I'd play thopter/depths or hypergenesis combo or in other words the most degenerate decks from old extended.
Hypergenesis is extremely strong, but also an even bigger glass cannon than something like Griselbrand Reanimator. At the very minimum, it would probably be good against decks like Elves or Affinity, which are probably more powerful overall, but it gets destroyed by most of the slightly more fair decks. Yes, it can play some hate against such measures, but it also has to deal with the fact that it will lose to itself a good amount of the time.
Old extended IS a decent resource, but there are a lot of new players in this hypothetical format that weren't around back then.
1. Cloudpost Strategies are extremely strong, and can be very versatile. You can play UW cloudpost control that can ramp very quickly, reanimate from Gifts Ungiven, or simply play a control role that dominates other decks with very little effort.
2. Dark Depths is stronger than it used to be - The main thing here is that you can play Thespian's Stage for more redundancy and a more difficult to disrupt gameplan. Still requires building around, but there is no hand disruption or counterspell effect that can stop stage from copying depths. For this reason, it's a pretty strong combo against many of the more fair decks around that want to win off counterbalance or a tempo + disruption gameplan.
3. GSZ makes fair decks and hatebear decks much more potent. Realistically, you can come very close to playing full-legacy Maverick in this format. you don't get wastelands, but there are still a good amount of utility lands that work (tectonic edge, horizon canopy, township, bojuka bog, etc etc). GSZ also enables 1-mana ramp for decks like Scapeshift if they really want it.
4. Treasure Cruise is still insane in this format, and in my opinion, a stronger card than Skullclamp in many decks. Cruise wasn't around previously.
5. Midrange decks have way more tools than they did during old extended's hayday. They now have stoneforge mystic, tasigur, and other super strong cheap threats. But more important, they have a lot more tools that are potent against the unfair decks in the format with Deathrite Shaman, Liliana of the Veil, Kolaghan's Command, Sccavenging Ooze, and Abrupt Decay all being significant roadblocks to decks that want to win off synergy, or landing a few critical pieces.
6. Infect exists now. Personally, I think it's a bit of an overrated deck, but it would still likely be a player to at least some extent, which wasn't the case before.
Trying to think of ways you could win the turn you mill your library without requiring cards you have in hand to win (IE, lightning storm). My first thought would be to use Memory's Journey, which requires 1 green mana open, but that's not too difficult. This could give you a Doomsday style effect, where you stack the top 3 cards of your library with the frog's draw triggers on the stack.
One infinite combo I'm a big fan of with a dredge / reanimation suite is the Sharuum infinite combo. The problem with this is you wouldn't be able to win the same turn, but reanimating the toad would at least set you up to win the next turn provided no disruption.
The combo requires 4 cards in your graveyard: Bridge from Below, Sharuum, the Hegemon, Phyrexian Metamorph, and then you add a singleton Akroma's memorial to win that turn. The way it works is you reanimate sharuum, which triggers her reahnimation ability. This puts either metamorph copying herself, or another version of Sharuum onto the battlefield, which then triggers the legendary rule, giving you a zombie. You then just cycle Sharuums infinitely to get infinite Zombies, and then using the last Sharuum, choose to reanimate Bridge from Below to give everything haste and evasion. It's not perfect, but what's nice about this is that a lot of the cards are decent in a dredge deck (bridge from below) regardless of the situation, and Goryo's Vengeance can be used at instant speed to reanimate Sharuum a lot of the time.
From under the floorboards is a really good card. Definitely a fan, I want to work it into a control deck somehow. Stabilizes life, provides board presence potentially at instant speed, scales, and is even good against opposing Liliana of the Veil's, which have traditionally been used to crush control decks without creatures to attack into her.
Why not just pay 1 more mana and cast gifts? This card just isn't good, even if you build around it, it's ridiculously slow to generate any advantage, and really isn't all that good when drawn in multiples.
Love this card, love the art, love the flavor. Everything about it is awesome. I think this could go a long way toward making draw-go more of a thing in modern.
Modern is already a super aggro-intensive format. Making more combo bans is a very bad idea in my opinion as breathe stated. If anything, we need linear combo decks that can race aggro decks and tron-style big mana decks, but are fragile in the face of disruptive decks. This will encourage a more interactive format, more format diversity, allow control decks room to breathe, etc etc.
If they refuse to allow combo to be faster than aggro, then the format will increasingly shift to playing aggro decks that either try to win as fast as possible, or make any interaction from an opponent as unprofitable as possible. Also, they need to print maindeck-worthy life gain cards that control decks can use against aggro - it's honestly ridiculous how far wizards goes these days to make control unplayable.
I like the New Jace. He's boring, but the high loyalty and +1 uptick is nice. May be similar to Ob Nix, but the scry before the draw is actually quite relevant. That said, I'm not sure he'll be a big player in modern, but I definitely see him being a standard staple.
I think Lantern best described Arlinn. He's not great in a non-aggro shell, but can be a good top-end if that's what you want.
Nahiri I think is being underrated a bit. High loyalty, can be used as removal, and offers important card selection / filtering in colors that really needs better card selection options. I can definitely see Nahiri being a staple in RW prison style decks, but also can be used in other control variants.
New Sigarda is probably worse than old Sigarda, although she at least may be a little bit better vs. combo decks or burn style decks.
Our LGS held 2 events like this, i brought Miracles. It turned out that it's not the same without Brainstorm, it happens too often that you draw in the first 7 a Terminus or Entreat and ended up waiting for a Jace to get stuff going. Even playing without Counterspell and Fow was a nightmare, every deck was going crazy with me holding a mana leak... Jace is a powerful planeswalker, but in a format full of creature is less likely to stay alive and make the difference (won me a couple of games though).
The 2 events were won by Jund, followed by Elves and Hypergenesis (1st Event); Jund, Storm and Jund (2nd one). So if you're opened to every kind of deck i would go with a full powered Jund.
I'm a huge fan of Control style decks and was hoping that MNBL would be an amazing format for it. But instead it left me disappointed. The lack of good counter spell is too critical, and the amount of Combo is crazy high, so i would not try to run fair deck in this particular environment (even Jund cheat stuff into play with BBE).
Control is a difficult deck to crack in an unknown meta. I sort of disagree that control isn't viable in NB modern, I actually think it's one of the stronger choices, but you need to be able to know what to anticipate in advance if we're being honest. Proactive decks don't have to worry about reacting as much to other decks - they simply need to do their thing and hope for the most part they can power through or race the opponent. Control doesnt really have that luxury.
With that said, in a combo-heavy format, decks that play a good mix of permission, discard, and sideboard hate (especially relevant sideboard hate) will be powerful. I tend to think control that can win off a combo finish like Scapeshift or even counterbalance is probably going to be superior in this format, but tempo also is quite powerful if you want to go with more of a control-ish mindset.
Here are some control lists I've had a lot of luck in testing against a pretty wide field (namely on cockatrice admittedly, but against a lot of known and powerful decks in a format like this). Note that 3 of the 4 decks play maindeck relic of Progenitus. That's a good start if you want to have a leg up on combo decks as well as quite a few "fair" decks.
UW Thopter Control
Strategy Win off fast mana, efficient removal and artifact hate. Can combo thopters against more fair decks combined with efficient disruption against unfair decks. Pretty simple and straightforward strategy, but has effective tools against every deck in the format except *maybe* 12 post decks, although this can often just race them when backed with permission.
Main weaknesses is stony silence or other artifact hate.
Strategy: Somewhat similar to the UW deck, this deck utilizes artifact hate to increase the tempo. Unlike UW thopters however, this is more of a prison deck that wants to drop early planeswalkers off artifact acceleration, then sit behind an ensnaring bridge as you win off the walkers or off thopter combos.
Strategy: Slow the game down with efficient removal, disruption, and life gain while accumulating mana to drop bombs (hence going over the top of midrange, aggro, or other control decks).
Strategy: This is a deck reminiscent of the current grixis delve deck, except it utilizes cards on the ban list instead to power itself up. It's a potent anti-combo deck with loads of disruption and an efficient clock.
One interesting aspect of this format is that the Artifact Lands being legal really enables a lot of interesting stuff. Naturally, it powers up artifact decks like Affinity, but it also enables less traditional decks to play cards like Dispatch as a better Swords to Plowshares, or to utilize Mox Opal in a control deck.
Additionally, white is actually a relevant color in this format as it has a lot of cards that truly shut down many of the potent combo decks in the format. Rest in Peace, Ethersworn Canonist, and Stony Silence in particular all are extremely powerful tools against the decks in the format that are more on the unfair side of things. Path to Exile is an important tool as well against dark depths decks.
One final thing is that Dark Depths combo is much better than it previously was, since you can combo with either Vampire Hexmage, or Thespian's Stage. The latter ability to combo off 2 lands allows depths decks to get a marit lage out regardless of whether an opponent has permission or discard. This is especially important against decks like UR Delver.
Wouldn't something like Hypergenesis be the best deck in this? I like the idea but I don't see how it's going to work without FoW
Hardly. Test against a gauntlet if you want. Hypergenesis is actually pretty inconsistent, and has no good way of fighting through disruption. A single spell pierce can often be the downfall of it, not to mention the fact that it loses to most of the common sideboard hate cards in the format.
It's funny, because a deck like All-in-red can really beat up hard on the unfair decks in the format, but it's absolutely awful against more fair strategies like GW Hatebears or Merfolk.
It'd be a terrible, uninteractive format. Even more so than it is now. Because there's no Force of Will or Wasteland, every single Modern game would be a combo deck trying to goldfish before the other combo deck can goldfish.
Not really - formats like these actually promote interactivity since they allow control decks to thrive. Old-extended had some very strong interactive decks like Faeries (often mono-blue) and Tezzerator variants being big as tools that beat up on the combo-heavy meta. Also, there would be a lot more tools to be able to handle combo decks, whether it's a GSZ toolbox, or legal Mental Misstep, or more decks simply maindecking spell pierce with a strong tempo game. Keep in mind, the aggro decks aren't there necessarily to beat combo, but instead to beat the control decks that in turn beat combo.
Combo is obviously going to be quite relevant, but I think you would have a LOT of archetypes represented. I honestly think you could have a very diverse meta - all these decks could easily be viable. The supposedly degenerate decks all have viable hate in the format, you don't NEED to have force of will here in my honest opinion. I found in a good amount of testing that people really underestimate the power of hex-depths. Most of the delver-style decks simply aren't equipped to deal with Marit Lage and end up losing to it sooner or later. Similarly, this combo often out-races many of the other combos in the format like Infect, and at times, even storm (especially when backed with a bit of disruption).
Most combo decks in the format get stomped by the tempo decks, regardless of the degenerate cards they do or don't have available to them. Similarly, the tempo decks get stomped by decks like 12post or Jund (especially with punishing fire). Aggro kind of falls in the middle depending on what they're playing vs.
You would likely get lots of combo variants - storm, twin, eggs, dark depths, hypergenesis, Scapeshift, Jeskai Ascendancy, infect.
You would get aggro-combo variants - Affinity, Elves, Dredge, Gx toolbox combos (melira, spike feeder, Knight of the Reliquary combos with dark depths)
You would get pure-aggro decks - namely zoo variants & burn variants
You would get tempo / control variants - Faeries, Delver cruise, stoneblade, merfolk, hatebears, death and taxes
You would probably get straight midrange decks - Jund, Junk, etc
You would probably get some hard control decks - Tezzerator, Next Level Blue, Stoneblade (more controlling versions), Miracles, Counter-Top
You would get ramp variants, most likely all 12post decks, as well as other bigger mana decks like all-in-red.
Except that formats like Vintage and Legacy actually have tools for control to interact early in the game. Modern doesn't have any of this. There is no reliable way for control to deal with combo spells before Turn 2. You basically need Force of Will in the format to prevent fast combo from taking over that format. Nor is there any effective way to deal with broken lands. Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge are vastly inferior compared to Wasteland and Strip Mine.
And what kind of skewed testing have you done exactly? Aggro being able to survive in a Turn-2 kill format? It simply won't happen. In such a format aggro would not even be represented as there would be no point in competing on fair level with such quick combo kills.
I don't see at all how you believe that Zoo, Burn, Junk, Junk, Tezzerator, Stoneblade, and 12post would even survive in this format.
First off, this isn't a turn 2 format. Very few decks here win consistently on turn 2, even with the ban list being removed, it would likely be more of a turn 3 format for the quickest combo decks. Most of the all-in combos can have a very rare nut-draw turn 2 win, but they're still mostly turn 3-4 decks.
Zoo did very well in old extended - a format with no-ban dredge, no-ban dark depths thopter, no-ban hypergenesis, no-ban elf combo (including symbiote), etc. Believe it or not, early pressure + a few well-placed maindeck hatebears makes it very difficult for combo decks to win. Thalia Zoo or Gaddock Teeg zoo + additional sideboard hate beats most combo decks, or you could alternatively go with a counter-cat style deck with zeniths, deathrite shamans, geists, and meddling mages in the board. Also, Twin is one of the best anti-combo decks around (even though it's a combo deck itself) and would be a very difficult matchup for decks like Storm, Elves, Infect, Etc.
There is no reliable way for control to deal with combo spells before Turn 2
That's not true. Thoughtseize, Spell Snare, Mental Misstep, Remand, Mana Leak, spell pierce, dispel, Inquisition of Kozilek, Abrupt Decay, all are potent tools against combo, not to mention more specialized cards like Chalice of the Void, or Counter-top combo. Also, what combo decks are you talking about? Half the combo decks in the format are vulnerable to a chalice of the void or Ethersworn Canonist. The other half die to graveyard hate or artifact hate (stony silence wrecks MANY decks here). If you really want, you can play mindbreak trap as well. The aggro decks and midrange decks will utilize Green Sun's Zenith turn 2 to find hatebears (gaddock teeg will likely be popular), and scooze / deathrite shaman will be potent against graveyard decks. If a black deck can survive until turn 4, Night of Souls betrayal wrecks half the format (an old extended tool that's great vs faeries, thopter combo, dark depths, delver variants, elves, infect, etc).
Storm and many other combos still have a very difficult time winning through Eidolon of the Great Revel.
The fact is, UR delver-cruise beats up on the majority of the combo decks in this format. Spell pierces + remands with a potent clock and card advantage just wrecks decks like Storm, Hypergenesis, and others. Tezzerator does as well. You don't need force of will.
Didn't Wizards try this when Modern was first announced? The best deck turns out to be Blazing Shoal Infect.
There were still quite a few bans in that format - no skullclamp, no dark depths, no thopter combo, no mental misstep, no ancestral vision, treasure cruise, no deathrite shaman (wasn't printed yet), no abrupt decay, no stoneforge mystic, no jace, etc etc.
Blazing Shoal infect was more of a metagame call since it was very strong against a 12-post heavy field, which was a deck with virtually no removal maindeck. It was not by any means a definitive best deck. It's actually relatively "meh" when you include a full no-banlist format.
It'd be a terrible, uninteractive format. Even more so than it is now. Because there's no Force of Will or Wasteland, every single Modern game would be a combo deck trying to goldfish before the other combo deck can goldfish.
Not really - formats like these actually promote interactivity since they allow control decks to thrive. Old-extended had some very strong interactive decks like Faeries (often mono-blue) and Tezzerator variants being big as tools that beat up on the combo-heavy meta. Also, there would be a lot more tools to be able to handle combo decks, whether it's a GSZ toolbox, or legal Mental Misstep, or more decks simply maindecking spell pierce with a strong tempo game.
Combo is obviously going to be quite relevant, but I think you would have a LOT of archetypes represented. I honestly think you could have a very diverse meta - all these decks could easily be viable. The supposedly degenerate decks all have viable hate in the format, you don't NEED to have force of will here in my honest opinion. I found in a good amount of testing that people really underestimate the power of hex-depths. Most of the delver-style decks simply aren't equipped to deal with Marit Lage and end up losing to it sooner or later. Similarly, this combo often out-races many of the other combos in the format like Infect, and at times, even storm (especially when backed with a bit of disruption).
Most combo decks in the format get stomped by the tempo decks, regardless of the degenerate cards they do or don't have available to them. Similarly, the tempo decks get stomped by decks like 12post or Jund (especially with punishing fire). Aggro kind of falls in the middle depending on what they're playing vs.
You would likely get lots of combo variants - storm, twin, eggs, dark depths, hypergenesis, Scapeshift, Jeskai Ascendancy, infect.
You would get aggro-combo variants - Affinity, Elves, Dredge, Gx toolbox combos (melira, spike feeder, Knight of the Reliquary combos with dark depths)
You would get pure-aggro decks - namely zoo variants & burn variants
You would get tempo / control variants - Faeries, Delver cruise, stoneblade, merfolk, hatebears, death and taxes
You would probably get straight midrange decks - Jund, Junk, etc
You would probably get some hard control decks - Tezzerator, Next Level Blue, Stoneblade (more controlling versions), Miracles, Counter-Top
You would get ramp variants, most likely all 12post decks, as well as other bigger mana decks like all-in-red.
It's actually not as powerful as you would think. Not saying it should be unbanned or anything, but in any games I've played in no-ban modern, Skullclamp has been a pretty fair card to be honest. In a format like this, grinding out games with incremental card-advantage cards like Skullclamp isn't that game-breaking. Keep in mind, it's a big tempo loss to keep sacrificing your creatures, so the only really busted application to use this is when you can use it in a deck like Affinity or Elves to combo out.
Another thing worth mentioning is that there would be a LOT of artifact hate in a format like this. You pretty much have to have tons of artifact hate since decks like Affinity, Eggs, and others are hypothetically huge parts of it, not to mention more fair decks like Stoneblade and thopter-sword decks being relevant.
Heir of Falkenrath is a good card - 3/2 flyer for 1b is good by itself. The discard clause makes it a bit more narrow, but in decks that can actually make use of that, it will be an advantage more than a disadvantage.
I'm not feeling the CMC or the discard activation in Modern. If Delver gets bolted, you're at parity. If Delver gets Pathed, you're up a land. If Delver gets Decayed/Terminated/Kommanded, you're up by diverting 2-3 mana on a 1 CMC threat. Heir doesn't hit any of those benchmarks and, much more worryingly, turns many of them into two-for-ones because you had to discard a card to flip it. Some decks can use that discard as an advantage (Madness? Lingering Souls?), but that's still niche and opens up a lot more room for unfavorable exchanges.
I'm not comparing it to delver. It's more Lotleth Troll than Delver - a niche card that can be good in niche decks, and isn't entirely bad on its own. In those niche decks however, it will be a pretty strong card assuming the discard clause is rarely ever a disadvantage.
Hypergenesis is extremely strong, but also an even bigger glass cannon than something like Griselbrand Reanimator. At the very minimum, it would probably be good against decks like Elves or Affinity, which are probably more powerful overall, but it gets destroyed by most of the slightly more fair decks. Yes, it can play some hate against such measures, but it also has to deal with the fact that it will lose to itself a good amount of the time.
Old extended IS a decent resource, but there are a lot of new players in this hypothetical format that weren't around back then.
1. Cloudpost Strategies are extremely strong, and can be very versatile. You can play UW cloudpost control that can ramp very quickly, reanimate from Gifts Ungiven, or simply play a control role that dominates other decks with very little effort.
2. Dark Depths is stronger than it used to be - The main thing here is that you can play Thespian's Stage for more redundancy and a more difficult to disrupt gameplan. Still requires building around, but there is no hand disruption or counterspell effect that can stop stage from copying depths. For this reason, it's a pretty strong combo against many of the more fair decks around that want to win off counterbalance or a tempo + disruption gameplan.
3. GSZ makes fair decks and hatebear decks much more potent. Realistically, you can come very close to playing full-legacy Maverick in this format. you don't get wastelands, but there are still a good amount of utility lands that work (tectonic edge, horizon canopy, township, bojuka bog, etc etc). GSZ also enables 1-mana ramp for decks like Scapeshift if they really want it.
4. Treasure Cruise is still insane in this format, and in my opinion, a stronger card than Skullclamp in many decks. Cruise wasn't around previously.
5. Midrange decks have way more tools than they did during old extended's hayday. They now have stoneforge mystic, tasigur, and other super strong cheap threats. But more important, they have a lot more tools that are potent against the unfair decks in the format with Deathrite Shaman, Liliana of the Veil, Kolaghan's Command, Sccavenging Ooze, and Abrupt Decay all being significant roadblocks to decks that want to win off synergy, or landing a few critical pieces.
6. Infect exists now. Personally, I think it's a bit of an overrated deck, but it would still likely be a player to at least some extent, which wasn't the case before.
One infinite combo I'm a big fan of with a dredge / reanimation suite is the Sharuum infinite combo. The problem with this is you wouldn't be able to win the same turn, but reanimating the toad would at least set you up to win the next turn provided no disruption.
The combo requires 4 cards in your graveyard: Bridge from Below, Sharuum, the Hegemon, Phyrexian Metamorph, and then you add a singleton Akroma's memorial to win that turn. The way it works is you reanimate sharuum, which triggers her reahnimation ability. This puts either metamorph copying herself, or another version of Sharuum onto the battlefield, which then triggers the legendary rule, giving you a zombie. You then just cycle Sharuums infinitely to get infinite Zombies, and then using the last Sharuum, choose to reanimate Bridge from Below to give everything haste and evasion. It's not perfect, but what's nice about this is that a lot of the cards are decent in a dredge deck (bridge from below) regardless of the situation, and Goryo's Vengeance can be used at instant speed to reanimate Sharuum a lot of the time.
Works well with Warped Devotion.
If they refuse to allow combo to be faster than aggro, then the format will increasingly shift to playing aggro decks that either try to win as fast as possible, or make any interaction from an opponent as unprofitable as possible. Also, they need to print maindeck-worthy life gain cards that control decks can use against aggro - it's honestly ridiculous how far wizards goes these days to make control unplayable.
I think Lantern best described Arlinn. He's not great in a non-aggro shell, but can be a good top-end if that's what you want.
Nahiri I think is being underrated a bit. High loyalty, can be used as removal, and offers important card selection / filtering in colors that really needs better card selection options. I can definitely see Nahiri being a staple in RW prison style decks, but also can be used in other control variants.
New Sigarda is probably worse than old Sigarda, although she at least may be a little bit better vs. combo decks or burn style decks.
Control is a difficult deck to crack in an unknown meta. I sort of disagree that control isn't viable in NB modern, I actually think it's one of the stronger choices, but you need to be able to know what to anticipate in advance if we're being honest. Proactive decks don't have to worry about reacting as much to other decks - they simply need to do their thing and hope for the most part they can power through or race the opponent. Control doesnt really have that luxury.
With that said, in a combo-heavy format, decks that play a good mix of permission, discard, and sideboard hate (especially relevant sideboard hate) will be powerful. I tend to think control that can win off a combo finish like Scapeshift or even counterbalance is probably going to be superior in this format, but tempo also is quite powerful if you want to go with more of a control-ish mindset.
Here are some control lists I've had a lot of luck in testing against a pretty wide field (namely on cockatrice admittedly, but against a lot of known and powerful decks in a format like this). Note that 3 of the 4 decks play maindeck relic of Progenitus. That's a good start if you want to have a leg up on combo decks as well as quite a few "fair" decks.
UW Thopter Control
Strategy Win off fast mana, efficient removal and artifact hate. Can combo thopters against more fair decks combined with efficient disruption against unfair decks. Pretty simple and straightforward strategy, but has effective tools against every deck in the format except *maybe* 12 post decks, although this can often just race them when backed with permission.
Main weaknesses is stony silence or other artifact hate.
2x Ponder
2x Mana Leak
2x Stoic Rebuttal
4x Mental Misstep
4x Dispatch
2x Spell Snare
2x Thirst for Knowledge
Artifacts
3x Relic of Progenitus
3x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Thopter Foundry
3x Sword of the Meek
2x Trinket Mage
1x Pithing Needle
1x Engineered Explosives
4x Mox Opal
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Lands
4x Seat of the Synod
4x Ancient Den
4x Flooded Strand
3x Hallowed Fountain
2x Snow-Covered Island
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Dispel
3x Supreme Verdict
1x Steel Sabotage
1x Chalice of the Void
3x Disenchant
3x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Repeal
1x Negate
1x Nevermore
UB Planeswalker Prison
Strategy: Somewhat similar to the UW deck, this deck utilizes artifact hate to increase the tempo. Unlike UW thopters however, this is more of a prison deck that wants to drop early planeswalkers off artifact acceleration, then sit behind an ensnaring bridge as you win off the walkers or off thopter combos.
4 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Ponder
Planeswalkers
4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Artifacts
3 Chrome Mox
4 Mox Opal
4 Thopter Foundry
3 Sword of the Meek
4 Relic of Progenitus
4 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Academy Ruins
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
2 Darksteel Citadel
4 River of Tears
2 Tectonic Edge
2 Tectonic Edge
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Duress
3 Echoing Truth
2 Spellskite
Izzet 12-post
Strategy: Slow the game down with efficient removal, disruption, and life gain while accumulating mana to drop bombs (hence going over the top of midrange, aggro, or other control decks).
4x Expedition Map
2x Spellskite
3x Relic of Progenitus
4x Izzet Signet
Instants / Sorceries
4x Preordain
4x Remand
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Thirst for Knowledge
3x Mental Misstep
2x Repeal
2x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Lands
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Steam Vents
2 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Cloudpost
3 Vesuva
4 Glimmerpost
1 Eye of Ugin
2x Dispel
3x Chalice of the Void
3x Spell Pierce
2x Crucible of Worlds
3x Shatterstorm
1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1x Kozilek, the Great Distortion
No-Banlist Grixis midrange/control
Strategy: This is a deck reminiscent of the current grixis delve deck, except it utilizes cards on the ban list instead to power itself up. It's a potent anti-combo deck with loads of disruption and an efficient clock.
4x Deathrite Shaman
2x Tasigur, the Golden Fang
3x Snapcaster Mage
Planeswalkers
3x Liliana of the Veil
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Disruption / Instants / Sorceries
2x Preordain
4x Ponder
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Thoughtseize
2x Repeal
2x Kolaghan's Command
2x Remand
2x Spell Pierce
1x Terminate
2x Snow-Covered Island
1x Snow-Covered Swamp
1x Snow-Covered Mountain
4x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Steam Vents
2x Watery Grave
1x Blood Crypt
1x Breeding Pool
2x Creeping Tar Pit
2x Night of Souls' Betrayal
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Engineered Explosives
3x Relic of Progenitus
1x Pithing Needle
1x Shatterstorm
1x Pyroclasm
3x Blood Moon
1x Slaughter Games
1x Countersquall
Additionally, white is actually a relevant color in this format as it has a lot of cards that truly shut down many of the potent combo decks in the format. Rest in Peace, Ethersworn Canonist, and Stony Silence in particular all are extremely powerful tools against the decks in the format that are more on the unfair side of things. Path to Exile is an important tool as well against dark depths decks.
One final thing is that Dark Depths combo is much better than it previously was, since you can combo with either Vampire Hexmage, or Thespian's Stage. The latter ability to combo off 2 lands allows depths decks to get a marit lage out regardless of whether an opponent has permission or discard. This is especially important against decks like UR Delver.
Hardly. Test against a gauntlet if you want. Hypergenesis is actually pretty inconsistent, and has no good way of fighting through disruption. A single spell pierce can often be the downfall of it, not to mention the fact that it loses to most of the common sideboard hate cards in the format.
It's funny, because a deck like All-in-red can really beat up hard on the unfair decks in the format, but it's absolutely awful against more fair strategies like GW Hatebears or Merfolk.
First off, this isn't a turn 2 format. Very few decks here win consistently on turn 2, even with the ban list being removed, it would likely be more of a turn 3 format for the quickest combo decks. Most of the all-in combos can have a very rare nut-draw turn 2 win, but they're still mostly turn 3-4 decks.
Zoo did very well in old extended - a format with no-ban dredge, no-ban dark depths thopter, no-ban hypergenesis, no-ban elf combo (including symbiote), etc. Believe it or not, early pressure + a few well-placed maindeck hatebears makes it very difficult for combo decks to win. Thalia Zoo or Gaddock Teeg zoo + additional sideboard hate beats most combo decks, or you could alternatively go with a counter-cat style deck with zeniths, deathrite shamans, geists, and meddling mages in the board. Also, Twin is one of the best anti-combo decks around (even though it's a combo deck itself) and would be a very difficult matchup for decks like Storm, Elves, Infect, Etc.
That's not true. Thoughtseize, Spell Snare, Mental Misstep, Remand, Mana Leak, spell pierce, dispel, Inquisition of Kozilek, Abrupt Decay, all are potent tools against combo, not to mention more specialized cards like Chalice of the Void, or Counter-top combo. Also, what combo decks are you talking about? Half the combo decks in the format are vulnerable to a chalice of the void or Ethersworn Canonist. The other half die to graveyard hate or artifact hate (stony silence wrecks MANY decks here). If you really want, you can play mindbreak trap as well. The aggro decks and midrange decks will utilize Green Sun's Zenith turn 2 to find hatebears (gaddock teeg will likely be popular), and scooze / deathrite shaman will be potent against graveyard decks. If a black deck can survive until turn 4, Night of Souls betrayal wrecks half the format (an old extended tool that's great vs faeries, thopter combo, dark depths, delver variants, elves, infect, etc).
Storm and many other combos still have a very difficult time winning through Eidolon of the Great Revel.
The fact is, UR delver-cruise beats up on the majority of the combo decks in this format. Spell pierces + remands with a potent clock and card advantage just wrecks decks like Storm, Hypergenesis, and others. Tezzerator does as well. You don't need force of will.
There were still quite a few bans in that format - no skullclamp, no dark depths, no thopter combo, no mental misstep, no ancestral vision, treasure cruise, no deathrite shaman (wasn't printed yet), no abrupt decay, no stoneforge mystic, no jace, etc etc.
Blazing Shoal infect was more of a metagame call since it was very strong against a 12-post heavy field, which was a deck with virtually no removal maindeck. It was not by any means a definitive best deck. It's actually relatively "meh" when you include a full no-banlist format.
Not really - formats like these actually promote interactivity since they allow control decks to thrive. Old-extended had some very strong interactive decks like Faeries (often mono-blue) and Tezzerator variants being big as tools that beat up on the combo-heavy meta. Also, there would be a lot more tools to be able to handle combo decks, whether it's a GSZ toolbox, or legal Mental Misstep, or more decks simply maindecking spell pierce with a strong tempo game.
Combo is obviously going to be quite relevant, but I think you would have a LOT of archetypes represented. I honestly think you could have a very diverse meta - all these decks could easily be viable. The supposedly degenerate decks all have viable hate in the format, you don't NEED to have force of will here in my honest opinion. I found in a good amount of testing that people really underestimate the power of hex-depths. Most of the delver-style decks simply aren't equipped to deal with Marit Lage and end up losing to it sooner or later. Similarly, this combo often out-races many of the other combos in the format like Infect, and at times, even storm (especially when backed with a bit of disruption).
Most combo decks in the format get stomped by the tempo decks, regardless of the degenerate cards they do or don't have available to them. Similarly, the tempo decks get stomped by decks like 12post or Jund (especially with punishing fire). Aggro kind of falls in the middle depending on what they're playing vs.
You would likely get lots of combo variants - storm, twin, eggs, dark depths, hypergenesis, Scapeshift, Jeskai Ascendancy, infect.
You would get aggro-combo variants - Affinity, Elves, Dredge, Gx toolbox combos (melira, spike feeder, Knight of the Reliquary combos with dark depths)
You would get pure-aggro decks - namely zoo variants & burn variants
You would get tempo / control variants - Faeries, Delver cruise, stoneblade, merfolk, hatebears, death and taxes
You would probably get straight midrange decks - Jund, Junk, etc
You would probably get some hard control decks - Tezzerator, Next Level Blue, Stoneblade (more controlling versions), Miracles, Counter-Top
You would get ramp variants, most likely all 12post decks, as well as other bigger mana decks like all-in-red.
It's actually not as powerful as you would think. Not saying it should be unbanned or anything, but in any games I've played in no-ban modern, Skullclamp has been a pretty fair card to be honest. In a format like this, grinding out games with incremental card-advantage cards like Skullclamp isn't that game-breaking. Keep in mind, it's a big tempo loss to keep sacrificing your creatures, so the only really busted application to use this is when you can use it in a deck like Affinity or Elves to combo out.
Another thing worth mentioning is that there would be a LOT of artifact hate in a format like this. You pretty much have to have tons of artifact hate since decks like Affinity, Eggs, and others are hypothetically huge parts of it, not to mention more fair decks like Stoneblade and thopter-sword decks being relevant.
I'm not comparing it to delver. It's more Lotleth Troll than Delver - a niche card that can be good in niche decks, and isn't entirely bad on its own. In those niche decks however, it will be a pretty strong card assuming the discard clause is rarely ever a disadvantage.