Damping Sphere will be amazing in Lantern. The question obviously is what to cut for it. Because I firmly believe it isn't a sidebaord card, but a mainboard one.
So I took a look at the Modern banned list, seeing if there were any cards I'd want unbanned. After doing some thinking, I came to the following thoughts.
One of the nightmare cards for Robots to deal with is Stony Silence. Imagine Modern, where we have moved back to players actually using Affinitycreatures in a deck called Affinity. Running these lands makes your opponent's Ancient Grudges because double Stone Rains. Robots doesn't care about a Blood Moon, but with artifact lands, Stony silence just stops them from ever making mana. Honestly for me this unban would be 100% contingent on them banning Mox Opal. If they don't ban Opal it is too easy to abuse the fast mana. And banning Opal hurts decks like Lantern, and Ironworks, both decks that I love. I honestly don't realistically see the artifact lands coming off the banned list, but it was still something I thought would be interesting.
DTT got the axe along with Treasure Cruise, when the latter was proven too be a completely busted card. DTT however, while still definitely good, wasn't obscenely broken. Those who played during that time will remember decks like Burn explicitly splashed blue, just to play Treasure Cruise. However decks weren't exactly stretching to play DTT. The UU cost for it makes it so you can't just splash it in your deck. Now yes, DTT is a powerful card, and will most likely give blue decks another push in the direction of powerful options available to them. However if you look at MTGGoldfish at their metashare (which I know is not all that accurate these days, but it's the best I have) there are only 3 blue decks in the Top 12 decks being played; GDS, UW Control, and Jeskai Control. GDS most likely would not run DTT as between Angler and Tasigur you'd have way too many delve spells. And maybe UW and Jeskai control need another push, since Jace didn't seem to do much of anything for them (to the surprise of a lot of people). So maybe DTT is the card blue decks really need to do better in Modern. Who knows. But to me it looks like a safe card to at least try out in the format.
Is Fire + Grove really that good of a combo in Modern? Honestly, it's debatable. There is a chance that it will be devastating for creature decks, much like Jitte would be. There's also a chance that it does nothing like Sword. I can see some negatives to this card, but at the same time it feels woefully inadequate. Humans is by far one of the better decks in Modern right now. Maybe a card like Punishing Fire will help take it down a notch. Maybe it'll do nothing because of those pesky Kitesail Freebooters or Meddling Mages. We have a lot of really good creatures decks in Modern, perhaps we need something to push back against them a bit.
Well that's it. Those are my three thoughts on things that should/could be unbanned. Do I see #1 happening? Hell No. However I definitely see #2 & #3 as possibilities in the future. What do the rest of you think? I believe I made some sound arguments for the latter 2. The artifact lands are more of a "what-if?" scenario, but I think if they ban Opal unbanning the lands won't be too powerful or format warping for Modern.
Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle could be a potential Myr Retriever replacement. Retriever has the added benefit of being an artifact. Does Teshar have have an upside for the combo that Retriever does not?
Only upside I can think of is it doesn't die to Gutshot
ive been trying to get people to ask themselves this question about any of the unbans. the prevailing response seems to be that cards that dont seem too powerful should just not be on the banlist out of principle. /shrug
I know that this is always my response when I am talking about taking something off of the Modern banned list. If a card isn't too powerful, why is it banned? If it is on the banned list because it not being there would allow a completely broken deck to be in the format, then you can't say it isn't a powerful card can you?
With concerns to cards being banned, for me there are only 3 reasons a card should be banned in Modern:
1) The card's existence in the format warps the format around whatever deck it is in. This can be seen as a card that makes a specific deck very powerful and format warping (Deathrite Shaman/Eye of Ugin), or a card that adds too much consistency too a deck, making it too large of a metagame share because it is the obvious best deck (Rite of Flame/Ponder).
2) The card is just way too damn powerful. It's a case where in a lot of instances if you aren't running this card you're either playing a specific deck it is bad in, or you're just being bad (Umezawa's Jitte/Treasure Cruise)
3) The card isn't overly powerful, but is definitely strong in Modern in a way that can restrict what WotC wants to develop and release in future sets (Stoneforge Mystic/Birthing Pod)
A previous user made a list of all the Modern cards from the previous few blocks, and it's fairly sizable and consistent between sets. I can't find the post I want to cite so hopefully another thread regular can locate it. There's a popular narrative that new sets are too weak for Modern with few playable cards, but when you actually look at how many cards feature in tiered and tournament-placing decks, there's a fairly wide representation. Every preview season sees players unhappy about how few cards are Modern playable, and every new set sees a number of new cards making an important Modern impact. I expect Dominaria will be no different.
I can't find the post, but I can easily make the same kind of list.
These cards are grabbed from the Top 20 Modern decks listed on MTGGoldfish. Since we're just trying to make a list of "what is used in Modern" any card that was used, even as a 1-of in the 75 has been included.
I'm not sure I see how that can possibly be true. Take the Burn matchup, for instance. It seems to me that that's a matchup in which we need to give ourselves Hexproof as quickly as possible; without the turn 0 Leyline of Sanctity, there's a very good chance that we're just dead before we can stabilize.
Burn is an odd match up. You can put in extra Leylines, get your turn 0 Hexproof, and your opponent just draws a creature heavy draw and you lose if you don't find a Bridge. Or you find a Bridge, don't get Hexproof, and your opponent gets a spell heavy hand.
Let us say that every year they print a set like Modern Masters 2017. Every single year, the price of all the cards in the set will decrease as more cards that people are looking for are added to the supply. This will continue until we have a situation like Masters 25, where you have maybe 5 cards that put you ahead of the cost of the pack, and everything else is *****. And this time, it will be because of the simple fact that everything has been printed into oblivion.
Our deck doesn't run Ghost Quarter because of how hard it is to hit UUU for Whir. 0% chance of it seeing play in the Whir lists, and the land doesn't do enough to warrant it seeing any play in the BG decks.
Nobody is mystified about the how (welcome to how supply and demand zzzzzzzzzz....you lost me) prices got here.
Card's being THIS expensive, if supply dries up, is a bad thing however. We all laugh at Vintage deck prices or Legacy, because those formats have reserved list issues, but if multiple play sets in your deck are $400+ thats a very steep barrier, that doesnt need to exist.
Let me put it this way. You can't complain about how cards are 'too expensive', and then also complain about how sets like Masters 25 don't have 'enough value'. Both of these ideas are opposed to each other.
If cards are too expensive, the answer is to print more, increasing the supply and therefore dropping the price.
But if you want to open cards worth money, those cards needs to not be reprinted, and thus the supply will be restricted which drives up the price.
WotC could very easily do what the company that prints Yu-Gi-Oh does. IIRC, after their PT equivalent, they print deck tins that are the decks that were in the Top 8 of the tournament. This gives every player access to powerful decks, without having to spend thousands of dollars. However, Magic players want their collections to be worth money, so doing this makes exactly no sense, because in this scenario, your cards are worth nothing.
Me saying, "I don't get it," is me being confused when people want cards to be cheap for them to buy, but then they want them to be expensive as soon as they are in their collection.
I honestly don't see why people seem to think Modern cards being expensive is a bad thing. Welcome to how supply and demand works in a market with limited supply items.
Greetings, one and all! I'm having some difficulty understanding why the conventional wisdom is to run only 2 Leyline of Sanctity in the sideboard. If we follow the math from the Mox Opal debate above, it seems to me like we need to be running at least 3 in order to have a reasonable chance of having it in our opening hand. Obviously, there's something I'm missing here; otherwise, I wouldn't be asking this question! Any insights and explanations this community can offer would be greatly appreciated.
You don't need Leyline on Turn 1. Yes in a lot of match ups it definitely helps to have it, but in some instances you want it to act as extra Witchbane Orbs later on. Add to that the fact that you can't sideboard too heavily with this deck since you don't want to be diluting it, and you have why there are only 2 Leylines in the sideboard.
Personally I still prefer Aetherflux Reservoir as the deck's main win condition since it helps with the Burn match up, but it is definitely nice to see people doing well with the deck at large events, no matter what they attempt to use to win.
Zhalfir Void actually seems like an alright land for the Eldrazi decks. Those decks tend to be in a situation where once you get a Temple in play, you want your cards to appear in a specific order. Void has the benefit of tapping for colourless to help cast Eldrazi, while also helping you fix your next draw a little bit. I could definitely see those decks testing out this land, at the very least just to see if it does much of anything.
I would argue against this completely, and state the only massive difference between Modern and Legacy right now is Dual Lands vs Shocklands and Brainstorm vs Serum Visions. The countermagic only exists in the prevalence that it does in Legacy because there are decks that run cards like Dark Ritual. We have seen Legacy metagames where either only Force, or 3 Force main, 1 Side have existed because fair decks dominated in those periods of time.
Well first off, those are huge differences between the formats
Having to take 2 damage for your duals lands to enter untapped is a huge reason as to why Burn is honestly a good deck in the format. So many decks deal incidental damage to themselves already, Burn usually only has to really do 14-15 damage most games, which isn't overly difficult.
I'm not even going to touch on how much more powerful Brainstorm is than Visions, that one is plain as day lol.
In one essence, I feel FoW would do to Modern what many people feared Jace would do. It will congeal blue decks towards a specific deck build, while other control decks in the format fail at being nearly as good. Again I'll bring up Burn since most people forget that the alternate cost on FoW does in fact cost you 1 life in addition to the blue card you need to exile.
I feel if Wizards was going to remake FoW for Standard, at the very least the damage it did for the alternate cost would probably be up to around 3 damage I'd say, as opposed to the measly 1 current FoW does.
I mean it's a fair reason to have that fear. Jace completely busted his nut all over Standard for half a year. He had to be banned for crying out loud. However it wasn't just Jace himself that was so good. If you think about it, if Jace was the complete menace everyone seems to remember him being, why is it a deck with him didn't completely unbalance the format until Caw-Blade?
It wasn't just Jace was was absurd in Standard. It was Jace + SFM, + Batterskull + Squadron Hawk + efficient removal and counters, in a Standard environment, where all of the previously mentioend cards were the most powerful things you could be doing.
Compare that list to what is available for Modern. SFM is banned, as such Batterskull is mediocre, Hawk is laughably bad, and while the format has efficient removal, the counters are nowhere near strong enough.
1. The Full Artifact Land Cycle, however only if Mox Opal gets banned
One of the nightmare cards for Robots to deal with is Stony Silence. Imagine Modern, where we have moved back to players actually using Affinity creatures in a deck called Affinity. Running these lands makes your opponent's Ancient Grudges because double Stone Rains. Robots doesn't care about a Blood Moon, but with artifact lands, Stony silence just stops them from ever making mana. Honestly for me this unban would be 100% contingent on them banning Mox Opal. If they don't ban Opal it is too easy to abuse the fast mana. And banning Opal hurts decks like Lantern, and Ironworks, both decks that I love. I honestly don't realistically see the artifact lands coming off the banned list, but it was still something I thought would be interesting.
2. Dig Through Time
DTT got the axe along with Treasure Cruise, when the latter was proven too be a completely busted card. DTT however, while still definitely good, wasn't obscenely broken. Those who played during that time will remember decks like Burn explicitly splashed blue, just to play Treasure Cruise. However decks weren't exactly stretching to play DTT. The UU cost for it makes it so you can't just splash it in your deck. Now yes, DTT is a powerful card, and will most likely give blue decks another push in the direction of powerful options available to them. However if you look at MTGGoldfish at their metashare (which I know is not all that accurate these days, but it's the best I have) there are only 3 blue decks in the Top 12 decks being played; GDS, UW Control, and Jeskai Control. GDS most likely would not run DTT as between Angler and Tasigur you'd have way too many delve spells. And maybe UW and Jeskai control need another push, since Jace didn't seem to do much of anything for them (to the surprise of a lot of people). So maybe DTT is the card blue decks really need to do better in Modern. Who knows. But to me it looks like a safe card to at least try out in the format.
3. Punishing Fire
Is Fire + Grove really that good of a combo in Modern? Honestly, it's debatable. There is a chance that it will be devastating for creature decks, much like Jitte would be. There's also a chance that it does nothing like Sword. I can see some negatives to this card, but at the same time it feels woefully inadequate. Humans is by far one of the better decks in Modern right now. Maybe a card like Punishing Fire will help take it down a notch. Maybe it'll do nothing because of those pesky Kitesail Freebooters or Meddling Mages. We have a lot of really good creatures decks in Modern, perhaps we need something to push back against them a bit.
Well that's it. Those are my three thoughts on things that should/could be unbanned. Do I see #1 happening? Hell No. However I definitely see #2 & #3 as possibilities in the future. What do the rest of you think? I believe I made some sound arguments for the latter 2. The artifact lands are more of a "what-if?" scenario, but I think if they ban Opal unbanning the lands won't be too powerful or format warping for Modern.
Only upside I can think of is it doesn't die to Gutshot
I know that this is always my response when I am talking about taking something off of the Modern banned list. If a card isn't too powerful, why is it banned? If it is on the banned list because it not being there would allow a completely broken deck to be in the format, then you can't say it isn't a powerful card can you?
With concerns to cards being banned, for me there are only 3 reasons a card should be banned in Modern:
1) The card's existence in the format warps the format around whatever deck it is in. This can be seen as a card that makes a specific deck very powerful and format warping (Deathrite Shaman/Eye of Ugin), or a card that adds too much consistency too a deck, making it too large of a metagame share because it is the obvious best deck (Rite of Flame/Ponder).
2) The card is just way too damn powerful. It's a case where in a lot of instances if you aren't running this card you're either playing a specific deck it is bad in, or you're just being bad (Umezawa's Jitte/Treasure Cruise)
3) The card isn't overly powerful, but is definitely strong in Modern in a way that can restrict what WotC wants to develop and release in future sets (Stoneforge Mystic/Birthing Pod)
I can't find the post, but I can easily make the same kind of list.
Battle for Zendikar:
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Painful Truths
Crumble to Dust
Cinder Glade
Sanctum of Ugin
Oath of the Gatewatch
Endbringer
Matter Reshaper
Reality Smasher
Thought-Knot Seer
Warping Wail
Kozilek's Return
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
World Breaker
Reflector Mage
Sea Gate Wreckage
Shadows Over Innistrad
Gryff's Boon
Thalia's Lieutenant
Pieces of the Puzzle
Insolent Neonate
Duskwatch Recruiter
Tireless Tracker
Prized Amalgam
Eldritch Moon
Blessed Alliance
Collective Brutality
Liliana, the Last Hope
Spell Queller
Kaladesh
Ceremonious Rejection
Glint-Nest Crane
Cathartic Reunion
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Kambal, COnsul of Allocation
Inspiring Vantage
Spirebluff Canal
Aether Revolt
Baral, Chief of Compliance
Fatal Push
Renegade Rallier
Walking Ballista
Spire of Industry
Amonkhet
Cartouche of Solidarity
Gideon of the Trials
Vizier of Remedies
Flameblade Adept
Hazoret the Fervent
Sweltering Suns
Rhonas the Indomitable
Hour of Devastation
Hour of Promise
Hollow One
Ixalan
Settle the Wreckage
Opt
Search for Azcanta
Kitesail Freebooter
Hostage Taker
[card}Field of Ruin[/card]
Unclaimed Territory
Rivals of Ixalan
Dire Fleet Daredevil
These cards are grabbed from the Top 20 Modern decks listed on MTGGoldfish. Since we're just trying to make a list of "what is used in Modern" any card that was used, even as a 1-of in the 75 has been included.
Burn is an odd match up. You can put in extra Leylines, get your turn 0 Hexproof, and your opponent just draws a creature heavy draw and you lose if you don't find a Bridge. Or you find a Bridge, don't get Hexproof, and your opponent gets a spell heavy hand.
Let us say that every year they print a set like Modern Masters 2017. Every single year, the price of all the cards in the set will decrease as more cards that people are looking for are added to the supply. This will continue until we have a situation like Masters 25, where you have maybe 5 cards that put you ahead of the cost of the pack, and everything else is *****. And this time, it will be because of the simple fact that everything has been printed into oblivion.
It really isn't that simple.
Let me put it this way. You can't complain about how cards are 'too expensive', and then also complain about how sets like Masters 25 don't have 'enough value'. Both of these ideas are opposed to each other.
If cards are too expensive, the answer is to print more, increasing the supply and therefore dropping the price.
But if you want to open cards worth money, those cards needs to not be reprinted, and thus the supply will be restricted which drives up the price.
WotC could very easily do what the company that prints Yu-Gi-Oh does. IIRC, after their PT equivalent, they print deck tins that are the decks that were in the Top 8 of the tournament. This gives every player access to powerful decks, without having to spend thousands of dollars. However, Magic players want their collections to be worth money, so doing this makes exactly no sense, because in this scenario, your cards are worth nothing.
Me saying, "I don't get it," is me being confused when people want cards to be cheap for them to buy, but then they want them to be expensive as soon as they are in their collection.
You don't need Leyline on Turn 1. Yes in a lot of match ups it definitely helps to have it, but in some instances you want it to act as extra Witchbane Orbs later on. Add to that the fact that you can't sideboard too heavily with this deck since you don't want to be diluting it, and you have why there are only 2 Leylines in the sideboard.
Well first off, those are huge differences between the formats
Having to take 2 damage for your duals lands to enter untapped is a huge reason as to why Burn is honestly a good deck in the format. So many decks deal incidental damage to themselves already, Burn usually only has to really do 14-15 damage most games, which isn't overly difficult.
I'm not even going to touch on how much more powerful Brainstorm is than Visions, that one is plain as day lol.
In one essence, I feel FoW would do to Modern what many people feared Jace would do. It will congeal blue decks towards a specific deck build, while other control decks in the format fail at being nearly as good. Again I'll bring up Burn since most people forget that the alternate cost on FoW does in fact cost you 1 life in addition to the blue card you need to exile.
I feel if Wizards was going to remake FoW for Standard, at the very least the damage it did for the alternate cost would probably be up to around 3 damage I'd say, as opposed to the measly 1 current FoW does.
It wasn't just Jace was was absurd in Standard. It was Jace + SFM, + Batterskull + Squadron Hawk + efficient removal and counters, in a Standard environment, where all of the previously mentioend cards were the most powerful things you could be doing.
Compare that list to what is available for Modern. SFM is banned, as such Batterskull is mediocre, Hawk is laughably bad, and while the format has efficient removal, the counters are nowhere near strong enough.