I've been out of the Modern Loop for quite a while, but as a Vorthos I'll just say:
Finishing the Rivals of Ixalan Pro Tour using Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas was top-notch flavor. If anything the trophy should be reshaped to look like The Immortal Sun for what could be the most flavorful Modern PT win ever (or at the very least send a giant-sized version of the card with the trophy).
WOO the history of Lantern called out as starting on MTGSalvation! Kudos to Mark for the accuracy.
Really? That's awesome. So happy someone got it right on a big stage. It really validates the work done by all those brewers and tuners.
KCommand and Wear/Tear are great here against the Bridges, but Lantern is equipped to handle them. I'd love to see Mardu win this, both because it's a deck that doesn't get a lot of respect and because I really like Gerry T. Either way, the PT was awesome and I'll be citing it for a long time as a stark rebuttal to all the nonsense criticisms of Modern.
EDIT: Guess Gerry loses. Oh well. We thought Lantern might be a secret best deck, and Luis didn't disappoint.
PT as a whole was great.
While the final wasn't good, the semi final was nuts between Gerry and Pasco. Even Hollow One v Lantern was a good series.
Lantern winning makes me feel like BBE has a better chance of an unban, I'm certain they'd rather create a predator than have to consider bannings (not that a PT result would mark a deserved ban).
I doubt we'll see a ban now, but Lantern's popularity is going to massively increase after this. If it does turn out to be a secret best deck and/or causes tournament issues like Sensei's Divining Top did in legacy with lots of games going to time, it will be banned.
yeah, by looking the matches and the pt overall it's fairly obvious that modern it's in a grrat shape and no bannings are needed. thing is, lantern is miserable to play against and to watch... wotc might consider a ban for those reasons alone, though not likely.
loved the pt, we had all kind of decks, even midrange in the form of abzan, which put up horrible results outside reid.
hope this makes wotc give more love to modern as it has proven to be a lively, wild and skillful format
I could conceive ancient stirrings being considered for a ban as it helps many decks people complains about. It's about as powerful as any banned blue cantrip in those decks.
As a Lantern player, if something was going to get banned, this would be my top choice as I think the deck might be able to survive with one of the blue cantrips. Plus, it would screw over Tron, which is never a bad thing in my eyes.
No Abzan Company decks anywhere near top 8. Has this deck really fallen that far from it's highs of early 2017? I'm guessing all the creature-removal heavy decks are making Abzan Company nearly unplayable.
No Abzan Company decks anywhere near top 8. Has this deck really fallen that far from it's highs of early 2017? I'm guessing all the creature-removal heavy decks are making Abzan Company nearly unplayable.
Thoughts?
It's pretty mediocre really. It struggles against removal heavy decks which control is and it has an issue with decks like Death shadow which have creature removal, hand disruption and a quick clock. Really it's only great against midrange decks and other combo decks because it's faster, but storm is pretty much just as fast.
I could conceive ancient stirrings being considered for a ban as it helps many decks people complains about. It's about as powerful as any banned blue cantrip in those decks.
As a Lantern player, if something was going to get banned, this would be my top choice as I think the deck might be able to survive with one of the blue cantrips. Plus, it would screw over Tron, which is never a bad thing in my eyes.
That would be ridiculous collateral damage considering how many other pieces of the Lantern lock could be banned and leave the deck functional but not as good.
Very happy Lantern won. It's the risk of relying on creatures only as a win condition and control decks only packing answers for creatures. I remember the ancient says when control decks played disenchant maindeck.
I could conceive ancient stirrings being considered for a ban as it helps many decks people complains about. It's about as powerful as any banned blue cantrip in those decks.
As a Lantern player, if something was going to get banned, this would be my top choice as I think the deck might be able to survive with one of the blue cantrips. Plus, it would screw over Tron, which is never a bad thing in my eyes.
That would be ridiculous collateral damage considering how many other pieces of the Lantern lock could be banned and leave the deck functional but not as good.
What would you ban that would leave it functioning?
I look forward to seeing more Lantern mirrors at GPs.
Seriously though, what is a Lantern mirror like? Do you try to mill the other guy out as fast as possible?
Kind of. Whoever is able to establish a solid lock first usually wins.
I mean I too am looking at more amateurs who don't fully understand Lantern playing a deck that can very easily cause you to lose games from a single mistake
SHould result in a lot of easy wins for a lot of people.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks: UBG Lantern Control GBU BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
So now that the PT is over, we can pour over all the results and stats and really assess Modern. Lots of people were concerned the results would show the PT is bad for the game and will cause crazy bans. I actually don't think the PT had results that would suggest that.
There was no deck with over 10% share on day 1. Their slides showed Humans at 9.9% of day 2's meta share and 9.3% of day 1. Compare this to metas in the past where we've had 13% share decks or even PT RTR where we had 31% Jund on day 1. This percentage was MUCH better and indicates the format is very healthy.
The most popular deck is a relatively new deck in Modern, which even includes cards from Ixalan (Humans playing Kitesail Freebooter).
The most played deck got crushed in later rounds and the top 8. Both UR Thing In The Ice and Mardu destroyed Humans. Salvatto (thanks to his deck misconfiguration) ended up essentially winning 3 games against Humans in round 16. Evidently, the deck has inherent flaws and isn't straight busted. It put two copies into the top 8 and promptly lost in the quarters.
People are playing slightly different lists among the top decks (some Humans lists have CoCo, although none of those lists made top 8). These types of innovations are good for the game and show that we haven't solved things.
The top 8 most played decks on day 1 match the data MTGGoldfish has (ordering is different though). Evidently, the pros are still playing what the format has been playing. There are some changes to decks, but by and large, the format didn't have some break out deck that broke the format at the PT.
The top 8 itself was diverse. We had aggressive creature strategies all the way to as control as you can get. It wasn't like the last PT with 6 copies of Eldrazi, we had only one deck that was duplicated once. Some of the decks were ones we expected to be in the top 8, some weren't really on our radar.
Archetypes people thought were bad (Abzan) managed to top 8. Even Bogles had a 24 point deck (X-2), which really summarizes how open Modern is; Bogles is a deck people know about but usually discount and ignore.
Archetypes people had thrown away (UR Thing In The Ice) are back with a vengeance.
20% of the format was labelled as other, indicative that the format is pretty wide open.
No combo deck managed to top 8, so people complaining Storm is busted are just wrong. Storm had an 8-2 deck though, which was the best performing combo deck. 8-2 was good enough to top 8 with a strong draft performance, so it's not as if the deck performed poorly. But the fact it was one of the 8 most played decks and didn't top 8 suggests that it wasn't overly powerful.
Despite not top 8ing, Eldrazi Tron and UW Control both had 27 point decks. Just like Storm, indicative that the decks are both still good.
Even though the numbers support Humans being the breakout deck, it's best performance was only 22 points (X-2-1), indicative that it's perhaps not the best deck. It got smashed in the top 8 and the fact that each one of them had two losses at least suggests that the deck does have answers that people are packing.
BW Zombies had a 21 point deck, indicative that the format is wide open and anything can perform reasonably well. I don't think anyone would have guessed this in a million years, and yet it happened.
Blue control decks had a 73.8% conversion rate to day 2, meaning blue is still very healthy. Anyone asking for JTMS or Preordain to come off the banlist are probably wrong that blue needs help.
Combo underperformed by a decent amount. It's not entirely surprising to me, the PT probably has a higher than average amount of hate. In fact, one of the Humans lists is playing Kambal, Consul of Allocation. If combo does really poorly at GP Toronto and a couple other events, maybe we can start talking about it. Considering people were complaining it was too strong a few days ago, I think that means it's perfectly reasonable.
Considering both Abzan and Traverse Shadow (which is a GB base) top 8'd, I think it's safe to say the BG archetype isn't really dead like people suggest.
Of note among the top 8 players, Reid Duke top 8'd again with a BGx deck when people thought it wasn't that good in the format. This is either indicative of BGx being good still, or Reid being significantly better than his competition. At the PT, I suspect the former is more likely true, even if Reid is the current #2 ranked player and has a history of being good with BGx. I find it hard to believe he's that much better than other people.
Of note among the top 8 players, 3 of them are top 25 players. That's kind of the ratio I expect, so nothing unusual here.
The bottom line I see from all of this is that the format is completely open and completely healthy. 10% as the top deck is VERY GOOD for us. Last PT we had some decks at 13% (Affinity and Burn) which was during Eldrazi Summer; the top 8 stats were much worse, showing 6 Eldrazi variants and 2 Affinity lists. If we look back even further we have much worse stats, like Abzan at 28% of day 2 at PT FRF or Jund at 31% of PT RTR.
I think it's far too early to make any calls about the format, and I'd love to watch it play out at other events. I personally think no changes makes the most sense, and that's the ideal take away from the PT.
Lantern seems like an under-appreciated deck, but I don't expect it to rise that much given the nature of it. I also don't think it's super oppressive from my own experiences, and there are clearly very powerful sideboard options people have that they didn't bring (ala Shatterstorm). If you wanted to ban a card there, probably Ancient Stirrings makes the most sense (especially since people have been asking for that card). The games also went reasonably fast on camera, and while people obviously scooped early to it, even games where Luis played out the combo weren't that slow.
I look forward to seeing more Lantern mirrors at GPs.
Seriously though, what is a Lantern mirror like? Do you try to mill the other guy out as fast as possible?
Kind of. Whoever is able to establish a solid lock first usually wins.
I mean I too am looking at more amateurs who don't fully understand Lantern playing a deck that can very easily cause you to lose games from a single mistake
SHould result in a lot of easy wins for a lot of people.
Nah. I mean... if you are a control player you are used to the fact that a single mistake can cost you the game.
Just look at the control player vs the mardu pyromancer deck. He countered a discard spell with two cryptics in hand, allowing his opponent to resolve a bedlum reveler and win the game.
-7 different decks in top 8
-no deck over 10% of meta
-while some people may hate Lantern, not sure if anyone could have seen it winning. I'm not overly worried about it taking over a sI hear it's hard to play
I can't see them banning anything next week, but let's see. I'd like maybe more unbans but I think probably leaving the format alone is probbaly the correct decision
Darksteel, I was going to ignore it the first mention, but then you made it a second mention
Abzan IS a bad deck. It took the 2nd best player in the world to do well with it. He won 2 matches on camera that are 30/70s. The rest of the Abzan and BG Rock decks performed atrociously. I'm finding it frustrating that players say, "oh, well Reid Duke got top 8 with it. The deck of Abzan was greatly exaggerated." The deck was an AWFUL choice for anyone not ranked 2 in the world.
Traverse Shadow is much closer to a shadow deck than a rock deck. It's an aggro/combo deck.
I look forward to seeing more Lantern mirrors at GPs.
Seriously though, what is a Lantern mirror like? Do you try to mill the other guy out as fast as possible?
Whomever gets one kind of mill rock then pithing/mills the opponent off the other kind wins. Post-board a Leyline + pyxis/bell wins.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: -UBG Lantern Control-GW or RG or R Tron - G Stompy - C KCI Combo-
EDH: -UG Ezuri-UGZegana-BRMogis-WUBRGRamos-WBREdgar-URLocust God-WUBRBreya-BMacar-WUBrago-WEvra-
Darksteel, I was going to ignore it the first mention, but then you made it a second mention
Abzan IS a bad deck. It took the 2nd best player in the world to do well with it. He won 2 matches on camera that are 30/70s. The rest of the Abzan and BG Rock decks performed atrociously. I'm finding it frustrating that players say, "oh, well Reid Duke got top 8 with it. The deck of Abzan was greatly exaggerated." The deck was an AWFUL choice for anyone not ranked 2 in the world.
Traverse Shadow is much closer to a shadow deck than a rock deck. It's an aggro/combo deck.
Don't forget a lifetime of playing BGx in any format he can.
If you want to go that route, then Titan Breach/Shift performed awfully and it's a bad deck too. It had a 36% day 2 conversion rate, far lower than BGx. I definitely don't think either of us want to suggest that deck is bad, I know I still think it's a perfectly fine deck. We can read a lot into PT results, but we have to take everything with a grain of salt.
Abzan actually performed about even (the global convesion average is 63%, they had 6/10 decks convert). Considering most people thought it was a much worse deck, I'd say it outperformed expectations. If you consider all BGx archetypes (and even discount Traverse Shadow), they're only a little under average. Again, being under average isn't good but it's better than I think people expected. I agree that Reid is a great player, especially when it comes to BGx, but I don't think that alone is enough to turn it from a bad deck to a top 8 performance. There was another player who had 22 points with Abzan, the same amount of points in Modern Javier Dominguez and Pascal Vieren had.
I also don't know if I'd say Traverse Shadow isn't a rock deck, it plays a lot of the same shell as the BGx decks play. Sure, it's not quite the same and plays out somewhat like other Shadow decks, but it probably fits somewhere in the middle. It's definitely more grindy than Grixis Death's Shadow because of the lack of explosive openers with Thought Scour.
The whole point here is that people think BGx is in need of some serious love, but the PT results don't suggest it is. Abzan seems perfectly viable, it had a very reasonable showing.
Finishing the Rivals of Ixalan Pro Tour using Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas was top-notch flavor. If anything the trophy should be reshaped to look like The Immortal Sun for what could be the most flavorful Modern PT win ever (or at the very least send a giant-sized version of the card with the trophy).
PT as a whole was great.
While the final wasn't good, the semi final was nuts between Gerry and Pasco. Even Hollow One v Lantern was a good series.
Lantern winning makes me feel like BBE has a better chance of an unban, I'm certain they'd rather create a predator than have to consider bannings (not that a PT result would mark a deserved ban).
loved the pt, we had all kind of decks, even midrange in the form of abzan, which put up horrible results outside reid.
hope this makes wotc give more love to modern as it has proven to be a lively, wild and skillful format
PT was great, I really expected to be disappointed.
As a Lantern player, if something was going to get banned, this would be my top choice as I think the deck might be able to survive with one of the blue cantrips. Plus, it would screw over Tron, which is never a bad thing in my eyes.
Thoughts?
RWG Burn
GW Abzan Company
It's pretty mediocre really. It struggles against removal heavy decks which control is and it has an issue with decks like Death shadow which have creature removal, hand disruption and a quick clock. Really it's only great against midrange decks and other combo decks because it's faster, but storm is pretty much just as fast.
That would be ridiculous collateral damage considering how many other pieces of the Lantern lock could be banned and leave the deck functional but not as good.
What would you ban that would leave it functioning?
Spirits
Well, except for the fact that MaRo has already told us the actual card you're talking about is still coming..
The card is quite strong though, no argument from me there.
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Seriously though, what is a Lantern mirror like? Do you try to mill the other guy out as fast as possible?
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Kind of. Whoever is able to establish a solid lock first usually wins.
I mean I too am looking at more amateurs who don't fully understand Lantern playing a deck that can very easily cause you to lose games from a single mistake
SHould result in a lot of easy wins for a lot of people.
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
The bottom line I see from all of this is that the format is completely open and completely healthy. 10% as the top deck is VERY GOOD for us. Last PT we had some decks at 13% (Affinity and Burn) which was during Eldrazi Summer; the top 8 stats were much worse, showing 6 Eldrazi variants and 2 Affinity lists. If we look back even further we have much worse stats, like Abzan at 28% of day 2 at PT FRF or Jund at 31% of PT RTR.
I think it's far too early to make any calls about the format, and I'd love to watch it play out at other events. I personally think no changes makes the most sense, and that's the ideal take away from the PT.
Lantern seems like an under-appreciated deck, but I don't expect it to rise that much given the nature of it. I also don't think it's super oppressive from my own experiences, and there are clearly very powerful sideboard options people have that they didn't bring (ala Shatterstorm). If you wanted to ban a card there, probably Ancient Stirrings makes the most sense (especially since people have been asking for that card). The games also went reasonably fast on camera, and while people obviously scooped early to it, even games where Luis played out the combo weren't that slow.
Grixis Death's Shadow, Jund, UW Tron, Jeskai Control, Storm, Counters Company, Eldrazi Tron, Affinity, Living End, Infect, Merfolk, Dredge, Ad Nauseam, Amulet, Bogles, Eldrazi Tron, Mono U Tron, Lantern, Mardu Pyromancer
Nah. I mean... if you are a control player you are used to the fact that a single mistake can cost you the game.
Just look at the control player vs the mardu pyromancer deck. He countered a discard spell with two cryptics in hand, allowing his opponent to resolve a bedlum reveler and win the game.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
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Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
-7 different decks in top 8
-no deck over 10% of meta
-while some people may hate Lantern, not sure if anyone could have seen it winning. I'm not overly worried about it taking over a sI hear it's hard to play
I can't see them banning anything next week, but let's see. I'd like maybe more unbans but I think probably leaving the format alone is probbaly the correct decision
Abzan IS a bad deck. It took the 2nd best player in the world to do well with it. He won 2 matches on camera that are 30/70s. The rest of the Abzan and BG Rock decks performed atrociously. I'm finding it frustrating that players say, "oh, well Reid Duke got top 8 with it. The deck of Abzan was greatly exaggerated." The deck was an AWFUL choice for anyone not ranked 2 in the world.
Traverse Shadow is much closer to a shadow deck than a rock deck. It's an aggro/combo deck.
Whomever gets one kind of mill rock then pithing/mills the opponent off the other kind wins. Post-board a Leyline + pyxis/bell wins.
EDH: -UG Ezuri-UGZegana-BRMogis-WUBRGRamos-WBREdgar-URLocust God-WUBRBreya-BMacar-WUBrago-WEvra-
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
Don't forget a lifetime of playing BGx in any format he can.
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
G1 Witchbane Orb is huge as well. Lantern mirror is a snoozefest is what it is I've witnessed 3 these last months and all of them went to time.
Abzan actually performed about even (the global convesion average is 63%, they had 6/10 decks convert). Considering most people thought it was a much worse deck, I'd say it outperformed expectations. If you consider all BGx archetypes (and even discount Traverse Shadow), they're only a little under average. Again, being under average isn't good but it's better than I think people expected. I agree that Reid is a great player, especially when it comes to BGx, but I don't think that alone is enough to turn it from a bad deck to a top 8 performance. There was another player who had 22 points with Abzan, the same amount of points in Modern Javier Dominguez and Pascal Vieren had.
I also don't know if I'd say Traverse Shadow isn't a rock deck, it plays a lot of the same shell as the BGx decks play. Sure, it's not quite the same and plays out somewhat like other Shadow decks, but it probably fits somewhere in the middle. It's definitely more grindy than Grixis Death's Shadow because of the lack of explosive openers with Thought Scour.
The whole point here is that people think BGx is in need of some serious love, but the PT results don't suggest it is. Abzan seems perfectly viable, it had a very reasonable showing.
Grixis Death's Shadow, Jund, UW Tron, Jeskai Control, Storm, Counters Company, Eldrazi Tron, Affinity, Living End, Infect, Merfolk, Dredge, Ad Nauseam, Amulet, Bogles, Eldrazi Tron, Mono U Tron, Lantern, Mardu Pyromancer
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/approximate-win-percentages-for-the-best-modern-decks/
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.