The thing about magic is that "power" is not one dimensional. Kommand is the kind of card that doesnt bring up the power level of the format but simply acts to police another. I didn't say print powerful cards, I said print cards that interact powerfully with old cards.
There's a difference.
But how many can they possibly design in a set, especially when they don't have the resources to test for Modern? Even if they succeeded, it wouldn't sell that many packs in the first place (I honestly don't see people furiously opening DTK for Kommands and Collected Companies.
You speak as though R&D can easily just snap their fingers and produce relatively decent sets (for Modern) like DTK. You can argue it's their job, but as I said before, they actually design primarily for Limited/Standard (which means bluntly speaking, it's not their "actual" job, they're just being considerate with the format like they do with EDH.) Most of the time we end up like DGM (1 card in the entire set) or OGW (Should have called that "The Real Rise of the Eldrazi" instead).
On top of that R&D probably doesn't hold a lot of power in the company, if you think about it. They get the most social media exposure (mainly MaRo), but in the end if you think about it they're, bluntly put, somewhat like assembly workers, except they assemble designs. They get called up whenever Affinity Standard happens, but not when True-Name Nemesis changed Legacy (somewhat).
You want change? Convince the powers that control the financing of R&D and the DCI/Banning committees that Modern is worth investing in, with full financial predictions. I doubt most of R&D (if not all), let alone us here have the actual power to change anything fast enough, since the Standard/Limited crowd is still around outnumbering us and the focus of the WotC is actually them.
Also, on the "borderline fraud case" you mentioned, they might have very different definitions for that though. The minute they listed "Limited Print Run", they can technically find their way around it. On top of that I suppose R&D had to be done with design at least 6 months before release, so when MM2 was completed, Birthing Pod was probably still legal, so even if effective communication channels (which I actually suspect they don't have), the banning committee cannot possibily foresee that (even more so if they make their "shakeup" bans at the last minute).
You'll probably find me similar to some other posters here, "defending a business that sells a product and bans it 6 months later", but I'm pointing out to you it is a business. Not just a LGS, but a large one. It consists of components that works on different time frames, just like any other huge company out there (why do you think time-based office politics happen?). Yes, like you, I'm not satisfied with the way the company is handling Modern, but I also recognize that it is a huge corporate company and expecting it to work as imagined instantly is just silly.
No, silly is really attacking the irate customer ranting at a business you have no stake in, apart from being a fellow customer.
Private Mod Note
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BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
No, silly is really attacking the irate customer ranting at a business you have no stake in, apart from being a fellow customer.
I apologize if you felt that the previous post was attacking you. I will just make it clear here to all that it was not intended to be offensive in any way and it was not directed at any particular individual - honestly this sort of ranting has been going on for quite some time, it's more or less directed at ranting at general. I might have used some specific examples from your posts, but it was simply because it was more recent and provides a better flow to the thread, similar examples have been rampant all around honestly.
Although I daresay ranting in itself is a silly action, being an irate customer doesn't really make any difference to the ranting, because it doesn't provide any options that take into consideration the interests of both parties.
"It's not like Legacy has the softest and most open Tier frontiers, incentivizing people to master their favorite deck instead of just playing the best Tier 1 or losing every match like in Standard."
I do not think this is true. Shardless, delver, and miracles seem like a good mark above the rest in my experience.
I also really don't think it's a good idea to hold legacy up as a successful model for modern to follow in general, regardless of how apparently you feel otherwise. I agree with fiddlyr, modern obviously isn't the format for you when you have this deep seated of issues with how it's run.
Let me put this forward to you, Monday. Say you are the manufacturer of a series of race cars. Your latest facelift of model X is due to launch this week. Stock has been manufactured, they're lined up in the factory ready to be picked up. Prior to product release you decide arbitrarily that model X is winning too many races on your tracks. You're going to ban the model before your next Grand Prix.
This is assuming that the Twin ban had already been lined up by the time MMA was released. Remember that Modern Masters 2015 was announced in December of 2014 (which means that it had been completed long before that) and released on May 22 of 2015. They most certainly did not know that Twin was going to be banned in 2016 when they decided to put Twin in the set back in 2014 and they still very likely did not know that it was going to be banned when they released it in May. That's somewhere around eight months between when MMA was released and Twin was banned, which is more than enough time for things to change and cards needed to be banned.
Implying that Wizards knew without a doubt in 2014 or May of 2015 that Twin was going to be banned in January of 2016 is ridiculous and calling this fraud is hyperbolic in the extreme.
Let me put this forward to you, Monday. Say you are the manufacturer of a series of race cars. Your latest facelift of model X is due to launch this week. Stock has been manufactured, they're lined up in the factory ready to be picked up. Prior to product release you decide arbitrarily that model X is winning too many races on your tracks. You're going to ban the model before your next Grand Prix.
This is assuming that the Twin ban had already been lined up by the time MMA was released. Remember that Modern Masters 2015 was announced in December of 2014 (which means that it had been completed long before that) and released on May 22 of 2015. They most certainly did not know that Twin was going to be banned in 2016 when they decided to put Twin in the set back in 2014 and they still very likely did not know that it was going to be banned when they released it in May. That's somewhere around eight months between when MMA was released and Twin was banned, which is more than enough time for things to change and cards needed to be banned.
Implying that Wizards knew without a doubt in 2014 or May of 2015 that Twin was going to be banned in January of 2016 is ridiculous and calling this fraud is hyperbolic in the extreme.
Except Twin "needing" to be banned is highly arguable at best and laughably wrong at worst. The fact that it "needed" to be banned was because Wizards didn't want to see another Top 8 "full of Twin" (meaning 2 copies). So instead, we got 80% of the field made up of Affinity/Infect/Burn. Even without the eventual domination of Eldrazi, the Twin ban failed on all accounts. Every reason we were given in the ban announcement for Twin has produced the opposite results: competitive diversity, empowering other URx decks, etc. The fact that they had only recently reprinted just adds massive insult to injury. The egg is on their face, and hopefully they can wash it off in April.
Let me put this forward to you, Monday. Say you are the manufacturer of a series of race cars. Your latest facelift of model X is due to launch this week. Stock has been manufactured, they're lined up in the factory ready to be picked up. Prior to product release you decide arbitrarily that model X is winning too many races on your tracks. You're going to ban the model before your next Grand Prix.
This is assuming that the Twin ban had already been lined up by the time MMA was released. Remember that Modern Masters 2015 was announced in December of 2014 (which means that it had been completed long before that) and released on May 22 of 2015. They most certainly did not know that Twin was going to be banned in 2016 when they decided to put Twin in the set back in 2014 and they still very likely did not know that it was going to be banned when they released it in May. That's somewhere around eight months between when MMA was released and Twin was banned, which is more than enough time for things to change and cards needed to be banned.
Implying that Wizards knew without a doubt in 2014 or May of 2015 that Twin was going to be banned in January of 2016 is ridiculous and calling this fraud is hyperbolic in the extreme.
Except Twin "needing" to be banned is highly arguable at best and laughably wrong at worst. The fact that it "needed" to be banned was because Wizards didn't want to see another Top 8 "full of Twin" (meaning 2 copies). So instead, we got 80% of the field made up of Affinity/Infect/Burn. Even without the eventual domination of Eldrazi, the Twin ban failed on all accounts. Every reason we were given in the ban announcement for Twin has produced the opposite results. The fact that they had only recently reprinted just adds massive insult to injury. The egg is on their face, and hopefully they can wash it off in April.
Literally all of this is entirely irrelevant to the point I was making.
I made no arguments that the Twin ban was good (and, in fact, implied it was bad by saying that it pushed me into Legacy). My point was that calling the Twin ban fraud because it had been reprinted in MMA is extremely silly.
Let me put this forward to you, Monday. Say you are the manufacturer of a series of race cars. Your latest facelift of model X is due to launch this week. Stock has been manufactured, they're lined up in the factory ready to be picked up. Prior to product release you decide arbitrarily that model X is winning too many races on your tracks. You're going to ban the model before your next Grand Prix.
This is assuming that the Twin ban had already been lined up by the time MMA was released. Remember that Modern Masters 2015 was announced in December of 2014 (which means that it had been completed long before that) and released on May 22 of 2015. They most certainly did not know that Twin was going to be banned in 2016 when they decided to put Twin in the set back in 2014 and they still very likely did not know that it was going to be banned when they released it in May. That's somewhere around eight months between when MMA was released and Twin was banned, which is more than enough time for things to change and cards needed to be banned.
Implying that Wizards knew without a doubt in 2014 or May of 2015 that Twin was going to be banned in January of 2016 is ridiculous and calling this fraud is hyperbolic in the extreme.
Except Twin "needing" to be banned is highly arguable at best and laughably wrong at worst. The fact that it "needed" to be banned was because Wizards didn't want to see another Top 8 "full of Twin" (meaning 2 copies). So instead, we got 80% of the field made up of Affinity/Infect/Burn. Even without the eventual domination of Eldrazi, the Twin ban failed on all accounts. Every reason we were given in the ban announcement for Twin has produced the opposite results. The fact that they had only recently reprinted just adds massive insult to injury. The egg is on their face, and hopefully they can wash it off in April.
Literally all of this is entirely irrelevant to the point I was making.
I made no arguments that the Twin ban was good (and, in fact, implied it was bad by saying that it pushed me into Legacy). My point was that calling the Twin ban fraud because it had been reprinted in MMA is extremely silly.
It's still an extremely questionable business decision. As already pointed out, someone somewhere had to make the case in front of a bunch of business exec's that "Hey, should we really make this borderline ban on a card we just reprinted in a set that is supposed to represent Modern?" Perhaps "fraud" isn't the best word, but it's a questionable business practice that would be frowned upon in any regulated market.
As already pointed out, someone somewhere had to make the case in front of a bunch of business exec's that "Hey, should we really make this borderline ban on a card we just reprinted in a set that is supposed to represent Modern?"
I highly doubt that this happened. They more likely sat down with the Organized Play department and made their case, which apparently fell within Wizards' nebulous guidelines for what constitutes a ban. The higher ups at the board very likely do not care what cards get banned as long as Wizards pulls in a profit, which they do with Standard and Draft, not Modern.
Perhaps "fraud" isn't the best word, but it's a questionable business practice that would be frowned upon in any regulated market.
???
How on earth would banning a single card from being played in a game be frowned upon in any regulated market? Games tweak themselves all the time. Characters in MMOs get nerfed, champions in League get banned from competitive play. Being told you can't play a single card in a single format that happened to get reprinted a few months earlier is not a big deal and trying to compare it to fraud with anyone that has to actually deal with fraud would get you laughed out of the room.
Anyone complaining about Twin being banned since it was printed in MM2015 just needs to shut up. Absolutely no one on Earth based their decision to purchase MM2015 solely on the fact Twin was in the set. People would have still bought MM2015 if Twin wasnt in the set. get over it, twin is banned.
