Important question for those who run Spell Queller, if you target grapeshot does it stop the storm triggers? I can't find the ruling anywhere and I'm wondering if it would be effective against Storm since I'm playing in a PPTQ this coming weekend.
Also, what does everyone run against that matchup? Do you just side in normal graveyard hate and dispels/other counter magic?
Finally, for Scapeshift it stops them from using the spell effectively is what I meant earlier.. I know that they chose how many lands to sacrifice but obviously they won't sacrifice any that turn so it in essence stops them from combo killing you that turn
You can disallow and counter the storm trigger. Or summary dismissal, or counterflux overload for all the spells.
lol, so you are essentially just saying you do not want your particular axis of attack to be something that is a hateable weakness.
I too, wish I could play my decks with no fear they be targeted by hate.
Pray that your deck doesnt become too successful due to some other pushed Standard card, because without control's in the formats pool (ie: Hate Cards) you get banned, instead of meta'ed.
Pretty much this. This is also why I'm pushing for unbans because I want to power up other archetypes so that we don't HAVE to lead down this road of banning the top dogs over and over. I'm sick of people getting their decks repeatedly banned and I would like people to get some fun things to play with.
Turn 3 Karn doesn't happen 100% of the time, though. I said matchups don't have 100/0 percentages. But yeah, one reason decks are favored generally is that one "best draw" just trumps the other's "best draw." This is a card game. There's variance. Either accept it, and realize that variance will help you about as often as it hurts you, or play chess. I play Storm, I know how it feels to get hosed.
Of course it doesn't. I was pointing out that no amount of knowledge can combat things completely out of your control. That IS variance and people aren't terrible at the game because they haven't found the solution to unwinnable positions. You were saying that understanding the matchup was the problem. It simply isn't the only thing going on.
2. That matchup lottery is fair. You have the odds of being matched against deck X no matter what you decide to play, no matter how many pro points you have. The numbers really don't change until halfway through a GP when a portion of the field fails to make day 2. Personally this is why I am opposed to GP byes - let everyone risk running into Enduring Ideal round 1 not just the newer players.
3. There is no 100/0 matchup. None. It doesn't exist. If you play Abzan you are a dog to E-Tron, yes. That doesn't mean you are guaranteed to lose. I think some people need to acknowledge their own play mistakes, too. If you play against every deck the same way...yeah if you don't know how to adjust in some matchups you'll lose way more. Some of these complainers fail to acknowledge that they might just not understand the matchup.
Lottery huh. That's kind of admitting that there are luck of the draw matchups and thus maybe some huge variance. Not that this doesn't happen in other formats. I agree that there isn't a 100/0 matchup but if something is like 70/30 it may not matter how much time you've put into a deck. Not that I am complaining about it right now cause I've accepted that flaw of modern because we are heading in a positive direction.
BlueTronFTW I think that you're being a tad condescending because no amount of knowing the matchup will save you from t3 karn in jund/junk. You can understand all day that is something really bad for you in the matchup. To put it bluntly labeling people complainers then saying that their loss is because they don't understand is just blatantly attacking their cognitive ability.
I love the argument "Oh you have a complaint about modern, you just want zero bad matchups" we have some pretty strong circle jerking on both ends of the spectrum but this is just kinda par for the course. The modern player base is interesting to say the least
That IS their complaint though. At least sisicat admits it; other Modern critics just beat around the bush. People don't want to play decks like Ux Control ans BGx because they perceive the bad matchups are too bad and the good matchups aren't good enough, and their proposed solution is almost always to ban bad matchup cards or unban cards that disrupt format balance. They also routinely ignore the performance of these allegedly sub-optimal decks in big events. Jeskai and Abzan did great this weekend. But instead of celebrating that success or looking to build from it, many critics just dismiss it, ignore it, or doubt it.
For example, Abzan had a great performance all weekend despite numerous people saying it sucked due to unwinnable big mana matchups. And yet, Abzan did well in a field with tons of E-Tron Titanshift. Evidently, these matchups aren't as decisive and problematic as many critics claim. So when the critics say their fair decks have unwinnable matchups that make the deck unplayable, I compare those claims to results such as last weekend's and find the claims unsupportable. Either the claimants aren't looking at the results or are looking at the results and still want their bad matchups eliminated. Either way, it's hard to take those criticisms seriously.
Then how do you explain people like me who wouldn't be caught dead playing BBE or SFM, arguing for it's unbanning, and getting shouted down like I'm some jund apologist for suggesting that I think we could have some cool cards off the list. I'm fine being tier 2 as a control player right now because it's alot better than it was. I'd like to add fun cards back into the format, cards that make my job TOUGHER as a control mage, yet my suggestions of unbans fall into me secretly wanting to play jund or stoneblade?
UW control typically now is playing serum visions and spreading seas to move through the deck and maybe one jace and rev. They are also more tapout oriented because they run gideon of the trials. Problem is currently that the strategy is great when you can maintain velocity through the deck, but a few key discards and being behind can put that deck way behind compared to other control decks. Jeskai has the burn em out strategy, grixis control has the kolaghan's command shenanigans, esper has charms and think twice, and UB usually is running a 4 of AV and SV.
Jeskai did well at SCG because the pilots were top players on their circuit. I'm not bemoaning the state of blue nor am i thinking one event means the sky is falling or jeskai is now tier 1. I still think their are unbans to be had.
< Just wants to play stoneforge mystic so he can search up his sword of the meek and sword of X and Y, is that so bad?
But abzan would get another threat (carry away)
But batterskull (well times fatal push)
I get the basics of each argument but yeah that unban would be really nice to have, since apparently jitte is never coming off the banlist and one of the reasonings I heard was stoneforge.
Been pushing for sfm and bbe here for quite some time. Who knows hopefully WOTC will hear our cries for it.
I think we also see that scapeshift/titanshift can be a natural predator on eldratron. This is a good thing so everyone with their pitchforks up about temple can put them down.
Eldrazi Tron, such an oppressive deck. Ban Temple immediately.
I know that you're being sarcastic and all, and I agree that a temple ban isn't going to solve much. I still think unbans are the way to approach the format. I think however, you can't use one tournament to say something is or isn't broken. I think fundamentally a lot of things are broken in modern which is fine as long as they balanced against each other.
From the Top 8/32 of GP Birmingham I would write off a SFM unban. I think a BBE unban is far more likely than SFM but is still unlikely, given the results. From what I'm hearing, from people who went there this weekend, was that there was an incredibly low amount of Tron variants at the tournament. This fits in line with some of the player choices I know happened, inasmuch as, many of the players who would normally have taken Eldra/Tron were expecting a tonne of hate from every deck and decided to go with a different choice for the event.
I think BBE and SFM were on the agenda for unbanning the next unbanning announcement but as of the results are back on the "wait and see" list.
The results in from the weekend look amazing though and, more importantly, there is absolutely no reason for a banning.
Yep the dreaded wait and see for eternity. I still think sfm and bbe are fine. I would like to unban some things that are silly and honestly, I'm tired of no stoneblade variant, and I think bbe could open alot of midrange space which would be fun for people to explore. I just want people to have their toys back that aren't going to break the format.
There is no way to predict how the meta will evolve with new printings. Pure speculation with zero evidence is not a good way to predict format health. At least preface those kinds of statements with a clear declaration that it is just a guess. Also, you are forgetting that TKS draws the opponent a card when it dies. That's a big deal when talking about these two in terms of resource advantages.
Your doomsday prediction is based on no other decks getting any kind of support, and no new decks being created from new cards. Two years ago there was no eldrazi deck because the new eldrazi had not even been printed. A year ago death's shadow only saw play in Become Immense-based zoo decks. Storm was hot garbage, so the meta you're talking about is relatively new anyways. To say these will dominate for years to come with any sort of guarantee or confidence is a lackluster statement at best.
I don't think he was trying to predict the meta, more just stating a fact about the format.
Your reasoning for not wanting to unban BBE is that you don't want to add a new card to the format that could change the metagame as it currently is, because you like how the metagame currently is.
Well Wizards releases a new set every 3 months, and Trazareth's point (as I understood it anyway) is that you can never know what the future holds. Right now we have a very stable meta where unbanning BBE is a 100% safe call. Face it, there are much more powerful things you can do in Modern than play a Jund deck with 2-3 BBE in it. However should something get printed where BBE is suddenly too strong, it can just be banned again.
His post wasn't a doomsday prediction, it is an assessment of what has happened every time new powerful cards enter the Modern card pool.
New or existing decks rise to take advantage of the new cards. People modify other existing decks to deal with this new or updated super power. This continues down the chain until a new metagame is formed. It's not a doomsday scenario, it's how the format works, and has worked. It's how we have come to our current metagame that a lot of people are praising as the best state Modern has ever been in.
^ what he stated was my intent. It doesn't matter who is dominating just that through printings eventually people will be.
Either way we can debate stable top dogs and all that but that doesn't really address the issues at hand. Is a 4 drop 3/2 haste that brings a free card 3 or less at random from your library better than a 4/4 that will for sure look at the opponents hand and most of the time exile a card from it that can also come down turn 2? I think not, and furthermore sfm could also be unbanned as well because there is no Jitte in modern and none of the 3 drop swords are close to as powerful.
This meta will eventually morph into a few top dogs because of printings and other things eventually becoming more powerful, whether that's eldrazi, storm, shadow or another random deck that just needs a little bit. Adding things back that are not more powerful than what is going on. This hayday of diversity will end at some point through printings and allowing things back that are less powerful than whats going on to boost things back is a better solution than banning temple for eldrazitron players, shadow for grixis player, and past in flames for storm.
First off, reducing the ban list does not automatically make the format better. The fact that there are cards virtually everyone agrees should stay banned is proof of this. The whole "keep the list as short as possible" really isn't grounded in any empirical data. It just is a feel-good thing. Second, the introduction or improvement of any deck or decks comes at the expense of metagame shares of other decks. We can't have a meta composition over 100% of the playerbase, so unless an unban like BBE just causes thousands of people to jump into modern who were waiting to play...it hurts a deck's viability for each deck improved. BBE makes Jund shoot up an additional three percentage points, and let's say temur midrange appears at two or three percentage points. Those five to six points have to come from somewhere, and it may result in other existing decks being replaced.
Shake up unbans may not be as easily visible, but the potential for damage is still there. The argument against bans is that decks become banned entirely and consumer confidence is damaged. If a shake up unban boosts one archetype up and invalidates other decks as a result, the same result occurs in a way that is just slightly tougher to point at in outrage.
Again. I'll keep playing modern regardless, but the claim that these three or four unbans will cause a net gain is a really hefty assumption. People I think are looking at the immediate impact and not so much the ripple effect further out. Those can occur, and are a risk well worth noting.
Finally...just as I mentioned with jund, temur doesn't HAVE to exist. The card pool dictates that some shards/guilds are better, especially for control or midrange. The idea that all twenty combinations of two and three color decs will be viable is a pipe dream.
We're arguing if cards are unjustly banned. Because if a card isn't overwhelming powerful it shouldn't be on the list. The format is naturally going to get stronger over time and sometimes the cards there are going to look really silly like wild nacatl or sword of the meek. Even GGT was fine until a trifecta of printings basically broke it in half. Yes unbans shake things up but where is this deck of doom playing sword of the meek, wild nacatl, or ancestral visions? It doesn't exist and people shifting over because something becomes viable that they like to play isn't a bad thing.
I'm still confused why you're so opposed to people testing things out when we have stability. It makes sense to test with something stable instead of throwing unbans into a situation like the eldrazi winter.
Again, people from all lines of play have been supporting sfm and bbe. If I as a blue control player who doesn't have a vested interest in playing either card agrees with the players who do want to play with it, your argument about it just being jund players falls flat.
Not accusatory, and neither is this about shaking up. This is about what should and shouldn't be on the banned list. I am saying let the midrange RGx decks have their toys too. I don't even play those decks. I am a control player and wouldn't ever cast BBE.
yeah kind of tired of BBE being broken discussion. This card would be a pain for me to play against but it doesn't deserve to be on the list neither does sfm or preordain but hey it might make waves among the top decks and we wouldn't want that would we?
You can disallow and counter the storm trigger. Or summary dismissal, or counterflux overload for all the spells.
Pretty much this. This is also why I'm pushing for unbans because I want to power up other archetypes so that we don't HAVE to lead down this road of banning the top dogs over and over. I'm sick of people getting their decks repeatedly banned and I would like people to get some fun things to play with.
Of course it doesn't. I was pointing out that no amount of knowledge can combat things completely out of your control. That IS variance and people aren't terrible at the game because they haven't found the solution to unwinnable positions. You were saying that understanding the matchup was the problem. It simply isn't the only thing going on.
Lottery huh. That's kind of admitting that there are luck of the draw matchups and thus maybe some huge variance. Not that this doesn't happen in other formats. I agree that there isn't a 100/0 matchup but if something is like 70/30 it may not matter how much time you've put into a deck. Not that I am complaining about it right now cause I've accepted that flaw of modern because we are heading in a positive direction.
BlueTronFTW I think that you're being a tad condescending because no amount of knowing the matchup will save you from t3 karn in jund/junk. You can understand all day that is something really bad for you in the matchup. To put it bluntly labeling people complainers then saying that their loss is because they don't understand is just blatantly attacking their cognitive ability.
Then how do you explain people like me who wouldn't be caught dead playing BBE or SFM, arguing for it's unbanning, and getting shouted down like I'm some jund apologist for suggesting that I think we could have some cool cards off the list. I'm fine being tier 2 as a control player right now because it's alot better than it was. I'd like to add fun cards back into the format, cards that make my job TOUGHER as a control mage, yet my suggestions of unbans fall into me secretly wanting to play jund or stoneblade?
Jeskai did well at SCG because the pilots were top players on their circuit. I'm not bemoaning the state of blue nor am i thinking one event means the sky is falling or jeskai is now tier 1. I still think their are unbans to be had.
Been pushing for sfm and bbe here for quite some time. Who knows hopefully WOTC will hear our cries for it.
I know that you're being sarcastic and all, and I agree that a temple ban isn't going to solve much. I still think unbans are the way to approach the format. I think however, you can't use one tournament to say something is or isn't broken. I think fundamentally a lot of things are broken in modern which is fine as long as they balanced against each other.
Yep the dreaded wait and see for eternity. I still think sfm and bbe are fine. I would like to unban some things that are silly and honestly, I'm tired of no stoneblade variant, and I think bbe could open alot of midrange space which would be fun for people to explore. I just want people to have their toys back that aren't going to break the format.
^ what he stated was my intent. It doesn't matter who is dominating just that through printings eventually people will be.
This meta will eventually morph into a few top dogs because of printings and other things eventually becoming more powerful, whether that's eldrazi, storm, shadow or another random deck that just needs a little bit. Adding things back that are not more powerful than what is going on. This hayday of diversity will end at some point through printings and allowing things back that are less powerful than whats going on to boost things back is a better solution than banning temple for eldrazitron players, shadow for grixis player, and past in flames for storm.
We're arguing if cards are unjustly banned. Because if a card isn't overwhelming powerful it shouldn't be on the list. The format is naturally going to get stronger over time and sometimes the cards there are going to look really silly like wild nacatl or sword of the meek. Even GGT was fine until a trifecta of printings basically broke it in half. Yes unbans shake things up but where is this deck of doom playing sword of the meek, wild nacatl, or ancestral visions? It doesn't exist and people shifting over because something becomes viable that they like to play isn't a bad thing.
I'm still confused why you're so opposed to people testing things out when we have stability. It makes sense to test with something stable instead of throwing unbans into a situation like the eldrazi winter.
Again, people from all lines of play have been supporting sfm and bbe. If I as a blue control player who doesn't have a vested interest in playing either card agrees with the players who do want to play with it, your argument about it just being jund players falls flat.
Not accusatory, and neither is this about shaking up. This is about what should and shouldn't be on the banned list. I am saying let the midrange RGx decks have their toys too. I don't even play those decks. I am a control player and wouldn't ever cast BBE.