in modern. I believe the only reason they were banning decks every year was to shake up the pro tour. Granted Eldrazi Winter was a different situation that truly did need to be fixed. I wouldn't Be surprised if some of the ban cards from the past get unban going forward.
Do you play modern much or did you come here on a whim?
Play all the time just don't think wizards need to ban anything anymore.
Just to be clear, are you saying the Eye of Ugin ban was a mistake? I happened after the PT was cancelled after all... I don't understand how you can possibly say bans are only to shake up the PT, when you acknowledge yourself that Eye had to go in the next sentence. Your position sees self-contradictory.
If all you're saying is that we don't need "shake-up" bans anymore, then yeah that is pretty uncontroversial.
So much this. In my own personal testing in anticipation of it's release, even burn - the deck most directly challenged by SFM-Bskull, doesn't seem to care. Searing Blaze loves it when SFM is slammed turn 2. From turn 3+, it's pretty common to have access to Skullcrack and/Atarka's command to tempo out the SFM deck for a turn or two. Even worse post-board when Destructive Revelry handily answers the 4 mana investment towards Bskull.
If/when SFM ever sees play in the format, I suspect it will be more of a flop than many people are anticipating. Fatal Push / Lightning bolt are everywhere, and even just those cards preclude Bskull from coming down until turn 5. Kolaghan's Command in a significant % of top decks is likely to prevent SFM from seeing tier 1 play.
Honestly I fee like some of the arguments on stoneforge mystic are disingenuous at best.
1. It's not as fast as the godhands from various decks.
Things like t3 breach are not comparable and not useful to bring up in the conversation. T3 breach is also faster and more broken than esper charm if it had a -5/-5 option, or a hexproof dark confidant. Comparing a single card to an undisrupted godhand that requires the entire deck be constructed around said godhand is silly.
2. It doesn't slot directly into any of the current t1 decks
True enough, and it would certainly be true that stoneforge would create new decks. However, that doesn't mean it's safe. If you banned prized amalgalm, dredge would be tier 3. Does that mean that dread return is ok? Of course not.
3. Ok but it's not good enough to be broken.
This is the most complex one to answer. I think people are fixating too much on trying to imagine overwhelming kill turns. That is very much not what stoneforge mystic does. Stoneforge mystic is strong because it is a cheap, efficient win-con, which significantly alleviates deck-building constraints. The ability to include a 7 card package with a 2 drop which wins the game by itself, no matter the actual clock, is extremely significant.
I realize legacy is not modern, but check out the following:
Notice that a lot of the creature inclusions are actually very weak when it comes to board presence. There's a lot of random bears and 3 drop hate creatures. Why is this deck good? It doesn't do anything that broken right? Sometimes it blinks a 4 drop with flickerwisp to exile something. How's that better than Eldrazi with eye of ugin, eldrazi temple, ancient tomb, city of traitors, and wasteland in its mana base? Surely ACTUAL CONSISTENT t2 thought-knot is better than t3 batterskull right? How's that better than Burn with Price of Progress and Fireblast? Surely burn having access to 8 damage spells is stronger?
This entire deck is only good because the Stoneforge package provides enough winning potential for the rest of the deck to be devoted to disruption. You can play cards like phyrexian revoker and thalia, heretic cathar mainboard, the deck was even running 4 vryn wingmare at one point (now it's 1-2). This is what I mean by freeing up deck-building constraints.
Similarly, if you conceptualize stoneforge as part of UW, you don't say "oh, I'm not racing affinity, so it's bad kappa". You never raced affinity as UW. If you could race affinity as UW, nobody would play anything but UW. Instead, you ask:
Can UW include more spells because of the stoneforge package's win con?
Can UW significantly lower its curve because of stoneforge's mana efficiency?
Can UW get run currently non-viable spell packages because of the turn on which stoneforge stabilizes the board?
Does the addition of stoneforge patch a significant portion of the weaknesses of a given UW build?
Do any of these changes make UW too good?
