I understand what a "Sol land" implies I was simply pointing out that the only other to my knowledge in the format is a land that literally see's no play and just find it odd that you bring up that it plays more than any other deck as though non-Eldrazi decks are running any similar type of land.
I disagree that it Temple is what enables the deck to be so successful in the Meta. I think it is that it essentially just plays alot of really good cards that even at "full cost" are great play's. Sure TKS on T2/3 is ideal but a T4 TKS is not bad by any measure, Reality Smasher is still fine on T5 etc.... This is not as True for Classic Tron decks Karn is strong at seven but the deck does little to nothing between the beginning of the game and Karn so if you are hard casting it with out Tron assembled you are very likely in a very bad spot, this isn't true for E-Tron every thing they play is reasonable even if you have to cast it for full cost.
While you might run more top end cards like Ulamog that is not the norm for E-Tron, most lists top out at Karn/all is dust split in the main. I think its the quality threat heavy aspect of the deck that really makes it so good, it just runs playsets of awesome Mid-Range creatures and can accelerate them out 1/2 turns ahead depending on their draw, but is not contingent on that to be a solid deck, T2 chalice, T3 Matter Reshaper, T4 TSK etc.... are all still very powerful plays which are only made better with Temple or a Mind Stone or assembling Tron.
I think the difference between a Ramp deck and a Big Mana deck are what are your intentions with the ramping. Pretty much every "big mana" deck is a Ramp deck but not every Ramp deck is looking to play 7,8,9,10 drops etc.... Valukut is a Ramp deck but its most expensive card is 6c.c. its not really looking to Spend big mana its looking to enable its combo kill. Classic Tron is a big mana deck, it is looking to play very expensive things early always it is the classic mid-range Ramp/Control deck essentially looking to do the kinds of things that a traditional draw-go control deck would do but ramping them out 2-3 turns earlier than a traditional control deck can. I think the major difference is that Ramp is a design guideline while "big mana" is the strategy for exploiting the early mana, E-Tron Titainshift are both perfectly fine only netting -1 turn on the c.c. of their business spells TKS on 3, Reality of 4 Titan on 5 etc... Tron on the other hand is having a terrible match up if all they gained was Karn on 6.
Cool
It's worth mentioning simply because I was asking what defines the difference between midrange and big mana and it's an area where there is a difference. No other reason.
Agreed that the cards in E-Tron are great even without temple (I enjoyed playing Bant Eldrazi which is definitely midrange), all I was suggesting is that without temple the deck would have to make a choice (Karn and Ulamog, both of which have become pretty standard in the last month, check the E-Tron thread for the discussions) or (play noble hierarch, birds etc to get to big beaters) and couldn't do both plans equally well. (Which is why it's interesting to try to categorise E-Tron, because it does both plans well).
I also agree with you on the reasons for difference between ramp and big mana is in the philosophy.
I'm not sure I agree there is sufficiently large philosophy difference between E-Tron and Gx Tron to call one big mana and the other midrange.
ET is my main deck, and I've also been playing G/B Tron a lot lately. They feel like completely different decks. They only feel similar when ET gets the "God draw" of early tron into Karn, but that's really quite rare.
Gx Tron feels like a combo deck. You either assemble the combo (Urzatron) and drop your bombs and hopefully win, or you don't assemble your combo and you definitely lose.
ET is more of a midrange deck with a big mana upside. It usually feels like a midrange deck, though. ET can grind out games whereas Gx Tron just folds.
played in the Face to face Modern Open event at GP Toronto on Saturday. Only deck I faced twice was fish. Saw a wide variety of decks as well, Grixis Shadow and even Espern and Mardu Shadow. Several UBx control decks, Eldrazi tron and even RG Tron finished 12th Saw traditional Jund and Junk lists, even Junk super friends with Gideon of the Trials. Dredge was still alive and well. Saw random decks like Jeskai Flash and Lantern as well I mean there were 228 players, so I guess I could expec a lot of variety. Ive been having more fun playing modern this year than I have since pre-twin ban. Although I took a few months off because of life though
How would you (as a player of both E-Tron and Gx Tron) describe big mana then?
I don't see what purpose those terms serve. They are confusing at best. My personal opinion is that archetypes make sense. Trying to group archetypes into larger aggregates is problematic. It's something I've actually thought about for my meta analysis, doing a kind of super-archetype analysis, but it's a slippery slope with too many variables and too much overlap. And "Big Mana" is probably the least useful of them all.
If pushed, I would definitely call ET midrange. Not sure how that's even debatable, but ok.
I would call Gx Tron a combo deck. You are cantripping and tutoring to assemble your combo, then once assembled you play your wincon. Is that not almost the definition of combo? Gx Tron plays no less than TWENTY cantrip/tutor cards - 4x Map, 4x Stirrings, 4x Sylvan, 8x Chromatics. That's a combo deck to my eyes.
Edit: To analyze decks on dimensions other than archetype, what I'm thinking is that a "tagging" scheme would make sense. That way, each archetype can be tagged with multiple identifiers that make sense for it, then the data can be aggregated for each tag. Tags could be things like Combo, Aggro, Midrange, Linear, Interactive, etc.
How would you (as a player of both E-Tron and Gx Tron) describe big mana then?
I don't see what purpose those terms serve. They are confusing at best. My personal opinion is that archetypes make sense. Trying to group archetypes into larger aggregates is problematic. It's something I've actually thought about for my meta analysis, doing a kind of super-archetype analysis, but it's a slippery slope with too many variables and too much overlap. And "Big Mana" is probably the least useful of them all.
If pushed, I would definitely call ET midrange. Not sure how that's even debatable, but ok.
I would call Gx Tron a combo deck. You are cantripping and tutoring to assemble your combo, then once assembled you play your wincon. Is that not almost the definition of combo? Gx Tron plays no less than TWENTY cantrip/tutor cards - 4x Map, 4x Stirrings, 4x Sylvan, 8x Chromatics. That's a combo deck to my eyes.
Thank you! Finally someone with credibility agrees with me. I have been shouting from the rooftop that Tron is just another combo deck for years. The majority of the deck is dedicated to the combo, most of the rest protects it (o-stone). It's a slow, high commitment deck that trades all real speed, all instant win power, for sturdiness. Depending on the board state, I have on occasion even lost with t3 Karn, to a t4 win I just didn't have time to stop
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We play enough to be continually disappointed. I wonder how many people that actually praise modern play on a regular basis, some do but not all
Well, I'm playing plenty pretty much every weekend on MTGO, so I can't speak for others but can speak for my own positive experience. Given how the recent major events (GP, Classics, Challenges, Opens) mirror my experience, the critics either aren't playing or are playing metagames that aren't representative of the general format. I really don't think any metagame short of a Legacy one would satisfy many critics, but thankfully, Wizards has moved away from that kind of format so the critics just need to adjust and/or move on.
Related: I don't know what the critics even realistically want. There are so many viable top-tier interactive decks they can play. Just pick one and stop complaining.
To be clear, I do think there are things in Modern worth criticizing. For example, white could be better. But this myth about a format of non-interactive decks hasn't been true since January 2017 and it needs to stop.
so your saying that your weekend mtg games carry more weight than stats and other players experience? Ones that may be playing the game alot more than yourself?
Given that you continue to claim in your signature that you aren't playing any Modern any more, I could ask you the same question?
Cuts both ways.
We play enough to be continually disappointed. I wonder how many people that actually praise modern play on a regular basis, some do but not all
Well, I'm playing plenty pretty much every weekend on MTGO, so I can't speak for others but can speak for my own positive experience. Given how the recent major events (GP, Classics, Challenges, Opens) mirror my experience, the critics either aren't playing or are playing metagames that aren't representative of the general format. I really don't think any metagame short of a Legacy one would satisfy many critics, but thankfully, Wizards has moved away from that kind of format so the critics just need to adjust and/or move on.
Related: I don't know what the critics even realistically want. There are so many viable top-tier interactive decks they can play. Just pick one and stop complaining.
To be clear, I do think there are things in Modern worth criticizing. For example, white could be better. But this myth about a format of non-interactive decks hasn't been true since January 2017 and it needs to stop.
so your saying that your weekend mtg games carry more weight than stats and other players experience? Ones that may be playing the game alot more than yourself?
Given that you continue to claim in your signature that you aren't playing any Modern any more, I could ask you the same question?
Cuts both ways.
signature is outdated. bad argument
It's not a bad argument when its made best on the best information available.
We play enough to be continually disappointed. I wonder how many people that actually praise modern play on a regular basis, some do but not all
Well, I'm playing plenty pretty much every weekend on MTGO, so I can't speak for others but can speak for my own positive experience. Given how the recent major events (GP, Classics, Challenges, Opens) mirror my experience, the critics either aren't playing or are playing metagames that aren't representative of the general format. I really don't think any metagame short of a Legacy one would satisfy many critics, but thankfully, Wizards has moved away from that kind of format so the critics just need to adjust and/or move on.
Related: I don't know what the critics even realistically want. There are so many viable top-tier interactive decks they can play. Just pick one and stop complaining.
To be clear, I do think there are things in Modern worth criticizing. For example, white could be better. But this myth about a format of non-interactive decks hasn't been true since January 2017 and it needs to stop.
so your saying that your weekend mtg games carry more weight than stats and other players experience? Ones that may be playing the game alot more than yourself?
Because my experience aligns with the overall metagame stats AND the recent major events. I literally said this in the quoted post. If mine aligns with that very broad picture and someone else's experience does not, of course I'm going to think their's isn't representative of what ia going on in Modern, That, or they aren't really playing. Both of those scenarios are far likelier than the alternative: that the metagame stats and major event picture is somehow not representative of the experience for average Modern players.
I have become very skeptical of and annoyed with many critics in this thread because their claims consistently lack support. It started with the "blue sucks" camp, which drove me to play blue decks in May to see if blue really did suck. I realized they had totally mis-evaluated decks like UW Control, and then UW Control hit Tier 1. This showed how wrong the "blue sucks" camp had been. Now we have critics who claim the meta isn't interactive when it has the same split as the late 2015 metagame, which I know was idealized as a perfect Modern meta. Or critics who want E-Tron banned when it isn't even the most-played deck and is barely 8% of the format or less. All of this suggests to me that the hyper-vocal, hyper minority is not in dialogue with what is actually going on in Modern. They have personal visions of the format that are heavily biased and they willfully present those visions without evidence and in opposition to Wizards' stated goals.
Not all critics do this. Those arguing for BBE or SFM or other unbans are generally much more evidence-based. But other critics are just expressing personal fantasies of their perfect Modern, and it's often not productive or engaged with reality.
no your experience aligns with your experience, that is it. there are so many decks being played that you could think lantern is tier 1 in your own little experience
uw control wont last in tier 1, that is my prediction. and this prediction follows every non twin reactive bluer deck since the ban, since the ban. but 6 months will tell, and I am rightfully skeptical.
hyper minority is an exaggeration im sure. but feel free to prove that this thread is all that modern is. there is another world other than this thread and it clearly dislikes alot of quirks modern has. but keep straw-maning those comments away though.
The problem is, almost every Modern deck is trying to “cheat” on mana/tempo in some form or another.
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Gurmag Angler
Simian Spirit Guide
Goryo's Vengeance
Any 3 CMC card with cascade
Aether Vial
Collected Company
Burning Tree Emissary
Hidden Herbalists
Prized Amalgam
Bloodghast
There are a ton more, but it's essentially what every deck is trying to do. Most of the decks that make use of Opal have strategies that are hurt pretty badly by artifact hate. Temple, I can see people being justifiably upset about, since Temple is used to rush out early Thought-Knot Seer which is a preemptive answer to a lot of potential hate that could be played against Temple decks, but it just doesn't have the meta-share and wins to warrant any action.
There ya go.
The problem isn't Eldrazi Temple. The problem is the idea that modern is a format all about playing on curve. This is a hyper efficient format where you are going to have to cheat mana somehow. Hell this list didn't even mention the Tron lands or Storms mana reducers.
Mana efficiency is always the name of the game and that's exactly why Eldrazi Temple is too good for this format. Not going into specifics here, regardless of how warranted they are as quite a few of them are straw-man arguments (some are actually amusingly wrong), all of the cards listed here have very real costs when it comes to deck construction, most if not all of them can be interacted with on the stack or with graveyard/artifact hate and almost none of them provide near as plentiful, quick and resilient mana acceleration as Eldrazi Temple does (heck some of the cards listed don't even make mana!). How do you interact with a turn two Thought-Knot Seer on the play? Thoughtseize it and pray they don't peel another one? Even if they played it on turn 3 you should be sweating bullets since you can't attack their acceleration and the mana disadvantage that implies will become more significant as the game progresses.
Tron has to go through nigh infinite hoops and has to make very significant deck building restrictions just to be able to, on turn 3, do something decks with Eldrazi Temple can lucksack into naturally on turn 2; play high impact threats way ahead of curve without suffering any card disadvantage and retain the ability to do so for the rest of the game.
I repeat, this isn't about meta shares. Those are important but they aren't the only factor (just ask storm players when Seething Song got the chop). Ancient Tombs shouldn't be Modern legal, especially if the format has close to no ways to interact with said lands in the early game in a meaningful way. I would go so far as to say that it is the single most powerful mana producer the format has, especially in multiples.
exactly this. but people will keep bringing up that its only tier 1 not 0, and that its meta shares are fine ect ect.
Ignoring the fact that since its rise, Jund has fallen hard. which is huuuuuge for a deck that held the top tiers for soo long. if that isn't an indicator of broken...I don't know what is.
Some actual indicators of broken:
1. Violating the turn 4 rule with relative frequency.
2. Dominating the metagame shares (tier zero)
3. Pushing out all other viable strategies (eldrazi tron is the only grindy eldrazi deck)
Those are some real examples. Jund midrange has no right to exist in any format. Abzan is better for BGx midrange and is very viable. Jund Shadow is a jund deck but has a different game plan. Again, I keep saying this and I have yet to see a valid argument, but Jund not being tier 1 isn't a sign of broken...unless you spent two grand on jund or more foiling it out and want to protect your "investment."
says the guy whose name is blue tron....I wonder if there is any bias in your words.
jund has been tier 1, forever, most of the time. and now it isnt, because of eldrazi. which is a deck that slams fatties way ahead of curve. that is not the direction I think modern should head if we want a balance between broken and fair. but im sure you are on the side of broken, so im not going to argue with you anymore.
How would you (as a player of both E-Tron and Gx Tron) describe big mana then?
