I've refrained from posting too much about the ban list, trying to think things through before talking to much. Sorry if this ends up being a wall of text.
I'm happy Dredge got hit. It ate precious sideboard slots, and pushed other grave based decks out due to the splash effect it had on the format. Now, you could argue that Affinity is much the same story, but the difference I see is that Dredge can fight through it's hate, where was Affinity tends to just fold. On top of Dredge being sideboard hungry, and resilient to hate, it's also pretty fast. So fast that it forced the format to either be faster, or overload on hate. Filling your sideboard with hate left you weak to other matchups, so being faster was the better option. This was slightly personal, as I did run a graveyard based deck, so take what I've said above with a grain of salt.
I am bummed that Git Probe was axed. As a fan of Storm, the deck may as well be dead. The good this is that the ban hit many of the aggro decks that where taking the format by storm. I question if it was necessary, as with a weaker Dredge, aggro's bad matchups may well return to prominence. Along with Fatal Push, these two changes may well have been enough to push aggro down a notch. Banning Probe on top of these changes might have been too much. Infect will probably still be good, but Zooicide and UR Kiln Fiend is probably done for at the higher levels of play. Luckily we still have Burn and Affinity to complete the traditional aggro trinity.
What worries me is that after the Twin banning and the removal Wizards seemed to give the impression they where going to a more hands off. This series of bans go directly against this. The language they used for justifying the GGT ban was odd. It comes off sounding like they are banning it because they don't like the decks existence at top tables, not because it was causing any issues as far as things like the turn four rule. This worries me, as what if Storm one day where to return to prominence, with similar meta game shares? Does it get banned because it's not something Wizards wants for Modern? This brings up a lot of uncomfortable questions for how Wizards will be handling the ban list from here on out. Are they hands on, actively adjusting the format as a they see fit, or hands off, allowing the format to adjust to new issues? Do they follow the original rules set out for Modern, or go by hidden internal rules we are not aware of?
Wizards really need to be more communicative to it's Modern players. I wouldn't mind regular format health updates to help the community gauge Wizard's goals for the format. There is so much uncertainty with Modern, that even just a little insider information would probably calm the masses down. Right now we are all just hoping our decks are hit by the ban hammer. That is a really bad place for Modern to be, as a format ruled by fear isn't one that inspires long term confidence.
Okay this is ridiculous. When will this Affinity has to be the best deck in the format mindset from wizards end? Always ban a card or kill a deck because it surpasses a certain deck in popularity or power?!? We just can't have something on par with affinity.(In terms of numbers and sideboard stifling)
HEY WIZARDS!!! IF YOU WANT EVERYONE PLAYING WITH ONE PARTICULAR DECK THEN STOP PRINTING ANYTHING BUT THOSE CARDS!!!
Disclaimer: As an Affinity player only (mainly because I'm too lazy to build the others) this might be slightly biased even if I consciously tried to keep it objective.
Not necessarily. Affinity has always been "fair" (I'm not talking the interactive way, just the general power-level) because the checks to it are relatively nicely printed compared to the likes of the status of generic answers, plus its "worst era" happened right at the starting block of the format, the main offenders being already locked in the List, so it's pretty hard to surpass what already exists, when it is already a "compromised mish-mash Tier 1 deck from it's potentially Tier 0 form". Yes, there are points to be argued about some cards (Mox Opal and Cranial Plating, which I will sit on the edge with my bias they don't ever go away), but the same exist with a more recent parallel in the format - Eldrazi, who were also Tier 0 once (Affinity just had its Tier 0 time in Standard instead) and even with the neutering and compromising to Tier 1, the borderline cards (Eldrazi Temple and maybe TKS) still get raised from time-to-time (although the Eldrazi case is shakier since they follow solely creature removal overall...).
Oh, they don't want anyone to be playing any particular deck, they want you to be endlessly buying packs for different decks. Affinity is lucky enough to be on the borderline that it can't really be pushed higher in power and there's usually someone to steal the spotlight from it. Fortunately, the fact every deck has answers against does make the deck less appealing the some people, so Affinity, along with Burn is more or less the "Midrange" variants of the aggro-decks (meaning they are relatively safe from bans because of their weaknesses and despite being aggro, their popularity is meta-dependent like the Midrange decks).
And that is my point exactly. It's always the best deck... Until something replaces it then that new deck gets a banning. Putting affinity back on top. It's like wizards is saying that affinity has to be the best deck.
You always hear about decks that are unplayable due to all the artifact hate people have to play in the SB due to affinity. How is that in any way different than dredge? It's a reasonable liability they are willing to take. They could have banned arcbound ravager instead if troll and the SB would still have 5 to 7 dedicated slots to fighting the big deck. But would have allowed a different set of decks to exist. But no. Affinity had to be the best deck. Simply put.
Let's go down that ave for a second. Banning ravager would open up the artifact lands. As the real reason they are banned is because of ravager. (Think back to standard.) So many more decks would be there and switch out all the artifact hate for graveyard hate would have been actually good for the game.
As was just discussed (with some data behind it, imperfect as it may be), Affinity does not require the levels of hate Dredge does, is less resilient against said hate, and can be interacted with just fine with cards that are broadly useful and heavily played. It's an example of where good answers (for this particular type of deck) mean we can have strong cards and the meta will sort itself out.
On gitaxian probe, I was sad to see it banned. I'm sure it was aimed at deathshadow zoo and infect, but many other decks including "fair" ones were caught in the bann. I would have much prefered a Simian Spirit Guide bann. In fact I have been advocating that one for a while. I think others have outlined pretty thoroughly why it needs to happen.
Why does it need to happen? SSG isn't in any top-tier, consistent violators of the T4 rule. An SSG ban also would not have addressed either Infect or DSZ, which Wizards identified as collectively infringing on the T4 rule.
While not currently part of a problem deck it has been an inclusion in past decks time after time. Not only is it fast mana, it has no restrictions on it. The rituals require red mana, opal requires you to be playing multipme artifacts. Spirit guide? You just need to sleeve it up. WOTC has made very clear what sort of format they want modern to be and SSG is the epitome of what they are trying to do away with. It only ever enables noninteractive combo and prisob decks and because of the lack of interaction games that come down to what the ssg player draws rather than both playera effecting the outcome. In legacy there are checks for these decks, but wizaeds has not and willnot print checks for them in modern so they should do away with it altogether.
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All the bans done in the last year just says something:
Wizard wants Modern to be, from the power level as from the playstyle, close to Standard than Legacy and shouldn't be neither something in the middle (as it was pre TC print).