The twin banning came out of left field and I am sure it upset a lot of Twin players. Whether or not it was a correct/right ban will be an un-endable debate.
As for the Eldrazi "plague" - has there even been a Modern GP since OGW was legal? We had the PT (which IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT a reflection of the true meta), and the PT is just a glorified FNM for HoF's and "pro's." Guess what? if 50 ppl show up to an FNM with burn, and 50 ppl show up with affinity, whats that tell you? Nothing. Pro Tours tell us almost nothing about a format's current meta, because its not made up of the players who participate in that meta. GP's are the best reflection of what a format looks like; they have the largest attendance from the broadest area of players. This evens out any "unbalance" that may come from a group of players all playing 1 deck. If 2 "super teams" all bring Eldrazi to a GP...that might be what, 50 players? out of the 1500+ that will attend said Modern GP. We need to cool down for a minute and see what actually happens at a Modern GP with the Eldrazi before you start talking about emergency bans and unhealthy formats.
If say 65 eldrazi decks show up for a GP, and 50 make day 2, and half the top 32 are eldrazi and 5 of the top 8 are eldrazi then its another story.
Fraud? Really? Please. Its a poor business decision, at worst. You own the card, not the game. Wizards can do whatever it wants with sanctioned formats. You are not legally bound to use the card in sanctioned formats only. And no legally binding contract holds Wizards or Hasbro accountable for the value of the product they print. End of discussion.
Anyone complaining about Twin being banned since it was printed in MM2015 just needs to shut up. Absolutely no one on Earth based their decision to purchase MM2015 solely on the fact Twin was in the set. People would have still bought MM2015 if Twin wasnt in the set. get over it, twin is banned.
I don't think that's the case being made, but rather people bought into Twin because of MM2015. I know I did. Between Cryptic Command, Vendilion Clique, Remand, Electrolyze, Spellskite, and the namesake Splinter Twin, the cost of getting in to that deck was reduced by hundreds of dollars.
Let me put this forward to you, Monday. Say you are the manufacturer of a series of race cars. Your latest facelift of model X is due to launch this week. Stock has been manufactured, they're lined up in the factory ready to be picked up. Prior to product release you decide arbitrarily that model X is winning too many races on your tracks. You're going to ban the model before your next Grand Prix.
This is assuming that the Twin ban had already been lined up by the time MMA was released. Remember that Modern Masters 2015 was announced in December of 2014 (which means that it had been completed long before that) and released on May 22 of 2015. They most certainly did not know that Twin was going to be banned in 2016 when they decided to put Twin in the set back in 2014 and they still very likely did not know that it was going to be banned when they released it in May. That's somewhere around eight months between when MMA was released and Twin was banned, which is more than enough time for things to change and cards needed to be banned.
Implying that Wizards knew without a doubt in 2014 or May of 2015 that Twin was going to be banned in January of 2016 is ridiculous and calling this fraud is hyperbolic in the extreme.
Perhaps, yes, but surely as reasonable people we can agree that there would be no harm, no foul, and reduce butthurt by some degree if, say, WotC did come to the conclusion on a Twin Ban maybe a month before the announcement, and maybe let us know at that time? See, bans and unbans, especially in Modern right now are being fielded as 'we don't like this for x, sorry for the players rolling with it, have a new deck by Friday or miss FNM lol'.
Personally, I feel the same about spoiler season, but that's another topic for another day. Wizard's doesn't have to use these narrow time frames, they choose to. At this point, there have been enough bans that it feels malicious. They say they're blind to the secondary market, yet they insist that a staple, 4-of 2 drop HAS to be mythic. They wipe an entire archetype (Pod, Twin) without any warning/expectation it was coming to its players, and not even enough warning to get into a new deck. Just that's it, your deck is out. That's not okay, and that's not how you do business.
Additionally, I refuse to believe in the age of 'tested with Modern in mind' that not one person ran Oath through its paces without trying it with Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple. The synergy is so broken its format-warping, guaranteed to cause a ban on cards that were otherwise harmless utility, and just so happens to make a stifling 50% metashare deck out of one of the crappiest blocks in recent memory that just hit shelves? This stinks of something, but incompetence is not what comes to mind.
Sirius_B, I'm really not sure what to make of your long post, so my apologies if I miss something. I'm also not sure why the personal attack was necessary.
It looks like you enjoy Legacy, I'm happy for you that you do.
You made a long list of playable new cards and then moaned about Wizards only making playable new cards as Mythics. Please review your list and count the number that have been printed at only Mythic rarity.
I agree there have been a lot of new Modern playable cards printed. Wizards wants that to be true for the new set 5 years from now also, yet they don't want power creep in Standard. The implications are straight logic from there.
First of all drop the martyrdom, challenging your lack of knowledge about the Legacy format is not a personal attack.
And you don't even need to go into the absolute best spell ever for X purpose. Sometimes all it takes it there being a spell for X purpose. Narcomoeba and Phantasmagorian don't do anything by themselves. Delver of Secrets is a crap card without suffling cantrips and it shows notoriously by how bad the deck is with Ponder and Preordain banned vs how good it is in Legacy and how good it was in Standard with, surprise, Ponder.
WotC could have solved their "nobody plays Delver" temper tantrum by just unbanning Ponder and today we'd have two powerful URx decks and Eldrazi shaking the meta, instead of just Eldrazi. But that's not their goal, their goal is for us to open boosters like madmen looking for a very select handful of cards.
Rethread that list again. How many of those were overpowered in standard? How many were staples, or even saw standard play at all?
Very, very few, even Liliana and Goyf were largely ignored because you just wouldn't gather enough goodstuff to deal with Merfolk/Faeries or Delver/Naya Blitz. Most of these cards, even the most self sufficient, were useless in standard because they just didn't have the support they needed within their standard enviroment. Doesn't that prove objectively that R&D could be designing cards specifically for Modern that wouldn't upset Standard's stupidly narrow gameplay? I personally believe most of the cards in that list were accidents that happened to slot into Legacy decks because the card pool is so huge and varied. I also believe power creep is a bull***** excuse. Notthing stops them from pushing different tribes like Nantuko instead of Elf, pushing different decks like Stax or Tokens instead of ALWAYS pushing Gxx Attrition, Uxx Control and Rxx Aggro. Notthing stops them from pushing strategies on their secondary or tertiary colors instead of making worse versions of Duress because Thoughtseize is "problematic". The only reason they don't explore the game further is they have realized that no matter how crap the set is, no matter if almost all the commons and uncommons are bad even in limited play, people will still have to purchase aprox 110 boosters to get one copy of the 4x mythics they need, and it's in their best interest if Standard decks absolutely need multiple mythics to compete.
But sure, whatever, current game design doesn't promote a mythic lottery. Not at all. We just don't realize you can win the PT with Malakir Soothsayer instead of Kalitas, Traitor of Geth and are a bunch of ungrateful ********s who want the game to implode because of rampant power-creep.
"It's not like Legacy has the softest and most open Tier frontiers, incentivizing people to master their favorite deck instead of just playing the best Tier 1 or losing every match like in Standard."
I do not think this is true. Shardless, delver, and miracles seem like a good mark above the rest in my experience.
I also really don't think it's a good idea to hold legacy up as a successful model for modern to follow in general, regardless of how apparently you feel otherwise. I agree with fiddlyr, modern obviously isn't the format for you when you have this deep seated of issues with how it's run.
Shardless has a 10/90 game vs Burn, and it's not their only terrible match up. Delver suffers against fast attrition decks like Maverick or D&T. And Miracles is losing like a baby vs Eldrazi and the resurgence of other Stompy decks like Big Red and Demon Stompy.
Yes, these 3 and OmniShow are objectively the Tier 1 of Legacy, but no, they're not a mark above, they're not untouchable at all and you don't even need to hatebrew to be a bad match for them.
Legacy Delver is not Standard Delver, Shardless is not CAW Blade, Miracles is not RTR-THS Esper Control, OmniShow is not French Rites.
If there is a format Modern shouldn't try to look like, it's the format that actually tends to have a single objectively superior deck, because that is the source of the constant bans. And I say this as someone who plays EVERY format, from Vintage to Pauper: Standard is the format most likely to become a 1 deck format.
Pros love it that way because it's less work, less matches to learn, less sideboards to bother with, less likely to need to give up on a rogue match showing up to beat you, and this has even been some of their complains about Modern, that it's "too open and hard to sideboard against everything that matters".
Why would you want Modern to be more like that than the format that can kick a king out of it's throne with minimum brewing, without any need of bans or needless drama from WotC?
Perhaps, yes, but surely as reasonable people we can agree that there would be no harm, no foul, and reduce butthurt by some degree if, say, WotC did come to the conclusion on a Twin Ban maybe a month before the announcement, and maybe let us know at that time?
If this were to happen, your deck would essentially be banned a month earlier. Sure, you can still play it, but nobody is going to buy into it and your cards' value will go down just like a regular ban. This happens on MTGO every time the banlist gets updated since the sets and banlists are updated later on there than in paper.
Additionally, I refuse to believe in the age of 'tested with Modern in mind' that not one person ran Oath through its paces without trying it with Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple. The synergy is so broken its format-warping, guaranteed to cause a ban on cards that were otherwise harmless utility, and just so happens to make a stifling 50% metashare deck out of one of the crappiest blocks in recent memory that just hit shelves? This stinks of something, but incompetence is not what comes to mind.
They have specifically said that they do not test for Modern and, if I remember correctly, they figured that the Temple/Eye synergy would be this good, but not format warping (whoops).
And once again, I fail to see how this is relevant to the point I was making originally. It seems like I'm attracting all these people who don't read what I'm saying and go "BUT BUT BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BANLIST."
Fraud? Really? Please. Its a poor business decision, at worst. You own the card, not the game. Wizards can do whatever it wants with sanctioned formats. You are not legally bound to use the card in sanctioned formats only. And no legally binding contract holds Wizards or Hasbro accountable for the value of the product they print. End of discussion.
Contracts can be express or implied, and even lacking either the law can still give equitable remedies through things like quantum meruit or promissory estoppel. It's actually not the end of discussion if someone really wanted to go down that path.
Fraud? Really? Please. Its a poor business decision, at worst. You own the card, not the game. Wizards can do whatever it wants with sanctioned formats. You are not legally bound to use the card in sanctioned formats only. And no legally binding contract holds Wizards or Hasbro accountable for the value of the product they print. End of discussion.
Contracts can be express or implied, and even lacking either the law can still give equitable remedies through things like quantum meruit or promissory estoppel. It's actually not the end of discussion if someone really wanted to go down that path.
You can pursue a lot of legal paths in the American justice system, especially in civil suits. You could probably find representation for most cases too. That doesn't necessarily make those paths or cases less ridiculous. I don't think there's a thing about a "Mad Modern Players vs. Wizards of the Coast" case which would survive a motion to dismiss, especially by a (presumably competent and well-compensated) Hasbro attorney.
Fraud? Really? Please. Its a poor business decision, at worst. You own the card, not the game. Wizards can do whatever it wants with sanctioned formats. You are not legally bound to use the card in sanctioned formats only. And no legally binding contract holds Wizards or Hasbro accountable for the value of the product they print. End of discussion.
Contracts can be express or implied, and even lacking either the law can still give equitable remedies through things like quantum meruit or promissory estoppel. It's actually not the end of discussion if someone really wanted to go down that path.
You wouldnt get to court if you chose that path, I assure you.
Fraud? Really? Please. Its a poor business decision, at worst. You own the card, not the game. Wizards can do whatever it wants with sanctioned formats. You are not legally bound to use the card in sanctioned formats only. And no legally binding contract holds Wizards or Hasbro accountable for the value of the product they print. End of discussion.
Contracts can be express or implied, and even lacking either the law can still give equitable remedies through things like quantum meruit or promissory estoppel. It's actually not the end of discussion if someone really wanted to go down that path.
You can pursue a lot of legal paths in the American justice system, especially in civil suits. You could probably find representation for most cases too. That doesn't necessarily make those paths or cases less ridiculous. I don't think there's a thing about a "Mad Modern Players vs. Wizards of the Coast" case which would survive a motion to dismiss, especially by a (presumably competent and well-compensated) Hasbro attorney.
Fraud? Really? Please. Its a poor business decision, at worst. You own the card, not the game. Wizards can do whatever it wants with sanctioned formats. You are not legally bound to use the card in sanctioned formats only. And no legally binding contract holds Wizards or Hasbro accountable for the value of the product they print. End of discussion.
Contracts can be express or implied, and even lacking either the law can still give equitable remedies through things like quantum meruit or promissory estoppel. It's actually not the end of discussion if someone really wanted to go down that path.
You wouldnt get to court if you chose that path, I assure you.
If someone came to my office asking me to represent them in a case like this I absolutely would not take the case. But I can see a few twists that might entice someone to try it.
can somebody please explain something to me? some people bought into twin because of mm15 and then were/are super salty when it got banned. you know what else they printed in mm15? KIKI-JIKI, MIRROR BREAKER. no, it isn't 4 mana so it isn't a perfect replacement but I really don't understand how the other 56 cards in a twin deck plus kiki are suddenly completely unviable, especially if eldrazi temple or eye gets banned. the combo is just as fragile but doesn't get hosed by spellskite if you use kiki instead. all I see are ex twin players claiming to be financial victims when the reality is that they printed a suitable replacement for twin IN THE SAME SET. aren't auras often badmouthed because they open you up to be 2-1'd? kiki can even attack if he has to! literally it being an extra red mana is the only difference I can see.
so, I would really love to hear why people who used to play twin pretend kiki jiki doesn't exist. I've also been told twin was a great deck because it didn't have to rely on the combo. so the other cards in the deck still do what they always did right?
can somebody please explain something to me? some people bought into twin because of mm15 and then were/are super salty when it got banned. you know what else they printed in mm15? KIKI-JIKI, MIRROR BREAKER. no, it isn't 4 mana so it isn't a perfect replacement but I really don't understand how the other 56 cards in a twin deck plus kiki are suddenly completely unviable, especially if eldrazi temple or eye gets banned. the combo is just as fragile but doesn't get hosed by spellskite if you use kiki instead. all I see are ex twin players claiming to be financial victims when the reality is that they printed a suitable replacement for twin IN THE SAME SET. aren't auras often badmouthed because they open you up to be 2-1'd? kiki can even attack if he has to! literally it being an extra red mana is the only difference I can see.
so, I would really love to hear why people who used to play twin pretend kiki jiki doesn't exist. I've also been told twin was a great deck because it didn't have to rely on the combo. so the other cards in the deck still do what they always did right?
Well, first, Twin players aren't really even financial victims. The rest of the deck's prices hold up pretty well.
But to answer your question, Kiki is worse for 2 reasons. The first you mentioned - CMC. Sure, Twin would sometimes wait a few turns and get grindy/tempoey before punching the combo, but the threat of the turn 3 exarch/pestermite and turn 4 twin was a real force in any matchup and the speed was just right when you had to jam. The second reason is that as a creature Kiki is a much more fragile combo piece.
We may see it get some attention after the Eldrazi nightmare passes.
I know they aren't, but you might think so if you read enough posts in this thread. the cmc is the only issue, the combo is a turn slower, I get that. the metagame is probably a bit too aggressive for t5 combos, but has anyone even tried? kiki chord seems to do fine and it is certainly not winning t5 most of the time. kiki being a creature is irrelevant as far as comboing is concerned I think. how did you stop the twin combo before? you kill deceiver/pestermite. sure, with kiki you get to choose which you want to kill but the principle is the same, as getting rid of deceiver/exarch still stops the combo. kiki dies to bolt, sure, but everyone is/should be playing dismembers and paths with all the eldrazi running around so that point is kind of moot.
I know they aren't, but you might think so if you read enough posts in this thread. the cmc is the only issue, the combo is a turn slower, I get that. the metagame is probably a bit too aggressive for t5 combos, but has anyone even tried? kiki chord seems to do fine and it is certainly not winning t5 most of the time. kiki being a creature is irrelevant as far as comboing is concerned I think. how did you stop the twin combo before? you kill deceiver/pestermite. sure, with kiki you get to choose which you want to kill but the principle is the same, as getting rid of deceiver/exarch still stops the combo. kiki dies to bolt, sure, but everyone is/should be playing dismembers and paths with all the eldrazi running around so that point is kind of moot.
It's actually typically not one turn slower. From experience, 4 mana is ~turn 4-6 while 5 mana is more like 6-8. Two turns is a long time. Also, if Eldrazi do face a ban (which you imply), dismember might get used less often. That two toughness plays a huge difference in matchups like burn; all of a sudden playing into just a grim lavamancer just isn't a valid play. So that point is moot if the trajectory towards an Eye/Temple ban continues. That said it might still be decent. But a lot of people don't consider a deck viable unless its Jund/Affinity/Burn level and I'm unsure if Kiki-Jiki would be anywhere close to that.
if I'm living to turn 6-8 against burn and they want to bolt my kiki jiki instead of trying to kill me, that is great news. kiki is a powerful magic card, it has that 20 dollar price for a reason. there are people out there using it for purposes that aren't edh and they certainly arent playing it in legacy/vintage. I think it is incorrect to evaluate cards based on the lowest impact they will have, it is all about the potential they can have. people play plenty of creatures that die to bolt and they always will because when they don't die they tend to get the job done as they were intended to.
Also worth noting that most Twin lists packed some number of Cryptic Command, which required 3 blue, and Kiki requires 3 red. While you could adapt the lists, at least at first glance it's a huge strain on a manabase.
if I'm living to turn 6-8 against burn and they want to bolt my kiki jiki instead of trying to kill me, that is great news. kiki is a powerful magic card, it has that 20 dollar price for a reason. there are people out there using it for purposes that aren't edh and they certainly arent playing it in legacy/vintage. I think it is incorrect to evaluate cards based on the lowest impact they will have, it is all about the potential they can have. people play plenty of creatures that die to bolt and they always will because when they don't die they tend to get the job done as they were intended to.
The card was on a steady and hard decline ever since reprint announcement from MM15. It was not recovering whatsoever, because it's just worse than Twin in basically every non-EDH deck. A few months ago, I had purchased a MM15 foil copy for $11 to use in Commander. But the night of the Twin announcement, I got two regular MM15 copies for $6 each in hopes of it filling the gaps of Twin. Well, it's bad in that shell. Really bad. For all the reasons already pointed out. Believe me, I tried it and it's not good. But this price spike we're seeing now is a DIRECT reflection of people like me scooping up copies and trying to make it work. Look at the graphs of any copy of Kiki Jiki and there is a MASSIVE jump the night of the announcement. The fact is that outside of Jeff Hoogland and his masterful Kiki Chord deck (which only runs 1-2 copies anyway), there's really been nothing successful running Kiki. And the ones that are, are doing it with Resto and a UW shell rather than Pestermite/Exarch and a UR shell, and still aren't all that good.
No, silly is really attacking the irate customer ranting at a business you have no stake in, apart from being a fellow customer.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
I apologize if you felt that the previous post was attacking you. I will just make it clear here to all that it was not intended to be offensive in any way and it was not directed at any particular individual - honestly this sort of ranting has been going on for quite some time, it's more or less directed at ranting at general. I might have used some specific examples from your posts, but it was simply because it was more recent and provides a better flow to the thread, similar examples have been rampant all around honestly.
Although I daresay ranting in itself is a silly action, being an irate customer doesn't really make any difference to the ranting, because it doesn't provide any options that take into consideration the interests of both parties.
I do not think this is true. Shardless, delver, and miracles seem like a good mark above the rest in my experience.
I also really don't think it's a good idea to hold legacy up as a successful model for modern to follow in general, regardless of how apparently you feel otherwise. I agree with fiddlyr, modern obviously isn't the format for you when you have this deep seated of issues with how it's run.
This is assuming that the Twin ban had already been lined up by the time MMA was released. Remember that Modern Masters 2015 was announced in December of 2014 (which means that it had been completed long before that) and released on May 22 of 2015. They most certainly did not know that Twin was going to be banned in 2016 when they decided to put Twin in the set back in 2014 and they still very likely did not know that it was going to be banned when they released it in May. That's somewhere around eight months between when MMA was released and Twin was banned, which is more than enough time for things to change and cards needed to be banned.
Implying that Wizards knew without a doubt in 2014 or May of 2015 that Twin was going to be banned in January of 2016 is ridiculous and calling this fraud is hyperbolic in the extreme.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
Except Twin "needing" to be banned is highly arguable at best and laughably wrong at worst. The fact that it "needed" to be banned was because Wizards didn't want to see another Top 8 "full of Twin" (meaning 2 copies). So instead, we got 80% of the field made up of Affinity/Infect/Burn. Even without the eventual domination of Eldrazi, the Twin ban failed on all accounts. Every reason we were given in the ban announcement for Twin has produced the opposite results: competitive diversity, empowering other URx decks, etc. The fact that they had only recently reprinted just adds massive insult to injury. The egg is on their face, and hopefully they can wash it off in April.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Literally all of this is entirely irrelevant to the point I was making.
I made no arguments that the Twin ban was good (and, in fact, implied it was bad by saying that it pushed me into Legacy). My point was that calling the Twin ban fraud because it had been reprinted in MMA is extremely silly.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
It's still an extremely questionable business decision. As already pointed out, someone somewhere had to make the case in front of a bunch of business exec's that "Hey, should we really make this borderline ban on a card we just reprinted in a set that is supposed to represent Modern?" Perhaps "fraud" isn't the best word, but it's a questionable business practice that would be frowned upon in any regulated market.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I highly doubt that this happened. They more likely sat down with the Organized Play department and made their case, which apparently fell within Wizards' nebulous guidelines for what constitutes a ban. The higher ups at the board very likely do not care what cards get banned as long as Wizards pulls in a profit, which they do with Standard and Draft, not Modern.
???
How on earth would banning a single card from being played in a game be frowned upon in any regulated market? Games tweak themselves all the time. Characters in MMOs get nerfed, champions in League get banned from competitive play. Being told you can't play a single card in a single format that happened to get reprinted a few months earlier is not a big deal and trying to compare it to fraud with anyone that has to actually deal with fraud would get you laughed out of the room.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
The twin banning came out of left field and I am sure it upset a lot of Twin players. Whether or not it was a correct/right ban will be an un-endable debate.
As for the Eldrazi "plague" - has there even been a Modern GP since OGW was legal? We had the PT (which IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT a reflection of the true meta), and the PT is just a glorified FNM for HoF's and "pro's." Guess what? if 50 ppl show up to an FNM with burn, and 50 ppl show up with affinity, whats that tell you? Nothing. Pro Tours tell us almost nothing about a format's current meta, because its not made up of the players who participate in that meta. GP's are the best reflection of what a format looks like; they have the largest attendance from the broadest area of players. This evens out any "unbalance" that may come from a group of players all playing 1 deck. If 2 "super teams" all bring Eldrazi to a GP...that might be what, 50 players? out of the 1500+ that will attend said Modern GP. We need to cool down for a minute and see what actually happens at a Modern GP with the Eldrazi before you start talking about emergency bans and unhealthy formats.
If say 65 eldrazi decks show up for a GP, and 50 make day 2, and half the top 32 are eldrazi and 5 of the top 8 are eldrazi then its another story.
WBG Karador GBW
R Daretti R
RG Omnath GR
WRG Modern Burn GRW
WB Modern Tokens BW
DCI Rules Advisor as of 5/18/2015
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
I don't think that's the case being made, but rather people bought into Twin because of MM2015. I know I did. Between Cryptic Command, Vendilion Clique, Remand, Electrolyze, Spellskite, and the namesake Splinter Twin, the cost of getting in to that deck was reduced by hundreds of dollars.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Perhaps, yes, but surely as reasonable people we can agree that there would be no harm, no foul, and reduce butthurt by some degree if, say, WotC did come to the conclusion on a Twin Ban maybe a month before the announcement, and maybe let us know at that time? See, bans and unbans, especially in Modern right now are being fielded as 'we don't like this for x, sorry for the players rolling with it, have a new deck by Friday or miss FNM lol'.
Personally, I feel the same about spoiler season, but that's another topic for another day. Wizard's doesn't have to use these narrow time frames, they choose to. At this point, there have been enough bans that it feels malicious. They say they're blind to the secondary market, yet they insist that a staple, 4-of 2 drop HAS to be mythic. They wipe an entire archetype (Pod, Twin) without any warning/expectation it was coming to its players, and not even enough warning to get into a new deck. Just that's it, your deck is out. That's not okay, and that's not how you do business.
Additionally, I refuse to believe in the age of 'tested with Modern in mind' that not one person ran Oath through its paces without trying it with Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple. The synergy is so broken its format-warping, guaranteed to cause a ban on cards that were otherwise harmless utility, and just so happens to make a stifling 50% metashare deck out of one of the crappiest blocks in recent memory that just hit shelves? This stinks of something, but incompetence is not what comes to mind.
First of all drop the martyrdom, challenging your lack of knowledge about the Legacy format is not a personal attack.
Now, review the list yourself. That's a lot of cards and a huge ammount of commons and uncommons, something unheard of in post NWO standard deckbuilding. Nowadays we don't really want to play most commons and uncommons in Standard, we only do so because they're the only card that kinda does something we need. Zulaport Cutthroat and Nantuko Husk are oddities of a world where formats spin around Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Dragonlord Ojutai, Whisperwood Elemental, Anafenza, the Fremost, Nissa, Worldwaker, Elspeth, Sun's Champion...
Meanwhile Legacy players actually look forward to playing their commons, because while current standard players are getting commons and uncommons like Comparative Analysis and Boulder Salvo, Legacy players and Standard players of seasons past got to play Brainstorm and Lightning Bolt.
And you don't even need to go into the absolute best spell ever for X purpose. Sometimes all it takes it there being a spell for X purpose. Narcomoeba and Phantasmagorian don't do anything by themselves. Delver of Secrets is a crap card without suffling cantrips and it shows notoriously by how bad the deck is with Ponder and Preordain banned vs how good it is in Legacy and how good it was in Standard with, surprise, Ponder.
WotC could have solved their "nobody plays Delver" temper tantrum by just unbanning Ponder and today we'd have two powerful URx decks and Eldrazi shaking the meta, instead of just Eldrazi. But that's not their goal, their goal is for us to open boosters like madmen looking for a very select handful of cards.
Rethread that list again. How many of those were overpowered in standard? How many were staples, or even saw standard play at all?
Very, very few, even Liliana and Goyf were largely ignored because you just wouldn't gather enough goodstuff to deal with Merfolk/Faeries or Delver/Naya Blitz. Most of these cards, even the most self sufficient, were useless in standard because they just didn't have the support they needed within their standard enviroment. Doesn't that prove objectively that R&D could be designing cards specifically for Modern that wouldn't upset Standard's stupidly narrow gameplay? I personally believe most of the cards in that list were accidents that happened to slot into Legacy decks because the card pool is so huge and varied. I also believe power creep is a bull***** excuse. Notthing stops them from pushing different tribes like Nantuko instead of Elf, pushing different decks like Stax or Tokens instead of ALWAYS pushing Gxx Attrition, Uxx Control and Rxx Aggro. Notthing stops them from pushing strategies on their secondary or tertiary colors instead of making worse versions of Duress because Thoughtseize is "problematic". The only reason they don't explore the game further is they have realized that no matter how crap the set is, no matter if almost all the commons and uncommons are bad even in limited play, people will still have to purchase aprox 110 boosters to get one copy of the 4x mythics they need, and it's in their best interest if Standard decks absolutely need multiple mythics to compete.
But sure, whatever, current game design doesn't promote a mythic lottery. Not at all. We just don't realize you can win the PT with Malakir Soothsayer instead of Kalitas, Traitor of Geth and are a bunch of ungrateful ********s who want the game to implode because of rampant power-creep.
Shardless has a 10/90 game vs Burn, and it's not their only terrible match up. Delver suffers against fast attrition decks like Maverick or D&T. And Miracles is losing like a baby vs Eldrazi and the resurgence of other Stompy decks like Big Red and Demon Stompy.
Yes, these 3 and OmniShow are objectively the Tier 1 of Legacy, but no, they're not a mark above, they're not untouchable at all and you don't even need to hatebrew to be a bad match for them.
Legacy Delver is not Standard Delver, Shardless is not CAW Blade, Miracles is not RTR-THS Esper Control, OmniShow is not French Rites.
If there is a format Modern shouldn't try to look like, it's the format that actually tends to have a single objectively superior deck, because that is the source of the constant bans. And I say this as someone who plays EVERY format, from Vintage to Pauper: Standard is the format most likely to become a 1 deck format.
Pros love it that way because it's less work, less matches to learn, less sideboards to bother with, less likely to need to give up on a rogue match showing up to beat you, and this has even been some of their complains about Modern, that it's "too open and hard to sideboard against everything that matters".
Why would you want Modern to be more like that than the format that can kick a king out of it's throne with minimum brewing, without any need of bans or needless drama from WotC?
If this were to happen, your deck would essentially be banned a month earlier. Sure, you can still play it, but nobody is going to buy into it and your cards' value will go down just like a regular ban. This happens on MTGO every time the banlist gets updated since the sets and banlists are updated later on there than in paper.
They have specifically said that they do not test for Modern and, if I remember correctly, they figured that the Temple/Eye synergy would be this good, but not format warping (whoops).
And once again, I fail to see how this is relevant to the point I was making originally. It seems like I'm attracting all these people who don't read what I'm saying and go "BUT BUT BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BANLIST."
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
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
You can pursue a lot of legal paths in the American justice system, especially in civil suits. You could probably find representation for most cases too. That doesn't necessarily make those paths or cases less ridiculous. I don't think there's a thing about a "Mad Modern Players vs. Wizards of the Coast" case which would survive a motion to dismiss, especially by a (presumably competent and well-compensated) Hasbro attorney.
You wouldnt get to court if you chose that path, I assure you.
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
If someone came to my office asking me to represent them in a case like this I absolutely would not take the case. But I can see a few twists that might entice someone to try it.
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, I would really love to hear why people who used to play twin pretend kiki jiki doesn't exist. I've also been told twin was a great deck because it didn't have to rely on the combo. so the other cards in the deck still do what they always did right?
But to answer your question, Kiki is worse for 2 reasons. The first you mentioned - CMC. Sure, Twin would sometimes wait a few turns and get grindy/tempoey before punching the combo, but the threat of the turn 3 exarch/pestermite and turn 4 twin was a real force in any matchup and the speed was just right when you had to jam. The second reason is that as a creature Kiki is a much more fragile combo piece.
We may see it get some attention after the Eldrazi nightmare passes.
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
It's actually typically not one turn slower. From experience, 4 mana is ~turn 4-6 while 5 mana is more like 6-8. Two turns is a long time. Also, if Eldrazi do face a ban (which you imply), dismember might get used less often. That two toughness plays a huge difference in matchups like burn; all of a sudden playing into just a grim lavamancer just isn't a valid play. So that point is moot if the trajectory towards an Eye/Temple ban continues. That said it might still be decent. But a lot of people don't consider a deck viable unless its Jund/Affinity/Burn level and I'm unsure if Kiki-Jiki would be anywhere close to that.
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
The card was on a steady and hard decline ever since reprint announcement from MM15. It was not recovering whatsoever, because it's just worse than Twin in basically every non-EDH deck. A few months ago, I had purchased a MM15 foil copy for $11 to use in Commander. But the night of the Twin announcement, I got two regular MM15 copies for $6 each in hopes of it filling the gaps of Twin. Well, it's bad in that shell. Really bad. For all the reasons already pointed out. Believe me, I tried it and it's not good. But this price spike we're seeing now is a DIRECT reflection of people like me scooping up copies and trying to make it work. Look at the graphs of any copy of Kiki Jiki and there is a MASSIVE jump the night of the announcement. The fact is that outside of Jeff Hoogland and his masterful Kiki Chord deck (which only runs 1-2 copies anyway), there's really been nothing successful running Kiki. And the ones that are, are doing it with Resto and a UW shell rather than Pestermite/Exarch and a UR shell, and still aren't all that good.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate