Well, the most likely outcome is that nothing gets banned and nothing gets unbanned. The trouble with unbanning certain cards isn't really about their gameplay viability, but who could even bother to afford playing them and experimenting with them if they did become modern playable. People earlier were mentioning Jace, The Mind Sculptor, who has a hefty price tag because players who get one basically staple it to themselves and refuse to part with it unless you pay them a not so insignificant part of their monthly rent. If they made him modern legal the few players who own copies would get to take advantage of him in modern, but forget ever touching that guy because now you just stapled + super glued the sucker to the person.
Stoneforge Mystic is the other card people want unbanned (including myself to a degree), but that card is very much a legacy card in feel and power. In a format where equipment is just too slow to do any good and cards like Umezawa's Jitte are not legal, it likely will flounder about just like Sword of the Meek or enter that odd position that Ancestral Visions fills. The Batterskull combo is basically that cards namesake in combination with cards that can allow expansion to equips like Sigarda's Aid and Leonin Shikari. To this day, the only other deck I've found her useful in is Legacy Death and Taxes alongside Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (who's price is creeping up right now and I really should get some paper copies of...)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
Colt, a quick check shows dozens of Jace's available, he was just reprinted. Your views on price, are your views. The rest of us buy and play the cards.
I'm a bit fascinated, and disappointed, in the amount of hyperbole I hear about the demise of control in the meta. To me, it seems that a large part of the population that makes these sorts of claims seem to correlate to the population that are angry about the Twin ban, and are likely only using the "demise of control" argument as a thinly veiled criticism of WotC for a decision they disagree with.
If we look at the recent States results, there's a decent amount of control there. The problem is that people like to adjust their definition of "control" in order to fit their argument. Technically speaking, Death and Taxes is a control deck. A "counterspell" control deck stops players from resolving relevant spells just as well as Death and Taxes, or Lantern, or Sun and Moon. The method of control might be different, but the hairs are split in order to classify one group as "prison" rather than control. If someone cannot resolve spells, no matter the method of control, they are "imprisoned".
Even if we ignore Death and Taxes, or Lantern, or Sun and Moon, we have a decent amount of Grixis, Jeskai, and Esper control existing. Sure, it's not as prevalent as people might like, but I wouldn't say that it's because it's strictly not viable.
If a player claims to be a proponent of blue-based control, but decides to play something like Infect or Amulet Titan, then they aren't "stuck in traffic - they are the traffic". For a long time people claimed that Lantern wasn't viable, and the justification were prejudiced ideas about how it would lose to time or hate cards. But then people started actually picking it up and learning it. It has a rough learning curve, just like a control deck probably should. But that means that the pilots have to think, and thinking is hard. We, as humans, don't like to face our mistakes for the most part. That's why many of us resort to decks that don't require a half hour of thought do so. It allows for fewer games of small mistakes costing games. It's much easier for us to justify our failures to variance, or a "hostile meta for our favorite decks". Sure, hostile metas happen, but so does cognitive bias
Well, the most likely outcome is that nothing gets banned and nothing gets unbanned. The trouble with unbanning certain cards isn't really about their gameplay viability, but who could even bother to afford playing them and experimenting with them if they did become modern playable. People earlier were mentioning Jace, The Mind Sculptor, who has a hefty price tag because players who get one basically staple it to themselves and refuse to part with it unless you pay them a not so insignificant part of their monthly rent. If they made him modern legal the few players who own copies would get to take advantage of him in modern, but forget ever touching that guy because now you just stapled + super glued the sucker to the person.
Stoneforge Mystic is the other card people want unbanned (including myself to a degree), but that card is very much a legacy card in feel and power. In a format where equipment is just too slow to do any good and cards like Umezawa's Jitte are not legal, it likely will flounder about just like Sword of the Meek or enter that odd position that Ancestral Visions fills. The Batterskull combo is basically that cards namesake in combination with cards that can allow expansion to equips like Sigarda's Aid and Leonin Shikari. To this day, the only other deck I've found her useful in is Legacy Death and Taxes alongside Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (who's price is creeping up right now and I really should get some paper copies of...)
You aren't seriously complaining about price of a card in a format where an uncommon is $40 and goyf/lili both cost more than jtm. Price has nothing to do with if a card should be legal.
Just because a deck interacts with your opponent doesn't mean it's a control deck. I've seen the most ridiculous claims on this thread as to what constitutes control. By most people's logic I could slap the control label on a Burn deck and say Modern is fixed.
Stop playing extremes, stop using your personal judgment as fact, and stop stretching the truth to your image.
Modern has no control deck, and we need one because as diverse as Modern is, most players still feel the outcome of their games are not decided by skill, but rather by opponents luck.
Just because a deck interacts with your opponent doesn't mean it's a control deck. I've seen the most ridiculous claims on this thread as to what constitutes control. By most people's logic I could slap the control label on a Burn deck and say Modern is fixed.
Stop playing extremes, stop using your personal judgment as fact, and stop stretching the truth to your image.
Modern has no control deck, and we need one because as diverse as Modern is, most players still feel the outcome of their games are not decided by skill, but rather by opponents luck.
Not necessarily just luck but why is it ok to take 12 discard spells to your opponent tearing their hand apart, yet not be able to play a decent counterspell/selection spell.
My money is very much on a dual unban of sfm and preordain
I'll be stunned if there's no urban. I'd be caught off guard if there were any banana too.
I the k jace makes with nervous and rightfully so, a jace reban would be the largest disaster in modern history, afm carries less risk and possible fixes to blue, along with white that's devolved into only having path and lingering souls exist in the format
People will experiment with others, but SFM + Goyf + discard seems better than anything Jeskai, Esper, or UW has to offer.
I think there's something to that. However, Stoneforge Mystic would almost certainly be a bigger boost to non-GB decks. Abzan's gains from running SFM (in a meta that was not tooled to combat SFM) were demonstrated to be pretty minimal (outside vs. burn). My guess is that's because Abzan is already bursting with high-octane midrange cards - way higher quality than what your UWx Control or W-based Midrange deck is pulling out.
That said, I think a Stoneforge works best alongside another unban - preferably Preordain. That gives you a little more reason to run midrange that's not BGx, and both cards do good things from the format from very different vectors. Plus, UWx are the only decks that benefit from both, and it's not like Esper Draw-Go is tearing up the format or anything.
Basically this. Unbanning Mystic means Abzan may run it, but it gives Something like Bant a much needed shot in the arm. Mystic let's White no longer be "Path+Sideboard"
Well, the most likely outcome is that nothing gets banned and nothing gets unbanned. The trouble with unbanning certain cards isn't really about their gameplay viability, but who could even bother to afford playing them and experimenting with them if they did become modern playable. People earlier were mentioning Jace, The Mind Sculptor, who has a hefty price tag because players who get one basically staple it to themselves and refuse to part with it unless you pay them a not so insignificant part of their monthly rent. If they made him modern legal the few players who own copies would get to take advantage of him in modern, but forget ever touching that guy because now you just stapled + super glued the sucker to the person.
Stoneforge Mystic is the other card people want unbanned (including myself to a degree), but that card is very much a legacy card in feel and power. In a format where equipment is just too slow to do any good and cards like Umezawa's Jitte are not legal, it likely will flounder about just like Sword of the Meek or enter that odd position that Ancestral Visions fills. The Batterskull combo is basically that cards namesake in combination with cards that can allow expansion to equips like Sigarda's Aid and Leonin Shikari. To this day, the only other deck I've found her useful in is Legacy Death and Taxes alongside Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (who's price is creeping up right now and I really should get some paper copies of...)
You aren't seriously complaining about price of a card in a format where an uncommon is $40 and goyf/lili both cost more than jtm. Price has nothing to do with if a card should be legal.
I don't know. Are you bringing up some personal biased position that price doesn't have any place in a modern discussion and that the impact of an unbanning can actually be related to how available the card is to the community at large?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
Well, the most likely outcome is that nothing gets banned and nothing gets unbanned. The trouble with unbanning certain cards isn't really about their gameplay viability, but who could even bother to afford playing them and experimenting with them if they did become modern playable. People earlier were mentioning Jace, The Mind Sculptor, who has a hefty price tag because players who get one basically staple it to themselves and refuse to part with it unless you pay them a not so insignificant part of their monthly rent. If they made him modern legal the few players who own copies would get to take advantage of him in modern, but forget ever touching that guy because now you just stapled + super glued the sucker to the person.