It just worries me, that apparently bannings are the only way for wizard to "handle" a format like Modern. It worries me even MORE, when they need to BAN cards from Standard, a format they are testing for it with some obvious play patterns (putting Emmi into play on turn 4, that there does not exist a good removal spell for Copter or the simple fact, that they printed Reflector Mage, which just warped the format on it's own.
So I have more angst from the design steps taken over the last years than those actual bannings.
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Yes, and uts that which I hope Wizards is able to be self aware of.
What they thought was fine design practice, is not.
You cannot push threats if there are no meaningful answers, and the player base needs to get over the bad feelings they have regarding removal, counters, and lock downs.
Otherwise, it's all circling the drain.
I think I'm going to make a twitter account and ask them if they plan to ban Opal next...
On gitaxian probe, I was sad to see it banned. I'm sure it was aimed at deathshadow zoo and infect, but many other decks including "fair" ones were caught in the bann. I would have much prefered a Simian Spirit Guide bann. In fact I have been advocating that one for a while. I think others have outlined pretty thoroughly why it needs to happen.
Why does it need to happen? SSG isn't in any top-tier, consistent violators of the T4 rule. An SSG ban also would not have addressed either Infect or DSZ, which Wizards identified as collectively infringing on the T4 rule.
couple questions ive been pondering:
If dredge was hit to avoid "sideboard battles" than isnt tron a possible target one day?
dont alot of fair decks lose to tron just like they did to dredge before its nerf?
does tron get better in modern now with infect nerfed?
is tron going to be accepted by wizards as a large contribution to rock paper scissors modern, and sideboard lottery?
a small example: 3-4 fulmis in grix and bg/x ie: "sideboard battles"
This is the fourth year in a row I've had my deck hit in January. 3/4 of those years I do not believe I was playing the best deck in the format (exception being when Cruise/Dig were legal since obviously those cards were good.) On Monday I was literally having a conversation with a friend where I said there was no way Wizards was going to ban anything out of our deck, if they wanted to hit Infect they'd just ban Become Immense, they learned their lesson a long time ago... And boom, Probe's gone.
I don't think Gitaxian Probe is just a fine Magic card with no issues, obviously. But once you've got your basic lands in your deck you stop looking at fine Magic cards with no issues when determining what cards to play in Modern. I don't want to play Grizzly Bears and Lightning Strike, I want to play Tarmogoyf and Lightning Bolt. That's what the format is.
The most puzzling part of this ban is that Become Immense was the obvious target, since it hurts both Infect and Death's Shadow Zoo without killing either. Banning Probe leaves Infect only minimally different from before, while killing Death's Shadow and Bloo, neither of which was a top tier deck. Infect, meanwhile, is the most powerful and prevalent of those and has been for years. I just do not understand the priorities involved in punishing the less powerful decks disproportionately through the choice of ban targets. It's definitely not motivated by spite, but it feels spiteful.
WOTC has made a lot of promises about Modern and, while they absolutely have a difficult task in managing the format, they seem to break all of them. They said they'd take a lighter touch on the format after the Twin ban, then they make a marginal-case banning like Gitaxian Probe that's clearly upset people, blindsided a lot of folks, and is divisive. Nobody is complaining about the Grave-Troll ban, and I can't really imagine an outcry over a ban to Become Immense. I often feel like WOTC is full of people who are so used to being the smartest person in the room (and absolutely thinking they're the smartest person in the room) that they can't resist messing with things on the assumption that they know better than everyone else, and a ban like Probe feels more clever than a ban on Become Immense, so it's enticing to them. I could be totally off-base with that, but I do not agree with the people arguing that WOTC just knows better than everyone else what's healthy for a format or what the right thing is to do. Look at the past several years worth of Standard as evidence for the ability of the multitudes to figure things out more effectively than the designers.
Filling people with fear, anger, and frustration every time you release a banlist update just does not seem like the way to run things. We've asked for clarity and transparency over and over against as a community and they make a token effort at best. I wish they didn't do this to us.
On gitaxian probe, I was sad to see it banned. I'm sure it was aimed at deathshadow zoo and infect, but many other decks including "fair" ones were caught in the bann. I would have much prefered a Simian Spirit Guide bann. In fact I have been advocating that one for a while. I think others have outlined pretty thoroughly why it needs to happen.
Why does it need to happen? SSG isn't in any top-tier, consistent violators of the T4 rule. An SSG ban also would not have addressed either Infect or DSZ, which Wizards identified as collectively infringing on the T4 rule.
couple questions ive been pondering:
If dredge was hit to avoid "sideboard battles" than isnt tron a possible target one day?
dont alot of fair decks lose to tron just like they did to dredge before its nerf?
does tron get better in modern now with infect nerfed?
is tron going to be accepted by wizards as a large contribution to rock paper scissors modern, and sideboard lottery?
a small example: 3-4 fulmis in grix and bg/x ie: "sideboard battles"
Fair decks will have to sideboard for their bad matchups, just like everyone else. Now they'll have more room.
A lot of people seem to be confused about what people are arguing here.
On one side people are saying "Modern format was bad and needed these bans!"
The other side is saying "The modern format was bad BECAUSE IT CAN'T POLICE ITSELF and thus wizards keeps having to ban stuff, and we dont like that ban everything mentality."
Yes, and I've heard those "police" people complaining for a long time and keep asking them what is this special card (or cards) that they want wizards to make or insert into the card pool. No takers on what that card is exactly. Just random complaining that the police cards aren't there. Tell us what they are and perhaps we can discuss them?
It's not like Counterspell would have policed these decks. Mana Leak is countering all the same cards at an easier mana cost on T2-T3 so it wouldn't be policing any of these fast kills.
Preytell what are these specific police cards that would have stopped the T2-4 kill decks?
These cards have been discussed dozens of times. If you haven't seen them then you simply haven't been looking.
They include many things. For a while Innocent Blood was chief among them. But now we have Fatal Push, which likely answers that space.
Better non-basic land hate. Something between the power levels of what we currently have in Modern and Wasteland.
And yes, Counterspell and other cheaper and efficient counters. The fact that Counterspell and Mana Leak hit the same things in the fast aggressive decks is completely irrelevant. Control and Midrange decks already have positive matchups against those fast linear decks so it doesn't matter whatsoever there. But control and midrange decks have HORRID matchups against the big-mana decks like RG Breach/Valakut, Eldrazi, and Tron. Those decks can pay for Mana Leak multiple times over but Counterspell would be a huge positive for fair control and midrange decks to have a fighting chance there.
When fast linear decks are dominant that means they're preying on slower, rampy decks. Not midrange and control.
Interesting that you saw they've been discussed dozens of times but still can't list an actual card and I said don't mention counterspell because it doesn't address the problem of fast linear which is what the complaint is about. The big mana decks SHOULD be able to have good match-ups too. You can't seriously hope to have "all the answers" good stuff.dec
and many more. These cards have been discussed TONS of times. Again - if you didn't know that, you simply weren't looking. But not knowing something is out there doesn't mean it isn't.
And of course big mana decks should have good matchups. Nobody's saying they shouldn't. My point is simply that right now they have 80/20 matchups against midrange and control and I'd like those decks to have a fighting chance to make that matchup 65/35 in favor of the big mana decks.
On gitaxian probe, I was sad to see it banned. I'm sure it was aimed at deathshadow zoo and infect, but many other decks including "fair" ones were caught in the bann. I would have much prefered a Simian Spirit Guide bann. In fact I have been advocating that one for a while. I think others have outlined pretty thoroughly why it needs to happen.
Why does it need to happen? SSG isn't in any top-tier, consistent violators of the T4 rule. An SSG ban also would not have addressed either Infect or DSZ, which Wizards identified as collectively infringing on the T4 rule.
couple questions ive been pondering:
If dredge was hit to avoid "sideboard battles" than isnt tron a possible target one day?
dont alot of fair decks lose to tron just like they did to dredge before its nerf?
does tron get better in modern now with infect nerfed?
is tron going to be accepted by wizards as a large contribution to rock paper scissors modern, and sideboard lottery?
a small example: 3-4 fulmis in grix and bg/x ie: "sideboard battles"
Fair decks will have to sideboard for their bad matchups, just like everyone else. Now they'll have more room.
true, but my point is: if a deck that made you run 4 x hate was hit for that reason, why is tron aloud to be tier 1 when it in fact causes the same thing.
while only promoting racing as the only way to beat it, again, much like dredge.
nah. Infect is still there. Gitaxian Probe was too good of a card and this is a right ban. They didn't kill my deck. It's TRONS time to own the meta now! Go get them, Karn!
Let's say your doomsaying is true, and tron starts dominating the field, won't that mean the meta is ripe for fast decks like Infect/Affinity to just wipe out our new tron overlords? It's not like Infect's kill speed got any worse. Wait a second, that means we might have some sort of cyclical meta with checks and balances! As opposed to a combo-agro infested meta!
Is there a reason they can't just restrict cards? Like instead on banning GGT, they just restrict it to one or two or three copies per deck.
Because they only do this in vintage, and they only do it their because vintage is often the last place a card can even be played, a ban in vintage often would kill any chance to ever play certain cards in all of magic ever again. Restrictions create terribly swingy games that boil down to "who drew the most restricted cards wins"
nah. Infect is still there. Gitaxian Probe was too good of a card and this is a right ban. They didn't kill my deck. It's TRONS time to own the meta now! Go get them, Karn!
Let's say your doomsaying is true, and tron starts dominating the field, won't that mean the meta is ripe for fast decks like Infect/Affinity to just wipe out our new tron overlords? It's not like Infect's kill speed got any worse. Wait a second, that means we might have some sort of cyclical meta with checks and balances! As opposed to a combo-agro infested meta!
Good job WotC.
Post was just an irony! But Fatal Push print and the Probe ban may be too much for those decks.
Affinity (and Burn while we're mentioning Tron foils) don't run Probe, they can and will do fine in the Tron matchup, and easily bring back meta percentages to a reasonable level. If the meta is infested with Tron/big mana decks, Infect can just run Street Wraith for the same kill speed as they had with probe.
Will Infect/Affinity/Burn specifically have a harder time against interactive decks? Sure, but they shouldn't have had a good time to begin with. Does that mean aggressive decks have lost their ability to thrive in a specific meta? Not at all. That's how it should be.
Is there a reason they can't just restrict cards? Like instead on banning GGT, they just restrict it to one or two or three copies per deck.
Because they only do this in vintage, and they only do it their because vintage is often the last place a card can even be played, a ban in vintage often would kill any chance to ever play certain cards in all of magic ever again. Restrictions create terribly swingy games that boil down to "who drew the most restricted cards wins"
Your first sentence is correct. Your second is a common misconception of Vintage.
I don't understand this idea that everything that doesn't follow the Good Old Accepted Rules Of Fair And Good Magic has to be taken out of Modern. Like, why? Modern has always had free mana, has always had delve and phyresian spells, has always had Tron lands, why does it have to be different?
The short answer: because that's what WotC wants for the format, and it's what they have wanted since its inception.
The long answer: In the Modern era, WotC has been too inconsistent with the power levels of the cards that they print. The Modern era has given us powerfulspells and powerfulcreatures, but there is clearly an upper echelon of powerful cards. However, most of those powerful cards are aggressive creatures or combo-enabling spells; there are no comparably powerful police cards in Modern. The end result is that Modern can't actually police itself. Thoughtseize and Blood Moon alone aren't keeping Modern a turn-four format. That's the ultimate irony and misfortune of Modern: despite being sold by WotC as a slower format than Legacy, significantly more Modern games than Legacy games are decided on the earlier turns, de facto making Modern a faster format than Legacy. And the difference between the two formats is a lack of strong police cards, which, as you allude to, don't exist because WotC considers them "unfun". Police cards serve an important purpose in the health of a metagame, and without comparably strong police cards in Modern, WotC can only rely on the banhammer to "fix" the format.
Many of those cards and mechanics have been present in tens of decks from the start of the format, they ARE a part of the format, and I don't know why that has to change and why some people is constantly asking for Modern to be turned into some ***** "standard but with better cards" format, where the second someone does something different from playing Tarmogoyfs and Bolts, one land per turn, kill your stuff you kill my stuff and we keep playing stuff and killing our stuff, there's endless cries and appeals to some vaporous concepts about how Magic is supposed to be played and what is "fun" or "not fun".
You're absolutely right, but you should have been complaining about this for five years. Control players have been. The irony of your statement is that classic control and prison decks have never been allowed to exist in Modern because WotC considers them "unfun", but it takes the banning of a combo-enabler to elicit this kind of response from the community.
WotC has narrowed the range of playable strategies in recent years, not only in Modern, but in Standard. They've presumably got marketing research pertaining to what players do and do not like, and they've been gradually pushing the game towards accessibility (simplicity) as opposed to complexity (nuance). But the end result is that the game as a whole plays in ways that you're lamenting.
Frankly, as a Death & Taxes player, I agree with you. I would like to be the format police so that you can pilot your combo deck without overrunning the rest of the format. But WotC doesn't want to give control players the tools they need, and as a result, they have to ban powerful cards that can't be interacted with by aggro decks.
Playing millions of cards every turn... Slowly and systematically obliterating any chance my opponent has of winning... Clicking the multitude of locking mechanisms into place... Not even trying to win myself until turn 10+ once I have nigh absolute control... Watching my opponent desperately trying to navigate the labyrinthine prison that I've constructed... Seeing the light of hope fade and ultimately extinguished in an excruciatingly slow manner... THAT'S fun Magic.
We have 2-3 users that are dramatically making this thread incomprehensible and non-productive for anyone else to possibly join in the discussion. This needs to change.
Every time I see [ktkenshinx] post in here, I get the impression of a stern dad walking in on a bunch of kids trying to do something dumb and just shaking his head in disappointment.
Near Mint: The same as Slightly Played, but we threw some Altoids in the box we stored it in to cover up the scent of dead mice. Slightly Played: The base condition for all MTG cards. This card looks OK, but there’s one minor annoying ding in it that will always irritate and distract you whenever you draw it. Moderately Played: This card looks like it survived the Tet Offensive tucked inside the waistband of GI underwear. It may smell like it, too. Heavily Played: This card looks like the remains of Mohammed Atta’s passport after 9/11. It may be playable if you double-sleeve it to stop the chunks from falling out. The condition formerly known as "Washing Machine Grade" Damaged: This card is the unfortunate victim of a Mirrorweave/March of the Machines/Chaos Confetti/Mindslaver combo.
[M]aking counterfeit cards is the absolute height of dishonesty. Ask yourself this question: Since most people...are totally cool with the use of proxies...what purpose do [high] quality counterfeit cards serve?
If dredge was hit to avoid "sideboard battles" than isnt tron a possible target one day?
dont alot of fair decks lose to tron just like they did to dredge before its nerf?
does tron get better in modern now with infect nerfed?
is tron going to be accepted by wizards as a large contribution to rock paper scissors modern, and sideboard lottery?
a small example: 3-4 fulmis in grix and bg/x ie: "sideboard battles"
This just underscores the problems of the announcement: we have no clue what "sideboard battles" means. I'm analyzing sideboards to try and figure out what the heck that meant with Dredge and how it was different from Affinity, another deck that demands sideboard slots but has never been banned for creating "sideboard battles." All of this would be unnecessary if Wizards was more transparent in its definitions, but that's a topic for another time.
Is there a reason they can't just restrict cards? Like instead on banning GGT, they just restrict it to one or two or three copies per deck.
It increases variance and makes games even more dependent on drawing or tutoring for certain bombs. Never going to happen in Modern and it wouldn't really help address the main complaints.
And the difference between the two formats is a lack of strong police cards, which, as you allude to, don't exist because WotC considers them "unfun".
Last I checked, Bolt was the most-played card in the format and Fatal Push was revealed in the AER spoilers. Do you have a link to Wizards calling strong answer cards "unfun," or did you just make this up?
The irony of your statement is that classic control and prison decks have never been allowed to exist in Modern because WotC considers them "unfun", but it takes the banning of a combo-enabler to elicit this kind of response from the community.
And yet, Chalice of the Void, Blood Moon, and Nahiri, the Harbinger all exist in Modern (and even in the same competitive deck, alongside none other than Simian Spirit Guide, which did not get banned by the way). Control decks don't exist in this format because they stretch themselves too thing trying to hold off linear aggro while beating big mana, not because Wizards considers them "unfun." ...Unless you have a link to Wizards calling control and prison decks "unfun?" Or did you just make this up, too?
It's difficult---nay, impossible---to take arguments seriously when they're not only not based in fact, but founded entirely on lies. Feel free to back up your claims with some literature, though. I'd love some egg on my face!
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.
And that is my point exactly. It's always the best deck... Until something replaces it then that new deck gets a banning. Putting affinity back on top. It's like wizards is saying that affinity has to be the best deck.
You always hear about decks that are unplayable due to all the artifact hate people have to play in the SB due to affinity. How is that in any way different than dredge? It's a reasonable liability they are willing to take. They could have banned arcbound ravager instead if troll and the SB would still have 5 to 7 dedicated slots to fighting the big deck. But would have allowed a different set of decks to exist. But no. Affinity had to be the best deck. Simply put.
Let's go down that ave for a second. Banning ravager would open up the artifact lands. As the real reason they are banned is because of ravager. (Think back to standard.) So many more decks would be there and switch out all the artifact hate for graveyard hate would have been actually good for the game.
But unlike Dredge, Affinity can be managed by "fair" decks on Game 1 because its weakness is interactivity. True, the reason Affinity is dodging literally every ban since the start of the format is because some "stronger deck" shows up, but the common factor among these decks is that they are somewhat more "immune to interactivity" on top of being interactive themselves.
Affinity relies on creatures while Dredge relies on the graveyard. Midrange decks almost always have creature removal game 1, but nearly never graveyard hate game 1.
Affinity charges in blind dumping their hand as the game plan. Infect got around interactivity while fueling their game plan (Become Immense) with Gitaxian Probe.
Even when compared to Twin (disclaimer: this is purely for comparison, I am not stating the Twin ban is entirely justified), answers to Affinity can almost be played at any time, where as Twin demanded you keep mana up at all times or run into the risk of an instant-combo loss.
Affinity has so many weaknesses and has literally no way to patch them up. Even in the SB game, our own SB slots are also spent because we spend our SB slots in an attempt to nullify your SB slots against us because of how potent it is and more often than not, these slots also slow down our game plan. If you chose not to pack Stony Silence and I didn't know it, whatever I replaced with Ghirapur Aether Grid to counter Stony Silence more likely meant I dropped speed for a clunky card that does way less and slower in a situation with no Stony Silence, but I still have to run it because without it, I'm stuck with no way out if the Stony Silence actually shows up.
If a deck is "unplayable" because they absolutely couldn't deal with Affinity game 1, it means they lack interaction. Which is exactly the kind of decks the format doesn't want in the first place. There's an argument to be made that Affinity may be too fast for the "interaction" control makes, but Modern is still at the stage where there always seems to be a deck that even "interaction" that Midrange makes can't deal with and considering Midrange is probably the easiest archetype to handle that around, I don't trust Control to be fixed any time too soon.
Long story short, if we scrapped Affinity instead of Dredge, we'll end up with an "Affinity, but Midrange can't deal with it Game 1" scenario. If that is the case, I doubt "so many more decks" will be out there since they would more likely be even more ill-equipped to deal with Dredge than Affinity. Tron could manage a 50/50 game because Anger of the Gods could deal with Affinity (and Burn) but Tron pretty much doesn't run gravehate in the mainboard. All these other decks you mentioned are basically Tron without Anger and how many of them have graveyard hate in the MB and actually benefit from Dredge replacing Affinity?
It just worries me, that apparently bannings are the only way for wizard to "handle" a format like Modern. It worries me even MORE, when they need to BAN cards from Standard, a format they are testing for it with some obvious play patterns (putting Emmi into play on turn 4, that there does not exist a good removal spell for Copter or the simple fact, that they printed Reflector Mage, which just warped the format on it's own.
The thing is, none of those cards were, strictly speaking, too powerful, at least not any more so than many other cards in Standard that never received bans. Remember Siege Rhino? Thoughtseize+Pack Rat? Delver of Secrets revealing a Mana Leak? EOTFOFYL? This isn't something like Stoneforge Mystic and Jace where bans were essentially required because of how much those cards had messed the format up (Jace, for example, was in nearly 90% of decks). This Standard wasn't particularly imbalanced... at least, not more so than is typical for Standard. Nothing was problematically dominant. Smuggler's Copter saw a ton of play, but it could be played in a variety of archetypes. So I don't think their testing was particularly off.
What seems to be the problem with Standard they want to address isn't imbalance, but boredom. People just don't enjoy it. And it's also coming after several Standard seasons that had their own share of big complaints. Before this, people were sick of Collected Company. Before that, people were annoyed at the fetchland+battleland combo (with no good way to hate on it), both because it made things really expensive but also because of how it made all of the decks feel similar because when everyone is in 3-4 colors, they all tend to play pretty similarly. And exacerbating all of this was their new Standard rotation, which made it even harder to keep up, giving players further incentive to just throw up their hands in frustration and not bother anymore.
I don't think the issue is really any of these cards being too powerful in the current Standard (heck, Emrakul arguably isn't even the best thing to cast off Aetherworks Marvel). It's more about how their recent Standard decisions in general have been driving people away. I'm not even just talking about the specific Standard environments (though that is people don't seem to care for), it's things beyond that also, like the ill-advised rotation change they eventually reversed. These bannings seem less about saving the format from degeneracy (as was the case for basically all previous Standard bannings), and more about "tuning" it to be more like what players might want to try to curb the loss of interest.
Is there a reason they can't just restrict cards? Like instead on banning GGT, they just restrict it to one or two or three copies per deck.
The problem with this is that it has the effect of increasing variance to an uncomfortable degree. Certainly, variance is a part of the game, but when players can only play their best cards as 1-ofs, then it turns into whoever happens to draw those restricted cards and gets the advantage out of them. They actually used to restrict cards in Standard, but dropped that for those reasons.
Now you might mention they restrict cards in Vintage. Well, it works in Vintage because...
1) The whole point of Vintage is that no matter how broken a card is, you can still play it. Cards never get banned in Vintage for power level. They might get banned for other things (e.g. ante), but not power level.
2) Vintage has so many crazy broken restricted cards that all players are going to draw some of them, so it manages to even itself out.
Long story short, if we scrapped Affinity instead of Dredge, we'll end up with an "Affinity, but Midrange can't deal with it Game 1" scenario. If that is the case, I doubt "so many more decks" will be out there since they would more likely be even more ill-equipped to deal with Dredge than Affinity. Tron could manage a 50/50 game because Anger of the Gods could deal with Affinity (and Burn) but Tron pretty much doesn't run gravehate in the mainboard. All these other decks you mentioned are basically Tron without Anger and how many of them have graveyard hate in the MB and actually benefit from Dredge replacing Affinity?
Tron prefers Pyroclasm (or Firespout if it really needs to hit for 3 damage) over Anger of the Gods, because hitting that double Red is tough. But you make a much odder claim, namely "Tron pretty much doesn't run gravehate in the mainboard"? Huh? MTG Goldfish records 95% of Tron decks running Relic of Progenitus maindeck.
One might immediately jump to declaring "that just shows how warping Dredge is, if it's making them play that maindeck!" But I should point out that Relic of Progenitus was an outright maindeck staple in Tron years before Dredge became a real thing and even before Golgari Grave-Troll was unbanned. In fact, up until GP Los Angeles this year, every Tron deck that ever got into the Top 8 of a Grand Prix was running at least 2 copies of Relic of Progenitus maindeck.
I don't understand this idea that everything that doesn't follow the Good Old Accepted Rules Of Fair And Good Magic has to be taken out of Modern. Like, why? Modern has always had free mana, has always had delve and phyresian spells, has always had Tron lands, why does it have to be different?
The short answer: because that's what WotC wants for the format, and it's what they have wanted since its inception.
The long answer: In the Modern era, WotC has been too inconsistent with the power levels of the cards that they print. The Modern era has given us powerfulspells and powerfulcreatures, but there is clearly an upper echelon of powerful cards. However, most of those powerful cards are aggressive creatures or combo-enabling spells; there are no comparably powerful police cards in Modern. The end result is that Modern can't actually police itself. Thoughtseize and Blood Moon alone aren't keeping Modern a turn-four format. That's the ultimate irony and misfortune of Modern: despite being sold by WotC as a slower format than Legacy, significantly more Modern games than Legacy games are decided on the earlier turns, de facto making Modern a faster format than Legacy. And the difference between the two formats is a lack of strong police cards, which, as you allude to, don't exist because WotC considers them "unfun". Police cards serve an important purpose in the health of a metagame, and without comparably strong police cards in Modern, WotC can only rely on the banhammer to "fix" the format.
Many of those cards and mechanics have been present in tens of decks from the start of the format, they ARE a part of the format, and I don't know why that has to change and why some people is constantly asking for Modern to be turned into some ***** "standard but with better cards" format, where the second someone does something different from playing Tarmogoyfs and Bolts, one land per turn, kill your stuff you kill my stuff and we keep playing stuff and killing our stuff, there's endless cries and appeals to some vaporous concepts about how Magic is supposed to be played and what is "fun" or "not fun".
You're absolutely right, but you should have been complaining about this for five years. Control players have been. The irony of your statement is that classic control and prison decks have never been allowed to exist in Modern because WotC considers them "unfun", but it takes the banning of a combo-enabler to elicit this kind of response from the community.
WotC has narrowed the range of playable strategies in recent years, not only in Modern, but in Standard. They've presumably got marketing research pertaining to what players do and do not like, and they've been gradually pushing the game towards accessibility (simplicity) as opposed to complexity (nuance). But the end result is that the game as a whole plays in ways that you're lamenting.
Frankly, as a Death & Taxes player, I agree with you. I would like to be the format police so that you can pilot your combo deck without overrunning the rest of the format. But WotC doesn't want to give control players the tools they need, and as a result, they have to ban powerful cards that can't be interacted with by aggro decks.
I'm with you there. I'm a legacy Death and Taxes player, and in that format, we have the tools to punish decks that do unfair things, and we have creatures that are powerful enough to present a decent clock. Modern DnT has none of those things. Ghost quarter+leonin arbiter is cute, but neither of those cards on their own are really all that playable. Thalia just gets goyfed, you don't have mom or sfm, I could go on. I personally think modern could adapt to wasteland, not port though, but even a version of tec edge with the "4 or more" restriction removed, could go a long way to keeping modern more sane.
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Legacy
Death and Taxes Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
Tron prefers Pyroclasm (or Firespout if it really needs to hit for 3 damage) over Anger of the Gods, because hitting that double Red is tough. But you make a much odder claim, namely "Tron pretty much doesn't run gravehate in the mainboard"? Huh? MTG Goldfish records 95% of Tron decks running Relic of Progenitus maindeck.
One might immediately jump to declaring "that just shows how warping Dredge is, if it's making them play that maindeck!" But I should point out that Relic of Progenitus was an outright maindeck staple in Tron years before Dredge became a real thing and even before Golgari Grave-Troll was unbanned. In fact, up until GP Los Angeles this year, every Tron deck that ever got into the Top 8 of a Grand Prix was running at least 2 copies of Relic of Progenitus maindeck.
My bad. I haven't played the format in months and even when I was I ran into more RG Titan Scapeshift/Breach so I ended up mentally suppressing (and mixing) them together (and it didn't help I ran into Anger in the first games quite a handful of times). That being said, I'm still pretty sure Relic/Pyroclasm/Anger all serve auxiliary purposes rather than the main plan (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) and cards in these slots can be said to be flexible. Basically these decks have "free slots"/"interactive slots" that allow the Sideboard to be placed in their mainboard to improve their Game 1 matches against decks they would not otherwise fare well.
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I'm happy Dredge got hit. It ate precious sideboard slots, and pushed other grave based decks out due to the splash effect it had on the format. Now, you could argue that Affinity is much the same story, but the difference I see is that Dredge can fight through it's hate, where was Affinity tends to just fold. On top of Dredge being sideboard hungry, and resilient to hate, it's also pretty fast. So fast that it forced the format to either be faster, or overload on hate. Filling your sideboard with hate left you weak to other matchups, so being faster was the better option. This was slightly personal, as I did run a graveyard based deck, so take what I've said above with a grain of salt.
I am bummed that Git Probe was axed. As a fan of Storm, the deck may as well be dead. The good this is that the ban hit many of the aggro decks that where taking the format by storm. I question if it was necessary, as with a weaker Dredge, aggro's bad matchups may well return to prominence. Along with Fatal Push, these two changes may well have been enough to push aggro down a notch. Banning Probe on top of these changes might have been too much. Infect will probably still be good, but Zooicide and UR Kiln Fiend is probably done for at the higher levels of play. Luckily we still have Burn and Affinity to complete the traditional aggro trinity.
What worries me is that after the Twin banning and the removal Wizards seemed to give the impression they where going to a more hands off. This series of bans go directly against this. The language they used for justifying the GGT ban was odd. It comes off sounding like they are banning it because they don't like the decks existence at top tables, not because it was causing any issues as far as things like the turn four rule. This worries me, as what if Storm one day where to return to prominence, with similar meta game shares? Does it get banned because it's not something Wizards wants for Modern? This brings up a lot of uncomfortable questions for how Wizards will be handling the ban list from here on out. Are they hands on, actively adjusting the format as a they see fit, or hands off, allowing the format to adjust to new issues? Do they follow the original rules set out for Modern, or go by hidden internal rules we are not aware of?
Wizards really need to be more communicative to it's Modern players. I wouldn't mind regular format health updates to help the community gauge Wizard's goals for the format. There is so much uncertainty with Modern, that even just a little insider information would probably calm the masses down. Right now we are all just hoping our decks are hit by the ban hammer. That is a really bad place for Modern to be, as a format ruled by fear isn't one that inspires long term confidence.
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Reid Duke's Level One
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And that is my point exactly. It's always the best deck... Until something replaces it then that new deck gets a banning. Putting affinity back on top. It's like wizards is saying that affinity has to be the best deck.
You always hear about decks that are unplayable due to all the artifact hate people have to play in the SB due to affinity. How is that in any way different than dredge? It's a reasonable liability they are willing to take. They could have banned arcbound ravager instead if troll and the SB would still have 5 to 7 dedicated slots to fighting the big deck. But would have allowed a different set of decks to exist. But no. Affinity had to be the best deck. Simply put.
Let's go down that ave for a second. Banning ravager would open up the artifact lands. As the real reason they are banned is because of ravager. (Think back to standard.) So many more decks would be there and switch out all the artifact hate for graveyard hate would have been actually good for the game.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
While not currently part of a problem deck it has been an inclusion in past decks time after time. Not only is it fast mana, it has no restrictions on it. The rituals require red mana, opal requires you to be playing multipme artifacts. Spirit guide? You just need to sleeve it up. WOTC has made very clear what sort of format they want modern to be and SSG is the epitome of what they are trying to do away with. It only ever enables noninteractive combo and prisob decks and because of the lack of interaction games that come down to what the ssg player draws rather than both playera effecting the outcome. In legacy there are checks for these decks, but wizaeds has not and willnot print checks for them in modern so they should do away with it altogether.
Wizard wants Modern to be, from the power level as from the playstyle, close to Standard than Legacy and shouldn't be neither something in the middle (as it was pre TC print).
It just worries me, that apparently bannings are the only way for wizard to "handle" a format like Modern. It worries me even MORE, when they need to BAN cards from Standard, a format they are testing for it with some obvious play patterns (putting Emmi into play on turn 4, that there does not exist a good removal spell for Copter or the simple fact, that they printed Reflector Mage, which just warped the format on it's own.
So I have more angst from the design steps taken over the last years than those actual bannings.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
What they thought was fine design practice, is not.
You cannot push threats if there are no meaningful answers, and the player base needs to get over the bad feelings they have regarding removal, counters, and lock downs.
Otherwise, it's all circling the drain.
I think I'm going to make a twitter account and ask them if they plan to ban Opal next...
Spirits
couple questions ive been pondering:
If dredge was hit to avoid "sideboard battles" than isnt tron a possible target one day?
dont alot of fair decks lose to tron just like they did to dredge before its nerf?
does tron get better in modern now with infect nerfed?
is tron going to be accepted by wizards as a large contribution to rock paper scissors modern, and sideboard lottery?
a small example: 3-4 fulmis in grix and bg/x ie: "sideboard battles"
decks playing:
none
I don't think Gitaxian Probe is just a fine Magic card with no issues, obviously. But once you've got your basic lands in your deck you stop looking at fine Magic cards with no issues when determining what cards to play in Modern. I don't want to play Grizzly Bears and Lightning Strike, I want to play Tarmogoyf and Lightning Bolt. That's what the format is.
The most puzzling part of this ban is that Become Immense was the obvious target, since it hurts both Infect and Death's Shadow Zoo without killing either. Banning Probe leaves Infect only minimally different from before, while killing Death's Shadow and Bloo, neither of which was a top tier deck. Infect, meanwhile, is the most powerful and prevalent of those and has been for years. I just do not understand the priorities involved in punishing the less powerful decks disproportionately through the choice of ban targets. It's definitely not motivated by spite, but it feels spiteful.
WOTC has made a lot of promises about Modern and, while they absolutely have a difficult task in managing the format, they seem to break all of them. They said they'd take a lighter touch on the format after the Twin ban, then they make a marginal-case banning like Gitaxian Probe that's clearly upset people, blindsided a lot of folks, and is divisive. Nobody is complaining about the Grave-Troll ban, and I can't really imagine an outcry over a ban to Become Immense. I often feel like WOTC is full of people who are so used to being the smartest person in the room (and absolutely thinking they're the smartest person in the room) that they can't resist messing with things on the assumption that they know better than everyone else, and a ban like Probe feels more clever than a ban on Become Immense, so it's enticing to them. I could be totally off-base with that, but I do not agree with the people arguing that WOTC just knows better than everyone else what's healthy for a format or what the right thing is to do. Look at the past several years worth of Standard as evidence for the ability of the multitudes to figure things out more effectively than the designers.
Filling people with fear, anger, and frustration every time you release a banlist update just does not seem like the way to run things. We've asked for clarity and transparency over and over against as a community and they make a token effort at best. I wish they didn't do this to us.
Fair decks will have to sideboard for their bad matchups, just like everyone else. Now they'll have more room.
Baleful Strix
Innocent Blood - but now we have Fatal Push which probably works in this slot
Something close to Wasteland but not quite that powerful
Opt
Prohibit
Counterspell - I really don't care that you said not to list it. You're simply wrong about it.
Absorb
Undermine
Containment Priest
Impulse
Diabolic Edict
Force Spike
Memory Lapse
Fire // Ice
and many more. These cards have been discussed TONS of times. Again - if you didn't know that, you simply weren't looking. But not knowing something is out there doesn't mean it isn't.
And of course big mana decks should have good matchups. Nobody's saying they shouldn't. My point is simply that right now they have 80/20 matchups against midrange and control and I'd like those decks to have a fighting chance to make that matchup 65/35 in favor of the big mana decks.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
true, but my point is: if a deck that made you run 4 x hate was hit for that reason, why is tron aloud to be tier 1 when it in fact causes the same thing.
while only promoting racing as the only way to beat it, again, much like dredge.
decks playing:
none
Let's say your doomsaying is true, and tron starts dominating the field, won't that mean the meta is ripe for fast decks like Infect/Affinity to just wipe out our new tron overlords? It's not like Infect's kill speed got any worse. Wait a second, that means we might have some sort of cyclical meta with checks and balances! As opposed to a combo-agro infested meta!
Good job WotC.
Because they only do this in vintage, and they only do it their because vintage is often the last place a card can even be played, a ban in vintage often would kill any chance to ever play certain cards in all of magic ever again. Restrictions create terribly swingy games that boil down to "who drew the most restricted cards wins"
UWRjeskai nahiri UWR
UBRgrixis titi UBR
UBRgrixis delverUBR
UR ur kikimite UR
EDH
RUG Riku of Two Reflections RUG
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose UBR
UBRGYidris, Maelstrom Wielder UBRG
UBRJeleva, Nephalia's ScourgeUBR
Affinity (and Burn while we're mentioning Tron foils) don't run Probe, they can and will do fine in the Tron matchup, and easily bring back meta percentages to a reasonable level. If the meta is infested with Tron/big mana decks, Infect can just run Street Wraith for the same kill speed as they had with probe.
Will Infect/Affinity/Burn specifically have a harder time against interactive decks? Sure, but they shouldn't have had a good time to begin with. Does that mean aggressive decks have lost their ability to thrive in a specific meta? Not at all. That's how it should be.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
The long answer: In the Modern era, WotC has been too inconsistent with the power levels of the cards that they print. The Modern era has given us powerful spells and powerful creatures, but there is clearly an upper echelon of powerful cards. However, most of those powerful cards are aggressive creatures or combo-enabling spells; there are no comparably powerful police cards in Modern. The end result is that Modern can't actually police itself. Thoughtseize and Blood Moon alone aren't keeping Modern a turn-four format. That's the ultimate irony and misfortune of Modern: despite being sold by WotC as a slower format than Legacy, significantly more Modern games than Legacy games are decided on the earlier turns, de facto making Modern a faster format than Legacy. And the difference between the two formats is a lack of strong police cards, which, as you allude to, don't exist because WotC considers them "unfun". Police cards serve an important purpose in the health of a metagame, and without comparably strong police cards in Modern, WotC can only rely on the banhammer to "fix" the format.
You're absolutely right, but you should have been complaining about this for five years. Control players have been. The irony of your statement is that classic control and prison decks have never been allowed to exist in Modern because WotC considers them "unfun", but it takes the banning of a combo-enabler to elicit this kind of response from the community.
WotC has narrowed the range of playable strategies in recent years, not only in Modern, but in Standard. They've presumably got marketing research pertaining to what players do and do not like, and they've been gradually pushing the game towards accessibility (simplicity) as opposed to complexity (nuance). But the end result is that the game as a whole plays in ways that you're lamenting.
Frankly, as a Death & Taxes player, I agree with you. I would like to be the format police so that you can pilot your combo deck without overrunning the rest of the format. But WotC doesn't want to give control players the tools they need, and as a result, they have to ban powerful cards that can't be interacted with by aggro decks.
WUDeath&TaxesWG
Legacy
UBRGDredgeUBRG
UHigh TideU
URGLandsURG
WR Card Choice List
WUR American D&T
WUB Esper D&T
The Reserved List
Heat Maps
This just underscores the problems of the announcement: we have no clue what "sideboard battles" means. I'm analyzing sideboards to try and figure out what the heck that meant with Dredge and how it was different from Affinity, another deck that demands sideboard slots but has never been banned for creating "sideboard battles." All of this would be unnecessary if Wizards was more transparent in its definitions, but that's a topic for another time.
It increases variance and makes games even more dependent on drawing or tutoring for certain bombs. Never going to happen in Modern and it wouldn't really help address the main complaints.
It's difficult---nay, impossible---to take arguments seriously when they're not only not based in fact, but founded entirely on lies. Feel free to back up your claims with some literature, though. I'd love some egg on my face!
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
But unlike Dredge, Affinity can be managed by "fair" decks on Game 1 because its weakness is interactivity. True, the reason Affinity is dodging literally every ban since the start of the format is because some "stronger deck" shows up, but the common factor among these decks is that they are somewhat more "immune to interactivity" on top of being interactive themselves.
Affinity relies on creatures while Dredge relies on the graveyard. Midrange decks almost always have creature removal game 1, but nearly never graveyard hate game 1.
Affinity charges in blind dumping their hand as the game plan. Infect got around interactivity while fueling their game plan (Become Immense) with Gitaxian Probe.
Even when compared to Twin (disclaimer: this is purely for comparison, I am not stating the Twin ban is entirely justified), answers to Affinity can almost be played at any time, where as Twin demanded you keep mana up at all times or run into the risk of an instant-combo loss.
Affinity has so many weaknesses and has literally no way to patch them up. Even in the SB game, our own SB slots are also spent because we spend our SB slots in an attempt to nullify your SB slots against us because of how potent it is and more often than not, these slots also slow down our game plan. If you chose not to pack Stony Silence and I didn't know it, whatever I replaced with Ghirapur Aether Grid to counter Stony Silence more likely meant I dropped speed for a clunky card that does way less and slower in a situation with no Stony Silence, but I still have to run it because without it, I'm stuck with no way out if the Stony Silence actually shows up.
If a deck is "unplayable" because they absolutely couldn't deal with Affinity game 1, it means they lack interaction. Which is exactly the kind of decks the format doesn't want in the first place. There's an argument to be made that Affinity may be too fast for the "interaction" control makes, but Modern is still at the stage where there always seems to be a deck that even "interaction" that Midrange makes can't deal with and considering Midrange is probably the easiest archetype to handle that around, I don't trust Control to be fixed any time too soon.
Long story short, if we scrapped Affinity instead of Dredge, we'll end up with an "Affinity, but Midrange can't deal with it Game 1" scenario. If that is the case, I doubt "so many more decks" will be out there since they would more likely be even more ill-equipped to deal with Dredge than Affinity. Tron could manage a 50/50 game because Anger of the Gods could deal with Affinity (and Burn) but Tron pretty much doesn't run gravehate in the mainboard. All these other decks you mentioned are basically Tron without Anger and how many of them have graveyard hate in the MB and actually benefit from Dredge replacing Affinity?
The thing is, none of those cards were, strictly speaking, too powerful, at least not any more so than many other cards in Standard that never received bans. Remember Siege Rhino? Thoughtseize+Pack Rat? Delver of Secrets revealing a Mana Leak? EOTFOFYL? This isn't something like Stoneforge Mystic and Jace where bans were essentially required because of how much those cards had messed the format up (Jace, for example, was in nearly 90% of decks). This Standard wasn't particularly imbalanced... at least, not more so than is typical for Standard. Nothing was problematically dominant. Smuggler's Copter saw a ton of play, but it could be played in a variety of archetypes. So I don't think their testing was particularly off.
What seems to be the problem with Standard they want to address isn't imbalance, but boredom. People just don't enjoy it. And it's also coming after several Standard seasons that had their own share of big complaints. Before this, people were sick of Collected Company. Before that, people were annoyed at the fetchland+battleland combo (with no good way to hate on it), both because it made things really expensive but also because of how it made all of the decks feel similar because when everyone is in 3-4 colors, they all tend to play pretty similarly. And exacerbating all of this was their new Standard rotation, which made it even harder to keep up, giving players further incentive to just throw up their hands in frustration and not bother anymore.
I don't think the issue is really any of these cards being too powerful in the current Standard (heck, Emrakul arguably isn't even the best thing to cast off Aetherworks Marvel). It's more about how their recent Standard decisions in general have been driving people away. I'm not even just talking about the specific Standard environments (though that is people don't seem to care for), it's things beyond that also, like the ill-advised rotation change they eventually reversed. These bannings seem less about saving the format from degeneracy (as was the case for basically all previous Standard bannings), and more about "tuning" it to be more like what players might want to try to curb the loss of interest.
The problem with this is that it has the effect of increasing variance to an uncomfortable degree. Certainly, variance is a part of the game, but when players can only play their best cards as 1-ofs, then it turns into whoever happens to draw those restricted cards and gets the advantage out of them. They actually used to restrict cards in Standard, but dropped that for those reasons.
Now you might mention they restrict cards in Vintage. Well, it works in Vintage because...
1) The whole point of Vintage is that no matter how broken a card is, you can still play it. Cards never get banned in Vintage for power level. They might get banned for other things (e.g. ante), but not power level.
2) Vintage has so many crazy broken restricted cards that all players are going to draw some of them, so it manages to even itself out.
Tron prefers Pyroclasm (or Firespout if it really needs to hit for 3 damage) over Anger of the Gods, because hitting that double Red is tough. But you make a much odder claim, namely "Tron pretty much doesn't run gravehate in the mainboard"? Huh? MTG Goldfish records 95% of Tron decks running Relic of Progenitus maindeck.
One might immediately jump to declaring "that just shows how warping Dredge is, if it's making them play that maindeck!" But I should point out that Relic of Progenitus was an outright maindeck staple in Tron years before Dredge became a real thing and even before Golgari Grave-Troll was unbanned. In fact, up until GP Los Angeles this year, every Tron deck that ever got into the Top 8 of a Grand Prix was running at least 2 copies of Relic of Progenitus maindeck.
I'm with you there. I'm a legacy Death and Taxes player, and in that format, we have the tools to punish decks that do unfair things, and we have creatures that are powerful enough to present a decent clock. Modern DnT has none of those things. Ghost quarter+leonin arbiter is cute, but neither of those cards on their own are really all that playable. Thalia just gets goyfed, you don't have mom or sfm, I could go on. I personally think modern could adapt to wasteland, not port though, but even a version of tec edge with the "4 or more" restriction removed, could go a long way to keeping modern more sane.
Death and Taxes
Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron
Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
My bad. I haven't played the format in months and even when I was I ran into more RG Titan Scapeshift/Breach so I ended up mentally suppressing (and mixing) them together (and it didn't help I ran into Anger in the first games quite a handful of times). That being said, I'm still pretty sure Relic/Pyroclasm/Anger all serve auxiliary purposes rather than the main plan (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) and cards in these slots can be said to be flexible. Basically these decks have "free slots"/"interactive slots" that allow the Sideboard to be placed in their mainboard to improve their Game 1 matches against decks they would not otherwise fare well.