I still feel players have to jump through hoops just to do as well as midrange, combo and aggro. Not that this is me claiming blue is bad---it just takes more dedication than normal.
I just don't understand what the interactive players want. On the one hand, I constantly here stuff about how linear decks are not skill-testing Magic and skill doesn't matter. They then naturally follow-up by saying interactive decks are the opposite: skill-testing decks where play skill and choices do matter and you can pick up tiny edges for excellent play. This part makes sense to me and I think it reflects what most interactive players believe about their decks. As a player who prefers interactive strategies, I also want such a deck to exist and I want to play it.
On the other hand, and here's the part that makes zero sense, the interactive players are always complaining that their decks take TOO much skill to win and the matchups are too hard. As someone who played a lot of UW Control on MTGO, this is exactly my favorite part of playing the deck. Mistakes were highly unforgiving and I learned from them. You didn't have Brainstorm or FoW to fall back on in case something went wrong. You had to make extremely tight decisions and gameplay to come out on top, and I loved the feeling of eking out 45/55 or worse matchups. Many decisions were related to mulligans, correct deck configuration, and reading an opponent's turn 1 play. I would imagine other Spikey interactive players would enjoy the same feeling, but instead many of them constantly complain about that same experience.
I remain convinced that many interactive players just want the 50/50 Twin type back deck. They don't want bad matchups and they try to camouflage this by saying that their matchups should be as close to 50/50 across the board, not polarized in the 20/80 or 80/20 range. The implication is that the following two decks are equally fair and equally acceptable in a format:
These two theoretical decks and their theoretical matchup spectrums have the same average MWP across the board. But the range is totally different in practice and Deck A is almost definitely a better deck. This is particularly true because Deck A secretly has a ton of 70/30 matchups against random decks because it's so tuned. This typically polarizes the format towards a few top-tier decks that can battle against each other on even footing, with all the lower-tier stuff getting totally pushed out by some format beasts.
I believe there is a contingent of interactive players who want Deck A and view their success on such a deck as a testament to their skill and prowess on the archetype. In reality, this deck isn't actually highlighting their skill or lack of skill. The deck is just probably too good and everyone should probably be playing it. That deck also wouldn't require as much skill to pilot as many claim. It basically plays itself because it's so good in so many situations. If you want to play skill-testing, interactive Magic, Modern has decks for you. If you want a 50/50+ interactive deck that picks up random 70/30+ games against lower-tier decks, Modern will never have such a deck (competitive Magic as a whole probably won't for any sustained period of time) and you're requesting something that isn't aligned with format realities. It would be like combo players clamoring for a tiered Hypergenesis deck to get a proper explosive combo experience.
Oh, I'm perfectly happy with Jund. Traverse Shadow wasn't too bad to pilot though. I'm mainly referring to decks like Jeskai and UW. I mean, two weeks ago watching Jim Davis on Jeskai, it's like---holy crap, man, that looks insane. I don't know if its because the win con is so slow that the mistakes are so crippling. Then that matchup last week with UW Control v Affinity highlighted just how well things have to go, he needed some serious exact topdecks to matchup with his opponent.
It doesn't really have to do with wanting a 50/50, I'm not complaining about modern or unhappy with it. I just watch control players and think just how many hoops they have to jump through.
I'm perfectly happy with my midrange deck, BBE was a huge boon to me, personally. It doesn't mean I still think blue is in a perfect place. the UWx modern Facebook community seems to be lost about what the decks should even look like.
Also, Jund still isn't getting that many free wins. At the 1K I was at, I didn't receive any free wins, even with how powerful BBE was. Outside of an opponent keeping a very bad hand or getting mana screwed, games rarely feel easy.
I think my issue is that UW and Jeskai just don't have a good win con. Jace has been----lukewarm. Maybe SFM would fix this issue.
Jeskai Geist could actually turn the corner, and we were seeing some nice results with the deck, even with E-Tron players spoiling some of that success. Now blue players are forcing these slow win cons.
If SFM AND Jace end up being too good together, sure, reban SFM---but blue does't look promising to me, Sheridan. I know you're saying, "but the top 32!" I still think players are excited to crack a Jace shell, and I feel that we're going to see that enthusiasm drop off. Or not. I don't even truly know nowadays.
I think next year SFM should be the next shakeup. WOTC won't do it now obviously or anytime soon.
