The only think that really stands out about white is the number of sideboard cards it gives you access to. Cards like Stony Silence, Rest in Peace, and Rule of Law might be narrow, but they make perfect sideboard cards. Other than that white doesn't really have the card quality or synergy to compete with other colors.
I don't really understand the focus on colors TBH. I care far more about different deck archetypes and how they play; blue might dominate Legacy, but Legacy is far more diverse and interesting than modern. I see attachment to particular colors as a "casual" think, although I don't mean that in a derogatory way.
I think having a white based deck would open the door for more diversity due to it's untapped color pie potential. I really disagree with you on legacy's diversity and believe strongly modern shouldn't be handled as such, but that's another topic for discussion.
My real hope here is that this might mean we see a good build around in white
I'd like to see them reprint Mother of Runes or a similar card. It would be good in standard, but hardly unfair, and I think it would really help out a lot of aggressive "white" decks in Modern.
My point about colors is that I care more about gameplay and the way that decks work than I do about the flavor of the colors. Does that make sense?
I don't really understand the focus on colors TBH. I care far more about different deck archetypes and how they play; blue might dominate Legacy, but Legacy is far more diverse and interesting than modern. I see attachment to particular colors as a "casual" think, although I don't mean that in a derogatory way.
Pure control will not be a tier-1 archetype in Modern until they have better card selection and/or better free counterspells. Incidentally I believe the lack of these is what also forces Wizards to use the banhammer so much to try to manage the format.
This is one of the things that I am constantly saying. Force of Will and Daze are the built in combo police of legacy. While combo decks like show and tell will run the free counters themselves to protect their combo, the fact that those spells exist in tier decks keeps the number of viable combo decks manageable as they are effective and by heavily disrupting their consistency. Things like counter your t1 glistener elf while on the draw can't be done in modern so going under is a viable and effective strategy against control, so the combo decks race to be faster or else they play the same controlling game and build in a combo finish that as it turns out is more effective than traditional finishers have been in the past.
Counterspells don't have to be free. Actual Counterspell would already be enough. Instead of this Mana Leak crap that is dead in the phase of the game where control should be at its strongest which is the late game.
While counterspell would be a powerful inclusion, and a card that would see a fair amount of play, it wouldn't have nearly the effect on the format as a whole that a couple of good free counters would.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Force of will wouldn't bring back control. It would just slot in to twin. Free counters help combo because control cares too much about card advantage in this format where draw is bad.
Force of Will is not really a "control" card as much as it is a tempo card. When you cast FoW you are saying that you will give up card advantage in order to gain tempo. Controlling decks can use it to fight combo, but the main thing it would do is provide tempo decks an effective way to combat combo decks. Delver decks are a combo deck's natural predators and if they were better that would weaken combo quite a bit.
This will really test how much people enjoy Modern at least. People play Legacy because it's awesome even though it's irrelevant. Is modern that strong? I don't know. Personally I would go out of my way to play Legacy and feel a strong attachment for my Legacy decks, and I have never felt that way about modern.
It really isn't comparable, because legacy HAS tournament support in the form of the SCG Opens, that Modern lacks. Eh, I play modern mainly in my local store, and will continue to play even if wizards axes it - there just won't be more people coming into the format anymore. So, yeah, I'd say I feel the same way you do about legacy towards modern, and Legacy has never really been an option for me.
Legacy got tournament support because it had devoted fans. It's true that SCG raised the visibility of the format and made cards more expensive, but Legacy was a beloved and community driven format before they made it part of their tournament system. Time will tell if Modern has the ability to do the same.
This will really test how much people enjoy Modern at least. People play Legacy because it's awesome even though it's irrelevant. Is modern that strong? I don't know. Personally I would go out of my way to play Legacy and feel a strong attachment for my Legacy decks, and I have never felt that way about modern.
I don't blame them. As I said a long time ago, the only way to keep Modern a fair format is to continuously ban cards. Without Force of Will and Wasteland to keep things in the check the number of interactions will continue to create boring and uninteractive decks and eventually break the format. I think Lapille is right to say that the only way to balance the unfairness of not banning things that players want in the format and the competitive integrity of the pro tour (and also keep it interesting, if that is all you think he meant)is to take Modern off the big stage and keep it in the little leagues where it won't get broken.
the format would have been way better if fetches were banned from the start
And how would banning fetchlands help contain broken decks? Or accomplish anything
at all?
I didn't mean that those two things are related, I was just giving my opinion on one aspect of the format. That said, without fetches a lot of the powerful midrange decks would be a lot weaker because their mana wouldn't be so perfect, and even if those decks are not "dominant" they are an unhealthy force in Modern and have been for a long time. Wasteland is good for Legacy precisely because it makes mana worse.
The lack of fetchlands would hit everyone. Zoo would not be able to use Wild Nacatl. Burn couldn't reliably go into 3 colors. WUR Control couldn't play Cryptic Command. Cruel Control would cease to exist. Blue Moon would be much weaker. Without fetchlands, Control and Aggro would both get much worse.
Well obiously the format would be completely different. My point is that the format would be in a better place.
I would prefer to just have Wasteland in the format, but Wizards won't print it in a Standard legal set.
I don't blame them. As I said a long time ago, the only way to keep Modern a fair format is to continuously ban cards. Without Force of Will and Wasteland to keep things in the check the number of interactions will continue to create boring and uninteractive decks and eventually break the format. I think Lapille is right to say that the only way to balance the unfairness of not banning things that players want in the format and the competitive integrity of the pro tour (and also keep it interesting, if that is all you think he meant)is to take Modern off the big stage and keep it in the little leagues where it won't get broken.
the format would have been way better if fetches were banned from the start
And how would banning fetchlands help contain broken decks? Or accomplish anything
at all?
I didn't mean that those two things are related, I was just giving my opinion on one aspect of the format. That said, without fetches a lot of the powerful midrange decks would be a lot weaker because their mana wouldn't be so perfect, and even if those decks are not "dominant" they are an unhealthy force in Modern and have been for a long time. Wasteland is good for Legacy precisely because it makes mana worse.
I don't blame them. As I said a long time ago, the only way to keep Modern a fair format is to continuously ban cards. Without Force of Will and Wasteland to keep things in check the number of interactions will continue to create boring and uninteractive decks and eventually break the format. I think Lapille is right to say that the only way to balance the unfairness of not banning things that players want in the format and the competitive integrity of the pro tour (and also keep it interesting, if that is all you think he meant)is to take Modern off the big stage and keep it in the little leagues where it won't get broken.
the format would have been way better if fetches were banned from the start
I wouldn't trust any private group's testing to be representative of what is good and bad in any given format. Take the Pro Tour as an example. Some of the best teams regularly make serious metagame mistakes and draw incorrect conclusions about what is good. Why should we think that any small group of people can actually replicate the hivemind of magic players, vast amounts of MTGO results, or whatever? It's an absurd conceit, which is why I always want to roll my eyes when someone on this forum says they have tested a card and determined it is safe.
The difference between All-In Twin and Scapeshift is that Twin is a 2-card combo. Scapeshift is just 1. If Scapeshift gets disrupted they only need to draw one card to try again. Twin needs two (yeah, ok, if the Twin gets countered then they just need one, but if Pestermite/Exarch gets Dismembered in response to the enchant then they need two). Furthermore, Scapeshift can buy more time to draw into another copy because it has stuff like Anger of the Gods.
This strikes me as a fundamental misunderstanding of Shapeshift. Shapeshift's "combo" relies on the ramp spells it uses to get a lot of lands into play. So it's not a matter of casting 1 card and winning, it's a matter of using several cards to set up a situation in which that one card can win the game.
I agree that Wizards is shoehorning Magic to be one way at the cost of what made it a good game to start with. I feel most people in my age group (23-30) that have played the game competitively since 2006 or before feel the same as I do. I believe there are two different groups of Magic players nowadays, with the younger set being the ones that constantly cry "Ban Twin! Ban Pod! Ban Storm! Ban all CAHMBOES!" and the rest of us crying "Unban Ponder!" and it is a direct result of how the game has changed since Lorwyn was released. The cards have been less powerful overall and strategies more pigeoned into the combat zone. We can all say Faeries this and Faeries that, but hear me out.
Many of the "backbone" cards of Modern - the cards that define the best decks and best interactions - come from a period before Lorwyn. Granted, somethings like Frogmite don't make the cut anymore, Affinity is still a Cranial Plating Arcbound Ravager deck. More proof? Jund is a Goyf-Bob deck. Storm is storm. Pod is the best version of Project X ever. (Shoutouts to Saffi and Cryptbro) Twin just does what Tooth and Nail used to - get Kiki Jiki and win. I cannot think of a halfway good modern deck (apart from maybe infect?) that isn't shaped from Mirrodin - Timespiral cards. All of the best decks in this format are built around cards from the earliest part of the legal sets. This shows a change in design, but more importantly it shows that the design changes haven't been impactful throughout the years following Timespiral, with few exceptions (Lightning Bolt, notably). This is dangerous for Modern as a format for a few reasons.
First - No new archetypes or decks will emerge given the current trend in design. Sure we can get yet another Lord of Atlantis, but we won't get anything on Aether Vial's powerlevel. Wizards current design promotes two things, creature decks and anti-creature decks. Stack interaction is a thing of the past, and given this philosophy, the goodstuff decks with the most good stuff are going to be the good decks, something which, sadly, has started to make it's way into Modern.
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Power level and interacting on the stack are two different things. I agree that stack interaction may be minimized in the future, but I find the idea that powerful cards won't be printed to be laughable at best. Deathrite Shaman was literally the best card in Modern other than Lightning Bolt when it was legal and it was printed 1 block ago. Wizards will makes mistakes, and they will also just print powerful cards because they can (eg Voice of Resurgence).
Are you ignoring the posts about Lorwyn-Shards-M10 Standard where there was no Wrath of God/Supreme Verdict/Day of Judgment variant? Unless you meant to say a Standard without any sweepers(Volcanic Fallout, Anger of the Gods, etc) and in that case, yes there are 0 samples of that.
I meant to say that there are zero examples of a Standard environment without a *** variant where aggro dominated. All of the relevant historical data points indicate that aggro will not be top dog. Any claim that aggro will overrun a wrath-less Standard is just baseless speculation.
Flooded with creature decks? There are only two creature decks in the entire top 8! Jund and Gruul Monster decks are a definite force in the meta, and Blue Devotion pops up from time to time, but for the most part Standard has been the domain of Revelation decks and Thoughtseize/Downfall decks.
Aggressive creatures have been pushed further than ever before by R&D so arguments about what happened a long time ago are simply not useful. It strikes me as irrelevant information.
It is also illogical to say that arguments are "baseless" simply because they make predictions about what will happen in the future based on available data.
If there wasn't a four mana wrath effect, I'd probably just stick to Legacy, Standard would become boring aggro decks galore and even more boring than it is now.
We are literally less than a week removed from a premier event that proves you wrong.
Leaving aside the fact that Block and Standard are different, Block seems quite unhealthy. Almost all of the top decks used exactly the same green shell and felt like they were basically the same with a few minor tweaks.
Aggro decks in Standard are much stronger than aggro decks in Block, and creatures have been pushed so far that some kind of efficient wrath is needed in standard. People can argue that Anger of the Gods plays that role, but I don't buy it since so many creatures are too big for it to be effective, and the fact that it is a narrower answer prevents it from being played maindeck as often as a true wrath.
That said, the real reason we will get one is that control players would FLIP out if Wizards didn't print one given that control has been weakened so much over time.
I'd like to see them reprint Mother of Runes or a similar card. It would be good in standard, but hardly unfair, and I think it would really help out a lot of aggressive "white" decks in Modern.
My point about colors is that I care more about gameplay and the way that decks work than I do about the flavor of the colors. Does that make sense?
Force of Will is not really a "control" card as much as it is a tempo card. When you cast FoW you are saying that you will give up card advantage in order to gain tempo. Controlling decks can use it to fight combo, but the main thing it would do is provide tempo decks an effective way to combat combo decks. Delver decks are a combo deck's natural predators and if they were better that would weaken combo quite a bit.
Legacy got tournament support because it had devoted fans. It's true that SCG raised the visibility of the format and made cards more expensive, but Legacy was a beloved and community driven format before they made it part of their tournament system. Time will tell if Modern has the ability to do the same.
Well obiously the format would be completely different. My point is that the format would be in a better place.
I would prefer to just have Wasteland in the format, but Wizards won't print it in a Standard legal set.
I didn't mean that those two things are related, I was just giving my opinion on one aspect of the format. That said, without fetches a lot of the powerful midrange decks would be a lot weaker because their mana wouldn't be so perfect, and even if those decks are not "dominant" they are an unhealthy force in Modern and have been for a long time. Wasteland is good for Legacy precisely because it makes mana worse.
the format would have been way better if fetches were banned from the start
This strikes me as a fundamental misunderstanding of Shapeshift. Shapeshift's "combo" relies on the ramp spells it uses to get a lot of lands into play. So it's not a matter of casting 1 card and winning, it's a matter of using several cards to set up a situation in which that one card can win the game.
Power level and interacting on the stack are two different things. I agree that stack interaction may be minimized in the future, but I find the idea that powerful cards won't be printed to be laughable at best. Deathrite Shaman was literally the best card in Modern other than Lightning Bolt when it was legal and it was printed 1 block ago. Wizards will makes mistakes, and they will also just print powerful cards because they can (eg Voice of Resurgence).
Aggressive creatures have been pushed further than ever before by R&D so arguments about what happened a long time ago are simply not useful. It strikes me as irrelevant information.
It is also illogical to say that arguments are "baseless" simply because they make predictions about what will happen in the future based on available data.
Leaving aside the fact that Block and Standard are different, Block seems quite unhealthy. Almost all of the top decks used exactly the same green shell and felt like they were basically the same with a few minor tweaks.
That said, the real reason we will get one is that control players would FLIP out if Wizards didn't print one given that control has been weakened so much over time.