Shuffle it once when you draw. That's legit. Shuffling for the sake of looking like the biggest douche in the world is .... well douchy. Usually I just slap the opponent and they stop. I tried slapping LSV, but it did not work over the internet. LOL
You may be able to get away with that crap at your LGS, but I think it's important for everybody with silly pet peeves to realize that quite a few MTG players practice at least one martial art and aren't afraid to prove it. Get into a pissing match with the wrong guy and you could very quickly regret your inability to ignore an innocent thing.
Shuffle it once when you draw. That's legit. Shuffling for the sake of looking like the biggest douche in the world is .... well douchy. Usually I just slap the opponent and they stop. I tried slapping LSV, but it did not work over the internet. LOL
You may be able to get away with that crap at your LGS, but I think it's important for everybody with silly pet peeves to realize that quite a few MTG players practice at least one martial art and aren't afraid to prove it. Get into a pissing match with the wrong guy and you could very quickly regret your inability to ignore an innocent thing.
lol this is a joke, right?
Not at all. Maybe it's just where I live, but I don't have many neckbeards at my LGSs, but instead far more people who look like they should be playing football. And it's fairly well known that a significant number of pros have MMA backgrounds as well. If somebody tried to slap me just for shuffling my hand I'd probably end up breaking his arm.
Shuffle it once when you draw. That's legit. Shuffling for the sake of looking like the biggest douche in the world is .... well douchy. Usually I just slap the opponent and they stop. I tried slapping LSV, but it did not work over the internet. LOL
You may be able to get away with that crap at your LGS, but I think it's important for everybody with silly pet peeves to realize that quite a few MTG players practice at least one martial art and aren't afraid to prove it. Get into a pissing match with the wrong guy and you could very quickly regret your inability to ignore an innocent thing.
lol this is a joke, right?
Not at all. Maybe it's just where I live, but I don't have many neckbeards at my LGSs, but instead far more people who look like they should be playing football. And it's fairly well known that a significant number of pros have MMA backgrounds as well. If somebody tried to slap me just for shuffling my hand I'd probably end up breaking his arm.
So much repressed anger hahah. You do realize he's just joking, right?
Shuffle it once when you draw. That's legit. Shuffling for the sake of looking like the biggest douche in the world is .... well douchy. Usually I just slap the opponent and they stop. I tried slapping LSV, but it did not work over the internet. LOL
You may be able to get away with that crap at your LGS, but I think it's important for everybody with silly pet peeves to realize that quite a few MTG players practice at least one martial art and aren't afraid to prove it. Get into a pissing match with the wrong guy and you could very quickly regret your inability to ignore an innocent thing.
lol this is a joke, right?
Not at all. Maybe it's just where I live, but I don't have many neckbeards at my LGSs, but instead far more people who look like they should be playing football. And it's fairly well known that a significant number of pros have MMA backgrounds as well. If somebody tried to slap me just for shuffling my hand I'd probably end up breaking his arm.
So much repressed anger hahah. You do realize he's just joking, right?
/slap
I hoped he was joking, but he also needs to get off his high horse regarding a simple little habit that other people have which doesn't affect him at all.
Letting go of frustration/irritation with petty nuisances comes with (a) growing up, (b) understanding and dealing with actual, significant problems in life, or (c) a combination of the two. Spending all your time getting bent out of shape over something inconsequential, whether it be an inconsiderate driver, your co-workers' annoying habits, or what your opponent does with his cards is a good way to tack on unneeded stress and anxiety. I spent too many years worked up over stupid stuff. It's such a waste of otherwise useful brain power.
Sorry for the the slight thread derailment. Back on topic: Day 2 numbers aside, these are what your tournament results will consistently continue to look like. Pod is difficult to hate out, attacks from multiple angles, has an insta-kill built in, and can come from behind to create insurmountable board states.
Where other decks are forced to go all-in on a strategy, Pod has outs that avoid the typical hate people will bring in. Where Stony Silence or Ethersworn Canonist may be virtual locks against their respective targets, Pod can quite easily maneuver around whatever sideboard answers you hope will stop it.
Modern is a 2 strategy format: Midrange or "all-in." And if you're not all-in, why not just play the best midrange strategy of the bunch. Prior to Bloodbraid Elf's banning, that was Jund. It's been Pod now for quite sometime, and while you'll occasionally see things crop up here and there, on a large enough scale with enough variance, Pod will consistently come out on top.
Break the meta down however you want. Splice up lists to see all of the various decks Modern has to offer. Refute it by pointing out Day 2 aggro or control decks (we even had a couple faeries tempo decks put up decent numbers). At its core though, we're still in a format of just two Tier 1 strategies.
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Currently playing:
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
Has anyone been able to find recorded matches? I wanted to at least watch from the semis on but YouTube has nothing and the Twitch mobile app has nothing as well (I don't have access to a computer at the moment).
Im not sure why Pod is "difficult to hate out" there's plenty of cards like Arbiter and Mindcensor to stop searching. Lots of creature exiling like Path and Anger. Lots of yard hate whether it be ooze, relic, grafdiggers, or a million others. And leans heavily on an artifact with literally every deck having hard artifact counters in the sideboard due to robots. It literally has more points of interaction than any other deck in the format. And while none of them completely hose the deck, they all put a major dent in it.
It's been just a coincidence that from the 18 players who got 39+ points, the 5 who were playing Pod made it to the top8. And all of that with a shady and controversial tie-breaker system.
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Who is truer: you who are, or you who are to be?
Currently sleeved: WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
Has anyone been able to find recorded matches? I wanted to at least watch from the semis on but YouTube has nothing and the Twitch mobile app has nothing as well (I don't have access to a computer at the moment).
It's been just a coincidence that from the 18 players who got 39+ points, the 5 who were playing Pod made it to the top8. And all of that with a shady and controversial tie-breaker system.
Maybe you just don't understand how it works. If you're tied in points with someone (same record, 12-1-1 or whatever), then we take a look at your opponents average match win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your game win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your opponent's game win percentage.
If your opponents do well, it's better for you. If your opponents drop after losing to you every round, you're going to have crappy tie breakers.
Im not sure why Pod is "difficult to hate out" there's plenty of cards like Arbiter and Mindcensor to stop searching. Lots of creature exiling like Path and Anger. Lots of yard hate whether it be ooze, relic, grafdiggers, or a million others. And leans heavily on an artifact with literally every deck having hard artifact counters in the sideboard due to robots. It literally has more points of interaction than any other deck in the format. And while none of them completely hose the deck, they all put a major dent in it.
It's because you would need all of those things rolling at the same time to truly shut it down. Yes, there are answers, and yes it's imminently beatable. But if you shut down their searching, they'll go on the beat down plan. If you snipe their creatures, you'll give them time to recover elsewhere. They hit from so many angles, and they do so with incredible consistency. Where you can windmill slam a Rest in Peace and watch the Living End player curl up and cry, or drop Stony Silence and laugh at your Affinity opponent, that doesn't happen with Pod. You play Torpor Orb, they shrug, activate Gavony Township, and beat you down with mana dorks and grizzly bears. You play hit Anger of the Gods and clear their board, they shrug, play a 2 drop, Pod it away for a Kitchen Finks or whatever and start rebuilding immediately.
By no means am I suggesting that it's a lost cause. I'm only saying that over the course of enough rounds with enough decks in the field, Pod is going to get there one way or the other, just as Bloodbraid Elf and Jund were able to do in the past.
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Currently playing:
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
Has anyone been able to find recorded matches? I wanted to at least watch from the semis on but YouTube has nothing and the Twitch mobile app has nothing as well (I don't have access to a computer at the moment).
Lol, links back to the Twitch page. That requires flash player and I'm on an iphone. Tried it on my Kindle and it just says Failed to load video over and over. Fml....
what about WUR? What singular card makes that deck instantly scoop. Because I can't think of any. Just because there's not a single card that completely hoses a deck into forfeit situation, doesn't mean the deck can't be hated. Hate is supposed to do just that, which is the main difference between hate cards and hosers. Hate is meant to hurt a deck's gameplan and being inconvenient for them. Voice of Resurgence hates against control decks. But they just burn it out on their main phase. Loxodon Smiter gives you what is essentially 3 free mana if your opponent runs blind discard. That's how most hate has always been, minor advantages over specific opponents, that hurts them but doesn't shut them down completely(Cards that guaranteed victory if you draw it, and guarantee loss if you don't are things Wizards doesn't like when they can help it).
Pod has more points of interactions than decks like WUR. Which means its utilizing many different strategies. The whole design is to make it susceptible to lots of types of hate and be able to play through all of them at a limited capacity, that's kinda the point. That's the only reason to add multiple points of interaction. And it's because people are tired of hard hosers why decks like Blue Moon have come into existence.
blood moon poops on WUR pretty easily. and yeah, since pod can attack from so many angles it makes it very hard to specifically hate. an acceptable comparison would be WUR control with thopter/sword. if their primary game plan doesn't work out, it has something to fall back on. and now cards that you bring in to hate WUR don't cover all of what the deck can put out.
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I speak in sarcasm because calling people ******* ******** is not allowed.
what about WUR? What singular card makes that deck instantly scoop. Because I can't think of any. Just because there's not a single card that completely hoses a deck into forfeit situation, doesn't mean the deck can't be hated. Hate is supposed to do just that, which is the main difference between hate cards and hosers. Hate is meant to hurt a deck's gameplan and being inconvenient for them. Voice of Resurgence hates against control decks. But they just burn it out on their main phase. Loxodon Smiter gives you what is essentially 3 free mana if your opponent runs blind discard. That's how most hate has always been, minor advantages over specific opponents, that hurts them but doesn't shut them down completely(Cards that guaranteed victory if you draw it, and guarantee loss if you don't are things Wizards doesn't like when they can help it).
Pod has more points of interactions than decks like WUR. Which means its utilizing many different strategies. The whole design is to make it susceptible to lots of types of hate and be able to play through all of them at a limited capacity, that's kinda the point. That's the only reason to add multiple points of interaction. And it's because people are tired of hard hosers why decks like Blue Moon have come into existence.
I don't want to argue with you, because I think you've inadvertantly agreed with me. Also, I don't disagree with what you've said, but I think it's missing the mark. My broader point was simply that the format can be boiled down into two strategies. This is a statement on the systemic problem with how Modern has developed (or has been manipulated to develop by Wizards) rather than a discussion of Pod.
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Currently playing:
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
Maybe you just don't understand how it works. If you're tied in points with someone (same record, 12-1-1 or whatever), then we take a look at your opponents average match win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your game win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your opponent's game win percentage.
If your opponents do well, it's better for you. If your opponents drop after losing to you every round, you're going to have crappy tie breakers.
And if your tie-breakers get reset after day one, it doesn't matter if you started the day 9-0 or 7-2, and the way they did it, what counted wasn't the total points of your opponent but the points he had made day two only.
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Who is truer: you who are, or you who are to be?
Currently sleeved: WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
There's a sliding scale. Speed v Resilience. There are extremely fast decks, like Storm and Affinity. These can win before the opponent has a chance to react, but will also immediately fold extremely hard to any amount of hate. Because they only try to do one thing but they try to do it very efficiently. The strengths of such a deck are obvious.
But as you spread yourself out to different strategies, you do none of them amazingly well, which means you do all of them reasonably slowly. It's a trade-off on how much you value speed. And the fact that Robots is still the #1 most played deck, and appearing in plenty of top8s, theres a lot of people demonstrating that going with a fast strategy that gets hard countered can work just fine.
But to look at the most diverse metagame numbers that any format has had in as long as I can remember, and saying "the format can be boiled down into two strategies" is...mindboggling.
Maybe you just don't understand how it works. If you're tied in points with someone (same record, 12-1-1 or whatever), then we take a look at your opponents average match win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your game win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your opponent's game win percentage.
If your opponents do well, it's better for you. If your opponents drop after losing to you every round, you're going to have crappy tie breakers.
And if your tie-breakers get reset after day one, it doesn't matter if you started the day 9-0 or 7-2, and the way they did it, what counted wasn't the total points of your opponent but the points he had made day two only.
If that were true then the guy who won would have been ranked #1 going into the top 8, because he was undefeated in day 2.
Maybe you just don't understand how it works. If you're tied in points with someone (same record, 12-1-1 or whatever), then we take a look at your opponents average match win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your game win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your opponent's game win percentage.
If your opponents do well, it's better for you. If your opponents drop after losing to you every round, you're going to have crappy tie breakers.
And if your tie-breakers get reset after day one, it doesn't matter if you started the day 9-0 or 7-2, and the way they did it, what counted wasn't the total points of your opponent but the points he had made day two only.
If that were true then the guy who won would have been ranked #1 going into the top 8, because he was undefeated in day 2.
The tie-breakers were reset after day one. Logistically speaking, day two was a separate event. This is what happens at very large events because DCI-R can only hold so many players in an event (which is why there were three flights) and they just merge the players at X-2 into a new event.
I'm really disappointed with that top 8. I was really hoping for more variety, given how cool the metagame has been on MTGO and at PT Valencia and such lately.
The top 8 isn'treally the metagame. We really have to look at all of the decks on day 1 to get a good look at what's being played and have a good understanding of the numbers at this event. Sure, there were 5 Birthing Pod decks in the top 8. The Pod deck in the minority took the win, so what does that mean?
Yeah, I know. It's just that I'd really like to see people be rewarded for playing all those cool, diverse decks. I was there, and I ran into none of those decks in the t8 before dropping. No one I spoke to was playing any of them. But then the t8 hits, and it's the same four boring decks. It's just a little disappointing, you know?
EDIT: Though, now that I've had a chance to look at the top 16 (Everything was a bit hectic, what with us leaving early because a friend got food poisoning), things all look a lot more interesting. UB Fae in the top 16? Phyrexian Obliterator? Hell yeah, that's all great. I am officially less disappointed now.
My broader point was simply that the format can be boiled down into two strategies. This is a statement on the systemic problem with how Modern has developed (or has been manipulated to develop by Wizards) rather than a discussion of Pod.
I think there's some truth to what you say, but I don't think it's as dire as just "all-in" or "midrange." There's a lot of diversity within those categories, and some strategies straddle them. Tarmo Twin is an all-in deck that can do an impression of midrange, Kiki Pod is a midrange deck that can do an all-in impression. Sure, there's decks that are firmly in one camp or the other too. I think you're onto something in that control is slightly under represented, but it exists (4c Gifts, UWR). Basically, I think you can pick any strategy you want in modern and have a chance to do well in a local tournament. Maybe not win a 15 round GP, but certainly 4-0 a MTGO event.
Pod is difficult to hate out, attacks from multiple angles, has an insta-kill built in, and can come from behind to create insurmountable board states.
Where other decks are forced to go all-in on a strategy, Pod has outs that avoid the typical hate people will bring in. Where or may be virtual locks against their respective targets, Pod can quite easily maneuver around whatever sideboard answers you hope will stop it.
Modern is a 2 strategy format: Midrange or "all-in." And if you're not all-in, why not just play the best midrange strategy of the bunch. Prior to Bloodbraid Elf's banning, that was Jund. It's been Pod now for quite sometime, and while you'll occasionally see things crop up here and there, on a large enough scale with enough variance, Pod will consistently come out on top.
Break the meta down however you want. Splice up lists to see all of the various decks Modern has to offer. Refute it by pointing out Day 2 aggro or control decks (we even had a couple faeries tempo decks put up decent numbers). At its core though, we're still in a format of just two Tier 1 strategies.
Pod is hard to hate out? You know that the deck had like a 30% matchup against tron, right? And that was mostly because RG tron plays pyroclasm maindeck and could deploy big threats before Pod could kill through combat damage... Now, how do you think Pod will do in a field full of anger of the gods and hallowed burial? The problem is people pack the wrong kinds of hate against pod: stony silence? it literally only stops the birthing pod itself. Grafdigger's cage? a bit better, but still, you only took out the melira combo, Pod, and Chord of Calling (both melira and chord are often sided out, so you won't be getting much value). Wanna hose Pod badly? Go after their creatures. Side in removal like path to exile boardwipes, and value spells.
Pod is difficult to hate out, attacks from multiple angles, has an insta-kill built in, and can come from behind to create insurmountable board states.
Where other decks are forced to go all-in on a strategy, Pod has outs that avoid the typical hate people will bring in. Where or may be virtual locks against their respective targets, Pod can quite easily maneuver around whatever sideboard answers you hope will stop it.
Modern is a 2 strategy format: Midrange or "all-in." And if you're not all-in, why not just play the best midrange strategy of the bunch. Prior to Bloodbraid Elf's banning, that was Jund. It's been Pod now for quite sometime, and while you'll occasionally see things crop up here and there, on a large enough scale with enough variance, Pod will consistently come out on top.
Break the meta down however you want. Splice up lists to see all of the various decks Modern has to offer. Refute it by pointing out Day 2 aggro or control decks (we even had a couple faeries tempo decks put up decent numbers). At its core though, we're still in a format of just two Tier 1 strategies.
Pod is hard to hate out? You know that the deck had like a 30% matchup against tron, right? And that was mostly because RG tron plays pyroclasm maindeck and could deploy big threats before Pod could kill through combat damage... Now, how do you think Pod will do in a field full of anger of the gods and hallowed burial? The problem is people pack the wrong kinds of hate against pod: stony silence? it literally only stops the birthing pod itself. Grafdigger's cage? a bit better, but still, you only took out the melira combo, Pod, and Chord of Calling (both melira and chord are often sided out, so you won't be getting much value). Wanna hose Pod badly? Go after their creatures. Side in removal like path to exile boardwipes, and value spells.
How well does Tron do against the rest of the field? In theory, you could build a deck designed to murder Pod. We could probably brainstorm that deck in less than 5 minutes. It still has to be able to compete with the rest of the field. How many Tron decks made it to Day 2? That's not a rhetorical question. I really have no clue, having not played Tron in a very long time.
I'm not trying to defend Pod. I don't even play it. I think you're missing the forest for the trees. I was just using Pod as an example of resilient, midrange decks arguably being the best choice for surviving an event of that size with a somewhat unknown meta.
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Currently playing:
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
But to look at the most diverse metagame numbers that any format has had in as long as I can remember, and saying "the format can be boiled down into two strategies" is...mindboggling.
First, I'd like to know where that claim is coming from. Second, even if that's true, you're taking one of the biggest, if not the biggest constructed tournament of all time and then saying it had the broadest variety of decks. That's not exactly newsworthy or groundbreaking. If it didn't have the biggest variety of decks, something would be seriously wrong with not just Modern, but Magic itself.
Now, I never said the meta wasn't diverse, although I have said that about Modern in the past. I said the strategies aren't diverse. There's a difference. 10 different deck archetypes could all have the same strategy. For example, I'd clump all variations of Delver decks in both legacy and modern into the "tempo" strategy. Likewise, you could clump Reanimator, Sneak and Show, Tin Fins, Omnitell, Through the Breach, etc. into the strategy of "cheat a fatty into play," which I'd treat as a subset of the broader group of "combo" decks.
Before I go any further, I should state now that I'm not going to consider unsuccesful decks as a serious part of the meta. In the most technical sense, they're decks that are being played at the event, and therefore are part of it, but including them in this discussion is disingenuous. You can play anything you want so long as it's legal. That doesn't mean it should be given serious consideration, and so I'll treat any modestly competitive, but non-producing decks as nonfactors. Back on point...
Now, when I say "all-in" strategies, I'm referring to decks that put all of their eggs in one basket and hope that its enough to get them there. These decks are incredibly susceptible to hoser cards, but the payoff is that without those cards, they can run rampant and dominate. These decks have either very little fallback plan or none at all. Examples of what I'd consider an all-in deck include Affinity, Living End, Amulet Combo, Ad Nauseum, Tron, Storm, and a plethora of lesser played synergy and combo decks. These decks appeal to people who want to do something broken, whether it be casting 30 spells on a single turn, playing Karn Liberated on turn 3, or just dumping your hand on turn 1-2 and hooking up a cranial plating. The common thread of course is that these decks fold up and die to their respective hosers if said cards are not answered immediately (Rest in Peace, Stony Silence, Rule of Law, Blood Moon, Shatterstorm, etc.).
Midrange decks, as I've already stated, are those which grind out incremental advantages over the course of the game, often fighting an attrition battle to empty an opponents resources before finishing them off. The classic example is Jund, but you can see it in every format and in every flavor. The strategy doesn't change though.
These are your only real options if you want to be successful in Modern, either because Wizards has banned key components to other strategies or because the cardpool simply isn't there to compete with The Big Two. Want to play aggro? Hope you like Affinity, because Nacatyl & Friends won't get you there. Want to play control? Hope you don't need any decent card draw. Tempo your thing? Well, Bitterblossom put 2 decks into Day 2, so, uhh, there you go! If you want to speak in the broadest terms, sure, those are all completely legitimate strategies. Unfortunately, none of them can really hang with the big boys in a field as big as we just saw. The tools just aren't there.
I do think there is tons of room for innovation and development. I just don't think that those innovations can really compete with the top decks, and as someone who strongly opposes most bannings, Modern or otherwise, I don't have a good answer for how Wizards fixes it without changing their attitude towards the current banned list or printing new cards targeted at manipulating the meta.
EDIT: Please bump this and make me look like a complete tool if the next Modern tournament shatters everything I've just said. Nothing could make me happier than seeing something new and being proven wrong.
lol this is a joke, right?
Not at all. Maybe it's just where I live, but I don't have many neckbeards at my LGSs, but instead far more people who look like they should be playing football. And it's fairly well known that a significant number of pros have MMA backgrounds as well. If somebody tried to slap me just for shuffling my hand I'd probably end up breaking his arm.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
So much repressed anger hahah. You do realize he's just joking, right?
/slap
I hoped he was joking, but he also needs to get off his high horse regarding a simple little habit that other people have which doesn't affect him at all.
/breakyourarm :-p
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
Sorry for the the slight thread derailment. Back on topic: Day 2 numbers aside, these are what your tournament results will consistently continue to look like. Pod is difficult to hate out, attacks from multiple angles, has an insta-kill built in, and can come from behind to create insurmountable board states.
Where other decks are forced to go all-in on a strategy, Pod has outs that avoid the typical hate people will bring in. Where Stony Silence or Ethersworn Canonist may be virtual locks against their respective targets, Pod can quite easily maneuver around whatever sideboard answers you hope will stop it.
Modern is a 2 strategy format: Midrange or "all-in." And if you're not all-in, why not just play the best midrange strategy of the bunch. Prior to Bloodbraid Elf's banning, that was Jund. It's been Pod now for quite sometime, and while you'll occasionally see things crop up here and there, on a large enough scale with enough variance, Pod will consistently come out on top.
Break the meta down however you want. Splice up lists to see all of the various decks Modern has to offer. Refute it by pointing out Day 2 aggro or control decks (we even had a couple faeries tempo decks put up decent numbers). At its core though, we're still in a format of just two Tier 1 strategies.
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
Currently sleeved:
WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
This is some of the best coverage in MTG:
http://www.mtgcoverage.com
Maybe you just don't understand how it works. If you're tied in points with someone (same record, 12-1-1 or whatever), then we take a look at your opponents average match win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your game win percentage. If that is tied, we look at your opponent's game win percentage.
If your opponents do well, it's better for you. If your opponents drop after losing to you every round, you're going to have crappy tie breakers.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
It's because you would need all of those things rolling at the same time to truly shut it down. Yes, there are answers, and yes it's imminently beatable. But if you shut down their searching, they'll go on the beat down plan. If you snipe their creatures, you'll give them time to recover elsewhere. They hit from so many angles, and they do so with incredible consistency. Where you can windmill slam a Rest in Peace and watch the Living End player curl up and cry, or drop Stony Silence and laugh at your Affinity opponent, that doesn't happen with Pod. You play Torpor Orb, they shrug, activate Gavony Township, and beat you down with mana dorks and grizzly bears. You play hit Anger of the Gods and clear their board, they shrug, play a 2 drop, Pod it away for a Kitchen Finks or whatever and start rebuilding immediately.
By no means am I suggesting that it's a lost cause. I'm only saying that over the course of enough rounds with enough decks in the field, Pod is going to get there one way or the other, just as Bloodbraid Elf and Jund were able to do in the past.
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
Lol, links back to the Twitch page. That requires flash player and I'm on an iphone. Tried it on my Kindle and it just says Failed to load video over and over. Fml....
Pod has more points of interactions than decks like WUR. Which means its utilizing many different strategies. The whole design is to make it susceptible to lots of types of hate and be able to play through all of them at a limited capacity, that's kinda the point. That's the only reason to add multiple points of interaction. And it's because people are tired of hard hosers why decks like Blue Moon have come into existence.
I don't want to argue with you, because I think you've inadvertantly agreed with me. Also, I don't disagree with what you've said, but I think it's missing the mark. My broader point was simply that the format can be boiled down into two strategies. This is a statement on the systemic problem with how Modern has developed (or has been manipulated to develop by Wizards) rather than a discussion of Pod.
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
And if your tie-breakers get reset after day one, it doesn't matter if you started the day 9-0 or 7-2, and the way they did it, what counted wasn't the total points of your opponent but the points he had made day two only.
Currently sleeved:
WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
But as you spread yourself out to different strategies, you do none of them amazingly well, which means you do all of them reasonably slowly. It's a trade-off on how much you value speed. And the fact that Robots is still the #1 most played deck, and appearing in plenty of top8s, theres a lot of people demonstrating that going with a fast strategy that gets hard countered can work just fine.
But to look at the most diverse metagame numbers that any format has had in as long as I can remember, and saying "the format can be boiled down into two strategies" is...mindboggling.
If that were true then the guy who won would have been ranked #1 going into the top 8, because he was undefeated in day 2.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
The tie-breakers were reset after day one. Logistically speaking, day two was a separate event. This is what happens at very large events because DCI-R can only hold so many players in an event (which is why there were three flights) and they just merge the players at X-2 into a new event.
Yeah, I know. It's just that I'd really like to see people be rewarded for playing all those cool, diverse decks. I was there, and I ran into none of those decks in the t8 before dropping. No one I spoke to was playing any of them. But then the t8 hits, and it's the same four boring decks. It's just a little disappointing, you know?
EDIT: Though, now that I've had a chance to look at the top 16 (Everything was a bit hectic, what with us leaving early because a friend got food poisoning), things all look a lot more interesting. UB Fae in the top 16? Phyrexian Obliterator? Hell yeah, that's all great. I am officially less disappointed now.
I think there's some truth to what you say, but I don't think it's as dire as just "all-in" or "midrange." There's a lot of diversity within those categories, and some strategies straddle them. Tarmo Twin is an all-in deck that can do an impression of midrange, Kiki Pod is a midrange deck that can do an all-in impression. Sure, there's decks that are firmly in one camp or the other too. I think you're onto something in that control is slightly under represented, but it exists (4c Gifts, UWR). Basically, I think you can pick any strategy you want in modern and have a chance to do well in a local tournament. Maybe not win a 15 round GP, but certainly 4-0 a MTGO event.
Pod is hard to hate out? You know that the deck had like a 30% matchup against tron, right? And that was mostly because RG tron plays pyroclasm maindeck and could deploy big threats before Pod could kill through combat damage... Now, how do you think Pod will do in a field full of anger of the gods and hallowed burial? The problem is people pack the wrong kinds of hate against pod: stony silence? it literally only stops the birthing pod itself. Grafdigger's cage? a bit better, but still, you only took out the melira combo, Pod, and Chord of Calling (both melira and chord are often sided out, so you won't be getting much value). Wanna hose Pod badly? Go after their creatures. Side in removal like path to exile boardwipes, and value spells.
How well does Tron do against the rest of the field? In theory, you could build a deck designed to murder Pod. We could probably brainstorm that deck in less than 5 minutes. It still has to be able to compete with the rest of the field. How many Tron decks made it to Day 2? That's not a rhetorical question. I really have no clue, having not played Tron in a very long time.
I'm not trying to defend Pod. I don't even play it. I think you're missing the forest for the trees. I was just using Pod as an example of resilient, midrange decks arguably being the best choice for surviving an event of that size with a somewhat unknown meta.
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
First, I'd like to know where that claim is coming from. Second, even if that's true, you're taking one of the biggest, if not the biggest constructed tournament of all time and then saying it had the broadest variety of decks. That's not exactly newsworthy or groundbreaking. If it didn't have the biggest variety of decks, something would be seriously wrong with not just Modern, but Magic itself.
Now, I never said the meta wasn't diverse, although I have said that about Modern in the past. I said the strategies aren't diverse. There's a difference. 10 different deck archetypes could all have the same strategy. For example, I'd clump all variations of Delver decks in both legacy and modern into the "tempo" strategy. Likewise, you could clump Reanimator, Sneak and Show, Tin Fins, Omnitell, Through the Breach, etc. into the strategy of "cheat a fatty into play," which I'd treat as a subset of the broader group of "combo" decks.
Before I go any further, I should state now that I'm not going to consider unsuccesful decks as a serious part of the meta. In the most technical sense, they're decks that are being played at the event, and therefore are part of it, but including them in this discussion is disingenuous. You can play anything you want so long as it's legal. That doesn't mean it should be given serious consideration, and so I'll treat any modestly competitive, but non-producing decks as nonfactors. Back on point...
Now, when I say "all-in" strategies, I'm referring to decks that put all of their eggs in one basket and hope that its enough to get them there. These decks are incredibly susceptible to hoser cards, but the payoff is that without those cards, they can run rampant and dominate. These decks have either very little fallback plan or none at all. Examples of what I'd consider an all-in deck include Affinity, Living End, Amulet Combo, Ad Nauseum, Tron, Storm, and a plethora of lesser played synergy and combo decks. These decks appeal to people who want to do something broken, whether it be casting 30 spells on a single turn, playing Karn Liberated on turn 3, or just dumping your hand on turn 1-2 and hooking up a cranial plating. The common thread of course is that these decks fold up and die to their respective hosers if said cards are not answered immediately (Rest in Peace, Stony Silence, Rule of Law, Blood Moon, Shatterstorm, etc.).
Midrange decks, as I've already stated, are those which grind out incremental advantages over the course of the game, often fighting an attrition battle to empty an opponents resources before finishing them off. The classic example is Jund, but you can see it in every format and in every flavor. The strategy doesn't change though.
These are your only real options if you want to be successful in Modern, either because Wizards has banned key components to other strategies or because the cardpool simply isn't there to compete with The Big Two. Want to play aggro? Hope you like Affinity, because Nacatyl & Friends won't get you there. Want to play control? Hope you don't need any decent card draw. Tempo your thing? Well, Bitterblossom put 2 decks into Day 2, so, uhh, there you go! If you want to speak in the broadest terms, sure, those are all completely legitimate strategies. Unfortunately, none of them can really hang with the big boys in a field as big as we just saw. The tools just aren't there.
I do think there is tons of room for innovation and development. I just don't think that those innovations can really compete with the top decks, and as someone who strongly opposes most bannings, Modern or otherwise, I don't have a good answer for how Wizards fixes it without changing their attitude towards the current banned list or printing new cards targeted at manipulating the meta.
EDIT: Please bump this and make me look like a complete tool if the next Modern tournament shatters everything I've just said. Nothing could make me happier than seeing something new and being proven wrong.
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator