WOTC really needs to introduce a powerful land destruction card that wouldn't damage standard. I'm looking at it more and more, and I'm seeing big mana decks have a huge strangle-hold on modern. Everyone's looking at Grixis, but the more I look at it, the more I'm convinced it has to do with cheating mana for huge threats--Tron lands/Temple.
Shadow decks struggle against the more fair, interactive decks, but why the hell would anyone play a fair deck when they have lousy matchups against big mana decks, while also being stretched too thin to have answers for decks like dredge, company, humans and Affinity? Seriously, if you're a die-hard competitive, you're better off playing a linear, solitaire deck that relies more on doing your own thing and just hoping not to see a blowout hate card.
These combo/linear decks are less likely to fall on their face twice in a row than drawing the wrong half of your midrange/control deck, or not having the sideboard to fight decks.
Modern is fun, and diverse, but it is severely fundamentally flawed.
So really, nothing has changed in months and months. Really since the ban to hit Dredge.
There is an underlying issue in the format, but the meta controls it, or at least keeps it from getting out of hand.
The only issue is if you want to play fair, completely fair, DS decks have pushed that option out. (Jund being the ultimate 'fair' deck in this case?)
I sincerely believe we should try adding some cards that're missing before we start seriously restricting archetypes.
If you drive people off tron they'll play valakut, and if you drive them off valakut we've now lost two cool decks in the meta that have different approaches to the game.
Maybe we could add a 2 CMC hard counter, add a decent draw spell, and maybe print some decent threats in U and W, maybe even print a second try at Tectonic Edge (1, {T}: destroy target non-basic land only if opponent controls at least two non-basic lands). I don't see the sky falling linear disaster that people seem to be claiming; just a few power gaps that could be adjusted.
It's possible DS is too powerful but it's nowhere near proven that; straight midrange and control decks still trump most DS decks.
My prescription for the format:
* print counterspell
* print fact or fiction
* print a fixed land destruction land that splits the difference between tec edge and wasteland
* unban stoneforge mystic
* wait and see.
I'm not advocating a ban of Tron, I'm just trying to go through the mental exercise of what that would do to the format and I appreciate your input.
I don't believe Valakut is strong enough to deter people from playing Control/Mid-Range decks. In fact, most control decks see Valakut as a winnable (not great, but winnable) match-up.
I agree that adding cards would be absolutely ideal; Wizards has proven time and again, though, that they are unwilling to print those specific blue cards at the required power-level for Modern as they fear the effect it will have on Standard.
Un-banning SFM would help Taxes decks but they already have pretty favorable Tron match-ups.
BBE would be a safe un-ban but I feel that's more because it's effect on the format would be limited. I don't think it solves any problems.
I don't want to be "that guy", but would un-banning Twin be an effective counter to big-mana decks? As somebody who never piloted the deck I don't feel I have much insight to offer. What is the GDS - Twin match-up like? Would the deck be format-warping? Again, this is all just a thought-exercise and I'm genuinely curious for insight and opinions.
You can wiff with CoCo or just hit irrelevant creatures like mana dorks that don't combo, etc....Pod is a repeatable tutor that lets you pick the exact best option out of your deck. Pod invalidated all other fair creature decks and made aggro decks like burn, zoo, and infect unplayable; CoCo isn't invalidating any other strategies.
That's Grand Prix Omaha, the last Grand Prix before Birthing Pod got banned. Hrm... Merfolk and Zoo both in the Top 8, a "Big Zoo" list at #9, Infect at #10, and Burn at #11. Pretty good results for decks that were "unplayable"!
You can wiff with CoCo or just hit irrelevant creatures like mana dorks that don't combo, etc....Pod is a repeatable tutor that lets you pick the exact best option out of your deck. Pod invalidated all other fair creature decks and made aggro decks like burn, zoo, and infect unplayable; CoCo isn't invalidating any other strategies.
That's Grand Prix Omaha, the last Grand Prix before Birthing Pod got banned. Hrm... Merfolk and Zoo both in the Top 8, a "Big Zoo" list at #9, Infect at #10, and Burn at #11. Pretty good results for decks that were "unplayable"!
and how well did those decks start to do after it was banned? they became T1, yes while Pod was around randomly sometimes those decks would do ok like when Pod players decided to move away from the combo then you would see burn and infect pop up which just requires a move back towards the combo. Moving away from the Combo is exactly how I would describe that Pod list with absolutely 0 combo pieces.
Not to mention that this event was during the Treasure Cruise era in which going wider than delver was a okay plan.
Folks are remembering fondly the days when Twin had a good Tron matchup. That time was before Rending volley and Newlamog, when the matchup became slightly tilted in Tron's favor on the balance.
I think Pokkens ideas are better than ban overreactions. WOTC should do it's best to unban/introduce things before bans
I disagree with you that RG Tron had a major nerf, Ulamog was a MASSIVE buff to the deck. Honestly, I think with Eye and Ulamog, the deck was on it's way to throwing out fair decks. The deck balanced itself out with the Eye ban. Obviously, Trons in a different place now.
I'm not at all demanding tron bans here, I'm just saying, I think big mana may actually be the real culprit here. Junk can't break the top 8, and Jund has honestly struggled since the Twin banning to be honest. Eldrazi Winter, Jeskai Nahiri, Bant Eldrazi post-nerf, dredge. I love jund, but it hasn't been a great deck in at least a year.
In a long tournament, the format just has way too many issues for a fair deck to break the top 8 consistently. Fair decks seem great at local FNM's, but I think these opens/classics/GP's really show them breaking at the seams.
Return to Zendikar was such a mistake of a set. I think WOTC needs to realize making good colorless cards breaks the pie chart and absolutely leads to nothing but broken set ups. I just have to roll my eyes now when people say Ancient Stirrings requires so much deck restriction.
Thought-Knot was a fair card in standard, but sometimes it almost seems oppressive in modern setups. Not at all advocating for a ban there, I'm just noting that the Eldrazi set really effected modern. I hope WOTC realizes to not print colorless, powerful cards, it wrecked standard multiple times with copters, marvel and Mama Eldrazi.
We can ban Shadow/wraith, but I think fair players will be extremely disappointed in the months to come, and I think if you want to play outside of fun, that being fair would be the wrong deck to play competitively.
* print counterspell
* print fact or fiction
* print a fixed land destruction land that splits the difference between tec edge and wasteland
* unban stoneforge mystic
* wait and see.
I agree, I would love for any or all of those things for modern. Unfortunately, none of them are going to happen. Not for at least several years and I highly doubt ever, on all fronts.
I'm curious why no one ever talks about banning Dismember. It gives non-black colors access to a remove spell that they really probably should not have access to with Phyrexian mana, even if the cost (4 life) is high. Mental Misstep got banned. I'm not saying I think it should get banned; I own three and use it in my main deck. I'm just kinda surprised it doesn't get brought up much if at all.
Folks are remembering fondly the days when Twin had a good Tron matchup. That time was before Rending volley and Newlamog, when the matchup became slightly tilted in Tron's favor on the balance.
Newlamog didn't help out Tron much against Twin. Yes, if everything lines up and you can cast him on turn 4, you're golden. But anytime after that, tapping out for him is just an invitation for Twin to combo off. Rending Volley was good, but it's a sideboard card and required Red mana, meaning you needed two Red sources available to count on it, as otherwise they'd just tap down your Red source to thwart it. Twin was still quite unfavorable for Tron.
Of course, we also never got to see what impact Warping Wail would have on the matchup.
I'm curious why no one ever talks about banning Dismember. It gives non-black colors access to a remove spell that they really probably should not have access to with Phyrexian mana, even if the cost (4 life) is high. Mental Misstep got banned. I'm not saying I think it should get banned; I own three and use it in my main deck. I'm just kinda surprised it doesn't get brought up much if at all.
It only sees limited play and its effect is pretty common even if it gives decks access to something they otherwise wouldn't have. Mental Misstep on the other hand had the issue of warping what cards got played very hard. Most decks start with 4 Mental Misstep because you either need to counter the opponents one drop or you were protecting your own one drops.
Folks are remembering fondly the days when Twin had a good Tron matchup. That time was before Rending volley and Newlamog, when the matchup became slightly tilted in Tron's favor on the balance.
Newlamog didn't help out Tron much against Twin. Yes, if everything lines up and you can cast him on turn 4, you're golden. But anytime after that, tapping out for him is just an invitation for Twin to combo off. Rending Volley was good, but it's a sideboard card and required Red mana, meaning you needed two Red sources available to count on it, as otherwise they'd just tap down your Red source to thwart it. Twin was still quite unfavorable for Tron.
Of course, we also never got to see what impact Warping Wail would have on the matchup.
The ETB tap is a trigger; they can rend the creature in response to the trigger, as they did constantly. It didn't result in a 2-for-1 but it did put them off the combo another turn or two.
Listen, I followed the whole thing pretty closely and everyone I knew on both tron and twin agreed that the matchup went positive after Ulamog because after Ulamog remand was no longer good. Previously every threat Tron played other than Emrakul was fairly vulnerable to remand, which defined the matchup. I also realize that the reason the matchup was positive was because of 5-8 sideboard cards coming in for Tron, and that is somewhat warping, but Tron didn't really have to work hard against most other decks (Just burn and infect really at the time).
Regardless, I think anyone with eyes on the format can see that Tron and Eldrazi Tron are both fine at the moment.
You can wiff with CoCo or just hit irrelevant creatures like mana dorks that don't combo, etc....Pod is a repeatable tutor that lets you pick the exact best option out of your deck. Pod invalidated all other fair creature decks and made aggro decks like burn, zoo, and infect unplayable; CoCo isn't invalidating any other strategies.
That's Grand Prix Omaha, the last Grand Prix before Birthing Pod got banned. Hrm... Merfolk and Zoo both in the Top 8, a "Big Zoo" list at #9, Infect at #10, and Burn at #11. Pretty good results for decks that were "unplayable"!
and how well did those decks start to do after it was banned? they became T1, yes while Pod was around randomly sometimes those decks would do ok like when Pod players decided to move away from the combo then you would see burn and infect pop up which just requires a move back towards the combo. Moving away from the Combo is exactly how I would describe that Pod list with absolutely 0 combo pieces.
The only one to become Tier 1 was Burn. The rest basically stayed where they were. Okay, Infect did become Tier 1, but that was quite a bit later so we can't really ascribe that to the ban of Birthing Pod.
At any rate, clearly aggro decks were able to be viable and compete considering how well we were able to see them do there.
Not to mention that this event was during the Treasure Cruise era in which going wider than delver was a okay plan.
Yet those decks didn't seem to be measurably better before then, at least from what I can tell, outside of Burn. As far as I can tell, Burn is the only aggro deck of the ones you mentioned that really seemed to be much weaker when Birthing Pod was at its most powerful--and some people don't really consider Burn an aggro deck anyway, but more a weird sort of combo deck. It's certainly not what one traditionally thinks of as aggro.
Of course, if you want to pull the Treasure Cruise card, one can just as easily turn around and say the reason for Burn dropping off a bit was that Treasure Cruise Delver just presented a better version.
Folks are remembering fondly the days when Twin had a good Tron matchup. That time was before Rending volley and Newlamog, when the matchup became slightly tilted in Tron's favor on the balance.
Newlamog didn't help out Tron much against Twin. Yes, if everything lines up and you can cast him on turn 4, you're golden. But anytime after that, tapping out for him is just an invitation for Twin to combo off. Rending Volley was good, but it's a sideboard card and required Red mana, meaning you needed two Red sources available to count on it, as otherwise they'd just tap down your Red source to thwart it. Twin was still quite unfavorable for Tron.
Of course, we also never got to see what impact Warping Wail would have on the matchup.
The ETB tap is a trigger; they can rend the creature in response to the trigger, as they did constantly. It didn't result in a 2-for-1 but it did put them off the combo another turn or two.
Yes, you can use Rending Volley on the creature. Which doesn't help at all if they had another such creature in play. I played Tron, and that was an issue that would often happen: They have one in play, then end of turn use another to tap down the Red source, and you can only take out one of them. It meant you had to slow down your development just to make sure you continually had two Red sources.
Listen, I followed the whole thing pretty closely and everyone I knew on both tron and twin agreed that the matchup went positive after Ulamog because after Ulamog remand was no longer good. Previously every threat Tron played other than Emrakul was fairly vulnerable to remand, which defined the matchup. I also realize that the reason the matchup was positive was because of 5-8 sideboard cards coming in for Tron, and that is somewhat warping, but Tron didn't really have to work hard against most other decks (Just burn and infect really at the time).
I never found Ulamog all that amazing against Twin. Yes, sometimes it'd be good, but most of the time casting it would just open you up to the combo. When Ulamog was good, he was astounding... but if you weren't casting him right away, he didn't do much for you. The matchup really didn't turn positive because of him.
I suppose someone can argue that Ulamog indirectly made Tron better, because Ulamog helped them out against other decks (Ulamog more or less singlehandedly turned RUG Scapeshift from nearly unwinnable to slightly favored) which allowed them to concentrate more on being anti-Twin in the rest of the deck, but Ulamog himself didn't do much to help out the matchup.
Grixis Deaths Shadow is taking over the meta, but it is because it's a fair deck that can actually beat big mana for once. It's matchups vs other fair decks aren't that great (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSCBh_r20p4) the issue is that those other fair decks aren't good enough to fight big mana or good enough in the meta overall otherwise to be worth it. So why play one of those decks to beat deaths shadow when you can just focus on building the best deaths shadow deck and be better in the mirror?