It is unlikely that stoneforge ever makes a deck unbeatable. The risk we need to think about is the creation of a deck which has a 55% win rate against almost everything. For example, imagine if a UW list found that it could lose a lot of its "survive vs. aggro" stuff like lightning helix and electrolyze because stoneforge is stabilizing the early game and focus on other matchups. Also all of you who don't think stoneforge is good against affinity are trippin. Like, they cast it turn 4 or 5 while holding up removal. It's insanely strong to be able to continue removing/countering things while threatening to poop out a 4/4 lifelinker at instant speed.
Would it actually be broken? Difficult to say. Its CERTAINLY not "super safe". Unfortunately, I haven't tested anything with stoneforge since before the eldrazi winter.
You don't suppose the the banned-in-modern Umezawa's Jitte has any impact on DnT's ability to beat burn, win creature matchups such as eldrazi and generally interact better with the opponent, do you? Jitte was a notable omission from your analysis, yet it plays a central role in SFM's inclusion in the deck.
Your argument reminds me of players saying Ancestral Vision was too strong because it is played in Shardless sultai in legacy, while overlooking the synergies that allow it to be played. They might have had a point if we had Shardless agent in the format, just as you might if we had Jitte.
As much as people including myself might want SFM unbanned, I think it has a pretty low chance of actually getting unbanned. I think there are two things WotC will find paramount in this discussion:
-future design space limitations
-legacy and modern decks both featuring the card
While there are a few different angles from-which to view SFM, I think WotC will not unban it in order to avoid making modern look more like legacy, and to avoid constraining future design space. These two factors IMO, combined with a general lack of impetus to act, will result in SFM not getting it's deserved unban.
It's really sad to see people putting so much work into MTGO data. The data is completely useless, yet is getting used in analysis.
To reiterate: MTGO leagues are worth nothing because they are not swiss pairing events - they don't qualify as tournaments. If that weren't enough, we are aware that the data given is a subset [of unknown %] of the total data set and there is no way to know how representative the data given is of the whole set.
MTGO league data is irrelevant. It should be treated as such.
Again, Wizards banned two cards in Standard solely on those data. And they are looking at Marvel again based on those data.
MODO's data are totally relevant and the fact that you don't recognize them as such is puzzling and concerning.
Fortunately, the vast majority of people who play Modern treat MODO's data as highly important ones and probably will continue to do so since Wizards rates MODO's data so high.
WotC has access to all the MODO data - much more than just 5-0 leagues (match win % etc) they publish. Are you unaware of the wealth of MODO data available to WotC that is not published? They are basing their actions on the whole of the data, not just what they publish.
If they are, in fact, acting solely on published data from events that do not qualify as tournaments, that is even more troubling than just the playerbase using such awful data.
It's really sad to see people putting so much work into MTGO data. The data is completely useless, yet is getting used in analysis.
To reiterate: MTGO leagues are worth nothing because they are not swiss pairing events - they don't qualify as tournaments. If that weren't enough, we are aware that the data given is a subset [of unknown %] of the total data set and there is no way to know how representative the data given is of the whole set.
MTGO league data is irrelevant. It should be treated as such.
SFM is 100% safe. There is no scenario where a 4/4 lifelink vigilance creature is too fast on turn 3 - we're letting people Karn Liberated people on the same turn. I'm sorry but there is no way one is fair but not the other. Moreover, batterskull can be taken out from the hand after its searched with ubiquitous thoughtseize or thought-knot seer in addition to just having the germ token fatal pushed or the whole sfm-batterskull pair taken out by Kolaghan's command. In addition to dying to removal, it also dies to a lot of the interaction of the format while being slower and more vulnerable than other cards seeing play right now. Artifacts have a hard time in modern because there are already plenty of decks getting hated out by artifact hate. The answers already see wide and common play.
How is it possibly justifiable to say that TKS/karn/lily are a reasonable turn 3 play, but SFM crosses the line? SFM is in good company with other very strong cards that will win the game if not dealt with - something white is notably in short supply of.
I'm coming from a much more liberal philosophy in regards to the banned list, where I would not have banned many of the cards recently. Modern is a format full of powerful interactions leading to extremely aggressive games. I don't think SFM could possibly be a threat to the meta overall, and that the most likely result of an unban would be similar to the Ancestral Vision or Wild Nacatl unban: a card that fits into decks looking for the particular tool, but not strong enough to build towards in decks already boasting strong plans (most decks). This isn't Legacy, we've got Umezawa's Jitte banned.
