Izzetmage elves can win on turn 2 now, but it almost never happens and you are still incredibly weak to removal and sweepers, Glimpse seems fine the only hands it breaks are ones that can win early anyway aka nettle ×2 draw with ways to tutor for druid
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Modern:
Paper: WUR Waffle Control, RG and U Tron
MTGO: U Tron, BRG Living End, B Infect
Testing Modern on MTGO and helping to craft decks on a Budget I stream!
There's a big difference between:
1) casting a whole bunch of Elves on turn 3 and having to wait until turn 4 to attack for the win
2) reanimating Iona on turn 3, effectively locking your opponent out of the game on the same turn
3) reanimating Flame-Kin Zealot on turn 3 with a bunch of Zombie tokens and swinging on the same turn for the win
You can't win on turn 3 with Elves unless you manage to hardcast Emrakul/Hoof, or get an absolutely insane Glimpse + Druid + double Sentinel draw by turn 2.
Clearly you've never played against competitive elf-ball. If they go off turn 3, it means they're dropping an Emrakul, bouncing every permanent you control back to your hand (primal command), or swinging for lethal with craterhoof or something similar. If you "go off" with elves, it means you're winning that turn, not waiting for the untap phase the following turn (although sometimes if they fizzle, this is enough to win regardless).
They also do have tons of cantrips and redundancy. Summoner's Pact tutors for the heritage druids or necessary nettle sentinels. Lead the Stampede and Elvish Visionary cantrip and invalidate a lot of removal effects, draw into necessary combo pieces, and allow you to see tons of cards. Glimpse of nature is also a cantrip in it's own that can either be used for value, or to win on the spot. A turn 2 archdruid also threatens tons of mana that can be used to "go off" that turn.
Elf-combo even in it's most competitive form no doubt can be answered in the format, but it would put a very large dent into the metagame, requiring most decks that are slower than it is to play red sweepers or lose to them. Spot removal is usually a losing proposition against full-powered elves as they have too many cantrips & card advantage spells to maintain parity, especially when they draw 5 cards off a "value" glimpse of nature, or draw 3-4 off a turn 2 lead the stampede.
To be honest I can't ever see this coming off. There are already three combos that are overwhelmingly powerful in creature matchups: Punishing Grove, Thopter Sword, and Jitte + creature. Guess what? They're all banned.
And the entire format is creature decks, most of which can easily answer thopter/sword. I don't see why this is oppressive. Besides, considering creature decks dominate the meta, unbanning thopter/sword would be healthy and far from oppressive. If it's that big of a problem where your maindeck pridemages, abrupt decays, or turn 4 wins can't deal with thopter sword, then you still have that thing known as a sideboard to deal with it, much of which already hurts the combo (stony silence, rest in peace, pithing needle, ancient grudge, maelstrom pulse, shattering spree, etc).
The big problem with punishing fire and jitte, is that there is very little drawback to playing them, and they're both essentially 1 card combos. Thoptersword is a 2 card combo where each piece is useless without the other. That makes it slower, less consistent, and easier to answer. I've yet to see a strong argument for why it should stay on the ban list.
Jesus christ. 9 times out of 10 if I make a post it goes entirely unnoticed. Whatever.
Glimpse Elves is gross powerful. but so is DRedge. and Thepths.
The difference is, THE FORMATS ARE NOT THE SAME. Extended didn't have Scavenging Ooze, Abrupt Decay, Swan Song, Deathrite Shaman, Twin Combo (More consistant and with disruption), Pod combo (mainboard hate ITFO Deathrite and ScOoze) etc.
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There is no "problematic card" on BGx, unless you consider all cards problematic.
BGx is just a goodstuff deck with some of the best modern cards, and will still be even if it have any of the cards banned.
BGx alone is strong, but is not oppressive, the problem is that BGx can easily splash to gain access of resources that BG alone don't have with no punishment.
This is the second time you've made this assertion. It's still wrong.
If there was actually no punishment, then no one would ever play BG Rock instead of Jund or Ajundi. What do you know, a lot of people are, and it's gained a lot of popularity and is doing pretty well.
Do you have a decklist for ThopterSword that is good against Jund?
You say amazing, but I am fine with good.
I am fine with it only being good against Jund and not other decks if that is really necessary.
I've tried numerous times to make a decent ThopterSword deck in modern (with the only ban change being having sword available). And it has never produced anything worth playing*. Sword is not the only thing that old school ThopterSword decks lost, and some of the other losses sting even harder than sword does (artifact lands and chrome mox in particular).
*
There was an affinity list that was a sidegrade to current affinity, but it was at best something you would pick as a metagame option over current affinity to shore up some matchups and lose percentages elsewhere.
Absolutely nothing of the sort of "controlly blue" decks that people say would be good if they had sword.
Believe me, I am one of the most ban-happy people around, and if I had even the slightest fear of sword I wouldn't bother saying anything about it. But we've brewed, we've tested, and its just not even that good, let alone dangerous.
