It makes sense. This is yet another Standard banning, and Wizards needs to really explain their rationale and goals for the format, and set future expectations. And the discussion is informative, even if not directly pertaining to Modern. For now, I'm just happy there aren't any more bans in Modern. I think the metagame is still adapting to the different Death's Shadow decks, and giving things time to settle before taking any action (even unbans) is the right way to go.
It makes sense. This is yet another Standard banning, and Wizards needs to really explain their rationale and goals for the format, and set future expectations. And the discussion is informative, even if not directly pertaining to Modern. For now, I'm just happy there aren't any more bans in Modern. I think the metagame is still adapting to the different Death's Shadow decks, and giving things time to settle before taking any action (even unbans) is the right way to go.
ecept that never happens. New sets get printed all the time and if you use that argument you will never get unbans. Unbans have to come at times like these imo.
What I like about this announcement is that they justified their decision and really took their time to explain it and break it down. I think Grixis Shadow's situation is similar to twin, it's by no means a must ban, but it's probably the best deck. It also changes the play pattern of the opponent considerably and makes them play by their own rules. The meta all in all is enjoyable and there is no rush to ban the deck right now, considering we don't really have that much data.(For a deck that would be a borderline ban, for twin we did have plenty of data to support the assumption that twin was the best deck) If their ban announcements are like this and less like "No Changes, that's all for today, next announcement is xx.yy.zzzz" I am happy and think they learned very much out of the situation in standard over the last year.
It makes sense. This is yet another Standard banning, and Wizards needs to really explain their rationale and goals for the format, and set future expectations. And the discussion is informative, even if not directly pertaining to Modern. For now, I'm just happy there aren't any more bans in Modern. I think the metagame is still adapting to the different Death's Shadow decks, and giving things time to settle before taking any action (even unbans) is the right way to go.
bottom line, Standard is a higher priority. Wouldn't be suprised if we see no changes for the rest of modern existence at this point. Unless of course something gets an unhealthy meta share.
"The best games of Magic are ones that involve counterplay on both sides"
I totally agree! The shorter a game is the less decisions that are made by both sides and the more likely it is that the draws were what mattered, not skill. That's why I hoped they would unban SFM because it clearly goes into decks looking to slow down the format and bring skill intensive games to the forefront without being a dominating presence.
The two silver linings I see here:
1. They at least didn't ban anything, and I'm actually glad they didn't mention modern. They are so terribly unprepared to manage the format that I just prefer them to ignore it at this point
2. I've gone through enough of these "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST UNBAN SFM ALREADY" moments to not actually be that disappointed by this. If you actually expected anything other than "no changes" then you haven't been following modern very well.
EDIT: Modern is solidly in the "Let's see how things play out before making any changes" spiral and I think it is exactly what Wizards wants. They can just continue to claim that new sets will bring new stuff and they need to gauge how that effects things. This way they never have to test for modern at all while continuing to appear to care.
It seems that WotC figured that since they had frustrated their Standard players to max with repeated failings, why not also frustrate the modern players by omission. After multiple statements describing future consideration towards UW (articles, twitter), we don't even get a "we're still looking at data" as an olive branch.
If WotC had banned something here, that would have been a huge mistake and completely unwarranted. I don't think they should get credit for avoiding that obvious failure - but the fact that people want to give them credit for not making a stupid mistake is fairly indicative of player confidence.
Points for not failing more? I don't think so.
edit: Note that they use the truly awful league data for stuff. That alone is a true indictment of this analytical abilities. Non-tournament structure events are highly problematic without including various tiebreaking metrics (which are functions of opponent's scores). It is very problematic to weigh a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all 0-xs along the way the same as a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all x-0s.
Wotc is in a defensive stance right now, because of standard. In addition there is no obvious ban, nor is there an easy unban, such as bitter blossom, ancestral visions etc. Those didn't even make it into permanent T1 strategies, which every single card on the current banned list would(I'd say Abzan is close enough to tier 1 without SFM, Jace should make it into T1 without problems, Serum Visions has its T1 uses(therefore Preordain swell) and Bloodbraid Elf is sure to make a splash as well)
It seems that WotC figured that since they had frustrated their Standard players to max with repeated failings, why not also frustrate the modern players by omission. After multiple statements describing future consideration towards UW (articles, twitter), we don't even get a "we're still looking at data" as an olive branch.
If WotC had banned something here, that would have been a huge mistake and completely unwarranted. I don't think they should get credit for avoiding that obvious failure - but the fact that people want to give them credit for not making a stupid mistake is fairly indicative of player confidence.
Points for not failing more? I don't think so.
edit: Note that they use the truly awful league data for stuff. That alone is a true indictment of this analytical abilities. Non-tournament structure events are highly problematic without including various tiebreaking metrics (which are functions of opponent's scores). It is very problematic to weigh a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all 0-xs along the way the same as a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all x-0s.
I was expecting some changes to Modern or Legacy because of how they hyped this announcement. They rescheduled announcement week to include this B&R update, then they pushed the update a day earlier, then the updates specifically mentioned that whatever they were doing would take effect right after GP Vegas.
Everything suggested the changes would be big, and they weren't really.
No bans in modern: good. the meta will adapt to shadow very soon
Standard ban: good, this was needed.
Waiting 2+ months until the next announcement: very good. now we dont need to live in fear that next month something will be banned
No unbans: Sad, as always. But expected. I think Hour of Devastation will give us the blue/white cards we need without having to resort to unbanning Jace/Stoneforge quite yet
What I like about this announcement is that they justified their decision and really took their time to explain it and break it down.
What's clear to me, and what I see more clearly the further we go along, is that the Eldrazi titans were stupid card designs and their biggest mistake is to keep printing them. Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek are all dumb dumb dumb. Those cards in every incarnation are bad for magic. They make anything that is slightly unfair - from Tron Lands to Marvel - ridiculously unfair. The game would be better off today if the Eldrazi never existsed and we had to play still-good artifact fatties like Wurmcoil Engine, Blightsteel Colossus, and Razormane Masticore.
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WoTC, thank you for finally announcing the Modern format, an eternal format where everyone can participate.
I mean, I guess we can be optimistic that between their acknowledgement of UW being weak in modern and that standard needs better answers that we may see new tools for U/W coming in a standard set that will work in Modern. I'd like to see SFM off the banlist (in step with their statement that banlist should be small as possible).
But generally the challenge with printing new stuff is that Modern cards need to be okay for standard, and the power levels don't necessarily allow an easy transition through both formats (ie often something Modern needs is just too strong for standard). The Revolt mechanic was a case of something that was super good in Modern but just okay in Standard, and I think we're all still pretty frustrated that there wasn't any two-cmc revolt counterspell to compliment fatal push. Similarly, Miscalculation looked quite good for Modern when we learned cycling was back but they watered it down to Censor - presumably because miscacl was deemed too good for standard.
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
What I like about this announcement is that they justified their decision and really took their time to explain it and break it down.
What's clear to me, and what I see more clearly the further we go along, is that the Eldrazi titans were stupid card designs and their biggest mistake is to keep printing them. Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek are all dumb dumb dumb. Those cards in every incarnation are bad for magic. They make anything that is slightly unfair - from Tron Lands to Marvel - ridiculously unfair. The game would be better off today if the Eldrazi never existsed and we had to play still-good artifact fatties like Wurmcoil Engine, Blightsteel Colossus, and Razormane Masticore.
The eldrazi are fine for how much they cost IMO. Wizards just has to be extra careful when they print cards that cheat on mana costs or cheat stuff into play for free
I don't understand how people can be optimistic about unbans for modern at this point. The fact that standard is a dumpster fire (how is this different from usual?) does not get them a pass.
Given the history of bannings and refusals to unban, I doubt Death's Shadow makes it past the next update unless is sees a significant drop-off. It would be stupid and warrantless, but consistent with their previous actions and statements.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
It seems that WotC figured that since they had frustrated their Standard players to max with repeated failings, why not also frustrate the modern players by omission. After multiple statements describing future consideration towards UW (articles, twitter), we don't even get a "we're still looking at data" as an olive branch.
If WotC had banned something here, that would have been a huge mistake and completely unwarranted. I don't think they should get credit for avoiding that obvious failure - but the fact that people want to give them credit for not making a stupid mistake is fairly indicative of player confidence.
Points for not failing more? I don't think so.
edit: Note that they use the truly awful league data for stuff. That alone is a true indictment of this analytical abilities. Non-tournament structure events are highly problematic without including various tiebreaking metrics (which are functions of opponent's scores). It is very problematic to weigh a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all 0-xs along the way the same as a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all x-0s.
I was expecting some changes to Modern or Legacy because of how they hyped this announcement. They rescheduled announcement week to include this B&R update, then they pushed the update a day earlier, then the updates specifically mentioned that whatever they were doing would take effect right after GP Vegas.
Everything suggested the changes would be big, and they weren't really.
Yeah, the fact they moved the announcement up a day to give us time to "discuss, dissect, and dive into it" seemed to indicate big changes. The fact that the only change was completely obvious and expected...seems odd. It really just shows how unconnected they are to the player base. I don't even really play standard and I saw this coming a mile away. Now just get ready for the Gideon standard because he is going to be absolutely everywhere.
No unbans: Sad, as always. But expected. I think Hour of Devastation will give us the blue/white cards we need without having to resort to unbanning Jace/Stoneforge quite yet
I think this is the incorrect way to look at unbans. It isn't that they "have" to resort to unbanning, it's more that SFM doesn't belong there in the first place. It wouldn't be resorting to anything, it would just be better aligning their own stated goals. They've explicitly mentioned in other unban announcements that periods of stability are when they look to unban and that goes completely counter to the "having to resort to unbanning" theory.
they didnt said ANYTHING about other formats? really? its a shame
They said everything they needed to say about Modern the last time - basically that the meta was healthy and there was no need to interfere. Why rehash it? Or did you want them to talk about why they didn't unban xyz? Then they'd have to go into every banned card which takes too much time when the article was really about standard.
"No changes" was all we needed to hear.
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Modern: UR Storm G Stompy URSuicide Bloo
Commander: (Don't play as much as I'd like) UBPhenax, God of Deception
What I like about this announcement is that they justified their decision and really took their time to explain it and break it down.
What's clear to me, and what I see more clearly the further we go along, is that the Eldrazi titans were stupid card designs and their biggest mistake is to keep printing them. Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek are all dumb dumb dumb. Those cards in every incarnation are bad for magic. They make anything that is slightly unfair - from Tron Lands to Marvel - ridiculously unfair. The game would be better off today if the Eldrazi never existsed and we had to play still-good artifact fatties like Wurmcoil Engine, Blightsteel Colossus, and Razormane Masticore.
But that's what the cards are supposed to be about - players trying to figure out how to cheat them into play, be it graveyard recursion or otherwise. I don't personally think any of them have been a "blight" to any format, although I do realize that Wizards has to constantly be careful about what cheating effects are done (see Dubious Challenge, which still was "broken" by Flickerwisp and the Glimmerpoint Stag).
I know that personally, I would have had a lot less fun without Emrakul, the Aeon's Torn. He and Griselbrand are 2 of my favorite creatures ever. Some players like doing broken stuff and there's nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn't win a high percentage of the time or have too many players playing it.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Fairly expected and pretty disappointing. I think the worst thing though is revert back to the old B&R schedule. Now they can screw us with no unbans at the old rate again!
I understand Standard has been a heaping pile of garbage (and entirely their own fault), but not a single word on any eternal format says that they care even less than they pretended to with their worthless comments last time. We aren't getting anything back any time soon.
What I like about this announcement is that they justified their decision and really took their time to explain it and break it down.
What's clear to me, and what I see more clearly the further we go along, is that the Eldrazi titans were stupid card designs and their biggest mistake is to keep printing them. Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek are all dumb dumb dumb. Those cards in every incarnation are bad for magic. They make anything that is slightly unfair - from Tron Lands to Marvel - ridiculously unfair. The game would be better off today if the Eldrazi never existsed and we had to play still-good artifact fatties like Wurmcoil Engine, Blightsteel Colossus, and Razormane Masticore.
The eldrazi are fine for how much they cost IMO. Wizards just has to be extra careful when they print cards that cheat on mana costs or cheat stuff into play for free
There is nothing "fine" about creatures that time walk or blow up your opponent's board just for being cast. The Eldrazi were a mistake, are a mistake, and will by a mistake forever. Mana acceleration is a part of Magic, always has been, always will be. Cheating things into play has been part of the game from the beginning. RnD needs to think about that as they design cards. They took nothing into consideration when it came to making the Eldrazi and it gets them in trouble time and time again.
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WoTC, thank you for finally announcing the Modern format, an eternal format where everyone can participate.
You can't blame Wizards for not wanting *two* *****-storm at the same time. Whatever they would have said about modern would have upset some people, so keeping mum is the best option.
On top of that, the recent modern events showed the format to be healthy. Diverse meta-game, multiple viable decks, multiple different winners. Plus, grixis shadow is both a blast to play and to watch. It's very interactive, full of decisions and counter-plays, both ways. I've seen for example Emma Handy throw away games near the top-8 this week-end due to very slight mistake and miscalculations (not playing kolaghan's command when she should have, notably.) It's a tough deck with razor thin margin for errors.
That's why it's not a twin situation. It's not a head-down combo-out deck. It's the kind of deck you like on camera.
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Where'd you see this? I've been refreshing the article page constantly for 20 minutes and still don't see the article.
It makes sense. This is yet another Standard banning, and Wizards needs to really explain their rationale and goals for the format, and set future expectations. And the discussion is informative, even if not directly pertaining to Modern. For now, I'm just happy there aren't any more bans in Modern. I think the metagame is still adapting to the different Death's Shadow decks, and giving things time to settle before taking any action (even unbans) is the right way to go.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/june-13-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-06-13
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/june-13-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-06-13
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
decks playing:
none
No changes is what I expected, SFM and BBE was what I was hoping for.
Man, maybe SFM really will never see an unbanning
"The best games of Magic are ones that involve counterplay on both sides"
I totally agree! The shorter a game is the less decisions that are made by both sides and the more likely it is that the draws were what mattered, not skill. That's why I hoped they would unban SFM because it clearly goes into decks looking to slow down the format and bring skill intensive games to the forefront without being a dominating presence.
The two silver linings I see here:
1. They at least didn't ban anything, and I'm actually glad they didn't mention modern. They are so terribly unprepared to manage the format that I just prefer them to ignore it at this point
2. I've gone through enough of these "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST UNBAN SFM ALREADY" moments to not actually be that disappointed by this. If you actually expected anything other than "no changes" then you haven't been following modern very well.
EDIT: Modern is solidly in the "Let's see how things play out before making any changes" spiral and I think it is exactly what Wizards wants. They can just continue to claim that new sets will bring new stuff and they need to gauge how that effects things. This way they never have to test for modern at all while continuing to appear to care.
If WotC had banned something here, that would have been a huge mistake and completely unwarranted. I don't think they should get credit for avoiding that obvious failure - but the fact that people want to give them credit for not making a stupid mistake is fairly indicative of player confidence.
Points for not failing more? I don't think so.
edit: Note that they use the truly awful league data for stuff. That alone is a true indictment of this analytical abilities. Non-tournament structure events are highly problematic without including various tiebreaking metrics (which are functions of opponent's scores). It is very problematic to weigh a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all 0-xs along the way the same as a 5-0 deck that got there by beating all x-0s.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
I was expecting some changes to Modern or Legacy because of how they hyped this announcement. They rescheduled announcement week to include this B&R update, then they pushed the update a day earlier, then the updates specifically mentioned that whatever they were doing would take effect right after GP Vegas.
Everything suggested the changes would be big, and they weren't really.
Standard ban: good, this was needed.
Waiting 2+ months until the next announcement: very good. now we dont need to live in fear that next month something will be banned
No unbans: Sad, as always. But expected. I think Hour of Devastation will give us the blue/white cards we need without having to resort to unbanning Jace/Stoneforge quite yet
What's clear to me, and what I see more clearly the further we go along, is that the Eldrazi titans were stupid card designs and their biggest mistake is to keep printing them. Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek are all dumb dumb dumb. Those cards in every incarnation are bad for magic. They make anything that is slightly unfair - from Tron Lands to Marvel - ridiculously unfair. The game would be better off today if the Eldrazi never existsed and we had to play still-good artifact fatties like Wurmcoil Engine, Blightsteel Colossus, and Razormane Masticore.
But generally the challenge with printing new stuff is that Modern cards need to be okay for standard, and the power levels don't necessarily allow an easy transition through both formats (ie often something Modern needs is just too strong for standard). The Revolt mechanic was a case of something that was super good in Modern but just okay in Standard, and I think we're all still pretty frustrated that there wasn't any two-cmc revolt counterspell to compliment fatal push. Similarly, Miscalculation looked quite good for Modern when we learned cycling was back but they watered it down to Censor - presumably because miscacl was deemed too good for standard.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
The eldrazi are fine for how much they cost IMO. Wizards just has to be extra careful when they print cards that cheat on mana costs or cheat stuff into play for free
Given the history of bannings and refusals to unban, I doubt Death's Shadow makes it past the next update unless is sees a significant drop-off. It would be stupid and warrantless, but consistent with their previous actions and statements.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Yeah, the fact they moved the announcement up a day to give us time to "discuss, dissect, and dive into it" seemed to indicate big changes. The fact that the only change was completely obvious and expected...seems odd. It really just shows how unconnected they are to the player base. I don't even really play standard and I saw this coming a mile away. Now just get ready for the Gideon standard because he is going to be absolutely everywhere.
I think this is the incorrect way to look at unbans. It isn't that they "have" to resort to unbanning, it's more that SFM doesn't belong there in the first place. It wouldn't be resorting to anything, it would just be better aligning their own stated goals. They've explicitly mentioned in other unban announcements that periods of stability are when they look to unban and that goes completely counter to the "having to resort to unbanning" theory.
They said everything they needed to say about Modern the last time - basically that the meta was healthy and there was no need to interfere. Why rehash it? Or did you want them to talk about why they didn't unban xyz? Then they'd have to go into every banned card which takes too much time when the article was really about standard.
"No changes" was all we needed to hear.
UR Storm
G Stompy
URSuicide Bloo
Commander: (Don't play as much as I'd like)
UBPhenax, God of Deception
But that's what the cards are supposed to be about - players trying to figure out how to cheat them into play, be it graveyard recursion or otherwise. I don't personally think any of them have been a "blight" to any format, although I do realize that Wizards has to constantly be careful about what cheating effects are done (see Dubious Challenge, which still was "broken" by Flickerwisp and the Glimmerpoint Stag).
I know that personally, I would have had a lot less fun without Emrakul, the Aeon's Torn. He and Griselbrand are 2 of my favorite creatures ever. Some players like doing broken stuff and there's nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn't win a high percentage of the time or have too many players playing it.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)I understand Standard has been a heaping pile of garbage (and entirely their own fault), but not a single word on any eternal format says that they care even less than they pretended to with their worthless comments last time. We aren't getting anything back any time soon.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
There is nothing "fine" about creatures that time walk or blow up your opponent's board just for being cast. The Eldrazi were a mistake, are a mistake, and will by a mistake forever. Mana acceleration is a part of Magic, always has been, always will be. Cheating things into play has been part of the game from the beginning. RnD needs to think about that as they design cards. They took nothing into consideration when it came to making the Eldrazi and it gets them in trouble time and time again.
On top of that, the recent modern events showed the format to be healthy. Diverse meta-game, multiple viable decks, multiple different winners. Plus, grixis shadow is both a blast to play and to watch. It's very interactive, full of decisions and counter-plays, both ways. I've seen for example Emma Handy throw away games near the top-8 this week-end due to very slight mistake and miscalculations (not playing kolaghan's command when she should have, notably.) It's a tough deck with razor thin margin for errors.
That's why it's not a twin situation. It's not a head-down combo-out deck. It's the kind of deck you like on camera.