Re: Challenge results
As I wrote in the Reddit post, the Challenge results are both laughably bad (32% Hogaak Vine = lulz) and relatively isolated. Did Hogaak have an outrageous debut at this single Challenge? Absolutely, and it would be misleading to deny that. But it's just as misleading to oversell the results of a single Challenge. For one, it's a single datapoint on the debut weekend of a deck. There are so many factors that both artificially increase (e.g. players don't know how to play against it, SB decisions, hype, etc.) and decrease (card availability, untuned decks, pilots don't know tricks with the deck, etc.) prevalence in such a single datapoint. Given these limitations, it's hard to draw a meaningful conclusion. Second, it's not even a major paper event. It's "just" an MTGO Challenge, which we have routinely (and rightfully) questioned as representative of the metagame on any given weekend. Significant paper results or repeat online results are needed to really figure out where the deck stands in the metagame.
Re: ban decisions
Wizards has issued one emergency ban in over a decade (Felidar), which was more of an oversight acknowledgement than a response to a pattern of troubling results. There is no way we see emergency ban action based on a single Challenge. Wizards has repeatedly shown, despite the blaring ban mania in online communities, that they will wait for sustained results before acting on a ban.
I encourage community members to stick to the proven method of ban analysis: waiting for more data and taking a long, conservative view of the format. Recognize the metagame's ability to adapt and acknowledge that most decks have more weaknesses than we think. This method has produced consistent predictions of changes and no changes for years now. Even if Hogaak Vine is ultimately bannable, that does not mean we throw out the proven, conservative method and revert to a ban mania mindframe. If you throw enough darts at a board, eventually you'll get a bullseye even if your technique is horrible. That doesn't mean we look at the bullseye and say "NAILED IT" with all of our bad technique throws. We stick with the technique that works.
it uses hogaak brodge from below and altar of dementia to have a combo kill outside the combat step. Look at Kanister streaming the deck it seems pretty broken imo. Every single obnoxious deck that isnt Tron is centered on abusing faithless looting.
I've seen these kinds of comments and assessments for literal years. A recent comparison was last summer when numerous authors, players, and posters in the older version of this thread (including players who rarely ever raise ban alarm) brought up the same fears about Bridgevine. Like basically every episode of ban fear and ban mania before, that too passed with no significant metagame impact and, obviously, no banning. The overwhelming majority of such fears don't pan out because Modern is a remarkably robust and adaptive format. Similarly, there is significant incentive for authors, commenters, streamers, pros, and even average community members to hype up these kinds of decks for clicks, views, upvotes, reputation, accolades, etc. Don't buy into this hype. Wait for results and trust that the overwhelming majority of such fears will be unfounded, the deck in question actually isn't that good/broken, and the metagame will adjust to most emerging strategies.
-biggest failure I still think is how this set was hyped up as THE Modern set. Together with the months of blueballing, discovering we have to share the spotlight with commander product rejects and cute but never intended to be playable callbacks like Ponder Mage is a tad frustrating.
I want to pose to you the same question I posed to others: where did your hyped expectations come from? Was it a specific Wizards quote? Was there an article you read or a citable stream/podcast/interview you heard? I'm just going to paste my take on this from a different thread. Some elements of this quote won't apply here, but the vast majority of what I said here can be taken as a response to your quoted "biggest failure":
I really don't understand the negative reception to MH. It feels like many of the people who are disappointed set their own expectations and standards based on personal preferences, and then when Wizards failed to meet those subjective, personal, impossible expectations, they were disappointed/frustrated. Can people who are unhappy with MH actually cite a Wizards pitch, advertisement, promise, or claim that justified expectations of stuff like Sinkhole at uncommon?
"Powerful new options mixed with flavorful updates for favorite characters means Modern Horizons is going to be a wild ride. The set is full of cards that build up favorite Modern strategies, create new ones, and bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal."
Breaking this promise down, I'd identify five distinct expectations we should have:
1. "Powerful new options"
2. "Flavorful updates for favorite characters"
3. "Cards that build up favorite Modern strategies"
4. Cards that "create new ones"
5. Cards that "bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal
Three of these have unquestionably been met: 1, 2, and 5. Two of those objectives are flavor-based, not even power-based, and #1 has plenty of cards that fit the mold. 3 and 5 remain to be seen. I will remind everyone that even pros and pundits are notoriously inconsistent at card evaluation. Almost everyone missed the impact of stuff like Narset in non-rotating formats. Literally every author I've read missed Arclight Phoenix as a Tier 1 Modern enabler.
