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.
Any time you sleeve up a deck, and I do mean any time, you are effectively saying "okay, I'm going to accept that these matchups will probably be bad for me". It doesn't matter what format you're playing, unless we're in one of those short periods where there is legitimately a best deck and playing anything that isn't it is incorrect.
However, apparently not all people have gotten the memo, and seem to think that Jund in Modern MUST have a 50-50 match with the entire field.
No, sorry. When you sleeve up Jund, you are saying "I am going to have trouble with my big mana matchup", and if you're not happy with that you can A, tune your list so the big mana matchup is closer to fair or advantageous (hi, Death's Shadow!) or B, play a different bloody deck.
Some players seem to think there's an option C, which is "get online and whine about how big mana is stopping Modern from being a good format" but that does nothing at all.
Every deck has bad matchups. Some decks might have matchups that are disproportionately bad, like Jund's weakness to Tron. But every deck has them, and Jund players don't get to get upset that they lose to Tron when that is something that you knew when you decided to sleeve up Jund.
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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.
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.
Any time you sleeve up a deck, and I do mean any time, you are effectively saying "okay, I'm going to accept that these matchups will probably be bad for me". It doesn't matter what format you're playing, unless we're in one of those short periods where there is legitimately a best deck and playing anything that isn't it is incorrect.
However, apparently not all people have gotten the memo, and seem to think that Jund in Modern MUST have a 50-50 match with the entire field.
No, sorry. When you sleeve up Jund, you are saying "I am going to have trouble with my big mana matchup", and if you're not happy with that you can A, tune your list so the big mana matchup is closer to fair or advantageous (hi, Death's Shadow!) or B, play a different bloody deck.
You had me until here, and this is what I was commenting on before. You're using the more broad "play a different bloody deck" but last time you said that you should play a specific deck. That's against the reasons I play Modern. I don't play Modern because the only way to beat big mana is with Death's Shadow. I play modern because I can play whatever pet deck I want and at least have a chance. There's a difference between a 'bad match-up' and an unwinnable one.
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.
this argument is no longer quite as valid as Jund itself has been affected by big mana. You can no longer say its just urx control players whining like you did months ago. Now it's jund and abzan aswell.
Death shadow is what happens to fair decks when you give them no other choice. Eldrazi are toxic to fair midrange and control whether you want to admit it not. And using a deck example such as cheerios vs an archtype argument as well as calling blue players whiners is a typical strawman argument.
I agree we need better counterspells and maybe SFM but
Tell me, what is jund missing in modern for it to do well now?
It has good answers and threats and it still has to run death shadow, Why is that I wonder?
I've been on the ban tron bandwagon a few times but as I've played the format for longer I've begun to feel that the variety of archetypes and approaches in modern is a feature not a bug. Especially since Eye of Ugin went out.
I will say I wish they would cut it out with On Cast triggers for creatures. It's a pretty unpleasant mechanic that further dilutes counterspell as an option.
Any time you sleeve up a deck, and I do mean any time, you are effectively saying "okay, I'm going to accept that these matchups will probably be bad for me". It doesn't matter what format you're playing, unless we're in one of those short periods where there is legitimately a best deck and playing anything that isn't it is incorrect.
However, apparently not all people have gotten the memo, and seem to think that Jund in Modern MUST have a 50-50 match with the entire field.
No, sorry. When you sleeve up Jund, you are saying "I am going to have trouble with my big mana matchup", and if you're not happy with that you can A, tune your list so the big mana matchup is closer to fair or advantageous (hi, Death's Shadow!) or B, play a different bloody deck.
First of all, it's not just Jund, it's pretty much all non-Shadow fair decks. And it's not just that they have a bad matchup. Even Grixis Shadow has some bad matchups in the 35-40% range. It's that Tron and Valakut are nearly unwinnable matchups, like 20% or lower. Huge disparities in matchups like that aren't good. On average, you're going to see one of these decks about 2 times in a 15 round swiss, so you know you're practically going into a tournament already at X-2. So why would you play a deck with a matchup that bad against 14% of the field? You don't.
