If we don't use modern challenge results what should we use? It's the only online result we have left in modern worth anything at all and we need 6 months of paper data to make any conclusions and by the time we have that data the meta has already changed. Yes it's easier to say X should be banned because I want it to, but if that's all we are going to do then what's the point.
Force of Will has long been thought of as a card that helps keep combination decks in check in Legacy and Vintage. However, it doesn't directly help decks that aren't playing blue. One idea that was floated was creating a similar card that could be played in nonblue decks. When Phyrexian mana was designed, it was an opportunity to create such a card. R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm. Clearly printing a card like this has a lot of risk, but there is also the potential for helping the format a lot. The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card.
Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banning Mental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep.
"Of blue cards that are legal in Modern, Mental Misstep is the most played in Legacy, and it also has one of the more damaging effects on Modern by sitting on beatdown decks that want to start on turn one. We chose to ban it rather than put that much pressure on beatdown decks."
Are we still in that spot? Does it still deserve to be banned because Blue is the dominant color in Legacy? The card has never had a chance to have an impact.
Force of Will has long been thought of as a card that helps keep combination decks in check in Legacy and Vintage. However, it doesn't directly help decks that aren't playing blue. One idea that was floated was creating a similar card that could be played in nonblue decks. When Phyrexian mana was designed, it was an opportunity to create such a card. R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm. Clearly printing a card like this has a lot of risk, but there is also the potential for helping the format a lot. The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card.
Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banning Mental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep.
"Of blue cards that are legal in Modern, Mental Misstep is the most played in Legacy, and it also has one of the more damaging effects on Modern by sitting on beatdown decks that want to start on turn one. We chose to ban it rather than put that much pressure on beatdown decks."
Are we still in that spot? Does it still deserve to be banned because Blue is the dominant color in Legacy? The card has never had a chance to have an impact.
Mental Misstep is a format warping card. Much like how Lightning Bolt made Tarmogoyf the best creature in the format and Fatal Push warped the format into preferring Delve creatures and Eldrazi. Mental Misstep is an automatic 4 of in every deck because it is not only the best answer to every 1 drop in the format, but it is the best answer to itself and most decks cannot forego 1 drops entirely to blank the opponents Missteps. If all your removal is 2 mana then suddenly the creature decks are just too fast for you.
Using Legacy's reason for the Mental Misstep ban is already pretty questionable when Wizards has stated in the past that they look at each format in a vacuum when deciding to ban a card. Otherwise Gitaxian Probe would be banned in Legacy since they limited it in Vintage and banned it in Modern.
That being said, I don't see unbanning MM as a good way to police 1 CMC cards when literally every deck can run 4. It just seems like the most likely scenario is that those same low curve decks will be running around, only now they have a way to to prevent other, arguably more important policing cards like Thoughtseize and Path to Exile from doing their jobs. This is on top of giving all-in combo decks a free counter to discard spells and removal.
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Modern: UWUW Control UBRGrixis Shadow URIzzet Phoenix
Banning Eldrazi Temple would drastically decrease the amount of Chalice of the Void seem at the top tables, because that's the current best Chalice deck.
I'm still not sure I want Temple banned though. Timmy players really like casting big dumb eldrazi creatures, and doing this would be a lot harder without Temple. Then again, if its for the health of the format, I would be ok.
For argument's sake, doesn't banning Chalice of the Void decrease the amount of Eldrazi Temple decks? As far as I know, a lot of E-Tron's matchups are fixed by having Chalice to lock people out of their spells. I imagine the end can be achieved via either means.
My opinion of Chalice:
I don't like Chalice. I think it is bad by design. Automatically countering spells is lame, and I don't like the gameplay it produces. This effect is natural to Prison effects, especially ones which are hard to play around (I don't really like Prison effects as a result). However, banning cards has negative effects, and even cards like this (Simian Spirit Guide) survive due to being unpopular. I don't want Chalice banned because I'm sure some people like it, and I don't end up having to deal with it that often, so those who do should get to ha e their fun. There are at least some ways to deal with Chalice.
