"Why twin was banned: keeping the format diverse requires that the best deck loses to hate. Twin kept winning while on top. Can't have that."
Even if Affinity or Burn become top dog (if you don't already consider Affinity top dog), they are fairly easy to hate out. That doesn't mean they don't still win sideboarded games.
I'm not sure if Tron folds as much to hate (off the top of my head, only red and black seem to have answers to their gameplan), but I'd speculatively say that the other two have the necessary stop gaps if people want to go into a tournament and not lose to that deck.
I'm trying not to butt in the thread as I see the saltiness in the air has still not come down to safety levels to have a civilized conversation about it. But this is certainly worthy of correction because evidently a huge part of the player base misunderstood those tweets and in their anger are refusing to see the truth.
Its not a contradiction. Its a clarification because people misunderstood what he meant:
"That is not why the ban is happening. It is dictating when, not why."
Twin was up for a banning, the only thing the PT dictated is when that banning occurred, not why. What that means is that WotC probably selected Twiin for a ban previously during the year and just waited for the PT to do so. Its probably the same reason Bloom survived the past 2 ban announcements, because as Aaron clarified, the timing of bannings is dictated by the PT, which means the rest of the announcements of the year are just for emergencies and other formats.
This is also to all the people saying that without a PT Twin would still be here. Truth is, judging by Aaron's words, thats probably not true. Without a PT dictating when bans occur it means both Twin & Bloom might have probably been banned even sooner since they wouldn't have had to wait up until the PT to do so.
This tweet is a direct admission that they ban cards in modern for the pro tour. I'd really love to see you try and twist logic to make it seem otherwise.
This tweet makes it seem like Aaron and whoever was on the committee weren't really considering what would happen after Twin was banned, since they'd just have to "wait until the Pro Tour to find out the answers".
1. Yes, that is a direct admission that they ban cards for the pro tour. However, and I'm going by Forsythe's clarification words again, the PT dicatates when, not why. I don't need to twist logic for that to make sense. What I interpret from that is that they put a hold on bans during the year unless its an emergency a la TC/DTT. Instead of banning cards during the year, they wait until the PT so that people don't have enough time to tune their decks for the PT, which is good for the diversity of the PT. If they had banned Bloom and Twin back in summer people would have already adapted for the PT. This is only my interpretation, though.
2. I agree, they do not know what the outcome will be. They do not test for modern. They just do things on a hunch. This only strengthens the argument I've brought up many times that quite a few cards that were banned prior to the format's inception were wrongfully banned, as evidenced by the few that have been unbanned thus far.
Hope that makes some sense, without logic twisting and all.
I think the twin ban opens up a lot of Blue design space since we no longer have the "just play twin as your win condition" argument to consider.
So now you can play any win condition and lose to virtually the entire upper tier if you're playing blue, got it.
Blue needs to stand on it's own without twin to carry it. I think we could see the meta evolve into something else blue + X. Now it means that red isn't necessarily and automatically the partner color for Blue.
BECAUSE TWIN WAS AS CLOSE TO TIER 0 AS THE FORMAT HAD. BECAUSE 30% OF PROS WERE GOING TO PLAY IT IN DAY 2. BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T WANT A REPEAT OF THE FINAL FROM THE LAST PRO TOUR. THIS IS HAS BEEN SAID SO MANY TIMES I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. HOLY GOD.
Whether or not you AGREE with those reasons is where the conversation should be centered. WHY is pretty obvious at this point.
Sure, this is the reason WOTC presents. And as a results, 55% of the players here disagree, 35% of the players agree.
I am part of the 55% do not agree with that.
"That is not why the ban is happening. It is dictating when, not why." - A. F.
Is it clear to you?
Except that statement contradicts EVERYTHING he said prior. Not interpreting that. It's just a fact.
No. That clarification contradicts only what YOU misinterpreted from what he said prior. He can't be held hostage to YOUR interpretation of his words. He gladly clarified the situation though, but people refuse to see it.
I was not interpreting it. He said PT facilitates bans. PT puts more pressure on Modern to require bans. and Modern being a PT format is not necessarily good for the health of the format.
Those are paraphrased with no interpretation. You just choose to ignore them.
And to be completely honest... it makes sense! Wizards is a business. Having the same exact decks top 8 over and over again would be boring for coverage (and it doesn't sell cards).
You're delusional if you don't think they banned Twin to shake up for the format for the PT.
Which means next year they will ban another deck to also "shake up the format". (that part is interpretation)
Honestly, I feel I will just be repeating myself over and over. I've answered this multiple times. Lets just agree to disagree cause I gotta keep working over here.
I'm trying not to butt in the thread as I see the saltiness in the air has still not come down to safety levels to have a civilized conversation about it. But this is certainly worthy of correction because evidently a huge part of the player base misunderstood those tweets and in their anger are refusing to see the truth.
Its not a contradiction. Its a clarification because people misunderstood what he meant:
"That is not why the ban is happening. It is dictating when, not why."
Twin was up for a banning, the only thing the PT dictated is when that banning occurred, not why. What that means is that WotC probably selected Twiin for a ban previously during the year and just waited for the PT to do so. Its probably the same reason Bloom survived the past 2 ban announcements, because as Aaron clarified, the timing of bannings is dictated by the PT, which means the rest of the announcements of the year are just for emergencies and other formats.
This is also to all the people saying that without a PT Twin would still be here. Truth is, judging by Aaron's words, thats probably not true. Without a PT dictating when bans occur it means both Twin & Bloom might have probably been banned even sooner since they wouldn't have had to wait up until the PT to do so.
This tweet is a direct admission that they ban cards in modern for the pro tour. I'd really love to see you try and twist logic to make it seem otherwise.
This tweet makes it seem like Aaron and whoever was on the committee weren't really considering what would happen after Twin was banned, since they'd just have to "wait until the Pro Tour to find out the answers".
1. Yes, that is a direct admission that they ban cards for the pro tour. However, and I'm going by Forsythe's clarification words again, the PT dicatates when, not why. I don't need to twist logic for that to make sense. What I interpret from that is that they put a hold on bans during the year unless its an emergency a la TC/DTT. Instead of banning cards during the year, they wait until the PT so that people don't have enough time to tune their decks for the PT, which is good for the diversity of the PT. If they had banned Bloom and Twin back in summer people would have already adapted for the PT. This is only my interpretation, though.
