There is no way around a Looting ban. The card is way too powerful.
People are packing a bunch of gy hate and dredge still has a 56% winrate. That is ridicolous
Much like my view of Probe, I find it ironic that a card which has been legal in Modern for nearly the entirety of the existence of the format, is suddenly broken. But nobody seems to address that the reason why it's "broken" is specifically due to newprintings that abuse free, uncounterable graveyard abilities.
I'd have to say one of the most frustrating things about the stronger modern players is how cheaply and quickly they can filter through their decks. I've posted about it before, but watching the volume of cards dredge and Phoenix get to see by turn four compared to most other decks is where I think the problem lies.
When a deck is digging 7-8+ cards deeper and hitting incremental advantage along the way at the same turn as its opponent then your initial plays don't have to carry as much weight in the match.
A 3/2 haste flyer isn't that threatening, it's not even really all that good even at 3 mana because the format can already drop mantis rider for the same clock. The issue with the deck imho is that it churns through 5-6 cards in library and never goes down on hand size while getting that Phoenix for free.
I'd love to run some midrange start, even something with a modest amount of discard/removal/etc. but there is a huge variance in cmc on what allows xerox decks to fire off and my 2 cmc single target kill spells.
To combat this, the format moves to cheaper sweepers, which can push small tribal decks out that don't have enough built in interaction to stymie or survive it (spirits and humans).
Unfortunately I don't think one ban will do anything and I don't even know of one card that can do anything. Opt is a fine card. Spell payoffs for 2 cmc like pyromancer or thing are fine cards. Manamorphose isn't doing anything inherently broken except letting you run essentially 56 card decks.
It's kind of head scratching to me. If anything even marginally stronger than any cog is reprinted, we're back at square one. Dunno of a clean answer.
I fear SFM won't have the impact you all are hoping for. Even a Turn 3 Batterskull won't prevent Phoenix, Dredge and Titan from doing their powerful and unfair stuff. Of course i would highly appreciate it if they finally unban SFM.
And i don't have a problem with Titan and Phoenix being around because both decks can be attacked quite well by fair decks like GDS or Golgari Rock. It's dredge once again that just stomps all those fair decks and creates this kind of *****ty metagame...
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern // Legacy // Pauper WUBRG
"Of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire."
Ah, I'm not seeing his posts anymore, SFM is not what I'm talking about.
Does SFM do a thing against
1. Tron?
2. Any deck with Push? (Kills both parts)
3. Any deck with Bolt?
4. Any deck that can kill an artifact?
5. Any deck that can clear the board (Terminus, Thing trigger?)
6. Any prison/lock deck?
Nope. Thinking SFM would apply any pressure at all to the 'winners meta' is questionable at best. I'm sure it would beat up on Zoo though, assuming you know they didnt bolt it. Suspension issued for trolling. --CavalryWolfPack
In a world with early game Karn, Primetime, Ugin and etc I don't see how Stoneforge is "too good"; I might be wrong but I just don't see it.
I also agree UR has way too many filtering cards. Phoenix decks play about 20 cards that draw/filter for free or 1 mana. mainboard, 24 if you wana count the flashback.
GP bilbão had 20 FL in the top 8. Thats 5 out ot 8 decks running 4 copies, just too much
Whether SFM belongs on the banlist and whether unbanning SFM would have any relevant impact on the winners' meta are two different questions. Too often people ask for an SFM unban because they want to play her and she looks silly behind bars, and people shoot them down because, truthfully, she wouldn't do anything against the top of the field. SFM unban wouldn't fix our problems, but she wouldn't create more.
Whether SFM belongs on the banlist and whether unbanning SFM would have any relevant impact on the winners' meta are two different questions. Too often people ask for an SFM unban because they want to play her and she looks silly behind bars, and people shoot them down because, truthfully, she wouldn't do anything against the top of the field. SFM unban wouldn't fix our problems, but she wouldn't create more.
I believe these two statements very firmly:
1) She should be unbanned.
2) She will have little to no meaningful impact on the format.
There is no way around a Looting ban. The card is way too powerful.
People are packing a bunch of gy hate and dredge still has a 56% winrate. That is ridicolous
Much like my view of Probe, I find it ironic that a card which has been legal in Modern for nearly the entirety of the existence of the format, is suddenly broken. But nobody seems to address that the reason why it's "broken" is specifically due to newprintings that abuse free, uncounterable graveyard abilities.
Eh, I disagree. It's card selection and graveyard feeding was always broken, at least for the mana costs involved, it's just that the card wasn't that much more powerful than it's costs.
Card selection being too powerful for it's costs is hard to detect, outside of that ones that are fair for their costs don't see much play, because the format is too fast for them and the decks they get put in have often been lacking in density of what the card selection tools can dig up, as well as the issue of cheating in paper magic. It's rare for decks that aren't highly reliant on specific cards or are doing something weird like a combo to play much card selection. Card selection has gotten better over time in the format as the number of viable powerful options in a lot of archetypes has grown, making it easier to dig to something that can do well against more consistent decks that had better card pools from earlier in the format.
Graveyard feeding being too powerful is hard to detect because basically only the stuff that is too powerful is played since the start of the format, because graveyard stuff itself wasn't that powerful. Having too strong of enablers means that when decent graveyard stuff is printed in sufficient mass, they start breaking things, even if they served as life-support beforehand, but it increases in power rapidly as more stuff gets printed that is format viable without the stronger than it should be feeding.
Faithless looting isn't too much over the edge, but I think it's enough so that I wouldn't blame the things it enables too easily. This doesn't means such things are automatically fair and it's the culprit, but I'd hesitate to automatically blame the things it enables, especially when most of their other enablers aren't nearly as early game or reliable, and don't see as much play in as many different decks.
The card selection in Faithless Looting is completely unusable for the majority of decks if they aren't abusing the graveyard. This is evidenced by literally no decks every playing this card who are not abusing the graveyard in some way. So the issue here is graveyard abuse, not Faithless Looting. And it will continue to be a problem as long as Wizards keeps printing things which abuse the grave yard, especially for free and uncounterable GY interactions like Chill and Phoenix.
She may have some impact against Dredge, maybe not a dominating impact, but spending one of the precious few anti-hate pieces on RIP may leave the door open for a Batterskull to slow the game down. Or the opposite, a Batterskull turned Trophy may be followed by a RIP. Could just be about not having enough answers opposed to how impactful the card actually is.
It's a fairly significant "if", I know, but "if" it forces Dredge to overload on anti-hate, then it could dilute them enough to drop a percent here or there.
I do still agree with many that think she doesn't fit in any current deck lists well.
I suppose we're just putting our heads down at the dinner table pretending daddy didn't just hit mommy....
Something like D&T could be just one Containment Priest-esque card away from being a T1 deck in the post-horizons meta game, which would arguably result in the effective policing of decks like Phoexix/Dredge. That's just one possibility once 250 new cards are infused into Modern. Let's not be prisoners of the moment, folks; the current meta will be just another blip on the Magic timeline once mid June rolls around.
So I got turn 3'd 3 matches in a row last night, even when I was able to remove or counter a thing. Was able to beat the Vengevine deck in games 2-3, but yeah... This is why I was doing so well with running 4x Disrupting Shoal and about 25 other 1-2 drop blue cards to counter anything my opponent did on turns 1 and 2. When it's not a T1 looting or goblin guide it's usually a Thoughtseize or Inquisition, all of which I'm happy to counter by removing 2 cards from my hand. Looting is basically a draw 4 for GY decks, stirrings doesn't really bother me much honestly, but I still don't think banning them is the best answer. It does seem pretty wrong for red decks to be better at drawing / "setting up" than blue decks, which is why Modern just keeps pushing me towards Legacy every time I play. So many games come down to my desperation opt or serum visions and instead of playing "control" I am playing "luck". I tried Dredge, I was winning, but I hated it, and I was also running into an insane amount of main deck GY hate. This is all based on the online meta which seems to be extremely unforgiving, faster evolving and more extreme compared to paper.
Edit: I still usually manage to go at least 3-2, but sometimes I just go 0-3 and drop.
Something like D&T could be just one Containment Priest-esque card away from being a T1 deck in the post-horizons meta game, which would arguably result in the effective policing of decks like Phoexix/Dredge. That's just one possibility once 250 new cards are infused into Modern. Let's not be prisoners of the moment, folks; the current meta will be just another blip on the Magic timeline once mid June rolls around.
Xerox vs Prison. I certainly hope Horizon's lands like a meteor on this meta. Its one of the only solutions that is imo tenable.
Yes WOTC keeps printing graveyard and pushing it and yes looting has been arround for as long as thalia GoT, but those new interactions are the one hurting everything. It's not a fluke more than half of top 8 decks were running the card. WOTC has poorly designed interactions with modern in mind, for sure. but now its done and something has to be done to adress it. We are running mainboard hate against those decks and they still keep winning. Looting itself isnt a broken card, WOTC just keep printing interactions that break it
The card selection in Faithless Looting is completely unusable for the majority of decks if they aren't abusing the graveyard. This is evidenced by literally no decks every playing this card who are not abusing the graveyard in some way. So the issue here is graveyard abuse, not Faithless Looting. And it will continue to be a problem as long as Wizards keeps printing things which abuse the grave yard, especially for free and uncounterable GY interactions like Chill and Phoenix.
If it was really that graveyard focused, I feel like we'd see cards like Tome Scour or Thought Scour targeting yourself would see some play in the same sort of decks. I mean, I've seen that with Thought Scour, but not as often as I'd think if the graveyard aspect was the only thing making FL see the play it does. I think it's the combination of card selection, graveyard feeding and flashback that puts it over the edge. It's not good enough at card selection to really see play outside of graveyard stuff, partly because it's net negative cards during the initial cast from the hand, but with graveyard play, it's almost like card selection for the graveyard too, since you are picking not just from your top cards but also from your hand.
Thought Scour targeting yourself would see some play in the same sort of decks. I mean, I've seen that with Thought Scour, but not as often as I'd think if the graveyard aspect was the only thing making FL see the play it does.
Thought Scour is a 4x staple of both Phoenix and GDS, decks which use the card for its benefit to the graveyard. Dredge doesn't play it because they don't/can't reliably make blue mana to actually cast it. If they could cast it, they absolutely would. It puts two things into the GY and draws AFTERWARDS, meaning you could hit a Dredger off the first two, and then Dredge with your draw.
Alot of these arguments for Looting are similar to Vengevine and Survival in Legacy. Wotc won't stop printing Phoenix, chills etc so the best cause of action is to simply ban looting
Thought Scour targeting yourself would see some play in the same sort of decks. I mean, I've seen that with Thought Scour, but not as often as I'd think if the graveyard aspect was the only thing making FL see the play it does.
Thought Scour is a 4x staple of both Phoenix and GDS, decks which use the card for its benefit to the graveyard. Dredge doesn't play it because they don't/can't reliably make blue mana to actually cast it. If they could cast it, they absolutely would. It puts two things into the GY and draws AFTERWARDS, meaning you could hit a Dredger off the first two, and then Dredge with your draw.
Nevermind then, I've just not been thinking clearly I guess since I have a cold.
There is no way around a Looting ban. The card is way too powerful.
People are packing a bunch of gy hate and dredge still has a 56% winrate. That is ridicolous
Much like my view of Probe, I find it ironic that a card which has been legal in Modern for nearly the entirety of the existence of the format, is suddenly broken. But nobody seems to address that the reason why it's "broken" is specifically due to newprintings that abuse free, uncounterable graveyard abilities.
I 2/3rds agree with you. I agree it's similar to Probe (which I felt shouldn't have been banned). I agree that Lootings has been fine for ever. But I disagree that it's simply because of new printings. New printings have made those decks more popular, but the real issue in my mind is that the format lacks general answers to those strategies which can be deployed by almost any deck.
People are packing a bunch of gy hate and dredge still has a 56% winrate. That is ridicolous
Much like my view of Probe, I find it ironic that a card which has been legal in Modern for nearly the entirety of the existence of the format, is suddenly broken. But nobody seems to address that the reason why it's "broken" is specifically due to new printings that abuse free, uncounterable graveyard abilities.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Serious inquiry: is this an ironic statement? Or do you believe this?
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
When a deck is digging 7-8+ cards deeper and hitting incremental advantage along the way at the same turn as its opponent then your initial plays don't have to carry as much weight in the match.
A 3/2 haste flyer isn't that threatening, it's not even really all that good even at 3 mana because the format can already drop mantis rider for the same clock. The issue with the deck imho is that it churns through 5-6 cards in library and never goes down on hand size while getting that Phoenix for free.
I'd love to run some midrange start, even something with a modest amount of discard/removal/etc. but there is a huge variance in cmc on what allows xerox decks to fire off and my 2 cmc single target kill spells.
To combat this, the format moves to cheaper sweepers, which can push small tribal decks out that don't have enough built in interaction to stymie or survive it (spirits and humans).
Unfortunately I don't think one ban will do anything and I don't even know of one card that can do anything. Opt is a fine card. Spell payoffs for 2 cmc like pyromancer or thing are fine cards. Manamorphose isn't doing anything inherently broken except letting you run essentially 56 card decks.
It's kind of head scratching to me. If anything even marginally stronger than any cog is reprinted, we're back at square one. Dunno of a clean answer.
IT IS INSANE RESULT.
BGUSultai Shadow
BURGrixis Shadow
BGUSultai midrange
BRWMardu Pyromancer
BGRJund
A ban of looting, would REQUIRE a ban on Stirrings, which would then REQUIRE a ban on Terminus.
It will not happen, when a simple unban is all that is required to start to apply pressure on these proactive decks.
Also, I just wanted to put this out as a combined list.
Tampa
Phoenix
Phoenix
Phoenix
Phoenix
Tron
Lantern
Bogles
GDS
Bilbo
Phoenix
Phoenix
Dredge
Dredge
Dredge
Shadow Zoo
Whir
Titanshift
SCG
Izzet Phoenix
Izzet Phoenix
Dredge
Amulet Titan
Amulet Titan
Golgari Midrange
Hollow One
Mono-Green Tron
Combined Top 8 Percentages for the weekend of the 16th.
Phoenix - 8 - 33%
Dredge - 4 - 16%
Amulet - 2 - 8%
Tron - 2 - 8%
Shift - 1 - 4%
Hollow One - 1 - 4%
Rock - 1 - 4%
Whir - 1 - 4%
Lantern - 1 - 4%
GDS - 1 - 4%
Shadow Zoo - 1 - 4%
Bogles - 1 - 4%
Truly, the most impressive display I've seen.
Spirits
I fear SFM won't have the impact you all are hoping for. Even a Turn 3 Batterskull won't prevent Phoenix, Dredge and Titan from doing their powerful and unfair stuff. Of course i would highly appreciate it if they finally unban SFM.
And i don't have a problem with Titan and Phoenix being around because both decks can be attacked quite well by fair decks like GDS or Golgari Rock. It's dredge once again that just stomps all those fair decks and creates this kind of *****ty metagame...
Modern // Legacy // Pauper
WUBRG
"Of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire."
Does SFM do a thing against
1. Tron?
2. Any deck with Push? (Kills both parts)
3. Any deck with Bolt?
4. Any deck that can kill an artifact?
5. Any deck that can clear the board (Terminus, Thing trigger?)
6. Any prison/lock deck?
Nope. Thinking SFM would apply any pressure at all to the 'winners meta' is questionable at best. I'm sure it would beat up on Zoo though, assuming you know they didnt bolt it.
Suspension issued for trolling. --CavalryWolfPack
Spirits
I also agree UR has way too many filtering cards. Phoenix decks play about 20 cards that draw/filter for free or 1 mana. mainboard, 24 if you wana count the flashback.
GP bilbão had 20 FL in the top 8. Thats 5 out ot 8 decks running 4 copies, just too much
Spirits
Titan is a very tough matchup for the Rock, so that's simply not true.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
I believe these two statements very firmly:
1) She should be unbanned.
2) She will have little to no meaningful impact on the format.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Eh, I disagree. It's card selection and graveyard feeding was always broken, at least for the mana costs involved, it's just that the card wasn't that much more powerful than it's costs.
Card selection being too powerful for it's costs is hard to detect, outside of that ones that are fair for their costs don't see much play, because the format is too fast for them and the decks they get put in have often been lacking in density of what the card selection tools can dig up, as well as the issue of cheating in paper magic. It's rare for decks that aren't highly reliant on specific cards or are doing something weird like a combo to play much card selection. Card selection has gotten better over time in the format as the number of viable powerful options in a lot of archetypes has grown, making it easier to dig to something that can do well against more consistent decks that had better card pools from earlier in the format.
Graveyard feeding being too powerful is hard to detect because basically only the stuff that is too powerful is played since the start of the format, because graveyard stuff itself wasn't that powerful. Having too strong of enablers means that when decent graveyard stuff is printed in sufficient mass, they start breaking things, even if they served as life-support beforehand, but it increases in power rapidly as more stuff gets printed that is format viable without the stronger than it should be feeding.
Faithless looting isn't too much over the edge, but I think it's enough so that I wouldn't blame the things it enables too easily. This doesn't means such things are automatically fair and it's the culprit, but I'd hesitate to automatically blame the things it enables, especially when most of their other enablers aren't nearly as early game or reliable, and don't see as much play in as many different decks.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
It's a fairly significant "if", I know, but "if" it forces Dredge to overload on anti-hate, then it could dilute them enough to drop a percent here or there.
I do still agree with many that think she doesn't fit in any current deck lists well.
"Reveal a Dragon"
Something like D&T could be just one Containment Priest-esque card away from being a T1 deck in the post-horizons meta game, which would arguably result in the effective policing of decks like Phoexix/Dredge. That's just one possibility once 250 new cards are infused into Modern. Let's not be prisoners of the moment, folks; the current meta will be just another blip on the Magic timeline once mid June rolls around.
Link to Discord server where anybody from MTGS can keep up with thread topics while everything is being sorted out with the new site.
Edit: I still usually manage to go at least 3-2, but sometimes I just go 0-3 and drop.
It absolutely is, and its far far closer to the meta one expects to see at the GP level, than the LGS level.
Xerox vs Prison. I certainly hope Horizon's lands like a meteor on this meta. Its one of the only solutions that is imo tenable.
Spirits
If it was really that graveyard focused, I feel like we'd see cards like Tome Scour or Thought Scour targeting yourself would see some play in the same sort of decks. I mean, I've seen that with Thought Scour, but not as often as I'd think if the graveyard aspect was the only thing making FL see the play it does. I think it's the combination of card selection, graveyard feeding and flashback that puts it over the edge. It's not good enough at card selection to really see play outside of graveyard stuff, partly because it's net negative cards during the initial cast from the hand, but with graveyard play, it's almost like card selection for the graveyard too, since you are picking not just from your top cards but also from your hand.
Thought Scour is a 4x staple of both Phoenix and GDS, decks which use the card for its benefit to the graveyard. Dredge doesn't play it because they don't/can't reliably make blue mana to actually cast it. If they could cast it, they absolutely would. It puts two things into the GY and draws AFTERWARDS, meaning you could hit a Dredger off the first two, and then Dredge with your draw.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Nevermind then, I've just not been thinking clearly I guess since I have a cold.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero