Valakut should ban again, this is not making sense for how people playing with this, Scapeshift, Primeval Titan, Explore, Farseek, Summoner's Pact, Khalni Heart Expedition, Sakura-Tribe Elder......everybody playing the same way, same cards, this deck is just wont change.
Yes, that's why you see decks like Bring to Light Scapeshift, RUG Scapeshift, Omenshift, Titan Breach, and RG Valakut all playing the same cards.
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Modern RGTron UGInfect URStorm WUBRAd Nauseam BRGrishoalbrand URGScapeshift WBGAbzan Company WUBRGAmulet Titan BRGLiving End WGBogles
Think about what they're saying with Cloudpost banning and Eye of Ugin. Ramp that strong shouldn't be there. So why is tron?
Asking "if Cloudpost is too strong, why isn't Tron too strong?" is akin to asking "if Deathrite Shaman is too strong, why isn't Noble Hierarch too strong?" In both cases, the answer is obvious: The latter is quite a bit weaker than the former. 12-Post is quite a bit stronger than Urzatron is. It ramps more effectively, it's thwarted less by land destruction, and it staves off aggro better thanks to Glimmerpost gaining life.
In regards to Eye of Ugin vs. Tron, you ignore the fact that Eye of Ugin starts the ramp (for Eldrazi) on turn 1, whereas Tron can't get any ramp until the third turn (well I guess with a crazy good hand you can get 3 mana off an Urza's Tower on the second turn if you're running Explore, but almost all Tron builds have dropped that card). There's a big difference between a card that instantly gives you 2 mana versus one that can't give you that ramp until the third turn and requires you to assemble two other specific lands.
Basically, Eye of Ugin and Cloudpost ramp way better than Tron. So wondering why Tron is okay but those aren't is like asking why Time Warp isn't banned when one considers how amazing Time Walk is.
You literally took what I said, quoted it, then changed the wording and meaning of the quote in your first sentence, and somehow missed the point at the same time. What I was saying with all of those examples is WotC has yet to clearly define what they want this format to look like. They do have a problem with Ramp in the Cloudpost form and the nuisance that Eldrazi was thanks to Eye of Ugin, yet the 'feel-bads' about Tron has been allowed to stay, albeit begrudgingly. Tron can still, even now, clean up in g1, then take g2 before the 3 and 4cc hate cards remove their primary strategy. Now, that's not to say that Tron should be banned, as a matter of fact I'm 100% opposed to banning based on words like 'feeling' and 'dislike' as opposed to 'format-warping', 'stifling', 'difficult to answer' or 'over-represented'.
I hope I clarified my position better, because that one line was not only taken out of context but you answered a question/argument I never asked.
But my post does answer your question. 12-Post gets banned because it's too powerful. Tron, which is not anywhere near as powerful, is spared. Trying to claim they have "yet to clearly define what they want this format to look like" (at least in regards to this specific case) is silly because 12-Post got banned because it was too good at what it did. Tron, which is not as powerful, is apparently at an acceptable power level.
As for the Eldrazi, comparing the single most dominant deck in the format's history with a deck that tends to be in the 3-5% area is just plain silly.
There are certainly a number of criticisms that one can aim at Wizards of the Coast in regards to their handling of the Modern banned list as well as alleged dissonances in what's banned or what isn't banned, but this is not one of them. There is no disconnect or dissonance or additional need to "define" things in regards to 12-Post and Eldrazi being banned but Tron not being banned. The first two are significantly more powerful than the latter, so it makes perfect sense for them to get bans while Tron doesn't.
I agree with you. While tron is still a strong deck, it doesn't violate the turn 4 rule. In addition, there is plenty of hate for it in modern.
Not to mention that it has unfavorable matches against Burn, Infect, Delver, Dredge, Death's Shadow aggro, Ad Nauseum and other combo, or any other fast decks. And this was when eye of ugin was still legal.
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pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
Jund + Junk putting GODLY results in the recent MODO comp leagues. They are sitting in 7.3% + 7% meta share(=14.3%), and trending upwards. If. by any means, they reach 9+9 would they be in problem?
PS: Of course I am not advocating any bans, just wanting opinions.
This thread and Modern generally are totally gripped by ban mania. By ban fever at this point. Just a few pages back, GK you yourself wanted/predicted a ramp deck banning because all the fast aggro couldn't police it. Now its Jund and Abzan? We have people claiming Dredge is still totally broken, people claiming Bloo is still broken, and now people worrying about BGx's share. People need to calm down, take deep breaths, and get some perspective. I know Wizards is partially to blame for this with its incessant and opaque bannings, but we have to take responsibility and stay rational.
Give the metagame time. Let's at least wait for a real tournament to start panicking about the bannability of these decks,
I think a much more fruitful topic would be discussing the possible answers Wizards might bring to Standard and, by extension, Modern. Push was a good step, but what comes next?
I did not advocate a Jund and Abzan ban. I specifically said " I am not advocating any bans, only wanting opinions ". I am not sure what else should I write to make myself clear on me don't wanting any bans. Hell, I even was OK with a "No bans" during previous weekend. Just asking from what % and onwards could the BGx feel the pressure. Will it be 10 + 10? 12 + 12?
