Amulet would annihilate eldrazi. Please playtest that one and report back. Jund could barely manage an even matchup with Amulet and they played turn 6-7 pieces of turn 1 discard and fulminator mages in the sideboard
Referring to pro tour eldrazi not current eldrazi. T1 chalice on 0 shuts off hive mind kill, and forces them to have titan combo in hand t2 or die. Also once again, if it truly was a good matchup, im even more glad it got the axe then
Edit:4x maindeck ghost quarter is nothing to scoff at either
Twin would help URx vs linear decks, jace helps against fair, slow decks. All depends on what is currently more represented in the format, and where the bad matchips are. In general, U decks are already favored in the slow, grindy games, while they can struggle vs linear combo/aggro. Linear combo/aggro is much more prevalent. Therefore twin would be the better unban. However, both options are using a sledgehammer where a chisel is needed
I was hoping for a stoneforge mystic unban . How good is turn 3 batterskull ? Is it that unbeatable? It was a standard deck. It would create a new flavor of White\X colored decks. I know that it can be abused with blink effects. Restoration angel your stone forge mystic. I'd be up for an unban just to see what happens. Add squadrin hawks and the deck just about makes itself. I don't even know if it would be good enough in modern. Caw blade was oppressive in standard but the deck card pool in modern is so much stronger. The deck would probably play some swords in it as well. I'm not sure what the rest of the creature base would be. I can't remember what the other living weapons cards are I don't know if they'd be good enough. I'm liking the way dredge has became a deck after the unban then the printing of Prized Amalgam. I know sword of the meek isn't doing anything since I have yet to see a list of that deck anywhere. Wizards does what they want to do as always. I was just looking at the current banned list and was wondering is stoneforge mystic really that powerful? I doubt we'd see top 8 all caw blade.
Something people always forget is that Stoneforge Mystic was essentially always in a Jace the Mindsculptor deck through it's history in standard. I think we have far better ways to deal with it and it's equipment than before and it'd be fine to bring off the banlist. That being said, I can see why they are being slower to ban/unban stuff since they don't need to worry about the Pro Tour anymore.
SFM is pretty safe imo. Safe from being dominant imo, but (nearly) all Wxx decks will want to play the card and homogenize. It is pretty much too slow to help against aggro, so unless people want to watch SFM vs SFM midrange games, there isn't much upside to unbanning it.
That being said, I don't think it's really that dangerous. I personally would find it interesting to see how the Stoneforge Mystic vs Kolaghan's Command dynamic would work out. I feel like there are enough midrange tools that SFM won't be more than the meta can handle - you'll still be liable to losing to infect (...etc) with SFM in hand/in play.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Aaron Forsythe saw his shadow. Three more months of linearity.
Interaction is here. The format IS interactive.
Go look at the recent top 32 at the SCG Open. 1 Jund list and 2 Jeskai lists in a sea of linearity. Face the facts: the format is ultra linear right now.
Tiers indicate prevalence in the metagame, not tournament results or chances of success. People will stubbornly continue to play interactive decks like Jund in spite of the fact that they are not good choices for spiking an event.
Wizards- "We broke these decks as planned, good we can ban something in them now"
Ban - Grave troll dredge is bonkers now
- mutigenic growth or become immense- infect has become harder to intract with or race, and has top 8ed to many times.
And hopefully unbans to shake things up next time around
Infect has had 4 top 8's since march, jund has had much more than that, do you think jund needs the axe too?
Infect has put 7 pilots into the top 8s of SCG Opens since March 1st. Jund has placed 6 pilots (see the attached picture) into the top 8s of SCG Opens during the same time frame. Jund has more than twice as many pilots. Infect is, in no uncertain terms, a better deck than Jund.
Modern never had strong midrange decks outside of the BGx(red or white).
Jund and Abzan don't need more tools when they are quite playable.
SFM vs KCommand dynamic will just make every midrange player to play Abzan or Jund.
I would rather see new midrange decks.
Some of them are close to playable, but not quite there - Mardu, Temur, Grixis, Sultai, Jeskai.
Esper and Bant are just bad.
Let's not make the format Abzan vs Jund, please.
I think my point was that unbanning SFM won't make the format Midrange vs Midrange forever, but rather be ineffective in most aggro matchups and just lead the midrange portion of the meta into a SFM vs Kolaghan's command dynamic.
It will homogenize that section of the metagame imo, which is a bit of a negative. But I don't see why it would make Jund vs Abzan the default though, it might help stuff like mardu (can play both!) and other Wxx midrange like esper and bant get closer to Jund and Abzan.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Modern never had strong midrange decks outside of the BGx(red or white).
Jund and Abzan don't need more tools when they are quite playable.
SFM vs KCommand dynamic will just make every midrange player to play Abzan or Jund.
I would rather see new midrange decks.
Some of them are close to playable, but not quite there - Mardu, Temur, Grixis, Sultai, Jeskai.
Esper and Bant are just bad.
Let's not make the format Abzan vs Jund, please.
I think my point was that unbanning SFM won't make the format Midrange vs Midrange forever, but rather be ineffective in most aggro matchups and just lead the midrange portion of the meta into a SFM vs Kolaghan's command dynamic.
It will homogenize that section of the metagame imo, which is a bit of a negative. But I don't see why it would make Jund vs Abzan the default though, it might help stuff like mardu (can play both!) and other Wxx midrange like esper and bant get closer to Jund and Abzan.
Don't forget diversifying Jeskai control as either Jeskai Nahiri or Jeskai Stoneblade (the deck doesn't have enough space for both packages).
I'm pretty disappointed by no changes. Preordain is a really safe unban that would do something to help blue decks, so I was hoping for at least that. I've always played Snapcaster decks, but I'm starting to think about buying into Jund or a linear deck. I'm starting to lose confidence that things are going to get any better for blue decks.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
I'm pretty disappointed by no changes. Preordain is a really safe unban that would do something to help blue decks, so I was hoping for at least that. I've always played Snapcaster decks, but I'm starting to think about buying into Jund or a linear deck. I'm starting to lose confidence that things are going to get any better for blue decks.
Honestly, if I wanted to buy into a completely new deck, it would be Bant Eldrazi in a heartbeat. The deck is almost as explosive as other aggro decks, almost as robust as Jund, and has some of the most pushed and overpowered creatures in Modern backed by lands that tap for 2 mana, lands that let you cast them without being countered, and a 1 mana Dig Through Time by means of Ancient Stirrings. It has the benefits of fast aggro with the benefits of strong midrange and virtually none of the drawbacks, including an infinite combo of its own. Unfortunately, the most expensive pieces (Noble Hierarch, Cavern of Souls, Chalice of the Void, and a third Engineered Explosives) combine for nearly $700. And that doesn't even include the rest of the deck, which would require another $200 or so. After spending a couple years and thousands of dollars on URx decks and staples, it's hard to swallow the idea of dropping another ~$1,000 just to be competitive. Luckily, grad school night classes are eating up much of my free time anyway, so it's just another excuse not to play. I don't see blue getting any help any time soon. Commander with friends has taken most of the priority this past year, and it looks like that will continue until at least January.
Go look at the recent top 32 at the SCG Open. 1 Jund list and 2 Jeskai lists in a sea of linearity. Face the facts: the format is ultra linear right now.
Tiers indicate prevalence in the metagame, not tournament results or chances of success. People will stubbornly continue to play interactive decks like Jund in spite of the fact that they are not good choices for spiking an event.
Wizards- "We broke these decks as planned, good we can ban something in them now"
Ban - Grave troll dredge is bonkers now
- mutigenic growth or become immense- infect has become harder to intract with or race, and has top 8ed to many times.
