How are you addressing the issue of hostile metas? There's obviously Eldrazi Winter, but also Dredge and DSZ rising to prominence alongside big-mana decks like Bant Eldrazi, TitanShift, and others.
There was simply never a time for a blue tempo/control/midrange deck to shine in 2016/17 with the meta the way it was. Saying that Twin would have held or did hold in similarly hostile metas is disingenuous because of the fundamentally unfair nature of the Twin combo, which no other deck you're comparing Twin against can boast.
That is the thing and the reason why blue is doing bad in general. You need to be doing something pretty busted in modern. Every successful modern deck has their ability to justto execute a gameplan and win. The article would confirm that blue decks need a gameplan that can compete with other options. Blue has cards are decks would love to play but not even incentive due to lack of a strong wincon. If deaths shadow could fit a 5th color somehow I am sure they would love serum visions to make their deck even smaller.
I'm writing an article assessing the effectiveness of the Twin ban and the Sword/AV unbans at achieving their overlapping goals. Did the ban free up space for non-Twin blue decks? Did the unbans improve controlling blue decks? After analyzing the 2015 data during the Twin era and the 2016 and early 2017 data from after the ban/unbans, I now have enough information to answer this question. I'll publish the full results and numbers in the article itself, but here's the summary:
1. Non-Twin blue decks performed slightly better at the GP/SCG T8 and T16 level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
2. Non-Twin blue decks performed worse at the GP/SCG Day 2 level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
3. Non-Twin blue decks performed worse at the MTGO level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
4. Non-Twin blue decks performed slightly worse at the overall aggregated metagame level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
5. The total share of blue decks (non-Twin and Twin) plummeted by roughly 50% in all categories from 2015 to 2016-17.
Here's an example of how I came to these findings. In 2015, non-Twin decks averaged an 8.2% share at the T8 level and a 9% share at the T16 level. In 2016-17, that share is up to 12.1% and 11.2% respectively. That's just one example of how the comparison plays out, but there's obviously a lot of detail and depth to explore. I'm posting this here to see what questions you all have and other feedback you can provide on this kind of analysis.
So what you're saying is that the Twin ban was a colossal failure and we should all apologize to Cfusion?
Does this research lead you to think Twin should be unbanned, or are you still leaning on the Preordain/Jace/SFM unban?
Here's a different idea, what if we legalized 7th edition? I was looking through 7th edition the other day, and the majority of cards in the set would be completely unplayable in Modern today, but a couple would be. We would get Counterspell, Memory Lapse and Force Spike for the blue decks, which would be pretty huge for them. We also get Goblin Matron, which is one of the missing pieces to a competitive Goblin Tribal deck in Modern. I could see Final Fortune being a fun brew-around. Pretty much everything else in the set would be unplayable because it's either too expensive or there's something already legal that's better. Thoughts on this?
I'd have no problem with legalizing 7th Edition. I think it's a great idea. However, it does lead to the awkwardness that the seven sets released between 7th Edition and 8th Edition (Apocalypse, Odyssey, Torment, Judgment, Onslaught, Legions, and Scourge) wouldn't be legal. And you can't really do it from 7th Edition onward because then you end up with the increased goofiness of only getting part of the Invasion block. To get 7th Edition in, I think you'd have to set the starting point at Invasion.
Not that I'd have any problem with that either. I think Modern should've started with Invasion or Masques.
I think it should be unbanned. All of the decks that abused it have been banned and blue control and midrange decks won't become unbeatable if it is unbanned. The only thing that I might be concerned about is Ad Nauseum, and I honestly don't think we should let a boring, uninteractive combo deck keep a Control card from being unbanned. If Ad Nauseum abuses Dig Thropugh Time, ban something from it, not a card that other fair blue decks use.
Ad Nauseum was the deck I was most concerned with too, but I just looked at the lists from late 2014, and Ad Nauseum wasn't playing DTT back then. I think my assumption in my original post was correct; Ad Nauseum can't fill up their graveyard fast enough to play DTT.
Then in that case, I see no problems with unbanning Dig Through Time.
I think [Dig Through Time] should be unbanned. All of the decks that abused it have been banned and blue control and midrange decks won't become unbeatable if it is unbanned. The only thing that I might be concerned about is Ad Nauseum, and I honestly don't think we should let a boring, uninteractive combo deck keep a Control card from being unbanned. If Ad Nauseum abuses Dig Thropugh Time, ban something from it, not a card that other fair blue decks use.
Note: the following assumes Ad Naus would even run Dig Through Time. Which, as wraithpk pointed out, it did not even when it was legal. So entirely irrelevant, but worth bringing up anyways.
Banning Pact of Negation, which has no purpose in Modern other than protecting all-in combo decks from the control decks that are supposed to police them, would almost certainly be sufficient. Ad Naus would go from being an intermittent Tier-2 deck to Tier 1.5 or 1, and reactive blue decks would keep it in check by going from intermittently Tier-2 to Tier 1.5 or 1. Storm would still suffer from having all of its best cards banned and not being able to Delve away cards. Seems totally fine to me.
And the "Jund splashing U for Cruise" problem would be kept in check by the basement UU cost.
