It's not a relatively safe unban; it is a safe unban. It's such a laughably safe unban I can't understand why in the world it hasn't been unbanned yet. Before I could say "well, they don't want to waste an unban announcement on a card that will do nothing" but they didn't unban it alongside Wild Nacatl and Bitterblossom (two cards that were way more dangerous to the format than Golgari Grave-Troll!), so there goes even that.
Bitterblossom dangerous to the format? Lol.
Exactly. Every card that has been unbanned in Modern so far was more dangerous to the format than Golgari Grave-Troll would be. So the fact it remains on the banned list while these more powerful and dangerous cards are deemed safe is rather baffling.
Honestly I kinda think a lot of people forgot GB had a really bad match up against burn. Also burn didn't have eidolon to give it legs. I do know DRS helps GB's burn match up a lot. It likely is too good but I just am a little worried about the deck falling of the face of the earth nearly overnight.
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I do remember feeling like the elf in refreshing rain after the DRS ban, but I totally respect the BG shell and its current power level, I think its really balanced for the format and all thats left are the players who really enjoy playing that style of deck, rather than the exodus being due to a lack of power level.
Overall question that applies to both legacy and modern, but wondering what the thoughts were here.
I have been reading a lot of articles related to bans, and noticed some people even suggest changing the banned list to a more "banned/restricted" list to get a few cards off from outright bans that aren't oppressive when not in multiples. Legacy may not be affected by this because tutors already exist, but in modern where tutors are much more restricted to begin with in the card pool a restricted list might not be completely bad.
As such i could see the following:
BANNED
Ancient Den
Blazing Shoal
Cloud Post
Dark Depths
Dread Return
Glimpse of Nature
Great Furnace
Green Sun's Zenith
Hypergenesis
Jeskai Ascendancy
Mental Misstep
Punishing Fire
Rite of Flame
Seat of the Synod
Second Sunrise
Seething Song
Sensei's Divining Top
Skullclamp
Sword of the Meek
Tree of Tales
Vault of Whispers
Umezawa's Jitte
RESTRICTED TO 1
Bloodbraid Elf
Deathrite Shaman
Chrome Mox
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Ponder
Preordain
Stoneforge Mystic
Treasure Cruise
UNRESTRICTED
Ancestral Vision
Golgari Grave-Troll
By restricting powerful broken cards that are used in "fair" archetype it doesn't make them degenerate and oppressive as allowing an either 0 or 4 on them. Personally I feel like singletons of DRS, BBE, Jace, and Stoneforge are less of a problem than allowing 4 copies of each, and makes banning all these cantrips rather silly in the first place. Jund having access to a single BBE and DRS makes it powerful, but having a powerful fair deck is not nearly as bad in the first place. I'm debating the punishing fire combo coming back but it sort of nerfs any other aggro strategy from being playable, so I'd rather modern lived without it. A single jace will not warp the format, just give blue a push (and we are getting enough ways to hate out PWs now that it won't dominate). Arguably it opens more room for more cards (artifact lands to 1 to give affinity a boost). Leaving banned cards to remain to combo engines that are degenerate or cards that are seriously broken in any amount to be unbanned (Jitte, Skullclamp, GSZ). It would lower the size of the list and open up more playable strategies as well.
This also would allow more room for significant changes in the metagame. Cards that aren't "good enough to be banned" but still problem in 4 can be put into the list. Realistically a lot of combo engines could also be put into one copy due to the lack of tutors making them more inconsistent also, so we could see some cards coming of.
A lot of prediction on the current modern metagame suggests that the format is going to slowly creep into the territory where Green decks are wholly irrelevant with the top tier strategies now being between Twin Decks, Delver Decks, Burn, Ascendancy Combo, and Affinity (somewhat holding on) with a minor amount of GB, Pod and UWR Control still being top tier playable but each one having an oppressively hard time with at least one of those matchups that can more or less make them irrelevant.
A strong jund player here, and i'm slowly creeping into deciding to just play Twin or Delver because my metagame is not friendly to jund anymore and the greater metagame as well.
I'm also debating opening up cards like Top back into the format. I understand time and draw reasons are why it remains, but maybe allowing Top to return for a while and enabling Miracles to exist as another control deck in Modern would help get combo cards to come off the list as well. All of this needs more testing but a little speculation I've been wondering about. I miss a lot of cards on the list and would love for a chance to return them to the format.
Overall a healthy metagame should have a half dozen decks that are all undisputably tier 1 and widely played without one being too dominate over the rest, and enough fringe/rogue deck options that also have a fair/strong matchup against a couple of the tier 1 decks to keep them relevant. We have been fairly close to this in Modern, and it has the best potential to keep this a possibility.
I find it quite possible with all the current "buffs" to blue decks that both BBE and Golgari-Grave Troll should be removed from the Banned list in the near future. I would also like to entertain the idea that the third card on that debatable list becomes Ancestral Visions, yet this is only going to be a current notion after we have seen the full effects of Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise.
One argument for leaving Visions banned is that you can't really run Cruise+Dig in the same deck, but you could run Visions+Dig... that would be really strong.
Restricted lists for formats not named Vintage will never happen because they make games too swing-y. The only reason Vintage has a restricted list is because the idea of the format is to allow every card in magic with the exception of cards that have issues that are not related to power level (i.e. ante, manual dexterity, shahrazad, conspiracy, etc.), thus requiring some cards to be restricted to reign things in so that games resemble actual Magic, despite having plenty of powerful and broken cards. This leads to very swing-y games because sometimes your opponent just top decks a bomb and you lose out of nowhere, but this is within the scope of the format because they want anything to go. The restricted list only belongs in Vintage and suggesting otherwise is pointless.
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On Mono Black in Commander:
Quote from BlackJack68 »
But whomever your commander is, Cabal Coffers is really in charge.
You forgot that it hoses persist creatures and any card with flashback too. In fact I've probably forgotten something else it's good against too. It is beyond doubt the best one mana creature of all time. He's called the "one mana planeswalker" for a reason.
You know, it's funny. I definitely thought about Persist/Undying while I was typing up the post, and then I completely forgot to throw it in. DRS just does so many things, it's hard to keep track!
Playing millions of cards every turn... Slowly and systematically obliterating any chance my opponent has of winning... Clicking the multitude of locking mechanisms into place... Not even trying to win myself until turn 10+ once I have nigh absolute control... Watching my opponent desperately trying to navigate the labyrinthine prison that I've constructed... Seeing the light of hope fade and ultimately extinguished in an excruciatingly slow manner... THAT'S fun Magic.
We have 2-3 users that are dramatically making this thread incomprehensible and non-productive for anyone else to possibly join in the discussion. This needs to change.
Every time I see [ktkenshinx] post in here, I get the impression of a stern dad walking in on a bunch of kids trying to do something dumb and just shaking his head in disappointment.
Near Mint: The same as Slightly Played, but we threw some Altoids in the box we stored it in to cover up the scent of dead mice. Slightly Played: The base condition for all MTG cards. This card looks OK, but there’s one minor annoying ding in it that will always irritate and distract you whenever you draw it. Moderately Played: This card looks like it survived the Tet Offensive tucked inside the waistband of GI underwear. It may smell like it, too. Heavily Played: This card looks like the remains of Mohammed Atta’s passport after 9/11. It may be playable if you double-sleeve it to stop the chunks from falling out. The condition formerly known as "Washing Machine Grade" Damaged: This card is the unfortunate victim of a Mirrorweave/March of the Machines/Chaos Confetti/Mindslaver combo.
[M]aking counterfeit cards is the absolute height of dishonesty. Ask yourself this question: Since most people...are totally cool with the use of proxies...what purpose do [high] quality counterfeit cards serve?
I would say it is a complete fact that Treasure Cruise is more powerful than Ancestral Vision. However there are a few instances where Visions is stronger, namely with the use of Snapcaster Mage and cascade. I mean I could see using Visions in Living end with the hope of drawing more cycling critters before going off with End. And delve does hurt the usefulness of SCM or vise versa. Of course this does not negate the fact that Cruise is uber powerful and is likely to see play in a lot of decks. Whether that is grounds enough for a banning, well its to early to tell for certain. I think the biggest thing to be concerned with, with regard to both Cruise and Dig is if some combo deck is gonna abuse it to oblivion.
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I would say it is a complete fact that Treasure Cruise is more powerful than Ancestral Vision. However there are a few instances where Visions is stronger, namely with the use of Snapcaster Mage and cascade. I mean I could see using Visions in Living end with the hope of drawing more cycling critters before going off with End. And delve does hurt the usefulness of SCM or vise versa. Of course this does not negate the fact that Cruise is uber powerful and is likely to see play in a lot of decks. Whether that is grounds enough for a banning, well its to early to tell for certain. I think the biggest thing to be concerned with, with regard to both Cruise and Dig is if some combo deck is gonna abuse it to oblivion.
AV and snapcaster are not a combo. AV's cost is no cost. It doesn't get flashback of 0. Cascade works though.
Why not ban lightning bolt? It would actually allow decks like Bant or Esper to evolve and stop the format's dependancy on red.
Why destroy other decks just to make tier 2-3 decks seem better in context?
It honestly isn't even making them better objectively, it is just weakening all other decks as a whole. And Burn dies. Twin gets hit hard. UWR dies. Jund goes to Junk entirely. UR Delver dies.
What is the point? How about just print something that would be better for Bant and Esper? Or unban Ancestral Visions to strengthen Control in general?
Aaaaaand we're back to making a restricted list for modern. Can we group making a restricted list with increasing or decreasing the banned list by more than 2 or 3 cards, technically you are taking more than 2 or 3 cards off the banned list.
Aaaaaand we're back to making a restricted list for modern. Can we group making a restricted list with increasing or decreasing the banned list by more than 2 or 3 cards, technically you are taking more than 2 or 3 cards off the banned list.
I admit, it's annoying. It just isn't quite as spammy as the whole "ban every card that remotely breaks turn 4 rule" line of discussion. We are trying to keep the conversation open to ideas without making too many rules, and so far, the restricted idea (although ridiculous) hasn't been quite as ruinous to the thread as other banned topics.
why is TC better than AV? in some cases TC is better, in others AV is better.
its a new meta, with TC, pod graveyard creatures, tarmos and some other graveyard decks maybe rest in peace and leyline of the void prey on they, who knows.
By restricting powerful broken cards that are used in "fair" archetype it doesn't make them degenerate and oppressive as allowing an either 0 or 4 on them. Personally I feel like singletons of DRS, BBE, Jace, and Stoneforge are less of a problem than allowing 4 copies of each, and makes banning all these cantrips rather silly in the first place. Jund having access to a single BBE and DRS makes it powerful, but having a powerful fair deck is not nearly as bad in the first place. I'm debating the punishing fire combo coming back but it sort of nerfs any other aggro strategy from being playable, so I'd rather modern lived without it. A single jace will not warp the format, just give blue a push (and we are getting enough ways to hate out PWs now that it won't dominate). Arguably it opens more room for more cards (artifact lands to 1 to give affinity a boost). Leaving banned cards to remain to combo engines that are degenerate or cards that are seriously broken in any amount to be unbanned (Jitte, Skullclamp, GSZ). It would lower the size of the list and open up more playable strategies as well.
Restricting cards increases variance dramatically by turning games into "did you draw your 1-of bomb?" Which is exactly why they got rid of restricted lists in everything but Vintage (yes, at one time, Standard had a restricted list). It's a bad idea. It works in Vintage because the whole point of Vintage is that you get to play with all the broken cards, and there's so many bonkers cards that are restricted that it all manages to sort of even out because everyone is going to be drawing some of them each game.
I would say it is a complete fact that Treasure Cruise is more powerful than Ancestral Vision. However there are a few instances where Visions is stronger, namely with the use of Snapcaster Mage and cascade. I mean I could see using Visions in Living end with the hope of drawing more cycling critters before going off with End.
Ancestral Vision is stronger with neither Snapcaster Mage nor cascade. Ancestral Vision cannot be cast off of Snapcaster Mage, and trying to cascade into Ancestral Vision means you have to be playing awful cascade cards just in the hopes you'll occasionally get a 3-mana Concentrate. Unless you actually are playing no other cards that cost less than 3 mana, in which case you're crippling your deck just for that, whereas you can do that without crippling your deck with Treasure Cruise.
And Ancestral Vision in Living End? No way. The whole point of Living End is to cascade into Living End; adding a card that can get in the way of that is bad.
why is TC better than AV? in some cases TC is better, in others AV is better.
It's easy to figure out why. Ancestral Vision, best case scenario, is cast on turn 1 and then you draw the cards on turn 5. Which is a turn when you can likely be casting Treasure Cruise for 3 mana or even less. But to be fair, Ancestral Vision is at least slightly better on that turn. However, every progressive turn Treasure Cruise increases in value while Ancestral Vision decreases. Suppose you draw an Ancestral Vision on turn 5. You're going to have to wait until turn 9 to get any usage, whereas Treasure Cruise you can fire off right then and there. And remember that any deck that would be playing Ancestral Vision would be a deck that wants to draw out the game anyway; it wants the game to be going past turn 5.
Basically, pretty much any deck that wants to play Ancestral Vision is better off playing Treasure Cruise, and there are decks that would have no interest in Ancestral Vision that would want to play Treasure Cruise. There are certain cases that Ancestral Vision is better, but Treasure Cruise is so much better on the whole you'd prefer to run that.
I mean, there are situations where Lightning Bolt is better than Incinerate, and situations where Incinerate is better than Lightning Bolt. But no one would ever try to argue that Incinerate is the better card. Being better in some situations means nothing when those situations are so infrequent compared to the situations where the other card is better.
I would say it is a complete fact that Treasure Cruise is more powerful than Ancestral Vision. However there are a few instances where Visions is stronger, namely with the use of Snapcaster Mage and cascade. I mean I could see using Visions in Living end with the hope of drawing more cycling critters before going off with End. And delve does hurt the usefulness of SCM or vise versa. Of course this does not negate the fact that Cruise is uber powerful and is likely to see play in a lot of decks. Whether that is grounds enough for a banning, well its to early to tell for certain. I think the biggest thing to be concerned with, with regard to both Cruise and Dig is if some combo deck is gonna abuse it to oblivion.
AV and snapcaster are not a combo. AV's cost is no cost. It doesn't get flashback of 0. Cascade works though.
I didn't mean to imply they were. However, it still works better with SCM than Treasure Cruise simply because both of those cards are feeding from the same source.
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I really want JTMS back and a functional top reprint so I can play miracles in Modern but that's just because I'm greedy. Probably ban Counterbalance in that case.
why is TC better than AV? in some cases TC is better, in others AV is better.
its a new meta, with TC, pod graveyard creatures, tarmos and some other graveyard decks maybe rest in peace and leyline of the void prey on they, who knows.
The problem is, to "prey on" a Treasure Cruise deck, you have to side in cards that don't otherwise affect the board state, making them questionable side-ins. Is Rest in Peace really a good card to bring in vs. Dork Storm or Delver, just to shut down their Delve cards? I don't know that it is. The decks that Cruise is best in are ones that weren't using their graveyard for anything in the first place, but would love to draw 3 cards. About the only tool we have is Scooze, and it can't keep Cruise in check on its own.
And Cruise is definitely more powerful than Visions. It can typically be cast for U on turn 3-4 it most decks that play it, which gets you your 3 cards before you would with Visions. Visions also gives your opponent more information as it sits there waiting to resolve, and it must be played on turn 1 for maximum benefit (when Delver would like to be playing a Delver or setting up its turn 2 Delver). Lastly, Visions is a terrible lategame topdeck, whereas Cruise is a great lategame topdeck. About the only way Visions is better is when drawn in multiples, as that can be clunky sometimes (and with cascade, but that's a pretty narrow corner case). Cruise is better than Visions and Visions is banned. Cruise should probably also be banned.
For the record, I'm likely okay with a Visions unban. And if it were unbanned, the logic for a Cruise ban would evaporate, unless results in the coming months prove Cruise to be too powerful in general.
I love Treasure Cruise. I love playing 3-4 Sorcery Speed Ancestral Recalls on a single turn (3) with the help of Noxious Revival of course. The card is just crazy busted. Out of context, the card seems fine. In the right deck, the card is insane and you don't have to hurt the deck in the slightest to "build around" the card.
I completely agree with Zemanjaski, as he is known here on MTGS, in that Treasure Cruise should be and will eventually be banned. Right now I am enjoying the card, but the moment everyone adapts and starts playing it themselves, I will probably lose that smirk on my face.
(This is coming from a former Vintage player who hasn't cast Ancestral Recall in over 8 years now and is always looking for "semi-substitutes" when new cards are printed. At least one good thing came from the card; it seems very likely that Ancestral Vision is fine.)
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Why not ban lightning bolt? It would actually allow decks like Bant or Esper to evolve and stop the format's dependancy on red.
Why destroy other decks just to make tier 2-3 decks seem better in context?
It honestly isn't even making them better objectively, it is just weakening all other decks as a whole. And Burn dies. Twin gets hit hard. UWR dies. Jund goes to Junk entirely. UR Delver dies.
What is the point? How about just print something that would be better for Bant and Esper? Or unban Ancestral Visions to strengthen Control in general?
Treasure Cruise is a fine, fair card. Sure, anything playable and powerful will be looked at as being format defining and ban deserving, *****, if Pod were printed in Khans and Melira Pod became a deck over the last week then people would be losing their minds. It is a very powerful card and doesn't synergize well with most already existing fair blue decks. The only decks in which it is even slightly too powerful are the UR Delver lists and Jeskai Ascendancy. Try it in UWR Control, not so good when youre exiling Bolts, Helix's, Paths, Remands or Mana Leaks. It makes the best blue creature worse in those decks.
The card shouldn't be banned based solely on power level. Drawing cards is always going to be one of the most powerful effects. But if the decks that run it become too format dominating and warping then we should talk about it. But as of right now its just a conditional draw 3 spell that cant be cast reliably for 1 until around turn 4/5 in a format dominated by combo and agro decks.
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Active Modern Decks
U Tron GW Bogles RG Loam UR Blue Breach RBU Grixis Goryo BRU Grixis Delver GBR Jund GBW Junk
1) Those suggesting a restricted list for Modern has never played with a restricted list. The game devolves to who gets to their restricted card first.
2) T.cruise is better/more powerful then AV with the self mill available to player in Modern. Its only a matter of time we see T.cruise being played turn 2 and 3. P&P and GSZ were banned because of consistency issues, which I could see happening with T.cruise and Dig.
It seems Wotc in the past has been trying to make a some what fair format where cheap powerful things get banned. I could see another wave of bannings coming in the future, it all depends on if Wotc is still standing by how they looked at the format the first 3 years. If their views have changed, we may be in for a huge shift in the format.
GB Rock
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RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
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Goblins
Burn
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GBW Ghave
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GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I have been reading a lot of articles related to bans, and noticed some people even suggest changing the banned list to a more "banned/restricted" list to get a few cards off from outright bans that aren't oppressive when not in multiples. Legacy may not be affected by this because tutors already exist, but in modern where tutors are much more restricted to begin with in the card pool a restricted list might not be completely bad.
As such i could see the following:
BANNED
Ancient Den
Blazing Shoal
Cloud Post
Dark Depths
Dread Return
Glimpse of Nature
Great Furnace
Green Sun's Zenith
Hypergenesis
Jeskai Ascendancy
Mental Misstep
Punishing Fire
Rite of Flame
Seat of the Synod
Second Sunrise
Seething Song
Sensei's Divining Top
Skullclamp
Sword of the Meek
Tree of Tales
Vault of Whispers
Umezawa's Jitte
RESTRICTED TO 1
Bloodbraid Elf
Deathrite Shaman
Chrome Mox
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Ponder
Preordain
Stoneforge Mystic
Treasure Cruise
UNRESTRICTED
Ancestral Vision
Golgari Grave-Troll
By restricting powerful broken cards that are used in "fair" archetype it doesn't make them degenerate and oppressive as allowing an either 0 or 4 on them. Personally I feel like singletons of DRS, BBE, Jace, and Stoneforge are less of a problem than allowing 4 copies of each, and makes banning all these cantrips rather silly in the first place. Jund having access to a single BBE and DRS makes it powerful, but having a powerful fair deck is not nearly as bad in the first place. I'm debating the punishing fire combo coming back but it sort of nerfs any other aggro strategy from being playable, so I'd rather modern lived without it. A single jace will not warp the format, just give blue a push (and we are getting enough ways to hate out PWs now that it won't dominate). Arguably it opens more room for more cards (artifact lands to 1 to give affinity a boost). Leaving banned cards to remain to combo engines that are degenerate or cards that are seriously broken in any amount to be unbanned (Jitte, Skullclamp, GSZ). It would lower the size of the list and open up more playable strategies as well.
This also would allow more room for significant changes in the metagame. Cards that aren't "good enough to be banned" but still problem in 4 can be put into the list. Realistically a lot of combo engines could also be put into one copy due to the lack of tutors making them more inconsistent also, so we could see some cards coming of.
A lot of prediction on the current modern metagame suggests that the format is going to slowly creep into the territory where Green decks are wholly irrelevant with the top tier strategies now being between Twin Decks, Delver Decks, Burn, Ascendancy Combo, and Affinity (somewhat holding on) with a minor amount of GB, Pod and UWR Control still being top tier playable but each one having an oppressively hard time with at least one of those matchups that can more or less make them irrelevant.
A strong jund player here, and i'm slowly creeping into deciding to just play Twin or Delver because my metagame is not friendly to jund anymore and the greater metagame as well.
I'm also debating opening up cards like Top back into the format. I understand time and draw reasons are why it remains, but maybe allowing Top to return for a while and enabling Miracles to exist as another control deck in Modern would help get combo cards to come off the list as well. All of this needs more testing but a little speculation I've been wondering about. I miss a lot of cards on the list and would love for a chance to return them to the format.
Overall a healthy metagame should have a half dozen decks that are all undisputably tier 1 and widely played without one being too dominate over the rest, and enough fringe/rogue deck options that also have a fair/strong matchup against a couple of the tier 1 decks to keep them relevant. We have been fairly close to this in Modern, and it has the best potential to keep this a possibility.
One argument for leaving Visions banned is that you can't really run Cruise+Dig in the same deck, but you could run Visions+Dig... that would be really strong.
You know, it's funny. I definitely thought about Persist/Undying while I was typing up the post, and then I completely forgot to throw it in. DRS just does so many things, it's hard to keep track!
WUDeath&TaxesWG
Legacy
UBRGDredgeUBRG
UHigh TideU
URGLandsURG
WR Card Choice List
WUR American D&T
WUB Esper D&T
The Reserved List
Heat Maps
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
AV and snapcaster are not a combo. AV's cost is no cost. It doesn't get flashback of 0. Cascade works though.
Why destroy other decks just to make tier 2-3 decks seem better in context?
It honestly isn't even making them better objectively, it is just weakening all other decks as a whole. And Burn dies. Twin gets hit hard. UWR dies. Jund goes to Junk entirely. UR Delver dies.
What is the point? How about just print something that would be better for Bant and Esper? Or unban Ancestral Visions to strengthen Control in general?
I admit, it's annoying. It just isn't quite as spammy as the whole "ban every card that remotely breaks turn 4 rule" line of discussion. We are trying to keep the conversation open to ideas without making too many rules, and so far, the restricted idea (although ridiculous) hasn't been quite as ruinous to the thread as other banned topics.
why is TC better than AV? in some cases TC is better, in others AV is better.
its a new meta, with TC, pod graveyard creatures, tarmos and some other graveyard decks maybe rest in peace and leyline of the void prey on they, who knows.
Ancestral Vision is stronger with neither Snapcaster Mage nor cascade. Ancestral Vision cannot be cast off of Snapcaster Mage, and trying to cascade into Ancestral Vision means you have to be playing awful cascade cards just in the hopes you'll occasionally get a 3-mana Concentrate. Unless you actually are playing no other cards that cost less than 3 mana, in which case you're crippling your deck just for that, whereas you can do that without crippling your deck with Treasure Cruise.
And Ancestral Vision in Living End? No way. The whole point of Living End is to cascade into Living End; adding a card that can get in the way of that is bad.
It's easy to figure out why. Ancestral Vision, best case scenario, is cast on turn 1 and then you draw the cards on turn 5. Which is a turn when you can likely be casting Treasure Cruise for 3 mana or even less. But to be fair, Ancestral Vision is at least slightly better on that turn. However, every progressive turn Treasure Cruise increases in value while Ancestral Vision decreases. Suppose you draw an Ancestral Vision on turn 5. You're going to have to wait until turn 9 to get any usage, whereas Treasure Cruise you can fire off right then and there. And remember that any deck that would be playing Ancestral Vision would be a deck that wants to draw out the game anyway; it wants the game to be going past turn 5.
Basically, pretty much any deck that wants to play Ancestral Vision is better off playing Treasure Cruise, and there are decks that would have no interest in Ancestral Vision that would want to play Treasure Cruise. There are certain cases that Ancestral Vision is better, but Treasure Cruise is so much better on the whole you'd prefer to run that.
I mean, there are situations where Lightning Bolt is better than Incinerate, and situations where Incinerate is better than Lightning Bolt. But no one would ever try to argue that Incinerate is the better card. Being better in some situations means nothing when those situations are so infrequent compared to the situations where the other card is better.
I didn't mean to imply they were. However, it still works better with SCM than Treasure Cruise simply because both of those cards are feeding from the same source.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
UW Approach UW
EDH
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls U
The problem is, to "prey on" a Treasure Cruise deck, you have to side in cards that don't otherwise affect the board state, making them questionable side-ins. Is Rest in Peace really a good card to bring in vs. Dork Storm or Delver, just to shut down their Delve cards? I don't know that it is. The decks that Cruise is best in are ones that weren't using their graveyard for anything in the first place, but would love to draw 3 cards. About the only tool we have is Scooze, and it can't keep Cruise in check on its own.
And Cruise is definitely more powerful than Visions. It can typically be cast for U on turn 3-4 it most decks that play it, which gets you your 3 cards before you would with Visions. Visions also gives your opponent more information as it sits there waiting to resolve, and it must be played on turn 1 for maximum benefit (when Delver would like to be playing a Delver or setting up its turn 2 Delver). Lastly, Visions is a terrible lategame topdeck, whereas Cruise is a great lategame topdeck. About the only way Visions is better is when drawn in multiples, as that can be clunky sometimes (and with cascade, but that's a pretty narrow corner case). Cruise is better than Visions and Visions is banned. Cruise should probably also be banned.
For the record, I'm likely okay with a Visions unban. And if it were unbanned, the logic for a Cruise ban would evaporate, unless results in the coming months prove Cruise to be too powerful in general.
Modern: GW Hatebears/midrange, WGU Knightfall/evolution midrange stuff
Standard: nope
Legacy: W Death & Taxes
EDH (not Commander!): W Avacyn, Angel of Hope, GR Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, WGB Anafenza, the Foremost, WU Hanna, Ship's Navigator
I completely agree with Zemanjaski, as he is known here on MTGS, in that Treasure Cruise should be and will eventually be banned. Right now I am enjoying the card, but the moment everyone adapts and starts playing it themselves, I will probably lose that smirk on my face.
(This is coming from a former Vintage player who hasn't cast Ancestral Recall in over 8 years now and is always looking for "semi-substitutes" when new cards are printed. At least one good thing came from the card; it seems very likely that Ancestral Vision is fine.)
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Yeah okay. I agree.
The card shouldn't be banned based solely on power level. Drawing cards is always going to be one of the most powerful effects. But if the decks that run it become too format dominating and warping then we should talk about it. But as of right now its just a conditional draw 3 spell that cant be cast reliably for 1 until around turn 4/5 in a format dominated by combo and agro decks.
U Tron
GW Bogles
RG Loam
UR Blue Breach
RBU Grixis Goryo
BRU Grixis Delver
GBR Jund
GBW Junk
Active Legacy Decks
BR Reanimator
2) T.cruise is better/more powerful then AV with the self mill available to player in Modern. Its only a matter of time we see T.cruise being played turn 2 and 3. P&P and GSZ were banned because of consistency issues, which I could see happening with T.cruise and Dig.
It seems Wotc in the past has been trying to make a some what fair format where cheap powerful things get banned. I could see another wave of bannings coming in the future, it all depends on if Wotc is still standing by how they looked at the format the first 3 years. If their views have changed, we may be in for a huge shift in the format.