But as always, I would love to be proven wrong. But as many times as I have asked for a list, we've yet to have someone produce one that was any good in the modern format.
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe we haven't even gotten a list that was actually legal in the modern format (aside from the obvious sword unban that is the discussion at hand), the best anyone really ever offered was lists to old extended that
1) had other cards banned
2) was engineered to the threats of that format (sorry repeal isn't nearly as good in modern)
3) gave no mind to the fact that years and years of new cards have entered the equation
So please, I am begging here. If you want to continue believing that Sword is good, show us WHY.
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I support WotC's goal of shaping Modern in favor of diversity.
I ran a thought experiment on my blog Modern in a Nuclear Wasteland
of an extreme case of banning 20 more cards to make sure they get everything, then scaling back where appropriate. WotC seems to be on a slowly build up approach. Both ways probably reach similar end points.
The post Gatecrash metagame is proving to be closer to the endpoint than I estimated, so its very possible that few (if any) more cards need to be banned.
If there was actually no punishment, then no one would ever play BG Rock instead of Jund or Ajundi.
But the fun part is that those BG rock don't go light on the manabases, they still uses 8-10 fetches, 2-4 shocks and only 2-4 basics, basically the same as the 3-4 colors BGx.
So they are not going straight BG because of the mana, and if your point is "people go straight BG to avoid greedy mana punishment", then you are the one wrong, because people still use the same recipe for their lands, and non-basic hate would have the same impact on them as it have on 3-4 colors jund.
What do you know, a lot of people are, and it's gained a lot of popularity and is doing pretty well.
And it is not because of how it evades non-basic hate, it probably because some people belive that other colors don't offer anything that will actually improve the deck core strategy.
Do you have a decklist for ThopterSword that is good against Jund?
You say amazing, but I am fine with good.
I am fine with it only being good against Jund and not other decks if that is really necessary.
I've tried numerous times to make a decent ThopterSword deck in modern (with the only ban change being having sword available). And it has never produced anything worth playing*. Sword is not the only thing that old school ThopterSword decks lost, and some of the other losses sting even harder than sword does (artifact lands and chrome mox in particular).
*
There was an affinity list that was a sidegrade to current affinity, but it was at best something you would pick as a metagame option over current affinity to shore up some matchups and lose percentages elsewhere.
Absolutely nothing of the sort of "controlly blue" decks that people say would be good if they had sword.
Believe me, I am one of the most ban-happy people around, and if I had even the slightest fear of sword I wouldn't bother saying anything about it. But we've brewed, we've tested, and its just not even that good, let alone dangerous.
But as always, I would love to be proven wrong. But as many times as I have asked for a list, we've yet to have someone produce one that was any good in the modern format.
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe we haven't even gotten a list that was actually legal in the modern format (aside from the obvious sword unban that is the discussion at hand), the best anyone really ever offered was lists to old extended that
1) had other cards banned
2) was engineered to the threats of that format (sorry repeal isn't nearly as good in modern)
3) gave no mind to the fact that years and years of new cards have entered the equation
So please, I am begging here. If you want to continue believing that Sword is good, show us WHY.
This list has been pretty strong against midrange for me in testing. It's pretty straightforward, and plays more removal, more redundancy, and less tutoring than the extended lists. As a result, it's better equipped in the modern meta to deal with all the creature-oriented decks as well as the midrange decks.
But the fun part is that those BG rock don't go light on the manabases, they still uses 8-10 fetches, 2-4 shocks and only 2-4 basics, basically the same as the 3-4 colors BGx.
So they are not going straight BG because of the mana, and if your point is "people go straight BG to avoid greedy mana punishment", then you are the one wrong, because people still use the same recipe for their lands, and non-basic hate would have the same impact on them as it have on 3-4 colors jund.
I'm still grinding a Ghost Quarter / Tec edge heavy deck (as well as a blood moon running side deck) a year or so after getting into modern, and let me say that this guy has a really good point.
Non-basic land hate punishes the straight Rock lists about as hard as it does the 4 color / Jund lists.. the only noticeable difference being the higher potential for specific color screw. DRS, ramping and fixing in any color, will help either deck recover regardless.
I'm so thoroughly sick of the 'modern mana bases are greedy' meme, to be honest. Compared, as a format, to what? Standard? Mana bases are almost as 'greedy', mostly non-basics with little (basically no) hate present. This is probably changing now that stuff like Farseek and Thragtusk are leaving, which enabled 4-5 ridiculous decks to fix and not die, but still. Most of the lands being played are non-basic.
Legacy? Hearing the meme coming out of legacy players is the most infuriating of all. Legacy has wasteland, but it also has 4 color decks running DRS and Karakas. It has 3 color BUG decks that literally scoop to blood moon resolving minutes into a game. It has decks so greedy that they control the game built entirely on absurd mana bases + Life from the Loam. All of these decks have greedy mana bases that are weak to wasteland no doubt. But they're also so greedy that many of them slot wasteland as well!
