The meta in Modern is hostile to Elves. I have tried the deck since Beck was printed and just hated it. Beck costing 2 mana hurts, bolt hurts, not having Glimpse hurts but most of all, turn 3 sweepers hurt.
Elves I doubt are coming back. If you want to play Elves, play the version with Gaea's Cradle.
Turn 3 sweepers wouldnt be a problem with Glimpse. Your elves are usually out of range by turn 3, again, playing with glimpse.
I agree beck is not a good replacement. Slows the deck down way too much.
On the topic of JTMS: I think unbanning him in Modern would be a very bad idea. Not because of his powerlevel, but the financial aspect. How much I would like to see control perform in Modern with his help (and I dont think he would be as dominant as he was during Standard), a twohundred dollar piece of cardboard is not desirable for Modern.
Since when did Tarmogoyf not exist in Modern? Pricing should never become an issue when it comes to balance, especially when they are cards that Wizards can(and will) reprint if needed.(See: the death of Legacy)
So here's how I see the banned list going over the next 1-3 announcements:
"Guaranteed" unbans(I put quotes around guaranteed because despite how likely something is, Wizards has full discretion to mess it up): GGT, BBE
Possible unbans: SoM, AV, Preordain, Seething Song(see possible bans)
Very unlikely unbans: Mox, GSZ, JTMS, Ponder, Jitte
Dead forever: everything else
Possible Bans:
Splinter Twin - Wizards has demonstrated they greatly dislike "oops I win" cards with no setup and little countermeasure. The fact that you can't even tap down to 1 against twin past turn 2 they find extremely unhealthy. And twin has shown a tendency to have a decent turn3 winrate. Bannning any other card out of the deck won't solve what wizards dislikes about it, which is the instant win out of nowhere, so even they aren't dumb enough to try and pull a "ban pestermite so the deck doesn't die, just gets worse" thing.
Grapeshot - Storm is in the sights again. Still putting up enough turn3 wins to be called 'consistent' depending on Wizards' metric of consistency. They can only ban incidental (and fair) rituals and cantrips for so long until they finally address the real problem. Even if it just forced storm into EtW as their main plan, that is either a turn slower or is less consistent(because they need to commit deckslots to bushwhackers) and is way more interactive because of instant-speed board clears and blockers+removal(which is sometimes enough if they only got a medium-sized storm). Not counting edge cases like Rakdos Charm and Soul Sisters. Also takes away storm's "clear the board with grapeshot 1 because I can't win yet, and try and stall for grapeshot 2" planB.
Pod - I highly doubt this myself, but if enough people complain about it long enough, Wizards has been known to cave under pressure. Slow, fair, highly interactive, the definition of a setup card(the opposite of 'oops i win.' I don't know how this could be unfair. There's so much artifact hate in the format for affinity already, so many ways to stop decksearching or take advantage of it, and so many things that exile creatures and remove from yard.
Snapcaster - See: Pod(the except for the artifact and decksearching parts)
I think that's everything. And I don't think any of that is unreasonable(though I'm sure there's plenty of people who will disagree with me). Hopefully Wizards sees that their last announcement was good(repealing pointless bans, and banning the actual problem cards), and continues to do that instead of just resting on their laurels.
They banned DRS in order to allow graveyard based strategies to be an option. The problem I see is that most of these decks were an option already. Melira-pod, Splinter-Twin and UWR were already played frequently before the banning and now that witness,finks, redcap and snapcaster only have scavenging ooze to worry about they obviously perform even better than previously. The only deck that has had a huge resurgence thanks to banning DRS is Storm. Now I guess some think it's fun to play non-interactive magic, but I really do think modern needs decks like jund to keep the most played combo decks from going rampant. Attrition based decks are the decks that are able to balance the meta, with only combo and aggro decks around there is no decks that have room to pack the hate cards that can balance the metagame. Where you previously had jund and BGw that could bring a hatepackage in the sideboard or even main to hose the most played decks, a lot fewer are playing these decks now and those that do all notice the lack of DRS reduces most matchups to less than 50% game 1, making it very hard to perform well in large tournaments. If BGw was a thing then you would have decks that could sideboarddrown in sorrow, Path to Exile,aven mindcensor, stony silence, abrupt decay, torpor orb, zealous persecution, Voice of Resurgence, etc, cards that could seriously hose pod, twin and affinity. With DRS gone, the manabase of BGw was also destroyed. As there's no green/black alternative to Blackcleave Cliffs, it's impossible to build a manabase that can consistently support Voice turn two followed by Liliana turn 3.
I would have thought Goryo's Vengeancewould become big, but inconsistent decks will never be really great anyway, even if they do broken things. Aggro Loam and other graveyard decks haven't really been able to perform as splinter twin, affinity and melira-pod are just too strong right now. Whatever neat stuff you're trying to do, those decks will do it faster and more consistent and at the same time play better cards than you. With Melira-pod so strong, Zoo will never get to shine either as the matchup is just extremely good for melira-pod. Zoo also seems to perform a lot worse than Affinity anyway though, even though pretty much everyone has a lot of sideboard cards specifically for affinity. Cranial Plating is a broken card and should probably be banned if they want other aggressive strategies to be viable.
People think that we should wait until the meta shifts, but I don't really see how it will. Tron sure has a good matchup vs melira-pod, but such a horrible matchup against decks that run counters and is such a bore to play anyway that I have a hard time seeing a big shift in that direction, though more will probably pick it up. Unbanning wild nacatl and bitterblossom was definetly a good move, as some decks have become viable at least on FNM-level, but banning DRS without printing a decent replacement at least was not a good move in my opinion. We will see in the next GP, but I wouldn't be too surprised if even more end up picking up pod, twin and affinity, as the decks that are supposed to beat them, just don't do that anymore or can't really beat anything else.
Yes, can we please start talking about cards that can be unbanned that would help out control? What are the current thoughts on Jace? Or Stoneforge? I know P&P can't come off with all the Twin currently, along with Storm apparently back from the dead. Top is banned for time reasons, so I doubt it'll come out. And I don't believe AV is safe to come off, but that is because I believe it could make Twin too consistent as well.
I made the case for Chrome Mox in this post. Unlikely choice, but Valakut was completely unexpected as well.
Looking back, SSG is not actually that good with Twin because Twin needs the mana over two turns. However, the recent Twin list with mana dorks from GP Richmond didn't break the format, so I still think Mox could be OK.
SFM is completely out of the question because it goes into any fair deck with white (UWR Midrange, Zoo). No matter how much it could help control, the effect would be overshadowed by all the other non-control decks picking it up.
Some of you may remember my team did some (sadly, limited) testing of possible unbans, testing which managed to predict with some accuracy what would happen given their January unbans (Bitterblossom would be too weak to perform in modern, and Nacatl would be strong enough, but still a safe unban). That testing, which we've done a bit more of, says the following about possible unbans:
Golgari Grave-Troll is the safest unban you can get. It's absolutely unplayable in its historic decks, and no current deck wants it. We got some decent results with a Goryo's Vengeance reanimator deck using a dredge engine to draw, but it was still unimpressive, and if it were modern legal the results we got were not good enough for me to pursue the deck further.
Ancestral Vision is a safe unban. It's not unplayable like Grave-Troll, and indeed I found it to be quite strong, but it's not banworthy. We got solid results with it in UW/X control (esper and UWR), and it would certainly be worth playing there, but the results still weren't amazing enough to make the deck too dominant. We also did some limited U/B faeries testing with it, but still didn't get strong enough results for us to worry about it. I'm going to say this explicitly: I don't believer faeries is a good deck in modern. It's playable now, and might be decent with Ancestral Vision, but unless we missed a major card choice that significantly ups its power level, Faeries will not be tier 1.
Bloodbraid Elf is probably a safe unban. We got some scary results with Jund (a little bit better than our testing with Nacatl), but it didn't feel particularly broken. The most notable thing was that it had a quite poor matchup against UWR and especially UWR twin, which suggests that there's a fundamental check on the power of Jund in the format with Deathrite Shaman gone. I'd definitely want to see more testing of this card before I felt comfortable unbanning it, were I the DCI, but it's certainly not inherently dangerous.
Seething Song is debatable. We tried storm with seething song, and found it to be quite powerful, probably powerful enough to make it a recurring contender in the format. However, we found a 15% turn-3 goldfish rate so far, and this was done against our standard modern gauntlet with no sideboard changes. Given that it performed well but not incredibly well (worse, for instance, than zoo with Nacatl did during our testing), it would probably only mean people would have to devote more sideboard hate to storm. From a format dominance and enjoyability perspective, Seething Song is not a threat. From a turn-4 rule perspective, it could be in violation, but I don't think it has a high enough percentage. It's also worth noting that I am a longtime storm combo player, as are two other members of my team, which in my opinion gives this testing more credence (we're less likely to misplay a storm deck).
Sword of the Meek is NOT a safe unban. Dear god is this not a safe unban. The combo is so good, a control shell that can consistently get it out by turn 4 (not that hard if you play any Muddle the Mixtures) doesn't really have to worry about aggro matchups, so they can just play a ton of counters and discard with Snapcasters and Thirst. We tried it in UWR, Esper, and U/B tezzeret. Every single one was extremely strong, with Tezzeret testing roughly equally to zoo with Nacatl and the other two testing vastly better. Note: this does not mean that Sword is absolutely not unbannable. It's entirely possible we missed a couple of powerful hate cards or interactions that make Thopter/Sword weaker, or that new printings over the next couple months will make it weaker. What it does mean is that it's not a safe unban, meaning that, based on our testing, there are real and credible risks that sword will be dominant.
There are other cards we've done minimal testing for (Mental Misstep, Chrome Mox, and Blazing Shoal), but none of those are actually for potential unbans, but rather for reasons of figuring out more general things about approaching banned lists. We haven't done enough testing for those to be relevant, so I can't make any predictions about them.
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
They banned DRS in order to allow graveyard based strategies to be an option. The problem I see is that most of these decks were an option already. Melira-pod, Splinter-Twin and UWR were already played frequently before the banning and now that witness,finks, redcap and snapcaster only have scavenging ooze to worry about they obviously perform even better than previously. The only deck that has had a huge resurgence thanks to banning DRS is Storm. Now I guess some think it's fun to play non-interactive magic, but I really do think modern needs decks like jund to keep the most played combo decks from going rampant. Attrition based decks are the decks that are able to balance the meta, with only combo and aggro decks around there is no decks that have room to pack the hate cards that can balance the metagame. Where you previously had jund and BGw that could bring a hatepackage in the sideboard or even main to hose the most played decks, a lot fewer are playing these decks now and those that do all notice the lack of DRS reduces most matchups to less than 50% game 1, making it very hard to perform well in large tournaments. If BGw was a thing then you would have decks that could sideboarddrown in sorrow, Path to Exile,aven mindcensor, stony silence, abrupt decay, torpor orb, zealous persecution, Voice of Resurgence, etc, cards that could seriously hose pod, twin and affinity. With DRS gone, the manabase of BGw was also destroyed. As there's no green/black alternative to Blackcleave Cliffs, it's impossible to build a manabase that can consistently support Voice turn two followed by Liliana turn 3.
I would have thought Goryo's Vengeancewould become big, but inconsistent decks will never be really great anyway, even if they do broken things. Aggro Loam and other graveyard decks haven't really been able to perform as splinter twin, affinity and melira-pod are just too strong right now. Whatever neat stuff you're trying to do, those decks will do it faster and more consistent and at the same time play better cards than you. With Melira-pod so strong, Zoo will never get to shine either as the matchup is just extremely good for melira-pod. Zoo also seems to perform a lot worse than Affinity anyway though, even though pretty much everyone has a lot of sideboard cards specifically for affinity. Cranial Plating is a broken card and should probably be banned if they want other aggressive strategies to be viable.
People think that we should wait until the meta shifts, but I don't really see how it will. Tron sure has a good matchup vs melira-pod, but such a horrible matchup against decks that run counters and is such a bore to play anyway that I have a hard time seeing a big shift in that direction, though more will probably pick it up. Unbanning wild nacatl and bitterblossom was definetly a good move, as some decks have become viable at least on FNM-level, but banning DRS without printing a decent replacement at least was not a good move in my opinion. We will see in the next GP, but I wouldn't be too surprised if even more end up picking up pod, twin and affinity, as the decks that are supposed to beat them, just don't do that anymore or can't really beat anything else.
Im not a player of Modern right now but I follow it with interest and the thing I want to say it why give only BG decks the stuff they need to keep everything in check?
Why dont give Blue Control the stuff they need to keep everything in check?
Dont they want Modern to become a Blue format like Legacy is? Why dont unban something like Jace, the Mind sculptor?
They printed the Azorius Control cards(Sphinx's Revelation, Detention Sphere, Supreme Verdict) in Return to Ravnica and also stuff like Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Jace, Architect of Thought which made UW-based Control strategies a thing since their printing in Standard.
Why dont give the same support for the Modern version by unbanning certain cards or printing new tools to finally give it more game?
Some of you may remember my team did some (sadly, limited) testing of possible unbans, testing which managed to predict with some accuracy what would happen given their January unbans (Bitterblossom would be too weak to perform in modern, and Nacatl would be strong enough, but still a safe unban). That testing, which we've done a bit more of, says the following about possible unbans:
Golgari Grave-Troll is the safest unban you can get. It's absolutely unplayable in its historic decks, and no current deck wants it. We got some decent results with a Goryo's Vengeance reanimator deck using a dredge engine to draw, but it was still unimpressive, and if it were modern legal the results we got were not good enough for me to pursue the deck further.
Ancestral Vision is a safe unban. It's not unplayable like Grave-Troll, and indeed I found it to be quite strong, but it's not banworthy. We got solid results with it in UW/X control (esper and UWR), and it would certainly be worth playing there, but the results still weren't amazing enough to make the deck too dominant. We also did some limited U/B faeries testing with it, but still didn't get strong enough results for us to worry about it. I'm going to say this explicitly: I don't believer faeries is a good deck in modern. It's playable now, and might be decent with Ancestral Vision, but unless we missed a major card choice that significantly ups its power level, Faeries will not be tier 1.
Bloodbraid Elf is probably a safe unban. We got some scary results with Jund (a little bit better than our testing with Nacatl), but it didn't feel particularly scary. The most notable thing was that it had a quite poor matchup against UWR and especially UWR twin, which suggests that there's a fundamental check on the power of Jund in the format with Deathrite Shaman gone. I'd definitely want to see more testing of this card before I felt comfortable unbanning it, were I the DCI, but it's certainly not inherently dangerous.
Seething Song is debatable. We tried storm with seething song, and found it to be quite powerful, probably powerful enough to make it a recurring contender in the format. However, we found a 15% turn-3 goldfish rate so far, and this was done against our standard modern gauntlet with no sideboard changes. Given that it performed well but not incredibly well (worse, for instance, than zoo with Nacatl did during our testing), it would probably only mean people would have to devote more sideboard hate to storm. From a format dominance and enjoyability perspective, Seething Song is not a threat. From a turn-4 rule perspective, it could be in violation, but I don't think it has a high enough percentage. It's also worth noting that I am a longtime storm combo player, as are two other members of my team, which in my opinion gives this testing more credence (we're less likely to misplay a storm deck).
Sword of the Meek is NOT a safe unban. Dear god is this not a safe unban. The combo is so good, a control shell that can consistently get it out by turn 4 (not that hard if you play any Muddle the Mixtures) doesn't really have to worry about aggro matchups, so they can just play a ton of counters and discard with Snapcasters and Thirst. We tried it in UWR, Esper, and U/B tezzeret. Every single one was extremely strong, with Tezzeret testing roughly equally to zoo with Nacatl and the other two testing vastly better. Note: this does not mean that Sword is absolutely not unbannable. It's entirely possible we missed a couple of powerful hate cards or interactions that make Thopter/Sword weaker, or that new printings over the next couple months will make it weaker. What it does mean is that it's not a safe unban, meaning that, based on our testing, there are real and credible risks that sword will be dominant.
There are other cards we've done minimal testing for (Mental Misstep, Chrome Mox, and Blazing Shoal), but none of those are actually for potential unbans, but rather for reasons of figuring out more general things about approaching banned lists. We haven't done enough testing for those to be relevant, so I can't make any predictions about them.
Honestly, I don't think you needed testing. :-P Those are definitely the best unban candidates, (in the order BBE, GGT, AV, w/ Song possibly coming off some day if Past in Flames goes away) and Sword, like P. Fire, is never going to be safe to unban.
While I would disagree with your ordering (GGT is by far the best card to unban, since it's actually just completely unplayable), that's roughly correct. That said, I like having at least a little bit of concrete information to use when talking about unbans, and it gives everyone a good starting point. You're never worse off for knowing with a bit more certainty what's going to happen if X is done.
Also, a couple of people have been arguing for a Sword unban, so I decided to see if there was anything to it.
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"Completely Unplayable" is a bit of an exaggeration. There was in fact a singular Dredgevine list that made it to Richmond Day2. So while it may be a far ways off from tier1, GGT would have a home in a legitimate deck. And it's not like GGT wouldn't help the deck at least slightly.
As a rule, I'm NOT very keen on pumping more fast mana into the format. While the speed is sometimes welcome it invariably leads to degeneracy, sooner rather then later.
LegitKarona, have you tested GGT in possible Dredge decks? GGT's chances of seeing the light of Modern are heavily dependent on the overall performance of that one deck so seeing how it fairs against a regular Modern gauntlet is the best way to see if GGT is still unsafe for the format.
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Dredge decks were the first thing we tried. With no way to sacrifice creatures from the graveyard (Dread Return is banned), Bridge from Below lists were horrible. We then tried a couple of dredgevine variants, using first Fatestitcher and Gravecrawlers to bring back Vengevines, then with Skaab Ruinators. Both were bad, with the Fatestitcher version being horrible and the Skaab Ruinator version being playable, but still bad. We tried a Reanimator-style deck that milled Unburial Rites and used Life from the Loam to get the lands to cast it, but that was bad. The last thing we tried was a dredge-based Griselbrand Reanimator Shell, which was actually decent but ultimately not as good as the current version.
@NessOnett: That's true. Maybe I'm underselling GGT. But I will stand by the prediction that unbanning it would have a far smaller impact on the format than the unbanning of Bitterblossom, and that it is the easiest card to unban on the entire list.
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Didn't wanna say told you, but... TOLD YA!
20 copies of pod in the top8!
The question is will it get banned before or after the next new good pod creature gets printed?
Didn't you also say that Wild Nacatl could never be unbanned because it would destroy Modern? The meta will be able to adapt. Pod has issues against stuff like Storm, BGx, and Tron. I personally have a deck that I'd say is somewhere around 80/20 against Melira Pod preboard and a little lower after that. The metagame will be able to handle Pod. It dies to too many decks for it to not adapt.
Actually, what I said was that wild nacatl would change everything and that it'd be bad for the format.
But I DID say if nacatl got unbanned it wouldn't be the end of the world... the post is out there if it didn't get deleted.
So I was wrong, I already recognized it, but I wasn't all that much wrong. I also was right in most Modern predictions over all these past yeears.
The key change was DRS's ban, actually, which I didn't predict, so I guess I was wrong on that too. They must have tested the format extensively without DRS to come to that conclusion. At least, that's what I hope.
I certainly hope they didn't just ban it on a whim, to see what happens.
And I think BBE has a real chance of leaving the list in the near future.
there is no reason to re-introduce BBE into the format. GB and GBx are still fine deck choices. and really, cascading purely for value is one of the more broken things you can do. cascading into living end/restore balance is okay, because you have to build your deck around that. i think sword of the meek can come off actually. there's enough graveyard hate and it'll delinearlize UWx decks (much like birthing pod) and give them a second angle of attack. it'll also enable tezzeret decks (not nearly as much as artifact lands, but that's another discussion).
i also don't think past in flames should be banned. if you don't prep for a deck, you deserve to lose to it, not call for it to be banned.
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I speak in sarcasm because calling people ******* ******** is not allowed.
DRS was a good ban for sure. Having a 1 mana toolbox that can fit in any deck that plays G or B isn't good for the format.
I agree with others that GGT could be unbanned without problems. It may be that future printings that are already designed are what's keeping it on the ban list. If not, they could unban it at some point.
On Ancestral Vision: It may be true that it's not an auto-include in every single blue deck. The thing is however, that it supports a strong draw&go game plan. This is something WotC does not want in Modern. In a draw-go control deck, 'waiting' those 4 turns is nothing. The whole point of a deck like that is that it can control the game for many turns without casting anything during their own turns. It's not like they are sitting ducks until the thing finally resolves. It fills their hand at the time they run out of fuel (counterspells). Mid to late game this is no different. A draw&go style of deck kills very slowly. Sure sometimes it will be a dead draw, but that can be said about a lot more cards that are currently being played. Drawing a Drak Confidant while sitting at three life makes it pretty much a dead draw for instance ;).
The exact quote from WotC on why they banned Ancestral Vision:
"The last Modern-legal card that has been making a huge splash in Legacy control decks is Ancestral Vision. While not every Jace, the Mind Sculptor deck in Legacy plays Ancestral Vision, a great many of them do. The combination of Ancestral Vision, Spell Snare, and other counterspells lets control decks draw cards very cheaply without getting behind early on, and that's powerful enough that we feel safer having it banned."
They don't want control decks that never run out of juice in Modern. Plain and simple. I don't think their view has changed much on this topic since then.
I don't quite know how to say this...
There isn't enough graveyard hate. Sure, there's graveyard hate, but if you're relying on interacting with thopter/sword via the graveyard you're going to lose. Decks that play thopter/sword aren't planning on getting it out as soon as possible, they're planning on playing the control game for a bit and then getting it out when there's a window. Graveyard hate doesn't do a whole lot to that strategy, and unless you have Rest in Peace, your dream scenario is to remove the Sword before they can bring it back, in which case they still have the Foundry and can just draw into another one. You're literally just trading 1-for-1. And, as we found out time and time again in testing, trading 1-for-1 to disrupt the combo in a thopter control deck is not a winning strategy. In fact, we couldn't find a winning strategy. Aggro decks fold to it, midrange decks fold to it, combo decks can't play through it (once you get the combo, you can just play draw-go, counter the key spells, and spend all excess mana on thopters), and control would rather just play it. The only deck we found that could break through and win against it was infect, because when you think of a healthy modern format, you think of infect.
I'm sure there are other decks that could beat a thopter/sword control deck. The metagame would adapt, it always does. But unless we missed a HUGE piece of tech, Sword of the Meek needs to stay on the banned list.
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I don't quite know how to say this...
There isn't enough graveyard hate. Sure, there's graveyard hate, but if you're relying on interacting with thopter/sword via the graveyard you're going to lose. Decks that play thopter/sword aren't planning on getting it out as soon as possible, they're planning on playing the control game for a bit and then getting it out when there's a window. Graveyard hate doesn't do a whole lot to that strategy, and unless you have Rest in Peace, your dream scenario is to remove the Sword before they can bring it back, in which case they still have the Foundry and can just draw into another one. You're literally just trading 1-for-1. And, as we found out time and time again in testing, trading 1-for-1 to disrupt the combo in a thopter control deck is not a winning strategy. In fact, we couldn't find a winning strategy. Aggro decks fold to it, midrange decks fold to it, combo decks can't play through it (once you get the combo, you can just play draw-go, counter the key spells, and spend all excess mana on thopters), and control would rather just play it. The only deck we found that could break through and win against it was infect, because when you think of a healthy modern format, you think of infect.
I'm sure there are other decks that could beat a thopter/sword control deck. The metagame would adapt, it always does. But unless we missed a HUGE piece of tech, Sword of the Meek needs to stay on the banned list.
I just started ignoring people who thought it was safe. Made my life easier.
I don't quite know how to say this...
There isn't enough graveyard hate. Sure, there's graveyard hate, but if you're relying on interacting with thopter/sword via the graveyard you're going to lose. Decks that play thopter/sword aren't planning on getting it out as soon as possible, they're planning on playing the control game for a bit and then getting it out when there's a window. Graveyard hate doesn't do a whole lot to that strategy, and unless you have Rest in Peace, your dream scenario is to remove the Sword before they can bring it back, in which case they still have the Foundry and can just draw into another one. You're literally just trading 1-for-1. And, as we found out time and time again in testing, trading 1-for-1 to disrupt the combo in a thopter control deck is not a winning strategy. In fact, we couldn't find a winning strategy. Aggro decks fold to it, midrange decks fold to it, combo decks can't play through it (once you get the combo, you can just play draw-go, counter the key spells, and spend all excess mana on thopters), and control would rather just play it. The only deck we found that could break through and win against it was infect, because when you think of a healthy modern format, you think of infect.
I'm sure there are other decks that could beat a thopter/sword control deck. The metagame would adapt, it always does. But unless we missed a HUGE piece of tech, Sword of the Meek needs to stay on the banned list.
I just started ignoring people who thought it was safe. Made my life easier.
NO. PEOPLE ARE WRONG ON THE INTERNET.
EDIT: kidding aside, that's probably a good idea. I do like to point out the theory for why a card should stay banned, rather than just "I played games with it, you didn't." At least it's more productive.
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I don't quite know how to say this...
There isn't enough graveyard hate. Sure, there's graveyard hate, but if you're relying on interacting with thopter/sword via the graveyard you're going to lose. Decks that play thopter/sword aren't planning on getting it out as soon as possible, they're planning on playing the control game for a bit and then getting it out when there's a window. Graveyard hate doesn't do a whole lot to that strategy, and unless you have Rest in Peace, your dream scenario is to remove the Sword before they can bring it back, in which case they still have the Foundry and can just draw into another one. You're literally just trading 1-for-1. And, as we found out time and time again in testing, trading 1-for-1 to disrupt the combo in a thopter control deck is not a winning strategy. In fact, we couldn't find a winning strategy. Aggro decks fold to it, midrange decks fold to it, combo decks can't play through it (once you get the combo, you can just play draw-go, counter the key spells, and spend all excess mana on thopters), and control would rather just play it. The only deck we found that could break through and win against it was infect, because when you think of a healthy modern format, you think of infect.
I'm sure there are other decks that could beat a thopter/sword control deck. The metagame would adapt, it always does. But unless we missed a HUGE piece of tech, Sword of the Meek needs to stay on the banned list.
I'm sure you've had to do this several times, but could you elaborate on the testing process that went through? Was it just "design decks using X card and see if it breaks the game"? Or did you just add it to a theoretical pool to allow other decks to balance around it.(Obviously if you were testing DR, it would be broken in the current meta, but the meta would quickly adapt to combat such a fragile GY strat and it would do worse...even if still broken). And of course there's the aspect of one card checking another. Such as BBE being very good against Jace, so testing each in a vacuum might provide skewed information on how they would both function in a format together(not to mention cards like P+P which would play WITH one another).
But I gotta weigh in on this Thopter/Sword thing. You are trying to argue that a control deck, which takes control of the game, can play a very resilient win-condition to have a high probability of winning after it has taken control of the game? Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you...but isn't that the POINT of control? Isn't its primary function to stall the game out long enough until they can play a singular threat, and protect it, and ride that singular threat to win the game? Isn't that what Scapeshift is? You are a control deck, like any other, with a splash of mana ramp(which actually advances your ability to control through winning counter-wars). And then when you have enough mana to win a counter-war you drop a single card(scapeshift) and use it to win. Having a Thopter resolve and having a Scapeshift resolve both have pretty similar odds of success. And if they resolve, the Scapeshift has a higher chance of winning. And they are both taking a very small number of slots in what is 90% a control deck shell. So wouldn't Scapeshift be bannable by the same logic? I'm not suggesting Scapeshift is a problem, I'm just trying to find the distinction here. Because...I feel like that's how control has always worked.
No problem, always glad to make that a bit clearer.
First, we figure out a list to work with. These are usually quite rough. We do these with anything that could possibly be good with the card, we're pretty inclusive. Then, we run each one in 5 matches against a random sample of decks. If a list wins 2 or more, we make revisions and do 3 matches against every deck in our gauntlet. If at any point the deck clearly looks unplayable, we stop testing. If it looks like modifications are necessary, we change the deck and do it again. The most iterations we ever did were 3 runs through the gauntlet for Zoo with Nacatl, as we tried to find the right ones. We don't update our gauntlet to try and simulate what the meta would look like, we just assume that the clunkiness of our lists will offset the lack of hate. This obviously wouldn't work as well with dedicated combo cards like Dread Return, and would tend to overvalue their viability, but since we've never found a combo card to be too dominant, that hasn't been an issue yet. This method is fairly predictive for versatile cards, less so for all-in combo cards. Dread Return is a perfect example of a place where this method would fail. However, for other cards, cards which don't have perfectly obvious checks, it's fairly predictive.
As for the distinction I draw, I believe it's a matter of how resilient it is, and how fast it is. Take Scapeshift, for instance. Scapeshift actually demands quite a few slots in your deck, since you have to get to 7 lands, and play Valakuts, and play additional mountains. While that cost isn't huge, it is present. Thopter/Sword, on the other hand, require far fewer cards, and what cards they do want are things like Muddle the Mixture or Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, which are already fairly good on their own and perfectly playable without the combo. The other thing is that the thopter/sword combo is fast. We were able to consistently get it out on turn 4 with countermagic protection, and from there, it was essentially impossible for any opposing deck to recover. Scapeshift needs 3 ramp spells and the Scapeshift itself to win on turn 4. It's not a matter of "it's a win condition that's fast, resilient, and reliable", it's a matter of "it's a win condition that's TOO fast, TOO resilient, and TOO reliable".
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Decks that play thopter/sword aren't planning on getting it out as soon as possible, they're planning on playing the control game for a bit and then getting it out when there's a window.
See, the way you said it the first time made it seem like it wasn't fast. Even if you "can" cast the combo in the first 4 turns(which would be hard to draw since you have to spend more of your mana controlling the game than filtering the deck), you usually wouldn't because you want to wait until you can protect it. And scapeshift often goes off on turn 5(and CAN go off turn4 with good draws), because it only needs 7 lands normally and has ramp to help with that. So it's not really 'slow' by any means if it draws well. And if it does go off, the chances of it losing from there aren't low, they are zero.
The other thing is that the thopter/sword combo is fast. We were able to consistently get it out on turn 4 with countermagic protection, and from there, it was essentially impossible for any opposing deck to recover.
You can see where the confusion may have come from. But how is it impossible for a deck to recover. A lot of popular decks right now can just...Ignore the combo. Storm, just kills you. Twin, sends infinite attackers. Elesh norn is a thing. Scapeshift(speaking of which) can kill you assuming you don't get past 36 life(which takes a bit, let's be honest). Pod can deal infinite damage or gain infinite life. The game against aggro is obviously good, but I can't blindly accept that resolving Foundry is backbreaking, especially against what are essentially other combo-control decks.
But I'll try and take your word on it. Mostly because I haven't done any testing myself to have measurable data to lean on. But I do have one last question. Which is when you did this. Because if it was a year ago, a lot has changed since then. Now one could argue that it would only help SoM because of the lack of DRS. But the decks that are popular right now are very different from what we saw back then, and I think what's good now(that wasn't so prevalent then) is a lot better at dealing with this control-centric strategy because there have been a lot of those decks making their presence known as time has gone on.
The thing is, while it can get it out fast, it's not trying to. Something like turn 1 thoughtseize, turn 2 thopter, turn 3 transmute muddle for sword, turn four play sword and leave 2 mana up, is quite easy to do, and gives you the ability to take their answer and protect the combo when you play the second part. That's also the reason decks can't recover: Because you generally haven't spent your turns durdling with cantrips and trying to find the combo, you can interact a lot more, which makes it harder to power through thopter/sword. Additionally, since as soon as the combo is out you're under a huge amount of pressure, it's basically impossible to play around countermagic and removal once its out. It's a bit like how you technically have to cast a spell for Pact of Negation once they tap out for Hive Mind, so you're not ALWAYS immediately dead, but realistically you're not winning those games. The other thing is that, because thopter/sword makes the aggro matchup so good, you don't need to play nearly as much spot removal, instead allowing for more countermagic, card draw, and discard, which is exactly the sort of cards other combo-control decks might want to run. Basically, I misspoke: the combo alone isn't impossble to recover from. It's that, because it's not a combo you have to spend a ton of resources finding, you also have to recover from the combo while facing disruption from multiple angles.
And the testing for sword and seething song was this week. Everything else was before the pro tour.
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I'll just say this about Birthing Pod: I think it will be banned at some point in the future when who knows, but this has show and tell syndrome written all over it in that the potential for stupid brokenness is there and as such potential banning is possible. I think however it won't be banned for some time. this card reminds me too much of Survival of the Fittest and we all know where that went. I can see this card becoming more problematic as new cards enter modern but as of right now I would say keep it on the "watch list" not ban it yet.
I don't understand how anyone could try and equate Birthing Pod with Survival of the Fittest and Show and Tell.
There's a key difference here. Survival says: "A creature." Show and Tell says: "A creature." Birthing Pod says: "A creature with converted mana cost of X." The difference here should be very obvious(and it's the same reasoning why SFM is a problem). Magic is designed around mana costs. And when you have the ability to completely subvert those mana costs...things have a tendency to break.
I don't understand how anyone could try and equate Birthing Pod with Survival of the Fittest and Show and Tell.
There's a key difference here. Survival says: "A creature." Show and Tell says: "A creature." Birthing Pod says: "A creature with converted mana cost of X." The difference here should be very obvious(and it's the same reasoning why SFM is a problem). Magic is designed around mana costs. And when you have the ability to completely subvert those mana costs...things have a tendency to break.
Obviously S&T and SotF is broken beyond belief with one banned and the other the legacy format star. but I feel Birthing Pod is the modern format's version of those two cards (particularly Survival) in comparison to where the cards stand in their respective formats in other words modern's Birthing Pod is one of or if not the most popular single card to build around. Also Ness keep in mind Wizards is making more powerful creatures now than they were say ten or even five years ago so that being said I still feel the comparison to Survival is just in that Survival just flat out cheats creatures where Pod you basically have to build around it with creatures of a certain cc and people have obviously with 5 Pod decks in top 8 of GP Richmond.
Show and tell is to legacy as Birthing Pod is to modern. damn good cards.
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Turn 3 sweepers wouldnt be a problem with Glimpse. Your elves are usually out of range by turn 3, again, playing with glimpse.
I agree beck is not a good replacement. Slows the deck down way too much.
Since when did Tarmogoyf not exist in Modern? Pricing should never become an issue when it comes to balance, especially when they are cards that Wizards can(and will) reprint if needed.(See: the death of Legacy)
So here's how I see the banned list going over the next 1-3 announcements:
"Guaranteed" unbans(I put quotes around guaranteed because despite how likely something is, Wizards has full discretion to mess it up): GGT, BBE
Possible unbans: SoM, AV, Preordain, Seething Song(see possible bans)
Very unlikely unbans: Mox, GSZ, JTMS, Ponder, Jitte
Dead forever: everything else
Possible Bans:
Splinter Twin - Wizards has demonstrated they greatly dislike "oops I win" cards with no setup and little countermeasure. The fact that you can't even tap down to 1 against twin past turn 2 they find extremely unhealthy. And twin has shown a tendency to have a decent turn3 winrate. Bannning any other card out of the deck won't solve what wizards dislikes about it, which is the instant win out of nowhere, so even they aren't dumb enough to try and pull a "ban pestermite so the deck doesn't die, just gets worse" thing.
Grapeshot - Storm is in the sights again. Still putting up enough turn3 wins to be called 'consistent' depending on Wizards' metric of consistency. They can only ban incidental (and fair) rituals and cantrips for so long until they finally address the real problem. Even if it just forced storm into EtW as their main plan, that is either a turn slower or is less consistent(because they need to commit deckslots to bushwhackers) and is way more interactive because of instant-speed board clears and blockers+removal(which is sometimes enough if they only got a medium-sized storm). Not counting edge cases like Rakdos Charm and Soul Sisters. Also takes away storm's "clear the board with grapeshot 1 because I can't win yet, and try and stall for grapeshot 2" planB.
Pod - I highly doubt this myself, but if enough people complain about it long enough, Wizards has been known to cave under pressure. Slow, fair, highly interactive, the definition of a setup card(the opposite of 'oops i win.' I don't know how this could be unfair. There's so much artifact hate in the format for affinity already, so many ways to stop decksearching or take advantage of it, and so many things that exile creatures and remove from yard.
Snapcaster - See: Pod(the except for the artifact and decksearching parts)
I think that's everything. And I don't think any of that is unreasonable(though I'm sure there's plenty of people who will disagree with me). Hopefully Wizards sees that their last announcement was good(repealing pointless bans, and banning the actual problem cards), and continues to do that instead of just resting on their laurels.
I would have thought Goryo's Vengeancewould become big, but inconsistent decks will never be really great anyway, even if they do broken things. Aggro Loam and other graveyard decks haven't really been able to perform as splinter twin, affinity and melira-pod are just too strong right now. Whatever neat stuff you're trying to do, those decks will do it faster and more consistent and at the same time play better cards than you. With Melira-pod so strong, Zoo will never get to shine either as the matchup is just extremely good for melira-pod. Zoo also seems to perform a lot worse than Affinity anyway though, even though pretty much everyone has a lot of sideboard cards specifically for affinity. Cranial Plating is a broken card and should probably be banned if they want other aggressive strategies to be viable.
People think that we should wait until the meta shifts, but I don't really see how it will. Tron sure has a good matchup vs melira-pod, but such a horrible matchup against decks that run counters and is such a bore to play anyway that I have a hard time seeing a big shift in that direction, though more will probably pick it up. Unbanning wild nacatl and bitterblossom was definetly a good move, as some decks have become viable at least on FNM-level, but banning DRS without printing a decent replacement at least was not a good move in my opinion. We will see in the next GP, but I wouldn't be too surprised if even more end up picking up pod, twin and affinity, as the decks that are supposed to beat them, just don't do that anymore or can't really beat anything else.
I made the case for Chrome Mox in this post. Unlikely choice, but Valakut was completely unexpected as well.
Looking back, SSG is not actually that good with Twin because Twin needs the mana over two turns. However, the recent Twin list with mana dorks from GP Richmond didn't break the format, so I still think Mox could be OK.
SFM is completely out of the question because it goes into any fair deck with white (UWR Midrange, Zoo). No matter how much it could help control, the effect would be overshadowed by all the other non-control decks picking it up.
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Big Johnny.
Golgari Grave-Troll is the safest unban you can get. It's absolutely unplayable in its historic decks, and no current deck wants it. We got some decent results with a Goryo's Vengeance reanimator deck using a dredge engine to draw, but it was still unimpressive, and if it were modern legal the results we got were not good enough for me to pursue the deck further.
Ancestral Vision is a safe unban. It's not unplayable like Grave-Troll, and indeed I found it to be quite strong, but it's not banworthy. We got solid results with it in UW/X control (esper and UWR), and it would certainly be worth playing there, but the results still weren't amazing enough to make the deck too dominant. We also did some limited U/B faeries testing with it, but still didn't get strong enough results for us to worry about it. I'm going to say this explicitly: I don't believer faeries is a good deck in modern. It's playable now, and might be decent with Ancestral Vision, but unless we missed a major card choice that significantly ups its power level, Faeries will not be tier 1.
Bloodbraid Elf is probably a safe unban. We got some scary results with Jund (a little bit better than our testing with Nacatl), but it didn't feel particularly broken. The most notable thing was that it had a quite poor matchup against UWR and especially UWR twin, which suggests that there's a fundamental check on the power of Jund in the format with Deathrite Shaman gone. I'd definitely want to see more testing of this card before I felt comfortable unbanning it, were I the DCI, but it's certainly not inherently dangerous.
Seething Song is debatable. We tried storm with seething song, and found it to be quite powerful, probably powerful enough to make it a recurring contender in the format. However, we found a 15% turn-3 goldfish rate so far, and this was done against our standard modern gauntlet with no sideboard changes. Given that it performed well but not incredibly well (worse, for instance, than zoo with Nacatl did during our testing), it would probably only mean people would have to devote more sideboard hate to storm. From a format dominance and enjoyability perspective, Seething Song is not a threat. From a turn-4 rule perspective, it could be in violation, but I don't think it has a high enough percentage. It's also worth noting that I am a longtime storm combo player, as are two other members of my team, which in my opinion gives this testing more credence (we're less likely to misplay a storm deck).
Sword of the Meek is NOT a safe unban. Dear god is this not a safe unban. The combo is so good, a control shell that can consistently get it out by turn 4 (not that hard if you play any Muddle the Mixtures) doesn't really have to worry about aggro matchups, so they can just play a ton of counters and discard with Snapcasters and Thirst. We tried it in UWR, Esper, and U/B tezzeret. Every single one was extremely strong, with Tezzeret testing roughly equally to zoo with Nacatl and the other two testing vastly better. Note: this does not mean that Sword is absolutely not unbannable. It's entirely possible we missed a couple of powerful hate cards or interactions that make Thopter/Sword weaker, or that new printings over the next couple months will make it weaker. What it does mean is that it's not a safe unban, meaning that, based on our testing, there are real and credible risks that sword will be dominant.
There are other cards we've done minimal testing for (Mental Misstep, Chrome Mox, and Blazing Shoal), but none of those are actually for potential unbans, but rather for reasons of figuring out more general things about approaching banned lists. We haven't done enough testing for those to be relevant, so I can't make any predictions about them.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Im not a player of Modern right now but I follow it with interest and the thing I want to say it why give only BG decks the stuff they need to keep everything in check?
Why dont give Blue Control the stuff they need to keep everything in check?
Dont they want Modern to become a Blue format like Legacy is? Why dont unban something like Jace, the Mind sculptor?
They printed the Azorius Control cards(Sphinx's Revelation, Detention Sphere, Supreme Verdict) in Return to Ravnica and also stuff like Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Jace, Architect of Thought which made UW-based Control strategies a thing since their printing in Standard.
Why dont give the same support for the Modern version by unbanning certain cards or printing new tools to finally give it more game?
Honestly, I don't think you needed testing. :-P Those are definitely the best unban candidates, (in the order BBE, GGT, AV, w/ Song possibly coming off some day if Past in Flames goes away) and Sword, like P. Fire, is never going to be safe to unban.
Current post- Grand Prix KC Modern Postmortem (7/7/13)
Also, a couple of people have been arguing for a Sword unban, so I decided to see if there was anything to it.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
LegitKarona, have you tested GGT in possible Dredge decks? GGT's chances of seeing the light of Modern are heavily dependent on the overall performance of that one deck so seeing how it fairs against a regular Modern gauntlet is the best way to see if GGT is still unsafe for the format.
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@NessOnett: That's true. Maybe I'm underselling GGT. But I will stand by the prediction that unbanning it would have a far smaller impact on the format than the unbanning of Bitterblossom, and that it is the easiest card to unban on the entire list.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Actually, what I said was that wild nacatl would change everything and that it'd be bad for the format.
But I DID say if nacatl got unbanned it wouldn't be the end of the world... the post is out there if it didn't get deleted.
So I was wrong, I already recognized it, but I wasn't all that much wrong. I also was right in most Modern predictions over all these past yeears.
The key change was DRS's ban, actually, which I didn't predict, so I guess I was wrong on that too. They must have tested the format extensively without DRS to come to that conclusion. At least, that's what I hope.
I certainly hope they didn't just ban it on a whim, to see what happens.
And I think BBE has a real chance of leaving the list in the near future.
i also don't think past in flames should be banned. if you don't prep for a deck, you deserve to lose to it, not call for it to be banned.
I agree with others that GGT could be unbanned without problems. It may be that future printings that are already designed are what's keeping it on the ban list. If not, they could unban it at some point.
On Ancestral Vision: It may be true that it's not an auto-include in every single blue deck. The thing is however, that it supports a strong draw&go game plan. This is something WotC does not want in Modern. In a draw-go control deck, 'waiting' those 4 turns is nothing. The whole point of a deck like that is that it can control the game for many turns without casting anything during their own turns. It's not like they are sitting ducks until the thing finally resolves. It fills their hand at the time they run out of fuel (counterspells). Mid to late game this is no different. A draw&go style of deck kills very slowly. Sure sometimes it will be a dead draw, but that can be said about a lot more cards that are currently being played. Drawing a Drak Confidant while sitting at three life makes it pretty much a dead draw for instance ;).
The exact quote from WotC on why they banned Ancestral Vision:
"The last Modern-legal card that has been making a huge splash in Legacy control decks is Ancestral Vision. While not every Jace, the Mind Sculptor deck in Legacy plays Ancestral Vision, a great many of them do. The combination of Ancestral Vision, Spell Snare, and other counterspells lets control decks draw cards very cheaply without getting behind early on, and that's powerful enough that we feel safer having it banned."
They don't want control decks that never run out of juice in Modern. Plain and simple. I don't think their view has changed much on this topic since then.
There isn't enough graveyard hate. Sure, there's graveyard hate, but if you're relying on interacting with thopter/sword via the graveyard you're going to lose. Decks that play thopter/sword aren't planning on getting it out as soon as possible, they're planning on playing the control game for a bit and then getting it out when there's a window. Graveyard hate doesn't do a whole lot to that strategy, and unless you have Rest in Peace, your dream scenario is to remove the Sword before they can bring it back, in which case they still have the Foundry and can just draw into another one. You're literally just trading 1-for-1. And, as we found out time and time again in testing, trading 1-for-1 to disrupt the combo in a thopter control deck is not a winning strategy. In fact, we couldn't find a winning strategy. Aggro decks fold to it, midrange decks fold to it, combo decks can't play through it (once you get the combo, you can just play draw-go, counter the key spells, and spend all excess mana on thopters), and control would rather just play it. The only deck we found that could break through and win against it was infect, because when you think of a healthy modern format, you think of infect.
I'm sure there are other decks that could beat a thopter/sword control deck. The metagame would adapt, it always does. But unless we missed a HUGE piece of tech, Sword of the Meek needs to stay on the banned list.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Try again.....
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
I just started ignoring people who thought it was safe. Made my life easier.
Current post- Grand Prix KC Modern Postmortem (7/7/13)
NO. PEOPLE ARE WRONG ON THE INTERNET.
EDIT: kidding aside, that's probably a good idea. I do like to point out the theory for why a card should stay banned, rather than just "I played games with it, you didn't." At least it's more productive.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I'm sure you've had to do this several times, but could you elaborate on the testing process that went through? Was it just "design decks using X card and see if it breaks the game"? Or did you just add it to a theoretical pool to allow other decks to balance around it.(Obviously if you were testing DR, it would be broken in the current meta, but the meta would quickly adapt to combat such a fragile GY strat and it would do worse...even if still broken). And of course there's the aspect of one card checking another. Such as BBE being very good against Jace, so testing each in a vacuum might provide skewed information on how they would both function in a format together(not to mention cards like P+P which would play WITH one another).
But I gotta weigh in on this Thopter/Sword thing. You are trying to argue that a control deck, which takes control of the game, can play a very resilient win-condition to have a high probability of winning after it has taken control of the game? Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you...but isn't that the POINT of control? Isn't its primary function to stall the game out long enough until they can play a singular threat, and protect it, and ride that singular threat to win the game? Isn't that what Scapeshift is? You are a control deck, like any other, with a splash of mana ramp(which actually advances your ability to control through winning counter-wars). And then when you have enough mana to win a counter-war you drop a single card(scapeshift) and use it to win. Having a Thopter resolve and having a Scapeshift resolve both have pretty similar odds of success. And if they resolve, the Scapeshift has a higher chance of winning. And they are both taking a very small number of slots in what is 90% a control deck shell. So wouldn't Scapeshift be bannable by the same logic? I'm not suggesting Scapeshift is a problem, I'm just trying to find the distinction here. Because...I feel like that's how control has always worked.
First, we figure out a list to work with. These are usually quite rough. We do these with anything that could possibly be good with the card, we're pretty inclusive. Then, we run each one in 5 matches against a random sample of decks. If a list wins 2 or more, we make revisions and do 3 matches against every deck in our gauntlet. If at any point the deck clearly looks unplayable, we stop testing. If it looks like modifications are necessary, we change the deck and do it again. The most iterations we ever did were 3 runs through the gauntlet for Zoo with Nacatl, as we tried to find the right ones. We don't update our gauntlet to try and simulate what the meta would look like, we just assume that the clunkiness of our lists will offset the lack of hate. This obviously wouldn't work as well with dedicated combo cards like Dread Return, and would tend to overvalue their viability, but since we've never found a combo card to be too dominant, that hasn't been an issue yet. This method is fairly predictive for versatile cards, less so for all-in combo cards. Dread Return is a perfect example of a place where this method would fail. However, for other cards, cards which don't have perfectly obvious checks, it's fairly predictive.
As for the distinction I draw, I believe it's a matter of how resilient it is, and how fast it is. Take Scapeshift, for instance. Scapeshift actually demands quite a few slots in your deck, since you have to get to 7 lands, and play Valakuts, and play additional mountains. While that cost isn't huge, it is present. Thopter/Sword, on the other hand, require far fewer cards, and what cards they do want are things like Muddle the Mixture or Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, which are already fairly good on their own and perfectly playable without the combo. The other thing is that the thopter/sword combo is fast. We were able to consistently get it out on turn 4 with countermagic protection, and from there, it was essentially impossible for any opposing deck to recover. Scapeshift needs 3 ramp spells and the Scapeshift itself to win on turn 4. It's not a matter of "it's a win condition that's fast, resilient, and reliable", it's a matter of "it's a win condition that's TOO fast, TOO resilient, and TOO reliable".
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
See, the way you said it the first time made it seem like it wasn't fast. Even if you "can" cast the combo in the first 4 turns(which would be hard to draw since you have to spend more of your mana controlling the game than filtering the deck), you usually wouldn't because you want to wait until you can protect it. And scapeshift often goes off on turn 5(and CAN go off turn4 with good draws), because it only needs 7 lands normally and has ramp to help with that. So it's not really 'slow' by any means if it draws well. And if it does go off, the chances of it losing from there aren't low, they are zero.
You can see where the confusion may have come from. But how is it impossible for a deck to recover. A lot of popular decks right now can just...Ignore the combo. Storm, just kills you. Twin, sends infinite attackers. Elesh norn is a thing. Scapeshift(speaking of which) can kill you assuming you don't get past 36 life(which takes a bit, let's be honest). Pod can deal infinite damage or gain infinite life. The game against aggro is obviously good, but I can't blindly accept that resolving Foundry is backbreaking, especially against what are essentially other combo-control decks.
But I'll try and take your word on it. Mostly because I haven't done any testing myself to have measurable data to lean on. But I do have one last question. Which is when you did this. Because if it was a year ago, a lot has changed since then. Now one could argue that it would only help SoM because of the lack of DRS. But the decks that are popular right now are very different from what we saw back then, and I think what's good now(that wasn't so prevalent then) is a lot better at dealing with this control-centric strategy because there have been a lot of those decks making their presence known as time has gone on.
And the testing for sword and seething song was this week. Everything else was before the pro tour.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
There's a key difference here. Survival says: "A creature." Show and Tell says: "A creature." Birthing Pod says: "A creature with converted mana cost of X." The difference here should be very obvious(and it's the same reasoning why SFM is a problem). Magic is designed around mana costs. And when you have the ability to completely subvert those mana costs...things have a tendency to break.
Obviously S&T and SotF is broken beyond belief with one banned and the other the legacy format star. but I feel Birthing Pod is the modern format's version of those two cards (particularly Survival) in comparison to where the cards stand in their respective formats in other words modern's Birthing Pod is one of or if not the most popular single card to build around. Also Ness keep in mind Wizards is making more powerful creatures now than they were say ten or even five years ago so that being said I still feel the comparison to Survival is just in that Survival just flat out cheats creatures where Pod you basically have to build around it with creatures of a certain cc and people have obviously with 5 Pod decks in top 8 of GP Richmond.
Show and tell is to legacy as Birthing Pod is to modern. damn good cards.