Twin would slow down the formar by forcing everyone to run interaction again, which would make other blue decks actually playable. Remember that grixis control once was a tier 1 deck?
I'm always very skeptical about the "twin will save us all" argument, however one thing is for sure: nothing twin ever did was as powerful as what dredge and infect are allowed to do right now
Twin has won more GPs and PTs than Infect and Dredge put together.
This is absurd. Dredge wasn't even a deck while Twin was legal - the printing of prized amalgam is what made dredge viable. People fixate on an arbitrary number to defend the twin ban - number of wins,but that doesn't change the fact that the deck was never oppressive. It was never even 20% of the meta, never put more than 3 decks on top 8s of events... It was as warping as affinity, or jund. Without it, the format degenerated into decks trying to kill it each other as soon as possible, without interacting with the opponent.
So, here's the thing: the twin ban broke modern. The metagame is self evidently unhealthy to anyone not in denial. Look at top 32 of recent SCG opens - even BGx is slowly sliding towards tier 2 now. Take Dredge, for instance. It was already borderline broken until wizards decided to give it a nice 2 mana "dredge 18" sorcery. No fair deck can beat it game 1 - it just doesn't happen. So it ends up being another deck that demands 4+ sideboard slots just to have a chance, in a format where sideboards were already overstuffed. The thing, however, is that Twin could beat it - Slow it down enough to combo turn 4, just before dredge kills you. Same way it could reliably beat infect, affinity, suicide decks, burn, etc.
But the twin banning is just a symptom of a bigger problem with the modern banlist: wizards banned the best cards the fair decks had (deathrite shaman, Pod, Twin), and now the linear decks are just objectively more powerful than anything you can do in BGx or URx. Frankly, the only "fair" deck that is on the same level of the broken decks is Eldrazi, because sometimes they get to curve turn 2 thought-knot seer into turn 3 smasher.
Look, I play control. I played UW control even when I could play Twin, and I top 8ed a WMCQ with it - pretry nice for a tier 3 deck. I have also tried all sort of grixis and jeskai decks, and have decent succes in my meta. But it's HARD. You have to predict the meta correctly and be constantly adjusting your 75, and if you play less than optimally you're not winning a game. So I took a break, and decided to sleeve suicide bloo and burn stock lists on two consecutive modern nights and went 3-1 and undefeated, respectively. While making mistakes like missing letal on board and having pretty much zero experience with these decks or, hell, with very low agro experience. The decks simply played on auto pilot.
It's not just control that's bad, midrange sucks too. So, here's a modest proposal: unban Deathrite, Pod and Twin (maybe Jace and Stoneforge too) so that the nonlinear decks can do broken stuff too. That, or ban Primetime, Become Immense, Mox Opal, Bloodghast, Eldrazi Temple, the phyrexian mana cards and all the other broken cards in the format.
How you feel baby jace without O. Command? you want cut them in your next list or put an Command.
I think I'm taking out Jace VP. I also feel the metagame will get slightly less linear, so I'm thinking of replacing him with a Jace Beleren and maybe a think twice or another card draw spell.
So, I made top 8 in a 95-people WMCQ with the following list: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=13569&d=279860&f=MO. On the previous day, I got 9th in a 75 people PPTQ in the same store. Reading bigdeezyrider's comments, it's amazing how we've come to very similar conclusions about the archtype but wound up with very different lists. In my case, I abandoned slow, pure card advantage cards like AV and Sphinx Revelation because the format is simply too fast for them to matter in many matchups; instead, by playing value creatures that generate incremental card advantage, we can survive the early game and them outgrind our opponents in the late game.
I purposely decided to focus on beating the hyper aggro decks (suicide zoo, burn, infect, go wide decks) as I felt those were the most popular in the brazilian metagame; however, I got it a bit wrong, as the meta was extremely varied. In the PPTQ, I went 5-2, losing to Mardu Planeswalkers (0-2) and RW Moon (1-2; dude had blood moon turn 2 on the first game and turn 1 on the third, both times on the play) and beating Burning-Tree Zoo twice (both times 2-0), Infect (2-0), Dredge (2-1) and Jund. On the WMCQ, I went 5-1-1, losing to Titanshift (1-2) and drawing with Grixis Delver to top 8. I beat Infect (2-1), RW Moon (2-0, no godhands from him this time), UW Control Mirror (1-0), Merfolk (2-0) and Jund (2-1). In the quarterfinals, I lost two quick games to Bant Eldrazi - a good matchup, but sometimes they can start on turn 2 with Thought-Knot and curve from there in a way that feels like Eldrazi Winter never really left.
After the events, I gotta say that I found Serum Visions to be the best card in the deck, followed closely by Path and Snap. Jace is great against non-interactive decks, but if you want him to be a relible card advantage engine, you have to couple him with Ojutai's (or Kolaghan's) command; the best surprise of the weekend was just how strong Blessed Alliance was, both working as a way to recover life and dealing with hard to remove creatures. Overall, I feel like UW is a deck that can be tuned to beat anything, but doesn't really have the objective power level to simply "jund 'em out" in an unknown metagame. That's why I think there's so much variance on well placing lists - we don't have tarmogoyfs and lilianas, but we do have a ton of flexible, powerful options of disruption and many card advantage engines. This way, if a UW player can accurately predict the broadstrokes of a metagame, he can tune his list to great success.
Someone on the same list also made 30th. I've been testing it and I like it so far. Av is definitely medium, but my only gripe so far are the 2 tec edges. 5 colorless lands in a deck with so many demanding casting costs (finks, vendilion, verdict, cryptic) is insane if you want to play spells on curve. 4 ghost quarters seem much better, given that they can smooth our mana if needed, at the cost of 1 land. I'd also like to see how well queller works in Clique's slot.
How about we ask them to swallow their pride and just straight up unban splinter twin? ( and amulet )
It really should be a frontrunner option.
No, it shouldn't
Bloom was broken. Period
Why the hell would we accept a deck that doesn't interact back? The deck proved to violate turn 3 wins a lot
So, you want to see another goldfish deck?
Banning Twin in the first place made it look very bad already, and this PT made it look like the B&R announcements were made by people with absolutely no notion.
Unbanning Twin so soon would make WOTC look very, very bad.
EDIT: The fact that "Goryo's Blue" is listed as a combo deck worth showcasing does not suggest anything positive about the commentator's Modern knowledge (or agenda).
Idk why people can't just call tron a control deck. Every card is about controlling the board via boardwipe/spot removal or ramping.
I don't call Tron a control deck because it skips the whole "interact with your opponent to stabilise" stage of the game to assemble a combo of lands and go straight into "cast finishers" stage. It can have the boardstate of a control deck on turn 10... by turn 4, that's how it wins, not by slowing down its opponent.
Am I the only person who would actually be happy if this was a recurring thing? As Oath of the Gatewatch proved, it's not necessarily a gimmick to sell bad sets only, and the idea of a "golden ticket" being somewhere there in the packs is great fun and adds a lot of extra thrill/hype to pack openings.
This would heavily limit the number of modern playable reprints in "normal sets", though.
There's been a lot of talk and speculation about how the new Modern meta will shape up. Well, I've been play-testing the gauntlet of tier->=2 decks, and I'm having a depressing vision: Nothing in this format seems to beat Burn, Zoo, Infect, and Affinity, at least pre-board. I could swear this is turning into Pauper, where it's just bears vs. bears.
Am I too glum in my assessment? If not, what happens next? Do we all sleeve up Soul Sisters or try to go under everything with Kiln Fiend decks?
The two events held in my store confirm this vision...
I haven't found any real need for *** - the matchups where you need wrath effects like merfolk you really want uncounterable. Against Zoo variants and GBx Thrun could be an issue, but not many are concerned with using a slot for him. Affinity also has welding jar, but that's also incredibly narrow. Of the things to be concerned about, I think this falls to the bottom quickly. Having access to at least 3 wrath effects in the 75 is what's important IMO.
Stopping regeneration effects is really important against elves, which might become more important if that deck picks up
I didn't want to be a bye for Tron, which is why I added the red splash. Going forward, either Minamo or a Mystic Gate would have to go, because the deck definetily needs another basic; in matches against decks with path/ghost quarter, it's definetily possible to wind up without fetchable sources by the late game, which is absolutely backbreaking against control decks. I would strongly suggest trying the splash; Engineered Explosives was the best card in the board all weekend, and crumble to dust is our best shot at beating tron.
As for the maindeck choices... 1x Snapcaster in place of one Dragonlord Ojutai simply because the curve felt too heavy, snap can be the fourth spell snare or fifth path when the situation calls for it or rebuy multiple cryptic commands in the late game; I went with 4x wall of omens/3x kitchen finks because wall really helps us hit our land drops and, in combination with restoration angel, can be our main source of card advantage. The 2x anticipate was my solution to the serum visions dilemma discussed above - not being sorcery speed means it doesn't clash with our board development, being fairly easy to cast it on the turns we spend holding up counterspells but do nothing. I would like to test a third, maybe replacing one of the remands...
As for how the GP went, I started out with a game loss due to getting one minute late for my 1st match: Bant Reliquary. It was a much more midrangey beast than the one that top 8d, playing stuff like noble hierarchs and lotus cobras; game 2 (game 1, really, we couldn't sideboard) I won after going verdict into gideon; after that, Jura completely controlled the board, and eventually atacking for the win, after all my other creatures had gotten path'd. I sided dispels and aven mindcensor because he had shown chord of calling. In game 3 he had 3 Knighths of the Reliquary... which I awnsered with 3 paths. Eventually he dropped a retreat to coralhelm, which allowed him to scry multiple times; he found a tragtusk while I flooded, and I lost.
Match 2: UW Merfolk. I really needed him to overextend a bit more both games, but he kept enough gas in hand to redevelop completely after my verdict; afterwards, he told me he had lost his first round to another UW Control player... So maybe that's why he knew to play around verdict so well?
Match 3: Burn. Game 1 I keep a slow hand and he kills me on his turn 4, on the play. Ouch.I side 8 cards, lowering the deck's curve drastically, and it's a cake walk... Wall of Omens into Finks followed by a resto Angel quickly closes game 2, while game 3 is won by curving Wall into Explosives for 1, plague winding his board.
Match 4: Grixis Delver. Game 1 comes down to a very interesting decision: it's his end step. My board is a wall of omens, while his is flipped delver, two tokens, pyromancer and gurmag angler - I absolutely need to draw a verdict to not die, haven't seen one the entire game - I have a cryptic in hand, which I can use to try and bounce the gurmag or delver, giving me one extra turn (I'm at 6 life) or wait for his next turn to try and fog + draw a card. I chose to bounce the angler, planning to remand it on the way down, which would mean it'd get stuck in my opponent's hand for a while - but I immediatily draw verdict from the cryptic. Not wanting to go down to one and die to a topdecked burn spell, I wrath the board on my turn. I think I absolutely chose the wrong play, and the only reason I was able to win this game was because my next two draws were a path for his angler and Ojutai, who closed the game in 2 attacks. Game 2 he wins by dropping delver, which flips the following turn, and protecting it with counterspells while it flies over my walls and single kitchen finks. Game 3 goes to time after I'd stabilised (was at 13 life, had ojutai + minamo on board to his single gurmag angler at 10 life) and while I'm trying to get my opponent to concede, he says we should roll a dice; judge overhears it and he gets dq'd.
match 5: Esper draw go - game 1, he simply outgrinds me; I manage to put him at 6 life, but with absolutely no board and no hand while he still has a full hand. He shows me his sphinx revelation (which would be for x = 7 or so...) and I concede, not wanting to waste time on a lost game; I decide to go all in on the tempo plan, since he has esper charms, think twices, and sphinx revelations, so I side in the cheap counterspells and mindcensor while cutting verdicts and a cryptic; in games 2 and 3, early vendilion/mindcensor beats coupled with dispel/negate gets me there, while he wastes time thinking twicing and esper charming; a sided baneslayer gets path'd, and revelations gets countered.
Match 6: UR delver. In both games he stumbles a bit on mana development, which allows me to develop my board at ease; by the time his delvers are flipping and pyromancers start churning out tokens, restoration angel, kitchen finks and wall of omens have already put up an impenetrable defence, while collonades (game 1) and ojutai (game 2) close the game.
After clawing my way through 0-2, now sitting at 4-2... I sit down to play against jund and he mulls down to 5. Game 1 is mine. Game 2, after awnsering his first few threats, comes down to a point where I've held cryptic up for the last couple turns, while he simply passes; I have an Wall of Omens and an Ojutai in hand and am stuck at 4 lands. I decide to play the wall, to dig deeper, while holding 2 mana up. he untaps, plays fulminator, destroy my 4th land... then, on the following turn, goes kolaghan's command rebuying fulminator, drops fulminator, and leaves me with only 2 lands, completely shutting me off the game. In game 3, I simply flood while he beats me to death with a raging ravine.
I play the next round for fun, and beat little zoo much the same way I beat burn in round 3.
In conclusion, I'd say the deck feels reallly good against aggro and linear decks (didn't play any combo at the gp, but from testing at my store, combo like storm or ad nauseam shouldn't be too bad a matchup)but can suffer pretty badly against decks with better card advantage, like control decks.
For comparison's sake, my brother went with affinity and finished 3-3; our friend that traveled with us also went 4-3, playing Jund with 2 byes. So if the meta keeps on an agressive slant, I feel like UW might be well positioned.
This is absurd. Dredge wasn't even a deck while Twin was legal - the printing of prized amalgam is what made dredge viable. People fixate on an arbitrary number to defend the twin ban - number of wins,but that doesn't change the fact that the deck was never oppressive. It was never even 20% of the meta, never put more than 3 decks on top 8s of events... It was as warping as affinity, or jund. Without it, the format degenerated into decks trying to kill it each other as soon as possible, without interacting with the opponent.
But the twin banning is just a symptom of a bigger problem with the modern banlist: wizards banned the best cards the fair decks had (deathrite shaman, Pod, Twin), and now the linear decks are just objectively more powerful than anything you can do in BGx or URx. Frankly, the only "fair" deck that is on the same level of the broken decks is Eldrazi, because sometimes they get to curve turn 2 thought-knot seer into turn 3 smasher.
Look, I play control. I played UW control even when I could play Twin, and I top 8ed a WMCQ with it - pretry nice for a tier 3 deck. I have also tried all sort of grixis and jeskai decks, and have decent succes in my meta. But it's HARD. You have to predict the meta correctly and be constantly adjusting your 75, and if you play less than optimally you're not winning a game. So I took a break, and decided to sleeve suicide bloo and burn stock lists on two consecutive modern nights and went 3-1 and undefeated, respectively. While making mistakes like missing letal on board and having pretty much zero experience with these decks or, hell, with very low agro experience. The decks simply played on auto pilot.
It's not just control that's bad, midrange sucks too. So, here's a modest proposal: unban Deathrite, Pod and Twin (maybe Jace and Stoneforge too) so that the nonlinear decks can do broken stuff too. That, or ban Primetime, Become Immense, Mox Opal, Bloodghast, Eldrazi Temple, the phyrexian mana cards and all the other broken cards in the format.
I think I'm taking out Jace VP. I also feel the metagame will get slightly less linear, so I'm thinking of replacing him with a Jace Beleren and maybe a think twice or another card draw spell.
I purposely decided to focus on beating the hyper aggro decks (suicide zoo, burn, infect, go wide decks) as I felt those were the most popular in the brazilian metagame; however, I got it a bit wrong, as the meta was extremely varied. In the PPTQ, I went 5-2, losing to Mardu Planeswalkers (0-2) and RW Moon (1-2; dude had blood moon turn 2 on the first game and turn 1 on the third, both times on the play) and beating Burning-Tree Zoo twice (both times 2-0), Infect (2-0), Dredge (2-1) and Jund. On the WMCQ, I went 5-1-1, losing to Titanshift (1-2) and drawing with Grixis Delver to top 8. I beat Infect (2-1), RW Moon (2-0, no godhands from him this time), UW Control Mirror (1-0), Merfolk (2-0) and Jund (2-1). In the quarterfinals, I lost two quick games to Bant Eldrazi - a good matchup, but sometimes they can start on turn 2 with Thought-Knot and curve from there in a way that feels like Eldrazi Winter never really left.
After the events, I gotta say that I found Serum Visions to be the best card in the deck, followed closely by Path and Snap. Jace is great against non-interactive decks, but if you want him to be a relible card advantage engine, you have to couple him with Ojutai's (or Kolaghan's) command; the best surprise of the weekend was just how strong Blessed Alliance was, both working as a way to recover life and dealing with hard to remove creatures. Overall, I feel like UW is a deck that can be tuned to beat anything, but doesn't really have the objective power level to simply "jund 'em out" in an unknown metagame. That's why I think there's so much variance on well placing lists - we don't have tarmogoyfs and lilianas, but we do have a ton of flexible, powerful options of disruption and many card advantage engines. This way, if a UW player can accurately predict the broadstrokes of a metagame, he can tune his list to great success.
I don't call Tron a control deck because it skips the whole "interact with your opponent to stabilise" stage of the game to assemble a combo of lands and go straight into "cast finishers" stage. It can have the boardstate of a control deck on turn 10... by turn 4, that's how it wins, not by slowing down its opponent.
This would heavily limit the number of modern playable reprints in "normal sets", though.
The two events held in my store confirm this vision...
Called it! See post #38 on that thread... Next year, again, the best deck will be banned again, and most likely that deck will be affinity... Enjoy your platings while you can.
Stopping regeneration effects is really important against elves, which might become more important if that deck picks up
I didn't want to be a bye for Tron, which is why I added the red splash. Going forward, either Minamo or a Mystic Gate would have to go, because the deck definetily needs another basic; in matches against decks with path/ghost quarter, it's definetily possible to wind up without fetchable sources by the late game, which is absolutely backbreaking against control decks. I would strongly suggest trying the splash; Engineered Explosives was the best card in the board all weekend, and crumble to dust is our best shot at beating tron.
As for the maindeck choices... 1x Snapcaster in place of one Dragonlord Ojutai simply because the curve felt too heavy, snap can be the fourth spell snare or fifth path when the situation calls for it or rebuy multiple cryptic commands in the late game; I went with 4x wall of omens/3x kitchen finks because wall really helps us hit our land drops and, in combination with restoration angel, can be our main source of card advantage. The 2x anticipate was my solution to the serum visions dilemma discussed above - not being sorcery speed means it doesn't clash with our board development, being fairly easy to cast it on the turns we spend holding up counterspells but do nothing. I would like to test a third, maybe replacing one of the remands...
As for how the GP went, I started out with a game loss due to getting one minute late for my 1st match: Bant Reliquary. It was a much more midrangey beast than the one that top 8d, playing stuff like noble hierarchs and lotus cobras; game 2 (game 1, really, we couldn't sideboard) I won after going verdict into gideon; after that, Jura completely controlled the board, and eventually atacking for the win, after all my other creatures had gotten path'd. I sided dispels and aven mindcensor because he had shown chord of calling. In game 3 he had 3 Knighths of the Reliquary... which I awnsered with 3 paths. Eventually he dropped a retreat to coralhelm, which allowed him to scry multiple times; he found a tragtusk while I flooded, and I lost.
Match 2: UW Merfolk. I really needed him to overextend a bit more both games, but he kept enough gas in hand to redevelop completely after my verdict; afterwards, he told me he had lost his first round to another UW Control player... So maybe that's why he knew to play around verdict so well?
Match 3: Burn. Game 1 I keep a slow hand and he kills me on his turn 4, on the play. Ouch.I side 8 cards, lowering the deck's curve drastically, and it's a cake walk... Wall of Omens into Finks followed by a resto Angel quickly closes game 2, while game 3 is won by curving Wall into Explosives for 1, plague winding his board.
Match 4: Grixis Delver. Game 1 comes down to a very interesting decision: it's his end step. My board is a wall of omens, while his is flipped delver, two tokens, pyromancer and gurmag angler - I absolutely need to draw a verdict to not die, haven't seen one the entire game - I have a cryptic in hand, which I can use to try and bounce the gurmag or delver, giving me one extra turn (I'm at 6 life) or wait for his next turn to try and fog + draw a card. I chose to bounce the angler, planning to remand it on the way down, which would mean it'd get stuck in my opponent's hand for a while - but I immediatily draw verdict from the cryptic. Not wanting to go down to one and die to a topdecked burn spell, I wrath the board on my turn. I think I absolutely chose the wrong play, and the only reason I was able to win this game was because my next two draws were a path for his angler and Ojutai, who closed the game in 2 attacks. Game 2 he wins by dropping delver, which flips the following turn, and protecting it with counterspells while it flies over my walls and single kitchen finks. Game 3 goes to time after I'd stabilised (was at 13 life, had ojutai + minamo on board to his single gurmag angler at 10 life) and while I'm trying to get my opponent to concede, he says we should roll a dice; judge overhears it and he gets dq'd.
match 5: Esper draw go - game 1, he simply outgrinds me; I manage to put him at 6 life, but with absolutely no board and no hand while he still has a full hand. He shows me his sphinx revelation (which would be for x = 7 or so...) and I concede, not wanting to waste time on a lost game; I decide to go all in on the tempo plan, since he has esper charms, think twices, and sphinx revelations, so I side in the cheap counterspells and mindcensor while cutting verdicts and a cryptic; in games 2 and 3, early vendilion/mindcensor beats coupled with dispel/negate gets me there, while he wastes time thinking twicing and esper charming; a sided baneslayer gets path'd, and revelations gets countered.
Match 6: UR delver. In both games he stumbles a bit on mana development, which allows me to develop my board at ease; by the time his delvers are flipping and pyromancers start churning out tokens, restoration angel, kitchen finks and wall of omens have already put up an impenetrable defence, while collonades (game 1) and ojutai (game 2) close the game.
After clawing my way through 0-2, now sitting at 4-2... I sit down to play against jund and he mulls down to 5. Game 1 is mine. Game 2, after awnsering his first few threats, comes down to a point where I've held cryptic up for the last couple turns, while he simply passes; I have an Wall of Omens and an Ojutai in hand and am stuck at 4 lands. I decide to play the wall, to dig deeper, while holding 2 mana up. he untaps, plays fulminator, destroy my 4th land... then, on the following turn, goes kolaghan's command rebuying fulminator, drops fulminator, and leaves me with only 2 lands, completely shutting me off the game. In game 3, I simply flood while he beats me to death with a raging ravine.
I play the next round for fun, and beat little zoo much the same way I beat burn in round 3.
In conclusion, I'd say the deck feels reallly good against aggro and linear decks (didn't play any combo at the gp, but from testing at my store, combo like storm or ad nauseam shouldn't be too bad a matchup)but can suffer pretty badly against decks with better card advantage, like control decks.
For comparison's sake, my brother went with affinity and finished 3-3; our friend that traveled with us also went 4-3, playing Jund with 2 byes. So if the meta keeps on an agressive slant, I feel like UW might be well positioned.