There are a lot of fairly alarming assessments in this thread about Tron based on a single GP. Wizards has never banned anything, not even Eye of Ugin, after one bad event. It takes a consistent pattern to spur action. Given that Tron never saw more than 1 T8 appearance per GP for all of 2017 up until GPOKC, I feel fairly confident saying nothing is going to happen ban-wise until after the PT. Not even the vocal pros want cards banned, which hasn't been the case in 1-2 years. If the GP data isn't there and the public outcry isn't there, I'm just not seeing it.
To be clear, a bad PT would definitely prompt action. But we're not there yet. I think some vocal players, specifically those who prefer a certain decktype, just hate Tron. They wait month after month for any evidence to vindicate and support their dislike of the deck. We just happen to be coming off a heavy Tron GP T8 so the complaints are eapecially loud.
I agree with you that I don't think anything is happening until post-PT but I've heard several pros wanting a Tron ban then as well. While yes, Tron did put only 1 top 8 result per GP before OKC I still see that as kind of alarming that it's put up so many. For a deck that is supposed to have extremely polarizing results, it's managed to go undefeated or X-1 at a extremely consistent clip at GPs over the last year (Bear in mind of the 4 non-OKC top 8's, only 1 was E.Tron and the rest were Traditional). I think part of that is the inherent "bustedness" of the Tron lands themselves, the tuning of their lists and cards they've gotten to make their bad matchups better while keeping their good matchups extremely lopsided, but the other part is that I think there are other decks that have come up that are also suppressing their bad matchups. Like these Jeskai decks (while I agree they have to be group together, I do dislike how inconsistent the lists are. It really makes them hard to figure out), they are really good against Storm, Affinity, Humans and Death Shadow. They seem to be good in a lot of matchups that might have stopped Trons performance. While it's nice to think "yeah people will just adjust to decks that beat Tron" but if those decks aren't well positioned against the rest of the field, Tron will continue to stay on top. I'm not super optimistic about this.
Death Shadow: 9
Affintiy: 6
Counter Company: 5
Burn: 3
Death and Taxes: 3
Merfolk: 1
Lantern: 3
Dredge: 5
Living End: 3
WR Sun and Moon: 1
GBx: 3
BW Eldrazi (actual midrange, no taxes): 1
Ad Nauseum: 1
UWx: 4
Storm: 1
Titanshift: 5
Turns(Quad sleeved power): 1
Knightfall: 1
Now before you get to clickity clack responding about Death Shadow, here is the breakdown by GP in the order they happened:
GP Vancouver: 3
GP Brisbane: 0 (notably this is the same weekend of GP Vancouver and the birth of what we now call Death Shadow)
GP Kobe: 1
GP Copenhagen: 2
GP Las Vegas: 0
GP Sao Paulo: 2
GP Birmingham: 1
GP OKC: 0
Let's prempt the question "bUT wHaT AbOUt DeAtH sHaDOw?!". Yeah, those are some pretty big numbers. Yes, we could talk about how good GDS is overall. I will say that Death Shadow burst onto the scene with a flurry of power and then saw diminishing results as people found ways to deal with and beat it. That's because inherently it is a fair deck and there are fair ways to beat it (one of my big issues against Tron). Trons numbers stayed pretty consistent over the year even though they were bouncing from one variant to the next. Why? Because it doesn't matter what variant they are on. Tron lands add an inherent power to the deck that pushes it over the top. Sure maybe Death Shadow is too good but I see far fewer games where people are frustrated because they played against Death Shadow. Additionally, I feel that Death Shadow is just a symptom of the problem. Death Shadow came about because black based midrange players got tired of losing to big mana decks and tried to find a faster way to beat them. They developed a combo of their own through their own life resources and cards and managed to piece together one hell of a deck. We can talk about it as well as far as things putting up too many results over the year but I think Death Shadow is far less format warping than Tron.
I mean, of course we should worry about these last results. WotC focuses on GP/PT Top8 diversity for Modern bans after all. But come on guys, I come back to the thread after months and knee-jerk reactions still abound. Did someone at least run all the 2017 GP Top8 numbers? More level headed discussion and informed opinions would be nice, just saying.
Quick glances at the numbers for top 8's:
GP Vancouver: 0
GP Brisbane: 1
GP Kobe: 1
GP Copenhagen: 0
GP Las Vegas: 1
GP San Paulo: 1
GP Brimmingham: 0
GP OKC: 3
Total: 7/64 - 10.9375%
That's a lot considering Eldrazi Tron was barely a deck a year ago and GR Tron was replaced with GB tron only recently. As lists get more and more tuned it's putting up results. Only 3/8 GPs without Tron lands in the top 8. For a deck that is supposed to have high variance matchups... that is a lot of top 8 results IMO.
Edit: So I see the site I was using didn't filter out the team events since that meta is inherently wonky. So the number is updated based on non team events. I am doing a calculation of the other archetypes in a second but my point still stands from above
Edit #2: removed team events completely from the list and put the GPs in chronological order like I did for Death Shadow below.
Edit #3: Not to derail this into an awful rehashed topic but just as a frame of reference. Twin was 17.86% of the top 8's in its last year in the format. We all know that the "too much" number is arbitrary and changes at WotC's discretion but that is what it was at when it was cited for bans for similar reasons we are discussing here.
I don't know why I'm still surprised by this, but the hyperbole and quick overreaction to a single top 8 (which contained a diverse and interactive top 32) is astounding. The top 8 was bad, sure, but let's not rewrite history and pretend tron has been unbeatable for the past 6 months and has 50/50 mu's across the field. That's insane and disingenuous.
Sometimes people bring 6 cards in from the sb for you. It's fairly easy when you make sure your sideboard cards are broadly effective enough to help in other bad mu's. It's not like relic of progenitus has subtext reading *note: only bring for storm*
This was a single event. Let's look at at least one more before we get into our bomb shelters.
As someone who is almost solely a midrange player, I feel like I'm losing my mind reading this thread. Nearly every deck I enjoy playing in modern has a medium to awful matchup against Tron and I don't find myself freaking out.
Tron has been a quiet, underperforming deck in 2017 in major tournaments, Tom Ross was mainly the only one getting good results earlier in the year, and then it disappeared for months. One awful tournaments and we lose our minds? Come on, man, it's really difficult to take this thread seriously, it's actually very toxic. If not for Sheridan and GK's awesome stats and findings I think this thread would lack some serious dialogue.
As someone who despises playing against the Tron archetype, stop...The deck has almost never over-performed for long periods of times. Yes, I hate that midrange decks can't just have a bunch of 50/50s but it does keep those decks honest, even if that's frustrating.
Of course I want an improved answer(s) to big ramp---but the sky is falling attitude is awful.
And people calling for Tron bans while they play Storm? Am I losing my mind here?
The only scenario that had me worried was when Tron received Ugin while Eye was legal.
Maps/stirrings/Tron lands is not ban worthy, not until it's results are consistent. If we get a protour and a GP coupled with it, then we can start freaking out.
I've hated Tron for a long while but this is the year when I have started talking about it being band. Gx Tron saw diminished play in the middle part of the year but Eldrazi Tron ramped up and put up serious numbers and results. While yes, Gx Tron and Eldrazi Tron have functionally different gameplans, they both abuse the hard to interact with and busted fast mana that Tron lands enable. We don't see Bant Eldrazi anymore, we barely see Eldrazi and Taxes anymore and why? Because Tron lands make the deck better. IMO the breaking point was Walking Ballista. The card has added another great payoff for Tron land decks that can aid them in bad matchups early by plinking creatures or combo pieces and it is an engine that can help them win the game late. Now it's the breaking point not because Walking Ballista itself is too good. It's the breaking point because over the last several years Tron has gotten better and better pieces to fight it's bad matchups while it's good matchups didn't get any worse. It's time Tron be shown the door. It had its stay and I for one am sick and tired of it. It promotes boring non-interactive lopsided games of magic and warps the format into a race it or lose to it mentality. Even with the loss of Eye of Ugin, Tron decks have barely missed stride as Sanctum of Ugin mixed with Newlamog have just jumped into prime poll position as a "late game" way to close things out. Did I say late? I mean turn 4 or 5....
Someone asked whether they should play Jund or stick with Abzan. I told them I'd rather go with Abzan, which prompted a question as to why. I answered that question and now you're mad we're talking about that? Sometimes I really why I bother.
It just derailed the entire thread into a comparison between Abzan and Jund which IMO is not what this particular thread should be about. We've now gone on 2 pages that essentially ends up in preference territory. Answering the question is fine but it doesn't need 2 pages of card by card comparison between the 2 decks. That should be done in another thread altogether.
Even outside of arguing semantics and comparing sideboards and card selection, we shouldn't really even be debating which is better Abzan or Jund. That's not what this thread is supposed to be about. This thread should be how we can tune and tailor Jund to be the best it can be. Essentially it feels like you come into a thread to try and say, "You guys aren't playing my preferred variant of the GBx deck and therefore you guys are wrong and should just stop playing this deck altogether." In the end, none of that is helpful or contributes to a discussion of what we should be doing in Jund. I know it's impossible but I almost wish there were 3 threads. A Jund thread, an Abzan thread and a GBx thread. We could then relegate all comparison of the 2 decks and debates on why play one or the other to that third thread. The 2 specific threads should really be about tuning that desired variant.
I actually like Jund better than Abzan right now because I'm not big on Path to Exile. Sure it's a great catch all but there are a ton of decks in the format like Storm and Counter Company that you absolutely do not want to give them an extra land early. This is where Bolt has come back to being a great answer. I also tend to agree that I like Junds ability to clock over Abzans resilience and ability to grind right now. Games just aren't grinding out like they have in the past and Jund plays the better role of beat down.
Everywhere where Path to Exile is bad, it will often be easily boarded out for better hate because that's usually what playing white cards in the sideboard is good for. Not to mention, you get to do this while still having access to Fatal Push. Your example seems a little less than good when you should be shaving removal even with Jund. Also, I haven't seen too many fast games in Modern right now. When I'm constantly seeing Storm with 6 or 7 lands out, how much more grindy can we get?
What? Games in Modern have a tendency to go very very quickly. They only don't go quickly if you managed to stifle what your opponent is doing. Otherwise games end extremely fast. It's not hard to trim removal in Jund when you need to because Bolt at it's worst goes to the face and push at it's worse hits manlands.
" I believe that a skilled pilot who knows how to mulligan and play the matchup, and who comes prepared with a decent sideboard, can win nearly half of their matches against Tron." --> Bold statement from Reid there. Can't confirm this out of my experience
Yeah that is on the bold side. Now I really want for him to do a video series of how to play GBx vs Tron and give us the rundown. I can understand that statement if he is including Eldrazi Tron in that. I haven't lost to it yet. 5/6 Goyfs tend to really put a hurt on their attack plans. Usually long enough to turn the corner.
These are gonna be great. I really think that tweet he sent out about the GP OKC results really grinded his gears. That top 8 was like a Bat Signal and Reid is jumping into action.
I actually like Jund better than Abzan right now because I'm not big on Path to Exile. Sure it's a great catch all but there are a ton of decks in the format like Storm and Counter Company that you absolutely do not want to give them an extra land early. This is where Bolt has come back to being a great answer. I also tend to agree that I like Junds ability to clock over Abzans resilience and ability to grind right now. Games just aren't grinding out like they have in the past and Jund plays the better role of beat down.
So I thought it might be useful to put all articles relevant for us in the primer and thus added a chapter in the Technical Play section. If there are any extra articles I forgot, please let me know.
Not necessarily technical play related but Reid Duke is one of the masters of Jund and does write articles occasionally on it. IIRC he tends to go into pretty good detail about why he made those changes at the time. While those specific lists aren't exactly relevant, knowing why Jund wants to play certain cards can help people learn how to think "jund"
So the big thing that we are already starting to see though is an increase in 3cmc creatures. Fatal push doesn't always cleanly answer everything. Revolt is hard to trigger sometimes. This is why we have seen Rabblemaster also making a showing in Jund. Also we will see increases in things like Tasigur and Angler and such if the format ever opens up so midrange decks are better positioned. Things are too fast right now because everyone is trying to race big mana decks.
I think Push was great for midrange decks, just not GBx. BWx Midrange decks are really poised to be good if Tron and such weren't such a big portion of the format.
The fact that sometimes Inquisition doesn't get what you want or the life loss for Thoughtseize is too much makes them both questionable to me. Yes, discard is generally good for us but only if it gets what we want. The reason I don't love Tarmogoyf any more is because it's easily killed by a lot of decks or sometimes it's easily ignored. The prevalance of graveyard hate also makes it questionable after game 1.
My point isn't to question the relevance of Storm. My point is that even the decks we're supposed to have an advantage against are getting better while we're stagnant at best and not very well positioned. Can any of you point out a metagame where Jund would dominate? I don't mean be alright in. I mean be legitimately good. I can do that for several other decks.
There isn't one. But that is why Jund is a Tier 2 deck and only just came back out of the cellars of Developing Competitive. Unless they get rid of Tron altogether, there won't be a format in which Jund is extremely relevant. Currently we are playing dodge the big mana matchups and prey on Affinity, Humans, Jeskai Tempo and other creature based decks. What our goal in this thread isn't to say that Jund is the best deck in the format but work to improve our 75's to make our versions of Jund be the best they can be so that if the metagame becomes more favorable that we can be ready to dominate.
I agree with you that I don't think anything is happening until post-PT but I've heard several pros wanting a Tron ban then as well. While yes, Tron did put only 1 top 8 result per GP before OKC I still see that as kind of alarming that it's put up so many. For a deck that is supposed to have extremely polarizing results, it's managed to go undefeated or X-1 at a extremely consistent clip at GPs over the last year (Bear in mind of the 4 non-OKC top 8's, only 1 was E.Tron and the rest were Traditional). I think part of that is the inherent "bustedness" of the Tron lands themselves, the tuning of their lists and cards they've gotten to make their bad matchups better while keeping their good matchups extremely lopsided, but the other part is that I think there are other decks that have come up that are also suppressing their bad matchups. Like these Jeskai decks (while I agree they have to be group together, I do dislike how inconsistent the lists are. It really makes them hard to figure out), they are really good against Storm, Affinity, Humans and Death Shadow. They seem to be good in a lot of matchups that might have stopped Trons performance. While it's nice to think "yeah people will just adjust to decks that beat Tron" but if those decks aren't well positioned against the rest of the field, Tron will continue to stay on top. I'm not super optimistic about this.
Affintiy: 6
Counter Company: 5
Burn: 3
Death and Taxes: 3
Merfolk: 1
Lantern: 3
Dredge: 5
Living End: 3
WR Sun and Moon: 1
GBx: 3
BW Eldrazi (actual midrange, no taxes): 1
Ad Nauseum: 1
UWx: 4
Storm: 1
Titanshift: 5
Turns(Quad sleeved power): 1
Knightfall: 1
Now before you get to clickity clack responding about Death Shadow, here is the breakdown by GP in the order they happened:
GP Vancouver: 3
GP Brisbane: 0 (notably this is the same weekend of GP Vancouver and the birth of what we now call Death Shadow)
GP Kobe: 1
GP Copenhagen: 2
GP Las Vegas: 0
GP Sao Paulo: 2
GP Birmingham: 1
GP OKC: 0
Let's prempt the question "bUT wHaT AbOUt DeAtH sHaDOw?!". Yeah, those are some pretty big numbers. Yes, we could talk about how good GDS is overall. I will say that Death Shadow burst onto the scene with a flurry of power and then saw diminishing results as people found ways to deal with and beat it. That's because inherently it is a fair deck and there are fair ways to beat it (one of my big issues against Tron). Trons numbers stayed pretty consistent over the year even though they were bouncing from one variant to the next. Why? Because it doesn't matter what variant they are on. Tron lands add an inherent power to the deck that pushes it over the top. Sure maybe Death Shadow is too good but I see far fewer games where people are frustrated because they played against Death Shadow. Additionally, I feel that Death Shadow is just a symptom of the problem. Death Shadow came about because black based midrange players got tired of losing to big mana decks and tried to find a faster way to beat them. They developed a combo of their own through their own life resources and cards and managed to piece together one hell of a deck. We can talk about it as well as far as things putting up too many results over the year but I think Death Shadow is far less format warping than Tron.
Quick glances at the numbers for top 8's:
GP Vancouver: 0
GP Brisbane: 1
GP Kobe: 1
GP Copenhagen: 0
GP Las Vegas: 1
GP San Paulo: 1
GP Brimmingham: 0
GP OKC: 3
Total: 7/64 - 10.9375%
That's a lot considering Eldrazi Tron was barely a deck a year ago and GR Tron was replaced with GB tron only recently. As lists get more and more tuned it's putting up results. Only 3/8 GPs without Tron lands in the top 8. For a deck that is supposed to have high variance matchups... that is a lot of top 8 results IMO.
Edit: So I see the site I was using didn't filter out the team events since that meta is inherently wonky. So the number is updated based on non team events. I am doing a calculation of the other archetypes in a second but my point still stands from above
Edit #2: removed team events completely from the list and put the GPs in chronological order like I did for Death Shadow below.
Edit #3: Not to derail this into an awful rehashed topic but just as a frame of reference. Twin was 17.86% of the top 8's in its last year in the format. We all know that the "too much" number is arbitrary and changes at WotC's discretion but that is what it was at when it was cited for bans for similar reasons we are discussing here.
I've hated Tron for a long while but this is the year when I have started talking about it being band. Gx Tron saw diminished play in the middle part of the year but Eldrazi Tron ramped up and put up serious numbers and results. While yes, Gx Tron and Eldrazi Tron have functionally different gameplans, they both abuse the hard to interact with and busted fast mana that Tron lands enable. We don't see Bant Eldrazi anymore, we barely see Eldrazi and Taxes anymore and why? Because Tron lands make the deck better. IMO the breaking point was Walking Ballista. The card has added another great payoff for Tron land decks that can aid them in bad matchups early by plinking creatures or combo pieces and it is an engine that can help them win the game late. Now it's the breaking point not because Walking Ballista itself is too good. It's the breaking point because over the last several years Tron has gotten better and better pieces to fight it's bad matchups while it's good matchups didn't get any worse. It's time Tron be shown the door. It had its stay and I for one am sick and tired of it. It promotes boring non-interactive lopsided games of magic and warps the format into a race it or lose to it mentality. Even with the loss of Eye of Ugin, Tron decks have barely missed stride as Sanctum of Ugin mixed with Newlamog have just jumped into prime poll position as a "late game" way to close things out. Did I say late? I mean turn 4 or 5....
It just derailed the entire thread into a comparison between Abzan and Jund which IMO is not what this particular thread should be about. We've now gone on 2 pages that essentially ends up in preference territory. Answering the question is fine but it doesn't need 2 pages of card by card comparison between the 2 decks. That should be done in another thread altogether.
What? Games in Modern have a tendency to go very very quickly. They only don't go quickly if you managed to stifle what your opponent is doing. Otherwise games end extremely fast. It's not hard to trim removal in Jund when you need to because Bolt at it's worst goes to the face and push at it's worse hits manlands.
Yeah that is on the bold side. Now I really want for him to do a video series of how to play GBx vs Tron and give us the rundown. I can understand that statement if he is including Eldrazi Tron in that. I haven't lost to it yet. 5/6 Goyfs tend to really put a hurt on their attack plans. Usually long enough to turn the corner.
These are gonna be great. I really think that tweet he sent out about the GP OKC results really grinded his gears. That top 8 was like a Bat Signal and Reid is jumping into action.
Not necessarily technical play related but Reid Duke is one of the masters of Jund and does write articles occasionally on it. IIRC he tends to go into pretty good detail about why he made those changes at the time. While those specific lists aren't exactly relevant, knowing why Jund wants to play certain cards can help people learn how to think "jund"
I think the "suprise of the PT" will be that it's Tron, Affinity and Storm and it's truly terrible. Then they go after 2/3 of those decks.
There isn't one. But that is why Jund is a Tier 2 deck and only just came back out of the cellars of Developing Competitive. Unless they get rid of Tron altogether, there won't be a format in which Jund is extremely relevant. Currently we are playing dodge the big mana matchups and prey on Affinity, Humans, Jeskai Tempo and other creature based decks. What our goal in this thread isn't to say that Jund is the best deck in the format but work to improve our 75's to make our versions of Jund be the best they can be so that if the metagame becomes more favorable that we can be ready to dominate.