The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
How far must we adapt? 8-rack may have a solid matchup against Eldrazi, but it was out of favor for a reason; it doesn't have good matchups against the rest of the current meta. Your deck may offset the Eldrazi deck, but it doesn't represent a large portion of the metagame currently.
Currently, would-be Modern players are often told that, while Modern may be pricey to get into, the cards and decks hold value virtually indefinitely. Even post-bannings, Pod players easily shifted into CoCo/Chord/Midrange builds with similar cards, and Twin players can shift towards various flavors of Delver, Jeskai, Grixis, etc. But the worst case scenario at play here is that the Eldrazi deck is insurmountable by a wide swath of the metagame, and having your deck totally neutered by a major force in the metagame is a lot worse than any banning.
I play Grixis. My four-of Lightning Bolts are supposed to answer virtually any creature threat playable on turn 1 or 2, and my Terminates should mop up most of the rest. Now, my deck that was built around taking advantage of the best removal in the format may very well not have the tools necessary to answer threats in an archetype that it was designed to take on effectively. That may not necessarily "kill" my deck, but it sure as hell makes me uncomfortable.
Ensnaring Bridge bores me as a card and a strategy. I want to play with lots of cards in my hand, not zero. If the presence of the Eldrazi deck drastically narrows my options of decks to play and strategies to use, then it is extremely unhealthy for the format.
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Formerly Angrypossum over at the now-defunct WotC forums.
I'm actually starting to think people are starting to adapt. Merfolk is adding more Sea Claims and having more lords to buff up their own lords. So you have 5/5 Eldrazi vs 5/5/ Merfolks. And Goblins is packing in grenades, and some other silly things. Eldrazi just eliminates the old guard like Tron.
The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
How far must we adapt? 8-rack may have a solid matchup against Eldrazi, but it was out of favor for a reason; it doesn't have good matchups against the rest of the current meta. Your deck may offset the Eldrazi deck, but it doesn't represent a large portion of the metagame currently.
Currently, would-be Modern players are often told that, while Modern may be pricey to get into, the cards and decks hold value virtually indefinitely. Even post-bannings, Pod players easily shifted into CoCo/Chord/Midrange builds with similar cards, and Twin players can shift towards various flavors of Delver, Jeskai, Grixis, etc. But the worst case scenario at play here is that the Eldrazi deck is insurmountable by a wide swath of the metagame, and having your deck totally neutered by a major force in the metagame is a lot worse than any banning.
I play Grixis. My four-of Lightning Bolts are supposed to answer virtually any creature threat playable on turn 1 or 2, and my Terminates should mop up most of the rest. Now, my deck that was built around taking advantage of the best removal in the format may very well not have the tools necessary to answer threats in an archetype that it was designed to take on effectively. That may not necessarily "kill" my deck, but it sure as hell makes me uncomfortable.
Ensnaring Bridge bores me as a card and a strategy. I want to play with lots of cards in my hand, not zero. If the presence of the Eldrazi deck drastically narrows my options of decks to play and strategies to use, then it is extremely unhealthy for the format.
8-Rack has been enjoying a rather nice spot in the meta for quite a while thanks for asking. It was great vs Twin. Now it's great vs Eldrazi, with the added bonus of Eldrazi obsoleting Tron. Tron was by far our worst match. And who cares if Ensnaring Bridge is a "boring card"?? I care about one thing: results. Bridge is a very effective strat. Learn ot adapt and let go of what you think is "boring".
The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
How far must we adapt? 8-rack may have a solid matchup against Eldrazi, but it was out of favor for a reason; it doesn't have good matchups against the rest of the current meta. Your deck may offset the Eldrazi deck, but it doesn't represent a large portion of the metagame currently.
Currently, would-be Modern players are often told that, while Modern may be pricey to get into, the cards and decks hold value virtually indefinitely. Even post-bannings, Pod players easily shifted into CoCo/Chord/Midrange builds with similar cards, and Twin players can shift towards various flavors of Delver, Jeskai, Grixis, etc. But the worst case scenario at play here is that the Eldrazi deck is insurmountable by a wide swath of the metagame, and having your deck totally neutered by a major force in the metagame is a lot worse than any banning.
I play Grixis. My four-of Lightning Bolts are supposed to answer virtually any creature threat playable on turn 1 or 2, and my Terminates should mop up most of the rest. Now, my deck that was built around taking advantage of the best removal in the format may very well not have the tools necessary to answer threats in an archetype that it was designed to take on effectively. That may not necessarily "kill" my deck, but it sure as hell makes me uncomfortable.
Ensnaring Bridge bores me as a card and a strategy. I want to play with lots of cards in my hand, not zero. If the presence of the Eldrazi deck drastically narrows my options of decks to play and strategies to use, then it is extremely unhealthy for the format.
8-Rack has been enjoying a rather nice spot in the meta for quite a while thanks for asking. It was great vs Twin. Now it's great vs Eldrazi, with the added bonus of Eldrazi obsoleting Tron. Tron was by far our worst match. And who cares if Ensnaring Bridge is a "boring card"?? I care about one thing: results. Bridge is a very effective strat. Learn ot adapt and let go of what you think is "boring".
The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
How far must we adapt? 8-rack may have a solid matchup against Eldrazi, but it was out of favor for a reason; it doesn't have good matchups against the rest of the current meta. Your deck may offset the Eldrazi deck, but it doesn't represent a large portion of the metagame currently.
Currently, would-be Modern players are often told that, while Modern may be pricey to get into, the cards and decks hold value virtually indefinitely. Even post-bannings, Pod players easily shifted into CoCo/Chord/Midrange builds with similar cards, and Twin players can shift towards various flavors of Delver, Jeskai, Grixis, etc. But the worst case scenario at play here is that the Eldrazi deck is insurmountable by a wide swath of the metagame, and having your deck totally neutered by a major force in the metagame is a lot worse than any banning.
I play Grixis. My four-of Lightning Bolts are supposed to answer virtually any creature threat playable on turn 1 or 2, and my Terminates should mop up most of the rest. Now, my deck that was built around taking advantage of the best removal in the format may very well not have the tools necessary to answer threats in an archetype that it was designed to take on effectively. That may not necessarily "kill" my deck, but it sure as hell makes me uncomfortable.
Ensnaring Bridge bores me as a card and a strategy. I want to play with lots of cards in my hand, not zero. If the presence of the Eldrazi deck drastically narrows my options of decks to play and strategies to use, then it is extremely unhealthy for the format.
What a card is supposed to do is highly irrelevant to what a card does; Bolt was never played because it killed a bunch of creature, but because it killed a bunch of creatures and could hit someone in the face if required/you wanted it. Just because Bolt doesn't kill a deck's creatures doesn't mean that the deck is too good/Bolt is suddenly bad; Bolt still does what bolt always did; act a removal spell AND go for the face, but still not killing any creature played.
See also Thought Scour, a card that was supposed to be a worthless common cantrip until Delve came back in a big way and suddenly we have a Dark Ritual that replaces itself and doesn't have to be cast on the same turn.
As much as I love the Eldrazi, I honestly don't know if the deck is really "for" Modern; it's a colorless deck that can then slot in any color and get massive benefits from it, so even with a ban of Eldrazi Mimic you still have a deck that can literally be any color and will either be incredibly consistant, durable, or ludicrously fast. Colorless Creatures were always designed to suck so that while any color could use them, they wouldn't outshine the actual creature colors; the Eldrazi kind of don't work like that, and it's really not hard to get colorless mana in even a dual colored deck.
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Oath of the Gatewatch; the set that caused the competitive community to freak out over Basic Lands.
The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
How far must we adapt? 8-rack may have a solid matchup against Eldrazi, but it was out of favor for a reason; it doesn't have good matchups against the rest of the current meta. Your deck may offset the Eldrazi deck, but it doesn't represent a large portion of the metagame currently.
Currently, would-be Modern players are often told that, while Modern may be pricey to get into, the cards and decks hold value virtually indefinitely. Even post-bannings, Pod players easily shifted into CoCo/Chord/Midrange builds with similar cards, and Twin players can shift towards various flavors of Delver, Jeskai, Grixis, etc. But the worst case scenario at play here is that the Eldrazi deck is insurmountable by a wide swath of the metagame, and having your deck totally neutered by a major force in the metagame is a lot worse than any banning.
I play Grixis. My four-of Lightning Bolts are supposed to answer virtually any creature threat playable on turn 1 or 2, and my Terminates should mop up most of the rest. Now, my deck that was built around taking advantage of the best removal in the format may very well not have the tools necessary to answer threats in an archetype that it was designed to take on effectively. That may not necessarily "kill" my deck, but it sure as hell makes me uncomfortable.
