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What cards do you think should be banned or unbanned in Modern in the next announcement? (4/4/16 update)
Poll: What cards do you think should be BANNED?
Ended Apr 2, 2016
Poll: What cards do you think should be UNBANNED?
Ended Apr 2, 2016
decks playing:
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what's wrong with completely annihilating it is that there's actually no reason to.
it's an interesting deck to have around, and it's always good to have more viable decks. if it has to be powered down a bit before it can be fair, then ok - but there's no actual reason to remove it completely from the format besides people getting salty.
and the whole "why does it deserve to survive if it needs these specific lands" argument doesn't even make sense. the whole game is full of cards-that-need-other-cards.... that's the entire point lol. saying deck A doesn't deserve to be around because it needs land B in order to work is nonsensical.
that's like saying Scapeshift shouldn't deserve to exist because it needs Valakut in order to be a deck. haha
you guys have to put your own personal grudges aside. it would be a bad move to wipe the deck away completely - bad for Modern and bad for Magic. if the deck can exist at a reasonable tier 2 or tier 1 in a nerfed state, there's nothing wrong with letting it stick around. there aren't any rules as to what sorts of decks are allowed to be competitive. as a community we should be fine with what is effectively a "stompy" deck being able to win some matches and the occasional prize.
decks playing:
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Tonight I've just browsed one of our local facebook mtg buy and sell community, saw plenty of "Eldrazi deck package sale". The Eldrazi feel that the end of their reign of terror is near.. just a few more days to go. **
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
for what it's worth I've been seeing a big dip in the success of Eldrazi in the last two weeks. UW control is becoming a big thing, even Elves has picked up some steam, and the format is changing to meet the competitive needs of the community.
Yesterday, for instance, was a 300 person Modern GPT in the UK - the second biggest ever, and the biggest ever in Europe.
Eldrazi was poorly represented - it was there, no doubt. most people got to play against an eldrazi opponent once. but in the later rounds all i heard from opponents and neighbours at the event was how diverse it was, how they'd played a different deck each round, how much fun they'd had, how Eldrazi didn't seem to be there in force, and so on.
there were, of course, a few grumbling scrooge-like characters who kept moaning about "eldrazi winter", how it was ruining everything - but when pressed to see what they'd played against that day, most of them hadn't played against an Eldrazi opponent even once. it was just blind-moaning out of habit, rather than based on what was around them. there they were, in round five after having faced Merfolk, Kiki-Chord, Jund and Scapeshift and all they could talk about was "eldrazi winter". I had to physically restrain myself from rolling my eyes haha.
this is where I think the community has sort of tripped up on itself, to some extent. the deck has been seen competing and causing some issues at high levels in GPs and ProTours but from what I can tell (asking a lot of people from multiple countries and a variety of different shops and playgroups) the Eldrazi menace hasn't really existed at the ground level. everyone's got up in a huge panic about the implications, and all personally offended at the existence of the deck - it's become an ideology of hate rather than a real practical problem.
for instance, I took a colourless Eldrazi deck to FNM at my local shop. I was the first and only Eldrazi player at this particular shop. the deck wasn't making a huge impact or dominating anything, it just existed on the sidelines. and yet, the vitriol and grumpiness from other players was disproportionate - they'd wax lyrical about eldrazi winter, how it was ruining the game, how it was everywhere, and they'd be sitting in a room full of twenty different deck archetypes, and me, the only eldrazi player there. and this came from players who never played anywhere else, so this was the first time they'd ever even seen the deck! it's incredibly lazy thinking, just moaning about something because you've heard someone else moaning about it.
all you economists out there will recognise the phrase "a run on the bank". that's definitely what's happened here.
I dont think mox opal is the biggest offender and I think that a ban hits too many other decks. Pretty much any artifact deck will die, especially fun decks that arent super competitive. My other thought is that there is best and most extensive hate for artifacts, so unless you hit a really broken card, there would be no point. I think inkmoth, ravager and even the hat are way more broken than opal. I played affinity for a few years and thats just my opinion though
first and foremost, the deck is 100% getting a ban in less than a week, you really believe that people didnt sell off the deck/just never bought into it at the "ground floor" due to this?
second, people are not allowed to be emotionally invested in the overall health of the game and format they identify with and love? if your countries economy is in the *****ter, but your neighborhood hasnt noticed at all, in fact you have been flourishing, does that give you no right to care about the overall health of the economy on the grander scale?
you always need to remember that many people use MTGO as their primary/secondary way to play the game, and several (like me) who watch pro level events religiously. watching events is almost synonymous to playing, and watching the eldrazi destroy the format that was so amazing just a few months before certainly doesnt leave me in a happy go lucky mood screaming "yay diversity!"
UWRjeskai nahiri UWR
UBRgrixis titi UBR
UBRgrixis delverUBR
UR ur kikimite UR
EDH
RUG Riku of Two Reflections RUG
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose UBR
UBRGYidris, Maelstrom Wielder UBRG
UBRJeleva, Nephalia's ScourgeUBR
Banned -
Eye of Ugin
Chalice of the void
Batterskull
Unbanned -
Ancestral Vision
Stoneforge mystic
Green Sun's Zennith
What does everyone think of this list? I believe it to be fake, but fogured Is loat it here just to see what everything thinks. I Dont know if this is the right place to post potential leaks so please forgive me in advance.
Eldrazi is considerably more oppressive than Twin ever was in every measurable way, and Twin was nuked out of existence. So f*** Eldrazi. The deck is a cancer on the format and doesn't deserve even half the sympathy it's getting from the players exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome. Ban both lands and let's all move on.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I think its fake to, if only the GSZ wasnt listed it could be legit. People said SFM cannot be un banned while Batterskull stays legal, so? And banning Chalice helps keep SPG around? GSZ would be over the top, espcially with Company/Kiki Chord decks around. Elves and infect would be on that boat too.
firstly - I agree - a ban is/may be needed. we're all pretty sure it's a done deal at this point. I wasn't disagreeing with this.
thing is - it doesn't matter what the reason is for people not to be playing the Eldrazi deck at the grass-roots level of magic - it's still the case.
and people who i've spoken to, who aren't MTGO grinders, don't play outside of a particular area or shop, and don't play at big tournaments, and who had never actually seen the Eldrazi being played IRL, were sitting down at FNMs where there wasn't an Eldrazi deck in sight, with a fun and diverse metagame at their fingertips, and complaining to each other that the format was unplayable and they might stop going to FNM because of "all the eldrazi decks"....
you see the huge disconnect there, right?
i think one big take-away that the community needs to get from all of this is that the ProTour, and to a lesser extent the GP circuit, are relatively isolated events. they feature teams and high-ranking Pros who focus heavily on each other, and we see time and time again a sort of "inbred" metagame which is like a cartoon exaggeration of the real Modern format. we only have to look back a year or two to see the best pros in the world all simultaneously pick up Bogles at one of the premier events of the calendar year - a deck which at the time was regarded as being Tier 2 and fairly inconsistent.
did that suddenly mean Bogles was any better than it had previously been? no, of course not. But players in the wider community seemed to take it this way and bought into the deck in droves, before it sank back into mediocrity again.
there is a very real difference from the Modern you watch in coverage at high-ranking events, and the Modern that we all play every week at FNM. for good or bad, and for whatever reason, Eldrazi hasn't been a legitimate problem at the FNM level as far as the vast majority of testimonials can confirm, and yet players insist on talking about the format like they are no longer able to play their weekly Magic events - which is patently not the case.
see the issue?
I'm all for appreciating local differences, but this seems very misleading. What exactly constitutes "the vast majority of testimonials"? Most of the people in my own local Magic community have confirmed that their FNMs were either ruined by Eldrazi or have an unspoken agreement that no one is playing Eldrazi because a ban is forthcoming. I also know of at least 3-4 posters on this site who have reported similar conditions in the Eldrazi thread. This suggests the qualitative evidence on the anti-Eldrazi side is at least as strong as that on your side of the argument. When we add in the harder quantitative numbers on MTGO and the smaller SCG IQ-style tournament scene (to make no mention of the horrendous GP/PT scene), and it seems that there is really no disconnect between the assertion that Eldrazi has broken Modern and the reality on the ground.
I'm sure there are exceptions to this but there will ALWAYS be exceptions to a ban. Or exceptions to a metagame trend generally! We can always find some local metagame that doesn't line up with the broader expectation, whether with Standard Rally decks or Modern decks that ultimately get banned. Thankfully, Wizards doesn't act on that exception or it would be impossible to make meaningful decisions about formats. It might be academically interesting to observe these differences, but it's just not very helpful at the policy level.
Apply that same logic to Twin. Not only was it not as successful as Eldrazi has been, but it held a relatively small share of the meta and was on the decline. For the most part, people did not play Twin. There were 2 people that played it locally in a weekly Modern Monday that saw 30-40 people regularly. It was banned simply because of its top level tournament performance. This question was raised in a handful of articles showcasing Wizards making a change in the priority for their bannings. Your LGS doesn't matter, and Wizards has basically said with the Twin ban: meta share doesn't matter either; only top level tournaments. Under that context, a tactical nuking of Eldrazi is almost certain. Hpwever, this is before even taking into consideration that it IS statistically the most prevalent and oppressive deck ever played in Modern. And while I've only faced it in person a handful of times, it is completely unavoidable on MTGO to the point that it's not even worth playing Constructed Tournaments, and I have only been playing "Tournament Practice" free rooms the last month and a half.
TL;DR: I would love to believe Wizards cared about the local meta. They don't. Regardless, Eldrazi is worse and more oppressive than any other deck in Modern's history.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I'd also attest that while Eldrazi isn't a large problem in my meta over the last month or so, that is 100% because it is getting the ax soon and people sold out when they had the chance. If the deck wasn't in danger of getting an ax at all, it'd be the deck you either play or lose to (like it was from the PT til the week of GP Detroit.
Not even close to Eldrazi numbers and was banned out of existence. Are you saying Eldrazi should *NOT* be banned out of existence? I mentioned the other numbers and local metas to specifically showcase that they *DON'T* matter, which was the point so many people were trying to make in justifying the Twin ban: "Top 8s matter more than local metas."
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I was merely commenting on the community's eagerness to wipe the deck out of existence completely and the "eldrazi winter" rhetoric that I have seen bandied about the place in situations where it clearly didn't apply.
well said - but the particular bit you quoted was following on from an experience of my own, where my statement definitely applied, and people need to make the distinction between what they see on coverage and what's happening around them. At no point was I apologising for the deck or arguing it shouldn't see a ban. in fact I explicitly argued that it *should* see a ban of some kind.
to quickly summarise my point: there are people playing at FNMs around the world (I have personal experience of this) where either zero or maybe 1 Eldrazi deck has been represented in a local scene, and players sit around in a diverse field of decks, no different to what you'd consider the norm, and I've seen them complain to each other about how they "can't play Modern any more". these are individuals who when questioned have never actually played against the deck, sometimes never seen it actually played at all, not seen it perform well in their area and don't play on MTGO or go to large events. my point was that the community is falling over itself to kind of 'rally round a cause' and we have an ideology of "everything is ruined" even when it doesn't make any sense.
likewise - my experience yesterday at a 300 person Modern event was one of overwhelming positivity at an open format. all day, players were incredibly pleased at what was a hugely diverse format. Even so - in this positive environment, some players insisted that everything was ruined and Eldrazi was "everywhere", despite (upon being questioned) not actually having played against Eldrazi themselves on the day (and Eldrazi having a noticeably poor showing). My point was one of proportionality. There's a definite case of top-down scapegoatism, and I understand why it's happened of course, but it's a shame that it exists to such an extent that people are falsely, manipulatively complaining about their experiences of the Modern format when they haven't actually seen any of the effects they are talking about.
Wotc needs to concern itself about local metas more then the high level simply because it effects more from a business stand point. If the local metas are screwed up and people quit playing any format, that means people are not buying singles, which means LGS are suffering.
I agree with your statement that local metas can vary by quite a bit. That doesnt mean Wotc shouldnt keep an eye on them.
There is much more Magic in general being played at the local level that the twitch tournaments we see every weekend. Seems wotc should concern itself with the greater more so then the higher level.
Bull*****;
Almost every week an Eldrazi player win at my FNM.
Last weeks it wasnt even his deck; He played his friend eldrazi deck and finished first.
This deck is cancer. Theres no exageration.
BGUSultai Shadow
BURGrixis Shadow
BGUSultai midrange
BRWMardu Pyromancer
BGRJund
They have the computer programs that LGS use to run the events and send results to Wotc. Probably easier then you think it is to keep track.
This is exactly why both lands should be banned right now. We can't risk the possibility of Eldrazi decks still being very alive if only one of their Sol lands is banned. It's best to play it safe by banning both Eye and Temple. It kills the deck, but that's the whole point. Wizards didn't shed any tears for Affinity or Cawblade when they were ruining Standard like Eldrazi has been doing with Modern. For the sake of format health as well as PR, the deck needs to be put down.
Modern - Cheeri0s (building), Belcher (building), Lantern (building), UW Control (building)
RIP Magic Duels. Wizards will regret what they did to you.
In theory?
Control decks.
In practice, however, these decks have a bit of an issue getting to the point where AV matters, and if they _can_ do so, they tend to have a bit of trouble doing anything about lasting that long. This is largely because the answers they can find in the modern card pool are either good in the early game and bad in the late game, or simply can't be played in the early game because their mana cost is too high, and you can't survive long enough to play them because the format is too fast for them to matter. Worse, control decks can less afford to 'waste' that turn 1 mana not doing their best to slow down faster decks with some kind of answer, or even just a tempo play (although too many of these and they stop being a control deck and become a tempo deck) or discard.
If they can serum vision, they can AV.
Turn one bolt/kosilek isnt a must.
Turn 2+ is more important.
I played grixis for a while and never felt behin because i played a serum vision one turn 1
BGUSultai Shadow
BURGrixis Shadow
BGUSultai midrange
BRWMardu Pyromancer
BGRJund