The justification of Chalice existing to police one mana spells is interesting. Do one mana spells actually need policing? Why? To keep the format from being too efficient? The only thing one mana spells have over two mana spells is that they cost less mana. So, why not just run one mana spells of your own to interact? Isn't that just having a decent mana curve? Midrange, Control, even Combo and Ramp decks all run one mana interaction. Tron has run Bolt/Push/Path. Burn sideboards Path. Storm boards in some interaction. Midrange and Control are obvious examples.
Modern's Control decks are often said to be much more low to the ground than those found in other formats. Is that a bad thing? That's the only argument I can think of.
One mana spells are good for tempo. To beat them, make tempo neutal or tempo positive plays. Sure, that means more one mana spells. But I don't see a format that runs a bunch of efficient answers as a bad thing.
The justification of Chalice existing to police one mana spells is interesting. Do one mana spells actually need policing? Why? To keep the format from being too efficient? The only thing one mana spells have over two mana spells is that they cost less mana. So, why not just run one mana spells of your own to interact? Isn't that just having a decent mana curve? Midrange, Control, even Combo and Ramp decks all run one mana interaction. Tron has run Bolt/Push/Path. Burn sideboards Path. Storm boards in some interaction. Midrange and Control are obvious examples.
Yes. Imagine Shadow if Tron decks couldn't run Chalices, or Eldrazi Temples. It would regain the impressive big mana matchup it had before Gx Tron transitioned to maintain relevance in this metagame, likely proving oppressive enough at that point to cause even more bans. As we've seen in the past, bans themselves rarely solve problems---they tend to create voids in the metagame that in turn beget other bans. Wizards' continued printing of viable threats (Hollow One; Gideon) and, especially, answers (Fatal Push) or niche tools (Opt; Chart a Course) addresses diversity issues far better, not to mention more sustainably on most levels.
Modern is highly diverse right now and no deck appears to violate the Turn 4 Rule (which controls for tiering and raw data). I doubt anything's on the chopping block.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
But those ruminations aside, my larger point was that the desire for a better mulligan rule really comes from a desire for a better mana system, and that's not really fixable at this point.
I disagree. I think the desire for a better mulligan rule stems from players not understanding how to properly deck build or mulligan. If players understood both of those then "mana screw" would happen MUCH less frequently than it does. So infrequently that it would become a moot point. Therefore the issue simply cannot lie with the mana system.
Many players bring "netdecks" to tournaments, so the point of deck building is likely lost on most people. But what net-deckers (and I'm one of them) often don't understand is that the deck that Person Y brought and showed up as #1 on mtgtop8 was likely tailored to that person. Perhaps that person knows they make riskier keeps than the majority and therefore shaved a land off what most players should actually run. Knowing your playstyle well and being able to identify someone else's playstyle based on their 75 are keys to bringing the correct 75 for you (i.e. deckbuilding).
And the playerbase in general makes abysmal mulligan decisions.
You make the claim "so infrequently it would become a moot point" but neglect to provide any definite data for that statement, which would seem required, rather than what amounts to little more than speculation. If you don't get enough lands, you don't get enough lands. And unlike the Pokemon TCG, you don't have free, super-efficient draw/tutor effects that increase the chance of you being able to get the stuff you need.
Sure, some cases of feel-bad mulligans come from bad decisions. But a lot--too many--are simply not getting lands (or ending up going down to a low number when you finally get lands) and no different sequence would have changed that.
I've done the numbers for various standard, modern, and legacy decks in the past, which is why I'm confident making the assertions I did. But pick a deck, run the numbers, show us the math, and let's discuss the results.
Just be careful since adding mulligans into the mix makes the calculation a bit more complicated.
Yes. Imagine Shadow if Tron decks couldn't run Chalices, or Eldrazi Temples. It would regain the impressive big mana matchup it had before Gx Tron transitioned to maintain relevance in this metagame, likely proving oppressive enough at that point to cause even more bans.
UW and Jeskai control do a nice job beating Shadow decks without the help of Chalice of the Void. They do lthis with plenty of cheap removal and 2 for 1s.
But those ruminations aside, my larger point was that the desire for a better mulligan rule really comes from a desire for a better mana system, and that's not really fixable at this point.
I disagree. I think the desire for a better mulligan rule stems from players not understanding how to properly deck build or mulligan. If players understood both of those then "mana screw" would happen MUCH less frequently than it does. So infrequently that it would become a moot point. Therefore the issue simply cannot lie with the mana system.
Many players bring "netdecks" to tournaments, so the point of deck building is likely lost on most people. But what net-deckers (and I'm one of them) often don't understand is that the deck that Person Y brought and showed up as #1 on mtgtop8 was likely tailored to that person. Perhaps that person knows they make riskier keeps than the majority and therefore shaved a land off what most players should actually run. Knowing your playstyle well and being able to identify someone else's playstyle based on their 75 are keys to bringing the correct 75 for you (i.e. deckbuilding).
And the playerbase in general makes abysmal mulligan decisions.
You make the claim "so infrequently it would become a moot point" but neglect to provide any definite data for that statement, which would seem required, rather than what amounts to little more than speculation. If you don't get enough lands, you don't get enough lands. And unlike the Pokemon TCG, you don't have free, super-efficient draw/tutor effects that increase the chance of you being able to get the stuff you need.
Sure, some cases of feel-bad mulligans come from bad decisions. But a lot--too many--are simply not getting lands (or ending up going down to a low number when you finally get lands) and no different sequence would have changed that.
I've done the numbers for various standard, modern, and legacy decks in the past, which is why I'm confident making the assertions I did. But pick a deck, run the numbers, show us the math, and let's discuss the results.
Just be careful since adding mulligans into the mix makes the calculation a bit more complicated.
Disclaimer: I'm pretty well-versed with probability.
I don't think your post is inherently wrong, but I do think you've missed the point. From a deck construction standpoint, even if you build your deck optimally for a certain number of lands on a certain turn, you'll be flooded or screwed relative to your optimization in a fair number of games. Of course it varies by deck and what you're trying to optimize for, but just as an example: if you wanted a deck with the maximum likelihood of having 3 lands in your starting 7, you would put 26 lands in your 60 card deck. But even that only gives you a 31.22% chance of having exactly 3 lands in your starting hand. And there is a 22.20% chance of having fewer than 2 or more than 4 lands.
If you consider having fewer than 2 or more than 4 lands in your opening hand a "failure" (which would be reasonable), then you're having to mulligan in 1 out of every 5 games no matter what. Of course, mulligans make your failure rate go down. They're independent events, so having to mulligan to 5 should only happen in roughly 1 out of every 25 games (in this case, the odds that you draw fewer than 2 lands or more than 4 lands doesn't actually change very much when you go to 6, it goes from 22.20% to 22.06%).
To be fair, this would happen less often if people were better at math. But to be fair to the people you're arguing with, I think the complaint is that even if you build your deck optimally, the current system results in a certain number of non-games. People don't like variance; that's why the fetchlands are as popular as they are. Variance is a requirement for almost all card games. One possible way of reducing variance is separating the spells from the lands.
I'm not really taking a position on this topic. I just don't think you can stipulate that people are bad at math, point to the hypergeometric distribution, and claim that non-games wouldn't be a problem if people knew what they were doing. Yes, there would be fewer non-games. But hypothetically, why wouldn't you want a system with the fewest number of non-games possible?
To be clear: I'm not advocating for Magic becoming chess. I just think it's a tough sell to advocate for more variance in a game where the players generally like that skill matters.
EDIT: Also, I'm already aware that separating lands from spells simply results in having to manage two different hypergeometric distributions. It doesn't actually eliminate the need for understanding probability. It just changes the problem from "I had too few/many lands" to "I had a suboptimal mixture of spells throughout the game".
Playing millions of cards every turn... Slowly and systematically obliterating any chance my opponent has of winning... Clicking the multitude of locking mechanisms into place... Not even trying to win myself until turn 10+ once I have nigh absolute control... Watching my opponent desperately trying to navigate the labyrinthine prison that I've constructed... Seeing the light of hope fade and ultimately extinguished in an excruciatingly slow manner... THAT'S fun Magic.
We have 2-3 users that are dramatically making this thread incomprehensible and non-productive for anyone else to possibly join in the discussion. This needs to change.
Every time I see [ktkenshinx] post in here, I get the impression of a stern dad walking in on a bunch of kids trying to do something dumb and just shaking his head in disappointment.
Near Mint: The same as Slightly Played, but we threw some Altoids in the box we stored it in to cover up the scent of dead mice. Slightly Played: The base condition for all MTG cards. This card looks OK, but there’s one minor annoying ding in it that will always irritate and distract you whenever you draw it. Moderately Played: This card looks like it survived the Tet Offensive tucked inside the waistband of GI underwear. It may smell like it, too. Heavily Played: This card looks like the remains of Mohammed Atta’s passport after 9/11. It may be playable if you double-sleeve it to stop the chunks from falling out. The condition formerly known as "Washing Machine Grade" Damaged: This card is the unfortunate victim of a Mirrorweave/March of the Machines/Chaos Confetti/Mindslaver combo.
[M]aking counterfeit cards is the absolute height of dishonesty. Ask yourself this question: Since most people...are totally cool with the use of proxies...what purpose do [high] quality counterfeit cards serve?
Chalice has never been a problem but is too good in eldrazi IMO. Temple or Chalice is a hard choice, maybe temple is better because chalice has never been a problem, it's been a good sideboard card and it's always been fine. And temple is a mana cheater land, which is something that has always been problematic in Magic.
So temple seems like the better card to ban. And no, it doesn't kill the deck, but it will probably go to tier2. The most interesting effect of banning temple is the effect it would have on other decks and the whole metagame.
If they don't ban anything I hope they unban SFM & BBE at least. If you don't want to lower the power level of the best decks, you have to increase it in the other decks then.
And I still think storm is too good but whatever, too many storm players in mtgsalvation.
Yes. Imagine Shadow if Tron decks couldn't run Chalices, or Eldrazi Temples. It would regain the impressive big mana matchup it had before Gx Tron transitioned to maintain relevance in this metagame, likely proving oppressive enough at that point to cause even more bans.
UW and Jeskai control do a nice job beating Shadow decks without the help of Chalice of the Void. They do lthis with plenty of cheap removal and 2 for 1s.
Chalice just helps make non-interactive games
My initial thought was that there are plenty of Midrange decks that can punish Shadow, so really Shadow can't be much of a problem. The meta figured out how to adapt to Shadow (even if it involved the meta warping) and could do so again.
One argument against this is that Shadow can still be the best "Midrange" deck due to its Ramp matchup, so people theoretically would rather play it than decks that beat it. I think UW and Jeskai are really interesting here because they can have a go at Shadow while not having a garbage Ramp matchup. I'm not sure how UW matches up against Valakut though.
It's possible UW and Jeskai have actually been tuned to the point of being able to police Shadow.
Also, a mostly related sidenote: If Shadow is the only reason one mana spells need policing, don't we just police Shadow decks instead of one mana spells?
e tron is a really unfun deck to play against, but well, i can understand that i wont be happy everytime that i play magic (even more playing modern), but i do think that chalice is just too eficient in this deck, i mean, it's a catch all answer that can be autowin in A LOT of matches (and can be game changer in others), without even affect the e tron player. Banning temple probably kills the deck, but banning chalice seems like a better answer to the strategy
Its like people on this forum do not understand the term sideboarding nor adapting their decks to handle their bad matchups lol. There are so many cards and strategies that just slap E-Tron around, if you haven't adapted some tech to that matchup then nothing can be blamed for your poor E-Tron matchup aside from refusal to change cards. IF Chalice is the card your deck doesn't want to see, ADD SOME ARTIFACT HATE. Affinity and Lantern are still decks, that hate will get use elsewhere as well. If Temple is the card your deck cant beat, either go faster or add something to your deck to slow them down. If doing that makes your matchups in other areas slightly worse, that's kind of the point and quite fair. You cant have your cake and eat it too.
Also, ill add that Legacy has more or less always had a colorless deck that has had a good matchup against 1 drop decks and midrange/control. Why can't modern have a similar strategy especially considering a lot of Modern archetypes have Legacy ports or similar strategies? Reanimator, Grixis stuff, Jund (less now than before Leo), Elves, Storm, UW Control, ect. are all basically universally staples in older formats. But because E-Tron is attacking the metagame from a different angel or one that players refuse to adapt to, you think its completely busted and unfair. ****, if I didn't adapt my lists to handle Eldrazi I would be salty too.
