How does one attack ETron? Other than "hope they stumble" or "damage race," what can decks actually do? Mind you that, as I mentioned last page, answers like Ceremonious Rejection are handled by their 4x, main deck Chalice of the Void. Hitting their lands doesn't really hurt them, all their creatures are hugely-advantageous 2-for-1s, they pack one-sided board wipes that get rid of all your non-land permanents, they have access to tons of graveyard hate, countermagic for sorceries, additional board wipes, and a top end that nobody can compete with, all with a pain-free manabase that gets to run multiple sol lands and utility lands at no detriment to color fixing.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like when this deck loses, it's only because it loses to itself or to an explosive hand out of a hyper aggro deck.
Dismissing ceremonious rejection due to chalice would be like dismissing kor firewalker against burn due to skullcrack. Yeah, they have a 4-of that can answer the problem, but that problem still needs to be answered. In the rejection/e-tron case, we're talking about a a chalice that can't be cheated out turn 1 can can be stopped by the very card that answers the rest of the deck.
Between Chalice and Cavern of Souls, you can't reliably count on Rejection to save you. It's definitely good, but it's not even back-breaking. It's more of a speed bump.
Remember, Chalice is a 4x main, meaning they'll have one to play on turn 2 nearly 50% of the time. Chalice also shuts off lots of cards from lots of decks, not just Rejection. The card wrecks hard and is played in the main deck with virtually no downside.
Yet Eldrazi Tron is not putting up nearly the same numbers as its eye of ugin predecessor. Its just good against some decks.
So you would advise waiting for it's metagame share to be greater then the combined share of all the other tier one decks before considering bans? Pretty slick.
The problem with rejection Vs chalice is what happens when they draw and cast chalice before you find your counter. SSG is still a card which those decks can play if they prioritize chalice enough, like they did at the pt.
Yes. I want a deck that doesn't violate the turn four rule to be tier zero before banning.
How does one attack ETron? Other than "hope they stumble" or "damage race," what can decks actually do? Mind you that, as I mentioned last page, answers like Ceremonious Rejection are handled by their 4x, main deck Chalice of the Void. Hitting their lands doesn't really hurt them, all their creatures are hugely-advantageous 2-for-1s, they pack one-sided board wipes that get rid of all your non-land permanents, they have access to tons of graveyard hate, countermagic for sorceries, additional board wipes, and a top end that nobody can compete with, all with a pain-free manabase that gets to run multiple sol lands and utility lands at no detriment to color fixing.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like when this deck loses, it's only because it loses to itself or to an explosive hand out of a hyper aggro deck.
Dismissing ceremonious rejection due to chalice would be like dismissing kor firewalker against burn due to skullcrack. Yeah, they have a 4-of that can answer the problem, but that problem still needs to be answered. In the rejection/e-tron case, we're talking about a a chalice that can't be cheated out turn 1 can can be stopped by the very card that answers the rest of the deck.
Between Chalice and Cavern of Souls, you can't reliably count on Rejection to save you. It's definitely good, but it's not even back-breaking. It's more of a speed bump.
Remember, Chalice is a 4x main, meaning they'll have one to play on turn 2 nearly 50% of the time. Chalice also shuts off lots of cards from lots of decks, not just Rejection. The card wrecks hard and is played in the main deck with virtually no downside.
Yet Eldrazi Tron is not putting up nearly the same numbers as its eye of ugin predecessor. Its just good against some decks.
In all fairness I've pushed for a temple ban since eldrazi winter. Recent results and trends, if anything, just cement the notion that they will have to get rid of it eventually, before the PT.
Affinity is an odd fish since it is the one top tier deck in the format that wasn't hit by a ban, not once. There is one possible banworthy card in that deck but since people have just recently advocated to urban artifact lands I don't even want to go there.
So it's bad that ET pushes out some other midrange decks (a dubious claim in itself), but it's ok that Affinity pushes out other aggro strategies?
There's always going to be a best midrange deck, and there's always going to be a best aggro deck. Just because you'd rather have a different midrange deck tier 1 isn't a good enough reason for an ET ban.
This. So much this. Something has to be the best, and there is no reason why it has to be GBx. I maintain that a bunch of people spent 2K on Jund and simply believe that gives them some sort of right to play it as a tier one deck until they sell it (and often also believe its value should never go down).
Went 0-3 to drop from a PPTQ last Saturday. Round one was burn and I simply got rolled. Round two was BW tokens where I won game one, but lost games two and three as he boarded in TWELVE cards including Leyline of Sanctity, Lost Legacy, and Zealous Persecution to effectively shut down all ways I could win. Round three was a Grixis Delver player I've went against before. I don't have another qualifier for about two weeks, but yeah that was a rough go of things.
Honestly, I feel like after the printing of Push, the entire list deserves to be reevaluated. There is no reason for cards that would only be in Infect to be banned, there is no reason for any non-GGT creatures to stay banned (yes this includes DRS), no reason for Depths to stay banned. Push is the most beautiful card printed for Modern in YEARS, maybe the MVP of the entire format. It is a huge shift, and everything needs to be looked at with fresh eyes...braver eyes than Wizards, eyes that actually understand the format even a little bit.
Full disclosure.....yeah, I have some SFM playsets, but aside from REALLY, REALLY wanting to play Preordain in my Dimir control build, I have no desire to play with most of these cards and won't gain or lose much until the next Eldrazi Winter.
DRS is still doing a lot of work in legacy. If it's still an amazing creature in THAT format, I don't think we can immediately welcome it with open arms. Also, bear in mind that not every deck can run fatal push. I'd hate for diversity to suffer just so that jund players can go junding again.
No. No I'm sorry but this is a ridiculous statement on its face. Countermagic is firmly blue in the color pie, and that comes at the expense of not really having anything to destroy permanents once they actually do resolve. That's blue - the ability to answer most things, but only within the window of that thing being a spell on the stack. The color pie has been tweaked over time, but part of deck design and testing is to see if a given color combination's weaknesses are easily exploited. If every color had every answer to every spell or permanent, then there would be no reason to have five colors of magic...unless you just like the artwork of mountains over swamps.
The only weakness of diversity is that you can't walk into an event with, as sisi wanted, a guaranteed 70% winrate (which again is bs). If you know you are playing a deck with a significant weakness, you can prepare accordingly or take the risk of facing that deck or archetype.
I recently started playing Magic again, and I'm looking to flesh out my online collection. So far I only really have the cards for Mono U Tron. Any tips on staples I should be picking up? Looking to grab cards that might be cheap right now but useful in the future. I'm mostly interested in playing Esper color decks, but that doesn't mean I don't have love for R/G.
Also, any lands I should be picking up? Shocks, fetches, etc. that might be dropping in price?
If you have the cash to blow, I'd just start buying fetchlands. The MM17 reprint dropped prices on the enemy colored ones, but they will eventually go back up. Otherwise, pick a deck and specifically start buying the cards for it. UW control is very viable in modern right now and runs between $600 and $700 total, putting it basically in the middle of modern decks. Blue Tron often runs chalices, so if you already have those along with tron lands and expedition map you could start building towards eldrazi tron too.
Nikachu's youtube channel once showed the win percentages of the top pros in organized play. The only player who broke the 60% mark I believe was LSV. Everyone else was like 56-59th percentile. These were platinum pros. The claim of 70% win rate all the time is either a lie or a case of a player only competing against significantly lesser-skilled players.
But its still interaction, even if you don't enjoy it. Deciding what creatures to attack with, tapping with all your mana available, trying to bluff a kill spell, etc. That's a huge part of my dissenting opinion of the "noninteractive" argument - not every deck can be blue and focus on interacting with the stack.
The Eldrazi Winter comment makes sense if you look at a magic tournament purely through prize EV. You can't metagame in a field of thirty decks, which means the odds of winning those packs, that store credit, the box, the RPTQ invite, whatever, goes down. If you look at any competitive event through the lens of "cost to play vs EV of winning" the Eldrazi Winter premise is a logical conclusion. That's why I mentioned pros. They can talk about diversity in opinion articles regarding bans or unbans, but pros would prefer every person play the same deck except them. A healthy metagame, and this makes me sad as an economist, a communal concept. Your deck being good or bad is not indicative of a healthy meta. It's about the aggregate. If your EV of an event is only about prize support, diversity is bad. If your EV includes constant fun and interesting matches, diversity is much better.
By the way, am I the only one who finds creature combat, attacking vs blocking, interactive?
Pros complain because they may go up against someone on mono green stompy and get rolled as a burn player or something. But you know the thing about matchups, pairings and the inherent chaos thereof? Its fair. If you pick a decent deck and know what you are doing, the odds of you facing three awful matchups is about the same as LSV. I understand why the pros say it, every bit of variance lowers the odds of making Day 2, top 8, or winning a major event. I just don't really care, because the WOTC cartel of pro play bothers me on a fundamental level.
I don't actually care for pros either, but this is the crux of one of my main complaints about Modern: bringing a deck with positive matchups against a predicted metagame is significantly more beneficial than simply being skillful with any one particular deck. It would be nice to have the flexibility to switch on the fly between several $1,000+ decks that have virtually no crossover cards. As such, most players simply play what they have and deal with the matchups they are given. It leads to wildly swingy outcomes that are heavily influenced by things outside of your control.
So you believe that diversity is bad? Or is it just a matter of diminishing marginal returns? The standard comparison has already been made, and I can tell you if the entire format literally was Grixis Shadow, E-Tron, let's say Burn and Affinity, no other deck existed that had a shot at going X-2 at a GP, I'd quit the format. That's standard to me. Hell, add Valakut and call it five decks and not only is that standard but that's a healthy standard!
Still worth noting how there aren't a ton of 80/20 matchups in modern nonetheless.
Pros complain because they may go up against someone on mono green stompy and get rolled as a burn player or something. But you know the thing about matchups, pairings and the inherent chaos thereof? Its fair. If you pick a decent deck and know what you are doing, the odds of you facing three awful matchups is about the same as LSV. I understand why the pros say it, every bit of variance lowers the odds of making Day 2, top 8, or winning a major event. I just don't really care, because the WOTC cartel of pro play bothers me on a fundamental level.
Yes. I want a deck that doesn't violate the turn four rule to be tier zero before banning.
Yet Eldrazi Tron is not putting up nearly the same numbers as its eye of ugin predecessor. Its just good against some decks.
This. So much this. Something has to be the best, and there is no reason why it has to be GBx. I maintain that a bunch of people spent 2K on Jund and simply believe that gives them some sort of right to play it as a tier one deck until they sell it (and often also believe its value should never go down).
Went 0-3 to drop from a PPTQ last Saturday. Round one was burn and I simply got rolled. Round two was BW tokens where I won game one, but lost games two and three as he boarded in TWELVE cards including Leyline of Sanctity, Lost Legacy, and Zealous Persecution to effectively shut down all ways I could win. Round three was a Grixis Delver player I've went against before. I don't have another qualifier for about two weeks, but yeah that was a rough go of things.
DRS is still doing a lot of work in legacy. If it's still an amazing creature in THAT format, I don't think we can immediately welcome it with open arms. Also, bear in mind that not every deck can run fatal push. I'd hate for diversity to suffer just so that jund players can go junding again.
The only weakness of diversity is that you can't walk into an event with, as sisi wanted, a guaranteed 70% winrate (which again is bs). If you know you are playing a deck with a significant weakness, you can prepare accordingly or take the risk of facing that deck or archetype.
If you have the cash to blow, I'd just start buying fetchlands. The MM17 reprint dropped prices on the enemy colored ones, but they will eventually go back up. Otherwise, pick a deck and specifically start buying the cards for it. UW control is very viable in modern right now and runs between $600 and $700 total, putting it basically in the middle of modern decks. Blue Tron often runs chalices, so if you already have those along with tron lands and expedition map you could start building towards eldrazi tron too.
The Eldrazi Winter comment makes sense if you look at a magic tournament purely through prize EV. You can't metagame in a field of thirty decks, which means the odds of winning those packs, that store credit, the box, the RPTQ invite, whatever, goes down. If you look at any competitive event through the lens of "cost to play vs EV of winning" the Eldrazi Winter premise is a logical conclusion. That's why I mentioned pros. They can talk about diversity in opinion articles regarding bans or unbans, but pros would prefer every person play the same deck except them. A healthy metagame, and this makes me sad as an economist, a communal concept. Your deck being good or bad is not indicative of a healthy meta. It's about the aggregate. If your EV of an event is only about prize support, diversity is bad. If your EV includes constant fun and interesting matches, diversity is much better.
By the way, am I the only one who finds creature combat, attacking vs blocking, interactive?
So you believe that diversity is bad? Or is it just a matter of diminishing marginal returns? The standard comparison has already been made, and I can tell you if the entire format literally was Grixis Shadow, E-Tron, let's say Burn and Affinity, no other deck existed that had a shot at going X-2 at a GP, I'd quit the format. That's standard to me. Hell, add Valakut and call it five decks and not only is that standard but that's a healthy standard!
Still worth noting how there aren't a ton of 80/20 matchups in modern nonetheless.