So, since I can't get a sideboard guide due to meta changes
Can anyone tell me the matches where I should cut most, if not all aether vials?
Read Covals article, hated siding out vials against storm---is this right, for example?
Thanks in advance
I don't know if there is going to be a consensus on this.
Vial is a great card, but it's a terrible topdeck. It exchanges one card (the copy of Vial) for additional tempo throughout the game. Generally, you should side at least some of them out against the decks where the extra card is more important than the tempo.
Personally, I never side out all of my copies of Vial. Sometimes I board out 1-2 copies against grindy discard decks and also against very fast decks where I might lose by the time my Vial goes up to 3. In other words, I'm boarding out Vials on both ends of the spectrum: when my opponent's deck is blazingly fast or when my opponent's deck is using attrition to win the game.
Storm, however, meets neither of those criteria. It's possible that I'd cut a Vial depending on my opponent's list, but generally I'm leaving my Vials in. The best thing you can do against storm is Vial in Eidolon of Rhetoric with a cantrip or a mana accelerator on the stack in the middle of their combo turn. The Vials also help get around their counterspells.
What do you guys think about canopy for the white version?
It's great.
Generally speaking, it competes with the Shefet Dunes slot, so before Dunes existed, Canopy was more common. Now, players get to pick whichever one works best in their deck. I'd recommend keeping Dunes if you're going to run Displacer, but if you cut Displacer, definitely run Canopy instead.
No. If you curve into a Copter and your opponent lets you keep it, he or she will lose to it. Copter was overpowered in Standard and it's very good in Modern.
I'm also finding any sideboard guides really scarce.
This is a metagame deck. The good news is that some form of the deck will always exist, because it's never poorly positioned in the metagame. The bad news is that the maindeck and the sideboard shift rapidly to combat changes in the metagame. You won't find many sideboard guides for two reasons: first, your sideboard is contingent upon your maindeck, which has 6-14 flex slots, and second, the sideboards change very quickly.
If you have questions about sideboarding for a specific matchup, you're better off just asking about it in this thread and waiting for players to give you advice.
Hey guys, dont mean to derail the thread but has anyone tried a red splash for death and taxes? I know in legacy, you can splash for a Plateau. How about in modern?
Magus of the Moon is kind of a nonbo with Path to Exile/ Ghost Quarter, but red also provides Lightning Bolt for bad matchups like affinity and elves. Thoughts?
Short answer: it gets talked about, but seldom gets tested. To my knowledge, it's never put up meaningful results.
Long answer: it's probably competitive, but it's really hard to build properly. Lightning Bolt is the reason to play red, just like Hierarch in green. The problem is that it's such a nonbo with Thalia that you almost never want to run Bolt and Thalia in the maindeck. If you cut Thalia, it plays a lot less like a Taxes deck. If you play Bolt out of the sideboard, you're probably boarding it in to deal with decks like Elves, Affinity, Counters Company, and Merfolk, at which point it's functionally equivalent to Sunlance.
Magus of the Moon is very tempting to put in the deck, but on the surface, Mangara is similarly tempting to put in mono-white. I'm not trying to compare the two, but I am trying to suggest that not everything that seems good actually plays well. Magus not only turns off all of our land destruction, but it also turns opponents' fetchlands into mana producers. In my experience, Magus may win games on the spot, but it also loses games by not being something more generically useful; it's good against the 3-color decks that we're already competitive with and it's bad against Elves, Affinity, Counters Company, and Merfolk.
At the moment, I don't think that WR is better positioned than mono-white. With the printing of Field of Ruin, I'd rather be threatening my opponents' manabases than making them play around Blood Moon. Good opponents will know how to do the latter, but even good opponents may stumble against the former.
Over the last year or two, I've had a few ideas about how to build WR D&T. I even started typing up a mini-primer for it, but I never got around to finishing it. Again, I think WR is playable and possibly even competitive. But I also think it's the hardest version of the deck to build properly. For example, it may have to play Thalia out of the sideboard, but that could just be the price of maindecking Lightning Bolts.
I have a strong desire to go reductio ad absurdum on this, because your claim is equally valid for a lot of things on the ban list. Lots of new cards exist today that didn't exist in 2011. That doesn't mean we're unbanning Skullclamp and just waiting for the dust to settle.
The argument was about how Punishing Fire makes creature decks invalid. I pointed to several creature decks that were great while Punishing Fire was around, and then was countering the claim that "but these other creature decks weren't around when Punishing Fire was!" by pointing out factors that have made those decks better than then. Heck, look at the decks you listed again: "Affinity, Death and Taxes, Elves, Merfolk, Counters Company, Humans, Faeries, Soul Sisters, and to a lesser extent Burn." I've already explained how Affinity was great when Punishing Fire was around (and it remained good after its banning). But if the argument is that it was Punishing Fire keeping all those creature decks down, we would've seen a big increase in them, right? Not really. Faeries was decent for a while then dropped off really hard until Bitterblossom was unbanned. Soul Sisters did manage a respectful 2nd place at a Grand Prix, but then did basically nothing afterwards, indicating it chanced upon a favorable metagame for its finish (it is a bit questionable how effective Punishing Fire would have been against it anyway, as it feeds directly into its lifegain plan). The rest were fairly fringe, if they were around at all. Merfolk and Elves did eventually become really good, but this happened was years after Punishing Fire was banned and thus is ascribed more due to cards like Master of the Pearl Trident or Collected Company giving them a boost than Punishing Fire being banned.
There really wasn't an appreciable increase in creature decks after Punishing Fire got banned. Birthing Pod was good, but it was decent while Punishing Fire was around. Weirdly, the deck that got the most benefit from the Punishing Fire ban was Jund, which suddenly rose to become one of the best decks in the format--although, admittedly, the banning of Wild Nacatl could have had a lot to do with that also.
As for the Skullclamp example, that misses a key difference between the cards: Skullclamp doesn't "invalidate" anything, at least not directly. It isn't a card that's just so darn good against a particular kind of deck that that kind of deck can't compete; it's a card that's just insanely good, as is true for most cards on the banned list. Ancestral Recall isn't overpowered because it's so effective against any particular kind of deck, it's just such an astoundingly overpowered card that it's banned for that reason. Come to think of it, Punishing Fire is a bit of an anomaly on the banned list in that it's primarily an answer card. The only other cards like that that are banned or restricted in the major formats would seem to be Jace and (in Vintage) Trinisphere.
But in attempt to dialogue with you, I just don't think you realize how oppressive Punishing Grove can be. It doesn't just deal two damage at a time to creatures. It's excellent in multiples and can be used against players (one damage at a time). Even a single copy of Punishing Fire can be used twice in the same turn on an individual creature, provided the spell started the turn in your hand. And as an avid D&T player, and I'm telling you that the land destruction route is an extremely unreliable way to deal with the problem.
Punishing Fire can be used against players but it's very ineffective and slow at doing so--granted, it can add up, but that's more for grinding against midrange or control rather than something to deal with decks heavily based around creatures. However, let's again look at what you stated. "Even a single copy of Punishing Fire can be used twice in the same turn on an individual creature." Sure, you can do that on one creature. It also means you spent 5 mana (2 to cast Punishing Fire, 1 to get it back, 2 to cast it again) to deal four damage to a creature. You could've done that for 1 mana with Flame Slash.
True, the point is that Punishing Fire can recur and do it over and over again whereas Flame Slash is a one-shot thing. But it takes time for Punishing Fire to be able to add up to be better than other cards, which is usually not all that impressive against creature decks which aim to defeat the opponent quickly.
On Death & Taxes, it is true that land destruction is unreliable, but my point was that it's still a strategy that can be utilized to an extent many can't.
Not just viable, but Tier 1. Is there any particular reason to believe it wouldn't be still be Tier 1 with Punishing Fire back in the format? While the format has gone through a number of changes, I don't see anything that makes Affinity weaker against Punishing Fire. Also, the update was September, not October.
I also notice you completely ignored my mention of how amazing Zoo was when Punishing Fire was around. If anything, the worry regarding Punishing Fire is not that it'll invalidate creature decks, but that it'll make one creature deck in particular (Zoo) way too good, which was really the problem with it back then. It's why Wild Nacatl was unfairly banned, Zoo was so good and they wanted to hit a card directly from the deck, probably worrying that hitting the card indirectly responsible for its rise wouldn't do the trick.
I ignored the Zoo comment because it's irrelevant. That's like saying the second-best deck during Eldrazi Winter wasn't invalidated by the Eldrazi decks.
How is it irrelevant? Let's look back at your comment:
I don't think Punishing Fire is that great. What creature decks does it invalidate exactly?
All of them.
Zoo is a creature deck. If it isn't invalidated (and history indicates that far from being invalidated, it would become the best deck in the format with Punishing Fire legal), then that clearly disproves your claim that all of them would.
Furthermore, I don't think you can treat anything from 2011 as reliable data points about the format. The format was new and the dust was still settling. Fire and Nacatl were the last two cards banned before nine months of no changes to the ban list. Nacatl was splash damage from Fire, just like BBE is still splash damage from Deathrite Shaman. You shouldn't use a period of sweeping changes to the format as evidence that an individual card should be unbanned.
Hrm, when did I ever argue Punishing Fire should be unbanned? I was pointing out how completely ridiculous your claim that it would invalidate all creature decks by pointing out creature decks it didn't invalidate as well as the fact that the creature decks someone could point to as having been invalidated didn't seem to be all that helped by its banning. Considerably better arguments against Punishing Fire than the claim it invalidates creature decks would be that it might make Zoo insanely good like it did before or that it would be problematically pervasive.