I don't see what purpose those terms serve. They are confusing at best. My personal opinion is that archetypes make sense. Trying to group archetypes into larger aggregates is problematic. It's something I've actually thought about for my meta analysis, doing a kind of super-archetype analysis, but it's a slippery slope with too many variables and too much overlap. And "Big Mana" is probably the least useful of them all.
If pushed, I would definitely call ET midrange. Not sure how that's even debatable, but ok.
I would call Gx Tron a combo deck. You are cantripping and tutoring to assemble your combo, then once assembled you play your wincon. Is that not almost the definition of combo? Gx Tron plays no less than TWENTY cantrip/tutor cards - 4x Map, 4x Stirrings, 4x Sylvan, 8x Chromatics. That's a combo deck to my eyes.
Thank you! Finally someone with credibility agrees with me. I have been shouting from the rooftop that Tron is just another combo deck for years. The majority of the deck is dedicated to the combo, most of the rest protects it (o-stone). It's a slow, high commitment deck that trades all real speed, all instant win power, for sturdiness. Depending on the board state, I have on occasion even lost with t3 Karn, to a t4 win I just didn't have time to stop
Am I the only one that found this post funny? It reads like 'You agree with me, and therefore you are a credible source of information!'
Personally, as a combo player, if its not 'my combo is here, I win' then its just not combo. Calling it combo is like saying 'I've assembled my lands, time to combo into Tasigur!'
Storm is a combo, Kiki is a combo, Saheeli. Things like that.
labels and definitions are a sticking point around here though.
We play enough to be continually disappointed. I wonder how many people that actually praise modern play on a regular basis, some do but not all
Well, I'm playing plenty pretty much every weekend on MTGO, so I can't speak for others but can speak for my own positive experience. Given how the recent major events (GP, Classics, Challenges, Opens) mirror my experience, the critics either aren't playing or are playing metagames that aren't representative of the general format. I really don't think any metagame short of a Legacy one would satisfy many critics, but thankfully, Wizards has moved away from that kind of format so the critics just need to adjust and/or move on.
Related: I don't know what the critics even realistically want. There are so many viable top-tier interactive decks they can play. Just pick one and stop complaining.
To be clear, I do think there are things in Modern worth criticizing. For example, white could be better. But this myth about a format of non-interactive decks hasn't been true since January 2017 and it needs to stop.
so your saying that your weekend mtg games carry more weight than stats and other players experience? Ones that may be playing the game alot more than yourself?
Because my experience aligns with the overall metagame stats AND the recent major events. I literally said this in the quoted post. If mine aligns with that very broad picture and someone else's experience does not, of course I'm going to think their's isn't representative of what ia going on in Modern, That, or they aren't really playing. Both of those scenarios are far likelier than the alternative: that the metagame stats and major event picture is somehow not representative of the experience for average Modern players.
I have become very skeptical of and annoyed with many critics in this thread because their claims consistently lack support. It started with the "blue sucks" camp, which drove me to play blue decks in May to see if blue really did suck. I realized they had totally mis-evaluated decks like UW Control, and then UW Control hit Tier 1. This showed how wrong the "blue sucks" camp had been. Now we have critics who claim the meta isn't interactive when it has the same split as the late 2015 metagame, which I know was idealized as a perfect Modern meta. Or critics who want E-Tron banned when it isn't even the most-played deck and is barely 8% of the format or less. All of this suggests to me that the hyper-vocal, hyper minority is not in dialogue with what is actually going on in Modern. They have personal visions of the format that are heavily biased and they willfully present those visions without evidence and in opposition to Wizards' stated goals.
Not all critics do this. Those arguing for BBE or SFM or other unbans are generally much more evidence-based. But other critics are just expressing personal fantasies of their perfect Modern, and it's often not productive or engaged with reality.
no your experience aligns with your experience, that is it. there are so many decks being played that you could think lantern is tier 1.
uw control wont last in tier 1 that is my prediction. and this prediction follows every non twin reactive bluer deck, since the twin banning. but 6 months will tell, and I am rightfully skeptical.
hyper minority is an exaggeration im sure. but feel free to prove that this thread is all that modern is. there is another world other than this thread and it clearly dislikes alot of quirks modern has. keep straw-maning those comments away though.
When my experience aligns with the overall metagame stats AND the picture from the last two months of major events, then of course I'm going to treat it as more representative than an experience that does not align with any of those datapoints. By contrast, if my experience was wildly different from the meta picture, I'd question if my experience was representative instead. That's such basic analysis. I don't understand what makes it complicated to understand.
This is the second time you have incorrectly used the strawman accusation. I'm pointing out the minority opinion not to discredit the argument (it's discredited by the rest of the metagame picture already), but to show it's not a topic we should be seriously discussing in this thread. It's much better to talk about policy-aligned changes like a potential BBE or SFM unban than to fantasize about personal and biased visions of someone's ideal Modern, ESPECIALLY when that vision is grossly misaligned with Wizards' format aims. It's fine to criticize Modern, but some of the recent criticisms are just willfully misrepresenting, or outright ignoring, the format/facts/stats to advance a personal belief.
Well, I'm playing plenty pretty much every weekend on MTGO, so I can't speak for others but can speak for my own positive experience. Given how the recent major events (GP, Classics, Challenges, Opens) mirror my experience, the critics either aren't playing or are playing metagames that aren't representative of the general format. I really don't think any metagame short of a Legacy one would satisfy many critics, but thankfully, Wizards has moved away from that kind of format so the critics just need to adjust and/or move on.
Related: I don't know what the critics even realistically want. There are so many viable top-tier interactive decks they can play. Just pick one and stop complaining.
To be clear, I do think there are things in Modern worth criticizing. For example, white could be better. But this myth about a format of non-interactive decks hasn't been true since January 2017 and it needs to stop.
so your saying that your weekend mtg games carry more weight than stats and other players experience? Ones that may be playing the game alot more than yourself?
Because my experience aligns with the overall metagame stats AND the recent major events. I literally said this in the quoted post. If mine aligns with that very broad picture and someone else's experience does not, of course I'm going to think their's isn't representative of what ia going on in Modern, That, or they aren't really playing. Both of those scenarios are far likelier than the alternative: that the metagame stats and major event picture is somehow not representative of the experience for average Modern players.
I have become very skeptical of and annoyed with many critics in this thread because their claims consistently lack support. It started with the "blue sucks" camp, which drove me to play blue decks in May to see if blue really did suck. I realized they had totally mis-evaluated decks like UW Control, and then UW Control hit Tier 1. This showed how wrong the "blue sucks" camp had been. Now we have critics who claim the meta isn't interactive when it has the same split as the late 2015 metagame, which I know was idealized as a perfect Modern meta. Or critics who want E-Tron banned when it isn't even the most-played deck and is barely 8% of the format or less. All of this suggests to me that the hyper-vocal, hyper minority is not in dialogue with what is actually going on in Modern. They have personal visions of the format that are heavily biased and they willfully present those visions without evidence and in opposition to Wizards' stated goals.
Not all critics do this. Those arguing for BBE or SFM or other unbans are generally much more evidence-based. But other critics are just expressing personal fantasies of their perfect Modern, and it's often not productive or engaged with reality.
no your experience aligns with your experience, that is it. there are so many decks being played that you could think lantern is tier 1.
uw control wont last in tier 1 that is my prediction. and this prediction follows every non twin reactive bluer deck, since the twin banning. but 6 months will tell, and I am rightfully skeptical.
hyper minority is an exaggeration im sure. but feel free to prove that this thread is all that modern is. there is another world other than this thread and it clearly dislikes alot of quirks modern has. keep straw-maning those comments away though.
When my experience aligns with the overall metagame stats AND the picture from the last two months of major events, then of course I'm going to treat it as more representative than an experience that does not align with any of those datapoints. By contrast, if my experience was wildly different from the meta picture, I'd question if my experience was representative instead. That's such basic analysis. I don't understand what makes it complicated to understand.
This is the second time you have incorrectly used the strawman accusation. I'm pointing out the minority opinion not to discredit the argument (it's discredited by the rest of the metagame picture already), but to show it's not a topic we should be seriously discussing in this thread. It's much better to talk about policy-aligned changes like a potential BBE or SFM unban than to fantasize about personal and biased visions of someone's ideal Modern, ESPECIALLY when that vision is grossly misaligned with Wizards' format aims. It's fine to criticize Modern, but some of the recent criticisms are just willfully misrepresenting, or outright ignoring, the format/facts/stats to advance a personal belief.
See here is the problem, we just don't care about 99% of what you just said. Everyone is clearly dug into their opinions
Am I the only one that found this post funny? It reads like 'You agree with me, and therefore you are a credible source of information!'
Personally, as a combo player, if its not 'my combo is here, I win' then its just not combo. Calling it combo is like saying 'I've assembled my lands, time to combo into Tasigur!'
Storm is a combo, Kiki is a combo, Saheeli. Things like that.
labels and definitions are a sticking point around here though.
Not touching the credibility thing.
I think you make a fair point in that Gx Tron isn't an instant-win combo. But a turn 3 Karn into a turn 4 Ugin or Ulamog is effectively the same thing in most cases. If the deck had some other way to win I'd probably agree with you, but the deck can't win without it. The boilerplate Gx Tron decks everyone is playing now are all-in on assembling Urzatron then playing game-ending threats. Definitely feels like combo to me even if it's not an instant-win combo in the purest sense.
And yeah, labels fail only if people insist on applying exactly one to every deck. You really need a set of "tags" from a data sense, but that's hard to have a discussion around unless everyone has an agreed-upon set of tags to reference.
@Zora
I agree that's a problem because it means your arguments are totally out of dialogue with the overall metagame stats, their historical context relative to other Modern metagames, the recent major event finishes, and the last two years of Wizards' quotes/actions/policies. It is very problematic that a group of Modern critics don't want to engage any of that and would rather advance only their personal views and beliefs without any appeal to the vast body of evidence and information we have. This "my beliefs > evidence" stance makes it very hard to have meaningful conversations in this thread
Watch out on the 'effectively the same as a win' line, that triggers a few people around here.
I can see the combo like angle, I just think that without tags as you say, it muddies the water too much. Ramp = Gaining Mana Advantage over time, right? Its easier to look at it for me that way, so to me, Tron is Ramp, it just depends on specific lands.
I mean I had what 3 people complain that I labelled DS decks as Aggro? Labels tilt people quickly for some reason, but its not like we have a sticky post with agreed upon definitions.
Watch out on the 'effectively the same as a win' line, that triggers a few people around here.
I can see the combo like angle, I just think that without tags as you say, it muddies the water too much. Ramp = Gaining Mana Advantage over time, right? Its easier to look at it for me that way, so to me, Tron is Ramp, it just depends on specific lands.
I mean I had what 3 people complain that I labelled DS decks as Aggro? Labels tilt people quickly for some reason, but its not like we have a sticky post with agreed upon definitions.
See, we can't even agree on what Ramp means. Tron isn't Ramp - it's a Combo into Big Mana. See what I did there? Lol.
Ramp is playing dorks or other mana accelerators like Sakura-Tribe Elder that get you ahead of the curve on subsequent turns.
Labels tilt people quickly for some reason, but its not like we have a sticky post with agreed upon definitions.
Apparently we could do with some, since it seems people are heavily entrenched in their way of thinking making discussion and persuasion near impossible.
Am I the only one that found this post funny? It reads like 'You agree with me, and therefore you are a credible source of information!'
Personally, as a combo player, if its not 'my combo is here, I win' then its just not combo. Calling it combo is like saying 'I've assembled my lands, time to combo into Tasigur!'
Storm is a combo, Kiki is a combo, Saheeli. Things like that.
labels and definitions are a sticking point around here though.
Not touching the credibility thing.
I think you make a fair point in that Gx Tron isn't an instant-win combo. But a turn 3 Karn into a turn 4 Ugin or Ulamog is effectively the same thing in most cases. If the deck had some other way to win I'd probably agree with you, but the deck can't win without it. The boilerplate Gx Tron decks everyone is playing now are all-in on assembling Urzatron then playing game-ending threats. Definitely feels like combo to me even if it's not an instant-win combo in the purest sense.
And yeah, labels fail only if people insist on applying exactly one to every deck. You really need a set of "tags" from a data sense, but that's hard to have a discussion around unless everyone has an agreed-upon set of tags to reference.
Is he/are you not? I thought I had seen researched, data driven articles?
that aside, for the most part it DOES meet your definition. Tower+Mine+Power Plant+Karn=win. and even if the win con is flexible, it has to be those three very specific lands. most of the time, it is an instant win, just not in the 'infinite damage, literally loss without concession that turn' sense. if a player is running lifegain and gets to a high enough total that Storm 'storming' for 24-30 is not enough to win on the spot,is Storm not a combo deck? combo is 'combination', a very specific set of cards that when combined, are more than the sum of their parts. Mine+Mine+Tower=3 mana, whereas your example works as long as there is one land making black, nothing more specific. Depths+Hexmage doesn't technically win on the spot, in fact, most decks these days can deal with it with minimal fuss I would think. it can't work at instant speed, and it needs their own combat to win. does that mean it's not a combo?
that's the problem with having a definition be too specific, in a game as huge as Magic, with so many options, it won't be absolute. like I tell my friends learning to play 'these are the rules....unless something comes along that is allowed to break the rules'
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Project Booster Fun makes it less fun to open a booster.
Watch out on the 'effectively the same as a win' line, that triggers a few people around here.
I can see the combo like angle, I just think that without tags as you say, it muddies the water too much. Ramp = Gaining Mana Advantage over time, right? Its easier to look at it for me that way, so to me, Tron is Ramp, it just depends on specific lands.
I mean I had what 3 people complain that I labelled DS decks as Aggro? Labels tilt people quickly for some reason, but its not like we have a sticky post with agreed upon definitions.
Aw, someone is really upset that they can't just rail on people about their favorite deck anymore.
Really? "Triggered". Really? Have some empathy for people for God's sake. It was a sad meme when 4chan started attacking Tumblr over it, and it's a sad meme now.
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Infraction issued for trolling.
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Level 1 Judge
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Lol, go up to your last post before pointing any fingers about not getting over things. I've said my piece in the first response on this thread.
You are the one trying to be cute and allude to things and I've reported you for it.
You are a troll, and you got trolled, big time.
I'm a troll? REALLY? You're the one spending every post in this thread gleefully dancing around the "card that shall not be named" telling the mods "I'm not saying the card, I'm not. I'm totally talking about it, but I'm not saying it!"
At least you admit that you're trolling.
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Level 1 Judge
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Well This thread is quickly devolving into a credibility and popularity contest.
Well, I guess that's the kind of thread we end up with after artificially banning discussion of certain topics in order to shake-up the diversity of thread. I mean, I agree that discussion is more "diverse" as a result. But in addition to the shift of complaints to big mana, now we're devolving into silly avenues like Chrome Mox, arguing over whether a deck that does X should be called Y, and a myriad of personal attacks. Perhaps the resultant, artificial "diversity" of the thread is actually worse than the discussions that were taking place before. The same problems and hostility exist (and actually feel amplified), it's just channeled through different forms and centered around different decks. If there was ever a perfect allegory for the state of Modern, it's this thread.
Public Mod Note
(Lantern):
Infraction for breaking thread rules. Just because you didnt say twin, doesn't mean you arent clearly breaking the mods ruling here. ~Lantern
Cool
It's worth mentioning simply because I was asking what defines the difference between midrange and big mana and it's an area where there is a difference. No other reason.
Agreed that the cards in E-Tron are great even without temple (I enjoyed playing Bant Eldrazi which is definitely midrange), all I was suggesting is that without temple the deck would have to make a choice (Karn and Ulamog, both of which have become pretty standard in the last month, check the E-Tron thread for the discussions) or (play noble hierarch, birds etc to get to big beaters) and couldn't do both plans equally well. (Which is why it's interesting to try to categorise E-Tron, because it does both plans well).
I also agree with you on the reasons for difference between ramp and big mana is in the philosophy.
I'm not sure I agree there is sufficiently large philosophy difference between E-Tron and Gx Tron to call one big mana and the other midrange.
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
Gx Tron feels like a combo deck. You either assemble the combo (Urzatron) and drop your bombs and hopefully win, or you don't assemble your combo and you definitely lose.
ET is more of a midrange deck with a big mana upside. It usually feels like a midrange deck, though. ET can grind out games whereas Gx Tron just folds.
How would you (as a player of both E-Tron and Gx Tron) describe big mana then?
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
I don't see what purpose those terms serve. They are confusing at best. My personal opinion is that archetypes make sense. Trying to group archetypes into larger aggregates is problematic. It's something I've actually thought about for my meta analysis, doing a kind of super-archetype analysis, but it's a slippery slope with too many variables and too much overlap. And "Big Mana" is probably the least useful of them all.
If pushed, I would definitely call ET midrange. Not sure how that's even debatable, but ok.
I would call Gx Tron a combo deck. You are cantripping and tutoring to assemble your combo, then once assembled you play your wincon. Is that not almost the definition of combo? Gx Tron plays no less than TWENTY cantrip/tutor cards - 4x Map, 4x Stirrings, 4x Sylvan, 8x Chromatics. That's a combo deck to my eyes.
Edit: To analyze decks on dimensions other than archetype, what I'm thinking is that a "tagging" scheme would make sense. That way, each archetype can be tagged with multiple identifiers that make sense for it, then the data can be aggregated for each tag. Tags could be things like Combo, Aggro, Midrange, Linear, Interactive, etc.
Thank you! Finally someone with credibility agrees with me. I have been shouting from the rooftop that Tron is just another combo deck for years. The majority of the deck is dedicated to the combo, most of the rest protects it (o-stone). It's a slow, high commitment deck that trades all real speed, all instant win power, for sturdiness. Depending on the board state, I have on occasion even lost with t3 Karn, to a t4 win I just didn't have time to stop
signature is outdated. bad argument
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It's not a bad argument when its made best on the best information available.
no your experience aligns with your experience, that is it. there are so many decks being played that you could think lantern is tier 1 in your own little experience
uw control wont last in tier 1, that is my prediction. and this prediction follows every non twin reactive bluer deck since the ban, since the ban. but 6 months will tell, and I am rightfully skeptical.
hyper minority is an exaggeration im sure. but feel free to prove that this thread is all that modern is. there is another world other than this thread and it clearly dislikes alot of quirks modern has. but keep straw-maning those comments away though.
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Warning for Spam. Add to the thread and push it to a good direction rather than just making a joke, even if its correct. ~Lantern
says the guy whose name is blue tron....I wonder if there is any bias in your words.
jund has been tier 1, forever, most of the time. and now it isnt, because of eldrazi. which is a deck that slams fatties way ahead of curve. that is not the direction I think modern should head if we want a balance between broken and fair. but im sure you are on the side of broken, so im not going to argue with you anymore.
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Am I the only one that found this post funny? It reads like 'You agree with me, and therefore you are a credible source of information!'
Personally, as a combo player, if its not 'my combo is here, I win' then its just not combo. Calling it combo is like saying 'I've assembled my lands, time to combo into Tasigur!'
Storm is a combo, Kiki is a combo, Saheeli. Things like that.
labels and definitions are a sticking point around here though.
Spirits
When my experience aligns with the overall metagame stats AND the picture from the last two months of major events, then of course I'm going to treat it as more representative than an experience that does not align with any of those datapoints. By contrast, if my experience was wildly different from the meta picture, I'd question if my experience was representative instead. That's such basic analysis. I don't understand what makes it complicated to understand.
This is the second time you have incorrectly used the strawman accusation. I'm pointing out the minority opinion not to discredit the argument (it's discredited by the rest of the metagame picture already), but to show it's not a topic we should be seriously discussing in this thread. It's much better to talk about policy-aligned changes like a potential BBE or SFM unban than to fantasize about personal and biased visions of someone's ideal Modern, ESPECIALLY when that vision is grossly misaligned with Wizards' format aims. It's fine to criticize Modern, but some of the recent criticisms are just willfully misrepresenting, or outright ignoring, the format/facts/stats to advance a personal belief.
See here is the problem, we just don't care about 99% of what you just said. Everyone is clearly dug into their opinions
Not touching the credibility thing.
I think you make a fair point in that Gx Tron isn't an instant-win combo. But a turn 3 Karn into a turn 4 Ugin or Ulamog is effectively the same thing in most cases. If the deck had some other way to win I'd probably agree with you, but the deck can't win without it. The boilerplate Gx Tron decks everyone is playing now are all-in on assembling Urzatron then playing game-ending threats. Definitely feels like combo to me even if it's not an instant-win combo in the purest sense.
And yeah, labels fail only if people insist on applying exactly one to every deck. You really need a set of "tags" from a data sense, but that's hard to have a discussion around unless everyone has an agreed-upon set of tags to reference.
I agree that's a problem because it means your arguments are totally out of dialogue with the overall metagame stats, their historical context relative to other Modern metagames, the recent major event finishes, and the last two years of Wizards' quotes/actions/policies. It is very problematic that a group of Modern critics don't want to engage any of that and would rather advance only their personal views and beliefs without any appeal to the vast body of evidence and information we have. This "my beliefs > evidence" stance makes it very hard to have meaningful conversations in this thread
I can see the combo like angle, I just think that without tags as you say, it muddies the water too much. Ramp = Gaining Mana Advantage over time, right? Its easier to look at it for me that way, so to me, Tron is Ramp, it just depends on specific lands.
I mean I had what 3 people complain that I labelled DS decks as Aggro? Labels tilt people quickly for some reason, but its not like we have a sticky post with agreed upon definitions.
Spirits
See, we can't even agree on what Ramp means. Tron isn't Ramp - it's a Combo into Big Mana. See what I did there? Lol.
Ramp is playing dorks or other mana accelerators like Sakura-Tribe Elder that get you ahead of the curve on subsequent turns.
Apparently we could do with some, since it seems people are heavily entrenched in their way of thinking making discussion and persuasion near impossible.
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
Is he/are you not? I thought I had seen researched, data driven articles?
that aside, for the most part it DOES meet your definition. Tower+Mine+Power Plant+Karn=win. and even if the win con is flexible, it has to be those three very specific lands. most of the time, it is an instant win, just not in the 'infinite damage, literally loss without concession that turn' sense. if a player is running lifegain and gets to a high enough total that Storm 'storming' for 24-30 is not enough to win on the spot,is Storm not a combo deck? combo is 'combination', a very specific set of cards that when combined, are more than the sum of their parts. Mine+Mine+Tower=3 mana, whereas your example works as long as there is one land making black, nothing more specific. Depths+Hexmage doesn't technically win on the spot, in fact, most decks these days can deal with it with minimal fuss I would think. it can't work at instant speed, and it needs their own combat to win. does that mean it's not a combo?
that's the problem with having a definition be too specific, in a game as huge as Magic, with so many options, it won't be absolute. like I tell my friends learning to play 'these are the rules....unless something comes along that is allowed to break the rules'
Aw, someone is really upset that they can't just rail on people about their favorite deck anymore.
Really? "Triggered". Really? Have some empathy for people for God's sake. It was a sad meme when 4chan started attacking Tumblr over it, and it's a sad meme now.
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You are the one trying to be cute and allude to things and I've reported you for it.
You are a troll, and you got trolled, big time.
Spirits
I'm a troll? REALLY? You're the one spending every post in this thread gleefully dancing around the "card that shall not be named" telling the mods "I'm not saying the card, I'm not. I'm totally talking about it, but I'm not saying it!"
At least you admit that you're trolling.
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
Well, I guess that's the kind of thread we end up with after artificially banning discussion of certain topics in order to shake-up the diversity of thread. I mean, I agree that discussion is more "diverse" as a result. But in addition to the shift of complaints to big mana, now we're devolving into silly avenues like Chrome Mox, arguing over whether a deck that does X should be called Y, and a myriad of personal attacks. Perhaps the resultant, artificial "diversity" of the thread is actually worse than the discussions that were taking place before. The same problems and hostility exist (and actually feel amplified), it's just channeled through different forms and centered around different decks. If there was ever a perfect allegory for the state of Modern, it's this thread.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Can happen when someone is so tilted, I won't hold it against you.
Spirits