Just banning DS or an enabler card to "weaken" it doesn't solve the problem with the format it just bandaids it. If you kill DS, the format goes back to the next fastest thoughtsieze/push based midrange deck as the format's only midrange. Probably jund. I'm worried because it always feels like wizards likes it's baindaid solutions instead of trying to curate the format on a deeper level. What we need for modern to be healthy is a format where you have multiple options for grindy strategies.
The main way I can see that is unbanning SFM. D&T/Hatebears just had a good tournament but overall still didn't do that well (just 3 in the top 64), and hasn't been putting up more that tier 2ish results. Wx midrange seems to have the tools to fight GDS, but no individual build seems to be able to hold down a tier 1 meta percentage cause no single build is powerful enough against the meta overall. SFM would give one of those Wx midrange that boost it needs and provide a fair competitor to GDS. It's especially nice since Deaths Shadow and Stoneforge cannot be in the same deck, and that Grixis has a very fair tool (k command) to fight SFM to keep the mystic from being too powerful. It feels like it would be a balanced match.
I could also see them, forgive me for falling into a meme for a second, bringing back twin at some point. Especially if they do decide to ban DS. Then we'd have twin beats tron, tron beats jund, jund beats twin metagame clock again. And if twin is a little too strong they could always ban deciever or bring back BloodBraid Elf.
Speaking of BBE, it is a bit of an obnoxious card but would bring back jund into consideration. If BBE Jund and GDS do end up being the two midrange decks it would be two thoughtsieze k command based decks though, which could get a little repetitive. The other one on the list is Jace. Personally I don't think Jace is safe but I could be wrong on that.
We just have to wait til august, but unfortunately wizards is very reluctant on unbannings and heavy on bannings, so I don't think they'll do something to make a two midrange deck format.
The people clamoring for a DS ban (not so many people on here, more on reddit) need to understand why it is the preferred build for a fair deck in Modern now. As others have touched on, Shadow fixed the big mana matchup. Look at classic Jund. You had mostly even matchups across the board, which was always one of the appeals of the deck, but Tron and Valakut decks just crush you. Right now, we're talking about having a 20/80 matchup against 14% of the meta. Running the numbers through a binomial calculator, that means that for a 15 round swiss tournament, you have about a 35% chance of running into a big mana deck 3 or more times, X-3 usually being the record that locks you out of top 8 contention. Your odds of getting 2 or more matchups against big mana are 65%, so if you're playing Jund you basically have to hope you only see a big mana deck 2 times and you win every other matchup, because you're probably losing to big mana every time. That's a really tall order to fill, saying you basically have to win every non-big mana match or you're locked out of top 8.
Going to the Shadow builds fixed this problem. Tron is somewhere close to even for them, and they traded percentage points against other slow fair decks like blue control and traditional GBx midrange to get that, but neither are as bad as big mana used to be, and both are combined less of the meta now. Shadow is basically the new Jund, it's the new 50/50 fair deck of the format. Banning it only makes it so there's no real viable fair deck anymore. If you do so, you have to ban Tron and probably Primeval Titan just to open up some breathing space for slower fair decks to exist in again.
The answer here, as other people have stated, is not to ban Shadow out, it's to either unban or print new things that can enable other fair archetypes to also stabilize against the meta as a whole. Just SFM alone would probably be enough to create an entire other archetype of viable fair decks, which would reduce Shadow's metashare.
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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 people clamoring for a DS ban (not so many people on here, more on reddit) need to understand why it is the preferred build for a fair deck in Modern now. As others have touched on, Shadow fixed the big mana matchup. Look at classic Jund. You had mostly even matchups across the board, which was always one of the appeals of the deck, but Tron and Valakut decks just crush you. Right now, we're talking about having a 20/80 matchup against 14% of the meta. Running the numbers through a binomial calculator, that means that for a 15 round swiss tournament, you have about a 35% chance of running into a big mana deck 3 or more times, X-3 usually being the record that locks you out of top 8 contention. Your odds of getting 2 or more matchups against big mana are 65%, so if you're playing Jund you basically have to hope you only see a big mana deck 2 times and you win every other matchup, because you're probably losing to big mana every time. That's a really tall order to fill, saying you basically have to win every non-big mana match or you're locked out of top 8.
