i don't think i play enough modern. i travel too much for work to play enough to have the same opinions and come to the same conclusions some of you have reached. i have been killed t3/4 by infect and affinity plenty of times when i have no piece of interaction. this is the case with eldrazi and thought knot t2 i suppose. but that hypothetical t1 mimic is pulling a lot of weight, no? doesn't it seem a little analogous to a t1 glistener elf?
i don't think i play enough modern. i travel too much for work to play enough to have the same opinions and come to the same conclusions some of you have reached. i have been killed t3/4 by infect and affinity plenty of times when i have no piece of interaction. this is the case with eldrazi and thought knot t2 i suppose. but that hypothetical t1 mimic is pulling a lot of weight, no? doesn't it seem a little analogous to a t1 glistener elf?
Turn 1 Mimic is scarier than Elf because of what comes after it.
That was a good hand but not even the best. Try this one:
Turn 1 - Eye, Mimic, Mimic
Turn 2 - Temple, Discard Simian Spirit Guide, play Reality Smasher, swing for 15.
Say you have a hand full of Path to exiles and Thoughtseizes (which would wreck Affinity and Infect) and you are on the draw:
They go Turn 1 - Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, Chalice of the Void on 1.
Turn 2 you look at your useless hand. They play Eye of Ugin and TKS your Supreme Verdict.
mimic doesnt copy trample, just the p/t changes. just sayin
what i meant was that t1 mimic and t1 elf can very similar if the opponent does not have a piece of interaction on the 1st turn.
t1 elf on the play
you don't kill it your first turn.
t2 land, attack, groundswell, 5 poison.
you don't kill it t2.
t3 might of old krosa, kill you.
the raw damage from eldrazi is much more over the course of 3 turns, but you are just as dead here if you don't have a path or dismember in your first two turns.
without the mimic in play, the clock is much more reasonable (not that a 4/4 t2 and 5/5 trample haste t3 is completely fair)
i don't really like your chalice example because any deck could do that with chalice if they included it and ssg. yes it does not help the case for colorless eldrazi using it, but still.
i think i am just advertising how strong maindeck dismember is at this point haha.
i am going to spend some time this weekend trying to test a controlling deck vs eldrazi and see what i can come up with. somewhere between snapcaster, lightning helix, jvp, and dismember there has to be a deck that can fight big creatures and control the game without losing to chalice on 1.
The aggro by itself is nice, but isn't that great. If all of the non-mimic eldrazi were like Endless one, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But Thought-Knot Seer gives them information + your best card (like Path or Dismember) and Reality Smasher tends to be a _very_ high value card. And both are non-boltable.
Conversely, everything in Infect is boltable (which is the minimum interaction) and doesn't really produce any form of advantage.
Who's this "we", anyway? You got a mouse in your pocket? I would play Modern every day if I had access to it. The problems are overstated: yes, one deck is too strong, but the Eldrazi vs. Eldrazi games are still very skill-testing and involve a lot of sequencing and combat math. Previously, Modern was actually too diverse: you can't plan for 20 archetypes with a 15-card sideboard.
Ideally, this format would have 4-5 well-balanced archetypes. We don't have that now, but we're moving closer to it.
Eldrazi mirrors are super degenerate. The first person to get Thought knot on the field usually wins the game. Even LSV has admitted to this being stupid.
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On mtgsalvation people don't want to discuss ideas, so I give people something else to discuss: my controversial opinions.
I did beat the Eldrazi U/R deck once, but only because I was basically playing my "kill everything that moves" casual deck that spams creature removal. Hell hath no fury like a deck full of 8 undying beaters, Retribution of the Ancients, hardened scales, and a crap ton of doom blade, maelstrom pulse, tribute to hunger, Go for the throat, and dismember. The only issues I ran into was dealing with Reality Smasher and TKS. I still did horribly over all, but it was funny when the guy played a TKS, saw my hand, and was literally asking me "Is your deck nothing but creature kill spells?"
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
mimic doesnt copy trample, just the p/t changes. just sayin
what i meant was that t1 mimic and t1 elf can very similar if the opponent does not have a piece of interaction on the 1st turn.
t1 elf on the play
you don't kill it your first turn.
t2 land, attack, groundswell, 5 poison.
you don't kill it t2.
t3 might of old krosa, kill you.
the raw damage from eldrazi is much more over the course of 3 turns, but you are just as dead here if you don't have a path or dismember in your first two turns.
without the mimic in play, the clock is much more reasonable (not that a 4/4 t2 and 5/5 trample haste t3 is completely fair)
There are some really important differences between early eldrazi and early infect that you are overlooking. I play grixis control, one of my best friends had CFB colorless eldrazi and Bx Eldrazi before that And a few other friends have UG infect so I am well versed in both match ups. Infect is very favorable for me. Your example of t1 elf doesn't happen that often. When it does, all I have to do is have untapped mana available and it becomes way too risky to try the t2/t3 blowout. Even if I don't have a removal spell (unlikely b/c I have a lot and I mulligan if I need them), I can bluff one and it's such a huge swing against them if they get hit w/o another infect creature available that they HAVE to hold up mana for vines of vast wood or apostles blessing. Usually the correct play is let them hit for 1 (since they can't pull without getting hit with removal in response) and then kill it at end phase to force them to waste a pump spell to save it. The infect deck is easy to interact with, it is easy to bluff against merely by fetching an untapped red source, and they run out of gas easy when you kill the creatures. The only inevitability they have is 1-2 copies of the 3-drop enchantment that giant growths everything.
In contrast, eldrazi is UNWINNABLE. I have never once won a match. I think I might have won 1 game only when I got really lucky but I'm not even sure of that. The difference is that even if you kill the early mimic, it doesn't disrupt their game plan so much as it buys you an extra turn maybe. They have the inevitability. They have more threats than you can kill and all of them are must-answer. A deck that is both an aggro deck AND has inevitability against control is very strong. Eldrazi goes under and goes over the top simultaneously. It goes big and goes wide simultaneously. It is also simply not the case that "any deck can add chalice and SSG" and be successful. Most decks have 1 drops.
mimic doesnt copy trample, just the p/t changes. just sayin
what i meant was that t1 mimic and t1 elf can very similar if the opponent does not have a piece of interaction on the 1st turn.
t1 elf on the play
you don't kill it your first turn.
t2 land, attack, groundswell, 5 poison.
you don't kill it t2.
t3 might of old krosa, kill you.
the raw damage from eldrazi is much more over the course of 3 turns, but you are just as dead here if you don't have a path or dismember in your first two turns.
without the mimic in play, the clock is much more reasonable (not that a 4/4 t2 and 5/5 trample haste t3 is completely fair)
There are some really important differences between early eldrazi and early infect that you are overlooking. I play grixis control, one of my best friends had CFB colorless eldrazi and Bx Eldrazi before that And a few other friends have UG infect so I am well versed in both match ups. Infect is very favorable for me. Your example of t1 elf doesn't happen that often. When it does, all I have to do is have untapped mana available and it becomes way too risky to try the t2/t3 blowout. Even if I don't have a removal spell (unlikely b/c I have a lot and I mulligan if I need them), I can bluff one and it's such a huge swing against them if they get hit w/o another infect creature available that they HAVE to hold up mana for vines of vast wood or apostles blessing. Usually the correct play is let them hit for 1 (since they can't pull without getting hit with removal in response) and then kill it at end phase to force them to waste a pump spell to save it. The infect deck is easy to interact with, it is easy to bluff against merely by fetching an untapped red source, and they run out of gas easy when you kill the creatures. The only inevitability they have is 1-2 copies of the 3-drop enchantment that giant growths everything.
In contrast, eldrazi is UNWINNABLE. I have never once won a match. I think I might have won 1 game only when I got really lucky but I'm not even sure of that. The difference is that even if you kill the early mimic, it doesn't disrupt their game plan so much as it buys you an extra turn maybe. They have the inevitability. They have more threats than you can kill and all of them are must-answer. A deck that is both an aggro deck AND has inevitability against control is very strong. Eldrazi goes under and goes over the top simultaneously. It goes big and goes wide simultaneously. It is also simply not the case that "any deck can add chalice and SSG" and be successful. Most decks have 1 drops.
Ironically, I actually had a similar experience with my aforementioned misadventure with a casual deck composed mostly of creature kill spells. It doesn't matter how many eldrazi you end up killing. The creatures are basically "good stuff" that never ends. It's like taking down one Tarmogoyf only to see it get replaced by yet another one, and Reality Smasher + Thought-knot seer are brutal to deal with turn 2 and 3 thanks to one taking away a card preemptively and the other taxing you when you try to take it down. So the reality is that even if someone has a dedicated field control deck, you lose because you can't actually trade 1 for 1 with eldrazi.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
terrifictorkoal, those are pretty gross numbers, i cannot lie. i guess my problem with eldrazi aggro is that to me it just seems like another linear strategy that aims to pass right by you but for some reason this time it isn't okay. is the premise of this deck really that different from affinity or infect? both of these other two decks can have just as explosive a start as eldrazi if not moreso, but we are not clamoring for them to be banned. there is the inevitability of eye of ugin activations i suppose, but that was never a problem when tron was doing it for emrakul. is it really much worse to be eyeing for reality smashers instead?
vorthospike, as a blanket statement they generally don't test much for modern according to that. but i have a really hard time believing that something as iconic as the eldrazi didn't jog anybody's memory about two lands that help cast eldrazi from the last time there was an eldrazi set. i think this was likely more a case of they didn't realize quite how strong those lands were in combination with those critters when they were testing internally.
The problem with eldrazi is that every single one of their threats either scale, or basically force a 2 for 1.You also have to answer every single one of the darn eldrazi, all of them set a decent clock. This is perfectly fine for midrange strategies. Eye, however, cuts 2 mana off everything in the deck, often times beating freaking Mishra's workshop in terms of mana production, and temple is basically a painless ancient tomb, with the drawback that you need to play above curve creatures, the horror. You get a deck that can achieve the speed of hyperaggro decks, while still having the disruption and reach that a midrange deck gives you, you get something super format warping. The other problem is that the deck gets all its power from lands, and wizards has decided that good land destruction is unfun.
Basically, Infect and Affinity force you to commit to a plan, and build your deck around that strategy. Eldrazi lets you just play goodstuff that sometimes wins on turn 3, without making any deckbuilding sacrifices. The deck is like the nightmare lovechild of Shops and Affinity.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Modern is at a higher power level than Legacy, this probably sounds strange but it's true. Modern has better mana because there are no Wastelands. Modern has more potent threats because there are no good counters. Modern has more resilient threats because it's more creature focused (each piece of removal matters less due to more threats). Modern is also a format where threats are better than answers, so it's pointless to try and answer your opponent.
Modern does not have as many turn 2 and turn 3 wins but the average Legacy deck is actually a good deal slower than the average Modern deck. Modern as a format is a full turn faster than Legacy.
This is demonstrably not true. Everything that is legal in Modern is legal in Legacy and Legacy has additional cards available. Its impossible for Modern to have a higher power level.
What you're getting at is true though, the balance between threats and answers is different in the two formats.
(In the absence of a Tier 0 deck: Eldrazi in Modern)
Modern the threats are better than the answers. It is extremely difficult to answer every threat, the nuance of the game is having answers for some threats, correctly choosing which threats to ignore and incremental board advantage from comes into play or leaves play abilities.
Legacy the answers are better than the threats. It is extremely difficult to win with a large number of threats swamping the available answers. The only threats worth playing are ones that win the game very close to on the spot. The nuance is in card advantage and hand positioning to maneuver into a position for getting your threat to work or by assembling an unassailable lock where you can't lose and then you win in some tertiary way.
Modern is at a higher power level than Legacy, this probably sounds strange but it's true. Modern has better mana because there are no Wastelands. Modern has more potent threats because there are no good counters. Modern has more resilient threats because it's more creature focused (each piece of removal matters less due to more threats). Modern is also a format where threats are better than answers, so it's pointless to try and answer your opponent.
Modern does not have as many turn 2 and turn 3 wins but the average Legacy deck is actually a good deal slower than the average Modern deck. Modern as a format is a full turn faster than Legacy.
This is demonstrably not true. Everything that is legal in Modern is legal in Legacy and Legacy has additional cards available. Its impossible for Modern to have a higher power level.
I think he's trying to say that Modern is FASTER than Legacy, which it probably is. But speed does not necessarily mean power, which is where the confusion arises.
I think he's trying to say that Modern is FASTER than Legacy, which it probably is. But speed does not necessarily mean power, which is where the confusion arises.
That's reasonable, but if its true, it is only because the Legacy metagame skews itself to make it so. We know that because the best fast decks in Modern aren't also the best decks in Legacy. Legacy decks could be as fast or faster than Modern decks; the Legacy metagame (apparently) makes them suboptimal.
All of this is just friendly rumination. What he's really getting at is the difference in threats and answers I believe, which is clearly true. Building decks in Modern and Legacy have very different underlying philosophies based on the respective card pools.
Isn't the first essential question for a Legacy deck how do I either win or avoid losing by Turn 2?
The first question for a Modern deck, I think, is how am I going to win faster than the fastest decks I can distrupt?
Either of those are just the first, of many, questions when building a deck.
This brings up always present Modern problem-the lack of good answers to faster, linear combo/aggro decks. Legacy has good tools that are better than threats which makes it easier to deal with problematic cards. Modern doesn't have that kind of cards but threats in Modern simply surpass available answers. Other decks have harder time dealing with some threats and decks because of that. We need better, more efficient answers (the ones we have are either too slow or too narrow) to solve this problem.
This is a common refrain, and not very long ago it was true to a certain extent, but be don't know if its still true. Three months ago, your control deck had to answer:
Affinity, Infect, Merfolk, Zoo and other creature decks
Burn
Twin
Amulet Bloom
Jund
Other stuff
Once the Eldrazi are gone, and we can scratch Twin and Amulet Bloom off because of bans, a pile of Paths, Wraths, Counterspells and card draw looks pretty decent against the remaining field.
There's no question in May, we're going to need to either race Affinity and Infect (unlikely) or kill creatures effectively to have a decent Modern deck. That's a lot lower bar for control decks than having to do that while also having interaction for Twin and Amulet Bloom.
The reason modern is so wasted right now, is that Wizards built it with a premise that made no sense to how magic is played. The format was not made to be anything but simply a collection of once-standard legal cards that should not win before turn 4. They wasted the chance to cash in on all of the people that were waiting on an eternal format which does not require an initial investment of over $1k-$2k exclusively for the manabase. So we still end up having only 1 real eternal format, which is legacy, which is unsustainable long term because pretty much everything you need to play legacy is on the restricted list, so there is no influx of reprints and single prices will only ever increase.
Additionally they decided to leave out all non-standard sets from legality, this insanely diminishes the usable card pool, because as we all know, Wizards does not print good stuff in standard sets unless it slips through their testers. This in turn meant that the remaining good cards were too few, so everyone logically flocked to those, then the real stupidity began. Having the "only turn 4 kill is OK" rule, they started banning cards that were good during the early turns of the game, they removed consistency from decks and generally good cards that could be used for multiple strategies and deck building.
This only achieved making people more invested in the remaining useful cards, which drove the price to the skies. Having a format that is built around denying players deck building creativity just because they want wins after turn X is stupid, you will ban stuff that is able to win before your intended turn, and that will only make it so people try harder to find decks that can still do it, and every time a new one is found, everyone will use it, because thanks to the banlist, there is no variety in deckbuilding, when a deck is good, people all use the same core and jut add some personal touches.
Add in to it the fact that the format received no meaningful support from wizards on the card pool, and instead we got the MM sets which only worked to increase single prices as they confirmed that they would not make meaningful reprints of needed staples, and whichever ones they did, were only mythics or rares that had mythic rarity chance of being opened.
Then after so much BS with bannings of decks because they "violate the turn 4 kill rule", we get a new ban on the only deck that consistently fulfilled that rule while being fair enough that all colors have ways to interact. This meant the only consistent rule of how the format existed was broken by the creators, now we had a format that has no clear path, no purpose, and no consistency on how it is supposed to be other than simply "find the most busted deck, and use it for a year until it is banned because it is too successful". Trying to push the format back on how fast you can win, only makes fast decks better, and you can't ban out all fast decks unless you literally ban everything that can be played before turn 4.
We now have a format with no support or dedication from wizards, with a gigantic ban list that only accomplishes funneling the entire playerbase into the same decks at the same time, with an extremely reduced pool of good cards to use, and with no consistency on how it is handled.
I personally think wizards has screwed Modern past the point of repair, and they simply need to create a new eternal format with actual support both in product and handling, and which is not so oppressively restrictive on the card pool for no good reason, Legacy is such an awesome format because there is interaction, everything has a way of playing against something else or is a super fragile combo deck, Modern is the complete opposite, nothing has any meaningful interaction with anything else, and its just who aggro the other faster.
Ayiluss, the point I'm trying to make is the variety of strategies you need to be prepared for has narrowed significantly, again once the Eldrazi are dealt with.
I think he's trying to say that Modern is FASTER than Legacy, which it probably is. But speed does not necessarily mean power, which is where the confusion arises.
Maybe powerful isn't quite the right word but it's how I think about it. Besides the first thing I mentioned where Modern has better manabases due to the lack of Wasteland (which in a sense depowers things), what I meant was that decks are better able to execute their own powerful plans.
In Legacy and even Vintage the opponents deck keeps yours in check and games involve an exchange of resources with strong plays and counterplays. The end result is that despite the powerful cards it's usually rather low powered finishes like a single Delver of Secrets or something that closes out the game.
In Modern that's not the case, decks don't really constrain their opponents decks so all of that power is left unchecked, maybe Shmanka explained this better a page or two back, as he understood what I was saying but didn't like the word powerful.
Honestly, I'm tried of the price spikes. I bought inquisitions when they were 12 and then they doubled in price. Similarly, I sold my Chalice when they were 20 and then they tripled in price.
Similarly, I wanted to get into Standard. But the meta currently changes too quickly I figured I need to reinvest almost 300-400 dollars (at a minimum) every half year to keep up with the sets.
Personally, I love magic and I enjoy building decks, but this recent chain of events made me quit competitive play altogether. I broke up my modern and standard decks and reinvested the cards into a 720 cube for myself and all my friends whom are fedup with competitive magic to play.
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
After the Splinter Twin and Bloom Banning, the Eldrazi Winter and the unnecessary price spikes, I have decided to suspend playing modern in favor of cube. What are your thoughts?
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
@LucianVampa That's what I've been saying since the start, but people viciously defend the format, pricing and all, for some gods only knows reason. I play it because it is in a good position compared to Legacy as a wide open, non-rotating set. However, this interest in playing magic is swiftly shifting to 100% EDH or complete casual because the format staples are just out of control on prices. It's turning into a collectors / hording paradise more than a format meant to actually be played. Putting all the pressure on so few good cards is not helping matters given a lot of those cards are mythic / rare and have severe print issues from being released a long time ago or in insufficient quantities.
That's why I'm sort of hoping Wizards takes to doing some kind of eternal format that follows a cube methodology and learns from their past mistakes with modern and legacy. Modern format is just impossible to play on a competitive level unless someone has been buying up cards on pre-release for the last 10+ years and guessed the right cards that were going to be popular / needed / not banned.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I am basically waiting till April, but I am not extremely angry. I think many others are doing that as well, but it is not one of the answers. That poll better could have had some less extreme answers, because now it will be kind of useless.
I used this time to build my cube and to play with alot of these cards I really like. I personally really enjoy cube as its somewhat immune to these price spikes. Similarly, I notice the MTG community is becoming alot more competitive recently and players are becoming extremely aggressive with winning and I'm really disliking this environment. (I find people are dropping tournaments if they went 0-2 and getting very angry)
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I've gotten back into playing Commander, but I have not given up Modern. Locally, there is either a gentleman's agreement (or just an unwillingness to buy into an expensive deck that will be banned), so I don't actually see it much at FNMs. I'm still mad about Splinter Twin, and would rather it not be banned, but in a predictable aggro meta, UR colors should at least be competitively playable again. I'm mad that the format as a whole is garbage, but I'm not feeling the effects that much personally (outside of not being able to play Twin anymore).
I was going to buy into modern thanks to two expeditions. I was building the BW Eldrazi deck: it looked like a nice enough deck and I already had everything but the mana base. I bought everything else I needed for it... 3 days before the pro-tour. Now, I sold off the 2 Eye of Ugin I had bought (took a hit there) before something in the deck gets banned and they fall back in value.
I will keep playing standard and limited until the ban hammer hits in April and decide what to do next.
Turn 1 Mimic is scarier than Elf because of what comes after it.
Turn 1- Eye of Ugin, Eldrazi Mimic
Turn 2 - Eldrazi Temple, Thought-Knot Seer (take your best card), swing 4 with Mimic
Turn 3 - Colorless land, Reality Smasher, swing for 14 (10 of that is with Trample).
That was a good hand but not even the best. Try this one:
Turn 1 - Eye, Mimic, Mimic
Turn 2 - Temple, Discard Simian Spirit Guide, play Reality Smasher, swing for 15.
Say you have a hand full of Path to exiles and Thoughtseizes (which would wreck Affinity and Infect) and you are on the draw:
They go Turn 1 - Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, Chalice of the Void on 1.
Turn 2 you look at your useless hand. They play Eye of Ugin and TKS your Supreme Verdict.
It is just a bad time all around.
what i meant was that t1 mimic and t1 elf can very similar if the opponent does not have a piece of interaction on the 1st turn.
t1 elf on the play
you don't kill it your first turn.
t2 land, attack, groundswell, 5 poison.
you don't kill it t2.
t3 might of old krosa, kill you.
the raw damage from eldrazi is much more over the course of 3 turns, but you are just as dead here if you don't have a path or dismember in your first two turns.
without the mimic in play, the clock is much more reasonable (not that a 4/4 t2 and 5/5 trample haste t3 is completely fair)
i don't really like your chalice example because any deck could do that with chalice if they included it and ssg. yes it does not help the case for colorless eldrazi using it, but still.
i think i am just advertising how strong maindeck dismember is at this point haha.
i am going to spend some time this weekend trying to test a controlling deck vs eldrazi and see what i can come up with. somewhere between snapcaster, lightning helix, jvp, and dismember there has to be a deck that can fight big creatures and control the game without losing to chalice on 1.
Conversely, everything in Infect is boltable (which is the minimum interaction) and doesn't really produce any form of advantage.
Eldrazi mirrors are super degenerate. The first person to get Thought knot on the field usually wins the game. Even LSV has admitted to this being stupid.
Decks I'm playing in Modern right now:
URB Grixis Reveler (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-grixis-reveler/)
UB Faeries (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/ub-fae-2/)
UW Azorious Control (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-ojutai-control-2/)
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
There are some really important differences between early eldrazi and early infect that you are overlooking. I play grixis control, one of my best friends had CFB colorless eldrazi and Bx Eldrazi before that And a few other friends have UG infect so I am well versed in both match ups. Infect is very favorable for me. Your example of t1 elf doesn't happen that often. When it does, all I have to do is have untapped mana available and it becomes way too risky to try the t2/t3 blowout. Even if I don't have a removal spell (unlikely b/c I have a lot and I mulligan if I need them), I can bluff one and it's such a huge swing against them if they get hit w/o another infect creature available that they HAVE to hold up mana for vines of vast wood or apostles blessing. Usually the correct play is let them hit for 1 (since they can't pull without getting hit with removal in response) and then kill it at end phase to force them to waste a pump spell to save it. The infect deck is easy to interact with, it is easy to bluff against merely by fetching an untapped red source, and they run out of gas easy when you kill the creatures. The only inevitability they have is 1-2 copies of the 3-drop enchantment that giant growths everything.
In contrast, eldrazi is UNWINNABLE. I have never once won a match. I think I might have won 1 game only when I got really lucky but I'm not even sure of that. The difference is that even if you kill the early mimic, it doesn't disrupt their game plan so much as it buys you an extra turn maybe. They have the inevitability. They have more threats than you can kill and all of them are must-answer. A deck that is both an aggro deck AND has inevitability against control is very strong. Eldrazi goes under and goes over the top simultaneously. It goes big and goes wide simultaneously. It is also simply not the case that "any deck can add chalice and SSG" and be successful. Most decks have 1 drops.
Ironically, I actually had a similar experience with my aforementioned misadventure with a casual deck composed mostly of creature kill spells. It doesn't matter how many eldrazi you end up killing. The creatures are basically "good stuff" that never ends. It's like taking down one Tarmogoyf only to see it get replaced by yet another one, and Reality Smasher + Thought-knot seer are brutal to deal with turn 2 and 3 thanks to one taking away a card preemptively and the other taxing you when you try to take it down. So the reality is that even if someone has a dedicated field control deck, you lose because you can't actually trade 1 for 1 with eldrazi.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The problem with eldrazi is that every single one of their threats either scale, or basically force a 2 for 1.You also have to answer every single one of the darn eldrazi, all of them set a decent clock. This is perfectly fine for midrange strategies. Eye, however, cuts 2 mana off everything in the deck, often times beating freaking Mishra's workshop in terms of mana production, and temple is basically a painless ancient tomb, with the drawback that you need to play above curve creatures, the horror. You get a deck that can achieve the speed of hyperaggro decks, while still having the disruption and reach that a midrange deck gives you, you get something super format warping. The other problem is that the deck gets all its power from lands, and wizards has decided that good land destruction is unfun.
Basically, Infect and Affinity force you to commit to a plan, and build your deck around that strategy. Eldrazi lets you just play goodstuff that sometimes wins on turn 3, without making any deckbuilding sacrifices. The deck is like the nightmare lovechild of Shops and Affinity.
Death and Taxes
Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron
Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
Sorry, can't help myself.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
This is demonstrably not true. Everything that is legal in Modern is legal in Legacy and Legacy has additional cards available. Its impossible for Modern to have a higher power level.
What you're getting at is true though, the balance between threats and answers is different in the two formats.
(In the absence of a Tier 0 deck: Eldrazi in Modern)
Modern the threats are better than the answers. It is extremely difficult to answer every threat, the nuance of the game is having answers for some threats, correctly choosing which threats to ignore and incremental board advantage from comes into play or leaves play abilities.
Legacy the answers are better than the threats. It is extremely difficult to win with a large number of threats swamping the available answers. The only threats worth playing are ones that win the game very close to on the spot. The nuance is in card advantage and hand positioning to maneuver into a position for getting your threat to work or by assembling an unassailable lock where you can't lose and then you win in some tertiary way.
I think he's trying to say that Modern is FASTER than Legacy, which it probably is. But speed does not necessarily mean power, which is where the confusion arises.
That's reasonable, but if its true, it is only because the Legacy metagame skews itself to make it so. We know that because the best fast decks in Modern aren't also the best decks in Legacy. Legacy decks could be as fast or faster than Modern decks; the Legacy metagame (apparently) makes them suboptimal.
All of this is just friendly rumination. What he's really getting at is the difference in threats and answers I believe, which is clearly true. Building decks in Modern and Legacy have very different underlying philosophies based on the respective card pools.
Isn't the first essential question for a Legacy deck how do I either win or avoid losing by Turn 2?
The first question for a Modern deck, I think, is how am I going to win faster than the fastest decks I can distrupt?
Either of those are just the first, of many, questions when building a deck.
This is a common refrain, and not very long ago it was true to a certain extent, but be don't know if its still true. Three months ago, your control deck had to answer:
Affinity, Infect, Merfolk, Zoo and other creature decks
Burn
Twin
Amulet Bloom
Jund
Other stuff
Once the Eldrazi are gone, and we can scratch Twin and Amulet Bloom off because of bans, a pile of Paths, Wraths, Counterspells and card draw looks pretty decent against the remaining field.
There's no question in May, we're going to need to either race Affinity and Infect (unlikely) or kill creatures effectively to have a decent Modern deck. That's a lot lower bar for control decks than having to do that while also having interaction for Twin and Amulet Bloom.
The reason modern is so wasted right now, is that Wizards built it with a premise that made no sense to how magic is played. The format was not made to be anything but simply a collection of once-standard legal cards that should not win before turn 4. They wasted the chance to cash in on all of the people that were waiting on an eternal format which does not require an initial investment of over $1k-$2k exclusively for the manabase. So we still end up having only 1 real eternal format, which is legacy, which is unsustainable long term because pretty much everything you need to play legacy is on the restricted list, so there is no influx of reprints and single prices will only ever increase.
Additionally they decided to leave out all non-standard sets from legality, this insanely diminishes the usable card pool, because as we all know, Wizards does not print good stuff in standard sets unless it slips through their testers. This in turn meant that the remaining good cards were too few, so everyone logically flocked to those, then the real stupidity began. Having the "only turn 4 kill is OK" rule, they started banning cards that were good during the early turns of the game, they removed consistency from decks and generally good cards that could be used for multiple strategies and deck building.
This only achieved making people more invested in the remaining useful cards, which drove the price to the skies. Having a format that is built around denying players deck building creativity just because they want wins after turn X is stupid, you will ban stuff that is able to win before your intended turn, and that will only make it so people try harder to find decks that can still do it, and every time a new one is found, everyone will use it, because thanks to the banlist, there is no variety in deckbuilding, when a deck is good, people all use the same core and jut add some personal touches.
Add in to it the fact that the format received no meaningful support from wizards on the card pool, and instead we got the MM sets which only worked to increase single prices as they confirmed that they would not make meaningful reprints of needed staples, and whichever ones they did, were only mythics or rares that had mythic rarity chance of being opened.
Then after so much BS with bannings of decks because they "violate the turn 4 kill rule", we get a new ban on the only deck that consistently fulfilled that rule while being fair enough that all colors have ways to interact. This meant the only consistent rule of how the format existed was broken by the creators, now we had a format that has no clear path, no purpose, and no consistency on how it is supposed to be other than simply "find the most busted deck, and use it for a year until it is banned because it is too successful". Trying to push the format back on how fast you can win, only makes fast decks better, and you can't ban out all fast decks unless you literally ban everything that can be played before turn 4.
We now have a format with no support or dedication from wizards, with a gigantic ban list that only accomplishes funneling the entire playerbase into the same decks at the same time, with an extremely reduced pool of good cards to use, and with no consistency on how it is handled.
I personally think wizards has screwed Modern past the point of repair, and they simply need to create a new eternal format with actual support both in product and handling, and which is not so oppressively restrictive on the card pool for no good reason, Legacy is such an awesome format because there is interaction, everything has a way of playing against something else or is a super fragile combo deck, Modern is the complete opposite, nothing has any meaningful interaction with anything else, and its just who aggro the other faster.
/rant
Maybe powerful isn't quite the right word but it's how I think about it. Besides the first thing I mentioned where Modern has better manabases due to the lack of Wasteland (which in a sense depowers things), what I meant was that decks are better able to execute their own powerful plans.
In Legacy and even Vintage the opponents deck keeps yours in check and games involve an exchange of resources with strong plays and counterplays. The end result is that despite the powerful cards it's usually rather low powered finishes like a single Delver of Secrets or something that closes out the game.
In Modern that's not the case, decks don't really constrain their opponents decks so all of that power is left unchecked, maybe Shmanka explained this better a page or two back, as he understood what I was saying but didn't like the word powerful.
Similarly, I wanted to get into Standard. But the meta currently changes too quickly I figured I need to reinvest almost 300-400 dollars (at a minimum) every half year to keep up with the sets.
Personally, I love magic and I enjoy building decks, but this recent chain of events made me quit competitive play altogether. I broke up my modern and standard decks and reinvested the cards into a 720 cube for myself and all my friends whom are fedup with competitive magic to play.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
That's why I'm sort of hoping Wizards takes to doing some kind of eternal format that follows a cube methodology and learns from their past mistakes with modern and legacy. Modern format is just impossible to play on a competitive level unless someone has been buying up cards on pre-release for the last 10+ years and guessed the right cards that were going to be popular / needed / not banned.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I used this time to build my cube and to play with alot of these cards I really like. I personally really enjoy cube as its somewhat immune to these price spikes. Similarly, I notice the MTG community is becoming alot more competitive recently and players are becoming extremely aggressive with winning and I'm really disliking this environment. (I find people are dropping tournaments if they went 0-2 and getting very angry)
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I will keep playing standard and limited until the ban hammer hits in April and decide what to do next.
WBC Eldrazi & Taxes CBW
UR Keep on Cantripin' (UR Phoenix) RU
WU Surprise! It's not UW Control! (UW Midrange) UW
BG The Rock, Straight BG
U Mono-Blue Fish U
RBW Mardu Pyromancer BWR
RG Rabble! Rabble! (GR Blood Moon Aggro) GR
Legacy
W Death & Taxes W
Spirits