I'm pretty pumped up for this set. A way to skip Standard and get needed cards directly into Modern is something we've all been asking for for years. It's also nice to see that they do listen to us. Cabal Therapist looks interesting in something like Dredge or Bridgevine. Could also work in a fair deck that makes tokens to sacrifice. Serra is very interesting. Obviously, the barrier to entry for a 4-drop is very high in Modern, but she might get there. There are decks that want Worship, and she's a main-deckable Worship that can't be removed. Worst case scenario, she's a 4 mana Serra Angel that leaves a planeswalker behind. She seems like she would go well in a Lingering Souls deck, or a creature deck that would want Worship.
I think the card I'm most hoping for is Counterspell. I don't even think it would be a huge difference, but it would be nice to not have to play such a wide split of incredibly situational 2 mana counters and hope you have the right one at the right time. I'm excited to see what else they have for us in this set, this is going to be HUGE for the format!
So, does this GP result solidify for anyone else that GB Rock is the best build of the GBx Midrange decks? I know people have been trying to force Jund for the past year, but the consistency and power you get from the two color manabase seems to be where it's at.
My guess is a supplemental set that's Modern legal, because we know there are cards they want to inject into Modern but don't want in Standard, like Counterspell. There's also a bunch of sweet cards from past supplemental sets that would be fun to have in Modern, even if they wouldn't be all that great, like Kaya, Ghost Assassin or Dak Fayden.
Containment Priest is a card that absolutely should be in Modern. It's an excellent answer for fair white-based midrange and/or control decks to all the graveyard shenanigans going on in the format. They keep printing so many threats that recur from the graveyard without giving us nice answers to that strategy, and Containment Priest would be a nice step in the right direction.
I think something that would be good for Modern would be a card that did what Mental Misstep was supposed to do, if they had designed it correctly. A free counter that can only counter 1 cmc spells would help, but it A) must not counter itself, and B) needs to require you to be playing the color blue. There are some ways to achieve this design, and it's the kind of card that would be completely innocuous in Standard.
That's just false. Preordain is more powerful than Serum Visions, but it's MUCH closer to SV in power than it is to Ponder or Brainstorm. Those two are the truly broken cantrips. If you honestly think that unbanning Preordain would do anything in Modern, you're way overvaluing what a minor difference like upgrading SV to Preordain can do for a deck. In fact, Grishoalbrand gets to play a 2 mana Preordain that's even better than Preordain for them, since they want things in their graveyard, and it's... just fine. Like, it's good in the deck, but it didn't break Grishoalbrand. And Grishoalbrand was upgrading to that from stuff like Tormenting Voice, which is way worse than SV. Decks that would upgrade from SV to Preordain would have an imperceptible bump in power, probably not even a full 1% in overall MWP. Decks that want more cantrips that are upgrading something like Sleight of Hand to Preordain would have a larger bump, but it's still not game-breaking for them.
More sweepers that exile would be really helpful. The reason why UW has been so successful is that Terminus deals with graveyard recursive creatures. Before we could play Terminus, there would be times you would wipe the board, and they would rebuild like you had done nothing on the next turn because of creatures that can come back from the graveyard. Anger of the Gods is great, but there is a lot of stuff it doesn't kill, so you can't really run 4 of them.
Personally I think Ponder is way too powerful to be ever even considered for Modern. Ponder is restricted in Vintage, because it is much more powerful in a format with Fetchlands. Preordain seems more likely, but given the success of Serum Vision decks I doubt Wotc wants to boost them further.
Agreed. I think Ponder is too powerful for Modern, but I also think Ancient Stirrings is too powerful. These two need to be in the same place, either both banned or both unbanned.
I personally would have preferred a Scrap Trawler ban. That only hits KCI, but allows the deck to continue to exist at a much lower power level instead of completely nuking it.
You know every fair white deck does play SFM in Legacy, whereas Delver is not played in every blue fair deck.
I'm personally hoping for a Dark Depths unban, because it's not even that strong compared to:
-)insert combo deck killing you on turn 3
-) would boost fair decks
-) we have more answers with Field of Ruin than in the past
Miracles doesn't play SFM. And again, SFM is way more powerful in Legacy than she is in Modern. Modern UW Miracles would not play her. The current build of Jeskai Control would not play her. In Modern, she would slot nicely into Death and Taxes, but that deck sucks so who cares about that. She would go into Abzan Midrange, which hasn't been playable in years. Beyond that, she would also spawn some new UWx tempo or midrange shell with cards like Lingering Souls, Spell Queller, and Geist. I personally would build a Jeskai tempo shell with her, centered around playing Geist and getting a Sword that lets Geist attack through blockers.
I just don't get the logic of comparing SFM, a Legacy staple 2 drop, with Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, Sword (all fringe playables at best in Legacy) or even worse comparing it with 4 mana cards.
You have to take into account the different contexts for SFM in Legacy vs. SFM in Modern. First of all, there's no Jitte in Modern, and that's a HUGE difference in power level for the card. There's also no TNN to suit up, which is another big difference. Thirdly, there is a lot more creature removal and artifact hate in Modern because of decks like Affinity and Hardened Scales. Finally, Modern is much less about card advantage and grinding, and more about tempo. This is the same reason why Jace is way worse in Modern than he is in Legacy. What SFM does in Legacy has next to no application to what it would do in Modern.
The Aaron forsythe quote means we are probably having no unbans during 2019.
Not necessarily. The last time he made this bad of a take on a banned card was when he thought Sword of the Meek would go into Lantern, and the twitter army so vehemently disagreed with him that it obviously changed his mind and the card was unbanned soon after.
Let's do this. You want me to say "NO" to you. So, obviously, no. What is your reasoning? Walk me through it. Then I can explain to you why this card has no upside at all in Wizard's eyes.
So if we accept for argument's sake that Twin did impact Modern's diversity when it was 12% of the meta (which I don't really believe, but we'll pretend it did for now), but we can agree that Twin at 0% of the meta would not adversely affect the diversity of the format, that means there is some number between 0 and 12 percent where Twin is playable, and perhaps even well represented, in the format while not yet impacting the diversity. So the real question we need to be discussing is what that number is, and if Twin would be at or below that number if it were unbanned today.
Personally, I don't buy the diversity argument even when Twin was at 12%, but I'm willing to say that Twin shouldn't be unbanned if it would still be 12% of the meta today. I just don't think that would be the case. Look at the difference between the Modern meta in 2015 versus today. There are a lot more powerful things you can do in Modern now than there were in 2015. Hell, the second and third best decks of 2015 (Jund and Affinity) are practically non-existent today. And this diversity and power increase aren't related to the Twin ban, it's because WotC has seeded powerful pieces for existing underpowered archetypes (Dredge, KCI, blue control, Fatal Push decks, Storm) or printed new powerful build-arounds that have spawned new archetypes (Phoenix, Humans, Spirits, Hardened Scales, Hollow One). Yes, the Twin shell has gotten some upgrades as well, but it's nowhere near the same magnitude as the growth of Modern as a whole. In fact, I would argue that Jund has gotten FAR superior upgrades compared to Twin in the last three years (Fatal Push, Bloodbraid Elf, Liliana the Last Hope, Collective Brutality, Tireless Tracker, Kalitas, Assassin's Trophy), and yet it's still floundering in Modern.
So if Twin could be unbanned and be like 6% of the format, it would be a huge win for the format as a whole. First of all, it's a beloved archetype that some people would like to get to play again. It probably wouldn't have a huge effect on the format at only 6% of the meta, but it would be a slight nudge away from the linear non-interactive decks and towards the fair interactive ones. Maybe combined with GDS and Humans, it could help push the format towards a healthier place. So there definitely is upside to a Twin unbanning, as long as it's within the current power level of the format and wouldn't dominate it again, which I don't believe it would.
I think the card I'm most hoping for is Counterspell. I don't even think it would be a huge difference, but it would be nice to not have to play such a wide split of incredibly situational 2 mana counters and hope you have the right one at the right time. I'm excited to see what else they have for us in this set, this is going to be HUGE for the format!
Agreed. I think Ponder is too powerful for Modern, but I also think Ancient Stirrings is too powerful. These two need to be in the same place, either both banned or both unbanned.
You have to take into account the different contexts for SFM in Legacy vs. SFM in Modern. First of all, there's no Jitte in Modern, and that's a HUGE difference in power level for the card. There's also no TNN to suit up, which is another big difference. Thirdly, there is a lot more creature removal and artifact hate in Modern because of decks like Affinity and Hardened Scales. Finally, Modern is much less about card advantage and grinding, and more about tempo. This is the same reason why Jace is way worse in Modern than he is in Legacy. What SFM does in Legacy has next to no application to what it would do in Modern.
Not necessarily. The last time he made this bad of a take on a banned card was when he thought Sword of the Meek would go into Lantern, and the twitter army so vehemently disagreed with him that it obviously changed his mind and the card was unbanned soon after.
Personally, I don't buy the diversity argument even when Twin was at 12%, but I'm willing to say that Twin shouldn't be unbanned if it would still be 12% of the meta today. I just don't think that would be the case. Look at the difference between the Modern meta in 2015 versus today. There are a lot more powerful things you can do in Modern now than there were in 2015. Hell, the second and third best decks of 2015 (Jund and Affinity) are practically non-existent today. And this diversity and power increase aren't related to the Twin ban, it's because WotC has seeded powerful pieces for existing underpowered archetypes (Dredge, KCI, blue control, Fatal Push decks, Storm) or printed new powerful build-arounds that have spawned new archetypes (Phoenix, Humans, Spirits, Hardened Scales, Hollow One). Yes, the Twin shell has gotten some upgrades as well, but it's nowhere near the same magnitude as the growth of Modern as a whole. In fact, I would argue that Jund has gotten FAR superior upgrades compared to Twin in the last three years (Fatal Push, Bloodbraid Elf, Liliana the Last Hope, Collective Brutality, Tireless Tracker, Kalitas, Assassin's Trophy), and yet it's still floundering in Modern.
So if Twin could be unbanned and be like 6% of the format, it would be a huge win for the format as a whole. First of all, it's a beloved archetype that some people would like to get to play again. It probably wouldn't have a huge effect on the format at only 6% of the meta, but it would be a slight nudge away from the linear non-interactive decks and towards the fair interactive ones. Maybe combined with GDS and Humans, it could help push the format towards a healthier place. So there definitely is upside to a Twin unbanning, as long as it's within the current power level of the format and wouldn't dominate it again, which I don't believe it would.