2. I agree, they do not know what the outcome will be. They do not test for modern. They just do things on a hunch. This only strengthens the argument I've brought up many times that quite a few cards that were banned prior to the format's inception were wrongfully banned, as evidenced by the few that have been unbanned thus far.
Hope that makes some sense, without logic twisting and all.
So you are choosing to ignore the fact that the later statement (which only came after outrage from the first statement) contradicts the original statement.
Also: why does the timing matter? If bans have nothing to do with "shaking up the format" for the PT? Who cares if people have adapted to the bannings for the PT? (unless the PT is the reason for the bannings?)
The truth... is if bannings have nothing to do with shaking up the format for the PT... then the timing is irrelevant and his most recent tweet also makes no sense.
That's no interpretation. Just applying common sense.
EDIT: His most recent tweet wasn't really a lie. The "reasoning" of the ban was to shake up the meta. That has nothing to do with the PT. The PT does facilitate the timing though because now it has to happen more often. So the PT is exciting.
I'm trying not to butt in the thread as I see the saltiness in the air has still not come down to safety levels to have a civilized conversation about it. But this is certainly worthy of correction because evidently a huge part of the player base misunderstood those tweets and in their anger are refusing to see the truth.
Its not a contradiction. Its a clarification because people misunderstood what he meant:
"That is not why the ban is happening. It is dictating when, not why."
Twin was up for a banning, the only thing the PT dictated is when that banning occurred, not why. What that means is that WotC probably selected Twiin for a ban previously during the year and just waited for the PT to do so. Its probably the same reason Bloom survived the past 2 ban announcements, because as Aaron clarified, the timing of bannings is dictated by the PT, which means the rest of the announcements of the year are just for emergencies and other formats.
This is also to all the people saying that without a PT Twin would still be here. Truth is, judging by Aaron's words, thats probably not true. Without a PT dictating when bans occur it means both Twin & Bloom might have probably been banned even sooner since they wouldn't have had to wait up until the PT to do so.
This tweet is a direct admission that they ban cards in modern for the pro tour. I'd really love to see you try and twist logic to make it seem otherwise.
This tweet makes it seem like Aaron and whoever was on the committee weren't really considering what would happen after Twin was banned, since they'd just have to "wait until the Pro Tour to find out the answers".
1. Yes, that is a direct admission that they ban cards for the pro tour. However, and I'm going by Forsythe's clarification words again, the PT dicatates when, not why. I don't need to twist logic for that to make sense. What I interpret from that is that they put a hold on bans during the year unless its an emergency a la TC/DTT. Instead of banning cards during the year, they wait until the PT so that people don't have enough time to tune their decks for the PT, which is good for the diversity of the PT. If they had banned Bloom and Twin back in summer people would have already adapted for the PT. This is only my interpretation, though.
2. I agree, they do not know what the outcome will be. They do not test for modern. They just do things on a hunch. This only strengthens the argument I've brought up many times that quite a few cards that were banned prior to the format's inception were wrongfully banned, as evidenced by the few that have been unbanned thus far.
Hope that makes some sense, without logic twisting and all.
With respect to 1), there have been a LOT of things said in regards to the relationship between the PT and bans up to and including this latest discussion. It has been noted that being a pro tour format isn't in the best interest of modern's health, which also heavily implies that there are decisions made on the ban list that would not be made in the absence of PT format status. Not that this settles anything, but they have been intentionally vague enough times that it is fairly difficult to distill a meaningful stance out of what has been said if you take it all at 100% face value.
That is all fair, but it only means Wizards should be answering to these concerns then, if not those who were in favor of these changes. No matter what we write in this thread we are going to have to live with the ban, but if we were only interested in Wizards' view of what this format should look like or how the ban list should be handled this thread would be completely pointless from the outset. The entire point of this thread is to contest the way things are or the way we think things should be and come to an understanding of the format. This means both understanding how the DCI actually bans, and also whether or not we think those bans are reasonable or even good to begin with.
If it really is an unjust ban, it is not beyond the community to push back, I don't believe. Even if it doesn't give us Twin back (which I'm not even necessarily arguing should happen, though I think it was definitely a bad ban) it could give us better transparency, more clarified ban list criteria, or at the very least a much more even handed approach to shakeup bans in the future.
But as far as the Tier 0 thing goes, I just don't find it convincing. SOMETHING is always the best deck. If it's not Twin, something else will be the *closest thing to tier 0* the format has. It just doesn't mean much unless we have an objective justification of when we can consider something an offender on those grounds.
I only participate in this thread because it's active. We're all just spinning our wheels here. When bans happen we talk about what to do now and what might happen next. In the interim we talk about what we'd like unbanned, and what might happen if THAT happened. While all of this happens, there are 20-30 people who stop by simply to call everyone stupid. We all laugh. Ah, the internet.
I don't think this ban is outside of the pattern that's already been laid out. Look through the last modern pro tours. Almost every deck that has been in a finals has been nerfed or banned in some way. Wizards sees the pro position as the authority on the power of the format. Twin has had multiple Pro tour top 8s in 3 of the 4 modern pro tours. Jund has been nerfed twice for pro tour dominance. Eggs being a nightmare on camera pushed it over the edge. Amulet is gone. Pro tour Philly feature Counter Cat vs. Twin in those finals - Nacatl got banned from it, Twin survived, and that's one of only 2 decks to make it through a pro tour finals appearance unscathed the next year (the only other being WUR control when it played against POD - but the year that followed wasn't kind WUR control and I'm sure Wizards saw no reason to hit it with something). We simply were not looking at the right things to indicate bannings. I guess this is a little unfortunate, but that's up to the individual. I think it's pretty clear going forward what should be looked at - if a deck hits the pro tour finals, and continues to be a force in the meta, probably avoid that deck or have a second one on the ready.
On tier 0 - put yourself in a pro's shoes for a second. You're only PASSIVELY familiar with modern but you've got the pro tour coming up and you need to play something. What are you going to play? Pre-bannings, there were really only 4 options (and I'd argue it's reallllly 3 options) - Twin (it's blue with an oops I win button), Jund (BG goodstuff always feels safe and doesn't take much practice), Amulet (on power level and brokenness alone), or Affinity. Affinity has NOT done well at the pro tour of years past and it's the only one of those 4 decks that is shut down from competition by one card, so I'd imagine most unfamiliar pros would skip over it. Those other three decks? That is our 'effective' format tier 0. ALL of my anecdotal evidence from my own experience backs this up - I don't know that I've EVER played in an event where I didn't expect to see Twin or Jund in multiple rounds. It's just the way modern has been.
The numbers that are always cited don't to me capture the full picture of what's going on in the format. Modern is MUCH MUCH MUCH more wide open than any other constructed format - for a deck to be anywhere between 11-15% at any point represents a MUCH higher effective percentage than something like Legacy. This is just my own interpretation of the numbers, but I absolutely do not buy the interpretation that Twin was somehow on the decline, and I also do not think you can throw out it's legacy and only look at the last 3 months to determine it's strength. Look at all of the results from States, SCGs, GPs, Pro Tours, IQs, all of it. Twin shows up in some form in almost every single top 8 and often in multiples and often for the win. Period. No other deck even comes close.
I think you do a reasonable job on summarizing exactly what happened. The problem is deeply rooted in opinions in what modern should be and how bans should be handled, and ultimately wizards vision is the only opinion that matters, but they have not effectively communicates that vision to the masses, so we are left piecing it together.
I know modern has evolved into something very different than what I thought it was going to be in 2012. I'll still be playing, because it's the most easily accessible format for me with regard to my available time for acquiring cards, changing decks, and playing, but it is definitely not what I thought it would be. (I may just be a bit salty though since the seething song, tc/dtt, pod, and twin bans all hit decks I played, I'm a combo player at heart.)
I think alittle more transparency would go a long way in stopping the fearmongering.
I don't feel like this is an unreasonable request at all. Transparency would go a long way to chilling out some of the pitchforks.
That is all fair, but it only means Wizards should be answering to these concerns then, if not those who were in favor of these changes. No matter what we write in this thread we are going to have to live with the ban, but if we were only interested in Wizards' view of what this format should look like or how the ban list should be handled this thread would be completely pointless from the outset. The entire point of this thread is to contest the way things are or the way we think things should be and come to an understanding of the format. This means both understanding how the DCI actually bans, and also whether or not we think those bans are reasonable or even good to begin with.
If it really is an unjust ban, it is not beyond the community to push back, I don't believe. Even if it doesn't give us Twin back (which I'm not even necessarily arguing should happen, though I think it was definitely a bad ban) it could give us better transparency, more clarified ban list criteria, or at the very least a much more even handed approach to shakeup bans in the future.
But as far as the Tier 0 thing goes, I just don't find it convincing. SOMETHING is always the best deck. If it's not Twin, something else will be the *closest thing to tier 0* the format has. It just doesn't mean much unless we have an objective justification of when we can consider something an offender on those grounds.
I only participate in this thread because it's active. We're all just spinning our wheels here. When bans happen we talk about what to do now and what might happen next. In the interim we talk about what we'd like unbanned, and what might happen if THAT happened. While all of this happens, there are 20-30 people who stop by simply to call everyone stupid. We all laugh. Ah, the internet.
I don't think this ban is outside of the pattern that's already been laid out. Look through the last modern pro tours. Almost every deck that has been in a finals has been nerfed or banned in some way. Wizards sees the pro position as the authority on the power of the format. Twin has had multiple Pro tour top 8s in 3 of the 4 modern pro tours. Jund has been nerfed twice for pro tour dominance. Eggs being a nightmare on camera pushed it over the edge. Amulet is gone. Pro tour Philly feature Counter Cat vs. Twin in those finals - Nacatl got banned from it, Twin survived, and that's one of only 2 decks to make it through a pro tour finals appearance unscathed the next year (the only other being WUR control when it played against POD - but the year that followed wasn't kind WUR control and I'm sure Wizards saw no reason to hit it with something). We simply were not looking at the right things to indicate bannings. I guess this is a little unfortunate, but that's up to the individual. I think it's pretty clear going forward what should be looked at - if a deck hits the pro tour finals, and continues to be a force in the meta, probably avoid that deck or have a second one on the ready.
On tier 0 - put yourself in a pro's shoes for a second. You're only PASSIVELY familiar with modern but you've got the pro tour coming up and you need to play something. What are you going to play? Pre-bannings, there were really only 4 options (and I'd argue it's reallllly 3 options) - Twin (it's blue with an oops I win button), Jund (BG goodstuff always feels safe and doesn't take much practice), Amulet (on power level and brokenness alone), or Affinity. Affinity has NOT done well at the pro tour of years past and it's the only one of those 4 decks that is shut down from competition by one card, so I'd imagine most unfamiliar pros would skip over it. Those other three decks? That is our 'effective' format tier 0. ALL of my anecdotal evidence from my own experience backs this up - I don't know that I've EVER played in an event where I didn't expect to see Twin or Jund in multiple rounds. It's just the way modern has been.
The numbers that are always cited don't to me capture the full picture of what's going on in the format. Modern is MUCH MUCH MUCH more wide open than any other constructed format - for a deck to be anywhere between 11-15% at any point represents a MUCH higher effective percentage than something like Legacy. This is just my own interpretation of the numbers, but I absolutely do not buy the interpretation that Twin was somehow on the decline, and I also do not think you can throw out it's legacy and only look at the last 3 months to determine it's strength. Look at all of the results from States, SCGs, GPs, Pro Tours, IQs, all of it. Twin shows up in some form in almost every single top 8 and often in multiples and often for the win. Period. No other deck even comes close.
I think this is why alot of people are upset. Modern was supposed to be a non-rotating format that was not plagued by the problems of the reserved list.
Not a non-rotating format with "forced" rotations via bans.
I'm trying not to butt in the thread as I see the saltiness in the air has still not come down to safety levels to have a civilized conversation about it. But this is certainly worthy of correction because evidently a huge part of the player base misunderstood those tweets and in their anger are refusing to see the truth.
Its not a contradiction. Its a clarification because people misunderstood what he meant:
"That is not why the ban is happening. It is dictating when, not why."
Twin was up for a banning, the only thing the PT dictated is when that banning occurred, not why. What that means is that WotC probably selected Twiin for a ban previously during the year and just waited for the PT to do so. Its probably the same reason Bloom survived the past 2 ban announcements, because as Aaron clarified, the timing of bannings is dictated by the PT, which means the rest of the announcements of the year are just for emergencies and other formats.
This is also to all the people saying that without a PT Twin would still be here. Truth is, judging by Aaron's words, thats probably not true. Without a PT dictating when bans occur it means both Twin & Bloom might have probably been banned even sooner since they wouldn't have had to wait up until the PT to do so.
This tweet is a direct admission that they ban cards in modern for the pro tour. I'd really love to see you try and twist logic to make it seem otherwise.
This tweet makes it seem like Aaron and whoever was on the committee weren't really considering what would happen after Twin was banned, since they'd just have to "wait until the Pro Tour to find out the answers".
1. Yes, that is a direct admission that they ban cards for the pro tour. However, and I'm going by Forsythe's clarification words again, the PT dicatates when, not why. I don't need to twist logic for that to make sense. What I interpret from that is that they put a hold on bans during the year unless its an emergency a la TC/DTT. Instead of banning cards during the year, they wait until the PT so that people don't have enough time to tune their decks for the PT, which is good for the diversity of the PT. If they had banned Bloom and Twin back in summer people would have already adapted for the PT. This is only my interpretation, though.
2. I agree, they do not know what the outcome will be. They do not test for modern. They just do things on a hunch. This only strengthens the argument I've brought up many times that quite a few cards that were banned prior to the format's inception were wrongfully banned, as evidenced by the few that have been unbanned thus far.
Hope that makes some sense, without logic twisting and all.
So you are choosing to ignore the fact that the later statement (which only came after outrage from the first statement) contradicts the original statement.
Also: why does the timing matter? If bans have nothing to do with "shaking up the format" for the PT? Who cares if people have adapted to the bannings for the PT? (unless the PT is the reason for the bannings?)
The truth... is if bannings have nothing to do with shaking up the format for the PT... then the timing is irrelevant and his most recent tweet also makes no sense.
That's no interpretation. Just applying common sense.
No. You're just misinterpreting my words just like a lot of people misinterpreted Forsythe's words.
I just wanted to bring up Forsythe's clarification to the "PT dictates bans" statement because its being ignored. I'm not interested in discussing why WotC does things the way they do things or if Twin deserved to be banned or not. I'm not WotC employee, I'm just good at reading and interpreting and I know how easily words can be misinterpreted and taken out of context, specially by angry mobs looking for someone to lynch.
Besides. Why argue if you already have "the truth"?
I'm trying not to butt in the thread as I see the saltiness in the air has still not come down to safety levels to have a civilized conversation about it. But this is certainly worthy of correction because evidently a huge part of the player base misunderstood those tweets and in their anger are refusing to see the truth.
Its not a contradiction. Its a clarification because people misunderstood what he meant:
"That is not why the ban is happening. It is dictating when, not why."
Twin was up for a banning, the only thing the PT dictated is when that banning occurred, not why. What that means is that WotC probably selected Twiin for a ban previously during the year and just waited for the PT to do so. Its probably the same reason Bloom survived the past 2 ban announcements, because as Aaron clarified, the timing of bannings is dictated by the PT, which means the rest of the announcements of the year are just for emergencies and other formats.
This is also to all the people saying that without a PT Twin would still be here. Truth is, judging by Aaron's words, thats probably not true. Without a PT dictating when bans occur it means both Twin & Bloom might have probably been banned even sooner since they wouldn't have had to wait up until the PT to do so.
This tweet is a direct admission that they ban cards in modern for the pro tour. I'd really love to see you try and twist logic to make it seem otherwise.
This tweet makes it seem like Aaron and whoever was on the committee weren't really considering what would happen after Twin was banned, since they'd just have to "wait until the Pro Tour to find out the answers".
1. Yes, that is a direct admission that they ban cards for the pro tour. However, and I'm going by Forsythe's clarification words again, the PT dicatates when, not why. I don't need to twist logic for that to make sense. What I interpret from that is that they put a hold on bans during the year unless its an emergency a la TC/DTT. Instead of banning cards during the year, they wait until the PT so that people don't have enough time to tune their decks for the PT, which is good for the diversity of the PT. If they had banned Bloom and Twin back in summer people would have already adapted for the PT. This is only my interpretation, though.
2. I agree, they do not know what the outcome will be. They do not test for modern. They just do things on a hunch. This only strengthens the argument I've brought up many times that quite a few cards that were banned prior to the format's inception were wrongfully banned, as evidenced by the few that have been unbanned thus far.
Hope that makes some sense, without logic twisting and all.
So you are choosing to ignore the fact that the later statement (which only came after outrage from the first statement) contradicts the original statement.
Also: why does the timing matter? If bans have nothing to do with "shaking up the format" for the PT? Who cares if people have adapted to the bannings for the PT? (unless the PT is the reason for the bannings?)
The truth... is if bannings have nothing to do with shaking up the format for the PT... then the timing is irrelevant and his most recent tweet also makes no sense.
That's no interpretation. Just applying common sense.
No. You're just misinterpreting my words just like a lot of people misinterpreted Forsythe's words.
I just wanted to bring up Forsythe's clarification to the "PT dictates bans" statement because its being ignored. I'm not interested in discussing why WotC does things the way they do things or if Twin deserved to be banned or not. I'm not WotC employee, I'm just good at reading and interpreting and I know how easily words can be misinterpreted and taken out of context, specially by angry mobs looking for someone to lynch.
Besides. Why argue if you already have "the truth"?
Please see my post edits. I clarified my position. His statement is being ignored for a reason. It's irreleative.
Everyone knows that Splinter Twin wasn't banned 'because of the pt'. The PT wasn't the reasoning of the ban, it was the facilitator of it.
The ban happened to "shake up the format". That was the reasoning. The PT requires that the meta be "shaken up" hence it dictating the timing of the ban.
You mentioned earlier (or someone did with that tweet) that he stated that Twin would have been banned anyways. That's NOT what he said (and that actually is interpreting it).
His most recent tweet said the PT dictates the timing, not the reasoning. Which I said before is true. The reasoning was to "Shake up the meta". The timing now is due to the PT.
To convince people that are making up other justifications. I know you arent new to this.
This doesn't add anything to the discussion. It's cheeky for the sake of being cheeky. Respond to arguments or don't, but don't bring the quality of the conversations down - especially because you've already admitted you don't care about playing this format anymore.
Instead of arguing about why these bannings happened and being salty about it, let's talk about what will happen as a result of the bans. What decks are good and bad now? I think the general consensus right now is that Bgx is going to see a dip in play losing its best matchup, and while most think tron is going to rule the format I think we're heading back to the hyper aggressive meta that followed immediately after the tc/dtt bans.
