I think we are all really stuck on fetch lands and have put too much stock in always having access to them in non rotating formats. Banning of the allied fetch lands in Pioneer all but confirms we are done getting true fetch lands (land types not basics) in standard ever. Not a bad decision on their part. They have always been problematic there. Not just shuffling times but they also homogenize deck diversity and also thin decks too efficiently in the numbers cycled fetches are played in. Fabled Passage as a standard playable Evolving Wilds is not problematic for standard because it only finds basics and has a real cost in a technical way and not just a managing resources way like Prismatic Vista. It's not a really good land in the pioneer format for 3 color + decks though. It pulls lands tapped early on and doesn't line up well with decks with heavy color requirements. In Modern fetch lands can pull multiple colors out of your deck to diversify your Mana base extremely quickly. They allow you to pull heavy color requirements. You can for example pull GGB, UUU, UUB, and UBG in just 3 fetches in Modern. Fabled Passage and Prismatic Vista both don't do anything close to this powerful. There are exceptions to this. Prismatic Vista would help DRS if it found a way into pioneer. Fabled Passage won't help Deathrite Shaman accelerate early but it can help enable revolt and shuffle an unwanted card away from say Courser of Crufix. Which is I believe the idea in a non rotating format without true fetches (land types not just basics.) You should play Fabled Passage when your build dictates it and not just an obligatory include. There are some other good lands throughout this era of cards beyond just Fabled Passage and Shocks to take advantage of. Cycling lands can be powerful in control decks to help mitigate higher land counts. Cards like Courser of Crufix would be able to take advantage of scry lands. Obviously the Fast land cycle and Pain lands will fair well in Aggro decks. The dual Man lands will probably find niche rolls in many types of decks also. In fact this format could make the lesser land cycles more relevant and give them a source of value when they literally can't compete at all with Modern/Legacy Mana bases.
Additional note, anyone who is complaining about price hikes for Pioneer really have things pretty good. The price hikes on Modern were waaaaay worse for a long time. $50 moderately played shock lands, $10 Remand, $50 Cryptic Command, $10 spell Snare $80 Noble Hierarch and $200 Tarmogyfes were rampant, just to name a few. Heck the most expensive card in the format is only about $50 a couple weeks in! Formats create a supply and demand economy, nothing can change that. Looking to do MTG on the cheap? MTGA is the only realistic option. I am now really loving my decision not to sell off all my stuff post rotating. And people called me crazy!
(Pioneer and Modern are Non-rotating formats, not eternal ones. There is a difference!)
they have fetches in the form of Fabled passage, but yeah, good point on that. I think you are right that DRS is safe.
Fabled Passage isn't an enabler for Deathrite Shaman. It will bring lands into play tapped early. Deathrite needs support to accelerate early. Also Fabled passage is only good in 2 color decks honestly. Things like Satyr Wayfinder will be enabling DRS abilities.
I think many will be surprised at what ultimately does get banned honestly. A lot of the more problematic cards from certain areas bcoming in have some amount of answers in sets outside of the standard they belong. Thoughtseize is a good deterrent to the more expensive combos and field of ruin will punish greedy mana bases. White has a couple of flash O-ring effects that seem suitable in addition to the black removal sweets. Red seems underpowered in the burn department though. It's hard to tell where things will wind up as we have never had a format this wide without fetch/shock mana base. That dynamic is what I am interested in. The biggest factor is that decks won't concentrate themselves as games go long. In modern and legacy the more you fetch typically the more relevant your draw step becomes. Your land count in Pioneer is a real factor. One too many you flood more often, one too little you starve! 5 and 6 drops that outright win games will be more valuable, at least in small quantities. All this to say anything broken will rise to the top early and get banned soon enough. Once the format firms up it will be a decent format for players in between formats!
Rotating formats are a hard sell outside of standard honestly. A lot of players make it to there first set rotation and then they are like "so I can't play with my cards anymore? That sucks!". For a while they had Legacy turn to. Then they Modern. Now they will have Pioneer. Regardless, whichever format they make will incur a secondary market for that format and drive card values up. It creates supply and demand. If they had made Pioneer a rotating format people would have the exact same complaints anyway!
Modern is a Non-Rotating format, not an Eternal format. The difference is inclusiveness. Eternal formats include all suplementary products. Pauper and Legacy are Eternal formats because things like Conspiracy and yearly Commander Deck Series are legal in those formats
I don't see Modern, Legacy, and Vintage going anywhere, ever! The reason Legacy and Vintage are having trouble with hosted events has absolutely nothing to do with lack of support. The support is lacking because the patrons of those formats are declining and new blood is not really replacing them. It's getting harder and harder to justify regular and frequent large events because the turn out is dwindling. It's not hard to understand, these formats are rediculasly expensive! Modern is the new legacy only in that it is an expensive format with a high amount of long time players. Modern decks today are comparable in price now to roughly what legacy decks were when Modern was a new format that was never going catch on. (ABUR lands were about $50-$100 and a lot of the important Staples were $50-$200). Pioneer is a stepping stone for new players (last 6 years) looking to go beyond standard but not quite ready for Modern. Much like Modern is a great stepping stone for players looking to go beyond where Pioneer is now but not quite ready for Legacy. I don't see this as a conspiracy sized excuse for a "cash grab" or pandering to those of us on a budget. I also don't see it as a way to avoid reprinting to demand either. Cards like Tarmogyfe were reprinted into oblivion in the Masters series and the only thing that really put a dent in it's price tag was simply WOTC printing better threats. Tarmogyfe is a lot cheaper now because it's just not clearly the best creature anymore, simple as that. Will they be making another non rotating format 10 years from now? Possibly, probably. Will this format succeed? With the support they plan on putting into it, you bet ya! It's just another format where different cards get a chance to shine.
There are definitely some take aways I took from the announcement that I found interesting though!
- Fetch lands will NOT be returning to standard any time soon. By banning the allied ones it would seem silly to print the enemy ones I'm standard without also banning them as well. "No fetch lands" appear to be a defining feature of pioneer.
- Obviously bannings will happen when apparent need arises. They seem to have learned their lesson when they created Modern. They want to make sure only problematic are removed.
- They didn't put any restrictions yet on what will define the format. Modern was billed as a turn 4 format and WOTC has been dancing that devil ever since! This statement has made quite a few headaches for them over the years. Hopefully they will be leaving this criteria up to the players. We have proven to be a quiet a vocal constiuancy!
- They have also not set any expectations of reprints as well. By billing Modern as a "reprint friendly" format it has given the modern player base a unrealistic expectation of card availability ever since it's inception. Often times we forget Magic is a rare card game that has been able to develop a SUCCESSFUL secondary market mostly because WOTC learned vary early on conservative reprint policies are healthy on some level.
- Hopefully these previous 2 statements remain unchanged. Like it or not both of those policies have hampered modern in general as a format!
All in all, this news is really exciting to me. I have been holding on to my standard staples for a while as they were perfectly reasonable cards with nowhere to be relevant. Hopefully many will find a home I'm this exciting new format!
This would only be legal in legacy and vintage and I wouldn't recommend it. You would be playing against really powerful permission spells (free counterspells) and creatures, also crazy efficient mana bases. Just to point out a few things. If you are interested in trying your hand at tournament play I would recommend doing some research and starting out in standard. Manage your expectation a little starting out too. I know a couple of players who went in confident from positive kitchen table experience and got trounced at there first tournament and gave up because they started with sky high expectations of themselves. It's a bit of a learning curve!
Going just a little deeper outside of the the obvious though. You lack other OP cards like FOW, Daze, True Name Nemesis, and Brainstorm. You also lack threats like Delver of Secrets that benefit from manipulating your deck. Wasteland and Stifle can also help limit your opponents ability to build a board and pressure your Planeswalkers. Back to Basics is a different way to pressure your opponents Mana base in legacy. The threats you face attack from different angles also because said threats don't have to deal with all the stuff mentioned above that to compete! Short answer really is Modern is just a different format period. At least for now anyway.
Sounds like a legit strategy. It all depends on if you are interested in having fun or interested in actually winning. I do pretty well with a pet brew of mine that wins using Time Seive but just because I actually can win with it occasionally doesn't mean I sleeve it up for big tournaments! It's important to manage expectations on pet decks. The UR list someone else posted seems like a good place to start. Use resource denial to limit what they can do by the time they draw 7 from each spell. Might be better off with Thing in the Ice in game 2 though. Aetherling is too much. You need 6 to play and at least 1 extra blue source to protect it. When it was in Standard it wasn't uncommon to wait until you had 3 untapped blue sources to protect it! Have fun, happy brewing!
It's just another powerful 2 drop in a format loaded with powerful 2 drop creatures like Dark Confidant, Tarmogyfe, Snapcaster Mage, and Young Pyromancer to name a few. SFM is probably a better white 2 drop than anything in Hate Bears only because it doesn't play to a really specific niche. The thing is both SFM and JTMS were victims of a poorly developed standard and their own success. Even though they were grossly overpowered in their standard environment, it was more because the environment they were in was grossly underpowered!
The reason KCI was so powerful was due to it being very strong against any hate. At first glace the deck seems like it should lose to graveyard hate and artifact hate. However, due to it maindecking 3-4 Engineered Explosives, easily slotting in any number of Nature's Claim and similar effects in the sideboard, and due to the deck's main point of recurring artifacts from the graveyard at instant speed, it basically dealt with everything. Ancient Stirrings only made the deck consistent, but the true power was in the core of the shell, nothing else. The question we need to ask is if Stirrings and Mox Opal make the deck broken or not, and in most cases, even in KCI I would say it isn't the case. I think in the same vein, one could even argue the same for Faithless Looting in the graveyard decks. Its the argument of enablers vs payoff.
However, Wotc did ban Looting because of the implications it could have on the future meta game, and how a card like looting can enable decks like Dredge to be super powerful and format warping. While I'd personally argue that Izzet Phoenix, while once the top deck or one of the top decks, it was on its last legs as a top tier deck at the time of the banning even with Hogaak gone. But by banning looting it overall slows down the format, so I guess its warranted to slow down the format and could, and probably so, will create a better format overall.
The thing is about banning cards in an eternal format, I am for only one criterion of banning: format warping. This is slightly vague but I will give two other criteria under the "format warping" title. (1) Meta game share and (2) homogenization of deck construction strategy. Hogaak is a good example of the first. It's obvious success across pretty much every tournament since its printing had a huge share of not just the overall meta game, but also the winning meta game. As for the second, we can look to cards like Ponder and Preordain for an example.
I'll reply to your quote:
I dont think its fair that blue gets all of its good cantripping spells banned while green can keep this powerful one even if it is one you have to build around
The reasoning here is incorrect. You even said it later yourself and how you can't simply put Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal in any (green) deck, and how Serum Visions doesn't go into ever blue deck. While you are right about Opal and Stirrings, I think you are wrong about blue decks and its cantrips. Serum Visions doesn't go into every blue deck because there aren't as many "pile" decks in Modern. The decks that do care about drawing do play Serum Visions, and there's a good chance that even the blue decks that don't currently run it would play a card like Ponder or even Preordain due to the immense increase in power compared to Serum Visions. In how the mechanics work with Fetch Lands, Serum Visions becomes a vastly inferior card compared to the other two. If we look to pretty much every blue deck that isn't a specific critical mass deck (e.g. Urza wants critical mass of artifacts, spirits wants creatures, etc), then I'd argue that they all would play Ponder or Preordain, as they all already are playing Serum. This then becomes format warping as we see in Legacy where most decks start with 52 cards after Brainstorm and Ponder.
Going back to my original criterion about banning cards, i'd like to share a quote I have shared in the past from Brian Kibler to show why I believe this is the only valid criterion:
"This is the problem with eternal formats. New interactions are going to keep coming up, new powerful things are going to keep happening If you're response is 'we're going to get rid of that one', then you are going to lose the point of having an eternal format. In Modern, people can't play the decks they've put together that they like and they want to play, which is really a lot of the appeal of the format to a lot of people."
7:13
We need to ask ourselves what is the point of an eternal format like Modern. To Kibler's point, Modern is there for us to play cards that were printed from 8th edition. If we take some other criterion than what I proposed, they we will continue to ride the ban carousal and continue to keep banning what ever deck is on top (e.g Pod, Splinter Twin), or what cards people simply don't like. As he says, new interactions will keep coming up, and yes, we sometimes need to ban these under strict criteria, but in the case of weaker arguments such as potential enabling of a certain strategy, we have to avoid that way of thinking.
This whole statement lays out a good argument for banning either Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal actually. Big green ramp in modern is basically big colorless ramp because Ancient Stirrings makes big colorless ramp more consistent than big green ramp decks. It's not really a choice at this point. Not to say other ramp decks don't or can't exist at all. They just don't work pound for pound as well as Tron. Even the Titan ramp decks aren't as good because they lack the ability to search out their key cards as well as Tron! On the other hand Ancient Stirrings has also enabled decks like KCI, Eldrazi, Lantern Control, and Second Breakfast if anyone remembers that fiasco to get to or near bannable points and probably weighs heavily on card design when they go to do a colorless set. It meets criteria on both fronts. Mox Opal also qualifies for both of these catagories as well but I really hope "it's fast mana" is enough of an argument at this point to explain itself! I'm not really just saying this to complain about Tron and/or Affinity. My argument for banning Ancient Stirrings is because Ancient Stirrings literally fits the exact same criteria as Faithless Looting does and there was no resolve offered as to why it got the pass. Just a passing mention of it being on a "watch list". The decision was non uniform without explanation. Like I said before, I personally don't believe Mox Opal to be responsible for power level issues so it getting a pass without explanation is ok to me.
Also Modern is a Non Rotating Format, not an eternal one. Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Pauper are examples eternal formats. They don't exclude black boarder expansions. Just individual cards.
I'm not too unhappy about the bannings. Kind of surprised they didn't just ban Ancient Stirrings with Faithless Looting though. This banning makes it the most powerful cantrip in Modern. Ponder for 5 was pretty busted, it's a surprise it outlasted Faithless Looting! I would say that is the next most problematic card that gets axed. I'm not really worried about Mox Opal as much honestly. As powerful as it is, it's still Legendary artifact. Affinity burns through it's recourses pretty quick. Being able to use the extra mana or two to tutor out something from the top of your deck is the degenerate play pattern. I would argue Simian Spirit Guide is more problematic in the fast mana department. I don't actually play Affinity myself so maybe I am missing some perspective on it's power level.
Also, I can't wait to watch someone Leroy Jenkins a Stoneforge Mystic into a turn 3 Karn. It's going to happen and that's going to be hilarious!
I seriously don't understand why so many people want to see wizards kill off a huge swath of there most popular intellectual property. I can dig a few irrelevant characters getting killed off. It seems better to finish the Bolas plot line and diversify and fill out the characters they already have and flesh them out into something interesting. Maybe a main gatewatch character who doesn't have any meaningful story left could die. It's also most likely not going to be Jace. He is one of the only main gatewatch characters who's home plane we haven't visited yet and that's at least one story I feel we will see before he gets the axe. They went through the trouble of getting his memory back after all! Probably not going to kill off Bolas either. Good villains never get killed off for good. Pretty sure that might be considered bad story telling. Me personally I don't have a problem any current walker, I'd hate to see a bunch of them killed off at the moment. The forum community in general are incredibly cynical and would find a way to voice displeasure at any possible twist in War of the Spark. Looking forward to war of the spark though! Teaser looks great
Killing off inconsequential characters accomplishes nothing. It has no impact on the story or the consumer, making an attempt at shock value that lacks shock.
And most of the Gatewatch characters are boring as hell and haven’t gotten any more interesting over the years.
I just don't have a problem with the gatewatch personally, I think they are fine. I understand that a lot of players attention spans are short but the decision to focus on them had more to do with wizards breaking into Hollywood and bringing Magic to a new mainstream
audience. Obviously this experiment wasn't translated into the game well but Hollywood told them they needed recognizable characters. Killing the whole squad would completely undermine that work. Do you want a gatewatch rehash? I'm sure thier second best ideas are so much better than there first ones right? Better to leave them alive and focus elsewhere for a while.
I seriously don't understand why so many people want to see wizards kill off a huge swath of there most popular intellectual property. I can dig a few irrelevant characters getting killed off. It seems better to finish the Bolas plot line and diversify and fill out the characters they already have and flesh them out into something interesting. Maybe a main gatewatch character who doesn't have any meaningful story left could die. It's also most likely not going to be Jace. He is one of the only main gatewatch characters who's home plane we haven't visited yet and that's at least one story I feel we will see before he gets the axe. They went through the trouble of getting his memory back after all! Probably not going to kill off Bolas either. Good villains never get killed off for good. Pretty sure that might be considered bad story telling. Me personally I don't have a problem any current walker, I'd hate to see a bunch of them killed off at the moment. The forum community in general are incredibly cynical and would find a way to voice displeasure at any possible twist in War of the Spark. Looking forward to war of the spark though! Teaser looks great
Additional note, anyone who is complaining about price hikes for Pioneer really have things pretty good. The price hikes on Modern were waaaaay worse for a long time. $50 moderately played shock lands, $10 Remand, $50 Cryptic Command, $10 spell Snare $80 Noble Hierarch and $200 Tarmogyfes were rampant, just to name a few. Heck the most expensive card in the format is only about $50 a couple weeks in! Formats create a supply and demand economy, nothing can change that. Looking to do MTG on the cheap? MTGA is the only realistic option. I am now really loving my decision not to sell off all my stuff post rotating. And people called me crazy!
(Pioneer and Modern are Non-rotating formats, not eternal ones. There is a difference!)
Fabled Passage isn't an enabler for Deathrite Shaman. It will bring lands into play tapped early. Deathrite needs support to accelerate early. Also Fabled passage is only good in 2 color decks honestly. Things like Satyr Wayfinder will be enabling DRS abilities.
Modern is a Non-Rotating format, not an Eternal format. The difference is inclusiveness. Eternal formats include all suplementary products. Pauper and Legacy are Eternal formats because things like Conspiracy and yearly Commander Deck Series are legal in those formats
There are definitely some take aways I took from the announcement that I found interesting though!
- Fetch lands will NOT be returning to standard any time soon. By banning the allied ones it would seem silly to print the enemy ones I'm standard without also banning them as well. "No fetch lands" appear to be a defining feature of pioneer.
- Obviously bannings will happen when apparent need arises. They seem to have learned their lesson when they created Modern. They want to make sure only problematic are removed.
- They didn't put any restrictions yet on what will define the format. Modern was billed as a turn 4 format and WOTC has been dancing that devil ever since! This statement has made quite a few headaches for them over the years. Hopefully they will be leaving this criteria up to the players. We have proven to be a quiet a vocal constiuancy!
- They have also not set any expectations of reprints as well. By billing Modern as a "reprint friendly" format it has given the modern player base a unrealistic expectation of card availability ever since it's inception. Often times we forget Magic is a rare card game that has been able to develop a SUCCESSFUL secondary market mostly because WOTC learned vary early on conservative reprint policies are healthy on some level.
- Hopefully these previous 2 statements remain unchanged. Like it or not both of those policies have hampered modern in general as a format!
All in all, this news is really exciting to me. I have been holding on to my standard staples for a while as they were perfectly reasonable cards with nowhere to be relevant. Hopefully many will find a home I'm this exciting new format!
Mills 180 cards
Rite of replication + Hagra Diabolist
30 life loss
This whole statement lays out a good argument for banning either Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal actually. Big green ramp in modern is basically big colorless ramp because Ancient Stirrings makes big colorless ramp more consistent than big green ramp decks. It's not really a choice at this point. Not to say other ramp decks don't or can't exist at all. They just don't work pound for pound as well as Tron. Even the Titan ramp decks aren't as good because they lack the ability to search out their key cards as well as Tron! On the other hand Ancient Stirrings has also enabled decks like KCI, Eldrazi, Lantern Control, and Second Breakfast if anyone remembers that fiasco to get to or near bannable points and probably weighs heavily on card design when they go to do a colorless set. It meets criteria on both fronts. Mox Opal also qualifies for both of these catagories as well but I really hope "it's fast mana" is enough of an argument at this point to explain itself! I'm not really just saying this to complain about Tron and/or Affinity. My argument for banning Ancient Stirrings is because Ancient Stirrings literally fits the exact same criteria as Faithless Looting does and there was no resolve offered as to why it got the pass. Just a passing mention of it being on a "watch list". The decision was non uniform without explanation. Like I said before, I personally don't believe Mox Opal to be responsible for power level issues so it getting a pass without explanation is ok to me.
Also Modern is a Non Rotating Format, not an eternal one. Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Pauper are examples eternal formats. They don't exclude black boarder expansions. Just individual cards.
Also, I can't wait to watch someone Leroy Jenkins a Stoneforge Mystic into a turn 3 Karn. It's going to happen and that's going to be hilarious!
I just don't have a problem with the gatewatch personally, I think they are fine. I understand that a lot of players attention spans are short but the decision to focus on them had more to do with wizards breaking into Hollywood and bringing Magic to a new mainstream
audience. Obviously this experiment wasn't translated into the game well but Hollywood told them they needed recognizable characters. Killing the whole squad would completely undermine that work. Do you want a gatewatch rehash? I'm sure thier second best ideas are so much better than there first ones right? Better to leave them alive and focus elsewhere for a while.