On top of these facts, there's no question of, "Do I pay a tenth of my life total here for an untapped shock to cast something." You just get an untapped ABUR Dual and do whatever the hell you want.
The mana bases in magic in general these days are "greedy", in all 3 major constructed formats.
I'm advocating FOR sword to come off the banned list. If you had read my entire post, rather than just quoting one line, you would see that.
And ThopterSword is inherently good against midrange. A deck built right will crush a midrange strategy, and it doesn't even have to be a perfect list. Of course, Tron is inherently good against control, and aggro can race the "combo."
This is a UB Thopter Tron list I threw together, and beat basically every BGx deck I ran into while testing it, and I had about an even matchup with RDW and Gruul Zoo.
Not even an optimal list. Wellsprings probably should have been prophetic prisms, probably need more removal, etc. However, against opposing Tron Decks, and against Scapeshift, the matchup was very poor for me.
Yo, you need more spellskites and muddles, no tron lands and probably confidant if you go the UB route.
Yeah. I basically threw the deck together and went the tron route, i don't remember why. But I think the traditional ub muddle/skite/bob/more removal control list would be better.
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Clearly you've never played against competitive elf-ball. If they go off turn 3, it means they're dropping an Emrakul, bouncing every permanent you control back to your hand (primal command), or swinging for lethal with craterhoof or something similar. If you "go off" with elves, it means you're winning that turn, not waiting for the untap phase the following turn (although sometimes if they fizzle, this is enough to win regardless).
They also do have tons of cantrips and redundancy. Summoner's Pact tutors for the heritage druids or necessary nettle sentinels. Lead the Stampede and Elvish Visionary cantrip and invalidate a lot of removal effects, draw into necessary combo pieces, and allow you to see tons of cards. Glimpse of nature is also a cantrip in it's own that can either be used for value, or to win on the spot. A turn 2 archdruid also threatens tons of mana that can be used to "go off" that turn.
Elf-combo even in it's most competitive form no doubt can be answered in the format, but it would put a very large dent into the metagame, requiring most decks that are slower than it is to play red sweepers or lose to them. Spot removal is usually a losing proposition against full-powered elves as they have too many cantrips & card advantage spells to maintain parity, especially when they draw 5 cards off a "value" glimpse of nature, or draw 3-4 off a turn 2 lead the stampede.
Clearly you do not understand that Elves in Modern is completely different from Elves in every other format that it was playable in.
This is NOT Extended ca. PT Berlin 2008, or Overextended, when Elves had Wirewood Symbiote. (Not to mention the Buried Alive/Vengevine SB option).
This is NOT Extended ca. GP Oakland 2010, where you could get away with tapping out for Cloudstone Curio, since Abrupt Decay didn't exist. You could also get away with the Eternal Witness/Primal Command loop, because other decks did not have maindeck DRS or Ooze to break it up.
This is NOT the 2011 Community Cup, when GSZ was still unbanned.
I am fully aware of the cool stuff that Elves has. A lot of it looks good on paper, but the big question is whether the combination of all of them is able to produce a deck that kills on turn 3 consistently. Turn 4 is, by Modern standards, perfectly acceptable. This includes all the times where Elves floods the field with creatures on turn 3 but falls short on mana/cards and has to wait one turn before it can attack for the win.
Don't tell me to look at Extended/OE - I have already said that some cards that made Elves great in those formats are missing from Modern.
I guess I'm laying down a challenge, then. Go ahead, build an Elves deck with any card currently legal in Modern, plus Glimpse of Nature. Yes, that includes Beck//Call; you can play 4 Glimpse and 4 Beck if you think that will help. Goldfish it and tell me how often it kills on turn 3 - and I should make it clear once more, that's kill on turn 3, not "I have a bunch of Elves on turn 3 but I'll need to wait until turn 4 to attack with them".
Yes Unban Glimpse please, one of my favorite things in MtG is massacring hoards of elves!
Thopter sword is certainly worth giving a shot in this format, sure its good vs midrange but isnt that what we need?
Yes Unban Glimpse please, one of my favorite things in MtG is massacring hoards of elves!
Thopter sword is certainly worth giving a shot in this format, sure its good vs midrange but isnt that what we need?
Yes, THATS MY POINT. Sword is the best unban BECAUSE its so good vs midrange...
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I'm still grinding a Ghost Quarter / Tec edge heavy deck (as well as a blood moon running side deck) a year or so after getting into modern, and let me say that this guy has a really good point.
Non-basic land hate punishes the straight Rock lists about as hard as it does the 4 color / Jund lists.. the only noticeable difference being the higher potential for specific color screw. DRS, ramping and fixing in any color, will help either deck recover regardless.
I'm so thoroughly sick of the 'modern mana bases are greedy' meme, to be honest. Compared, as a format, to what? Standard? Mana bases are almost as 'greedy', mostly non-basics with little (basically no) hate present. This is probably changing now that stuff like Farseek and Thragtusk are leaving, which enabled 4-5 ridiculous decks to fix and not die, but still. Most of the lands being played are non-basic.
Legacy? Hearing the meme coming out of legacy players is the most infuriating of all. Legacy has wasteland, but it also has 4 color decks running DRS and Karakas. It has 3 color BUG decks that literally scoop to blood moon resolving minutes into a game. It has decks so greedy that they control the game built entirely on absurd mana bases + Life from the Loam. All of these decks have greedy mana bases that are weak to wasteland no doubt. But they're also so greedy that many of them slot wasteland as well!
On top of these facts, there's no question of, "Do I pay a tenth of my life total here for an untapped shock to cast something." You just get an untapped ABUR Dual and do whatever the hell you want.
The mana bases in magic in general these days are "greedy", in all 3 major constructed formats.
When was the last time a mono-coloured list won anything in modern? The last month or so has seen 3 mono-coloured lists win major tournaments in legacy (elves, imperial painter, omnishow). Land hate prevents homogenisation, because it means there are actual risks associated with splashing a colour (since fetches effectively make multicoloured mana perfect), and utilising mono-coloured lists means decks dodge a whole lot of land hate that completely shuts down other decks. Hell, one of the reasons RUG delver is so dangerous is precisely because of its ability to hate out non-basic lands. This is also one of the reasons why DRS is such a big deal, because (among other things) he makes multi-coloured midrange decks very resilient to land hate.
Modern manabases are greedy in the sense that there is no inherent risk associated with running several colours. Introducing land hate would increase deck diversity by providing an incentive to choose monocoloured decks over multicoloured decks. You trade raw power for additional resilience against land hate, meaning meta choices can be made as to how many colours should be run given the risk of having your manabase switched off. Not to mention, land hate is a big reason why legacy games are often slower than modern matches, since there's a very real chance your first few lands could be destroyed. Colour denial and holding back fetches until your opponent is tapped out (or you've gained intel on their hand) are real tactics that need to be employed, and add an extra dimension to the game, as is knowing how to respond when your lands get destroyed.
We have discussed the thopter sword thing a lot, many times.
I think the end of the discussion last time was it has to be tested quite extensively to know if it can be unbanned.
Personally, without any tests, I'd bet it's too powerful, but I'm not completely sure.
On top of these facts, there's no question of, "Do I pay a tenth of my life total here for an untapped shock to cast something." You just get an untapped ABUR Dual and do whatever the hell you want.
The mana bases in magic in general these days are "greedy", in all 3 major constructed formats.
Even with ABU duals around, legacy have some high tier mono/dual colored lists, some decks are actually better by not going 3 colors, because there is enough punishment.
Standard is a bad for comparation, since it's rotation and avaiable sets control this, we had some less colorful standards, but now we are on a standard with Ravinica, there is no way to not be greedy with a multicolor block on standard.
The point is that greedy manabases should exist along with non-greedy ones. The greedy ones should have some sort of disvantage, so people can choose for the high risk/reward route or safer route.
Modern don't have such risk, so a multi colored deck will be always better because you lose nothing to add a splash and give access for your deck to resources that a less colored deck would otherwise not have.
When was the last time a mono-coloured list won anything in modern? The last month or so has seen 3 mono-coloured lists win major tournaments in legacy (elves, imperial painter, omnishow).
First off: Reid Duke's Elves deck (which is I assume what you refer to) was not mono-colored. It was Black/Green. In fact, Elves is very rarely mono-colored anymore unless you're playing budget.
However, even ignoring that, this is a bit of a weak argument. Legacy has a big tournament almost every week due to Star City Games. Modern has a big tournament maybe once a month because they're all GPs. Of course you'll find more mono-colored decks doing well in Legacy tournaments because there's a lot more opportunities for them to do so.
Furthermore, Legacy has a lot more cards and thus a lot better cards in each color. Thus, decks have less of a need to go into another color because they can (far more often than Modern) get the cards they need within the color(s) they're already playing.
First off: Reid Duke's Elves deck (which is I assume what you refer to) was not mono-colored. It was Black/Green. In fact, Elves is very rarely mono-colored anymore unless you're playing budget.
Actually, Reid Duke also splashed a tiny bit of white for Qasali Pridemage as well, getting it off a single Savannah. So yes, it was predominantly green, but there was a splash of two other colors.
When was the last time a mono-coloured list won anything in modern? The last month or so has seen 3 mono-coloured lists win major tournaments in legacy (elves, imperial painter, omnishow). Land hate prevents homogenisation, because it means there are actual risks associated with splashing a colour (since fetches effectively make multicoloured mana perfect), and utilising mono-coloured lists means decks dodge a whole lot of land hate that completely shuts down other decks. Hell, one of the reasons RUG delver is so dangerous is precisely because of its ability to hate out non-basic lands. This is also one of the reasons why DRS is such a big deal, because (among other things) he makes multi-coloured midrange decks very resilient to land hate.
Modern manabases are greedy in the sense that there is no inherent risk associated with running several colours. Introducing land hate would increase deck diversity by providing an incentive to choose monocoloured decks over multicoloured decks. You trade raw power for additional resilience against land hate, meaning meta choices can be made as to how many colours should be run given the risk of having your manabase switched off. Not to mention, land hate is a big reason why legacy games are often slower than modern matches, since there's a very real chance your first few lands could be destroyed. Colour denial and holding back fetches until your opponent is tapped out (or you've gained intel on their hand) are real tactics that need to be employed, and add an extra dimension to the game, as is knowing how to respond when your lands get destroyed.
I don't understand the comparisons that I see between Legacy and Modern, and there seems to have been a whole lot of them on the forums in the last couple of weeks. They're two completely different formats. You can't translate any of the three winning "mono" colored decks into anything that's feasible in Modern.
It's no different than pointing out that a mono-colored deck won the SCG Standard Open last week. So what?
I also continue to be at a loss about this new phrase that's been run out at every opportunity lately: "deck diversity". Why in the name of anything logical is it somehow "more diverse" if you don't have the option of three-plus color decks? Reducing options makes things less diverse. The best possible case is making some one- and two-color decks viable that aren't now, in which case you're simply replacing one with the other.
"Different" and "diverse" are two different words with two different meanings. Just cut the buzzword and say what you really mean.
Even with ABU duals around, legacy have some high tier mono/dual colored lists, some decks are actually better by not going 3 colors, because there is enough punishment.
This is pretty much entirely due to the presence of mono-colored powerhouses like Stoneforge Mystic, Goblin Piledriver, Rishadan Port, Wasteland, Force of Will (for merfolk), etc.
It's kind of a moot point.. because modern is simply not going to ever get those cards as it stands.
Stuff like Wasteland and Port punish TOO hard for this format. Everything people seem to want to do to improve the health of the format just end up HELPING the BGx shell. If they get Wasteland, now they have it and DRS and everything else. And this is coming from somebody who plays a deck that would instantly slot 4 wasteland upon it's reprint..
What the format needs is more colored, good cards for the other archetypes. Not legacy reprints.
This is pretty much entirely due to the presence of mono-colored powerhouses like Stoneforge Mystic, Goblin Piledriver, Rishadan Port, Wasteland, Force of Will (for merfolk), etc.
Not really, SFM see play in decks other than mono-white, so mono white is not directly tied to SFM. Goblins could also splash other colors without any losses to use Goblin Piledriver, so again, the mono-color power have no direct connection with the card.
Stuff like Wasteland and Port punish TOO hard for this format. Everything people seem to want to do to improve the health of the format just end up HELPING the BGx shell. If they get Wasteland, now they have it and DRS and everything else. And this is coming from somebody who plays a deck that would instantly slot 4 wasteland upon it's reprint..
What the format needs is more colored, good cards for the other archetypes. Not legacy reprints.
Also who said about reprint things like wasteland? I'm sure it was not. My point was exactly about bringing non-LD hate.
Not really, SFM see play in decks other than mono-white, so mono white is not directly tied to SFM. Goblins could also splash other colors without any losses to use Goblin Piledriver, so again, the mono-color power have no direct connection with the card.
Also who said about reprint things like wasteland? I'm sure it was not. My point was exactly about bringing non-LD hate.
Exactly, what Modern needs is a Price of Progress type of card. Aggressively costed and heavily punishing...
People wouldn't want to run 4-5 colors because the threat of Non-basic hate would be too high, 3 colors can get away with it for a while. and adjust their lists to compensate for the threat of damage from PoP...
Sure, let the jund player shock himself for 3 mana on turn 1, and then another 2-3 a turn later just to get online... By turn 3 half of their life will be gone...
PoP would definitely shake things up.
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1) That's like saying Lightning Bolt should be banned because it's nigh ubiquitous in red decks. Or Thoughtseize because it's nigh ubiquitous in black decks. And so on and so forth. Just because a card's a pillar of the format doesn't mean it's so pervasive that it needs to be banned.
2) Secondary market price is a terrible reason to ban a card, because then you're not placing gameplay as the primary reason for banning, and that's not a road Wizards should go down. Yes, he's brutally expensive. But it's not a barrier to entry into the format or anything. He's a luxury card. That's not really a terrible thing in the grand scheme of the format.
Sounds like you're annoyed because someone trashed your deck idea that didn't include Tarmogoyf.
not true.
but it happens a lot. sure, you can list a few decks that don't run tarmogoyf. that's not hard. but the problem is still there - people have this opinion of 'goyf that is weirdly separate from everything else.
and in response to the other comment, i suppose you could, on the face of it, make a comparison to lightning bolt. but in an in-depth discussion, the clear differences between the two cards and their situations would come out.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
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Paper: WUR Waffle Control, RG and U Tron
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Hermit Druid Combo:
Clearly you've never played against competitive elf-ball. If they go off turn 3, it means they're dropping an Emrakul, bouncing every permanent you control back to your hand (primal command), or swinging for lethal with craterhoof or something similar. If you "go off" with elves, it means you're winning that turn, not waiting for the untap phase the following turn (although sometimes if they fizzle, this is enough to win regardless).
They also do have tons of cantrips and redundancy. Summoner's Pact tutors for the heritage druids or necessary nettle sentinels. Lead the Stampede and Elvish Visionary cantrip and invalidate a lot of removal effects, draw into necessary combo pieces, and allow you to see tons of cards. Glimpse of nature is also a cantrip in it's own that can either be used for value, or to win on the spot. A turn 2 archdruid also threatens tons of mana that can be used to "go off" that turn.
Elf-combo even in it's most competitive form no doubt can be answered in the format, but it would put a very large dent into the metagame, requiring most decks that are slower than it is to play red sweepers or lose to them. Spot removal is usually a losing proposition against full-powered elves as they have too many cantrips & card advantage spells to maintain parity, especially when they draw 5 cards off a "value" glimpse of nature, or draw 3-4 off a turn 2 lead the stampede.
And the entire format is creature decks, most of which can easily answer thopter/sword. I don't see why this is oppressive. Besides, considering creature decks dominate the meta, unbanning thopter/sword would be healthy and far from oppressive. If it's that big of a problem where your maindeck pridemages, abrupt decays, or turn 4 wins can't deal with thopter sword, then you still have that thing known as a sideboard to deal with it, much of which already hurts the combo (stony silence, rest in peace, pithing needle, ancient grudge, maelstrom pulse, shattering spree, etc).
The big problem with punishing fire and jitte, is that there is very little drawback to playing them, and they're both essentially 1 card combos. Thoptersword is a 2 card combo where each piece is useless without the other. That makes it slower, less consistent, and easier to answer. I've yet to see a strong argument for why it should stay on the ban list.
Glimpse Elves is gross powerful. but so is DRedge. and Thepths.
The difference is, THE FORMATS ARE NOT THE SAME. Extended didn't have Scavenging Ooze, Abrupt Decay, Swan Song, Deathrite Shaman, Twin Combo (More consistant and with disruption), Pod combo (mainboard hate ITFO Deathrite and ScOoze) etc.
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Quotes:
This is the second time you've made this assertion. It's still wrong.
If there was actually no punishment, then no one would ever play BG Rock instead of Jund or Ajundi. What do you know, a lot of people are, and it's gained a lot of popularity and is doing pretty well.
Do you have a decklist for ThopterSword that is good against Jund?
You say amazing, but I am fine with good.
I am fine with it only being good against Jund and not other decks if that is really necessary.
I've tried numerous times to make a decent ThopterSword deck in modern (with the only ban change being having sword available). And it has never produced anything worth playing*. Sword is not the only thing that old school ThopterSword decks lost, and some of the other losses sting even harder than sword does (artifact lands and chrome mox in particular).
*
Absolutely nothing of the sort of "controlly blue" decks that people say would be good if they had sword.
Believe me, I am one of the most ban-happy people around, and if I had even the slightest fear of sword I wouldn't bother saying anything about it. But we've brewed, we've tested, and its just not even that good, let alone dangerous.
But as always, I would love to be proven wrong. But as many times as I have asked for a list, we've yet to have someone produce one that was any good in the modern format.
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe we haven't even gotten a list that was actually legal in the modern format (aside from the obvious sword unban that is the discussion at hand), the best anyone really ever offered was lists to old extended that
1) had other cards banned
2) was engineered to the threats of that format (sorry repeal isn't nearly as good in modern)
3) gave no mind to the fact that years and years of new cards have entered the equation
So please, I am begging here. If you want to continue believing that Sword is good, show us WHY.
I ran a thought experiment on my blog
Modern in a Nuclear Wasteland
of an extreme case of banning 20 more cards to make sure they get everything, then scaling back where appropriate. WotC seems to be on a slowly build up approach. Both ways probably reach similar end points.
The post Gatecrash metagame is proving to be closer to the endpoint than I estimated, so its very possible that few (if any) more cards need to be banned.
But the fun part is that those BG rock don't go light on the manabases, they still uses 8-10 fetches, 2-4 shocks and only 2-4 basics, basically the same as the 3-4 colors BGx.
So they are not going straight BG because of the mana, and if your point is "people go straight BG to avoid greedy mana punishment", then you are the one wrong, because people still use the same recipe for their lands, and non-basic hate would have the same impact on them as it have on 3-4 colors jund.
And it is not because of how it evades non-basic hate, it probably because some people belive that other colors don't offer anything that will actually improve the deck core strategy.
This list has been pretty strong against midrange for me in testing. It's pretty straightforward, and plays more removal, more redundancy, and less tutoring than the extended lists. As a result, it's better equipped in the modern meta to deal with all the creature-oriented decks as well as the midrange decks.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Thopter Foundry
3 Sword of the Meek
2 Mox Opal
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Path to Exile
3 Spell Snare
3 Mana Leak
2 Cryptic Command
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Talisman of Progress
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Tectonic Edge
3 Steam Vents
4 Arid Mesa
3 Celestial Colonnade
2 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Plains
I'm still grinding a Ghost Quarter / Tec edge heavy deck (as well as a blood moon running side deck) a year or so after getting into modern, and let me say that this guy has a really good point.
Non-basic land hate punishes the straight Rock lists about as hard as it does the 4 color / Jund lists.. the only noticeable difference being the higher potential for specific color screw. DRS, ramping and fixing in any color, will help either deck recover regardless.
I'm so thoroughly sick of the 'modern mana bases are greedy' meme, to be honest. Compared, as a format, to what? Standard? Mana bases are almost as 'greedy', mostly non-basics with little (basically no) hate present. This is probably changing now that stuff like Farseek and Thragtusk are leaving, which enabled 4-5 ridiculous decks to fix and not die, but still. Most of the lands being played are non-basic.
Legacy? Hearing the meme coming out of legacy players is the most infuriating of all. Legacy has wasteland, but it also has 4 color decks running DRS and Karakas. It has 3 color BUG decks that literally scoop to blood moon resolving minutes into a game. It has decks so greedy that they control the game built entirely on absurd mana bases + Life from the Loam. All of these decks have greedy mana bases that are weak to wasteland no doubt. But they're also so greedy that many of them slot wasteland as well!
On top of these facts, there's no question of, "Do I pay a tenth of my life total here for an untapped shock to cast something." You just get an untapped ABUR Dual and do whatever the hell you want.
The mana bases in magic in general these days are "greedy", in all 3 major constructed formats.
I'm advocating FOR sword to come off the banned list. If you had read my entire post, rather than just quoting one line, you would see that.
And ThopterSword is inherently good against midrange. A deck built right will crush a midrange strategy, and it doesn't even have to be a perfect list. Of course, Tron is inherently good against control, and aggro can race the "combo."
This is a UB Thopter Tron list I threw together, and beat basically every BGx deck I ran into while testing it, and I had about an even matchup with RDW and Gruul Zoo.
3 Thopter Foundry
2 Sword of the Meek
4 Expedition Map
4 Dimir Signet
2 Oblivion Stone
2 Time Sieve
2 Ichor Wellspring
Spells:
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Remand
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Repeal
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Wurmcoil Engine
Planeswalkers:
2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
2 Karn Liberated
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
Land:
4 Urza's Tower
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
4 River of Tears
1 Academy Ruins
1 Eye of Ugin
1 Island
1 Swamp
Not even an optimal list. Wellsprings probably should have been prophetic prisms, probably need more removal, etc. However, against opposing Tron Decks, and against Scapeshift, the matchup was very poor for me.
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
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Yeah. I basically threw the deck together and went the tron route, i don't remember why. But I think the traditional ub muddle/skite/bob/more removal control list would be better.
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
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Clearly you do not understand that Elves in Modern is completely different from Elves in every other format that it was playable in.
This is NOT Extended ca. PT Berlin 2008, or Overextended, when Elves had Wirewood Symbiote. (Not to mention the Buried Alive/Vengevine SB option).
This is NOT Extended ca. GP Oakland 2010, where you could get away with tapping out for Cloudstone Curio, since Abrupt Decay didn't exist. You could also get away with the Eternal Witness/Primal Command loop, because other decks did not have maindeck DRS or Ooze to break it up.
This is NOT the 2011 Community Cup, when GSZ was still unbanned.
I am fully aware of the cool stuff that Elves has. A lot of it looks good on paper, but the big question is whether the combination of all of them is able to produce a deck that kills on turn 3 consistently. Turn 4 is, by Modern standards, perfectly acceptable. This includes all the times where Elves floods the field with creatures on turn 3 but falls short on mana/cards and has to wait one turn before it can attack for the win.
Don't tell me to look at Extended/OE - I have already said that some cards that made Elves great in those formats are missing from Modern.
I guess I'm laying down a challenge, then. Go ahead, build an Elves deck with any card currently legal in Modern, plus Glimpse of Nature. Yes, that includes Beck//Call; you can play 4 Glimpse and 4 Beck if you think that will help. Goldfish it and tell me how often it kills on turn 3 - and I should make it clear once more, that's kill on turn 3, not "I have a bunch of Elves on turn 3 but I'll need to wait until turn 4 to attack with them".
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Thopter sword is certainly worth giving a shot in this format, sure its good vs midrange but isnt that what we need?
Yes, THATS MY POINT. Sword is the best unban BECAUSE its so good vs midrange...
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
Quotes:
When was the last time a mono-coloured list won anything in modern? The last month or so has seen 3 mono-coloured lists win major tournaments in legacy (elves, imperial painter, omnishow). Land hate prevents homogenisation, because it means there are actual risks associated with splashing a colour (since fetches effectively make multicoloured mana perfect), and utilising mono-coloured lists means decks dodge a whole lot of land hate that completely shuts down other decks. Hell, one of the reasons RUG delver is so dangerous is precisely because of its ability to hate out non-basic lands. This is also one of the reasons why DRS is such a big deal, because (among other things) he makes multi-coloured midrange decks very resilient to land hate.