If someone can point me towards a different promise or advertisement by Wizards that promised something else/more, I'd love to read it. But most people who are disappointed with MH are not citing a claim that was unmet.
Re: Pod
I did play in that era, and Pod was definitely too prevalent. That's why I was unsurprised to see almost all of the ban rationale point to prevalence and dominance, with design space limitation as a distant, secondary factor. It's annoying to see prominent Magic personalities, most recently Hoogland, citing that reason as a strike against the Pod ban when it was clearly not as influential as the meta/T8 dominance factor.
My issue with these "new toys" is that many of them are just not good enough to do anything meaningful in a format as brutally fast, efficient, and punishing as Modern.
I will again remind you and everyone else that even the best players are very inconsistent at card evaluation. If we go by the Jeff Hoogland metric of "brutally fast, efficient, and punishing" (terms I regularly hear when I've seen his stream), we would not expect to see things like Narset appearing in Ux strategies.
I'm not sure where we even disagree on this. Narset sees play exactly because it is punishing and efficient. It is a difficult-to-remove card which significantly neuters one of the top decks and considerably hurts several others that rely on cantrips or looting effects. Same goes for new Teferi, Ashiok, and Karn. They appear like they will have a greater impact on Modern than anything in Horizons and have been picked up by players almost immediately.
Narset has no impact on the board-state when it enters and is a terrible T3 play in numerous matchups. At the time, that's probably why most players dismissed her. In hindsight, it's easy to see why Narset is good in Modern and why everyone got it wrong. But at the time of WAR's release, there were very, very few players to my knowledge that knew how good that card would be. PVDR didn't even mention her in his review, Lepore missed her too, Maynard didn't talk about her, Dominguez identified probably the most cards that might be playable and STILL missed her, etc. Only one author I know of actually mentioned her: Gottlieb on SCG. And he ranked her at #9 and said "What is really holding Narset back in Modern is how few archetypes are presently built around card advantage and selection," which is basically the opposite of part of your assessment. All of this is to say that the "fast/brutal/efficient" test is not always good in Modern, and that card evaluation is very difficult and inconsistent. MH could have many more Narset scenarios where the overwhelming majority of evaluators just miss a great card.
I am attacking the design space because it is often the main justification for Stoneforge, and was a justification for Pod. I honestly was not around much when Pod was legal, so I don't really know specifics or player feelings, just that "design space" was often a talking point, in addition to its dominance.
Either way, the bottom line is it's frustrating to see cards break design space, such as new Karn, when considerably less powerful things (like Stoneforge) are deemed "too good" for Modern.
Especially since WOTC nerf equipment anyway. So its disingenuous you expect the new Swords to be on the level of Fire and Ice if this argument was true.
Again, I am not aware of any Wizards sources where design space limitations are "the main justification" for the SFM ban or her continued banning. I know people like to claim they say this, but where's the citation? Here are the only sources I am familiar with where Wizards officially weighs in on the SFM ban.
Original ban rationale: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/welcome-modern-world-2011-08-12 "Stoneforge Mystic has by now made its mark on every format from Standard to Legacy, and Stoneforge-based blue control decks regularly do well in Legacy tournaments. Porting such decks into Modern was a trivial affair, and resulted in very powerful decks. We prefer to just ban this card rather than risk yet another format dominated by Stoneforge Mystic."
Stoddard on development mistakes: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/developmental-mistakes-2014-06-13 "The cards where we are wrong and that ended up much more powerful than we had expected are some of the most iconic cards from the last decade—Primeval Titan; Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Stoneforge Mystic; Bitterblossom; Bridge from Below; Tarmogoyf; etc. These cards are not always the most fun to play with or against, and we have subsequently had to ban them from some formats, but the cards still exist in the same form they did when we printed them."
Forsythe Twitter: https://twitter.com/mtgaaron/status/1087393927454326785 "As @mtg_ianduke mentioned in today’s article, WU Control has the 2nd-most Modern GP Top 8s recently, behind KCI. Jeskai Control is third. Hard to justify a Stoneforge Mystic unban in that environment."
"We have the wider results as well. Control is doing fine by all accounts."
Are there others out there I haven't heard from an official Wizards employee? If there are, please let me know. But I don't think I've seen others. And if these represent the only Wizards quotes on the matter, you'll note none of them mention design space as a limiting factor for an SFM unban. It's all about power level.
Now, the power level justification for an SFM ban is ridiculous. Many of us, you and I included, have been saying that for a while. But if we want to criticize inconsistencies or problems with the SFM ban, let's focus on the real reason Wizards is keeping her banned: a perception of power level. They do not mention design space once, so there's no reason to attack this as the "main justification" for her remaining banned.
My issue with these "new toys" is that many of them are just not good enough to do anything meaningful in a format as brutally fast, efficient, and punishing as Modern.
I will again remind you and everyone else that even the best players are very inconsistent at card evaluation. If we go by the Jeff Hoogland metric of "brutally fast, efficient, and punishing" (terms I regularly hear when I've seen his stream), we would not expect to see things like Narset appearing in Ux strategies. Good players miss card evaluations because it's a hard business. Some MH cards are clear hits: FoN, FoV, Canopy lands, Ouphe, and a few others. Many, many more are uncertain. We'll need to see actual lists and tournaments to weigh in on the set's power. There's nothing predictive about saying a set and its cards aren't good enough for Modern. That's the default, null hypothesis for every set and you'd be right for 95%+ of cards in a set.
And after getting New Karn Wished last night, multiple times, getting narrow sideboard hate cards that locked me out of the game, I had to revel at the fact that Birthing Pod and Stoneforge Mystic are banned because they "limit design space" for creatures and equipment, but Karn and Stirrings don't apparently limit design space for colorless cards. Oh, and at least Twin won the game on the spot, instead of making you have to decide if you're going to concede, or slog out several turns of unbearable, unplayable nonsense to hope to get out of it, because your opponent has not displayed a win condition. Also, I can't wait for Force of Negation after getting T1 Chalice'd on the draw with SSG. Modern is a great format.
Maybe this is your personal opinion, but it feels like another rehash of Hoogland sound bytes. I literally heard him complaining about the Birthing Pod and SFM "design space" ban decision in the last 2-3 days in an AM stream. Same for Stirrings/Karn/colorless design space, in that same stream. Collectively, these are more arguments that just aren't in dialogue with the stated reasons for Wizards' decisions. From the Birthing Pod ban: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19
"Over the past year, Birthing Pod decks have won significantly more Grand Prix than any other Modern decks and compose the largest percentage of the field. Each year, new powerful options are printed, most recently Siege Rhino. Over time, this creates a growing gap between the strength of the Pod deck and other creature decks. Pod won five of the twelve Grand Prix over the past year, including winning the last two. The high percentage of the field playing Pod suppresses decks, especially other creature decks, that have an unfavorable matchup. In the interest of supporting a diverse format, Birthing Pod is banned."
In this ban justification, we see about four reasons for banning Pod, only one of which suggests a design space influence to the ban:
1. "Birthing Pod decks have won significantly more Grand Prix than any other Modern decks"
2. They "compose the largest percentage of the field"
3. "Each year, new powerful options are printed... this creates a growing gap between the strength of the Pod deck and other creature decks." (Design space reason)
4. "The high percentage of the field playing Pod suppresses decks, especially other creature decks, that have an unfavorable matchup"
It's extremely disingenuous to try discrediting the Pod ban based on just one of its four justifications while ignoring the other three, especially when the other three are consistent measures used by Wizards for banning cards. I suspect the design space consideration, #3 above, is far less influential than #1, #2, and #4. This is because Wizards consistently cites #1, #2, and #4 as reasons to ban a card, rarely citing #3. They certainly never cited #3 in the Song, BBE, DRS, TC, Twin, Bloom, Probe, GGT, and KCI bans, but they cited variations of #1, #2, and #4 in most of those. It's fine to criticize a ban like Pod, but at least do so on the actual terms of the ban. Just attacking it because of the "design space" reason is very misleading.
Gotta say I'm also disappointed by MH, looks like 60% draft fodder, 20% Commander and 20% Modern maybes. Laughed at the Commander Masters meme.
My idea of a MH draft is to pick some Fatal Pushes or Accumulated Knowledge at common, Sinkholes and Berserks at uncommon and Armageddons or Back to Basics at rare. I'm surprised that even in the set for Spikes they didn't dare to put land destruction that actually cuts people of mana.
But whatever, at least my Life from the Loam deck will lose by having different cards uncast in the hand this time.
I really don't understand the negative reception to MH. It feels like many of the people who are disappointed set their own expectations and standards based on personal preferences, and then when Wizards failed to meet those subjective, personal, impossible expectations, they were disappointed/frustrated. Can people who are unhappy with MH actually cite a Wizards pitch, advertisement, promise, or claim that justified expectations of stuff like Sinkhole at uncommon?
"Powerful new options mixed with flavorful updates for favorite characters means Modern Horizons is going to be a wild ride. The set is full of cards that build up favorite Modern strategies, create new ones, and bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal."
Breaking this promise down, I'd identify five distinct expectations we should have:
1. "Powerful new options"
2. "Flavorful updates for favorite characters"
3. "Cards that build up favorite Modern strategies"
4. Cards that "create new ones"
5. Cards that "bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal
Three of these have unquestionably been met: 1, 2, and 5. Two of those objectives are flavor-based, not even power-based, and #1 has plenty of cards that fit the mold. 3 and 5 remain to be seen. I will remind everyone that even pros and pundits are notoriously inconsistent at card evaluation. Almost everyone missed the impact of stuff like Narset in non-rotating formats. Literally every author I've read missed Arclight Phoenix as a Tier 1 Modern enabler.
If someone can point me towards a different promise or advertisement by Wizards that promised something else/more, I'd love to read it. But most people who are disappointed with MH are not citing a claim that was unmet.
This is very depressing. The Reddit Modern community feels so much more scattered at times. I will miss actual conversation here instead of just people shouting opinions into the internet void.
Kaya's Guile also looks to the playable side to me; I tried getting Foul-Tongue Invocation to work for a while, and when I could gain 4 life from it, it was quite good. Kaya's Guile is like a better Foul-Tongue Invocation with added graveyard hate and threat creating as options, except it's BW.
Any way we can make Valiant Changeling as cheap as possible as efficiently as possible? I want my 3/3 with Double Strike to ideally cost only WW, and I'm willing to pay only 3 mana max. This guy is 7 cmc, so we have our work cut out for us.
There's the obvious combo with Changelings, but I'd rather not play 2 Mirror Entity, and tapping a Mutavault for this guy already costs 1 mana.
Death and Taxes's creatures tend to have 1-2 creature types each, so unless I overextend with 3 other creatures, I'm getting a 3-mana Valiant Changeling with such combinations of 2 cards as Kor Cleric, Human Soldier, Cat Cleric, and maybe Vedalken Wizard.
Guile is sweet. Sac plus exile graveyard is excellent, as it removes the binned creature permanently with everything else. I wish this card had a relevant mode against big mana, but I guess we can't have everything in one card. Speaking of which...
More importantly, WB charm fits the Talisman cycle colors, Kaya fits the Talisman flavor text, and all the other planeswalkers in those flavor texts also fit the number crunch for their respective commands. Super pumped to see all four of the remaining ones, especially BG.
if the green stony silence bear becomes a thing, just transition to vanilla affinity which runs actual removal spells. hell you dont even need metalcraft to galv blast it.
As someone who loses hard to Affinity, I thought that, too, and then I thought about how many ways Affinity has to make red mana when this creature is out. I think it's 4. For 2 mana, I'll take it.
Most Affinity lists play 1-2 Mountains and 3-4 Glimmervoids/Spires for a total of 5 red non-artifact red sources. So that's 4 Blasts and 5 sources to cast it. That's about a 17% to get the combo in your opening hand, 22% on the second draw, 26% on the third, 31% on the fourth, and 35.5% on the fifth. Cumulatively, you have a 36% chance of getting it by draw 2, 42% by draw 3, 49% by draw 4, and 55% by draw 5. Reasonable odds but not good ones. Ouphe is still very strong against Affinity, especially if you can protect it or recur it.
Scrap Reclaimer won't be played because nobody is going to want to play Hardened scales :*(
Our placings have already fallen off a cliff after Tron started mainboarding 4 great creators. After green gets ouphe and humans splits its side between creatures and enchantments it's gonna be tough to come up with a reason to play the deck lol.
I discourage people from thinking about Modern decks this way. Look at something like Affinity, Storm, or Infect, all time-honored Modern decks that have come in and out of top-tier finishes for literal years. A deck with HS's competitive pedigree doesn't simply become irrelevant overnight. It might fall out of mass favor, but it will still be an excellent choice for experienced pilots. Scrappy should be quite happy in its new home.
I understand that many of you will disagree, but I have yet to see a single main deck playable level card spoiled from MH1, excluding the slivers and the canopy land cycle.
1. Card evaluators are notoriously inconsistent. As a recent example, the overwhelming majority of card reviewers had no idea just how impactful Arclight Phoenix would be in late 2018. It singlehandedly created a Tier 1 archetype. Almost everyone missed it. Just like many missed Narset in WAR. This means we need to treat early card evaluations skeptically.
2. Acknowledging point 1, I expect the following cards to see some degree of MD play in various Tier 1-2 decks: Giver (D&T, E&T), Archmage's Charm (Ux), Fact or Fiction (Mono U Tron), FoN (Ux, especially Ux with creatures), Lava Dart (Phoenix), Collector Ouphe (CoCo/Chord decks), Scale Up (Infect), Eladamri's Call (Devoted Company), Scrapyard Recombiner (Hardened ScaleS), and, as you said, Canopy Lands (everywhere).
3. Dozens of cards will see play in various lower tier strategies, potentially improving their playability. There are also tons of cards that create brewing potential. Examples include, but are not limited to, all the Slivers, many of the Goblins, Urza/Sword/Thopter, Urza/Architect, Pillage in Ponza, Seasoned Pyromancer in Mardu, Wrenn and Six in something (cycling lands will make this excellent), Kess in Grixis, etc.
4. Dozens more cards will see significant and impactful SB play. It is important to acknowledge SB cards as much, if not more than, MD cards. It's less obvious to do so, but 2/3 of all competitive Modern games are impacted by SB cards and just as game-defining as MD cards. Force of Vigor alone is huge, as is FoN even just as a SB card.
Ever since what feels like day 3 of previews, I've seen a significant amount of unwarranted negativity around this set. Part of this is probably Wizards' fault by failing to communicate expectations appropriately. But a big responsibility still lies with players, who just are setting expectations unreasonably high for a product that never promised to meet those expectations. Wizards was fairly clear in their articles that the product needs to meet Modern, Commander, Cube, and draft experiences at the same time. Wizards also doesn't need to do deliberate, heavy-handed shakeups of Modern in a format that has evolved organically with every new set. We don't need a Modern TNN or Leovold experiment that totally reshapes the format.
The only notable omissions at this time, that I still expect to happen, would be:
1. BGx throwbacks/reprints/fixes (e.g. Hymn, Deluge, Deed, DRS, etc.)
2. Iconic eternal card throwbacks/fixes (e.g. Wasteland, Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares, Daze)
3. Graveyard hate
Ouphe is excellent. Full stop. It's a maindeckable bullet in toolbox decks and a solid SB plan for everyone else in green. Claim doesn't touch it and Explosives doesn't either. Just watch out for Blast Zone in decks that can support it.
Yaegmoth seems very strong. Draws lots of cards with two Undying creatures in play. Definitely a sweet, Bolt-proof engine that also wrecks opposing creature decks: sign me up. I need izzetmage to tell me if this is good in aristocrats decks.
EDIT: And we get Eladamri's Call. Instant speed 2 mana tutor seems EXTREMELY playable.
As I wrote in the Reddit post, the Challenge results are both laughably bad (32% Hogaak Vine = lulz) and relatively isolated. Did Hogaak have an outrageous debut at this single Challenge? Absolutely, and it would be misleading to deny that. But it's just as misleading to oversell the results of a single Challenge. For one, it's a single datapoint on the debut weekend of a deck. There are so many factors that both artificially increase (e.g. players don't know how to play against it, SB decisions, hype, etc.) and decrease (card availability, untuned decks, pilots don't know tricks with the deck, etc.) prevalence in such a single datapoint. Given these limitations, it's hard to draw a meaningful conclusion. Second, it's not even a major paper event. It's "just" an MTGO Challenge, which we have routinely (and rightfully) questioned as representative of the metagame on any given weekend. Significant paper results or repeat online results are needed to really figure out where the deck stands in the metagame.
Re: ban decisions
Wizards has issued one emergency ban in over a decade (Felidar), which was more of an oversight acknowledgement than a response to a pattern of troubling results. There is no way we see emergency ban action based on a single Challenge. Wizards has repeatedly shown, despite the blaring ban mania in online communities, that they will wait for sustained results before acting on a ban.
I encourage community members to stick to the proven method of ban analysis: waiting for more data and taking a long, conservative view of the format. Recognize the metagame's ability to adapt and acknowledge that most decks have more weaknesses than we think. This method has produced consistent predictions of changes and no changes for years now. Even if Hogaak Vine is ultimately bannable, that does not mean we throw out the proven, conservative method and revert to a ban mania mindframe. If you throw enough darts at a board, eventually you'll get a bullseye even if your technique is horrible. That doesn't mean we look at the bullseye and say "NAILED IT" with all of our bad technique throws. We stick with the technique that works.
I've seen these kinds of comments and assessments for literal years. A recent comparison was last summer when numerous authors, players, and posters in the older version of this thread (including players who rarely ever raise ban alarm) brought up the same fears about Bridgevine. Like basically every episode of ban fear and ban mania before, that too passed with no significant metagame impact and, obviously, no banning. The overwhelming majority of such fears don't pan out because Modern is a remarkably robust and adaptive format. Similarly, there is significant incentive for authors, commenters, streamers, pros, and even average community members to hype up these kinds of decks for clicks, views, upvotes, reputation, accolades, etc. Don't buy into this hype. Wait for results and trust that the overwhelming majority of such fears will be unfounded, the deck in question actually isn't that good/broken, and the metagame will adjust to most emerging strategies.
I want to pose to you the same question I posed to others: where did your hyped expectations come from? Was it a specific Wizards quote? Was there an article you read or a citable stream/podcast/interview you heard? I'm just going to paste my take on this from a different thread. Some elements of this quote won't apply here, but the vast majority of what I said here can be taken as a response to your quoted "biggest failure":
I am bad and feel bad.
Re: Pod
I did play in that era, and Pod was definitely too prevalent. That's why I was unsurprised to see almost all of the ban rationale point to prevalence and dominance, with design space limitation as a distant, secondary factor. It's annoying to see prominent Magic personalities, most recently Hoogland, citing that reason as a strike against the Pod ban when it was clearly not as influential as the meta/T8 dominance factor.
Narset has no impact on the board-state when it enters and is a terrible T3 play in numerous matchups. At the time, that's probably why most players dismissed her. In hindsight, it's easy to see why Narset is good in Modern and why everyone got it wrong. But at the time of WAR's release, there were very, very few players to my knowledge that knew how good that card would be. PVDR didn't even mention her in his review, Lepore missed her too, Maynard didn't talk about her, Dominguez identified probably the most cards that might be playable and STILL missed her, etc. Only one author I know of actually mentioned her: Gottlieb on SCG. And he ranked her at #9 and said "What is really holding Narset back in Modern is how few archetypes are presently built around card advantage and selection," which is basically the opposite of part of your assessment. All of this is to say that the "fast/brutal/efficient" test is not always good in Modern, and that card evaluation is very difficult and inconsistent. MH could have many more Narset scenarios where the overwhelming majority of evaluators just miss a great card.
Again, I am not aware of any Wizards sources where design space limitations are "the main justification" for the SFM ban or her continued banning. I know people like to claim they say this, but where's the citation? Here are the only sources I am familiar with where Wizards officially weighs in on the SFM ban.
Original ban rationale: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/welcome-modern-world-2011-08-12
"Stoneforge Mystic has by now made its mark on every format from Standard to Legacy, and Stoneforge-based blue control decks regularly do well in Legacy tournaments. Porting such decks into Modern was a trivial affair, and resulted in very powerful decks. We prefer to just ban this card rather than risk yet another format dominated by Stoneforge Mystic."
Mike Flores on two-drops: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/top-decks/pardon-imposition…-2013-07-02
"The banned Squire, Stoneforge Mystic, is so good they didn't even have to give her 2 power. She has dominated almost every format they let her play in, so hey—preemptively pink-slipped in Modern. "
Stoddard on development mistakes: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/developmental-mistakes-2014-06-13
"The cards where we are wrong and that ended up much more powerful than we had expected are some of the most iconic cards from the last decade—Primeval Titan; Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Stoneforge Mystic; Bitterblossom; Bridge from Below; Tarmogoyf; etc. These cards are not always the most fun to play with or against, and we have subsequently had to ban them from some formats, but the cards still exist in the same form they did when we printed them."
Forsythe Twitter: https://twitter.com/mtgaaron/status/1087393927454326785
"As @mtg_ianduke mentioned in today’s article, WU Control has the 2nd-most Modern GP Top 8s recently, behind KCI. Jeskai Control is third. Hard to justify a Stoneforge Mystic unban in that environment."
"We have the wider results as well. Control is doing fine by all accounts."
Are there others out there I haven't heard from an official Wizards employee? If there are, please let me know. But I don't think I've seen others. And if these represent the only Wizards quotes on the matter, you'll note none of them mention design space as a limiting factor for an SFM unban. It's all about power level.
Now, the power level justification for an SFM ban is ridiculous. Many of us, you and I included, have been saying that for a while. But if we want to criticize inconsistencies or problems with the SFM ban, let's focus on the real reason Wizards is keeping her banned: a perception of power level. They do not mention design space once, so there's no reason to attack this as the "main justification" for her remaining banned.
I will again remind you and everyone else that even the best players are very inconsistent at card evaluation. If we go by the Jeff Hoogland metric of "brutally fast, efficient, and punishing" (terms I regularly hear when I've seen his stream), we would not expect to see things like Narset appearing in Ux strategies. Good players miss card evaluations because it's a hard business. Some MH cards are clear hits: FoN, FoV, Canopy lands, Ouphe, and a few others. Many, many more are uncertain. We'll need to see actual lists and tournaments to weigh in on the set's power. There's nothing predictive about saying a set and its cards aren't good enough for Modern. That's the default, null hypothesis for every set and you'd be right for 95%+ of cards in a set.
Maybe this is your personal opinion, but it feels like another rehash of Hoogland sound bytes. I literally heard him complaining about the Birthing Pod and SFM "design space" ban decision in the last 2-3 days in an AM stream. Same for Stirrings/Karn/colorless design space, in that same stream. Collectively, these are more arguments that just aren't in dialogue with the stated reasons for Wizards' decisions. From the Birthing Pod ban: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19
"Over the past year, Birthing Pod decks have won significantly more Grand Prix than any other Modern decks and compose the largest percentage of the field. Each year, new powerful options are printed, most recently Siege Rhino. Over time, this creates a growing gap between the strength of the Pod deck and other creature decks. Pod won five of the twelve Grand Prix over the past year, including winning the last two. The high percentage of the field playing Pod suppresses decks, especially other creature decks, that have an unfavorable matchup. In the interest of supporting a diverse format, Birthing Pod is banned."
In this ban justification, we see about four reasons for banning Pod, only one of which suggests a design space influence to the ban:
1. "Birthing Pod decks have won significantly more Grand Prix than any other Modern decks"
2. They "compose the largest percentage of the field"
3. "Each year, new powerful options are printed... this creates a growing gap between the strength of the Pod deck and other creature decks." (Design space reason)
4. "The high percentage of the field playing Pod suppresses decks, especially other creature decks, that have an unfavorable matchup"
It's extremely disingenuous to try discrediting the Pod ban based on just one of its four justifications while ignoring the other three, especially when the other three are consistent measures used by Wizards for banning cards. I suspect the design space consideration, #3 above, is far less influential than #1, #2, and #4. This is because Wizards consistently cites #1, #2, and #4 as reasons to ban a card, rarely citing #3. They certainly never cited #3 in the Song, BBE, DRS, TC, Twin, Bloom, Probe, GGT, and KCI bans, but they cited variations of #1, #2, and #4 in most of those. It's fine to criticize a ban like Pod, but at least do so on the actual terms of the ban. Just attacking it because of the "design space" reason is very misleading.
I really don't understand the negative reception to MH. It feels like many of the people who are disappointed set their own expectations and standards based on personal preferences, and then when Wizards failed to meet those subjective, personal, impossible expectations, they were disappointed/frustrated. Can people who are unhappy with MH actually cite a Wizards pitch, advertisement, promise, or claim that justified expectations of stuff like Sinkhole at uncommon?
From what I've found, here was the most definitive promise Wizards made about MH: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/announcing-modern-horizons-2019-02-28
"Powerful new options mixed with flavorful updates for favorite characters means Modern Horizons is going to be a wild ride. The set is full of cards that build up favorite Modern strategies, create new ones, and bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal."
Breaking this promise down, I'd identify five distinct expectations we should have:
1. "Powerful new options"
2. "Flavorful updates for favorite characters"
3. "Cards that build up favorite Modern strategies"
4. Cards that "create new ones"
5. Cards that "bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal
Three of these have unquestionably been met: 1, 2, and 5. Two of those objectives are flavor-based, not even power-based, and #1 has plenty of cards that fit the mold. 3 and 5 remain to be seen. I will remind everyone that even pros and pundits are notoriously inconsistent at card evaluation. Almost everyone missed the impact of stuff like Narset in non-rotating formats. Literally every author I've read missed Arclight Phoenix as a Tier 1 Modern enabler.
If someone can point me towards a different promise or advertisement by Wizards that promised something else/more, I'd love to read it. But most people who are disappointed with MH are not citing a claim that was unmet.
There has to be a good combo with Faithless Looting into Vesperlark.
Consider me another supporter of this format. The Reddit-style comment thread does not lend itself to long form discussion.
This is very depressing. The Reddit Modern community feels so much more scattered at times. I will miss actual conversation here instead of just people shouting opinions into the internet void.
Guile is sweet. Sac plus exile graveyard is excellent, as it removes the binned creature permanently with everything else. I wish this card had a relevant mode against big mana, but I guess we can't have everything in one card. Speaking of which...
More importantly, WB charm fits the Talisman cycle colors, Kaya fits the Talisman flavor text, and all the other planeswalkers in those flavor texts also fit the number crunch for their respective commands. Super pumped to see all four of the remaining ones, especially BG.
Most Affinity lists play 1-2 Mountains and 3-4 Glimmervoids/Spires for a total of 5 red non-artifact red sources. So that's 4 Blasts and 5 sources to cast it. That's about a 17% to get the combo in your opening hand, 22% on the second draw, 26% on the third, 31% on the fourth, and 35.5% on the fifth. Cumulatively, you have a 36% chance of getting it by draw 2, 42% by draw 3, 49% by draw 4, and 55% by draw 5. Reasonable odds but not good ones. Ouphe is still very strong against Affinity, especially if you can protect it or recur it.
I discourage people from thinking about Modern decks this way. Look at something like Affinity, Storm, or Infect, all time-honored Modern decks that have come in and out of top-tier finishes for literal years. A deck with HS's competitive pedigree doesn't simply become irrelevant overnight. It might fall out of mass favor, but it will still be an excellent choice for experienced pilots. Scrappy should be quite happy in its new home.
1. Card evaluators are notoriously inconsistent. As a recent example, the overwhelming majority of card reviewers had no idea just how impactful Arclight Phoenix would be in late 2018. It singlehandedly created a Tier 1 archetype. Almost everyone missed it. Just like many missed Narset in WAR. This means we need to treat early card evaluations skeptically.
2. Acknowledging point 1, I expect the following cards to see some degree of MD play in various Tier 1-2 decks: Giver (D&T, E&T), Archmage's Charm (Ux), Fact or Fiction (Mono U Tron), FoN (Ux, especially Ux with creatures), Lava Dart (Phoenix), Collector Ouphe (CoCo/Chord decks), Scale Up (Infect), Eladamri's Call (Devoted Company), Scrapyard Recombiner (Hardened ScaleS), and, as you said, Canopy Lands (everywhere).
3. Dozens of cards will see play in various lower tier strategies, potentially improving their playability. There are also tons of cards that create brewing potential. Examples include, but are not limited to, all the Slivers, many of the Goblins, Urza/Sword/Thopter, Urza/Architect, Pillage in Ponza, Seasoned Pyromancer in Mardu, Wrenn and Six in something (cycling lands will make this excellent), Kess in Grixis, etc.
4. Dozens more cards will see significant and impactful SB play. It is important to acknowledge SB cards as much, if not more than, MD cards. It's less obvious to do so, but 2/3 of all competitive Modern games are impacted by SB cards and just as game-defining as MD cards. Force of Vigor alone is huge, as is FoN even just as a SB card.
Ever since what feels like day 3 of previews, I've seen a significant amount of unwarranted negativity around this set. Part of this is probably Wizards' fault by failing to communicate expectations appropriately. But a big responsibility still lies with players, who just are setting expectations unreasonably high for a product that never promised to meet those expectations. Wizards was fairly clear in their articles that the product needs to meet Modern, Commander, Cube, and draft experiences at the same time. Wizards also doesn't need to do deliberate, heavy-handed shakeups of Modern in a format that has evolved organically with every new set. We don't need a Modern TNN or Leovold experiment that totally reshapes the format.
The only notable omissions at this time, that I still expect to happen, would be:
1. BGx throwbacks/reprints/fixes (e.g. Hymn, Deluge, Deed, DRS, etc.)
2. Iconic eternal card throwbacks/fixes (e.g. Wasteland, Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares, Daze)
3. Graveyard hate
Yaegmoth seems very strong. Draws lots of cards with two Undying creatures in play. Definitely a sweet, Bolt-proof engine that also wrecks opposing creature decks: sign me up. I need izzetmage to tell me if this is good in aristocrats decks.
EDIT: And we get Eladamri's Call. Instant speed 2 mana tutor seems EXTREMELY playable.