It's really sad that most things one can ask on this thread can be perceived as banmania posts, even if you clarify it's not for that...
Next time I will try and clarify that I DONT WANT ANY BANS FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR twice!
The thing is, when someone says they don't want any bans in a post-script sentence, but then talk about a deck's "GODLY results" in an earlier sentence and ask if it will soon be "a problem," AND they do that in the thread where ban talk has been happening nonstop for pages, of course it's perceived as part of the ban mania. What other way are we to interpret "a problem" in this context? You even confirm that connection in this recent post, asking "from what % and onwards could the BGx feel the pressure." Here, "the pressure" is clearly ban pressure, again underscoring a connection between a perception of BGx's current meta performance and fear of bans.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection. Accusing a deck of putting up "GODLY results" and asking about its potential to become "a problem" at this time is itself very problematic and is clearly linked to ban dialogue. So is asking "from what % and onwards could the BGx feel the pressure." We're one week out from the ban, less than a week into AER for paper events, and NOT into AER at all for MTGO events. Those "GODLY results" are curiosities at best and meaningless/misleading at worst.
We need to back off this ban fear and allow the metagame to settle. We can certainly make informed predictions about where it will head in the first month or so, but immediately tying that to bans is a disservice to the community and the format.
I think a much more fruitful topic would be discussing the possible answers Wizards might bring to Standard and, by extension, Modern. Push was a good step, but what comes next?
Does that mean we can propose cards Wizards should print to help modern here? There kind of is a thread for that already so I'm just asking to make sure. As long as the proposed cards are directly linked to modern format health it's ok I guess?
I agree that modern would profit from something between Wasteland and Ghost Quarter. GQ is fine against Tron and utility/manlands but it obviously sucks against RG Valakut decks and isn't really that good against Bant Eldrazi either.
So how about:
Better GQ
Land
Tap: add c to your mana pool
Tap, Sac Better GQ: Destroy target nonbasic land. It's controller may draw a card.
It's still card disadvantage (like GQ) but actually sets your opponents back in terms of land drops. I can see this especially helping Tempo decks (trading CA for a tempo gain is exactly what the card does). I just don't know if this can ever go through standard. Maybe they can use it to give mono coloured strategies a push there?
Edit: it's possible that we need a mechanic a la revolt (easy to enable in modern, but a lot harder in T2) to get a wastelandesque card in modern though.
The thing is, when someone says they don't want any bans in a post-script sentence, but then talk about a deck's "GODLY results" in an earlier sentence and ask if it will soon be "a problem," AND they do that in the thread where ban talk has been happening nonstop for pages, of course it's perceived as part of the ban mania.
So, my post has to be a post filled with banmania just because I asked a legit question after pages and pages of banmania? I am sorry, but it's not my job to get down with the whole quality of this thread.
No, you completely misinterpreted what he meant. The way you worded your post made it seem you were theorizing a scenario were Jund/Abzan could be banned based on MTGO numbers despite placing a little disclaimer. Whenever someone brings up tournament results or MTGO percentages it's usually to justify a ban, and with a thread mostly discussing bans it would easy to confuse your comment as regular "ban-mania."
I think a much more fruitful topic would be discussing the possible answers Wizards might bring to Standard and, by extension, Modern. Push was a good step, but what comes next?
Does that mean we can propose cards Wizards should print to help modern here? There kind of is a thread for that already so I'm just asking to make sure. As long as the proposed cards are directly linked to modern format health it's ok I guess?
I agree that modern would profit from something between Wasteland and Ghost Quarter. GQ is fine against Tron and utility/manlands but it obviously sucks against RG Valakut decks and isn't really that good against Bant Eldrazi either.
So how about:
Better GQ
Land
Tap: add c to your mana pool
Tap, Sac Better GQ: Destroy target nonbasic land. It's controller may draw a card.
It's still card disadvantage (like GQ) but actually sets your opponents back in terms of land drops. I can see this especially helping Tempo decks (trading CA for a tempo gain is exactly what the card does). I just don't know if this can ever go through standard. Maybe they can use it to give mono coloured strategies a push there?
Edit: it's possible that we need a mechanic a la revolt (easy to enable in modern, but a lot harder in T2) to get a wastelandesque card in modern though.
That's literally the exact card I came up with for the purpose. Not surprising, since it's a pretty common-sense solution.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
So, my post has to be a post filled with banmania just because I asked a legit question after pages and pages of banmania? I am sorry, but it's not my job to get down with the whole quality of this thread. We, users, are here just to comment on various topics and ask legit questions like:
In what X% of the meta share does a deck becomes vulnerable to banning?Does Wizards have a X% on this? Or is it just intuitional?
That is a very legitimate question. The ways you phrased the posts I initially replied to, however, were not framed in this manner.
It's not like I am trying to argue about a Twin or Bloom unbanning. If you think those are questions a user should not be making and instead he should be talking about Fatal Push and other possible answers that are about to come after this user(me) having talked so much about it with legit arguments and our post were lost in Bloom's/Twin's noise, it's ok.
