These other decks are, to a point, the exact same decks that the people were dangling to demonstrate that Eldrazi Winter was a diverse (Affinity and Storm) field.
Quite simply Eldrazi Temple isn't a healthy influence on the format by any stretch of the imagination and it needs to go. The sooner the better.
I'm personally happy that all the storm decks that reached day 2 ended up in the top 16. I don't remember that the deck ever had such a good conversion rate.
On the other hand that exact number demonstrates what kind of an effect E-Tron has on the format. By pushing out all the other midrange decks the format is down to linear racing. There is no other way to explain storm's and affinity's numbers on day 2.
This effect, I feel, will become more apparent in the next month or so but I don't think I'm being overly paranoid when I say WotC needs to finish the job they've started when they banned Eye of Ugin (by banning Eldrazi Temple) unless they want a repeat of the last Modern PT.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor being a degenerate card, while a Sol Land, or an Ancient Tomb without you taking damage, but for only a specific type of creatures(and the most powerful in the game) is ok is beyond me!
If JTMS is not fine, then cards like Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, or heck even Collected Company are not fine as well.
I agree with this, to a point. A pair of Eldrazi Temples will make for way more non-games then Jace ever will.
However, I wouldn't compared CoCo to any of these cards. It is a powerful card to be sure but it is, for lack of a better word, fair.
Ultimately I think the Unban Jace Dillema is too big. It's possible implications on all aspects of the format would be unprecedented, for better or for worse, and would dwarf all the changes that came before.
My guess is wotc is biding their time. They haven't exactly been on a winning streak with b&r announcements recently and this kind of gambit takes a lot of balls and credibility - of which they currently have neither.
As things are there is no good incentive to change anything. We have a full blocks worth of cards ahead of us before the PT so speculating about February in July seems pointless.
Regarding Eldrazi Temple I still think it doesn't belong in Modern, purely for holistic reasons, but I'm willing to tolerate it for as long as it doesn't homogenize midrange decks in the format (I don't know if that is happening already but I'm guessing a few posters on this thread are keeping track of such things).
It still remains the card most likely to be broken, again, at the pt by a wide margin though.I'm willing to wait this one out but WotC might not be of the same opinion on this given how the last pt went down.
Artifact lands are never coming off the banned list. Ever. Apart from the fact each of them is a pseudo Ancient Tomb with affinity mechanic cards, they give an unhealthy power boost to current Affinity decks.
Think of what those cards do for ravager, plating, etched champion, galvanic blast and mox opal. Then think about master of etherium, myr enforcer and disciple of the vault. If you think all of those would be kept in check by a few more hate cards out of the board you are badly mistaken...
I'm very sceptical of the Modern pt announcement. Given the history of those events it's more then likely they will mess something up with the banned list.
On the other hand if a skewed pt is what it takes to finally finish cleaning up the aftermath of Eldrazi Winter then so be it. I'm aware that E-Tron isn't the monstrosity we had last year but does it really have to be to prove the point that Eldrazi Temple is an unfair and unbalanced card? Even if by some weird logic Ancient Tomb is a fair card for Modern having it relegated to a single deck is far from fair.
I can already tell we are going to have trouble labeling some of these decks. For instance I consider eldrazi tron a big mana deck
Eldrazi Tron is midrange. Karn and E-Map are the only rampy cards in the deck, and most E-Tron builds don't even run the full Karn playset. Everything else is good, old-fashioned midrange with big dumb dudes, disruption, valuable creatures, etc. E-Tron just happens to do midrange better than many other midrange decks, and that mana efficiency makes people call it a big mana deck. Incidentally, cards that are good against big mana tend to be less good against E-Tron. Spreading Seas and Ghost Quarter, for example, are sweet against Gx Tron but really not spectacular against E-Tron. They help, sure, but not the same way they ruin Gx Tron. By contrast, many cards that aren't good against big mana are great against E-Tron. See Verdict.
As multiple posters said earlier, and as recent articles have talked about, many successful Modern decks do so by cheating on mana in various ways. E-Tron happens to do this with lands, as opposed to GDS doing it with casting costs or Dredge doing it with a mechanic. This use of lands makes many people incorrectly label the deck as ramp. But E-Tron plays out as midrange, despite lands being its source of mana cheating: disrupt the opponent with Chalice/TKS/Dismember/All Is Dust and then win with mana-efficient monsters. Also as with midrange, E-Tron can switch between an aggressive role with Smashers and TKS or a more controlling route with Ballista.
Just compare the real ramp decks like Gx Tron and Titanshift to E-Tron and the difference is very clear. The decks have little in common.
I completely agree with this analysis, though it still doesn't answer why the format is better off with a midrange deck packed to the brim with Ancient Tombs.
To be clear tron lands are perfectly fine, as they require you to put in work for the extra mana. Eldrazi Temple just requires mulligan skills.
Traditional Jund went into decline as soon as Tron players figured out that they are better off playing Thought-Knot Seer on turn two instead of durdling into turn 3 Karns.
Basically they exchanged a slight portion of their late-game power for early interaction while retaining their main mana engine and adding Eldrazi Temple to make it even better in the process.
Traditional Jund is more or less done for for as long as Eldrazi Temple remains in the format.
While eldrazi temple and mox opal are "fine" for modern because the decks they see play in aren't overly oppressive those cards do make modern worse by increasing the amount of non games. I really wish something would just go ahead and break them so we can get them out of the format. This waiting game has gotten old
The problem is, almost every Modern deck is trying to “cheat” on mana/tempo in some form or another.
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Gurmag Angler
Simian Spirit Guide
Goryo's Vengeance
Any 3 CMC card with cascade
Aether Vial
Collected Company
Burning Tree Emissary
Hidden Herbalists
Prized Amalgam
Bloodghast
There are a ton more, but it's essentially what every deck is trying to do. Most of the decks that make use of Opal have strategies that are hurt pretty badly by artifact hate. Temple, I can see people being justifiably upset about, since Temple is used to rush out early Thought-Knot Seer which is a preemptive answer to a lot of potential hate that could be played against Temple decks, but it just doesn't have the meta-share and wins to warrant any action.
There ya go.
The problem isn't Eldrazi Temple. The problem is the idea that modern is a format all about playing on curve. This is a hyper efficient format where you are going to have to cheat mana somehow. Hell this list didn't even mention the Tron lands or Storms mana reducers.
Mana efficiency is always the name of the game and that's exactly why Eldrazi Temple is too good for this format. Not going into specifics here, regardless of how warranted they are as quite a few of them are straw-man arguments (some are actually amusingly wrong), all of the cards listed here have very real costs when it comes to deck construction, most if not all of them can be interacted with on the stack or with graveyard/artifact hate and almost none of them provide near as plentiful, quick and resilient mana acceleration as Eldrazi Temple does (heck some of the cards listed don't even make mana!). How do you interact with a turn two Thought-Knot Seer on the play? Thoughtseize it and pray they don't peel another one? Even if they played it on turn 3 you should be sweating bullets since you can't attack their acceleration and the mana disadvantage that implies will become more significant as the game progresses.
Tron has to go through nigh infinite hoops and has to make very significant deck building restrictions just to be able to, on turn 3, do something decks with Eldrazi Temple can lucksack into naturally on turn 2; play high impact threats way ahead of curve without suffering any card disadvantage and retain the ability to do so for the rest of the game.
I repeat, this isn't about meta shares. Those are important but they aren't the only factor (just ask storm players when Seething Song got the chop). Ancient Tombs shouldn't be Modern legal, especially if the format has close to no ways to interact with said lands in the early game in a meaningful way. I would go so far as to say that it is the single most powerful mana producer the format has, especially in multiples.
If there was one card I would consider banning that card would have to be Eldrazi Temple.
What it boils down to is that I think it should have been banned during the Eldrazi Winter along with the Eye since both cards became fundamentally unfair after Oath of the Gatewatch got released. Ancient Tomb with no drawbacks shouldn't be a modern-legal card.
E-Tron's status in the meta shouldn't factor into this. If anything it shows that the Eye of Ugin ban was a half measure.
Looks like a great, if nerfed, combo card. Sure there will be times when this bricks but it seems like a fair risk. Lands not untapping is irrelevant. They cant get back at you if they are dead.
Im seriously considering now building back some shape of UW Sram again for a PPTQ, which will be still before the next set, aka in less than 2 weeks.
Soah all flavors of BG, Mardu, and Zombies are whats left, plus mb some RGX Energy/Gods, incl Temur NO-Marvel.
Thinking whats best in SB apart from counters, Fumigates, Crush, and Fragmentize.
Maybe Cast Out as a catch all, but then extra Negates etc will be smoother.
Would you play any number of cycle duals in UW?
On one hand some grave hate would be useful vs Delirium and Zombies, but then again it doesn't affect the game plan that much.
It's nice to see someone else considering going the uw route.
This my current sb, more or less:
2 Dispel
2 Negate
2 Repel the Abominable
1 Whir of Invention
2 Fumigate
4 Bastion Inventor
1 Approach of the second Sun
Fog effects are there for the aggro decks, inventors and counters for the control matchups along with the extra tutor. The alternative win con comes in against dedicated hate like Disposses. Fumigate is a bit of an odd fish since crush is better in some corner cases and against planeswalkers.
Im currently playing 3 uw cycling lands in the main. Having more then that can lead to clunky openers.
Against bg and zombies you just need to focus on doing your thing. They can't really interact with your main plan game one. After sb-ing they will probably have discard, artifact hate and maybe even cranial effects (if you see those or expect them side in approach).
Expecting what ammounts to a pet deck to show up and perform well is highly optimistic.That being said i feel very good about playing this deck right now sice I feel the marvel matchup is decent (you can counter marvel and combo them out before they have a chance to hardcast ulamog). Game one against zombies looks like a cakewalk and I'm only concerned about the splash damage from their plans to combat marvel.
Quite simply Eldrazi Temple isn't a healthy influence on the format by any stretch of the imagination and it needs to go. The sooner the better.
I'm personally happy that all the storm decks that reached day 2 ended up in the top 16. I don't remember that the deck ever had such a good conversion rate.
On the other hand that exact number demonstrates what kind of an effect E-Tron has on the format. By pushing out all the other midrange decks the format is down to linear racing. There is no other way to explain storm's and affinity's numbers on day 2.
This effect, I feel, will become more apparent in the next month or so but I don't think I'm being overly paranoid when I say WotC needs to finish the job they've started when they banned Eye of Ugin (by banning Eldrazi Temple) unless they want a repeat of the last Modern PT.
I agree with this, to a point. A pair of Eldrazi Temples will make for way more non-games then Jace ever will.
However, I wouldn't compared CoCo to any of these cards. It is a powerful card to be sure but it is, for lack of a better word, fair.
Ultimately I think the Unban Jace Dillema is too big. It's possible implications on all aspects of the format would be unprecedented, for better or for worse, and would dwarf all the changes that came before.
My guess is wotc is biding their time. They haven't exactly been on a winning streak with b&r announcements recently and this kind of gambit takes a lot of balls and credibility - of which they currently have neither.
Regarding Eldrazi Temple I still think it doesn't belong in Modern, purely for holistic reasons, but I'm willing to tolerate it for as long as it doesn't homogenize midrange decks in the format (I don't know if that is happening already but I'm guessing a few posters on this thread are keeping track of such things).
It still remains the card most likely to be broken, again, at the pt by a wide margin though.I'm willing to wait this one out but WotC might not be of the same opinion on this given how the last pt went down.
Think of what those cards do for ravager, plating, etched champion, galvanic blast and mox opal. Then think about master of etherium, myr enforcer and disciple of the vault. If you think all of those would be kept in check by a few more hate cards out of the board you are badly mistaken...
On the other hand if a skewed pt is what it takes to finally finish cleaning up the aftermath of Eldrazi Winter then so be it. I'm aware that E-Tron isn't the monstrosity we had last year but does it really have to be to prove the point that Eldrazi Temple is an unfair and unbalanced card? Even if by some weird logic Ancient Tomb is a fair card for Modern having it relegated to a single deck is far from fair.
I completely agree with this analysis, though it still doesn't answer why the format is better off with a midrange deck packed to the brim with Ancient Tombs.
To be clear tron lands are perfectly fine, as they require you to put in work for the extra mana. Eldrazi Temple just requires mulligan skills.
Basically they exchanged a slight portion of their late-game power for early interaction while retaining their main mana engine and adding Eldrazi Temple to make it even better in the process.
Traditional Jund is more or less done for for as long as Eldrazi Temple remains in the format.
Mana efficiency is always the name of the game and that's exactly why Eldrazi Temple is too good for this format. Not going into specifics here, regardless of how warranted they are as quite a few of them are straw-man arguments (some are actually amusingly wrong), all of the cards listed here have very real costs when it comes to deck construction, most if not all of them can be interacted with on the stack or with graveyard/artifact hate and almost none of them provide near as plentiful, quick and resilient mana acceleration as Eldrazi Temple does (heck some of the cards listed don't even make mana!). How do you interact with a turn two Thought-Knot Seer on the play? Thoughtseize it and pray they don't peel another one? Even if they played it on turn 3 you should be sweating bullets since you can't attack their acceleration and the mana disadvantage that implies will become more significant as the game progresses.
Tron has to go through nigh infinite hoops and has to make very significant deck building restrictions just to be able to, on turn 3, do something decks with Eldrazi Temple can lucksack into naturally on turn 2; play high impact threats way ahead of curve without suffering any card disadvantage and retain the ability to do so for the rest of the game.
I repeat, this isn't about meta shares. Those are important but they aren't the only factor (just ask storm players when Seething Song got the chop). Ancient Tombs shouldn't be Modern legal, especially if the format has close to no ways to interact with said lands in the early game in a meaningful way. I would go so far as to say that it is the single most powerful mana producer the format has, especially in multiples.
What it boils down to is that I think it should have been banned during the Eldrazi Winter along with the Eye since both cards became fundamentally unfair after Oath of the Gatewatch got released. Ancient Tomb with no drawbacks shouldn't be a modern-legal card.
E-Tron's status in the meta shouldn't factor into this. If anything it shows that the Eye of Ugin ban was a half measure.
It's nice to see someone else considering going the uw route.
This my current sb, more or less:
2 Dispel
2 Negate
2 Repel the Abominable
1 Whir of Invention
2 Fumigate
4 Bastion Inventor
1 Approach of the second Sun
Fog effects are there for the aggro decks, inventors and counters for the control matchups along with the extra tutor. The alternative win con comes in against dedicated hate like Disposses. Fumigate is a bit of an odd fish since crush is better in some corner cases and against planeswalkers.
Im currently playing 3 uw cycling lands in the main. Having more then that can lead to clunky openers.
Against bg and zombies you just need to focus on doing your thing. They can't really interact with your main plan game one. After sb-ing they will probably have discard, artifact hate and maybe even cranial effects (if you see those or expect them side in approach).