Exactly. Would anyone even really care if Pact of Negation had to be banned?
I was giving Dig Through Time some thought too. The card is certainly broken, but let's face it, Modern's best cards are conceptually broken.
The two more outstanding problems i can think of are: 1)Would it make Reactive blue decks too good?. The card generates crazy consistency and as a player who played a lot of RUG Scapeshift, UR Twin and UWR Control with it i can say that, obviously, the least broken user was Jeskai but in a world where the aforementioned combos where Tier 1 decks. Which leads me to...
2)Temur Scapeshift. The last remaining Combo-Control deck. Epitome of 'Unfair' in MTG. I think this is the deck that triggers worries everytime R&D review their banlist. I'm mostly sure that RUG Shift would be Tier 1 in a world with DTT. It is quite intuitive since every good card in this format ends up in a broken or unfair strategy. Would control decks beat Scapeshift with DTT for both sides? Seems pretty dificult. Control decks give you a lot of time to build you hand with combo pieces and counterspells. 1 Dig resolved could mean enough.
Aside from those i don't see why DTT couldn't be legal but i may be missing something.
I really doubt Dig is powerful enough to single-handedly make blue control decks and Scapeshift increase from tier 3 to unbeatable monsters.
I am against dtt because i feel it is a massive over correction. Yes, blue needs help i agree. Yes, dtt would help blue. But the amount of help it provides is beyond what the color needs, i strongly believe it brings blue decks just way above what other decks are doing. I understand that the card can look innocent on the surface, i really do, and I've thought about it a few times myself. But then i play with it and remember how absurd it is in real games. It very often ends up reading UU: demonic tutor at instant speed, and even when it doesn't, it is still beyond absurd. Honestly the card would be fine if it was a sorcery, but it's an instant, it provides way to much value, and should remain on the ban list. I would much rather discuss jace, twin, ponder or Preordain than dig
Dig definitely is an overcorrection. Moreover, I don't understand how players can believe that WotC would sooner unban Dig Through Time than Preordain. Both cards serve similar decks, but one is also clearly much stronger than the other. Why would
WotC go with Dig first and not Preordain?
We have to start with the most innocuous cards first before moving onto more powerful ones imo.
I am not saying that there is any reason to believe that Wizards would choose to unban Dig over Preordain or Jace. I am saying that Dig has no evidence or data to back up its banning, that Dig almost certainly wouldn't single-handedly manage to make blue interactive decks so powerful that they dominate the format, and that all of the unfair decks that would abuse Dig have already been banned. It would be good enough to make interactive blue decks strong in Modern and likely wouldn't break the format. It isn't a likely unban, but that doesn't mean that it would be the wrong choice.
I played against Esper Dragons standard with my Jund deck and I was getting thrashed. DDT let him give 7 cards deep at the end of my turn for 2 cards advantage for any perfect answer or threat, now let's think about that in a format thats nothing but efficient piles of cards. 2 Mana for all that, then we start snap casting it back, Dank Dweller or whatever the hell it is, Scapeshift tutoring for anything they want
Yeah, no, no thank you. DDT was too powerful for legacy, for different reasons, but I think that's because DDT is not, "oh! it's modern fun broken" it's a broken ass card, period.
I can't provide you in what context DDT will be used, I'm just most certainly sure it's too powerful
Dig being too powerful in Legacy and you anecdotally losing a game to a Standard deck doesn't mean that Dig is too powerful for Modern.
Blue doesn't need help. It is still the strongest color in modern. No unbannings are needed. Modern is supposed to be diverse enough that most deck concepts can compete. Accept storm ,Wizards hates combo.
This is simply not true and you know it. Blue only has 3 playable Modern cards right now other than Merfolk.
Blue is a support color, more than anything else. Maybe thats not a bad thing? I enjoy the way I use blue right now. Sure, it could be better to help me out more, but I dont think any of us are talking about blue being able to stand on its own two feet, are we? Isnt the whole point of the color pie that colors have strengths and weaknesses? Isnt the whole point of color mixing that what you give up in mana consistency issues, you make-up for in having more powerful tools at your disposal?
What strengths do blue and white even have in Modern though? Blue has Snapcaster Mage and some mediocre library manipulation while white has Path to Exile and a few sideboard cards. Other than that, what else is playable in those colors (not counting Lingering Souls, which is basically multicolored, and Merfolk)?
Blue doesn't need help. It is still the strongest color in modern. No unbannings are needed. Modern is supposed to be diverse enough that most deck concepts can compete. Accept storm ,Wizards hates combo.
Blue is the strongest colour in modern? Hmm, I thought that was black or green. I don't think your opinion is shared by most.
Yeah, that is laughable. Black, then colorless, then green, then red, then blue with white not that far behind it. Blue has Snapcaster and not a whole lot else.
I honestly think that both Delve cards should be unbanned. Cruise Delver really wasn't that bad, it was just a meta thing. With Pod (which I also think should come back) gone the bad matchups for Delver would come back and I don't see it being any worse than any other deck. I played against it quite a bit and I wasn't impressed. It was strong, but if it becomes a problem, Tron lays waste to it. The meta just wasn't given time to fix itself
Unbanning Treasure Cruise would obviously be the wrong choice. It was broken even when Pod was lgal, and Pod was the deck with the best matchup against Cruise decks. It would be absurd now.
Dig through at the very least 13% of your deck (it gets progressively better for each card you draw before casting DTT), and then choose 29% of those cards and put them into your hand? All for UU? Yea, its not coming off the ban list.
Yes, Dig is powerful. However, there are many powerful cards in Modern. Do you have any evidence that Dig is too powerful?
(Funny enough MM is not "that" big of an player in Modern NBL, which is quite surprising, when you think about how broken that card is).
Regarding DTT and what influence it will have:
There are three primary winners, and a lot of secondary ones. Primary ones are obvious Jeskai Ascendency (the UWR Tempo/Combo version), RUG Scapeshift (the secretly "best" deck in the TC/DTT area, since it had both a good Delver as Pod match-up) and Control (especially Esper Control would love that card). For the secondary ones only Delver decks have to get noticed, since it would allow the deck to be a solid Tier 2 deck, even though it struggles with a lot of things.
Jeskai Ascendency was a good deck, especially since it was not an all in combo deck + played a relative high amount of interaction (6-8 removal spells and 4-6 counters). The earliest win was on turn 3 thanks to Probe, which is now no longer possible. Hence, the earliest kill would be a turn 4 kill which is more than okay (Modern is a turn 4 format), especially since you can interact quite easily with the combo elements (Bolt/Path vs Fatesticher, Decay/Remand vs Ascendency). Would develop into a solid Tier 2 deck, sometimes dipping into the Tier 1 scene, when the Meta is soft to it, sometimes going down to Tier 3.
RUG Scapeshift would be the real winner. Everybody who followed the deck back in the DTT times knew, how good it was. However, the main reason, why it was so good was mainly of how the interaction from the deck aligned with the current meta. Anger was MVP (both against Delver as Pod), especially when you were able to cast it on turn 3 with counter back up. It still had a decent clock and the goldfish with a perfect draw was at turn 4 (needs a perfect hand and you cannot play anything else but ramp spells basically). Again, no problem with the Turn 4 rule. However, what the deck CAN do is, that when correctly build it can offer a decent choice against both big mana decks (as long as they do not sling Caverns and Ulamogs at you) due to the counter suite and have a decent match-up vs midrange esque decks. However, on the other side the control (lots of air) and aggro (again lots of air) match-ups are not great, this is especially true in the current RUG version. Hence, would establish as a solid Tier 1.5, sometimes dipping down to Tier 2 when there is more aggro and control and being at Tier 1 when there are more targets for multifunctional interaction spells (like Anger back in the days).
Last but not least Control. I can only speak from my personal experience with UW Control back with DTT, have not played Jeskai or Esper Control with that card, so if somebody, who has played with DTT in the respective deck, can correct me if I'm wrong, please go ahead.
In UW Control Dig was a okay-ish card. The problem was, that filling up the Graveyard was an actual problem. Due to the nature of the deck of playing more board based interaction spells (Wall of Omens, Detention Sphere, Vedillion Clique, Runed Halo,...) and the low number of Fetchlands (5 is the max you usually want to run) you had problems to get a "early" Dig off. Most of the times Turn 4 was a realistic Dig for 4 mana turn, which was nice but not close to game breaking. Hence, you had to build the UW Control deck still with the early game in mind hand had the Digs as a late game tutor for the silver win con bullets (be it WSZ or Rev in the more draw and go version or the Planeswalkers in the more tapout version).
However, Dig would improve both Esper and Jeskai a great deal and would give them a real shot of beating things like the ramp decks or something like Cavern of Souls.
Overall, while Dig is a broken good card (as most of the modern powerhouses) it would be INTERESTING to have it in the current Modern format and look, how it would develop from there. I honestly doubt, it would result into huge problems, it would just force a shift in the comfort levels from the players.
Greetings,
Kathal
PS: And totally agree, MM3 is absolutely bonkers ^^
Agreed. Dig is a very powerful card, but so are Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf, Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, Path to Exile, Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Mox Opal, Arcbound Ravager, Cranial Plating, the Tron lands, and many other cards. Dig would not break the format, so why not unban it?
Blue doesn't need help. It is still the strongest color in modern. No unbannings are needed. Modern is supposed to be diverse enough that most deck concepts can compete. Accept storm ,Wizards hates combo.
Blue is the strongest colour in modern? Hmm, I thought that was black or green. I don't think your opinion is shared by most.
Yeah, that is laughable. Black, then colorless, then green, then red, then blue with white not that far behind it. Blue has Snapcaster and not a whole lot else.
I honestly think that both Delve cards should be unbanned. Cruise Delver really wasn't that bad, it was just a meta thing. With Pod (which I also think should come back) gone the bad matchups for Delver would come back and I don't see it being any worse than any other deck. I played against it quite a bit and I wasn't impressed. It was strong, but if it becomes a problem, Tron lays waste to it. The meta just wasn't given time to fix itself
Dude, stop.
Every single deck would splash blue to play Treasure cruise.
Stahp.
No, every single deck would not splash Blue to play Treasure Cruise. How do I know that? Because that wasn't the case when it was legal. Heck, Treasure Cruise is actually worse than it was then due to the banning of Gitaxian Probe.
The card is stupid broken and restricted even in vintage, it was an awful suggestions to entertain to begin with
I don't think "restricted even in Vintage" is all that persuasive of an argument. The formats are rather different. I mean, Vintage is a format where Lodestone Golem and Merchant Scroll are restricted, and those cards see basically no play in Modern. Modern is just nowhere near as good at filling up the graveyard quickly as Vintage is.
I'd be rather dubious about it coming back if Gitaxian Probe were still legal, but that card is gone and that card was basically the biggest enabler of Treasure Cruise that existed in the format.
Dig Through Time does make a lot more sense than Treasure Cruise though.
Can people please stop comparing cards in different formats to how good they'd be in another? Gush is one of the most bonkers cards in Vintage, but would be relatively meh in Modern in comparison. Context matters. Deathrite Shaman was total garbage in Standard, but tore up everywhere else. In a format with Moxes, free spells, Mental Misstep, Force, and Gitaxian Probe legal not to mention the billion times more power-level that is Vintage compared to Modern that DTT is probably at least a thousand times more powerful in Vintage than Modern. So using Vintage as an argument about how DTT would play in Modern is just dumb.
I'm writing an article assessing the effectiveness of the Twin ban and the Sword/AV unbans at achieving their overlapping goals. Did the ban free up space for non-Twin blue decks? Did the unbans improve controlling blue decks? After analyzing the 2015 data during the Twin era and the 2016 and early 2017 data from after the ban/unbans, I now have enough information to answer this question. I'll publish the full results and numbers in the article itself, but here's the summary:
1. Non-Twin blue decks performed slightly better at the GP/SCG T8 and T16 level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
2. Non-Twin blue decks performed worse at the GP/SCG Day 2 level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
3. Non-Twin blue decks performed worse at the MTGO level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
4. Non-Twin blue decks performed slightly worse at the overall aggregated metagame level in 2016-17 than in 2015.
5. The total share of blue decks (non-Twin and Twin) plummeted by roughly 50% in all categories from 2015 to 2016-17.
Here's an example of how I came to these findings. In 2015, non-Twin decks averaged an 8.2% share at the T8 level and a 9% share at the T16 level. In 2016-17, that share is up to 12.1% and 11.2% respectively. That's just one example of how the comparison plays out, but there's obviously a lot of detail and depth to explore. I'm posting this here to see what questions you all have and other feedback you can provide on this kind of analysis.
So what you're saying is that the Twin ban was a colossal failure and we should all apologize to Cfusion?
Not all of us - some of us agreed with him from the start
I don't see a problem with unbanning a card like Dig. If it's an "overcorrection" it can be rebanned. What I do see a problem with are the constant undercorrections - AV and Sword didn't help blue much, and I'm willing to be any of the "safe" cards on the list won't help it drastically either. What do we do if we unban Jace and it has no effect? Wait another year and hope for something else? I think a solid year of a color underperforming indicates that it's time to stop being so conservative about blue is allowed to do.
So what you're saying is that the Twin ban was a colossal failure and we should all apologize to Cfusion?
Its failure depends on what we think Wizards' objective was. If it was to reduce the overall share of blue decks (Twin and non-Twin) while simultaneously making non-Twin decks more viable at the T8 and T16 level, then it may have been a moderate success. If it was to keep the overall share of blue decks stable and just redistribute Twin's share to other decks, however, then it was a colossal failure. I'm sure the answer is somewhere in the middle but, not knowing that middle, it's hard to weigh in on its success or failure overall. All considered, I think the numbers do not paint a positive picture of blue's standing in Modern.
Does this research lead you to think Twin should be unbanned, or are you still leaning on the Preordain/Jace/SFM unban?
I haven't decided what the fix is, just that a fix is needed.
If non-twin Uxx reactive decks declined in day 2 but increased in top8, would that not indicate an improved conversion ratio? I suppose that a narrowing metagame might explain why such decks might work better day 2 than they did day 1. That seems to suggest that non-twin Uxx reactive decks are better against tier 1 decks than they are the field?
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
If non-twin Uxx reactive decks declined in day 2 but increased in top8, would that not indicate an improved conversion ratio? I suppose that a narrowing metagame might explain why such decks might work better day 2 than they did day 1. That seems to suggest that non-twin Uxx reactive decks are better against tier 1 decks than they are the field?
That is true about reactive decks in general. You build them to beat the majority of tier 1 which is why they do well in small formats like standard. The only way reactive blue becomes viable in an eternal format as diverse as modern is if some outrageously strong consistency/card advantage tool is printed or unbanned. Usually if a truly reactive blue deck is tier 1 it is usually oppressive like the nonesense going on during the mental misstep era in legacy. I rather have combo control decks in the format than have something like mm era legacy control in modern. Thats not to say I do think blue needs better consistency tools or answers but nothing at the level of dtt and mental misstep but preordain is fine.
If non-twin Uxx reactive decks declined in day 2 but increased in top8, would that not indicate an improved conversion ratio? I suppose that a narrowing metagame might explain why such decks might work better day 2 than they did day 1. That seems to suggest that non-twin Uxx reactive decks are better against tier 1 decks than they are the field?
"All considered, I think the numbers do not paint a positive picture of blue's standing in Modern"
If non-twin Uxx reactive decks declined in day 2 but increased in top8, would that not indicate an improved conversion ratio? I suppose that a narrowing metagame might explain why such decks might work better day 2 than they did day 1. That seems to suggest that non-twin Uxx reactive decks are better against tier 1 decks than they are the field?
"All considered, I think the numbers do not paint a positive picture of blue's standing in Modern"
did you not read what he said here?
I'm not sure who you are responding to here. If you are responding to me, my short answer is that I'm still crunching the numbers so I'm not sure. My longer answer is that a slightly higher conversion rate doesn't matter if the field as a whole sees a massive decline in the deck. It's actually sometimes easier for decks with fewer players to have better conversion rates. Once the analysis is totally cleaned up, I'll be able to weigh in with more detail.
Its failure depends on what we think Wizards' objective was. If it was to reduce the overall share of blue decks (Twin and non-Twin) while simultaneously making non-Twin decks more viable at the T8 and T16 level, then it may have been a moderate success. If it was to keep the overall share of blue decks stable and just redistribute Twin's share to other decks, however, then it was a colossal failure. I'm sure the answer is somewhere in the middle but, not knowing that middle, it's hard to weigh in on its success or failure overall. All considered, I think the numbers do not paint a positive picture of blue's standing in Modern.
I think it's pretty clear from the ban announcement that they expected the non-Twin blue decks to pick up a sizeable chunk of Twin's metashare at the very least:
Decks that are this strong can hurt diversity by pushing the decks that it defeats out of competition. They can also reduce diversity by supplanting similar decks. For instance, Shaun McLaren won Pro Tour Born of the Gods playing this Jeskai control deck. Alex Bianchi won our most recent Modern Grand Prix playing a similar deck but adding the Splinter Twin combination. Similarly, Temur Tempo used to see play at high-level events but has been supplanted by Temur Twin.
We considered what one would do with the cards from a Splinter Twin deck with Splinter Twin banned. In the case of some Jeskai or Temur, there are very similar decks to build. In other cases, there is Kiki-Jiki as a replacement.
Time has born out that Twin was not actually pushing any decks out of competition. There weren't any new decks that suddenly surfaced because Twin was gone. They spend a lot more time here talking about decks that Twin would supplant, namely other blue decks. I think it's pretty clear from their wording that they expected people to move to these other blue decks, but that didn't happen. If I remember correctly from your Modern Nexus article sometime around February, UXx decks were like 25% of the field right before the ban, about 14% of which were non-blue decks. Well, the blue decks now are at like 10%, so I would say going from 25 to 10% is a pretty colossal failure.
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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
The major argument I have against Dig Through time is that Reanimator has been slowly gaining in power since the deck changed from Jund(Grishoalbrand) to Grixis and got to play with the Expertise Cycle and other "Discard to do more" cards(Collective Brutality). I'm not sure that giving a deck that's been rising slowly access to a "Look at Top 7, Draw 2" when it's already able to win through Counterspells (I had a game where I went Remand a Goryo's Vengeance cast in response to an Emrakul Shuffle Trigger, only for him to recast it thanks to SSG giving him a second Mana.) Especially with the Expertise half needing literally 2 cards in hand.
The major argument I have against Dig Through time is that Reanimator has been slowly gaining in power since the deck changed from Jund(Grishoalbrand) to Grixis and got to play with the Expertise Cycle and other "Discard to do more" cards(Collective Brutality). I'm not sure that giving a deck that's been rising slowly access to a "Look at Top 7, Draw 2" when it's already able to win through Counterspells (I had a game where I went Remand a Goryo's Vengeance cast in response to an Emrakul Shuffle Trigger, only for him to recast it thanks to SSG giving him a second Mana.) Especially with the Expertise half needing literally 2 cards in hand.
Hmm, how to explain this in a reasonable matter?
The Shoal version of the deck cannot run it, it would need to go into U which hurts a ton (life and land wise) and will reap not much benefits, since you cannot fill your graveyard fast enough to get an early Dig out. Realistically you are looking at a turn 3 Dig with an empty grave afterwards, which is something you usually do not want (cannot pitch reanimate targets or Lootings to Looting effects).
The Grixis PT version (which got played after the Twin ban last year) would love something like Dig. It is a slower and more controlling deck, plays up to 12 interaction spells MD and would be able to field Dig in a good manner. However, while the deck can still generate rather fast kills (without help from the opponent the soonest is a turn 3 kill with a turn 2 Griselbrand) you can still interact with it quite cleanly, be it Surgical, Counter Spells (and no Remand is no counter spell in this match-up) or Path like removal spells for Griselbrand. However, the crucial aspect is (as against any kind of combo deck) that you need a reasonable clock. Without a clock the combo player can just go over the top, this is especially true, when he has access to protection cards like Collective Brutality or Izzet Charm.
Now to the most recent brew, the Expertise version. I have played with it a couple games, so I cannot make a 100% profound answer but since I play this archetype since 3,5 years I can make comparisons to other versions of the deck.
Basically it cannot play Dig for the same reason why the Shoal version cannot do it. What makes it even worse is, that by running Emrakul you have one card less you can actually pitch for a Looting to get a early Dig online. To makes things even worse, by discarding Emmi (be it by self discard or Thoughtseize) you are actually "countering" your Dig for another 2-3 turns, which is more than bad.
In the end, the Grixis PT controllish version would profit the most, since the other version simply cannot run it. However, since it is the weakest one among them (relatively speaking) it wouldn't break it in half. Furthermore, it would just make its mid to late game more consistent, which is not a problem per se, since only the pre turn 4 kills are a real problem.
tl,dr.: Dig would do close to nothing in that shell.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Its failure depends on what we think Wizards' objective was. If it was to reduce the overall share of blue decks (Twin and non-Twin) while simultaneously making non-Twin decks more viable at the T8 and T16 level, then it may have been a moderate success. If it was to keep the overall share of blue decks stable and just redistribute Twin's share to other decks, however, then it was a colossal failure. I'm sure the answer is somewhere in the middle but, not knowing that middle, it's hard to weigh in on its success or failure overall. All considered, I think the numbers do not paint a positive picture of blue's standing in Modern.
I think it's pretty clear from the ban announcement that they expected the non-Twin blue decks to pick up a sizeable chunk of Twin's metashare at the very least:
Decks that are this strong can hurt diversity by pushing the decks that it defeats out of competition. They can also reduce diversity by supplanting similar decks. For instance, Shaun McLaren won Pro Tour Born of the Gods playing this Jeskai control deck. Alex Bianchi won our most recent Modern Grand Prix playing a similar deck but adding the Splinter Twin combination. Similarly, Temur Tempo used to see play at high-level events but has been supplanted by Temur Twin.
We considered what one would do with the cards from a Splinter Twin deck with Splinter Twin banned. In the case of some Jeskai or Temur, there are very similar decks to build. In other cases, there is Kiki-Jiki as a replacement.
Time has born out that Twin was not actually pushing any decks out of competition. There weren't any new decks that suddenly surfaced because Twin was gone. They spend a lot more time here talking about decks that Twin would supplant, namely other blue decks. I think it's pretty clear from their wording that they expected people to move to these other blue decks, but that didn't happen. If I remember correctly from your Modern Nexus article sometime around February, UXx decks were like 25% of the field right before the ban, about 14% of which were non-blue decks. Well, the blue decks now are at like 10%, so I would say going from 25 to 10% is a pretty colossal failure.
I agree that it is unreasonable to believe Wizards wanted all of Twin's metagame share to simply disappear. They almost definitely wanted at least some percentage of it to be folded into new decks. We don't know that percentage, but we do know that none of the Twin share was folded into new decks at the MTGO or Day 2 level. A small percentage did get absorbed into the non-Twin blue decks at the T8 and T16 level (not T32 though). This might suggest a better conversion rate to T8 and T16 for non-Twin blue decks relative to their conversion rate before the ban, but more digging is needed to confirm that.
All told, these stats point to the Twin ban falling short in at least a few goals.
I appreciate your efforts in maths and percentage numbers.
Do you believe wizards think like you when approaching a ban? it's very likely they do not know how to use a calculator...
Stoddard's recent ban articles suggest they are very data-driven when making decisions, but I also do not believe the Twin ban was driven by good data (and/or driven primarily by data). It was a Pro Tour shakeup ban that could have had good consequences for the Modern metagame but hasn't over a year later.
If non-twin Uxx reactive decks declined in day 2 but increased in top8, would that not indicate an improved conversion ratio? I suppose that a narrowing metagame might explain why such decks might work better day 2 than they did day 1. That seems to suggest that non-twin Uxx reactive decks are better against tier 1 decks than they are the field?
"All considered, I think the numbers do not paint a positive picture of blue's standing in Modern"
did you not read what he said here?
I'm not sure who you are responding to here. If you are responding to me, my short answer is that I'm still crunching the numbers so I'm not sure. My longer answer is that a slightly higher conversion rate doesn't matter if the field as a whole sees a massive decline in the deck. It's actually sometimes easier for decks with fewer players to have better conversion rates. Once the analysis is totally cleaned up, I'll be able to weigh in with more detail.
what im saying is that it seems some people will still not believe blue is doing poorly even when you put the facts in front of them.
Seems like WOTC is dumping every possible Modern played card in MM3. Anything we should take away from this?
Takeaway 1: Wizards cares about Modern, wants cards to be cheaper and more available, and wants to support it.
Takeaway 2: fetchlands will likely never again be legal in a Standard set. They will be for non-rotating formats, the poster child of which is Modern.
Takeaway 3: Wizards (or, at least, Stoddard and his team) has a better understanding of the Modern market and player needs than we give them credit. Their choice of reprints underscores this point.
Seems like WOTC is dumping every possible Modern played card in MM3. Anything we should take away from this?
To me, it shows that they are willing to take a risk and pump ridiculous value into the set because the players have been demanding it. Between the low volume of MMA and the terrible non-mythic value of MM15, they've listened to our complaints by making a set jam packed with value AND an increased printing. It's a gesture that they actually DO listen to players, at least in some degree.
That is the thing and the reason why blue is doing bad in general. You need to be doing something pretty busted in modern. Every successful modern deck has their ability to justto execute a gameplan and win. The article would confirm that blue decks need a gameplan that can compete with other options. Blue has cards are decks would love to play but not even incentive due to lack of a strong wincon. If deaths shadow could fit a 5th color somehow I am sure they would love serum visions to make their deck even smaller.
So what you're saying is that the Twin ban was a colossal failure and we should all apologize to Cfusion?
Does this research lead you to think Twin should be unbanned, or are you still leaning on the Preordain/Jace/SFM unban?
I'd have no problem with legalizing 7th Edition. I think it's a great idea. However, it does lead to the awkwardness that the seven sets released between 7th Edition and 8th Edition (Apocalypse, Odyssey, Torment, Judgment, Onslaught, Legions, and Scourge) wouldn't be legal. And you can't really do it from 7th Edition onward because then you end up with the increased goofiness of only getting part of the Invasion block. To get 7th Edition in, I think you'd have to set the starting point at Invasion.
Not that I'd have any problem with that either. I think Modern should've started with Invasion or Masques.
Anything other than 'twin was the best deck' was always questionable at best, nice to see some facts that every other reason provided has failed.
Spirits
Then in that case, I see no problems with unbanning Dig Through Time.
Exactly. Would anyone even really care if Pact of Negation had to be banned?
I really doubt Dig is powerful enough to single-handedly make blue control decks and Scapeshift increase from tier 3 to unbeatable monsters.
I am not saying that there is any reason to believe that Wizards would choose to unban Dig over Preordain or Jace. I am saying that Dig has no evidence or data to back up its banning, that Dig almost certainly wouldn't single-handedly manage to make blue interactive decks so powerful that they dominate the format, and that all of the unfair decks that would abuse Dig have already been banned. It would be good enough to make interactive blue decks strong in Modern and likely wouldn't break the format. It isn't a likely unban, but that doesn't mean that it would be the wrong choice.
Dig being too powerful in Legacy and you anecdotally losing a game to a Standard deck doesn't mean that Dig is too powerful for Modern.
This is simply not true and you know it. Blue only has 3 playable Modern cards right now other than Merfolk.
What strengths do blue and white even have in Modern though? Blue has Snapcaster Mage and some mediocre library manipulation while white has Path to Exile and a few sideboard cards. Other than that, what else is playable in those colors (not counting Lingering Souls, which is basically multicolored, and Merfolk)?
Unbanning Treasure Cruise would obviously be the wrong choice. It was broken even when Pod was lgal, and Pod was the deck with the best matchup against Cruise decks. It would be absurd now.
Yes, Dig is powerful. However, there are many powerful cards in Modern. Do you have any evidence that Dig is too powerful?
Having a deck that is having 0 tournament success and saying that it is good is a terrible argument for banning or unbanning anything.
Agreed. Dig is a very powerful card, but so are Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf, Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, Path to Exile, Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Mox Opal, Arcbound Ravager, Cranial Plating, the Tron lands, and many other cards. Dig would not break the format, so why not unban it?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
No, every single deck would not splash Blue to play Treasure Cruise. How do I know that? Because that wasn't the case when it was legal. Heck, Treasure Cruise is actually worse than it was then due to the banning of Gitaxian Probe.
The card is stupid broken and restricted even in vintage, it was an awful suggestions to entertain to begin with
I don't think "restricted even in Vintage" is all that persuasive of an argument. The formats are rather different. I mean, Vintage is a format where Lodestone Golem and Merchant Scroll are restricted, and those cards see basically no play in Modern. Modern is just nowhere near as good at filling up the graveyard quickly as Vintage is.
I'd be rather dubious about it coming back if Gitaxian Probe were still legal, but that card is gone and that card was basically the biggest enabler of Treasure Cruise that existed in the format.
Dig Through Time does make a lot more sense than Treasure Cruise though.
Not all of us - some of us agreed with him from the start
I don't see a problem with unbanning a card like Dig. If it's an "overcorrection" it can be rebanned. What I do see a problem with are the constant undercorrections - AV and Sword didn't help blue much, and I'm willing to be any of the "safe" cards on the list won't help it drastically either. What do we do if we unban Jace and it has no effect? Wait another year and hope for something else? I think a solid year of a color underperforming indicates that it's time to stop being so conservative about blue is allowed to do.
Its failure depends on what we think Wizards' objective was. If it was to reduce the overall share of blue decks (Twin and non-Twin) while simultaneously making non-Twin decks more viable at the T8 and T16 level, then it may have been a moderate success. If it was to keep the overall share of blue decks stable and just redistribute Twin's share to other decks, however, then it was a colossal failure. I'm sure the answer is somewhere in the middle but, not knowing that middle, it's hard to weigh in on its success or failure overall. All considered, I think the numbers do not paint a positive picture of blue's standing in Modern.
I haven't decided what the fix is, just that a fix is needed.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
That is true about reactive decks in general. You build them to beat the majority of tier 1 which is why they do well in small formats like standard. The only way reactive blue becomes viable in an eternal format as diverse as modern is if some outrageously strong consistency/card advantage tool is printed or unbanned. Usually if a truly reactive blue deck is tier 1 it is usually oppressive like the nonesense going on during the mental misstep era in legacy. I rather have combo control decks in the format than have something like mm era legacy control in modern. Thats not to say I do think blue needs better consistency tools or answers but nothing at the level of dtt and mental misstep but preordain is fine.
"All considered, I think the numbers do not paint a positive picture of blue's standing in Modern"
did you not read what he said here?
decks playing:
none
I'm not sure who you are responding to here. If you are responding to me, my short answer is that I'm still crunching the numbers so I'm not sure. My longer answer is that a slightly higher conversion rate doesn't matter if the field as a whole sees a massive decline in the deck. It's actually sometimes easier for decks with fewer players to have better conversion rates. Once the analysis is totally cleaned up, I'll be able to weigh in with more detail.
I think it's pretty clear from the ban announcement that they expected the non-Twin blue decks to pick up a sizeable chunk of Twin's metashare at the very least:
Time has born out that Twin was not actually pushing any decks out of competition. There weren't any new decks that suddenly surfaced because Twin was gone. They spend a lot more time here talking about decks that Twin would supplant, namely other blue decks. I think it's pretty clear from their wording that they expected people to move to these other blue decks, but that didn't happen. If I remember correctly from your Modern Nexus article sometime around February, UXx decks were like 25% of the field right before the ban, about 14% of which were non-blue decks. Well, the blue decks now are at like 10%, so I would say going from 25 to 10% is a pretty colossal failure.
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
Hmm, how to explain this in a reasonable matter?
The Shoal version of the deck cannot run it, it would need to go into U which hurts a ton (life and land wise) and will reap not much benefits, since you cannot fill your graveyard fast enough to get an early Dig out. Realistically you are looking at a turn 3 Dig with an empty grave afterwards, which is something you usually do not want (cannot pitch reanimate targets or Lootings to Looting effects).
The Grixis PT version (which got played after the Twin ban last year) would love something like Dig. It is a slower and more controlling deck, plays up to 12 interaction spells MD and would be able to field Dig in a good manner. However, while the deck can still generate rather fast kills (without help from the opponent the soonest is a turn 3 kill with a turn 2 Griselbrand) you can still interact with it quite cleanly, be it Surgical, Counter Spells (and no Remand is no counter spell in this match-up) or Path like removal spells for Griselbrand. However, the crucial aspect is (as against any kind of combo deck) that you need a reasonable clock. Without a clock the combo player can just go over the top, this is especially true, when he has access to protection cards like Collective Brutality or Izzet Charm.
Now to the most recent brew, the Expertise version. I have played with it a couple games, so I cannot make a 100% profound answer but since I play this archetype since 3,5 years I can make comparisons to other versions of the deck.
Basically it cannot play Dig for the same reason why the Shoal version cannot do it. What makes it even worse is, that by running Emrakul you have one card less you can actually pitch for a Looting to get a early Dig online. To makes things even worse, by discarding Emmi (be it by self discard or Thoughtseize) you are actually "countering" your Dig for another 2-3 turns, which is more than bad.
In the end, the Grixis PT controllish version would profit the most, since the other version simply cannot run it. However, since it is the weakest one among them (relatively speaking) it wouldn't break it in half. Furthermore, it would just make its mid to late game more consistent, which is not a problem per se, since only the pre turn 4 kills are a real problem.
tl,dr.: Dig would do close to nothing in that shell.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
I agree that it is unreasonable to believe Wizards wanted all of Twin's metagame share to simply disappear. They almost definitely wanted at least some percentage of it to be folded into new decks. We don't know that percentage, but we do know that none of the Twin share was folded into new decks at the MTGO or Day 2 level. A small percentage did get absorbed into the non-Twin blue decks at the T8 and T16 level (not T32 though). This might suggest a better conversion rate to T8 and T16 for non-Twin blue decks relative to their conversion rate before the ban, but more digging is needed to confirm that.
All told, these stats point to the Twin ban falling short in at least a few goals.
Stoddard's recent ban articles suggest they are very data-driven when making decisions, but I also do not believe the Twin ban was driven by good data (and/or driven primarily by data). It was a Pro Tour shakeup ban that could have had good consequences for the Modern metagame but hasn't over a year later.
what im saying is that it seems some people will still not believe blue is doing poorly even when you put the facts in front of them.
decks playing:
none
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
Modern is to be played legacy is to be collected
Takeaway 1: Wizards cares about Modern, wants cards to be cheaper and more available, and wants to support it.
Takeaway 2: fetchlands will likely never again be legal in a Standard set. They will be for non-rotating formats, the poster child of which is Modern.
Takeaway 3: Wizards (or, at least, Stoddard and his team) has a better understanding of the Modern market and player needs than we give them credit. Their choice of reprints underscores this point.
To me, it shows that they are willing to take a risk and pump ridiculous value into the set because the players have been demanding it. Between the low volume of MMA and the terrible non-mythic value of MM15, they've listened to our complaints by making a set jam packed with value AND an increased printing. It's a gesture that they actually DO listen to players, at least in some degree.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate