I think Ad Naus has a good shot at taking this one home. Doesn't seem like Bant Eldrazi/Grixis Control/Abzan get there fast enough, or can they disrupt its game? Seems like Ad Nauseam was a good meta choice, given it can just go around/over a lot of the field.
I don't know, I haven't played the MU much with Grixis control but I am at a 4-0 matches 8-1 games total. It really depends on the draw but grixis can deal with ad N.
Reactive blue remains awful. Two people making T8 doesn't undermine the fact that only five players even made Day 2 with any kind of reactive blue decks. Then two of the five converted for an abysmal 40% Day 2 to T32 conversion. Just terrible. This continues the narrative of bad blue decks we saw last weekend and for months before. Grixis could win the entire event and reactive blue would still be bad; the mountain of metagame evidence suggesting this deck's weaknesses is now impossible to ignore.
No, the appearance of Grixis decks in the Top 8 did not save U or the Control archetype. It was a metagame call against a deck with low threat count, a work control decks never had trouble executing. As the format adapts to Death's Shadow, it is realistic to expect it to drop from "Deck to Beat" to just another solid strategy available in Modern.
Every once in a while, Jeskai and Grixis control decks make an appearance in Top 8 (or even Top 16) and leave people hopeful for a Modern format where every color and archetype is fairly represented, but unlike the Splinter Twin days, we don't have an interactive U control deck that persists on Tier 1 through multiple metagame changes and establishes itself as the premier police deck of the format. While some people argue that a Splinter Twin unban would be an effective way of helping the format, i think it is worth trying to fulfill Wizards' objective of promoting a greater diversity of U decks in the meta.
The present tournament may and will probably not be representative of the metagame for months to come, but it certainly reinforces the point that control decks have enough removal to have a fair chance against racing decks with low threat count, such as Death's Shadow, Infect and Affinity (this last one may have a lot of creatures, but few of them are the actual payoff cards capable of ending the game quickly, i.e. few must-answer cards). If control has trouble consistently getting access to those answers, unbanning card selection tools would help with the problem. For this purpose, we have Ponder and Preordain. Preordain is less powerful than Ponder, a safer option if we were to be provided a better low mana cantrip.
Other point about U decks this tournament reinforces is how unreliable Ancestral Vision is as a card advantage engine. The payoff takes a lot of time to arrive even when cast at the optimal opportunity (Turn 1), and the worst-case scenario of a terrible topdeck is really disheartening. A common argument against the unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor is that the card doesn't help against racing decks and would be mostly useful versus GBx decks and other midrange strategies. Looking at the decent performance of Grixis decks against Death's Shadow, as well as the overall efficiency of one mana removal spells when it comes to keeping cheap creatures in check, i don't think Wizards really needs to unban a card that is particularly good at dealing with aggro.
On the other hand, we have three midrange decks on Tier 1, two of them being GBX, and no U control decks to keep them in check. With the addition of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, WUR and UBR control decks could consolidate themselves on Tier 1 with favorable matchups against Affinity, Death's Shadow, Infect, Jund, Junk and unfavorable matchups versus Bant Eldrazi, Breach, Burn, Scapeshift and Tron, a very balanced metagame position. For people worried about Jace "running away" with the game, let's not forget that the modern card pool is strong enough to fight a deck that consistently gets the tron engine online by turn 4, as well as that other one that Lightning Storm's you into oblivion if it goes unchecked.
I agree with ktkenshinx: between Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Preordain, i believe the former is a safer unban, since it doesn't enable wins before (neither during) turn 4. I also believe that many player's conservative mentality is preventing the format from improving: many people asking for bans against every new threat, freaking out on unban suggestions for no reason etc. Wizards' new banlist update schedule gives them more flexibility to unban cards and ensure nothing ever gets out of control for too long. If Jace get unbanned in the March 13 announcement, and proves to be above the acceptable power level for the format, it will take just over a month to fix the problem.
Death's Shadow
Death's Shadow
Bant Eldrazi
Bant Eldrazi
Grixis Delver
Grixis Control
Abzan Midrange
Ad Nauseam
A good healthy top 8, if we leave the fact that DS is double and triple top8 ing a lot of events and it's starting to break out as the BEST DECK in Modern atm.
DS Jund is two weeks old. Let's maybe wait until July to start saying it's doing anything in "a lot" of tournaments. Doubly so when this thread and most of that awful Twitch chat wants to use its performance to justifying banning cards. Or, more generally, wants to ban everything from every deck that has more than a middling performance.
Double Grixis (Delver and Control) in top 8! That's sure an upset!
What do people make of it?
The color still needs help. This appearance doesn't overturn its horrible GP performance or bad performance since summer 2016. It doesn't need a double unban or anything drastic, but it does need assistance.
If only we were going to a plane where a Grixis colored planeswalker rules it as it's king... Maybe grixis would get more help
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On mtgsalvation people don't want to discuss ideas, so I give people something else to discuss: my controversial opinions.
Question: Where was it stated that reactive blue decks have to have measurable meta share? To me, the top 32 look impressively diverse. GR Ponza? It's not terrible. GB variations are starting to get a bit too prevalent though. I'm really not sure the lack of blue is because of weak card choices though but rather the natural slant of human psychology. Its more fun being the windshield rather than the bug, as it were.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Question: Where was it stated that reactive blue decks have to have measurable meta share? To me, the top 32 look impressively diverse. GR Ponza? It's not terrible. GB variations are starting to get a bit too prevalent though. I'm really not sure the lack of blue is because of weak card choices though but rather the natural slant of human psychology. Its more fun being the windshield rather than the bug, as it were.
When Splinter Twin was banned, it was banned specifically to help the growth and proliferation of other blue reactive decks that were supposedly being supplanted and stifled by Twin's success. Removing Twin was supposed to allow, in their words, "Temur, Jeskai, and Kiki Jiki decks" to thrive as a suitable replacement.
The issue isn't really one of entitlement, but that our deck was BANNED OUT OF EXISTENCE in order to push other blue decks up. But instead of actually helping blue, it has fallen from so far from grace that it's almost an embarrassment to show up to events with Steam Vents in your deck.
If Wizards had just said "We don't like Twin, we don't want it in the format," then fine. But to say that the Twin ban was supposed to HELP blue is hysterically wrong. I've been singing this song for more than a year, mostly to mockery and ridicule from others, but blue is still bad and the Twin ban was still an utter failure.
Question: Where was it stated that reactive blue decks have to have measurable meta share? To me, the top 32 look impressively diverse. GR Ponza? It's not terrible. GB variations are starting to get a bit too prevalent though. I'm really not sure the lack of blue is because of weak card choices though but rather the natural slant of human psychology. Its more fun being the windshield rather than the bug, as it were.
Wizards banned Twin to open up the blue space. That failed. Then they unbanned Sword and AV to help reactive blue decks. That failed too. Wizards clearly wants the decks to be top-tier, or at least one of them, but that just isn't the case right now. I expect them to address this by July or earlier.
You're right, there aren't any blue cards at GB power level. And there aren't any on the banned list either. Blue does however have effective strategies. But if you think something can be unbanned that will level the playing field so that blue can slug it out with GB decks, well, it won't happen.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
You're right, there aren't any blue cards at GB power level. And there aren't any on the banned list either. Blue does however have effective strategies. But if you think something can be unbanned that will level the playing field so that blue can slug it out with GB decks, well, it won't happen.
how do you know this? what reasons do you have for this? twin would certainly help blue, the others, very well could.
WotC is essentially going to have to ban the entirety of the jund deck then because that is what jund does. It feeds on decks that think they can sit on their hands and react. Jund does stuff on turn one every game. For a reactive deck to have a play, they essentially need a turn zero play. Cards like that don't fare to well (mental misstep and probe). Perhaps there is some unexplored game space that can make blue viable again but I really don't think there is anything on the banned list that will help (maybe ponder but preordain doesn't do enough and at 4 mana JTMS is pretty much a joke.) More bannings will not help though, that much I'm certain.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I'd like we stopped talking about Twin as a blue card. I mean, it's quite obvious it's not blue, but red. But the point is if we want to "Fix Blue", we don't fix blue by still having Blue being garbage but giving it a card from other color so a garbage color can win with some combo.
The idea is fix blue so it doesn't suck, not give it an off-color card to cheat wins despite sucking. Because, well, this idea might be unbelievable to some, but U is not forced to go with red at all by some law, and there are a lot of blue players that have zero interested in playing red at all. Including many good guys and players I know that religiously grind UW and Esper Control.
Those have every bit the right (which is, zero right) any UR lovers have to see their archetype boosted.
if we want to win fair I think nothing other than better countermagic helps us, either that or preordain for our delvers to be more consistent
The problem with magic in the last 4+ years is the lack of a powerful T1 control deck. You see this in standard and you see it with constant bannings in Modern. You can't bemoan the frequency of banning cards and also want blue reactive decks to stay *****, as reactive blue decks are the best kind of decks to keep a format healthy. For the life of me I can't find the appeal in playing by yourself in a competitive game meant to be played against another human being. I love magic, but if the trend continues I'm not going to be playing much longer. I wish the reserved list never existed...Legacy is so much better on a competitive level than every other format, but because of the reserved list it prices so many people out of the format. On top of that they're trying to shoehorn everyone into their *****ty standard. I really miss 2009-2013.
If a piece of the Death's Shadow deck gets banned, I am probably done with Modern to be honest. If the deck really ends up being too dominant, which I find unlikely given that there are plenty of natural counters to the deck, this would be the exact type of situation where an unban would be more appropriate than a ban.
What would you even ban anyway? Death's Shadow? Goyf? That would be silly. There isn't a single card in the deck that's even close to being overpowered. If it ends up dominating the format, that's just a sign that they've powered other decks down too much with bans.
This deck is strong but very beatable, and it's a nice police deck to have in the format.
It is like the delver of modern. Strong beatdown plan with disruption except it uses discard instead of land destruction and counters.
Twin is broken. And most of the blue cards are just not good enough. Ponder and preordain are sorcery speed. What is the creative power of the top three cards of a randomized 60 card deck next to the destructive power of one of seven that thoughtseize or IOK can pull? JTMS is slow and is hit by discard pretty easily (though it does dodge IOK.) If it came back tomorrow, the only change you'd see is people playing duress main deck.
You guys are talking about a reactive game for gods sake. Four turns is all you got and auto wins apparently not allowed. What can you do?
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I'd like we stopped talking about Twin as a blue card. I mean, it's quite obvious it's not blue, but red. But the point is if we want to "Fix Blue", we don't fix blue by still having Blue being garbage but giving it a card from other color so a garbage color can win with some combo.
The idea is fix blue so it doesn't suck, not give it an off-color card to cheat wins despite sucking. Because, well, this idea might be unbelievable to some, but U is not forced to go with red at all by some law, and there are a lot of blue players that have zero interested in playing red at all. Including many good guys and players I know that religiously grind UW and Esper Control.
Those have every bit the right (which is, zero right) any UR lovers have to see their archetype boosted.
if we want to win fair I think nothing other than better countermagic helps us, either that or preordain for our delvers to be more consistent
Better countermagic would help, will we get it? Doubtful, because standard. Better cantrips would help, will we get it? Doubtful, because combo. Better wincons would help, will we get them? Mmmh that could be... but I'm not sure to what degree it would help.
So I agree that if we assume we are not getting any good countermagic or any good cantripping, then outside of Twin, the thing is complicated. But we also assume WotC actually wants to help blue, right? So we'll have to wait and see.
I mean aaron forcythe just talked about jace, and attempted to help blue with av and sotm. but in the end it is twin that is the answer, because maybe like you said non twin blue decks are doomed in this fast format if we cant get beter counterspells, cantrips and threats. ( which as you said is slim chance)
As much as I'd hate to see another ban, I think Traverse the Ulvenwald is the most possible candidate. I think the biggest obstacle DSJ has is that it is a fun deck to play and a lot of folks will be playing it. And they will continue to play it, until they can't, which is so lame.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Reactive Blue decks are NOT healthy. Look at the current Miracles meta in Legacy. If your deck can't beat Miracles, it's not a deck. Having a super blue police deck isn't as great as you think. You're either playing the deck or you're going to find a way to beat that deck. Or even worse, you have to run blue or your deck is crap.
Blue just needs better answers to fast creatures. I rather see something like a 1 drop 0/1 Twiddle creature. I like 3CMC hard counters and 2CMC counters with conditions, so that other colors can shine. If anything Green needs a pullback right now.
Twin is broken. And most of the blue cards are just not good enough. Ponder and preordain are sorcery speed. What is the creative power of the top three cards of a randomized 60 card deck next to the destructive power of one of seven that thoughtseize or IOK can pull? JTMS is slow and is hit by discard pretty easily (though it does dodge IOK.) If it came back tomorrow, the only change you'd see is people playing duress main deck.
You guys are talking about a reactive game for gods sake. Four turns is all you got and auto wins apparently not allowed. What can you do?
Surviving isn't the issue. Ux control decks are pretty good at getting to T5. The problem is we lack some consistency (I'd prefer Opt to Ponder or Preordain) so we can sometimes get stuck with the wrong half of the deck in our hand, but mostly it's outside of Snapcaster having a pretty awful late-game which is compounded by poor CA engines. Jace would help with that. The better option though is Dig Through Time (they really missed the boat with the sorcery speed accumulated knowledge in SOI....if only it was an instant!). If the best we can muster is Snap+Dismiss (the most oft used mode of CC) what are we really trying to work towards? It would be one thing if we had an efficient consistent way to swamp others through CA in the late-game, but we lack that.
The best I've found is going Esper and playing Esper Charm, CC, and Torrential Gearhulk. If I had counterspell and accumulated knowledge (instead of TT) in that deck it'd be so good.
The other issue is that Cavern of Souls should probably be banned if we want to see Ux deck come back. I'm not sure how palatable that one is though.
Nah it's mostly 50/50 (Twin had a 60/40 edge, roughly) but GBX is proactive, you are advocating for a U reactive deck. They seem to mirror each other. Further I don't know why you think that. I mean I emphasized the 4 turn clock, which has very little to do with GBX and a lot to do with the format as a whole. Still further, why are we talking about Twin as being reactive? It was a combo deck that pretended to play magic for three or four turns...
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Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Reactive Blue decks are NOT healthy. Look at the current Miracles meta in Legacy. If your deck can't beat Miracles, it's not a deck. Having a super blue police deck isn't as great as you think. You're either playing the deck or you're going to find a way to beat that deck. Or even worse, you have to run blue or your deck is crap.
How is this proof reactive Blue decks aren't healthy? The problem with Miracles (if there is one) isn't that it's a reactive Blue deck, it's that it occupies a rather high metagame share. That's totally incidental to what kind of deck it is. Eldrazi occupied an overly large metagame share too, by that logic aggro decks aren't healthy.
Reactive Blue decks are NOT healthy. Look at the current Miracles meta in Legacy. If your deck can't beat Miracles, it's not a deck. Having a super blue police deck isn't as great as you think. You're either playing the deck or you're going to find a way to beat that deck. Or even worse, you have to run blue or your deck is crap.
Blue just needs better answers to fast creatures. I rather see something like a 1 drop 0/1 Twiddle creature. I like 3CMC hard counters and 2CMC counters with conditions, so that other colors can shine. If anything Green needs a pullback right now.
of course its not healthy when it has such a high meta share. but that is legacy a different monster.
"Blue just needs better answers to fast creatures"
we have bolt/fatal push. thats not where we need help.
Nah it's mostly 50/50 (Twin had a 60/40 edge, roughly) but GBX is proactive, you are advocating for a U reactive deck. They seem to mirror each other. Further I don't know why you think that. I mean I emphasized the 4 turn clock, which has very little to do with GBX and a lot to do with the format as a whole. Still further, why are we talking about Twin as being reactive? It was a combo deck that pretended to play magic for three or four turns...
Twin was pretty bad against the fair decks. It beat up on the linear uninteractive/big mana decks. 80% of the time Twin also just turned into a URx control deck relying on Snapcaster and Keranos/Jace AoT post-board.
As for in general. Most Ux control decks are at least 60/40 against GBx. With Esper I'm closer to 75/25 against them. The problem is against half of the T1 decks you're more like a 30/70 dog. A part of me says they should be tacking on lifegain onto control spells, but that might be a little too good.
Finding a way to win is not really an issue imho. We have a lot of good ways to close games whether it is Tasigur, Snap-Bolt, Clique, Nahiri, etc. The problem is Cavern of Souls, no real good CA consistency to work towards (AV is too slow and inconsistent), and the counterspells in the format suck at the stage of the game we actively want to make it to. If we had counterspell + DTT and/or Jace and Cavern was banned we would be in a good spot imho.
I think delver v bant eldrazi perfectly showcased why blue isn't viable in this format
These posts about waiting for better cards to be printed is nonsense, that could take blue.
Blue has to grind out wins against Gbx decks, and can struggle against junk itself. Tron goes over the top. Scapeshift has too much inevitably, bant eldrazi has cavern and pumps put too many creatures, zoo like decks overwhelm it.
There's too many proactive decks and strategies in this format, preordain won't fix this, and Jace doesn't fix a damn thing about decks going under and over the top, it just punishes interactive decks already established
You guys are nuts of you think almost any unban can help it
Reactive Blue decks are NOT healthy. Look at the current Miracles meta in Legacy. If your deck can't beat Miracles, it's not a deck. Having a super blue police deck isn't as great as you think. You're either playing the deck or you're going to find a way to beat that deck. Or even worse, you have to run blue or your deck is crap.
How is this proof reactive Blue decks aren't healthy? The problem with Miracles (if there is one) isn't that it's a reactive Blue deck, it's that it occupies a rather high metagame share. That's totally incidental to what kind of deck it is. Eldrazi occupied an overly large metagame share too, by that logic aggro decks aren't healthy.
Not only that, Miracles hasn't been the best deck in Legacy in a bit. It's very good and does a very good of policing the format, but if you look at the past 6 months of results this idea that Miracles is beyond the pale is just not true. Look at the GP results. Look at the results from European tournaments. Look at the SCG results. It will usually put a pilot into the T8 and you are not embarrassed to bring it to a tournament if you're aiming to win. Is that too much to ask for?
This monster of a deck that is too OP put 1 person in the top 16 of the Legacy classic this weekend lol.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
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Reactive blue remains awful. Two people making T8 doesn't undermine the fact that only five players even made Day 2 with any kind of reactive blue decks. Then two of the five converted for an abysmal 40% Day 2 to T32 conversion. Just terrible. This continues the narrative of bad blue decks we saw last weekend and for months before. Grixis could win the entire event and reactive blue would still be bad; the mountain of metagame evidence suggesting this deck's weaknesses is now impossible to ignore.
Every once in a while, Jeskai and Grixis control decks make an appearance in Top 8 (or even Top 16) and leave people hopeful for a Modern format where every color and archetype is fairly represented, but unlike the Splinter Twin days, we don't have an interactive U control deck that persists on Tier 1 through multiple metagame changes and establishes itself as the premier police deck of the format. While some people argue that a Splinter Twin unban would be an effective way of helping the format, i think it is worth trying to fulfill Wizards' objective of promoting a greater diversity of U decks in the meta.
The present tournament may and will probably not be representative of the metagame for months to come, but it certainly reinforces the point that control decks have enough removal to have a fair chance against racing decks with low threat count, such as Death's Shadow, Infect and Affinity (this last one may have a lot of creatures, but few of them are the actual payoff cards capable of ending the game quickly, i.e. few must-answer cards). If control has trouble consistently getting access to those answers, unbanning card selection tools would help with the problem. For this purpose, we have Ponder and Preordain. Preordain is less powerful than Ponder, a safer option if we were to be provided a better low mana cantrip.
Other point about U decks this tournament reinforces is how unreliable Ancestral Vision is as a card advantage engine. The payoff takes a lot of time to arrive even when cast at the optimal opportunity (Turn 1), and the worst-case scenario of a terrible topdeck is really disheartening. A common argument against the unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor is that the card doesn't help against racing decks and would be mostly useful versus GBx decks and other midrange strategies. Looking at the decent performance of Grixis decks against Death's Shadow, as well as the overall efficiency of one mana removal spells when it comes to keeping cheap creatures in check, i don't think Wizards really needs to unban a card that is particularly good at dealing with aggro.
On the other hand, we have three midrange decks on Tier 1, two of them being GBX, and no U control decks to keep them in check. With the addition of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, WUR and UBR control decks could consolidate themselves on Tier 1 with favorable matchups against Affinity, Death's Shadow, Infect, Jund, Junk and unfavorable matchups versus Bant Eldrazi, Breach, Burn, Scapeshift and Tron, a very balanced metagame position. For people worried about Jace "running away" with the game, let's not forget that the modern card pool is strong enough to fight a deck that consistently gets the tron engine online by turn 4, as well as that other one that Lightning Storm's you into oblivion if it goes unchecked.
I agree with ktkenshinx: between Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Preordain, i believe the former is a safer unban, since it doesn't enable wins before (neither during) turn 4. I also believe that many player's conservative mentality is preventing the format from improving: many people asking for bans against every new threat, freaking out on unban suggestions for no reason etc. Wizards' new banlist update schedule gives them more flexibility to unban cards and ensure nothing ever gets out of control for too long. If Jace get unbanned in the March 13 announcement, and proves to be above the acceptable power level for the format, it will take just over a month to fix the problem.
I will close this post by inviting people to actually test Jace and Preordain on Modern Reformed: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/770299-reformation-of-modern-if-you-want-something-done.
If only we were going to a plane where a Grixis colored planeswalker rules it as it's king... Maybe grixis would get more help
Decks I'm playing in Modern right now:
URB Grixis Reveler (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-grixis-reveler/)
UB Faeries (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/ub-fae-2/)
UW Azorious Control (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-ojutai-control-2/)
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
When Splinter Twin was banned, it was banned specifically to help the growth and proliferation of other blue reactive decks that were supposedly being supplanted and stifled by Twin's success. Removing Twin was supposed to allow, in their words, "Temur, Jeskai, and Kiki Jiki decks" to thrive as a suitable replacement.
The issue isn't really one of entitlement, but that our deck was BANNED OUT OF EXISTENCE in order to push other blue decks up. But instead of actually helping blue, it has fallen from so far from grace that it's almost an embarrassment to show up to events with Steam Vents in your deck.
If Wizards had just said "We don't like Twin, we don't want it in the format," then fine. But to say that the Twin ban was supposed to HELP blue is hysterically wrong. I've been singing this song for more than a year, mostly to mockery and ridicule from others, but blue is still bad and the Twin ban was still an utter failure.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Wizards banned Twin to open up the blue space. That failed. Then they unbanned Sword and AV to help reactive blue decks. That failed too. Wizards clearly wants the decks to be top-tier, or at least one of them, but that just isn't the case right now. I expect them to address this by July or earlier.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
how do you know this? what reasons do you have for this? twin would certainly help blue, the others, very well could.
decks playing:
none
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
if we want to win fair I think nothing other than better countermagic helps us, either that or preordain for our delvers to be more consistent
decks playing:
none
It is like the delver of modern. Strong beatdown plan with disruption except it uses discard instead of land destruction and counters.
You guys are talking about a reactive game for gods sake. Four turns is all you got and auto wins apparently not allowed. What can you do?
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I mean aaron forcythe just talked about jace, and attempted to help blue with av and sotm. but in the end it is twin that is the answer, because maybe like you said non twin blue decks are doomed in this fast format if we cant get beter counterspells, cantrips and threats. ( which as you said is slim chance)
decks playing:
none
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Blue just needs better answers to fast creatures. I rather see something like a 1 drop 0/1 Twiddle creature. I like 3CMC hard counters and 2CMC counters with conditions, so that other colors can shine. If anything Green needs a pullback right now.
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
Surviving isn't the issue. Ux control decks are pretty good at getting to T5. The problem is we lack some consistency (I'd prefer Opt to Ponder or Preordain) so we can sometimes get stuck with the wrong half of the deck in our hand, but mostly it's outside of Snapcaster having a pretty awful late-game which is compounded by poor CA engines. Jace would help with that. The better option though is Dig Through Time (they really missed the boat with the sorcery speed accumulated knowledge in SOI....if only it was an instant!). If the best we can muster is Snap+Dismiss (the most oft used mode of CC) what are we really trying to work towards? It would be one thing if we had an efficient consistent way to swamp others through CA in the late-game, but we lack that.
The best I've found is going Esper and playing Esper Charm, CC, and Torrential Gearhulk. If I had counterspell and accumulated knowledge (instead of TT) in that deck it'd be so good.
The other issue is that Cavern of Souls should probably be banned if we want to see Ux deck come back. I'm not sure how palatable that one is though.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
How is this proof reactive Blue decks aren't healthy? The problem with Miracles (if there is one) isn't that it's a reactive Blue deck, it's that it occupies a rather high metagame share. That's totally incidental to what kind of deck it is. Eldrazi occupied an overly large metagame share too, by that logic aggro decks aren't healthy.
of course its not healthy when it has such a high meta share. but that is legacy a different monster.
"Blue just needs better answers to fast creatures"
we have bolt/fatal push. thats not where we need help.
decks playing:
none
Twin was pretty bad against the fair decks. It beat up on the linear uninteractive/big mana decks. 80% of the time Twin also just turned into a URx control deck relying on Snapcaster and Keranos/Jace AoT post-board.
As for in general. Most Ux control decks are at least 60/40 against GBx. With Esper I'm closer to 75/25 against them. The problem is against half of the T1 decks you're more like a 30/70 dog. A part of me says they should be tacking on lifegain onto control spells, but that might be a little too good.
Finding a way to win is not really an issue imho. We have a lot of good ways to close games whether it is Tasigur, Snap-Bolt, Clique, Nahiri, etc. The problem is Cavern of Souls, no real good CA consistency to work towards (AV is too slow and inconsistent), and the counterspells in the format suck at the stage of the game we actively want to make it to. If we had counterspell + DTT and/or Jace and Cavern was banned we would be in a good spot imho.
These posts about waiting for better cards to be printed is nonsense, that could take blue.
Blue has to grind out wins against Gbx decks, and can struggle against junk itself. Tron goes over the top. Scapeshift has too much inevitably, bant eldrazi has cavern and pumps put too many creatures, zoo like decks overwhelm it.
There's too many proactive decks and strategies in this format, preordain won't fix this, and Jace doesn't fix a damn thing about decks going under and over the top, it just punishes interactive decks already established
You guys are nuts of you think almost any unban can help it
Not only that, Miracles hasn't been the best deck in Legacy in a bit. It's very good and does a very good of policing the format, but if you look at the past 6 months of results this idea that Miracles is beyond the pale is just not true. Look at the GP results. Look at the results from European tournaments. Look at the SCG results. It will usually put a pilot into the T8 and you are not embarrassed to bring it to a tournament if you're aiming to win. Is that too much to ask for?
This monster of a deck that is too OP put 1 person in the top 16 of the Legacy classic this weekend lol.
That's not true at all for overall match %.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate