First of all, your fooling yourself if you think URx control doesnt have a good BGx matchup already. It had a good matchup before AV, its only gotten better.
Abzan is widely considered favored against Jeskai, so I guess everyone's just fooling themselves.
I feel i shouldnt even comment on your next point, since you throw the completely random 10% metric for a jace unban, then argue as if it is i who proposed that they would be 10% of the meta, and finish your argument basically calling me an idiot for thinking BGx dies because of a deck that is 10% of the meta. However, i will comment anyways:
When dredge emerged, we saw a direct correlation between the rise of dredge and the fall of jund. When dredge hit 10%, we almost stopped seeing jund altogether, with it falling down into the 4-5% range from the 10-12% range. Now, with dredge falling, we are seeing jund rise again. This suggests that yes, a deck you expect to go against 10% of the time does indeed affect your meta positioning. In fact, at the 13% of the meta dredge capped at, you expect to see it twice every gp, meaning signing up with jund is signing up to a gp at 0-2. Making the same connection, with dredge replaced with jtms decks, and you at the very least have to admit there is cause for concern there.
Jund began to decline for several reasons. First of all, Abzan picked up in popularity and began to leach some metashare from it. It's not useful to look at Jund by itself, you have to combine the GBx decks. Second, GBx as a whole started to see a small decline because of the emergence of several decks that were bad matchups. It wasn't just Dredge, it was also Bant Eldrazi and the Valakut decks, along with Tron's continued existence. We weren't looking at 10% bad matchups, we were looking at closer to 30%. And yet, despite all of this, GBx is still holding at 10% of the meta. Dredge has been shown to be pretty beatable if you sideboard for it, and its presence has undercut Eldrazi and Valakut decks, so the meta is beginning to head towards a better place for GBx.
This is, of course all assuming that jtms only brings U decks up to a combined 10%. Unfortunately, modernnexus is severely out of date, but the September numbers put U based control at around 8%. Basically your suggesting that jace only increases blues metashare by around 2%, which is of course possible, but very implausible. Assuming jace doubles the metashare, and we see a response in a rise in dredge and tron to compensate (we will), we would end up with a meta where fair, none jace decks cannot compete (id estimate 30% of the meta to be unwinnable matchups at that point, meaning you sign up for a gp 0-5)
You're right, those numbers are really out of date, 2 months old at this point. Even still, 8% was wrong even from those numbers. Jeskai was at 3%, UW control was at 1.4%, and Grixis was at .4%, adding up to 4.8%. I'm not sure how you came to 8% unless you added in decks that would not even play Jace if he was legal. Scapeshift isn't playing him. Delver decks aren't playing him outside of maybe a copy or two in the SB. So it was 4.8% for the meta two months ago. What does it look like now? Going by the numbers on mtggoldfish.com, we've got Grixis Control at about 2% (and this is with a big up-tick in the deck's play from Burkhart's top 8), Jeskai at about 1.5%, and UW Control about .7%. So it's at 4.2% right now, which I expect to go down further when the novelty of Burkhart's Grixis deck wears off (he's the only one who puts up results with the deck, it's actually kinda fascinating).
So how much of the metagame do you think blue control would become if Jace were unbanned? Yes, the 10% number was nothing more than a conjecture on my part, but I thought it was a pretty reasonable guess. Jace would not take over Modern and make blue control 20% of the meta, I'm sure you'll agree with that. I don't even see Jace decks reaching the meta share of GBx decks, which usually hover around 10-12%. I went with 10% as what I thought of as a high estimate. I doubt decks playing Jace would combine for much more than that.
In conclusion, as i stated before, jace does nothing to help U decks or modern in general. He creates an environment where modern can never slow down. At best he makes almost no effect, but now all U decks cost $200-$400 more to invest in they did before. At worst, we end up needing to reban him or ban other things from U, hurting player confidence.
He can't both "do nothing" and also horribly warp the format, like you're suggesting here. You can't have it both ways. Either he's not good in the current Modern, in which case why does he need to stay banned, or he's good and helps blue control decks pick up some needed ground. And if the blue decks pick up in metashare, those numbers are coming from somewhere, meaning people will be leaving some of the faster more linear decks to play with Jace. If he needs to be rebanned in the future, then fine! At least then we'll know for sure! As it is now, we don't know if he's ok, or if he's even good in the format.
Edit: one final thing, U based control does nit "deserve" to be the best deck in the format anymore than dredge does. Your post echoed a very blue elitist attitude, an attitude that is really the heart of the problem. The fact of the matter is, U based decks are doing just fine in modern, we just had 2 top 8 the last gp. If you learn your deck, play well, and build it appropriately for the meta instead of trying to run a stock list at every event, you will do well, the tools are there.
Did I say that blue control decks "deserve" to be the best decks in the format? No, I never said that anywhere, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth. I do believe that blue decks (not just control, but tempo and midrange) deserve to be competitive and have a few different representatives in the upper tiers of the meta. I knew this was going to happen after the GP and even posted about it in this thread, but blue decks are not doing "just fine" in modern. Like I said above, Burkhart is the only person who's had any success with the Grixis deck, and hundreds of people have tried. If you had watched that GP, you'd also know that he got really lucky on his pairings and dodged Dredge for the entire tournament except for the last round of the swiss, where he was able to ID into the top 8. The Jeskai list that made top 8 was the old pre-Nahiri list. You know, the version of the deck that's been around for years and never found any sustained success. By your argument, Skred must be one of the best decks in Modern since it won the thing.
Jtms does nothing to solve this problem,he actually exacerbates it. Jtms furthers urx's grindy, durdle game that tron, eldrazi and dredge take advantage of. Twin was an actual proactive URx plan, which these decks could not handle. While URx control inherently never will be able to handle these decks as you said, URx itself can. Decks like delver, kiln fiend and jeskai prowess are decks than forgo the completely disruptive gameplan for a bit of proactivity, giving them game in the matchups. The lesson to be learned here is that the way to fix URx is by giving it the tools that are proven to succeed in modern, not another durdly control card that does nothing in your bad matchups
I'm currently playing Suicide Bloo, and while I enjoy the deck, I find it troubling that the only way for a blue deck to compete in this meta is to "join 'em" and go hyper aggressive and linear, basically becoming a blue version of Infect. Bloo's success is a real indicator of a problem in the format, not a solution. The deck straight folds to interactive decks, so it being as good as it is right now shows how uninteractive Modern is.
This is really getting into semantics here, but ill bite anyway. The 50 match test of the abzan vs jeskai on modernnexus showed the matchup here to be 50/50. Giving abzan stoneforge mystic made the matchup 52% abzans favor, so in a 100 match sample size in which half of them abzan was using a banned card, that matchup is more or less even. My own testing matches this. Anyone who regards abzan as a bad matchup is not good at jeskai. Jeskai is bad against specifically lingering souls, not bad against abzan, and this is a weakness jace does nothing to improve
Debating back and forth about why exactly jund declined will get us no where, in fact im sorry i even started it, that is the exact type of discussion that causes this thread to go off on a tangent for two days without discussing anything meaningful, only semantics. So, how about this wraith, since you believe so strongly that jace is safe, why not run him through the gauntlet? Show that he genuinely improves U controls matchups against the current aggro meta without making a deck that is oppressive for non-jace decks and ill be on board. If you cant show that, id be glad to discuss with you how we can improve U while improving modern at the same time
Legit question and not looking to start a flame war, but why is BGx the sacred cow of modern? Often times on this thread I see people complaining that card x or y will kill of jund or something. Why is it a problem if something gets printed or unbanned that pushes those decks to T2? Is it just a metric of modern as a format that those fair decks couldn't survive? If their meta share was supplanted by Ux control, wouldn't that be fine as far as it still being a fair deck policing the format? Again, not wanting a fight, just curious as to the sentiments of the forum.
Honestly I don't think people who make those comments are actually sitting there thinking that BGx needs to always be tier 1 when they make the comments. I think they're simply making the general point that they don't like sacrificing an existing deck for only potential in an unban, and BGx happens to now be one of 2 (Affinity the other) longstanding decks and also defines an archetype in the format.
Legit question and not looking to start a flame war, but why is BGx the sacred cow of modern? Often times on this thread I see people complaining that card x or y will kill of jund or something. Why is it a problem if something gets printed or unbanned that pushes those decks to T2? Is it just a metric of modern as a format that those fair decks couldn't survive? If their meta share was supplanted by Ux control, wouldn't that be fine as far as it still being a fair deck policing the format? Again, not wanting a fight, just curious as to the sentiments of the forum.
Honestly I don't think people who make those comments are actually sitting there thinking that BGx needs to always be tier 1 when they make the comments. I think they're simply making the general point that they don't like sacrificing an existing deck for only potential in an unban, and BGx happens to now be one of 2 (Affinity the other) longstanding decks and also defines an archetype in the format.
There used to be three. And the salt probably comes from them seeing what happened to that third pillar and hoping it doesn't happen to them. Who knows though, I've never owned or played BGx.
So, how about this wraith, since you believe so strongly that jace is safe, why not run him through the gauntlet? Show that he genuinely improves U controls matchups against the current aggro meta without making a deck that is oppressive for non-jace decks and ill be on board. If you cant show that, id be glad to discuss with you how we can improve U while improving modern at the same time
I don't even "strongly believe" that he's safe, I'm modest enough to say that I don't really know, but I think a lot of the arguments against him are flawed or are ignoring a lot of factors. The Modern metagame is very complex, and it's not always easy to see how well a card would do in the format. People get it wrong around spoiler season all the time. I saw people saying that both Nahiri and Chandra would end up getting banned in Modern. Myself, I thought Nahiri would only see fringe play, while I thought Chandra would be very good, and would set herself apart as the clear 2nd or 3rd best Planeswalker in Modern. Turns out Nahiri was better than I thought, and Chandra didn't quite live up to my expectations.
My point being, you can't say things like "Jace would invalidate GBx decks." I think a comment like that is ignoring how robust and resilient the Modern meta is. These decks have plenty of ways to answer Jace. Sure, he might run away with a game if he's allowed to sit around Brainstorming for several turns unanswered, but we have a bunch of cards in Modern that will run away with the game if they aren't answered. The key point here, however, is how easy is he to answer? Blue control decks don't have the tools available in Legacy to make sure the opponent can't answer your Jace. The answers in Modern are very narrow and not really up to the power-level of the threats, which is something I think most of us in this thread can agree on. This is why I think Jace would not be as good in Modern as he is in Legacy.
The biggest reason not to unban Jace would be if we had a top tier blue deck that would use him, like when Twin was around. This isn't the case right now, so while I'm not sure if he would be fine or not, I think this is a great time for WotC to unban him to find out. This is basically what they did with GGT, they took a risk to see if it would be ok, and GGT was fine for a couple years until new printings broke open the Dredge archetype. Even if GGT gets rebanned, I personally will look at it as a successful experiment. The same is true for Jace. Maybe Jace turns out to be fine for a while, but further printings in the future push blue control decks a bit too far (which I doubt, given their current design philosophy), or maybe he does cause problems for GBx decks and needs to be rebanned. At least then we'll know what he does in Modern. As of now, none of us actually know, we're all just guessing. And this is my main reason for wanting SFM as well. Let's stop being scared of cards and find out for sure if they can exist healthily in Modern.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
wish they would ban either 8 drop Ugyn or Karn both in Tron are annoying given that getting rid of either is normally going to cost you 2+ cards if your lucky.
Dredge is annoying not nearly as good as a temple+eye eldrazi or BBE+DRS jund.
Infect has always been a tier 1.5-1 deck and I think that after some time is given and new decks have been tempered more it won't seem like such a boogie-man.
As long as BGx decks packing tons of discard are the best control decks than linear aggro will continue to be a good option. Redundant decks that don't care if you shred their hand up will always be a better option that functionally loses to t1 IoK, t2 IoK or creature depending on how bad you left their hand, t3 LotV. Its not junds fault that their deck is good but you can't complain when the best strategies against it are annoying or boring to play against.
Bant Eldrazi is a fair deck and I don't see how Jund/Junk players hate on it so hard. When they T2 TKS into another big play the next turn it feels alot like losing to jund.
Karn and ugin both lose to countermagic and discard. Tron is no problem but if they reallly want to make it less over the top vs midrange and control the culprit is really newlamog. On cast triggers are a very uninteractive and can only be stopped with preemptive measures like discard but are unstoppable when top decked.
While it does suck to get that double exile trigger slapped on ya, I feel like 10 is more reasonable they need double towers to hit it on five. Karn is a four of three drop in the deck and I hate having my second land exiled. yes he is vulnerable to counter magic but currently cheap counters are kind of bad, cheap removal and cryptic command is a much better plan than mana leak against most decks. I did preface my comment by saying I just wish they would not that I actually think the deck needs a ban.
GGT was definitely a success. You didn't see dredge decks until shadows and that's not because GGT was broken it's because WOTC did the same thing they did with eldrazi. They pushed a new "best" deck into modern to sell cards. I find it very hard to believe they that don't know exactly what they're doing when they print all these new modern cards to help sell packs because they are failing in standard these days.
Oath pushed eldrazi
Inn pushed dredge
Kaladesh is pushing lantern
Next?
That's really insightful. I think Battle for Zendikar block also pushed Tron too, though. It would be interesting to see if Lantern Control's share of the meta increased after Kaladesh.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern RGTron UGInfect URStorm WUBRAd Nauseam BRGrishoalbrand URGScapeshift WBGAbzan Company WUBRGAmulet Titan BRGLiving End WGBogles
Legit question and not looking to start a flame war, but why is BGx the sacred cow of modern? Often times on this thread I see people complaining that card x or y will kill of jund or something. Why is it a problem if something gets printed or unbanned that pushes those decks to T2? Is it just a metric of modern as a format that those fair decks couldn't survive? If their meta share was supplanted by Ux control, wouldn't that be fine as far as it still being a fair deck policing the format? Again, not wanting a fight, just curious as to the sentiments of the forum.
Honestly I don't think people who make those comments are actually sitting there thinking that BGx needs to always be tier 1 when they make the comments. I think they're simply making the general point that they don't like sacrificing an existing deck for only potential in an unban, and BGx happens to now be one of 2 (Affinity the other) longstanding decks and also defines an archetype in the format.
There used to be three. And the salt probably comes from them seeing what happened to that third pillar and hoping it doesn't happen to them. Who knows though, I've never owned or played BGx.
I guess if you include pod,storm and infect we've lost 3 and have 3 left.
I would say that BG is considered to be a sacred cow of modern because it often plays a very interactive game with discard, removal, and threats. It is probably the one archetype to having very close matchups against every other archetype.
BG mirrors are often quite skill testing and grindy which is makes piloting them correctly a rewarding experience.
This is actually what is happening in standard right now: the BG deck is arguably the best one in the format and mirror matches are many. The victor is therefore not determined based on metagaming or the dice roll so much as navigating through the game itself since all of the decks are very similar looking.
Haha, you could replace every "BG" in your post with "Twin" and it would have worked, except the discard part. We need interactive decks in the format, that's why GBx is important, and it's why Twin was important. If people don't have to worry about interaction, the format becomes who can build the deck that kills the fastest. If we had 20-25% of the meta GBx and Twin like last year, a lot of decks people are playing right now wouldn't be as good because they fold to interaction. They would either have to play something less linear, or build their decks to be able to fight against disruption. Either way, the format would be slower and healthier.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
That's really insightful. I think Battle for Zendikar block also pushed Tron too, though. It would be interesting to see if Lantern Control's share of the meta increased after Kaladesh.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but just as I said that Dredge will be a subject of a ban when I saw all those broken cards, I am safe to say that now. Lantern will be subject of a ban after January. It's perfectly clear to me that having a Tier 1 deck in Modo that does not let you play magic is something...ehm..."obnoxious".
I feel safe to yell at Wizards: Ban Ensnaring Bridge or Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal already. I really can't handle 1 out of 10 decks being this abomination in MODO. Modern is becoming problematic in a very worrying degree. Remember? I was one of the people that used to speak and thing SO highly of this format. The train is starting to derail and the direction is heading to is problematic. Do something. If you can't handle all of those abominations, unban Splinter Twin already. It was a good ban ONLY if you were to care for the format. If you don't intend to, and keep on pushing decks like Dredge, Lantern, Eldrazi, Infect(and yes, my deck of choice is Infect), Zooicide, UR Aggro with Thing etc, unban Splinter Twin and ban all of the problematic cards.
Slow the format down and make it interactive and interactable and a blast to play again!
Don't touch Ancient Stirrings. Tron has already eaten one ban for the sins of Eldrazi, that would make it virtually unplayable, certainly not competitive.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Project Booster Fun makes it less fun to open a booster.
I hate Lantern but it hasn't really done anything wrong. The last deck that got banned purely by MODO prevalence was Storm when it was 12%+ of the MODO meta and killed early. Lantern is nowhere near that. Eggs got banned because it had long turns that made it difficult to run tournaments, which is why that got banned. Lantern doesn't do that.
Really, ban hate Lantern Control? Did it really get so OP with the fair and crane? Or are you really that scared of Trinket mage? You know Fabricate already exists and is far better in the deck, yet doesn't get ran, right? Screw it, having a control deck approach tier 1 isn't obnoxious, don't be ridiculous. Do we have to seriously ban out every control deck? Decisions like this kill the format.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but just as I said that Dredge will be a subject of a ban when I saw all those broken cards, I am safe to say that now. Lantern will be subject of a ban after January. It's perfectly clear to me that having a Tier 1 deck in Modo that does not let you play magic is something...ehm..."obnoxious".
I feel safe to yell at Wizards: Ban Ensnaring Bridge or Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal already. I really can't handle 1 out of 10 decks being this abomination in MODO. Modern is becoming problematic in a very worrying degree. Remember? I was one of the people that used to speak and thing SO highly of this format. The train is starting to derail and the direction is heading to is problematic. Do something. If you can't handle all of those abominations, unban Splinter Twin already. It was a good ban ONLY if you were to care for the format. If you don't intend to, and keep on pushing decks like Dredge, Lantern, Eldrazi, Infect(and yes, my deck of choice is Infect), Zooicide, UR Aggro with Thing etc, unban Splinter Twin and ban all of the problematic cards.
Slow the format down and make it interactive and interactable and a blast to play again!
I'm sorry, this isn't trolling or anything like that. But you ust had yourself a very bad day in MODO, or you went to a local tournament and got crushed.
At least you have to make up your subjectivity. You basically want to, destroy Tron, Eldrazi,Lantern and Dredge, at the same time, unbanning Twin or Preordain, and maybe Jace?. Jesus man. We all can see you signature. Remember that its not any of the decks you mentioned above the ones who kill consistently on Turn 3...
I've always been indifferent towards Twin but I don't want it unbanned, at least not yet.
More than over a year we have heard nothing but complaints from salty Twin players. Circular arguments, quote mining, cherry picking data and passive aggressive attitude towards Modern. Not to come off sounding rude but I come from the school of thought that you shouldn't reward people for having a tantrum.
Twin had a good run, it truly did but I'd rather unban stuff that hasn't had a chance such as Jace and Stoneforge Mystic. I know Jund is still a good deck but if they unban Twin before Bloodbraid Elf I would feel a bit cheated, and especially since a majority Jund players have been patiently waiting for its potential unban for a lot longer than Twin.
Do I think Twin should be banned? Well no, I miss playing against like I do with Pod. In my opinion Modern was more interactive and enjoyable but now I'm tired listening to people who think Twin is intrinsically connected to the health of Modern.
I eagerly await being told I'm wrong by upset Twin players.
Just ban something from Dredge and Eldrazi, unban BBE and we'll be fine. No more changes needed.
Nerf the only top tier competitors to BGx, unban a card that helps BGx and ONLY BGx.
Alright, I'll play your game: Reprint/unban Counter Spell, Force of Will, Flusterstorm, Swords of Plowshare, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Jace the Mind Sculpter, Cunning Wish, Fact or Fiction. Ban Swamp and Forest. No more changes needed.
Now back to reality, I feel like modern needs reprints/unbans much more than bans. There just aren't enough police cards that can answer the massive array of threats in the format. Banning Dredge and Infect would just give us a meta of Eldrazi and Affinity. Ban them and we get a meta of Suicide Zoo/Bloo and Burn...and on and on it goes. So long as people don't have to fear interaction, the format will always be a race.
Don't touch Ancient Stirrings. Tron has already eaten one ban for the sins of Eldrazi, that would make it virtually unplayable, certainly not competitive.
Tron is just coming quite stupid and impossible to beat with these "recent" cast triggering cards those just encourage other decks to play faster and win earlier. And since we don't have powerful interactive cards in modern card pool compared to diversity of threats it is just better to play your own thing instead of worrying about what opponent is doing - that is not healthy.
@gkourou: I didn't questioned your results. I was saying that your posts were contained and, besides Preordain, we were on the same page, and same as almost everyone else. Then you came with thos massive bannings ala Hoogland and it was so off your textbook that i joked about you having a bad tournament. Just a point out, no trouble here, let's keep on.
@sss123: There's a logic behind banning Temple or Stirrings, just to nerf Eldrazi. The reason being that Eldrazi basicaly pushed counterspells out of the format. I mean, that's a bad thing, but Eldrazi have been FAR AWAY from oppressive. They have a good share of bad matchups, and even then, BGX isn't the cakewalk people like to say. Even UR/X isn't a cakewalk. It depends on how many counterspells they have maindeck. The deck isn't really healthy for the format, but what deck is really healthy nowadays?. If you ban Temple, go on and take out Urza lands which crap on control decks at a much harder extent. Cavern of Souls is a card that you could theoricaly ban, but it's 70 a piece so i wouldn't bet on that one.
Side note on Splinter Twin and BBE: In my honest and humble opinion. This cards can't come off as the format stands right now. Let's quickly analyze Splinter Twin, then BBE, both have the same issue card in the format.
Twin/Exarch was the best deck in the format until January dropped the ban hammer on Splinter Twin. If you were to unban Twin as a player, you are basically saying, all right i want this deck to be the best deck in the format and be ok with it. That has no upside for me. Splinter Twin may be not an oppressive archetype metagame wise, but you can bet every Modern Top 8 will have at least 1 copy of a flavor of Twin/Exarch. Ancestral Vision just took that off the table for me. That's the nail in the coffin that WOTC putted on the Twin banning, is just like sayong, ok guys Twin is over, let's move on and make blue control decks good while not having a beautiful Turn 4 "oops i win button".
BBE+AV? Yikes. I know Temur is not a big shard right now, but this may be the chance for them to take over, and in a bad way. If they unban BBE, this combination will be a nightmare for midrange and control decks. Again, this is like going back and making Modern one whole archetype all about only one flavor. I for one, would try and work hard to make something like Temur Moon a big deck. Classic case of homogenization of a diverse format.
People are still hung up on twin when if you think about it it was ban when there was still a PT. You can't take into effect anything from the twin ban because WOTC just wanted to shake up the format for the PT.
BBE+AV? Yikes. I know Temur is not a big shard right now, but this may be the chance for them to take over, and in a bad way. If they unban BBE, this combination will be a nightmare for midrange and control decks. Again, this is like going back and making Modern one whole archetype all about only one flavor. I for one, would try and work hard to make something like Temur Moon a big deck. Classic case of homogenization of a diverse format.
I think you are really overstimating the impact of BBE + AV. In Modern Cascade is pretty much completly random so you have rather low chances of ever living the dream. Besides, blue doesn't play well with Cascade otherwise, counters are just awful and getting a Serum Visions off BBE isn't that impressive, neither is Snapcaster Mage. Goyf is okay, but RUG has a hard time feeding him. The general card quality with CMC < 4 in these colors is just way too low to spawn a good deck or cause even a slight homogenization towards RUG. No, if BBE is unbanned it will go into Jund. Hitting Liliana of the Veil, Kolaghan's Command or a fully fed Goyf is just a lot more impressive than what Temur could offer. AV doesn't change that.
As an additional note to BBE + AV: Yahenni's Expertise lets you do exactly that, just way better. Wipe the board off small creature and draw 3. No lucky Cascade required, just have AV in hand.
BBE+AV? Yikes. I know Temur is not a big shard right now, but this may be the chance for them to take over, and in a bad way. If they unban BBE, this combination will be a nightmare for midrange and control decks. Again, this is like going back and making Modern one whole archetype all about only one flavor. I for one, would try and work hard to make something like Temur Moon a big deck. Classic case of homogenization of a diverse format.
I think you are really overstimating the impact of BBE + AV. In Modern Cascade is pretty much completly random so you have rather low chances of ever living the dream. Besides, blue doesn't play well with Cascade otherwise, counters are just awful and getting a Serum Visions off BBE isn't that impressive, neither is Snapcaster Mage. Goyf is okay, but RUG has a hard time feeding him. The general card quality with CMC < 4 in these colors is just way too low to spawn a good deck or cause even a slight homogenization towards RUG. No, if BBE is unbanned it will go into Jund. Hitting Liliana of the Veil, Kolaghan's Command or a fully fed Goyf is just a lot more impressive than what Temur could offer. AV doesn't change that.
As an additional note to BBE + AV: Yahenni's Expertise lets you do exactly that, just way better. Wipe the board off small creature and draw 3. No lucky Cascade required, just have AV in hand.
You are right. Cascade is nowhere near Legacy in terms of consistency. That's what i'm afraid off too. BBE is just too dicey for a format with so much power level.
A few counterpoints to your arguement: 1)Actually counterspells aren't good right now, and i suspect they won't be until some hard land destruction is printed or Cavern gets banned.
2)You might miss on the juicy Liliana and Kolaghan's Command, but you gain Ancestral Vison and Blood Moon, Serum Visions, Vendilion Clique, even something like Vedalken Shackles can make good work even if it doens't have an ETB trigger.
3)You are certainly right that Jund would abuse her too. Ultimately, it doesn't bring anything good for the format. Just more degeneracy and variance.
You are right. Cascade is nowhere near Legacy in terms of consistency. That's what i'm afraid off too. BBE is just too dicey for a format with so much power level.
This is really getting into semantics here, but ill bite anyway. The 50 match test of the abzan vs jeskai on modernnexus showed the matchup here to be 50/50. Giving abzan stoneforge mystic made the matchup 52% abzans favor, so in a 100 match sample size in which half of them abzan was using a banned card, that matchup is more or less even. My own testing matches this. Anyone who regards abzan as a bad matchup is not good at jeskai. Jeskai is bad against specifically lingering souls, not bad against abzan, and this is a weakness jace does nothing to improve
Debating back and forth about why exactly jund declined will get us no where, in fact im sorry i even started it, that is the exact type of discussion that causes this thread to go off on a tangent for two days without discussing anything meaningful, only semantics. So, how about this wraith, since you believe so strongly that jace is safe, why not run him through the gauntlet? Show that he genuinely improves U controls matchups against the current aggro meta without making a deck that is oppressive for non-jace decks and ill be on board. If you cant show that, id be glad to discuss with you how we can improve U while improving modern at the same time
UWRjeskai nahiri UWR
UBRgrixis titi UBR
UBRgrixis delverUBR
UR ur kikimite UR
EDH
RUG Riku of Two Reflections RUG
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose UBR
UBRGYidris, Maelstrom Wielder UBRG
UBRJeleva, Nephalia's ScourgeUBR
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
There used to be three. And the salt probably comes from them seeing what happened to that third pillar and hoping it doesn't happen to them. Who knows though, I've never owned or played BGx.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I don't even "strongly believe" that he's safe, I'm modest enough to say that I don't really know, but I think a lot of the arguments against him are flawed or are ignoring a lot of factors. The Modern metagame is very complex, and it's not always easy to see how well a card would do in the format. People get it wrong around spoiler season all the time. I saw people saying that both Nahiri and Chandra would end up getting banned in Modern. Myself, I thought Nahiri would only see fringe play, while I thought Chandra would be very good, and would set herself apart as the clear 2nd or 3rd best Planeswalker in Modern. Turns out Nahiri was better than I thought, and Chandra didn't quite live up to my expectations.
My point being, you can't say things like "Jace would invalidate GBx decks." I think a comment like that is ignoring how robust and resilient the Modern meta is. These decks have plenty of ways to answer Jace. Sure, he might run away with a game if he's allowed to sit around Brainstorming for several turns unanswered, but we have a bunch of cards in Modern that will run away with the game if they aren't answered. The key point here, however, is how easy is he to answer? Blue control decks don't have the tools available in Legacy to make sure the opponent can't answer your Jace. The answers in Modern are very narrow and not really up to the power-level of the threats, which is something I think most of us in this thread can agree on. This is why I think Jace would not be as good in Modern as he is in Legacy.
The biggest reason not to unban Jace would be if we had a top tier blue deck that would use him, like when Twin was around. This isn't the case right now, so while I'm not sure if he would be fine or not, I think this is a great time for WotC to unban him to find out. This is basically what they did with GGT, they took a risk to see if it would be ok, and GGT was fine for a couple years until new printings broke open the Dredge archetype. Even if GGT gets rebanned, I personally will look at it as a successful experiment. The same is true for Jace. Maybe Jace turns out to be fine for a while, but further printings in the future push blue control decks a bit too far (which I doubt, given their current design philosophy), or maybe he does cause problems for GBx decks and needs to be rebanned. At least then we'll know what he does in Modern. As of now, none of us actually know, we're all just guessing. And this is my main reason for wanting SFM as well. Let's stop being scared of cards and find out for sure if they can exist healthily in Modern.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
While it does suck to get that double exile trigger slapped on ya, I feel like 10 is more reasonable they need double towers to hit it on five. Karn is a four of three drop in the deck and I hate having my second land exiled. yes he is vulnerable to counter magic but currently cheap counters are kind of bad, cheap removal and cryptic command is a much better plan than mana leak against most decks. I did preface my comment by saying I just wish they would not that I actually think the deck needs a ban.
Oath pushed eldrazi
Inn pushed dredge
Kaladesh is pushing lantern
Next?
RGTron
UGInfect
URStorm
WUBRAd Nauseam
BRGrishoalbrand
URGScapeshift
WBGAbzan Company
WUBRGAmulet Titan
BRGLiving End
WGBogles
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
BG mirrors are often quite skill testing and grindy which is makes piloting them correctly a rewarding experience.
This is actually what is happening in standard right now: the BG deck is arguably the best one in the format and mirror matches are many. The victor is therefore not determined based on metagaming or the dice roll so much as navigating through the game itself since all of the decks are very similar looking.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
It already has online, it's basically t1 there.
Don't touch Ancient Stirrings. Tron has already eaten one ban for the sins of Eldrazi, that would make it virtually unplayable, certainly not competitive.
Banning Lantern is a ridiculous proposition.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
RGTron
UGInfect
URStorm
WUBRAd Nauseam
BRGrishoalbrand
URGScapeshift
WBGAbzan Company
WUBRGAmulet Titan
BRGLiving End
WGBogles
I'm sorry, this isn't trolling or anything like that. But you ust had yourself a very bad day in MODO, or you went to a local tournament and got crushed.
At least you have to make up your subjectivity. You basically want to, destroy Tron, Eldrazi,Lantern and Dredge, at the same time, unbanning Twin or Preordain, and maybe Jace?. Jesus man. We all can see you signature. Remember that its not any of the decks you mentioned above the ones who kill consistently on Turn 3...
I've always been indifferent towards Twin but I don't want it unbanned, at least not yet.
More than over a year we have heard nothing but complaints from salty Twin players. Circular arguments, quote mining, cherry picking data and passive aggressive attitude towards Modern. Not to come off sounding rude but I come from the school of thought that you shouldn't reward people for having a tantrum.
Twin had a good run, it truly did but I'd rather unban stuff that hasn't had a chance such as Jace and Stoneforge Mystic. I know Jund is still a good deck but if they unban Twin before Bloodbraid Elf I would feel a bit cheated, and especially since a majority Jund players have been patiently waiting for its potential unban for a lot longer than Twin.
Do I think Twin should be banned? Well no, I miss playing against like I do with Pod. In my opinion Modern was more interactive and enjoyable but now I'm tired listening to people who think Twin is intrinsically connected to the health of Modern.
I eagerly await being told I'm wrong by upset Twin players.
Nerf the only top tier competitors to BGx, unban a card that helps BGx and ONLY BGx.
Alright, I'll play your game: Reprint/unban Counter Spell, Force of Will, Flusterstorm, Swords of Plowshare, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Jace the Mind Sculpter, Cunning Wish, Fact or Fiction. Ban Swamp and Forest. No more changes needed.
Now back to reality, I feel like modern needs reprints/unbans much more than bans. There just aren't enough police cards that can answer the massive array of threats in the format. Banning Dredge and Infect would just give us a meta of Eldrazi and Affinity. Ban them and we get a meta of Suicide Zoo/Bloo and Burn...and on and on it goes. So long as people don't have to fear interaction, the format will always be a race.
Tron is just coming quite stupid and impossible to beat with these "recent" cast triggering cards those just encourage other decks to play faster and win earlier. And since we don't have powerful interactive cards in modern card pool compared to diversity of threats it is just better to play your own thing instead of worrying about what opponent is doing - that is not healthy.
Modern
WUBRG
Can you explain the logic behind for the Eldrazi ban?
What is wrong with it?
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
@sss123: There's a logic behind banning Temple or Stirrings, just to nerf Eldrazi. The reason being that Eldrazi basicaly pushed counterspells out of the format. I mean, that's a bad thing, but Eldrazi have been FAR AWAY from oppressive. They have a good share of bad matchups, and even then, BGX isn't the cakewalk people like to say. Even UR/X isn't a cakewalk. It depends on how many counterspells they have maindeck. The deck isn't really healthy for the format, but what deck is really healthy nowadays?. If you ban Temple, go on and take out Urza lands which crap on control decks at a much harder extent. Cavern of Souls is a card that you could theoricaly ban, but it's 70 a piece so i wouldn't bet on that one.
Side note on Splinter Twin and BBE: In my honest and humble opinion. This cards can't come off as the format stands right now. Let's quickly analyze Splinter Twin, then BBE, both have the same issue card in the format.
Twin/Exarch was the best deck in the format until January dropped the ban hammer on Splinter Twin. If you were to unban Twin as a player, you are basically saying, all right i want this deck to be the best deck in the format and be ok with it. That has no upside for me. Splinter Twin may be not an oppressive archetype metagame wise, but you can bet every Modern Top 8 will have at least 1 copy of a flavor of Twin/Exarch. Ancestral Vision just took that off the table for me. That's the nail in the coffin that WOTC putted on the Twin banning, is just like sayong, ok guys Twin is over, let's move on and make blue control decks good while not having a beautiful Turn 4 "oops i win button".
BBE+AV? Yikes. I know Temur is not a big shard right now, but this may be the chance for them to take over, and in a bad way. If they unban BBE, this combination will be a nightmare for midrange and control decks. Again, this is like going back and making Modern one whole archetype all about only one flavor. I for one, would try and work hard to make something like Temur Moon a big deck. Classic case of homogenization of a diverse format.
I think you are really overstimating the impact of BBE + AV. In Modern Cascade is pretty much completly random so you have rather low chances of ever living the dream. Besides, blue doesn't play well with Cascade otherwise, counters are just awful and getting a Serum Visions off BBE isn't that impressive, neither is Snapcaster Mage. Goyf is okay, but RUG has a hard time feeding him. The general card quality with CMC < 4 in these colors is just way too low to spawn a good deck or cause even a slight homogenization towards RUG. No, if BBE is unbanned it will go into Jund. Hitting Liliana of the Veil, Kolaghan's Command or a fully fed Goyf is just a lot more impressive than what Temur could offer. AV doesn't change that.
As an additional note to BBE + AV: Yahenni's Expertise lets you do exactly that, just way better. Wipe the board off small creature and draw 3. No lucky Cascade required, just have AV in hand.
My Modern Decks:
BGWAbzan MidrangeWGB
UWRJeskai NahiriRWU
BRUGrixis ControlURB
You are right. Cascade is nowhere near Legacy in terms of consistency. That's what i'm afraid off too. BBE is just too dicey for a format with so much power level.
A few counterpoints to your arguement: 1)Actually counterspells aren't good right now, and i suspect they won't be until some hard land destruction is printed or Cavern gets banned.
2)You might miss on the juicy Liliana and Kolaghan's Command, but you gain Ancestral Vison and Blood Moon, Serum Visions, Vendilion Clique, even something like Vedalken Shackles can make good work even if it doens't have an ETB trigger.
3)You are certainly right that Jund would abuse her too. Ultimately, it doesn't bring anything good for the format. Just more degeneracy and variance.
- Tron; 7 Mana on Turn 3. Karn Liberated or Wurmcoil Engine.
- Eldrazi; The super value midrange deck that pumps out Turn 3 Reality Smasher. Seriously.
- Infect; condensed with powerful pump spells that cut your life in half.
- Storm; Where your creature removal and counter magic have no effect.
- Dredge; bleeeeeeeeeeeeeehgghgg 12 power
- Affinity; bleeeeeeeeeeeeeehgghgg + I somehow win through Stony Silence.
- Suicide Zoo; bleeeeeeeeeeeeeehgghgg How did these cards get here?
- Zoo Burn; Great Stuff, probably the most fair deck on this list, but it can still kill you turn 3.
- Ad Nauseam; I've never heard someone say they have a good Ad Nauseam Matchup.
- Grixis; Instant Speed Snapcaster Mage into Kolaghan's Command targeting Snapcaster Mage & making you hate life with whatever secondary mode I select.
Is this the format where Bloodbraid Elf, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and Stoneforge Mystic are "too dicey?"