Going to the Shadow builds fixed this problem. Tron is somewhere close to even for them, and they traded percentage points against other slow fair decks like blue control and traditional GBx midrange to get that, but neither are as bad as big mana used to be, and both are combined less of the meta now. Shadow is basically the new Jund, it's the new 50/50 fair deck of the format. Banning it only makes it so there's no real viable fair deck anymore. If you do so, you have to ban Tron and probably Primeval Titan just to open up some breathing space for slower fair decks to exist in again.
The answer here, as other people have stated, is not to ban Shadow out, it's to either unban or print new things that can enable other fair archetypes to also stabilize against the meta as a whole. Just SFM alone would probably be enough to create an entire other archetype of viable fair decks, which would reduce Shadow's metashare.
But why should a fair player HAVE to play shadow? if you look deep into this argument isnt big mana the real problem in this format? not shadow?
I wish they would have just banned both "eldrazi" lands in the first place.
here is some food for thought:
pod was dominant: they killed it
twin was dominant: they killed it
eldrazi was the most oppressive thing we have ever seen in modern: so they nerf it
Big mana decks very much are the issue, but the average poster on mtg reddit aren't very...hmmm, thoughtful?
People see the best deck perform well and think, "oh, X=the problem".
The issue, like Wraith put it, is an X-3 record usually locks you out of a big tournament, that means you have a 35% chance of seeing 3 HORRIBLE matchups. In my two years of playing Junk, I can count on one hand how many times I beat Tron. It's truly that awful. Titanshift is a little better, but almost none of it comes down to skills or sequencing, the bad matchup will often blow you out.
That means the fair player has to pretty much beat out all the other 50/50. 45/55/, 55/45
Thats insane, why even try to play fair at that point?
There's a reason decks like UW/Jeskai don't exist outside of that awkward 2.5 tier spot, they're absolutely locked out of the meta, it's certainly not GBx or all the combo decks holding back.
The people clamoring for a DS ban (not so many people on here, more on reddit) need to understand why it is the preferred build for a fair deck in Modern now. As others have touched on, Shadow fixed the big mana matchup. Look at classic Jund. You had mostly even matchups across the board, which was always one of the appeals of the deck, but Tron and Valakut decks just crush you. Right now, we're talking about having a 20/80 matchup against 14% of the meta. Running the numbers through a binomial calculator, that means that for a 15 round swiss tournament, you have about a 35% chance of running into a big mana deck 3 or more times, X-3 usually being the record that locks you out of top 8 contention. Your odds of getting 2 or more matchups against big mana are 65%, so if you're playing Jund you basically have to hope you only see a big mana deck 2 times and you win every other matchup, because you're probably losing to big mana every time. That's a really tall order to fill, saying you basically have to win every non-big mana match or you're locked out of top 8.
Going to the Shadow builds fixed this problem. Tron is somewhere close to even for them, and they traded percentage points against other slow fair decks like blue control and traditional GBx midrange to get that, but neither are as bad as big mana used to be, and both are combined less of the meta now. Shadow is basically the new Jund, it's the new 50/50 fair deck of the format. Banning it only makes it so there's no real viable fair deck anymore. If you do so, you have to ban Tron and probably Primeval Titan just to open up some breathing space for slower fair decks to exist in again.
The answer here, as other people have stated, is not to ban Shadow out, it's to either unban or print new things that can enable other fair archetypes to also stabilize against the meta as a whole. Just SFM alone would probably be enough to create an entire other archetype of viable fair decks, which would reduce Shadow's metashare.
But why should a fair player HAVE to play shadow? if you look deep into this argument isnt big mana the real problem in this format? not shadow?
I wish they would have just banned both "eldrazi" lands in the first place.
here is some food for thought:
pod was dominant: they killed it
twin was dominant: they killed it
eldrazi was the most oppressive thing we have ever seen in modern: so they nerf it
Something wrong with that picture? I think so
Pod was replaced with Company. Twin was legit killed but a) they didn't think they were killing it as much as they did and b) that ban was probably the most controversial in MTG history and they may have learned from it.
And you know what? If you're playing a fair deck, yes, you should have to play Shadow or have a bad big mana matchup.
Jund or whatever midrange stategy you like isn't some holy archetype gifted to us by Richard Garfield that has to have a 50-50 matchup across the board. It has to have its own weakness and you can either try to fix that weakness by shifting it by playing Death's Shadow, or just ignore it and keep on playing Jund.
Deal with it. It's how it is.
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Well, I can saw a woman in two, but you won't wanna look in the box when I'm through.
And you know what? If you're playing a fair deck, yes, you should have to play Shadow or have a bad big mana matchup.
Jund or whatever midrange stategy you like isn't some holy archetype gifted to us by Richard Garfield that has to have a 50-50 matchup across the board. It has to have its own weakness and you can either try to fix that weakness by shifting it by playing Death's Shadow, or just ignore it and keep on playing Jund.
Deal with it. It's how it is.
For the most part, the people hating on big mana are the same small and vocal crowd that want an extremely specific version of blue-based-draw-go-control in Modern. If I remember correctly, these people wanted Tron lands banned back when Tron was less than 4% of the metagame and Infect, DSZ, Dredge, and other fast, linear nonsense was running rampant. It's just a matter of (biased) principle, I suppose. Many of these players also believe that big mana is the main reason for control's weaknesses in Modern, arguing this despite Jund staying Tier 1 for 2-3 years despite a Tier 1 or Tier 2 Tron and Valakut deck existing right alongside it. Rather than admit the main problem is that blue-based-draw-go-control lacks Modern tools, some prefer to blame big mana instead.
As far as I'm concerned, this would be like me as a Cheeri0s player arguing for a TS/IoK ban because those cards make my pet strategy of engine-based combo much weaker, ignoring the fact that these cards should be my weakness and I don't get to have 50/50+ matchups across the board.
And you know what? If you're playing a fair deck, yes, you should have to play Shadow or have a bad big mana matchup.
Jund or whatever midrange stategy you like isn't some holy archetype gifted to us by Richard Garfield that has to have a 50-50 matchup across the board. It has to have its own weakness and you can either try to fix that weakness by shifting it by playing Death's Shadow, or just ignore it and keep on playing Jund.
Deal with it. It's how it is.
Uhhhhh this is why I don't play standard and instead play non-rotating formats. So I have more than one option to defeat certain strategies and still remain competitive.
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So really, nothing has changed in months and months. Really since the ban to hit Dredge.
There is an underlying issue in the format, but the meta controls it, or at least keeps it from getting out of hand.
The only issue is if you want to play fair, completely fair, DS decks have pushed that option out. (Jund being the ultimate 'fair' deck in this case?)
Spirits
If you drive people off tron they'll play valakut, and if you drive them off valakut we've now lost two cool decks in the meta that have different approaches to the game.
Maybe we could add a 2 CMC hard counter, add a decent draw spell, and maybe print some decent threats in U and W, maybe even print a second try at Tectonic Edge (1, {T}: destroy target non-basic land only if opponent controls at least two non-basic lands). I don't see the sky falling linear disaster that people seem to be claiming; just a few power gaps that could be adjusted.
It's possible DS is too powerful but it's nowhere near proven that; straight midrange and control decks still trump most DS decks.
My prescription for the format:
* print counterspell
* print fact or fiction
* print a fixed land destruction land that splits the difference between tec edge and wasteland
* unban stoneforge mystic
* wait and see.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I don't believe Valakut is strong enough to deter people from playing Control/Mid-Range decks. In fact, most control decks see Valakut as a winnable (not great, but winnable) match-up.
I agree that adding cards would be absolutely ideal; Wizards has proven time and again, though, that they are unwilling to print those specific blue cards at the required power-level for Modern as they fear the effect it will have on Standard.
Un-banning SFM would help Taxes decks but they already have pretty favorable Tron match-ups.
BBE would be a safe un-ban but I feel that's more because it's effect on the format would be limited. I don't think it solves any problems.
I don't want to be "that guy", but would un-banning Twin be an effective counter to big-mana decks? As somebody who never piloted the deck I don't feel I have much insight to offer. What is the GDS - Twin match-up like? Would the deck be format-warping? Again, this is all just a thought-exercise and I'm genuinely curious for insight and opinions.
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=8894&f=MO
That's Grand Prix Omaha, the last Grand Prix before Birthing Pod got banned. Hrm... Merfolk and Zoo both in the Top 8, a "Big Zoo" list at #9, Infect at #10, and Burn at #11. Pretty good results for decks that were "unplayable"!
RGTron
UGInfect
URStorm
WUBRAd Nauseam
BRGrishoalbrand
URGScapeshift
WBGAbzan Company
WUBRGAmulet Titan
BRGLiving End
WGBogles
and how well did those decks start to do after it was banned? they became T1, yes while Pod was around randomly sometimes those decks would do ok like when Pod players decided to move away from the combo then you would see burn and infect pop up which just requires a move back towards the combo. Moving away from the Combo is exactly how I would describe that Pod list with absolutely 0 combo pieces.
Not to mention that this event was during the Treasure Cruise era in which going wider than delver was a okay plan.
After Eldrazi winter or the summer of dredge? Not a compelling argument.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I disagree with you that RG Tron had a major nerf, Ulamog was a MASSIVE buff to the deck. Honestly, I think with Eye and Ulamog, the deck was on it's way to throwing out fair decks. The deck balanced itself out with the Eye ban. Obviously, Trons in a different place now.
I'm not at all demanding tron bans here, I'm just saying, I think big mana may actually be the real culprit here. Junk can't break the top 8, and Jund has honestly struggled since the Twin banning to be honest. Eldrazi Winter, Jeskai Nahiri, Bant Eldrazi post-nerf, dredge. I love jund, but it hasn't been a great deck in at least a year.
In a long tournament, the format just has way too many issues for a fair deck to break the top 8 consistently. Fair decks seem great at local FNM's, but I think these opens/classics/GP's really show them breaking at the seams.
Return to Zendikar was such a mistake of a set. I think WOTC needs to realize making good colorless cards breaks the pie chart and absolutely leads to nothing but broken set ups. I just have to roll my eyes now when people say Ancient Stirrings requires so much deck restriction.
Thought-Knot was a fair card in standard, but sometimes it almost seems oppressive in modern setups. Not at all advocating for a ban there, I'm just noting that the Eldrazi set really effected modern. I hope WOTC realizes to not print colorless, powerful cards, it wrecked standard multiple times with copters, marvel and Mama Eldrazi.
We can ban Shadow/wraith, but I think fair players will be extremely disappointed in the months to come, and I think if you want to play outside of fun, that being fair would be the wrong deck to play competitively.
I agree, I would love for any or all of those things for modern. Unfortunately, none of them are going to happen. Not for at least several years and I highly doubt ever, on all fronts.
Of course, we also never got to see what impact Warping Wail would have on the matchup.
It only sees limited play and its effect is pretty common even if it gives decks access to something they otherwise wouldn't have. Mental Misstep on the other hand had the issue of warping what cards got played very hard. Most decks start with 4 Mental Misstep because you either need to counter the opponents one drop or you were protecting your own one drops.
The ETB tap is a trigger; they can rend the creature in response to the trigger, as they did constantly. It didn't result in a 2-for-1 but it did put them off the combo another turn or two.
Listen, I followed the whole thing pretty closely and everyone I knew on both tron and twin agreed that the matchup went positive after Ulamog because after Ulamog remand was no longer good. Previously every threat Tron played other than Emrakul was fairly vulnerable to remand, which defined the matchup. I also realize that the reason the matchup was positive was because of 5-8 sideboard cards coming in for Tron, and that is somewhat warping, but Tron didn't really have to work hard against most other decks (Just burn and infect really at the time).
Regardless, I think anyone with eyes on the format can see that Tron and Eldrazi Tron are both fine at the moment.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
At any rate, clearly aggro decks were able to be viable and compete considering how well we were able to see them do there.
Yet those decks didn't seem to be measurably better before then, at least from what I can tell, outside of Burn. As far as I can tell, Burn is the only aggro deck of the ones you mentioned that really seemed to be much weaker when Birthing Pod was at its most powerful--and some people don't really consider Burn an aggro deck anyway, but more a weird sort of combo deck. It's certainly not what one traditionally thinks of as aggro.
Of course, if you want to pull the Treasure Cruise card, one can just as easily turn around and say the reason for Burn dropping off a bit was that Treasure Cruise Delver just presented a better version.
I never found Ulamog all that amazing against Twin. Yes, sometimes it'd be good, but most of the time casting it would just open you up to the combo. When Ulamog was good, he was astounding... but if you weren't casting him right away, he didn't do much for you. The matchup really didn't turn positive because of him.
I suppose someone can argue that Ulamog indirectly made Tron better, because Ulamog helped them out against other decks (Ulamog more or less singlehandedly turned RUG Scapeshift from nearly unwinnable to slightly favored) which allowed them to concentrate more on being anti-Twin in the rest of the deck, but Ulamog himself didn't do much to help out the matchup.
Just banning DS or an enabler card to "weaken" it doesn't solve the problem with the format it just bandaids it. If you kill DS, the format goes back to the next fastest thoughtsieze/push based midrange deck as the format's only midrange. Probably jund. I'm worried because it always feels like wizards likes it's baindaid solutions instead of trying to curate the format on a deeper level. What we need for modern to be healthy is a format where you have multiple options for grindy strategies.
The main way I can see that is unbanning SFM. D&T/Hatebears just had a good tournament but overall still didn't do that well (just 3 in the top 64), and hasn't been putting up more that tier 2ish results. Wx midrange seems to have the tools to fight GDS, but no individual build seems to be able to hold down a tier 1 meta percentage cause no single build is powerful enough against the meta overall. SFM would give one of those Wx midrange that boost it needs and provide a fair competitor to GDS. It's especially nice since Deaths Shadow and Stoneforge cannot be in the same deck, and that Grixis has a very fair tool (k command) to fight SFM to keep the mystic from being too powerful. It feels like it would be a balanced match.
I could also see them, forgive me for falling into a meme for a second, bringing back twin at some point. Especially if they do decide to ban DS. Then we'd have twin beats tron, tron beats jund, jund beats twin metagame clock again. And if twin is a little too strong they could always ban deciever or bring back BloodBraid Elf.
Speaking of BBE, it is a bit of an obnoxious card but would bring back jund into consideration. If BBE Jund and GDS do end up being the two midrange decks it would be two thoughtsieze k command based decks though, which could get a little repetitive. The other one on the list is Jace. Personally I don't think Jace is safe but I could be wrong on that.
We just have to wait til august, but unfortunately wizards is very reluctant on unbannings and heavy on bannings, so I don't think they'll do something to make a two midrange deck format.
Going to the Shadow builds fixed this problem. Tron is somewhere close to even for them, and they traded percentage points against other slow fair decks like blue control and traditional GBx midrange to get that, but neither are as bad as big mana used to be, and both are combined less of the meta now. Shadow is basically the new Jund, it's the new 50/50 fair deck of the format. Banning it only makes it so there's no real viable fair deck anymore. If you do so, you have to ban Tron and probably Primeval Titan just to open up some breathing space for slower fair decks to exist in again.
The answer here, as other people have stated, is not to ban Shadow out, it's to either unban or print new things that can enable other fair archetypes to also stabilize against the meta as a whole. Just SFM alone would probably be enough to create an entire other archetype of viable fair decks, which would reduce Shadow's metashare.
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
But why should a fair player HAVE to play shadow? if you look deep into this argument isnt big mana the real problem in this format? not shadow?
I wish they would have just banned both "eldrazi" lands in the first place.
here is some food for thought:
pod was dominant: they killed it
twin was dominant: they killed it
eldrazi was the most oppressive thing we have ever seen in modern: so they nerf it
Something wrong with that picture? I think so
decks playing:
none
People see the best deck perform well and think, "oh, X=the problem".
The issue, like Wraith put it, is an X-3 record usually locks you out of a big tournament, that means you have a 35% chance of seeing 3 HORRIBLE matchups. In my two years of playing Junk, I can count on one hand how many times I beat Tron. It's truly that awful. Titanshift is a little better, but almost none of it comes down to skills or sequencing, the bad matchup will often blow you out.
That means the fair player has to pretty much beat out all the other 50/50. 45/55/, 55/45
Thats insane, why even try to play fair at that point?
There's a reason decks like UW/Jeskai don't exist outside of that awkward 2.5 tier spot, they're absolutely locked out of the meta, it's certainly not GBx or all the combo decks holding back.
Pod was replaced with Company. Twin was legit killed but a) they didn't think they were killing it as much as they did and b) that ban was probably the most controversial in MTG history and they may have learned from it.
And you know what? If you're playing a fair deck, yes, you should have to play Shadow or have a bad big mana matchup.
Jund or whatever midrange stategy you like isn't some holy archetype gifted to us by Richard Garfield that has to have a 50-50 matchup across the board. It has to have its own weakness and you can either try to fix that weakness by shifting it by playing Death's Shadow, or just ignore it and keep on playing Jund.
Deal with it. It's how it is.
For the most part, the people hating on big mana are the same small and vocal crowd that want an extremely specific version of blue-based-draw-go-control in Modern. If I remember correctly, these people wanted Tron lands banned back when Tron was less than 4% of the metagame and Infect, DSZ, Dredge, and other fast, linear nonsense was running rampant. It's just a matter of (biased) principle, I suppose. Many of these players also believe that big mana is the main reason for control's weaknesses in Modern, arguing this despite Jund staying Tier 1 for 2-3 years despite a Tier 1 or Tier 2 Tron and Valakut deck existing right alongside it. Rather than admit the main problem is that blue-based-draw-go-control lacks Modern tools, some prefer to blame big mana instead.
As far as I'm concerned, this would be like me as a Cheeri0s player arguing for a TS/IoK ban because those cards make my pet strategy of engine-based combo much weaker, ignoring the fact that these cards should be my weakness and I don't get to have 50/50+ matchups across the board.
Uhhhhh this is why I don't play standard and instead play non-rotating formats. So I have more than one option to defeat certain strategies and still remain competitive.