I'll never understand why they will never print the full 10-card cycle of duels in one set.
That being said, my favorite color pairs are here, so I am content.
Because lands hold a lot of value and boxes have to line up the EV with the cost so they'd not want to give away so much value. Imagine a set of all 10 fetches, all 10 shocks etc, that's just crazy town. Also lands are nice for value but do nothing for drafting. Taking up 20% or so of the rare slots with a land limits their space for other stuff.
I assume these lands are going to see heavy modern play and be pretty pricey. I would imagine for example burn swaps out the 4 inspiring vantages for 4 of these new ones. The 1 life lost is surely irrelevant vs being able to swap it for a card later on. All those unfair decks running botanical sanctum (whir prison, lantern, amulet titan, neoform) can swap out for that waterlogged one. Phoenix probably wants some of that izzet one, maybe GDS as well (1 life every turn vs 2 life shocking once might be worth it to help lower life and also cycle later). Yeah the more I think about this the more I can see these going everywhere. I'm just glad we didn't get a RG one to make dredge even better.
I was sure Edict would make it in this set then the WAR edict made me sure it wouldn't. Now I'm just left confused why wizards wasted a slot on a card that is literally worse than 1 printed in standard a few weeks ago. I like the card but it's a big letdown.
Also exclude while a cool card is not good enough for modern play and as Hawk7915 mentioned we've already got 2 counterspells now which is making a literal counterspell less likely. They wouldn't print counterspell at rare so would they really have so many different ones at the lower rarity? The 1 saving grace is exclude is an essence scatter effect so that might be different enough to allow a proper counter as well.
It will be so disappointing if counterspell doesn't make the cut.
Certainly a strong card when you really break down everything it does.
The only downside is the discard is not a may so if you have 2 strong cards left you can't cast this unless you're willing to throw those 2 cards for 2 random draws. That could really make enough of a difference to stop this seeing much modern play.
So many... Why so many? I can understand Gush, I can understand Daze, I can understand Probe, but all three at once?
Did you read the article? “Many decks mix and match a combined total of about eight copies of these three cards, so banning just one of them would cause decks to converge on eight total copies of the other two—a fairly minimal effect on the strength of those decks.”
You misread that. They were referring to banning of brainstorm/ponder/preodrain and said they saw no reason to ban 1 because the decks tended to run 8 cantrip effects so if 1 was banned everyone would play the other 2. As they consider the filtering effects a key part of pauper they left it untouched.
This card is not going to appear in modern BUT I think undervaluing it is incorrect. If you're running evolving wilds/expanse in EDH you'll want this too or instead of 1 of those. The 1 life is far less relevant than the untapped right away ability when you start at 40. With that in mind I probably need 4 or 5 copies... so I hope it does end up bulk lol!
So we have a way *****tier Force of Will and a mostly better Deranged Hermit. I really hope we don’t get too many of these *****tier callbacks that are just mostly worse than the original. More Astral Drifts and Deep Forest Hermits and fewer Cabal Therapists and Force of Negations please.
Totally disagree.
I wanted force of will but to be honest I think modern would have been worse off if they actually printed it. This card is powerful enough to keep the degenerate stuff in check before your regular countermagic can be used without pushing blue over the edge.
Also on an unrelated note that Deep Forest Hermit comes as a real surprise. It seems so very similar to Deranged Hermit (which is a RL card) which has to make you wonder what other cards on the RL they might alter ever so slightly while keeping it almost identical. Obviously echo vs vanishing is a fundamental difference but the cards still feel so similar.
20% is not nearly consistent enough is it? I mean I guess when you say '1 in 5' that sounds a lot worse than 20% but not nearly as hilarious as '4 in 5' lol.
I dont know, I see Twitter picking up on it already and starting to beat the drum, at this point its not particularly relevant to me. Let it take over the format for a few weeks if it can, without the London Mull I doubt its that strong.
As I have mentioned I've been Turn 1 killed before by Narset, Enlightened Master and this was probably years ago at this point. It happens.
I dont know, its just one more crazy thing in Modern to me. If its truly oppressive, it will be gone.
In order to pull off the narset kill on turn 1 you need your graveyard right? There are decks playing maindeck surgicals and a ton of decks running leylines or surgicals in the board. With that in mind the deck is never going to get a clean turn 1 kill where the opponent has no way to interact, especially with the London mulligan rule where they know a surgical or leyline is an auto win vs all in combo
Edit:
I was thinking a little more and you can't count mindbreak trap as an answer actually since Allosaurus Rider into Neoform is just 2 spells and at that point griselbrand is in play and they'll draw their deck and win with pact of negation backup
Reporting that people are pre-turn-3 killing opponents 50% of the time on MTGO is not ban mania. I counter your "knee-jerk ban-mania" claim with "anti-ban knee-jerk" claim! And double down for using the tired glass canon meme. Yes, combo-decks that are disrupted mid-combo fail to win, we know that.
The key points with this new deck are that:
It draws the entire library.
It kills on the turn it goes off.
Due 1 and 2, it can run pact of negation for protection.
Due to 1, it can ensure it has pact in hand.
There is a reason Enter the Infinite is 12 mana. It basically is ad-nauseam, but with a faster clock, an earlier fundamental turn. Sure, people can start packing dispel or some 1-mana creature bounce as a reaction, but that would not be healthy. (And still fails if they happen to have pact of negation in hand.)
None of this is relevant to the bannability of the deck. All four of those qualities apply to Ad Nauseam, an eminently acceptable combo deck. The only question is whether or not the deck can consistently win before T4. Based on the previous Bloom ban example, I would estimate a deck would need to win before T4 in 20%+ of games in a large N, large T context in order to be bannable. Cherrypicked streamer results don't get there. My Cheeri0s win rate was about 75% with more than 25% of my wins happening before T4. Obviously, nothing from Cheeri0s got banned. My personal examples don't necessarily reflect the wider metagame realities. Let's increase the number of auditable events and the time span before we entertain ban discussion like Cohen's.
The turn 4 rule doesn't feel like a fair assessment. In a format that doesn't have force of will no deck should be able to win on turn 1 before their opponent has a chance to do anything, even if it's only in a few % of games and even if the pre turn 4 win % is low. The feel bad of sitting down for a game of magic where you literally don't play is insane. That is the kind of thing that would make me avoid playing the format. The only other decks capable of nut drawing turn 1 kills use the graveyard at which point surgical and leyline both become legitimate ways to prevent it.
Sure you can say there are theoretical turn 1 kills with turn 1 blood moon or chalice of the void which some decks can't beat but you at least stand a chance and if you're playing a modern deck with 0 outs to a blood moon or chalice in your 75 you've clearly gone wrong somewhere. But if you're literally getting killed on turn 1 no amount of sideboard hate saves you...
Ad nauseam is a fine deck because it can nut draw for a turn 3 win but can't be faster than that but that gives your opponent at least 2 turns to play discard, some form of hate or hold counters.
Has anyone else played against the Allosaurus rider combo deck? I got turn 1 killed on the draw which is the first time I can ever remember that happening in modern.
I have no idea how often this can happen, the person I played said they were winning on turn 1 30% of the time but I'm doubtful it's that high but even at just 10% that's still 1 in 10 games you get a free win because your opponent can't do anything. Leyline of the void? nope, leyline of sancitity? nope, surgical? nope. You'd need a mindbreak trap/disrupting shoal and hope they don't have a pact backup.
Obviously if you're on the play and have discard you can interact but looking at the top decks (tron, humans, phoenix, dredge, amulet titan, hardened scales) none of them have maindeck turn 1 ways to interact and even WU control with a path I'm not sure that it's enough just like the goryo's version since they already get to draw all the cards.
Hopefully it's just a novelty deck which doesn't see much play but if it sees any sort of traction or string of results something needs to be banned to slow the deck down.
Poor mans natural order for modern elves for Devastation. 10 mana for a hoof is a lot but with heritage druid/archdruid I can totally see this working. On a lesser scale it's a 2 mana ramp for dryad arbor or 3 mana tutor for heritage druid/nettle sentinel, has to be good enough right?
Because lands hold a lot of value and boxes have to line up the EV with the cost so they'd not want to give away so much value. Imagine a set of all 10 fetches, all 10 shocks etc, that's just crazy town. Also lands are nice for value but do nothing for drafting. Taking up 20% or so of the rare slots with a land limits their space for other stuff.
I assume these lands are going to see heavy modern play and be pretty pricey. I would imagine for example burn swaps out the 4 inspiring vantages for 4 of these new ones. The 1 life lost is surely irrelevant vs being able to swap it for a card later on. All those unfair decks running botanical sanctum (whir prison, lantern, amulet titan, neoform) can swap out for that waterlogged one. Phoenix probably wants some of that izzet one, maybe GDS as well (1 life every turn vs 2 life shocking once might be worth it to help lower life and also cycle later). Yeah the more I think about this the more I can see these going everywhere. I'm just glad we didn't get a RG one to make dredge even better.
Also exclude while a cool card is not good enough for modern play and as Hawk7915 mentioned we've already got 2 counterspells now which is making a literal counterspell less likely. They wouldn't print counterspell at rare so would they really have so many different ones at the lower rarity? The 1 saving grace is exclude is an essence scatter effect so that might be different enough to allow a proper counter as well.
It will be so disappointing if counterspell doesn't make the cut.
Augur also triggers off zombie tokens which is a huge upgrade as well.
The only downside is the discard is not a may so if you have 2 strong cards left you can't cast this unless you're willing to throw those 2 cards for 2 random draws. That could really make enough of a difference to stop this seeing much modern play.
You misread that. They were referring to banning of brainstorm/ponder/preodrain and said they saw no reason to ban 1 because the decks tended to run 8 cantrip effects so if 1 was banned everyone would play the other 2. As they consider the filtering effects a key part of pauper they left it untouched.
If this isn't a reason to unban splinter twin nothing is
Totally disagree.
I wanted force of will but to be honest I think modern would have been worse off if they actually printed it. This card is powerful enough to keep the degenerate stuff in check before your regular countermagic can be used without pushing blue over the edge.
Also on an unrelated note that Deep Forest Hermit comes as a real surprise. It seems so very similar to Deranged Hermit (which is a RL card) which has to make you wonder what other cards on the RL they might alter ever so slightly while keeping it almost identical. Obviously echo vs vanishing is a fundamental difference but the cards still feel so similar.
In order to pull off the narset kill on turn 1 you need your graveyard right? There are decks playing maindeck surgicals and a ton of decks running leylines or surgicals in the board. With that in mind the deck is never going to get a clean turn 1 kill where the opponent has no way to interact, especially with the London mulligan rule where they know a surgical or leyline is an auto win vs all in combo
Edit:
I was thinking a little more and you can't count mindbreak trap as an answer actually since Allosaurus Rider into Neoform is just 2 spells and at that point griselbrand is in play and they'll draw their deck and win with pact of negation backup
The turn 4 rule doesn't feel like a fair assessment. In a format that doesn't have force of will no deck should be able to win on turn 1 before their opponent has a chance to do anything, even if it's only in a few % of games and even if the pre turn 4 win % is low. The feel bad of sitting down for a game of magic where you literally don't play is insane. That is the kind of thing that would make me avoid playing the format. The only other decks capable of nut drawing turn 1 kills use the graveyard at which point surgical and leyline both become legitimate ways to prevent it.
Sure you can say there are theoretical turn 1 kills with turn 1 blood moon or chalice of the void which some decks can't beat but you at least stand a chance and if you're playing a modern deck with 0 outs to a blood moon or chalice in your 75 you've clearly gone wrong somewhere. But if you're literally getting killed on turn 1 no amount of sideboard hate saves you...
Ad nauseam is a fine deck because it can nut draw for a turn 3 win but can't be faster than that but that gives your opponent at least 2 turns to play discard, some form of hate or hold counters.
I have no idea how often this can happen, the person I played said they were winning on turn 1 30% of the time but I'm doubtful it's that high but even at just 10% that's still 1 in 10 games you get a free win because your opponent can't do anything. Leyline of the void? nope, leyline of sancitity? nope, surgical? nope. You'd need a mindbreak trap/disrupting shoal and hope they don't have a pact backup.
Obviously if you're on the play and have discard you can interact but looking at the top decks (tron, humans, phoenix, dredge, amulet titan, hardened scales) none of them have maindeck turn 1 ways to interact and even WU control with a path I'm not sure that it's enough just like the goryo's version since they already get to draw all the cards.
Hopefully it's just a novelty deck which doesn't see much play but if it sees any sort of traction or string of results something needs to be banned to slow the deck down.