Nobody really hyping up Urza because they want to lock in their copies at a reasonable price first?
I'm almost positive that this will either be banned or unofficially shunned from Commander (it's true home). It's wholly irrelevant to Modern, and just... really encourages broken awful play lines in Commander. It's an enabler and payoff all in one card. It's GROSSSSS.
It's not irrelevant IMO, it makes the Thopter-Sword combo generate inifinite mana that you can use for the Mind Desire ability and win on the spot
2. Modern is currently healthy in Wizards' eyes. So take a snapshot of Modern for the past few months: that's healthy. If you don't like that, you are probably out of sync with Wizards' views on format health.
WOTC things an abundance of high variance graveyard abuse is healthy. I guess it's time to sell out of the format? I have heard many people compare the past few months to how awful the GGT/Probe meta was, and I agree with them. I'm curious how many at WOTC actually play competitive Modern, instead of simply look at excel spreadsheets of deck labels and card names.
Well, based on the announcement itself, it seems like they were focused on the MC results to assess Modern's health:
We were happy with the outcome of the Modern portion of Mythic Championship II
Which seems super loose after some months of Phoenix dominance (at least in metagame share).
We already know that we shouldn't make conclusions from a small sample size and that PTs MCs are not the greatest data source since it combines limited and players are trying to metagame everyone else as there aren't that many players compared to a GP, so using the London MC that tested a new mulligan rule and also gave decklist information, seems rather questionable.
I agree that no changes is probably the best outcome for Modern right now but I didn't like that they used the MC as an indicator of how Modern fares to be honest.
I think most people agree that the reserve list doesn't make much sense today but it's probably going to stay forever.
As long as a card doesn't check all boxes, it can be printed. The new Hermit has a different ability than the older one so it's compliant with these rules.
However, I think there is also one thing to keep in mind: WoTC won't trick themsleves to break the rule as they are more concerned with the spirit of the rule itself.
They won't print improved duals (let's say they gain you life when they ETB) since that would probably make duals value go down and that's precisely what the reserve list was trying to avoid
I think the total reprints in horizons is somewhere between like ten and twenty?
Is this confirmed? I have searched but couldn't find how many cards will be reprinted, I hope is a bit more than that, 20 cards out of 254 seems a bit underwhelming
As long as skillful players deem it necessary to put Surgical Extraction in their mainboard I will not consider Modern to be "fine".
Why? When everybody and their mom were playing Midrange (aka DRS times) people played things like Elspeth, Sun's Champion in their main, cause it was so darn good vs the metagame.
Well, the difference is that Elspeth is a card you could want to include as part of your strategy, not for the sole purpose of not being annihilated game 1
After some more testing I came to the conclusion that Ancestral Vision was not helping me too much, I am not able to cast it without using a combo piece so I can't use it to find my relevant spells as I do with Faithless Looting. Also, there is no way for me to put Wheel of Fate in the graveyard except for casting it with Electrodominance or discarding it with Faithless Looting. You can see where this is going, a huge inconsistency in how my strategy develops.
After playing a paper Magic tournament last Saturday, I finally got a grip of the issue so I decided to make some changes to improve it, here is my latest version:
Decided to change from white to green since the only enchantments that are really troublesome are Leyline of Sanctity and Worship, that way, we can get the Great Artifact spot removal that is Ancient Grudge, that also works great with Steam-Kin and Shrine (2 spells in 1 card). Grudge is really useful to deal with Damping Sphere and a lot of decks are packing it right now so I wouldn't play without some Grudges in my sideboard.
As to how I plan to beat those 2 annoying enchantments, I decided to include a singleton Laboratory Maniac since it's easy to draw our whole library once we are comboing off. There are a couple singletons in my sideboard that may seem odd:
Dragon's Claw is a concession to burn, Eidolon of the Great Revel is really painful and filling their hand is not ideal when they are sending fire to your face. Maybe is not worth to include just 1 copy but reserving more space in the sideboard feels even worse and maybe the best call is to simply try to goldfish or bust vs them.
Shatterstorm is great to deal with Whir prison and/or Hardened scales, specially since it doesn't care for Welding Jar, I used to play 2 copies but after including Grudge, I feel like I could be fine with 1 of these.
Blood Moon is a great gotcha card that slows tron and titanshift enough to develop our combo, unfortunately, it is one of those cards where drawing additional copies becomes an issue since it doesn't help with our main gameplan, that's why I play just 1 copy.
Ravenous trap only enters in a few matchups like Dredge, Living End variants and Storm to disrupt their combo, these decks get help from us since we are filling their graveyard and hand for them so having a surprise exile all your graveyard effect seems necessary. Other options like Tormod's Crypt have a problem and is they can play around it since they know the effect is there, I like the surprise element of the Trap but maybe I am mistaken and Tormod's is the right call.
In the mainboard, you can see there are 2 Gut Shot, this card fits nicely since it clears the way from opposing thalias or buy us time killing a dork, a Champion of the Parish or a Thalia's Liutenant before they get out of hand, but the actual reason why I included it is that sometimes I would wiff mid-combo as I just needed one more red spell to put the 3rd counter on Steam-Kin so having a free red spell would help getting extra mana in those scenarios and Gut Shot just happened to be the best fit.
I think this version is a bit more optimized and consistent. I am unsure about the lands. Realistically I just want to hit a couple lands at the beginning and then I'd rather have SSG for the extra mana to go off. Adding more lands could help but it would also increaseing the chance of wiff mid-combo and I really don't want to take out SSG since it provides 2 mana plays on turn 1 that can be auto-wins (Shrine on turn1 postsideboard vs control is great, they usually bring in graveyard hate and can only deal with it through Cryptic Command.
Any help in that regard would be appreciated.
Ok, so yesterday I was able to test a bit on MTGO, buying copies of Finale of Promise was difficult as most bots were out of stock but in the end I managed to get my playset and goldfish a little bit in the tournament practice room.
I had already made a small change in the list that has a huge impact on the deck's performance and that change was removing the only blue cantrip and replace it with a Runaway Steam-Kin. The amount of mana it generates makes it more unlikely to fizzle mid combo as it generates an insane amount of mana and it pairs really well with Electrodominance. Usually we would only use Electrodominance as a way to cheat our Suspend spells but with so much mana it also becomes a win condition on its own (and it doesn't use the graveyard so there is that), yesterday I was able to win some games like that, one of them I actually used Electrodominance to cast Grapeshot at instant speed in response to a Sphinx's Revelation dealing enough damage off both spells to kill the opponent.
I didn't have time to play a League as it was already late by the time I got the cards but I will try some this weekend and give some feedback. I like how the sideboard turned out as both Shrine and Gut Shot are coheseive with our maindeck plan, Gut Shot generates mana with Steam-Kin and Shrine is easy to trigger when you have 41 red spells (37 if you don't count SSG as you are more likely exiling it for mana). Ravenous Trap is also easy to trigger once you resolve Wheel of Fate, so all in all I think this could actually work nicely, here is my current build:
Maybe we can another blue mana source at this point since it only allows to Suspend Ancestral Vision, maybe 1 Steam Vents is enough for that, I already took Spirebluff Canal out as I want my lands to enter untapped everytime I need it and I wasn't using blue mana anyway.
Finale of Promise on Increasing Vengeance sounds sweet! I think it works (copy twice is clear, my doubt is if Ancestral would be on the stack already by the time we cast Increasing Vengeance) but I am not sure, let's say we cast Finale with x=2 targeting Ancestral Vision + Increasing Vengeance.
Since it's all part of Finale's resolution, I imagine we can order the stack so we cast Ancestral first and then Vengeance targeting Ancestral, otherwise there is no window to target it with Increasing Vengeance, right?
BTW, I had a chance to do this yesterday, it works and it feels great to spend 4 mana on a Finale of Promise to draw 9 cards
Yeah, it was surprising to see how they consider Splinter Twin easier to hate with removal spells than Stoneforge Mystic when they are actually mentioning 1 mana removal spells like Dismember as answers
Commenting on Chrome Mox and artifact lands (both are extremely powerful) before other much more innocuous stuff like Punishing Fire was quite surprising to me. I think Birthing Pod, Dig Through Time or Ponder would have been more interesting cards to discuss here IMO.
I liked their reasoning with Green Sun's Zenith and how it could shape Devoted Druid decks more towards Melira than to Vizier, I think it could enhance the deck without making it OP so that would be an interesting addition to the format. Not sure if Dryad Arbor off GSZ would still be an interaction that would give the deck too much consistency in the early game but I think it's worth testing it.
Anyway, I don't expect changes until Modern Horizons is released and the metagame has settled afterwards.
Regarding goldfishing, I have tried to do it with hand sampling tools, it feels like some upgrades would be welcome to increase consistency. I will MODO test it for sure as I expect London mulligan to help these kind of decks (we can mull to 4 and reset the game (we keep 7 in hand so it's even better since we net a card and have a chance to screw our opponent's opening hand) if we find land + SSG + Electrodominance + Wheel). Not a likely scenario, but it could happen a bit more with this new mulligan system.
Thought Scour is not great, I agree. Maybe Sleight of Hand or Serum Visions could be better for cycling and finding the pieces, I included it at first since the potential synergy but a blind draw is not great and we need to find the pieces to cast our suspend spells. What would be better then? Sleight or Serum? I think it's probably worth making room for both but if only 1 could make the cut I think I prefer Sleight of Hand.
EDIT: I am starting to doubt if Ancestral Vision is really worth 4 slots, it's basically plan B on free spells and maybe sometimes Suspend on turn 1 but it doesn't really seem necessary to go off so maybe cutting some copies could be good and help make room for more cantrips
Finale of Promise on Increasing Vengeance sounds sweet! I think it works (copy twice is clear, my doubt is if Ancestral would be on the stack already by the time we cast Increasing Vengeance) but I am not sure, let's say we cast Finale with x=2 targeting Ancestral Vision + Increasing Vengeance.
Since it's all part of Finale's resolution, I imagine we can order the stack so we cast Ancestral first and then Vengeance targeting Ancestral, otherwise there is no window to target it with Increasing Vengeance, right?
Since Finale of Promise was spoiled, I have been thinking of ways to break the card besides the obvious "reanimate all your Arclight Phoenix with just 1 card" and the next scenario where this could become cute is casting suspend cards without a mana cost such as Ancestral Vision or Living End.
One of these suspend cards is Wheel of Fate and draw 7 effects have been historically powerful so I thought it could be an interesting card to test. I also realized that casting Finale is great for storm purposes and that it can also recycle an already used Electrodominance to keep going off so I decided to create what I like to call the Final-e Storm:
The idea is to float enough mana (I think 4 mana should be enough) to cast our first Wheel of Fate via Electrodominance (or Finale of Promise if we discarded it with Faithless Looting while setting up), from there we can keep netting mana from Simian Spirit Guide + rituals and keep churning through our draw effects to then cast Past in Flames, keep netting mana and drawing cards while upping our storm count to finish the game with Grapeshot. If we get lucky, we can do this as early as turn 1 so there is that.
Maybe Serum Visions and/or Sleight of Hand should be there to have better consistency in setting up but I think Looting helps us more in that regard and we can make up for the card disadvantage it generates, it also helps mid-combo to avoid fizzling since it has flashback so I decided to include Thought Scour as it could potentially helps us set up Finale of Promise.
Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas on how to improve this concept
Im not the only one who thought Finale of Promise will slot right in to UR Storm, am I? It works so well with a deck with tons of rituals that wants to be casting tons of spells per turn. Even ignoring the "supercharged" version, casting it for X=2 and getting to cast a ritual and grapeshot for free sounds like some craaaazy gas.
Wheel of Fate storm could become a thing. T1 Looting, T2 rituals into Finale of Promise to cast wheel from graveyard while floating mana, it gets even sillier with electrodominance (cast finale with X=2, draw 7, net more mana from freshly drawn cards, resolve electrodominance and maybe cast Ancestral Vision or another wheel if you drew it from the previous one, etc), it also works well with Manamorphose since it nets you back the mana you spend and you also net a card
Dread Return makes dredge somewhat better than it is currently, but it doesn't solve any of dredge's problems. It still loses to the same graveyard hate that it currently does.
Having played Dredge in Vintage with Bridge from Below and Dread Return, I think you don't realize how explosive the nut draws can be when you have access to a free reanimation spell that creates an army of zombies when you cast it.
Seriously, it's one of those cards you don't realize how stupidly strong it is until you play it.
It's not irrelevant IMO, it makes the Thopter-Sword combo generate inifinite mana that you can use for the Mind Desire ability and win on the spot
These are the other cards I could find that might be interesting for what you want:
Wheel of Fate, Lore Broker, Dark Deal, Noggle Ransacker and Reforge the Soul
Well, based on the announcement itself, it seems like they were focused on the MC results to assess Modern's health:
Which seems super loose after some months of Phoenix dominance (at least in metagame share).
We already know that we shouldn't make conclusions from a small sample size and that
PTsMCs are not the greatest data source since it combines limited and players are trying to metagame everyone else as there aren't that many players compared to a GP, so using the London MC that tested a new mulligan rule and also gave decklist information, seems rather questionable.I agree that no changes is probably the best outcome for Modern right now but I didn't like that they used the MC as an indicator of how Modern fares to be honest.
I think most people agree that the reserve list doesn't make much sense today but it's probably going to stay forever.
As long as a card doesn't check all boxes, it can be printed. The new Hermit has a different ability than the older one so it's compliant with these rules.
However, I think there is also one thing to keep in mind: WoTC won't trick themsleves to break the rule as they are more concerned with the spirit of the rule itself.
They won't print improved duals (let's say they gain you life when they ETB) since that would probably make duals value go down and that's precisely what the reserve list was trying to avoid
Is this confirmed? I have searched but couldn't find how many cards will be reprinted, I hope is a bit more than that, 20 cards out of 254 seems a bit underwhelming
They were not taking about Cabal Therapy but Cabal Ritual
Well, the difference is that Elspeth is a card you could want to include as part of your strategy, not for the sole purpose of not being annihilated game 1
After playing a paper Magic tournament last Saturday, I finally got a grip of the issue so I decided to make some changes to improve it, here is my latest version:
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Runaway Steam-Kin
Spells (37)
4 Wheel of Fate
2 Gut Shot
4 Faithless Looting
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Electrodominance
3 Cathartic Reunion
2 Grapeshot
4 Manamorphose
4 Pyretic Ritual
2 Past in Flames
4 Finale of Promise
1 Stomping Ground
6 Mountain
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Steam Vents
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Ravenous Trap
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Lightning Axe
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Shatterstorm
1 Blood Moon
1 Dragon's Claw
Decided to change from white to green since the only enchantments that are really troublesome are Leyline of Sanctity and Worship, that way, we can get the Great Artifact spot removal that is Ancient Grudge, that also works great with Steam-Kin and Shrine (2 spells in 1 card). Grudge is really useful to deal with Damping Sphere and a lot of decks are packing it right now so I wouldn't play without some Grudges in my sideboard.
As to how I plan to beat those 2 annoying enchantments, I decided to include a singleton Laboratory Maniac since it's easy to draw our whole library once we are comboing off. There are a couple singletons in my sideboard that may seem odd:
Dragon's Claw is a concession to burn, Eidolon of the Great Revel is really painful and filling their hand is not ideal when they are sending fire to your face. Maybe is not worth to include just 1 copy but reserving more space in the sideboard feels even worse and maybe the best call is to simply try to goldfish or bust vs them.
Shatterstorm is great to deal with Whir prison and/or Hardened scales, specially since it doesn't care for Welding Jar, I used to play 2 copies but after including Grudge, I feel like I could be fine with 1 of these.
Blood Moon is a great gotcha card that slows tron and titanshift enough to develop our combo, unfortunately, it is one of those cards where drawing additional copies becomes an issue since it doesn't help with our main gameplan, that's why I play just 1 copy.
Ravenous trap only enters in a few matchups like Dredge, Living End variants and Storm to disrupt their combo, these decks get help from us since we are filling their graveyard and hand for them so having a surprise exile all your graveyard effect seems necessary. Other options like Tormod's Crypt have a problem and is they can play around it since they know the effect is there, I like the surprise element of the Trap but maybe I am mistaken and Tormod's is the right call.
In the mainboard, you can see there are 2 Gut Shot, this card fits nicely since it clears the way from opposing thalias or buy us time killing a dork, a Champion of the Parish or a Thalia's Liutenant before they get out of hand, but the actual reason why I included it is that sometimes I would wiff mid-combo as I just needed one more red spell to put the 3rd counter on Steam-Kin so having a free red spell would help getting extra mana in those scenarios and Gut Shot just happened to be the best fit.
I think this version is a bit more optimized and consistent. I am unsure about the lands. Realistically I just want to hit a couple lands at the beginning and then I'd rather have SSG for the extra mana to go off. Adding more lands could help but it would also increaseing the chance of wiff mid-combo and I really don't want to take out SSG since it provides 2 mana plays on turn 1 that can be auto-wins (Shrine on turn1 postsideboard vs control is great, they usually bring in graveyard hate and can only deal with it through Cryptic Command.
Any help in that regard would be appreciated.
I had already made a small change in the list that has a huge impact on the deck's performance and that change was removing the only blue cantrip and replace it with a Runaway Steam-Kin. The amount of mana it generates makes it more unlikely to fizzle mid combo as it generates an insane amount of mana and it pairs really well with Electrodominance. Usually we would only use Electrodominance as a way to cheat our Suspend spells but with so much mana it also becomes a win condition on its own (and it doesn't use the graveyard so there is that), yesterday I was able to win some games like that, one of them I actually used Electrodominance to cast Grapeshot at instant speed in response to a Sphinx's Revelation dealing enough damage off both spells to kill the opponent.
I didn't have time to play a League as it was already late by the time I got the cards but I will try some this weekend and give some feedback. I like how the sideboard turned out as both Shrine and Gut Shot are coheseive with our maindeck plan, Gut Shot generates mana with Steam-Kin and Shrine is easy to trigger when you have 41 red spells (37 if you don't count SSG as you are more likely exiling it for mana). Ravenous Trap is also easy to trigger once you resolve Wheel of Fate, so all in all I think this could actually work nicely, here is my current build:
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Runaway Steam-Kin
Spells (36)
3 Ancestral Vision
4 Wheel of Fate
4 Faithless Looting
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Electrodominance
2 Grapeshot
4 Manamorphose
4 Pyretic Ritual
2 Past in Flames
4 Finale of Promise
1 Increasing Vengeance
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Sacred Fountain
6 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Ravenous Trap
3 Wear // Tear
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
4 Gut Shot
Maybe we can another blue mana source at this point since it only allows to Suspend Ancestral Vision, maybe 1 Steam Vents is enough for that, I already took Spirebluff Canal out as I want my lands to enter untapped everytime I need it and I wasn't using blue mana anyway.
BTW, I had a chance to do this yesterday, it works and it feels great to spend 4 mana on a Finale of Promise to draw 9 cards
Commenting on Chrome Mox and artifact lands (both are extremely powerful) before other much more innocuous stuff like Punishing Fire was quite surprising to me. I think Birthing Pod, Dig Through Time or Ponder would have been more interesting cards to discuss here IMO.
I liked their reasoning with Green Sun's Zenith and how it could shape Devoted Druid decks more towards Melira than to Vizier, I think it could enhance the deck without making it OP so that would be an interesting addition to the format. Not sure if Dryad Arbor off GSZ would still be an interaction that would give the deck too much consistency in the early game but I think it's worth testing it.
Anyway, I don't expect changes until Modern Horizons is released and the metagame has settled afterwards.
Regarding goldfishing, I have tried to do it with hand sampling tools, it feels like some upgrades would be welcome to increase consistency. I will MODO test it for sure as I expect London mulligan to help these kind of decks (we can mull to 4 and reset the game (we keep 7 in hand so it's even better since we net a card and have a chance to screw our opponent's opening hand) if we find land + SSG + Electrodominance + Wheel). Not a likely scenario, but it could happen a bit more with this new mulligan system.
Thought Scour is not great, I agree. Maybe Sleight of Hand or Serum Visions could be better for cycling and finding the pieces, I included it at first since the potential synergy but a blind draw is not great and we need to find the pieces to cast our suspend spells. What would be better then? Sleight or Serum? I think it's probably worth making room for both but if only 1 could make the cut I think I prefer Sleight of Hand.
EDIT: I am starting to doubt if Ancestral Vision is really worth 4 slots, it's basically plan B on free spells and maybe sometimes Suspend on turn 1 but it doesn't really seem necessary to go off so maybe cutting some copies could be good and help make room for more cantrips
Finale of Promise on Increasing Vengeance sounds sweet! I think it works (copy twice is clear, my doubt is if Ancestral would be on the stack already by the time we cast Increasing Vengeance) but I am not sure, let's say we cast Finale with x=2 targeting Ancestral Vision + Increasing Vengeance.
Since it's all part of Finale's resolution, I imagine we can order the stack so we cast Ancestral first and then Vengeance targeting Ancestral, otherwise there is no window to target it with Increasing Vengeance, right?
One of these suspend cards is Wheel of Fate and draw 7 effects have been historically powerful so I thought it could be an interesting card to test. I also realized that casting Finale is great for storm purposes and that it can also recycle an already used Electrodominance to keep going off so I decided to create what I like to call the Final-e Storm:
4 Simian Spirit Guide
Spells (36)
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Wheel of Fate
4 Faithless Looting
4 Thought Scour
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Electrodominance
2 Grapeshot
4 Manamorphose
4 Pyretic Ritual
2 Past in Flames
4 Finale of Promise
1 Arid Mesa
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
3 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
3 Grim Lavamancer
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Echoing Truth
3 Empty the Warrens
2 Ravenous Trap
3 Wear // Tear
The idea is to float enough mana (I think 4 mana should be enough) to cast our first Wheel of Fate via Electrodominance (or Finale of Promise if we discarded it with Faithless Looting while setting up), from there we can keep netting mana from Simian Spirit Guide + rituals and keep churning through our draw effects to then cast Past in Flames, keep netting mana and drawing cards while upping our storm count to finish the game with Grapeshot. If we get lucky, we can do this as early as turn 1 so there is that.
Maybe Serum Visions and/or Sleight of Hand should be there to have better consistency in setting up but I think Looting helps us more in that regard and we can make up for the card disadvantage it generates, it also helps mid-combo to avoid fizzling since it has flashback so I decided to include Thought Scour as it could potentially helps us set up Finale of Promise.
Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas on how to improve this concept
Wheel of Fate storm could become a thing. T1 Looting, T2 rituals into Finale of Promise to cast wheel from graveyard while floating mana, it gets even sillier with electrodominance (cast finale with X=2, draw 7, net more mana from freshly drawn cards, resolve electrodominance and maybe cast Ancestral Vision or another wheel if you drew it from the previous one, etc), it also works well with Manamorphose since it nets you back the mana you spend and you also net a card
Having played Dredge in Vintage with Bridge from Below and Dread Return, I think you don't realize how explosive the nut draws can be when you have access to a free reanimation spell that creates an army of zombies when you cast it.
Seriously, it's one of those cards you don't realize how stupidly strong it is until you play it.