People leaving out that dredge hate. I'm guilty of it, too
Dredge will spike one major tournament and then get harshly hated out again.
5C Humans is a solid deck, glad I got into it. I'm not really an aggro player by nature, but the disruptiveness makes it feel like more than just a solitaire creature deck. It feels like DnT and Merfolk rolled into one deck.
I doubt Humans stays tier 1, but I think I think it's going to be a very consistent tier 2 deck with the occasional meta shift of being tier 1.
Dredge is a rough matchup for humans, apparently.
Eldrazi Tron is down and not running 7 or 8 GY hate like it used to
Decks like Jund are ticking up, Jeskai is the top fair midrange deck, it's not surprising dredge is a good meta call
I used to play dredge before I got tired of the deck and moved on to eldrazi taxes, merfolk, and spirits. The deck is easy to hate out, but even when it does get hated out it can side in ways to deal with the hate, so it turns into a coin flip whether the other player gets their hate card online and if you get the card to answer it. If you get the card to answer the hate card the game is just over unless they race well. Honestly, it's a very degenerate deck type that is basically playing MtG Solitaire even when you have someone else at the table. Hate cards kind of break the monotony since they have to poke you to remind you they got a Rest in Peace or cage up. Then you shrug and blow up the thing or try to hope you draw into the answer. IMO Affinity, burn, and just about any deck is more interactive than freaking dredge.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Yeah, not too many decks really get to play magic against Dredge. It more often than not feels like someone got blown out.
Dredge doing its thing gives a lot of opportunity to just jam the solitaire game and get a ton of free wins though.
I need to accept I'm not really much of a combo or aggro player. I've played nearly every major deck in the format and really like the more interactive things. 5C Humans and Eldrazi Tron is as linear as I can handle.
Looks like Dredge caught players sleeping on their GY hate. What interests me is the utter lack of Storm performance in both the RPTQ and Modern Challenge. Not sure if this trend will continue, but it definitely piques my curiosity. Also of note is Infect making another top8 appearance, as well as the seeming disappearance of Eldrazi Tron.
EDIT: Ironically, Tron tends to main board Relic of Progenitus, and generally has a favorable matchup with Dredge. Could the fall of one be helping with the rise of the other? I don't know, but it seems possible.
Eldrazi decks in general are always going to be good so I wouldn't make any judgement calls based on what was seen. Despite what some people may feel, BFZ and especially Oath were really high powered sets. They just were extremely unwieldly sets when it came to standard thanks to having so many high cost cards and not a lot of good ways to ramp into them. It's the same situation right now with Ixalan: Carnage Tyrant, River's Rebuke, and Vraska, Relic Seeker are all powerful cards, but they are hindered by high mana costs. Well, that and outside of tyrant none of them have a shot in modern. They just have better equivalents already.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Great results and a great meta-game atm. I stand behind my stance towards modern for the last few months. Things are fine, people are adapting. A lot of decks are viable and we are at a good point. Maybe a storm ban will be required, maybe not, I think it is not that relevant.
What I have to say is that the rise of BW Taxes together with humans make the unbanning of SFM pretty unlikely.
Human tribal was an inevitable event for modern it was just a matter of how many sets and getting enough mana fixing to make it work. Wizards default template for creature types uses human as a base type since humans are generic to all settings and planes (or at least the majority of them). Adding a third land that can act as a cheap creature specific rainbow land with no downside was all it took since they had Ancient Ziggurat floating around in the bulk bins for ages. Humans is the only tribe I can think of right now that literally has every kind of spell effect stapled to them. They got creature destruction, bounce, exile, target discard, hatebears, tokens, etc. They even have protection from color creatures, unblockable creatures, etc. It's one of the most diverse tribes to have to shift through.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I know it's a team Open so the meta is different, but that's still a beautiful metagame.
Also, in this metagame, Energy decks in standard seem to have exactly 54% of the metagame. Now, talk about awful.
Even if the meta is different, I agree that the metagame looks great!
Yeah, I think GP Portland is an energy mess too. Hopefully this further pushes R&D away from the horrible design philosophy of the last 2-3 years and back to more of the generic answers and interactive cards that make Magic what it is. It also further drops the chances of a January unban; Wizards will probably dedicate more time to solving the mess of Standard.
Also, slightly unrelated, I was not thrilled to see Tom Ross added to play design. On the one hand, he knows many formats and is probably a solid add. On the other, he's one of the worst ban maniacs in the last few years, infamously predicting a Nahiri ban 6 months out from Nahiri's May 2016 debut. He had some other doozies too. This kind of bad judgment worries me, even if Tom isn't involved in R&D decisions.
No one talking about how storm needs a ban now? oh my
We're still tracking the deck's T3 win-rate which is currently around 12%. Storm ban talk is directly related to whether or not it is top-tier (it is) and whether or not it consistently wins pre-T4 (unclear, hence the tracking). I expect this will remain an open question until the PT.
Seems like each top 8 is bringing new surprises. Have to admit, my prediction of a blue downtrend (counterspell specifically) is way off, but kind of laughing about the dredge mirror for the finish of the one. Still those were the only copies in the top 32, so those two pilots made a good call.
Also, out of the next 16 Starcity games events, 13 of them contain Modern in some form: 8 out of them are straight Modern events and 5 contain Modern as a Std/Mod or as a Team Constructed Event.
Which is great, shows how popular is the format at the moment. Standard is thriving with Energy mirrors, and it's diversity is at its worst.
They said multiple times during coverage that they consider Modern to be the best format. It has also produced the most interesting gameplay throughout this event.
Legacy was all about lands, land mirrors, T1-2 Kills and some form of delver.
Standard was almost all about energy.
Modern had some diversity and we saw a lot of things happening, DS, burn, company decks, grixis control, eltradzi tron, jeskai, jund. A lot of interaction, combo was still there, aggro decks were still there (burn and affinity). Modern looked the best out of the three formats in this event.
Also, out of the next 16 Starcity games events, 13 of them contain Modern in some form: 8 out of them are straight Modern events and 5 contain Modern as a Std/Mod or as a Team Constructed Event.
Which is great, shows how popular is the format at the moment. Standard is thriving with Energy mirrors, and it's diversity is at its worst.
They said multiple times during coverage that they consider Modern to be the best format. It has also produced the most interesting gameplay throughout this event.
Legacy was all about lands, land mirrors, T1-2 Kills and some form of delver.
Standard was almost all about energy.
Modern had some diversity and we saw a lot of things happening, DS, burn, company decks, grixis control, eltradzi tron, jeskai, jund. A lot of interaction, combo was still there, aggro decks were still there (burn and affinity). Modern looked the best out of the three formats in this event.
What I'm really surprised about is there are no Death & Taxes decks that made day 2 in Legacy. I know it's inherently a skewed and weird metagame due to the team format, but the deck's good enough it's surprising to not see any. Maybe there was just an unusually high number of Lands players there.
Jeskai is undoubtedly tier 1---I didn't realize this was a question.
The deck is really good, and just very solid. I've witnessed Jeskai doing very well in multiple tournaments in a few stores on top of it. The deck will stay tier 1 as long as dredge and living end aren't around.
I still think Storm is at risk, especially since it can combo off very well through hate and disruption, but the meta is adjusting enough that it's not really that much of a problem.
Every deck I play just straight loses to Storm, which is vaguely irritating, but I don't mind. Just what I get for playing dumb ramp decks.
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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.
Well, that game 2 of the finals just now was very indicative of how storm can win through multiple discard spells and pressure. As I said before, I am also a bit on the "storm is probably too good" train but I will remain conservative on my prediction of a ban requirement until after the pro tour. As it stands, storm has been doing VERY well though in terms of results.
Titanshift is trending up, not down. It's happening right now as we speak.
Jeskai might be tier 1 popularity wise depending on how you look at things. It's 100% not tier 1 power wise. I've played it in different times, last one the other day on stream. It's a fun deck, a cool deck, and a not very good or powerful deck, ultimately. Eldrazi Tron and Titanshift utterly murder you in any game in which everything doesn't line up perfectly for you.
Do you have numbers to back up your claim that Titanshift is trending up? Anecdotal evidence doesn't count.
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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.
Standard continues to suck. Check out the horror of GP Portland and the Standard decks in the SCG Open and Cassic. What Modern-related implications do you think are in the pipeline? Is it a lack of strong answers? If so, better answers could filter into Modern after entering Standard. Is it a lack of color balance? Archetype diversity? I'm just curious how you think Wizards' R&D response to the *****show of Energy is going to play out for us. Thoughts?
Titanshift is trending up, not down. It's happening right now as we speak.
Jeskai might be tier 1 popularity wise depending on how you look at things. It's 100% not tier 1 power wise. I've played it in different times, last one the other day on stream. It's a fun deck, a cool deck, and a not very good or powerful deck, ultimately. Eldrazi Tron and Titanshift utterly murder you in any game in which everything doesn't line up perfectly for you.
Tiers are only a measure of popularity. In and of themselves they indicate nothing about powerlevel.
Titanshift is trending up, not down. It's happening right now as we speak.
Jeskai might be tier 1 popularity wise depending on how you look at things. It's 100% not tier 1 power wise. I've played it in different times, last one the other day on stream. It's a fun deck, a cool deck, and a not very good or powerful deck, ultimately. Eldrazi Tron and Titanshift utterly murder you in any game in which everything doesn't line up perfectly for you.
Tiers are only a measure of popularity. In and of themselves they indicate nothing about powerlevel.
This is sort of true. With few exceptions, the best decks in Modern tend to also be Tier 1 decks. By "best decks" I mean those with the best matchup spectrum against the most top-tier decks. This is less true now because we have so little data that it's hard to tell what decks are good/prevalent and metagame appropriately, but it was definitely true in most Modern eras.
Titanshift is trending up, not down. It's happening right now as we speak.
Jeskai might be tier 1 popularity wise depending on how you look at things. It's 100% not tier 1 power wise. I've played it in different times, last one the other day on stream. It's a fun deck, a cool deck, and a not very good or powerful deck, ultimately. Eldrazi Tron and Titanshift utterly murder you in any game in which everything doesn't line up perfectly for you.
You're very all over the place with your predictions and opinions, It doesn't feel like a lot of the things you say usually come to fruition.
I mean, wasn't it you who said we should just ban everything from the top five decks? I want to say it was about a month ago, maybe two. No offense, but that was a really absurd opinion. Modern hands down looked the best on camera today, and that's not just because we favor modern.
You also thought UW was hot *****, it really never did much outside of MTGO.
Jeskai is a flat out better choice, since burn and Geist turn the corner quick.
The deck is definitely tier 1. Yes, it's true the deck suffers from drawing the wrong half of the deck or not having answers line up, but it's literally just a blue version of good stuff deck, all fair decks have that issue.
Eldrazi Tron is trending down.
Titanshift is probably trending up because supposedly it has a decent matchup against Humans.
The meta is about to become very creature heavy with midrange and control popping up, and then a meta shift will take advantage of all the fair decks.
Dredge will spike one major tournament and then get harshly hated out again.
5C Humans is a solid deck, glad I got into it. I'm not really an aggro player by nature, but the disruptiveness makes it feel like more than just a solitaire creature deck. It feels like DnT and Merfolk rolled into one deck.
I doubt Humans stays tier 1, but I think I think it's going to be a very consistent tier 2 deck with the occasional meta shift of being tier 1.
Dredge is a rough matchup for humans, apparently.
Eldrazi Tron is down and not running 7 or 8 GY hate like it used to
Decks like Jund are ticking up, Jeskai is the top fair midrange deck, it's not surprising dredge is a good meta call
I don't think it'll last too long though
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Dredge doing its thing gives a lot of opportunity to just jam the solitaire game and get a ton of free wins though.
I need to accept I'm not really much of a combo or aggro player. I've played nearly every major deck in the format and really like the more interactive things. 5C Humans and Eldrazi Tron is as linear as I can handle.
EDIT: Ironically, Tron tends to main board Relic of Progenitus, and generally has a favorable matchup with Dredge. Could the fall of one be helping with the rise of the other? I don't know, but it seems possible.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
What I have to say is that the rise of BW Taxes together with humans make the unbanning of SFM pretty unlikely.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I know it's a team Open so the meta is different, but that's still a beautiful metagame.
Yeah, I think GP Portland is an energy mess too. Hopefully this further pushes R&D away from the horrible design philosophy of the last 2-3 years and back to more of the generic answers and interactive cards that make Magic what it is. It also further drops the chances of a January unban; Wizards will probably dedicate more time to solving the mess of Standard.
Also, slightly unrelated, I was not thrilled to see Tom Ross added to play design. On the one hand, he knows many formats and is probably a solid add. On the other, he's one of the worst ban maniacs in the last few years, infamously predicting a Nahiri ban 6 months out from Nahiri's May 2016 debut. He had some other doozies too. This kind of bad judgment worries me, even if Tom isn't involved in R&D decisions.
I foresee Humans being a long standing tier 2 deck in modern.
Not sure Humans would play SFM. The Avrabucks and 3 drop thalias would be cut if they really wanted to make that change
Batterskull would be very reliant on SFM to cast, which I don't love.
The person who suggested banning something from five of the top decks was absurd; thankfully it's not them who runs the format.
Its nice to just talk about the meta as a whole for once
We're still tracking the deck's T3 win-rate which is currently around 12%. Storm ban talk is directly related to whether or not it is top-tier (it is) and whether or not it consistently wins pre-T4 (unclear, hence the tracking). I expect this will remain an open question until the PT.
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sigpic.
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Legacy was all about lands, land mirrors, T1-2 Kills and some form of delver.
Standard was almost all about energy.
Modern had some diversity and we saw a lot of things happening, DS, burn, company decks, grixis control, eltradzi tron, jeskai, jund. A lot of interaction, combo was still there, aggro decks were still there (burn and affinity). Modern looked the best out of the three formats in this event.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
The deck is really good, and just very solid. I've witnessed Jeskai doing very well in multiple tournaments in a few stores on top of it. The deck will stay tier 1 as long as dredge and living end aren't around.
Every deck I play just straight loses to Storm, which is vaguely irritating, but I don't mind. Just what I get for playing dumb ramp decks.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
Do you have numbers to back up your claim that Titanshift is trending up? Anecdotal evidence doesn't count.
Tiers are only a measure of popularity. In and of themselves they indicate nothing about powerlevel.
This is sort of true. With few exceptions, the best decks in Modern tend to also be Tier 1 decks. By "best decks" I mean those with the best matchup spectrum against the most top-tier decks. This is less true now because we have so little data that it's hard to tell what decks are good/prevalent and metagame appropriately, but it was definitely true in most Modern eras.
You're very all over the place with your predictions and opinions, It doesn't feel like a lot of the things you say usually come to fruition.
I mean, wasn't it you who said we should just ban everything from the top five decks? I want to say it was about a month ago, maybe two. No offense, but that was a really absurd opinion. Modern hands down looked the best on camera today, and that's not just because we favor modern.
You also thought UW was hot *****, it really never did much outside of MTGO.
Jeskai is a flat out better choice, since burn and Geist turn the corner quick.
The deck is definitely tier 1. Yes, it's true the deck suffers from drawing the wrong half of the deck or not having answers line up, but it's literally just a blue version of good stuff deck, all fair decks have that issue.
Eldrazi Tron is trending down.
Titanshift is probably trending up because supposedly it has a decent matchup against Humans.
The meta is about to become very creature heavy with midrange and control popping up, and then a meta shift will take advantage of all the fair decks.