Condescend and Censor seem like good options to set up Miracles and as an additional way to draw on your opponents turn. They are obviously more situational than Mana Leak or Logic Knot but as a 1 of might be worth trying out.
Maro also answered that. For some reason they felt that they had to shake up the format before every Pro Tour via often unjustified bans because they feared that people wouldn't be interested in it otherwise. There is no evidence that the viewers wanted those bans, it was just speculation on their part.
The most important (for us) is probably the first one, which refers specifically to Modern and cites the Pro-Tour's existence as directly causal to card bannings. Posting the others for completeness' sake. I know MaRo isn't the be-all end-all but it's not like we have anybody else to go to for additional info/perspective regarding things.
If what Maro said was true, GDS would dominate Modern to a ridiculous extent and would need a ban soon because data suggested that it was the best deck and according to him that means that everyone would play it. But that didn't happen. Why? Because not everyone is simply playing the best deck there are also many people that try to counter the best deck, which in the case of GDS seems to be working out so far. If that's not possible and there is no deck to counter the best deck then R&D is to blame and not too much data.
The whole thing is just a cheap excuse to distract from their own failures.
The problem with the format is the 30 starting life, because it suppresses aggro decks which are meant to counter those slow decks.
On the other hand banning Preordain in a format with Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor seems like a bad joke.
I think the 1v1 Commander bans just show which cards WotC dislikes the most, first there were the TC and Dig bans and now the cantrips, in my opinion this can be applied to the Modern banlist to see which cards are the least likely to get unbanned.
I think this also underscores the fact that black is the best color in Modern. The metagame just reflects that now black's best support is blue, not green anymore. Maybe blue's cardpool isn't too bad, but it better allows more proactive shells like aggro-control and combo-control. If there are still color balance concerns, white is definitely doing the worst (just Path, Souls, Rest, Stony and Helix in Top50). Regardless of whether Shadow decks ultimately prove to be too good or not, I really hope we get something for white (be it Stoneforge or a new card for the format).
I agree with your statement but I'd also like to note that personally I don't think it's a bad thing. Legacy is still a quality format despite being heavy leaning on blue decks to police the format. Modern is very similar except it leans on black (TS and IoK to be specific).
On a note from the discussion of DTT in Modern vs Legacy I think there is some reaching going on with how much easier DTT might actually be to cast in Modern. You forget Legacy is a format with FoW, Daze, Wasteland and DRS for example all of which can help fight DTT. While the cantrips in Modern aren't nearly as strong, we get away with running cards like Thoughtscour and the like which fill up our own graveyards exceedingly fast if needed. We also don't have to worry about being wastelanded off of UU like you do in Legacy. Now the main difference to me in the two formats is that the payoffs in Modern are at a lower power level but because our answers are also at a lower power level, I think DTT is WAY too good and would argue it'd could be better than TC in Modern (because selecting exactly which cards you want is better than 3 random cards off the top). Either way, both cards are too good for this format.
I've been playing a lot of Jund/Junk and Esper midrange lately in this format to great success. A lot of folks spout on about "bad matchups" but I haven't had even remotely close to the same results. Part of it is due to deck construction at least. The midrange decks have a ton of flex slots and there is no current "correct" configuration of those slots (both in the MD and SB). Essentially I treat my Jund deck as a 80-85 card list where 5-10 cards move around based on how I feel the local meta is going to be that day. I also suspect we will see more traditional GBx decks start to crop back up as Counter Company is heading back down. That matchup is why I moved back to Jund over Abzan in the first place.
Also folks want to ramble about bad matchups but a lot of "bad matchups" are very winnable and matchups have become less polarized for me lately since a lot of the RG Tron variants have been replaced with Eldrazi Tron and Death Shadow is keeping Titanshift numbers a little bit down.
The premises for DTT in Modern are just very different than in Legacy.
In Legacy blue was already by far the best color, DTT just pushed it over the top. The top 8 decks went from 60% Brainstorm decks to something like 80+%, blue had just reached a critical mass of powerful spells that WotC felt was too much even for a traditionally blue dominated format like Legacy. They could have also just banned Brainstorm instead which is overall more powerful than Dig Through Time to nerf blue, but decided on Dig Through Time because it was the new card.
In Modern the situation is very different as it was never really blue dominated(if you don't count the first PT), because there is no powerful card draw/selection like Ponder or Brainstorm. The banning of Gitaxian Probe also limits the potential power of the card. It also doesn't work well with Delve creatures so it would be much more difficult to incorporate in Grixis DS than something like Preordain.
The main difference between Modern and Legacy when it comes to DTT is that blue as a whole is a much weaker color in Modern, which makes it less likely for a single card like DTT to make it too good.
Also the fact that DTT saw little play in both Modern and Legacy while TC was legal should be enough evidence to show that DTT is in fact the weaker of the 2 cards and the biggest reason for that is not its effect but its mana cost, DTT always costs at least 2 mana while TC often only costs 1 which makes a big difference.