I'll be back when the announcement comes and we can see all the midrange/control players moan about Chalice and Temple again.
Of course, how haven't we thought of adapting our decks to etron?! We are such noobs, guys.
We could have won eldrazi winter PT if we had known of that! Oh well.
Of course, how haven't we thought of adapting our decks to etron?! We are such noobs, guys.
We could have won eldrazi winter PT if we had know of that!
Well, if you actually did try to find cards to beat Chalice or Temple you would have succeeded in probably giving yourself a fighting chance. If you tell me what decks you are playing and having a tough time against Eldrazi, I will gladly help you tune a SB or MD to giving you an edge. But as it stands it seems more like refusal to adapt to the meta.
Dont know if I'm being trolled but I'll answer.
Don't you think thousands of magic players haven't already tried?
On a side note, I've been testing my jeskai deck lately and winning is so hard, every game, and almost never get free wins.
Then, I play my burn deck and autowin so many matches putting 10% of the effort.
Is your Jeskai deck primarily reactive? If so, yes, you will have to work to get your wins.
That's one of the key advantages of running proactive decks - since they're asking questions, rather than answering them, they sometimes win because the opponent can't answer them.
What you're complaining about isn't a bug, it's a feature.
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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.
Dont know if I'm being trolled but I'll answer.
Don't you think thousands of magic players haven't already tried?
On a side note, I've been testing my jeskai deck lately and winning is so hard, every game, and almost never get free wins.
Then, I play my burn deck and autowin so many matches putting 10% of the effort.
But the meta is fine guyz.
Okay, not sure what your list is but if you want game against Storm (as your flare says u want that banned too) and Eldrazi I would run Spell Queller and some Dispel/Negate/Logic Knot in the 75 along with some Spreading Seas, Supreme Verdicts and Ghost Quarters. You also get some good ways to interact with Chalice, plenty of counters, some artifact destruction somewhere in the SB cause I mean everyone has some Affinity/Lantern hate somewhere in their deck.
Burn gets D-Revelery in the SB to mess with Chalice. Burn just happens to be a deck that wants to run a lot of 1 mana spells, Chalice seems pretty good here G1. Maybe add some Blood Moons to the SB to slow down Eldrazi enough to get there? Molten Rain isn't awful either. Not to mention most of your spells can hit Storm's dudes to stop the combo. If its giving you a real hard time you can always just rock some Relic of Progenitus.
Of course, how haven't we thought of adapting our decks to etron?! We are such noobs, guys.
We could have won eldrazi winter PT if we had known of that! Oh well.
Had Eye of Ugin not been banned, there would have been more and more decks emerge with a good Eldrazi matchup. That just never happened because Eye was banned so quickly
Of course, how haven't we thought of adapting our decks to etron?! We are such noobs, guys.
We could have won eldrazi winter PT if we had known of that! Oh well.
Had Eye of Ugin not been banned, there would have been more and more decks emerge with a good Eldrazi matchup. That just never happened because Eye was banned so quickly
Or it's because the new Oath Eldrazi are the most pushed, broken, and high-value creatures ever printed when they're being powered out by Sol lands, and if you skew your deck to fight it, you will lose to everything else. This is exactly why it was banned in the first place and the ripple effects are still happening today with ETron.
Of course, how haven't we thought of adapting our decks to etron?! We are such noobs, guys.
We could have won eldrazi winter PT if we had known of that! Oh well.
Had Eye of Ugin not been banned, there would have been more and more decks emerge with a good Eldrazi matchup. That just never happened because Eye was banned so quickly
The deck had the speed of an aggro deck with creatures as bulky as most BGx midrange decks. Most decks that would attempt to attack the mana base couldn't last long enough to do so, going bigger than them was nearly impossible, and as far as I know Affinity was the only deck that could go wide enough in a small time frame to deal with it. I'm curious as to what kind of decks you think would have emerged that could possible deal with Eldrazi when Eye was legal
That being said though, Nyzzeh's original analogy just fall flats because it's painfully obvious that EldraTron =/= Eldrazi with Eye, and using people's inability to adapt to Eldrazi with Eye as an argument against being able to adapt a deck to the current meta is pointless
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Decks
Modern: UWUW Control UBRGrixis Shadow URIzzet Phoenix
Dont know if I'm being trolled but I'll answer.
Don't you think thousands of magic players haven't already tried?
On a side note, I've been testing my jeskai deck lately and winning is so hard, every game, and almost never get free wins.
Then, I play my burn deck and autowin so many matches putting 10% of the effort.
But the meta is fine guyz.
Some decks inherently will have a bad matchup, and some can be tweaked to make it even. Some will have good eldrazi matchups.
Now... Jeskai I've got some experience with and know that you can run a positive matchup against Eldrazi.
Your series of comments seem to suggest that "everyone's tried really hard and there's no solution" but in reality, most players aren't protour level brewers, and people are heavily resistant to change (yes, this societal observation also applies to magic). Couple this with an innate human sensibility to feel like you know what you're doing even when you are operating with severely limited information, and that people are reluctant to spent money to try and beat a specific matchup and you get a situation where most people *aren't* adapting to metagames. Generally speaking, looking at large populations of players, magic players are bad at this.
But that's fine. If everyone was a metagame master, I wouldn't get to Play Soul Sisters in the tournament practice room on mtgo.
The reality here is that everything is fine, you *can* tune your deck better than you have already done, population-wide metagame adaptation isn't generally a thing (despite *seeming* like a thing, it's specific individuals who adapt and the sheep follow) and nothing needs to be banned right now.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
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If WotC is worried about 1 CMC spells ruling Modern, then there's another, very narrow spell any deck can play: Mental Misstep
Because Chalice of the Void hits a lot more than just 1 CMC cards.
The reasoning for Modern?
"Of blue cards that are legal in Modern, Mental Misstep is the most played in Legacy, and it also has one of the more damaging effects on Modern by sitting on beatdown decks that want to start on turn one. We chose to ban it rather than put that much pressure on beatdown decks."
Are we still in that spot? Does it still deserve to be banned because Blue is the dominant color in Legacy? The card has never had a chance to have an impact.
Mental Misstep is a format warping card. Much like how Lightning Bolt made Tarmogoyf the best creature in the format and Fatal Push warped the format into preferring Delve creatures and Eldrazi. Mental Misstep is an automatic 4 of in every deck because it is not only the best answer to every 1 drop in the format, but it is the best answer to itself and most decks cannot forego 1 drops entirely to blank the opponents Missteps. If all your removal is 2 mana then suddenly the creature decks are just too fast for you.
That being said, I don't see unbanning MM as a good way to police 1 CMC cards when literally every deck can run 4. It just seems like the most likely scenario is that those same low curve decks will be running around, only now they have a way to to prevent other, arguably more important policing cards like Thoughtseize and Path to Exile from doing their jobs. This is on top of giving all-in combo decks a free counter to discard spells and removal.
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
I'm still not sure I want Temple banned though. Timmy players really like casting big dumb eldrazi creatures, and doing this would be a lot harder without Temple. Then again, if its for the health of the format, I would be ok.
My opinion of Chalice:
The justification of Chalice existing to police one mana spells is interesting. Do one mana spells actually need policing? Why? To keep the format from being too efficient? The only thing one mana spells have over two mana spells is that they cost less mana. So, why not just run one mana spells of your own to interact? Isn't that just having a decent mana curve? Midrange, Control, even Combo and Ramp decks all run one mana interaction. Tron has run Bolt/Push/Path. Burn sideboards Path. Storm boards in some interaction. Midrange and Control are obvious examples.
Modern's Control decks are often said to be much more low to the ground than those found in other formats. Is that a bad thing? That's the only argument I can think of.
One mana spells are good for tempo. To beat them, make tempo neutal or tempo positive plays. Sure, that means more one mana spells. But I don't see a format that runs a bunch of efficient answers as a bad thing.
What do you all think?
Interested in RUG (Temur) Delver in Modern? Find gameplay with live commentary at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UcKe8jVh1e2N4CHbd3fhg
Modern is highly diverse right now and no deck appears to violate the Turn 4 Rule (which controls for tiering and raw data). I doubt anything's on the chopping block.
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
http://diestoremoval.com/hypergeometric-distribution
http://www.kibble.net/magic/magic10.php
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/chrismascioli-100512-of-math-and-magic-part-1-the-hypergeometric-distribution/
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/brewer-s-minute-hypergeometric-distribution-in-deck-building
I've done the numbers for various standard, modern, and legacy decks in the past, which is why I'm confident making the assertions I did. But pick a deck, run the numbers, show us the math, and let's discuss the results.
Just be careful since adding mulligans into the mix makes the calculation a bit more complicated.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
UW and Jeskai control do a nice job beating Shadow decks without the help of Chalice of the Void. They do lthis with plenty of cheap removal and 2 for 1s.
Chalice just helps make non-interactive games
I don't think your post is inherently wrong, but I do think you've missed the point. From a deck construction standpoint, even if you build your deck optimally for a certain number of lands on a certain turn, you'll be flooded or screwed relative to your optimization in a fair number of games. Of course it varies by deck and what you're trying to optimize for, but just as an example: if you wanted a deck with the maximum likelihood of having 3 lands in your starting 7, you would put 26 lands in your 60 card deck. But even that only gives you a 31.22% chance of having exactly 3 lands in your starting hand. And there is a 22.20% chance of having fewer than 2 or more than 4 lands.
If you consider having fewer than 2 or more than 4 lands in your opening hand a "failure" (which would be reasonable), then you're having to mulligan in 1 out of every 5 games no matter what. Of course, mulligans make your failure rate go down. They're independent events, so having to mulligan to 5 should only happen in roughly 1 out of every 25 games (in this case, the odds that you draw fewer than 2 lands or more than 4 lands doesn't actually change very much when you go to 6, it goes from 22.20% to 22.06%).
To be fair, this would happen less often if people were better at math. But to be fair to the people you're arguing with, I think the complaint is that even if you build your deck optimally, the current system results in a certain number of non-games. People don't like variance; that's why the fetchlands are as popular as they are. Variance is a requirement for almost all card games. One possible way of reducing variance is separating the spells from the lands.
I'm not really taking a position on this topic. I just don't think you can stipulate that people are bad at math, point to the hypergeometric distribution, and claim that non-games wouldn't be a problem if people knew what they were doing. Yes, there would be fewer non-games. But hypothetically, why wouldn't you want a system with the fewest number of non-games possible?
To be clear: I'm not advocating for Magic becoming chess. I just think it's a tough sell to advocate for more variance in a game where the players generally like that skill matters.
EDIT: Also, I'm already aware that separating lands from spells simply results in having to manage two different hypergeometric distributions. It doesn't actually eliminate the need for understanding probability. It just changes the problem from "I had too few/many lands" to "I had a suboptimal mixture of spells throughout the game".
WUDeath&TaxesWG
Legacy
UBRGDredgeUBRG
UHigh TideU
URGLandsURG
WR Card Choice List
WUR American D&T
WUB Esper D&T
The Reserved List
Heat Maps
So temple seems like the better card to ban. And no, it doesn't kill the deck, but it will probably go to tier2. The most interesting effect of banning temple is the effect it would have on other decks and the whole metagame.
If they don't ban anything I hope they unban SFM & BBE at least. If you don't want to lower the power level of the best decks, you have to increase it in the other decks then.
And I still think storm is too good but whatever, too many storm players in mtgsalvation.
My initial thought was that there are plenty of Midrange decks that can punish Shadow, so really Shadow can't be much of a problem. The meta figured out how to adapt to Shadow (even if it involved the meta warping) and could do so again.
One argument against this is that Shadow can still be the best "Midrange" deck due to its Ramp matchup, so people theoretically would rather play it than decks that beat it. I think UW and Jeskai are really interesting here because they can have a go at Shadow while not having a garbage Ramp matchup. I'm not sure how UW matches up against Valakut though.
It's possible UW and Jeskai have actually been tuned to the point of being able to police Shadow.
Also, a mostly related sidenote: If Shadow is the only reason one mana spells need policing, don't we just police Shadow decks instead of one mana spells?
Interested in RUG (Temur) Delver in Modern? Find gameplay with live commentary at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UcKe8jVh1e2N4CHbd3fhg
Also, ill add that Legacy has more or less always had a colorless deck that has had a good matchup against 1 drop decks and midrange/control. Why can't modern have a similar strategy especially considering a lot of Modern archetypes have Legacy ports or similar strategies? Reanimator, Grixis stuff, Jund (less now than before Leo), Elves, Storm, UW Control, ect. are all basically universally staples in older formats. But because E-Tron is attacking the metagame from a different angel or one that players refuse to adapt to, you think its completely busted and unfair. ****, if I didn't adapt my lists to handle Eldrazi I would be salty too.
I'll be back when the announcement comes and we can see all the midrange/control players moan about Chalice and Temple again.
RG BBE Ponza
UX Eldrazi Tron
UR Jace Breach
We could have won eldrazi winter PT if we had known of that! Oh well.
Well, if you actually did try to find cards to beat Chalice or Temple you would have succeeded in probably giving yourself a fighting chance. If you tell me what decks you are playing and having a tough time against Eldrazi, I will gladly help you tune a SB or MD to giving you an edge. But as it stands it seems more like refusal to adapt to the meta.
RG BBE Ponza
UX Eldrazi Tron
UR Jace Breach
Don't you think thousands of magic players haven't already tried?
On a side note, I've been testing my jeskai deck lately and winning is so hard, every game, and almost never get free wins.
Then, I play my burn deck and autowin so many matches putting 10% of the effort.
But the meta is fine guyz.
That's one of the key advantages of running proactive decks - since they're asking questions, rather than answering them, they sometimes win because the opponent can't answer them.
What you're complaining about isn't a bug, it's a feature.
Okay, not sure what your list is but if you want game against Storm (as your flare says u want that banned too) and Eldrazi I would run Spell Queller and some Dispel/Negate/Logic Knot in the 75 along with some Spreading Seas, Supreme Verdicts and Ghost Quarters. You also get some good ways to interact with Chalice, plenty of counters, some artifact destruction somewhere in the SB cause I mean everyone has some Affinity/Lantern hate somewhere in their deck.
Burn gets D-Revelery in the SB to mess with Chalice. Burn just happens to be a deck that wants to run a lot of 1 mana spells, Chalice seems pretty good here G1. Maybe add some Blood Moons to the SB to slow down Eldrazi enough to get there? Molten Rain isn't awful either. Not to mention most of your spells can hit Storm's dudes to stop the combo. If its giving you a real hard time you can always just rock some Relic of Progenitus.
RG BBE Ponza
UX Eldrazi Tron
UR Jace Breach
Had Eye of Ugin not been banned, there would have been more and more decks emerge with a good Eldrazi matchup. That just never happened because Eye was banned so quickly
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
That being said though, Nyzzeh's original analogy just fall flats because it's painfully obvious that EldraTron =/= Eldrazi with Eye, and using people's inability to adapt to Eldrazi with Eye as an argument against being able to adapt a deck to the current meta is pointless
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
Some decks inherently will have a bad matchup, and some can be tweaked to make it even. Some will have good eldrazi matchups.
Now... Jeskai I've got some experience with and know that you can run a positive matchup against Eldrazi.
Your series of comments seem to suggest that "everyone's tried really hard and there's no solution" but in reality, most players aren't protour level brewers, and people are heavily resistant to change (yes, this societal observation also applies to magic). Couple this with an innate human sensibility to feel like you know what you're doing even when you are operating with severely limited information, and that people are reluctant to spent money to try and beat a specific matchup and you get a situation where most people *aren't* adapting to metagames. Generally speaking, looking at large populations of players, magic players are bad at this.
But that's fine. If everyone was a metagame master, I wouldn't get to Play Soul Sisters in the tournament practice room on mtgo.
The reality here is that everything is fine, you *can* tune your deck better than you have already done, population-wide metagame adaptation isn't generally a thing (despite *seeming* like a thing, it's specific individuals who adapt and the sheep follow) and nothing needs to be banned right now.