And hopefully unbans to shake things up next time around
Infect has had 4 top 8's since march, jund has had much more than that, do you think jund needs the axe too?
Infect has put 7 pilots into the top 8s of SCG Opens since March 1st. Jund has placed 6 pilots (see the attached picture) into the top 8s of SCG Opens during the same time frame. Jund has more than twice as many pilots. Infect is, in no uncertain terms, a better deck than Jund.
Hmm, i wonder what data is more reliable, gp results with 1000+ entrants each that show jund far out performing infect, or scg events that are a few hundred people and contain very localized metas
SCG modern open placement -- clearly the benchmark for modern success. I'm not trying to be overly flip but if you look at the decks that place in SCG opens it tells the entire story of why it's ridiculous to look exclusively at those as a metric.
First off, we don't know what percentage of the field is specifically in the inbred field that is SCG opens. You'd need to do that first.
Secondly, the meta is as I said so ridiculous and inbred I would really hesitate to draw any conclusions based on it.
Here, numbers from all major and professional (read: including WMCQs and Grand Prix) level events ("Competitive" events were excluded because they include minor events like PPTQs that aren't really relevant to the discussion). Do we want to keep shifting the goalposts, or are we satisfied?
For a deck that has, again, around twice as many pilots (likely even more at the upper echolons of the community), these numbers do not line up. A holistic evaluation of the format (Jund has no positive game one matchups against tier 1 competitors except Infect) is reflected by the numbers, and basically says that your best bet for doing well at a large event is to ignore your opponent and try to pick whatever linear deck is not going to be hated on that day.
You're entitled to keep your opinion, of course, but I, as well as many (probably approaching the majority at this point) players feel like the format is unhealthy for interactive competitive play and a 'No Changes' announcement today was a tremendous failure on the part of R&D.
(For the record, I play Infect and I'm personally baffled at how Become Immense didn't get banned today. I'm not a salty Jund pilot wanting a leg up on everybody)
I feel that they've already changed the modern format enough for this year
I mean there are a lot of linear agro decks right now but I wanna see where the format goes until at least January. Infect and Bant Eldrazi decks are kind annoying but lets see what happens
They want Infect to exist in the format, since it's totally interactable. This is not going to change not now, not in January. Infect is a totally safe deck. It even promotes fair decks' plans. If Infect would be nerfed, the interaction in your deck would be probably less mandatory(I do not know in what degree though). Zooicide on the other hand, if this deck would dominate the format, then Become Immense would get snap banned but this deck is not a godly deck. Has its nightmare matchups as well(Burn,Affinity,Jund).
Understand that I'm not saying Infect is the problem that is plaguing Modern and needs something to be banned from it (merely that I was anticipating a ban). Infect's success is a symptom of the sickness plaguing the format - the linear nature of the metagame. If >50% of the metagame consisted of interactive decks, Infect would be unplayable. That it is having so much success is due to the fact that people are ignoring each other, which results in too many die-roll matchups and too many games of solitaire, and Infect has the fastest and most consistent goldfish while not being a total glass cannon. More than a banning, I wanted to see an unbanning of something to help the interactive decks not flounder around. They've unbanned Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek and it hasn't really done much to help non-Jund interactive decks break out.
tl;dr - Successful Infect is indicative of bigger problems
The shown numbers are regarding the last three months where the metagame got more and more hostile for Jund after its metagame percentage rised and everyone prepared for Jund. With Jeskai Nahiri lingering in tier 1, Dredge emerging and both Valakut/Bant Eldrazi decks gaining popularity its normal Jund is not putting up the same numbers consistently. The metagame getting more linear and Abzan Company disappearing also incidentally means that Infect is better positioned at the moment.
Infect is also a deck which can be easily hated out, some cards are just devastating against the deck, if its popularity really starts to noticeably rise people will pack more Chalice/Spellskite/Melira/Sudden Shock/Nights of Soul's Betrayal/Deflecting Palm/Grim Lavamancer/Ghostly Prison/others which are often just huge blowouts, not to mention that it still has alot of bad matchups in all the interactive decks. If they somehow gain popularity again Infect will suffer.