The pairings are not Swiss, so the results are mostly irrelevant. We only use them because, other than paper tournaments (which large ones are limited to multiple events in a single weekend, several months apart), we have virtually nothing else to go off of.
I remain convinced that people are unaware exactly how negative of an affect this has on the value of the results. The results are entirely meaningless. Not only are the events being reported not tournaments - they are aptly-named "League"s for a reason, but we don't know what % of the 5-0s are reported or how representative the sample provided are of the data set.
MTGO numbers are purely meaningless and of zero value. I used to think they had some value, but the fact that they are not tournaments makes them meaningless.
That wrath is interesting. It costs at least six mana over two turns, but the real test will be to see how it plays after turn 3 since you can't untap any lands, not just those you use to cast Reckoning. Interesting how As Foretold helps mitigate the drawback in the late game.
A little concerned about the concentration of power cards in black if this is a hit, but we'll have to see how the rest of the set unfolds.
Samut seems good, not sure which deck wants that card though. And or course, landing a bolas would be a beating - if you can ever cast a 3 colour over 7 mana walker.
Did you see the sam stoddard quote (from last week's mailbag article I think) where he states that Miscalculation is too powerful for standard? It seemed to imply that a counterspell good enough for modern is not going to happen. So while I have some hope from their earlier statement about stronger answers, it seems like they stepped back from that by denouncing Miscalculation as too strong.
That has been known for a while, players just refuse to accept it. Maro stated years ago when cancel became the go to unconditional counter that they Wotc were not going to print an unconditional 2 mana counter in Standard any more. Double blue is not considered a condition with the mana bases we have in Modern.
Right...
Except that recently WotC (march?) released an article acknowledging that answers have been too weak compared to threats in standard, and that they intended to make stronger answer cards. I think it was quite reasonable to therefore conclude a stronger counterspell was possible - a departure from the previous paradigm.
This Sam Stoddard comment closed the door on that to some extent. They have not said directly that they intended to print counterspell in standard, but it wasn't so unreasonable to hope that better answers might mean something like counterspell comes back.
It's not just their Modern mismanagement. Standard has made it even worse with not one, not two, but FOUR bans in Standard and talk of even more. The gap between R&D, D&D, and the competitive scene is cavernous.
The funny thing is that all of these failures directly relate back to the lack of good generic answers. Thankfully, it looks like the folks floundering in D&D and R&D have finally figured this out, so we'll all hold out hope things get better by the end of the year. I also think Wizards is going to finally figure out that constant banning is bad for format and game confidence. Even if this lesson originates in Standard, I expect it will benefit Modern too.
Did you see the sam stoddard quote (from last week's mailbag article I think) where he states that Miscalculation is too powerful for standard? It seemed to imply that a counterspell good enough for modern is not going to happen. So while I have some hope from their earlier statement about stronger answers, it seems like they stepped back from that by denouncing Miscalculation as too strong.
I play 2 Scooze in the 75 as well so it's not like I am saying Scooze is bad. Rather, it is just less important to see in a given matchup. Tarmogoyf is a great beater in these grindy matchups you want gavony and scooze for, while being a much better clock in the other matchups like ad nauseam, tron/eldazi, storm, eggs etc.
Notably I'm playing the second ghost quarter over gavony township for some harder matchups like tron/eldrazi. Given this decision, I think Renegade Rallier is a superior grindy card to Tireless tracker. Not only does it help the ghost quarter game plan against ramp decks, but it is especially relevant when playing goyf as you can easily get 7+ power on the board when you bring back a goyf. The increased average power output from your Cocos is also notable (and easy to underestimate).
Note that Scooze and tracker are a bit mana intensive, something I'm trying to avoid - I'll dump my extra mana into Kessig on most turns.
Played the deck at a small 5-rounder GPT for vegas. Matches went Bant Eldrazi W 2-1, Burn L 1-2, BTL Scapeshift W 2-0, Lantern Control W 2-1, Burn W 2-1. Finished 1st on breaks after swiss and dropped out of the cut since I had already won the prizes and wasn't going to GP vegas anyways. Goyf was a squire one turn out of the whole event, and otherwise got up to 3/4 and 4/5 quickly enough to be a real clock. Pretty much always happy to get goyf. Can't emphasize enough how important a followup the goyf is when your dork gets bolted. I would have put a kor firewalker in the board if I had known there would be so much burn today.
If all you're saying is that we don't need "shake-up" bans anymore, then yeah that is pretty uncontroversial.
If/when SFM ever sees play in the format, I suspect it will be more of a flop than many people are anticipating. Fatal Push / Lightning bolt are everywhere, and even just those cards preclude Bskull from coming down until turn 5. Kolaghan's Command in a significant % of top decks is likely to prevent SFM from seeing tier 1 play.
Your argument reminds me of players saying Ancestral Vision was too strong because it is played in Shardless sultai in legacy, while overlooking the synergies that allow it to be played. They might have had a point if we had Shardless agent in the format, just as you might if we had Jitte.
-future design space limitations
-legacy and modern decks both featuring the card
While there are a few different angles from-which to view SFM, I think WotC will not unban it in order to avoid making modern look more like legacy, and to avoid constraining future design space. These two factors IMO, combined with a general lack of impetus to act, will result in SFM not getting it's deserved unban.
If they are, in fact, acting solely on published data from events that do not qualify as tournaments, that is even more troubling than just the playerbase using such awful data.
To reiterate: MTGO leagues are worth nothing because they are not swiss pairing events - they don't qualify as tournaments. If that weren't enough, we are aware that the data given is a subset [of unknown %] of the total data set and there is no way to know how representative the data given is of the whole set.
MTGO league data is irrelevant. It should be treated as such.
How is it possibly justifiable to say that TKS/karn/lily are a reasonable turn 3 play, but SFM crosses the line? SFM is in good company with other very strong cards that will win the game if not dealt with - something white is notably in short supply of.
I'm coming from a much more liberal philosophy in regards to the banned list, where I would not have banned many of the cards recently. Modern is a format full of powerful interactions leading to extremely aggressive games. I don't think SFM could possibly be a threat to the meta overall, and that the most likely result of an unban would be similar to the Ancestral Vision or Wild Nacatl unban: a card that fits into decks looking for the particular tool, but not strong enough to build towards in decks already boasting strong plans (most decks). This isn't Legacy, we've got Umezawa's Jitte banned.
MTGO numbers are purely meaningless and of zero value. I used to think they had some value, but the fact that they are not tournaments makes them meaningless.
A little concerned about the concentration of power cards in black if this is a hit, but we'll have to see how the rest of the set unfolds.
Samut seems good, not sure which deck wants that card though. And or course, landing a bolas would be a beating - if you can ever cast a 3 colour over 7 mana walker.
Except that recently WotC (march?) released an article acknowledging that answers have been too weak compared to threats in standard, and that they intended to make stronger answer cards. I think it was quite reasonable to therefore conclude a stronger counterspell was possible - a departure from the previous paradigm.
This Sam Stoddard comment closed the door on that to some extent. They have not said directly that they intended to print counterspell in standard, but it wasn't so unreasonable to hope that better answers might mean something like counterspell comes back.
Notably I'm playing the second ghost quarter over gavony township for some harder matchups like tron/eldrazi. Given this decision, I think Renegade Rallier is a superior grindy card to Tireless tracker. Not only does it help the ghost quarter game plan against ramp decks, but it is especially relevant when playing goyf as you can easily get 7+ power on the board when you bring back a goyf. The increased average power output from your Cocos is also notable (and easy to underestimate).
Note that Scooze and tracker are a bit mana intensive, something I'm trying to avoid - I'll dump my extra mana into Kessig on most turns.
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
1x Horizon Canopy
2x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Stomping Ground
3x Forest
1x Plains
2x Ghost Quarter
1x Kessig Wolf Run
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
2x Retreat to Coralhelm
4x Noble Hierarch
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Selfless Spirit
4x Tarmogoyf
3x Voice of Resurgence
1x Courser of Kruphix
4x Knight of the Reliquary
2x Renegade Rallier
3x Spell Queller
1x Reflector Mage
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Stony Silence
2x Blessed Alliance
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Kataki, War's Wage
1x Meddling Mage
2x Negate
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Rhox War Monk