Storm certainly wouldn't play it, it needs its graveyard and Gifts Ungiven is overall just a better card for the deck. Jeskai Ascendancy is probably something like tier 4 at this point, so I don't think that that deck should be considered when it comes to any unbanning decisions.
The premises for DTT in Modern are just very different than in Legacy.
In Legacy blue was already by far the best color, DTT just pushed it over the top. The top 8 decks went from 60% Brainstorm decks to something like 80+%, blue had just reached a critical mass of powerful spells that WotC felt was too much even for a traditionally blue dominated format like Legacy. They could have also just banned Brainstorm instead which is overall more powerful than Dig Through Time to nerf blue, but decided on Dig Through Time because it was the new card.
In Modern the situation is very different as it was never really blue dominated(if you don't count the first PT), because there is no powerful card draw/selection like Ponder or Brainstorm. The banning of Gitaxian Probe also limits the potential power of the card. It also doesn't work well with Delve creatures so it would be much more difficult to incorporate in Grixis DS than something like Preordain.
How did this devolve into a discussion about reactive blue decks? Weren't we discussing how Tron is pushing mid-range decks out of the format? How it's a big mana deck that plays a better mid-range game than any other mid-range decks outside of shadow? How did this become about reactive control? Can we get back to talking about the fundamental issues the format is currently having?
It's unbelievable to me that people look at the metagame, see stuff like DS at 24% of the GP Vegas T64 and the most-played deck on MTGO, and somehow decide the REAL problem is those darn Tron lands. It's like the fair midrange/control crowd won't rest until they have a Tier 1 deck with positive matchups across the format. Every other decktype and their players accept their bad matchups and learn to live with them. This subset of fair deck players, however, constantly goes after their natural bad matchups as if they aren't supposed to have them.
Well to be fair unfair/linear decks still make up a large majority of the metagame despite Death's Shadow's dominance.
At least before the twin ban you could choose between two interactive decks in the form of twin or black midrange, nowadays it's only one.
In my opinion there are two problems, the metashare of interactive decks is still too low(but that has been the case for a long time now) and then there is also too little diversity in terms of interactve decks(one deck takes up something like 80% of that portion of the metagame and 10 decks share the rest).
At least the 2nd problem could most likely easily be fixed with unbans, the first problem however is harder to solve(although I still believe that unbans like SFM or Jace would increase the metashare of interactive decks, just not by much).
How did this devolve into a discussion about reactive blue decks? Weren't we discussing how Tron is pushing mid-range decks out of the format? How it's a big mana deck that plays a better mid-range game than any other mid-range decks outside of shadow? How did this become about reactive control? Can we get back to talking about the fundamental issues the format is currently having?
In Legacy you have fast combo decks keeping down big mana decks and they in return lose to FoW decks. Neither of those things exist in Modern. So you can either nerf them via bans or via new hate cards which are unlikely to see print.
Then you should also realize that it's not unreasonable to expect to someday for a longer period of time see a strategy in tier 1 that's also regularly tier 1 in both Standard and Legacy.
And this is why the argument of "Go play Legacy" isn't a strawman like some are claiming. If you want to play a blue completely reactive deck without having to use black's engine, your options are Legacy, Vintage, and that's it. That style of deck is likely never coming back to Modern unless Wizards completely changes how they do power in standard.
1. You're putting words in other peoples' mouths and misrepresenting peoples' stances.
2. If that truly is the stance Wizards holds, then they need to unban Twin, plain and simple.
First off, Teysa is completely right. This style of deck is never cutting it to Modern and if you do not know it by now, you should read some more Maro quotes about the future counterspells they are going to introduce to Standard.
(Question: What do you say to the people who feel that their favorite parts of magic (for example, heavy control elements and discard) are being pushed out of the game? Is magic just not for them anymore?
Maro: "Note, I’m not saying that elements of those strategies are unplayable. The decks that do nothing but that thing(draw-go-countering things) are purposely unplayable. For example, there have been playable counterspells. We just haven’t allowed Draw, Go decks that do nothing but counter spells to be good.
If you’ve been playing long enough to remember decks that were centered solely on those strategies, that means you been playing Magic for about fifteen years without them.
I don’t understand how you can be playing for so many years if the thing that makes Magic special to you, that you don’t want to play without, the thing that the game just isn’t fun if it’s missing hasn’t existed for fifteen years.")
Why? Because Censor and Disallow are the best Counterspells you are going to find around.
Concerning Twin, it is a diversity reducer in their books and you know it. Modern is super diverse and fun atm. Even Grixis Shadow, which we all thought it was by far the best deck, did not make a single top 8. This shows that even a very good deck is super beatable and hateable. They won't change a thing in this diverse format.
But this is not my opinion. Twin should be unbanned in my opinion as well. It always was a nice deck to have around. If it was top8ing a lot(which it did) they could fix that by introducing a better card for the control decks which Twin could never play. For example, I genuinely believe Twin would still prefer Remand over the original Counterspell. This flexibility in cards could make people have a variety of blue decks to choose from in Modern: from draw-go Control decks, to other tempo strategies.
Sadly, this is not happening either.
You do realize that control decks still regularly exist in Standard, right? It looks like you are really misunderstanding what he is saying or you for some reason believe that if people here talk about control they mean some 20 year old deck with 30 counterspells, all he is saying is that they don't want 20+ counterspells decks to exist anymore(those haven't been a top tier strategy for probably more than 15 years anyway), it has nothing to do with "normal" control decks most people here are talking about.
You should explain why the best Walker ever printed wouldn't fit into DS? Is brainstorming turn after turn something that would cause the deck to collapse? I play Grixis Shadow and IMO some number would see play as the deck already has the back up plan of hard casting 5 drops if need be and Jace is probably the best mid-range value engine ever printed.
you really have to ask why Jace wouldn't go In death shadow, really? Are you sure you play it?
What 19-20 land decks run 4 drops? Cast without fast mana or delve?
yes I play the deck and hitting 4 lands isn't a normally a issue given all of the cantrips. 19-20 + 8 cantrips equals something like 24 lands when you factor in the +.5 land per cantrip unless your going to imply that this well established mathematical aspect of deck building doesn't pertain to Grixis Shadow.
Actually there is a mathematical guide line to what your highest curve should be In a deck, In relation to how many lands you run. and Jace doesn't fit Grixis shadow.
Nor does it fit its gameplan.
Jace fits every game plan.
Just like the predictions many people made about Ancestral Vision. I mean every deck wants to draw 3 cards for 1 mana, right?
The whole discussion is pointless, the people that criticize Grixis DS want a tier 1 deck that plays counterspells as its primary form of interaction not black discard, that's all there is to it.
If what Maro said was true, GDS would dominate Modern to a ridiculous extent and would need a ban soon because data suggested that it was the best deck and according to him that means that everyone would play it. But that didn't happen. Why? Because not everyone is simply playing the best deck there are also many people that try to counter the best deck, which in the case of GDS seems to be working out so far. If that's not possible and there is no deck to counter the best deck then R&D is to blame and not too much data.
The whole thing is just a cheap excuse to distract from their own failures.
On the other hand banning Preordain in a format with Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor seems like a bad joke.
I think the 1v1 Commander bans just show which cards WotC dislikes the most, first there were the TC and Dig bans and now the cantrips, in my opinion this can be applied to the Modern banlist to see which cards are the least likely to get unbanned.
Their hatred for blue cantrips still seems to be very much a thing, I wouldn't expect a Preordain unban anytime soon.
Out of all blue cards Jace, the Mind Sculptor is probably the most likely card to get unbanned, but that probably doesn't mean much.
as I said here:
The main difference between Modern and Legacy when it comes to DTT is that blue as a whole is a much weaker color in Modern, which makes it less likely for a single card like DTT to make it too good.
Also the fact that DTT saw little play in both Modern and Legacy while TC was legal should be enough evidence to show that DTT is in fact the weaker of the 2 cards and the biggest reason for that is not its effect but its mana cost, DTT always costs at least 2 mana while TC often only costs 1 which makes a big difference.
In Legacy blue was already by far the best color, DTT just pushed it over the top. The top 8 decks went from 60% Brainstorm decks to something like 80+%, blue had just reached a critical mass of powerful spells that WotC felt was too much even for a traditionally blue dominated format like Legacy. They could have also just banned Brainstorm instead which is overall more powerful than Dig Through Time to nerf blue, but decided on Dig Through Time because it was the new card.
In Modern the situation is very different as it was never really blue dominated(if you don't count the first PT), because there is no powerful card draw/selection like Ponder or Brainstorm. The banning of Gitaxian Probe also limits the potential power of the card. It also doesn't work well with Delve creatures so it would be much more difficult to incorporate in Grixis DS than something like Preordain.
Well to be fair unfair/linear decks still make up a large majority of the metagame despite Death's Shadow's dominance.
At least before the twin ban you could choose between two interactive decks in the form of twin or black midrange, nowadays it's only one.
In my opinion there are two problems, the metashare of interactive decks is still too low(but that has been the case for a long time now) and then there is also too little diversity in terms of interactve decks(one deck takes up something like 80% of that portion of the metagame and 10 decks share the rest).
At least the 2nd problem could most likely easily be fixed with unbans, the first problem however is harder to solve(although I still believe that unbans like SFM or Jace would increase the metashare of interactive decks, just not by much).
In Legacy you have fast combo decks keeping down big mana decks and they in return lose to FoW decks. Neither of those things exist in Modern. So you can either nerf them via bans or via new hate cards which are unlikely to see print.
You do realize that control decks still regularly exist in Standard, right? It looks like you are really misunderstanding what he is saying or you for some reason believe that if people here talk about control they mean some 20 year old deck with 30 counterspells, all he is saying is that they don't want 20+ counterspells decks to exist anymore(those haven't been a top tier strategy for probably more than 15 years anyway), it has nothing to do with "normal" control decks most people here are talking about.
Just like the predictions many people made about Ancestral Vision. I mean every deck wants to draw 3 cards for 1 mana, right?