And that's why Shadow is becoming so popular, it's the fair deck that can beat the big mana decks. If people have a problem with Shadow being as much of the meta as it is, the answer isn't to ban Shadow. The answer is either to unban something that creates another fair archetype that has a reasonable big mana matchup, or ban something from Tron to make it less oppressive to fair decks. Or, we just leave things as they are and accept that Shadow is basically the only viable fair deck right now.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Any time you sleeve up a deck, and I do mean any time, you are effectively saying "okay, I'm going to accept that these matchups will probably be bad for me". It doesn't matter what format you're playing, unless we're in one of those short periods where there is legitimately a best deck and playing anything that isn't it is incorrect.
However, apparently not all people have gotten the memo, and seem to think that Jund in Modern MUST have a 50-50 match with the entire field.
No, sorry. When you sleeve up Jund, you are saying "I am going to have trouble with my big mana matchup", and if you're not happy with that you can A, tune your list so the big mana matchup is closer to fair or advantageous (hi, Death's Shadow!) or B, play a different bloody deck.
First of all, it's not just Jund, it's pretty much all non-Shadow fair decks. And it's not just that they have a bad matchup. Even Grixis Shadow has some bad matchups in the 35-40% range. It's that Tron and Valakut are nearly unwinnable matchups, like 20% or lower. Huge disparities in matchups like that aren't good. On average, you're going to see one of these decks about 2 times in a 15 round swiss, so you know you're practically going into a tournament already at X-2. So why would you play a deck with a matchup that bad against 14% of the field? You don't.
And that's why Shadow is becoming so popular, it's the fair deck that can beat the big mana decks. If people have a problem with Shadow being as much of the meta as it is, the answer isn't to ban Shadow. The answer is either to unban something that creates another fair archetype that has a reasonable big mana matchup, or ban something from Tron to make it less oppressive to fair decks. Or, we just leave things as they are and accept that Shadow is basically the only viable fair deck right now.
And that is called seing the big picture. Thank goodness there are some on here who do.
Commander GUR Maelstrom Wanderer BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith RRR Feldon of the Third Path WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
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.
Infect was in the same boat as Burn, it can be difficult to compare some of the current aggro decks because while they did exist in some form many of them rely on cards that didn't exist while Pod was legal things like the revolt Burning Tree, or the Surge +1/+0 guy etc.. they didn't have the critical mass of redundant affects to warrant seeing near as much play as they did. Burn and Infect both suffered because of Pod and essentially that was a match up that you just had to hope to not be paired against. I point this out because people will incorrectly point to Twin as the reason these decks didn't see as much play when in fact both Infect and Burn type hyper linear aggro/combo decks are a good choice against Twin because against a deck like Twin you only have a few options of effective strategies going under the combo which Infect and Burn could and would do, BGx attrition strategies with access to targeted discard and Abrupt decay, or going over the the deck with a Control deck but this was a probably the least effective of the strategies as Combo decks are favored against pure control because a single instance of answer not matching up to threat will result in a instant loss. I would consider the combo v combo match up as near even and draw dependent.
Pod was simply the best creature deck since it was a tool box of the best creatures and two of the best combos which happen to share 2/3rds of the required pieces. It was the infinite life combo that invalidated Burn/Zoo strategies as they simply cannot win through the opponent gaining a arbitrarily large amount of life, and infect was invalidated by the set up for the combo including Melira as a key piece.
The version of Pod you pointed to was the "inbreed" highly meta-gamed version of Pod which like in many meta-games is a instance of a strictly dominate strategy being so focused on the Mirror that it would give up the natural edge it would have against other dominated strategies in the format. This happens all the time a deck is so good that the mirror becomes highly prevalent and it becomes vulnerable to some of the strategies in which it was dominating in its previous incarnations.
I would also point out that Burn and Infect not becoming T1 instantly after the ban doesn't really prove anything to your point. Essentially every deck takes some measure of time for players to gravitate towards it unless it has a "break out" event to push it into a sudden high profile status, look at Grixis Shadow, it was considered a fine deck prior to its break out event's the deck itself hadn't really changed much it was just that most players will not invest time and energy into a deck that hasn't "proven" its dominate status. It simply took time for enough players to gravitate towards Infect which had previously been a known weakly dominated strategy prior to the banning.
When I hear nonsense like "20% or worse" from matchup numbers I am inclined to remember the old matchup number database that blew my mind.
Jund from the post-bloodbraid days had something like 43% win rate against GR tron Pre-Eye banning. Similarly, the Twin-Tron matchup was only 58% in Twin's' favor (IIRC, it was certainly no worse than 60%).
When you quote numbers like 20%, that had better be backed up with a hundred rounds of matchup data IMHO or it's probably just hyperbole. There are very, very, very few matchups worse than 35% or so in modern, post-sideboard.
Back when I was testing this chord deck I was working on I played the merfolk matchup a couple times and concluded Merfolk was nearly unwinnable...then I played 20 matches and it was something like 40%.
I would say a good rule of thumb is if you think a matchup is worse than 35% you should test it before making that claim, because that's seriously bad.
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For a more relatable example two friends of mine played GR tron and Jund -- the Jund deck had 4 fulminators in the sideboard, but few other good cards vs. tron (maybe a duress?). The Jund player always made a huge deal out of how hard the matchup was but he still won something like 2/5 matches they played, and in testing with me watching they went 50-50 in 4 test matches.
There's a lot to the matchup numbers people imagine that is based on "feel." When Jund beats Tron it feels like they squeaked one out, and when Tron beats Jund it feels like a vicious drubbing. That's just the way the matchup plays out, but in reality Jund "squeaks one out" fairly regularly
I think a wasteland type card is too powerful for Modern and a "colorless wasteland" would be as effective as Ghost Quarter currently is (who cares if they go get a Wastes). It would also be hard to fit into mid-range decks anyway and I don't see that being a solution to big mana.
And let's not pretend it's ALL big mana decks. It's Tron. It's the fact that Tron Drazi can consistently play 7 mana spells on a mid-range curve or Thoughtseize on a 4/4 turn 3. It's mid-range on steroids.
I don't think we need a better wasteland type card. Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge are enough
If something were to be banned from Eldrazi Tron though, which is it: Eldrazi Temple or the Urzatron? The problem is that banning Temple kills bant eldrazi, and banning urzatron kill all variants of tron
Better land destruction is not coming to Standard. Maro has stated it. Best you can ask for is a worse Molten Rain, something like 2RR destroy nonbasic land sorcery.
You had better accept that reality and talk about more feasible things.
100% correct here, WotC is not going to suddenly reintroduce a element to the game they know is detested as much as cheap land destruction.
The best I think we can hope for is a cycle of colorless hate cards similar to the self hate cycle we got this time around. Maybe when they resolve the Eldrazi story line we will get some thematic strong colorless hate.
Better land destruction is not coming to Standard. Maro has stated it. Best you can ask for is a worse Molten Rain, something like 2RR destroy nonbasic land sorcery.
You had better accept that reality and talk about more feasible things.
Which is exactly why I think the 1 mana artifact and 2 mana enchantment I was talking about would be decent-ish for Modern without breaking Standard. "Lands can't tap for more than 1 mana" is totally doable IMO. And yes, the splash damage to filter lands would be worth it.
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Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
@HF
It's not at all a strawman. What is with people in internet discussions using that term all the time. Combo, e.g. Cheeri0s, is supposed to struggle against disruptive decks that play cards like TS or IoK. Midrange, e.g. Jund, is supposed to struggle against big mana decks that play cards like Tron and Temple. I'm not constantly complaining about my bad matchups that are bad by design. The control and midrange players, by contrast, complain all the time.
Non-Shadow fair decks, like Jund, aren't bad. They just aren't as good as the Shadow decks. That has little to do with Jund having bad matchups (which it should) and much more to do with DS decks having very few bad matchups (which could indicate brokenness). The problem isn't decks beating Jund. It's DS beating decks that it probably shouldn't be. The issue, if any exists, would be with DS itself, not big mana. If you banned big mana, DS decks don't get worse. They would still be better than Jund decks by most counts.
If you guys hate Tron that much, build a f*cking storm/company combo deck and gg, you have 70%++ win rate vs Tron.
When you play modern, you accept to have good and Bad matchups. So please stop crying 24/24 7/7 that your pet deck cant Beat the whole meta because no decks Can. Thats what modern is.
If you think Tron is degenerate, toxic or whatever just play it for some Time. I bet you will then cry about how unfair and stupid is burn/storm/ad nauseam or any other *****ty matchups.
I dont find death shadow being problematic on modern, what makes the deck good is not only DS but DS + wraith + the ***** ton of discards and pressure cards.
If you really hate DS that much, go play a fast blood Moon or chalice for 1 deck. Ez.
But we all know the only things you want guys is go have your unbeatable blue deck.
If you want it that bad, go play in legacy.
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If you guys hate Tron that much, build a f*cking storm/company combo deck and gg, you have 70%++ win rate vs Tron.
See my above post re: win rate hypeprbole. Included in this post of yours is both this kind of exaggeration AND a blatant falsehood -- Company combo decks are in the vicinity of 50/50 with both Tron variants, possibly losing to Eldrazi Tron by a bit, at the very best. It's possible they are worse than 50/50.
Eldrazi Tron tends toward 3-4 maindeck chalices (in addition to some number of relics) which are as good as game over a high percentage of the time for most combo decks in addition to Thought-Knot seer. The matchup is very far from 70%; I would estimate 55% in Storm's favor, 60% at best.
GW tron can run a lot of hate cards for Storm and while its only real out game 1 is T3 Karn, that happens with some frequency. My guess is the GW tron matchup with a good sideboard is at worst 65/35.
The whole "go play legacy" argument is kinda silly. That literally is a straw man argument. People are setting up a straw man of "Modern players who want blue to be as good in modern as it is in legacy."
That's an easy to defeat argument because blue is way too strong in legacy. It's comical almost. Something like 80% of registered decks play brainstorm.
What some folks (such as myself) want is more parity between power level in the colors in modern. Many of the best blue and white cards are banned, while their black/green/red counterparts are not. Especially white (as I keep saying which is far less represented in modern than blue).
What I want is for white and blue to be somewhere in the vicinity of the power level of black and green as opposed to significantly underpowered. Frankly I'd like the same thing in reverse in legacy -- a massive powerdown for blue would be great IMHO.
@HF
It's not at all a strawman. What is with people in internet discussions using that term all the time. Combo, e.g. Cheeri0s, is supposed to struggle against disruptive decks that play cards like TS or IoK. Midrange, e.g. Jund, is supposed to struggle against big mana decks that play cards like Tron and Temple. I'm not constantly complaining about my bad matchups that are bad by design. The control and midrange players, by contrast, complain all the time.
Non-Shadow fair decks, like Jund, aren't bad. They just aren't as good as the Shadow decks. That has little to do with Jund having bad matchups (which it should) and much more to do with DS decks having very few bad matchups (which could indicate brokenness). The problem isn't decks beating Jund. It's DS beating decks that it probably shouldn't be. The issue, if any exists, would be with DS itself, not big mana. If you banned big mana, DS decks don't get worse. They would still be better than Jund decks by most counts.
I just want to ask why it's ok for big mana to suppress 2 archetypes?
Thought experiment - if tron and temple didn't exist you'd expect a fairly simple cycle where -
combo beats aggro
control beats combo
aggro beats control
The only logical conclusion is that the presence of big mana (in combination with the printing of cheap + extra effect eldrazi) is the source of the issues.
I DO NOT WANT BANS, however, it's clear that the power of big mana means the power of midrange and control threats or answers must increase in order to combat this. And as a number of other posters have stated WoTC refuse to print anything worth while in terms of LD, counter spells or deck manipulation.
Leaving the obvious 4 cards that are mentioned every single ban list update as the only way we currently guarantee support for midrange and control.
TL;DR - 1 archetype suppressing 2 isn't healthy or smart and people should rightly complain (constructively) about that.
@HF
It's not at all a strawman. What is with people in internet discussions using that term all the time. Combo, e.g. Cheeri0s, is supposed to struggle against disruptive decks that play cards like TS or IoK. Midrange, e.g. Jund, is supposed to struggle against big mana decks that play cards like Tron and Temple. I'm not constantly complaining about my bad matchups that are bad by design. The control and midrange players, by contrast, complain all the time.
Non-Shadow fair decks, like Jund, aren't bad. They just aren't as good as the Shadow decks. That has little to do with Jund having bad matchups (which it should) and much more to do with DS decks having very few bad matchups (which could indicate brokenness). The problem isn't decks beating Jund. It's DS beating decks that it probably shouldn't be. The issue, if any exists, would be with DS itself, not big mana. If you banned big mana, DS decks don't get worse. They would still be better than Jund decks by most counts.
but why arent there more jund decks policing shadow decks? they are good against them. and in fact decent against the non big mana field. big mana/eldrazitron is suppressing it, thats why it has adapted by using death shadow.
saying it is simply that death shadow is Super powerful is not the only story. the meta is what shapes what is good and not.
Any time you sleeve up a deck, and I do mean any time, you are effectively saying "okay, I'm going to accept that these matchups will probably be bad for me". It doesn't matter what format you're playing, unless we're in one of those short periods where there is legitimately a best deck and playing anything that isn't it is incorrect.
However, apparently not all people have gotten the memo, and seem to think that Jund in Modern MUST have a 50-50 match with the entire field.
No, sorry. When you sleeve up Jund, you are saying "I am going to have trouble with my big mana matchup", and if you're not happy with that you can A, tune your list so the big mana matchup is closer to fair or advantageous (hi, Death's Shadow!) or B, play a different bloody deck.
Some players seem to think there's an option C, which is "get online and whine about how big mana is stopping Modern from being a good format" but that does nothing at all.
Every deck has bad matchups. Some decks might have matchups that are disproportionately bad, like Jund's weakness to Tron. But every deck has them, and Jund players don't get to get upset that they lose to Tron when that is something that you knew when you decided to sleeve up Jund.
You had me until here, and this is what I was commenting on before. You're using the more broad "play a different bloody deck" but last time you said that you should play a specific deck. That's against the reasons I play Modern. I don't play Modern because the only way to beat big mana is with Death's Shadow. I play modern because I can play whatever pet deck I want and at least have a chance. There's a difference between a 'bad match-up' and an unwinnable one.
Death shadow is what happens to fair decks when you give them no other choice. Eldrazi are toxic to fair midrange and control whether you want to admit it not. And using a deck example such as cheerios vs an archtype argument as well as calling blue players whiners is a typical strawman argument.
I agree we need better counterspells and maybe SFM but
Tell me, what is jund missing in modern for it to do well now?
It has good answers and threats and it still has to run death shadow, Why is that I wonder?
decks playing:
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I will say I wish they would cut it out with On Cast triggers for creatures. It's a pretty unpleasant mechanic that further dilutes counterspell as an option.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
And that's why Shadow is becoming so popular, it's the fair deck that can beat the big mana decks. If people have a problem with Shadow being as much of the meta as it is, the answer isn't to ban Shadow. The answer is either to unban something that creates another fair archetype that has a reasonable big mana matchup, or ban something from Tron to make it less oppressive to fair decks. Or, we just leave things as they are and accept that Shadow is basically the only viable fair deck right now.
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
And that is called seing the big picture. Thank goodness there are some on here who do.
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GURB Grixis/Jund Shadow
RBG Dredge
xUx U Ballista Tron
Commander
GUR Maelstrom Wanderer
BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius
BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth
WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
RRR Feldon of the Third Path
WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
Infect was in the same boat as Burn, it can be difficult to compare some of the current aggro decks because while they did exist in some form many of them rely on cards that didn't exist while Pod was legal things like the revolt Burning Tree, or the Surge +1/+0 guy etc.. they didn't have the critical mass of redundant affects to warrant seeing near as much play as they did. Burn and Infect both suffered because of Pod and essentially that was a match up that you just had to hope to not be paired against. I point this out because people will incorrectly point to Twin as the reason these decks didn't see as much play when in fact both Infect and Burn type hyper linear aggro/combo decks are a good choice against Twin because against a deck like Twin you only have a few options of effective strategies going under the combo which Infect and Burn could and would do, BGx attrition strategies with access to targeted discard and Abrupt decay, or going over the the deck with a Control deck but this was a probably the least effective of the strategies as Combo decks are favored against pure control because a single instance of answer not matching up to threat will result in a instant loss. I would consider the combo v combo match up as near even and draw dependent.
Pod was simply the best creature deck since it was a tool box of the best creatures and two of the best combos which happen to share 2/3rds of the required pieces. It was the infinite life combo that invalidated Burn/Zoo strategies as they simply cannot win through the opponent gaining a arbitrarily large amount of life, and infect was invalidated by the set up for the combo including Melira as a key piece.
The version of Pod you pointed to was the "inbreed" highly meta-gamed version of Pod which like in many meta-games is a instance of a strictly dominate strategy being so focused on the Mirror that it would give up the natural edge it would have against other dominated strategies in the format. This happens all the time a deck is so good that the mirror becomes highly prevalent and it becomes vulnerable to some of the strategies in which it was dominating in its previous incarnations.
I would also point out that Burn and Infect not becoming T1 instantly after the ban doesn't really prove anything to your point. Essentially every deck takes some measure of time for players to gravitate towards it unless it has a "break out" event to push it into a sudden high profile status, look at Grixis Shadow, it was considered a fine deck prior to its break out event's the deck itself hadn't really changed much it was just that most players will not invest time and energy into a deck that hasn't "proven" its dominate status. It simply took time for enough players to gravitate towards Infect which had previously been a known weakly dominated strategy prior to the banning.
Jund from the post-bloodbraid days had something like 43% win rate against GR tron Pre-Eye banning. Similarly, the Twin-Tron matchup was only 58% in Twin's' favor (IIRC, it was certainly no worse than 60%).
When you quote numbers like 20%, that had better be backed up with a hundred rounds of matchup data IMHO or it's probably just hyperbole. There are very, very, very few matchups worse than 35% or so in modern, post-sideboard.
Back when I was testing this chord deck I was working on I played the merfolk matchup a couple times and concluded Merfolk was nearly unwinnable...then I played 20 matches and it was something like 40%.
I would say a good rule of thumb is if you think a matchup is worse than 35% you should test it before making that claim, because that's seriously bad.
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For a more relatable example two friends of mine played GR tron and Jund -- the Jund deck had 4 fulminators in the sideboard, but few other good cards vs. tron (maybe a duress?). The Jund player always made a huge deal out of how hard the matchup was but he still won something like 2/5 matches they played, and in testing with me watching they went 50-50 in 4 test matches.
There's a lot to the matchup numbers people imagine that is based on "feel." When Jund beats Tron it feels like they squeaked one out, and when Tron beats Jund it feels like a vicious drubbing. That's just the way the matchup plays out, but in reality Jund "squeaks one out" fairly regularly
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
And let's not pretend it's ALL big mana decks. It's Tron. It's the fact that Tron Drazi can consistently play 7 mana spells on a mid-range curve or Thoughtseize on a 4/4 turn 3. It's mid-range on steroids.
If something were to be banned from Eldrazi Tron though, which is it: Eldrazi Temple or the Urzatron? The problem is that banning Temple kills bant eldrazi, and banning urzatron kill all variants of tron
100% correct here, WotC is not going to suddenly reintroduce a element to the game they know is detested as much as cheap land destruction.
The best I think we can hope for is a cycle of colorless hate cards similar to the self hate cycle we got this time around. Maybe when they resolve the Eldrazi story line we will get some thematic strong colorless hate.
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
It's not at all a strawman. What is with people in internet discussions using that term all the time. Combo, e.g. Cheeri0s, is supposed to struggle against disruptive decks that play cards like TS or IoK. Midrange, e.g. Jund, is supposed to struggle against big mana decks that play cards like Tron and Temple. I'm not constantly complaining about my bad matchups that are bad by design. The control and midrange players, by contrast, complain all the time.
Non-Shadow fair decks, like Jund, aren't bad. They just aren't as good as the Shadow decks. That has little to do with Jund having bad matchups (which it should) and much more to do with DS decks having very few bad matchups (which could indicate brokenness). The problem isn't decks beating Jund. It's DS beating decks that it probably shouldn't be. The issue, if any exists, would be with DS itself, not big mana. If you banned big mana, DS decks don't get worse. They would still be better than Jund decks by most counts.
When you play modern, you accept to have good and Bad matchups. So please stop crying 24/24 7/7 that your pet deck cant Beat the whole meta because no decks Can. Thats what modern is.
If you think Tron is degenerate, toxic or whatever just play it for some Time. I bet you will then cry about how unfair and stupid is burn/storm/ad nauseam or any other *****ty matchups.
I dont find death shadow being problematic on modern, what makes the deck good is not only DS but DS + wraith + the ***** ton of discards and pressure cards.
If you really hate DS that much, go play a fast blood Moon or chalice for 1 deck. Ez.
But we all know the only things you want guys is go have your unbeatable blue deck.
If you want it that bad, go play in legacy.
Remember about a month ago when people were decrying that modern was nothing but Counters Company and Death's Shadow?
Now it seems like Affinity, Dredge, and Eldrazi are on top.
The meta keeps cycling back and forth since there are so many different powerful decks one can build
See my above post re: win rate hypeprbole. Included in this post of yours is both this kind of exaggeration AND a blatant falsehood -- Company combo decks are in the vicinity of 50/50 with both Tron variants, possibly losing to Eldrazi Tron by a bit, at the very best. It's possible they are worse than 50/50.
Eldrazi Tron tends toward 3-4 maindeck chalices (in addition to some number of relics) which are as good as game over a high percentage of the time for most combo decks in addition to Thought-Knot seer. The matchup is very far from 70%; I would estimate 55% in Storm's favor, 60% at best.
GW tron can run a lot of hate cards for Storm and while its only real out game 1 is T3 Karn, that happens with some frequency. My guess is the GW tron matchup with a good sideboard is at worst 65/35.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
If I had the $2,500+ for lands and FoWs, you better believe I'd be playing Delver in Legacy.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
That's an easy to defeat argument because blue is way too strong in legacy. It's comical almost. Something like 80% of registered decks play brainstorm.
What some folks (such as myself) want is more parity between power level in the colors in modern. Many of the best blue and white cards are banned, while their black/green/red counterparts are not. Especially white (as I keep saying which is far less represented in modern than blue).
What I want is for white and blue to be somewhere in the vicinity of the power level of black and green as opposed to significantly underpowered. Frankly I'd like the same thing in reverse in legacy -- a massive powerdown for blue would be great IMHO.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I just want to ask why it's ok for big mana to suppress 2 archetypes?
Thought experiment - if tron and temple didn't exist you'd expect a fairly simple cycle where -
combo beats aggro
control beats combo
aggro beats control
What in the format is making it super fast? It certainly isn't control decks - they barely exist. Same goes for midrange Jund/Abzan were tier 1 for ages without crushing all before it.
Aggro? Well burn and affinity have been tier 1 forever, haven't changed in the last few years (theros? most recent addition)
Must be all that combo then...no storm, 1 dredge, couple devoted druid
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/event-coverage/gp-vegas-modern-day-1-undefeated-decklists-2017-06-18
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplv17-modern/top-8-decklists-2017-06-18
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplv17/9-32-decklists-2017-06-18
The only logical conclusion is that the presence of big mana (in combination with the printing of cheap + extra effect eldrazi) is the source of the issues.
I DO NOT WANT BANS, however, it's clear that the power of big mana means the power of midrange and control threats or answers must increase in order to combat this. And as a number of other posters have stated WoTC refuse to print anything worth while in terms of LD, counter spells or deck manipulation.
Leaving the obvious 4 cards that are mentioned every single ban list update as the only way we currently guarantee support for midrange and control.
TL;DR - 1 archetype suppressing 2 isn't healthy or smart and people should rightly complain (constructively) about that.
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
Because reusing black cards and finding strong black cards in your deck is pretty good!
Also, I think people are wrong on the grixis bandwagon to be honest. DSJw felt like a better deck to me that people jumped ship from too quickly.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
but why arent there more jund decks policing shadow decks? they are good against them. and in fact decent against the non big mana field. big mana/eldrazitron is suppressing it, thats why it has adapted by using death shadow.
saying it is simply that death shadow is Super powerful is not the only story. the meta is what shapes what is good and not.
decks playing:
none
Because a black deck that gets to cast its black spells twice is a little better than a black deck that can tutor for green cards?
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate