Why do we need better land destruction? Despite some initial fearmongering, Tron doesn't seem to be a problem after the bans (nor has it ever been a problem, for the record). Fast decks just shrug off land destruction as they don't need many lands to begin with. I'm not sure what better land destruction is supposed to do.
We need better land destruction because what we currently have isn't very good, so it's difficult for answer decks to fight on that axis. Think about the maindeckable land hate. There's pretty much just Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge. Tec edge is too slow against Tron and Valakut decks. Ghost Quarter is fast enough, but it kinda sucks because it's card disadvantage as long as they have a basic to fetch. For the sideboard options, Crumble to dust is certainly powerful enough, but it's a turn or two too slow. Blood Moon and Spreading Seas can be good, but they only buy you a few turns, so they're not great answers.
So we need something that's maindeckable, faster than Tec Edge, and better than Ghost Quarter. My personal thought was a Tec Edge where your opponent only needs 2 lands in play to activate it. It's fast enough to deal with the land based combo decks and good enough that you don't feel bad playing it against decks that don't have particularly dangerous lands.
Agreed generally, but I'd point out that it's not really (usually) the card disadvantage of Ghost Quarter that makes it weak. It's the tempo loss of putting yourself one land behind your opponent. If it made them draw a card instead of tutoring a basic, it would IMO be a much more solid card.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
I actually think a better land destruction card is the main thing needed in modern. Honestly I feel right now with 2 almost unconditional removal in path and Fatal push the early game can be kept under control in a creature heavy format like modern. Counterspell would just be nice for control decks to keep things locked up more reliably late game after surviving. At the moment the late game for control consist of cryptic command which is really good but expensive.
Why do we need better land destruction? Despite some initial fearmongering, Tron doesn't seem to be a problem after the bans (nor has it ever been a problem, for the record). Fast decks just shrug off land destruction as they don't need many lands to begin with. I'm not sure what better land destruction is supposed to do.
To decrease lopsideness in matchups. The situation with fair decks is that pretty much everything else has free wins while your good matchups are at best 60/40 in your favor while you had truly terrible matchups. Aggrocombo had the opposite situation which is why they got nerfed. Aggro combo had free wins yet there bad matchups were close to even. Heck some deaths shadow players even claimed that grixis control was slightly in their favor or even.
I doubt a better mana destruction will out right kill tron. Tron will still be favored vs anything that is durdly just it will not be as much as a roflstomp like it currently is.
I disagree with some of the claims your making in general. "Fair" decks certainly do have lopsided match ups in which the opponent has little to no chance of winning. Its just that the types of decks which decks like Jund/Junk/Grixis have those match ups against are garbage because of the prevalence of those decks. No one is going to show up with on curve aggro deck because those decks will destroy them 9 out of 10 times, so the only aggro that is valid are the kinds we see now which are attempting do some degenerate fast thing like crapping out a bunch of 2/2 that only have the benefit of helping you play another 2/2. Tron is a SB beatable match up, Its all over MTGO at the moment and I've been packing a hate package in my Grixis Delver Sb and crushing them. It does suck that if you are not anticipating a deck that it might just beat your "fair" deck but that is kind of the weakness that these decks have always had, Jund is always a great option when you can anticipate the field of your particular event and construct your SB to deal with it you are rewarded by stomping the competition.
This just seems to be some weird preemptive strike attitude that people are adopting. It seems that people are arguing that "competitor A is reasonably competitive, but one day it might not be so we should give competitor B the ability to crush it in now in advance just in case". People saying we need a FoW for modern (never mind that in legacy FoW doesn't police busted combo decks alone it does so in conjunction with Daze,and Brainstorm while every busted combo deck runs FoW to attempt to push threw its own combo)or a wastelands. Isn't Combo supposed to have a better game 1 and be disadvantaged post board? Isn't a control deck like Tron ( and yes Tron is a control deck its ramp-control I know that hybrid strategies seem to give people fits but it is a hybrid strategy) supposed to be favored over mid-range/attrition? Fair is a subjective perception and this sense of injustice that some seem to have isn't shared by like 32% of the players in the format at least and that is just a combination of the meta-shares of people playing decks like Tron, Ad Nauseum, Burn,etc... And obviously not all players of "fair" decks share the same feeling of injustice because I don't and I only play Grixis or Jund. People seem to feel that they should be entitled to the status of Police deck which implies that they are involved in some manner as the authority of everyone else's fun why because those players collectively come together and claim that this status is fundamentally theirs? Magic isn't chess if you want a game that is fundamentally even and "fair" then what you want is a game in which all players have the same pieces and the same possible choices and no variety.
I disagree with some of the claims your making in general. "Fair" decks certainly do have lopsided match ups in which the opponent has little to no chance of winning. Its just that the types of decks which decks like Jund/Junk/Grixis have those match ups against are garbage because of the prevalence of those decks. No one is going to show up with on curve aggro deck because those decks will destroy them 9 out of 10 times, so the only aggro that is valid are the kinds we see now which are attempting do some degenerate fast thing like crapping out a bunch of 2/2 that only have the benefit of helping you play another 2/2. Tron is a SB beatable match up, Its all over MTGO at the moment and I've been packing a hate package in my Grixis Delver Sb and crushing them. It does suck that if you are not anticipating a deck that it might just beat your "fair" deck but that is kind of the weakness that these decks have always had, Jund is always a great option when you can anticipate the field of your particular event and construct your SB to deal with it you are rewarded by stomping the competition.
This just seems to be some weird preemptive strike attitude that people are adopting. It seems that people are arguing that "competitor A is reasonably competitive, but one day it might not be so we should give competitor B the ability to crush it in now in advance just in case". People saying we need a FoW for modern (never mind that in legacy FoW doesn't police busted combo decks alone it does so in conjunction with Daze,and Brainstorm while every busted combo deck runs FoW to attempt to push threw its own combo)or a wastelands. Isn't Combo supposed to have a better game 1 and be disadvantaged post board? Isn't a control deck like Tron ( and yes Tron is a control deck its ramp-control I know that hybrid strategies seem to give people fits but it is a hybrid strategy) supposed to be favored over mid-range/attrition? Fair is a subjective perception and this sense of injustice that some seem to have isn't shared by like 32% of the players in the format at least and that is just a combination of the meta-shares of people playing decks like Tron, Ad Nauseum, Burn,etc... And obviously not all players of "fair" decks share the same feeling of injustice because I don't and I only play Grixis or Jund. People seem to feel that they should be entitled to the status of Police deck which implies that they are involved in some manner as the authority of everyone else's fun why because those players collectively come together and claim that this status is fundamentally theirs? Magic isn't chess if you want a game that is fundamentally even and "fair" then what you want is a game in which all players have the same pieces and the same possible choices and no variety.
There should always be answers to any strategy. Even if a strategy isn't out of control right now, we never know what card Wizards is going to print that will suddenly empower something we weren't expecting. Who expected Cheeri0s to be the most talked about deck before AER was spoiled? Fortunately, we have a lot of ways to kill a 2/2, so the format might be able to handle the deck even if it's as broken as some people are saying.
Just as an example, one argument I see here often against unbanning Jace is that he would make the blue control decks overpowered and they would squeeze out the other midrange decks. Besides the fact that I think that is completely false, it's just a laughable argument when you look at all the anti-blue tech that's legal in Modern but no one is playing because blue decks are too bad. Choke, Boil, Boseiju, Cavern of Souls, Thrun, etc. So there's a very strong (arguably too strong) safety valve against blue decks ever running away with Modern.
We don't have that for certain other things, like land based combos and fast combos. Fast combo decks keep getting cards banned in Modern because we don't have good ways to stop them. As far as Tron and Valakut are concerned, I don't want either to see a ban, but they're just too good against the fair decks because the fair decks don't have a good way to fight them. Tron should definitely be favored against GBx and blue control, but it shouldn't be a 75/25 curb stomping. We should have cards that let fair decks fight on that axis if they chose to. And remember, just because certain hate cards exist doesn't mean they will be ubiquitous. People will still have to chose what they want to beat and what they're ok with losing to.
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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 disagree with some of the claims your making in general. "Fair" decks certainly do have lopsided match ups in which the opponent has little to no chance of winning. Its just that the types of decks which decks like Jund/Junk/Grixis have those match ups against are garbage because of the prevalence of those decks. No one is going to show up with on curve aggro deck because those decks will destroy them 9 out of 10 times, so the only aggro that is valid are the kinds we see now which are attempting do some degenerate fast thing like crapping out a bunch of 2/2 that only have the benefit of helping you play another 2/2. Tron is a SB beatable match up, Its all over MTGO at the moment and I've been packing a hate package in my Grixis Delver Sb and crushing them. It does suck that if you are not anticipating a deck that it might just beat your "fair" deck but that is kind of the weakness that these decks have always had, Jund is always a great option when you can anticipate the field of your particular event and construct your SB to deal with it you are rewarded by stomping the competition.
This just seems to be some weird preemptive strike attitude that people are adopting. It seems that people are arguing that "competitor A is reasonably competitive, but one day it might not be so we should give competitor B the ability to crush it in now in advance just in case". People saying we need a FoW for modern (never mind that in legacy FoW doesn't police busted combo decks alone it does so in conjunction with Daze,and Brainstorm while every busted combo deck runs FoW to attempt to push threw its own combo)or a wastelands. Isn't Combo supposed to have a better game 1 and be disadvantaged post board? Isn't a control deck like Tron ( and yes Tron is a control deck its ramp-control I know that hybrid strategies seem to give people fits but it is a hybrid strategy) supposed to be favored over mid-range/attrition? Fair is a subjective perception and this sense of injustice that some seem to have isn't shared by like 32% of the players in the format at least and that is just a combination of the meta-shares of people playing decks like Tron, Ad Nauseum, Burn,etc... And obviously not all players of "fair" decks share the same feeling of injustice because I don't and I only play Grixis or Jund. People seem to feel that they should be entitled to the status of Police deck which implies that they are involved in some manner as the authority of everyone else's fun why because those players collectively come together and claim that this status is fundamentally theirs? Magic isn't chess if you want a game that is fundamentally even and "fair" then what you want is a game in which all players have the same pieces and the same possible choices and no variety.
There should always be answers to any strategy. Even if a strategy isn't out of control right now, we never know what card Wizards is going to print that will suddenly empower something we weren't expecting. Who expected Cheeri0s to be the most talked about deck before AER was spoiled? Fortunately, we have a lot of ways to kill a 2/2, so the format might be able to handle the deck even if it's as broken as some people are saying.
Just as an example, one argument I see here often against unbanning Jace is that he would make the blue control decks overpowered and they would squeeze out the other midrange decks. Besides the fact that I think that is completely false, it's just a laughable argument when you look at all the anti-blue tech that's legal in Modern but no one is playing because blue decks are too bad. Choke, Boil, Boseiju, Cavern of Souls, Thrun, etc. So there's a very strong (arguably too strong) safety valve against blue decks ever running away with Modern.
We don't have that for certain other things, like land based combos and fast combos. Fast combo decks keep getting cards banned in Modern because we don't have good ways to stop them. As far as Tron and Valakut are concerned, I don't want either to see a ban, but they're just too good against the fair decks because the fair decks don't have a good way to fight them. Tron should definitely be favored against GBx and blue control, but it shouldn't be a 75/25 curb stomping. We should have cards that let fair decks fight on that axis if they chose to. And remember, just because certain hate cards exist doesn't mean they will be ubiquitous. People will still have to chose what they want to beat and what they're ok with losing to.
Tron hasn't had a consistent 75/25 matchup against Jund or similar decks for a long time, probably since eye of ugin got banned.
Quite a few people on here are holding onto a pre-ban idea of tron in the current meta. I'm not going to point fingers but we need the discussion here to be respectfully accurate, otherwise what's the point?
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
I'd love to see some data on these lopsided matchups. Not that I think the idea is terribly off base, but putting numbers to it would do worlds of good for the discussion.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
It seems disingenuous to me for people to claim that Force of Will is too powerful for Modern. Those same people generally refer to Legacy and the Blue dominance that format has, yet in reality, the Blue Dominance is obviously created by Brainstorm.
Force of Will is only as good as the decks that decide to fully dedicate themselves to a glass cannon, otherwise even in Legacy you side them out in all the fair matchups, and some decks don't even run the full four in the maindeck.
I disagree with some of the claims your making in general. "Fair" decks certainly do have lopsided match ups in which the opponent has little to no chance of winning. Its just that the types of decks which decks like Jund/Junk/Grixis have those match ups against are garbage because of the prevalence of those decks. No one is going to show up with on curve aggro deck because those decks will destroy them 9 out of 10 times, so the only aggro that is valid are the kinds we see now which are attempting do some degenerate fast thing like crapping out a bunch of 2/2 that only have the benefit of helping you play another 2/2. Tron is a SB beatable match up, Its all over MTGO at the moment and I've been packing a hate package in my Grixis Delver Sb and crushing them. It does suck that if you are not anticipating a deck that it might just beat your "fair" deck but that is kind of the weakness that these decks have always had, Jund is always a great option when you can anticipate the field of your particular event and construct your SB to deal with it you are rewarded by stomping the competition.
This just seems to be some weird preemptive strike attitude that people are adopting. It seems that people are arguing that "competitor A is reasonably competitive, but one day it might not be so we should give competitor B the ability to crush it in now in advance just in case". People saying we need a FoW for modern (never mind that in legacy FoW doesn't police busted combo decks alone it does so in conjunction with Daze,and Brainstorm while every busted combo deck runs FoW to attempt to push threw its own combo)or a wastelands. Isn't Combo supposed to have a better game 1 and be disadvantaged post board? Isn't a control deck like Tron ( and yes Tron is a control deck its ramp-control I know that hybrid strategies seem to give people fits but it is a hybrid strategy) supposed to be favored over mid-range/attrition? Fair is a subjective perception and this sense of injustice that some seem to have isn't shared by like 32% of the players in the format at least and that is just a combination of the meta-shares of people playing decks like Tron, Ad Nauseum, Burn,etc... And obviously not all players of "fair" decks share the same feeling of injustice because I don't and I only play Grixis or Jund. People seem to feel that they should be entitled to the status of Police deck which implies that they are involved in some manner as the authority of everyone else's fun why because those players collectively come together and claim that this status is fundamentally theirs? Magic isn't chess if you want a game that is fundamentally even and "fair" then what you want is a game in which all players have the same pieces and the same possible choices and no variety.
There should always be answers to any strategy. Even if a strategy isn't out of control right now, we never know what card Wizards is going to print that will suddenly empower something we weren't expecting. Who expected Cheeri0s to be the most talked about deck before AER was spoiled? Fortunately, we have a lot of ways to kill a 2/2, so the format might be able to handle the deck even if it's as broken as some people are saying.
Just as an example, one argument I see here often against unbanning Jace is that he would make the blue control decks overpowered and they would squeeze out the other midrange decks. Besides the fact that I think that is completely false, it's just a laughable argument when you look at all the anti-blue tech that's legal in Modern but no one is playing because blue decks are too bad. Choke, Boil, Boseiju, Cavern of Souls, Thrun, etc. So there's a very strong (arguably too strong) safety valve against blue decks ever running away with Modern.
We don't have that for certain other things, like land based combos and fast combos. Fast combo decks keep getting cards banned in Modern because we don't have good ways to stop them. As far as Tron and Valakut are concerned, I don't want either to see a ban, but they're just too good against the fair decks because the fair decks don't have a good way to fight them. Tron should definitely be favored against GBx and blue control, but it shouldn't be a 75/25 curb stomping. We should have cards that let fair decks fight on that axis if they chose to. And remember, just because certain hate cards exist doesn't mean they will be ubiquitous. People will still have to chose what they want to beat and what they're ok with losing to.
But people are not asking for a "answer" because answers do exist to things like combo decks, people are asking for main deck solutions to every problem that might ever come their way. If anything those types of blanket solutions to any problem are exactly the kinds of things that WotC doesn't want to put into the format if they want it to be a format that has a wide variety of decks that people can play. Look at legacy you have to play blue because blue has the free counterspells it is exactly like MM in the sense that you will need it just to fight it. MM was so broken in legacy not because it is just the most busted card ever it is because it just created a critical mass of free counterspells and killed every other deck and made the fair decks broken.
Your example is terrible as unbanning a card has nothing to do with the idea of what new cards the format needs. Also people are playing blue Grixis is doing well, UW control is on the up tick so no people are playing blue.
So what type of tools should we give on curve aggro creature decks to beat BGx? that is a 75/25 curb stomp as you put it that is why no one plays on curve aggro decks because you will be eaten alive by IoK, Thoughtseize, LotV and efficient removal and under costed creatures.
And Yes if we had a functional FoW in the format it would become ubiquitous because when you can tap out to cast your bomb and I attempt to play my answer the following turn and you counter my answer for free the only solution is going to be run the functional Fow. Just look at how dominate black decks are because of how strong discard is, the only real solution to discard decks is to run your own discard and snag their discard spell before they snag your card you actually want in your hand.
BGx and Grixis actually had good match ups against the prowess decks and DSZoo and Infect so they already had great answers to those decks, the decks those decks preyed on where Tron, Eldrazi, and Valakut decks. This might be a shocker but in the new wider open meta game perhaps strategies like Jund are not entitled to the 50/50 match up status they once had because in part that status was granted because Pod and Twin stifled so many other strategies from being competitive. Jund and Junk thrive when options are limited and they can build the exact 75 that will crush the field and that constriction is gone the format is fairly wide open for a variety of strategies and that hurts those decks.
