So here's my problem. Grixis shadow is the best deck in modern, and from a technical standpoint it is undeniably blue. It plays blue creatures, blue spells, and islands that produce blue mana. Just because the deck ''doesn't feel blue''(I'd still argue it does) doesn't mean it isn't blue from a mechanical standpoint and that it can't cast blue spells.
So when someone says that Jace should get unbanned, one of the best cards ever printed and probably the best pw in the game, even though the best deck in the format plays blue, I have a hard time taking them seriously. When someone says that we need better blue countermagic, even though the best deck in the format already plays one mana cancels, I have a hard time taking them seriously. You can't just introduce great blue cards into the format, when the best deck already plays blue. It could end up being a disaster.
I don't disagree that DSGrixis is a blue deck. But you do understand that Jace has absolutely no place in DSGrixis right?
You should explain why the best Walker ever printed wouldn't fit into DS? Is brainstorming turn after turn something that would cause the deck to collapse? I play Grixis Shadow and IMO some number would see play as the deck already has the back up plan of hard casting 5 drops if need be and Jace is probably the best mid-range value engine ever printed.
you really have to ask why Jace wouldn't go In death shadow, really? Are you sure you play it?
What 19-20 land decks run 4 drops? Cast without fast mana or delve?
if jace is unbanned and people start to play it no matter what just because it is blue, then probably the state of blue in modern could even become worse
if jace is unbanned and people start to play it no matter what just because it is blue, then probably the state of blue in modern could even become worse
You really think burn cares? Or eldrazitron? Or affinity dredge valakut coco? Oh wait I pretty much named the entire top tiers of the game. Which I've been testing Jace against. And Beleive me SFM is the crazy one not Jace.
And even SFM would be fine...
In fact I'd prefer an SFM unban over a Jace unban Becuase of the fact that that SFM is more proactive.
I've been saying this for a long time, but Jace is not something blue needs right now. They already have a slow, 4 mana planeswalker that draws cards, protects itself, and wins with the ultimate, and that's simply not good enough. What blue needs is a massive upgrade to cantrips and card draw OR a massive upgrade to counterspells OR a fast, reliable win condition.
As pointed out earlier, the reason Topless Miracles can still exist as a deck in Legacy without the counter-top lock combo is because it has massively good cantrips, card draw, and aggressively-costed, universal counterspells. The reason why Twinless Twin isn't even good enough for tier 3 and most Uxx control/reactive strategies flounder through the middle and bottom of tier 2 is because all we have is Serum Visions and a bunch of 2-mana counterspells with downside (or 1 mana extremely conditional spells). If those are the tools we have available and they're not going to give us better draw or better counters, then we absolutely need a timely, reliable win condition like Twin was. If they're not going to fill that void with something reasonable, then they need to release Twin from the banned list.
On the topic of SFM, I don't even think that's good enough either with the speed and ferocity of today's top decks in Modern, but I would welcome it into the format with open arms.
Funny little side story regarding Modern and my previous talks about Infect and the Turn 4 rule.
Obviously the infect players I talk to on here swear up and down the deck barely ever breaks the Turn 4 rule. My word against theirs, very little concrete data. Fine.
Then Solemnity got spoiled today. And several infect players chime in with "By the time you land this 3 mana enchantment, I've already killed you. Doesn't do anything against Infect."
Huh. That's interesting. It might just be bias towards our favorite decks that stops us from seeing data around it fairly.
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"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Also, for those interested in this month's data so far:
Grixis Shadow - 14.2%
Colorless Eldrazi - 10.5%
Humans - 6.3%
Affinity - 5.8%
Dredge - 5.3%
UR Storm - 3.2%
Naya Burn - 3.2%
Living End - 3.2%
WB Taxes - 3.2%
WU Control - 2.6%
I'll be honest, I was starting to get worried that Grixis Shadow was over 16% earlier in the month, but I guess the number will end up being more reasonable at the end of the month (although it has already secured 9.0%). These past weeks there have been a bunch of 2/3 Grixis Shadow leagues posted daily, but it may have been due to the deck being played everywhere It would be a problem if they find something worrisome with the winrates against non-mirrors, but I doubt it. Anyway, we'll see what happens in a few months.
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Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
Me? No, I meant most succesful. We don't have the data to measure popularity as in "most played decks", you'd need to know what everyone is playing round by round, league by league. The data we have only allows us to measure success as in "going undefeated", which describes which decks are performing well, regardless of the various factors involved (such as actual popularity, winrates, etc.)
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Me? No, I meant most succesful. We don't have the data to measure popularity as in "most played decks", you'd need to know what everyone is playing round by round, league by league. The data we have only allows us to measure success as in "going undefeated", which describes which decks are performing well, regardless of the various factors involved (such as actual popularity, winrates, etc.)
Ok, thanks. The charts aren't labeled, so my brain assumed it was meta share, not % of undefeated decks.
Ok, thanks. The charts aren't labeled, so my brain assumed it was meta share, not % of undefeated decks.
Thanks for the feedback, luckily it's easy to fix. Do note that ALL "metagame" sites actually use the "successful metagame", be it 5-0s, Top8, Top32, etc. Only Wizards knows the real metagame shares, at least the online ones.
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Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
Mark of the God Pharaoh is exactly what Modern needs. Apparently it is a fake. The text has an extra apostrophe that is wrong(it's instead of its)
i don't think modern needs that card at all!
Thank goodness that was an obvious fake. Way too powerful with too much splash damage to fairer decks that don't need hating.
I don't even know what the narrowly-defined-blue-draw-go camp wants anymore. Besides a Twin unbanning, that is, which is super odd to me because that style of proactive deck is exactly what they don't seem to want today. Unless, of course, that proactive deck is Twin. Lots of cognitive dissonance going on. In any event, what do they want? I can get behind the wishes for better generic answers, but those are generally going to benefit proactive decks more. It just seems like a few very vocal players have overly specific and fairly unreasonable/unrealistic demands, and I really don't see Wizards ever addressing those minutely specific wishes.
No, I'm talking about the era of Counter-Post into Counter-Burn into Bouncy. Some people never got over how fun it was just to tell people no-no-no then drop a threat and win, or just slowly mill them out over a ton of turns. And people make the mistake of thinking "The Deck" was all about permission. It totally wasn't. They just want to go back to a time when you could just laugh in your opponent's face as they helplessly tried to stick threats but couldn't.
Wasn't that a Mirage-Tempest thing, not anything that involved Ice Age?
Of course, the flip side of "laugh in your opponent's face as they helplessly tried to stick threats but couldn't" is that if they did stick a threat, they can leave in your face as your entire deck falls apart. Those decks were decent, but they weren't overpowering or anything--people could absolutely beat them, so people obviously were able to stick those threats. And counterspells are even worse nowadays thanks to all the "can't be countered" spells. That's why I think any sort of fearmongering about permission decks is silly. They were fine, if annoying, without all of the counterspell hate we've developed over the years... not to mention the ability to pre-empt counterspells with discard. Back then, you didn't even have Duress, let alone Thoughtseize... Coercion was the best targeted discard spell, which you might notice actually costs more than a counterspell.
People have all this paranoia about Counterspell based on a time when it (1) wasn't overpowered, honestly, and (2) was better than it would be nowadays anyway.
5) lockout control cards such as ensuring bridge and blood moon are not in blue. (In legacy, there is stasis and opposition etc
While I agree with you in general, I should point out that Stasis and Opposition are practically unplayable in Legacy. Outside of CounterTop (which is banned now), the best lockout cards aren't in Blue. Death & Taxes is a deck of prison cards and it's mono-White, and Lands (with Life from the Loam+Ghost Quarter/Wasteland) doesn't have a trace of Blue in it.
In fact, it's odd people seem to regard Stasis as such a powerful card. As I understand, the thing was a basically a junk rare until Necropotence became the deck to beat and then Stasis became good because it was really good against Necropotence because a mono-Black deck had very few ways to deal with enchantments.
Wizards needs to print something good in blue. (Yes the best card in modern is blue snapcaster Mage, but that's about it)
I'd honestly disagree with this. The best card in Modern is definitely not Snapcaster Mage. I'd put Fatal Push, Lightning Bolt, and Thoughtseize above it.
stasis forces the opponent to play a different game of magic, that's why it is a strong card. then we can talk about what is the best shell and how it is positioned in the meta and how certains decks (manaless dredge for example) simply don't give a damn about statis while other just auto lose when it hits the field
There are zero decks that "just auto lose when it hits the field." There may be decks that, once you get properly set up, really can't beat a resolved Stasis, but that's a very different matter. And the time it takes to set those up is too long in Legacy.
Really, outside of Necropotence Standard, Stasis was never a strong card. It's an annoying card, but not a strong one. That's why, outside of fun homebrews, the card basically went away when Necropotence was no longer a force, because that was the whole reason it was good: Despite not being that great on the whole, Stasis decks beat the best deck.
Obviously this is directed to me as well, but fortunately I am not in that camp at all! Personally, I feel covered with the existence of a Tier 1 blue Snapcaster Mage deck, I fully enjoy it, and I won't whine and I won't mind if there is not even a Tier 2 Blue Control deck. If you want my biased opinion, let all of the hard control decks rot in Tier 3 for all I care now that we have Grixis Shadow.
Sorry, wasn't actually directing it at you. You seem pretty satisfied with Grixis DS in Tier 1, which makes sense given that it fulfills the role of a blue deck in Tier 1 and it's a policing deck that prevents other more linear strategies from rising.
But! We have to be a little less narrow minded here and think a little more logical instead. We would all profit from a top tier Control deck(not necessarily Tier 1) and we would all profit from a better land destruction tool or from a better counterspell.
Consistent top-tier control would be fine, although it's hard to engineer a successful control deck in such a diverse field. I do agree that better nonbasic land hate and countermagic would help. Your suggestion of hate that hits colorless-producing nonbasics would work. Basically, a card that hates on stuff like Tron, Eldrazi Temple, Scapeshift, Amulet Titan, etc. but doesn't hit decks that just want to play with fetches, shocks, or basics.
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
Even a 1 mana artifact or 2 mana enchantment that either prevented lands from tapping for more than 2 mana or made them produce 1 mana instead would do the job. This does nothing against Valakut though, which is one of the lands people want an answer for.
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Even a 1 mana artifact or 2 mana enchantment that either prevented lands from tapping for more than 2 mana or made them produce 1 mana instead would do the job. This does nothing against Valakut though, which is one of the lands people want an answer for.
Only problem with that is it would hit the filter lands.
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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
Even a 1 mana artifact or 2 mana enchantment that either prevented lands from tapping for more than 2 mana or made them produce 1 mana instead would do the job. This does nothing against Valakut though, which is one of the lands people want an answer for.
Only problem with that is it would hit the filter lands.
It also does nothing against Cavern of Souls, yet another land some people clamor against. I came up with that in 5 seconds, don't take it too seriously but I think that would be a step in the right direction. Regarding filter lands, I honestly think that's an acceptable splash damage. Virtually no decks play them (less than 3% according to Goldfish): some Jund Midrange lists run 1 Twilight Mire, some WU Control lists run 1 Mystic Gate and that's about it. There's also the odd Bluffs/Prairie in some Jeskai decks. If we go Tier 3 and below we may find Fire-Lit Thicket in Chord/Evolution and Sunken Ruins perhaps? I dunno...
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Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
That would totally work. It would hit all the most offensive lands with minimal splash damage to fairer decks. It might need some kind of cost and/or restriction (like Tec Edge but not so limiting), but it would still be quite decent. Also, it could get through Standard!
Even a 1 mana artifact or 2 mana enchantment that either prevented lands from tapping for more than 2 mana or made them produce 1 mana instead would do the job. This does nothing against Valakut though, which is one of the lands people want an answer for.
Only problem with that is it would hit the filter lands.
It also does nothing against Cavern of Souls, yet another land some people clamor against. I came up with that in 5 seconds, don't take it too seriously but I think that would be a step in the right direction. Regarding filter lands, I honestly think that's an acceptable splash damage. Virtually no decks play them (less than 3% according to Goldfish): some Jund Midrange lists run 1 Twilight Mire, some WU Control lists run 1 Mystic Gate and that's about it. There's also the odd Bluffs/Prairie in some Jeskai decks. If we go Tier 3 and below we may find Fire-Lit Thicket in Chord/Evolution and Sunken Ruins perhaps? I dunno...
The filterlands are actually underplayed imho. I almost always play 1 or 2 in shard/wedge decks since the mana requirements can be quite the issue. They make fetching basics a lot better as well. As for that thought experiment of a card I don't think it would see any play. It's just not powerful enough and our SB's are all ready stretched too thin as it is. Really, what we need is something better than GQ/Tech Edge that's relatively easy to MB. In addition - Cavern of Souls needs to go. Between a little better GQ/Tech Edge and Ceremonious Rejection always being an answer the Eldrazi/Tron decks would be hit.
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What 19-20 land decks run 4 drops? Cast without fast mana or delve?
decks playing:
none
URW PillowFort Stasis (costruction)
modern:
U
pauper:
UB Servitor Control
xenob8 : you know you are going to have a bad time when opponent starts with snow covered island
And even SFM would be fine...
In fact I'd prefer an SFM unban over a Jace unban Becuase of the fact that that SFM is more proactive.
decks playing:
none
As pointed out earlier, the reason Topless Miracles can still exist as a deck in Legacy without the counter-top lock combo is because it has massively good cantrips, card draw, and aggressively-costed, universal counterspells. The reason why Twinless Twin isn't even good enough for tier 3 and most Uxx control/reactive strategies flounder through the middle and bottom of tier 2 is because all we have is Serum Visions and a bunch of 2-mana counterspells with downside (or 1 mana extremely conditional spells). If those are the tools we have available and they're not going to give us better draw or better counters, then we absolutely need a timely, reliable win condition like Twin was. If they're not going to fill that void with something reasonable, then they need to release Twin from the banned list.
On the topic of SFM, I don't even think that's good enough either with the speed and ferocity of today's top decks in Modern, but I would welcome it into the format with open arms.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Obviously the infect players I talk to on here swear up and down the deck barely ever breaks the Turn 4 rule. My word against theirs, very little concrete data. Fine.
Then Solemnity got spoiled today. And several infect players chime in with "By the time you land this 3 mana enchantment, I've already killed you. Doesn't do anything against Infect."
Huh. That's interesting. It might just be bias towards our favorite decks that stops us from seeing data around it fairly.
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
That's the black discard/land destruction right? Common consensus is that the card is a fake.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Yea, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that we're done with 3CMC LD spells. Which I'm sure includes a black Molten Rain+
I certainly hope it is. It's really frustrating if it's not fake.
Check the stats anytime you want here -> https://infogr.am/acc_95
- Colorless Eldrazi - 7.0%
- Jund Shadow - 6.8%
- Affinity - 6.0%
- Dredge - 4.9%
- Grixis Shadow - 4.7%
- Naya Burn - 4.5%
- Abzan Midrange - 4.5%
- UR Storm - 4.0%
- RG Scapeshift - 3.3%
- Jund Midrange - 3.0%
Also, for those interested in this month's data so far:I'll be honest, I was starting to get worried that Grixis Shadow was over 16% earlier in the month, but I guess the number will end up being more reasonable at the end of the month (although it has already secured 9.0%). These past weeks there have been a bunch of 2/3 Grixis Shadow leagues posted daily, but it may have been due to the deck being played everywhere
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
Ok, thanks. The charts aren't labeled, so my brain assumed it was meta share, not % of undefeated decks.
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
Thank goodness that was an obvious fake. Way too powerful with too much splash damage to fairer decks that don't need hating.
I don't even know what the narrowly-defined-blue-draw-go camp wants anymore. Besides a Twin unbanning, that is, which is super odd to me because that style of proactive deck is exactly what they don't seem to want today. Unless, of course, that proactive deck is Twin. Lots of cognitive dissonance going on. In any event, what do they want? I can get behind the wishes for better generic answers, but those are generally going to benefit proactive decks more. It just seems like a few very vocal players have overly specific and fairly unreasonable/unrealistic demands, and I really don't see Wizards ever addressing those minutely specific wishes.
Really, outside of Necropotence Standard, Stasis was never a strong card. It's an annoying card, but not a strong one. That's why, outside of fun homebrews, the card basically went away when Necropotence was no longer a force, because that was the whole reason it was good: Despite not being that great on the whole, Stasis decks beat the best deck.
Sorry, wasn't actually directing it at you. You seem pretty satisfied with Grixis DS in Tier 1, which makes sense given that it fulfills the role of a blue deck in Tier 1 and it's a policing deck that prevents other more linear strategies from rising.
Consistent top-tier control would be fine, although it's hard to engineer a successful control deck in such a diverse field. I do agree that better nonbasic land hate and countermagic would help. Your suggestion of hate that hits colorless-producing nonbasics would work. Basically, a card that hates on stuff like Tron, Eldrazi Temple, Scapeshift, Amulet Titan, etc. but doesn't hit decks that just want to play with fetches, shocks, or basics.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/773038-state-of-modern-thread-bans-format-health-metagame?comment=2581
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
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
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
That would totally work. It would hit all the most offensive lands with minimal splash damage to fairer decks. It might need some kind of cost and/or restriction (like Tec Edge but not so limiting), but it would still be quite decent. Also, it could get through Standard!
The filterlands are actually underplayed imho. I almost always play 1 or 2 in shard/wedge decks since the mana requirements can be quite the issue. They make fetching basics a lot better as well. As for that thought experiment of a card I don't think it would see any play. It's just not powerful enough and our SB's are all ready stretched too thin as it is. Really, what we need is something better than GQ/Tech Edge that's relatively easy to MB. In addition - Cavern of Souls needs to go. Between a little better GQ/Tech Edge and Ceremonious Rejection always being an answer the Eldrazi/Tron decks would be hit.