We'll have the next Ban List update in less than 2 weeks.
What do you think/hope will happen?
I think:
*Standard: No change
*Modern:
(1) Ban Deathrite Shaman - Bird of Paradise+Lavamancer+Random life gain is just too strong for 1 mana. And it just push the already very powerful Jund to the top, further warping the metagame.
(2) Unban Nacatl - Turn 2 Vanilla 3/3 is really nothing, when compared to Turn 2 flying 3/2 (delver).
*Legacy and vintage - no idea, as I'm not familiar with the metagame enough to say which cards are too broken.
I don't expect changes in any list. The Modern PTQ Season is started, there is not need to change anything about the format right now.
Well, this is not a good reason for "no change". There're way more general MTG players than PTQ grinders. And remind you that Modern is going to be a FNM format very soon.
If you think Wild Nacatl is "nothing" then you really know nothing about Modern or Zoo.
Zoo is not competitive right now, lots of new cards have been printed, and the metagame has changed a lot. Again, even on the power level in vacuum, delver is more oppressive than nacatl.
Standard:
Restoration Angel is banned (It extends matches nearly as much as Sensei's Divining Top does in Legacy. Top was axed in Modern on that basis alone, and the absurd amount of life that's derived from repeatedly blinking Thragtusks not only extends matches needlessly, it also has the potential to lead to a stagnant format warped around Thragtusk the way Necropotence warped Type II in 1995. I can see a ban on Restoration Angel to make sure this doesn't get that bad; I just hope that R&D sees that Restoration Angel is the actual problem & not Thragtusk. Unless Sulfuric Vortex is reprinted in Gatecrash, the angel needs to go.)
Modern:
Ancestral Vision is unbanned (Another 'safe' experimental card to unban, in much the same way Valakut was safe)
Deathrite Shaman is added to the watch list
Extended:
Who cares?
Legacy:
No changes (possible Mana Drain experimental unban similar to Land Tax)
Vintage:
No changes
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Standard:
Restoration Angel is banned (It extends matches nearly as much as Sensei's Divining Top does in Legacy. Top was axed in Modern on that basis alone, and the absurd amount of life that's derived from repeatedly blinking Thragtusks not only extends matches needlessly, it also has the potential to lead to a stagnant format warped around Thragtusk the way Necropotence warped Type II in 1995. I can see a ban on Restoration Angel to make sure this doesn't get that bad; I just hope that R&D sees that Restoration Angel is the actual problem & not Thragtusk. Unless Sulfuric Vortex is reprinted in Gatecrash, the angel needs to go.)
Modern:
Ancestral Vision is unbanned (Another 'safe' experimental card to unban, in much the same way Valakut was safe)
Deathrite Shaman is added to the watch list
Extended:
Who cares?
Legacy:
No changes (possible Mana Drain experimental unban similar to Land Tax)
Vintage:
No changes
Jund already made a white splash for Lingering Souls. Unban Ancestral Vision and I bet it will not take too much time until we see a blue splash...
Well, this is not a good reason for "no change". There're way more general MTG players than PTQ grinders. And remind you that Modern is going to be a FNM format very soon.
Our shop played Modern a couple of weeks ago for FNM.
Well, this is not a good reason for "no change". There're way more general MTG players than PTQ grinders. And remind you that Modern is going to be a FNM format very soon.
Zoo is not competitive right now, lots of new cards have been printed, and the metagame has changed a lot. Again, even on the power level in vacuum, delver is more oppressive than nacatl.
If you think Delver is anywhere near the power level of Nacatl in Modern, you didn't play Modern before it was banned.
Wizards is not going to ban a card (Deathrite Shaman) so soon from its release. It's making BG very powerful in Modern and Legacy, but not on the level of Memory Jar.
What I hope:
Standard, Legacy, Vintage: No changes
Modern: Fetchlands banned, Wild Nacatl unbanned
Personal opinion, I hate Jund. It's like when you play a fighting game, there's this one boss that just walks towards you, blocking/dodging/countering anything you try to throw at it. Then it traps you in a corner and beats the tar out of you.
What enables Jund to play 4 colors? Well, before Deathrite Shaman it was still 3-colored. So I guess DRS is part of the problem. You can ban DRS, or you can ban the thing that makes DRS such an effective mana dork - fetchlands. Without fetches, Jund can't just play 4 Deathrite Shaman and 1 Godless Shrine and be able to hit white reliably. It can play BOP over Shaman, but then it wouldn't fare so well against graveyard decks.
If fetches are gone, Wild Nacatl can re-enter. Zoo (the traditional Naya-colored deck with 12 one-mana 2/3s and 3/3s, not the 13 fetchland/8 shockland/2 basic/7 dork abomination that is Haunted Zoo) gets a boost and becomes a viable aggro choice alongside Affinity and RDW.
Combo takes a hit because it's no longer able to thin its deck. It's unnoticeable, but it will fizzle ever so slightly more often.
Some food for thought: since the unbanning of Valakut, Jund has won 3 GPs and 2nd-placed a GP and a PT. The next best deck based on tournament results is Affinity, which has finished 3rd-4th thrice, and 5th-8th once.
Modern: The only possible ban is Bloodbraid Elf. Deathrite Shaman may get some scrutiny, but not yet.
Possible unbans: Wild Nacatl, Jace, Visions and Green Sun's Zenith.
If they ban fetch lands I will probably unsleeve all of my Modern decks and play legacy until they come to their senses.
Edit: also to all of you who think delver is on par with nacatl you're wrong, delver requires an entire deck built around it, nacatl requires a singleton plateau.
This is modern, so no, he needs most of the time 2 fetches + a shockland.
So in the worst case scenario you take 4 to have a 3/3 in play on turn 2, and on average you take 3 damage for it.
Also zoo was dominant for 2 reasons when modern just got released.
1. Modern still had to form, and alot of the big names chose to play a deck that they were familiar with and was proven to be good in the past
2. Punishing fire was legal.
The latter is actually the most important, since it gave zoo reach/inevitability/sustain. Something zoo normally does not have acess too.
Also saying that delver isnt good because 'it needs an entire deck to be build around it', is the same argument people used when delver just got printed.
How did that work out for them?
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Standard
I don't think they will ban Resto Angel, if they're going to ban anything it'll be Thrag. Resto only showed in 1-2 of the top 12 decks recently, whereas Thrag was found as a 4-of in almost every single one, even RG Aggro. However with GCR coming, I don't think they'll ban anything. Especially since when Delver dominated 10 of the Top 12 they didn't touch it.
Modern
Maybe an unbanning of something to test the waters, but I can't see them necessarily banning anything, especially so soon after Modern became FNM legal.
You're calculations are way off, the plateau doesn't have to be untapped, also almost everyone plays fetch/shockduel in modern anyway, how does adding wild nacatl to your deck suddenly make you take more damage then normal on turn2?
Stop calling it a plateau, its a sacred foundry.
And no, my calculations are not off, zoo needs to play ALOT of fetches, and grabbing basics can be quite detrimental to your gameplan.
T1 fetch into shockland, untapped play nacatl, t2 fetch to get the sacred foundry tapped.
Also you conveniently skipped over my explanation why zoo is no-where near as broken as you pretend it to be.
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Standard: Nothing. The metagame is quite diverse, nothing remotely like Caw-Blade, Affinity or Academy. Not even as bad as when Delver and Jund were dominant.
Modern: Unban either Golgari Grave-Troll or Ancestral Vision. Why not? Neither card appears to put Jund over the top and both could lead to some new decks. I think if Jund continues to dominate, then Bloodbraid Elf could get axed when Dragon's Maze is released.
Legacy: Not sure. Yawgmoth's Bargain seems the least broken of the bunch and could be unbanned.
Firstly: My memory of the shockland names isn't as good as from the abu duals so i tend to use their old names.
Secondly: I wasn't conveniently skipping that part of your post, but i have no idea why pro's choose to play certain decks and for what reason, I also don't know how deck choice factors into the discussion, in general pro's will play the best deck available. Both fire and nacatl got banned at the same time.
Thirdly: Jund plays a lot of fetches and 4 colors, still the deck is one of the best atm, modern zoo would concievably play shaman and helix to offset some of the lifeloss anyway. 6-8 Fetches would probably be plenty for a naya variant. Besides its not like you can race the deck with other t1 creatures then nacatl.
It is ok, I tend to mix the shocklands names up now and then too.
The thing about the fetches is that modern zoo decks run steppe linx, and a decent amount of them used to run KotR too.
Next to that, they want to be able to thin their deck out as much as they can, because the deck only wants to only draw 3 lands in the most perfect scenario.
In any case, zoo will be able to combat jund relatively well.
Next to that, UW control decks do not have a bad matchup against zoo either.
Affinity vs Zoo is an interesting matchup too, and I won't favour either of them.
Melira pod vs zoo I would see going into favour of pod.
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Legacy: Not sure. Yawgmoth's Bargain seems the least broken of the bunch and could be unbanned.
Vintage: No idea.
Just to clarify, Yawgmoth's Bargain is insanely broken and will never get unbanned in Legacy. I can't imagine how warped the metagame would be with that card in Legacy. We would have an influx of storm decks all over the place. Just thinking about it gives me a headache.
Legacy is a whirlwind of anything so I see nothing banned there.
Standard is always changing, so nothing.
Modern is where the focus should be.
If anything, there will be bannings and unbannings.
Jund being the big culprit, could see a ban in Bloodbraid Elf, and Deathrite could be put on the watch list (FYI saying it is OK: it neuters GY-based strategies, and is more versatile then any rare G/x 1-drops in Modern (BoP, Lavamancer, Hierarch)) or potentially banned. It's increased in price drastically and there are 16+ copies always usually floating around in T16's or T8's, which is what Wotc tries not to do. Bloodbraid also enables plays that are usually uninteractive (I.E. into Abrupt Decay).
Unbannings, that's something different. Nacatl is on the fence (Jund could EASILY splash this ala Lingering Souls), and Visions could follow the same suite if so. Jace is just Jace. My bet is Bitterblossom unbanned.
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Big D seems to have it right, so I would only add this.
I would prefer they just ban Thragtusk now. It is nowhere near the JTMS levels, but I really believe that tusk obsoletes and warps the meta nonetheless. Plus, there are 3 more sets still to be released before fall rotation and Tusk will still be doing all this. People will still be calling for him to be banned. Wizards may as well give it the chop now and let other cards shine now as opposed to seeing a format stifler possibly hinder set sales.
That's just my opinion, I own tusks IRL and on MTGO so I have no bias there. I felt the same way last year about ponder and now tusk is sort of doing the same thing.
Standard:
Restoration Angel is banned (It extends matches nearly as much as Sensei's Divining Top does in Legacy. Top was axed in Modern on that basis alone, and the absurd amount of life that's derived from repeatedly blinking Thragtusks not only extends matches needlessly, it also has the potential to lead to a stagnant format warped around Thragtusk the way Necropotence warped Type II in 1995. I can see a ban on Restoration Angel to make sure this doesn't get that bad; I just hope that R&D sees that Restoration Angel is the actual problem & not Thragtusk. Unless Sulfuric Vortex is reprinted in Gatecrash, the angel needs to go.)
Modern:
Ancestral Vision is unbanned (Another 'safe' experimental card to unban, in much the same way Valakut was safe)
Deathrite Shaman is added to the watch list
Extended:
Who cares?
Legacy:
No changes (possible Mana Drain experimental unban similar to Land Tax)
Vintage:
No changes
Highly doubt a Resto ban. I do think Ancestral will be unbanned though, which is why I bought 4 of them while they're cheap
Modern: The only possible ban is Bloodbraid Elf. Deathrite Shaman may get some scrutiny, but not yet.
Possible unbans: Wild Nacatl, Jace, Visions and Green Sun's Zenith.
If they ban fetch lands I will probably unsleeve all of my Modern decks and play legacy until they come to their senses.
You're crazy if you think they're unbanning Jace. With Miracles in Modern? Nooooooo sir, I don't think so.
Naaah, nothing's gonna get banned in standard. Sure, Thragtusk is a good card that has really caught on, but the meta is still really fun and vibrant (meaning, even if it is ubiquitous in many decks, there are still a multitude of different decks placing well).
As for the other formats...I really only play limited so I don't wanna sound like an idiot lol.
Standard is fine. While thragtusk is on most list, he didn't make deck variety narrow. You can use it on varied lists, and there some very strong lists that don't use him. Ban him, and BR will totally dominate the meta.
Modern: Unban either Golgari Grave-Troll or Ancestral Vision. Why not? Neither card appears to put Jund over the top and both could lead to some new decks. I think if Jund continues to dominate, then Bloodbraid Elf could get axed when Dragon's Maze is released.
Bloodbraid Elf, this is the villian of Jund. Ancestral Vision was banned because of her (free cast a draw 3 out of a 3/2 haste?).
Deathrite is very ok. While he is strong, jund was very strong before him, and removing him wouldn't take jund from the top, the main issue is that he ramps into T3 bloodbraids without being a dead creature after that (as a Birds of Paradise would, and why it not widely played in all jund lists)
Nactal could be unbanned. She is strong? Yes, very strong, but nowdays she don't have the power to make zoo dominate the meta.
What do you think/hope will happen?
I think:
*Standard: No change
*Modern:
(1) Ban Deathrite Shaman - Bird of Paradise+Lavamancer+Random life gain is just too strong for 1 mana. And it just push the already very powerful Jund to the top, further warping the metagame.
(2) Unban Nacatl - Turn 2 Vanilla 3/3 is really nothing, when compared to Turn 2 flying 3/2 (delver).
*Legacy and vintage - no idea, as I'm not familiar with the metagame enough to say which cards are too broken.
Focus: Omnath, Locus of Mana EDH.
Well, this is not a good reason for "no change". There're way more general MTG players than PTQ grinders. And remind you that Modern is going to be a FNM format very soon.
Zoo is not competitive right now, lots of new cards have been printed, and the metagame has changed a lot. Again, even on the power level in vacuum, delver is more oppressive than nacatl.
Standard:
Restoration Angel is banned (It extends matches nearly as much as Sensei's Divining Top does in Legacy. Top was axed in Modern on that basis alone, and the absurd amount of life that's derived from repeatedly blinking Thragtusks not only extends matches needlessly, it also has the potential to lead to a stagnant format warped around Thragtusk the way Necropotence warped Type II in 1995. I can see a ban on Restoration Angel to make sure this doesn't get that bad; I just hope that R&D sees that Restoration Angel is the actual problem & not Thragtusk. Unless Sulfuric Vortex is reprinted in Gatecrash, the angel needs to go.)
Modern:
Ancestral Vision is unbanned (Another 'safe' experimental card to unban, in much the same way Valakut was safe)
Deathrite Shaman is added to the watch list
Extended:
Who cares?
Legacy:
No changes (possible Mana Drain experimental unban similar to Land Tax)
Vintage:
No changes
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Jund already made a white splash for Lingering Souls. Unban Ancestral Vision and I bet it will not take too much time until we see a blue splash...
I hope for the back o Blossom and Mindsculptor
Our shop played Modern a couple of weeks ago for FNM.
If you think Delver is anywhere near the power level of Nacatl in Modern, you didn't play Modern before it was banned.
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No changes
Wizards is not going to ban a card (Deathrite Shaman) so soon from its release. It's making BG very powerful in Modern and Legacy, but not on the level of Memory Jar.
What I hope:
Standard, Legacy, Vintage: No changes
Modern: Fetchlands banned, Wild Nacatl unbanned
Personal opinion, I hate Jund. It's like when you play a fighting game, there's this one boss that just walks towards you, blocking/dodging/countering anything you try to throw at it. Then it traps you in a corner and beats the tar out of you.
What enables Jund to play 4 colors? Well, before Deathrite Shaman it was still 3-colored. So I guess DRS is part of the problem. You can ban DRS, or you can ban the thing that makes DRS such an effective mana dork - fetchlands. Without fetches, Jund can't just play 4 Deathrite Shaman and 1 Godless Shrine and be able to hit white reliably. It can play BOP over Shaman, but then it wouldn't fare so well against graveyard decks.
If fetches are gone, Wild Nacatl can re-enter. Zoo (the traditional Naya-colored deck with 12 one-mana 2/3s and 3/3s, not the 13 fetchland/8 shockland/2 basic/7 dork abomination that is Haunted Zoo) gets a boost and becomes a viable aggro choice alongside Affinity and RDW.
Combo takes a hit because it's no longer able to thin its deck. It's unnoticeable, but it will fizzle ever so slightly more often.
Some food for thought: since the unbanning of Valakut, Jund has won 3 GPs and 2nd-placed a GP and a PT. The next best deck based on tournament results is Affinity, which has finished 3rd-4th thrice, and 5th-8th once.
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Possible unbans: Wild Nacatl, Jace, Visions and Green Sun's Zenith.
If they ban fetch lands I will probably unsleeve all of my Modern decks and play legacy until they come to their senses.
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Nacatl is very likely to being unbanned though, since we currently have a flying nacatl which is still legal.
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This is modern, so no, he needs most of the time 2 fetches + a shockland.
So in the worst case scenario you take 4 to have a 3/3 in play on turn 2, and on average you take 3 damage for it.
Also zoo was dominant for 2 reasons when modern just got released.
1. Modern still had to form, and alot of the big names chose to play a deck that they were familiar with and was proven to be good in the past
2. Punishing fire was legal.
The latter is actually the most important, since it gave zoo reach/inevitability/sustain. Something zoo normally does not have acess too.
Also saying that delver isnt good because 'it needs an entire deck to be build around it', is the same argument people used when delver just got printed.
How did that work out for them?
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I don't think they will ban Resto Angel, if they're going to ban anything it'll be Thrag. Resto only showed in 1-2 of the top 12 decks recently, whereas Thrag was found as a 4-of in almost every single one, even RG Aggro. However with GCR coming, I don't think they'll ban anything. Especially since when Delver dominated 10 of the Top 12 they didn't touch it.
Modern
Maybe an unbanning of something to test the waters, but I can't see them necessarily banning anything, especially so soon after Modern became FNM legal.
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Stop calling it a plateau, its a sacred foundry.
And no, my calculations are not off, zoo needs to play ALOT of fetches, and grabbing basics can be quite detrimental to your gameplan.
T1 fetch into shockland, untapped play nacatl, t2 fetch to get the sacred foundry tapped.
Also you conveniently skipped over my explanation why zoo is no-where near as broken as you pretend it to be.
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Modern: Unban either Golgari Grave-Troll or Ancestral Vision. Why not? Neither card appears to put Jund over the top and both could lead to some new decks. I think if Jund continues to dominate, then Bloodbraid Elf could get axed when Dragon's Maze is released.
Legacy: Not sure. Yawgmoth's Bargain seems the least broken of the bunch and could be unbanned.
Vintage: No idea.
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It is ok, I tend to mix the shocklands names up now and then too.
The thing about the fetches is that modern zoo decks run steppe linx, and a decent amount of them used to run KotR too.
Next to that, they want to be able to thin their deck out as much as they can, because the deck only wants to only draw 3 lands in the most perfect scenario.
In any case, zoo will be able to combat jund relatively well.
Next to that, UW control decks do not have a bad matchup against zoo either.
Affinity vs Zoo is an interesting matchup too, and I won't favour either of them.
Melira pod vs zoo I would see going into favour of pod.
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Just to clarify, Yawgmoth's Bargain is insanely broken and will never get unbanned in Legacy. I can't imagine how warped the metagame would be with that card in Legacy. We would have an influx of storm decks all over the place. Just thinking about it gives me a headache.
Standard is always changing, so nothing.
Modern is where the focus should be.
If anything, there will be bannings and unbannings.
Jund being the big culprit, could see a ban in Bloodbraid Elf, and Deathrite could be put on the watch list (FYI saying it is OK: it neuters GY-based strategies, and is more versatile then any rare G/x 1-drops in Modern (BoP, Lavamancer, Hierarch)) or potentially banned. It's increased in price drastically and there are 16+ copies always usually floating around in T16's or T8's, which is what Wotc tries not to do. Bloodbraid also enables plays that are usually uninteractive (I.E. into Abrupt Decay).
Unbannings, that's something different. Nacatl is on the fence (Jund could EASILY splash this ala Lingering Souls), and Visions could follow the same suite if so. Jace is just Jace. My bet is Bitterblossom unbanned.
Or they could surprise us completely.
I would prefer they just ban Thragtusk now. It is nowhere near the JTMS levels, but I really believe that tusk obsoletes and warps the meta nonetheless. Plus, there are 3 more sets still to be released before fall rotation and Tusk will still be doing all this. People will still be calling for him to be banned. Wizards may as well give it the chop now and let other cards shine now as opposed to seeing a format stifler possibly hinder set sales.
That's just my opinion, I own tusks IRL and on MTGO so I have no bias there. I felt the same way last year about ponder and now tusk is sort of doing the same thing.
I would love to see Jace, and Troll, and Dread return to be unbanned.
Highly doubt a Resto ban. I do think Ancestral will be unbanned though, which is why I bought 4 of them while they're cheap
You're crazy if you think they're unbanning Jace. With Miracles in Modern? Nooooooo sir, I don't think so.
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As for the other formats...I really only play limited so I don't wanna sound like an idiot lol.
None.
Standard is fine. While thragtusk is on most list, he didn't make deck variety narrow. You can use it on varied lists, and there some very strong lists that don't use him. Ban him, and BR will totally dominate the meta.
Modern:
- Unban:
Wild Nactal
Ancestral Vision
- Ban
Bloodbraid Elf
Bloodbraid Elf, this is the villian of Jund. Ancestral Vision was banned because of her (free cast a draw 3 out of a 3/2 haste?).
Deathrite is very ok. While he is strong, jund was very strong before him, and removing him wouldn't take jund from the top, the main issue is that he ramps into T3 bloodbraids without being a dead creature after that (as a Birds of Paradise would, and why it not widely played in all jund lists)
Nactal could be unbanned. She is strong? Yes, very strong, but nowdays she don't have the power to make zoo dominate the meta.
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EDH is perfectly fine where it is right now.
I don't see any reason why they would ban or unban any specific cards currently.
edit:
Scratch that, I personally think they should ban demonic tutor, but I think I am one of the few people who advocates this.
Give irony and sarcasm, when ignorance and stupidity is found.
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