I personally would rather see Bridge from Below; it would be a reanimator strategy that isn't "Legacy Lite", because there is nothing like it in that format, unlike Dread Return.
Funny thing is, is such a deck could use Mill as an alt-win, since you could use a singleton Oboro, Palace in the Clouds to keep the Bloodghasts coming back, and if your going to use Oboro, you might as well use Hedron Crabs as enablers.
Would be incredibly funny to see a Dimir Aggro deck
Well too bad that the format is already Legacy lite enough that a fringe strategy like that will never be viable. To me it seems like an aggro deck that's worse than Affinity, Burn,.. and easier to hate out at the same time.
A graveyard based strategy in this format just has to be broken to have a chance against all the possible hate.
That's why I said that even with Dread Return Dredge would never be better than tier 2. Everyone puts their 4 graveyard hate pieces back in their sideboard and that's it for broken tier 1 Dredge.
Except Dread Return Dredge WAS Broken T1 (Hence it's banning).
It's also highly resilient to effects like Discard, it laughs at Goyf and snapcaster, and due to all the threats you are pumping out it's rather hilarious.
Yes, it folds to hate, but so does Affinity, Infect, and most other decks in the format.
Also, Fringe will never be viable due to Legacy Lite-ness?
Amulet Bloom, Shamanism, 8Rack, Living End, POD, Blue Moon would like to have a word with you.
That was before cards like Rest in Peace were printed. Also I don't think much of the early testing, it was years ago with a a lot smaller card pool and also not really with enough data to be accurate.
What I meant with fringe was that the deck would basically be a worse version of existing decks, that's why it wouldn't really be viable if you want to win.
.....Cards like Planar Void have existed since forever and Legacy Reanimator is still a thing....
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Oath of the Gatewatch; the set that caused the competitive community to freak out over Basic Lands.
I personally would rather see Bridge from Below; it would be a reanimator strategy that isn't "Legacy Lite", because there is nothing like it in that format, unlike Dread Return.
Funny thing is, is such a deck could use Mill as an alt-win, since you could use a singleton Oboro, Palace in the Clouds to keep the Bloodghasts coming back, and if your going to use Oboro, you might as well use Hedron Crabs as enablers.
Would be incredibly funny to see a Dimir Aggro deck
Well too bad that the format is already Legacy lite enough that a fringe strategy like that will never be viable. To me it seems like an aggro deck that's worse than Affinity, Burn,.. and easier to hate out at the same time.
A graveyard based strategy in this format just has to be broken to have a chance against all the possible hate.
That's why I said that even with Dread Return Dredge would never be better than tier 2. Everyone puts their 4 graveyard hate pieces back in their sideboard and that's it for broken tier 1 Dredge.
Except Dread Return Dredge WAS Broken T1 (Hence it's banning).
It's also highly resilient to effects like Discard, it laughs at Goyf and snapcaster, and due to all the threats you are pumping out it's rather hilarious.
Yes, it folds to hate, but so does Affinity, Infect, and most other decks in the format.
Also, Fringe will never be viable due to Legacy Lite-ness?
Amulet Bloom, Shamanism, 8Rack, Living End, POD, Blue Moon would like to have a word with you.
That was before cards like Rest in Peace were printed. Also I don't think much of the early testing, it was years ago with a a lot smaller card pool and also not really with enough data to be accurate.
What I meant with fringe was that the deck would basically be a worse version of existing decks, that's why it wouldn't really be viable if you want to win.
Hate like rest in peace never has and never will make decks like fully powered dredge okay in modern. The tools to find the hate are just too weak, things like brainstorm are a huge piece of the puzzle for why fast combo style decks like that are good for the format.
As a side note, does bridge possibly have some potential with exploit? It looks like a natural enabler, granted none of the exploit cards are as pushed as I would have liked. An exploit creature with delve would have been mad sexy.
Aren't you just better off with a Sac Engine that does something useful?
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“Modern has provided us a non-rotating format that is far more accessible than Legacy or Vintage, but still retains many of the qualities that people enjoy in those formats—such as a more stable metagame, the ability to play and tweak the same deck week after week, and simply a much more powerful card pool than Standard.”
- Sam Stoddard, “Developing Modern” (June 21, 2013) (by means of Sheridan Lardner, "Fixing Modern: Defining Format Mission (March 16, 2016))
I personally would rather see Bridge from Below; it would be a reanimator strategy that isn't "Legacy Lite", because there is nothing like it in that format, unlike Dread Return.
Funny thing is, is such a deck could use Mill as an alt-win, since you could use a singleton Oboro, Palace in the Clouds to keep the Bloodghasts coming back, and if your going to use Oboro, you might as well use Hedron Crabs as enablers.
Would be incredibly funny to see a Dimir Aggro deck
Well too bad that the format is already Legacy lite enough that a fringe strategy like that will never be viable. To me it seems like an aggro deck that's worse than Affinity, Burn,.. and easier to hate out at the same time.
A graveyard based strategy in this format just has to be broken to have a chance against all the possible hate.
That's why I said that even with Dread Return Dredge would never be better than tier 2. Everyone puts their 4 graveyard hate pieces back in their sideboard and that's it for broken tier 1 Dredge.
Except Dread Return Dredge WAS Broken T1 (Hence it's banning).
It's also highly resilient to effects like Discard, it laughs at Goyf and snapcaster, and due to all the threats you are pumping out it's rather hilarious.
Yes, it folds to hate, but so does Affinity, Infect, and most other decks in the format.
Also, Fringe will never be viable due to Legacy Lite-ness?
Amulet Bloom, Shamanism, 8Rack, Living End, POD, Blue Moon would like to have a word with you.
That was before cards like Rest in Peace were printed. Also I don't think much of the early testing, it was years ago with a a lot smaller card pool and also not really with enough data to be accurate.
What I meant with fringe was that the deck would basically be a worse version of existing decks, that's why it wouldn't really be viable if you want to win.
Hate like rest in peace never has and never will make decks like fully powered dredge okay in modern. The tools to find the hate are just too weak, things like brainstorm are a huge piece of the puzzle for why fast combo style decks like that are good for the format.
As a side note, does bridge possibly have some potential with exploit? It looks like a natural enabler, granted none of the exploit cards are as pushed as I would have liked. An exploit creature with delve would have been mad sexy.
Fully powered compared to what? The current non existing Dredge? Or the Legacy Dredge, to which a Modern Dredge wouldn't even come close to and is missing so many cards?
And the consistency argument again look you would probably have to run 4 pieces of graveyard hate instead of the 2 that blue decks in Legacy run like Death and Taxes in Legacy. Most decks dedicate as much hate for Affinity and graveyard hate has even more uses like for Delve strategies for example.
Aren't you just better off with a Sac Engine that does something useful?
I believe so.
It's not that we don't have sac outlets to technically abuse Bridge (Viscera Seer, Greater Gargadon, Blasting Station, Drowned Rusalka) it's just that Dredge skips your draw step, so they're not reliable in that type of shell (unless you mulligan into oblivion). I've tried to break Bridge in every conceivable way and I think that if it is to be broken, then it's gonna be something veery different from what it does in Legacy/Vintage (something less GY based perhaps)
Sac outlets for Bridge should ideally be castable from your graveyard, assuming you're going to mill yourself to get Bridge in the graveyard. Just mill without worry; the sac outlets will find their way into the GY along with Bridge.
Unfortunately there are no good, repeatable sac outlets that work from the graveyard. Tymaret, the Murder King is the closest, but he costs mana to activate, so you can't spam him. And he returns to your hand after saccing, so you have to get him into the graveyard again.
Well too bad that the format is already Legacy lite enough that a fringe strategy like that will never be viable. To me it seems like an aggro deck that's worse than Affinity, Burn,.. and easier to hate out at the same time.
A graveyard based strategy in this format just has to be broken to have a chance against all the possible hate.
That's why I said that even with Dread Return Dredge would never be better than tier 2. Everyone puts their 4 graveyard hate pieces back in their sideboard and that's it for broken tier 1 Dredge.
Except Dread Return Dredge WAS Broken T1 (Hence it's banning).
It's also highly resilient to effects like Discard, it laughs at Goyf and snapcaster, and due to all the threats you are pumping out it's rather hilarious.
Yes, it folds to hate, but so does Affinity, Infect, and most other decks in the format.
Also, Fringe will never be viable due to Legacy Lite-ness?
Amulet Bloom, Shamanism, 8Rack, Living End, POD, Blue Moon would like to have a word with you.
That was before cards like Rest in Peace were printed. Also I don't think much of the early testing, it was years ago with a a lot smaller card pool and also not really with enough data to be accurate.
What I meant with fringe was that the deck would basically be a worse version of existing decks, that's why it wouldn't really be viable if you want to win.
Hate like rest in peace never has and never will make decks like fully powered dredge okay in modern. The tools to find the hate are just too weak, things like brainstorm are a huge piece of the puzzle for why fast combo style decks like that are good for the format.
As a side note, does bridge possibly have some potential with exploit? It looks like a natural enabler, granted none of the exploit cards are as pushed as I would have liked. An exploit creature with delve would have been mad sexy.
Fully powered compared to what? The current non existing Dredge? Or the Legacy Dredge, to which a Modern Dredge wouldn't even come close to and is missing so many cards?
And the consistency argument again look you would probably have to run 4 pieces of graveyard hate instead of the 2 that blue decks in Legacy run like Death and Taxes in Legacy. Most decks dedicate as much hate for Affinity and graveyard hate has even more uses like for Delve strategies for example.
I was thinking non-swap ban dredge, so dread return unbanned, everything else kept legal. Having to run 4 pieces of grave hate is a problem since the board is pretty full as is. Another tier 1 deck requiring narrow hate would mean essentially a cyclical non-interactive combo meta, since modern's counters aren't really broad enough to hold back the combo and do well against the rest of the field. As for it being good against delve strategies, it didn't really stop people from cruisin with delver now did it? Leave the fast consistent combos for legacy, people get angry enough over inconsistent kills before turn 4 like bloom (not to mention the simmering rage over affinity and infect turn 3 kills). For the record, theres plenty of artifact hate in decks too like decay and the various tools people side against affinity. Does that mean Jitte and Skullclamp can come off too? Surely the meta can adjust and just sideboard more cards against them.
Dread Return vs Bridge from Below is very similar to Grove of the Burnwillows vs Punishing Fire. Dread Return and Grove of the Burn Willows are both individually powerful cards with a built in downside. Bridge and Punishing Fire are cards that are very weird and usually unplayable but take the downside of the other card and turn it into a large upside. In situations like these, I think the format is better when we ban the weird/unplayable side of the combo and leave the part that is strong enough as a card to add to the format.
Maybe it's my Melvin showing through, but I'm just not a fan of Bridge from Below. It doesn't work like a Magic card, it has some completely worthless text, it dodges most common forms of interaction and there's little room between it being unplayable and broken. The issue with playing against Dredge has been that your ways to interact with it are to run grave hate or win before it does. This was due to Bridge from Below + sacrifice as a cost. Dread Return isn't the only card that has sacrificing a creature as a cost, it's simply the most powerful one for Dredge. However, nothing in Magic rewards you for sacrificing in the costless way that Bridge from Below does and Wizards will never print another card like it. Think about future cards. Anything that can fuel sacrificing 3 creatures is already powerful without Dread Return and so the number of cards having development hindered due to Dread Return is small. Meanwhile, sacrificing creatures as a cost is already explored more often and, due to it being a "downside", can be used more aggressively. However, aggressive sacrifice costs are being avoided because of Bridge from Below. Bridge just fits the criteria for deciding which combo card to ban more than Dread Return.
Dread Return vs Bridge from Below is very similar to Grove of the Burnwillows vs Punishing Fire. Dread Return and Grove of the Burn Willows are both individually powerful cards with a built in downside. Bridge and Punishing Fire are cards that are very weird and usually unplayable but take the downside of the other card and turn it into a large upside. In situations like these, I think the format is better when we ban the weird/unplayable side of the combo and leave the part that is strong enough as a card to add to the format.
Maybe it's my Melvin showing through, but I'm just not a fan of Bridge from Below. It doesn't work like a Magic card, it has some completely worthless text, it dodges most common forms of interaction and there's little room between it being unplayable and broken. The issue with playing against Dredge has been that your ways to interact with it are to run grave hate or win before it does. This was due to Bridge from Below + sacrifice as a cost. Dread Return isn't the only card that has sacrificing a creature as a cost, it's simply the most powerful one for Dredge. However, nothing in Magic rewards you for sacrificing in the costless way that Bridge from Below does and Wizards will never print another card like it. Think about future cards. Anything that can fuel sacrificing 3 creatures is already powerful without Dread Return and so the number of cards having development hindered due to Dread Return is small. Meanwhile, sacrificing creatures as a cost is already explored more often and, due to it being a "downside", can be used more aggressively. However, aggressive sacrifice costs are being avoided because of Bridge from Below. Bridge just fits the criteria for deciding which combo card to ban more than Dread Return.
This makes a lot of sense. Dread Return is probably the better card to have unbanned since it's less abusable than BFB due to future printed cards. Dread return could also be used as a decently fair card in certain decks. Turn 4-5 Iona probably isn't any worse for the format than some thing like Splinter Twin.
Eh... I'd be wary of unbanning Dread Return, because it limits what they can do with creature tokens in the future. For instance, I'd love a card that, say, creates a relatively high number of creature tokens... but they have defender, except such a card could potentially break Dread Return if it were legal. Maybe if they printed a variant that had sacrifice non-token creatures?
Eh... I'd be wary of unbanning Dread Return, because it limits what they can do with creature tokens in the future. For instance, I'd love a card that, say, creates a relatively high number of creature tokens... but they have defender, except such a card could potentially break Dread Return if it were legal. Maybe if they printed a variant that had sacrifice non-token creatures?
There are literally hundreds of cards that could become broken if the right cards were printed that no one has even thought of. I really hope WOTC isn't taking this cautious of an approach to the ban list, other wise nothing will ever be unbanned again.
Eh... I'd be wary of unbanning Dread Return, because it limits what they can do with creature tokens in the future. For instance, I'd love a card that, say, creates a relatively high number of creature tokens... but they have defender, except such a card could potentially break Dread Return if it were legal. Maybe if they printed a variant that had sacrifice non-token creatures?
There are literally hundreds of cards that could become broken if the right cards were printed that no one has even thought of. I really hope WOTC isn't taking this cautious of an approach to the ban list, other wise nothing will ever be unbanned again.
Dread return gets stronger every time they print a stronger creature. Currently that is very likely given their direction. Also dread return cheats costs which is historically very powerful. I really think return is far more likely to get broken than bridge, people just want return over bridge BECAUSE return is easier to break than bridge.
Dread Return vs Bridge from Below is very similar to Grove of the Burnwillows vs Punishing Fire. Dread Return and Grove of the Burn Willows are both individually powerful cards with a built in downside. Bridge and Punishing Fire are cards that are very weird and usually unplayable but take the downside of the other card and turn it into a large upside. In situations like these, I think the format is better when we ban the weird/unplayable side of the combo and leave the part that is strong enough as a card to add to the format.
Maybe it's my Melvin showing through, but I'm just not a fan of Bridge from Below. It doesn't work like a Magic card, it has some completely worthless text, it dodges most common forms of interaction and there's little room between it being unplayable and broken. The issue with playing against Dredge has been that your ways to interact with it are to run grave hate or win before it does. This was due to Bridge from Below + sacrifice as a cost. Dread Return isn't the only card that has sacrificing a creature as a cost, it's simply the most powerful one for Dredge. However, nothing in Magic rewards you for sacrificing in the costless way that Bridge from Below does and Wizards will never print another card like it. Think about future cards. Anything that can fuel sacrificing 3 creatures is already powerful without Dread Return and so the number of cards having development hindered due to Dread Return is small. Meanwhile, sacrificing creatures as a cost is already explored more often and, due to it being a "downside", can be used more aggressively. However, aggressive sacrifice costs are being avoided because of Bridge from Below. Bridge just fits the criteria for deciding which combo card to ban more than Dread Return.
I disagree that Bridge holds Wizards back from printing powerful sac outlets. There are plenty of ways to abuse this interaction without Bridge. Blood Artist, Dark Prophecy, Grave Pact, Xathrid Necromancer, Skirsdag High Priest, Liliana, Heretical Healer etc. Bridge isn't even that good compared to these unless your sac outlet works from the grave. That's what's holding Bridge back, not the lack of quality sac outlets but their lack of ability to work from the grave.
Let's not unban a card that will restrict or hamper future card design space.
But that's actually every card and strategy. Yes, having a powerful deck restricts WOTC from printing cards which make it more powerful. That's universal, not an argument, and irrelevant.
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
Let's not unban a card that will restrict or hamper future card design space.
But that's actually every card and strategy. Yes, having a powerful deck restricts WOTC from printing cards which make it more powerful. That's universal, not an argument, and irrelevant.
I mean that for cards that are already known to be easily broken or oppressive, eg: Dread Return, Deathrite, Blazing Shoal, Punishing Fire, etc
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Let's not unban a card that will restrict or hamper future card design space.
But that's actually every card and strategy. Yes, having a powerful deck restricts WOTC from printing cards which make it more powerful. That's universal, not an argument, and irrelevant.
I mean that for cards that are already known to be easily broken or oppressive, eg: Dread Return, Deathrite, Blazing Shoal, Punishing Fire, etc
But that's still true of every card, take the single most inoffensive card, and there is some way to break it, thus it hampers future design space.
The point is how it hampers such, and given that DR and Punishing Fire do not hamper it in a way which WoTC cares about even slightly (They don't particularly care about tokens other than as a token strategy* or about cards which gain opponent's life).
The statement only works with a qualifier, as it did for Birthing Pod, as that clashed directly with the direction in which WoTC desired to go. DRS less so, Blazing Shoal again absolutely.
Something like this however does not meet such characteristics
Eh... I'd be wary of unbanning Dread Return, because it limits what they can do with creature tokens in the future. For instance, I'd love a card that, say, creates a relatively high number of creature tokens... but they have defender, except such a card could potentially break Dread Return if it were legal. Maybe if they printed a variant that had sacrifice non-token creatures?
For such a direction is not one WoTC desires. Dig?
Eh... I'd be wary of unbanning Dread Return, because it limits what they can do with creature tokens in the future. For instance, I'd love a card that, say, creates a relatively high number of creature tokens... but they have defender, except such a card could potentially break Dread Return if it were legal. Maybe if they printed a variant that had sacrifice non-token creatures?
There are literally hundreds of cards that could become broken if the right cards were printed that no one has even thought of. I really hope WOTC isn't taking this cautious of an approach to the ban list, other wise nothing will ever be unbanned again.
Dread return gets stronger every time they print a stronger creature. Currently that is very likely given their direction. Also dread return cheats costs which is historically very powerful. I really think return is far more likely to get broken than bridge, people just want return over bridge BECAUSE return is easier to break than bridge.
This is bothersome for a different reason, namely that it's inconsistent, for the same argument can be made for every single reanimation spell in Modern. Are those to also be banned?
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
Yea but likelyhood to get more powerful is especially relevant when it's already an abusable card like dread return.
As a side note; what your demanding is a full explanation with every single post. That shouldn't really be necessary with the frequency these sort of arguments since they come up so frequently. When someone says it hampers future design, they OBVIOUSLY mean with the direction wizards is going in.
Eh... I'd be wary of unbanning Dread Return, because it limits what they can do with creature tokens in the future. For instance, I'd love a card that, say, creates a relatively high number of creature tokens... but they have defender, except such a card could potentially break Dread Return if it were legal. Maybe if they printed a variant that had sacrifice non-token creatures?
There are literally hundreds of cards that could become broken if the right cards were printed that no one has even thought of. I really hope WOTC isn't taking this cautious of an approach to the ban list, other wise nothing will ever be unbanned again.
Dread return gets stronger every time they print a stronger creature. Currently that is very likely given their direction. Also dread return cheats costs which is historically very powerful. I really think return is far more likely to get broken than bridge, people just want return over bridge BECAUSE return is easier to break than bridge.
Look at Reanimator in Legacy. Stronger creatures are getting printed but stronger creatures like DRS, Siege Rhino and Emrakul don't make the deck better and the creatures that do, like Iona, Griselbrand, and Elesh Norn, aren't enough to keep up with the rest of the format. What is going to break Return? It's an objectively stronger card than Bridge, but so is Grove of the Burnwillows compared to Punishing Fire. Lightning Bolt is a stronger card than Dread Return; simply being strong isn't the criteria for banning. There is always a big fear about unbanning good cards, but look at just how little impact the average cards getting unbanned have. I think that the criteria for getting a cad banned and keeping a card banned should be the same, but that standard isn't held to. What evidence is there that Dread Return is too strong without Bridge? It's going to be very hard for a fat creature to break Dread Return so hard that Remand and removal spells can't keep it in check without even accounting for gravehate.
I think in an earlier post I mentioned I'm fine with one or the other, I just think bridge is safer and more interesting. I mean that's opinion, and I can see why you'd prefer dread return unbanned since it would likely be more impactful.
Eh... I'd be wary of unbanning Dread Return, because it limits what they can do with creature tokens in the future. For instance, I'd love a card that, say, creates a relatively high number of creature tokens... but they have defender, except such a card could potentially break Dread Return if it were legal. Maybe if they printed a variant that had sacrifice non-token creatures?
There are literally hundreds of cards that could become broken if the right cards were printed that no one has even thought of. I really hope WOTC isn't taking this cautious of an approach to the ban list, other wise nothing will ever be unbanned again.
Dread return gets stronger every time they print a stronger creature.
Same argument can easily be applied to Unburial Rites. Shall we ban that also?
Anyway, you claim it gets stronger "every time they print a stronger creature." That's absolutely false. The creatures that make Dread Return stronger must fit a very specific criteria. Siege Rhino is a crazy good creature. It doesn't benefit Dread Return. Tasigur pretty much singlehandedly made Delver a thing again after the Treasure Cruise ban. He's not a better target for Dread Return than already exists.
Dread Return gets stronger when they print stronger creatures that have normally prohibitively high mana costs but are extremely powerful if you ignore that (for example, Elesh Norn, Iona) and don't have some kind of anti-synergy like Emrakul or Worldspine Wurm.
So no, printing better creatures doesn't make Dread Return better. Printing very specific kinds of creatures does. And on that note...
Currently that is very likely given their direction.
And what direction is that? Good reanimator targets are a rarity. The last one to be printed was Ashen Rider, but that's actually one of the weaker of the standard reanimator targets (some Legacy reanimator decks don't even play it). The last time Reanimator really got a boost was Griselbrand, four years ago.
For an analogy, look at what Carsten Kotter said about the demise of classic aggro in Legacy: "Yes, I understand it might seem strange to hear that the reason the aggressive creature decks aren't doing well [in Legacy] is that creatures have kept getting better by leaps and bounds throughout the last years. Better creatures should mean that you can bring the beatdown even better, right?
That oversimplifies things, however. An aggressive deck is looking for a very particular kind of creature - one that is cheap and kills fast. However, the only two creatures that even remotely fit that bill that have profited from modern creature power creep are Goblin Guide and Delver of Secrets. Now, Goblin Guide is very good in an aggressive creature deck, but Delver already disqualifies itself due to its flip condition (you really want to have a lot of creatures in your deck if you want to win by curving out with them)."
Like how the cards aren't really benefiting traditional aggro decks even if creatures are on a power ramp, the power ramp of creatures doesn't benefit Dread Return.
Also dread return cheats costs which is historically very powerful.
Just like Unburial Rites!
I really think return is far more likely to get broken than bridge, people just want return over bridge BECAUSE return is easier to break than bridge.
I want Dread Return over Bridge from Below because Dread Return can at least sort of be used for semi-"fair" strategies (as fair as reanimator can get, anyway) whereas Bridge from Below is inherently only playable in unfair ones like Dredge.
Sure, maybe Dread Return might only get played in Dredge decks, but I feel it has more of a potential to be played in a more interactive manner.
Sorry, dredge is not fair, but reanimator is? I think the degree to which one is less fair than the other is marginal: they're both pretty "unfair" (if that word even has meaning in this context).
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DR is stronger than Bridge. A full-powered Dredge deck will reanimate Iona/Elesh Norn/Flame-Kin Zealot on turn 3, with 3 Zombie tokens for their trouble.
Take away Bridge, they don't get the Zombies, but they still get the big guy.
Take away DR? Good luck reanimating the fatty. Rites is 4 mana and every time you Dredge 5/6, you're putting a creature instead of what could be a land into your hand. DR gets around this issue by not costing mana. And without DR, Bridge sucks because you don't have a good sac outlet that works from the graveyard, like DR.
There's a domino effect where due to DR being banned, Bridge becomes worse, resulting in Narcomoeba and Bloodghast becoming worse, and so on to the point where you don't have enough cards to build a Dredge deck.
Sorry, dredge is not fair, but reanimator is? I think the degree to which one is less fair than the other is marginal: they're both pretty "unfair" (if that word even has meaning in this context).
Maybe fair wasn't the right word. But Dread Return seems like it can see play outside of Dredge, whereas Bridge from Below is basically Dredge-only.
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.....Cards like Planar Void have existed since forever and Legacy Reanimator is still a thing....
Hate like rest in peace never has and never will make decks like fully powered dredge okay in modern. The tools to find the hate are just too weak, things like brainstorm are a huge piece of the puzzle for why fast combo style decks like that are good for the format.
As a side note, does bridge possibly have some potential with exploit? It looks like a natural enabler, granted none of the exploit cards are as pushed as I would have liked. An exploit creature with delve would have been mad sexy.
Aren't you just better off with a Sac Engine that does something useful?
- Sam Stoddard, “Developing Modern” (June 21, 2013) (by means of Sheridan Lardner, "Fixing Modern: Defining Format Mission (March 16, 2016))
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3 Polluted Delta
3 Steam Vents
3 Sulfur Falls
Creatures (16):
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Stormchaser Mage
2 Gut Shot
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Mutagenic Growth
3 Spell Pierce
3 Twisted Image
3 Vapor Snag
Sorceries (8):
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Serum Visions
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Blood Moon
2 Dispel
1 Forked Bolt
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Repeal
2 Roast
1 Spell Snare
2 Spellskite
1 Vapor Snag
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Copperline Gorge
5 Mountain
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Stomping Ground
4 Wooded Foothills
Creatures (14):
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Atarka's Command
4 Boros Charm
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Lightning Helix
3 Searing Blaze
Sorceries (8):
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
2 Deflecting Palm
4 Destructive Revelry
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Path to Exile
2 Rending Volley
3 Skullcrack
19 Forest
3 Treetop Village
Creatures (24):
4 Avatar of the Resolute
4 Dryad Militant
2 Dungrove Elder
4 Experiment One
4 Leatherback Baloth
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Rancor
Instants (10):
3 Aspect of Hydra
4 Vines of Vastwood
3 Dismember
2 Choke
2 Gut Shot
2 Deglamer
2 Feed the Clan
2 Oxidize
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Skylasher
1 Unravel the Æther
Fully powered compared to what? The current non existing Dredge? Or the Legacy Dredge, to which a Modern Dredge wouldn't even come close to and is missing so many cards?
And the consistency argument again look you would probably have to run 4 pieces of graveyard hate instead of the 2 that blue decks in Legacy run like Death and Taxes in Legacy. Most decks dedicate as much hate for Affinity and graveyard hate has even more uses like for Delve strategies for example.
I believe so.
It's not that we don't have sac outlets to technically abuse Bridge (Viscera Seer, Greater Gargadon, Blasting Station, Drowned Rusalka) it's just that Dredge skips your draw step, so they're not reliable in that type of shell (unless you mulligan into oblivion). I've tried to break Bridge in every conceivable way and I think that if it is to be broken, then it's gonna be something veery different from what it does in Legacy/Vintage (something less GY based perhaps)
Unfortunately there are no good, repeatable sac outlets that work from the graveyard. Tymaret, the Murder King is the closest, but he costs mana to activate, so you can't spam him. And he returns to your hand after saccing, so you have to get him into the graveyard again.
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Big Johnny.
I was thinking non-swap ban dredge, so dread return unbanned, everything else kept legal. Having to run 4 pieces of grave hate is a problem since the board is pretty full as is. Another tier 1 deck requiring narrow hate would mean essentially a cyclical non-interactive combo meta, since modern's counters aren't really broad enough to hold back the combo and do well against the rest of the field. As for it being good against delve strategies, it didn't really stop people from cruisin with delver now did it? Leave the fast consistent combos for legacy, people get angry enough over inconsistent kills before turn 4 like bloom (not to mention the simmering rage over affinity and infect turn 3 kills). For the record, theres plenty of artifact hate in decks too like decay and the various tools people side against affinity. Does that mean Jitte and Skullclamp can come off too? Surely the meta can adjust and just sideboard more cards against them.
Maybe it's my Melvin showing through, but I'm just not a fan of Bridge from Below. It doesn't work like a Magic card, it has some completely worthless text, it dodges most common forms of interaction and there's little room between it being unplayable and broken. The issue with playing against Dredge has been that your ways to interact with it are to run grave hate or win before it does. This was due to Bridge from Below + sacrifice as a cost. Dread Return isn't the only card that has sacrificing a creature as a cost, it's simply the most powerful one for Dredge. However, nothing in Magic rewards you for sacrificing in the costless way that Bridge from Below does and Wizards will never print another card like it. Think about future cards. Anything that can fuel sacrificing 3 creatures is already powerful without Dread Return and so the number of cards having development hindered due to Dread Return is small. Meanwhile, sacrificing creatures as a cost is already explored more often and, due to it being a "downside", can be used more aggressively. However, aggressive sacrifice costs are being avoided because of Bridge from Below. Bridge just fits the criteria for deciding which combo card to ban more than Dread Return.
This makes a lot of sense. Dread Return is probably the better card to have unbanned since it's less abusable than BFB due to future printed cards. Dread return could also be used as a decently fair card in certain decks. Turn 4-5 Iona probably isn't any worse for the format than some thing like Splinter Twin.
There are literally hundreds of cards that could become broken if the right cards were printed that no one has even thought of. I really hope WOTC isn't taking this cautious of an approach to the ban list, other wise nothing will ever be unbanned again.
Dread return gets stronger every time they print a stronger creature. Currently that is very likely given their direction. Also dread return cheats costs which is historically very powerful. I really think return is far more likely to get broken than bridge, people just want return over bridge BECAUSE return is easier to break than bridge.
Modern : Huh?
EDH : UBGW Thrasios / Tymna Combo UBGW // GRW Mayael Big Stuff GRW // GU Edric Timewalkers GU
I disagree that Bridge holds Wizards back from printing powerful sac outlets. There are plenty of ways to abuse this interaction without Bridge. Blood Artist, Dark Prophecy, Grave Pact, Xathrid Necromancer, Skirsdag High Priest, Liliana, Heretical Healer etc. Bridge isn't even that good compared to these unless your sac outlet works from the grave. That's what's holding Bridge back, not the lack of quality sac outlets but their lack of ability to work from the grave.
But that's actually every card and strategy. Yes, having a powerful deck restricts WOTC from printing cards which make it more powerful. That's universal, not an argument, and irrelevant.
I mean that for cards that are already known to be easily broken or oppressive, eg: Dread Return, Deathrite, Blazing Shoal, Punishing Fire, etc
Modern : Huh?
EDH : UBGW Thrasios / Tymna Combo UBGW // GRW Mayael Big Stuff GRW // GU Edric Timewalkers GU
But that's still true of every card, take the single most inoffensive card, and there is some way to break it, thus it hampers future design space.
The point is how it hampers such, and given that DR and Punishing Fire do not hamper it in a way which WoTC cares about even slightly (They don't particularly care about tokens other than as a token strategy* or about cards which gain opponent's life).
The statement only works with a qualifier, as it did for Birthing Pod, as that clashed directly with the direction in which WoTC desired to go. DRS less so, Blazing Shoal again absolutely.
Something like this however does not meet such characteristics
For such a direction is not one WoTC desires. Dig?
This is bothersome for a different reason, namely that it's inconsistent, for the same argument can be made for every single reanimation spell in Modern. Are those to also be banned?
As a side note; what your demanding is a full explanation with every single post. That shouldn't really be necessary with the frequency these sort of arguments since they come up so frequently. When someone says it hampers future design, they OBVIOUSLY mean with the direction wizards is going in.
Look at Reanimator in Legacy. Stronger creatures are getting printed but stronger creatures like DRS, Siege Rhino and Emrakul don't make the deck better and the creatures that do, like Iona, Griselbrand, and Elesh Norn, aren't enough to keep up with the rest of the format. What is going to break Return? It's an objectively stronger card than Bridge, but so is Grove of the Burnwillows compared to Punishing Fire. Lightning Bolt is a stronger card than Dread Return; simply being strong isn't the criteria for banning. There is always a big fear about unbanning good cards, but look at just how little impact the average cards getting unbanned have. I think that the criteria for getting a cad banned and keeping a card banned should be the same, but that standard isn't held to. What evidence is there that Dread Return is too strong without Bridge? It's going to be very hard for a fat creature to break Dread Return so hard that Remand and removal spells can't keep it in check without even accounting for gravehate.
Anyway, you claim it gets stronger "every time they print a stronger creature." That's absolutely false. The creatures that make Dread Return stronger must fit a very specific criteria. Siege Rhino is a crazy good creature. It doesn't benefit Dread Return. Tasigur pretty much singlehandedly made Delver a thing again after the Treasure Cruise ban. He's not a better target for Dread Return than already exists.
Dread Return gets stronger when they print stronger creatures that have normally prohibitively high mana costs but are extremely powerful if you ignore that (for example, Elesh Norn, Iona) and don't have some kind of anti-synergy like Emrakul or Worldspine Wurm.
So no, printing better creatures doesn't make Dread Return better. Printing very specific kinds of creatures does. And on that note...
And what direction is that? Good reanimator targets are a rarity. The last one to be printed was Ashen Rider, but that's actually one of the weaker of the standard reanimator targets (some Legacy reanimator decks don't even play it). The last time Reanimator really got a boost was Griselbrand, four years ago.
For an analogy, look at what Carsten Kotter said about the demise of classic aggro in Legacy:
"Yes, I understand it might seem strange to hear that the reason the aggressive creature decks aren't doing well [in Legacy] is that creatures have kept getting better by leaps and bounds throughout the last years. Better creatures should mean that you can bring the beatdown even better, right?
That oversimplifies things, however. An aggressive deck is looking for a very particular kind of creature - one that is cheap and kills fast. However, the only two creatures that even remotely fit that bill that have profited from modern creature power creep are Goblin Guide and Delver of Secrets. Now, Goblin Guide is very good in an aggressive creature deck, but Delver already disqualifies itself due to its flip condition (you really want to have a lot of creatures in your deck if you want to win by curving out with them)."
Like how the cards aren't really benefiting traditional aggro decks even if creatures are on a power ramp, the power ramp of creatures doesn't benefit Dread Return.
Just like Unburial Rites!
I want Dread Return over Bridge from Below because Dread Return can at least sort of be used for semi-"fair" strategies (as fair as reanimator can get, anyway) whereas Bridge from Below is inherently only playable in unfair ones like Dredge.
Sure, maybe Dread Return might only get played in Dredge decks, but I feel it has more of a potential to be played in a more interactive manner.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Take away Bridge, they don't get the Zombies, but they still get the big guy.
Take away DR? Good luck reanimating the fatty. Rites is 4 mana and every time you Dredge 5/6, you're putting a creature instead of what could be a land into your hand. DR gets around this issue by not costing mana. And without DR, Bridge sucks because you don't have a good sac outlet that works from the graveyard, like DR.
There's a domino effect where due to DR being banned, Bridge becomes worse, resulting in Narcomoeba and Bloodghast becoming worse, and so on to the point where you don't have enough cards to build a Dredge deck.
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Big Johnny.