the next announcement is the only time they can unban SFM before horizons. under normal circumstances id say that the recent and upcoming results might weigh in on the decision; however they are kinda priced in to their decision because sfm is either reprinted in horizons or it isnt. unlike a non-modern masters set, sfms presence cant be explained away. an unban without a reprint is a possibility, but i could see them viewing it as too much too quickly.
If I recall correctly, MaRo already confirmed that they were not going to repring any card from a modern-legal set, that includes banned cards like SFM so we have confirmation that SFM will not be in Modern Horizons.
On the top10 power level including Cabal Therapist, I am secretly hoping we misjudged the card and it ends up being better than we expected. Otherwise we can expect about 4 or 5 cards to have a significant impact on the metagame.
I am expecting Astral Slide to be one of those cards and if it is, it should create a whole new archetype which is always positive, so even if it is just 4 or 5 cards, if they have such a big impact to create new archetypes, the set would still have a great impact on the overall picture.
I just hope one of those is not a new mythic that is only available in Modern horizons, but that belongs in the prices discussion
Repudiate has been sweet! It's won a couple games against Amulet Titan. I even countered the bounce-a-land effect to keep his Tolaria West on the field that would have otherwise got a Summoner's Pact -> threat/blocker.
You could also let the bounce resolve and counter the transmute ability (discarding Tolaria West is a cost so they would lose it)
This way you don't have to worry for them to bounce it again next turn and transmute into a Titan
Weren't both BBE and DRS legal during the TC meta? Also, Scapeshift, even with DTT, wasn't as good as people think it was. I was on it at the time, and my dude, that deck was a pile. It was way too slow for the format, was in the unenviable position of getting smacked around by Pod and Delver, and wasn't able to fuel DTT properly.
DRS was banned in January 2014 and Khans of Tarkir was released on September 2014 so no, DRS was not legal by the time Treasure Cruise entered the format
Dig Through Time possibly shouldn't have been banned so early, but it would most likely have caused a problem pretty soon after Cruise and Pod were banned. It is almost 100% certain. So in my honest opinion, I think it was premature, but Dig definitely would have earned its spot on the Ban List eventually (sooner, not later, lol)
Yeah, that was exactly my point. We didn't have a chance to see it in action without the shadow of Treasure Cruise. The card is very strong and it could have been broken to the point of getting banned but it didn't even have the chance to do so.
This discussion about DTT being fair is kind of puzzling to me. Can anyone think of how bloody powerful UR Phoenix would be with DTT?!
I think this is a good example to showcase the difference between the cards.
I am pretty sure DTT would be tried in Phoenix but I don't think it would be as good as you say, and I am pretty sure nobody would play 4 copies, paying UU to get 2 cards (1 spell) could be worse than playing 2 U cantrips like Serum Visions both for triggering Phoenix or to flip TiTi. Yes, the card is powerful but its nature doesn't really help with the Phoenix or TiTi plan of casting many spells per turn.
Treasure Cruise on the other hand would be insane in Phoenix and most likely 4 copies would be played, from turns 3+ it is the replacement for any cantrip, same cost (U) but you draw 3, doesn't slow you down regarding spells/mana spent and it nets better card advantage, it's exactly the kind of card any Xerox deck wants
@headminerve Yeah, in Jeskai Ascendancy both cards were replaceable but as I said , this is something special about that deck that doesn't apply to any other deck as no other deck could make the switch so easily, Burn was never going to be able to play Dig and I doubt it would even do it if it could (I think I would rather have Light up the Stage for 1 mana than DTT for 2 in burn).
As I said, I think the card promotes decks that are not seeing much play now as I believe it doesn't fit that well in proactive strategies like Phoenix. I know it probably won't be unbanned anytime soon but I wanted to ask what was the perception for someone who plays no banlist modern. There are other cards in the banlist that I think could help slowing down the overall format speed and I would welcome in Modern (SFM and Punishing Fire mainly).
Overall I think Modern would be more enjoyable if it slowed down a bit as right now it feels like there are too many archetypes trying to goldfish, fortunately some decks like BG are trying to slow them down, but these decks are a minority.
WotC assumed they had to ban both as TC would be replaced by DTT in every deck
It's not quite what they said, and they'd probably have a refined judgement if the community asked them today. DTT is one of the best in its category (i.e. "blue tutors"), it doesn't go in every deck but the decks where it goes suddenly get a huge boost. It's in the same vein as Faithless Looting or Gitaxian Probe in that regard : it's not a wincon but a card that tremendously helps you win by adding consistency to your game plan. If the card was in Modern, players would keep complaining about it and it would constantly be on our "watchlist", which is certainly not a spot where players like to be when we take a look at how much we've been talking about Looting and Stirrings these last couple years.
I have to disagree:
They call it card draw and mention how efficient it is throughout the whole announcement, no mention to hand sculpting or any other usual term for card selection.
They mention Delver, Burn and Jeskai Ascendancy, no mention to Twin or Scapeshift, the only decks that played DTT over TC.
They state how replaceable they are with one another, I will explain below why I think this isn't true.
In Modern, these cards are easy replacements for one another—while a Delver deck might use Treasure Cruise over Dig Through Time, banning one but not the other would do little to change the deck. Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise are banned.
Why I think DTT and TC are not replaceable with one another:
Treasure Cruise is insane in decks that play 4 copies of many replaceable effects, as these decks can make a much better use of raw draw than any other deck (Burn and Storm fit very well in this category).
Dig Through Time is more useful in decks where you have more diversity between threats and answers, in those decks, card selection becomes much more useful (drawing counterspells vs aggro is not great), this applies very well to combo decks that rely on 1 or 2 specific cards to go off (RUG Scapeshifft and Twin come to mind).
These 2 cards are different and are not replaceable with one another in every deck (they can in some specific decks like Jeskai Ascendancy where paying extra blue is not a problem and drawing 2 nonlands + 1 land is basically the same as drawing those 2 nonlands, but this is not the norm)
Jeskai Ascendancy is a bit different from everything else, it's the only deck to have played both TC and DTT, even then, pros didn't agree on what was best, DTT was either 4 or 0 but all decks played at least 1 copy of TC, sometimes 4 (check Worlds 2014 decklists).
I think DTT could be fair enough for Modern and is a fun card to play with, you can't play it in the early turns and requires double blue so it's not easily splashable. It also works as an incentive to play reactive decks instead of proactive ones and I feel like the current metagame has too many proactive decks so is a card that would make me enjoy Modern a bit more.
There is always some new deck for people to complain about. Some new card. You can modify your deck or play a different one. Once this set drops most current decks are probably going to be made lower tier. Granted I do disagree with a lot of their bannings. They essentially ban combo every chance they get. Anything they want to label "Unfun" is banned. Well that's super lame. I don't even like combo but it is part of the game. That new Serra the Benevolent they are printing is stupid oppressive having a permanent emblem worship. They have gotten worse at designing magic sets over the years with the colors not being balanced at all. Blue now does everything with other colors lagging behind in design space. The banning of Gitaxian Probe is uncalled for. I'm looking at the ban list now. I see a lot of killed decks that I used to play against.
While I agree with the basic sentiment, it is always sad to see decks get pushed out of a format by a ban, I think playing some NBLM might give you some perspective on why certain certain cards need to be on the ban list. Gitaxian Probe is honestly worthy of a ban. It's less about it fitting into every deck (because it really, really doesn't) and more about how it makes "all in" decks way too safe. While there are some questionables on the list right now, by and large it's a pretty decent pick of the cards that break, warp, or make the format toxic to play in for most players. Sure, Stoneforge Mystic and Preordain really have no business on the banned list, and Green Sun's Zenith, Splinter Twin, Hypergensis, Birthing Pod, and Punishing Fire are all pretty in line with the current levels of power in Modern. However, even though Ascendancy Combo died because of Treasure Cruise's banning, it's definitely for the best.
Tunneling in on the decks that have been banned away without thinking about how those decks affected the format as a whole is a bit disingenuous.
I am curious since you commented on the Treasure Cruise ban, do you think Dig Through Time would be in line with the current power levels in Modern? When TC and DTT were banned, WotC assumed they had to ban both as TC would be replaced by DTT in every deck (which I disagree). It would be interesting to have an idea on how powerful the card is perceived by someone who has a chance to play NBLM as I think it would be in the same group as Birthing Pod, Green Sun's Zenith or Punishing Fire
Yeah, unfortunately that was published just before last weekend and it would be interesting to see the more updated numbers. Still, from this article you linked we can see that Phoenix had improved a lot its matchup vs Dredge with maindeck Surgical Extraction (from 16% winrate to 42%). As a result of this deckbuilding change, Humans had a better game vs Phoenix last weekend and I believe more people were playing Humans because of this.
I believe Phoenix is a good deck (not OP) that is reaping on a very favorable field: I think Dredge is actually more powerful than Phoenix and is making life hard for Burn because of Creeping Chill lifegain, which I think should be a bad matchup for Phoenix. Midrange decks are not viable unless they have a plan vs Tron, so in the end, Field of Ruin is a must for those strategies and that forces people to play many basics, so playing more than 2 colors is out of the question. If Mardu Pyromancer could have a Field of Ruin game vs Tron, I believe it could be another deck with a good matchup vs Phoenix.
Sure, there could be many reasons affecting GP attendance like the ones you name but before I ran the numbers, all we had is the claim that GP attendance was not dropping and I was curious to know if that was true or not.
Now we have the numbers and we know attendance is actually dropping. The reasons? I don't know, but attendance is dropping and that's a fact. I didn't say we should use GP attendance as correlation of how much players enjoy the format (Ymir said that attendance is not dropping as an indicator of people happiness with the format), but if we were to do so, the results would indicate that people are not engaging with Modern GPs as they did in previous years.
I don't know how you calculated that 18% drop, if we were to compare 2016 vs 2017, these are the numbers I get:
2016 Modern GP average attendance = 1916 players
2017 Modern GP average attendance = 1871 players
So, average attendance from 2016 to 2017 dropped, but only 2%
2018 and 2019 on the other hand, have a significant drop in attendance:
2018 Modern GP average attendance = 1685 players (10% drop vs 2017)
2019 Modern GP average attendance = 1325 players (21% drop vs 2018)
I also noticed that some large GPs (looking at you Vegas), have a great impact on averages, it also happens the other way around with small GPs (there is one in Brazil with less than 800 players), so maybe it would be more interesting to exclude those when analysing averages.
Here is the excel file I am using in case anyone else wants to dig into it and wants to segment by seasons, years, months, etc
I don't know how to attach a file here, so I uploaded to Drive and made it public, let me know if there is a better way to share this file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SOPtFxnbwiUfc5BjOP_e1gmSh3wAvqd2/view?usp=sharing
EDIT: There were some GPs that started one month and were finished in the next month, for the sake of simplicity I have grouped all GPs based on the month of the first date (a GP starting the 31st of March and ending the 2nd of April would be counted in March)
I'm a little curious about modern pleyers' thoughts about this, so I hope it's alright I ask it here.
With the current modern meta and lots of talks about banning three or four cards (I haven't been into modern until recently, so I'm not sure if there's always been a few cards people talk about needing a ban or a bad meta)
What would your thoughts be about the rumoured new non rotating format that starts from Shadows over Innistrad? Would modern players who are frustrated/tired with the meta and some of the cards that aren't seeing a ban be interested in that format?
Would you just regard it as a "modern light" and be too weak compared to the modern card pool?
I played 20 odd years ago, didn't touch magic cards for 17-18'ish years and then got back into it pretty deep again, but I've only been focused on Standard for more competitive play. I've been getting way more interested in modern since the last standard rotation, but I don't have a full modern deck that could last at FNM yet. Still kinda deciding which deck to put my money into (but I should probably wait until after Modern Horizons come out.... but I don't want to wait that long hehe)
I think that new non rotating format could be cool, but mostly because I wouldn't have to buy some really expensive cards hehe.
Anyway. I'm just curious to hear what people here think about a new non rotating format if you're you see too many problems with current modern.
I wouldn't like that but this depends on who you ask. I enjoy Legacy more than Standard and I would prefer Modern to look a little bit more like Legacy, what you propose would reduce the powerlevel a lot and it could end up being a balanced and fun format but I think I wouldn't be excited to play it.
Anyway, since Horizons is going to bring some Legacy cards into Modern I think Wizards take is more alligned with what I would prefer, I'd rather have Counterspell instead of forcing people into Cancel, have Thoughtseize instead of Transgress the Mind, etc
Just a thing about this article that is not considered and might be impactful: In a field where 20% of the players are on the same deck, there is a much higher chance for that deck to play a mirror match, which will inevitably account 1 win and 1 loss for the deck, thus moving its overall winrate closer to 50% Never mind, the numbers are for non-mirror matches
It would be great to know the matchup analysis like Tobi Henke did after Portland. I think that would be much more indicative of how well does Phoenix performs vs the rest of the field. Phoenix already had some data there and besides the Dredge matchup which seems terrible, everything else is either favorable or at least you can put a fight (36,4% vs Jund, second worst matchup)
If people bring in arguments of how there are many players who have "completely been driven out of the format", then these people might as well come with some data to back this up, because just claiming it is not enough.
Again, for the people in THIS forum, the result is rather clear. Attendance in events has not dropped as well, so I am not sure where this narrative is coming from, but I guess personal experience is a strong feeling.
This is a metric we can objectively measure and is well documented. I just took the numbers from season 2014-2015 onwards, excluded team events and the results seem to indicate that the average attendance for Modern GPs is going down in the last seasons.
If we are going to use this data as an indicative of how much people enjoy the format, attendance numbers would reinforce the idea that people are being driven out of the format.
I wonder if they will print more tribal lands. I mean there are some tribal lands they could reprint like Wirewood Lodge. They could easily also print more variations and powerful variations of Cavern of Souls. Perhaps even Tribal Legendary Lands like providing mana-cost reduction per chosen tribe or other benefit while still providing colored mana.
Yes to tribal lands but not generic ones that fit into any tribe like Cavern of Souls (doesn't look like WotC wants an even more powerful version since they took some power out when they recently printed Unclaimed Territory). But tribe specific lands like Secluded Glen seem interesting, cost reducing might be too dangerous as we've seen with Eye of Ugin in the past, but there are many creative ways to have tribal lands, I imagine a legendary tribal land with some abilities that require an amount of tribe permanents to activate them. Something like this:
The Bee Hive
Legendary land
Tap: Add G to your mana pool
2G + tap: Create a 1/1 green bee token with flying
G + tap: Create a 1/1 green bee token with flying, activate this ability only if you control 3 or more bees
G + tap: Create a 1/1 green bee token with flying, it has "other bees you control have deathtouch", activate this ability only if you control 5 or more bees
Serious question: How much worse off is Dredge if they jam 4 insolate neonate instead of 4 faithless looting? I think the deck really continues to function, to be honest. Insted, faithless looting destroys Mardu Mancer, grishoalbrand, bridgevine, hollow one, etc. Meaning either tier 2/3 decks, or a fair deck.
Is that what we want? I might be wrong here, I just want to hear opinions from Dredge experts or people who know the deck well enough.
I am going to test Dredge with that configuration during the weekend and get back with results.
I am not an expert but I think Dredge could still work, it would be a little less consistent, Insolent Neonate was replaced with Shriekhorn after GGT was banned as it was the most consistent choice (I read someone run the numbers for the change from Neonate to horn) but AFAIK nobody has tried to replace Loooting with something else. Neonate allows for some explosive draws where you are already dredging before T2, in a Christmas wonderland scenario, it could mean 4 Prized Amalgams + Narcomoeba on the battlefield ready to attack on turn 2 but being able to discard only 1 card with Neonate means you are more likely to find yourself with no dredgers on your draw phase.
Maybe they will print cheap creatures that interact with graveyards like Dryad Militant but exiling creatures instead of instants and sorceries or something like that, let's see what Horizon brings to the table and how Modern looks afterwards but the current scenario is quite worrying
MaRo said MH will follow the new color pie rules. Is Sylvan Library in green color pie nowadays? I seriously doubt it.
There is some card selection in green, for instance Oath of Nissa, I guess they could make a slightly worse version that allows you to show lands or creatures from the top and put them in hand as that is more fitting to what green does than grabbing just any of those cards
The biggest problem imho is the loss of life not the card selection. Exchanging cards for life is supposed to be black. Hence I can't see it reprinted "as is".
Agree that there could be a lot of pseudo-cards as seen with Cabal Therapist, so a fixed sylvan library is possible.
True, I didn't think about the pay life to draw cards mechanic, as you say, they will probably print a fixed version of it that is more representative of the current color pie
MaRo said MH will follow the new color pie rules. Is Sylvan Library in green color pie nowadays? I seriously doubt it.
There is some card selection in green, for instance Oath of Nissa, I guess they could make a slightly worse version that allows you to show lands or creatures from the top and put them in hand as that is more fitting to what green does than grabbing just any of those cards
If I recall correctly, MaRo already confirmed that they were not going to repring any card from a modern-legal set, that includes banned cards like SFM so we have confirmation that SFM will not be in Modern Horizons.
On the top10 power level including Cabal Therapist, I am secretly hoping we misjudged the card and it ends up being better than we expected. Otherwise we can expect about 4 or 5 cards to have a significant impact on the metagame.
I am expecting Astral Slide to be one of those cards and if it is, it should create a whole new archetype which is always positive, so even if it is just 4 or 5 cards, if they have such a big impact to create new archetypes, the set would still have a great impact on the overall picture.
I just hope one of those is not a new mythic that is only available in Modern horizons, but that belongs in the prices discussion
You could also let the bounce resolve and counter the transmute ability (discarding Tolaria West is a cost so they would lose it)
This way you don't have to worry for them to bounce it again next turn and transmute into a Titan
DRS was banned in January 2014 and Khans of Tarkir was released on September 2014 so no, DRS was not legal by the time Treasure Cruise entered the format
Yeah, that was exactly my point. We didn't have a chance to see it in action without the shadow of Treasure Cruise. The card is very strong and it could have been broken to the point of getting banned but it didn't even have the chance to do so.
I think this is a good example to showcase the difference between the cards.
I am pretty sure DTT would be tried in Phoenix but I don't think it would be as good as you say, and I am pretty sure nobody would play 4 copies, paying UU to get 2 cards (1 spell) could be worse than playing 2 U cantrips like Serum Visions both for triggering Phoenix or to flip TiTi. Yes, the card is powerful but its nature doesn't really help with the Phoenix or TiTi plan of casting many spells per turn.
Treasure Cruise on the other hand would be insane in Phoenix and most likely 4 copies would be played, from turns 3+ it is the replacement for any cantrip, same cost (U) but you draw 3, doesn't slow you down regarding spells/mana spent and it nets better card advantage, it's exactly the kind of card any Xerox deck wants
@headminerve Yeah, in Jeskai Ascendancy both cards were replaceable but as I said , this is something special about that deck that doesn't apply to any other deck as no other deck could make the switch so easily, Burn was never going to be able to play Dig and I doubt it would even do it if it could (I think I would rather have Light up the Stage for 1 mana than DTT for 2 in burn).
As I said, I think the card promotes decks that are not seeing much play now as I believe it doesn't fit that well in proactive strategies like Phoenix. I know it probably won't be unbanned anytime soon but I wanted to ask what was the perception for someone who plays no banlist modern. There are other cards in the banlist that I think could help slowing down the overall format speed and I would welcome in Modern (SFM and Punishing Fire mainly).
Overall I think Modern would be more enjoyable if it slowed down a bit as right now it feels like there are too many archetypes trying to goldfish, fortunately some decks like BG are trying to slow them down, but these decks are a minority.
I have to disagree:
- They call it card draw and mention how efficient it is throughout the whole announcement, no mention to hand sculpting or any other usual term for card selection.
- They mention Delver, Burn and Jeskai Ascendancy, no mention to Twin or Scapeshift, the only decks that played DTT over TC.
- They state how replaceable they are with one another, I will explain below why I think this isn't true.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19Why I think DTT and TC are not replaceable with one another:
- Treasure Cruise is insane in decks that play 4 copies of many replaceable effects, as these decks can make a much better use of raw draw than any other deck (Burn and Storm fit very well in this category).
- Dig Through Time is more useful in decks where you have more diversity between threats and answers, in those decks, card selection becomes much more useful (drawing counterspells vs aggro is not great), this applies very well to combo decks that rely on 1 or 2 specific cards to go off (RUG Scapeshifft and Twin come to mind).
These 2 cards are different and are not replaceable with one another in every deck (they can in some specific decks like Jeskai Ascendancy where paying extra blue is not a problem and drawing 2 nonlands + 1 land is basically the same as drawing those 2 nonlands, but this is not the norm)Jeskai Ascendancy is a bit different from everything else, it's the only deck to have played both TC and DTT, even then, pros didn't agree on what was best, DTT was either 4 or 0 but all decks played at least 1 copy of TC, sometimes 4 (check Worlds 2014 decklists).
I think DTT could be fair enough for Modern and is a fun card to play with, you can't play it in the early turns and requires double blue so it's not easily splashable. It also works as an incentive to play reactive decks instead of proactive ones and I feel like the current metagame has too many proactive decks so is a card that would make me enjoy Modern a bit more.
I am curious since you commented on the Treasure Cruise ban, do you think Dig Through Time would be in line with the current power levels in Modern? When TC and DTT were banned, WotC assumed they had to ban both as TC would be replaced by DTT in every deck (which I disagree). It would be interesting to have an idea on how powerful the card is perceived by someone who has a chance to play NBLM as I think it would be in the same group as Birthing Pod, Green Sun's Zenith or Punishing Fire
Yeah, unfortunately that was published just before last weekend and it would be interesting to see the more updated numbers. Still, from this article you linked we can see that Phoenix had improved a lot its matchup vs Dredge with maindeck Surgical Extraction (from 16% winrate to 42%). As a result of this deckbuilding change, Humans had a better game vs Phoenix last weekend and I believe more people were playing Humans because of this.
I believe Phoenix is a good deck (not OP) that is reaping on a very favorable field: I think Dredge is actually more powerful than Phoenix and is making life hard for Burn because of Creeping Chill lifegain, which I think should be a bad matchup for Phoenix. Midrange decks are not viable unless they have a plan vs Tron, so in the end, Field of Ruin is a must for those strategies and that forces people to play many basics, so playing more than 2 colors is out of the question. If Mardu Pyromancer could have a Field of Ruin game vs Tron, I believe it could be another deck with a good matchup vs Phoenix.
Now we have the numbers and we know attendance is actually dropping. The reasons? I don't know, but attendance is dropping and that's a fact. I didn't say we should use GP attendance as correlation of how much players enjoy the format (Ymir said that attendance is not dropping as an indicator of people happiness with the format), but if we were to do so, the results would indicate that people are not engaging with Modern GPs as they did in previous years.
I don't know how you calculated that 18% drop, if we were to compare 2016 vs 2017, these are the numbers I get:
2016 Modern GP average attendance = 1916 players
2017 Modern GP average attendance = 1871 players
So, average attendance from 2016 to 2017 dropped, but only 2%
2018 and 2019 on the other hand, have a significant drop in attendance:
2018 Modern GP average attendance = 1685 players (10% drop vs 2017)
2019 Modern GP average attendance = 1325 players (21% drop vs 2018)
I also noticed that some large GPs (looking at you Vegas), have a great impact on averages, it also happens the other way around with small GPs (there is one in Brazil with less than 800 players), so maybe it would be more interesting to exclude those when analysing averages.
Here is the excel file I am using in case anyone else wants to dig into it and wants to segment by seasons, years, months, etc
I don't know how to attach a file here, so I uploaded to Drive and made it public, let me know if there is a better way to share this file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SOPtFxnbwiUfc5BjOP_e1gmSh3wAvqd2/view?usp=sharing
EDIT: There were some GPs that started one month and were finished in the next month, for the sake of simplicity I have grouped all GPs based on the month of the first date (a GP starting the 31st of March and ending the 2nd of April would be counted in March)
I wouldn't like that but this depends on who you ask. I enjoy Legacy more than Standard and I would prefer Modern to look a little bit more like Legacy, what you propose would reduce the powerlevel a lot and it could end up being a balanced and fun format but I think I wouldn't be excited to play it.
Anyway, since Horizons is going to bring some Legacy cards into Modern I think Wizards take is more alligned with what I would prefer, I'd rather have Counterspell instead of forcing people into Cancel, have Thoughtseize instead of Transgress the Mind, etc
Just a thing about this article that is not considered and might be impactful: In a field where 20% of the players are on the same deck, there is a much higher chance for that deck to play a mirror match, which will inevitably account 1 win and 1 loss for the deck, thus moving its overall winrate closer to 50%Never mind, the numbers are for non-mirror matchesIt would be great to know the matchup analysis like Tobi Henke did after Portland. I think that would be much more indicative of how well does Phoenix performs vs the rest of the field. Phoenix already had some data there and besides the Dredge matchup which seems terrible, everything else is either favorable or at least you can put a fight (36,4% vs Jund, second worst matchup)
If we are going to use this data as an indicative of how much people enjoy the format, attendance numbers would reinforce the idea that people are being driven out of the format.
Yes to tribal lands but not generic ones that fit into any tribe like Cavern of Souls (doesn't look like WotC wants an even more powerful version since they took some power out when they recently printed Unclaimed Territory). But tribe specific lands like Secluded Glen seem interesting, cost reducing might be too dangerous as we've seen with Eye of Ugin in the past, but there are many creative ways to have tribal lands, I imagine a legendary tribal land with some abilities that require an amount of tribe permanents to activate them. Something like this:
The Bee Hive
Legendary land
Tap: Add G to your mana pool
2G + tap: Create a 1/1 green bee token with flying
G + tap: Create a 1/1 green bee token with flying, activate this ability only if you control 3 or more bees
G + tap: Create a 1/1 green bee token with flying, it has "other bees you control have deathtouch", activate this ability only if you control 5 or more bees
I am not an expert but I think Dredge could still work, it would be a little less consistent, Insolent Neonate was replaced with Shriekhorn after GGT was banned as it was the most consistent choice (I read someone run the numbers for the change from Neonate to horn) but AFAIK nobody has tried to replace Loooting with something else. Neonate allows for some explosive draws where you are already dredging before T2, in a Christmas wonderland scenario, it could mean 4 Prized Amalgams + Narcomoeba on the battlefield ready to attack on turn 2 but being able to discard only 1 card with Neonate means you are more likely to find yourself with no dredgers on your draw phase.
Maybe they will print cheap creatures that interact with graveyards like Dryad Militant but exiling creatures instead of instants and sorceries or something like that, let's see what Horizon brings to the table and how Modern looks afterwards but the current scenario is quite worrying
True, I didn't think about the pay life to draw cards mechanic, as you say, they will probably print a fixed version of it that is more representative of the current color pie
There is some card selection in green, for instance Oath of Nissa, I guess they could make a slightly worse version that allows you to show lands or creatures from the top and put them in hand as that is more fitting to what green does than grabbing just any of those cards