People seriously talking about banning Valakut... Banmania is here. Valakut is by no means breaking any rules. Simian Spirit Guide on the other hand...
Yes people are talking about valakut being banned. Why not? If it does well, it could be. That is Ban mania. Also assuming Spirit Guide, a card that sees less than 4 total percent in the meta should be banned... IS ALSO BAN MANIA
And your not to blame! Wizards has set the precedent. If its good, we will ban it.
We have entered the "Ban the degenerate cards" territory. Mox Opal and Simian Spirit Guide are degenerate cards. Rather than waiting for them to be banned out in the next January, Wizards should throw in a big announcement and ban them right away. Those and all the other cards they deem too strong.
I would not want them banned, but with Probe and GGT gone, the can has opened. More bans are NECESSARY to keep the format in check now. Unfortunate, but a must.
If WOTC bans Mox opal, I absolutely see no way it can survive something to that magnitude. Affinity would be too slow and fragile without it. It easily becomes a tier 3 deck that no one will touch
Also, if you ban mox opal, you're not banning 1 card, you're destroying an entire decks worth of investments, those cards don't fit into other decks. We are talking about players losing a 700 dollar investment
The only cards you can transfer are 4x Inkmoth, spellskites and the left over thoughtseize and 1x Blood Moon in the SB
Price isn't a factor in a ban, but we are talking about a very serious ban that effects people financially, this isn't banning Twin and being left with a pile of nothing
if their aim is to slow down the modern format to a 4th turn kill..
why, instead of banning the core cards of the fastest decks, don't they use the Legacy banlist starting from the 8th edition?
With every deck fastening, every deck will be slowed down.
The more opportunities, the best interactions to keep everyone in check.
Do you have real blue spells? I have Bloodbraid Elf and Artifact Lands, or a combo breaker.
Do you have graveyard-based deck? I have Deathrite Shaman.
Who's fastest? You in establishing control, with hard choices, or me in swinging in?
Modern today seems a solitaire game, with low to none interaction and hardcore lists that have very few flex spots to be changed during sideboarding.
The original modern banlist was decided without actual feedback; it wasn't even close to the Extended's, from which they could have learned something.
Now it's tuned according to tournaments results and decks' popularity, which is ok, but it is not fun.
Look at the Tier 1 section: all of the decks are aggro, or in the slower case, midrange. No real control, nor combo.
Maybe this have been already discussed zillion of times, but I want to know your opinion after this ban.
Modern often looked like a solitaire. Now, though, with Fatal Push coming our way and all of the hyper aggro decks nerfed or banned, the format will become once again very interactive and will be slowed down. We shall wait and get some results on our hands to be certain though.
All the cards in the banlist are banned for a specific reason.
One of: Preordain, Stoneforge Mystic, or Jace, The Mind Sculptor are the likely unban for the foreseeable future.
The solution you are proposing has so many problems. Who could fight a Jeskai StoneBlade Twin deck, with Stoneforge Mystic, Jace, the mind Sculptor, Ponder, Preordain, Ancestral Vision, Cryptic Command, etc?
Jund with DRS?
Pod with all that stuff?
Elves with Glimpse Of nature? Hypergenesis combos?
Super strong affinity?
Amulet Bloom in the format once again?
Can't be done. Sorry. Modern is not legacy. We need real solutions.
I think you are way off in assuming that the format will slow down much or become that much more focused on interactive plays. linear aggro-combo decks that focus on just doing what they do will still be the best non-Tron option against Jund style decks, super efficiently costed targeted discard pushes players towards DSZ and URprowess style aggro-combo decks. You can't play old school style aggro decks in a format so defined by attrition and targeted discard its not a viable option you have to construct a deck that disregards interaction in favor of running as many functional duplicates as possible so you don't get completely wrecked by cards like IoK and Thoughtseize. This is why delver generally sucks in modern its to open to hand disruption completely destroying its ability to compete.
not really fair to point to a legacy/vintage match as a justification. Modern's curve trends higher towards 2c.c. and 3 c.c. legacy and vintage its like 1.5 c.c. on average.
I do think that you can't talk about unbanning any of the grandfather bans unless your willing to consider and or try out all of them. They are all banned on the same or very similar grounds. JtmS SFM MM all banned because of their performance in other formats.
AV and SoM are different because they were preemptively banned because WotC was worried they would just go into a ready made U based control deck that would dominate and stifle to format in the cradle.
not really fair to point to a legacy/vintage match as a justification. Modern's curve trends higher towards 2c.c. and 3 c.c. legacy and vintage its like 1.5 c.c. on average.
Modern is policed by cards like Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, now Fatal Push, Thoughtseize, and Inquisition of Kozilek. Not only does Mental Misstep counter the spells that keep aggro/combo decks honest, it can only be meaningfully policed by itself. Which as we've seen before turns the game into "Who has the most Missteps?" That doesn't change whether the format is 2 CMC average or 1.5 CMC average. I don't see this as being a good thing.
I do think that you can't talk about unbanning any of the grandfather bans unless your willing to consider and or try out all of them. They are all banned on the same or very similar grounds. JtmS SFM MM all banned because of their performance in other formats.
AV and SoM are different because they were preemptively banned because WotC was worried they would just go into a ready made U based control deck that would dominate and stifle to format in the cradle.
Sword of the Meek was absolutely banned because of its performance in other formats. Exactly like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic (and Bitterblossom). Your reasoning doesn't hold up. Even if that weren't the case, I see no reason to believe that all preemptive bans must be treated equally.
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
No way do we want or should we want Pros or insiders testing new cards before they are released live. There is already some speculation that this occurs. It is a huge advantage to the handful of Pros who get to do this testing before the cards are released when they then go compete in tournaments w/ those new cards. Also, I, frankly, do not want the players designing the cards. There needs to be a divide there. I can accept things like Avalanche Riders that were one-off shots but not as a common practice.
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FREE MODERN. Break the Standard link.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
They absolutely could. However, I'm not terribly hopeful that they will. Maybe a little, but not very much.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
They absolutely could. However, I'm not terribly hopeful that they will. Maybe a little, but not very much.
I'll also add that Wizards does introduce new cards to STANDARD, their simplest, entry-level Constructed format, through supplemental products. If that's not complicated enough for Standard, it's definitely not complicated enough for Modern: just put stuff in Modern Masters and call it a day. I'm aware Wizards has other reasons for not doing this (Stoddard spoke about it last year), but the precedent is at least there.
not really fair to point to a legacy/vintage match as a justification. Modern's curve trends higher towards 2c.c. and 3 c.c. legacy and vintage its like 1.5 c.c. on average.
Modern is policed by cards like Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, now Fatal Push, Thoughtseize, and Inquisition of Kozilek. Not only does Mental Misstep counter the spells that keep aggro/combo decks honest, it can only be meaningfully policed by itself. Which as we've seen before turns the game into "Who has the most Missteps?" That doesn't change whether the format is 2 CMC average or 1.5 CMC average. I don't see this as being a good thing.
I do think that you can't talk about unbanning any of the grandfather bans unless your willing to consider and or try out all of them. They are all banned on the same or very similar grounds. JtmS SFM MM all banned because of their performance in other formats.
AV and SoM are different because they were preemptively banned because WotC was worried they would just go into a ready made U based control deck that would dominate and stifle to format in the cradle.
Sword of the Meek was absolutely banned because of its performance in other formats. Exactly like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic (and Bitterblossom). Your reasoning doesn't hold up. Even if that weren't the case, I see no reason to believe that all preemptive bans must be treated equally.
SFM JtmS and MM where all banned for the same reasoning. SotM and AV were not, they had been banned not because they are to powerful but because they didn't want a ready made powerful U control deck to dominate the format at its start. SFM JtmS and MM are banned because they have had format warping affects on various meta-games, I feel like they are equally banned for the same justifications and you cannot really say ones format warping history is less or more prevalent. You might hold bias' toward one specific card and be willing to over look its past and WotC reasoning for its placement on the banned list and that just makes your position inconsistent.
I say you cannot look at MM in legacy or vintage as justification for its banning in modern because modern lacks so many of the tools that make it so good in those formats. Those are formats that already have FoW and Daze adding MM to the mix just cemented U as the color you had to play. It wouldn't be the same in Modern and your kidding yourself if you say it would be. And if that is your standard for it remaining a forever banned card then SFM and JtmS are equally forever banned because I can find footage of both being extremely busted and undesirable game state generators if I can just pull from any format, all I have to do is search up caw-blade and I can find you hours no top of hours of evidence that they are justifiably banned forever because look what they did in a different format.
I'm not saying MM should be unbanned and it would be so good etc... I'm saying that ignoring SFM and JtmS' past and in unjustifiable outside of being willing to say that the type of busted meta-game these cards have created in the past is one in which i wouldn't mind Modern devolving into. In no banned list modern MM is one of the most heavily sideboarded out cards precisely because it doesn't hit that many targets its really only great in the Delver/treasure cruise mirrors or against decks like Infect so.
Why would the metagame not just sort itself out like it always do? You claim that Tron and Valakut will dominate and push out the decks that feasted on the aggressive decks, and maybe it will, short term. But if that's the case, we will see affinity, burn, infect, various combo like griselbrand based decks rise and punish those decks. This again will open the way for the jund like decks, and that again will invite tron etch. Why would that cycle suddenly stop simply because suicide zoo, UR prowess and to a lesser extent infect got weakened?
I see you state several places that you expect we will suddenly only see tron and similar decks, but im sure the metagame will control itself like it always have done unless something is to strong, like preban eldrazi. Your posts seem very biased and filled with bitterness since a vital card to your deck is banned. Surely a seasoned magic and modern player like yourself realize that as soon as the metagame settle, players will target those established decks.
Because at times, something happens that stops the normal cycle of the metagame. The singular reason why Modern has gone through these months of aggro and aggro-combo domination was the rise of Dredge. At the point where interactive decks should have been on the rise to control the fast decks, Dredge appeared and completely stopped interactive decks from doing so. And then, for all intents and purposes, the metagame froze for some months, until people were playing so much gy hate that the interactive decks could finally rise again and control the linears.
And this was happening already, you only need to see the evolution of the meta in the last few weeks. So after this rise, the next step in the cycle would be big mana decks rising to prey on interactive decks. Interactive decks going down while big mana goes up normally translates to the next step, fast decks going up again to profit from the situation. Only, when that happens, the best of those fast decks will be crippled or killed, and many of their bad matchups would have gained Fatal Push.
So what I expect, and I might be wrong but we'll see, is the crippling of those decks plus FP will have the same effect Dredge had on the metagame, but with a different target. Instead of it preventing interactive decks to rise in numbers to control the fast decks, it will prevent fast decks to rise in numbers to control big mana decks.
So again, we'll see what happens, because there's a new set out, which could bring unexpected developments and all this be different. But I've been following the (online) Modern meta for quite some time, I know pretty well how it moves, and I'm not optimistic.
EDIT: On the other hand, don't want to give a vibe of "sky is falling" or anything super dramatic. My deck got banned but I have a couple deck ideas I'll be working on, and will be generally ready to enjoy Modern as always. Who knows, perhaps more? Again, I'm not optimistic, but we'll see, because we are talking about the future and we just don't know
I honestly do not see this happening. The reason aggro and aggro combo does so well because they hardly have any true bad matchups in the their form before the bans. Most of the aggro decks bad matchups where in the realm of 45/55 or at worse 40/60 still too good and the fact that stumbling is much more punishing for interactive decks made it so they won quite a lot vs midrange and control. Many death shadow players even felt favored vs interactive decks just due to mana efficiency and redundancy. Interactive decks need true good matchups to have a true cyclical format which in the meta before the bans was not true.
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
They absolutely could. However, I'm not terribly hopeful that they will. Maybe a little, but not very much.
Yeah given that WotC has dismissed this idea multiple times leads me to believe it will not happen anytime with in the next 5 years.
You really have to look at it from WotC's perspective: they want modern as a format to exist to give long term value to their standard cards. If they start printing cards outside of standard for modern, then they risk taking value from their standard sets. They don't want modern to be more popular than standard.
I mean, WotC could start printing cards on request for a penny a piece and that might be good for some players, but the idea is not worth mentioning because it would obviously hurt their bottom line. That is an extreme example of a print policy that helps players but hurts WotC, but printing cards for modern outside of standard is not going to happen for the same reason: WotC's financial interest is contradicted by the proposed policy.
TL;DR: Wizards risks standard sales by putting high value/high demand cards for modern outside standard sets, so they won't do it.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
They absolutely could. However, I'm not terribly hopeful that they will. Maybe a little, but not very much.
Yeah given that WotC has dismissed this idea multiple times leads me to believe it will not happen anytime with in the next 5 years.
Well they did just unban and ban GGT and they reversed their silly change of the Standard rotation...but, yeah, they seem to really dislike Modern and even dealing with it anymore. They should try it though. At the end of the next ban announcement just tack on a sentence at the end saying. "Lastly, Counterspell is now legal in Modern." See where it goes, just like they did w/ the GGT unban.
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FREE MODERN. Break the Standard link.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
They absolutely could. However, I'm not terribly hopeful that they will. Maybe a little, but not very much.
Yeah given that WotC has dismissed this idea multiple times leads me to believe it will not happen anytime with in the next 5 years.
Well they did just unban and ban GGT and they reversed their silly change of the Standard rotation...but, yeah, they seem to really dislike Modern and even dealing with it anymore. They should try it though. At the end of the next ban announcement just tack on a sentence at the end saying. "Lastly, Counterspell is now legal in Modern." See where it goes, just like they did w/ the GGT unban.
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
They absolutely could. However, I'm not terribly hopeful that they will. Maybe a little, but not very much.
Yeah given that WotC has dismissed this idea multiple times leads me to believe it will not happen anytime with in the next 5 years.
Well they did just unban and ban GGT and they reversed their silly change of the Standard rotation...but, yeah, they seem to really dislike Modern and even dealing with it anymore. They should try it though. At the end of the next ban announcement just tack on a sentence at the end saying. "Lastly, Counterspell is now legal in Modern." See where it goes, just like they did w/ the GGT unban.
Let's avoid comments like "they seem to really dislike Modern and even dealing with it anymore." They're clearly dealing with it, profiting from it, and making some kind of effort with it. Unless you have specific evidence supporting that claim, not just subjective interpretations of things the community perceives as shortcomings, you really shouldn't be making that kind of claim. It's far more likely that Wizards, like many large organizations, is just making opaque and bad decisions, not that Wizards is trying to kill or jettison Modern. '
I imagine Wizards just has a lot of simultaneous projects and interests and is struggling to manage some of them effectively. See MTGO issues, pro reward programs, coverage failures, Modern's handling, Pro Tour changes, and a variety of other actions and shakeups over the past 2 years.
you'll notice that JtmS and SFM are viewed much more harshly than MM by WotC
and also the justification for its banning is exactly the opposite of why some people criticize it "Of blue cards that are legal in Modern, Mental Misstep is the most played in Legacy, and it also has one of the more damaging effects on Modern by sitting on beatdown decks that want to start on turn one. We chose to ban it rather than put that much pressure on beatdown decks."
IMO the unbanning and then rebanning of GGT is just going to leave WotC feeling very vindicated in their prior banning choices and leaves the unbanning of other similarly banned at birth of the format cards even less likely, after all they where correct about GGT why risk making the same mistake twice.
Yeah, that was my thinking of the troll ban. I would bet that part of the reason is so they can go "see, we told you so", and not take other cards off the list.
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Legacy
Death and Taxes Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
They absolutely could. However, I'm not terribly hopeful that they will. Maybe a little, but not very much.
Yeah given that WotC has dismissed this idea multiple times leads me to believe it will not happen anytime with in the next 5 years.
Well they did just unban and ban GGT and they reversed their silly change of the Standard rotation...but, yeah, they seem to really dislike Modern and even dealing with it anymore. They should try it though. At the end of the next ban announcement just tack on a sentence at the end saying. "Lastly, Counterspell is now legal in Modern." See where it goes, just like they did w/ the GGT unban.
Let's avoid comments like "they seem to really dislike Modern and even dealing with it anymore." They're clearly dealing with it, profiting from it, and making some kind of effort with it. Unless you have specific evidence supporting that claim, not just subjective interpretations of things the community perceives as shortcomings, you really shouldn't be making that kind of claim. It's far more likely that Wizards, like many large organizations, is just making opaque and bad decisions, not that Wizards is trying to kill or jettison Modern. '
I imagine Wizards just has a lot of simultaneous projects and interests and is struggling to manage some of them effectively. See MTGO issues, pro reward programs, coverage failures, Modern's handling, Pro Tour changes, and a variety of other actions and shakeups over the past 2 years.
The evidence is in their handling of the format and others. They just had three huge bans in the Standard format, including poster child of the Eldritch Moon set. Not only did Emrakul sell them packs, she cost a lot of players their own hard-earned money and time for putting together decks to play her in. Why are we not allowed to criticize WotC here? Does WotC run or profit from this website?
I can look at the fact that in my 20 years of playing Magic and purchasing products from WotC the value of their primary product, the booster pack, has steadily declined over time. You used to get 15 cards for your money, now you get 14, and a land or whatever. The mythic rare invention has made cards scarcer and devalued booster packs overall. I can say that WotC has an issue in that their primary product now is stressed too thin in how many formats of this game are played. Boosters now have to cater to Limited players, Standard, EDH, Modern, Legacy, Pauper, maybe even Frontier (I doubt it), and of course the kitchen table crowd. The fault that WotC cannot handle these things is not my fault as a customer, it's their fault for taking on so much and not effectively managing all of it. When a company makes "opaque and bad decisions" I as a customer have a right to question and criticize them for doing so, b/c it devalues their product to me and by extension makes their product a BAD experience. I should be able to share that experience. Why can I not share that here? As you pointed out, despite all of this loss of value to me, they are profiting from the game, still, and I am not here as a customer, NONE of us are, just to be profit bags for a company like WotC.
You yourself complained about their lack of decent explanations for the recent bans, and said that their reasons looked like they were thrown together in a manner of minutes. You can say such a thing (speculation) but I cannot?
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FREE MODERN. Break the Standard link.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
'All six developers and 2 interns...' I thought that was funny line from the intro to Modern article.
I dont know, I think this thread has kind of ran its course, we need some community outreach, and I just dont know if we get that very much for Modern these days. I dont even know who I would bother to try and get it, as I dont feel there is a clear 'Modern Champion' at Wizards?
The evidence is in their handling of the format and others. They just had three huge bans in the Standard format, including poster child of the Eldritch Moon set. Not only did Emrakul sell them packs, she cost a lot of players their own hard-earned money and time for putting together decks to play her in. Why are we not allowed to criticize WotC here? Does WotC run or profit from this website?
It is more likely that this handling is just a corporate error than a secret plot to undermine Modern. I'm a big occam's razor believer, and it often helps explain most shortcomings by large organizations. You are absolutely allowed to constructively criticize Wizards here and there is no Wizards/MTGS conflict of interest I am aware of. I'm simply pushing back at unsubstantiated claims because other players/posters read them. It's a discussion forum; you're allowed to constructive argue a point and I'm allowed to constructively point out its holes and alternate explanations.
I can look at the fact that in my 20 years of playing Magic and purchasing products from WotC the value of their primary product, the booster pack, has steadily declined over time. You used to get 15 cards for your money, now you get 14, and a land or whatever. The mythic rare invention has made cards scarcer and devalued booster packs overall. I can say that WotC has an issue in that their primary product now is stressed too thin in how many formats of this game are played. Boosters now have to cater to Limited players, Standard, EDH, Modern, Legacy, Pauper, maybe even Frontier (I doubt it), and of course the kitchen table crowd. The fault that WotC cannot handle these things is not my fault as a customer, it's their fault for taking on so much and not effectively managing all of it. When a company makes "opaque and bad decisions" I as a customer have a right to question and criticize them for doing so, b/c it devalues their product to me and by extension makes their product a BAD experience. I should be able to share that experience. Why can I not share that here? As you pointed out, despite all of this loss of value to me, they are profiting from the game, still, and I am not here as a customer, NONE of us are, just to be profit bags for a company like WotC.
Share away! But on issues like this, many users (myself included) will push back against extreme claims that have a high burden of evidence. I do not feel that burden has been at all met, so I am going to offer alternate explanations and show where the argument falls short.
You yourself complained about their lack of decent explanations for the recent bans, and said that their reasons looked like they were thrown together in a manner of minutes. You can say such a thing (speculation) but I cannot?
Again, you can constructively speculate all you want. But if I or others don't think the evidence points to a certain conclusion, or if the evidence is just lacking, then there's going to be some constructive pushback. That is also true of you pushing back against other posts you think are worth arguing against.
I argued that the article was thrown together because its Modern rationale is much shorter and generally less helpful than previous articles. The simplest explanation for that, as someone who works in an organization where written communication sometimes gets thrown together, is that they didn't spend enough time on it. Or that they didn't clearly communicate all the reasons they came up with internally.
It's not what you would initially think, but unbanned modern is actually a pretty diverse format. You can play so many different archetypes competitively.
...
Given, there isn't a legitimate metagame, and if this were played on MTGO, the meta would likely settle in a good bit with some decks falling down to tier 2 or 3 status, and some emerging as favorites, but no ban modern is a surprisingly balanced and diverse metagame despite all the degenerate cards that are in it. The prevalence of the degenerate cards requires more anti-combo cards in the main-deck, but there are some relevant tools that are legal such as Top, Mental Misstep, and certain cards become maindeck-worthy as the metagame becomes so graveyard-focused (such as Relic in Tezz decks).
Aaaand that's why the format is so "diverse." It hasn't been solved because there's no tangible incentive for high-quality players to sink a large amount of time into breaking the format. You know what was also a pretty diverse format? Pre-Pro Tour, Post-OGW Modern. Eldrazi decks, of which there were something like 3 highly discernible builds, collectively made up around 15% of the format.
All this to say that "Modern NBL is diverse" is a really terrible argument for bringing any banned card off the list and into a format that actually receives professional attention.
not really fair to point to a legacy/vintage match as a justification. Modern's curve trends higher towards 2c.c. and 3 c.c. legacy and vintage its like 1.5 c.c. on average.
I do think that you can't talk about unbanning any of the grandfather bans unless your willing to consider and or try out all of them. They are all banned on the same or very similar grounds. JtmS SFM MM all banned because of their performance in other formats.
AV and SoM are different because they were preemptively banned because WotC was worried they would just go into a ready made U based control deck that would dominate and stifle to format in the cradle.
We have no data from anywhere that indicates that having MM legal would not do exactly what it did in the formats it was legal in: speed everything up, homogenize deck construction, and drastically benefit blue strategies. I realize that blue is a color that could use a boost in Modern, but to therefore argue for an MM unban is as defensible as arguing for a Skullclamp unban to help creature decks beat attrition. When it comes to powering up blue, Preordain is a vastly more reasonable suggestion, as is Jace.
Wizards could introduce news cards to Modern w/o passing them through Standard. All they have to do is change the rules. It's their format they can do it if they want. I doubt the community of Modern players would be upset w/ that in the slightest, especially if they were able to introduce some good, needed cards that way that they don't want in Standard.
But in the foreseeable future, they won't, for a few reasons listed here (and probably for some additional reasons omitted from that relatively recent article). So I don't know how productive it is to speculate on this possibility, at least for another year or two or without first receiving some conflicting literature from WotC.
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.
The evidence is in their handling of the format and others. They just had three huge bans in the Standard format, including poster child of the Eldritch Moon set. Not only did Emrakul sell them packs, she cost a lot of players their own hard-earned money and time for putting together decks to play her in. Why are we not allowed to criticize WotC here? Does WotC run or profit from this website?
It is more likely that this handling is just a corporate error than a secret plot to undermine Modern. I'm a big occam's razor believer, and it often helps explain most shortcomings by large organizations. You are absolutely allowed to constructively criticize Wizards here and there is no Wizards/MTGS conflict of interest I am aware of. I'm simply pushing back at unsubstantiated claims because other players/posters read them. It's a discussion forum; you're allowed to constructive argue a point and I'm allowed to constructively point out its holes and alternate explanations.
I can look at the fact that in my 20 years of playing Magic and purchasing products from WotC the value of their primary product, the booster pack, has steadily declined over time. You used to get 15 cards for your money, now you get 14, and a land or whatever. The mythic rare invention has made cards scarcer and devalued booster packs overall. I can say that WotC has an issue in that their primary product now is stressed too thin in how many formats of this game are played. Boosters now have to cater to Limited players, Standard, EDH, Modern, Legacy, Pauper, maybe even Frontier (I doubt it), and of course the kitchen table crowd. The fault that WotC cannot handle these things is not my fault as a customer, it's their fault for taking on so much and not effectively managing all of it. When a company makes "opaque and bad decisions" I as a customer have a right to question and criticize them for doing so, b/c it devalues their product to me and by extension makes their product a BAD experience. I should be able to share that experience. Why can I not share that here? As you pointed out, despite all of this loss of value to me, they are profiting from the game, still, and I am not here as a customer, NONE of us are, just to be profit bags for a company like WotC.
Share away! But on issues like this, many users (myself included) will push back against extreme claims that have a high burden of evidence. I do not feel that burden has been at all met, so I am going to offer alternate explanations and show where the argument falls short.
You yourself complained about their lack of decent explanations for the recent bans, and said that their reasons looked like they were thrown together in a manner of minutes. You can say such a thing (speculation) but I cannot?
Again, you can constructively speculate all you want. But if I or others don't think the evidence points to a certain conclusion, or if the evidence is just lacking, then there's going to be some constructive pushback. That is also true of you pushing back against other posts you think are worth arguing against.
I argued that the article was thrown together because its Modern rationale is much shorter and generally less helpful than previous articles. The simplest explanation for that, as someone who works in an organization where written communication sometimes gets thrown together, is that they didn't spend enough time on it. Or that they didn't clearly communicate all the reasons they came up with internally.
I don't mind the constructive pushback. That's great it's what makes for fair conversation. I don't like the notion that I cannot criticize WotC for what I see as failings in their company and their product. If people disagree with me, that's fine. My experience is my experience and theirs is theirs. Other players can make up their own minds about what I have to say.
Also, let's not forget that you, as a moderator on this website and apparently a well known personage in the Magic community, just published in this very thread a list of criteria that WotC needs to meet in your mind for you to continue playing in the Modern format. I think what YOU say carries far more weight in this community than what I will bring to the table, since I'm an unknown nobody to everybody here.
I agree w/ idSurge this thread has probably run its course b/c we're talking well beyond the ban discussion anymore, so you can have the last word. Peace.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
FREE MODERN. Break the Standard link.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
I don't mind the constructive pushback. That's great it's what makes for fair conversation. I don't like the notion that I cannot criticize WotC for what I see as failings in their company and their product. If people disagree with me, that's fine. My experience is my experience and theirs is theirs. Other players can make up their own minds about what I have to say.
Also, let's not forget that you, as a moderator on this website and apparently a well known personage in the Magic community, just published in this very thread a list of criteria that WotC needs to meet in your mind for you to continue playing in the Modern format. I think what YOU say carries far more weight in this community than what I will bring to the table, since I'm an unknown nobody to everybody here.
For what it's worth, your contributions have been constructive, engaging, and helpful so far, and I think I speak for the MTGS community in welcoming you aboard.
I agree w/ idSurge this thread has probably run its course b/c we're talking well beyond the ban discussion anymore, so you can have the last word. Peace.
If WOTC bans Mox opal, I absolutely see no way it can survive something to that magnitude. Affinity would be too slow and fragile without it. It easily becomes a tier 3 deck that no one will touch
The only cards you can transfer are 4x Inkmoth, spellskites and the left over thoughtseize and 1x Blood Moon in the SB
Price isn't a factor in a ban, but we are talking about a very serious ban that effects people financially, this isn't banning Twin and being left with a pile of nothing
I think you are way off in assuming that the format will slow down much or become that much more focused on interactive plays. linear aggro-combo decks that focus on just doing what they do will still be the best non-Tron option against Jund style decks, super efficiently costed targeted discard pushes players towards DSZ and URprowess style aggro-combo decks. You can't play old school style aggro decks in a format so defined by attrition and targeted discard its not a viable option you have to construct a deck that disregards interaction in favor of running as many functional duplicates as possible so you don't get completely wrecked by cards like IoK and Thoughtseize. This is why delver generally sucks in modern its to open to hand disruption completely destroying its ability to compete.
Spirits
I do think that you can't talk about unbanning any of the grandfather bans unless your willing to consider and or try out all of them. They are all banned on the same or very similar grounds. JtmS SFM MM all banned because of their performance in other formats.
AV and SoM are different because they were preemptively banned because WotC was worried they would just go into a ready made U based control deck that would dominate and stifle to format in the cradle.
Modern is policed by cards like Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, now Fatal Push, Thoughtseize, and Inquisition of Kozilek. Not only does Mental Misstep counter the spells that keep aggro/combo decks honest, it can only be meaningfully policed by itself. Which as we've seen before turns the game into "Who has the most Missteps?" That doesn't change whether the format is 2 CMC average or 1.5 CMC average. I don't see this as being a good thing.
Sword of the Meek was absolutely banned because of its performance in other formats. Exactly like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic (and Bitterblossom). Your reasoning doesn't hold up. Even if that weren't the case, I see no reason to believe that all preemptive bans must be treated equally.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
No way do we want or should we want Pros or insiders testing new cards before they are released live. There is already some speculation that this occurs. It is a huge advantage to the handful of Pros who get to do this testing before the cards are released when they then go compete in tournaments w/ those new cards. Also, I, frankly, do not want the players designing the cards. There needs to be a divide there. I can accept things like Avalanche Riders that were one-off shots but not as a common practice.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
They absolutely could. However, I'm not terribly hopeful that they will. Maybe a little, but not very much.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
I'll also add that Wizards does introduce new cards to STANDARD, their simplest, entry-level Constructed format, through supplemental products. If that's not complicated enough for Standard, it's definitely not complicated enough for Modern: just put stuff in Modern Masters and call it a day. I'm aware Wizards has other reasons for not doing this (Stoddard spoke about it last year), but the precedent is at least there.
SFM JtmS and MM where all banned for the same reasoning. SotM and AV were not, they had been banned not because they are to powerful but because they didn't want a ready made powerful U control deck to dominate the format at its start. SFM JtmS and MM are banned because they have had format warping affects on various meta-games, I feel like they are equally banned for the same justifications and you cannot really say ones format warping history is less or more prevalent. You might hold bias' toward one specific card and be willing to over look its past and WotC reasoning for its placement on the banned list and that just makes your position inconsistent.
I say you cannot look at MM in legacy or vintage as justification for its banning in modern because modern lacks so many of the tools that make it so good in those formats. Those are formats that already have FoW and Daze adding MM to the mix just cemented U as the color you had to play. It wouldn't be the same in Modern and your kidding yourself if you say it would be. And if that is your standard for it remaining a forever banned card then SFM and JtmS are equally forever banned because I can find footage of both being extremely busted and undesirable game state generators if I can just pull from any format, all I have to do is search up caw-blade and I can find you hours no top of hours of evidence that they are justifiably banned forever because look what they did in a different format.
I'm not saying MM should be unbanned and it would be so good etc... I'm saying that ignoring SFM and JtmS' past and in unjustifiable outside of being willing to say that the type of busted meta-game these cards have created in the past is one in which i wouldn't mind Modern devolving into. In no banned list modern MM is one of the most heavily sideboarded out cards precisely because it doesn't hit that many targets its really only great in the Delver/treasure cruise mirrors or against decks like Infect so.
I honestly do not see this happening. The reason aggro and aggro combo does so well because they hardly have any true bad matchups in the their form before the bans. Most of the aggro decks bad matchups where in the realm of 45/55 or at worse 40/60 still too good and the fact that stumbling is much more punishing for interactive decks made it so they won quite a lot vs midrange and control. Many death shadow players even felt favored vs interactive decks just due to mana efficiency and redundancy. Interactive decks need true good matchups to have a true cyclical format which in the meta before the bans was not true.
Yeah given that WotC has dismissed this idea multiple times leads me to believe it will not happen anytime with in the next 5 years.
I mean, WotC could start printing cards on request for a penny a piece and that might be good for some players, but the idea is not worth mentioning because it would obviously hurt their bottom line. That is an extreme example of a print policy that helps players but hurts WotC, but printing cards for modern outside of standard is not going to happen for the same reason: WotC's financial interest is contradicted by the proposed policy.
TL;DR: Wizards risks standard sales by putting high value/high demand cards for modern outside standard sets, so they won't do it.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Well they did just unban and ban GGT and they reversed their silly change of the Standard rotation...but, yeah, they seem to really dislike Modern and even dealing with it anymore. They should try it though. At the end of the next ban announcement just tack on a sentence at the end saying. "Lastly, Counterspell is now legal in Modern." See where it goes, just like they did w/ the GGT unban.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
a article in which they give reasoning as to why this is something they never want to do.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/modern-proposal-2011-05-26 sorry for whatever reason the link isn't showing so I edited it into the text going to have to copy/paste that bad boy in..
Let's avoid comments like "they seem to really dislike Modern and even dealing with it anymore." They're clearly dealing with it, profiting from it, and making some kind of effort with it. Unless you have specific evidence supporting that claim, not just subjective interpretations of things the community perceives as shortcomings, you really shouldn't be making that kind of claim. It's far more likely that Wizards, like many large organizations, is just making opaque and bad decisions, not that Wizards is trying to kill or jettison Modern. '
I imagine Wizards just has a lot of simultaneous projects and interests and is struggling to manage some of them effectively. See MTGO issues, pro reward programs, coverage failures, Modern's handling, Pro Tour changes, and a variety of other actions and shakeups over the past 2 years.
you'll notice that JtmS and SFM are viewed much more harshly than MM by WotC
and also the justification for its banning is exactly the opposite of why some people criticize it "Of blue cards that are legal in Modern, Mental Misstep is the most played in Legacy, and it also has one of the more damaging effects on Modern by sitting on beatdown decks that want to start on turn one. We chose to ban it rather than put that much pressure on beatdown decks."
IMO the unbanning and then rebanning of GGT is just going to leave WotC feeling very vindicated in their prior banning choices and leaves the unbanning of other similarly banned at birth of the format cards even less likely, after all they where correct about GGT why risk making the same mistake twice.
Death and Taxes
Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron
Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
The evidence is in their handling of the format and others. They just had three huge bans in the Standard format, including poster child of the Eldritch Moon set. Not only did Emrakul sell them packs, she cost a lot of players their own hard-earned money and time for putting together decks to play her in. Why are we not allowed to criticize WotC here? Does WotC run or profit from this website?
I can look at the fact that in my 20 years of playing Magic and purchasing products from WotC the value of their primary product, the booster pack, has steadily declined over time. You used to get 15 cards for your money, now you get 14, and a land or whatever. The mythic rare invention has made cards scarcer and devalued booster packs overall. I can say that WotC has an issue in that their primary product now is stressed too thin in how many formats of this game are played. Boosters now have to cater to Limited players, Standard, EDH, Modern, Legacy, Pauper, maybe even Frontier (I doubt it), and of course the kitchen table crowd. The fault that WotC cannot handle these things is not my fault as a customer, it's their fault for taking on so much and not effectively managing all of it. When a company makes "opaque and bad decisions" I as a customer have a right to question and criticize them for doing so, b/c it devalues their product to me and by extension makes their product a BAD experience. I should be able to share that experience. Why can I not share that here? As you pointed out, despite all of this loss of value to me, they are profiting from the game, still, and I am not here as a customer, NONE of us are, just to be profit bags for a company like WotC.
You yourself complained about their lack of decent explanations for the recent bans, and said that their reasons looked like they were thrown together in a manner of minutes. You can say such a thing (speculation) but I cannot?
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
I dont know, I think this thread has kind of ran its course, we need some community outreach, and I just dont know if we get that very much for Modern these days. I dont even know who I would bother to try and get it, as I dont feel there is a clear 'Modern Champion' at Wizards?
Spirits
It is more likely that this handling is just a corporate error than a secret plot to undermine Modern. I'm a big occam's razor believer, and it often helps explain most shortcomings by large organizations. You are absolutely allowed to constructively criticize Wizards here and there is no Wizards/MTGS conflict of interest I am aware of. I'm simply pushing back at unsubstantiated claims because other players/posters read them. It's a discussion forum; you're allowed to constructive argue a point and I'm allowed to constructively point out its holes and alternate explanations.
Share away! But on issues like this, many users (myself included) will push back against extreme claims that have a high burden of evidence. I do not feel that burden has been at all met, so I am going to offer alternate explanations and show where the argument falls short.
Again, you can constructively speculate all you want. But if I or others don't think the evidence points to a certain conclusion, or if the evidence is just lacking, then there's going to be some constructive pushback. That is also true of you pushing back against other posts you think are worth arguing against.
I argued that the article was thrown together because its Modern rationale is much shorter and generally less helpful than previous articles. The simplest explanation for that, as someone who works in an organization where written communication sometimes gets thrown together, is that they didn't spend enough time on it. Or that they didn't clearly communicate all the reasons they came up with internally.
All this to say that "Modern NBL is diverse" is a really terrible argument for bringing any banned card off the list and into a format that actually receives professional attention. We have no data from anywhere that indicates that having MM legal would not do exactly what it did in the formats it was legal in: speed everything up, homogenize deck construction, and drastically benefit blue strategies. I realize that blue is a color that could use a boost in Modern, but to therefore argue for an MM unban is as defensible as arguing for a Skullclamp unban to help creature decks beat attrition. When it comes to powering up blue, Preordain is a vastly more reasonable suggestion, as is Jace. But in the foreseeable future, they won't, for a few reasons listed here (and probably for some additional reasons omitted from that relatively recent article). So I don't know how productive it is to speculate on this possibility, at least for another year or two or without first receiving some conflicting literature from WotC.
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
I don't mind the constructive pushback. That's great it's what makes for fair conversation. I don't like the notion that I cannot criticize WotC for what I see as failings in their company and their product. If people disagree with me, that's fine. My experience is my experience and theirs is theirs. Other players can make up their own minds about what I have to say.
Also, let's not forget that you, as a moderator on this website and apparently a well known personage in the Magic community, just published in this very thread a list of criteria that WotC needs to meet in your mind for you to continue playing in the Modern format. I think what YOU say carries far more weight in this community than what I will bring to the table, since I'm an unknown nobody to everybody here.
I agree w/ idSurge this thread has probably run its course b/c we're talking well beyond the ban discussion anymore, so you can have the last word. Peace.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
For what it's worth, your contributions have been constructive, engaging, and helpful so far, and I think I speak for the MTGS community in welcoming you aboard.
We'll keep the thread open until, likely, Friday. Then we'll lock it down and switch everything over to the State of Modern thread:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/764899-state-of-modern-thread-bans-format-health-reprints
Until then, everyone feel free to keep posting reactions and feedback (within the rules) here.