Just because I don't think anyone has articulated it concisely yet, the 'greed' problem with the fetch/shock manabase isn't about the risk/reward value at 3 colors being off, its about there being almost no penalty from 3c to 4c to 5c. Check this sequence of play:
Fetch (19), Shock (17), DRS
Fetch (16), Shock (14), tap DRS exiling fetch
That gives you 3 mana on turn 2, and if you hit your fetches right, access to all 5 colors at the same time. Or it could just be 2 colors. The cost in life is exactly the same either way. So its not the fetch/shock combo that is the problem...its the lack of ability to punish a player for getting greedy with it.
For example, lets say we get Wild Nacatl back. We'll assume you play it in a Naya shell (duh). If you want black, it becomes dark Naya. If you want blue, it becomes counter-cat or Aquarium or whatever. If you want both it becomes all of them and you might as well throw in Tribal Flame cuz Domain. But they're all just variations of Naya. And that's what leads to the lack of diversity. Its because its so easy to drop into extra colors and no incentive to just stay to 3c. There's no real risk brought about by getting greedy when the cost in life would be the same as staying straight Naya.
So there's got to be something that can be done to nip a single land, early enough in the game to hurt a 4 or 5c deck but without crippling the 3c deck.
Legacy suggests it might be that a well timed Wasteland is priceless. Maybe in Modern it will be Ruination to make them think twice about it going into the late game. Maybe both of those are too hardcore and can be toned down, but better than TecEdge and Thoughts of Ruin. Either way, this isn't the place for that discussion.
But what we can be certain of is this - the risk/reward ratio between 3 and 5 color shouldn't stay the same as you add more colors. I don't think that means we need a ban on fetch lands. But maybe we need something to punish the 4c and 5c in the name of defeating greedy.goodstuff.dec, because in the long term, continuing that trend is going to keep us talking about stuff like DRS and questioning whether Nacatl, SFM, BB, etc can ever come off when they're so easily splashable into any deck.
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CrazyMike366 posted a message on Temp Banlist Thread: DRS Banned, BB/Nacatl Unbanned!Posted in: Modern -
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TheWetRat posted a message on [Deck] Modern Event Deck announced. 30 May 2014, MSRP $75I've thought this over a little more, and right now I'm not convinced that it will be a pod deck, or any three-color deck at all. Event decks are supposed to be semi-competitive (and I'm using that term loosely, but they are definitely supposed to be much more powerful than your average intro deck). You really can't run any three-color deck on a competitive level without at least a few fetches in there, and I don't believe for a minute that Wizards would reprint enough fetches in this deck to justify a consistent three-color deck.Posted in: Modern
For my money, I think they're going to go with a Tron deck. It comes in three flavors: Mono-blue, UW and RG. Neither one would require an expensive mana-base to function. The Urza-Tron lands are all worth about a dollar each as-is. This means the bulk of the $75.00 price tag could go toward flashy, marketable bombs in the vein of Karn or Wurmcoil Engine. I could see at least a few of the double-sided tokens being tokens for Wurmcoil. The deck itself is just as iconic as Pod or Twin, but doesn't rely on abstract combos or making an infinite number of creatures, which may be difficult to explain in a strategy insert or be a turn-off to new players trying to get into Modern. Tron gets to make big, flashy plays and the winning strategy can be explained easily in a strategy insert. The concept is more easily marketable ("Uncover Urza's secrets and unleash his ancient machines on your opponent!") than a deck that relies on combos between cards that were never really expected to interact together ("Unleash the might of Kiki-Jiki and... Restoration Angel, I guess."), and it just looks plain cooler on a box. -
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Hyze posted a message on [[DGM]] Dragon's Maze Ultra•PRO lineupGuess Melek would have been Weird on the sleeves !Posted in: The Rumor Mill - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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it could be cornier.
i mean, it could be dragon's maize.