I think it's hardly fair to say that Infect merely existing means that the Modern meta is too linear. It's one more piece of the pile of aggressive linear decks, but it in and of itself is not an indicator of the format's linearity, or else we'd have to claim that Legacy is overrun by linear decks as well since Infect is a fairly popular deck there.
Infect is much more resilient than people realize, even against interactive decks. The Twin v Infect matchup was generally favored for Infect and the Abzan matchup used to be pretty good (not sure if that's changed recently or not). It's hard to just say that interactive decks universally defeat Infect.
They want Infect to exist in the format, since it's totally interactable. This is not going to change not now, not in January. Infect is a totally safe deck. It even promotes fair decks' plans. If Infect would be nerfed, the interaction in your deck would be probably less mandatory(I do not know in what degree though). Zooicide on the other hand, if this deck would dominate the format, then Become Immense would get snap banned but this deck is not a godly deck. Has its nightmare matchups as well(Burn,Affinity,Jund).
Understand that I'm not saying Infect is the problem that is plaguing Modern and needs something to be banned from it (merely that I was anticipating a ban). Infect's success is a symptom of the sickness plaguing the format - the linear nature of the metagame. If >50% of the metagame consisted of interactive decks, Infect would be unplayable. That it is having so much success is due to the fact that people are ignoring each other, which results in too many die-roll matchups and too many games of solitaire, and Infect has the fastest and most consistent goldfish while not being a total glass cannon. More than a banning, I wanted to see an unbanning of something to help the interactive decks not flounder around. They've unbanned Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek and it hasn't really done much to help non-Jund interactive decks break out.
tl;dr - Successful Infect is indicative of bigger problems
What about Jeskai Nahiri, (Jund), and Grixis Delver and Esper Control? They are interactive, win from time to time and Grixis is the most underplayed deck atm.
Linear decks are not a problem itself. The problem is that proactive plays are way more beneficial in a format which has more angels to attack and not all that good generic ways of stopping them. Good spells force bad removal.
Happy to see no changes for this run. I would be even happier if all we saw in January was a single unban to see how it affected the format, with no accompanying bans. This would suggest to me that Wizards is moving past the Pro Tour influence towards a more sustainable Modern. I haven't been producing much Modern Nexus/QS content recently, but I will definitely do something on both Preordain and the T4 rule with Infect before the January update.
I'm pretty disappointed by no changes. Preordain is a really safe unban that would do something to help blue decks, so I was hoping for at least that. I've always played Snapcaster decks, but I'm starting to think about buying into Jund or a linear deck. I'm starting to lose confidence that things are going to get any better for blue decks.
Honestly, if I wanted to buy into a completely new deck, it would be Bant Eldrazi in a heartbeat. The deck is almost as explosive as other aggro decks, almost as robust as Jund, and has some of the most pushed and overpowered creatures in Modern backed by lands that tap for 2 mana, lands that let you cast them without being countered, and a 1 mana Dig Through Time by means of Ancient Stirrings. It has the benefits of fast aggro with the benefits of strong midrange and virtually none of the drawbacks, including an infinite combo of its own. Unfortunately, the most expensive pieces (Noble Hierarch, Cavern of Souls, Chalice of the Void, and a third Engineered Explosives) combine for nearly $700. And that doesn't even include the rest of the deck, which would require another $200 or so. After spending a couple years and thousands of dollars on URx decks and staples, it's hard to swallow the idea of dropping another ~$1,000 just to be competitive. Luckily, grad school night classes are eating up much of my free time anyway, so it's just another excuse not to play. I don't see blue getting any help any time soon. Commander with friends has taken most of the priority this past year, and it looks like that will continue until at least January.
Let me agree for a second time. You are totally right on everything you say. Bant Eldrazi IS the best deck in Modern IMO and Ancient Stirrings is a ridiculous card really.
Plus, if you ever had given me the chance to speak about a ban, it would be either Cavern Of Souls or Ancient Stirrings. I consider those cards to be fairly broken regarding consistency. On the other side of the fence, you see blue decks trying to fight off with the mediocre/simply good Serum Visions. I don't want both Preordain and Stirrings, I just wish Stirrings would be down to 3 cards and not 5. But I am against any bans anyway. Playing with Infect and winning Trons and Eldrazis in my LGS makes me not look back even once for swapping from Grixis to Infect and Abzan Company at the last period. Those are the reasons that blue decks are not so good btw, and not the absence of more answers(Mana leaks+TS do just fine). But the power level of the format suddenly went through the roof with TKS, Smasher, Dredge cards, etc etc
The reason Eldrazi is so powerful still is because unlike highly synergistic decks, at the end of the day, it's really nothing more than a pile of some of the most pushed and most high value, high powered creatures ever made that are getting accelerated into play early to provide extremely powerful spell effects stapled to huge bodies with no observable downside.
And the struggles blue faces has everything to do with the strength of answers. Dealing with a bunch of X/1s is easy. Dealing with spell-based combo is easy. Dealing with the Graveyard is easy. Dealing with problematic lands is easy(ish). Dealing with ramp decks trying to resolve a payoff card is easy. But dealing with ALL THOSE TOGETHER, in addition to a deck like Bant Eldrazi, which plays robust creatures that can be uncounterable, are difficult to remove, and attack hard very early in the game, is almost impossible to do with any Uxx-based 75 cards. Jund has been doing well because, in addition to the better generalized disruption cards, it packs more than a dozen extremely high value threats at 2 and 3 mana. For Uxx to do well at this, it either needs a massive overhaul of answers (which is probably not happening any time soon, as per MaRo's comments about blue reactive cards), or it needs robust and reliable threats/win conditions (like Deceiver Exarch/Splinter Twin).
Until that happens, it will still be the best strategy to just do the fastest and most degenerate thing you can think of. Or just keep playing Jund. That doesn't sound like a super fun format to me (which is why I'm not losing much sleep over not being able to play as much nowadays).
tl;dr - Successful Infect is indicative of bigger problems
I do agree with this to a certain extent. I don't want to point fingers since it only was a small contribution to this so called problem modern is going through, but I've noticed a big change since Dredge emerged.
Its another deck which has an insane g1 matchup against fair strategies and forced more dedicated SB slots which made it impossible for midrange/control to have a prepared SB for most of the metagame. It also popularized Grafdigger's Cage which screwed fairer decks such as Abzan Company and Company/Chord decks in general, strategies which were full of bullets for these linear decks. Conflagrate consistently deals with any midrange creature oriented strategy while the resilience of the threats naturally deal with control.
Again, this was probably just another contributor, but I noticed the metagame getting more degenerate since its appearance. Maybe it was just the tipping point.
Infect is much more resilient than people realize, even against interactive decks. The Twin v Infect matchup was generally favored for Infect and the Abzan matchup used to be pretty good (not sure if that's changed recently or not). It's hard to just say that interactive decks universally defeat Infect.
It was not really favored for Infect, it was a tense game because Infect used to run 2-4 Spellskites in the 75 and Vines of the Vastwood prevented the combo, but Twin generally came out on top iirc. I do agree that Infect is resilient, mostly only because of Inkmoth Nexus though.
Ok, so lets look at the combined scg and gp results since the eldrazi ban
5 gps-
5 jund
1 infect
7 opens-
7 infect
6 jund
So, looking at these combined, we have a total of 11 jund and 7 infect.
This makes calling for an infect ban based on results hypocritical without also calling for a jund ban. In addition, this puts jund at 11.5% of the top 8's, and infect at 7.3%. This is significantly lower than the 20% that past bans of this category have had. Now, one could argue about infect "over performing" with high results and low share, and we do have precedence for this in the twin ban. Once again, the numbers fall far short, with infect taking up a little over a third of the metagame % and top 8 prevalence that twin held. Arguing t4 violations shows similar results, as all signs have put infect well under the threshold for banning under the t4 rule.
Over all, it is not Suprising at all that infect didnt get the axe. Literally 0 of their rules for the format have been ticked by the deck
SCG Opens are inbred? What are you smoking? These events are open to the public and each one gets literally hundreds of players from all over the country; it's not like the pro tour where it's a small, exclusive group of people, many of whom build and playtest with each other. Also, SCG releases day 2 meta statistics, so it should be easy to see if there's a difference between them and say MTGO.
Yes, SCG's meta appears quite inbred to me, both in general and tending to be extremely biased to the regional and local metagames as well.
If you watch you see all kinds of wacky brews and some really weird takes on existing archetypes too. Local guys playing their pet decks have more of an opportunity to place than at a GP because attendance is lower as well.
It's not quite as bizarre as the world championships type meta, but you're a lot more likely to see a 5 color aggro or 4 color humans or bant retreat or whatever doing well.
Edit: RE: Goalposts
I'm not shifting the goalpoasts, but I would say that GP performance is where I would start, since it tends to be more indicative of the broader metagame than SCG events.
I would at the very least weight GP (and previously pro tour) performance differently given the much higher and less regional population.
The best way to do it probably would be to weight proportionally by attendance; e.g. if a WMCQ has 100 people and a GP has 5000 people, you weight the WMCQ as 0.02 and the GP as 1. That way you don't wind up with sampling errors ruining your analysis.
That might not be the best way to do it but it's certainly going to get you closer to reality than trying to weight a 200 person tournament as equivalent to a 5000 person tournament.
Referring to pro tour eldrazi not current eldrazi. T1 chalice on 0 shuts off hive mind kill, and forces them to have titan combo in hand t2 or die. Also once again, if it truly was a good matchup, im even more glad it got the axe then
Edit:4x maindeck ghost quarter is nothing to scoff at either
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
Blue isn't even the worse colour in Modern either.
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
Something people always forget is that Stoneforge Mystic was essentially always in a Jace the Mindsculptor deck through it's history in standard. I think we have far better ways to deal with it and it's equipment than before and it'd be fine to bring off the banlist. That being said, I can see why they are being slower to ban/unban stuff since they don't need to worry about the Pro Tour anymore.
That being said, I don't think it's really that dangerous. I personally would find it interesting to see how the Stoneforge Mystic vs Kolaghan's Command dynamic would work out. I feel like there are enough midrange tools that SFM won't be more than the meta can handle - you'll still be liable to losing to infect (...etc) with SFM in hand/in play.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Infect has put 7 pilots into the top 8s of SCG Opens since March 1st. Jund has placed 6 pilots (see the attached picture) into the top 8s of SCG Opens during the same time frame. Jund has more than twice as many pilots. Infect is, in no uncertain terms, a better deck than Jund.
It will homogenize that section of the metagame imo, which is a bit of a negative. But I don't see why it would make Jund vs Abzan the default though, it might help stuff like mardu (can play both!) and other Wxx midrange like esper and bant get closer to Jund and Abzan.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Don't forget diversifying Jeskai control as either Jeskai Nahiri or Jeskai Stoneblade (the deck doesn't have enough space for both packages).
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Honestly, if I wanted to buy into a completely new deck, it would be Bant Eldrazi in a heartbeat. The deck is almost as explosive as other aggro decks, almost as robust as Jund, and has some of the most pushed and overpowered creatures in Modern backed by lands that tap for 2 mana, lands that let you cast them without being countered, and a 1 mana Dig Through Time by means of Ancient Stirrings. It has the benefits of fast aggro with the benefits of strong midrange and virtually none of the drawbacks, including an infinite combo of its own. Unfortunately, the most expensive pieces (Noble Hierarch, Cavern of Souls, Chalice of the Void, and a third Engineered Explosives) combine for nearly $700. And that doesn't even include the rest of the deck, which would require another $200 or so. After spending a couple years and thousands of dollars on URx decks and staples, it's hard to swallow the idea of dropping another ~$1,000 just to be competitive. Luckily, grad school night classes are eating up much of my free time anyway, so it's just another excuse not to play. I don't see blue getting any help any time soon. Commander with friends has taken most of the priority this past year, and it looks like that will continue until at least January.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Hmm, i wonder what data is more reliable, gp results with 1000+ entrants each that show jund far out performing infect, or scg events that are a few hundred people and contain very localized metas
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
First off, we don't know what percentage of the field is specifically in the inbred field that is SCG opens. You'd need to do that first.
Secondly, the meta is as I said so ridiculous and inbred I would really hesitate to draw any conclusions based on it.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
For a deck that has, again, around twice as many pilots (likely even more at the upper echolons of the community), these numbers do not line up. A holistic evaluation of the format (Jund has no positive game one matchups against tier 1 competitors except Infect) is reflected by the numbers, and basically says that your best bet for doing well at a large event is to ignore your opponent and try to pick whatever linear deck is not going to be hated on that day.
You're entitled to keep your opinion, of course, but I, as well as many (probably approaching the majority at this point) players feel like the format is unhealthy for interactive competitive play and a 'No Changes' announcement today was a tremendous failure on the part of R&D.
(For the record, I play Infect and I'm personally baffled at how Become Immense didn't get banned today. I'm not a salty Jund pilot wanting a leg up on everybody)
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StaffI mean there are a lot of linear agro decks right now but I wanna see where the format goes until at least January. Infect and Bant Eldrazi decks are kind annoying but lets see what happens
Understand that I'm not saying Infect is the problem that is plaguing Modern and needs something to be banned from it (merely that I was anticipating a ban). Infect's success is a symptom of the sickness plaguing the format - the linear nature of the metagame. If >50% of the metagame consisted of interactive decks, Infect would be unplayable. That it is having so much success is due to the fact that people are ignoring each other, which results in too many die-roll matchups and too many games of solitaire, and Infect has the fastest and most consistent goldfish while not being a total glass cannon. More than a banning, I wanted to see an unbanning of something to help the interactive decks not flounder around. They've unbanned Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek and it hasn't really done much to help non-Jund interactive decks break out.
tl;dr - Successful Infect is indicative of bigger problems
Infect is also a deck which can be easily hated out, some cards are just devastating against the deck, if its popularity really starts to noticeably rise people will pack more Chalice/Spellskite/Melira/Sudden Shock/Nights of Soul's Betrayal/Deflecting Palm/Grim Lavamancer/Ghostly Prison/others which are often just huge blowouts, not to mention that it still has alot of bad matchups in all the interactive decks. If they somehow gain popularity again Infect will suffer.
Infect is much more resilient than people realize, even against interactive decks. The Twin v Infect matchup was generally favored for Infect and the Abzan matchup used to be pretty good (not sure if that's changed recently or not). It's hard to just say that interactive decks universally defeat Infect.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
What about Jeskai Nahiri, (Jund), and Grixis Delver and Esper Control? They are interactive, win from time to time and Grixis is the most underplayed deck atm.
Linear decks are not a problem itself. The problem is that proactive plays are way more beneficial in a format which has more angels to attack and not all that good generic ways of stopping them. Good spells force bad removal.
Greetings
King
UWRWorking on: Pyromancer AscensionUR
The reason Eldrazi is so powerful still is because unlike highly synergistic decks, at the end of the day, it's really nothing more than a pile of some of the most pushed and most high value, high powered creatures ever made that are getting accelerated into play early to provide extremely powerful spell effects stapled to huge bodies with no observable downside.
And the struggles blue faces has everything to do with the strength of answers. Dealing with a bunch of X/1s is easy. Dealing with spell-based combo is easy. Dealing with the Graveyard is easy. Dealing with problematic lands is easy(ish). Dealing with ramp decks trying to resolve a payoff card is easy. But dealing with ALL THOSE TOGETHER, in addition to a deck like Bant Eldrazi, which plays robust creatures that can be uncounterable, are difficult to remove, and attack hard very early in the game, is almost impossible to do with any Uxx-based 75 cards. Jund has been doing well because, in addition to the better generalized disruption cards, it packs more than a dozen extremely high value threats at 2 and 3 mana. For Uxx to do well at this, it either needs a massive overhaul of answers (which is probably not happening any time soon, as per MaRo's comments about blue reactive cards), or it needs robust and reliable threats/win conditions (like Deceiver Exarch/Splinter Twin).
Until that happens, it will still be the best strategy to just do the fastest and most degenerate thing you can think of. Or just keep playing Jund. That doesn't sound like a super fun format to me (which is why I'm not losing much sleep over not being able to play as much nowadays).
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I do agree with this to a certain extent. I don't want to point fingers since it only was a small contribution to this so called problem modern is going through, but I've noticed a big change since Dredge emerged.
Its another deck which has an insane g1 matchup against fair strategies and forced more dedicated SB slots which made it impossible for midrange/control to have a prepared SB for most of the metagame. It also popularized Grafdigger's Cage which screwed fairer decks such as Abzan Company and Company/Chord decks in general, strategies which were full of bullets for these linear decks. Conflagrate consistently deals with any midrange creature oriented strategy while the resilience of the threats naturally deal with control.
Again, this was probably just another contributor, but I noticed the metagame getting more degenerate since its appearance. Maybe it was just the tipping point.
It was not really favored for Infect, it was a tense game because Infect used to run 2-4 Spellskites in the 75 and Vines of the Vastwood prevented the combo, but Twin generally came out on top iirc. I do agree that Infect is resilient, mostly only because of Inkmoth Nexus though.
5 gps-
5 jund
1 infect
7 opens-
7 infect
6 jund
So, looking at these combined, we have a total of 11 jund and 7 infect.
This makes calling for an infect ban based on results hypocritical without also calling for a jund ban. In addition, this puts jund at 11.5% of the top 8's, and infect at 7.3%. This is significantly lower than the 20% that past bans of this category have had. Now, one could argue about infect "over performing" with high results and low share, and we do have precedence for this in the twin ban. Once again, the numbers fall far short, with infect taking up a little over a third of the metagame % and top 8 prevalence that twin held. Arguing t4 violations shows similar results, as all signs have put infect well under the threshold for banning under the t4 rule.
Over all, it is not Suprising at all that infect didnt get the axe. Literally 0 of their rules for the format have been ticked by the deck
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
Yes, SCG's meta appears quite inbred to me, both in general and tending to be extremely biased to the regional and local metagames as well.
If you watch you see all kinds of wacky brews and some really weird takes on existing archetypes too. Local guys playing their pet decks have more of an opportunity to place than at a GP because attendance is lower as well.
It's not quite as bizarre as the world championships type meta, but you're a lot more likely to see a 5 color aggro or 4 color humans or bant retreat or whatever doing well.
Edit: RE: Goalposts
I'm not shifting the goalpoasts, but I would say that GP performance is where I would start, since it tends to be more indicative of the broader metagame than SCG events.
I would at the very least weight GP (and previously pro tour) performance differently given the much higher and less regional population.
The best way to do it probably would be to weight proportionally by attendance; e.g. if a WMCQ has 100 people and a GP has 5000 people, you weight the WMCQ as 0.02 and the GP as 1. That way you don't wind up with sampling errors ruining your analysis.
That might not be the best way to do it but it's certainly going to get you closer to reality than trying to weight a 200 person tournament as equivalent to a 5000 person tournament.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall