And we're again into the blue being too bad discussion. I don't think blue needs anything at the moment. Jeskai is still good decent deck. Dredge is a problem for it but so is for other reactive decks with Jund included and Jeskai has enough options for sb to fight Dredge. Those who play it will need to start packing more hate against it as well as other deck's players and we will pass Dredge test.
yay sideboard modern!
Is there any non-standard format where essential sideboard cards don't come into play in nearly every matchup? Legacy and vintage have extensive sideboard hate cards - in legacy the cards are sometimes as narrow as Ashen Rider to fight show and tell which feels absolutely disgusting. Can we drop this stupid argument and just admit that a symptom of an insanely deep card pool is that people will have to include cards to fight strategies that their regular 60 cards can't do? Hell, I bring in Ancestral Visions against Jund as a Fae player - am I just riding the sideboard wave?
I think a lot of that sentiment is because other than Jund, basically every other top tier deck wants to try and free-roll a Game 1 win and then take its chances in the following game(s) that you don't draw your SB hate. It makes many matches feel like they are mostly decided by the pairings board and dice roll, with the only real variable being whether or not you draw your specific hate cards. I don't know any way to proactively do anything about it though, other than doing something that helps universally suppress linear decks or makes non-linear decks (besides Jund) stronger.
And we're again into the blue being too bad discussion. I don't think blue needs anything at the moment. Jeskai is still good decent deck. Dredge is a problem for it but so is for other reactive decks with Jund included and Jeskai has enough options for sb to fight Dredge. Those who play it will need to start packing more hate against it as well as other deck's players and we will pass Dredge test.
yay sideboard modern!
Is there any non-standard format where essential sideboard cards don't come into play in nearly every matchup? Legacy and vintage have extensive sideboard hate cards - in legacy the cards are sometimes as narrow as Ashen Rider to fight show and tell which feels absolutely disgusting. Can we drop this stupid argument and just admit that a symptom of an insanely deep card pool is that people will have to include cards to fight strategies that their regular 60 cards can't do? Hell, I bring in Ancestral Visions against Jund as a Fae player - am I just riding the sideboard wave?
I think a lot of that sentiment is because other than Jund, basically every other top tier deck wants to try and free-roll a Game 1 win and then take its chances in the following game(s) that you don't draw your SB hate. It makes many matches feel like they are mostly decided by the pairings board and dice roll, with the only real variable being whether or not you draw your specific hate cards. I don't know any way to proactively do anything about it though, other than doing something that helps universally suppress linear decks or makes non-linear decks (besides Jund) stronger.
I get it - I'm just tired of lazy analysis.
Decks needing to pack graveyard hate isn't the worst thing. If we start to see decks needing to run things like Glaring Spotlight then I think those arguments start to gain a little more merit.
Legacy does have specific/narrow SB options, but the difference there is that there are police cards (ie Force of Will) that enable to you fight unfair strategies without necessarily drawing your hate. I played in a modern GPT and got Turn 0'd by goryo. Simian>faithless pitching griz>swamp + simian>goryo's. Now I fully understand that sort of hand is insanely perfect and that's not how the deck operates, but the fact that it happened just felt bad. Having force in legacy allows you to mull to ensure you don't die before you hit a land drop. Now I'm in no way advocating for force in modern, but having more catch all answers (and not specifically counterspells) means you don't need to lean so heavily on your sideboard for wins.
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Modern: UWR Breach, UWB Esper control
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
Legacy does have specific/narrow SB options, but the difference there is that there are police cards (ie Force of Will) that enable to you fight unfair strategies without necessarily drawing your hate. I played in a modern GPT and got Turn 0'd by goryo. Simian>faithless pitching griz>swamp + simian>goryo's. Now I fully understand that sort of hand is insanely perfect and that's not how the deck operates, but the fact that it happened just felt bad. Having force in legacy allows you to mull to ensure you don't die before you hit a land drop. Now I'm in no way advocating for force in modern, but having more catch all answers (and not specifically counterspells) means you don't need to lean so heavily on your sideboard for wins.
Yes, again, I get this - but your story is problematic for a few reasons (and this came up a LOT when bloom was around in full force)-
1. We're never going to get force of will. Ever. I don't think it's worth even talking about at this point. We CAN talk about some better filtering cantrips and how they help non-linear decks, but even that can lead to problematic conversation as you would be making those degenerate combos stronger. Not saying you were arguing for Force, but I just don't even see point in bringing it up anymore. We know Force is the stop gap in legacy but it means nothing here.
2. Legacy NEEDING force of will for fair decks presents it's own sort of warped metagame that has it's own problems. Blue reigns supreme in legacy and that's totally great there, but arguing for it here does nothing.
3. In your specific instance more generic answers would have done exactly nothing to help you. Even if we had actual counterspell, it wasn't going to do anything there. This needed to be said to SO many people when Amulet was around - they were losing on the draw on turn 2 and using that to complain about Counterspell not being in the format, well, counterspell wouldn't have helped you in that situation anyway.
4. Even if you were running an answer main board but NEED to draw that card vs. 'x' deck then you're still running the 'lottery' of drawing that card (Lily OTV vs. Bogles as Jund for instance). This is just the nature of variance and is what people are actually talking about when they spout these lazy truisms.
These things are inherent to variance. Period. Don't like variance? Play a different game. But calling out an essential aspect of the game and applying a narrative to it is BAD analysis. You CAN argue that some cards are BAD to see in sideboards, but graveyard hate isn't part of it due to it's extremely wide range of effectiveness. I guess an argument can be made that if we see a certain percentage of sideboards with an absolutely ridiculous number of cards devoted to it then that would be considered an unhealthy amount, but we're not there yet, not even close.
I wasn't advocating for force, I was just explaining one of the reasons why people tend to say that legacy doesn't have the perceived sideboard lottery that modern does. Also, I'm aware that in that example, there is no realistic card that currently exists, or will likely ever exist in modern that would have changed that outcome. But I offered it as something that doesn't happen in legacy. In regards to the new hotness that is dredge: as a jeskai player, the game boils down to draw rip or die. That typically is what people complain about. Game 1 is almost certainly a loss with that matchup. Which then means I need to hope to open with it in games 2 and 3, and also hope I don't get thoughtseized or abrupt decayed. So yes, all of this is variance and such, but going in to match and just hoping things line up feels bad to a lot of people. Everyone loses to variance and that's fine, but you want to at least feel like you were involved in every game.
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Modern: UWR Breach, UWB Esper control
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
And we're again into the blue being too bad discussion. I don't think blue needs anything at the moment. Jeskai is still good decent deck. Dredge is a problem for it but so is for other reactive decks with Jund included and Jeskai has enough options for sb to fight Dredge. Those who play it will need to start packing more hate against it as well as other deck's players and we will pass Dredge test.
yay sideboard modern!
Is there any non-standard format where essential sideboard cards don't come into play in nearly every matchup? Legacy and vintage have extensive sideboard hate cards - in legacy the cards are sometimes as narrow as Ashen Rider to fight show and tell which feels absolutely disgusting. Can we drop this stupid argument and just admit that a symptom of an insanely deep card pool is that people will have to include cards to fight strategies that their regular 60 cards can't do? Hell, I bring in Ancestral Visions against Jund as a Fae player - am I just riding the sideboard wave?
Exactly. The only format where SBs are irrelevant is limited (yes, I know the rest of your pool is your SB and you should use it based on matchup, but it's still irrelevant). They're neutered in Standard, and I have no idea whether "competitiv" EDH uses it. But Modern, Legacy, and Vintage ALL have silver bullets in their sideboards. The only real difference in these formats is the lack of catch-all answers in Modern, not the sideboards. For instance, other than Flusterstorm, Jitte, and FOW my Shardless BUG deck and my Modern Jund deck have incredibly similar sideboards. This "Modern is a SB lottery format" argument is a complete red herring. It has the same powerful responses to other strategies that any other old format does, but it just doesn't have filtering and powerful MD catch-all answers to fight through it.
I wasn't advocating for force, I was just explaining one of the reasons why people tend to say that legacy doesn't have the perceived sideboard lottery that modern does. Also, I'm aware that in that example, there is no realistic card that currently exists, or will likely ever exist in modern that would have changed that outcome. But I offered it as something that doesn't happen in legacy. In regards to the new hotness that is dredge: as a jeskai player, the game boils down to draw rip or die. That typically is what people complain about. Game 1 is almost certainly a loss with that matchup. Which then means I need to hope to open with it in games 2 and 3, and also hope I don't get thoughtseized or abrupt decayed. So yes, all of this is variance and such, but going in to match and just hoping things line up feels bad to a lot of people. Everyone loses to variance and that's fine, but you want to at least feel like you were involved in every game.
I was trying to not misrepresent what you were saying and I know you weren't advocating for Force in modern - my apologies if that was unclear.
Ultimately, I think the point that I was trying to get at is that matchups that require a silverbullet to beat are an annoyance but those decks are at the mercy of a single bullet and are not often successful over a long period of time and as such are largely weeded out naturally. We're left with either waiting for variance to push those players and decks to the wayside, or banning decks if that doesn't happen as our only two real options here. I'm not sure of any other way to actually reduce the reliance on sideboarding in this format (or any other) as it's such a key component of the way the game is designed. As such, it's frustrating when people just throw out the 'WELP SIDEBOARDS OUT BOYZZ' arguments as it doesn't add anything meaningful to the discussions.
I think these constitute better questions about the topic (rather than a cursory shallow observation):
'What is our tolerance for 'x' deck impacting 'y' number of sideboards?'
This question is open to any deck. If Bogles rose to ridiculous prominence it's a question we'd need to ask. As-is though, we don't.
'Are two (or more) decks splitting too many sideboards between them that fair decks simply can't compete because sideboards can't cover what they need to?'
One might argue that this is key. If modern sideboards are unable to adapt to too many different linear decks then we have a real problem. With Affinity on the downswing and dredge hate also hitting so many other decks, I don't think we are this threshold.
'Are mainboards being tuned to a degree where they are needing to over rely on sideboards and can this be prevented?'
No. I don't think they are. The format is still ridiculously weak to sweeper effects and we still see people hesitating to mainboard these effects. I'd imagine we see someone at one of the GPs capitalize on this weakness and PUNISH people with some Supreme Verdicts.
Just some thoughts - this topic IS interesting, but not when it's approached from a shallow perspective (NOT referring to you ThirdDegree).
Legacy does have specific/narrow SB options, but the difference there is that there are police cards (ie Force of Will) that enable to you fight unfair strategies without necessarily drawing your hate. I played in a modern GPT and got Turn 0'd by goryo. Simian>faithless pitching griz>swamp + simian>goryo's. Now I fully understand that sort of hand is insanely perfect and that's not how the deck operates, but the fact that it happened just felt bad. Having force in legacy allows you to mull to ensure you don't die before you hit a land drop. Now I'm in no way advocating for force in modern, but having more catch all answers (and not specifically counterspells) means you don't need to lean so heavily on your sideboard for wins.
Ya... that was me. That was really gross and is the first time I've pulled that off (not that it changes the fact it did happen to you or makes it better).
as long as we can rembember that we already had 2 GPs post Eldrazi and they were great, for some reason folks want to just pretend they never happened, now we're up for more
if it wasn't for Dredge i'd say that the meta is getting better and better for Jeskai (with some minor tuning it can easily be favored against Jund,Infect,Affinity while Tron is finally dropping) but i'm concerned about Dredge and the stupid GGT unban, as if any good could ever come of this card... but no BL has to be short... long BL is bad for the eyes...
The GGT unban was not stupid and in fact was long overdue; it really shouldn't have been banned in the first place. Juggernaut being banned back in Extended (yes, this happened) was less of a joke than the Golgari Grave-Troll ban was.
I am not fond of Dredge myself, but any problems related to Dredge are due to the newer cards that were printed, not GGT.
as long as we can rembember that we already had 2 GPs post Eldrazi and they were great, for some reason folks want to just pretend they never happened, now we're up for more
if it wasn't for Dredge i'd say that the meta is getting better and better for Jeskai (with some minor tuning it can easily be favored against Jund,Infect,Affinity while Tron is finally dropping) but i'm concerned about Dredge and the stupid GGT unban, as if any good could ever come of this card... but no BL has to be short... long BL is bad for the eyes...
Dredge is a tier 1 deck unlike any other, and it's a popular deck and people are having fun playing it. The metagame will adapt, and no one can really complain about having to play graveyard hate in their sideboard. Remember when reanimator dominated the format after the DRS ban, and then the meta adapted? I'm a Jund player, so dredge is a bad matchup for me, but I have access to Kalitas, traitor of ghet, scavenging ooze, anger of the gods, and grafdigger's cage. Kalitas and scooze are good enough to play MB, and are versatile enough to sideboard cards to also bring in against the mirror, burn, and control. Cage can be brought in against Abzan Coco and Nahiri control, and anger of the gods works well against Abzan Coco and any aggro deck. People don't even have to play GY hate that only hates on the graveyard. Let people have fun with dredge and GGT.
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Modern
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
as long as we can rembember that we already had 2 GPs post Eldrazi and they were great, for some reason folks want to just pretend they never happened, now we're up for more
if it wasn't for Dredge i'd say that the meta is getting better and better for Jeskai (with some minor tuning it can easily be favored against Jund,Infect,Affinity while Tron is finally dropping) but i'm concerned about Dredge and the stupid GGT unban, as if any good could ever come of this card... but no BL has to be short... long BL is bad for the eyes...
The GGT unban was not stupid and in fact was long overdue; it really shouldn't have been banned in the first place. Juggernaut being banned back in Extended (yes, this happened) was less of a joke than the Golgari Grave-Troll ban was.
I am not fond of Dredge myself, but any problems related to Dredge are due to the newer cards that were printed, not GGT.
To preface: I don't think anything should be banned and I think GGT was fine to unban.
That said, GGT is MUCH more powerful than people give it credit for. While it's certainly not "draw 6," it's not far from it in a Dredge deck. Yes, the newer cards pushed the deck over the top but the deck is more like a house of cards. There are multiple cards that you can pull from it and the whole thing will fall down. GGT is one of those because no other card "draws" them the same amount. According to Ross Merriam (winner of this past weekend's SCG Open on Dredge) Faithless Looting is another of those cards and the one he'd ban if the deck became ban worthy. These cards may look silly on the banlist but their effects on the deck should not be undervalued. If GGT were rebanned the deck would fall right back down to Tier 3 again.
And one more time for emphasis: I don't think anything should be banned and I think GGT was fine to unban.
Just want to chime in and say that I am excited about the addition of Dredge to T1.
It seems very beatable if you have a critical mass of effective SB cards.
I am on Grix Control atm and was able to board in Leyline of the Void, Anger of the Gods, Kalitas, Surgical Extraction, and even Crumble to Dust against it to good success. Even negate against T2 faithless looting turned out to be a fantastic play when they didn't hit on T1.
Dredge may help diversify the metagame and give space for other more fringe decks to breathe.
Would hold off any bans until only if it dominates and the meta fails to adapt for some reason.
I don't think that will happen though. Lets watch the next few tournaments and see what happens.
Legacy does have specific/narrow SB options, but the difference there is that there are police cards (ie Force of Will) that enable to you fight unfair strategies without necessarily drawing your hate. I played in a modern GPT and got Turn 0'd by goryo. Simian>faithless pitching griz>swamp + simian>goryo's. Now I fully understand that sort of hand is insanely perfect and that's not how the deck operates, but the fact that it happened just felt bad. Having force in legacy allows you to mull to ensure you don't die before you hit a land drop. Now I'm in no way advocating for force in modern, but having more catch all answers (and not specifically counterspells) means you don't need to lean so heavily on your sideboard for wins.
Ya... that was me. That was really gross and is the first time I've pulled that off (not that it changes the fact it did happen to you or makes it better).
No worries, brother! I wasn't being salty, just trying to illustrate a point. At the end of the day it's all about dem wins!
@Niallplaysmagic
I didn't take any offense to it. Just wanted to be clear on what I was saying. I think we all want to see modern succeed and survive as a format, despite everyone's differing opinions
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Modern: UWR Breach, UWB Esper control
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
Its not unheard of for people devote 7-8 slots just to beat Dredge consistently in Vintage. I play BUG Fish in that format and I have exactly 7 (plus maindeck Deathrite Shaman) to make that matchup not a complete joke post-board.
Legacy can definitely have some very weird sideboard cards in that format, I mean Moat is a card Miracles has been using for a while and its pretty common for non-blue green decks to be packing Choke in their sideboard.
The card selection being as powerful as it stands is what lets fair decks play magic against the unfair decks in eternal formats (Not advocating for them in modern, they'd be more busted in unfair decks here than anything fair).
The solution, in my eyes, is lots of cheap and modal cards that have relevant effects. I like how Blessed Alliance is lifegain + removal in a single card, and something like removal + grave hate in one could be done without going overboard and forcing everyone to rely on really narrow cards.
Well that really depends on what you think the problem is.
Dredge's speed or resilience? If its the former, then Neonate/other enables are the problem, but if its the latter then Faithless Looting/Bridge/Prized Amalgram/Bloodghast are the primary offenders.
you know what? personally i don't mind Dredge that much, despite that i generally dislike how it functions (sums to: a)race it b)hate it c)lose to it)
what bothers me the most is that a T1 dredge is another blow against interactive decks and will lead to even more whining about a 'SB lottery' format and control sucking in modern, unban some 'screw target fair deck' card so we can regain the lost points in other MUs demands and so on
essentially a new angle of attack was just added in Modern (dredge before neonate/amalgam was both inconsistent and mostly unable to outrace other aggro decks effectively limiting itself to a deck that beats control and jund and loses to everything else) and we already have way too much of those, all i see in this deck is more incentive to not play control/midrange and this time no generic answer seems to solve the newly added problem unless it includes a sweeping exile clause or GY hate in a card that's MB material without being too clunky
the problem with linearity was NEVER the amount of linear decks themselves but rather the amount of angles from which they attack, you can 10 zoo variants and another 10 burn variants they all lose to finks so who cares really, but when you have dredge, affinity,infect,zoo,burn and tron that's getting a bit too much to cover, it's not like you won't face non-linear decks as well, not to mention that if GY hate becomes ever present that's some splash damage to fair decks relying on goyfs/snaps/delve creatures/persist creatures and so on
regardless now the ship has sailed and the damage is done, nothing we can do about it since there's nothing banable about dredge
"that's getting a bit too much to cover"
and as it does, it becomes more about match ups than skill because we need better catchall answers maindeckable, OR force of will.
unbans wont solve this. and bans wouldn't follow "ban criteria" which I think is fundamentally flawed or we wouldn't be discussing this kind of issue......
untill then.... the people who enjoy "ships passing each other in the night" are the ones that win here ( which seems to be a few on this thread)
Well that really depends on what you think the problem is.
Dredge's speed or resilience? If its the former, then Neonate/other enables are the problem, but if its the latter then Faithless Looting/Bridge/Prized Amalgram/Bloodghast are the primary offenders.
Going wide isn't as much a problem as long as you don't dedicate wholly to wiping the free recursive bodies to the point you're soft to repeatedly hardcast Golgari Grave-Troll.
The thing that affects Dredge's degeneracy potential, at least the way I see it, is more the spells and spell-like effects it has access to that work in the graveyard. In other words, the flashback spells it can play, +/- Bridge from Below. Bridge especially gets rather dumb when the pool of legal flashback spells includes such beloved sac outlets as Cabal Therapy and Dread Return (as in Legacy Dredge), but really anything that just works when it's dredged into the graveyard further supports the whole point about how Dredge the mechanic may read "janky regrowth effect that lets you replace your draw step with a choice card" but is in practice "draw a ridiculous amount of cards; you have no hand size." Gives some stock to Ross Merriam's impression that Faithless Looting should be banned, but I think there's better ways to nerf the archetype if necessary without outright kneecapping it.
This does suggest that Dredge as it exists currently can get unacceptably degenerate from any future graveyard-matters sets. Or at the very least Modern can't be allowed to have any "Flashback - sacrifice a creature" spells, because that'd just fix the Gargadon problem and make Bridge from Below disgustingly consistent in a Dredge shell.
Its not unheard of for people devote 7-8 slots just to beat Dredge consistently in Vintage. I play BUG Fish in that format and I have exactly 7 (plus maindeck Deathrite Shaman) to make that matchup not a complete joke post-board.
Legacy can definitely have some very weird sideboard cards in that format, I mean Moat is a card Miracles has been using for a while and its pretty common for non-blue green decks to be packing Choke in their sideboard.
The card selection being as powerful as it stands is what lets fair decks play magic against the unfair decks in eternal formats (Not advocating for them in modern, they'd be more busted in unfair decks here than anything fair).
The solution, in my eyes, is lots of cheap and modal cards that have relevant effects. I like how Blessed Alliance is lifegain + removal in a single card, and something like removal + grave hate in one could be done without going overboard and forcing everyone to rely on really narrow cards.
as long as we can rembember that we already had 2 GPs post Eldrazi and they were great, for some reason folks want to just pretend they never happened, now we're up for more
if it wasn't for Dredge i'd say that the meta is getting better and better for Jeskai (with some minor tuning it can easily be favored against Jund,Infect,Affinity while Tron is finally dropping) but i'm concerned about Dredge and the stupid GGT unban, as if any good could ever come of this card... but no BL has to be short... long BL is bad for the eyes...
The GGT unban was not stupid and in fact was long overdue; it really shouldn't have been banned in the first place. Juggernaut being banned back in Extended (yes, this happened) was less of a joke than the Golgari Grave-Troll ban was.
I am not fond of Dredge myself, but any problems related to Dredge are due to the newer cards that were printed, not GGT.
While I don't think that Dredge needs a ban, what else could you possibly ban from the deck that's reasonable other than GGT?
I'm not sure what newer cards you refer to, but banning Insolent Neonate or Prized Amalgam would be pretty silly in my opinion. Those are pretty fair magic cards. Sure they are what enabled the deck to be good, but the its real power lies in the ability to dump several cards at a time into your graveyard from your deck.
I do think pre-emptively banning Grave Troll was not necessary, and unbanning it was the right move, but there's no doubt IMO that it should be the card sent back to jail if Dredge becomes too good.
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Current Modern decks BGW Junk / URB Grixis Shadow / RGB Lantern Control / WUBCBant Eldrazi
Current Legacy decks BUG Shardless BUG / UWR Predict Miracles / RUG Canadian Thresh / WRBG 4c Loam UB Reanimator
Its not unheard of for people devote 7-8 slots just to beat Dredge consistently in Vintage. I play BUG Fish in that format and I have exactly 7 (plus maindeck Deathrite Shaman) to make that matchup not a complete joke post-board.
Legacy can definitely have some very weird sideboard cards in that format, I mean Moat is a card Miracles has been using for a while and its pretty common for non-blue green decks to be packing Choke in their sideboard.
The card selection being as powerful as it stands is what lets fair decks play magic against the unfair decks in eternal formats (Not advocating for them in modern, they'd be more busted in unfair decks here than anything fair).
The solution, in my eyes, is lots of cheap and modal cards that have relevant effects. I like how Blessed Alliance is lifegain + removal in a single card, and something like removal + grave hate in one could be done without going overboard and forcing everyone to rely on really narrow cards.
anger and path don't matter much against dredge because they just sac the dudes to gargadon. Celestial Purge is narrow, I don't think I've ever seen a competitive modern deck play Anguished Unmaking. Nahiri is worth noting, but the only one out of those cards.
Surgical Extraction is a bad card and the only time it does anything against a combo deck is if the combo player is not very good at their deck. You're spending a card to not impact the board with the hope that taking all copies of a specific card renders the opponent unable to play magic or have their deck function at all, which probably won't happen against a competent combo player. Graveyard decks have just too many moving parts for one surgical to do anything, and you'll die to their beatdown plan. Everytime I see a Surgical Extraction in someone's sideboard I imagine they're not very good at creating powerful sideboards.
Grafdigger's Cage is the ultimate trap card. It looks great on the surface, but it does nothing to further your own proactive game plan. I've seen company players easily beat a t1 cage by just casting dudes and beating face.
Ooze and kalitas are good, but because they can threaten to kill the other guy instead of sitting around and doing nothing like Cage or Relic will.
as long as we can rembember that we already had 2 GPs post Eldrazi and they were great, for some reason folks want to just pretend they never happened, now we're up for more
if it wasn't for Dredge i'd say that the meta is getting better and better for Jeskai (with some minor tuning it can easily be favored against Jund,Infect,Affinity while Tron is finally dropping) but i'm concerned about Dredge and the stupid GGT unban, as if any good could ever come of this card... but no BL has to be short... long BL is bad for the eyes...
The GGT unban was not stupid and in fact was long overdue; it really shouldn't have been banned in the first place. Juggernaut being banned back in Extended (yes, this happened) was less of a joke than the Golgari Grave-Troll ban was.
I am not fond of Dredge myself, but any problems related to Dredge are due to the newer cards that were printed, not GGT.
To preface: I don't think anything should be banned and I think GGT was fine to unban.
That said, GGT is MUCH more powerful than people give it credit for. While it's certainly not "draw 6," it's not far from it in a Dredge deck. Yes, the newer cards pushed the deck over the top but the deck is more like a house of cards. There are multiple cards that you can pull from it and the whole thing will fall down. GGT is one of those because no other card "draws" them the same amount. According to Ross Merriam (winner of this past weekend's SCG Open on Dredge) Faithless Looting is another of those cards and the one he'd ban if the deck became ban worthy. These cards may look silly on the banlist but their effects on the deck should not be undervalued. If GGT were rebanned the deck would fall right back down to Tier 3 again.
And one more time for emphasis: I don't think anything should be banned and I think GGT was fine to unban.
GGT is not the problem and it's fine that Wizards unban it. It's good card and certainly helps Dredge a lot but it's not over the top. There are other cards that put Dredge on the top but in any case I think we can deal with it.
This exactly. GGT on its own never managed to put dredge over the top.
anger and path don't matter much against dredge because they just sac the dudes to gargadon. Celestial Purge is narrow, I don't think I've ever seen a competitive modern deck play Anguished Unmaking. Nahiri is worth noting, but the only one out of those cards.
I think this is the worse point to ever be made here. Using things that "has never been used before" is what people call 'innovation'. Something that people might need to adapt to this new threat.
as long as we can rembember that we already had 2 GPs post Eldrazi and they were great, for some reason folks want to just pretend they never happened, now we're up for more
if it wasn't for Dredge i'd say that the meta is getting better and better for Jeskai (with some minor tuning it can easily be favored against Jund,Infect,Affinity while Tron is finally dropping) but i'm concerned about Dredge and the stupid GGT unban, as if any good could ever come of this card... but no BL has to be short... long BL is bad for the eyes...
The GGT unban was not stupid and in fact was long overdue; it really shouldn't have been banned in the first place. Juggernaut being banned back in Extended (yes, this happened) was less of a joke than the Golgari Grave-Troll ban was.
I am not fond of Dredge myself, but any problems related to Dredge are due to the newer cards that were printed, not GGT.
While I don't think that Dredge needs a ban, what else could you possibly ban from the deck that's reasonable other than GGT?
I'm not sure what newer cards you refer to, but banning Insolent Neonate or Prized Amalgam would be pretty silly in my opinion. Those are pretty fair magic cards. Sure they are what enabled the deck to be good, but the its real power lies in the ability to dump several cards at a time into your graveyard from your deck.
In what world is Prized Amalgam a "fair" Magic card? It's about as fair as Scapeshift is.
I do think pre-emptively banning Grave Troll was not necessary, and unbanning it was the right move, but there's no doubt IMO that it should be the card sent back to jail if Dredge becomes too good.
And then watch as it accomplishes basically nothing in making Dredge not too good. There's a reason they didn't just ban Golgari Grave Troll and that was it; they then realized that it didn't really accomplish much in punishing Dredge and so they banned the much more problematic Dread Return to fix Dredge, but then apparently forgot to unban Golgari Grave-Troll until three years later.
If Dredge is too good, it won't be the fault of Golgari Grave-Troll and banning it won't fix the problem. The absence or presence of Golgari Grave-Troll is not, not has it ever, been the key deciding factor in whether Dredge is good. It certainly didn't become better after it was unbanned; Dredge appeared a little at first when people tried it out, then everyone realized the deck still sucked and dropped it.
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I think a lot of that sentiment is because other than Jund, basically every other top tier deck wants to try and free-roll a Game 1 win and then take its chances in the following game(s) that you don't draw your SB hate. It makes many matches feel like they are mostly decided by the pairings board and dice roll, with the only real variable being whether or not you draw your specific hate cards. I don't know any way to proactively do anything about it though, other than doing something that helps universally suppress linear decks or makes non-linear decks (besides Jund) stronger.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I get it - I'm just tired of lazy analysis.
Decks needing to pack graveyard hate isn't the worst thing. If we start to see decks needing to run things like Glaring Spotlight then I think those arguments start to gain a little more merit.
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
Yes, again, I get this - but your story is problematic for a few reasons (and this came up a LOT when bloom was around in full force)-
1. We're never going to get force of will. Ever. I don't think it's worth even talking about at this point. We CAN talk about some better filtering cantrips and how they help non-linear decks, but even that can lead to problematic conversation as you would be making those degenerate combos stronger. Not saying you were arguing for Force, but I just don't even see point in bringing it up anymore. We know Force is the stop gap in legacy but it means nothing here.
2. Legacy NEEDING force of will for fair decks presents it's own sort of warped metagame that has it's own problems. Blue reigns supreme in legacy and that's totally great there, but arguing for it here does nothing.
3. In your specific instance more generic answers would have done exactly nothing to help you. Even if we had actual counterspell, it wasn't going to do anything there. This needed to be said to SO many people when Amulet was around - they were losing on the draw on turn 2 and using that to complain about Counterspell not being in the format, well, counterspell wouldn't have helped you in that situation anyway.
4. Even if you were running an answer main board but NEED to draw that card vs. 'x' deck then you're still running the 'lottery' of drawing that card (Lily OTV vs. Bogles as Jund for instance). This is just the nature of variance and is what people are actually talking about when they spout these lazy truisms.
These things are inherent to variance. Period. Don't like variance? Play a different game. But calling out an essential aspect of the game and applying a narrative to it is BAD analysis. You CAN argue that some cards are BAD to see in sideboards, but graveyard hate isn't part of it due to it's extremely wide range of effectiveness. I guess an argument can be made that if we see a certain percentage of sideboards with an absolutely ridiculous number of cards devoted to it then that would be considered an unhealthy amount, but we're not there yet, not even close.
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
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
I was trying to not misrepresent what you were saying and I know you weren't advocating for Force in modern - my apologies if that was unclear.
Ultimately, I think the point that I was trying to get at is that matchups that require a silverbullet to beat are an annoyance but those decks are at the mercy of a single bullet and are not often successful over a long period of time and as such are largely weeded out naturally. We're left with either waiting for variance to push those players and decks to the wayside, or banning decks if that doesn't happen as our only two real options here. I'm not sure of any other way to actually reduce the reliance on sideboarding in this format (or any other) as it's such a key component of the way the game is designed. As such, it's frustrating when people just throw out the 'WELP SIDEBOARDS OUT BOYZZ' arguments as it doesn't add anything meaningful to the discussions.
I think these constitute better questions about the topic (rather than a cursory shallow observation):
'What is our tolerance for 'x' deck impacting 'y' number of sideboards?'
This question is open to any deck. If Bogles rose to ridiculous prominence it's a question we'd need to ask. As-is though, we don't.
'Are two (or more) decks splitting too many sideboards between them that fair decks simply can't compete because sideboards can't cover what they need to?'
One might argue that this is key. If modern sideboards are unable to adapt to too many different linear decks then we have a real problem. With Affinity on the downswing and dredge hate also hitting so many other decks, I don't think we are this threshold.
'Are mainboards being tuned to a degree where they are needing to over rely on sideboards and can this be prevented?'
No. I don't think they are. The format is still ridiculously weak to sweeper effects and we still see people hesitating to mainboard these effects. I'd imagine we see someone at one of the GPs capitalize on this weakness and PUNISH people with some Supreme Verdicts.
Just some thoughts - this topic IS interesting, but not when it's approached from a shallow perspective (NOT referring to you ThirdDegree).
Ya... that was me. That was really gross and is the first time I've pulled that off (not that it changes the fact it did happen to you or makes it better).
I am not fond of Dredge myself, but any problems related to Dredge are due to the newer cards that were printed, not GGT.
Dredge is a tier 1 deck unlike any other, and it's a popular deck and people are having fun playing it. The metagame will adapt, and no one can really complain about having to play graveyard hate in their sideboard. Remember when reanimator dominated the format after the DRS ban, and then the meta adapted? I'm a Jund player, so dredge is a bad matchup for me, but I have access to Kalitas, traitor of ghet, scavenging ooze, anger of the gods, and grafdigger's cage. Kalitas and scooze are good enough to play MB, and are versatile enough to sideboard cards to also bring in against the mirror, burn, and control. Cage can be brought in against Abzan Coco and Nahiri control, and anger of the gods works well against Abzan Coco and any aggro deck. People don't even have to play GY hate that only hates on the graveyard. Let people have fun with dredge and GGT.
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
That said, GGT is MUCH more powerful than people give it credit for. While it's certainly not "draw 6," it's not far from it in a Dredge deck. Yes, the newer cards pushed the deck over the top but the deck is more like a house of cards. There are multiple cards that you can pull from it and the whole thing will fall down. GGT is one of those because no other card "draws" them the same amount. According to Ross Merriam (winner of this past weekend's SCG Open on Dredge) Faithless Looting is another of those cards and the one he'd ban if the deck became ban worthy. These cards may look silly on the banlist but their effects on the deck should not be undervalued. If GGT were rebanned the deck would fall right back down to Tier 3 again.
And one more time for emphasis: I don't think anything should be banned and I think GGT was fine to unban.
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 seems very beatable if you have a critical mass of effective SB cards.
I am on Grix Control atm and was able to board in Leyline of the Void, Anger of the Gods, Kalitas, Surgical Extraction, and even Crumble to Dust against it to good success. Even negate against T2 faithless looting turned out to be a fantastic play when they didn't hit on T1.
Dredge may help diversify the metagame and give space for other more fringe decks to breathe.
Would hold off any bans until only if it dominates and the meta fails to adapt for some reason.
I don't think that will happen though. Lets watch the next few tournaments and see what happens.
EDH: UBRJeleva | GURSurrak
No worries, brother! I wasn't being salty, just trying to illustrate a point. At the end of the day it's all about dem wins!
@Niallplaysmagic
I didn't take any offense to it. Just wanted to be clear on what I was saying. I think we all want to see modern succeed and survive as a format, despite everyone's differing opinions
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
Legacy can definitely have some very weird sideboard cards in that format, I mean Moat is a card Miracles has been using for a while and its pretty common for non-blue green decks to be packing Choke in their sideboard.
The card selection being as powerful as it stands is what lets fair decks play magic against the unfair decks in eternal formats (Not advocating for them in modern, they'd be more busted in unfair decks here than anything fair).
The solution, in my eyes, is lots of cheap and modal cards that have relevant effects. I like how Blessed Alliance is lifegain + removal in a single card, and something like removal + grave hate in one could be done without going overboard and forcing everyone to rely on really narrow cards.
Dredge's speed or resilience? If its the former, then Neonate/other enables are the problem, but if its the latter then Faithless Looting/Bridge/Prized Amalgram/Bloodghast are the primary offenders.
"that's getting a bit too much to cover"
and as it does, it becomes more about match ups than skill because we need better catchall answers maindeckable, OR force of will.
unbans wont solve this. and bans wouldn't follow "ban criteria" which I think is fundamentally flawed or we wouldn't be discussing this kind of issue......
untill then.... the people who enjoy "ships passing each other in the night" are the ones that win here ( which seems to be a few on this thread)
decks playing:
none
Going wide isn't as much a problem as long as you don't dedicate wholly to wiping the free recursive bodies to the point you're soft to repeatedly hardcast Golgari Grave-Troll.
The thing that affects Dredge's degeneracy potential, at least the way I see it, is more the spells and spell-like effects it has access to that work in the graveyard. In other words, the flashback spells it can play, +/- Bridge from Below. Bridge especially gets rather dumb when the pool of legal flashback spells includes such beloved sac outlets as Cabal Therapy and Dread Return (as in Legacy Dredge), but really anything that just works when it's dredged into the graveyard further supports the whole point about how Dredge the mechanic may read "janky regrowth effect that lets you replace your draw step with a choice card" but is in practice "draw a ridiculous amount of cards; you have no hand size." Gives some stock to Ross Merriam's impression that Faithless Looting should be banned, but I think there's better ways to nerf the archetype if necessary without outright kneecapping it.
This does suggest that Dredge as it exists currently can get unacceptably degenerate from any future graveyard-matters sets. Or at the very least Modern can't be allowed to have any "Flashback - sacrifice a creature" spells, because that'd just fix the Gargadon problem and make Bridge from Below disgustingly consistent in a Dredge shell.
You mean like anger of the gods, path to exile, Celestial Purge, pillar of flame,anguished unmaking, and Nahiri, the harbinger?
scavenging ooze and kalitas, traitor of ghet are grave hate + lifegain + a threat.
Grafdigger's cage hates on the GY, collected company, and Nahiri's ultimate.
rakdos charm and jund charm are versatile cards that can be GY hate.
surgical extraction hates on the GY as well as combo.
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
While I don't think that Dredge needs a ban, what else could you possibly ban from the deck that's reasonable other than GGT?
I'm not sure what newer cards you refer to, but banning Insolent Neonate or Prized Amalgam would be pretty silly in my opinion. Those are pretty fair magic cards. Sure they are what enabled the deck to be good, but the its real power lies in the ability to dump several cards at a time into your graveyard from your deck.
I do think pre-emptively banning Grave Troll was not necessary, and unbanning it was the right move, but there's no doubt IMO that it should be the card sent back to jail if Dredge becomes too good.
BGW Junk / URB Grixis Shadow / RGB Lantern Control / WUBCBant Eldrazi
Current Legacy decks
BUG Shardless BUG / UWR Predict Miracles / RUG Canadian Thresh / WRBG 4c Loam
UB Reanimator
anger and path don't matter much against dredge because they just sac the dudes to gargadon. Celestial Purge is narrow, I don't think I've ever seen a competitive modern deck play Anguished Unmaking. Nahiri is worth noting, but the only one out of those cards.
Surgical Extraction is a bad card and the only time it does anything against a combo deck is if the combo player is not very good at their deck. You're spending a card to not impact the board with the hope that taking all copies of a specific card renders the opponent unable to play magic or have their deck function at all, which probably won't happen against a competent combo player. Graveyard decks have just too many moving parts for one surgical to do anything, and you'll die to their beatdown plan. Everytime I see a Surgical Extraction in someone's sideboard I imagine they're not very good at creating powerful sideboards.
Grafdigger's Cage is the ultimate trap card. It looks great on the surface, but it does nothing to further your own proactive game plan. I've seen company players easily beat a t1 cage by just casting dudes and beating face.
Ooze and kalitas are good, but because they can threaten to kill the other guy instead of sitting around and doing nothing like Cage or Relic will.
I think you left out "when your opponent has RIP".
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Big Johnny.
Well it has no evasion.
It enters tapped when resurrected.
It's a Blue spell in Modern.
...it's totally fair!
This exactly. GGT on its own never managed to put dredge over the top.
DECKS:
UB Faeries [Midrange/Tempo]
RWUGB Affinity[Aggro]
FAERIES TOO STRONK!!!1111
- Fae Prophecy, 201
5678I think this is the worse point to ever be made here. Using things that "has never been used before" is what people call 'innovation'. Something that people might need to adapt to this new threat.
And then watch as it accomplishes basically nothing in making Dredge not too good. There's a reason they didn't just ban Golgari Grave Troll and that was it; they then realized that it didn't really accomplish much in punishing Dredge and so they banned the much more problematic Dread Return to fix Dredge, but then apparently forgot to unban Golgari Grave-Troll until three years later.
If Dredge is too good, it won't be the fault of Golgari Grave-Troll and banning it won't fix the problem. The absence or presence of Golgari Grave-Troll is not, not has it ever, been the key deciding factor in whether Dredge is good. It certainly didn't become better after it was unbanned; Dredge appeared a little at first when people tried it out, then everyone realized the deck still sucked and dropped it.