Unbannings are always more welcome than bans though dread return is dangerous waters
I could be wrong completely wrong but I guess your nut draw would be like turn 1 land/spirit guide tormenting voice dredge like 3 narcomoeba, 1 dread return, 1 flamekin, 2 bridges and 5 random cards which would give you a turn 1 kill that short of getting hit by discard on the draw would be unstoppable without a leyline. Magical christmas land perhaps but if that's what you could do on turn 1, by turn 3 it should be a lot easier.
Dredge getting an uptick in power would be ok. Unburial rites is a solid card but forces you to play a lot of colours and also is quite slow. I would be ok with a 3 mana black flashback reanimator but having a free one whose only 'downside' is turning your 3 creatures into 3-12 creatures is too strong for what modern decks can do.
From the cards currently banned I would like to see Ancestral Vision unbanned. We have already seen from treasure cruise that other decks are able to survive against this monster and a top deck treasure cruise vs visions is not even in the same league. I'm not even sure how much play it would see with the current decks as they are.
Bloodbraid Elf could also get unbanned. It won't fit into the same deck as junk and seems on a similar level as rhino given by itself it's not much of a threat and you can easily hit completely dead discard/removal off the cascade.
JTMS is another card that I honestly feel can be safely unbanned. Tapping out on turn 4 for this guy is likely too late against burn, affinity, splinter twin, scapeshift and more. You'll always be forced to +1 it when it lands against red to avoid bolt. If your control opponent manages to land jace and ultimate it they obviously were in control of the game and could probably have won with colonnade/burn or any other won condition.
It would be nice to see some cantrips come off but that just boosts twin so I don't see that ever happening. The same with all the cards that were specifically banned because they were combo pieces or too painful to play against (top/sunrise)
What would happen if Splinter Twin was chosen for the next ban?
The format would die.
Lol, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but kind of. If Wizards took out two pillars of the format in a row, players would lose a lot of confidence in Wizards, Modern and the prices of the modern market. They won't do it though because they wouldn't shot themselves in the foot just before Modern Masters 2 comes out.
Not to mention that it is an interactive deck which stomps all kinds of solitaire decks.
Why is here even talk about Splinter Twin when the deck puts up lower numbers than both Burn and Junk? In paper Affinity has higher numbers than it too.
It's like people want to ignore the facts but then again I probably shouldn't be surprised about that at all. It's the internet after all.
People don't seem to understand that they're comparing things incorrectly. Twin can function as a combo deck or a control deck. If you want to beat affinity you can run cards that completely wipe the board for 4 mana. You want to beat burn you have a lot of different options to gain life. Twin on the other hand is not so straightforward. You can bring in all your combo hate only to have them sided it all out in favour of dropping a turn 3 blood moon, turn 5 keranos or similar and beating you slowly. Then there's the random single twin hanging out and they catch you with your pants down and suddenly you just die. Burn/Affinity are always going to do the same thing that means the hate cards will always be crippling.
Now I'm not saying ban twin ban twin. Merely pointing out that it is far harder to just beat out. Also twin is an oppressive deck. It forces you to either be able to win before turn 4 (at which point you're likely getting banned yourself) or be able to answer an instant speed creature. Playing against twin can be so frustrating when you're forced to keep your mana up after turn 3 because they may or not just kill you if you are rude enough to actually try to play your cards.
I quite like UWR control's position over junk. Game one isn't even that bad unless they go discard into goyf into liliana.
Electrolyze trades favourably with souls
With so few creatures hitting the graveyard ooze likely just dies to a bolt/helix
Path + snapcaster give you 8 hard answers to their 12 5 toughness creatures and even a bolt + electrolyze is a straight 1 for 1. There's plenty of other creative options using snapcaster and bolts as well.
They are only playing 1 or 2 lands less than you so in top deck mode they can hit (give or take) 7 discard spells and 7 removal spells which makes for 14 potential dead draws. Your 'dead' draws like burn can just go the face if needed. I guess the only true dead card is mana leak after they hit 7 lands. Then ofc there's the fact you have a gameover topdeck of revelation for 6 or something. The worst thing for you is if they hit a rhino or something but you'll still have a few turns to draw an answer.
I actually hate postboard games though. decklists are so wildly different. I've had decks that then board in a bunch of extra discard, decks that board in thruns, land destruction, batterskull, choke. Having answers to all this is not fun.
I generally board in 2 celestial purge as answers for liliana, rhino and tasigur.
2 wrath of god come in and if there is thrun great if not it still clears the board and gets past any potential golari charm
Lastly 1 wear/tear comes in as a catch all to any potential artifact/enchantment problem and if I actually see a choke or something the 2nd comes in for game 3.
That being said control is very much a gamblers deck it's a case of needing the right answers at the right time. Keeping a solid hand in the dark say 3 lands, snapaster, mana leak, cryptic and a bolt will just get wrecked by discard. If I know it's junk I would much rather keep a 6 lander and just hope the top of the deck has the right answers since answers in my hand will likely get discarded anyway.
There'll be the odd race you might win with casting this at the opponent, but that will be rare.
Ten cent card within six months.
100% disagree. This is far better because you can target your opponent and mill them out and also use it to fireball them for the last 5-10 damage late in the game.
Not sure if it will fit into a standard deck that exists at the moment but putting a single copy in U/B Control could be funny if you target them for 10 or something and just 'burn' them out.
The format is already slow enough without the need for t1 tapland, t2 tapland, t3 monument and finally t4 game starts. The mono/2 colour aggro decks will run over the field if this happens.
Oh my. I was beginning to think that twin would see some sort of ban this month given its constant high performance in modern events and high meta share. This card however would suggest otherwise. If you're expecting a lot of twin this card is great. Sure it doesn't kill rhino but if you're bringing combust in to deal with 4 cards in 60 from junk you're doing something wrongly. That you can let them go EoT tap your land so you only have 1 source open on t3 and then get a potential 2 for 1 if they slam twin is big game. Also has strong crossover hate against UWx if that ever comes back in a big way. 1 mana answer to colonnade that can't be stopped and doesn't give them replacement land while in a pinch also killing any resto, clique and snapcaster can't be ignored.
Modern Jeskai Dragons Control - is it possible with this card?
Just use resilient Dragons as finishers in a critical mass, so you always have Dragons on the field or in your hand?
Anger of the Gods and Wrath of God as sweepers?
Combine with Mana Leak for early game pressure?
A problem is, as always, that blue lacks powerful card draw in Modern..?
But how many dragons are you going to put in your deck? As a control deck you want a handful of finishers. Since the good ones start from 4 mana any opening hands with a dragon or 2 are really bad. You're almost never going to slam a turn 4 dragon. An opening hand with 3 lands, 2 silumgars score and say 2 thundermaw hellkite is far far worse than if you used a current deck setup and had 3 lands, 2 mana leaks and 2 interactive early spells.
If burn becomes a huge player in modern with the new command I could certainly see an argument for swapping out a celestial purge for a surge of righteousness in my board. At worst you're still killing 1 of their dudes and with upside of 2 life gained. Of course with twin and GBX around purge is currently a far better option.
This card is a tough one to call. You read hard counter for UU and think!!!!! but being an awful force spike doesn't seem great. If you have a dragon in play/hand ok but as a control deck you're not going to be rocking 10 dragons maybe 2? making this spell almost always a terrible investment.
As a card in modern who knows.
Mutavault is interesting but the 3 colour decks are already rocking a hard mana base, I don't see where you'd make all the extra colourless to support it. Perhaps in straight UW/UB
In the right build it's almost always an instant speed draw 2. Add on that if it resolves your creatures enter the battlefield no worries about countering. EoT casting this you could with a little luck put 8+ power onto the battlefield. An easy modern capable card. A must counter against control and totally messes up with attacks when a green deck has 4 mana open.
Roast has modern potential. It might as well read hose target junk deck as gofy is mostly a 4/5 also so you've got an answer to all their creatures. Downsides as a sorcery it can't hit manlands on the attack and can't hit annoying permanents like resto angel, pestermite and clique. Perhaps it will replace flame slash since that is there for spellskite which roast can also handle. An extra mana to be able to kill rhino/gofy seems a worthwhile trade off?
The command is underwhelming. At 5 mana it wouldn't be possible to justify more than a single maindeck copy. It's too slow for the majority of the non creatures played and is unable to kill the problem threats. I suppose as a topdeck on an empty board it could be ok to counter their planeswalker and bounce your scryland. Looks less impressive if you're using it to counter a burn spell though. As much as people say it would have been pushed at 4. Given cryptic (yes it's UUU) can hard counter at 4 this command should have been a hard counter or also 4 cmc.
My vote would be weak counter magic. Pure control wants to grind the game long which is useless when you're playing mana leak and remand (though at least this replaces itself). Spell snare is great in some matchups but is very situational. Cryptic command is obviously very powerful but when you have 2 of these in your opening hand it's just depressing and the heavy mana requirements makes it highly likely you take a bunch of damage from your lands to hit UUU on turn 4.
I don't think that card draw is as much a problem as you don't have space to fit it into the deck. With electrolyse, snapcaster and cryptic you're getting card advantage even if you're not drawing extra cards. Holding off your opponent until you hit a revelation isn't unreasonable and drawing 5/gaining 5 life is game changing.
Weak finishers could go either way. On the one hand mostly relying on a colonnade as the beater is tough when there are plenty of ghost quarters/tectonic edges running around. Not to mention the lack of other threats mean all your opponents paths, dismembers and others get shoved at him. You're also forced to tap 5 mana on your turn so unless you have nothing better to do with your mana the beatdown won't start for a while anyway. That being said simply burning out an opponent or having them concede after a big revelation is quite a common situation I find. People don't respect their life total against control so you often only need to do 12-15 damage.
On top of that you have excellent sideboard options as finishers like Batterskull, Keranos and perhaps even something like baneslayer angel or thundermaw hellkite.
Burn will get bans, you will see. It would be BETTER for us if this command was never printed or at cost 1RG. It sad to say but burn will be just broken, making meta unfun and unhealthy. And i am not burn hater, i am burn player for more than a year.
There is way too much overreacting about bans right now. The command is good, but it's not a game-changer. Swiftspear and Eidolon did more to boost this deck, and it's still not on top of the meta. If people want to hate out burn, no amount of Skullcracks is going to stop them. It's not like we can just run 8 Skullcracks without taking out something else that's relevant, and it's not like the green mana doesn't matter either. We can't just run a pile of 2-drops, and we are already on the line of having too many in my opinion.
But the command is what allows burn to function like a combo deck and kill you on turn 3. Let's say for arguments sake that you cut 2 lightning helix and move 2 skullcrack to the board that is 4 2 mana spells for 4 2 mana spells. The gaining 3 on helix is irrelevant if you're winning on turn 3 anyway and skullcrack is worse against everything but kor firewalker which isn't in a maindeck anyway? The only downside is the requirement of more shocklands
I could be wrong completely wrong but I guess your nut draw would be like turn 1 land/spirit guide tormenting voice dredge like 3 narcomoeba, 1 dread return, 1 flamekin, 2 bridges and 5 random cards which would give you a turn 1 kill that short of getting hit by discard on the draw would be unstoppable without a leyline. Magical christmas land perhaps but if that's what you could do on turn 1, by turn 3 it should be a lot easier.
Dredge getting an uptick in power would be ok. Unburial rites is a solid card but forces you to play a lot of colours and also is quite slow. I would be ok with a 3 mana black flashback reanimator but having a free one whose only 'downside' is turning your 3 creatures into 3-12 creatures is too strong for what modern decks can do.
From the cards currently banned I would like to see Ancestral Vision unbanned. We have already seen from treasure cruise that other decks are able to survive against this monster and a top deck treasure cruise vs visions is not even in the same league. I'm not even sure how much play it would see with the current decks as they are.
Bloodbraid Elf could also get unbanned. It won't fit into the same deck as junk and seems on a similar level as rhino given by itself it's not much of a threat and you can easily hit completely dead discard/removal off the cascade.
JTMS is another card that I honestly feel can be safely unbanned. Tapping out on turn 4 for this guy is likely too late against burn, affinity, splinter twin, scapeshift and more. You'll always be forced to +1 it when it lands against red to avoid bolt. If your control opponent manages to land jace and ultimate it they obviously were in control of the game and could probably have won with colonnade/burn or any other won condition.
It would be nice to see some cantrips come off but that just boosts twin so I don't see that ever happening. The same with all the cards that were specifically banned because they were combo pieces or too painful to play against (top/sunrise)
People don't seem to understand that they're comparing things incorrectly. Twin can function as a combo deck or a control deck. If you want to beat affinity you can run cards that completely wipe the board for 4 mana. You want to beat burn you have a lot of different options to gain life. Twin on the other hand is not so straightforward. You can bring in all your combo hate only to have them sided it all out in favour of dropping a turn 3 blood moon, turn 5 keranos or similar and beating you slowly. Then there's the random single twin hanging out and they catch you with your pants down and suddenly you just die. Burn/Affinity are always going to do the same thing that means the hate cards will always be crippling.
Now I'm not saying ban twin ban twin. Merely pointing out that it is far harder to just beat out. Also twin is an oppressive deck. It forces you to either be able to win before turn 4 (at which point you're likely getting banned yourself) or be able to answer an instant speed creature. Playing against twin can be so frustrating when you're forced to keep your mana up after turn 3 because they may or not just kill you if you are rude enough to actually try to play your cards.
Electrolyze trades favourably with souls
With so few creatures hitting the graveyard ooze likely just dies to a bolt/helix
Path + snapcaster give you 8 hard answers to their 12 5 toughness creatures and even a bolt + electrolyze is a straight 1 for 1. There's plenty of other creative options using snapcaster and bolts as well.
They are only playing 1 or 2 lands less than you so in top deck mode they can hit (give or take) 7 discard spells and 7 removal spells which makes for 14 potential dead draws. Your 'dead' draws like burn can just go the face if needed. I guess the only true dead card is mana leak after they hit 7 lands. Then ofc there's the fact you have a gameover topdeck of revelation for 6 or something. The worst thing for you is if they hit a rhino or something but you'll still have a few turns to draw an answer.
I actually hate postboard games though. decklists are so wildly different. I've had decks that then board in a bunch of extra discard, decks that board in thruns, land destruction, batterskull, choke. Having answers to all this is not fun.
I generally board in 2 celestial purge as answers for liliana, rhino and tasigur.
2 wrath of god come in and if there is thrun great if not it still clears the board and gets past any potential golari charm
Lastly 1 wear/tear comes in as a catch all to any potential artifact/enchantment problem and if I actually see a choke or something the 2nd comes in for game 3.
That being said control is very much a gamblers deck it's a case of needing the right answers at the right time. Keeping a solid hand in the dark say 3 lands, snapaster, mana leak, cryptic and a bolt will just get wrecked by discard. If I know it's junk I would much rather keep a 6 lander and just hope the top of the deck has the right answers since answers in my hand will likely get discarded anyway.
100% disagree. This is far better because you can target your opponent and mill them out and also use it to fireball them for the last 5-10 damage late in the game.
Not sure if it will fit into a standard deck that exists at the moment but putting a single copy in U/B Control could be funny if you target them for 10 or something and just 'burn' them out.
The format is already slow enough without the need for t1 tapland, t2 tapland, t3 monument and finally t4 game starts. The mono/2 colour aggro decks will run over the field if this happens.
Feels like it could slot into UB nicely as protection against your ugin or dragon getting discarded/countered/dying.
But how many dragons are you going to put in your deck? As a control deck you want a handful of finishers. Since the good ones start from 4 mana any opening hands with a dragon or 2 are really bad. You're almost never going to slam a turn 4 dragon. An opening hand with 3 lands, 2 silumgars score and say 2 thundermaw hellkite is far far worse than if you used a current deck setup and had 3 lands, 2 mana leaks and 2 interactive early spells.
As a card in modern who knows.
Mutavault is interesting but the 3 colour decks are already rocking a hard mana base, I don't see where you'd make all the extra colourless to support it. Perhaps in straight UW/UB
In the right build it's almost always an instant speed draw 2. Add on that if it resolves your creatures enter the battlefield no worries about countering. EoT casting this you could with a little luck put 8+ power onto the battlefield. An easy modern capable card. A must counter against control and totally messes up with attacks when a green deck has 4 mana open.
Roast has modern potential. It might as well read hose target junk deck as gofy is mostly a 4/5 also so you've got an answer to all their creatures. Downsides as a sorcery it can't hit manlands on the attack and can't hit annoying permanents like resto angel, pestermite and clique. Perhaps it will replace flame slash since that is there for spellskite which roast can also handle. An extra mana to be able to kill rhino/gofy seems a worthwhile trade off?
The command is underwhelming. At 5 mana it wouldn't be possible to justify more than a single maindeck copy. It's too slow for the majority of the non creatures played and is unable to kill the problem threats. I suppose as a topdeck on an empty board it could be ok to counter their planeswalker and bounce your scryland. Looks less impressive if you're using it to counter a burn spell though. As much as people say it would have been pushed at 4. Given cryptic (yes it's UUU) can hard counter at 4 this command should have been a hard counter or also 4 cmc.
I don't think that card draw is as much a problem as you don't have space to fit it into the deck. With electrolyse, snapcaster and cryptic you're getting card advantage even if you're not drawing extra cards. Holding off your opponent until you hit a revelation isn't unreasonable and drawing 5/gaining 5 life is game changing.
Weak finishers could go either way. On the one hand mostly relying on a colonnade as the beater is tough when there are plenty of ghost quarters/tectonic edges running around. Not to mention the lack of other threats mean all your opponents paths, dismembers and others get shoved at him. You're also forced to tap 5 mana on your turn so unless you have nothing better to do with your mana the beatdown won't start for a while anyway. That being said simply burning out an opponent or having them concede after a big revelation is quite a common situation I find. People don't respect their life total against control so you often only need to do 12-15 damage.
On top of that you have excellent sideboard options as finishers like Batterskull, Keranos and perhaps even something like baneslayer angel or thundermaw hellkite.
But the command is what allows burn to function like a combo deck and kill you on turn 3. Let's say for arguments sake that you cut 2 lightning helix and move 2 skullcrack to the board that is 4 2 mana spells for 4 2 mana spells. The gaining 3 on helix is irrelevant if you're winning on turn 3 anyway and skullcrack is worse against everything but kor firewalker which isn't in a maindeck anyway? The only downside is the requirement of more shocklands