As for the claim of "dust settling" I don't see how that disproves my points regarding Zoo and Affinity. Punishing Fire was very popular, and those decks were able to thrive in a format where it was widely played. If anything, "dust settling" seems like it would likely to see a reduction in Punishing Fire as people attempt to better deal with the decks that aren't all that impressed by it.
Missing the point. Punishing Fire does what Pyroclasm does, but only to one creature at a time, whereas Pyroclasm hits all of them at once. So, assuming you do have Grove of the Burnwillows, you spend 2 mana on turn two and 3 mana on turn three just to accomplish potentially less than Pyroclasm did for 2 mana on turn two.
Similarly, Anger of the Gods hits for more damage and for less mana than Punishing Fire does. It takes a while for Punishing Fire to get better than those cards, and if you survive that long against an aggro deck then the game is probably yours anyway.
This is probably your worst set of points. The oppressiveness of Punishing Grove comes from its versatility, including its ability to hit players. It's a Swiss-Army knife for an aggro deck; it removes blockers, it hits players, it acts as a fantastic mana sink, and it's reusable. If you can't tell the difference between Punishing Grove and Pyroclasm or Anger of the Gods, I don't know how to help you.
Of course a strength of it is its ability to hurt players. The point was that against decks heavily based on creatures, including the ones you mentioned, that "versatility" is actually weaker than cards already legal in the format. Its strength (compared to those cards) is more that it's decent against decks that don't care about Pyroclasm, but that doesn't explain how it invalidates creature decks.
Also, I'm very confused by your statement that it's "a Swiss-Army knife for an aggro deck" indicating it's great for an aggro deck, but this is to try to back up your claim that it invalidates all the creature decks? How does that work, for the card to be at its best in the decks it supposedly invalidates?
Look, I extended an olive branch trying to dialogue about this.
In exchange, you've returned with:
1) CharonsObol says Punishing Fire invalidates creature decks
2) Zoo is a creature deck that uses Punishing Fire
3) Therefore, CharonsObol is wrong
Even though this is the internet, I'm pretty sure that most readers are capable of discerning that this response...
I don't think Punishing Fire is that great. What creature decks does it invalidate exactly?
All of them.
...is using sarcasm to prove a point. I can't believe I have to spell this out explicitly, but I didn't mean that literally every deck running creatures can no longer win games of Magic.
From the original 2011 B&R Announcement Explanations:
Punishing Fire, when combined with Grove of the Burnwillows, gives a repeatable 2 damage for 3 mana. This pair of cards is commonly used, and is devastating to creature decks relying on creatures with less than 2 toughness. It also is a very slow and reliable win condition, netting 1 life for 3 mana. Tribal decks relying on 2 toughness "lords" see very little play, and this is a major barrier to their success.
More or less, I've repeated this justification using different words. You've chosen to argue with me about it. I'm not sure why you've chosen to argue with me - especially since you conceded that you're not necessarily advocating its unbanning - but here we are. You don't have to take it from me that Punishing Fire reduces deck diversity by crippling small creature decks; you can literally take it from WotC instead. WotC was pretty clear about it. I've been pretty clear about it. And your only response has been that the prevalence of Zoo and Affinity between October and December of 2011 is proof that creature decks will still exist.
I don't know what to tell you.
I'm just going to be over here playing Modern without Punishing Fire. You can be over there doing whatever you want.
Billiondegree wanted a list of decks. That's a list of decks. I basically just combed through the Tier 1, Tier 2, and Developing Competitive lists and figured out which ones play a surplus of creatures with 2 toughness or less. If you have a problem with the decks on the list, take it up with the Modern metagame, not me. Just because a deck has a small metagame share doesn't mean the deck doesn't exist.
And those decks would continue to exist, even if they were made worse, after a Punishing Fire unban. You can't pull the "well, they exist, even if they're barely played!" which is countered by the fact that if anyone plays them, they still exist. People still play decks that have never even Day 2's a Grand Prix in Modern's history, so they clearly exist.
But by what do you decree that those decks (at least the ones that are decent) would disappear? Most of them are "swarm" aggro decks which spot removal is often not that amazing against because you kill one threat and they have a lot left. Sure, Punishing Fire can recur and hit more things (if you have it and Grove of the Burnwillows in play), but it's slow at doing so. Now, someone might claim they weren't that big when Punishing Fire was around, but that ignores the various upgrades many have gotten; Faeries didn't have Bitterblossom, and Merfolk was missing Master of the Pearl Trident (making buffing easier and Punishing Fire worse). Elves didn't have Collected Company, which is key to its grinding gameplan that allows is to deal with removal. It also ignores several things in some of the decks that give it an edge: Death & Taxes's land destruction makes Grove of the Burnwillows a lot worse, Soul Sisters benefits from lifegain.
Counters Company would definitely be much weaker, though. Its grinding plan is a lot worse than previous Collected Company decks and is mostly just hoping to get the combo out, which Punishing Fire is very effective at thwarting.
I have a strong desire to go reductio ad absurdum on this, because your claim is equally valid for a lot of things on the ban list. Lots of new cards exist today that didn't exist in 2011. That doesn't mean we're unbanning Skullclamp and just waiting for the dust to settle.
But in attempt to dialogue with you, I just don't think you realize how oppressive Punishing Grove can be. It doesn't just deal two damage at a time to creatures. It's excellent in multiples and can be used against players (one damage at a time). Even a single copy of Punishing Fire can be used twice in the same turn on an individual creature, provided the spell started the turn in your hand. And as an avid D&T player, and I'm telling you that the land destruction route is an extremely unreliable way to deal with the problem.
I do find your assertion that Affinity would be invalidated amusing, however, as it was Tier 1 while Punishing Fire was in the format (and Zoo was something like Tier 0.5).
Punishing Fire was banned in December 2011. Modern first became a format in June 2011 during the Community Cup. Modern's initial ban list was in June and it was subsequently updated in August and September.
Which brings us back to your point: is your contention that Affinity would be okay because it was viable between October and December of 2011?
Not just viable, but Tier 1. Is there any particular reason to believe it wouldn't be still be Tier 1 with Punishing Fire back in the format? While the format has gone through a number of changes, I don't see anything that makes Affinity weaker against Punishing Fire. Also, the update was September, not October.
I also notice you completely ignored my mention of how amazing Zoo was when Punishing Fire was around. If anything, the worry regarding Punishing Fire is not that it'll invalidate creature decks, but that it'll make one creature deck in particular (Zoo) way too good, which was really the problem with it back then. It's why Wild Nacatl was unfairly banned, Zoo was so good and they wanted to hit a card directly from the deck, probably worrying that hitting the card indirectly responsible for its rise wouldn't do the trick.
I ignored the Zoo comment because it's irrelevant. That's like saying the second-best deck during Eldrazi Winter wasn't invalidated by the Eldrazi decks.
Furthermore, I don't think you can treat anything from 2011 as reliable data points about the format. The format was new and the dust was still settling. Fire and Nacatl were the last two cards banned before nine months of no changes to the ban list. Nacatl was splash damage from Fire, just like BBE is still splash damage from Deathrite Shaman. You shouldn't use a period of sweeping changes to the format as evidence that an individual card should be unbanned.
As for the others, good ol' Pyroclasm is generally better than Punishing Fire against them, though admittedly Punishing Fire does have more general utility.
Missing the point. Punishing Fire does what Pyroclasm does, but only to one creature at a time, whereas Pyroclasm hits all of them at once. So, assuming you do have Grove of the Burnwillows, you spend 2 mana on turn two and 3 mana on turn three just to accomplish potentially less than Pyroclasm did for 2 mana on turn two.
Similarly, Anger of the Gods hits for more damage and for less mana than Punishing Fire does. It takes a while for Punishing Fire to get better than those cards, and if you survive that long against an aggro deck then the game is probably yours anyway.
This is probably your worst set of points. The oppressiveness of Punishing Grove comes from its versatility, including its ability to hit players. It's a Swiss-Army knife for an aggro deck; it removes blockers, it hits players, it acts as a fantastic mana sink, and it's reusable. If you can't tell the difference between Punishing Grove and Pyroclasm or Anger of the Gods, I don't know how to help you.
UW Taxes is a viable option?
Spell Queller and Reflector Mage are very powerful cards, also Mausoleum Wanderer can be a good support with Geist, Queller, Selfless. Some counters in the board, Meddling Mage and maybe more blue stuff.
Please see this post. The information is a little out of date, but not much has been added to the WU lists since Spell Queller.
Honestly, I wouldn't recommend the blue splash at the moment. I just don't think it's very well positioned in the metagame.
I don't think Punishing Fire is that great. What creature decks does it invalidate exactly?
All of them.
Oh, you wanted a list. Well, Affinity, Death and Taxes, Elves, Merfolk, Counters Company, Humans, Faeries, Soul Sisters, and to a lesser extent Burn (it's also possible that Burn just starts playing it).
Because Humans, Faeries, and Soul Sisters are tearing up the metagame as is, right? Seriously though, Humans? Punishing Fire can't invalidate what's already invalidated. And the idea Burn would run it is laughable. Might as well have Gx Tron run Blood Moon.
Billiondegree wanted a list of decks. That's a list of decks. I basically just combed through the Tier 1, Tier 2, and Developing Competitive lists and figured out which ones play a surplus of creatures with 2 toughness or less. If you have a problem with the decks on the list, take it up with the Modern metagame, not me. Just because a deck has a small metagame share doesn't mean the deck doesn't exist.
I do find your assertion that Affinity would be invalidated amusing, however, as it was Tier 1 while Punishing Fire was in the format (and Zoo was something like Tier 0.5).
Punishing Fire was banned in December 2011. Modern first became a format in June 2011 during the Community Cup. Modern's initial ban list was in June and it was subsequently updated in August and September.
Which brings us back to your point: is your contention that Affinity would be okay because it was viable between October and December of 2011?
As for the others, good ol' Pyroclasm is generally better than Punishing Fire against them, though admittedly Punishing Fire does have more general utility.
I don't think Punishing Fire is that great. What creature decks does it invalidate exactly?
All of them.
Oh, you wanted a list. Well, Affinity, Death and Taxes, Elves, Merfolk, Counters Company, Humans, Faeries, Soul Sisters, and to a lesser extent Burn (it's also possible that Burn just starts playing it).
Unless you want a swap ban with Grove, Punishing Fire should just stay banned.
I'm not trying to discourage you, but goldfish simulation codes alreadyexist. Trying to generalize them for a bunch of different decks is likely to make your tool worse.
Birds are great, if you don't have Vial in your opening Hand, you Play Birds and can get Arbiter + GQ opponents' land next turn.. or Play big Thalia turn 2 (depends on opponent's deck).. it's very smooth and I didn't got manascrewed.. I like the Birds more than Hierarch, since they have flying and I would always take the 4 more flying creatures than the Exalted trigger.. you nearly don't even need sideboarding against some of the Tier decks like Burn, Tron etc. and with Birds you have some blockers against Affinity to buy you time until you find the sideboard Card/Wrath..
The green splash has been good for a long time. The recent printing of Ramunap Excavator gave it some new tech, although I haven't had a chance to test it yet.
There's a lot going on with your list, but I can already tell you that Hierarch is better than Birds. Hierarch is the second best mana dork behind Deathrite Shaman, and both of them are miles ahead of the third best dork, which is Birds of Paradise.
Finks in the maindeck is a metagame call. Unless your metagame is filled with Burn, it's probably not the right one. You've basically pulled 4x Blade Splicer for 2x Serra Avenger and 2x Kitchen Finks, which I think is probably a mistake. The 2x Serra Avenger is definitely a mistake. The 2x Kitchen Finks, well, your mileage may vary.
For what it's worth, I was recently testing Wrath of God in the Settle the Wreckage slot, and I think Wrath is the right call against a lot of decks. You only want that card when your opponents go wide faster than you do, and in that spot, you don't want your opponents to be able to play around it.
So a buddy of mine was at a PPTQ yesterday and faced a guy playing BW Eldrazi & Taxes with some Lingering Souls in it. Kind of sparked my curiosity. What's your opinions on putting 1-2 in where our flex spots are? I feel like it does fit into the deck alright. No real drawbacks except for maybe competing with our other 3 drops. But at that point I feel like you're playing more midrange Eldrazi almost so idk. Thoughts?
@yung_loogy google search the term “Lingering Taxes” or deathandcatmix. Lol we’ve been doing that’s for almost two years, my love!
Like Catmix said, we've been playing Lingering Souls in WB variants for a while now. Catmix advocated for it a long time ago, and I've become a big fan since trying it myself.
Nothing. As someone who plays E-Tron, there's some hands where I think it's nearly impossible to beat unless you're a combo deck that can win on the spot. Decks aren't designed to beat turn 2 thought knots into back to back 5/5s
Spsiegel1987 is right. Against that hand, you either have Ghost Quarter ready or you lose. Natural Tron only occurs in like 4-5% of games though, so you're dealing with the exception and not the rule.
So, question: Why Legacy Death and taxes always play Stoneforge Mystic, but it's not 100% maindeckable in the Modern deck? I would take the "you cant dig due to the Arbiter" argument, but your argument was that there's no Jitte and there's no space for it. I find that hard to believe though.
In Modern (and in Legacy), one of the hallmarks of a D&T deck is pressuring your opponent's manabase. In Legacy, there are efficient, standaloneoptions for that. In Modern, the options aremuchslower and require supplementalsupport.
I won't say that you can't run SFM and Arbiter in the same deck (after all, the D&T splashes often run fetchlands), but it does make your sequencing much more awkward. In order to run SFM, you'd probably have to turn some number of the Arbiters into Mindcensors (which are better against Titanshift decks anyway), but that slows down the pressure you can reasonably apply on your opponent's manabase.
Unlike Legacy, where you can just rely on Wasteland and Rishadan Port while your Vial ticks up, in Modern you can't just rely on Ghost Quarter, Tectonic Edge, and Field of Ruin. By themselves, two of those cards don't actually slow down your opponent, and the third one can't be activated until (usually) T4. Generally speaking, allowing your opponents to set up in their early turns is usually a good way to lose the game. Playing T2 SFM into T3 Batterskull isn't disrupting opponents.
A Modern mono-white (non-Eldrazi) D&T deck probably has about 8-12 flex slots, depending on whom you ask. Two years ago, there would have been approximately 17 flex slots (everything except the 20-card core and 23 lands). In those 8-12 slots, it seems like it would be easy to run 4 SFM and a Batterskull. But those slots are currently occupied by things like Blade Splicer, Restoration Angel, and Thalia, Heretic Cathar. In other words, those slots are filled with additional taxes and strategies to go wide. SFM doesn't do either of those things. SFM basically ties up your mana for 1-2 turns and gives you a 4/4 with vigilance and lifelink. It's good, but it's not winning games of Modern unless (a) your opponent is playing Burn or a fair deck and (b) your opponent isn't interacting with your germ token.
Just thinking about it now, it's rare that the games I lose could have been won if I had access to a Batterskull. I would be better positioned against Affinity, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Elves (maybe), but I would be worse positioned against most control and combo decks.
To be clear, I didn't say that SFM was unplayable in D&T. I'm just not convinced that it's an auto-include. If the metagame ever returns to a spot where Burn and Affinity are ubiquitous, then SFM would make D&T much better. For right now though, I'm not sure that D&T wants SFM.
Finally, if D&T is becoming better and better, that's good news for Modern. We need a deck that's keeping greedy decks like Eldra Tron, Titanshift, and 3 colour decks in check. That's one of the main things Modern needs tbh.
My buddy is a D&T player and I have played extensively with the deck so yeah, I think I know how the deck works.
D&T was an untiered deck until DS appeared on the map. DS became prevalent, D&T won two major(SCG) events. DS is slowly becoming a Tier 2 deck again, D&T is slowly fading away also. Those aren't all coincidences. Might have to do something with the sol land also which you can just throw inside and call it a day in Eldrazi and Taxes.
D&T was, is and will always be a mediocre/bad deck in Modern(at least in comparison with how it's in Legacy). It's just that with DS, it gains an extra bye matchup in the top tiers and this matchup is making the deck winning more.
In Legacy though, for a whole bunch of different reasons, it's a good deck.
I want a better DnT deck for sure, because it will make for a better format. SFM will make it into the Death and Taxes for sure, or at least it will be a good headache for the DnT players to have to go or not with.
Literally the only part of this statement that's correct is that D&T is a better deck in Legacy than Modern. Everything else is just proof that you don't know what you're talking about.
My suggestion: spend some more time in the Modern D&T thread. Maybe play fewer "Snapcaster Mage.deck" decks. Watch D&T being streamed on Twitch or sleeve it up and play at your LGS.
Honestly, I'm not sure why you think you're the authority on this. I'm a D&T pilot. I post regularly in the Modern D&T thread. D&T is listed in my signature as a deck that I play. For comparison, I'm not sure I've ever seen you in that thread and your signature literally has "Snapcaster Mage.deck" written in it.
D&T is a deck because Modern is a greedy format. It preys on most 3-color decks, noncreature combo, and Tron variants, so it's putting in a lot of work against the top end of the format. To reduce its success down to the prevalence of Death's Shadow either means (1) you don't know how D&T works or (2) you don't know anything about the Modern format. Given you're here in this thread, I'm going to assume it's the former.
To your credit, Stoneforge is a safe unban, mostly because of Kolaghan's Command. Because Jitte is also banned in Modern (and it should be), unbanning Stoneforge is limited in its usefulness. It allows decks to run Batterskull, which does punish Burn and a handful of fair decks. But adding something like a Swordpackage out of the sideboard starts costing you a lot of slots in the 75; it probably takes up 5 maindeck slots (4 SFM + Batterskull) with 2 sideboard slots (2 swords of your choice).
I'm a D&T player, and I'm not convinced that our deck even wants SFM. I think it helps UW control. I think it helps Abzan. But the D&T lists are so tight that giving up 5 slots in the maindeck is a significant cost.
Vial is a great card, but it's a terrible topdeck. It exchanges one card (the copy of Vial) for additional tempo throughout the game. Generally, you should side at least some of them out against the decks where the extra card is more important than the tempo.
Personally, I never side out all of my copies of Vial. Sometimes I board out 1-2 copies against grindy discard decks and also against very fast decks where I might lose by the time my Vial goes up to 3. In other words, I'm boarding out Vials on both ends of the spectrum: when my opponent's deck is blazingly fast or when my opponent's deck is using attrition to win the game.
Storm, however, meets neither of those criteria. It's possible that I'd cut a Vial depending on my opponent's list, but generally I'm leaving my Vials in. The best thing you can do against storm is Vial in Eidolon of Rhetoric with a cantrip or a mana accelerator on the stack in the middle of their combo turn. The Vials also help get around their counterspells.
Generally speaking, it competes with the Shefet Dunes slot, so before Dunes existed, Canopy was more common. Now, players get to pick whichever one works best in their deck. I'd recommend keeping Dunes if you're going to run Displacer, but if you cut Displacer, definitely run Canopy instead.
No. If you curve into a Copter and your opponent lets you keep it, he or she will lose to it. Copter was overpowered in Standard and it's very good in Modern.
Yes. It survives mass removal and acts as an indestructible clock. Also, it literally makes an emblem that says you can't lose the game.
This is a metagame deck. The good news is that some form of the deck will always exist, because it's never poorly positioned in the metagame. The bad news is that the maindeck and the sideboard shift rapidly to combat changes in the metagame. You won't find many sideboard guides for two reasons: first, your sideboard is contingent upon your maindeck, which has 6-14 flex slots, and second, the sideboards change very quickly.
If you have questions about sideboarding for a specific matchup, you're better off just asking about it in this thread and waiting for players to give you advice.
Long answer: it's probably competitive, but it's really hard to build properly. Lightning Bolt is the reason to play red, just like Hierarch in green. The problem is that it's such a nonbo with Thalia that you almost never want to run Bolt and Thalia in the maindeck. If you cut Thalia, it plays a lot less like a Taxes deck. If you play Bolt out of the sideboard, you're probably boarding it in to deal with decks like Elves, Affinity, Counters Company, and Merfolk, at which point it's functionally equivalent to Sunlance.
Magus of the Moon is very tempting to put in the deck, but on the surface, Mangara is similarly tempting to put in mono-white. I'm not trying to compare the two, but I am trying to suggest that not everything that seems good actually plays well. Magus not only turns off all of our land destruction, but it also turns opponents' fetchlands into mana producers. In my experience, Magus may win games on the spot, but it also loses games by not being something more generically useful; it's good against the 3-color decks that we're already competitive with and it's bad against Elves, Affinity, Counters Company, and Merfolk.
At the moment, I don't think that WR is better positioned than mono-white. With the printing of Field of Ruin, I'd rather be threatening my opponents' manabases than making them play around Blood Moon. Good opponents will know how to do the latter, but even good opponents may stumble against the former.
Over the last year or two, I've had a few ideas about how to build WR D&T. I even started typing up a mini-primer for it, but I never got around to finishing it. Again, I think WR is playable and possibly even competitive. But I also think it's the hardest version of the deck to build properly. For example, it may have to play Thalia out of the sideboard, but that could just be the price of maindecking Lightning Bolts.
In exchange, you've returned with:
1) CharonsObol says Punishing Fire invalidates creature decks
2) Zoo is a creature deck that uses Punishing Fire
3) Therefore, CharonsObol is wrong
Even though this is the internet, I'm pretty sure that most readers are capable of discerning that this response...
...is using sarcasm to prove a point. I can't believe I have to spell this out explicitly, but I didn't mean that literally every deck running creatures can no longer win games of Magic.
From the original 2011 B&R Announcement Explanations:More or less, I've repeated this justification using different words. You've chosen to argue with me about it. I'm not sure why you've chosen to argue with me - especially since you conceded that you're not necessarily advocating its unbanning - but here we are. You don't have to take it from me that Punishing Fire reduces deck diversity by crippling small creature decks; you can literally take it from WotC instead. WotC was pretty clear about it. I've been pretty clear about it. And your only response has been that the prevalence of Zoo and Affinity between October and December of 2011 is proof that creature decks will still exist.
I don't know what to tell you.
I'm just going to be over here playing Modern without Punishing Fire. You can be over there doing whatever you want.
But in attempt to dialogue with you, I just don't think you realize how oppressive Punishing Grove can be. It doesn't just deal two damage at a time to creatures. It's excellent in multiples and can be used against players (one damage at a time). Even a single copy of Punishing Fire can be used twice in the same turn on an individual creature, provided the spell started the turn in your hand. And as an avid D&T player, and I'm telling you that the land destruction route is an extremely unreliable way to deal with the problem.
I ignored the Zoo comment because it's irrelevant. That's like saying the second-best deck during Eldrazi Winter wasn't invalidated by the Eldrazi decks.
Furthermore, I don't think you can treat anything from 2011 as reliable data points about the format. The format was new and the dust was still settling. Fire and Nacatl were the last two cards banned before nine months of no changes to the ban list. Nacatl was splash damage from Fire, just like BBE is still splash damage from Deathrite Shaman. You shouldn't use a period of sweeping changes to the format as evidence that an individual card should be unbanned.
This is probably your worst set of points. The oppressiveness of Punishing Grove comes from its versatility, including its ability to hit players. It's a Swiss-Army knife for an aggro deck; it removes blockers, it hits players, it acts as a fantastic mana sink, and it's reusable. If you can't tell the difference between Punishing Grove and Pyroclasm or Anger of the Gods, I don't know how to help you.
Honestly, I wouldn't recommend the blue splash at the moment. I just don't think it's very well positioned in the metagame.
Punishing Fire was banned in December 2011. Modern first became a format in June 2011 during the Community Cup. Modern's initial ban list was in June and it was subsequently updated in August and September.
Which brings us back to your point: is your contention that Affinity would be okay because it was viable between October and December of 2011?
Oh yeah. While we're at it, let's pretend that Anger of the Gods is more oppressive than Punishing Grove. Seems reasonable.
Oh, you wanted a list. Well, Affinity, Death and Taxes, Elves, Merfolk, Counters Company, Humans, Faeries, Soul Sisters, and to a lesser extent Burn (it's also possible that Burn just starts playing it).
Unless you want a swap ban with Grove, Punishing Fire should just stay banned.
There's a lot going on with your list, but I can already tell you that Hierarch is better than Birds. Hierarch is the second best mana dork behind Deathrite Shaman, and both of them are miles ahead of the third best dork, which is Birds of Paradise.
Finks in the maindeck is a metagame call. Unless your metagame is filled with Burn, it's probably not the right one. You've basically pulled 4x Blade Splicer for 2x Serra Avenger and 2x Kitchen Finks, which I think is probably a mistake. The 2x Serra Avenger is definitely a mistake. The 2x Kitchen Finks, well, your mileage may vary.
For what it's worth, I was recently testing Wrath of God in the Settle the Wreckage slot, and I think Wrath is the right call against a lot of decks. You only want that card when your opponents go wide faster than you do, and in that spot, you don't want your opponents to be able to play around it.
Like Catmix said, we've been playing Lingering Souls in WB variants for a while now. Catmix advocated for it a long time ago, and I've become a big fan since trying it myself.
Masterpiece Vials are a nice touch, but you should only be running Masterpiece Vials if you've also got WMCQ Thalias.
I won't say that you can't run SFM and Arbiter in the same deck (after all, the D&T splashes often run fetchlands), but it does make your sequencing much more awkward. In order to run SFM, you'd probably have to turn some number of the Arbiters into Mindcensors (which are better against Titanshift decks anyway), but that slows down the pressure you can reasonably apply on your opponent's manabase.
Unlike Legacy, where you can just rely on Wasteland and Rishadan Port while your Vial ticks up, in Modern you can't just rely on Ghost Quarter, Tectonic Edge, and Field of Ruin. By themselves, two of those cards don't actually slow down your opponent, and the third one can't be activated until (usually) T4. Generally speaking, allowing your opponents to set up in their early turns is usually a good way to lose the game. Playing T2 SFM into T3 Batterskull isn't disrupting opponents.
A Modern mono-white (non-Eldrazi) D&T deck probably has about 8-12 flex slots, depending on whom you ask. Two years ago, there would have been approximately 17 flex slots (everything except the 20-card core and 23 lands). In those 8-12 slots, it seems like it would be easy to run 4 SFM and a Batterskull. But those slots are currently occupied by things like Blade Splicer, Restoration Angel, and Thalia, Heretic Cathar. In other words, those slots are filled with additional taxes and strategies to go wide. SFM doesn't do either of those things. SFM basically ties up your mana for 1-2 turns and gives you a 4/4 with vigilance and lifelink. It's good, but it's not winning games of Modern unless (a) your opponent is playing Burn or a fair deck and (b) your opponent isn't interacting with your germ token.
Just thinking about it now, it's rare that the games I lose could have been won if I had access to a Batterskull. I would be better positioned against Affinity, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Elves (maybe), but I would be worse positioned against most control and combo decks.
To be clear, I didn't say that SFM was unplayable in D&T. I'm just not convinced that it's an auto-include. If the metagame ever returns to a spot where Burn and Affinity are ubiquitous, then SFM would make D&T much better. For right now though, I'm not sure that D&T wants SFM.
We're working on it!
My suggestion: spend some more time in the Modern D&T thread. Maybe play fewer "Snapcaster Mage.deck" decks. Watch D&T being streamed on Twitch or sleeve it up and play at your LGS.
D&T is a viable option in the metagame and it's only getting better. In the last eighteen months, Smuggler's Copter, Thraben Inspector, Field of Ruin, and Gideon of the Trials have all been printed. The lists are getting tighter with fewer flex slots.
Honestly, I'm not sure why you think you're the authority on this. I'm a D&T pilot. I post regularly in the Modern D&T thread. D&T is listed in my signature as a deck that I play. For comparison, I'm not sure I've ever seen you in that thread and your signature literally has "Snapcaster Mage.deck" written in it.
To your credit, Stoneforge is a safe unban, mostly because of Kolaghan's Command. Because Jitte is also banned in Modern (and it should be), unbanning Stoneforge is limited in its usefulness. It allows decks to run Batterskull, which does punish Burn and a handful of fair decks. But adding something like a Sword package out of the sideboard starts costing you a lot of slots in the 75; it probably takes up 5 maindeck slots (4 SFM + Batterskull) with 2 sideboard slots (2 swords of your choice).
I'm a D&T player, and I'm not convinced that our deck even wants SFM. I think it helps UW control. I think it helps Abzan. But the D&T lists are so tight that giving up 5 slots in the maindeck is a significant cost.