Instead of arguing about why these bannings happened and being salty about it, let's talk about what will happen as a result of the bans. What decks are good and bad now? I think the general consensus right now is that Bgx is going to see a dip in play losing its best matchup, and while most think tron is going to rule the format I think we're heading back to the hyper aggressive meta that followed immediately after the tc/dtt bans.
Well, people are discussing what decks will be good. The consensus seems to be Affinity and RG Tron are the decks to beat and gained the most from the bannings.
That said meta analysis has its own dedicated thread, whereas this is literally the only place where you are allowed to talk about the bans, why they happened, and what should or shouldn't be on the banlist. It might be annoying but it's definitely not going to end any time soon, and probably not until we get some significantly increased transparency on what warrants banning.
This tweet is a direct admission that they ban cards in modern for the pro tour. I'd really love to see you try and twist logic to make it seem otherwise.
This tweet makes it seem like Aaron and whoever was on the committee weren't really considering what would happen after Twin was banned, since they'd just have to "wait until the Pro Tour to find out the answers".
1. Yes, that is a direct admission that they ban cards for the pro tour. However, and I'm going by Forsythe's clarification words again, the PT dicatates when, not why. I don't need to twist logic for that to make sense. What I interpret from that is that they put a hold on bans during the year unless its an emergency a la TC/DTT. Instead of banning cards during the year, they wait until the PT so that people don't have enough time to tune their decks for the PT, which is good for the diversity of the PT. If they had banned Bloom and Twin back in summer people would have already adapted for the PT. This is only my interpretation, though.
2. I agree, they do not know what the outcome will be. They do not test for modern. They just do things on a hunch. This only strengthens the argument I've brought up many times that quite a few cards that were banned prior to the format's inception were wrongfully banned, as evidenced by the few that have been unbanned thus far.
Hope that makes some sense, without logic twisting and all.
So you are choosing to ignore the fact that the later statement (which only came after outrage from the first statement) contradicts the original statement.
Also: why does the timing matter? If bans have nothing to do with "shaking up the format" for the PT? Who cares if people have adapted to the bannings for the PT? (unless the PT is the reason for the bannings?)
The truth... is if bannings have nothing to do with shaking up the format for the PT... then the timing is irrelevant and his most recent tweet also makes no sense.
That's no interpretation. Just applying common sense.
No. You're just misinterpreting my words just like a lot of people misinterpreted Forsythe's words.
I just wanted to bring up Forsythe's clarification to the "PT dictates bans" statement because its being ignored. I'm not interested in discussing why WotC does things the way they do things or if Twin deserved to be banned or not. I'm not WotC employee, I'm just good at reading and interpreting and I know how easily words can be misinterpreted and taken out of context, specially by angry mobs looking for someone to lynch.
Besides. Why argue if you already have "the truth"?
Please see my post edits. I clarified my position. His statement is being ignored for a reason. It's irreleative.
Everyone knows that Splinter Twin wasn't banned 'because of the pt'. The PT wasn't the reasoning of the ban, it was the facilitator of it.
The ban happened to "shake up the format". That was the reasoning. The PT requires that the meta be "shaken up" hence it dictating the timing of the ban.
You mentioned earlier (or someone did with that tweet) that he stated that Twin would have been banned anyways. That's NOT what he said (and that actually is interpreting it).
His most recent tweet said the PT dictates the timing, not the reasoning. Which I said before is true. The reasoning was to "Shake up the meta". The timing now is due to the PT.
Not sure how that is hard to understand.
Its kind of hard to argue with someone who states they are selectively ignoring important parts of the issue: "His statement is being ignored for a reason."
Which parts do we ignore and which parts do we believe?
Its also hard to discuss with people who believe to know "the truth" and lump the whole player base into their side of the argument: "Everyone knows that Splinter Twin wasn't banned 'because of the pt'."
If everyone knew there wouldn't be 35+ pages of people arguing with each other over it.
Its even harder to argue with people who paraphrase your words or take them out of context: "You mentioned earlier (or someone did with that tweet) that he stated that Twin would have been banned anyways. That's NOT what he said (and that actually is interpreting it)."
He never said that. Neither did I. Go look for that post and read it again.
But the hardest is to argue with people who belittle you because yopu don't agree with them: "Not sure how that is hard to understand."
So yeah... Like I said, I'll come back to the thread when the salt comes down to safety levels.
To convince people that are making up other justifications. I know you arent new to this.
This doesn't add anything to the discussion. It's cheeky for the sake of being cheeky. Respond to arguments or don't, but don't bring the quality of the conversations down - especially because you've already admitted you don't care about playing this format anymore.
I mean, you're not exactly innocent of this yourself, you've gone out of your way to attack other people in this thread several times so it seems weird you'd make this comment.
Instead of arguing about why these bannings happened and being salty about it, let's talk about what will happen as a result of the bans. What decks are good and bad now? I think the general consensus right now is that Bgx is going to see a dip in play losing its best matchup, and while most think tron is going to rule the format I think we're heading back to the hyper aggressive meta that followed immediately after the tc/dtt bans.
The new META will be dominated by Tron and Affinity. This is my prediction.
And these will give WOTC some good candidates for the Modern PT in 2017.
I just cannot agree with that bill. I firmly believe based on comments made that 'shake up' bans are a thing. It wont happen till next year, it will be 'no changes' until Jan, but if Tron takes off, those lands will go.
1. Yes, that is a direct admission that they ban cards for the pro tour. However, and I'm going by Forsythe's clarification words again, the PT dicatates when, not why. I don't need to twist logic for that to make sense. What I interpret from that is that they put a hold on bans during the year unless its an emergency a la TC/DTT. Instead of banning cards during the year, they wait until the PT so that people don't have enough time to tune their decks for the PT, which is good for the diversity of the PT. If they had banned Bloom and Twin back in summer people would have already adapted for the PT. This is only my interpretation, though.
2. I agree, they do not know what the outcome will be. They do not test for modern. They just do things on a hunch. This only strengthens the argument I've brought up many times that quite a few cards that were banned prior to the format's inception were wrongfully banned, as evidenced by the few that have been unbanned thus far.
Hope that makes some sense, without logic twisting and all.
So you are choosing to ignore the fact that the later statement (which only came after outrage from the first statement) contradicts the original statement.
Also: why does the timing matter? If bans have nothing to do with "shaking up the format" for the PT? Who cares if people have adapted to the bannings for the PT? (unless the PT is the reason for the bannings?)
The truth... is if bannings have nothing to do with shaking up the format for the PT... then the timing is irrelevant and his most recent tweet also makes no sense.
That's no interpretation. Just applying common sense.
No. You're just misinterpreting my words just like a lot of people misinterpreted Forsythe's words.
I just wanted to bring up Forsythe's clarification to the "PT dictates bans" statement because its being ignored. I'm not interested in discussing why WotC does things the way they do things or if Twin deserved to be banned or not. I'm not WotC employee, I'm just good at reading and interpreting and I know how easily words can be misinterpreted and taken out of context, specially by angry mobs looking for someone to lynch.
Besides. Why argue if you already have "the truth"?
Please see my post edits. I clarified my position. His statement is being ignored for a reason. It's irreleative.
Everyone knows that Splinter Twin wasn't banned 'because of the pt'. The PT wasn't the reasoning of the ban, it was the facilitator of it.
The ban happened to "shake up the format". That was the reasoning. The PT requires that the meta be "shaken up" hence it dictating the timing of the ban.
You mentioned earlier (or someone did with that tweet) that he stated that Twin would have been banned anyways. That's NOT what he said (and that actually is interpreting it).
His most recent tweet said the PT dictates the timing, not the reasoning. Which I said before is true. The reasoning was to "Shake up the meta". The timing now is due to the PT.
Not sure how that is hard to understand.
Its kind of hard to argue with someone who states they are selectively ignoring important parts of the issue: "His statement is being ignored for a reason."
Which parts do we ignore and which parts do we believe?
Its also hard to discuss with people who believe to know "the truth" and lump the whole player base into their side of the argument: "Everyone knows that Splinter Twin wasn't banned 'because of the pt'."
If everyone knew there wouldn't be 35+ pages of people arguing with each other over it.
Its even harder to argue with people who paraphrase your words or take them out of context: "You mentioned earlier (or someone did with that tweet) that he stated that Twin would have been banned anyways. That's NOT what he said (and that actually is interpreting it)."
He never said that. Neither did I. Go look for that post and read it again.
But the hardest is to argue with people who belittle you because yopu don't agree with them: "Not sure how that is hard to understand."
So yeah... Like I said, I'll come back to the thread when the salt comes down to safety levels.
I clarified it in my previous post.. but I'll clarify it again.
People are ignoring his tweet because it's not wrong. The PT was not the reason Twin got banned.
Twin got banned because they wanted to shake up the format. It just happens... that the PT REQUIRES the format to be shaken up once per year.
That is all fair, but it only means Wizards should be answering to these concerns then, if not those who were in favor of these changes. No matter what we write in this thread we are going to have to live with the ban, but if we were only interested in Wizards' view of what this format should look like or how the ban list should be handled this thread would be completely pointless from the outset. The entire point of this thread is to contest the way things are or the way we think things should be and come to an understanding of the format. This means both understanding how the DCI actually bans, and also whether or not we think those bans are reasonable or even good to begin with.
If it really is an unjust ban, it is not beyond the community to push back, I don't believe. Even if it doesn't give us Twin back (which I'm not even necessarily arguing should happen, though I think it was definitely a bad ban) it could give us better transparency, more clarified ban list criteria, or at the very least a much more even handed approach to shakeup bans in the future.
But as far as the Tier 0 thing goes, I just don't find it convincing. SOMETHING is always the best deck. If it's not Twin, something else will be the *closest thing to tier 0* the format has. It just doesn't mean much unless we have an objective justification of when we can consider something an offender on those grounds.
I only participate in this thread because it's active. We're all just spinning our wheels here. When bans happen we talk about what to do now and what might happen next. In the interim we talk about what we'd like unbanned, and what might happen if THAT happened. While all of this happens, there are 20-30 people who stop by simply to call everyone stupid. We all laugh. Ah, the internet.
I don't think this ban is outside of the pattern that's already been laid out. Look through the last modern pro tours. Almost every deck that has been in a finals has been nerfed or banned in some way. Wizards sees the pro position as the authority on the power of the format. Twin has had multiple Pro tour top 8s in 3 of the 4 modern pro tours. Jund has been nerfed twice for pro tour dominance. Eggs being a nightmare on camera pushed it over the edge. Amulet is gone. Pro tour Philly feature Counter Cat vs. Twin in those finals - Nacatl got banned from it, Twin survived, and that's one of only 2 decks to make it through a pro tour finals appearance unscathed the next year (the only other being WUR control when it played against POD - but the year that followed wasn't kind WUR control and I'm sure Wizards saw no reason to hit it with something). We simply were not looking at the right things to indicate bannings. I guess this is a little unfortunate, but that's up to the individual. I think it's pretty clear going forward what should be looked at - if a deck hits the pro tour finals, and continues to be a force in the meta, probably avoid that deck or have a second one on the ready.
On tier 0 - put yourself in a pro's shoes for a second. You're only PASSIVELY familiar with modern but you've got the pro tour coming up and you need to play something. What are you going to play? Pre-bannings, there were really only 4 options (and I'd argue it's reallllly 3 options) - Twin (it's blue with an oops I win button), Jund (BG goodstuff always feels safe and doesn't take much practice), Amulet (on power level and brokenness alone), or Affinity. Affinity has NOT done well at the pro tour of years past and it's the only one of those 4 decks that is shut down from competition by one card, so I'd imagine most unfamiliar pros would skip over it. Those other three decks? That is our 'effective' format tier 0. ALL of my anecdotal evidence from my own experience backs this up - I don't know that I've EVER played in an event where I didn't expect to see Twin or Jund in multiple rounds. It's just the way modern has been.
The numbers that are always cited don't to me capture the full picture of what's going on in the format. Modern is MUCH MUCH MUCH more wide open than any other constructed format - for a deck to be anywhere between 11-15% at any point represents a MUCH higher effective percentage than something like Legacy. This is just my own interpretation of the numbers, but I absolutely do not buy the interpretation that Twin was somehow on the decline, and I also do not think you can throw out it's legacy and only look at the last 3 months to determine it's strength. Look at all of the results from States, SCGs, GPs, Pro Tours, IQs, all of it. Twin shows up in some form in almost every single top 8 and often in multiples and often for the win. Period. No other deck even comes close.
I think this is why alot of people are upset. Modern was supposed to be a non-rotating format that was not plagued by the problems of the reserved list.
Not a non-rotating format with "forced" rotations via bans.
This hits the nail on the head they are using the ban list as a pseudo rotation scheme.
In the first he says Modern has more pressure than Vintage and Legacy for bans because of the Pro Tour. Therefore the implication is that Twin and possibly other cards have been banned where they might not have been if there was no pressure from the Pro Tour. In the second he says the Pro Tour is not causing any bans or pressure for a ban, just stalling bans until the pro tour happens.
You are viewing the second tweet as a clarification. Correct me if I'm wrong, but those statements he made are contradictory and can't both be true without some kind of doublethink mentality. He's not clarifying anything, he's just denying what he said earlier. I'll choose to believe the first one, because it's logical for WotC from a business point of view to do what they've done.
Therefore we won't get the non-rotating, stable format we want unless Modern is removed as a pro tour format. If modern stops having PPTQs and WCMQs as a result, it would suck though. I'm not sure which one would hurt the format more, but right now it feels like banning tier 1 decks every pro tour is worse for the long term.
they are not contradictory, essentially he means that due to the PT they have to be bit harsher with stale/solved metas but the PT alone is not the reason some bans happening, though if they are to happen they'll probably happen before the PT
it's only natural that he cannot explain his full line of thinking in a couple of tweets, none of us could do it either
Twin would not dodge the axe without the PT, only the timing would change, probably they would left it for a couple of anoucnements later so the people can see the dominance themselves and the meta shares they care so much about rising and then this conversations would be less bitter
now the Twin dominance ended almost immediately therefore you never had the time to see the meta-shares rocketing and see the ban as justified, they just spared us the trouble of fighting in a 20+% Twin meta that would have been by next year without significant changes to the card pool
meta shares take a lot of time to reflect the situation especially on paper which is a slow reacting meta
Saying that twin would not dodge the ax if Modern wasn't a PT format... IS interpreting his tweet. That's not what he said. AT ALL.
You're criticizing others for interpreting his tweets.. when you are doing the same exact thing.
That says it all. He was asked if the ban was made to spice up/shake up the PT. And he clarified, that is not why it was banned.
Unless we interpret "more pressure" from the other statement as "we need to spice up/shake the pro tour", I do not see how these 2 statements contradict each other.
This all hinges on what people interpret for "more pressure" because its a very vague phrase and certainly open to any sort of interpretation. The second statement is a direct explicit answer to a question.
I'll believe the second one, which is not vague or open to interpretation, until I see evidence proving otherwise.
https://twitter.com/SamuelHBlack/status/688326595493425152
"Why twin was banned: keeping the format diverse requires that the best deck loses to hate. Twin kept winning while on top. Can't have that."
Even if Affinity or Burn become top dog (if you don't already consider Affinity top dog), they are fairly easy to hate out. That doesn't mean they don't still win sideboarded games.
I'm not sure if Tron folds as much to hate (off the top of my head, only red and black seem to have answers to their gameplan), but I'd speculatively say that the other two have the necessary stop gaps if people want to go into a tournament and not lose to that deck.
1. Yes, that is a direct admission that they ban cards for the pro tour. However, and I'm going by Forsythe's clarification words again, the PT dicatates when, not why. I don't need to twist logic for that to make sense. What I interpret from that is that they put a hold on bans during the year unless its an emergency a la TC/DTT. Instead of banning cards during the year, they wait until the PT so that people don't have enough time to tune their decks for the PT, which is good for the diversity of the PT. If they had banned Bloom and Twin back in summer people would have already adapted for the PT. This is only my interpretation, though.
2. I agree, they do not know what the outcome will be. They do not test for modern. They just do things on a hunch. This only strengthens the argument I've brought up many times that quite a few cards that were banned prior to the format's inception were wrongfully banned, as evidenced by the few that have been unbanned thus far.
Hope that makes some sense, without logic twisting and all.
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"
Honestly, I feel I will just be repeating myself over and over. I've answered this multiple times. Lets just agree to disagree cause I gotta keep working over here.
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"
So you are choosing to ignore the fact that the later statement (which only came after outrage from the first statement) contradicts the original statement.
Also: why does the timing matter? If bans have nothing to do with "shaking up the format" for the PT? Who cares if people have adapted to the bannings for the PT? (unless the PT is the reason for the bannings?)
The truth... is if bannings have nothing to do with shaking up the format for the PT... then the timing is irrelevant and his most recent tweet also makes no sense.
That's no interpretation. Just applying common sense.
EDIT: His most recent tweet wasn't really a lie. The "reasoning" of the ban was to shake up the meta. That has nothing to do with the PT. The PT does facilitate the timing though because now it has to happen more often. So the PT is exciting.
It's word smithing at it's finest.
With respect to 1), there have been a LOT of things said in regards to the relationship between the PT and bans up to and including this latest discussion. It has been noted that being a pro tour format isn't in the best interest of modern's health, which also heavily implies that there are decisions made on the ban list that would not be made in the absence of PT format status. Not that this settles anything, but they have been intentionally vague enough times that it is fairly difficult to distill a meaningful stance out of what has been said if you take it all at 100% face value.
With respect to 2) I agree a great deal, and I think this is especially revealed in this series of tweets regarding Sword of the Meek: https://twitter.com/mtgaaron/status/688463841781526532
I only participate in this thread because it's active. We're all just spinning our wheels here. When bans happen we talk about what to do now and what might happen next. In the interim we talk about what we'd like unbanned, and what might happen if THAT happened. While all of this happens, there are 20-30 people who stop by simply to call everyone stupid. We all laugh. Ah, the internet.
I don't think this ban is outside of the pattern that's already been laid out. Look through the last modern pro tours. Almost every deck that has been in a finals has been nerfed or banned in some way. Wizards sees the pro position as the authority on the power of the format. Twin has had multiple Pro tour top 8s in 3 of the 4 modern pro tours. Jund has been nerfed twice for pro tour dominance. Eggs being a nightmare on camera pushed it over the edge. Amulet is gone. Pro tour Philly feature Counter Cat vs. Twin in those finals - Nacatl got banned from it, Twin survived, and that's one of only 2 decks to make it through a pro tour finals appearance unscathed the next year (the only other being WUR control when it played against POD - but the year that followed wasn't kind WUR control and I'm sure Wizards saw no reason to hit it with something). We simply were not looking at the right things to indicate bannings. I guess this is a little unfortunate, but that's up to the individual. I think it's pretty clear going forward what should be looked at - if a deck hits the pro tour finals, and continues to be a force in the meta, probably avoid that deck or have a second one on the ready.
On tier 0 - put yourself in a pro's shoes for a second. You're only PASSIVELY familiar with modern but you've got the pro tour coming up and you need to play something. What are you going to play? Pre-bannings, there were really only 4 options (and I'd argue it's reallllly 3 options) - Twin (it's blue with an oops I win button), Jund (BG goodstuff always feels safe and doesn't take much practice), Amulet (on power level and brokenness alone), or Affinity. Affinity has NOT done well at the pro tour of years past and it's the only one of those 4 decks that is shut down from competition by one card, so I'd imagine most unfamiliar pros would skip over it. Those other three decks? That is our 'effective' format tier 0. ALL of my anecdotal evidence from my own experience backs this up - I don't know that I've EVER played in an event where I didn't expect to see Twin or Jund in multiple rounds. It's just the way modern has been.
The numbers that are always cited don't to me capture the full picture of what's going on in the format. Modern is MUCH MUCH MUCH more wide open than any other constructed format - for a deck to be anywhere between 11-15% at any point represents a MUCH higher effective percentage than something like Legacy. This is just my own interpretation of the numbers, but I absolutely do not buy the interpretation that Twin was somehow on the decline, and I also do not think you can throw out it's legacy and only look at the last 3 months to determine it's strength. Look at all of the results from States, SCGs, GPs, Pro Tours, IQs, all of it. Twin shows up in some form in almost every single top 8 and often in multiples and often for the win. Period. No other deck even comes close.
I don't feel like this is an unreasonable request at all. Transparency would go a long way to chilling out some of the pitchforks.
I think this is why alot of people are upset. Modern was supposed to be a non-rotating format that was not plagued by the problems of the reserved list.
Not a non-rotating format with "forced" rotations via bans.
No. You're just misinterpreting my words just like a lot of people misinterpreted Forsythe's words.
I just wanted to bring up Forsythe's clarification to the "PT dictates bans" statement because its being ignored. I'm not interested in discussing why WotC does things the way they do things or if Twin deserved to be banned or not. I'm not WotC employee, I'm just good at reading and interpreting and I know how easily words can be misinterpreted and taken out of context, specially by angry mobs looking for someone to lynch.
Besides. Why argue if you already have "the truth"?
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"
Spirits
Please see my post edits. I clarified my position. His statement is being ignored for a reason. It's irreleative.
Everyone knows that Splinter Twin wasn't banned 'because of the pt'. The PT wasn't the reasoning of the ban, it was the facilitator of it.
The ban happened to "shake up the format". That was the reasoning. The PT requires that the meta be "shaken up" hence it dictating the timing of the ban.
You mentioned earlier (or someone did with that tweet) that he stated that Twin would have been banned anyways. That's NOT what he said (and that actually is interpreting it).
His most recent tweet said the PT dictates the timing, not the reasoning. Which I said before is true. The reasoning was to "Shake up the meta". The timing now is due to the PT.
Not sure how that is hard to understand.
This doesn't add anything to the discussion. It's cheeky for the sake of being cheeky. Respond to arguments or don't, but don't bring the quality of the conversations down - especially because you've already admitted you don't care about playing this format anymore.
I sincerely hope that I am wrong and its not a rotating door of top decks for the sake of a pro tour that 'pros' dont even want to play.
Spirits
Well, people are discussing what decks will be good. The consensus seems to be Affinity and RG Tron are the decks to beat and gained the most from the bannings.
That said meta analysis has its own dedicated thread, whereas this is literally the only place where you are allowed to talk about the bans, why they happened, and what should or shouldn't be on the banlist. It might be annoying but it's definitely not going to end any time soon, and probably not until we get some significantly increased transparency on what warrants banning.
Its kind of hard to argue with someone who states they are selectively ignoring important parts of the issue: "His statement is being ignored for a reason."
Which parts do we ignore and which parts do we believe?
Its also hard to discuss with people who believe to know "the truth" and lump the whole player base into their side of the argument: "Everyone knows that Splinter Twin wasn't banned 'because of the pt'."
If everyone knew there wouldn't be 35+ pages of people arguing with each other over it.
Its even harder to argue with people who paraphrase your words or take them out of context: "You mentioned earlier (or someone did with that tweet) that he stated that Twin would have been banned anyways. That's NOT what he said (and that actually is interpreting it)."
He never said that. Neither did I. Go look for that post and read it again.
But the hardest is to argue with people who belittle you because yopu don't agree with them: "Not sure how that is hard to understand."
So yeah... Like I said, I'll come back to the thread when the salt comes down to safety levels.
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"
I mean, you're not exactly innocent of this yourself, you've gone out of your way to attack other people in this thread several times so it seems weird you'd make this comment.
The new META will be dominated by Tron and Affinity. This is my prediction.
And these will give WOTC some good candidates for the Modern PT in 2017.
Anything, but nothing at the moment...
Modern:
WUBRGAmulet Titan, WUBRGHuman
WUBRAd Nauseam, WBRGDeath Shadow, UBRGScapeshift, UBRGDredge
WURJeskai Nahiri, WURCheeri0s, WBGCounter Company, WRGBurn, UBRMadcap Moon, BRGJund Midrange
UBTurn,BRGriselbrand Reanimator, WGKnight Company, RGRG Tron, RGRG Ponza, XAffinity, XEldrazi Tron
Spirits
I clarified it in my previous post.. but I'll clarify it again.
People are ignoring his tweet because it's not wrong. The PT was not the reason Twin got banned.
Twin got banned because they wanted to shake up the format. It just happens... that the PT REQUIRES the format to be shaken up once per year.
Saying that twin would not dodge the ax if Modern wasn't a PT format... IS interpreting his tweet. That's not what he said. AT ALL.
You're criticizing others for interpreting his tweets.. when you are doing the same exact thing.
That says it all. He was asked if the ban was made to spice up/shake up the PT. And he clarified, that is not why it was banned.
Unless we interpret "more pressure" from the other statement as "we need to spice up/shake the pro tour", I do not see how these 2 statements contradict each other.
This all hinges on what people interpret for "more pressure" because its a very vague phrase and certainly open to any sort of interpretation. The second statement is a direct explicit answer to a question.
I'll believe the second one, which is not vague or open to interpretation, until I see evidence proving otherwise.
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"