Ensnaring Bridge bores me as a card and a strategy. I want to play with lots of cards in my hand, not zero. If the presence of the Eldrazi deck drastically narrows my options of decks to play and strategies to use, then it is extremely unhealthy for the format.
iT
8-Rack has been enjoying a rather nice spot in the meta for quite a while thanks for asking. It was great vs Twin. Now it's great vs Eldrazi, with the added bonus of Eldrazi obsoleting Tron. Tron was by far our worst match. And who cares if Ensnaring Bridge is a "boring card"?? I care about one thing: results. Bridge is a very effective strat. Learn ot adapt and let go of what you think is "boring".
How's your matchup against Affinity?
It's never been a specific weakness of the deck. Bridge does major work there too and so does Darkblast. Sure we lose to godhands but who doesn't?
8-Rack has been enjoying a rather nice spot in the meta for quite a while thanks for asking. It was great vs Twin. Now it's great vs Eldrazi, with the added bonus of Eldrazi obsoleting Tron. Tron was by far our worst match. And who cares if Ensnaring Bridge is a "boring card"?? I care about one thing: results. Bridge is a very effective strat. Learn ot adapt and let go of what you think is "boring".
I think you're missing my point. Regardless of how good 8-rack is, it represents a small portion of the metagame. Magic is a game that offers a wide variety of ways to play it, and therefore appeals to players of widely divergent play styles. Optimally, the formats of Magic allow for a healthy number of archetypes to thrive and compete, in order to keep the game interesting and approachable to a variety of people.
Ensnaring Bridge is hardly an objectively boring card. However, it is boring to me, and I represent some portion of the metagame. I'm not a professional. Magic isn't my job. Magic is my hobby. If the emergence of Eldrazi negates a solid portion of the metagame, it will make players with similar tastes lose interest in the format and possibly the game.
8-rack may have a fine matchup against Eldrazi, but your pointing that out doesn't hold much weight for the format as a whole. Players with limited resources that may have invested in specific decks or archetypes will sooner quit or take a break than massively change their playstyle and invest in a new deck just to compete.
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Formerly Angrypossum over at the now-defunct WotC forums.
8-Rack has been enjoying a rather nice spot in the meta for quite a while thanks for asking. It was great vs Twin. Now it's great vs Eldrazi, with the added bonus of Eldrazi obsoleting Tron. Tron was by far our worst match. And who cares if Ensnaring Bridge is a "boring card"?? I care about one thing: results. Bridge is a very effective strat. Learn ot adapt and let go of what you think is "boring".
I think you're missing my point. Regardless of how good 8-rack is, it represents a small portion of the metagame. Magic is a game that offers a wide variety of ways to play it, and therefore appeals to players of widely divergent play styles. Optimally, the formats of Magic allow for a healthy number of archetypes to thrive and compete, in order to keep the game interesting and approachable to a variety of people.
Ensnaring Bridge is hardly an objectively boring card. However, it is boring to me, and I represent some portion of the metagame. I'm not a professional. Magic isn't my job. Magic is my hobby. If the emergence of Eldrazi negates a solid portion of the metagame, it will make players with similar tastes lose interest in the format and possibly the game.
8-rack may have a fine matchup against Eldrazi, but your pointing that out doesn't hold much weight for the format as a whole. Players with limited resources that may have invested in specific decks or archetypes will sooner quit or take a break than massively change their playstyle and invest in a new deck just to compete.
So? Magic has a constant influx of new cards which can invalidate a deck at any time. I doubt Legacy players threw fits about the death of goblins or the rise of Cawblade decks. If people want to play something that never changes they can play block or 95, because Modern has never been static.
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Pauper: UB Wight Phantasm RB Burn UR Faerie Rites of Initiation
What a card is supposed to do is highly irrelevant to what a card does; Bolt was never played because it killed a bunch of creature, but because it killed a bunch of creatures and could hit someone in the face if required/you wanted it. Just because Bolt doesn't kill a deck's creatures doesn't mean that the deck is too good/Bolt is suddenly bad; Bolt still does what bolt always did; act a removal spell AND go for the face, but still not killing any creature played.
See also Thought Scour, a card that was supposed to be a worthless common cantrip until Delve came back in a big way and suddenly we have a Dark Ritual that replaces itself and doesn't have to be cast on the same turn.
As much as I love the Eldrazi, I honestly don't know if the deck is really "for" Modern; it's a colorless deck that can then slot in any color and get massive benefits from it, so even with a ban of Eldrazi Mimic you still have a deck that can literally be any color and will either be incredibly consistant, durable, or ludicrously fast. Colorless Creatures were always designed to suck so that while any color could use them, they wouldn't outshine the actual creature colors; the Eldrazi kind of don't work like that, and it's really not hard to get colorless mana in even a dual colored deck.
You're also missing my point (which may very well be my fault).
I just threw out Bolt as an example of ways that Eldrazi messes with the metagame. Certain cards have certain roles in the format, and Bolt is one of the defining removal spells in Modern. But now Thought-Knot Seer on turn 2 and Reality Smasher on turn 3 largely upset the definition of what, in Modern, is "good" removal. Removal that is good enough to answer these Eldrazi threats may exist and require massive changes to the fundamentals of certain decks, which is unnerving. And it may prove nonexistent over the upcoming months, which is outright dangerous and damaging for Modern.
Similarly, Blood Moon, Molten Rain, Fulminator Mage, Tectonic Edge, and Ghost Quarter are the main ways that Modern decks answer land-based strategies. Tron can't go online before turn 3, so 3-cost disruption technology was sufficient to answer it fairly. But the Eldrazi deck generates absurd land-based advantage on turn 1 and 2, and these existing tools have a very hard time stacking up. Again, either we fundamentally shift how to offset land-based advantages, which is upsetting, or we find ourselves unable to do so, which is terrible.
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Formerly Angrypossum over at the now-defunct WotC forums.
So? Magic has a constant influx of new cards which can invalidate a deck at any time. I doubt Legacy players threw fits about the death of goblins or the rise of Cawblade decks. If people want to play something that never changes they can play block or 95, because Modern has never been static.
True, but rarely does the release of a new set invalidate such a wide swath of a metagame at once. The explosion of Eldrazi onto the scene may or may not represent a new world order. But if it DOES, that means that Eldrazi have "killed" not just one deck, but several.
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Formerly Angrypossum over at the now-defunct WotC forums.
So? Magic has a constant influx of new cards which can invalidate a deck at any time. I doubt Legacy players threw fits about the death of goblins or the rise of Cawblade decks. If people want to play something that never changes they can play block or 95, because Modern has never been static.
True, but rarely does the release of a new set invalidate such a wide swath of a metagame at once. The explosion of Eldrazi onto the scene may or may not represent a new world order. But if it DOES, that means that Eldrazi have "killed" not just one deck, but several.
Nope. You just want the new deck to be beatable by the old decks. Well too bad. You can't always have that. Sometimes you have to use new decks to beat it. They exist. If the decks didn't exist there would be a problem. No one cares if you don't like them or find them "boring" because those things are completely subjective to you and you alone.
That all said... yeah it's pretty obvious they are going to ban something from Eldrazi. Temple makes the most sense to me.
The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
Too bad 4 Ensnaring Bridges costs close to the same as 4 Eye of Ugins, at that point why don't I just play Eldrazi. I can say the same for other sideboard cards like Worship and Painter's Servant. I'm taking a significant risk to getting these sideboard cards that I'm not 100% sure will win on the spot every time. But I know that the Eldrazi deck will win because 75% of the top 8 showed the world that it works.
The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
Too bad 4 Ensnaring Bridges costs close to the same as 4 Eye of Ugins, at that point why don't I just play Eldrazi. I can say the same for other sideboard cards like Worship and Painter's Servant. I'm taking a significant risk to getting these sideboard cards that I'm not 100% sure will win on the spot every time. But I know that the Eldrazi deck will win because 75% of the top 8 showed the world that it works.
Oh I don't know, maybe because you want to do something different than everyone else? Even if you don;t can you conceed that SOME people might want to?
This deck made me rattle my mind for when a format really was warped beyond recognition and reminds me of the old 2005 banning of Skullclamp way back when I was a wee lad:
The points that stick out most to me from the article are:
As Magic R&D Director Randy Buehler likes to say, “We're better off pushing cards than making another Homelands.”
And from the beginning:
What we're not ok with is having one card be the focal point of every viable strategy.
to
The whole development process of a TCG only works if there are doors left open for players to exploit, and that's naturally going to be the case due to unavoidable human error. You outnumber us several million to under 20.
"We used two criteria to guide us in choosing what cards to ban. First, we have a rule of thumb about Legacy that we don't like consistent turn-two combination decks, but that turn-three combination decks are okay. We modified that rule for Modern by adding a turn to each side: we are going to allow turn-four combination decks, but not decks that consistently win the game on turn three."
couple that with
We also have the goal of maintaining a diverse format.
TL;DR From WotC Quotes on past bans, they encourage players to try and experiment with new ideas, try and break the format if they can, and then intervene only when they see one of their expressed rules of what denotes a broken environment occurs.
In my opinion, Eldrazi dominance hinges on land interaction; removing one of these key components would reduce the overall effectiveness of the deck.
So? Magic has a constant influx of new cards which can invalidate a deck at any time. I doubt Legacy players threw fits about the death of goblins or the rise of Cawblade decks. If people want to play something that never changes they can play block or 95, because Modern has never been static.
True, but rarely does the release of a new set invalidate such a wide swath of a metagame at once. The explosion of Eldrazi onto the scene may or may not represent a new world order. But if it DOES, that means that Eldrazi have "killed" not just one deck, but several.
Nope. You just want the new deck to be beatable by the old decks. Well too bad. You can't always have that. Sometimes you have to use new decks to beat it. They exist. If the decks didn't exist there would be a problem. No one cares if you don't like them or find them "boring" because those things are completely subjective to you and you alone.
That all said... yeah it's pretty obvious they are going to ban something from Eldrazi. Temple makes the most sense to me.
That's called power creep, and that's how games die.
Is Eldrazi Mimic the newest member of the Tarmogoyf-Snapcaster-Stoneforge-Confidant cycle?
It is. Try the deck w/o mimics and you'll find out why. It gives you the most busted draws ever. Doesn't matter what your opponent is playing or how good they are. You will win lose that match every time. Gutshot is the only tech to stop a Mimic before you take too much damage to come back from. Even then you're paying 2 life.
Eye of Ugin
Eldrazi Temple
Mimic
Mimic
Thought-Knot Seer
That hand will win you majority games that you play by a wide margin. It isn't even close and that is only off of 5 cards. You can even drop 1 of the mimics from the hand and it is still a solid hand.
As someone who's been building this deck for months, the insane amount of success it's had is disheartening for several reasons.
1) something is getting banned. If it's eye, the whole archtype (which is awesome, new, and exciting) will be in danger of falling apart. If it's mimic, it might not be enough to curb it. I don't so much care about the value as I started building early, but i'd feel really bad for those dropping $50 on eyes. Either way, I'm worried my new exciting deck ive spent months building is going to be destroyed.
2) I dont want a dominant deck. I dont enjoy crushing other decks, I like a challenge. Even if nothing gets banned I dont know if id play it going forward if it continues to have this kind of success.
I think ideally id like to see a few things happen:
Id like the modern community to get their head out of their hands and work on a solution. There might not be one, but at least put in the work because the alternative smacks of laziness. "The deck is too good just get rid of it" only works after the meta has a chance to fight back.
Id also like to see wizards print some powerful colorless hate, and maybe they are. Theres a good chance thats why theyve been pretty definitive about no emergency bannings. With all the eldrazi in standard there stands to reason theyll pack hate next set.
Just my 2 cents
tldnr - let's try and find a solution without destroying an entire new and exciting archtype. Not even eldrazi players want to dominate.
I think people are misunderstanding how a metagame works.
The decks that beat Eldrazi don't have to beat the entire rest of the format to be good in a format with lots of Eldrazi. Choosing a deck with a strong matchup against one or two major decks, but an even or poor matchup against the rest of the format, is an entirely reasonable option.
You also don't have to personally play those decks for them to stabilize the metagame. Don't like playing Ensnaring Bridge? Well, when all the bridge decks jump in to beat Eldrazi, play a deck that beats those decks.
That's what a healthy metagame looks like. No deck beats every deck. Once Eldrazi's predators start coming out in force, decks that beat those decks can start to flourish, especially if Eldrazi has to compromise its strategy to gain ground against Bridge. And boom, once you have three types of decks that all beat each other, you have the core of a metagame. T2 decks start finding weird niches, BGx starts having a 50% matchup against the entire field besides one deck again (Now Eldrazi instead of Tron, though I don't think Tron stops existing or anything, just becomes less relevant), weird combo and Affinity steal games from players who don't expect them, and everything goes back to how it was but with a bunch of the positions shuffled around.
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The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
Too bad 4 Ensnaring Bridges costs close to the same as 4 Eye of Ugins, at that point why don't I just play Eldrazi. I can say the same for other sideboard cards like Worship and Painter's Servant. I'm taking a significant risk to getting these sideboard cards that I'm not 100% sure will win on the spot every time. But I know that the Eldrazi deck will win because 75% of the top 8 showed the world that it works.
Oh I don't know, maybe because you want to do something different than everyone else? Even if you don;t can you conceed that SOME people might want to?
Yeah, sure I'll play 8 rack and lose to the other decks that Eldrazi preyed on. If that's what you like doing cool. I'm not interested in making that kind of gamble in any real tournament.
I think people are misunderstanding how a metagame works.
The decks that beat Eldrazi don't have to beat the entire rest of the format to be good in a format with lots of Eldrazi. Choosing a deck with a strong matchup against one or two major decks, but an even or poor matchup against the rest of the format, is an entirely reasonable option.
You also don't have to personally play those decks for them to stabilize the metagame. Don't like playing Ensnaring Bridge? Well, when all the bridge decks jump in to beat Eldrazi, play a deck that beats those decks.
That's what a healthy metagame looks like. No deck beats every deck. Once Eldrazi's predators start coming out in force, decks that beat those decks can start to flourish, especially if Eldrazi has to compromise its strategy to gain ground against Bridge. And boom, once you have three types of decks that all beat each other, you have the core of a metagame. T2 decks start finding weird niches, BGx starts having a 50% matchup against the entire field besides one deck again (Now Eldrazi instead of Tron, though I don't think Tron stops existing or anything, just becomes less relevant), weird combo and Affinity steal games from players who don't expect them, and everything goes back to how it was but with a bunch of the positions shuffled around.
We understand what a metagame is. The problem is that if the meta evolves into Eldrazi, Prison, and Hyper Aggro is something no one wants to play. It'd be miserable.
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Currently Playing:
Modern: UWUW TronUW
Legacy: WDeath N TaxesW CEldrazi C
If you couldn't tell I hate greedy blue decks.
How is the BGx matchup vs eldrazi? Is it like 40/60 or 20/80? Seems like that would stand a fighting chance... Abrupt Decay to fight through chalice, Liliana seems good, access to good removal in black. Maybe Abzan + Ensnaring Bridge would be a place to start? Or BUG?
The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
I came to the same conclusion but Ensnaring Bridge isn't exactly a winning endorsement for the format considering it's a card that should probably be banned. Responding to a bunch of linear decks that ignore the opponent (just about everything in T0/T1/T2) by removing an entire phase of the game isn't a sign of format health, it's just the opposite. It's like claiming Stasis is a reasonable answer to something in Legacy.
What is being said when Ensnaring Bridge is a viable answer to the meta (and it is, it stops the entire T1 and T2) is that the combat phase of the game is so degenerate that the only way to play Magic is to completely remove it from the game.
The problems isn't that Eldrazi is too powerful. The problem is people are unwilling to adapt to beat it. Cards like Ensnaring bridge give them fits. I find it interesting that my old RW lockdown deck AND 8Rack both have solid games against Eldrazi.
I came to the same conclusion but Ensnaring Bridge isn't exactly a winning endorsement for the format considering it's a card that should probably be banned. Responding to a bunch of linear decks that ignore the opponent (just about everything in T0/T1/T2) by removing an entire phase of the game isn't a sign of format health, it's just the opposite. It's like claiming Stasis is a reasonable answer to something in Legacy.
What is being said when Ensnaring Bridge is a viable answer to the meta (and it is, it stops the entire T1 and T2) is that the combat phase of the game is so degenerate that the only way to play Magic is to completely remove it from the game.
Why are cards like Bridge and Prison and Tax type cards considered "degenerate"? I have been using them to great effect whenever people rely too much on creatures. I personally like a meta where cards that shutdown creatures are encouraged in control decks.
How far must we adapt? 8-rack may have a solid matchup against Eldrazi, but it was out of favor for a reason; it doesn't have good matchups against the rest of the current meta. Your deck may offset the Eldrazi deck, but it doesn't represent a large portion of the metagame currently.
Currently, would-be Modern players are often told that, while Modern may be pricey to get into, the cards and decks hold value virtually indefinitely. Even post-bannings, Pod players easily shifted into CoCo/Chord/Midrange builds with similar cards, and Twin players can shift towards various flavors of Delver, Jeskai, Grixis, etc. But the worst case scenario at play here is that the Eldrazi deck is insurmountable by a wide swath of the metagame, and having your deck totally neutered by a major force in the metagame is a lot worse than any banning.
I play Grixis. My four-of Lightning Bolts are supposed to answer virtually any creature threat playable on turn 1 or 2, and my Terminates should mop up most of the rest. Now, my deck that was built around taking advantage of the best removal in the format may very well not have the tools necessary to answer threats in an archetype that it was designed to take on effectively. That may not necessarily "kill" my deck, but it sure as hell makes me uncomfortable.
Ensnaring Bridge bores me as a card and a strategy. I want to play with lots of cards in my hand, not zero. If the presence of the Eldrazi deck drastically narrows my options of decks to play and strategies to use, then it is extremely unhealthy for the format.
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
8-Rack has been enjoying a rather nice spot in the meta for quite a while thanks for asking. It was great vs Twin. Now it's great vs Eldrazi, with the added bonus of Eldrazi obsoleting Tron. Tron was by far our worst match. And who cares if Ensnaring Bridge is a "boring card"?? I care about one thing: results. Bridge is a very effective strat. Learn ot adapt and let go of what you think is "boring".
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
What a card is supposed to do is highly irrelevant to what a card does; Bolt was never played because it killed a bunch of creature, but because it killed a bunch of creatures and could hit someone in the face if required/you wanted it. Just because Bolt doesn't kill a deck's creatures doesn't mean that the deck is too good/Bolt is suddenly bad; Bolt still does what bolt always did; act a removal spell AND go for the face, but still not killing any creature played.
See also Thought Scour, a card that was supposed to be a worthless common cantrip until Delve came back in a big way and suddenly we have a Dark Ritual that replaces itself and doesn't have to be cast on the same turn.
As much as I love the Eldrazi, I honestly don't know if the deck is really "for" Modern; it's a colorless deck that can then slot in any color and get massive benefits from it, so even with a ban of Eldrazi Mimic you still have a deck that can literally be any color and will either be incredibly consistant, durable, or ludicrously fast. Colorless Creatures were always designed to suck so that while any color could use them, they wouldn't outshine the actual creature colors; the Eldrazi kind of don't work like that, and it's really not hard to get colorless mana in even a dual colored deck.
I think you're missing my point. Regardless of how good 8-rack is, it represents a small portion of the metagame. Magic is a game that offers a wide variety of ways to play it, and therefore appeals to players of widely divergent play styles. Optimally, the formats of Magic allow for a healthy number of archetypes to thrive and compete, in order to keep the game interesting and approachable to a variety of people.
Ensnaring Bridge is hardly an objectively boring card. However, it is boring to me, and I represent some portion of the metagame. I'm not a professional. Magic isn't my job. Magic is my hobby. If the emergence of Eldrazi negates a solid portion of the metagame, it will make players with similar tastes lose interest in the format and possibly the game.
8-rack may have a fine matchup against Eldrazi, but your pointing that out doesn't hold much weight for the format as a whole. Players with limited resources that may have invested in specific decks or archetypes will sooner quit or take a break than massively change their playstyle and invest in a new deck just to compete.
So? Magic has a constant influx of new cards which can invalidate a deck at any time. I doubt Legacy players threw fits about the death of goblins or the rise of Cawblade decks. If people want to play something that never changes they can play block or 95, because Modern has never been static.
UB Wight Phantasm
RB Burn
UR Faerie Rites of Initiation
Legacy:
R Burn
CG-Post
You're also missing my point (which may very well be my fault).
I just threw out Bolt as an example of ways that Eldrazi messes with the metagame. Certain cards have certain roles in the format, and Bolt is one of the defining removal spells in Modern. But now Thought-Knot Seer on turn 2 and Reality Smasher on turn 3 largely upset the definition of what, in Modern, is "good" removal. Removal that is good enough to answer these Eldrazi threats may exist and require massive changes to the fundamentals of certain decks, which is unnerving. And it may prove nonexistent over the upcoming months, which is outright dangerous and damaging for Modern.
Similarly, Blood Moon, Molten Rain, Fulminator Mage, Tectonic Edge, and Ghost Quarter are the main ways that Modern decks answer land-based strategies. Tron can't go online before turn 3, so 3-cost disruption technology was sufficient to answer it fairly. But the Eldrazi deck generates absurd land-based advantage on turn 1 and 2, and these existing tools have a very hard time stacking up. Again, either we fundamentally shift how to offset land-based advantages, which is upsetting, or we find ourselves unable to do so, which is terrible.
True, but rarely does the release of a new set invalidate such a wide swath of a metagame at once. The explosion of Eldrazi onto the scene may or may not represent a new world order. But if it DOES, that means that Eldrazi have "killed" not just one deck, but several.
That all said... yeah it's pretty obvious they are going to ban something from Eldrazi. Temple makes the most sense to me.
Too bad 4 Ensnaring Bridges costs close to the same as 4 Eye of Ugins, at that point why don't I just play Eldrazi. I can say the same for other sideboard cards like Worship and Painter's Servant. I'm taking a significant risk to getting these sideboard cards that I'm not 100% sure will win on the spot every time. But I know that the Eldrazi deck will win because 75% of the top 8 showed the world that it works.
Is Eldrazi Mimic the newest member of the Tarmogoyf-Snapcaster-Stoneforge-Confidant cycle?
2004 WotC Article Explaining the Skullclamp Ban in Standard
The points that stick out most to me from the article are:
And from the beginning:
to
Nowadays the definition of bans have changed as indicated in this 2015 WotC article on banned cards in Modern.
couple that with
TL;DR From WotC Quotes on past bans, they encourage players to try and experiment with new ideas, try and break the format if they can, and then intervene only when they see one of their expressed rules of what denotes a broken environment occurs.
In my opinion, Eldrazi dominance hinges on land interaction; removing one of these key components would reduce the overall effectiveness of the deck.
That's called power creep, and that's how games die.
It is. Try the deck w/o mimics and you'll find out why. It gives you the most busted draws ever. Doesn't matter what your opponent is playing or how good they are. You will win lose that match every time. Gutshot is the only tech to stop a Mimic before you take too much damage to come back from. Even then you're paying 2 life.
Eye of Ugin
Eldrazi Temple
Mimic
Mimic
Thought-Knot Seer
That hand will win you majority games that you play by a wide margin. It isn't even close and that is only off of 5 cards. You can even drop 1 of the mimics from the hand and it is still a solid hand.
1) something is getting banned. If it's eye, the whole archtype (which is awesome, new, and exciting) will be in danger of falling apart. If it's mimic, it might not be enough to curb it. I don't so much care about the value as I started building early, but i'd feel really bad for those dropping $50 on eyes. Either way, I'm worried my new exciting deck ive spent months building is going to be destroyed.
2) I dont want a dominant deck. I dont enjoy crushing other decks, I like a challenge. Even if nothing gets banned I dont know if id play it going forward if it continues to have this kind of success.
I think ideally id like to see a few things happen:
Id like the modern community to get their head out of their hands and work on a solution. There might not be one, but at least put in the work because the alternative smacks of laziness. "The deck is too good just get rid of it" only works after the meta has a chance to fight back.
Id also like to see wizards print some powerful colorless hate, and maybe they are. Theres a good chance thats why theyve been pretty definitive about no emergency bannings. With all the eldrazi in standard there stands to reason theyll pack hate next set.
Just my 2 cents
tldnr - let's try and find a solution without destroying an entire new and exciting archtype. Not even eldrazi players want to dominate.
The decks that beat Eldrazi don't have to beat the entire rest of the format to be good in a format with lots of Eldrazi. Choosing a deck with a strong matchup against one or two major decks, but an even or poor matchup against the rest of the format, is an entirely reasonable option.
You also don't have to personally play those decks for them to stabilize the metagame. Don't like playing Ensnaring Bridge? Well, when all the bridge decks jump in to beat Eldrazi, play a deck that beats those decks.
That's what a healthy metagame looks like. No deck beats every deck. Once Eldrazi's predators start coming out in force, decks that beat those decks can start to flourish, especially if Eldrazi has to compromise its strategy to gain ground against Bridge. And boom, once you have three types of decks that all beat each other, you have the core of a metagame. T2 decks start finding weird niches, BGx starts having a 50% matchup against the entire field besides one deck again (Now Eldrazi instead of Tron, though I don't think Tron stops existing or anything, just becomes less relevant), weird combo and Affinity steal games from players who don't expect them, and everything goes back to how it was but with a bunch of the positions shuffled around.
Yeah, sure I'll play 8 rack and lose to the other decks that Eldrazi preyed on. If that's what you like doing cool. I'm not interested in making that kind of gamble in any real tournament.
We understand what a metagame is. The problem is that if the meta evolves into Eldrazi, Prison, and Hyper Aggro is something no one wants to play. It'd be miserable.
Modern:
UWUW TronUW
Legacy:
WDeath N TaxesW
CEldrazi C
If you couldn't tell I hate greedy blue decks.
Vintage
WWhite Trash
I came to the same conclusion but Ensnaring Bridge isn't exactly a winning endorsement for the format considering it's a card that should probably be banned. Responding to a bunch of linear decks that ignore the opponent (just about everything in T0/T1/T2) by removing an entire phase of the game isn't a sign of format health, it's just the opposite. It's like claiming Stasis is a reasonable answer to something in Legacy.
What is being said when Ensnaring Bridge is a viable answer to the meta (and it is, it stops the entire T1 and T2) is that the combat phase of the game is so degenerate that the only way to play Magic is to completely remove it from the game.