Modern manabases are greedy in the sense that there is no inherent risk associated with running several colours. Introducing land hate would increase deck diversity by providing an incentive to choose monocoloured decks over multicoloured decks. You trade raw power for additional resilience against land hate, meaning meta choices can be made as to how many colours should be run given the risk of having your manabase switched off. Not to mention, land hate is a big reason why legacy games are often slower than modern matches, since there's a very real chance your first few lands could be destroyed. Colour denial and holding back fetches until your opponent is tapped out (or you've gained intel on their hand) are real tactics that need to be employed, and add an extra dimension to the game, as is knowing how to respond when your lands get destroyed.
I think the end of the discussion last time was it has to be tested quite extensively to know if it can be unbanned.
Personally, without any tests, I'd bet it's too powerful, but I'm not completely sure.
Even with ABU duals around, legacy have some high tier mono/dual colored lists, some decks are actually better by not going 3 colors, because there is enough punishment.
Standard is a bad for comparation, since it's rotation and avaiable sets control this, we had some less colorful standards, but now we are on a standard with Ravinica, there is no way to not be greedy with a multicolor block on standard.
The point is that greedy manabases should exist along with non-greedy ones. The greedy ones should have some sort of disvantage, so people can choose for the high risk/reward route or safer route.
Modern don't have such risk, so a multi colored deck will be always better because you lose nothing to add a splash and give access for your deck to resources that a less colored deck would otherwise not have.
First off: Reid Duke's Elves deck (which is I assume what you refer to) was not mono-colored. It was Black/Green. In fact, Elves is very rarely mono-colored anymore unless you're playing budget.
However, even ignoring that, this is a bit of a weak argument. Legacy has a big tournament almost every week due to Star City Games. Modern has a big tournament maybe once a month because they're all GPs. Of course you'll find more mono-colored decks doing well in Legacy tournaments because there's a lot more opportunities for them to do so.
Furthermore, Legacy has a lot more cards and thus a lot better cards in each color. Thus, decks have less of a need to go into another color because they can (far more often than Modern) get the cards they need within the color(s) they're already playing.
Actually, Reid Duke also splashed a tiny bit of white for Qasali Pridemage as well, getting it off a single Savannah. So yes, it was predominantly green, but there was a splash of two other colors.
I don't understand the comparisons that I see between Legacy and Modern, and there seems to have been a whole lot of them on the forums in the last couple of weeks. They're two completely different formats. You can't translate any of the three winning "mono" colored decks into anything that's feasible in Modern.
It's no different than pointing out that a mono-colored deck won the SCG Standard Open last week. So what?
I also continue to be at a loss about this new phrase that's been run out at every opportunity lately: "deck diversity". Why in the name of anything logical is it somehow "more diverse" if you don't have the option of three-plus color decks? Reducing options makes things less diverse. The best possible case is making some one- and two-color decks viable that aren't now, in which case you're simply replacing one with the other.
"Different" and "diverse" are two different words with two different meanings. Just cut the buzzword and say what you really mean.
GBW Melira Pod WBG
BW Tokens WB
This is pretty much entirely due to the presence of mono-colored powerhouses like Stoneforge Mystic, Goblin Piledriver, Rishadan Port, Wasteland, Force of Will (for merfolk), etc.
It's kind of a moot point.. because modern is simply not going to ever get those cards as it stands.
Stuff like Wasteland and Port punish TOO hard for this format. Everything people seem to want to do to improve the health of the format just end up HELPING the BGx shell. If they get Wasteland, now they have it and DRS and everything else. And this is coming from somebody who plays a deck that would instantly slot 4 wasteland upon it's reprint..
What the format needs is more colored, good cards for the other archetypes. Not legacy reprints.
Also who said about reprint things like wasteland? I'm sure it was not. My point was exactly about bringing non-LD hate.
Exactly, what Modern needs is a Price of Progress type of card. Aggressively costed and heavily punishing...
People wouldn't want to run 4-5 colors because the threat of Non-basic hate would be too high, 3 colors can get away with it for a while. and adjust their lists to compensate for the threat of damage from PoP...
Sure, let the jund player shock himself for 3 mana on turn 1, and then another 2-3 a turn later just to get online... By turn 3 half of their life will be gone...
PoP would definitely shake things up.
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2) Secondary market price is a terrible reason to ban a card, because then you're not placing gameplay as the primary reason for banning, and that's not a road Wizards should go down. Yes, he's brutally expensive. But it's not a barrier to entry into the format or anything. He's a luxury card. That's not really a terrible thing in the grand scheme of the format.
not true.
but it happens a lot. sure, you can list a few decks that don't run tarmogoyf. that's not hard. but the problem is still there - people have this opinion of 'goyf that is weirdly separate from everything else.
and in response to the other comment, i suppose you could, on the face of it, make a comparison to lightning bolt. but in an in-depth discussion, the clear differences between the two cards and their situations would come out.