This means you won't be able to fuse Beck // Call off of a Brain in a Jar or an Expertise anymore.
I'm posting this here since it's relevant to UW Control. Being able to Sram's Expertise into a Beck // Call to draw 4 and put 7 bodies in play gave the deck the kind of card advantage it needed to compete with decks like Tron, and losing that is a big hit.
I've always had a soft spot for Lightning Angel. She doesn't die to bolt or decay, has evasion, and blocks all the common fliers profitably (Delver, Spirit tokens, etc). Sadly, she's just a little too low impact.
Why is the health of Modern in some peoples' eyes intrinsically linked to Blue? I only wish people would put the same effort into White.
There's not really anything to talk about regarding white, beyond "Should they unban SFM?" There aren't any other 'fair' white cards on the banlist, and there aren't any historically powerful white decks that have been pushed/banned out of the format.
White's weakness in Modern is a developmental/color pie issue. Wizards seems comfortable pushing white cards for Standard, hopefully enough of those cards will trickle down into Modern.
Even if Twin was too good in 2015, I doubt that would be the case now. It has no meaningful way to interact with Bant Eldrazi, for instance, and a revolted Fatal Push kills all of its combo pieces.
This is going to get a lot of hate but Tron should be banned if anything. The reason why a long list of control archetypes aren't playable in Modern isn't because aggro is too good, it's because Tron absolutely crushes them.
Tron also keeps decks like Jund and Abzan in check.
The problem with blue isn't Tron, or Eldrazi, or agro. The problem with blue is blue.
I'm writing an article assessing the effectiveness of the Twin ban and the Sword/AV unbans at achieving their overlapping goals. Did the ban free up space for non-Twin blue decks? Did the unbans improve controlling blue decks? After analyzing the 2015 data during the Twin era and the 2016 and early 2017 data from after the ban/unbans, I now have enough information to answer this question. I'll publish the full results and numbers in the article itself, but here's the summary:
1. Non-Twin blue decks performed slightly better at the GP/SCG T8 and T16 level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
2. Non-Twin blue decks performed worse at the GP/SCG Day 2 level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
3. Non-Twin blue decks performed worse at the MTGO level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
4. Non-Twin blue decks performed slightly worse at the overall aggregated metagame level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
5. The total share of blue decks (non-Twin and Twin) plummeted by roughly 50% in all categories from 2015 to 2016-17.
Here's an example of how I came to these findings. In 2015, non-Twin decks averaged an 8.2% share at the T8 level and a 9% share at the T16 level. In 2016-17, that share is up to 12.1% and 11.2% respectively. That's just one example of how the comparison plays out, but there's obviously a lot of detail and depth to explore. I'm posting this here to see what questions you all have and other feedback you can provide on this kind of analysis.
So what you're saying is that the Twin ban was a colossal failure and we should all apologize to Cfusion?
Not all of us - some of us agreed with him from the start
I don't see a problem with unbanning a card like Dig. If it's an "overcorrection" it can be rebanned. What I do see a problem with are the constant undercorrections - AV and Sword didn't help blue much, and I'm willing to be any of the "safe" cards on the list won't help it drastically either. What do we do if we unban Jace and it has no effect? Wait another year and hope for something else? I think a solid year of a color underperforming indicates that it's time to stop being so conservative about blue is allowed to do.
What is the 'White Deck' play style that is missing, and what would it add to the formats depth? This isnt just about a colour (hi Fish) its about an archetype and play style.
This.
The problem is white is that other colors (and colorless) are better at doing white things than white itself is.
Affinity and Merfolk are better weenie decks than white weenie.
Lantern Control is a better prison deck than Ghostly Prison decks/D&T.
White-based control's main problem isn't white (Verdict, Path, Wall of Omens, etc are all strong cards), it's that the mostly commonly paired color (blue) doesn't offer much.
So while white does suck, most of its archetypes are doing well. This lessens some of the sting for fans of white, and means there isn't a giant hole in the metagame where white would normally be.
The second reason people aren't as dire about white in modern is that WotC seems pretty comfortable pushing white cards, even if they're not entirely sure how. I'm pretty confident that one day they'll print a strong fair white card that will make a big splash in modern. TKS could have very easily been a white card, for example.
I think Push is as much a reason to unban Twin as a strike against it. Black now has a 1 mana answer to Exarch that doesn't require losing 4 life.
Preordain would be good, except it's best in a UR "spells matter" deck (Delver, Storm, TiTi decks) and those just got hit hard by the Probe ban. Which is a shame - if Wizards gave us Prone and Preordain back, I think we could have a Tier 1 Delver deck.
Hopefully with the change in design philosophy, we'll get some decent counter magic and non-basic land hate sometime before the end of the decade.
I don't think Preordain would do much for control, but Serum Visions + Preordain together might be enough to make U/R Delver a thing again. Cutting some counter magic for 12 cantrips (including Probe) means a you can get a LOT of Young Peezy value while digging toward 1 or 2 ofs that help with its bad matchups (Blood Moon, Batterskull, Bedlam Reveler). It might be just enough gas to make that deck (and other similar tempo decks) compete without having to play the weird half-tempo/half-midrange game that Grixis Delver does.
Also a brief note on Twin - I know a lot of you are sick of hearing about it, but this weird revisionist history that Twin was some Tier 0 monstrosity (and the associated accusation that blue mages WANT Twin to be a Tier 0 monstrosity because they're baby-eating salt-monsters) isn't productive. Twin wasn't and wouldn't be unbeatable. If Twin comes back, Dredge runs 4 Lightning Axes (at the expensive of being slightly less consistent) and Infect goes back to running a Dismember and the world continues to turn, except now there's a Tier 1 reactive blue deck back in the format and this thread becomes a lot more cordial.
If you're in the "I'd rather Modern move forward than apply a band-aid fix" crowd that's fine, but you have an awful lot of faith in Wizards if you think they're going to print enough good reactive blue spells to make that happen. Although cards like TitI are a step in the right direction (although right now the only deck that's playing it is an all-in combo-aggro deck, just saying ^_^).
Honestly though... i know it's been beat to death... but if they unban twin then the dredge problem goes away
Wishful thinking probably. Modern has turned into a linear Garbage Fire
Shhhh. Don't use the T-word, people don't like it when blue players point out the truth.
Oh no, it's too late! I can already hear the chants of "why are you so salty" and "blue is fine just play Delver!" Quick, propose an Exarch ban before it's too late! Quickly child! The door won't hold for much longer!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHbut yeah seriously I think Twin would have enough trouble with Bant Eldrazi and the new Remand-resistant linear decks that it wouldn't be overpowered (not that it ever really wasOH GOD PLEASE MTGSALVATION PUT DOWN THAT CHAINSAW AAAHHHH!!!!)
I don't think Force of Will would be good for Modern.
I think lack of free spells (with some exceptions) is one of the key features differentiating Modern and Legacy and I'd like to keep it that way.
This is one of the issues I have with Dredge - it cheats on mana more than any deck in Modern. At least you had to actually cast spells to get Vengevine back. Modern Dredge can get 10+ mana worth of creatures on the board on turn 2 or 3 with 20 cards in their yard off of a 3 mana investment.
EDIT: And Prized really is the biggest offender here, since recurring 3/3s that can block are a lot more threatening than 2/1 that keep adorably running head on into an Izzet Staticaster.
Honestly though... i know it's been beat to death... but if they unban twin then the dredge problem goes away
Wishful thinking probably. Modern has turned into a linear Garbage Fire
Shhhh. Don't use the T-word, people don't like it when blue players point out the truth.
Oh no, it's too late! I can already hear the chants of "why are you so salty" and "blue is fine just play Delver!" Quick, propose an Exarch ban before it's too late! Quickly child! The door won't hold for much longer!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHbut yeah seriously I think Twin would have enough trouble with Bant Eldrazi and the new Remand-resistant linear decks that it wouldn't be overpowered (not that it ever really wasOH GOD PLEASE MTGSALVATION PUT DOWN THAT CHAINSAW AAAHHHH!!!!)
1. It's primary plan seems to play undercosted, hard to interact with creatures and swing. From what I've seen (nb: I haven't played the deck much aside from solo testing versus other decks) it seems to win by 'brute force' a lot, i.e. playing so many big guys that the opponent can't handle it. It has a much more linear gameplan than a deck like Jund (although this doesn't necessarily mean it's a linear deck). Granted, I've never tested Burn or Elves or Merfolk or anything like that against it, so maybe in those games it does sit back and play the control deck more, but with most of your interactions stapled to creatures I imagine you still just want to play out your hand a lot.
2. The deck seems to play out very similarly each time, at least against other fair decks. Let's use Jund as an example. Typically they want a T1 discard spell, and based on that they may play a beater turn 2 or hold up interaction, may or may not want to play Liliana, etc.
Bant I feel pretty much always wants to go T1 Noble T2 Reshaper T3 TKS T4 Reality Smasher. They don't have to choose between interacting, playing around removal, and putting on a fast clock - they can do all three at the same time. Maybe you open differently against Burn, but against Jund or Jeskai I don't see any reason you wouldn't just go for it.
So even though yes, Bant Eldrazi can be interactive, playing against the deck feels like playing against a linear aggro deck. They often don't care about what you're doing and most of their interaction is almost accidental. They don't have to choose between plating a Thoughtseize or a 'Goyf because they have TKS. They don't have to decide whether or not you top-deck a path because they have Reality Smasher. They have Stirrings for consistency and Cavern for resiliency. It's far more linear than any other midrange deck in Modern.
If Jund is the king of interaction (10/10 in a scale of 10) and Ad Nauseam is 0/10, Bant Eldrazi is certainly 7/10. Not more, not less. I never said it's as interactive as Jund or that it's its only plan. But it must interact in a lot of cases and it passes the test for being more interactive than uninteractive.
Jund isn't a 10/10. Wafo-Tapa Esper Control is a 10/10. Jund is maybe 8? So Bant would be fall somewhere in the range of 4-6 (leaving it up in the air as to whether it's more interactive than not, I'd peg it at a solid 5.5).
Man, where have we ended up if Jund is our Platonic ideal of an interactive Modern deck?
I never said Jund IS 10/10. I made a hypothesis. I said "IF (we consider) Jund to be 10/10 and Ad Nauseam, Bant Eldrazi is 7/10.
A hypothesis is a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth.
PS: Even if we go with 5.5/10, it still is more than 5. This means, it's more interactive than it is uninteractive. I think you are not just with your grade though. Move some posts up and you will see my previous post.
Thank you, I know what words mean
You said "If Jund is the king of interaction (10/10 in a scale of 10)"
Not "if we consider Jund to be," if it is. Also, apparently 'king' was meant to mean 'king of this hypothetical version of Modern where other decks don't exist.' My apologies, gkourou-sama! I'll try not to make such clumsy mistakes in the future.
I also now know that 5.5 is more than 5! Wow! I've learned so many things!
Now back to Magic.
The thing really issue I think people are concerned about isn't interactivity, it's linearity. TKS might be interactive, but if you're slamming it turn 2 regardless of what your opponent is playing, is that not somewhat linear? If Merfolk runs some Vapor Snags to get by blockers so they can safely turn dudes sideways, is that not still fairly linear?
It's also important to note that even if the difference in percentage points between Tier 1 and Tier 2 isn't astronomical, those decks still aren't great choices. Is it any surprise there's people struggling to hold on to interactive decks?
remember to keep the discussions on the cards and not the players. - Torpf
1. It's primary plan seems to play undercosted, hard to interact with creatures and swing. From what I've seen (nb: I haven't played the deck much aside from solo testing versus other decks) it seems to win by 'brute force' a lot, i.e. playing so many big guys that the opponent can't handle it. It has a much more linear gameplan than a deck like Jund (although this doesn't necessarily mean it's a linear deck). Granted, I've never tested Burn or Elves or Merfolk or anything like that against it, so maybe in those games it does sit back and play the control deck more, but with most of your interactions stapled to creatures I imagine you still just want to play out your hand a lot.
2. The deck seems to play out very similarly each time, at least against other fair decks. Let's use Jund as an example. Typically they want a T1 discard spell, and based on that they may play a beater turn 2 or hold up interaction, may or may not want to play Liliana, etc.
Bant I feel pretty much always wants to go T1 Noble T2 Reshaper T3 TKS T4 Reality Smasher. They don't have to choose between interacting, playing around removal, and putting on a fast clock - they can do all three at the same time. Maybe you open differently against Burn, but against Jund or Jeskai I don't see any reason you wouldn't just go for it.
So even though yes, Bant Eldrazi can be interactive, playing against the deck feels like playing against a linear aggro deck. They often don't care about what you're doing and most of their interaction is almost accidental. They don't have to choose between plating a Thoughtseize or a 'Goyf because they have TKS. They don't have to decide whether or not you top-deck a path because they have Reality Smasher. They have Stirrings for consistency and Cavern for resiliency. It's far more linear than any other midrange deck in Modern.
If Jund is the king of interaction (10/10 in a scale of 10) and Ad Nauseam is 0/10, Bant Eldrazi is certainly 7/10. Not more, not less. I never said it's as interactive as Jund or that it's its only plan. But it must interact in a lot of cases and it passes the test for being more interactive than uninteractive.
Jund isn't a 10/10. Wafo-Tapa Esper Control is a 10/10. Jund is maybe 8? So Bant would be fall somewhere in the range of 4-6 (leaving it up in the air as to whether it's more interactive than not, I'd peg it at a solid 5.5).
Man, where have we ended up if Jund is our Platonic ideal of an interactive Modern deck?
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/638ws6/torrential_gearhulk_and_aftermath_ruling_from/dfsccuj/
This means you won't be able to fuse Beck // Call off of a Brain in a Jar or an Expertise anymore.
I'm posting this here since it's relevant to UW Control. Being able to Sram's Expertise into a Beck // Call to draw 4 and put 7 bodies in play gave the deck the kind of card advantage it needed to compete with decks like Tron, and losing that is a big hit.
There's not really anything to talk about regarding white, beyond "Should they unban SFM?" There aren't any other 'fair' white cards on the banlist, and there aren't any historically powerful white decks that have been pushed/banned out of the format.
White's weakness in Modern is a developmental/color pie issue. Wizards seems comfortable pushing white cards for Standard, hopefully enough of those cards will trickle down into Modern.
Tron also keeps decks like Jund and Abzan in check.
The problem with blue isn't Tron, or Eldrazi, or agro. The problem with blue is blue.
Not all of us - some of us agreed with him from the start
I don't see a problem with unbanning a card like Dig. If it's an "overcorrection" it can be rebanned. What I do see a problem with are the constant undercorrections - AV and Sword didn't help blue much, and I'm willing to be any of the "safe" cards on the list won't help it drastically either. What do we do if we unban Jace and it has no effect? Wait another year and hope for something else? I think a solid year of a color underperforming indicates that it's time to stop being so conservative about blue is allowed to do.
This.
The problem is white is that other colors (and colorless) are better at doing white things than white itself is.
Affinity and Merfolk are better weenie decks than white weenie.
Lantern Control is a better prison deck than Ghostly Prison decks/D&T.
White-based control's main problem isn't white (Verdict, Path, Wall of Omens, etc are all strong cards), it's that the mostly commonly paired color (blue) doesn't offer much.
So while white does suck, most of its archetypes are doing well. This lessens some of the sting for fans of white, and means there isn't a giant hole in the metagame where white would normally be.
The second reason people aren't as dire about white in modern is that WotC seems pretty comfortable pushing white cards, even if they're not entirely sure how. I'm pretty confident that one day they'll print a strong fair white card that will make a big splash in modern. TKS could have very easily been a white card, for example.
Let's not forget Tasigur into Elesh Norn, or Angler into Griselbrand.
Pod is just too efficient for what it does. Hopefully we'll see a 'fixed' Pod one day that's stronger than EE.
Preordain would be good, except it's best in a UR "spells matter" deck (Delver, Storm, TiTi decks) and those just got hit hard by the Probe ban. Which is a shame - if Wizards gave us Prone and Preordain back, I think we could have a Tier 1 Delver deck.
Hopefully with the change in design philosophy, we'll get some decent counter magic and non-basic land hate sometime before the end of the decade.
Also a brief note on Twin - I know a lot of you are sick of hearing about it, but this weird revisionist history that Twin was some Tier 0 monstrosity (and the associated accusation that blue mages WANT Twin to be a Tier 0 monstrosity because they're baby-eating salt-monsters) isn't productive. Twin wasn't and wouldn't be unbeatable. If Twin comes back, Dredge runs 4 Lightning Axes (at the expensive of being slightly less consistent) and Infect goes back to running a Dismember and the world continues to turn, except now there's a Tier 1 reactive blue deck back in the format and this thread becomes a lot more cordial.
If you're in the "I'd rather Modern move forward than apply a band-aid fix" crowd that's fine, but you have an awful lot of faith in Wizards if you think they're going to print enough good reactive blue spells to make that happen. Although cards like TitI are a step in the right direction (although right now the only deck that's playing it is an all-in combo-aggro deck, just saying ^_^).
I don't think Force of Will would be good for Modern.
I think lack of free spells (with some exceptions) is one of the key features differentiating Modern and Legacy and I'd like to keep it that way.
This is one of the issues I have with Dredge - it cheats on mana more than any deck in Modern. At least you had to actually cast spells to get Vengevine back. Modern Dredge can get 10+ mana worth of creatures on the board on turn 2 or 3 with 20 cards in their yard off of a 3 mana investment.
EDIT: And Prized really is the biggest offender here, since recurring 3/3s that can block are a lot more threatening than 2/1 that keep adorably running head on into an Izzet Staticaster.
Shhhh. Don't use the T-word, people don't like it when blue players point out the truth.
Oh no, it's too late! I can already hear the chants of "why are you so salty" and "blue is fine just play Delver!" Quick, propose an Exarch ban before it's too late! Quickly child! The door won't hold for much longer!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHbut yeah seriously I think Twin would have enough trouble with Bant Eldrazi and the new Remand-resistant linear decks that it wouldn't be overpowered (not that it ever really wasOH GOD PLEASE MTGSALVATION PUT DOWN THAT CHAINSAW AAAHHHH!!!!)
Proving that no matter how many punts you make during a match, the biggest punt is playing Jeskai Control
Thank you, I know what words mean
You said "If Jund is the king of interaction (10/10 in a scale of 10)"
Not "if we consider Jund to be," if it is. Also, apparently 'king' was meant to mean 'king of this hypothetical version of Modern where other decks don't exist.' My apologies, gkourou-sama! I'll try not to make such clumsy mistakes in the future.
I also now know that 5.5 is more than 5! Wow! I've learned so many things!
Now back to Magic.
The thing really issue I think people are concerned about isn't interactivity, it's linearity. TKS might be interactive, but if you're slamming it turn 2 regardless of what your opponent is playing, is that not somewhat linear? If Merfolk runs some Vapor Snags to get by blockers so they can safely turn dudes sideways, is that not still fairly linear?
It's also important to note that even if the difference in percentage points between Tier 1 and Tier 2 isn't astronomical, those decks still aren't great choices. Is it any surprise there's people struggling to hold on to interactive decks?
remember to keep the discussions on the cards and not the players. - Torpf
Jund isn't a 10/10. Wafo-Tapa Esper Control is a 10/10. Jund is maybe 8? So Bant would be fall somewhere in the range of 4-6 (leaving it up in the air as to whether it's more interactive than not, I'd peg it at a solid 5.5).
Man, where have we ended up if Jund is our Platonic ideal of an interactive Modern deck?