Stoneforge Mystic is the other card people want unbanned (including myself to a degree), but that card is very much a legacy card in feel and power. In a format where equipment is just too slow to do any good and cards like Umezawa's Jitte are not legal, it likely will flounder about just like Sword of the Meek or enter that odd position that Ancestral Visions fills. The Batterskull combo is basically that cards namesake in combination with cards that can allow expansion to equips like Sigarda's Aid and Leonin Shikari. To this day, the only other deck I've found her useful in is Legacy Death and Taxes alongside Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (who's price is creeping up right now and I really should get some paper copies of...)
You aren't seriously complaining about price of a card in a format where an uncommon is $40 and goyf/lili both cost more than jtm. Price has nothing to do with if a card should be legal.
I don't know. Are you bringing up some personal biased position that price doesn't have any place in a modern discussion and that the impact of an unbanning can actually be related to how available the card is to the community at large?
How isn't Jace available? It's had 3 printings now. By your statement we should have banned goyf long ago because it was $200 and not readily available.
I'm a bit fascinated, and disappointed, in the amount of hyperbole I hear about the demise of control in the meta. To me, it seems that a large part of the population that makes these sorts of claims seem to correlate to the population that are angry about the Twin ban, and are likely only using the "demise of control" argument as a thinly veiled criticism of WotC for a decision they disagree with.
If we look at the recent States results, there's a decent amount of control there. The problem is that people like to adjust their definition of "control" in order to fit their argument. Technically speaking, Death and Taxes is a control deck. A "counterspell" control deck stops players from resolving relevant spells just as well as Death and Taxes, or Lantern, or Sun and Moon. The method of control might be different, but the hairs are split in order to classify one group as "prison" rather than control. If someone cannot resolve spells, no matter the method of control, they are "imprisoned".
Even if we ignore Death and Taxes, or Lantern, or Sun and Moon, we have a decent amount of Grixis, Jeskai, and Esper control existing. Sure, it's not as prevalent as people might like, but I wouldn't say that it's because it's strictly not viable.
If a player claims to be a proponent of blue-based control, but decides to play something like Infect or Amulet Titan, then they aren't "stuck in traffic - they are the traffic". For a long time people claimed that Lantern wasn't viable, and the justification were prejudiced ideas about how it would lose to time or hate cards. But then people started actually picking it up and learning it. It has a rough learning curve, just like a control deck probably should. But that means that the pilots have to think, and thinking is hard. We, as humans, don't like to face our mistakes for the most part. That's why many of us resort to decks that don't require a half hour of thought do so. It allows for fewer games of small mistakes costing games. It's much easier for us to justify our failures to variance, or a "hostile meta for our favorite decks". Sure, hostile metas happen, but so does cognitive bias
Rule of thumb: when players whine about "control" in this thread, they are referring specifically to reactive permission strategies, or Weissman control decks. That's why trying to console them with reminders about existing rock, prison, or fish decks never works.
Archetype classifications are highly subjective though, so here's a quick breakdown of the one I use as it relates to aggro decks, control decks, and aggro-control hybrids. Superarchetypes (Aggro, Control, Aggro-Control) in bold, and deck names in italics.
Midrange:
- Control rock (Grixis Control, Jeskai Flash)
- Aggro rock (Jund, Abzan)
---
Perhaps ironically, the fabled UR Twin was not a Weissman control deck, but a goodstuff Aggro-Combo-Control deck. Weissman has never been Tier 1 in Modern for an ongoing 2+ month period.
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.
Note: While most of the decks you list here seem to be control, or at least close enough, I would not classify Grixis Faeries or Jeskai Nahiri as control. Grixis Faeries is tempo/midrange, it has way too high threat percentage, and too many of it's answers make the long-game worse, to count as control, some people tend to get confused when a blue deck without green is a midrange or tempo deck and mistake it for control just because it has something like counterspells in it. Jeskai Nahiri is a tempo/combo deck, based on how it wins, and the cards it plays to slow down the game to pull off it's win condition, that are painful in the long game of control, as well as the relatively high number of Nahiri in the deck hinting at combo focus rather than control focus (which usually would prefer to have 1-2 of each threat they play in order to avoid things that shut down that threat, like an opponent running surgical extraction type effects), and cards like lighting bolt, izzet charm, lightning helix, and especially containing both mana leak and path to exile at the same time in the same deck strongly hint at tempo, rather than control.
The Jeskai control deck you listed just looks like a bad mix of tempo and control, where parts of the deck have anti-synergy with each other and the deck doesn't have reliable strength at any point in the game. The esper and sultai control decks you list look _much_ better and closer to true control, although still clearly have their own issues that hurts them as control decks. They've got better threat/answer ratios expected of control, less combo or tempo like threats, and less of their answer pool looks like it would work better for tempo/midrange strategies.