I mean aggro is SUPPOSED to beat control, so using UW vs Affinity as an example of how one needs some serious exact top decks to win seems a bit like of an "of course it does" type of situation. I know that it isn't the cleanest of examples since things like stony silence exist, but my overall point is Aggro > Control.
I personally feel the fact that control is doing as well as it is in such an open meta is impressive and indicates that they are in a healthy place. No deck has game against everything and some decks are going to take a long time to win. Some people enjoy the grind (Jim Davis being one of them). Personally control mirrors are especially yawn inducing, but some people enjoy it.
First, as someone who has played affinity and storm, any claims that those decks are easy to pilot are false. Affinity is a highly synergistic aggro/combo deck with a complicated decision tree. Storm isn't rocket science, but to become very good at sequencing and assembling unusual gifts piles for unusual situations requires significant practice. But that's how aggro and combo decks are. The entire point is to win before card advantage and removal grinds them out.
I've also played grixis delver, but I don't see that deck as being more complicated than affinity or storm. The decisions are different, sure, but not exponentially greater in number. "oh do I counter this or wait" and "do I hit that creature with removal or wait" aren't that different than decisions in jund, which I argue is as much of a control deck as anything.
I don't think any knowledgable player would say Affinity is easy, personally I think the deck is difficult to pilot well. It certainly has it's large chunk of free wins or easy hands were you dump everything---but it gets hard to play well when you play against removal heavy decks.
Jund is definitely way easier to pilot than decks like UW or Jeskai. I'd put Jund on the medium side of difficulty, or medium-easy.
I don't know how blue players do it in modern, it honestly looks too difficult in my eyes, probably because there's still a lack of a good win-con. Having Colonnade Beats, Gideon Jura and a Jace ult leave room for little forgiveness. The more I think about it, the more I'm curious to see how SFM really speeds things up for blue control decks. I'm not super high on Twin being unbanned, although maybe in 2 years the possibility of it can be revisited, although it's existence would probably just consolidate blue shells to look similar and play Jace in the sideboard.
[quote from="ktkenshinx »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/789239-the-state-of-modern-thread-b-r-10-02-18?comment=1439"]thats great that you like fighting for your wins, im in the same boat. however when their are options that are equally skill testing and occasionally picking up free wins; then that is simply the better path to success. its the entire reason people have picked up these explosive win cons.
I don't think anyone can say control doesn't get any free wins. It just doesn't have as many as some other decks. In exchange, you get to leverage play skill to normalize more (but not all) matchups closer to 50/50. You also get some common linear matchups that are much easier because you can shut down everything they do. That's the Spikey, competitive edge you get from playing a control deck. That's why we consistently see blue decks in the T8 and T16 of major events, even if some critics continuously dismiss those finishes as not representative of the format, not representative of their experience, flash in the pan anomalies, or not "real" wins because the events weren't competitive enough.
edit: reading your post im not sure you actually responded to anything i said. regardless i understand your crusade to stamp out complaints about the format.
Format complaints aren't the problem. There are legitimate Modern complaints which I don't try to shut down; you'll find many complaints I just don't engage with. The complaints I will always push back against are those that are rooted in cognitive dissonances and/or outright lies/misinterpretations of the format. This notion that control sucks is one of them. Another is that matches are determined by variance in large events. Another is that interactive decks must be high skill but then believing the decks require too much skill to win. Ban mania is another one, as are unreasonable unban suggestions. These are the kinds of claims I have always pushed back against and will continue to push back against so long as I play this format.
I think they should unban Second Sunrise. Eggs already exists with Scrap Trawler and the newer archetypes, even if Second Sunrise was included, doesn't rely on the non-deterministic loop of Second Sunrise/ Faith's Reward + Conjurer's Bauble anymore anyways.
While I understand that it's human nature to frame things to support one's belief and that's it's always tempting to use rhetoric, it's still annoying to constantly read negatively framed positions.
What I'm tired of reading about is the tired "free wins".
Some cards are good against some matchups. That's the point of playing them, isn't it? When a deck has cards that are good against a given deck and that deck pilot fails to sideboard or play properly against said card, it's not a free win. It's just wise deck building. I've watched a match this week-end where a multi-colors deck pilot chose to fetch shock land instead of basics and got locked out of his colors due to a blood moon. His opponent was ponza. It was not the first game. Fetching non-basics was just a plain greedy error.
What people call free win fall into one of the categories:
1. Early powerful cards. (Cranial plating for example)
2. Good sideboard cards. (Blood moon for example)
3. God hands. (Turn 3 Karn for example)
4. High-variance decks that can get an early win. (Let's say charbelcher, even though it's not played to any extent. Or reanimator.)
All of these are actually balanced plays. Affinity can fold to hate. Blood moon is entirely dead in some matchups and can be dead if played around smartly. Karn is a dead card if they don't assemble tron.
You don't like these cards? Fine. Just say it.
You think a card is unfair and should be banned? Fine. Just say it.
Stop talking about "Free wins." A win is a win whatever the turn it was decided, some decks are just inherently designed to be fast.
While I understand that it's human nature to frame things to support one's belief and that's it's always tempting to use rhetoric, it's still annoying to constantly read negatively framed positions.
What I'm tired of reading about is the tired "free wins".
Some cards are good against some matchups. That's the point of playing them, isn't it? When a deck has cards that are good against a given deck and that deck pilot fails to sideboard or play properly against said card, it's not a free win. It's just wise deck building. I've watched a match this week-end where a multi-colors deck pilot chose to fetch shock land instead of basics and got locked out of his colors due to a blood moon. His opponent was ponza. It was not the first game. Fetching non-basics was just a plain greedy error.
What people call free win fall into one of the categories:
1. Early powerful cards. (Cranial plating for example)
2. Good sideboard cards. (Blood moon for example)
3. God hands. (Turn 3 Karn for example)
4. High-variance decks that can get an early win. (Let's say charbelcher, even though it's not played to any extent. Or reanimator.)
All of these are actually balanced plays. Affinity can fold to hate. Blood moon is entirely dead in some matchups and can be dead if played around smartly. Karn is a dead card if they don't assemble tron.
You don't like these cards? Fine. Just say it.
You think a card is unfair and should be banned? Fine. Just say it.
Stop talking about "Free wins." A win is a win whatever the turn it was decided, some decks are just inherently designed to be fast.
“Free Wins” is just another one of those terms that’s been coined by Magic players that isn’t meant as a derogatory term or as some kind of a slam. I think to most, it simply means that a deck has an extremely good matchup that allows you to win without much mental energy. I've never seen that term as a bad word, just an easy way to understand that the deck has the potential for some easy wins sometimes.
It’s like fair deck vs unfair deck. To anyone outside the Magic community an “unfair” deck would sound like someone was cheating, but to most Magic players, they could give examples of an “unfair” deck. You could call Dredge an “unfair” deck, not because it’s unsportsmanlike, or cheating, but because it doesn’t cast creatures with mana and tries to generate threats via the graveyard and it attempts to make removal ineffective via graveyard recursion.
While I understand that it's human nature to frame things to support one's belief and that's it's always tempting to use rhetoric, it's still annoying to constantly read negatively framed positions.
What I'm tired of reading about is the tired "free wins".
Some cards are good against some matchups. That's the point of playing them, isn't it? When a deck has cards that are good against a given deck and that deck pilot fails to sideboard or play properly against said card, it's not a free win. It's just wise deck building. I've watched a match this week-end where a multi-colors deck pilot chose to fetch shock land instead of basics and got locked out of his colors due to a blood moon. His opponent was ponza. It was not the first game. Fetching non-basics was just a plain greedy error.
What people call free win fall into one of the categories:
1. Early powerful cards. (Cranial plating for example)
2. Good sideboard cards. (Blood moon for example)
3. God hands. (Turn 3 Karn for example)
4. High-variance decks that can get an early win. (Let's say charbelcher, even though it's not played to any extent. Or reanimator.)
All of these are actually balanced plays. Affinity can fold to hate. Blood moon is entirely dead in some matchups and can be dead if played around smartly. Karn is a dead card if they don't assemble tron.
You don't like these cards? Fine. Just say it.
You think a card is unfair and should be banned? Fine. Just say it.
Stop talking about "Free wins." A win is a win whatever the turn it was decided, some decks are just inherently designed to be fast.
+1. Free wins are better described as leveraging risk vs reward.
Let's look at legacy, where blue decks are very good. They tend to run delver of secrets, true-name nemesis, and/or deathrite shaman to do a lot of the work. Entreat the Angels isn't going to work without brainstorm and related cantrips, so we can cross that one off. Shaman gets calls for banning in legacy, so let's cross that off. True-name would be interesting, I've never put much thought into it. I will say that the "it has to be in standard" is something WOTC could make an exception for in any circumstance, so that argument alone doesn't convince me as the mothership could say "screw it, let's try something weird" and add TNN to the modern pool without a standard printing.
So we are left with three things: Delver, delve creatures, and SFM. One would have to be unbanned, and I have no issue with that happening. The others exist. I understand that we start to blur the line between control, tempo and aggro control by talking about turn 1 delver, or turn 3 tasigur with counter backup, but that's where we are. If you want those easier wins with control, it won't happen with a win con that you can't deploy with at least mana leak backup until turn six.
That's discounting combo finishes like UR Breach or Blue Scapeshift, and I think those are just as viable claims by the way. If the primary complaint is that control win cons are too slow, it is disingenuous to dismiss one-turn finishes. At that point you are placing restrictions on what a "control" deck is, in my opinion, to fit a narrative that supports certain unbans.
For the record, blue control decks do get free wins of Spreading Seas. The opponent suddenly can't make BB or two nonblues consistently and loses like three turns while waiting for a new land. Game is not technically lost on the spot since it's control's nature but starting your offense against a bunch of untapped lands and a full 7 is a mere formality.
Weren't we over the Twin ban like several pages ago? Lol at people pretending there's nonzero chances of it being unbanned. It would only take a single tournament between "Woot I can play Twin again!" and "good lord I've just remembered why we banned that damn thing, can't wait for the next B & R announcement".
I think you guys are missing the point of what 'free wins' means within the context of Modern. If you dont know what your opponent is on, or your deck run's few basics, and you get blood mooned after your second turn the game isnt 'over' but it could be.
Does that make Moon bad? Busted? OP? No. However within the context of that one game, its a 'free win'.
As pierrebai noted, that can be due to god hands, or overwhelming match up's, or side board blow out cards, or variance. The point is however that MOST great Modern decks have those, and Control, really does not.
That is one of the primary reasons, over a large even (not a 4-0 or 5-0 scale) Control struggles. Every game is a marathon, you have no 'free wins'.
Its not a shock that the control variant with the most top 16's last weekend was Blue Moon.
TNN should never ever be legal in modern. It is just another super stupid/unfun/toxic card to play against even in Legacy and Legacy has way better ways to deal with it either on the stack thanks to Pyroblast/FoW or via Toxic Deluge once it hits the board.
Well here's the thing...I'm not hearing any ideas. Like I said, apparently there is no way for a control deck to exist in modern without Twin, because everything else mentioned is somehow flawed. It's slow, or toxic, or not true control.
Well they still exist, I'm fairly happy with the power level of UWR/UW and I hope to see Esper get some success soon. I think its just a reality that those 'free wins' currently dont exist for control players, and across large events, it shows.
Free wins never exist for control. That's why every single new set in standard features a dozen websites posting articles reading "play aggro." Control decks thrive when the metagame is narrow enough that you can put together the best answers in a single deck along with some OP wincons. The closest to free wins is having force of will against belcher in legacy...that's sort of it.
I think they should unban Second Sunrise. Eggs already exists with Scrap Trawler and the newer archetypes, even if Second Sunrise was included, doesn't rely on the non-deterministic loop of Second Sunrise/ Faith's Reward + Conjurer's Bauble anymore anyways.
Do you actually think about what you post? Or do you just assemble random words from this thread together and make posts?
Public Mod Note
(Torpf):
Infraction for Flaming. Keep the discussions on the cards and not the players.
I think they should unban Second Sunrise. Eggs already exists with Scrap Trawler and the newer archetypes, even if Second Sunrise was included, doesn't rely on the non-deterministic loop of Second Sunrise/ Faith's Reward + Conjurer's Bauble anymore anyways.
Do you actually think about what you post? Or do you just assemble random words from this thread together and make posts?
Lol. wtf is this hostility
Anyways, Jace, the Mind Sculpter is unbanned and Second Sunrise being banned is strange imo. Also talk about GSZ and SFM makes Second Sunrise ban stupid. I get that the decks take long to execute, but like I said, the combo is very different now.
I seemed like the above conversation was coming to an end and Second Sunrise was on my mind. Then it became talk of TNN so I assumed the convo was done
I don't even remotely agree with this. If a UW player keeps a hand of Serum visions, Snapcaster, 2 paths and 3 lands against Traverse Shadow, that's game over from the opening 7. If your midrange opponent kept a hand full of removal and light on pressure and you're playing a deck with no good targets for removal, you're already at a huge advantage that will likely carry into a win just because you can spend all your time sculpting your draw while your opponent has to rely on the randomness of the top of their deck to keep up. What would a free win otherwise even look like in your deck that is purposely built not to be proactive in the early game?
I don't even remotely agree with this. If a UW player keeps a hand of Serum visions, Snapcaster, 2 paths and 3 lands against Traverse Shadow, that's game over from the opening 7. If your midrange opponent kept a hand full of removal and light on pressure and you're playing a deck with no good targets for removal, you're already at a huge advantage that will likely carry into a win just because you can spend all your time sculpting your draw while your opponent has to rely on the randomness of the top of their deck to keep up. What would a free win otherwise even look like in your deck that is purposely built not to be proactive in the early game?
“Free Wins” is just another one of those terms that’s been coined by Magic players that isn’t meant as a derogatory term or as some kind of a slam. I think to most, it simply means that a deck has an extremely good matchup that allows you to win without much mental energy. I've never seen that term as a bad word, just an easy way to understand that the deck has the potential for some easy wins sometimes.
I agree that it has that meaning, and other have chimed in to concur that they don't mean anything negative. Still, it seems to me that it gets used here regularly to mean unfair wins without much consideration to the other side of the coin. (Like I said: glass cannon, easy hate, correct play, dead cards.)
I guess I was venting about multiple consecutive posts all talking about free wins. Over-reaction on my part.
While I understand that it's human nature to frame things to support one's belief and that's it's always tempting to use rhetoric, it's still annoying to constantly read negatively framed positions.
What I'm tired of reading about is the tired "free wins".
i dont think anyone is claiming that free wins arent fair and shouldnt be allowed to happen. it also isnt something specific to matchups, a player making poor decisions, or any specific hate cards.
free wins refers to the events when a player initiates a game winning sequence that the other player has no hope of responding to. this could be because of how each decks strategy lines up with one another, or it could be a significant difference between the quality of each players draw.
blood moon is a salient example given how much its been showing up lately. if a player has the option to play around blood moon and doesnt, then the loss is their own fault - and thus isnt categorized as a free win.
however if a UW control player, who should have a good matchup against blood moon, starts with a hand with celestial colonnade and hallowed fountain and the opposing player opens with a turn 2 blood moon then the UW player simply has no recourse. they just lose on the spot.
or if a jund player draws the creature and removal portion of their deck and the opponent jams through the breach + emrakul, then thats it. the jund player had no hope.
these types of situations are a common occurrence, and its really just part of the game. if your opponent just has the stone nuts then you just roll over a die. this ties into our discussion on control decks because of the proactive versus reactive dichotomy. a player who is proactively and aggressively employing a strategy that is meant to win is more likely to encounter these situations than a player who is looking to react and try not to lose.
this is not to say that control decks never get free wins of their own. sometimes their responses just line up perfectly, and if the opponent doesnt peel out then they dont put up much of a fight.
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consider this example. imagine what a UW control players best starting hand looks like in game 1. then imagine the same for colorless eldrazi.
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the control player is probably looking like a couple lands, a few cheap spells, maybe a cantrip, and a powerful card to work towards like jace.
the colorless eldrazi player on the other hand is going to deploy a turn 1 chalice with simian spirit guide, a turn 2 TKS, and a turn 3 reality smasher.
which of these 2 is more likely to win without the opponent being able to mount a response? of course its the eldrazi player because they are actively employing a specific sequence regardless of what the opponent is doing and its simply the most efficient use of their cards.
so if both types of decks reward skillful play equally which side would you rather be on? you might be keen to point out that this is just the quality of some decks, and they were built to be fast. how its the control players own fault for choosing to build their deck in a certain way. youd be absolutely right. which is why people say its better to be proactive rather than reactive in this format. its the whole point of this discussion.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
At the end of the day, I look at it like this. Chalice of the Void is a card that can provide “Free Wins”. Yes, jamming a Chalice of the Void with X=1 might basically shut down another deck, but you still had to build a deck that can operate with Chalice of the Void set on 1. You had to sequence that Chalice out correctly. You had to decide that it was a card that was good against the meta. You had to decide to keep a hand with Chalice in it.
Just because you slammed Chalice on turn 2 and subsequently shut down your opponent, doesn’t mean that you didn’t have to make a series of choices leading up to that. It MIGHT, however, make the rest of the game quite trivial.
I'm so lost. Control by definition doesn't have "free wins" unless you're running a combo (Counter/Top, Blood moon, Twin, etc). Control runs like 1 wincon that costs 800 mana. Mana leaks don't hit for 3 a turn. The cards you play matter, control isn't running that sweet creature curve to win. It's like the definition that control doesn't get free wins. If it got "free wins" then it would be control/combo.
Also interactivity isn't the hallmark for a deck to leverage skill. How complex a deck is would help leverage skill like storm for example. The deck also can't be total garbage either.
Oh, I'm perfectly happy with Jund. Traverse Shadow wasn't too bad to pilot though. I'm mainly referring to decks like Jeskai and UW. I mean, two weeks ago watching Jim Davis on Jeskai, it's like---holy crap, man, that looks insane. I don't know if its because the win con is so slow that the mistakes are so crippling. Then that matchup last week with UW Control v Affinity highlighted just how well things have to go, he needed some serious exact topdecks to matchup with his opponent.
It doesn't really have to do with wanting a 50/50, I'm not complaining about modern or unhappy with it. I just watch control players and think just how many hoops they have to jump through.
I'm perfectly happy with my midrange deck, BBE was a huge boon to me, personally. It doesn't mean I still think blue is in a perfect place. the UWx modern Facebook community seems to be lost about what the decks should even look like.
I think my issue is that UW and Jeskai just don't have a good win con. Jace has been----lukewarm. Maybe SFM would fix this issue.
Jeskai Geist could actually turn the corner, and we were seeing some nice results with the deck, even with E-Tron players spoiling some of that success. Now blue players are forcing these slow win cons.
If SFM AND Jace end up being too good together, sure, reban SFM---but blue does't look promising to me, Sheridan. I know you're saying, "but the top 32!" I still think players are excited to crack a Jace shell, and I feel that we're going to see that enthusiasm drop off. Or not. I don't even truly know nowadays.
I think next year SFM should be the next shakeup. WOTC won't do it now obviously or anytime soon.
I personally feel the fact that control is doing as well as it is in such an open meta is impressive and indicates that they are in a healthy place. No deck has game against everything and some decks are going to take a long time to win. Some people enjoy the grind (Jim Davis being one of them). Personally control mirrors are especially yawn inducing, but some people enjoy it.
I've also played grixis delver, but I don't see that deck as being more complicated than affinity or storm. The decisions are different, sure, but not exponentially greater in number. "oh do I counter this or wait" and "do I hit that creature with removal or wait" aren't that different than decisions in jund, which I argue is as much of a control deck as anything.
Jund is definitely way easier to pilot than decks like UW or Jeskai. I'd put Jund on the medium side of difficulty, or medium-easy.
I don't know how blue players do it in modern, it honestly looks too difficult in my eyes, probably because there's still a lack of a good win-con. Having Colonnade Beats, Gideon Jura and a Jace ult leave room for little forgiveness. The more I think about it, the more I'm curious to see how SFM really speeds things up for blue control decks. I'm not super high on Twin being unbanned, although maybe in 2 years the possibility of it can be revisited, although it's existence would probably just consolidate blue shells to look similar and play Jace in the sideboard.
I don't think anyone can say control doesn't get any free wins. It just doesn't have as many as some other decks. In exchange, you get to leverage play skill to normalize more (but not all) matchups closer to 50/50. You also get some common linear matchups that are much easier because you can shut down everything they do. That's the Spikey, competitive edge you get from playing a control deck. That's why we consistently see blue decks in the T8 and T16 of major events, even if some critics continuously dismiss those finishes as not representative of the format, not representative of their experience, flash in the pan anomalies, or not "real" wins because the events weren't competitive enough.
Format complaints aren't the problem. There are legitimate Modern complaints which I don't try to shut down; you'll find many complaints I just don't engage with. The complaints I will always push back against are those that are rooted in cognitive dissonances and/or outright lies/misinterpretations of the format. This notion that control sucks is one of them. Another is that matches are determined by variance in large events. Another is that interactive decks must be high skill but then believing the decks require too much skill to win. Ban mania is another one, as are unreasonable unban suggestions. These are the kinds of claims I have always pushed back against and will continue to push back against so long as I play this format.
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
What I'm tired of reading about is the tired "free wins".
Some cards are good against some matchups. That's the point of playing them, isn't it? When a deck has cards that are good against a given deck and that deck pilot fails to sideboard or play properly against said card, it's not a free win. It's just wise deck building. I've watched a match this week-end where a multi-colors deck pilot chose to fetch shock land instead of basics and got locked out of his colors due to a blood moon. His opponent was ponza. It was not the first game. Fetching non-basics was just a plain greedy error.
What people call free win fall into one of the categories:
1. Early powerful cards. (Cranial plating for example)
2. Good sideboard cards. (Blood moon for example)
3. God hands. (Turn 3 Karn for example)
4. High-variance decks that can get an early win. (Let's say charbelcher, even though it's not played to any extent. Or reanimator.)
All of these are actually balanced plays. Affinity can fold to hate. Blood moon is entirely dead in some matchups and can be dead if played around smartly. Karn is a dead card if they don't assemble tron.
You don't like these cards? Fine. Just say it.
You think a card is unfair and should be banned? Fine. Just say it.
Stop talking about "Free wins." A win is a win whatever the turn it was decided, some decks are just inherently designed to be fast.
“Free Wins” is just another one of those terms that’s been coined by Magic players that isn’t meant as a derogatory term or as some kind of a slam. I think to most, it simply means that a deck has an extremely good matchup that allows you to win without much mental energy. I've never seen that term as a bad word, just an easy way to understand that the deck has the potential for some easy wins sometimes.
It’s like fair deck vs unfair deck. To anyone outside the Magic community an “unfair” deck would sound like someone was cheating, but to most Magic players, they could give examples of an “unfair” deck. You could call Dredge an “unfair” deck, not because it’s unsportsmanlike, or cheating, but because it doesn’t cast creatures with mana and tries to generate threats via the graveyard and it attempts to make removal ineffective via graveyard recursion.
+1. Free wins are better described as leveraging risk vs reward.
Let's look at legacy, where blue decks are very good. They tend to run delver of secrets, true-name nemesis, and/or deathrite shaman to do a lot of the work. Entreat the Angels isn't going to work without brainstorm and related cantrips, so we can cross that one off. Shaman gets calls for banning in legacy, so let's cross that off. True-name would be interesting, I've never put much thought into it. I will say that the "it has to be in standard" is something WOTC could make an exception for in any circumstance, so that argument alone doesn't convince me as the mothership could say "screw it, let's try something weird" and add TNN to the modern pool without a standard printing.
So we are left with three things: Delver, delve creatures, and SFM. One would have to be unbanned, and I have no issue with that happening. The others exist. I understand that we start to blur the line between control, tempo and aggro control by talking about turn 1 delver, or turn 3 tasigur with counter backup, but that's where we are. If you want those easier wins with control, it won't happen with a win con that you can't deploy with at least mana leak backup until turn six.
That's discounting combo finishes like UR Breach or Blue Scapeshift, and I think those are just as viable claims by the way. If the primary complaint is that control win cons are too slow, it is disingenuous to dismiss one-turn finishes. At that point you are placing restrictions on what a "control" deck is, in my opinion, to fit a narrative that supports certain unbans.
Weren't we over the Twin ban like several pages ago? Lol at people pretending there's nonzero chances of it being unbanned. It would only take a single tournament between "Woot I can play Twin again!" and "good lord I've just remembered why we banned that damn thing, can't wait for the next B & R announcement".
Does that make Moon bad? Busted? OP? No. However within the context of that one game, its a 'free win'.
As pierrebai noted, that can be due to god hands, or overwhelming match up's, or side board blow out cards, or variance. The point is however that MOST great Modern decks have those, and Control, really does not.
That is one of the primary reasons, over a large even (not a 4-0 or 5-0 scale) Control struggles. Every game is a marathon, you have no 'free wins'.
Its not a shock that the control variant with the most top 16's last weekend was Blue Moon.
Spirits
Well here's the thing...I'm not hearing any ideas. Like I said, apparently there is no way for a control deck to exist in modern without Twin, because everything else mentioned is somehow flawed. It's slow, or toxic, or not true control.
Spirits
Spirits
Do you actually think about what you post? Or do you just assemble random words from this thread together and make posts?
Lol. wtf is this hostility
Anyways, Jace, the Mind Sculpter is unbanned and Second Sunrise being banned is strange imo. Also talk about GSZ and SFM makes Second Sunrise ban stupid. I get that the decks take long to execute, but like I said, the combo is very different now.
I seemed like the above conversation was coming to an end and Second Sunrise was on my mind. Then it became talk of TNN so I assumed the convo was done
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
I don't even remotely agree with this. If a UW player keeps a hand of Serum visions, Snapcaster, 2 paths and 3 lands against Traverse Shadow, that's game over from the opening 7. If your midrange opponent kept a hand full of removal and light on pressure and you're playing a deck with no good targets for removal, you're already at a huge advantage that will likely carry into a win just because you can spend all your time sculpting your draw while your opponent has to rely on the randomness of the top of their deck to keep up. What would a free win otherwise even look like in your deck that is purposely built not to be proactive in the early game?
I agree. Every deck has free wins
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GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
I agree that it has that meaning, and other have chimed in to concur that they don't mean anything negative. Still, it seems to me that it gets used here regularly to mean unfair wins without much consideration to the other side of the coin. (Like I said: glass cannon, easy hate, correct play, dead cards.)
I guess I was venting about multiple consecutive posts all talking about free wins. Over-reaction on my part.
i dont think anyone is claiming that free wins arent fair and shouldnt be allowed to happen. it also isnt something specific to matchups, a player making poor decisions, or any specific hate cards.
free wins refers to the events when a player initiates a game winning sequence that the other player has no hope of responding to. this could be because of how each decks strategy lines up with one another, or it could be a significant difference between the quality of each players draw.
blood moon is a salient example given how much its been showing up lately. if a player has the option to play around blood moon and doesnt, then the loss is their own fault - and thus isnt categorized as a free win.
however if a UW control player, who should have a good matchup against blood moon, starts with a hand with celestial colonnade and hallowed fountain and the opposing player opens with a turn 2 blood moon then the UW player simply has no recourse. they just lose on the spot.
or if a jund player draws the creature and removal portion of their deck and the opponent jams through the breach + emrakul, then thats it. the jund player had no hope.
these types of situations are a common occurrence, and its really just part of the game. if your opponent just has the stone nuts then you just roll over a die. this ties into our discussion on control decks because of the proactive versus reactive dichotomy. a player who is proactively and aggressively employing a strategy that is meant to win is more likely to encounter these situations than a player who is looking to react and try not to lose.
this is not to say that control decks never get free wins of their own. sometimes their responses just line up perfectly, and if the opponent doesnt peel out then they dont put up much of a fight.
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consider this example. imagine what a UW control players best starting hand looks like in game 1. then imagine the same for colorless eldrazi.
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the control player is probably looking like a couple lands, a few cheap spells, maybe a cantrip, and a powerful card to work towards like jace.
the colorless eldrazi player on the other hand is going to deploy a turn 1 chalice with simian spirit guide, a turn 2 TKS, and a turn 3 reality smasher.
which of these 2 is more likely to win without the opponent being able to mount a response? of course its the eldrazi player because they are actively employing a specific sequence regardless of what the opponent is doing and its simply the most efficient use of their cards.
so if both types of decks reward skillful play equally which side would you rather be on? you might be keen to point out that this is just the quality of some decks, and they were built to be fast. how its the control players own fault for choosing to build their deck in a certain way. youd be absolutely right. which is why people say its better to be proactive rather than reactive in this format. its the whole point of this discussion.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Just because you slammed Chalice on turn 2 and subsequently shut down your opponent, doesn’t mean that you didn’t have to make a series of choices leading up to that. It MIGHT, however, make the rest of the game quite trivial.
Also interactivity isn't the hallmark for a deck to leverage skill. How complex a deck is would help leverage skill like storm for example. The deck also can't be total garbage either.
Bolts, Paths, Cerimonious Rejection, Stony Silence, Cryptics/Verdict in opening hand against Affinity
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GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]