MTG Salvation

Quote from Trazaeth »

I'd say that it's effect is less degeneracy and more that it makes decks partially homogenized. Basically, unless there's a very good reason not to, you should be starting every deck with 4 Chrome Mox, if it's legal. If anything though, it makes traditionally "fair" decks (aggro, control, ramp, and midrange) better against "unfair" (combo) decks. Admittedly, I think labeling decks "fair" or "unfair" is a bit loaded, but it's how the developers seem to think of things.

No, not all decks would run a chrome mox. However, ramping in that manner only really suits combo decks and ramp decks towards early powerful spells. The loss of a card in hand would mean that aggro wouldn't want it since it's trying to just race on curve, and control would only use it in a prison tezzerator build at best. Being able to be possibly two turns up on mana can lead to virtual locks. Either way, what is being accomplished with having this unbanned eludes me.

Basically all major archetypes in NBLM can or do run Chrome Mox, if they can support it. UWx Miracles, Tezzerator, WW, Storm (Non-Swath builds at least; PiF Storm builds love Chrome Mox, since they can absorb the CA hit), UR Turbo Twin, Pyroclamp, Elves, Dredge, GBx Hexdepths, 12 post, Bant Pod, Shoal Infect, Fairies... Really, the only decks that don't run it are Affinity, Eggs, Living End, Hypergenesis, and Eldrazi Aggro. Affinity and Eggs get Mox Opal as a replacement. Living End and Hypergenesis can't run it but usually have SSG in the list as a pseudo-Mox, though even the terrible lists that run off of the Expertise cycle from Kaladesh and As Foretold use Chrome Mox. Eldrazi get their Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temples, but the lack of a viable Mox replacement is a major issue with the deck. It's why they tend to get wrecked by Bridge decks and by Miracles.

Honestly, I think that Chrome Mox is probably the format defining card of NBLM. No other card has warped the meta on the same scale; not even Dark Depths or Skullclamp, which is insane.

Quote from ElectricEye »

Quote from Mortal Coil »

I don't think Belcher is the reason Chrome Mox should stay on the banned list. You actually can build a fairly consistent Belcher deck with just Chrome Mox, and Mox Opal as your mana base, shockingly enough, but that's beside the point really. Chrome Mox is an incredibly swingy card, especially on the play, when you're up 2 mana to nothing on turn 1. It gives most aggro, midrange, and control decks a huge leg up if they get to start with it, to the point where the advantage can easily snowball way out of control. I'd argue that the reason Fairies was so dominant was the Chrome Mox into Spellstutter Sprite starts. The only way to compete is to run 4 Chrome Mox yourself. It's a major issue in terms of deckbuilding balance. If you're building a deck with colored spells, it's usually correct to start with 4 Chrome Mox. Heck, half of the reason Tezzerator is so strong in NBLM is that it can afford to run Chrome Mox and Mox Opal, allowing some truly absurd turn 1 plays. Trust me, Chrome Mox should stay banned, and was absolutely a design mistake. There are three cards on the Banned List that absolutely need to stay banned or Modern will no longer be a fun format for most people: Skullclamp, Dread Return, and Chrome Mox. I can conceive of ways that you could make a meta to balance Dark Depths, Umezawa's Jitte, the artifact lands, or Sensei's Divining Top, but those three just break the game in half. You'd need to completely rework the rules to make them fair.

Ignoring the Chrome Mox debate for a minute here, I am going to have to disagree that those 3 cards are the ones that should stay banned forever in modern.

Skullclamp I agree with, that one is obvious.

The other two I believe to be Sensei's Divining Top and Eye of Ugin. The first one causes time delays in the format and potentially makes miracles tier 0. The second one - well we saw what happens when Eye and Temple are legal at the same time.

Dread Return makes dredge somewhat better than it is currently, but it doesn't solve any of dredge's problems. It still loses to the same graveyard hate that it currently does.

Back to Chrome Mox.

Chrome Mox is a very powerful card yes, but even though it has broad applications across the format not every colored deck is going to want to play it. It's still card disadvantage in the end. Noble Hierarch is also fairly swingy on the play, and many decks would prefer to play that than Chrome Mox.

Chrome Mox is, IMO, a way for decks that do not have access to Aether Vial, Mox Opal, mana dorks (birds, hierarch, arbor elf), Tron Lands, Eldrazi Lands, or red Rituals to compete against these decks by trading card advantage for mana. Tezzerator? Please show me a list and how you are going to reliably play both Mox Opal and Chrome Mox in the same deck when they each require you to play cards that do not synergize well together (Opal requires artifacts, Chrome requires non-artifacts)

So here's the Tezzerator deck I'm on in NBLM:


I've never really had much issue with activating both Moxen with this list, and it beats the pants off of everything except the mirror and White Weenie.It's a little less explosive than the versions with Gemstone Caverns, but it's a bit more consistent.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

Quote from Ym1r »

Quote from ElectricEye »

Quote from Wraithpk »

Quote from ElectricEye »

Why is Chrome Mox still banned?

It doesn't fit into any of the current top decks. Phoenix, Dredge, Humans, Spirits, Death's Shadow, Hardened Scales, Tron, UW control, Amulet, Rock, Jund, Burn, Whir Prison.

The only deck it fits into is Ad Nauseam, and even there its awkward and probably worse than Spirit Guide. So can someone explain this to me? Are there any decks I am forgetting?

Chrome Mox makes Modern Belcher a thing, and nobody wants that. Even if it wasn't for Belcher, think about what that card does. Fast mana only speeds decks up, and the decks that would most want something like this are fast combo decks. Does Modern really need to be faster and even more unfair than it currently is? No, it does not. So Chrome Mox would not be a good card to put into Modern.

I don't buy the argument that Belcher suddenly becomes playable with Chrome Mox. It's still a glass-cannon deck, much like Griselbrand combo and Cheerios. These type of strategies tend to mulligan terribly and fold to commonly played sideboard effects

We are at a point in Modern where free mana is considered offensive (and for good reason IMHO). Mox Opal, according to a previous announcement, is on the "watchlist) for a potential ban. Why on earth would they unban the best free mana artifact available in the modern cardpool if they find Mox Opan offensive?

I think his points stands. Modern Belcher is going to need a lot more than just Chrome Mox to become "playable." And when I say playable, I realize that everyone has a different definition. Some people believe that only UR Phoenix, Dredge, Amulet, Whir Prison, and Grixis Shadow are playable right now and I can't fault them for that line of thinking (yes, even with the 1 win that a Jund Titanshift deck did this weekend) We are talking about giving yourself the BEST chance, not just spiking a tournament with a deck that put you at a disadvantage from the start, even if you out tested all other 2,000 players at the GP.

Even though many of us assume it, I don't think Wizards has ever said explicitly that Mox Opal to be close to a banning. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here.

But I do believe that your point also stands because Wizards seemingly does not want (and I say this loosely because honestly there isn't any proof) fast mana to be prevalent in Modern. I guess there technically is proof with Rite of Flame and Seething Song banned, but other cards are not banned. This is the most likely conclusion one can have.

My point is that you can't blame someone for questioning the line of thinking - Chrome Mox won't get unbanned because of Belcher because Belcher has no relevance in the current meta and there is some percentage of players over 0% that don't believe Belcher to potentially be a problem if Chrome Mox is unbanned. My own opinion is that I don't think it currently should be unbanned, but I think it's close. I think 5 unbannings down the line, it SHOULD come off. I just don't know if that time period is 2 years or 22 years.

I don't think Belcher is the reason Chrome Mox should stay on the banned list. You actually can build a fairly consistent Belcher deck with just Chrome Mox, and Mox Opal as your mana base, shockingly enough, but that's beside the point really. Chrome Mox is an incredibly swingy card, especially on the play, when you're up 2 mana to nothing on turn 1. It gives most aggro, midrange, and control decks a huge leg up if they get to start with it, to the point where the advantage can easily snowball way out of control. I'd argue that the reason Fairies was so dominant was the Chrome Mox into Spellstutter Sprite starts. The only way to compete is to run 4 Chrome Mox yourself. It's a major issue in terms of deckbuilding balance. If you're building a deck with colored spells, it's usually correct to start with 4 Chrome Mox. Heck, half of the reason Tezzerator is so strong in NBLM is that it can afford to run Chrome Mox and Mox Opal, allowing some truly absurd turn 1 plays. Trust me, Chrome Mox should stay banned, and was absolutely a design mistake. There are three cards on the Banned List that absolutely need to stay banned or Modern will no longer be a fun format for most people: Skullclamp, Dread Return, and Chrome Mox. I can conceive of ways that you could make a meta to balance Dark Depths, Umezawa's Jitte, the artifact lands, or Sensei's Divining Top, but those three just break the game in half. You'd need to completely rework the rules to make them fair.

Quote from edinburgerboulderer53 »

It says
Most modern players are ok with Xerox styled decks being the best decks and anything better and different tends to end up banned. Goes on to suggest that this is a player perception issue rather than a card power and Brian DeMars agrees that he couldn't think of a rebuttal for this.

Now that is what lead me to preordain it also leads us into the murky twin water. so instead of that do we have any eternal format players able to highlight times when Xerox was bested and something got banned?

In Modern, the most infamous example is probably Pod. It took a giant dump on Delver, the UR Xerox deck of the time period, and it got banned. Was the deck actually OP? At the time, it was a surprisingly borderline case despite ballooning to over 20% of the meta due to how soundly it beat Delver, which was pushing 15% itself, IIRC. It was one of the early examples of when people began to cotton onto how the Meta might become imbalanced by indirect means.

Sword of the Meek was the most hilarious unban. People were on tinterhooks about how broken it would be, only to find out that it wasn't even that good in the context of that meta. It also helped pave the way for more interesting unbans, like JtMS and BBE.

Quote from izzetmage »

https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gpbar18/top-8-decklists-grand-prix-barcelona-2018-2018-07-01

3 UW and 1 Jeskai. That's awkward for the unban SFM crowd...

And pretty awkward for the "Ban Stirrings" crowd.

Quote from idSurge »

Is that Esper Dragon playable? I've never played Esper control outside of messing around with things like Mentor and Ashiok but its got me wanting to try it out.

Not in any Esper shell I've ever heard of.

Comment Hidden

Quote from Kathal »

Quote from pizzap »

NBL Modern is a different format than Modern, so I don't think it has any use for predicting unbans.

Exactly.

As a NBL player and crafter, I get really mad on how bad most of the top 32 decks were designed. I'm also surprised that nobody played Tezzerator (arguably the strongest Control deck), Affinity(with Skullclamp, only one guy in day 2) and Dredge, however, I attribute this to the lack of knowledge about the format than anything else.

Though, the deck BBD played is REALLY good (from a deck design perspective), it's Eldrazi match-up is really good.

Also, something people need to realise about NBL Modern, the angst from Combo is an illusion, Control decks either play Chalice or Top + Counterbalance, the "Tempo" decks have enough disruption (be it Discard, Counters (MM, Spell Pierce, Leak), or hatebears (Thalia says hi)) and all other decks have either a combination of the last mentioned things, or can just race you.

So yeah, for me it was expected that the metagame will look something like this, cause it is the "lazy" approach (people knew what is obviously good so they played, for the next layer they didn't want to invest enough time).

Greetings,
Kathal

Well, in their defense, NBLM Tezz is probably about as punishing of poor play as Lantern Control. At this point it's pretty much the strongest control deck in the format thanks to its ability cheat on mana, but it's not an easy deck to pick up. Too many tutor effects. Honestly, I was more surprised at the lack of Pyroclamp. It's a pretty forgiving archetype, it does reasonably well against Eldrazi aggro, and you get to play Skullclamp, Treasure Cruise, Chrome Mox, Jitte, MM, and Probe. Ditto for Death and Taxes, pretty easy to play, reasonable matchups across the board.

Quote from truth_bomb »

was building a sick brew but when i read Riptide Laboratory, i realized it wasn't modern legal =(

RIP Riptide Laboratory. Maybe in the next set we'll see a reprint.

man you guys are thinking way too hard over-analyzing what, at face value, was a rather straightforward decision.

like attributing choosing bridge over another card because they are greedy and only care about selling new product. is it not possible that bridge was chosen because it was actually the appropriate choice given its role in the most degenerate play patterns and its awkward and frankly poor design?

similarly their citing of certain data points but not including all the data they looked at isnt some deliberate attempt at deceive or hide anything. there isnt some set of immutable guidelines for ban decisions where some burden of proof exists. they are just people designing a game, and they adapt the 'rules' as they see fit in order to craft what they believe is a more enjoyable environment. so you either agree or you dont, and in turn you trust them or you dont. i get that players, especially ones that might use this forum/thread, would delight in more transparency; however it behooves wizards not to share everything they look at and the specifics because its needlessly constrains future decisions by setting precedent/expectations that most will likely misinterpret.

i mean did anything about the announcement seem unreasonable if taken at face value? regardless if anyone believed bridgevine didnt ultimately cross some line, i dont believe it can be argued the deck w/ bridge wasnt at least a borderline case.

Not sure if anyone posted this yet, but CFB has a very good modern win % analysis posted at:
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/bilbao-braggings-the-full-story-of-who-beats-whom-in-modern/

There is a really big sample size used for the analysis and I think it clearly demonstrates what the best and worst decks are in modern right now.

Quote from ElectricEye »

Dread Return makes dredge somewhat better than it is currently, but it doesn't solve any of dredge's problems. It still loses to the same graveyard hate that it currently does.

Having played Dredge in Vintage with Bridge from Below and Dread Return, I think you don't realize how explosive the nut draws can be when you have access to a free reanimation spell that creates an army of zombies when you cast it.

Seriously, it's one of those cards you don't realize how stupidly strong it is until you play it.

ALL the data from GP Bilbao! https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/full-meta-packet-the-99-of-grand-prix-bilbao/

Strangely the whole article included content on hand disruption too. Maybe just don't add the bit about silly (those in glass houses) and we could focus on your excellent response.

Anyway the comments section of the CFB article also has an interesting point regards what players are happy to allow in a format (via ban list)
It says
Most modern players are ok with Xerox styled decks being the best decks and anything better and different tends to end up banned. Goes on to suggest that this is a player perception issue rather than a card power and Brian DeMars agrees that he couldn't think of a rebuttal for this.

Now that is what lead me to preordain it also leads us into the murky twin water. so instead of that do we have any eternal format players able to highlight times when Xerox was bested and something got banned?


Edit - I could never condone the banning of looting and stirrings. Kills to many brews. Tron lands stay to. Whenever I come back to this thread I feel like what modern players hate most is their opponents getting to play magic too.
WotC may not have realised but they're seeking to balance this same internal inconsistency by changing the Mulligan rule.
We want players to consistently play games of magic (because it's fun) but we don't want to give them consistency tools.(because that's not fun)??

Quote from CrashCapt »

~stuff~

I wish they banned Looting, Stirrings, tron lands and maybe amulet, then the format would be mostly fair and a variety of strategies would be playable and fun.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that train is long gone. Modern cannot become Standard++ nor can it become something like Pauper. It is shaped from all kinds of different and big (contextual) design mistakes over the years.

Greetings,
Kathal

Quote from ktkenshinx »

1. Why did IP overperform so much?
1a. A combination of better players gravitating towards it and the deck just being naturally powerful and consistent.

it's more than that.

I've been scouring podcasts, articles, expert opinions and lighting up discord chats for pro players and there's one consistent message coming through loud and clear from those players:

people haven't figured out how to beat phoenix. They are packing the wrong hate-cards and mis-evaluating the deck and the matchups.
this will change in time, people will figure it out. Right now though people are try to beat Phoenix decks incorrectly.

it was pretty eloquently put on the MTG Grindcast, the GAM podcast and a few other sources recently, where they went into specifics and discussed how you feel (from the Phoenix side of the table) when someone spends one of their early turns dropping a rest in peace that they've sideboarded in against you. the answer? amazing. As the phoenix player, you have just watched your opponent timewalk themselves, switch off their own snapcasters (if they are running them) and delay any sort of proactive gameplan, while you are free to hardcast phoenixes, TiTi and drakes. and surgical extraction? it's very much in vogue at the moment, but do you know how happy a phoenix player would be to trade an in-library resource (i'm imagining Phoenix itself) for a card in your hand? very happy. And then they'd drop a TiTi or a crackling drake and proceed to out-card you for the rest of the game because you wasted valuable slots in your deck on Surgical.

don't get me wrong, these cards have an effect. They do something but they aren't windmill-slam hate-cards like people are assuming, and taking a turn away from a proactive plan, or just using up slots in your deck to use these effects isn't going to win this matchup.

and finally, the (incorrect) rhetoric that Phoenix is a 'combo deck' seems to be the root of this misunderstanding. Combo decks usually fold to these hate cards and so we as a playerbase, by buying into this description of the deck are being led astray.

you know what works? proactive strategies. Jund, The Rock, Burn - hands from these decks that 'curve out' will beat most starts from a Phoenix deck, with discard, tarmogoyf, scavenging ooze, and redundant burn spells pulling a lot of weight here. Forcing a Phoenix player to use all their mana to try and catch up rather than enact a dominant position in the game is a good way to approach the matchup.


yes; Phoenix decks are showing a high percentage of success at the moment and as you say, many of the best players in a given room on tournament day will be making the switch to that deck. But! Genuinely, for whatever reason, the wider magic playerbase has taken a twitter-esque approach of decrying the deck as some sort of unbeatable combo, without ever quite understanding what the deck is trying to do on a fundamental level. People just aren't understanding the matchup and it really shows (even just last night I heard players in the LGS crudely dismissing the deck as a broken combo without really 'getting it' or how to beat it). the "who's the beatdown" mentality needs to be invoked here - everyone needs to be seeking out the knowledgeable players on this deck and enacting some more nuanced approaches instead of engaging in a complaint-driven circlejerk where we see very little adaptation from players to meet a new successful deck.

Quote from Bearscape »

Quote from cfusionpm »

Yeah, thank GOD that deck lost favor at my store. But instead I have to deal with monumental disparity between streamlined tier decks and wacky random brews, or decks way out of favor. Just this last week, I lost a tight round 1 against Eldrazi Taxes (hi RIP and Leyline against GDS), so I go into the loser's bracket and play Bant Pile of Planeswalkers, then Grindstone combo, then Eldrazi Stopmpy. Awesome. Why do I even bother trying to pick my deck or tune my sideboard for anything. Meanwhile, the other half of the room was all Humans, Spirits, and Phoenix.

Man with such a matchup lottery, it almost sounds like you would've been better off playing something extremely linear that can mostly ignore the opponent's gameplan

For what feels like the two dozenth time, matchup lottery is not a real effect. There is no difference between top player MWP in Modern vs. other formats at either the SCG or GP level. The ceiling and spread are both statistically identical. Either so-called matchup lottery doesn't exist at all in Modern, or it has no impact on MWP for top players. This is true of both average grinders who attend lots of events and true of the top 50ish players in the world. Either way, it's not something to complain about. Philosophically, it's also not something to complain about because we know Modern will always be, and has always been, Wizards' diversity format. They want as many random, diverse decks viable as possible, which necessarily leads to less predictable fields. If one doesn't like diversity, Modern is not the format for that player. There are many legitimate things to complain about in Modern, and I have stayed largely silent in this thread and the State of Modern thread recently while people identify those legitimate areas of grievance. But matchup lottery is not one.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from 13055 »

According to the M Files today, Kaya was designed for Modern. No idea what they were thinking on that one.

These are the kinds of statements from Wizards that continually show they know absolutely nothing about Moddern. And that their ideas about Modern are driven 100% from data figures, analyzed by people with a loose, surface-level understanding of a deeply complex ecosystem.

Cards that are good in Modern are almost exclusively two things: excessively pushed or design accidents. Statements like these continue to show that's true.

WOTC incompetence towards Modern gets another example to point to.

Chill. A card can be designed for modern without being an immediate format staple. Leaning a card generally in the direction of doing things that modern does is enough for a card to be described as 'designed for modern' and shouldn't be cause to draw disdain and insults from the community.

Remember. Modern is a card pool. Modern isn't necessarily happening at a GP 100% of the time. Cards like these can exist in the ecosystem and provide choices without being a slam-dunk and that's totally fine.

Quote from ElectricEye »

BAN - Ancient Stirrings, Faithless Looting

I think this would make the format very interesting and a brewers paradise. It would hit so many of the most played and most complained about archetypes:

. KCI
. Phoenix
. Tron
. Dredge
. Hollow One
. Amulet Titan
. Scales Affinity

Decks that would remain unaffected:

. Spirits
. Humans
. UW
. Jeskai
. Grixis Shadow
. Storm
. Burn
. Jund
. Infect
. Druid Combo

Thoughts?

We were doing so well for a few pages. Now it's back to the unjustifiable ban claims. This post is particularly troubling because it doesn't even attempt to support a ban case with anything resembling Wizards' B&R rationale. It just asserts that the bans would make the format "more interesting" and a "brewer's paradise" by some unspecified subjective standard. Never mind that Modern already has the most viable top-tier decks of any format. Never mind that you don't make any case about how arbitrarily targeting a dozen top decks makes the format "more interesting."

Bans should be, and historically are, a last resort for broken metagames that have failed to self-regulate. Are you or other ban proponents making a case that these cards are doing that? If so, let's see the GP, PT. and MTGO numbers, I.e. the datapoints that actually inform ban decisions. If people aren't willing to make ban claims at this level of evidence and analysis, we should not give any credibility to those making the claims. Doubly so if the arguments in favor of a ban are in the "brewer's paradise" category. You know how else we can foster a brewer's paradise? Banning all powerful top-tier decks to open up the format in the classic race to the bottom ban problem. If that's the justification for a ban, it's hard to take that claim seriously.