That being said, Discard is important to combat combo and other gofish strategies. So Im not sure what to say. But its interesting to see people completely give a pass to strong discard (which is just proactive permission), and yet think counterspell is too strong.
Yeah, it's pretty hypocritical. The problem is that too many people get salty about counterspells, and WotC listened to those people and started dumbing them down, but kept making strong removal and discard, which is not really any different than permission. And now we have the mess of current Standard because people started complaining about removal and discard, so WotC dumbed those down too.
Who did they listen to, though? Where are the comments on message boards, the twitter postings, or the reddit cesspits that have people bunkered up saying they think counterspell is just too much of a bad card to play against? I doubt many people who entered the game recently even knew that card existed until Eternal Masters, let alone played against or with it. Also, counters and discard are feel bad cards? It's like people are forgetting that standard is a competitive format and that there always will be something that makes the game feel bad just like there are moments that make the game feel good.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
stifle would be a good blue card to help ux strategies. it wouldn't push the control end of the blue spectrum, but it'd greatly help the tempo strategies.
the only card that's on the ban list that'll help permission blue control is top. and that brings up another batch of issues that wizards probably doesn't want to deal with in modern.
The argument against most blue cards and cheap costed cards in general is "well doesn't annoying combo/hyper aggro deck just play x card also". This can been seen clearly in the current standard, fatal push goes into the decks it is best against also.
Think infect and death's shadow are annoying now, wait until they can also counter your lands.
What modern really needs is high powered blue cards that don't fix into low to the ground aggro strategies or into combo, but that are costed cheap enough that they can be effective against those strategies.
No way stifle is fitting into infect or anything like that. Infect exists in legacy as a competitive deck and it does not use cards like stifle. Infect is a linear deck that relies on redundency in pump and pfotection. The only reason that hardcore tempo cards do not exist in modern is because of how bad new players would feel to get their fetches denied and lands wastelanded while the opponent can still play all their stuff. The old school of magic did not allow big spells that some players like to be remltely viable. Stifle will only fit into delver but delver would push some players away because they feel they are not eing allosed to play.
Actually I think it fits right in with infect in modern.
Countering Liliana's -2, feeding become immense, etc. Nearly everything their current set of protection can't beat gets beat by stifle.
Not to mention that is drastically harder to kill their guy when they are up 2 mana on you every turn.
stifle would be a good blue card to help ux strategies. it wouldn't push the control end of the blue spectrum, but it'd greatly help the tempo strategies.
the only card that's on the ban list that'll help permission blue control is top. and that brings up another batch of issues that wizards probably doesn't want to deal with in modern.
The argument against most blue cards and cheap costed cards in general is "well doesn't annoying combo/hyper aggro deck just play x card also". This can been seen clearly in the current standard, fatal push goes into the decks it is best against also.
Think infect and death's shadow are annoying now, wait until they can also counter your lands.
What modern really needs is high powered blue cards that don't fix into low to the ground aggro strategies or into combo, but that are costed cheap enough that they can be effective against those strategies.
No way stifle is fitting into infect or anything like that. Infect exists in legacy as a competitive deck and it does not use cards like stifle. Infect is a linear deck that relies on redundency in pump and pfotection. The only reason that hardcore tempo cards do not exist in modern is because of how bad new players would feel to get their fetches denied and lands wastelanded while the opponent can still play all their stuff. The old school of magic did not allow big spells that some players like to be remltely viable. Stifle will only fit into delver but delver would push some players away because they feel they are not eing allosed to play.
Actually I think it fits right in with infect in modern.
Countering Liliana's -2, feeding become immense, etc. Nearly everything their current set of protection can't beat gets beat by stifle.
Not to mention that is drastically harder to kill their guy when they are up 2 mana on you every turn.
Wouldn't is be more direct to just run spell pierce so you can have more protection for your infect creatures while also having a way to stop lily from resolving in the first place?
If anyone is interested in more stats, I have MTGO ones here:
Abzan Midrange - 7.4%
Affinity - 6.5%
Jund Shadow - 6.5%
Dredge - 5.2%
Naya Burn - 5.2%
RG Scapeshift - 4.2%
Jund Midrange - 4.2%
Amulet Titan - 3.9%
WG Tron - 3.9%
Ad Nauseam - 3.5%
Jund Shadow - 10.7%
Colorless Eldrazi - 8.9%
Abzan Midrange - 6.4%
Affinity - 6.4%
Jund Midrange - 5.7%
RG Scapeshift - 5.0%
Naya Burn - 4.6%
Merfolk - 3.2%
Grixis Control - 2.9%
Dredge - 2.5%
Jund Shadow - 10.0%
Colorless Eldrazi - 9.2%
Naya Burn - 5.4%
UR Storm - 5.4%
Jund Midrange - 4.6%
Bant Eldrazi - 4.6%
Grixis Delver - 3.8%
Grixis Shadow - 3.8%
Abzan Midrange - 3.1%
RG Scapeshift - 3.1%
Coming into March, we see 4 new decks making their way up the tiers: Grixis Shadow (+3.5%), WG Hatebears (+3.1%), UR Storm (+2.9%) and Bant Eldrazi (+2.8%). On the other hand, the 3 decks that took the biggest hit from Feburary to now are Affinity (-4.1%), Abzan Midrange (-3.4%) and Grixis Control (-2.9%).
Abzan Midrange - 11.8%
Dredge - 10.9%
Jund Shadow - 7.3%
RG Scapeshift - 5.5%
WR Control - 5.5%
Ad Nauseam - 4.5%
WG Tron - 4.5%
Jund Midrange - 4.5%
Naya Burn - 3.6%
UG Infect - 3.6%
Jund Shadow - 9.0%
Colorless Eldrazi - 7.4%
Affinity - 6.2%
Abzan Midrange - 5.2%
Naya Burn - 4.9%
Jund Midrange - 4.9%
RG Scapeshift - 4.1%
UR Storm - 3.0%
Bant Eldrazi - 3.0%
Ad Nauseam - 2.3%
So, 61* days after the Gitaxian Probe and Golgari Grave-Troll bans went into effect online, I think it's clear this new metagame context helped Eldrazi Tron (+4.6%), Affinity (+3.3%) and UR Storm (+3.0%) the most, while Dredge (-8.6%), Abzan Midrange (-6.6%), WR Control (-4.3%), UG Infect (-3.1%) and WG Tron (-3.1%) took the biggest hit.
Any takeaway guys? Please, do note that I didn't post all the data because it would be 5 huge walls of text, limiting it to the top 10 decks, please feel free to ask for anything.
stifle would be a good blue card to help ux strategies. it wouldn't push the control end of the blue spectrum, but it'd greatly help the tempo strategies.
the only card that's on the ban list that'll help permission blue control is top. and that brings up another batch of issues that wizards probably doesn't want to deal with in modern.
The argument against most blue cards and cheap costed cards in general is "well doesn't annoying combo/hyper aggro deck just play x card also". This can been seen clearly in the current standard, fatal push goes into the decks it is best against also.
Think infect and death's shadow are annoying now, wait until they can also counter your lands.
What modern really needs is high powered blue cards that don't fix into low to the ground aggro strategies or into combo, but that are costed cheap enough that they can be effective against those strategies.
No way stifle is fitting into infect or anything like that. Infect exists in legacy as a competitive deck and it does not use cards like stifle. Infect is a linear deck that relies on redundency in pump and pfotection. The only reason that hardcore tempo cards do not exist in modern is because of how bad new players would feel to get their fetches denied and lands wastelanded while the opponent can still play all their stuff. The old school of magic did not allow big spells that some players like to be remltely viable. Stifle will only fit into delver but delver would push some players away because they feel they are not eing allosed to play.
Actually I think it fits right in with infect in modern.
Countering Liliana's -2, feeding become immense, etc. Nearly everything their current set of protection can't beat gets beat by stifle.
Not to mention that is drastically harder to kill their guy when they are up 2 mana on you every turn.
Wouldn't is be more direct to just run spell pierce so you can have more protection for your infect creatures while also having a way to stop lily from resolving in the first place?
Depends on how you prioritize you goals.
Sure spell pierce stops most kill spells.
However setting your opponent back a land does effectively the same thing, plus the stifle has value in hand.
The most relevant difference I can think of is if you prevent your opponent from getting their second land.
They can't cast most of their threats and also (more importantly to your blighted agent) they can't cast sudden shock.
The point I am getting at is the card can and probably will be played by some percentage of the people on that strategy. What control players should be looking for is a strictly control card.
Imagine a counterspell that costs 2UU, but also can be cast for X where X is the number of lands you control. If you want to counter you are forced to wait until late game or to pass your turn an react.
Any takeaway guys? Please, do note that I didn't post all the data because it would be 5 huge walls of text, limiting it to the top 10 decks, please feel free to ask for anything.
It's interesting to see how different the online meta is from paper. Well, I think the biggest takeaway from that is seeing the decks that are popular online and how they converted in the recent paper tournaments. Jund Shadow has actually performed even better in paper than online, while both Storm and Grixis Shadow haven't broken through in paper yet. Eldrazi Tron is doing better online than in paper, and Bant Eldrazi is the opposite. Other than that, looks like the online 5-0s are pretty close to the paper T32s we've seen.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Any takeaway guys? Please, do note that I didn't post all the data because it would be 5 huge walls of text, limiting it to the top 10 decks, please feel free to ask for anything.
It's interesting to see how different the online meta is from paper. Well, I think the biggest takeaway from that is seeing the decks that are popular online and how they converted in the recent paper tournaments. Jund Shadow has actually performed even better in paper than online, while both Storm and Grixis Shadow haven't broken through in paper yet. Eldrazi Tron is doing better online than in paper, and Bant Eldrazi is the opposite. Other than that, looks like the online 5-0s are pretty close to the paper T32s we've seen.
My theory is that the recent Bant Eldrazi online uptick is an answer to Jund Shadow and that there were more results on paper as many people hadn't adopted Eldrazi Tron yet, but the metagame was still good for both decks. I do expect this online/paper Eldrazi dissonance to normalize in these coming weeks, regardless off what version comes at the top. My bets aren't on Bant, though
Also, nice to see more Grixis decks, and Storm in the top 10 is quite the surprise. i guess Baral's help outweighs the loss of Probe. The adoption of Gifts Ungiven certainly improves concistency too.
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Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
My theory is that the recent Bant Eldrazi online uptick is an answer to Jund Shadow and that there were more results on paper as many people hadn't adopted Eldrazi Tron yet, but the metagame was still good for both decks. I do expect this online/paper Eldrazi dissonance to normalize in these coming weeks, regardless off what version comes at the top. My bets aren't on Bant, though
Also, nice to see more Grixis decks, and Storm in the top 10 is quite the surprise. i guess Baral's help outweighs the loss of Probe. The adoption of Gifts Ungiven certainly improves concistency too.
Storm didn't do well at the SCG Open, I know that. People did show up with it, but there were no copies that made top 32. I do think it's better now than it was before, though. That partially has to do with Baral, but also partially has to do with faster decks like Infect being less represented and there being less graveyard hate with Dredge taking a dip as well.
I really don't think the Grixis Shadow deck is the real deal. No copies of that made top 32 either, even though people apparently were trying it. It just looks like a worse version of the Jund build. On the other hand, Michael Majors brewed up a quick Sultai Shadow build tonight on stream, and that looked amazing: https://t.co/KmtuPTVTTX
It's pretty clearly a rough build, but he 5-0d on his first go with it, and the deck looked powerful.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
The argument against most blue cards and cheap costed cards in general is "well doesn't annoying combo/hyper aggro deck just play x card also". This can been seen clearly in the current standard, fatal push goes into the decks it is best against also.
Think infect and death's shadow are annoying now, wait until they can also counter your lands.
What modern really needs is high powered blue cards that don't fix into low to the ground aggro strategies or into combo, but that are costed cheap enough that they can be effective against those strategies.
No way stifle is fitting into infect or anything like that. Infect exists in legacy as a competitive deck and it does not use cards like stifle. Infect is a linear deck that relies on redundency in pump and pfotection. The only reason that hardcore tempo cards do not exist in modern is because of how bad new players would feel to get their fetches denied and lands wastelanded while the opponent can still play all their stuff. The old school of magic did not allow big spells that some players like to be remltely viable. Stifle will only fit into delver but delver would push some players away because they feel they are not eing allosed to play.
Actually I think it fits right in with infect in modern.
Countering Liliana's -2, feeding become immense, etc. Nearly everything their current set of protection can't beat gets beat by stifle.
Not to mention that is drastically harder to kill their guy when they are up 2 mana on you every turn.
Wouldn't is be more direct to just run spell pierce so you can have more protection for your infect creatures while also having a way to stop lily from resolving in the first place?
Depends on how you prioritize you goals.
Sure spell pierce stops most kill spells.
However setting your opponent back a land does effectively the same thing, plus the stifle has value in hand.
The most relevant difference I can think of is if you prevent your opponent from getting their second land.
They can't cast most of their threats and also (more importantly to your blighted agent) they can't cast sudden shock.
The point I am getting at is the card can and probably will be played by some percentage of the people on that strategy. What control players should be looking for is a strictly control card.
Imagine a counterspell that costs 2UU, but also can be cast for X where X is the number of lands you control. If you want to counter you are forced to wait until late game or to pass your turn an react.
Cheap spells on really degrade the format more.
That counterspell is definitely better in low to the ground decks than in a control one. Control HAS to hit its land drops meaning the card is just worse than in a deck that can play on 1 or 2 mana. It'd be pretty much the same issue as mana leak except for the obviously busted mental misstep mode.
I find it funny that people think Counterspell or even Mana Leak is too good for standard when we had Thoughseize just recently. Also, I don't understand how you feel miserable when you get your spell countered and you don't when you just get your hand stripped every turn via IoK and TS. TS is a proactive counterspell that costs one mana and gets rid of the most powerful spell you have. One could argue that you didn't get to pay the mana to cast that spell. That's true but on the other hand the guy who just TS you knows what's up and can sequence your turns pretty easily. I don't know about you but I don't find it fun when everyone is aware of what I'm doing.
Regardless, the concept of it being fun is in my opinion totally irrelevant when we're discussing development and balance. Since fun is a subjective concept it's just dumb to discuss it. When you compare the discard we have in modern to the counters we have in modern it's really noticeable the divergence on power level they have. Counters aren't indefinately worse in terms of oportunity cost/tempo/card advantage.
With this being said, what baffles me the most is why don't they use Modern Masters or whatever new product they can come up with to introduce cards directly into Modern without going through Standard. If they printed 10 cards from the old times every MM and allowed them to enter the format they would balance the format way more easily without going on this ridiculous ban mania. They do it already for Legacy with Commander and Conspiracy products so it's not unpreceded.
It all goes back to them being largely ignorant, slow, and lazy when it comes to changing policy on format support. They are afraid to directly support modern with new cards since it was originally intended to be the dumping ground of old standards, but modern really isn't that anymore. Hardly anything from standard gets played in modern because the cards that define it are so powerful they wash out all the other options on playability. It's super noticeable when jumping between modern and frontier the kind of power shift there is in the cards legal for play.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I find it funny that people think Counterspell or even Mana Leak is too good for standard when we had Thoughseize just recently. Also, I don't understand how you feel miserable when you get your spell countered and you don't when you just get your hand stripped every turn via IoK and TS. TS is a proactive counterspell that costs one mana and gets rid of the most powerful spell you have. One could argue that you didn't get to pay the mana to cast that spell. That's true but on the other hand the guy who just TS you knows what's up and can sequence your turns pretty easily. I don't know about you but I don't find it fun when everyone is aware of what I'm doing.
Regardless, the concept of it being fun is in my opinion totally irrelevant when we're discussing development and balance. Since fun is a subjective concept it's just dumb to discuss it. When you compare the discard we have in modern to the counters we have in modern it's really noticeable the divergence on power level they have. Counters aren't indefinately worse in terms of oportunity cost/tempo/card advantage.
With this being said, what baffles me the most is why don't they use Modern Masters or whatever new product they can come up with to introduce cards directly into Modern without going through Standard. If they printed 10 cards from the old times every MM and allowed them to enter the format they would balance the format way more easily without going on this ridiculous ban mania. They do it already for Legacy with Commander and Conspiracy products so it's not unpreceded.
It all goes back to them being largely ignorant, slow, and lazy when it comes to changing policy on format support. They are afraid to directly support modern with new cards since it was originally intended to be the dumping ground of old standards, but modern really isn't that anymore. Hardly anything from standard gets played in modern because the cards that define it are so powerful they wash out all the other options on playability. It's super noticeable when jumping between modern and frontier the kind of power shift there is in the cards legal for play.
I bet more unique decks are playable in Modern based on new Standard cards than Standard competitive decks.
'Hardly anything' is a poorly defined statement. Many cards see play with every single set.
That being said, Discard is important to combat combo and other gofish strategies. So Im not sure what to say. But its interesting to see people completely give a pass to strong discard (which is just proactive permission), and yet think counterspell is too strong.
Yeah, it's pretty hypocritical. The problem is that too many people get salty about counterspells, and WotC listened to those people and started dumbing them down, but kept making strong removal and discard, which is not really any different than permission. And now we have the mess of current Standard because people started complaining about removal and discard, so WotC dumbed those down too.
Real question here, just a thought experiment really, but if counterspell was put into modern, would any other counterspell in the format outside of cryptic even remotely make any deck list? Right now, whether we agree with it or not, the current state of counterspell balance in Modern seems fairly good, we have a lot of choices we can use, they include (but are not limited to):
These plus some other notables as well, right now we have legitimate choices, lets say in a hypothetical perfectly balanced format with equal parts aggro, midrange, control, combo, and tempo, is 4 x counterspell not simply always the best choice in a vacuum? Honest question since I have been thinking about it but I'm not 100% sure, if that is the case would that not result in massive deck building diversity lost? Is it bad if that happens? Just trying to think things through from Wotc's perspective.
Kind of a fun experiment. I think you'd see a lot of counterspell run with some number of cryptic commands. Mana leak still has a role in the (relatively few) decks that would want more than 4 counters and the (relatively larger) decks that don't want to get UU up on turn two. With our current manafixing, UU isn't a trivial thing on turn two for most decks--sometimes you will need to bolt yourself to do it, and that will suck. Spell snare is still the best 1cc option around, remand is a tempo king, especially in the early game, spell pierce and dispel will continue to be good at what they do. I'm not sure that disallow is actually played anywhere is it?
Really the only fall out is something like deprive (or familiar's ruse or silumgar's scorn) that only get run in decks that want counterspell because counterspell isn't available. Logic knot would also likely fall by the wayside. Any one of the counterspell-but-worse cards could still see play occasionally in decks that get something from the added cost or in the rare deck that has decided 4 2cc counters isn't enough.
As for going through standard, I think there have been plenty of environments where it wouldn't have made much of a difference if you replaced a premier counter with counterspell. There are some where it wouldn't work (notably snapcaster shenanigans would have sucked), but with a few tweaks a lot of environments could support it. I agree that, for standard, hard permission is likely a turnoff, but that can be avoided in an environment with counterspell by 1: not having other broad counterspells, 2: not having efficient instant card draw, 3: making sure control finishers don't have flash/hexproof, 4: have a few efficient uncounterable threats. In such an environment, counterspell would be played (assuming there is enough other reason to run blue), but it would be hard to make a draw-go deck (which is what most people hate, if they dislike blue). I'm not saying I think they'll do that, but they could, and I even think newer players would think it was kinda neat, as long as it isn't a constant thing.
I find it funny that people think Counterspell or even Mana Leak is too good for standard when we had Thoughseize just recently. Also, I don't understand how you feel miserable when you get your spell countered and you don't when you just get your hand stripped every turn via IoK and TS. TS is a proactive counterspell that costs one mana and gets rid of the most powerful spell you have. One could argue that you didn't get to pay the mana to cast that spell. That's true but on the other hand the guy who just TS you knows what's up and can sequence your turns pretty easily. I don't know about you but I don't find it fun when everyone is aware of what I'm doing.
Regardless, the concept of it being fun is in my opinion totally irrelevant when we're discussing development and balance. Since fun is a subjective concept it's just dumb to discuss it. When you compare the discard we have in modern to the counters we have in modern it's really noticeable the divergence on power level they have. Counters aren't indefinately worse in terms of oportunity cost/tempo/card advantage.
With this being said, what baffles me the most is why don't they use Modern Masters or whatever new product they can come up with to introduce cards directly into Modern without going through Standard. If they printed 10 cards from the old times every MM and allowed them to enter the format they would balance the format way more easily without going on this ridiculous ban mania. They do it already for Legacy with Commander and Conspiracy products so it's not unpreceded.
Sums up my views pretty much. Which is why I brought up discard in the first place. Its proactive permission with the upside of knowing what is in your hand. Discard is almost always way better than reactive permission even at resource parity.
I find it funny that people think Counterspell or even Mana Leak is too good for standard when we had Thoughseize just recently. Also, I don't understand how you feel miserable when you get your spell countered and you don't when you just get your hand stripped every turn via IoK and TS. TS is a proactive counterspell that costs one mana and gets rid of the most powerful spell you have. One could argue that you didn't get to pay the mana to cast that spell. That's true but on the other hand the guy who just TS you knows what's up and can sequence your turns pretty easily. I don't know about you but I don't find it fun when everyone is aware of what I'm doing.
Regardless, the concept of it being fun is in my opinion totally irrelevant when we're discussing development and balance. Since fun is a subjective concept it's just dumb to discuss it. When you compare the discard we have in modern to the counters we have in modern it's really noticeable the divergence on power level they have. Counters aren't indefinately worse in terms of oportunity cost/tempo/card advantage.
With this being said, what baffles me the most is why don't they use Modern Masters or whatever new product they can come up with to introduce cards directly into Modern without going through Standard. If they printed 10 cards from the old times every MM and allowed them to enter the format they would balance the format way more easily without going on this ridiculous ban mania. They do it already for Legacy with Commander and Conspiracy products so it's not unpreceded.
Sums up my views pretty much. Which is why I brought up discard in the first place. Its proactive permission with the upside of knowing what is in your hand. Discard is almost always way better than reactive permission even at resource parity.
There are a few important differences. Counters are much better when your opponent is in topdeck mode. Most discard options will allow them to get a spell through, if they can play it immediately, and there is always the chance that they topdeck a land, don't play it, and you burn a discard spell trying to get what they drew. Counterspells avoid all of that, while stealing the mana they used to try and play the spell as well. Discard, while it removes the options for a play, doesn't remove the opportunity to play, where counterspells sometimes do.
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Sig by Dark Night Cavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios!
That being said, Discard is important to combat combo and other gofish strategies. So Im not sure what to say. But its interesting to see people completely give a pass to strong discard (which is just proactive permission), and yet think counterspell is too strong.
Yeah, it's pretty hypocritical. The problem is that too many people get salty about counterspells, and WotC listened to those people and started dumbing them down, but kept making strong removal and discard, which is not really any different than permission. And now we have the mess of current Standard because people started complaining about removal and discard, so WotC dumbed those down too.
Who did they listen to, though? Where are the comments on message boards, the twitter postings, or the reddit cesspits that have people bunkered up saying they think counterspell is just too much of a bad card to play against? I doubt many people who entered the game recently even knew that card existed until Eternal Masters, let alone played against or with it. Also, counters and discard are feel bad cards? It's like people are forgetting that standard is a competitive format and that there always will be something that makes the game feel bad just like there are moments that make the game feel good.
A lot of it came from attendance data. When certain formats leaned toward a more controlish feel, people stopped playing and played other formats that werent as controlish. Then came MTGO and they had the ability in real time to see the effects as they made formats more control, or more creature, midrange, tempo and the direct effect on attendance.
Quote from DaveJacinto »
I find it funny that people think Counterspell or even Mana Leak is too good for standard when we had Thoughseize just recently.
To be fair, in hind sight, Wotc felt Thoughtseize was too powerful for Standard along with the fetches and some other reprints. I would have to dig for the article on the mothership.
I find it funny that people think Counterspell or even Mana Leak is too good for standard when we had Thoughseize just recently. Also, I don't understand how you feel miserable when you get your spell countered and you don't when you just get your hand stripped every turn via IoK and TS. TS is a proactive counterspell that costs one mana and gets rid of the most powerful spell you have. One could argue that you didn't get to pay the mana to cast that spell. That's true but on the other hand the guy who just TS you knows what's up and can sequence your turns pretty easily. I don't know about you but I don't find it fun when everyone is aware of what I'm doing.
Regardless, the concept of it being fun is in my opinion totally irrelevant when we're discussing development and balance. Since fun is a subjective concept it's just dumb to discuss it. When you compare the discard we have in modern to the counters we have in modern it's really noticeable the divergence on power level they have. Counters aren't indefinately worse in terms of oportunity cost/tempo/card advantage.
With this being said, what baffles me the most is why don't they use Modern Masters or whatever new product they can come up with to introduce cards directly into Modern without going through Standard. If they printed 10 cards from the old times every MM and allowed them to enter the format they would balance the format way more easily without going on this ridiculous ban mania. They do it already for Legacy with Commander and Conspiracy products so it's not unpreceded.
Sums up my views pretty much. Which is why I brought up discard in the first place. Its proactive permission with the upside of knowing what is in your hand. Discard is almost always way better than reactive permission even at resource parity.
There are a few important differences. Counters are much better when your opponent is in topdeck mode. Most discard options will allow them to get a spell through, if they can play it immediately, and there is always the chance that they topdeck a land, don't play it, and you burn a discard spell trying to get what they drew. Counterspells avoid all of that, while stealing the mana they used to try and play the spell as well. Discard, while it removes the options for a play, doesn't remove the opportunity to play, where counterspells sometimes do.
All correct, but don't forget that holding for counters disrupts your curve, and leads to wasting all the mana you held up if your opponent doesn't play something worth countering (unless your optimal play could be played at instant-speed).
With the pros and cons of Counterspell vs. Thoughtseize in a Modern environment, I think they're perfectly balanced against one another.
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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
.. yes, it's a knee-jerk response, but I'm not sure why you're more special than everyone else who "wants to play <insert favorite non-tiered archetype of choice here>". Plus, if you really want to play a certain type of deck, there's nothing stopping you. Heck, Seismic Swans(!) spiked a tournament this month.
Wait, where/when was that? I'd love to know.
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My thoughts are with the friends and family of the Orlando Shooting victims and with the rest of the LGBTQA+ community.
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
Necarg, please don't acknowledge this in any way whatsoever.
True Name Mafia (Win),Clan Contest IX Mafia (Win), Bravely Default Mafia (Loss), BOTAS (loss), BfV (Loss), Ace Attourney (loss)
Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
I find it funny that people think Counterspell or even Mana Leak is too good for standard when we had Thoughseize just recently. Also, I don't understand how you feel miserable when you get your spell countered and you don't when you just get your hand stripped every turn via IoK and TS. TS is a proactive counterspell that costs one mana and gets rid of the most powerful spell you have. One could argue that you didn't get to pay the mana to cast that spell. That's true but on the other hand the guy who just TS you knows what's up and can sequence your turns pretty easily. I don't know about you but I don't find it fun when everyone is aware of what I'm doing.
Regardless, the concept of it being fun is in my opinion totally irrelevant when we're discussing development and balance. Since fun is a subjective concept it's just dumb to discuss it. When you compare the discard we have in modern to the counters we have in modern it's really noticeable the divergence on power level they have. Counters aren't indefinately worse in terms of oportunity cost/tempo/card advantage.
With this being said, what baffles me the most is why don't they use Modern Masters or whatever new product they can come up with to introduce cards directly into Modern without going through Standard. If they printed 10 cards from the old times every MM and allowed them to enter the format they would balance the format way more easily without going on this ridiculous ban mania. They do it already for Legacy with Commander and Conspiracy products so it's not unpreceded.
Sums up my views pretty much. Which is why I brought up discard in the first place. Its proactive permission with the upside of knowing what is in your hand. Discard is almost always way better than reactive permission even at resource parity.
There are a few important differences. Counters are much better when your opponent is in topdeck mode. Most discard options will allow them to get a spell through, if they can play it immediately, and there is always the chance that they topdeck a land, don't play it, and you burn a discard spell trying to get what they drew. Counterspells avoid all of that, while stealing the mana they used to try and play the spell as well. Discard, while it removes the options for a play, doesn't remove the opportunity to play, where counterspells sometimes do.
All correct, but don't forget that holding for counters disrupts your curve, and leads to wasting all the mana you held up if your opponent doesn't play something worth countering (unless your optimal play could be played at instant-speed).
With the pros and cons of Counterspell vs. Thoughtseize in a Modern environment, I think they're perfectly balanced against one another.
Absolutely agree with you. Holding up mana throws off your tempo, even if you disrupt your opponent's tempo. It is one of the things that helps balance counters vs. discard. I think I was more responding to the idea that discard was superior to counterspells consistently.
Also agree about there not being any problem with counterspell in modern. I bet WotC wouldn't have an issue with it either, more of a problem with it in standard.
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Sig by Dark Night Cavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios!
It really hurts the game itself with how modern is getting support. I agree with a lot of people that they need another way to legalize cards for the modern format. Well, that and fetch lands are an abomination that need to be exiled from all formats and not just modern. The later looks like I'll just have to begrudgingly deal with, though.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
What is wrong with Fetch Lands ? Is it just the shuffling ?
Couple of problems, first and most obvious is how much shuffling it creates, how much this shuffling slows games, and how dumb it looks on camera. Less mentioned is how often new players become extremely confused when first exposed to fetchlands.
Edit: also, would add that a lot of less enfranchised players can struggle with shuffling generally. If you want an example of that, take a sleeved deck and hand it to a friend who doesn't play magic, and watch how it goes; a good chunk of the time, it's not pretty. Physical dexterity is not supposed to be a requirement of the game, which would incline RnD to not require people do something physically dextrous as often.
RGTron
UGInfect
URStorm
WUBRAd Nauseam
BRGrishoalbrand
URGScapeshift
WBGAbzan Company
WUBRGAmulet Titan
BRGLiving End
WGBogles
Who did they listen to, though? Where are the comments on message boards, the twitter postings, or the reddit cesspits that have people bunkered up saying they think counterspell is just too much of a bad card to play against? I doubt many people who entered the game recently even knew that card existed until Eternal Masters, let alone played against or with it. Also, counters and discard are feel bad cards? It's like people are forgetting that standard is a competitive format and that there always will be something that makes the game feel bad just like there are moments that make the game feel good.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Actually I think it fits right in with infect in modern.
Countering Liliana's -2, feeding become immense, etc. Nearly everything their current set of protection can't beat gets beat by stifle.
Not to mention that is drastically harder to kill their guy when they are up 2 mana on you every turn.
Wouldn't is be more direct to just run spell pierce so you can have more protection for your infect creatures while also having a way to stop lily from resolving in the first place?
Any takeaway guys? Please, do note that I didn't post all the data because it would be 5 huge walls of text, limiting it to the top 10 decks, please feel free to ask for anything.
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
Depends on how you prioritize you goals.
Sure spell pierce stops most kill spells.
However setting your opponent back a land does effectively the same thing, plus the stifle has value in hand.
The most relevant difference I can think of is if you prevent your opponent from getting their second land.
They can't cast most of their threats and also (more importantly to your blighted agent) they can't cast sudden shock.
The point I am getting at is the card can and probably will be played by some percentage of the people on that strategy. What control players should be looking for is a strictly control card.
Imagine a counterspell that costs 2UU, but also can be cast for X where X is the number of lands you control. If you want to counter you are forced to wait until late game or to pass your turn an react.
Cheap spells on really degrade the format more.
It's interesting to see how different the online meta is from paper. Well, I think the biggest takeaway from that is seeing the decks that are popular online and how they converted in the recent paper tournaments. Jund Shadow has actually performed even better in paper than online, while both Storm and Grixis Shadow haven't broken through in paper yet. Eldrazi Tron is doing better online than in paper, and Bant Eldrazi is the opposite. Other than that, looks like the online 5-0s are pretty close to the paper T32s we've seen.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Also, nice to see more Grixis decks, and Storm in the top 10 is quite the surprise. i guess Baral's help outweighs the loss of Probe. The adoption of Gifts Ungiven certainly improves concistency too.
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
Storm didn't do well at the SCG Open, I know that. People did show up with it, but there were no copies that made top 32. I do think it's better now than it was before, though. That partially has to do with Baral, but also partially has to do with faster decks like Infect being less represented and there being less graveyard hate with Dredge taking a dip as well.
I really don't think the Grixis Shadow deck is the real deal. No copies of that made top 32 either, even though people apparently were trying it. It just looks like a worse version of the Jund build. On the other hand, Michael Majors brewed up a quick Sultai Shadow build tonight on stream, and that looked amazing: https://t.co/KmtuPTVTTX
It's pretty clearly a rough build, but he 5-0d on his first go with it, and the deck looked powerful.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
That counterspell is definitely better in low to the ground decks than in a control one. Control HAS to hit its land drops meaning the card is just worse than in a deck that can play on 1 or 2 mana. It'd be pretty much the same issue as mana leak except for the obviously busted mental misstep mode.
It all goes back to them being largely ignorant, slow, and lazy when it comes to changing policy on format support. They are afraid to directly support modern with new cards since it was originally intended to be the dumping ground of old standards, but modern really isn't that anymore. Hardly anything from standard gets played in modern because the cards that define it are so powerful they wash out all the other options on playability. It's super noticeable when jumping between modern and frontier the kind of power shift there is in the cards legal for play.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Standard players are just casual, man, they get way too upset with discard, kill spells and counters.
I bet more unique decks are playable in Modern based on new Standard cards than Standard competitive decks.
'Hardly anything' is a poorly defined statement. Many cards see play with every single set.
Spirits
Kind of a fun experiment. I think you'd see a lot of counterspell run with some number of cryptic commands. Mana leak still has a role in the (relatively few) decks that would want more than 4 counters and the (relatively larger) decks that don't want to get UU up on turn two. With our current manafixing, UU isn't a trivial thing on turn two for most decks--sometimes you will need to bolt yourself to do it, and that will suck. Spell snare is still the best 1cc option around, remand is a tempo king, especially in the early game, spell pierce and dispel will continue to be good at what they do. I'm not sure that disallow is actually played anywhere is it?
Really the only fall out is something like deprive (or familiar's ruse or silumgar's scorn) that only get run in decks that want counterspell because counterspell isn't available. Logic knot would also likely fall by the wayside. Any one of the counterspell-but-worse cards could still see play occasionally in decks that get something from the added cost or in the rare deck that has decided 4 2cc counters isn't enough.
As for going through standard, I think there have been plenty of environments where it wouldn't have made much of a difference if you replaced a premier counter with counterspell. There are some where it wouldn't work (notably snapcaster shenanigans would have sucked), but with a few tweaks a lot of environments could support it. I agree that, for standard, hard permission is likely a turnoff, but that can be avoided in an environment with counterspell by 1: not having other broad counterspells, 2: not having efficient instant card draw, 3: making sure control finishers don't have flash/hexproof, 4: have a few efficient uncounterable threats. In such an environment, counterspell would be played (assuming there is enough other reason to run blue), but it would be hard to make a draw-go deck (which is what most people hate, if they dislike blue). I'm not saying I think they'll do that, but they could, and I even think newer players would think it was kinda neat, as long as it isn't a constant thing.
Sums up my views pretty much. Which is why I brought up discard in the first place. Its proactive permission with the upside of knowing what is in your hand. Discard is almost always way better than reactive permission even at resource parity.
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
There are a few important differences. Counters are much better when your opponent is in topdeck mode. Most discard options will allow them to get a spell through, if they can play it immediately, and there is always the chance that they topdeck a land, don't play it, and you burn a discard spell trying to get what they drew. Counterspells avoid all of that, while stealing the mana they used to try and play the spell as well. Discard, while it removes the options for a play, doesn't remove the opportunity to play, where counterspells sometimes do.
A lot of it came from attendance data. When certain formats leaned toward a more controlish feel, people stopped playing and played other formats that werent as controlish. Then came MTGO and they had the ability in real time to see the effects as they made formats more control, or more creature, midrange, tempo and the direct effect on attendance.
To be fair, in hind sight, Wotc felt Thoughtseize was too powerful for Standard along with the fetches and some other reprints. I would have to dig for the article on the mothership.
All correct, but don't forget that holding for counters disrupts your curve, and leads to wasting all the mana you held up if your opponent doesn't play something worth countering (unless your optimal play could be played at instant-speed).
With the pros and cons of Counterspell vs. Thoughtseize in a Modern environment, I think they're perfectly balanced against one another.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
Wait, where/when was that? I'd love to know.
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
True Name Mafia (Win),Clan Contest IX Mafia (Win), Bravely Default Mafia (Loss), BOTAS (loss), BfV (Loss), Ace Attourney (loss)
Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
Absolutely agree with you. Holding up mana throws off your tempo, even if you disrupt your opponent's tempo. It is one of the things that helps balance counters vs. discard. I think I was more responding to the idea that discard was superior to counterspells consistently.
Also agree about there not being any problem with counterspell in modern. I bet WotC wouldn't have an issue with it either, more of a problem with it in standard.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Couple of problems, first and most obvious is how much shuffling it creates, how much this shuffling slows games, and how dumb it looks on camera. Less mentioned is how often new players become extremely confused when first exposed to fetchlands.
Edit: also, would add that a lot of less enfranchised players can struggle with shuffling generally. If you want an example of that, take a sleeved deck and hand it to a friend who doesn't play magic, and watch how it goes; a good chunk of the time, it's not pretty. Physical dexterity is not supposed to be a requirement of the game, which would incline RnD to not require people do something physically dextrous as often.
Spirits