I really like the idea of more grandeur creatures, which seems like a fun mechanic, but think they might be better being slightly bigger and splashier. Emblems seem really strong, even if they only affect legends.
I totally get that sentiment. I was trying to balance risk vs. reward and I thought emblems were fun, cool, and haven't been explored beyond Planeswalkers.
Basically I'd love to see any aggro that would (1) be good enough to actually see play (2) hold some of its power after a board wipe, and (3) present a synergy-driven theme strong enough to serve as an alternative to the generic multicolor goodstuff Zoo with Tribal flames (cough Nacatl) that pops up from time to time.
So I think Jace would be an interesting choice for an unban, but one to be skeptical of. I don't think anyone would argue that the blue decks that take a controlling attitude (not gonna touch Jund's role and that distraction) are underperfoming right now so a Control for Jace discussion seems appropriate. (Aside: similar to Aggro for Nacatl.)
I'd like to take a second to throw some numbers out about metagame presence vs. perceptions. It seems to be a lot of feels and not a whole lot of stats. So lets try to ground it in numbers:
Modern DRS = 26.26% of decks x 3.7 copies per decklist = 97.162 total copies
Legacy Jace = 35.51% of decks x 2.6 copies per decklist = 92.326 total copies
So believe it or not, DRS seems to be more abundant in Modern than Jace is in Legacy right now.
I suppose then whether or not you're on the Ban-DRS wagon on the basis of metagame presence should probably carry over to opinions on a Jace unban.
I thought it was an interesting and eye opening exercise at least. Its changed my opinion as of now. Unban Jace.
I'd love to see a 'legendary aggro' deck based around heroes with pushed Grandeur abilities that help other legendary creatures. It would be a 'new' aggro deck to the format and creates an interesting tension around the drawbacks of the legendary rule and the raw power of grandeur-ing. There's so much cool flavor and design space left in Grandeur that the sky is the limit. Obviously these are joke names and pushed for the sake of demonstration.
Ghandi, Pacifist Hero - W
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric
When ~ enters the battlefield, choose a color. ~ has protection from the chosen color.
Grandeur - Choose a color. You get an emblem that says 'Legendary creatures you control gain protection from the chosen color.' The only good fight is no fight.
0/1
MacGyver, Stoneforge Hero - WW
Legendary Creature - Kor Soldier
First Strike
Grandeur - Search your library for an equipment card and put it onto the battlefield attached to target creature. The right tool. For any job.
2/2
Calvin P. Titus, Bearer of Old Glory - W
Legendary Creature - Human Soldier
First Strike
Grandeur - You get an emblem that says 'Legendary creatures you control get +2/+2.
1/1 Wiki this guy. Cool story. Oozy flavorful goodness.
Paul Bunyan - 2GG
Trample
1G - Regenerate ~.
Grandeur - For each legendary creature you control, you may have that creature fight another target creature you don't control.
4/2 Come at me, bro.
Babe, Ox of Bunyan - 1U
Hexproof
Grandeur - You get an emblem that says 'Legendary creatures you control gain flying.' And you thought Red Bull gave you wings.
2/2
Ash Ketchum - R
R - Firebreathing.
Grandeur - You get an emblem with 'Whenever a legendary creature enters the battlefield under your control, it deals damage equal to its converted casting cost to target creature or player.' Harness the power that's inside.
1/1
Is this data reflecting overall games or matches? Including sideboard games? Sorry, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the context. I must say, I think its strange that your Jund numbers are worse than Junk...mine was the opposite - Voice of Resurgence was an absolute beating. Could you post your lists?
It would be interesting to see if Jund is overperforming compared to its attendance.
WotC didn't publish Day 1 Metagame stats for GP Prague, but we can get a similar comparison between the Day 2 Metagame breakdown vs Top 16. (Aside - I'd prefer Day 1 vs Day 2 for sample size reasons.)
Day 2: 33 BGx Rock / 185 participants = 17.8% (Expected)
Top 16: 6 BGx Rock / 16 participants = 37.5% (Actual)
Achievement = (Actual/Expected) x 100= (37.5/17.8) x 100 = 210% expected
There you have it...the BGx Rock shell (mostly Jund) placed at a rate slightly better than twice expectation based on its Day 2 metagame share at GP Prague. Granted that's just one event so it comes with a sample size caveat.
I think that's more evidence that Jund is either too good (and needs another ban or 2 between Lily, DRS, and Bob) or that we should be pulling for several high power unbans so other decks can challenge it for individual card quality on an equal footing.
Personally I'd prefer unbans with continued aggressive new printings and reprints; Standard hasn't imploded with major pushing in INN, RTR, & M15 so I see no reason to think Standard will if they kept pace in Theros or subsequent sets.
Why don't you just check the mothership website for yourself?
My evidence is all over the internet, I apologize Mr 7 Posts, but you need to inform yourself on the very front page of this very thread before you post.
My evidence is directly in the link on the first post of this exact thread.
EDIT:
Here you go, all the disbelievers
Lets look at that in more detail, because it deserves some scrutiny IMO.
Here's the excerpt, just as a refresher:
The DCI's other primary goal for Modern is to not have top tier decks that frequently win on turn three (or earlier). Looking at the results of the recent tournaments, Storm is not the most played deck, but it is among the top tier of decks. Four of the players to get at least 18 points at Pro Tour Return to Ravnica were playing Storm, and Olivier Ruel had a Top 8 performance at Grand Prix Lyon playing Storm. On Magic Online, Storm is the second-most-frequent high-finishing deck in Modern events, at 11.42%, behind only Jund. These results indicate that, while far from dominant, Storm is a top tier deck.
Looking at the results of games, turn-three wins are frequent for Storm, contrary to the DCI's stated goals for the format. The DCI looked for a card that was very important to the turn-three wins but not one of the cards that make this deck unique. We decided Seething Song is the best choice. Even with no other mana acceleration, one can cast Seething Song on turn three and it gives a net acceleration of +2 mana. While there are other options for fast mana, none appear as efficient and reliable on turn three as Seething Song.
WotC asserted the following in its banning announcement:
1. Storm is a top tier deck
2. Storm wins on Turn 3 'frequently'
3. Seething song is critical to the deck, but not unique to it
Reason (1) Seems to be completely untrue based even on the evidence they cite in the announcement itself. The 'Top Tier' is for decks that are likely to win events. Storm earned a single top 8 performance at notable paper tournaments. That's not winning. And at PT RTR, it was 4.44% of the field and 3.88% of the metagame with 18 points or better, which indicates its actually underperforming relative to its metagame share, not overperforming. And the 4 players who were piloting it to 18 points or better were Reid Duke, Jon Finkel, William Jensen, and Tom Martell. No one should be surprised that group succeeded regardless of what they were playing.
I have no idea what Reason (2) actually means. They didn't provide any numbers. And it didn't mention whether or not that was through hate or just a non-interactive match. I don't think anybody who plays competitively would argue against the notion that you sleep in the bed you make with your sideboard. If you decide to just punt to storm because its only 4.4% of the metagame, then you can't complain when its a hopeless matchup. Every single color combination can interact favorably with storm now that green has Scavenging Ooze. As someone who plays this deck off and on, some of the most interesting matches I've played have been against decks that are well prepared to combat Storm (and they didn't end on T3.) My best estimation is that Storm only won on T3 or sooner about 10% of the time, and almost never on T3 against decks that were interacting with it. That's a quite dangerous precedent to set because a stunning number of decks seem to approach similar numbers.
Reason (3) is the most puzzling. Picking a card that's not unique to Storm flies in the face of even the Bloodbraid Elf ban in the same announcement. Seething song was a critical card for the infrequently played All-in-Red, Hive Mind, Dragonstorm, etc. Removing it effectively killed those decks. In the same banning announcement for pauper, WotC banned Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens not mana rituals. If Storm is too fast, why not ban Grape Shot and force them to use Empty the Warrens and Goblin Bushwacker...or just wait a turn for the summoning sickness to go away? Then it would be even more fragile, a turn slower, and leave room for interaction because you still need to attack instead of just using the stack. Then there's also the fact that Ponder and Preordain were banned to decrease the efficiency of combo decks to decrease the risk of future bannings. That clearly didn't work, so does that mean those should come off? There's also a lot of design space left in counterspells between something like Deprive (not good enough) and Counterspell (too obsoleting).
So the question: Would Storm be more acceptable if Seething Song was unbanned and Grapeshot was banned instead?
That wound up being more long winded than I thought. Hopefully its worth it and makes for some real discussion beyond the usual bolded assertions from pathos.
Wizards guys should just let the players vote on what would be unbanned. You know, democratically.
For instance, if the results mirrored the ones in this poll, we would have Nacatl, Vision, and Bitterblossom back which would be excellent
I think letting that happen in general would be bad (look at the non-zero number of people who voted for Skullclamp...) but there is something to be said for listening to community feedback and incorporating it into your decision process.
BB's price has almost went up like 10 bucks on Maggiccards. Does it usually happen around B/R List time? Or do they have info we don't?
There appears to be a spike on MTGO every time there's a new set and associated B&R update, plus there was also one right after Modern was announced and it had not yet been banned. That indicates to me that its a card people want to play.
I think the price spikes have been pretty regular because people realize its fair enough that it could possibly be unbanned with any given announcement, and there's always speculators who would want to ride that climb, and people on a budget who would want to pick up a playset before the price climbs. Its pretty clear that the card's lack of performance in Legacy has tanked the price, but its still a good enough card to be more than the $5-7 Tix its been floating at recently. Its due for a price correction, and the market condition most likely to initiate it is almost certainly an unban in Modern.
Unless people brings any argument about the damage that DRS [Card] cause to the format (Deck dominance, speed or diversity) they should stop talking about DRS [Card].
- DRS [Any Card] decks aren't dominating the format.
- DRS [Any Card] decks aren't breaking the turn 4 rule
- DRS [Any Card] decks don't reduce directly the diversity (and before someone says that it push grave based [some relevant] strategy out, it's pure bull****, Ooze [another card in the format] is far more problematic for grave based [other relevant] decks, and even so, some grave based [other] decks still see some play)
The problem is you can make that argument for half the cards on the darn banned list and two dozen more that are legal. Ancestral Vision. Bitterblossom. Ponder. Stoneforge Mystic. Jace. Birthing Pod. Lily. Emrakul. Grapeshot. The list goes on and on.
It boils down to this - WotC acts irrationally when it comes to bans and they'll ban whatever they want, try to sell it to us, and watch with glee as we pick it apart, discuss it, and argue about it til half of us don't remember why they banned it in the first place and the other half supports it because its now the status quo.
The best we can do is make imperfect, relativistic comparisons because we don't have a parallel universe where nothing is banned to use as a control group. Trying to figure out what motivates WotC and why is a hopeless task - they don't have the answers any more than we do, and if they did, they sure wouldn't tell us because that would give us too much ammunition to shoot them down later. Instead we should base arguments on answerable questions. Ask things like this: What occupied a larger piece of the metagame - Wild Nacatl then or Deathrite Shaman now? If Shaman>Nacatl, does that mean Shaman should be banned, or Nacatl should be unbanned? How frequently does a glass cannon reanimator deck beat the Turn 4 rule? Is it more or less than the frequency Storm with Seething Song did? What kind of win percentage would Bitterblossom Faeries get against a gauntlet of the top decks? These are questions that should theoretically have answers. And that's all we can really work with.
I started playing MTG at the kitchen table during Onslaught block, then started with organized play in Mirrodin block. I took a break when I started college for budget reasons, after the Futuresight prerelease. I got back into the game when I heard about Modern's announcement from a good friend who played stereotypical 'kitchen-table-casual' magic. Modern encompassed pretty much every set I remembered playing with, so there was some nostalgia factor to pull me back in, and it was cheap enough that it could be done on a budget with some cool interactions, so I decided to jump into that play group and I just stuck to budget Modern decks. One of them started a MTG club on campus. Budget Modern became our default casual format because you can actually make a pretty sweet deck with a week's worth of beer money. And things started ratcheting up from there.
Most of us have since graduated, gotten 'real' jobs, and can afford to pimp out our decks, play Standard, and experiment with Legacy like we never could before. Suddenly our casual Modern turned into a "Modern Plus" set up. I tried Faeries and Cawblade and all those cool decks I missed out on between Timespiral and Scars.
I recently moved to a rural location for work and traded in the paper for MTGO. So I don't play as much now because rural internet blows. But I'm still keenly interested.
And to answer your question, yes, I think Modern is in the long term cheaper than Standard. You buy your cards once (at a slightly greater investment) but don't have to worry too much about building new decks every 3 months. Most MTGO decks cost about $200-400 for Standard and $250-500 for Modern, with a couple notable exceptions well above and below for each.
...three of which have cards banned in their respective decks in Modern.
The sky didn't fall when Valakut was unbanned, and I haven't met a single player who quit modern because seeing a Valakut again triggered PTSD.
The initial point wasn't about Standard though...its that using Legacy relevance as a measuring stick doesn't make sense. All of those decks were comparably traumatizing in Standard and contributed heavily to Legacy.
Yet only the core of one of them (UW Stoneblade) is banned in Modern, while the others have a single card banned that reins them in without killing them altogether. Jund has BBE, Delver has Ponder/Preordain (but for other reasons), Faeries has Bitterblossom (even though Faeries is crap in Legacy) and Stoneblade has Batterskull Jace/SFM/AV and also Ponder and Jitte (for other reasons). One of these doesn't fit the pattern.
I would understand if Jund had seen bans to DRS, Lily, and BBE when it started to get successfully ported into Legacy with minimal change. Because we gotta keep the formats separated, right? But that's not what happened. So we're left with this weird situation where cross-format relevance is ok in one deck but not ok in another?
From what I've heard about Stoneforge, it won't probably ever come back. It was so polarizing that the vast majority of decks in the meta were Esper Deathblade and hardly anything else. Ancestral visions is one thing, but Jace and SFM are way too OP.
I wouldn't rule it out in the future. It might have been traumatizing once upon a time, but so were Ravager, Delver, Jund, and Valakut. Jace isn't that much better than Liliana of the Veil, and both pale in comparison to a Turn 3 Karn or sneaked-in Emrakul or Griselbrand. SFM fetching anything less than a Batterskull isn't that far off from a Turn 2 Dark Confidant or rebuying Lightning Bolts with Snapcaster Mage. Modern is full of powerful interactions, so it makes little sense to keep some of them on the sidelines while equally crazy stuff runs rampant.
Can someone briefly describe how Ancestral Visions was OP enough to ban?
Reason: At the time of its banning in Modern, Ancestral Vision was showing up in Legacy Stoneblade decks. The goal was to suspend AV on the first turn, then try to use 1-for-1 counters and removal to not fall behind while trying to stick Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. If the move failed, you would get a free fistful of cards to recover from it, and if it succeeded, you'd push so far ahead the match was almost unloseable. Since WotC was (and still is?) determined to making Modern 'feel' different from Legacy, they banned it as a precaution. In the meantime, Ancestral Vision has been dropped from UW Stoneblade, and only sees play in the Shardless Agent based BUG control deck.
The concept of thwarting the opponent 1-for-1, then pulling far ahead when AV came off of suspend would have been "unfun" at the dawn of the format and might have tainted the format in the eyes of a certain demographic of players. That's a reasonable fear, but what ended up happening instead was a bunch of combo decks goldfishing past each other, so it was a moot point.
Question:
If its no longer part of the UW shell that defines one of Legacy's pillars, should it remain banned? Personally, I think the answer is no. And for the record, I think cross-format relevance is a stupid metric anyways. The notion that the two formats can't have some common ground is ridiculous, and if you go back to the initial announcement, its strongly implied that overlap between them is the intent. Modern Jund porting into Legacy and thriving without its entire core (ok, just BBE) being stripped by bans (like Modern UW) was proof WotC's thinking is changing. I wouldn't be surprised to see AV, Jace, and SFM back in the format someday. Maybe not soon, but the wind is changing.
I suspect that there are enough ETB creatures in Modern that morphers won't be really necessary. Stonehorn Dignitary alone can lock out half the decks out there. Add in Mulldrifter, Geist-Honored Monk, Wall of Omens, and Sunblast Angel and you'd have a pretty good control deck. Oh, and keep Sun Titan around, and blink it with some back up Cloudshifts to bring slide out of hte graveyard and back onto the battlefield.
If only Venser had cost 2WU instead of 3WU. So close to being great.
>There are actually people who want Skullclamp to be unbanned
One can only hope that they misunderstood the prompt to be "vote for cards that should stay banned." Otherwise, I'd really like to hear an opinion on it. I doubt I'd agree, but I don't think I've seen a take on Clamp that wasn't facetious.
I totally get that sentiment. I was trying to balance risk vs. reward and I thought emblems were fun, cool, and haven't been explored beyond Planeswalkers.
Basically I'd love to see any aggro that would (1) be good enough to actually see play (2) hold some of its power after a board wipe, and (3) present a synergy-driven theme strong enough to serve as an alternative to the generic multicolor goodstuff Zoo with Tribal flames (cough Nacatl) that pops up from time to time.
I'd like to take a second to throw some numbers out about metagame presence vs. perceptions. It seems to be a lot of feels and not a whole lot of stats. So lets try to ground it in numbers:
Using some MTGO stats vs some Legacy stats from the same site:
Modern DRS = 26.26% of decks x 3.7 copies per decklist = 97.162 total copies
Legacy Jace = 35.51% of decks x 2.6 copies per decklist = 92.326 total copies
So believe it or not, DRS seems to be more abundant in Modern than Jace is in Legacy right now.
I suppose then whether or not you're on the Ban-DRS wagon on the basis of metagame presence should probably carry over to opinions on a Jace unban.
I thought it was an interesting and eye opening exercise at least. Its changed my opinion as of now. Unban Jace.
(And probably Nacatl). ((And maybe Bitterblossom.))
Ghandi, Pacifist Hero - W
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric
When ~ enters the battlefield, choose a color. ~ has protection from the chosen color.
Grandeur - Choose a color. You get an emblem that says 'Legendary creatures you control gain protection from the chosen color.'
The only good fight is no fight.
0/1
MacGyver, Stoneforge Hero - WW
Legendary Creature - Kor Soldier
First Strike
Grandeur - Search your library for an equipment card and put it onto the battlefield attached to target creature.
The right tool. For any job.
2/2
Calvin P. Titus, Bearer of Old Glory - W
Legendary Creature - Human Soldier
First Strike
Grandeur - You get an emblem that says 'Legendary creatures you control get +2/+2.
1/1
Wiki this guy. Cool story. Oozy flavorful goodness.
Paul Bunyan - 2GG
Trample
1G - Regenerate ~.
Grandeur - For each legendary creature you control, you may have that creature fight another target creature you don't control.
4/2
Come at me, bro.
Babe, Ox of Bunyan - 1U
Hexproof
Grandeur - You get an emblem that says 'Legendary creatures you control gain flying.'
And you thought Red Bull gave you wings.
2/2
Ash Ketchum - R
R - Firebreathing.
Grandeur - You get an emblem with 'Whenever a legendary creature enters the battlefield under your control, it deals damage equal to its converted casting cost to target creature or player.'
Harness the power that's inside.
1/1
Is this data reflecting overall games or matches? Including sideboard games? Sorry, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the context. I must say, I think its strange that your Jund numbers are worse than Junk...mine was the opposite - Voice of Resurgence was an absolute beating. Could you post your lists?
WotC didn't publish Day 1 Metagame stats for GP Prague, but we can get a similar comparison between the Day 2 Metagame breakdown vs Top 16. (Aside - I'd prefer Day 1 vs Day 2 for sample size reasons.)
Day 2: 33 BGx Rock / 185 participants = 17.8% (Expected)
Top 16: 6 BGx Rock / 16 participants = 37.5% (Actual)
Achievement = (Actual/Expected) x 100= (37.5/17.8) x 100 = 210% expected
There you have it...the BGx Rock shell (mostly Jund) placed at a rate slightly better than twice expectation based on its Day 2 metagame share at GP Prague. Granted that's just one event so it comes with a sample size caveat.
I think that's more evidence that Jund is either too good (and needs another ban or 2 between Lily, DRS, and Bob) or that we should be pulling for several high power unbans so other decks can challenge it for individual card quality on an equal footing.
Personally I'd prefer unbans with continued aggressive new printings and reprints; Standard hasn't imploded with major pushing in INN, RTR, & M15 so I see no reason to think Standard will if they kept pace in Theros or subsequent sets.
Lets look at that in more detail, because it deserves some scrutiny IMO.
Here's the excerpt, just as a refresher:
WotC asserted the following in its banning announcement:
1. Storm is a top tier deck
2. Storm wins on Turn 3 'frequently'
3. Seething song is critical to the deck, but not unique to it
Reason (1) Seems to be completely untrue based even on the evidence they cite in the announcement itself. The 'Top Tier' is for decks that are likely to win events. Storm earned a single top 8 performance at notable paper tournaments. That's not winning. And at PT RTR, it was 4.44% of the field and 3.88% of the metagame with 18 points or better, which indicates its actually underperforming relative to its metagame share, not overperforming. And the 4 players who were piloting it to 18 points or better were Reid Duke, Jon Finkel, William Jensen, and Tom Martell. No one should be surprised that group succeeded regardless of what they were playing.
I have no idea what Reason (2) actually means. They didn't provide any numbers. And it didn't mention whether or not that was through hate or just a non-interactive match. I don't think anybody who plays competitively would argue against the notion that you sleep in the bed you make with your sideboard. If you decide to just punt to storm because its only 4.4% of the metagame, then you can't complain when its a hopeless matchup. Every single color combination can interact favorably with storm now that green has Scavenging Ooze. As someone who plays this deck off and on, some of the most interesting matches I've played have been against decks that are well prepared to combat Storm (and they didn't end on T3.) My best estimation is that Storm only won on T3 or sooner about 10% of the time, and almost never on T3 against decks that were interacting with it. That's a quite dangerous precedent to set because a stunning number of decks seem to approach similar numbers.
Reason (3) is the most puzzling. Picking a card that's not unique to Storm flies in the face of even the Bloodbraid Elf ban in the same announcement. Seething song was a critical card for the infrequently played All-in-Red, Hive Mind, Dragonstorm, etc. Removing it effectively killed those decks. In the same banning announcement for pauper, WotC banned Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens not mana rituals. If Storm is too fast, why not ban Grape Shot and force them to use Empty the Warrens and Goblin Bushwacker...or just wait a turn for the summoning sickness to go away? Then it would be even more fragile, a turn slower, and leave room for interaction because you still need to attack instead of just using the stack. Then there's also the fact that Ponder and Preordain were banned to decrease the efficiency of combo decks to decrease the risk of future bannings. That clearly didn't work, so does that mean those should come off? There's also a lot of design space left in counterspells between something like Deprive (not good enough) and Counterspell (too obsoleting).
So the question: Would Storm be more acceptable if Seething Song was unbanned and Grapeshot was banned instead?
That wound up being more long winded than I thought. Hopefully its worth it and makes for some real discussion beyond the usual bolded assertions from pathos.
I think letting that happen in general would be bad (look at the non-zero number of people who voted for Skullclamp...) but there is something to be said for listening to community feedback and incorporating it into your decision process.
There appears to be a spike on MTGO every time there's a new set and associated B&R update, plus there was also one right after Modern was announced and it had not yet been banned. That indicates to me that its a card people want to play.
I think the price spikes have been pretty regular because people realize its fair enough that it could possibly be unbanned with any given announcement, and there's always speculators who would want to ride that climb, and people on a budget who would want to pick up a playset before the price climbs. Its pretty clear that the card's lack of performance in Legacy has tanked the price, but its still a good enough card to be more than the $5-7 Tix its been floating at recently. Its due for a price correction, and the market condition most likely to initiate it is almost certainly an unban in Modern.
The problem is you can make that argument for half the cards on the darn banned list and two dozen more that are legal. Ancestral Vision. Bitterblossom. Ponder. Stoneforge Mystic. Jace. Birthing Pod. Lily. Emrakul. Grapeshot. The list goes on and on.
It boils down to this - WotC acts irrationally when it comes to bans and they'll ban whatever they want, try to sell it to us, and watch with glee as we pick it apart, discuss it, and argue about it til half of us don't remember why they banned it in the first place and the other half supports it because its now the status quo.
The best we can do is make imperfect, relativistic comparisons because we don't have a parallel universe where nothing is banned to use as a control group. Trying to figure out what motivates WotC and why is a hopeless task - they don't have the answers any more than we do, and if they did, they sure wouldn't tell us because that would give us too much ammunition to shoot them down later. Instead we should base arguments on answerable questions. Ask things like this: What occupied a larger piece of the metagame - Wild Nacatl then or Deathrite Shaman now? If Shaman>Nacatl, does that mean Shaman should be banned, or Nacatl should be unbanned? How frequently does a glass cannon reanimator deck beat the Turn 4 rule? Is it more or less than the frequency Storm with Seething Song did? What kind of win percentage would Bitterblossom Faeries get against a gauntlet of the top decks? These are questions that should theoretically have answers. And that's all we can really work with.
Most of us have since graduated, gotten 'real' jobs, and can afford to pimp out our decks, play Standard, and experiment with Legacy like we never could before. Suddenly our casual Modern turned into a "Modern Plus" set up. I tried Faeries and Cawblade and all those cool decks I missed out on between Timespiral and Scars.
I recently moved to a rural location for work and traded in the paper for MTGO. So I don't play as much now because rural internet blows. But I'm still keenly interested.
And to answer your question, yes, I think Modern is in the long term cheaper than Standard. You buy your cards once (at a slightly greater investment) but don't have to worry too much about building new decks every 3 months. Most MTGO decks cost about $200-400 for Standard and $250-500 for Modern, with a couple notable exceptions well above and below for each.
The sky didn't fall when Valakut was unbanned, and I haven't met a single player who quit modern because seeing a Valakut again triggered PTSD.
The initial point wasn't about Standard though...its that using Legacy relevance as a measuring stick doesn't make sense. All of those decks were comparably traumatizing in Standard and contributed heavily to Legacy.
Yet only the core of one of them (UW Stoneblade) is banned in Modern, while the others have a single card banned that reins them in without killing them altogether. Jund has BBE, Delver has Ponder/Preordain (but for other reasons), Faeries has Bitterblossom (even though Faeries is crap in Legacy) and Stoneblade has
BatterskullJace/SFM/AV and also Ponder and Jitte (for other reasons). One of these doesn't fit the pattern.I would understand if Jund had seen bans to DRS, Lily, and BBE when it started to get successfully ported into Legacy with minimal change. Because we gotta keep the formats separated, right? But that's not what happened. So we're left with this weird situation where cross-format relevance is ok in one deck but not ok in another?
I wouldn't rule it out in the future. It might have been traumatizing once upon a time, but so were Ravager, Delver, Jund, and Valakut. Jace isn't that much better than Liliana of the Veil, and both pale in comparison to a Turn 3 Karn or sneaked-in Emrakul or Griselbrand. SFM fetching anything less than a Batterskull isn't that far off from a Turn 2 Dark Confidant or rebuying Lightning Bolts with Snapcaster Mage. Modern is full of powerful interactions, so it makes little sense to keep some of them on the sidelines while equally crazy stuff runs rampant.
Reason:
At the time of its banning in Modern, Ancestral Vision was showing up in Legacy Stoneblade decks. The goal was to suspend AV on the first turn, then try to use 1-for-1 counters and removal to not fall behind while trying to stick Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. If the move failed, you would get a free fistful of cards to recover from it, and if it succeeded, you'd push so far ahead the match was almost unloseable. Since WotC was (and still is?) determined to making Modern 'feel' different from Legacy, they banned it as a precaution. In the meantime, Ancestral Vision has been dropped from UW Stoneblade, and only sees play in the Shardless Agent based BUG control deck.
The concept of thwarting the opponent 1-for-1, then pulling far ahead when AV came off of suspend would have been "unfun" at the dawn of the format and might have tainted the format in the eyes of a certain demographic of players. That's a reasonable fear, but what ended up happening instead was a bunch of combo decks goldfishing past each other, so it was a moot point.
Question:
If its no longer part of the UW shell that defines one of Legacy's pillars, should it remain banned? Personally, I think the answer is no. And for the record, I think cross-format relevance is a stupid metric anyways. The notion that the two formats can't have some common ground is ridiculous, and if you go back to the initial announcement, its strongly implied that overlap between them is the intent. Modern Jund porting into Legacy and thriving without its entire core (ok, just BBE) being stripped by bans (like Modern UW) was proof WotC's thinking is changing. I wouldn't be surprised to see AV, Jace, and SFM back in the format someday. Maybe not soon, but the wind is changing.
If only Venser had cost 2WU instead of 3WU. So close to being great.
One can only hope that they misunderstood the prompt to be "vote for cards that should stay banned." Otherwise, I'd really like to hear an opinion on it. I doubt I'd agree, but I don't think I've seen a take on Clamp that wasn't facetious.