I lastly played 3-4 Skites in my Sideboard because the Mirror Match as well as Scapeshift and Burn were common.
Right now, my local Meta is in change due to new players, new Decks they finished and new cards (like Assassin's Trophy). I am building Elves right now, for the same reasons - Tron will have a hard time soon.
Greetings
PS: I'll be back here when I see Tron in a better position.
I think the effect of Trophy is a bit overblown right now but I understand the worry. I was about ready to put the deck down for a few months and then re-evaluated for a bit with some friends. On balance I think it'll be fine. If anything, more jund or GBx decks floating around will benefit us, even if they do have access to the card.
That's an educated guess though. I'm not trying to undermine your decision but it's worth having some more detailed reflection on the effects of Trophy rather than everyone panic. Haha
If Assassin's Trophy leads to the GBx decks not running Fulminator Mage, then that's actually great for us. The frustrating thing about Fulminator Mage is that it delays (or shuts off) Tron and puts you back a land. Assassin's Trophy delays or shuts off Tron, but you still get a land out of it, so your total land count is the same so it's easier to hardcast your stuff.
But if they're running Assassin's Trophy, they're more likely to not run Fulminator Mage (which was honestly a relatively narrow card), which is good for us. The only downside is that Assassin's Trophy is likely to see maindeck play whereas Fulminator Mage almost never did. But every time they cast an Assassin's Trophy it means they're not casting an actual threat.
There are probably better budget aggro options. The 8 Whack lists seem popular for this sort of thing. I've also played against the 12 Bolt lists with Flame of Keld online and they seem fine and are like 30 tix. That could get you started.
Heck, 8Whack can put up competitive results now and then. It got Top 16 at GP Hong Kong (see here). And it's cheap, too--the only particularly expensive card I notice is Goblin Guide, and even that one is "only" $25 each.
The entitlement and arrogance from some people is astonishing.
There is a simple reason why Wotc is very careful with reprints. A lot of people don't care if prices for cards get nuked as long as they don't own them. Now imagine those people just bought a playset of Snapcaster Mages and Wotc decides to print it as a Rare in a Masters Set.
People would be furious. Now do that a couple of times and customers lose confidence in your product and you start losing money
Like how when the fetchlands got reprinted in Khans of Tarkir, they crashed in price and people got angry and people refused to buy Khans of Tarkir booster packs because they were so offended by the loss in value. Remember that?
Oh, wait, no, I don't remember that, because that didn't happen. Khans of Tarkir was a hugely successful set. The only complaint people had about the fetchlands was that Wizards of the Coast somehow thought it was a good idea to later print fetchable dual lands into the same Standard format without any hate on the interaction.
In fact, interestingly, the subsequent Standard sets that didn't have any notable reprints were the ones that weren't received as well. Standard was on a real downhill decline in popularity afterwards, and it started gaining popularity again after they did start putting in some reprints people wanted. Granted, there were a lot of other factors in Standard's loss (and more recent gain) in popularity, but it is amusing to note that when they were including valuable reprints in Standard, Standard was on an upswing in popularity, then it lost popularity when they stopped, and then it started gaining popularity again after they started again (see Crucible of Worlds and Scapeshift, and of course now the shocklands).
I dislike the NWO complexity principle as much as the next guy, but try a simulated Ice Age or MIR-VIS-WTL draft to see how many cards there were that weren't just mediocre, but completely unplayable.
Nostalgia is a hell of a rosy lens
I'm going by an actual data metric, the "percentage of cards that were common in successful Standard decks," instead of just anecdotal "these cards were powerful."
If you look back at the standards that had Invasion, Odyssey, Onslaught, Mirrodin, etc, there were vastly more commons actually getting played in Standard. UG Madness and Psychatog were practically all commons.
Nostalgia is a rosy lens, but past Standards really were awesome.
Well, it helps sell packs if there's in-demand rares and mythics, so decks like UG Madness or Psychatog aren't really that good for WOTC. That said, there is a balance to be struck, and I thought it was struck very well with Scars-Innistrad Standard. Take a look at the deck to beat back then, UW Delver. It utilized some high-demand rares/mythics like Snapcaster Mage and Geist of Saint Traft, plus of course the dual lands, but a good amount of the deck was commons or uncommons. And the only "required" mythic in the deck was Geist of Saint Traft (the Swords sometimes saw play in the deck, but not all builds used them). That deck had the kind of rarity ratio that I think Standard decks should have.
Unmoored Ego seems terrible to me. What deck would actually play that?
It seems decent to me. Unlike Slaughter Games (or Memoricide), it can hit lands, which is not only good against us, it also powers it up against Valakut because you can name the titular land rather than having to name Scapeshift/Titan and hope the opponent doesn't topdeck the other. And then it has the same power against Storm, Ad Nauseam, Living End, Grishoalbrand, and Krark-Clan Ironworks (okay, a little worse against Storm because it runs the risk of getting Remand'd). But the real key difference, I feel, is this: It's three mana. With the normal "go-off" turn being turn 4, being able to cast it beforehand is a big deal.
Now, the big issue I see with it is twofold. First, there's not that many good UB decks. You've got Grixis Death's Shadow (which, due to its discard and counterspell suite, might consider it redundant) and that's basically it. Even counting Tier 3 decks, only Faeries comes to mind. And on top of that, a lot of the decks it's good against aren't a big thing right now. But, should these factors change, we might see this card see a lot more play.
This is, at least, less annoying than Crumble to Dust. Crumble to Dust not only took out a land in play, it also could sometimes get lucky and yank a land out of your hand. Given that your strategy after getting turned off Urzatron is to hit your land drops and cast things normally, losing a land in play and the possibility of losing a land in hand puts you back even further. This leaves intact the lands in play, and while it can take them out of your hand, you do get to draw a card to replace it so that loss is lessened.
Relic is a great card but I don't feel it's that important against UW. Blanking a Snapcaster is cool and all, but they only run 2 and on the flipside it makes Emrakul harder to cast (if you're playing it) or potentially exiles a World Breaker you have in the GY. Other minor upsides include slowing down a Search for Azcanta flip or potentially getting around a Logic Knot. I think we have better options in the 75 and I regularly cut 1 if not both post-board, depending on the particular configuration. It also gets shut off by Stony Silence and I like to minimize the amount of those effects post-board if possible.
Well, there is Surgical Extraction, and pretty much every UW list is running 1-2 copies in the sideboard. Outside of bringing in your own Surgical Extraction (which is otherwise terrible in the matchup), Relic of Progenitus is your only way to stop them from pulling that off.
Also, while not as common of a sideboard card for them, Relic of Progenitus is a way to thwart Crucible of Worlds if you don't happen to have another answer for it at the time.
Because WOTC's market research says that people prefer playing with creatures than spells. Interacting with the stack is the most niche appeal that some players have with the game. The majority of players would prefer permanents entering play, particularly creatures and planeswalkers. If anything, WOTC just needs to nuke counterspells once and for all and give blue more traditional removal.
Was this the same market research that led them to create a Standard format that was so unpopular that it necessitated more frequent bannings than at any other time in the game's history, including Urza's Saga block?
Izzet is another major guild this set next to Golgari, story wise and they get one of the worst 3 CMC counters ever. Along with a mechanic that eh WOTC seems awfully careful not to overpower leading to an over correction.
I don't know if it's that bad. I think Undermine was decent back in the day. Admittedly, it hit for 3 damage instead of 2 but it also was a little tougher to cast (UUB versus 1UR).
Actually, how about doing something like that? UUR, counter target spell, deal 2 damage to any target. What do you think of that?
Getting two colors in this deck, especially early, is not something I think we should strive for. The risks seem to really outweigh the benefits here, especially since Stony Silence and Blood Moon stuff our ability to generate the mana we need to begin with. With every (other) GBx deck set to jam playsets of AT, more basics than even four is going to become critically important, as the decks using it will be built to exploit this. Going into black at all will be more risky, even before attempting to add spells with more demanding colored mana costs. AT is certainly an amazing card, but for Tron, it just feels like bait to me.
I do not agree that more basics than 4 is critically important due to the GBx decks, because they will not be running any more copies of this effect (i.e. "get rid of land, then we get basic land") than we currently face from UWx Control decks or EldraziTron. In fact, unless they are Abzan, we will see fewer of those effects, due to the lack of Path to Exile.
I don't see how the existence of this card should have any effect on the number of basic lands we run compared to how many we ran before it, because the amount of such effects per deck in the decks that run them do not seem to have increased. Perhaps the number of decks running them have increased, but that does not matter within the games themselves.
You know, for all the talk of it being good against Tron, I've been struck by a question: What about running Assassin's Trophy ourselves?
It hits Blood Moon, it hits Stony Silence, it hits Damping Sphere. Normally you bring in Nature's Claim for those cards, but you have the issue that if the opponent doesn't have them or doesn't draw them, your Nature's Claim isn't all that great. This card solves that problem in that it'll take out the hate cards if they're cast but can get rid of anything else annoying they might play. A lot of times I find myself having to figure out how many Nature's Claims to bring in because of the uncertainty of whether the opponent has those cards, but this you can bring in every time because you'll always have targets. Heck, it might be maindeckable; you could replace the standard Dismember with it, then put more in the sideboard for the decks it's especially potent against.
Sure, it makes you weaker against the opponent's Assassin's Trophies because you need to bring in some Black-producing lands. But a mana combination of 3 Forest+1 Swamp+1 BG land (probably Llanowar Wastes) still leaves you with a good number of basics to grab yourself while still being able to support the splash. Heck, with all the "get rid of a card, that player searches for a basic land" your odds of being able to get that Swamp is higher!
Well that is some power hopefully other guilds get some good stuff as well lol.
I find it funny though that this is just fine for GB...but a 2 CMC unconditional counter is simply too good and just isn't fair.
Given that they've been on such a "the opponent searches for a basic land and puts it into play" kick lately (Field of Ruin, Old-Growth Dryad, and now this) I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the near future they print a 2-mana unconditional counterspell that has the opponent search out a basic land.
I'm kind of annoyed at this because they did move away from duel decks because of mixing standard legal cards with rotated cards, resulting in casual players who don't know any better to get told their decks are not tournament legal. The only reason the guild decks aren't standard legal is probably Deathrite shaman being in the same format as Llanowar Elves.
I doubt that's the case, because Deathrite Shaman is pretty mediocre in any Standard that doesn't have fetchlands. And the decks it did see play in were almost always decks that weren't running the-at-the-time-legal Elvish Mystic.
I think it probably has more to do with the fact they seem to have an aversion to printing a card in Standard that's currently banned in any other major format. Have they ever done that? I know there were cards printed into Standard that had been banned in some other format previously (e.g. Rukh Egg, Kird Ape, Hypnotic Specter), but by the time they were reprinted those cards were no longer banned either because they were unbanned or (in the case of Extended) rotated out.
Re: Fetches getting banned
This is not going to happen, Wizards has given no indication it will happen, and this suggestion has always been one of my favorite indicators that the format is healthy. Anytime people start suggesting these kinds of fundamental reshaping bans (e.g. ban fetches, ban all fast mana, ban all strong removal, etc.), I know that the format probably has no real issues and we are just struggling to find something meaningful to discuss.
Blood Moon would probably be eventually banned as well in a Modern format where fetch lands are not allowed. All my Modern decks rely on fetches to smooth the mana, and fight moon decks.
This is a claim often made regarding Blood Moon and the fetchlands, but it is highly dubious. First, Blood Moon was in Standard for about three years without there being fetchlands (in the time period after Onslaught rotated out and before Ninth Edition rotated out), and as far as I can tell its impact was relatively small. Sure, some decks would run it as a sideboard card, but it doesn't seem like it was doing much to suppress decks. Consider this deck, for example; 2nd place at the Pro Tour while running only three basic lands, in a format where Blood Moon was legal and can be seen in the sideboards of several decks at that tournament.
Second, and perhaps related to the above: It's true that without fetchlands, it's a lot harder to play around Blood Moon. But do you know who that also applies to? The person using Blood Moon. Without the fetchlands, it's considerably harder to actually use Blood Moon effectively. Blood Moon might become more powerful, but we'd see a dramatic drop in decks using Blood Moon. So I actually find it unlikely that, if fetchlands were removed, Blood Moon would actually require a banning. Any gain in strength it would experience is made up for how much more narrow the decks that can use it become.
Granted, this is all hypothetical as I do not see fetchlands being banned anyway, but for the above reasons I don't think Blood Moon would be anywhere near as overpowered as some people seem to think it would be in a Modern format without fetchlands.
It would be super unpopular but banning fetch lands would do a tremendous amount to slow the format down. It would make decks less consistent, as well as force more lands in a deck.
With just the checklands and shocklands, Innistrad-RTR was a format where 3-color decks were the norm. And most of the decks in Modern that are more than 3 colors aren't relying on the shockland/fetchland manabase anyway (e.g. Humans, Amulet Bloom). It would technically make decks slightly less consistent, but it wouldn't really make that big of a difference.
I'm also not sure how this would force more lands in a deck.
Decks would do less damage to themselves which would increase the damage aggro and burn decks need to do to win the game as well.
More on this later.
It would have an added benefit of reducing the cost of most modern decks by half making the format more accessible.
Well, Wizards of the Coast could actually reprint the fetchlands in Standard again, as they should, though that seems a bit unlikely. The fetchable dual lands they had from Amonkhet are rotating out so it'd be prime time, but they'll probably just put the shocklands in Ravnica again and then preclude putting the fetchlands into Standard for two freaking more years. But maybe they'll do the actually smart thing and reprint fetchlands in that block...
That said, I do question as to whether it would necessarily make the format that much more accessible. Yes, the fetchlands would be gone, and they're the most expensive. But them being gone would cause people to turn to the other dual lands, which would therefore rise in price and in the end I'm not sure the price would be that much lower on the whole.
As for the decks, i meant new decks that are not in existence yet. Midrange and control decks that do not see play because the format is too fast. It’s always felt sad to me how many amazing creatures and spells there are in the format that do not see play cause 4 mana is too expensive in a turn 3-4 format
Wait, huh? Control is probably the best it's ever been in the format. UWx Control might even be the best performing deck. There were many times in the format's history when complaints about the inability of control to compete were warranted, but we are no longer there.
Midrange is in a tougher spot, but I'm dubious about the claim the fetchlands being removed would fix it. If all they had to do to compete with burn and aggro decks was to drop the fetchlands, then they could... drop the fetchlands. Jund was a major force in Standard multiple times without needing the fetch+shock interaction to do it.
But if they're running Assassin's Trophy, they're more likely to not run Fulminator Mage (which was honestly a relatively narrow card), which is good for us. The only downside is that Assassin's Trophy is likely to see maindeck play whereas Fulminator Mage almost never did. But every time they cast an Assassin's Trophy it means they're not casting an actual threat.
Oh, wait, no, I don't remember that, because that didn't happen. Khans of Tarkir was a hugely successful set. The only complaint people had about the fetchlands was that Wizards of the Coast somehow thought it was a good idea to later print fetchable dual lands into the same Standard format without any hate on the interaction.
In fact, interestingly, the subsequent Standard sets that didn't have any notable reprints were the ones that weren't received as well. Standard was on a real downhill decline in popularity afterwards, and it started gaining popularity again after they did start putting in some reprints people wanted. Granted, there were a lot of other factors in Standard's loss (and more recent gain) in popularity, but it is amusing to note that when they were including valuable reprints in Standard, Standard was on an upswing in popularity, then it lost popularity when they stopped, and then it started gaining popularity again after they started again (see Crucible of Worlds and Scapeshift, and of course now the shocklands).
Now, the big issue I see with it is twofold. First, there's not that many good UB decks. You've got Grixis Death's Shadow (which, due to its discard and counterspell suite, might consider it redundant) and that's basically it. Even counting Tier 3 decks, only Faeries comes to mind. And on top of that, a lot of the decks it's good against aren't a big thing right now. But, should these factors change, we might see this card see a lot more play.
This is, at least, less annoying than Crumble to Dust. Crumble to Dust not only took out a land in play, it also could sometimes get lucky and yank a land out of your hand. Given that your strategy after getting turned off Urzatron is to hit your land drops and cast things normally, losing a land in play and the possibility of losing a land in hand puts you back even further. This leaves intact the lands in play, and while it can take them out of your hand, you do get to draw a card to replace it so that loss is lessened.
Also, while not as common of a sideboard card for them, Relic of Progenitus is a way to thwart Crucible of Worlds if you don't happen to have another answer for it at the time.
I mean, sure, that era ended pretty quickly, but it still happened.
Actually, how about doing something like that? UUR, counter target spell, deal 2 damage to any target. What do you think of that?
I don't see how the existence of this card should have any effect on the number of basic lands we run compared to how many we ran before it, because the amount of such effects per deck in the decks that run them do not seem to have increased. Perhaps the number of decks running them have increased, but that does not matter within the games themselves.
It hits Blood Moon, it hits Stony Silence, it hits Damping Sphere. Normally you bring in Nature's Claim for those cards, but you have the issue that if the opponent doesn't have them or doesn't draw them, your Nature's Claim isn't all that great. This card solves that problem in that it'll take out the hate cards if they're cast but can get rid of anything else annoying they might play. A lot of times I find myself having to figure out how many Nature's Claims to bring in because of the uncertainty of whether the opponent has those cards, but this you can bring in every time because you'll always have targets. Heck, it might be maindeckable; you could replace the standard Dismember with it, then put more in the sideboard for the decks it's especially potent against.
Sure, it makes you weaker against the opponent's Assassin's Trophies because you need to bring in some Black-producing lands. But a mana combination of 3 Forest+1 Swamp+1 BG land (probably Llanowar Wastes) still leaves you with a good number of basics to grab yourself while still being able to support the splash. Heck, with all the "get rid of a card, that player searches for a basic land" your odds of being able to get that Swamp is higher!
I think it probably has more to do with the fact they seem to have an aversion to printing a card in Standard that's currently banned in any other major format. Have they ever done that? I know there were cards printed into Standard that had been banned in some other format previously (e.g. Rukh Egg, Kird Ape, Hypnotic Specter), but by the time they were reprinted those cards were no longer banned either because they were unbanned or (in the case of Extended) rotated out.
Second, and perhaps related to the above: It's true that without fetchlands, it's a lot harder to play around Blood Moon. But do you know who that also applies to? The person using Blood Moon. Without the fetchlands, it's considerably harder to actually use Blood Moon effectively. Blood Moon might become more powerful, but we'd see a dramatic drop in decks using Blood Moon. So I actually find it unlikely that, if fetchlands were removed, Blood Moon would actually require a banning. Any gain in strength it would experience is made up for how much more narrow the decks that can use it become.
Granted, this is all hypothetical as I do not see fetchlands being banned anyway, but for the above reasons I don't think Blood Moon would be anywhere near as overpowered as some people seem to think it would be in a Modern format without fetchlands.
I'm also not sure how this would force more lands in a deck.
More on this later.
Well, Wizards of the Coast could actually reprint the fetchlands in Standard again, as they should, though that seems a bit unlikely. The fetchable dual lands they had from Amonkhet are rotating out so it'd be prime time, but they'll probably just put the shocklands in Ravnica again and then preclude putting the fetchlands into Standard for two freaking more years. But maybe they'll do the actually smart thing and reprint fetchlands in that block...
That said, I do question as to whether it would necessarily make the format that much more accessible. Yes, the fetchlands would be gone, and they're the most expensive. But them being gone would cause people to turn to the other dual lands, which would therefore rise in price and in the end I'm not sure the price would be that much lower on the whole.
Wait, huh? Control is probably the best it's ever been in the format. UWx Control might even be the best performing deck. There were many times in the format's history when complaints about the inability of control to compete were warranted, but we are no longer there.
Midrange is in a tougher spot, but I'm dubious about the claim the fetchlands being removed would fix it. If all they had to do to compete with burn and aggro decks was to drop the fetchlands, then they could... drop the fetchlands. Jund was a major force in Standard multiple times without needing the fetch+shock interaction to do it.