Lots of posts in this thread are borderline trolling or flaming. Keep it civil. If the tone doesn't calm down, staff will hand out warnings/infractions as needed and potentially close the thread for some time.
Are you ever going to do something about the Twin spammers here? They've had this thread completely hijacked for I don't know how long. It's stupid at this point.
I wonder if you had a group of guys posting 30 posts a day about Mental Misstep for weeks, or months, if wouldn't consider that spamming and worth acting.
EDIT: Otherwise, ok, I'm done with this place, title reads state of modern, format health and all but it's in reality a place where a bunch of guys still argue about Twin in frigging March, 2017. And we can't go and act like the whole thing pretty much asks for, which is laughing and making jokes, no, we have to act civil in front of the spam and take them seriously or just ignore the pollution they cause, when the pollution is half the posts. Come on.
Agreed. This thread sucks beyond belief b/c of the Splinter Twin crowd.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
FREE MODERN. Break the Standard link.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Lots of posts in this thread are borderline trolling or flaming. Keep it civil. If the tone doesn't calm down, staff will hand out warnings/infractions as needed and potentially close the thread for some time.
Are you ever going to do something about the Twin spammers here? They've had this thread completely hijacked for I don't know how long. It's stupid at this point.
I wonder if you had a group of guys posting 30 posts a day about Mental Misstep for weeks, or months, if wouldn't consider that spamming and worth acting.
EDIT: Otherwise, ok, I'm done with this place, title reads state of modern, format health and all but it's in reality a place where a bunch of guys still argue about Twin in frigging March, 2017. And we can't go and act like the whole thing pretty much asks for, which is laughing and making jokes, no, we have to act civil in front of the spam and take them seriously or just ignore the pollution they cause, when the pollution is half the posts. Come on.
Agreed. This thread sucks beyond belief b/c of the Splinter Twin crowd.
Again, we do not prohibit a topic just because one subset of users doesn't enjoy the topic. If you don't want to engage the topic or those posting about it, then feel free to totally ignore those posts and discuss another topic. The thread rules allow for a variety of topics and you are encouraged to post constructively about any of them.
@ashtonkutcher, That's fair. I don't know that complaining about a favorite specific type of control not being tier 1 for an extended period of time is truly due to it actually not being tier 1 for an extended period of time. I can agree that it's ironic that the people who are complaining about the lack of Weissman control decks tend to also complain about the loss of a goodstuff aggro-combo-control deck that, for the most part, pushed actual Weissman control decks out of the format.
@AvalonAurora, If we go by the Weissman control classification, the Nahiri deck is very close to the actual classic Weissman control deck. It ran lots of answers, a draw engine (Jayemdae Tome - Nahiri), and a big threat. The Jeskai Nahiri deck is simply a more robust version of it with a stronger finisher. I can understand why you might not want to classify Fae as a control deck, and I would agree that it's not a great example of a Weissman control deck as per ashtonkutcher's link. The point that I was trying to make was that the person I was responding to made a claim that:
Modern has no control deck, and we need one because as diverse as Modern is, most players still feel the outcome of their games are not decided by skill, but rather by opponents luck.
I was showing that this was a demonstrably false statement using links for evidence. The truth is that control does exist, and can place well. But if all of the "control fans" were actually control fans, and actually played control rather than Infect, or Amulet Titan, then maybe they might see more control in the meta. But that means that they wouldn't be justified in their criticism of WotC for a decision that, more likely than not, was absolutely justified by an amount of data that the complainers either can't guess at or refuse to consider.
EDIT: @h0lydiva, "But...that doesn't count as control." /s
I think it more has to do with as time goes on it's just harder and harder to play counter type control. I played 6 matches of modern today and 5 of the 6 were some type of b/bg/bw deck the played 4 ts 4iok and some other types of hand disruption. You can't play subpar control vs that field let alone just do well with it in general. So yes people that like control will shy away from it because it is so far down on the power scales. Vision is great for getting card advantage after taking 3 discard spells to the face but it's too bad you're dead by then.
Said this a zillion times by now. Will keep saying it.
The 'Blue Debate' is endless because frustrated blue players can't decide what is it they want fixed. They talk about Splinter Twin, Counterspell, Preordain, Jace, SFM, etc,etc. The issue here is that there are guys that clearly want Twin back no matter what. They really don't care about blue. They just want their overpowered super unfair combo-control deck again, and that's reasonable if you ask me. Every banned deck carries a lot of hurted players behind. Twin was an exceptional case because: 1)Not many people saw it comming(especially Twin players)
2)Many people belived Twin was a backbone of the Modern format that once removed, the entire body would fall apart(again, pretty much all Twin players).
The fact is that Twin will not come back no matter how factible may sound. It just doesn't fit R&D's agenda for the format. They don't want any deck being suppressed out of the metagame by one particular deck.(I know that it is an almost unachievable goal but still..).
So, what it's best for Modern?. That the whole point right? Play the best format ever?.
Do we think Modern needs a Top tier combo-control deck?. Draw-go maybe? Prison Control?.
Prison is pretty much out of the question since it is the best deck in another format(Legacy Miracles). Draw-go once existed in a more grindy metagame(back when Pod and Twin were a thing).
If you scratch the Combo, Draw-go and Prison elements for blue control, then you need bleu Midrange tools. Jace, Preordain, SFM+Preordain?, etc. Legacy doens't have Draw-go neither Combo-Control. It has Aggro-Control in Delver of Secrets, and Midrange in Esper,Sultai,Bant,etc. All of them good competitive decks.
Having said this, i confirm my believe that Forsythe's tweet about Jace wasn't trivial. I think WOTC is more likely to pull the Jace trigger than anything else, in an attempt to balance BG and U/x. If that ends in Sultai best shard, then we got what we wish for. A playable, top tier blue control deck. It might not be on the reactive end but still it is a control deck.
That's also why i don't see Counterspell variant happening anytime soon.
If you want to play Combo-Control, you have Saheeli+Cat. It's not Twin but i think it might be what Abzan Coco is to Pod.
In no way will Copy Cat ever hit the levels of success Abzan CoCo lists can, why?
Because it cannot win at instant speed.
You are 100% correct however, that blue players will never agree on what it will take to get to a point of happiness, after all many blue players hated twin just as much as they hate not having it.
Colt, a quick check shows dozens of Jace's available, he was just reprinted. Your views on price, are your views. The rest of us buy and play the cards.
Yup, plenty at 58+ usd. You people and your swiss bank accounts get me laughing for days. Pay someone enough and they will go walking barefoot through broken glass, that doesn't make it a good idea.
On topic, that is a price tag set by the sellers and community demand on a card not even played in modern. The second that card is unbanned it isn't going to stay at 58 usd. The multiplier on Ancestral Visions was crazy the second that got unbanned, and Jace has plenty of upwards growth potential if it goes modern legal. Unbanning something like Preordain, which is affordable, will impact modern significantly more than a high priced planeswalker that only a select few will likely purchase and make use of due to the price tag alone. It's the same reason a ton of people don't go and play jund. Not a lot of people want to pay 60+ usd per card on liliana along with 80+ usd a card for Tarmogoyf.
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!
shots fired
well we have gps..
URW PillowFort Stasis (costruction)
modern:
U Taking Turns combo
pauper:
UB Servitor Control
xenob8 : you know you are going to have a bad time when opponent starts with snow covered island
Stoneforge Mystic is the other card people want unbanned (including myself to a degree), but that card is very much a legacy card in feel and power. In a format where equipment is just too slow to do any good and cards like Umezawa's Jitte are not legal, it likely will flounder about just like Sword of the Meek or enter that odd position that Ancestral Visions fills. The Batterskull combo is basically that cards namesake in combination with cards that can allow expansion to equips like Sigarda's Aid and Leonin Shikari. To this day, the only other deck I've found her useful in is Legacy Death and Taxes alongside Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (who's price is creeping up right now and I really should get some paper copies of...)
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!
I'll be watching a sold out Modern Open this weekend, and so will more than will watch a competing Standard event. :]
Spirits
Spirits
If we look at the recent States results, there's a decent amount of control there. The problem is that people like to adjust their definition of "control" in order to fit their argument. Technically speaking, Death and Taxes is a control deck. A "counterspell" control deck stops players from resolving relevant spells just as well as Death and Taxes, or Lantern, or Sun and Moon. The method of control might be different, but the hairs are split in order to classify one group as "prison" rather than control. If someone cannot resolve spells, no matter the method of control, they are "imprisoned".
Even if we ignore Death and Taxes, or Lantern, or Sun and Moon, we have a decent amount of Grixis, Jeskai, and Esper control existing. Sure, it's not as prevalent as people might like, but I wouldn't say that it's because it's strictly not viable.
If a player claims to be a proponent of blue-based control, but decides to play something like Infect or Amulet Titan, then they aren't "stuck in traffic - they are the traffic". For a long time people claimed that Lantern wasn't viable, and the justification were prejudiced ideas about how it would lose to time or hate cards. But then people started actually picking it up and learning it. It has a rough learning curve, just like a control deck probably should. But that means that the pilots have to think, and thinking is hard. We, as humans, don't like to face our mistakes for the most part. That's why many of us resort to decks that don't require a half hour of thought do so. It allows for fewer games of small mistakes costing games. It's much easier for us to justify our failures to variance, or a "hostile meta for our favorite decks". Sure, hostile metas happen, but so does cognitive bias
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
You aren't seriously complaining about price of a card in a format where an uncommon is $40 and goyf/lili both cost more than jtm. Price has nothing to do with if a card should be legal.
Stop playing extremes, stop using your personal judgment as fact, and stop stretching the truth to your image.
Modern has no control deck, and we need one because as diverse as Modern is, most players still feel the outcome of their games are not decided by skill, but rather by opponents luck.
Not necessarily just luck but why is it ok to take 12 discard spells to your opponent tearing their hand apart, yet not be able to play a decent counterspell/selection spell.
I'll be stunned if there's no urban. I'd be caught off guard if there were any banana too.
I the k jace makes with nervous and rightfully so, a jace reban would be the largest disaster in modern history, afm carries less risk and possible fixes to blue, along with white that's devolved into only having path and lingering souls exist in the format
I'm not going to edit, spell check on phone sucks
Basically this. Unbanning Mystic means Abzan may run it, but it gives Something like Bant a much needed shot in the arm. Mystic let's White no longer be "Path+Sideboard"
I don't know. Are you bringing up some personal biased position that price doesn't have any place in a modern discussion and that the impact of an unbanning can actually be related to how available the card is to the community at large?
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!
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
How isn't Jace available? It's had 3 printings now. By your statement we should have banned goyf long ago because it was $200 and not readily available.
Archetype classifications are highly subjective though, so here's a quick breakdown of the one I use as it relates to aggro decks, control decks, and aggro-control hybrids. Superarchetypes (Aggro, Control, Aggro-Control) in bold, and deck names in italics.
AGGRO
- Zoo (8Whack, Revolt Zoo)
- Aura Stompy (Mono Green Stompy)
CONTROL
- Weissman (Wafo-Tapa Jeskai, Wafo-Tapa Esper)
- Prison (Lantern, WR Nahiri)
AGGRO-CONTROL
Tempo:
- Fish (Death & Taxes, Merfolk)
- Grow (Grixis/Temur Delver, Grixis/Jund Death's Shadow)
Midrange:
- Control rock (Grixis Control, Jeskai Flash)
- Aggro rock (Jund, Abzan)
---
Perhaps ironically, the fabled UR Twin was not a Weissman control deck, but a goodstuff Aggro-Combo-Control deck. Weissman has never been Tier 1 in Modern for an ongoing 2+ month period.
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
Note: While most of the decks you list here seem to be control, or at least close enough, I would not classify Grixis Faeries or Jeskai Nahiri as control. Grixis Faeries is tempo/midrange, it has way too high threat percentage, and too many of it's answers make the long-game worse, to count as control, some people tend to get confused when a blue deck without green is a midrange or tempo deck and mistake it for control just because it has something like counterspells in it. Jeskai Nahiri is a tempo/combo deck, based on how it wins, and the cards it plays to slow down the game to pull off it's win condition, that are painful in the long game of control, as well as the relatively high number of Nahiri in the deck hinting at combo focus rather than control focus (which usually would prefer to have 1-2 of each threat they play in order to avoid things that shut down that threat, like an opponent running surgical extraction type effects), and cards like lighting bolt, izzet charm, lightning helix, and especially containing both mana leak and path to exile at the same time in the same deck strongly hint at tempo, rather than control.
The Jeskai control deck you listed just looks like a bad mix of tempo and control, where parts of the deck have anti-synergy with each other and the deck doesn't have reliable strength at any point in the game. The esper and sultai control decks you list look _much_ better and closer to true control, although still clearly have their own issues that hurts them as control decks. They've got better threat/answer ratios expected of control, less combo or tempo like threats, and less of their answer pool looks like it would work better for tempo/midrange strategies.
Agreed. This thread sucks beyond belief b/c of the Splinter Twin crowd.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Again, we do not prohibit a topic just because one subset of users doesn't enjoy the topic. If you don't want to engage the topic or those posting about it, then feel free to totally ignore those posts and discuss another topic. The thread rules allow for a variety of topics and you are encouraged to post constructively about any of them.
@AvalonAurora, If we go by the Weissman control classification, the Nahiri deck is very close to the actual classic Weissman control deck. It ran lots of answers, a draw engine (Jayemdae Tome - Nahiri), and a big threat. The Jeskai Nahiri deck is simply a more robust version of it with a stronger finisher. I can understand why you might not want to classify Fae as a control deck, and I would agree that it's not a great example of a Weissman control deck as per ashtonkutcher's link. The point that I was trying to make was that the person I was responding to made a claim that:
I was showing that this was a demonstrably false statement using links for evidence. The truth is that control does exist, and can place well. But if all of the "control fans" were actually control fans, and actually played control rather than Infect, or Amulet Titan, then maybe they might see more control in the meta. But that means that they wouldn't be justified in their criticism of WotC for a decision that, more likely than not, was absolutely justified by an amount of data that the complainers either can't guess at or refuse to consider.
EDIT: @h0lydiva, "But...that doesn't count as control." /s
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
The 'Blue Debate' is endless because frustrated blue players can't decide what is it they want fixed. They talk about Splinter Twin, Counterspell, Preordain, Jace, SFM, etc,etc. The issue here is that there are guys that clearly want Twin back no matter what. They really don't care about blue. They just want their overpowered super unfair combo-control deck again, and that's reasonable if you ask me. Every banned deck carries a lot of hurted players behind. Twin was an exceptional case because: 1)Not many people saw it comming(especially Twin players)
2)Many people belived Twin was a backbone of the Modern format that once removed, the entire body would fall apart(again, pretty much all Twin players).
The fact is that Twin will not come back no matter how factible may sound. It just doesn't fit R&D's agenda for the format. They don't want any deck being suppressed out of the metagame by one particular deck.(I know that it is an almost unachievable goal but still..).
So, what it's best for Modern?. That the whole point right? Play the best format ever?.
Do we think Modern needs a Top tier combo-control deck?. Draw-go maybe? Prison Control?.
Prison is pretty much out of the question since it is the best deck in another format(Legacy Miracles). Draw-go once existed in a more grindy metagame(back when Pod and Twin were a thing).
If you scratch the Combo, Draw-go and Prison elements for blue control, then you need bleu Midrange tools. Jace, Preordain, SFM+Preordain?, etc. Legacy doens't have Draw-go neither Combo-Control. It has Aggro-Control in Delver of Secrets, and Midrange in Esper,Sultai,Bant,etc. All of them good competitive decks.
Having said this, i confirm my believe that Forsythe's tweet about Jace wasn't trivial. I think WOTC is more likely to pull the Jace trigger than anything else, in an attempt to balance BG and U/x. If that ends in Sultai best shard, then we got what we wish for. A playable, top tier blue control deck. It might not be on the reactive end but still it is a control deck.
That's also why i don't see Counterspell variant happening anytime soon.
If you want to play Combo-Control, you have Saheeli+Cat. It's not Twin but i think it might be what Abzan Coco is to Pod.
Because it cannot win at instant speed.
You are 100% correct however, that blue players will never agree on what it will take to get to a point of happiness, after all many blue players hated twin just as much as they hate not having it.
Spirits
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
There ya go.
Spirits
Yup, plenty at 58+ usd. You people and your swiss bank accounts get me laughing for days. Pay someone enough and they will go walking barefoot through broken glass, that doesn't make it a good idea.
On topic, that is a price tag set by the sellers and community demand on a card not even played in modern. The second that card is unbanned it isn't going to stay at 58 usd. The multiplier on Ancestral Visions was crazy the second that got unbanned, and Jace has plenty of upwards growth potential if it goes modern legal. Unbanning something like Preordain, which is affordable, will impact modern significantly more than a high priced planeswalker that only a select few will likely purchase and make use of due to the price tag alone. It's the same reason a ton of people don't go and play jund. Not a lot of people want to pay 60+ usd per card on liliana along with 80+ usd a card for Tarmogoyf.
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!