MTG Salvation

Blighted Moon 2B
Enchantment (R)

Land creatures you control have infect.

As the necrosis spread across the white moon Bringer, Mirrordin found itself bathed in grey and red.

IIW: Original Superheroes

And more decks will be good against it. When scales was actually good last PPTQ season (and I spammed it), we had a spread like this:

Humans (1st) (Very good)
Spirits (2nd) (Very Good)
Tron (3rd) (Favored)
KCI (4th) (Bad)
Hscales (5th) (Even)
GB (6th) (Very Good)
Burn (7th) (Good) (High variance though)
UW Control (8th)(Very Bad)

This contributed to the string of GPs that put our deck on the map so to speak after being jank for a good while previous. The matchup spread is why I eventually qualified for pro tour.

The current meta is pretty unfriendly, which is why we're 9th or 10th at the moment depending on the day's update. The top8 transitioned to:
Humans (1st) (Very Good)
Tron with 4 Karn (2nd) (Bad)
UW Control (Very Bad)
UR Phoenix (Bad)
Dredge (Even)
Amulet Titan (Favored)
Burn (Good)
Monored Phoenix (Favored)

The card is not narrow, at least not more narrow than stoney silence. The problem is that decks that DIDNT play stony silence get this card, and we don't have an easier time removing it because we have no burn. Additionally, green decks actually particularly like this more than stony because it hurts tron a lot more than other available 2 drops.

Unfortunately, introducing stony silence on a bear means that Amulet titan goes from Favored -> Even or Favored -> Disfavored depending on how many they run (they only have to run 1 because they have pact). Humans gets a much easier to cast hate card which is also not Nature's Claimable, meaning we have to either split our side or dilute our main. Our GB matchup gets substantially worse, because they go from barely playing creeping corrosion to instead playing stony silence, though they're also hovering between 9th and 12th at the moment.

My point is that it's not really hyperbole to say "do not bring this to a tournament". The spread is not good enough. You'd basically have to hope that you luck into matchups against decks 7 and 8 for most of the day. It's like prison. Sure there is like 1 or two good matchups like Arclight, but really you shouldn't bring prison to a big tournament right now.

TL:DR - cards get played in decks.

I mean mox tantalite won't be playable at all. Ouphe might make it mainboard in company decks which is... unpleasant for me

OK so apparently the goal of modern horizons was "not change the format much except we delete artifact decks forever". OK.


Like wtf wizards, the free ancient grudge was already good, why does green get searchable stony silence. Why do they think this is fun. What does this add.

As far as I can tell, flusterstorm does almost nothing in modern at the moment. It's worse than Spell Pierce in almost every situation except against storm, which already sucks right now.

Astral Drive seems interesting but I'm honestly not super blown away. Bouncing creatures for end of turn value doesn't seem like a winning plan in the current modern unless Mangara of Corondor or something is way more broken then I imagine.

I actually despise new Karn. I don't even care if it's broken, it just violates almost every principle of card design:

1. One sided "you can't play the game" isn't fun. Even Chalice of the Void or Ensnaring Bridge are more fun than this because they impose deckbuilding constraints. Making cards that counter themselves is not fun. Colorless decks will run more Karns, not less, the more popular Karn colorless becomes. It's like if hydroblast hit blue spells, it's just boring design.

2. Why does it get things from exile. This doesn't make sense and is wholly unecessary for a toolbox card. It probably won't be relevant, but it irritates me to no end. Wizards has repeatedly said they don't want exile to become graveyard 2.0. Why.

3. Look man, tron is already really good, and also one of the most unpopular decks in the format. This is like when they printed creeping chill. I don't understand what R&D was thinking when they designed this card. "Oh my god everyone is complaining about how good Hardened Scales is and how they really miss and love tron/prison"?

I understand I'm personally biased in that regard, but whenever you print a big hoser that's also an alternate wincon, you have to consider the people already invested in the game. Sure, when I was still on twin, if they printed a torpor orb/ win-con then fair enough. But this seems like anti-KCI tech for a meta where KCI is banned.

Circle of Life 1UWG
Artifact (M)

Whenever you cast a spell, you may counter it. If you do, you may choose one of the following:

Put X 1/1 bird tokens with flying onto the battlefield
Put 1 X/X beast token with trample onto the battlefield
Gain X life

Where X is the spell's converted mana cost.

It turns out all energy can be converted into life

Less Complicated


IIW: Genre Subversion
AN: This would have been a lot more elegant with only one ability, but I like cool things haha. Also, for the previous thing, I may have stopped reading before the "Uncommon" part; kinda thought I was making a Mythic Rare lol.

Omai Wa//Shinderu
U
Instant
Target creature is unblockable this turn

Shinderu
BB
Instant
Aftermath - If an opponent was dealt damage this turn, that player sacrifices target creature.

NANI?!

iiw: make a lynchpin card for an unused tribe.

See weirdly I'd be quite on-board with Deathrite if only it cost (G) and was a 1/1. Like it's stupid powerful, fine, but honestly it seems like it'd be nice as a regulating force in modern. The main problem I have with it is that every black deck also plays it.


I reiterate, I want to see containment priest and leovold, emissary of trest.

Also, dredge would 1000% play ichorid. The list would just look a bit different. (Think closer to bridgevine, but now it can also grind you out and is faster)

Has Gokurou ever asserted that modern is the best it's ever been in relation to the current phoenix meta? I keep seeing Renegade Rallier mention it over and over in response to posts that don't contain the statement.



Anyway, I'm probably a bit biased because I am very fond of Vengevine, but I'd actually prefer targeted bans at each of the "problem" decks even though it's "messier". For example, I'd very much prefer bans on Phoenix, Creeping Chill to bans on manamorphose or faithless looting. I don't like causing huge amounts of splash damage, and without the payoffs, the meta seems like it would shift back to the humans one, which most people were fine with.

Also, i don't think Hardened Scales gets dominant in the new meta. The matchup against control is so miserable that it might actually be worse.

Quote from Mallwan »

Can someone explain this to me: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/grand-prix-los-angeles-2019#paper

There was only 1 burn deck in the top 32? How is that possible? and look at the top cards played right now...
Looks like the Steel overseer has "won" over Mimic and Llanowar Reborn is "better" than Ruins of Oran-Rief which I still don't understand

edit: How can WOTC not reprint Surgical Extraction and Manamorphose in some stupid from the vault: Spells set? These ******* prices...

Yeah, and overseer is honestly nearly as fast as mimic in many cases, especially if there is no HS resolved. In games where you are rushing down, it's just way better in general.



The reason that Llanowar Reborn is better than Ruins of Oran-Rief is threefold:
1. Green - this is actually really important. We're cutting so much green for Darksteels and Inkmoths that those last few land slots are relatively precious.

2. Mana Efficient - You don't have to pay for the graft counter, which is actually kind of huge because of how Modern be right now (Top Deck Phoenix, 2nd Deck Dredge). Oran Rief is something that isn't likely to contribute more than llanowar did to the board state by turn 4-5, which is honestly around when games are usually decided.
EX: turn 3 llanowar -> grafted ballista (4/4) -> turn 4 casting 2, 2drops -> turn 5 casting something
turn 3 ruins -> non-grafted ballista (2/2) -> turn 4 casting 2, 2 drops -> turn 5 using oran rief for the first time

3. Redundancy - The time when Oran Rief is really good is when you're in top deck mode. However, the problem here is that the deck does either remarkably well in equivalent topdeck wars with decks like GB or even Grixis now, and remarkably terribly in topdeck wars against decks like UW or Prison. So it ends up being redundant or not useful where it's supposed to be great.

Those are nice examples, but none of that had to do with my response. I never said they were right or wrong, I said you're misrepresenting what was shared by their video and opinions.

Those who say "I can't take LSV and Matt Nass seriously" clearly haven't seen the video. Not that I agree with them necessarily, but they arguments are much more nuanced that "Free Twin, keep SFM banned". Just dismissing them like they said nothing is not really constructive.

Okay guys. Let's talk about how absurd Deathrite Shaman actually is. What I hope to show by the end of this is how Deathrite Shaman warps deck construction around him and does far more for the Jund/k decks than the naysayers are giving him credit for. I'm going to do this by comparing him to another well-known mana dork, and one that actually see some Modern play.



Here he is: the classic, the originial, the grand-daddy of them all: Birds of Paradise. He's all you could ever want; a one mana card that will not only fix all of your colors of mana, but will ramp you forward one turn of mana as well. This little guy is the dream; the gold-standard of mana dorks.

Let's talk about how you construct a deck that uses the little bird. In order for him to be useful, you need to have access to green mana on the first turn of the game. This means that your deck needs to have a preponderance of green mana; you need to have a lot of Forests, and your fetchlands will be targeting Forests more often than not as well. You will be leaning heavily on this card, because you will be warping your mana base around him in order to make him optimal.

If you want to lean on Birds, he forces your deck to be streamlined. You can't risk your entire gameplan on this guy; he can enable splashes, but if you're going to use him to produce mana, you can't lean on him to produce mana of all colors because your plan is screwed when he eats a Lightning Bolt. There's a reason you only see him in Pod decks: those decks want acceleration for Birthing Pod, want to be able to hardcast their creatures (of all colors) in a pinch, but aren't reliant on him to be able to execute their game plan.

That's also why Jund decks never ran this guy before. A Turn 2 Liliana of the Veil followed up by a Turn 3 Bloodbraid Elf sounds absolutely sweet. But now we're talking about warping not only our deck construction, but our fetchland orders as well. In order to get a Turn 3 Liliana, we almost certainly are forced to fetch an Overgrown Tomb and shock ourselves to make it happen.

In short, Birds is a good card, but encourages a synergistic, streamlined approach to deck building.



The first thing I want to talk about is this guy's mana cost. He costs a hybrid black/green. When I first saw him spoiled, I exclaimed "They printed a black mana dork!" And that's exactly what has happened - there now exists a mana dork that doesn't require your deck to be base green, or warp your fetchland ordering around him.

Let me rephrase this another way. Traditionally, mana dorks are base green, and fix other colors for you. Deathrite Shaman is a mana dork that can fix for green rather than fixing from green. That's certifiably insane.

Do you want proof of what this guy was doing? I'm going to bring up a couple of examples that I hope show the way that this guy has warped deck construction since his printing. Let's look at Yuuya Watanabe's winning deck from the Player's Championship in 2012 (prior to the release of Return to Ravnica):



Notice how focused the manabase is? Only five fetchlands, with three filter lands to deal with the rough :symb::symb: and :symg::symg: requirements. His deck is classic Jund, with an almost equal distribution of green and black, splashing red for removal.

Now, let's go back to the most recent GP with a Jund/k deck in the top 8. Let's look at Eric Froelich's deck. He describes it himself as "Jund" in the coverage, despite how monstrous the construction has actually become:



Look how insane this deck is. We're looking at a deck with color requirements all over the place; huge chunks of white, black, red, and what has become a relatively small splash of green. This is greed at its finest; we see 8 fetchlands, 1-ofs of each relevant dual land, a hedge between two different man-lands, etc, etc, etc.

There was nothing stopping Yuuya, and all of the other Jund pilots at the time, from playing this list prior to the Return to Ravnica - other than the manabase. This deck doesn't exist because Wizards suddenly printed a bunch of great white cards that the Jund decks want to splash for. It exists because they printed Deathrite Shaman and now literally anything goes.

In Closing
Deathrite Shaman warps deck construction in a way that enables consistency while promoting greedy mana bases. His presence has created the 4C Goodstuff archetype, which didn't exist before his printing. I will leave it up to the reader to determine if they think this is a good or bad thing. But to say "Deathrite Shaman is just a mana dork with slight upside that dies to a removal spell" is to be willingly obtuse. This card is the stone cold nuts, and is one of the cornerstones of the Modern format.

I am proposing to the moderation team of this forum to take action of locking and delete this thread with the positive intentions to create a new one.

Why?

1) There is over 70% of the posts in this thread non-related to bannings. If I personally got infracted for spam, I have no idea how this entire thread has not been infracted.

2) This is not contributing towards any positive discussion at the moment, and the previous posts are already setting a tone of negative endeavors in any future posts.

3) There is a large amount of misunderstanding and uneducated responses in this thread, beyond the fact that no one is reading the first post in the thread with all the information in it. I suggest a new color of text to make the first post more noticeable and re-title the thread to include you must read the first post as a rule before posting in this specific thread.

I am sorry for my hostile actions in this thread previously, I am losing patience dealing with this community, and again I apologize.

If you agree with renewing this thread please thank this post and contact the moderators as I have.

Quote from Blood Lightning

Your comment and all the rest of the comments about the Vraska are garbage. He's not asking what YOU value it at. In every single misprint thread people chime in with spam like this. Obviously misprints/miscuts etc.. have a niche market, everyone knows that already.

@jerbo A misprint like that should fetch considerably more than a regular one's market value if it's legal for tournament play.

I concur that its worth more then what people are suggesting, the only problem is that its an opinion-based market. So when they say they'd trade for it at +$5, its a valid statement, but doesn't necessarily set a gold standard. Someone that collects miscuts such as Gunslinga may pay +$20, yet you may never find that person.

Moral: All people can really do is say what they'd think would be fair, but as with any collector's market the right buyer will make all the difference in the world.

I would say make it known that you have it and sit on offers. Its a miscut planeswalker from a large set with some cool things going for it, I'd take my chances on waiting for the right offer.

However, if you name a creature you intend to copy prematurely, when you cast it, the opponent has a chance to respond to the spell on the stack before you actually get to make that choice. If they remove the creature you named, then when the copy creature enters, you get to make a new legal choice at that time. If there are no other creatures/artifacts to copy at that point (or you choose not to copy anything), then the copy enters as a 0/0 Phyrexian Metamorph, and goes to the graveyard immediately for having 0 toughness.