Using guidelines as a user/moderator is a nice thing to be doing and I like it, when someone is completely out of topic("Bloom was not a T4 rule violator/Twin should come back"). But when someone is asking a legit question, that feels bad and unjustified. You can't set guidelines on users talking ONLY about the new, hot subject. Users are supposed to comment on everything they want.
No one is setting guidelines. I'm pushing back against ban mania, which I've done since joining the forum and done in basically the same way. The questions you ask below are not even remotely ban mania. They are solid, reasonable, interesting points of discussion:
In the end, my question has further implications:
Does BGx's rise mean Bloodbraid Elf is completely off limits as Tanukimo suggested?
What do we expect from the coming meta?
What do we want it to be, so it can be in a healthy state?
Unfortunately, the post I initially responded to had none of those questions and only talked about "GODLY results" and asked about those results becoming a problem. The follow-up post then asked about ban pressure. That line of inquiry fits in ban mania, and I'll push back against it as I always have. These questions quoted above, however, are very good ones we should all be considering.
I think a much more fruitful topic would be discussing the possible answers Wizards might bring to Standard and, by extension, Modern. Push was a good step, but what comes next?
Does that mean we can propose cards Wizards should print to help modern here? There kind of is a thread for that already so I'm just asking to make sure. As long as the proposed cards are directly linked to modern format health it's ok I guess?
It's totally in the thread's topic! See the green "allowed topics" in the first post.
I always imagined them doing a Shockland version of Wasteland whenever they return to Ravnica. It fits the lore as well since the Gateless are anti-guilds.
Think about what they're saying with Cloudpost banning and Eye of Ugin. Ramp that strong shouldn't be there. So why is tron?
Asking "if Cloudpost is too strong, why isn't Tron too strong?" is akin to asking "if Deathrite Shaman is too strong, why isn't Noble Hierarch too strong?" In both cases, the answer is obvious: The latter is quite a bit weaker than the former. 12-Post is quite a bit stronger than Urzatron is. It ramps more effectively, it's thwarted less by land destruction, and it staves off aggro better thanks to Glimmerpost gaining life.
In regards to Eye of Ugin vs. Tron, you ignore the fact that Eye of Ugin starts the ramp (for Eldrazi) on turn 1, whereas Tron can't get any ramp until the third turn (well I guess with a crazy good hand you can get 3 mana off an Urza's Tower on the second turn if you're running Explore, but almost all Tron builds have dropped that card). There's a big difference between a card that instantly gives you 2 mana versus one that can't give you that ramp until the third turn and requires you to assemble two other specific lands.
Basically, Eye of Ugin and Cloudpost ramp way better than Tron. So wondering why Tron is okay but those aren't is like asking why Time Warp isn't banned when one considers how amazing Time Walk is.
You literally took what I said, quoted it, then changed the wording and meaning of the quote in your first sentence, and somehow missed the point at the same time. What I was saying with all of those examples is WotC has yet to clearly define what they want this format to look like. They do have a problem with Ramp in the Cloudpost form and the nuisance that Eldrazi was thanks to Eye of Ugin, yet the 'feel-bads' about Tron has been allowed to stay, albeit begrudgingly. Tron can still, even now, clean up in g1, then take g2 before the 3 and 4cc hate cards remove their primary strategy. Now, that's not to say that Tron should be banned, as a matter of fact I'm 100% opposed to banning based on words like 'feeling' and 'dislike' as opposed to 'format-warping', 'stifling', 'difficult to answer' or 'over-represented'.
I hope I clarified my position better, because that one line was not only taken out of context but you answered a question/argument I never asked.
But my post does answer your question. 12-Post gets banned because it's too powerful. Tron, which is not anywhere near as powerful, is spared. Trying to claim they have "yet to clearly define what they want this format to look like" (at least in regards to this specific case) is silly because 12-Post got banned because it was too good at what it did. Tron, which is not as powerful, is apparently at an acceptable power level.
As for the Eldrazi, comparing the single most dominant deck in the format's history with a deck that tends to be in the 3-5% area is just plain silly.
There are certainly a number of criticisms that one can aim at Wizards of the Coast in regards to their handling of the Modern banned list as well as alleged dissonances in what's banned or what isn't banned, but this is not one of them. There is no disconnect or dissonance or additional need to "define" things in regards to 12-Post and Eldrazi being banned but Tron not being banned. The first two are significantly more powerful than the latter, so it makes perfect sense for them to get bans while Tron doesn't.
I presented a laundry list of arguments, this was only one among them. So, no, it still doesn't. You disagree with this specific example, that's fine, but the point remains. Since it's inception, Modern has provoked reactive bans to what they thought was an acceptable power level, and then realized it wasn't. Meanwhile, the player base has tended toward 'solving' the format with more and more degenerate, difficult to answer strategies, the same strategies that by and large simply don't work in Legacy. That format has a myriad of better threats and answers, and I would dare day it's far more interactive than Modern, more skill-based, and a lot less of the 'rock, paper, scissors' nature of Modern. This seems to have been no end of trouble for WotC in trying to prune the format when it's just plain missing something. So you get these semi-contradictory statements like 'well, Tron isn't as bad, so that kind of ramp is okay', until something comes along that makes it not okay (like the collateral damage of the Eye banning because of another deck's ridiculousness). So, it's less about why one kind of ramp is okay and another isn't because of power level, because that is very subjective and highly subject to change.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
Both the community and Wizards are to blame, and I indicated as much in a post on the last page. Wizards is at fault for opaque reasoning and poor communication around their frequent bans. The community is at fault because, instead of demanding better communication and challenging Wizards' management, they embrace bans as a solution and push the issue. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'm confident the number of Modern articles in 2016 suggesting bans was an all-time high, especially across the major content providers. That attitude, although certainly started and sustained by Wizards, is also promoted by the community and is a problem for Modern's longevity.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
Both the community and Wizards are to blame, and I indicated as much in a post on the last page. Wizards is at fault for opaque reasoning and poor communication around their frequent bans. The community is at fault because, instead of demanding better communication and challenging Wizards' management, they embrace bans as a solution and push the issue. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'm confident the number of Modern articles in 2016 suggesting bans was an all-time high, especially across the major content providers. That attitude, although certainly started and sustained by Wizards, is also promoted by the community and is a problem for Modern's longevity.
Meh I tried that with #FixModern, no one thought it was an issue that needed to be pushed. The ones who want Wizards management to fix their constructed formats and their communication are in the minority.
Each time they do something unpopular or stupid the Modern community gets upset and then eventually gives up. They'll keep on doing whatever they feel is in their best interest if we allow them.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
Both the community and Wizards are to blame, and I indicated as much in a post on the last page. Wizards is at fault for opaque reasoning and poor communication around their frequent bans. The community is at fault because, instead of demanding better communication and challenging Wizards' management, they embrace bans as a solution and push the issue. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'm confident the number of Modern articles in 2016 suggesting bans was an all-time high, especially across the major content providers. That attitude, although certainly started and sustained by Wizards, is also promoted by the community and is a problem for Modern's longevity.
Meh I tried that with #FixModern, no one thought it was an issue that needed to be pushed. The ones who want Wizards management to fix their constructed formats and their communication are in the minority.
A hashtag isn't going to change anything - format attendance will. For as much as everyone blows up about how awful wizards is on this board, their decisions haven't resulted in declining tournament attendance in this format.
A hashtag isn't going to change anything - format attendance will. For as much as everyone blows up about how awful wizards is on this board, their decisions haven't resulted in declining tournament attendance in this format.
I would imagine a good source of their attendance data comes from FNM style WPN events, rather than GPs. And considering how much Modern players invest in their decks (time, money, personal style), it would really take a lot to cause Modern players to stop showing up. It would be a shame if this were their main metric for judging a format's health, since I could imagine heavily-invested players begrudgingly continuing to play a format they don't particularly like as much anymore, creating the illusion of satisfaction through attendance.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
In comparison with League of Legends, when there is an update on any individual character, there is more detail about the changes on that individual character, than what Wizards posts about the entire format and the card combined. Although some of the reasoning of Riot comes off as Sarcastic (in the nature of the game), it's generally reasonable.
If I had any power over Wizards, I would fire half of their staff, and I would ensure everyone on the PR/Communications got let go just based on the past two years alone. We are talking from the removal of PT benefits, the timing of all of their announcements, and even how they convey them. From Twitter to Mothership articles, etc.
I understand some of the responsibility will always be the community itself, but to put it in perspective, we should be able to alienate what are actual concerns or not when it comes to banning decisions. Someone thought that Gitaxian Probe was a huge potential ban target, and most of us mocked those users. I even remember highly respected people on this forum calling those bans "asinine" and "beyond reasonable to debate", now look where we are.
So if even the most accurate people on these forums are just out to lunch every other year, that's Wizards fault for being completely unpredictable and unstable. We should be able to predict these things, the fact that we can't is a problem that the company from the ground up needs to change.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
In comparison with League of Legends, when there is an update on any individual character, there is more detail about the changes on that individual character, than what Wizards posts about the entire format and the card combined. Although some of the reasoning of Riot comes off as Sarcastic (in the nature of the game), it's generally reasonable.
If I had any power over Wizards, I would fire half of their staff, and I would ensure everyone on the PR/Communications got let go just based on the past two years alone. We are talking from the removal of PT benefits, the timing of all of their announcements, and even how they convey them. From Twitter to Mothership articles, etc.
I understand some of the responsibility will always be the community itself, but to put it in perspective, we should be able to alienate what are actual concerns or not when it comes to banning decisions. Someone thought that Gitaxian Probe was a huge potential ban target, and most of us mocked those users. I even remember highly respected people on this forum calling those bans "asinine" and "beyond reasonable to debate", now look where we are.
So if even the most accurate people on these forums are just out to lunch every other year, that's Wizards fault for being completely unpredictable and unstable. We should be able to predict these things, the fact that we can't is a problem that the company from the ground up needs to change.
But some people do understand Wotc's vision and what they are trying to do with the format. Those are the ones bringing up these 'asinine' bans.
The issue is there are different groups of people that want different things from the format, there always have.
As long as those enjoying the format keep showing up and attendance numbers stay up, we can all expect the same. Like it or not.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
In comparison with League of Legends, when there is an update on any individual character, there is more detail about the changes on that individual character, than what Wizards posts about the entire format and the card combined. Although some of the reasoning of Riot comes off as Sarcastic (in the nature of the game), it's generally reasonable.
If I had any power over Wizards, I would fire half of their staff, and I would ensure everyone on the PR/Communications got let go just based on the past two years alone. We are talking from the removal of PT benefits, the timing of all of their announcements, and even how they convey them. From Twitter to Mothership articles, etc.
I understand some of the responsibility will always be the community itself, but to put it in perspective, we should be able to alienate what are actual concerns or not when it comes to banning decisions. Someone thought that Gitaxian Probe was a huge potential ban target, and most of us mocked those users. I even remember highly respected people on this forum calling those bans "asinine" and "beyond reasonable to debate", now look where we are.
So if even the most accurate people on these forums are just out to lunch every other year, that's Wizards fault for being completely unpredictable and unstable. We should be able to predict these things, the fact that we can't is a problem that the company from the ground up needs to change.
But some people do understand Wotc's vision and what they are trying to do with the format. Those are the ones bringing up these 'asinine' bans.
The issue is there are different groups of people that want different things from the format, there always have.
As long as those enjoying the format keep showing up and attendance numbers stay up, we can all expect the same. Like it or not.
You are missing the point completely.
No single group fully understands. That's why we are in this situation. It simply depends on the time of year if you are correct or not.
People also said ThopterSword would take over and was 'unsafe to ever be unbanned', fact of the matter is not enough testing is done in Wizards or the community to REALLY know what will or will not work.
With Wizards, its guess work, its by the gut, they have admitted to such.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
In comparison with League of Legends, when there is an update on any individual character, there is more detail about the changes on that individual character, than what Wizards posts about the entire format and the card combined. Although some of the reasoning of Riot comes off as Sarcastic (in the nature of the game), it's generally reasonable.
If I had any power over Wizards, I would fire half of their staff, and I would ensure everyone on the PR/Communications got let go just based on the past two years alone. We are talking from the removal of PT benefits, the timing of all of their announcements, and even how they convey them. From Twitter to Mothership articles, etc.
I understand some of the responsibility will always be the community itself, but to put it in perspective, we should be able to alienate what are actual concerns or not when it comes to banning decisions. Someone thought that Gitaxian Probe was a huge potential ban target, and most of us mocked those users. I even remember highly respected people on this forum calling those bans "asinine" and "beyond reasonable to debate", now look where we are.
So if even the most accurate people on these forums are just out to lunch every other year, that's Wizards fault for being completely unpredictable and unstable. We should be able to predict these things, the fact that we can't is a problem that the company from the ground up needs to change.
But some people do understand Wotc's vision and what they are trying to do with the format. Those are the ones bringing up these 'asinine' bans.
The issue is there are different groups of people that want different things from the format, there always have.
As long as those enjoying the format keep showing up and attendance numbers stay up, we can all expect the same. Like it or not.
First, nobody understands what Wizards' ultimate vision is for the format, and that's entirely the problem. Their lack of clear communication combined with seemingly haphazard actions specifically leads to the kind of banmania discussion we see now. It's only going to get worse now that there are twice as many announcements a year and "we simply don't like this deck" appears to be a completely legitimate ban criteria.
Second, attendance doesn't necessarily correspond to enjoyment, especially in a format where players are often intimately tied to their decks (playstyle preference, investment costs, hours played, difficulty of switching decks, etc). As long as their decks remain legal and the game isn't Eldrazi Winter levels of broken, most people will generally play at the local level. There's often too much of an investment of time/money/effort to just walk away from the format, even if it is in a state they don't necessarily like.
Personally, I am happy with how WOTC is handling things and I am certain I understand WOTC's vision. Is it ideal or perfect? No. But it's getting there.
I would like to expand that I don't necessarily think their choices to ban are wrong, but they're very odd choices given their history. Their reasoning is also very thin. What is lacking is their communication with regards to bans and the health of the format, which leaves all future bannings/unbannings a complete mystery to players. This mystery leads to ban mania and baseless speculation. We spent 50-something pages discussing what could be unbanned to help the format and the majority of players focused around 0-1 bans and 1-2 unbans. Instead, Wizards bans two mostly-unpredicted things and essentially tells us that they will ban anything out of any popular deck that they do not like. They maintain the negative stigma that no deck is safe and that Modern is a "ban everything" format.
Their choices aren't necessarily bad, but their communication and implementation do nothing but help destroy consumer confidence.
Here, Forsythe explains Modern's nine qualities. According to him, "Modern should..."
Be a fun way to play Magic (first, and easy to forget, but very important!)
Let you tap into your collection to expand upon established decks and familiar strategies from Magic's recent past
Offer different types of decks and gameplay than what you typically see in Standard
Not rotate, allowing you to keep a deck for a long period of time
Consist of cards that we are willing and able to reprint
Have a diverse top-tier metagame featuring over a dozen archetypes
Not be dominated by fast, non-interactive decks (consistent kills before turn four are a red flag)
Be at a power level that allows some newly printed Standard cards to affect the format (we don't have other ways to introduce cards into the format, and we like it when cards or decks can transition)
Have as small a banned list as possible that accomplishes all the previous goals
That's it! Everything beyond that, including discussion of "Tier 1" vs. "Tier 0.x" is all speculation and our attempts at filling in Wizards gaps.
I'll also add that R&D cares a lot about matchup data from MTGO Leagues. Stoddard discussed this in his recent banning article and talked about it extensively on Twitter. See some quotes below:
If there is one deck with no bad matchups, everyone will just trend toward either playing that deck or not playing.
Quote from Sam Stoddard »
When we looked at the Magic Online metagame data from Competitive Leagues, it was clear that White-Blue Flash was the strongest deck in Standard; it only had one bad matchup to a tier 2 deck (Black-Red Vampires), which it was only a one-percent underdog to.
Quote from Sam Stoddard »
Now, Flash didn't dominate everything, but it didn't have anything else that was a losing matchup.
@BraunDuinIt we don't ignore paper events, but not really able to incorporate them into matchup win% data. #WOTCstaff
In short, matchups and win-rate matters. It actually matters more than just the deck's dominance (see Reflector Mage) because Wizards wants to get ahead of a deck like this before it becomes a dominant deck.
And, while paper is important, I think (hope?) the granularity of data analysis available from MTGO would allow them to make more informed choices, so they may lean on that far more than paper?
Not be dominated by fast, non-interactive decks (consistent kills before turn four are a red flag)
We might disagree that this was the case with the Probe decks, but we have much less data than they do. Because of that, any challenge to Wizards' data has a high burden of evidence, and I at least still haven't seen anything that meets that bar. Otherwise, the ban made sense with their format vision.
According to Wizards, Probe decks broke the rule of being BY FAR the best choice when someone wanted to WIN a major event. When a deck is the BEST BY FAR(with Dredge) choice to help you win a major event, this deck will get banned.
Gitaxian Probe increased the number of third-turn kills in a few ways, but particularly by giving perfect information (and a card) to decks that often have to make strategic decisions about going "all-in." This hurt the ability of reactive decks to effectively bluff or for the aggressive deck to miss-sequence their turn. Ultimately, the card did too much for too little cost.
It's pretty clear it was banned because it "increased the number of third-turn kills in a few ways," not because it was "BY FAR the best choice when someone wanted to WIN a major event." There are a lot of jumps you have to make to get from the Wizards quote to your interpretation. That's particularly problematic because they don't even talk about Infect, Bloo, or DSZ being best decks. It's just about fast decks winning on T3. so I think we should just stick with the given reason: "Gitaxian Probe increased the number of third-turn kills in a few ways."
Cards are banned because they are in the best deck, but not every ban boils down to a "best deck" ban. This was not one such ban.
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Yes, that's why you see decks like Bring to Light Scapeshift, RUG Scapeshift, Omenshift, Titan Breach, and RG Valakut all playing the same cards.
RGTron
UGInfect
URStorm
WUBRAd Nauseam
BRGrishoalbrand
URGScapeshift
WBGAbzan Company
WUBRGAmulet Titan
BRGLiving End
WGBogles
I agree with you. While tron is still a strong deck, it doesn't violate the turn 4 rule. In addition, there is plenty of hate for it in modern.
1 ghost quarter
1 tectonic edge
1 fulminator mage
1 ancient grudge
1 crumble to dust
1 leonin arbiter
1 blood moon
1 aven mindcensor
1 chalice of the void
Not to mention that it has unfavorable matches against Burn, Infect, Delver, Dredge, Death's Shadow aggro, Ad Nauseum and other combo, or any other fast decks. And this was when eye of ugin was still legal.
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
The thing is, when someone says they don't want any bans in a post-script sentence, but then talk about a deck's "GODLY results" in an earlier sentence and ask if it will soon be "a problem," AND they do that in the thread where ban talk has been happening nonstop for pages, of course it's perceived as part of the ban mania. What other way are we to interpret "a problem" in this context? You even confirm that connection in this recent post, asking "from what % and onwards could the BGx feel the pressure." Here, "the pressure" is clearly ban pressure, again underscoring a connection between a perception of BGx's current meta performance and fear of bans.
You've read this thread. The community has been totally ban-wacky since the announcement. Remember what ban mania is. It's when you make an issue about bans when there's no evidence to support that connection. Accusing a deck of putting up "GODLY results" and asking about its potential to become "a problem" at this time is itself very problematic and is clearly linked to ban dialogue. So is asking "from what % and onwards could the BGx feel the pressure." We're one week out from the ban, less than a week into AER for paper events, and NOT into AER at all for MTGO events. Those "GODLY results" are curiosities at best and meaningless/misleading at worst.
We need to back off this ban fear and allow the metagame to settle. We can certainly make informed predictions about where it will head in the first month or so, but immediately tying that to bans is a disservice to the community and the format.
Does that mean we can propose cards Wizards should print to help modern here? There kind of is a thread for that already so I'm just asking to make sure. As long as the proposed cards are directly linked to modern format health it's ok I guess?
I agree that modern would profit from something between Wasteland and Ghost Quarter. GQ is fine against Tron and utility/manlands but it obviously sucks against RG Valakut decks and isn't really that good against Bant Eldrazi either.
So how about:
Better GQ
Land
Tap: add c to your mana pool
Tap, Sac Better GQ: Destroy target nonbasic land. It's controller may draw a card.
It's still card disadvantage (like GQ) but actually sets your opponents back in terms of land drops. I can see this especially helping Tempo decks (trading CA for a tempo gain is exactly what the card does). I just don't know if this can ever go through standard. Maybe they can use it to give mono coloured strategies a push there?
Edit: it's possible that we need a mechanic a la revolt (easy to enable in modern, but a lot harder in T2) to get a wastelandesque card in modern though.
No, you completely misinterpreted what he meant. The way you worded your post made it seem you were theorizing a scenario were Jund/Abzan could be banned based on MTGO numbers despite placing a little disclaimer. Whenever someone brings up tournament results or MTGO percentages it's usually to justify a ban, and with a thread mostly discussing bans it would easy to confuse your comment as regular "ban-mania."
That's literally the exact card I came up with for the purpose. Not surprising, since it's a pretty common-sense solution.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
That is a very legitimate question. The ways you phrased the posts I initially replied to, however, were not framed in this manner.
No one is setting guidelines. I'm pushing back against ban mania, which I've done since joining the forum and done in basically the same way. The questions you ask below are not even remotely ban mania. They are solid, reasonable, interesting points of discussion:
Unfortunately, the post I initially responded to had none of those questions and only talked about "GODLY results" and asked about those results becoming a problem. The follow-up post then asked about ban pressure. That line of inquiry fits in ban mania, and I'll push back against it as I always have. These questions quoted above, however, are very good ones we should all be considering.
It's totally in the thread's topic! See the green "allowed topics" in the first post.
I presented a laundry list of arguments, this was only one among them. So, no, it still doesn't. You disagree with this specific example, that's fine, but the point remains. Since it's inception, Modern has provoked reactive bans to what they thought was an acceptable power level, and then realized it wasn't. Meanwhile, the player base has tended toward 'solving' the format with more and more degenerate, difficult to answer strategies, the same strategies that by and large simply don't work in Legacy. That format has a myriad of better threats and answers, and I would dare day it's far more interactive than Modern, more skill-based, and a lot less of the 'rock, paper, scissors' nature of Modern. This seems to have been no end of trouble for WotC in trying to prune the format when it's just plain missing something. So you get these semi-contradictory statements like 'well, Tron isn't as bad, so that kind of ramp is okay', until something comes along that makes it not okay (like the collateral damage of the Eye banning because of another deck's ridiculousness). So, it's less about why one kind of ramp is okay and another isn't because of power level, because that is very subjective and highly subject to change.
This is the fault of Wizards, not the community. They could very well communicate their clear intentions and put the players' minds at ease. But instead they throw curve ball after curve ball, causing all of us to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on and what might happen next. It isn't so bad if all their actions line up based on similar criteria, so we can make relatively accurate and level-headed predictions. But when they appear to throw darts at a board for ban announcements, this is the kind of hysteria that results.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Both the community and Wizards are to blame, and I indicated as much in a post on the last page. Wizards is at fault for opaque reasoning and poor communication around their frequent bans. The community is at fault because, instead of demanding better communication and challenging Wizards' management, they embrace bans as a solution and push the issue. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'm confident the number of Modern articles in 2016 suggesting bans was an all-time high, especially across the major content providers. That attitude, although certainly started and sustained by Wizards, is also promoted by the community and is a problem for Modern's longevity.
Meh I tried that with #FixModern, no one thought it was an issue that needed to be pushed. The ones who want Wizards management to fix their constructed formats and their communication are in the minority.
Each time they do something unpopular or stupid the Modern community gets upset and then eventually gives up. They'll keep on doing whatever they feel is in their best interest if we allow them.
A hashtag isn't going to change anything - format attendance will. For as much as everyone blows up about how awful wizards is on this board, their decisions haven't resulted in declining tournament attendance in this format.
I would imagine a good source of their attendance data comes from FNM style WPN events, rather than GPs. And considering how much Modern players invest in their decks (time, money, personal style), it would really take a lot to cause Modern players to stop showing up. It would be a shame if this were their main metric for judging a format's health, since I could imagine heavily-invested players begrudgingly continuing to play a format they don't particularly like as much anymore, creating the illusion of satisfaction through attendance.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
In comparison with League of Legends, when there is an update on any individual character, there is more detail about the changes on that individual character, than what Wizards posts about the entire format and the card combined. Although some of the reasoning of Riot comes off as Sarcastic (in the nature of the game), it's generally reasonable.
If I had any power over Wizards, I would fire half of their staff, and I would ensure everyone on the PR/Communications got let go just based on the past two years alone. We are talking from the removal of PT benefits, the timing of all of their announcements, and even how they convey them. From Twitter to Mothership articles, etc.
I understand some of the responsibility will always be the community itself, but to put it in perspective, we should be able to alienate what are actual concerns or not when it comes to banning decisions. Someone thought that Gitaxian Probe was a huge potential ban target, and most of us mocked those users. I even remember highly respected people on this forum calling those bans "asinine" and "beyond reasonable to debate", now look where we are.
So if even the most accurate people on these forums are just out to lunch every other year, that's Wizards fault for being completely unpredictable and unstable. We should be able to predict these things, the fact that we can't is a problem that the company from the ground up needs to change.
But some people do understand Wotc's vision and what they are trying to do with the format. Those are the ones bringing up these 'asinine' bans.
The issue is there are different groups of people that want different things from the format, there always have.
As long as those enjoying the format keep showing up and attendance numbers stay up, we can all expect the same. Like it or not.
You are missing the point completely.
No single group fully understands. That's why we are in this situation. It simply depends on the time of year if you are correct or not.
With Wizards, its guess work, its by the gut, they have admitted to such.
Spirits
First, nobody understands what Wizards' ultimate vision is for the format, and that's entirely the problem. Their lack of clear communication combined with seemingly haphazard actions specifically leads to the kind of banmania discussion we see now. It's only going to get worse now that there are twice as many announcements a year and "we simply don't like this deck" appears to be a completely legitimate ban criteria.
Second, attendance doesn't necessarily correspond to enjoyment, especially in a format where players are often intimately tied to their decks (playstyle preference, investment costs, hours played, difficulty of switching decks, etc). As long as their decks remain legal and the game isn't Eldrazi Winter levels of broken, most people will generally play at the local level. There's often too much of an investment of time/money/effort to just walk away from the format, even if it is in a state they don't necessarily like.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I would like to expand that I don't necessarily think their choices to ban are wrong, but they're very odd choices given their history. Their reasoning is also very thin. What is lacking is their communication with regards to bans and the health of the format, which leaves all future bannings/unbannings a complete mystery to players. This mystery leads to ban mania and baseless speculation. We spent 50-something pages discussing what could be unbanned to help the format and the majority of players focused around 0-1 bans and 1-2 unbans. Instead, Wizards bans two mostly-unpredicted things and essentially tells us that they will ban anything out of any popular deck that they do not like. They maintain the negative stigma that no deck is safe and that Modern is a "ban everything" format.
Their choices aren't necessarily bad, but their communication and implementation do nothing but help destroy consumer confidence.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptsoi/where-modern-goes-from-here-2016-04-24
Here, Forsythe explains Modern's nine qualities. According to him, "Modern should..."
- Be a fun way to play Magic (first, and easy to forget, but very important!)
- Let you tap into your collection to expand upon established decks and familiar strategies from Magic's recent past
- Offer different types of decks and gameplay than what you typically see in Standard
- Not rotate, allowing you to keep a deck for a long period of time
- Consist of cards that we are willing and able to reprint
- Have a diverse top-tier metagame featuring over a dozen archetypes
- Not be dominated by fast, non-interactive decks (consistent kills before turn four are a red flag)
- Be at a power level that allows some newly printed Standard cards to affect the format (we don't have other ways to introduce cards into the format, and we like it when cards or decks can transition)
- Have as small a banned list as possible that accomplishes all the previous goals
That's it! Everything beyond that, including discussion of "Tier 1" vs. "Tier 0.x" is all speculation and our attempts at filling in Wizards gaps.I'll also add that R&D cares a lot about matchup data from MTGO Leagues. Stoddard discussed this in his recent banning article and talked about it extensively on Twitter. See some quotes below:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/standard-2017-01-13
https://twitter.com/samstod/status/818541652004388864
https://twitter.com/samstod/status/819956388361170944
In short, matchups and win-rate matters. It actually matters more than just the deck's dominance (see Reflector Mage) because Wizards wants to get ahead of a deck like this before it becomes a dominant deck.
Spirits
According to Wizards, Probe decks broke this rule:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptsoi/where-modern-goes-from-here-2016-04-24
We might disagree that this was the case with the Probe decks, but we have much less data than they do. Because of that, any challenge to Wizards' data has a high burden of evidence, and I at least still haven't seen anything that meets that bar. Otherwise, the ban made sense with their format vision.
That seems like a misreading of their explanation:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/january-9-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-01-09
It's pretty clear it was banned because it "increased the number of third-turn kills in a few ways," not because it was "BY FAR the best choice when someone wanted to WIN a major event." There are a lot of jumps you have to make to get from the Wizards quote to your interpretation. That's particularly problematic because they don't even talk about Infect, Bloo, or DSZ being best decks. It's just about fast decks winning on T3. so I think we should just stick with the given reason: "Gitaxian Probe increased the number of third-turn kills in a few ways."
Cards are banned because they are in the best deck, but not every ban boils down to a "best deck" ban. This was not one such ban.