MTG Salvation

It would be super sad to see Death's Shadow in the banlist. I don't think it is worth banning as much as unbanning Splinter Twin or Stoneforge Mystic. Banning the card Death's Shadow itself would be nothing short of incompetence and taking steps backwards in regards of format health and player trust. The DS strategy is powerful and as efficient as it gets in Modern. It doesn't win on T3 and goldfished T4 kills are against decks that many people hate playing against(like Tron and Valakut). It punishes you for trying to play solitaire and not caring about the board. As a bonus, it rewards you for playing boat loads of removal and powerful finishers like Planeswalkers.

My take is: Let's instead give it one more round to prove itself worthy of remaining as a viable strategy in Modern and unban Stoneforge Mystic to compensate and push a little more reactive decks. They can easily deal with her via Kolaghan's Command and even Tarfire if well timed. She will bring a new angle of attack and super interesting gameplay with the nowhere-to-be-seen Swords. Finally, it serves as an incentive to play control decks too(especially blue decks) even if Eldrazi and Abzan could potentially abuse her even more. That added with a good blue answer or CA spell and the format could be pretty well balanced.

And i don't get what makes you laugh. The fact that a potential Grixis Twin will have the abillity of closing the window on Turn 4 against Tron,Eldrazi,Dredge and Nauseam just to name a few? Or the fact that it will have such a strong SB plan that it will be hard to out-grind in a long game?.

Or maybe the fact that the archetype is so hyped that the first few months will be nothing but Twin variants running around until Death's Shadow tweaks the deck to consistently beat Twin and the pillars of the format will be Shadow,Twin and the rest of the field?.

I also think that Jund DS is superior to Grixis DS because of: Tarmogoyf as a consistent threat and wall against the right decks. Temur Batttle Rage against swarm and combo(it gives you the 'oops i win' which is super important in this format). Liliana of the Veil which single handedly beats decks like Ad Nauseam and Control. And lastly, Traverse the Ulvenwald which is very powerful and gives you a nice tool box plan post board.

Being said that, i think Grixis Shadow might be Modern's best blue deck and Snapcaster Mage is just a silly Magic card. Counter magic goes a long way in tandem with discard to protect yourself against almost anything(Not Supreme Verdict off the top for example). And with Jund being the deck to beat, playing 4 creatures that don't die to Fatal Push is the nail in the coffin for Grixis being a good deck and a fine choice just like Jund DS.

In conclusion, i think Jund is the better deck, but Grixis is almost as fine as Jund and are both fine choices in any given metagame.

PS: I don't play the Jund version but have tested it a few times.

If you use Rosewater's and Forsythe's comments to craft a theory, i would say that Hour of Devastation will bring something pushed for Blue to use. Rosewater said that Hour will be the first set that they could apply recent concerns and knowledge by the community, and Forsythe said he will adress blue issues in Modern.

I don't think they will unban any card. Jace if they feel that it is safer than safest. And Preordain if they change their goals for the format. Both seem dubious at best. I'm personally avoiding getting to close to any blue archetype because i feel they will make some changes in the format.

Also, i think some Shadow piece can be avoid being banned by empowering a struggling archetype like Control to give people reasons to not just jam 4 TS and 4 Shadows and call it a day.

Michael Majors: https://www.twitch.tv/mmajors
TCG Requiem: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4qcGbT7UN-flD9hMc8qD-g
Oren(fellow MTGS poster): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIUOGndgz_FPFuGmYabSThA

If i recall another one i¿ll edit and post it.

Mark Rosewater said on Blogatog that Hour of Devastation will be the first expansion to introduce changes that were asked by the community. He talks about the Gatewatch and Lili+Gideon dominance, but i could see it also in terms of Answers vs Threats pendulum.

Quote from Wraithpk »

Counterspell just got spoiled as a masterpiece. STANDARD REPRINT, PLS WIZARDS!

Wow, and if you look at the other ones, they are all Modern legal cards.

Just do it goddammit!

Link: http://www.magicspoiler.com/amonkhet-spoiler/

I said this a couple of weeks ago and many folks here crushed me when i said that Death's Shadow had resemblance with Splinter Twin in diversity matters. Right now instead of playing Grixis Delver i'm playing Grixis Shadow, my brother instead of playing Abzan he is playing Abzan Shadow, same with Jund and Esper players?. I mean, right now it's the pivotal point(closer to Amonkhet i believe) where the meta decides whether it's gobbled up by DS or some deck completetly crushes it or an unban or reprint gives us a reason to play classic control and midrange builds instead of the DS package.

I think calling it for a ban right now seems short-sighted since in a couple of weeks there will be a B&R announcement(which i believe they will unban something) and Amonkhet later on, mostly sure will bring an answer with the power level of recently printed creatures.

I think(and hope) that the meta will sort itself via unbans/reprints/next level building and we can have DS in Modern to be viable along every other strategy.

As of today, i think Blood Moon is the better choice for our 'land destruction' SB. Fulminator/Molten Rain seem too slow even if you plus Surgical Extraction to the equation. Eldrazi Tron being the top Big mana deck and Bant Eldrazi being such a poor matchup makes me think Moon is the way to go now.

I'm not sure if it would help or at least slow down Classic Tron and Valakut, but those matchups are won by Clock plus counters anyway.

If the objective is to win Tron and Eldrazi, i think Death's Shadow(with or without Delver) is plain better than classic Delver. You just have to respect them with some SB plan. DS could use land destruction against those decks because of discards spells an crazy clocks. Moon is definitely out of the question for this build because it locks Fetch Lands and makes DS much harder to grow and close the game.

Quote from wpgstevo »

With respect to the BBD article, I think he is right that all the six cards are pretty safe. I would argue the format would be better with the unbans - even simultaneous would be acceptable in my eyes. I think it would be a lot of fun!

• Preordain
  
• Punishing Fire
  
• Stoneforge Mystic
  
• Jace, the Mind Sculptor
  
• Bloodbraid Elf
  
• Splinter Twin

WotC risk aversion is too high to try something like this, but I could see it easily being even more diverse by giving slightly weaker archtypes their staple cards back. I don't really see how the above could be anything but awesome, even if wizards is too risk averse to try it.

To put it bluntly, black is the most powerful colour in modern because it has not had many toys taken away. This would even it out a bit more - but I think black would still be the best colour with a smaller gap.

Wow with all do respect, that format seems Aether Revolt Standard in diversity matters.

Splinter Twin and Jund are clearly the most benefited decks from thos changes. It would be a 2 deck format and Aggro would be non-existent.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from ashtonkutcher »

Wizards already seems to know the answer, as Modern continues to grow in popularity under their diversity-minded guidance. The fact is combo, control, and midrange decks are all playable in Modern, no matter how "good" you perceive them to be. That's why so many people play and love this format: they can win with their pet decks.

I actually just used this website the other day to showcase to my 8th graders that correlation does not dictate causation.

If anything, we can probably conclude the growth of Modern is the result of Standard being a dumpster fire drowning in a cesspool for the past two years and sloppy players being rewarded with wins against better players because fast, linear decks are really good and relatively cheap to build. I don't know how much it actually has anything to do with anything directly related to "diversity"; especially when the best decks in that "diversity" are full of miserable and toxic decks that promote awful gameplay fueled high variance in matchups and narrow sideboards. Modern is only really "diverse" in deck names. There's really only one archetype that consistently does well: fast/aggro/linear. The rest all have random, sporadic success, usually as dictated by their matchups in any given tournament.

This posts starts as a potentially nuanced discussion of attendance and other more objective factors about Modern popularity. Unfortunately, it rapidly slides into extremely subjective and negative evaluations of the format without any attempt to cite evidence. Maybe those "toxic" decks and matches are more popular than you believe. Maybe not. Maybe Standard was a major factor in Modern growth. Maybe diversity was too. Maybe not on either count. There are ways to answer those questions that don't involve hyperbole, and I wish we actually saw those analyses attempted more. There is plenty of data we can still look at. Especially attendance data. If posters spent more time looking at and analyzing that data instead of engaging in highly personal, subjective arguments, I feel like we would all understand the format better.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

While I agree that it is a diverse Top 8 in a currently diverse Modern meta, it is very noninteractive. None of those decks are trying to interact - Merfolk and Counters probably the most of the top 8.

I would say Death and Taxes are the most interactive. They are running Land destruction, hand attack, and removal.

Wizards strongly hinted in their announcement that Modern unbans are on the horizon. In a piece for Modern Nexus this morning, I went through what I believe are the five most likely candidates. Would love to hear some of your thoughts 💃🏻

http://modernnexus.com/challenger-approaching-unban-candidates/

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/august-28-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-08-28

The last B&R announcement said the 17th, so unless there's a more recent article stating otherwise, the announcement is tomorrow

I mean, Diva, last year was a garbage, dumpster fire of a mess format

Dredge and Infect ruined the format, and probe added to supplementary problems with the deck you enjoyed. A few months before that, Eldrazi Winter

I mean, I'm sorry you dislike modern where it is now, but you indicating last year as modern being remotely good really leaves me suspect that you view modern as healthy too selfishly. You did call yourself on that though, which I appreciate.

And I disagree heavily, modern is better now by miles than anytime at any single point of last year. Dredge was a toxic deck that wasn't quite on par with TC, DRS, but just a notch below those.

Quote from BlueTronFTW »

I don't find thoughtseize fun. I don't find GBx mirrors fun. I don't find it entertaining on either end to just fill a deck with the best kill spells, sit around until your opponent has no cards in hand, then swing with a raging ravine while using discard and removal TO PREVENT your opponent from doing anything. It is every bit as aggravating as playing dredge and facing a leyline of the void. What some players here are calling interaction are really ways to stop your opponent from doing things - counters, discard, removal. So when someone complains about chalice of the void making a non-game...well the goal of thoughtseize into goyf into LOTV is to do the exact same thing - stop your opponent from playing. It's all the same, just a matter of what sort of non-game you want to be on the end of, repeated discard and kill spells, a silver bullet sb card, or a deck that's just way faster than you.

I feel the same way in that respect. I always found it so odd whenever some BGx players complained that there is "no Magic being played" when their whole deck is meant to do that to the opponent via hand disruption and creature removal, then finishing you off with a super powerful beater. Now there is another beater that is half the cost and occasionally gets double the size, so it's not fair?

Quote from h0lydiva »

EDIT: I know this is not the place to express you don't like Modern so I'm done with it. I'm very pessimistic about the format.

I have been feeling this more and more from other players. It's really sad to me when I see players lose interest in Modern since it is the main format that I play and have so many cards in. I have noticed a decline in attendance locally. I don't know if it's the time of year, but you would think that Promo Fatal Push would push attendance. Nope.

For what it's worth, I will say what I have said 1,000 times here before. I do think that currently there is a real Rock/Paper/Scissors in Modern, but it just isn't enjoyable to players. I hope this is a sign to Wizards that their quest for the Holy Grail in a meta of 5% X 10 and 2.5% X 20 is not only unattainable, but could possibly NOT BE what players are looking for. I find it incredulous when someone complains about a deck that is 12% of the meta. That just blows me away. I used to play in metas where 33% of people played a certain deck and there was NO complaining. I think the more you give, the more that is asked from you. Wizards can't appease everyone. But I hoep that they try to do something to help attendance via unbans. That's what I really hope. *fingers crossed

Quote from pierrebai »

I'm not too enthusiastic about this recent discussion.

For starter, like many, I think the speculation of what would happen without the current tier-1 is both mostly hot air and entirely pointless. It's not that I mind people shooting from the hip and giving their opinion, but that I find the discussion to be a symptom of a lack of mental rigor. Any meta has a tier one, every tier set will have its detractor, every deck has its lover and hater. You'd replace one set of dissatisfied players with another. I'd rather read people discuss how to make some decks better than how to destroy the ones that exist. I find the current displayed hate for the existing tier-1 a bit tasteless.

Furthermore, the discussion seems to take for granted two things. One, that the current tier-1 suite is dominating. It's not true. Multiple recent results have shown other decks taking the crown in a given tournament. There is no huge gulf between tier-1 and tier-2. So why want to change the tier-1? It does not extinguish variety, that's just not true. Two, history bears this out, a single new card can push tier-2 deck into tier-1. Look at Baral making storm better for example. So, I would much prefer to see people speculating on new cards (even made up ones) that would help change the meta rather than bashing tier-1 decks you think are no-fun.

Seriously.

'I don't like the decks in tier 1 so lets ban a card from each of them and then there's no reason that everything shouldn't be fine and if you think there is then you don't know how to read or understand reason' is what I've been getting from the last ~4 pages (of course this clearly means that I can't read or understand reason).

What the heck happened to Sheridan? I mean I know he had to work more but it's been awhile since I've seen a post from the resident voice of reason in this ***** show.

Splinter twin.

Opt is a spectacular reprint. Combo lists will likely prefer the greater dig of Visions and Sleight, which means control and tempo decks will benefit from the selectivity and instant-speed nature of Opt. The T3 Snapcaster sure got a whole lot better! Great bone thrown by Wizards.

Also, I'd wager that Opt's reprinting means Preordain and Ponder are probably off the unban menu indefinitely, if they were ever on that menu at all.

Quote from gkourou »

Modern is more diverse than ever indeed. I repost my previous post, because this so called certain minority does try to ignore my valid points and arguments.

Modern is vastly different than other times, it's more diverse and it's got no 3ple top 8's. For example, in the past years, if you did want to play:

1. A ramp deck, you had to go Tron. You can go with Eldra Tron, Gx Tron, Titanshift, Titanbreach now.
2. An aggro deck, sure, you could play plenty. But there's plenty more now(5c humans, Elves, Dredge, etc)
3. Midrange, you had to play Jund(or maybe Abzan). There's Grixis Shadow, Jund Shadow in addition to them(some people count Eldra Tron as midrange-y as well) meaning decks like Jund or Abzan. Even BG Rock is back on the map.
4. Toolbox decks, well you could play Pod. That was it. There's Bant Knightall, Abzan Company, GW company, the Todd Stevens GW Value Town deck, etc.
5. Control decks, you should play a certain deck. You can play UW with great success now, Jeskai Queller or Jeskai Control seems to be in a great position
6. Combo decks, well, there were many at times. There is Storm, Ad Nauseam, Amulet Titan, various Reanimator decks, Taking Turns decks, etc atm.)
7. White-Based Death and Taxes decks or White-based decks in general. You just could not. Now, you can. At various forms also. May it be Eldrazi and Taxes, Mono W Death and Taxes, GW Hatebears
8. Prison decks. Well, there were not any. There is Lantern Control and RW Prison now.
9. New strategies are popping up to catch up with the meta, decks like BW Smallpox and others.

Modern is MORE DIVERSE than any other time, it's not even comparable to an era where we used to see "2 Jund, 2 redacted, 2 Affinity, 2 random decks" or older where we used to see "2-3 Pod, 2 Affinity, 2 Jund, 1 Control deck".

It's like "1 Bant Knightfall, 1 grixis Shadow, 1 BG Rock, 1 Affinity, 1 Jeskai Control, 1 Lantern Prison, 1 Burn, 1 Junk" now. And it's much, much better.
Oh, and every time a new deck is winning a certain event.

Just look at the past GP Top8's or SCG Top 8's or Modern Challenges.

In case it wasn't clear, or perhaps was missed, here's a quick breakdown from another poster just after yours:

Quote from TheMoonshield »

This is what looks like the combined top of the 2017 GPs and the combined top of the 2015 GPs:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3bAmE4JdvjzYklnVFFnRzVtQ0k/view?usp=sharing

I have excluded the team unified tournaments and the other mixed events, but i have included the pro tour for its relevance.
The suddivision in archetypes is really a subjective thing, and some i actually didn't know how to classify well (es Twin Decks, Death Shadows, Eldrazi Tron etc.)
However even considering only the number of decks that top8ed/top16ed, the result is more or less the same for both years.

Quote from Ember_Twilight »

Sorry, I don't see anything wrong with this format right now. It might not be what you like, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong here. People have freedom to choose so many different decks and all of them can do well at small and large tourneys. This is as close to ideal as Magic has ever been.

The lack of a clear and defined "Tier 1" means that preparing for an event is miserable, sideboards are stretched incredibly thin, and the chances of auto-losing to a weird or poor matchup is much higher. It increases variance, reduces impact of skill, and encourages games that are non-games. As a result, the most prominent strategies are ones that attack quickly or through an odd axis that is difficult to interact with. Dredge, Storm, Valakut, Eldrazi, etc, promote toxic gameplay and do not make the format better.

I'll repeat this yet again: people have always had the freedom to bring many different decks and have a chance to do well with good metagaming and a little luck. The excel link above is a perfect example. The difference between then and now is that the "establishment" of preparedness is basically completely gone and your preparations (and sideboards) are stretched incredibly thin over a ton of narrow decks; amplifying your risk of random bad matchups and sideboard lottery blowouts.