Again "to good against the fair decks" this is a subjective opinion, you feel like it is unfair because of your feelings. I play Grixis Delver by all accounts I think most people would label it a "fair" deck but I don't feel this way, in fact I actually have a good win rate against Tron and a close 45/55 against Valakut. But im not telling you my feelings dictate facts, I've read statements from pro's that say Tron has no good match ups does that make it so? If these decks are so oppressive then why haven't results from MTGO reflected this? I play online all the time Tron and RG valakut are very common decks and yet they are not dominating in a fashion that warrants even the slightest concern.
I think a lot of Jund/Junk players are salty because they bought into a expensive deck that used to be a good choice for any given event and now that the decks that restricted deck selection in format have been banned out they have gained some.... dare i say it poor match ups like every other deck.
It seems disingenuous to me for people to claim that Force of Will is too powerful for Modern. Those same people generally refer to Legacy and the Blue dominance that format has, yet in reality, the Blue Dominance is obviously created by Brainstorm.
Force of Will is only as good as the decks that decide to fully dedicate themselves to a glass cannon, otherwise even in Legacy you side them out in all the fair matchups, and some decks don't even run the full four in the maindeck.
FoW, Daze, Brainstorm are all the reason why blue is so dominate with out each other they each are slightly diminished. I don't board out FoW against countertop which is a fair control deck, etc.. yes in the delver v delver(lets get real those are the fair decks) you board it out because card advantage is more important and you both run daze etc.. so it just becomes less crucial.
If modern cannot handle Metal Misstep a card that only counters 1c.c. spells for free how does it make any sense to say a card that can counter any card for free as long as it doesn't say "cannot be countered" would be safe.
remove the banned list completely from modern and replace it with a restricted list. anyone can run any single copy of a given card on the banned list. This would allow players to play whatever without letting the more broken things just take over 12 post can't just take over if they only have 1 of the needed lands it would just to be to inconsistent etc...
just a idea, not many of the cards on the list are oppressive if not ran as a play set and this way no one ever has to feel salty that their deck got completely banned.
It seems disingenuous to me for people to claim that Force of Will is too powerful for Modern. Those same people generally refer to Legacy and the Blue dominance that format has, yet in reality, the Blue Dominance is obviously created by Brainstorm.
Force of Will is only as good as the decks that decide to fully dedicate themselves to a glass cannon, otherwise even in Legacy you side them out in all the fair matchups, and some decks don't even run the full four in the maindeck.
FoW, Daze, Brainstorm are all the reason why blue is so dominate with out each other they each are slightly diminished. I don't board out FoW against countertop which is a fair control deck, etc.. yes in the delver v delver(lets get real those are the fair decks) you board it out because card advantage is more important and you both run daze etc.. so it just becomes less crucial.
If modern cannot handle Metal Misstep a card that only counters 1c.c. spells for free how does it make any sense to say a card that can counter any card for free as long as it doesn't say "cannot be countered" would be safe.
Uh, Legacy would like to have a word with your reasoning.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
talking about brainstorm, do you all think that it would be too powerful in modern? seems like a good way to improve blue decks
I love blue but brainstorm is just too strong in a fetchland formats especially if combo is not as degenerate as it is in legacy wish is a good thing. Blue has to be strong in legacy otherwise turn 2 combo just stomps everything. That is not needed in modern nor desired which is why we have most known ridiculous things banned.
It seems disingenuous to me for people to claim that Force of Will is too powerful for Modern. Those same people generally refer to Legacy and the Blue dominance that format has, yet in reality, the Blue Dominance is obviously created by Brainstorm.
Force of Will is only as good as the decks that decide to fully dedicate themselves to a glass cannon, otherwise even in Legacy you side them out in all the fair matchups, and some decks don't even run the full four in the maindeck.
FoW, Daze, Brainstorm are all the reason why blue is so dominate with out each other they each are slightly diminished. I don't board out FoW against countertop which is a fair control deck, etc.. yes in the delver v delver(lets get real those are the fair decks) you board it out because card advantage is more important and you both run daze etc.. so it just becomes less crucial.
If modern cannot handle Metal Misstep a card that only counters 1c.c. spells for free how does it make any sense to say a card that can counter any card for free as long as it doesn't say "cannot be countered" would be safe.
Miracles is hardly a fair deck. It is a prison combocontrol deck. The only fair decks in legacy Delver and bug decks.
It seems disingenuous to me for people to claim that Force of Will is too powerful for Modern. Those same people generally refer to Legacy and the Blue dominance that format has, yet in reality, the Blue Dominance is obviously created by Brainstorm.
Force of Will is only as good as the decks that decide to fully dedicate themselves to a glass cannon, otherwise even in Legacy you side them out in all the fair matchups, and some decks don't even run the full four in the maindeck.
FoW, Daze, Brainstorm are all the reason why blue is so dominate with out each other they each are slightly diminished. I don't board out FoW against countertop which is a fair control deck, etc.. yes in the delver v delver(lets get real those are the fair decks) you board it out because card advantage is more important and you both run daze etc.. so it just becomes less crucial.
If modern cannot handle Metal Misstep a card that only counters 1c.c. spells for free how does it make any sense to say a card that can counter any card for free as long as it doesn't say "cannot be countered" would be safe.
Miracles is hardly a fair deck. It is a prison combocontrol deck. The only fair decks in legacy Delver and bug decks.
What about Jund, Maverick,DnT, Merfolk?
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Legacy
Death and Taxes Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
People who think mental misstep was not a broken card and impacted way more than turn one plays have never played against it.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
It seems disingenuous to me for people to claim that Force of Will is too powerful for Modern. Those same people generally refer to Legacy and the Blue dominance that format has, yet in reality, the Blue Dominance is obviously created by Brainstorm.
Force of Will is only as good as the decks that decide to fully dedicate themselves to a glass cannon, otherwise even in Legacy you side them out in all the fair matchups, and some decks don't even run the full four in the maindeck.
FoW, Daze, Brainstorm are all the reason why blue is so dominate with out each other they each are slightly diminished. I don't board out FoW against countertop which is a fair control deck, etc.. yes in the delver v delver(lets get real those are the fair decks) you board it out because card advantage is more important and you both run daze etc.. so it just becomes less crucial.
If modern cannot handle Metal Misstep a card that only counters 1c.c. spells for free how does it make any sense to say a card that can counter any card for free as long as it doesn't say "cannot be countered" would be safe.
Miracles is hardly a fair deck. It is a prison combocontrol deck. The only fair decks in legacy Delver and bug decks.
What about Jund, Maverick,DnT, Merfolk?
Those too but I was just saying the ones I see often.
The primary issue is that WOTC openly stated that they don't want Modern to be like Legacy nor Standard. They want it to be something else. That i agree with. What that doens't cover is the fact that Modern's power level is closer to Legacy than Standard so you NEED a 'safety valve' or insurance that you will be able to stop abusrd unfair plays between Turn 1 and Turn 4. That's the way to make Modern a 'Turn 4 Format', a stated goal of the aforementioned.
To be clear, abusrd plays can be unfair or fair. To me an opponent that sneaks a Turn 3 Karn and moves on to win the game is completely nonsense. Instead of keep decreasing the power level, let's leave Tron untouched and print some cards to help us fight this high power level plays.
Force of Will might be too much. I'm not sure. What i know is that the format will not be able to self-regulate everytime a new set comes up. RTR,Khans,SOI and now Aether Revolt showed us Modern's card pool is too sensitive to changes and new cards entering.
Again i will say, we are playing Legacy without Force. It could lead to a more stale metagame, but nothing's perfect in this world.
The primary issue is that WOTC openly stated that they don't want Modern to be like Legacy nor Standard. They want it to be something else. That i agree with. What that doens't cover is the fact that Modern's power level is closer to Legacy than Standard so you NEED a 'safety valve' or insurance that you will be able to stop abusrd unfair plays between Turn 1 and Turn 4. That's the way to make Modern a 'Turn 4 Format', a stated goal of the aforementioned.
To be clear, abusrd plays can be unfair or fair. To me an opponent that sneaks a Turn 3 Karn and moves on to win the game is completely nonsense. Instead of keep decreasing the power level, let's leave Tron untouched and print some cards to help us fight this high power level plays.
Force of Will might be too much. I'm not sure. What i know is that the format will not be able to self-regulate everytime a new set comes up. RTR,Khans,SOI and now Aether Revolt showed us Modern's card pool is too sensitive to changes and new cards entering.
Again i will say, we are playing Legacy without Force. It could lead to a more stale metagame, but nothing's perfect in this world.
I've said it earlier and I'll say it again.
It's totally possible this is how Wizards plans on managing Modern for the foreseeable future. Certainly, their past behavior points to this direction. But if this is the case, then Modern players must also be comfortable with 1-2 annual bans. If we don't have internal regulation like Legacy, and if we have significantly more powerful cards than Standard, we need to accept another form of regulation. Wizards has decided that regulation will be bans. Up until now, it felt (to me at least) like the annual bans were mostly cleanups of old or new mistakes that warped the metagame. The last year showed this wasn't the case. Wizards shows every indication of using bans in lieu of actual format answers to regulate cards and decks under somewhat opaque and somewhat unpredictable criteria. I no longer think the question is, "When does this stop?" It's now "When will it happen again?"
Some of you might ask "But KTK, why didn't you see it earlier? Why didn't you, and others, know Wizards was going to use external bans instead of internal cards to try regulating the format?" Easy: Wizards never said this would be a part of the format. They promised a non-rotating format without the card availability issues of Legacy, not a non-rotating format without the card availability issues of Legacy where they also ban things instead of empowering internal answers. They also continued to not state this policy for years, treating bans as as-needed fixes to problems that emerged, not a business-as-usual cycle of format management. Indeed, after the Twin ban and the removal of Modern from the PT, Forsythe wrote an article explicitly endorsing "as small a banned list as possible" and slowing down the pace of metagame change and changes to the banned list. It sounded great but, 8 months later, we got two more bans and zero more answers: Push only got legalized after those bans and the bans happened anyway.
I don't know about all of you, but I personally never signed up for a format with 1-2 annual bans. I like my decks to be stable investments, and I like to play in a format where other players regard their decks as stable investments. I'm not even saying I disagree with many of the bans in the context they happened. The problem is, better internal answers would have changed that context and prevented many (not all) of those bans in the first place. If that context doesn't change, then the 1-2 annual bans will continue.
I'm hopeful that Wizards' recent Standard design, development, and metagame disasters push them to get better answers and teach them about the problems with their recent philosophies. Stoddard's recent articles are very heartening in that regard, as is Fatal Push itself. If those lessons are learned, we could maybe exit this 1-2 card ban cycle. If we can't, then I'll just encourage Modern players to stop viewing 1-2 annual bans as anomalies and to start viewing them as scheduled "patches" to a format that can't patch itself. Some people will be okay with that and others won't. Wizards can't and shouldn't try to please everyone, but I strongly suspect that those who would prefer a lower-ban format are far more than those who would prefer a higher-ban one.
I think Wizards wants Modern to get to a point where it has enough police cards (i.e. Push, Thoughtseize) that so many bans are not needed and the format can self-regulate. Once we get to that point, bans will not just slow down, but Wizards will start removing cards from the banlist at a faster rate.
But it makes sense that Wizards doesn't want to bend over backwards and injure Standard at the cost of setting that scenario up. They're not going to rush to include all their Push-style answer cards (which they're not even sure will all work in Modern) in the newest Standard set, nor are they going to overhaul their business model by introducing a set of cards for Modern play to get all those designs out of the way. They're guaranteed to sell new sets to Modern players if they include stuff like Push every set or two. In the meantime, it makes perfect sense to me that problem decks will show up, and Wizards doesn't have any tools available to them but to ban that deck until more answers enter the format. It's unreasonable of us to expect Wizards to release a Standard set in a year with a FoW analog and a Wasteland analog.
Example: if the next police card they print occupies the same role as Push (punishing linear aggro-combo decks), we may start to see cards like Blazing Shoal come off the list. If splashable nonbasic land hate becomes a thing and Tron somehow drops to Tier 3, I could see Summer Bloom returning. Etc. But these scenarios are likely not to occur for many years.
As for never signing up for this format: actually, you did. Some players had the foresight to realize that given Modern's hard-and-fast rules (Turn Four Rule, diversity guidelines, etc.), it would be impossible for Wizards to not ban a card or two each year. After all, new combos do show up, and if Standard is to impact Modern at all, some risks need to be taken. Kt, you've said from the start (and especially since the Twin ban) that you thought Modern needed more generic answers to unfair strategies. Wouldn't you say that without them, in hindsight, the rate at which Wizards has recently been banning cards from the format makes a lot of sense?
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
As for never signing up for this format: actually, you did. Some players had the foresight to realize that given Modern's hard-and-fast rules (Turn Four Rule, diversity guidelines, etc.), it would be impossible for Wizards to not ban a card or two each year. After all, new combos do show up, and if Standard is to impact Modern at all, some risks need to be taken. Kt, you've said from the start (and especially since the Twin ban) that you thought Modern needed more generic answers to unfair strategies. Wouldn't you say that without them, in hindsight, the rate at which Wizards has recently been banning cards from the format makes a lot of sense?
I think the rate makes perfect sense given the answer climate. That said, I don't understand why it took us so long to get a card like Push. People wanted a card like Push since 2011 and 2012. I've been holding out hope that these answers would appear at a better rate and, although Push is a good step in the right direction, the current rate of answers is way too slow. I believe this was largely due to their failed Standard philosophy of threats and answers, which they recently admitted to being a problem and hopefully we see changes to in the future.
Some of you might ask "But KTK, why didn't you see it earlier? Why didn't you, and others, know Wizards was going to use external bans instead of internal cards to try regulating the format?" Easy: Wizards never said this would be a part of the format.
Sheridan, I remember quite well sharing this video to you like a year ago, but for those interested: Interview with Aaron Forsythe relevant part begins at 2:06.
We definitely want to keep the format fresh. We are going to use the banlist liberally, both adding and removing just to shake it up. We don't want the same decks winning tournament after tournament. So, unlike Standard, we're going to be willing to kind of push the envelope with changing the form of the banlist.
My take: Aaron did say the banlist was going to be used as a tool to shake the format quite liberally. I admit I wasn't expecting these last bans, but the best decks being targeted is still a noticeable trend. At this point, I've accepted that annual bans and unbans are patches, not anomalies. In the 64 months since this video, we had 20 bans and 6 unbans. Even dismissing the 6 ban announcement that happened at that time, you still have 14 bans and 6 bans... in 5 years. Do the math people, this is a ban heavy format.
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Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
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Agreed generally, but I'd point out that it's not really (usually) the card disadvantage of Ghost Quarter that makes it weak. It's the tempo loss of putting yourself one land behind your opponent. If it made them draw a card instead of tutoring a basic, it would IMO be a much more solid card.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
I disagree with some of the claims your making in general. "Fair" decks certainly do have lopsided match ups in which the opponent has little to no chance of winning. Its just that the types of decks which decks like Jund/Junk/Grixis have those match ups against are garbage because of the prevalence of those decks. No one is going to show up with on curve aggro deck because those decks will destroy them 9 out of 10 times, so the only aggro that is valid are the kinds we see now which are attempting do some degenerate fast thing like crapping out a bunch of 2/2 that only have the benefit of helping you play another 2/2. Tron is a SB beatable match up, Its all over MTGO at the moment and I've been packing a hate package in my Grixis Delver Sb and crushing them. It does suck that if you are not anticipating a deck that it might just beat your "fair" deck but that is kind of the weakness that these decks have always had, Jund is always a great option when you can anticipate the field of your particular event and construct your SB to deal with it you are rewarded by stomping the competition.
This just seems to be some weird preemptive strike attitude that people are adopting. It seems that people are arguing that "competitor A is reasonably competitive, but one day it might not be so we should give competitor B the ability to crush it in now in advance just in case". People saying we need a FoW for modern (never mind that in legacy FoW doesn't police busted combo decks alone it does so in conjunction with Daze,and Brainstorm while every busted combo deck runs FoW to attempt to push threw its own combo)or a wastelands. Isn't Combo supposed to have a better game 1 and be disadvantaged post board? Isn't a control deck like Tron ( and yes Tron is a control deck its ramp-control I know that hybrid strategies seem to give people fits but it is a hybrid strategy) supposed to be favored over mid-range/attrition? Fair is a subjective perception and this sense of injustice that some seem to have isn't shared by like 32% of the players in the format at least and that is just a combination of the meta-shares of people playing decks like Tron, Ad Nauseum, Burn,etc... And obviously not all players of "fair" decks share the same feeling of injustice because I don't and I only play Grixis or Jund. People seem to feel that they should be entitled to the status of Police deck which implies that they are involved in some manner as the authority of everyone else's fun why because those players collectively come together and claim that this status is fundamentally theirs? Magic isn't chess if you want a game that is fundamentally even and "fair" then what you want is a game in which all players have the same pieces and the same possible choices and no variety.
There should always be answers to any strategy. Even if a strategy isn't out of control right now, we never know what card Wizards is going to print that will suddenly empower something we weren't expecting. Who expected Cheeri0s to be the most talked about deck before AER was spoiled? Fortunately, we have a lot of ways to kill a 2/2, so the format might be able to handle the deck even if it's as broken as some people are saying.
Just as an example, one argument I see here often against unbanning Jace is that he would make the blue control decks overpowered and they would squeeze out the other midrange decks. Besides the fact that I think that is completely false, it's just a laughable argument when you look at all the anti-blue tech that's legal in Modern but no one is playing because blue decks are too bad. Choke, Boil, Boseiju, Cavern of Souls, Thrun, etc. So there's a very strong (arguably too strong) safety valve against blue decks ever running away with Modern.
We don't have that for certain other things, like land based combos and fast combos. Fast combo decks keep getting cards banned in Modern because we don't have good ways to stop them. As far as Tron and Valakut are concerned, I don't want either to see a ban, but they're just too good against the fair decks because the fair decks don't have a good way to fight them. Tron should definitely be favored against GBx and blue control, but it shouldn't be a 75/25 curb stomping. We should have cards that let fair decks fight on that axis if they chose to. And remember, just because certain hate cards exist doesn't mean they will be ubiquitous. People will still have to chose what they want to beat and what they're ok with losing to.
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
Tron hasn't had a consistent 75/25 matchup against Jund or similar decks for a long time, probably since eye of ugin got banned.
Quite a few people on here are holding onto a pre-ban idea of tron in the current meta. I'm not going to point fingers but we need the discussion here to be respectfully accurate, otherwise what's the point?
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
Force of Will is only as good as the decks that decide to fully dedicate themselves to a glass cannon, otherwise even in Legacy you side them out in all the fair matchups, and some decks don't even run the full four in the maindeck.
But people are not asking for a "answer" because answers do exist to things like combo decks, people are asking for main deck solutions to every problem that might ever come their way. If anything those types of blanket solutions to any problem are exactly the kinds of things that WotC doesn't want to put into the format if they want it to be a format that has a wide variety of decks that people can play. Look at legacy you have to play blue because blue has the free counterspells it is exactly like MM in the sense that you will need it just to fight it. MM was so broken in legacy not because it is just the most busted card ever it is because it just created a critical mass of free counterspells and killed every other deck and made the fair decks broken.
Your example is terrible as unbanning a card has nothing to do with the idea of what new cards the format needs. Also people are playing blue Grixis is doing well, UW control is on the up tick so no people are playing blue.
So what type of tools should we give on curve aggro creature decks to beat BGx? that is a 75/25 curb stomp as you put it that is why no one plays on curve aggro decks because you will be eaten alive by IoK, Thoughtseize, LotV and efficient removal and under costed creatures.
And Yes if we had a functional FoW in the format it would become ubiquitous because when you can tap out to cast your bomb and I attempt to play my answer the following turn and you counter my answer for free the only solution is going to be run the functional Fow. Just look at how dominate black decks are because of how strong discard is, the only real solution to discard decks is to run your own discard and snag their discard spell before they snag your card you actually want in your hand.
BGx and Grixis actually had good match ups against the prowess decks and DSZoo and Infect so they already had great answers to those decks, the decks those decks preyed on where Tron, Eldrazi, and Valakut decks. This might be a shocker but in the new wider open meta game perhaps strategies like Jund are not entitled to the 50/50 match up status they once had because in part that status was granted because Pod and Twin stifled so many other strategies from being competitive. Jund and Junk thrive when options are limited and they can build the exact 75 that will crush the field and that constriction is gone the format is fairly wide open for a variety of strategies and that hurts those decks.
Again "to good against the fair decks" this is a subjective opinion, you feel like it is unfair because of your feelings. I play Grixis Delver by all accounts I think most people would label it a "fair" deck but I don't feel this way, in fact I actually have a good win rate against Tron and a close 45/55 against Valakut. But im not telling you my feelings dictate facts, I've read statements from pro's that say Tron has no good match ups does that make it so? If these decks are so oppressive then why haven't results from MTGO reflected this? I play online all the time Tron and RG valakut are very common decks and yet they are not dominating in a fashion that warrants even the slightest concern.
I think a lot of Jund/Junk players are salty because they bought into a expensive deck that used to be a good choice for any given event and now that the decks that restricted deck selection in format have been banned out they have gained some.... dare i say it poor match ups like every other deck.
The power level of brainstorm is higher than FOW.
If Ponder is not allowed in Modern, how can we expect to have a brainstorm?
Anything, but nothing at the moment...
Modern:
WUBRGAmulet Titan, WUBRGHuman
WUBRAd Nauseam, WBRGDeath Shadow, UBRGScapeshift, UBRGDredge
WURJeskai Nahiri, WURCheeri0s, WBGCounter Company, WRGBurn, UBRMadcap Moon, BRGJund Midrange
UBTurn,BRGriselbrand Reanimator, WGKnight Company, RGRG Tron, RGRG Ponza, XAffinity, XEldrazi Tron
FoW, Daze, Brainstorm are all the reason why blue is so dominate with out each other they each are slightly diminished. I don't board out FoW against countertop which is a fair control deck, etc.. yes in the delver v delver(lets get real those are the fair decks) you board it out because card advantage is more important and you both run daze etc.. so it just becomes less crucial.
If modern cannot handle Metal Misstep a card that only counters 1c.c. spells for free how does it make any sense to say a card that can counter any card for free as long as it doesn't say "cannot be countered" would be safe.
exactly this.
people are advocating for cards that are stronger than the cards on the banned list.
remove the banned list completely from modern and replace it with a restricted list. anyone can run any single copy of a given card on the banned list. This would allow players to play whatever without letting the more broken things just take over 12 post can't just take over if they only have 1 of the needed lands it would just to be to inconsistent etc...
just a idea, not many of the cards on the list are oppressive if not ran as a play set and this way no one ever has to feel salty that their deck got completely banned.
Uh, Legacy would like to have a word with your reasoning.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
I love blue but brainstorm is just too strong in a fetchland formats especially if combo is not as degenerate as it is in legacy wish is a good thing. Blue has to be strong in legacy otherwise turn 2 combo just stomps everything. That is not needed in modern nor desired which is why we have most known ridiculous things banned.
Miracles is hardly a fair deck. It is a prison combocontrol deck. The only fair decks in legacy Delver and bug decks.
What about Jund, Maverick,DnT, Merfolk?
Death and Taxes
Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron
Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Those too but I was just saying the ones I see often.
To be clear, abusrd plays can be unfair or fair. To me an opponent that sneaks a Turn 3 Karn and moves on to win the game is completely nonsense. Instead of keep decreasing the power level, let's leave Tron untouched and print some cards to help us fight this high power level plays.
Force of Will might be too much. I'm not sure. What i know is that the format will not be able to self-regulate everytime a new set comes up. RTR,Khans,SOI and now Aether Revolt showed us Modern's card pool is too sensitive to changes and new cards entering.
Again i will say, we are playing Legacy without Force. It could lead to a more stale metagame, but nothing's perfect in this world.
I've said it earlier and I'll say it again.
It's totally possible this is how Wizards plans on managing Modern for the foreseeable future. Certainly, their past behavior points to this direction. But if this is the case, then Modern players must also be comfortable with 1-2 annual bans. If we don't have internal regulation like Legacy, and if we have significantly more powerful cards than Standard, we need to accept another form of regulation. Wizards has decided that regulation will be bans. Up until now, it felt (to me at least) like the annual bans were mostly cleanups of old or new mistakes that warped the metagame. The last year showed this wasn't the case. Wizards shows every indication of using bans in lieu of actual format answers to regulate cards and decks under somewhat opaque and somewhat unpredictable criteria. I no longer think the question is, "When does this stop?" It's now "When will it happen again?"
Some of you might ask "But KTK, why didn't you see it earlier? Why didn't you, and others, know Wizards was going to use external bans instead of internal cards to try regulating the format?" Easy: Wizards never said this would be a part of the format. They promised a non-rotating format without the card availability issues of Legacy, not a non-rotating format without the card availability issues of Legacy where they also ban things instead of empowering internal answers. They also continued to not state this policy for years, treating bans as as-needed fixes to problems that emerged, not a business-as-usual cycle of format management. Indeed, after the Twin ban and the removal of Modern from the PT, Forsythe wrote an article explicitly endorsing "as small a banned list as possible" and slowing down the pace of metagame change and changes to the banned list. It sounded great but, 8 months later, we got two more bans and zero more answers: Push only got legalized after those bans and the bans happened anyway.
I don't know about all of you, but I personally never signed up for a format with 1-2 annual bans. I like my decks to be stable investments, and I like to play in a format where other players regard their decks as stable investments. I'm not even saying I disagree with many of the bans in the context they happened. The problem is, better internal answers would have changed that context and prevented many (not all) of those bans in the first place. If that context doesn't change, then the 1-2 annual bans will continue.
I'm hopeful that Wizards' recent Standard design, development, and metagame disasters push them to get better answers and teach them about the problems with their recent philosophies. Stoddard's recent articles are very heartening in that regard, as is Fatal Push itself. If those lessons are learned, we could maybe exit this 1-2 card ban cycle. If we can't, then I'll just encourage Modern players to stop viewing 1-2 annual bans as anomalies and to start viewing them as scheduled "patches" to a format that can't patch itself. Some people will be okay with that and others won't. Wizards can't and shouldn't try to please everyone, but I strongly suspect that those who would prefer a lower-ban format are far more than those who would prefer a higher-ban one.
Push, Snap, Push can be back breaking.
Spirits
But it makes sense that Wizards doesn't want to bend over backwards and injure Standard at the cost of setting that scenario up. They're not going to rush to include all their Push-style answer cards (which they're not even sure will all work in Modern) in the newest Standard set, nor are they going to overhaul their business model by introducing a set of cards for Modern play to get all those designs out of the way. They're guaranteed to sell new sets to Modern players if they include stuff like Push every set or two. In the meantime, it makes perfect sense to me that problem decks will show up, and Wizards doesn't have any tools available to them but to ban that deck until more answers enter the format. It's unreasonable of us to expect Wizards to release a Standard set in a year with a FoW analog and a Wasteland analog.
Example: if the next police card they print occupies the same role as Push (punishing linear aggro-combo decks), we may start to see cards like Blazing Shoal come off the list. If splashable nonbasic land hate becomes a thing and Tron somehow drops to Tier 3, I could see Summer Bloom returning. Etc. But these scenarios are likely not to occur for many years.
As for never signing up for this format: actually, you did. Some players had the foresight to realize that given Modern's hard-and-fast rules (Turn Four Rule, diversity guidelines, etc.), it would be impossible for Wizards to not ban a card or two each year. After all, new combos do show up, and if Standard is to impact Modern at all, some risks need to be taken. Kt, you've said from the start (and especially since the Twin ban) that you thought Modern needed more generic answers to unfair strategies. Wouldn't you say that without them, in hindsight, the rate at which Wizards has recently been banning cards from the format makes a lot of sense?
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
I think the rate makes perfect sense given the answer climate. That said, I don't understand why it took us so long to get a card like Push. People wanted a card like Push since 2011 and 2012. I've been holding out hope that these answers would appear at a better rate and, although Push is a good step in the right direction, the current rate of answers is way too slow. I believe this was largely due to their failed Standard philosophy of threats and answers, which they recently admitted to being a problem and hopefully we see changes to in the future.
My take: Aaron did say the banlist was going to be used as a tool to shake the format quite liberally. I admit I wasn't expecting these last bans, but the best decks being targeted is still a noticeable trend. At this point, I've accepted that annual bans and unbans are patches, not anomalies. In the 64 months since this video, we had 20 bans and 6 unbans. Even dismissing the 6 ban announcement that happened at that time, you still have 14 bans and 6 bans... in 5 years. Do the math people, this is a ban heavy format.
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium