If this was the case, the card would have been unbanned long time ago. Remember; Wizards has much more access to the data. Day 1 to Day 2 conversion rates, MODO metagame shares, mwp's. Also someone literally posted some scary day 2 Twin percentages not so long time ago.
I know you think Wizards is the devil here, but they are not. They may know something more than us.
Ok, let's take this one step at a time. George, if Twin was unbanned and it was completely unplayable now and saw no play, would it reduce the diversity in Modern?
Which is highly being eliminated by the diversity reduction it is going to enduce. And diversity is the no. 1 priority in wizards books.
Even KCI is beggining to reduce the top 8 of every other decks at the moment.
Just ban KCI and everything is going to be fine again.
Twin doesn't inherently reduce diversity. They said that in the ban announcement because they thought Twin was the reason people weren't playing other blue decks, which has been thoroughly debunked since the ban. People weren't playing those other decks because they were bad, Twin had nothing to do with it. I always remind people, Affinity had a miserable Twin matchup and it was still the second or third best deck. Twin is not this gatekeeper that pushes out a huge swath of decks. If your deck is doing something objectively powerful, it will be good whether Twin exists or not. If your deck is underpowered jank, it will be bad whether Twin exists or not. This is all especially true if Twin comes back and is only a ~6% tier 1 deck, and not a 12% top-of-the-format deck. There is just no plausible way that a 6% deck is going to destroy Modern's diversity.
Yeah, another unfair combo deck helps magic to be more fair. Come on, this is bull...t. + 1 unfair deck is not - 1 unfair deck
You need to think one level deeper. It's not about what Twin itself is, it's about the effect is has on the format. Twin beats other unfair decks, and it gets beat by interactive fair decks. It's very obvious that putting Twin back into Modern makes the other non-interactive unfair decks worse, and it makes the interactive fair decks better.
Splinter Twin has no upside, as Aaron Forsythe said in a previous tweet of him("A card needs to have an upside to be unbanned").
All it's going to do is slightly reduce the diversity, and Wizards certainly do not want this.
Now, do I want it to be unbanned? It does not even matter. Wizards does not.
Twin does have upside. The upside is that it's good against the linear non-interactive aggro/combo decks that are plaguing Modern right now, and it gets beat by interactive fair decks, so even if it didn't have a huge impact on the format, it would nudge it at least slightly towards being slower and more fair. That's exactly the effect most of us want right now.
So I've been in and out of modern for a while and don't closely follow the meta, and I've noticed that almost everyone thinks KCI is a reasonable ban target. Could someone explain to me why anyone would ever want to ban a deck that's 5% of the meta? I get all the drivel about win percentages and all that, but if the deck really is that good then there's no reason why spikes wouldn't be picking it up in much larger numbers than 5% to increase their own success, and that's not happening right now.
Because it's a complicated deck with very long and tedious turns. A lot of people just don't find it fun to play, so they don't want to take the time to learn the deck.
Its only been around really, for about a year, year and a half? Since then, it was played by Matt Nass who proved it is essentially busted, with something like an 85% match win rate over several GP events.
It took SCG players about the whole year to catch on that they where all playing inferior decks, but their last major event of 2018 had KCI vs Dredge in the finals I believe of the Open and Classic portions.
We then saw GP Oakland, with 4 KCI in the top 8, as the capstone of a deck that see's comparably less play, yet dominated the Top 8's, over 2018.
Naw, KCI eggs has been around in some form for years, it was just super fringe because it wasn't good.
Yeah, which is why I say that it might be a hoax, but it might ultimately end up being right. I was pretty firmly "no bans" for a long time, but some of the recent GP data, besides the x4 top 8 showing, changed my mind. The fact that Matt Nass has like an 80% win rate with the deck, and it had like a 65% win rate overall across a couple GPs, is pretty alarming. It reminds me a lot of Amulet Bloom, where it was a very difficult deck to learn, but it was the best deck in the format once you did.
I mean, I do think SFM gets unbanned sometime in the first half of this year, but I don't know if I trust that post. It might end up being right, though, even if that post is a hoax.
I'm dubious of it, that user has only posted 3 comments in the past year, and then posts this. Maybe it's just an alt account because his main one gives away his mtgo account name, but still seems suspicious.
Besides that, you know what card would be amazing to have in Modern with all these graveyard recursion creatures they keep printing? Containment Priest... like seriously, why is this not in Modern yet?
The argument on the previous page was that the priemier midrange deck had 2 spots in the top 8 so I was stressing my opinion that midrange isn’t viable at all.
Well, the data from GP Oakland says that GB Rock did pretty well, so...
1. Izzet Phoenix is the real deal, but it's probably being overplayed right now
2. Bant Spirits is very overplayed
3. Hardened Scales is very underplayed
4. GDS is the best fair deck
5. KCI probably deserves to eat a ban soon
6. GB Midrange is better than a lot of people seem to think
Articles over a year old but I agree we don’t need to argue about our opinions or that just because pros think things doesn’t make them true. I respect your opinion just don’t agree.
We've had this debate on here in the past. The bottom line is that GDS straddles the line between Midrange and Tempo in a way that probably no other deck ever has in Modern. Most of the disruption the deck plays is more Midrangey, like discard and removal spells. On the other hand, the threats themselves are tempo plays, as they're both undercosted for their size. Finally, TBR adds a bit of a combo axis to the deck. I don't think you're necessarily wrong to call it either Tempo or Midrange, but what makes the final determination to me is how the deck wants to play out in the dark. Generally, you want to interact with your opponent, stripping their resources with your discard and killing their threats, then play out your own threat and kill them while protecting it. This is more of a Midrange strategy. The deck is very capable of draws that are more like a Tempo plan when it needs to do that, though. So I personally view the deck as a Midrange deck that can play like a Tempo deck when it needs to.
UW being better against Burn than Jeskai is probably going to surprise a lot of people, but having played the UW side a lot, I believe it. Helix gives you time against Burn, but they're eventually going to draw more burn spells and kill you if you don't kill them quickly. UW can actually turn the corner and take control of the game in a way that Jeskai can't. Beyond that, most UW lists were running 1-3 copies of Timely Reinforcements in their 75, sometimes even with a copy or two main, and the angels in the sideboard are just lights out against Burn if you get to untap with them. I've even had games where I just raced them with a Clique because they side out their Searing Blazes against UW.
SFM is only as good as the things she can tutor up. We don't have Jitte in this format, so she's considerably less powerful in Modern than she is in Legacy, where she's only okay. She was actually fine in Standard even, until they printed Batterskull. SFM tutoring up and putting Batterskull into play potentially on turn 3 was too powerful for Standard, but is it too powerful for Modern? I've yet to see a convincing argument that it would be.
As to Kathal's point, I agree that I don't think it would do much against a lot of the aggro/combo decks. In my testing with the card against Dredge, in particular, she was helpful if the Dredge player stumbled a bit and I got the germ token in to attack, but she was too slow against their better draws. However, even if I don't think she really addresses a format problem, I don't think she should remain banned if we're pretty confident that she fits within the framework of Modern's power level.
You need to think one level deeper. It's not about what Twin itself is, it's about the effect is has on the format. Twin beats other unfair decks, and it gets beat by interactive fair decks. It's very obvious that putting Twin back into Modern makes the other non-interactive unfair decks worse, and it makes the interactive fair decks better.
Naw, KCI eggs has been around in some form for years, it was just super fringe because it wasn't good.
Besides that, you know what card would be amazing to have in Modern with all these graveyard recursion creatures they keep printing? Containment Priest... like seriously, why is this not in Modern yet?
1. Izzet Phoenix is the real deal, but it's probably being overplayed right now
2. Bant Spirits is very overplayed
3. Hardened Scales is very underplayed
4. GDS is the best fair deck
5. KCI probably deserves to eat a ban soon
6. GB Midrange is better than a lot of people seem to think
As to Kathal's point, I agree that I don't think it would do much against a lot of the aggro/combo decks. In my testing with the card against Dredge, in particular, she was helpful if the Dredge player stumbled a bit and I got the germ token in to attack, but she was too slow against their better draws. However, even if I don't think she really addresses a format problem, I don't think she should remain banned if we're pretty confident that she fits within the framework of Modern's power level.