I'm not really a negative person. Modern is my favorite format. I really don't know how much time does that feeling has left.
I didn't enjoy Top 8, it was really awful to see those Breach decks try to outrace the aggro decks of the format.
I despise Hatebears and i was rooting for it.
Now that we have another Affinity in our sideboards to deal with(Dredge) for the first time in my 5 years as a MTG player i'm considering playing Standard or just go Draft to have some fun.
I think is time to give the format some different aproach. You have to be blind and deaf to not realize Modern is a linear fest where trying to goldsfish is money in the bank.
R&D just have to figure it out, don't ask the community to do their jobs for you. I don't know if it's Twin Unban, Dark Depths, Counterspell reprint whatever it is. There has to be someway to make control decks take down big tournaments.
The level of noninteractive decks is just becoming too much for me too. I don't see how Suicide Zoo can stay around much longer. How many times can it win on turn 3/4 through multiple instances of interaction? Burn has its place, but I really question a format where it is a 1 A/B/C deck. Affinity isn't looking as bad, but I am starting to understand why people can say Mox is an issue. Doesn't help that a lot of players seem to think Grim Flayer is a playable card at this point though…
I find so absurd all the complain about it, "cash grab" "out of flavor".
Man people memory here is so SHORT to not remember that we had the same things at the first conspiracy? (card from outside the plane, rarity shifts, cash grab...)
Really guys, take the common sense out of the closet before posting ¬¬
Just because it's obvious that there is going to be a bad rarity shift due to money doesn't take away from people rightly calling it a cash grab.
Perhaps because Wizards specifically stated that with the change to the 2-sets-a-block structure we'd see more reprints. But that's none of my business.
And we are getting them. Off the top of my head from EMN we got Hamlet Captain, Covolute, Terrarion, Murder. In SOI we got Groundskeeper and probably others. That is just off the top of my head without checking. That's more than I've seen in any block, except back when they were reprinting staples like counterspell and lightning bolt in every first block so they would exist in block constructed.
So, yeah. Feels like they are holding true to their promise. I remember being excited by having 1 or 2 cards reprinted in any given non-core set. They are basically spreading out the amount of reprints they would do in a core set throughout the blocks rather than devoting one set to them.
So yeah, your argument doesn't stack up all that well in the face of the 3 blocks prior to the shift. And unlike the reprints we've seen in SOI/BFZ block, some of those (Thoughtseize, Shocklands) were actually modern-relevant cards.
Except the new sets on average have 2 more reprints then the previous 9 sets prior to the change…
The type of reprints is kind of a red herring too.
A Flayer version that can quickly get to sculpting their draws is scary, but I think the Flayer version is significantly worse than list that don't include it. I think Bant is already running a lot good answers in the stock list to boot. I think a Void Grafter or two would be good and could work in some other match ups.
I've been out the loop besides watching some GPs and SCG Opens recently, but is it a Modern season of sorts? Noticed most NM original print Shocks are gone or significant jump in price on TCG. Plenty of NM reprints and LP or lower originals. Which seems weird because NM reprints of stuff like Goyfs, Cryptics and some other staples are out. Even noticed this in the common/uncommon highly used cards. Reprints kind of make sense since they normally cheaper, but some of these cards should have a decent supply.
Is this just a modern season deal? I'm slowing trying to pick off original prints for my Jund deck and wondering if I should hold off for a little bit of drop in price or bite the bullet on some cards.
I just wanted to point out that it is pretty much a hidden requirement to sleeve cards for tournament play. You might get away with a couple rounds at FNM, but you will get tagged for marked cards in an event that has more then 5 rounds with a decent prize.
So about 41.54% of the field is variations of White Humans and Bant Company. Those include Mono-W, U/W and W/G Humans and Bant Company and something called Bant Company/Humans. How different is G/W Humans from Mono-W?
The Temple gets the hammer. Eye is legendary and it is needless a banning on Tron. I could see WotC randomly banning something from a Gyro deck because they always seem to do some stupid unneeded banning.
Hey I am newish to magic and this is my first exposure to the madness mechanic. I don't get why this particular card is good. I thought that the strength of magdness lied in the fact that you could pay a lower mana cost in exchange for figuring out a way to discard it. Can someone please explain this card to me
Sure. Not all vampires will have madness tagged onto them. Some of them will get a discard ability that does things (like a buff, etc). Discard is usually viewed as card disadvantage. Madness allows you you to turn that disadvantage into card advantage. As you see more and more spoilers, you'll find alot of synergistic cards that have to do with looting (draw, then discard), rummaging (discard, then draw). This is where madness shines.
Innistrad is an abnormal block such that the first block wants you to appreciate death (morbid), self-mill, etc. This block is the same, except that they focus more on self-discard.
This guy encourages aggro. You won't normally see a 4 or 5 drop creature together with the glutton (not counting madness), so their madness cost (equal to their converted cost) is usually cheap. Surely an aggro deck can afford 1 or 2 mana.
It's not so much card advantage but mana efficiency.
So we're a GP win and handful of t8 away from an Eye of Ugin ban right? Heck might only need a couple t8s considering there is a very good chance the top 4 of the PT is all Eldrazi.
The names of a few of the flip cards on the checklist strongly hints at some of them not being creatures. Specifically "Neglected Heirloom", "Autumnal Gloom" and "Skin Invasion", though those last two might just be strange elemental creatures.
Well, the Heirloom sounds like an artifact, which is nothing we've never seen before with Elbrus from the original Innistrad. I feel like the other two may be enchantments, however, which is interesting.
There was also the Chalice that was an artifact along with the blue flyer that turned into a mind control when it did damage.
Why do people think that Modern can only be changed by banning or unbanning cards. WotC literally prints hundreds of BRAND NEW cards EVERY year. What little thought any of the complainers have put towards these bans is nothing in comparison to the hours of work the highly skilled and intelligent people working at WotC have done. They don't hire dumb people, we give them too much money for them to waste it paying dumb people.
WotC themselves will tell you a large part of those hundreds of cards are reprints/filler/average power cards. Eldrazi decks are the exception and not the rule. I personally think they're being very lazy and/or overly conservative and not dumb.
Everyone needs to stop complain about the banning of twin. When it holds enough top 8 places withing so many events, they will Co side it. You guys want things to stop getting banned then stop playing only 1 deck all the time. I have like 6 decks and I rotate playing them. If ppl only play the best deck in the format and it reaches over 30% of the meta or 3-5 places in the top 8 at a few events in a row, then what do you expect to happen? They want diversity. Same thing happened when caw-blade was the only deck playing in standard. They neutered it due to how much it was placing in top 8. It's no surprise to me. It's just time to move on to other decks and get use to how things work in the world I stead of crying about things like little kids.
The whole point of a non-rotating format is to pick your deck and run with it. Add a card here or there and maybe collect some extra that gives you a variation of it. That is the big appeal of Legacy. Sure, you can pick up a different deck for fun but a lot of player have "their deck".
WotC isn't proactively doing anything to help diversity except kick the can a year down the road. We're going to be in the same spot next year except Tron, Eldrazis or something else is getting axed. If they're adjusting every year why not try and unban some cards that could push the envelope a little more? Grave Troll does nothing when GY hate is powerful and easy accessible. Nactal doesn't do jack when Lightning Bolt and a lesser extent Path are so common. Bitterblossom wasn't an issue so let's try something else!
Trying to draw any correlation between Twin and Caw-Blade is silly. Caw-Blade era boiled down to CB beat Valkut, random rogue decks built specially to beat CB beat CB and Valkut beat those decks. There is still deck diversity in Modern even when WotC doesn't want to admit it. Sure, Twin is a good deck and is great in the right hands but there is other decks. I would go even further and say Bloom Titan did more to curb diversity then Twin.
I'm sorry, but that whole NPH sales were hurt by the God book is complete bull*****. Their sales were hurt because their tournaments attendance was down due to that awful standard. It was original Mirrodin all over again, not spoilers.
I just can't get behind the majority of this. I have no issue with the 2 and 3 year bans for the leaks. Everything after that is complete garbage and the open letter on judge site nails the major parts. WotC goes against they're normal procedures and uses such ambiguous language that they could ban pretty much anyone. Not the first time this happened in the past couple months. The whole Zach Jesse thing was crazy too. I agree with WotC's thought process of trying to make everyone as comfortable as they can be at their events, but you shouldn't be randomly enforcing bans in this manner. They even went as far as closing his MTGO account. WotC is free to arbitrarily enforce these kind of bans but you are going to have some serious backlash.
The level of noninteractive decks is just becoming too much for me too. I don't see how Suicide Zoo can stay around much longer. How many times can it win on turn 3/4 through multiple instances of interaction? Burn has its place, but I really question a format where it is a 1 A/B/C deck. Affinity isn't looking as bad, but I am starting to understand why people can say Mox is an issue. Doesn't help that a lot of players seem to think Grim Flayer is a playable card at this point though…
Just because it's obvious that there is going to be a bad rarity shift due to money doesn't take away from people rightly calling it a cash grab.
Except the new sets on average have 2 more reprints then the previous 9 sets prior to the change…
The type of reprints is kind of a red herring too.
Is this just a modern season deal? I'm slowing trying to pick off original prints for my Jund deck and wondering if I should hold off for a little bit of drop in price or bite the bullet on some cards.
It's not so much card advantage but mana efficiency.
There was also the Chalice that was an artifact along with the blue flyer that turned into a mind control when it did damage.
WotC themselves will tell you a large part of those hundreds of cards are reprints/filler/average power cards. Eldrazi decks are the exception and not the rule. I personally think they're being very lazy and/or overly conservative and not dumb.
The whole point of a non-rotating format is to pick your deck and run with it. Add a card here or there and maybe collect some extra that gives you a variation of it. That is the big appeal of Legacy. Sure, you can pick up a different deck for fun but a lot of player have "their deck".
WotC isn't proactively doing anything to help diversity except kick the can a year down the road. We're going to be in the same spot next year except Tron, Eldrazis or something else is getting axed. If they're adjusting every year why not try and unban some cards that could push the envelope a little more? Grave Troll does nothing when GY hate is powerful and easy accessible. Nactal doesn't do jack when Lightning Bolt and a lesser extent Path are so common. Bitterblossom wasn't an issue so let's try something else!
Trying to draw any correlation between Twin and Caw-Blade is silly. Caw-Blade era boiled down to CB beat Valkut, random rogue decks built specially to beat CB beat CB and Valkut beat those decks. There is still deck diversity in Modern even when WotC doesn't want to admit it. Sure, Twin is a good deck and is great in the right hands but there is other decks. I would go even further and say Bloom Titan did more to curb diversity then Twin.
I just can't get behind the majority of this. I have no issue with the 2 and 3 year bans for the leaks. Everything after that is complete garbage and the open letter on judge site nails the major parts. WotC goes against they're normal procedures and uses such ambiguous language that they could ban pretty much anyone. Not the first time this happened in the past couple months. The whole Zach Jesse thing was crazy too. I agree with WotC's thought process of trying to make everyone as comfortable as they can be at their events, but you shouldn't be randomly enforcing bans in this manner. They even went as far as closing his MTGO account. WotC is free to arbitrarily enforce these kind of bans but you are going to have some serious backlash.