Yeah, those standings pretty much torpedo the theory that there's a metagame imbalance right now. The only issue all weekend was blue-based control not doing well at one of the three events; that's a really tiny issue in the grand scheme. In fact, blue-based control also did quite well at the other two events, further invalidating that issue. Even BGx did well at all the different tournaments! Overall, Modern is in an extremely healthy position and I think most of the ridiculous criticisms over the past few months have been soundly overturned.
There is a Faeries deck in the top 32 of both GPs D:
i feel like more thoughtseize would have helped the sao paulo list personally (very similar to my list, but only 2 snapcasters to make room for 2 thoughtseize and a murderous cut over an IOK) not sure why the list opted out of them, maybe budget concerns. Also, I truly feel like faeries lists as of late are focusing less on being able to race the opponents (for a large number of reasons) so seeing a mistbind list is reassuring me that I'm doing the right thing in my list. We probably just need a good proactive card printed to push through better i think (in the faeries creature type) because mistbind can get there with the right frame of mind
Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
Played in all the modern side events at GP Birmingham, which I know isn't everyone's favourite metagame barometer, but it's still real players coming together in a tournament setting. Two of these side events were over 500 players! Others were 200+ players so these are significant events!
I didn't play against any value-coco decks but I saw plenty of them sitting near me. Saw storm quite a bit but didn't play against one either.
In 24 rounds of modern I saw (organised by wins and losses, I don't remember the exact order):
Scapeshift titan (win)
Burn (win)
Burn (win)
UW control (win)
Grixis control (win)
Slivers (win)
Grixis death's shadow (win)
Eldrazi tron (win)
Ad nauseam (win)
Skred (win)
RG tron (win)
Abzan (win)
Grixis delver (win)
Elves (win)
Norin sisters (win)
UR tempo/control (draw)
UW control (draw)
Unknown deck (ID)
Affinity (loss)
UW control (loss)
Burn (Loss)
Grixis death's shadow (loss)
Death & taxes (loss)
GB rock (loss)
Played six 4-round tournaments for a total of 24 rounds. only lost one match per tournament. Always ID'd the final round (but played it out anyway, thus allowing me to show all 24 rounds above with wins/losses).
Modern feels like it's in a great place right now but it's definitely different from before. Grixis DS and eldrazi have sculpted a new modern from the old jund/twin sculpted meta. It's slower, different cards are good, some previously good cards have become worse.
More than ever I feel like the sentiment of just jamming one deck over and over until you've completely mastered it is now the correct route to go for modern. Too often I've flitted around between decks because I have the luxury of a big modern collection, but I'm seeing the disadvantages of this now. Modern rewards reps and deck familiarity more than anything else, and up to a point, almost any deck is viable (I say up to a point, because certain strategies have a low ceiling and struggle against the tiered stuff).
All in all a good weekend. Exhausting but good. Came out with a couple of booster boxes of nice stuff for my troubles and had a good win ratio.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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
Looking over the top 32(2 lists missing) from GP Sao Paolo, I just realized there's zero Eldrazi Tron, so that's pretty interesting. Could it be because it's unfavored against GR Ramp? GR Ramp, Grixis Shadow and UWx Control dominates the top 32:
i was at sao paolo. the quantity of tron variants (gr and gb) and gr valakut decks surprised me, and the quantity of bad players sleeving grixis death's shadow was amazing.
The top decks at the moment to me are tron (traditional ones and eldrazi), valakut decks and grixis shadow. I think that the real problem of the format at the moment is the lack of good big mana hate
i was at sao paolo. the quantity of tron variants (gr and gb) and gr valakut decks surprised me, and the quantity of bad players sleeving grixis death's shadow was amazing.
The top decks at the moment to me are tron (traditional ones and eldrazi), valakut decks and grixis shadow. I think that the real problem of the format at the moment is the lack of good big mana hate
Yeah, those standings pretty much torpedo the theory that there's a metagame imbalance right now. The only issue all weekend was blue-based control not doing well at one of the three events; that's a really tiny issue in the grand scheme. In fact, blue-based control also did quite well at the other two events, further invalidating that issue. Even BGx did well at all the different tournaments! Overall, Modern is in an extremely healthy position and I think most of the ridiculous criticisms over the past few months have been soundly overturned.
Pretty exciting, I think we saw almost every archetype and major deck do well. I was shocked to see BGx even do as well as it did.
E-Tron was only in one top 8, so maybe people will chill with Temple bans.
Grixis was present in all these top 8s, but maybe it's presence is responsible for all these diverse decks in the 32.
Grixis is the new Jund.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
i feel like more thoughtseize would have helped the sao paulo list personally (very similar to my list, but only 2 snapcasters to make room for 2 thoughtseize and a murderous cut over an IOK) not sure why the list opted out of them, maybe budget concerns. Also, I truly feel like faeries lists as of late are focusing less on being able to race the opponents (for a large number of reasons) so seeing a mistbind list is reassuring me that I'm doing the right thing in my list. We probably just need a good proactive card printed to push through better i think (in the faeries creature type) because mistbind can get there with the right frame of mind
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
I didn't play against any value-coco decks but I saw plenty of them sitting near me. Saw storm quite a bit but didn't play against one either.
In 24 rounds of modern I saw (organised by wins and losses, I don't remember the exact order):
Scapeshift titan (win)
Burn (win)
Burn (win)
UW control (win)
Grixis control (win)
Slivers (win)
Grixis death's shadow (win)
Eldrazi tron (win)
Ad nauseam (win)
Skred (win)
RG tron (win)
Abzan (win)
Grixis delver (win)
Elves (win)
Norin sisters (win)
UR tempo/control (draw)
UW control (draw)
Unknown deck (ID)
Affinity (loss)
UW control (loss)
Burn (Loss)
Grixis death's shadow (loss)
Death & taxes (loss)
GB rock (loss)
Played six 4-round tournaments for a total of 24 rounds. only lost one match per tournament. Always ID'd the final round (but played it out anyway, thus allowing me to show all 24 rounds above with wins/losses).
Modern feels like it's in a great place right now but it's definitely different from before. Grixis DS and eldrazi have sculpted a new modern from the old jund/twin sculpted meta. It's slower, different cards are good, some previously good cards have become worse.
More than ever I feel like the sentiment of just jamming one deck over and over until you've completely mastered it is now the correct route to go for modern. Too often I've flitted around between decks because I have the luxury of a big modern collection, but I'm seeing the disadvantages of this now. Modern rewards reps and deck familiarity more than anything else, and up to a point, almost any deck is viable (I say up to a point, because certain strategies have a low ceiling and struggle against the tiered stuff).
All in all a good weekend. Exhausting but good. Came out with a couple of booster boxes of nice stuff for my troubles and had a good win ratio.
GR Ramp: 7
Grixis Shadow: 6
UWx Control: 5
BGx: 2
GWx Company: 2
Gx Tron: 2
Burn: 1
Affinity: 1
White weenie: 1
Storm: 1
Skred red: 1
Faeries: 1
Another interesting observation from the modern weekend is that there's zero BGx in the top 32 from SCG Modern Open Richmond.
UWRUWR Delver/Lynx TempoUWR-------UWRUWR Midrange GeistUWR-------UWRUWR Nahiri ControlUWR-------UWRUWR SaheeliUWR
BGRJund / Jund ShadowBGR-------BGWAbzan / Abzan ShadowBGW
Commander (Leviathan/MTGO): UWGeist of Saint TraftUW
The top decks at the moment to me are tron (traditional ones and eldrazi), valakut decks and grixis shadow. I think that the real problem of the format at the moment is the lack of good big mana hate
Time for a Back to Basics reprint?