A format in which you can't effectively interact with a deck for 3-4 turns is not healthy. A format in which you can be non-interactive for 3-4 turns and win on the spot in not healthy. This is why right now it is very problematic that Tron, Bant Eldrazi and RG Ramp are the best decks. I don't go to tournaments to play 4 turns of solitaire and watch my opponent win on the spot without me having a real say in it. Right now there are no real answers to a turn 2 TKS, turn 3 assembled Tron etc, RG ramp just putting lands on the field. At this point it is 100% clear something must be done. There are only 3 ways to deal with this:
- You either ban/nerf these decks as well: Ancient Stirrings should go, bye Tron and Valakut.
- You unban cards to revive archetypes or strengthen existing decks to deal with non-interactive decks: DRS, Preordain, Jayce, SFM
- You print new cards that can actually deal with non-interactive decks
Banning is not an option. You can't keep banning the top dog because it is a never ending circle. If you ban A you have to nerf B then ban C etc. So the only real options are unbans and new cards. The problem with new cards is they have to pass through Standard first so their powercurve is restrained and depends on set design, flavor etc. They can't just print something that doesn't fit with the rest of the set. So in the short run unbannings is the only logical option. In the medium-long run we will start seeing new cards but not everything that is needed can be printed in the same set so we will have to be patient.
There are answers to all of these things in the format. T2 tks is answered by fatal push or terminate, t3 tron can be interrupted by ghost quarter (i literally run 1-2 of these in every deck with a rough tron matchup, and don't understand why more people don't), and valakut decks get rekt by blood moon. You can answer all of these things with the tools in the format. In addition, you can also play moderns faster decks and just race big mana if you are anticipating large amounts of them. Making good meta calls is critical in every magic format.
In addition, it is pretty hard to call those decks linear. Tron runs around 16 maindeck pieces of interaction, bant eldrazi runs around 20 pieces of interaction. Even rg valakut, the least interactive of the bunch, runs around 6 pieces of interaction maindeck, not including the Valakut’s which arguably could be called pieces of interaction, but in gameplay rarely function as such. It is very easy to think of these strategies as non-interactive when playing against them as a control/midrange deck, but interaction simply isn't their role in that matchup, they are the beatdown there. The goal is only to ramp into bomb after bomb until they have just gotten way to car ahead for their midrange/control opponent to come back. Throw them against infect/affinity and suddenly their role shifts completely. In addition, most midrange/control decks are not packing meaningful maindeck interaction against these types of strategies. When you are playing a rather reactive deck in nature and are used to having all of the answers , it can feel pretty hopeless when none of your cards line up well against what they are doing. No one likes feeling this way, so it is quite understandable that people are often so opposed to these strategies regardless of their lack of metagame prevalence and high profile results. However, none of this means any action needs to be taken against these decks. As you stated yourself, we do not need more bans in this format, but unbanning drs because jund has a bad tron matchup isn't a viable option either. Making decks good enough to trump their naturally bad matchups will only lead to disaster. This means we have decks with no real bad matchups anymore, which is not the key to a healthy meta.
This is not to say we must leave midrange/control without the tools to stand somewhat a fighting chance against big mana. I stated earlier that there are answers to these strategies in the format, but it doesn't take a lot of modern experience to know that the aforementioned answers are often inadequate to fight back. Giving more ways for modern to fight big mana would be beneficial provided said answers don't tip the scales to broken. A quick glance at the banlist reveals nothing obvious to help fair decks fight big mana. This means new prints are indeed the best solution to the problem you described. As you also stated, as long as these answers have to come through standard, they will probably never be adequate.
So, are we just hosed then? We can't ban stuff since that will kill the format eventually and just reveal the new "problem" in the meantime. We don't have any good options for unbans, and our source of new cards will never provide what we need. To me the clear answer here is that MODERN NEEDS A SOURCE OF CARDS OUTSIDE OF STANDARD. many have said in here before that wizards won't do it, but wizards goes 180 on themselves so often i take most of what they say for granted. If enough people are loud enough, they will listen eventually.
The best solution in my eyes:
-Either create a new "Conspiracy" or change mm sets to an unlimited print run at normal msrp
-include in this set both new prints and reprints meant to both create new, interesting strategies and bolster existing ones
-make this set an annual release or semi-annual as to prevent it from taking away from standard
This solution addresses the common problem cited of modern not being a money maker for them. If modern players are suddenly cracking packs like madmen to get the new, exciting cards for the format, then they are making plenty of money from the format, which is win-win. The irregularity of print runs coupled with the lack of a modern PT should assure that modern doesn't take away from standard.
A format in which you can't effectively interact with a deck for 3-4 turns is not healthy. A format in which you can be non-interactive for 3-4 turns and win on the spot in not healthy. This is why right now it is very problematic that Tron, Bant Eldrazi and RG Ramp are the best decks.
Huh?
RG Ramp, sure. It can just ramp until it has enough lands to cast Scapeshift and win. But Tron? Eldrazi? How in the world is Eldrazi non-interactive in its early turns? Okay, maybe it's "not interactive" in its first turn, which is usually where it casts Ancient Stirrings or Noble Hierarch, but after that it's casting creatures and interacting, and it certaily doesn't "win on the spot." As for Tron... that's almost as puzzling. How does it "win on the spot"? Sure, it can make some powerful plays once it's gotten the lands assembled, but none of them, in fact, win on the spot. Against some decks an Ugin is really hard to come back from, but it's still not winning on the spot and in those cases Ugin isn't any really any worse worse than something like Supreme Verdict. And a sweeper is certainly interaction.
I don't go to tournaments to play 4 turns of solitaire and watch my opponent win on the spot without me having a real say in it. Right now there are no real answers to a turn 2 TKS, turn 3 assembled Tron etc, RG ramp just putting lands on the field.
There are totally answers to all of those things, or ways to stop them.
At this point it is 100% clear something must be done.
At this point is is 100% clear that you're making up stuff, arbitrarily assuming those will be the best decks and misrepresenting how they play.
There are only 3 ways to deal with this:
- You either ban/nerf these decks as well: Ancient Stirrings should go, bye Tron and Valakut.
- You unban cards to revive archetypes or strengthen existing decks to deal with non-interactive decks: DRS, Preordain, Jayce, SFM
- You print new cards that can actually deal with non-interactive decks
Banning is not an option. You can't keep banning the top dog because it is a never ending circle. If you ban A you have to nerf B then ban C etc. So the only real options are unbans and new cards. The problem with new cards is they have to pass through Standard first so their powercurve is restrained and depends on set design, flavor etc. They can't just print something that doesn't fit with the rest of the set. So in the short run unbannings is the only logical option. In the medium-long run we will start seeing new cards but not everything that is needed can be printed in the same set so we will have to be patient.
This part is more reasonable, but the stuff you started out with was basically nonsense.
Wizards will keep helicopter parenting this format until they realize that Modern can't be fully tamed and will eventually move ever closer to Legacy, or perhaps all their unpopular ban choices start to catch up with them.
I want to believe them that they're going to print better answers, but I'm doubtful. Heck, to get a better counter spell printed it'll probably have pay half your life and perform a perfect back flip in front of your opponent.
While i agree wizards has dropped the ball recently with opportunities to print better counterspells (counterspell get a clue, and revolt counterspell both seemed GREAT) I do feel like the message might be hitting home. We have had several rough standard season since the last truly powerful answer was printed in standard (thoughtseize in theros)
While I would love for them to print a real counterspell that isn't just worse than mana-leak I doubt its going to happen with the slower rotations staying around. You have to assume that the design team would have had knowledge of the up coming changes in the rotation cycle for standard and where probably told they could print more potent answers like Fatal Push because they will not be sticking in standard for as long. I doubt that they will continue to print strong answers like that if the slower rotation stick around, R&D was fairly unanimous that they thought that thoughtseize in standard was a mistake and that its to powerful for standard.
I think the changes to the B&R cycle is probably related to the fact that they probably designed the next few upcoming sets with the planned faster rotation and are now worried that the shorter term more powerful effects they designed into the sets will be around longer than anticipated and they needed a release valve for getting them out if needed since redesigning the sets is probably impossible given they are working on sets multiple sets ahead of the next few.
I think it's kinda ridiculous to think that Counterspell would break Standard if they tried to pass it through to get it in Modern. We had Silumgar's Scorn not that long ago, which was often just Counterspell in Esper Dragons, and it didn't break Standard.
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
A format in which you can't effectively interact with a deck for 3-4 turns is not healthy. A format in which you can be non-interactive for 3-4 turns and win on the spot in not healthy. This is why right now it is very problematic that Tron, Bant Eldrazi and RG Ramp are the best decks. I don't go to tournaments to play 4 turns of solitaire and watch my opponent win on the spot without me having a real say in it. Right now there are no real answers to a turn 2 TKS, turn 3 assembled Tron etc, RG ramp just putting lands on the field. At this point it is 100% clear something must be done.
There are plenty of answers to those things. A Thought-Knot Seer, even as early as turn 2 (which is quite rare), is a waste of mana against an opponent holding two cheap removal spells (I recall resolving a topdecked Seer the other night and conceding once I saw my opponent's hand was three ways to remove it). Crumble to Dust is a great answer to Tron, and Ghost Quarter slows it down a lot, as does having a lot of bolts or creatures to deal with its walkers. Ramp is tricky to interact with, but not impossible.
It's untrue to say that you can't interact with these decks, and it's certainly untrue to say that they never interact. I've played Tron for a while now, and while there are games where I just goldfish for the first few turns in an attempt to get Tron on and deal with issues then, there are games where I spend my mana dealing with threats and staying alive because of a slow hand or a fast opponent. A lot of games with Tron are won or lost based on judging how much time you have to respond to your opponent's game plan. There's no "t3 Tron, win on the spot." While it's certainly possible in some matchups to lock your opponent down with a t3 Karn or whatnot, it's silly to suggest games are just automatically won by having 7 mana.
If you honestly feel you're playing solitaire, I think you should step back and reevaluate your choices in those matchups. Because my experience playing with and against more combo-based decks is that the games are often quite interactive and involve a lot of tough choices (ignoring bad hands or players who just don't understand their opponent's gameplan).
The first problem with Magic has been that limited has crept in and taken out the design of removal cards and new removal entering the format. Fatal Push is the first real Modern removal in a number of years not printed at rare. The new world order and no printing of level 5 commons has created making uncommons more expensive. Sudden Push might've been a common years ago, now it's uncommon driving the price up.
With the limited amount of answers in Magic was mainly for Limited, which hurts constructed and the trickle down towards us in Modern. The Eldrazi and new dredge cards made the format more diverse over time, the lack of new answers has stagnated decks. With Khans we saw the creation of Grixis into a tier 1 deck for a while and settling around a good Tier 2 deck for control. That was in part because of land options finally being reprinted and new removal options with Kolaghan's Command. Once those two were set in place, we also saw Mardu control peak around more as well.
The issue with Magic is not to much that there is a lack of diversity, that there is a lack of diversity within removal itself for different color combinations. Sultai's problem is not blue black, rather black and blue itself is weak on removal. Black and White face a lack of creature support that would otherwise dominate to allow Mardu to be better. With increased removal diversity over the years we may see Sultai and Mardu go the way of Grixis and become better if not already with Fatal Push.
So the move in design to return removal to it's old power level is a great start, that may very well begin to diversify Magic control once more. While Jund is an awesome deck, Sultai and other decks, similar to Grixis, need to shine.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
As the title suggests this is a post about the concept of power level and magic formats with emphasis on Modern, a variety of topics overlap with this including banlist policies, printing policies, format starting points, supplementary products even in some cases in game rulings, therefore i felt more comfortable creating a new topic other than posting in an existing thread.
The term power level refers to the overall effectiveness of a card, which is essentially the impact of the said card compared to it's cost (both in mana and in other resources). We could say that the overall power level of all magic cards approaches normal distribution, with one major difference: cards that are considerably strong are much more rare than cards that are considerably weak. So if we could have a graph it would look like two pyramids with their bottoms connected except that the pyramid on top (which contains the more powerful cards) would be a lot 'sharper' as cards that are dramatically strong are also exceedingly rare, while the bottom pyramid would look a bit 'leveled', as the weakest cards in magic are closer to the average power level than the strongest are.
Before that oddball pyramid comparison starts making sense i'll also say what may seem obvious: in constructed formats what's playable is defined and restricted by what is available. Playability is not determined in abstract but in comparison to other cards because deck building in competitive formats is about maximizing effectiveness and not settling down with merely ok solutions. For example in abstract Shock is not a bad card in modern, it provides a reasonable flexibility and can take down a large number of key targets including all infecters, all burn creatures (even a T1 nacatl), all affinity creatures other than their 3 drops, mana dorks, Dark Confidant, Delver of Secrets, the combo elements of green toolbox decks etc. It can also hit the opponent for 10% of his starting life total. But Shock despite being a good card is unplayable in Modern, because a superior alternative exists in Lightning Bolt. It's a buyer's market really, and Shock is offering less 'product' (aka damage) at the same price, so none picks it.
So what is playable? outside of synergies, cards can only deviate as far as a number S in power level from the top tier meta.If a deck builder decides to go lower he simply gets outgunned by top tier decks and ends up with poor MUs everywhere therefore no competitive reason to pick his deck/cards. But there are also synergies: cards with a sum greater than their parts, that can compete with the best cards available (in some cases even outright smash them in degenerate ways) creating diversity and alternative ways to play this game other than simply playing the best threats/answers available. Without synergies a format inevitably ends up 'Midrange the Gathering', something that often describes Standard metas and is definately what Frontier is right now, because due to the smaller card pool of those formats there are not enough synergies available. On the opposite side of the spectrum Modern,Legacy and Vintage have some insanely powerful synergies that need to be kept in check with bans in order to allow simpler and fairer strategies like aggro and midrange to exist.
So what happens when we artificially alter the powerlevel of a format by adding or removing cards from it? Back to our pyramids, increasing the power level further extends the sharper top of the pyramid, therefore dragging the 'S' window of playability to the narrow neck of our top pyramid, effectvely reducing the amount of cards and decks that can compete in the new T1 meta, while on the other hand trimming the pyramid's top (aka baning cards) creates a new T1 meta closer to it's base therefore cards in average power level increase in playability and so is the format's diversity.
The above statement is true for both decks and individual cards: for instance when Eldrazi got introduced a whole number of decks that used to be competitive like Jund and Burn instantly became obsolete, another less obvious case is Jeskai Midrange: as more and more cards kept crawling into the format it became increasingly difficult for this deck to answer the newly introduced angles of attack added in the format while it's once scary wincon in Geist of Saint Traft got less and less scary every block. When power level is too high, tapping out becomes too risky therefore reactive strategies are forced to look for instant speed win cons or just play Inquisition of Kozilek which once again limits diversity.
Now on to power level and gameplay, before i proceed i'll make some basic cases of what's good and what's poor gameplay (yeah, that's painfully obvious but better not to skip it)
now what's a bad game of magic? it's a game when a player had no real chance to win, so he just feels cheated out of the game, while the victor deserves no credit as he merely did what his deck does, this can be the result of either:
a)crazy power level, if a format is too strong winning the dice and opening with a solid 7 hand are often enough to completely overwhelm someone, see linear godhands, how fun can a game that ended T2-3 be?
b)games decided on variance, mana screws, mulls to oblivion etc unfortunately this is core to the game due to the mana system and lands, probably far too late to change this and i won't be expanding on this
c)exceedingly unfair games, be it degenerate combo/ramp/gy/lockdown decks etc, i'll be blunt here, despite those archetypes being really fun (ok save lockdown which is the opposite of fun unless you're a sadist or something) in a casual level by doing crazy stuff and breaking all the fundamental rules of magic, they generate absurd amounts of mana, they draw their entire libraries, they can do 30+ damage to the other guy while he's trying to deploy 2 and 3 cmc creatures and so on, breaking the rules is fun but not for the wounded party, those archetypes mostly promote terrible gameplay
d)SB lottery games, games which the victor is determined by the pressence of an overwhelming hate card, again a by product of high power level and poor printing policies
if they stopped printing busted artifact synergies there would be no need for Stony Silence, if they stopped printing busted lands no need for Blood Moon, if they stopped printing busted graveyard synergies no need for Ravenous Trap and so on
what's a good game of magic? it's a game in which both players had a chance to win and it was their combined decisions that lead to whatever outcome, ideally the game was interactive, therefore it was more about outplaying each other and not just a solitaire display of mulligan and sequencing skills
A very popular opinion is to have a modern more powerful and balanced by either unbaning a bunch of cards and/or introducing cards via supplementary products. Let's just stop removing threats and keep empowering answers, new toys for everyone! While it makes sense, or at least it seems to (and i agree that some generic answers need to be introduced in Modern) it's also flawed because it misses the point about how high power level plays out:
a very common thing in this game is the so called mismatch: when you do have some answers in your hand but not the exact answer you need for the threat you're facing, in a lower power level format not only you will have many opportunities to correct this mismatch (as the game will be longer and you'll get to untap and draw more times) but there's less likely to be angles of attack that totally ignore most forms of interaction and no matter how many generic answers we create this is inevitable in a diverse format, this is a format with Cavern of Souls Eldrazi, Tron, Dredge, RG Valakut, Infect, zooicide, affinity even Lantern control, no matter how broad an answer is it can't cover you from all those decks, not to mention that the broader an answer gets the more it's mana cost increases, therefore it's easier for fast decks to get under it). The result of this high power level and it's mismatches is that it makes the opening hand more important than in game decisions and turns games into a question of whether you have a specific answer card on hand or not: do you have bolt against their T1 Glistener Elf or not? can you destroy Ensnaring Bridge or not? do you have Ravenous Trap against Dredge or not?
the way mismatch works in modern is also the reason why the format favours so strongly proactivity over reactive strategies and why the popular concept of 'policing' cards and decks would not work in any way other than making the format look better to outsiders (but not play better for the actual players)
Essentially Modern as a format has been determined by specific key points:
a)a poor decision to the format's starting point which was based on card frames instead of context, cards and gameplay and left the format stuck with degenerate ramp strategies like Bloom and Tron, degenerate lockdown strategies like Lantern Control or lockdown cards like Blood Moon and needless color hate like Choke
b)other mistakes of the developers immature past: Dredge,Storm,phyrexian mana, SSG, Ancient Stirrings and other beauties that promote non-games and take the format further towards a degenerate direction
c)TERRIBLE new printings that were either moving the format towards a more degenerate direction or straight up breaking it: TC/DTT, Eldrazi, Amalgam and so on..
d)bans which often makes wotc appear as if they suffer from bipolar disorder: they make bad prints, they ban something again and again,just like now: they buff dredge, they ban dredge, they buff infect, they ban infect, thought to be fair they openly stated that modern does not dictate what they can print or not the BL can adress this
that said despite being a bit hard to sell to inexperienced players their bans always had one single purprose: to improve the overall gameplay of the format, of course to the said inexperienced players they make no sense as they cannot see what's their effect and turn to conspiracy theories about how wotc randomly bans cards before the pro tour (see the Twin), how wotc hates certain archetypes and other similar superstitions, after every BL update i'm increasingly convinced that they actually plan to get rid of most/all degenerate stuff in modern they just do it in a step by step basis with as little casualties and colateral damage as possible, so no wotc is not stupid, it's actually pretty smart but focuses elsewhere and views modern as a secondary development goal, for instance today modern is better than it was yesterday, Infect stops being busted (and becomes more skill intensive on top) while the obviously degenerate dredge gets weaker (and our sideboards stronger), if anything it's a petty they didn't also hit imp while at it but anyways, let's see how that goes, in the future it's also very likely that there will be some bans targeted at ramp strategies and that lantern control will wear out it's welcome as it rises in share, this will lead to more interactive and fair games overall.
The way Modern's power level is handled is directly related to what happens to other non-rotating formats: when Modern gets too high in powerlevel a newer format will take it's place (frontier is a start but that format is not playable with fetchlands, it is however an interesting experiment) to facilitate the need and demand for a non-degenerate and non-rotating format but it seems we have a minimum of 5 years before this happens, the newly failed standard greatly delays this because i assume they wouldn't want their new format to be defined by T4 Emrakuls, I won't lie: yesterday there was no constructed format to play some fair and slow magic, Modern was plagued by dredge and the infect 'family' of T3 decks, standard was a format that apart from the obviously degenerate Emrakul had no answer to his top threat, while Legacy is an exotic fruit... and i wasn't really bothering with this game, today i almost feel renewed and optimist again (till they push the next degenerate deck with their prints and my optimism gets replaced with anger again, my money is on lantern)...
So Modern continues to be the top magic format but it will now face competition from frontier which may win the hearts of those who want to play some fair and interactive magic, that can lead to either wotc adopting frontier(sans fetches or from an even later starting point) and letting modern move to legacy directions or to modern becoming a better and more diverse version of frontier which will be forgotten as the idea of some retailers that never took off.
now i'm going to make a snowman and ponder on how to attack the new meta, thanks for reading this overly long and not that well written post that happens to include some of my most important thoughts in the format!
ps: now that it's apparent that even without a PT we do have bans can we get it back? that would be a great day for this format
The "On formats and power level: a case for a lower power Modern" thread, and all its replies, have been merged with the "State of Modern" thread.
So, the conversation for bans shifts to RG Valakut mainly now(maybe some other big mana decks as well). Truth be told, RG Tron was actually nerfed some months ago as a collateral damage.
Do I think RG Valakut is broken? It's not. Were Dredge and Infect broken? No, they were not. It's just the nature of bans. Bans are not the solution.
But I am certain RG Valakut is going to be the subject of bans sooner or later. Deck is too fast, but can grind games as well, and it has some turn 3 kills as well, kind of like Infect was with the difference it's not Boltable.
One thing is certain though: RG Valakut is here to dominate, with some other decks, all of the fair decks and keep them down in Earth again. It's also here to make all of your Fatal Push look stupidly bad.
I think calling Valakut too powerful is dangerous thinking, and this is coming from a BGx player
Valakut is fine, it definitely has to fight through hate to win
You keep insisting on Affinities mox opal, which is also a little baffling. It's not like it's playing turn 2 blood moons and then stopping people from interacting with you, unless you yourself are playing something super degenerate (It only averages 1 Moon anyway, 2 when Bloom was a deck).
I'm definutely tired of people saying Tron and Valakut just lost two of their best matchups, infect isn't going anywhere. At worst, it's a very upper tier 2 deck, I think it'll be tier 1 once people get tired of experimenting with fatal push.
It's not like modern is about to become a midrange dominated format, Tron and Valakut, and maybe Eldrazi are going to prey on those decks, and then infect and friends are going to come back, rock-paper-scissors format
Many players in this thread are underestimating the ability of Affinity, Burn, and even a slightly nerfed Infect to regulate big mana decks. My suspicion is that no one is actually testing these decks and is just theorycrafting. I'm running a few decks through Tier 1 gauntlets right now, and the new Tom Ross Infect, not to mention classic Naya Burn and Affinity, are still formidable forces the big mana decks will continue to struggle with. Between these three decks (which will still be Tier 1) and the unknown prevalence of DSZ and UR Prowess (probably Tier 2 but still probably 4%-5% collectively of the meta), there is still a significant top-tier aggro presence which will likely regulate ramp decks.
I saw Tom Ross write something but I'm not a premium member on Starcity, could you either post his new list or share the article?
I've been saying for weeks now that I think burns going to make a huge comeback, cut the Nacatcl nonsense out (Which I never liked), and really punish decks
Affinity is coming back too, push doesn't suddenly make it a bad deck (not that Affinity polices Tron though)
I agree with you though, these 3 decks can help regulate things like Valakut.
I saw on reddit that HolyDiva was tired of being matched up against Tron as Abzan and went back to the drawing boards, good to know probe didn't kill her deck at all
Whats the DSZ thing you're referring to?
Public Mod Note
(ktkenshinx):
Automatic suspension for promotion of illegal activity (requesting content behind a paywall) -ktkenshinx-
Reminder to everyone that requesting content behind a paywall is against the site rules and is grounds for immediate suspension. Here's the relevant excerpt of the rule:
Promotion of illegal activity... including but not limited to...copyright infringement (this includes...copyrighted material being distributed without permission of the copyright holder [such as premium articles]...)... is strictly prohibited. Please note that in the case of premium articles, sharing a decklist for the purposes of discussing is acceptable, but requesting decklists solely available in a premium article is not.
Please PM me if you have any questions about this rule.
We're also having a lot of very serious discussions about hate cards and powerful answers. As you have noticed with Fatal Push, we are not totally against printing very powerful answers in Standard, but we need to up that number. The pendulum of threats versus answers has swung too far toward the threats, and that has caused problems with our metagame. Our decision to not print enough answer cards also has shown to be a real problem. Some parts of this were conscious, like pushing story cards and new card types, and some were a result of moving to two-block world and removing the core set where we traditionally put many of the answers to these kinds of cards. We learned a lot from the last three blocks on how the two-block world should work and are incorporating those ideas into future sets. Again, you won't see all the changes immediately, but we are incorporating those learnings into sets you will play with soon.
A lot of players including myself has been saying this as far back as theros. The answer vs threat count was ramping up more and more, and we've most certainly felt the weight of that since unlike standard, we dont dump our power level once a year.
I have been very mad at the bans (not the cards banned, but the fact we needed to ban so often in the first place) and I think wizards might finally be realizing using the banlist as a power cap isnt working in the long run.
I both agree and disagree with your sentiments about banning to contain the power cap. In a lot of ways, I don't think it's gone far enough, while standard kill spells/counter magic has become so conditional it's almost a joke. I'd be willing to bet you could right this second put Spell Snare in Standard and control still would struggle, as every hard card counter is still at a 3 cmc and board wipes are at 5. Modern has the opposite problem. In a field of some of the best answers ever printed, you can't silver bullet the stupid number of ways you can die.
A lot of more recent design philosophies are to blame for that. Basic 1 cmc cantrips went the way of the dodo, hexproof replaced shroud which reduced risk, and you started getting creatures that came in with a spell effect at half the cost of both combined. You get Eldrazi doing too much, you get sticky 1/1's that refused to die like Inkmoth Nexus, and primarily because of 1 deck, Preordain and Ponder went from fair to broken. It's not just that there aren't enough answers (I agree there isn't), it's also that some of the strategies that exist in Modern just shouldn't be there.
Think about what they're saying with Cloudpost banning and Eye of Ugin. Ramp that strong shouldn't be there. So why is tron? Look at Blazing Shoal - we can't have Inkmoth Nexus end the game Turn 2, but Turn 4 doesn't still feel ridiculous? Mental Misstep is too good to police Turn 1 plays, but they want a Turn 4 format? Birthing Pod was considered a format staple until they printed a cheap 4/5 trample with Lightning Helix on it, and it was the deck's fault, not the broken creature they made? They've literally banned/unintentionally crippled Storm's ability to go off instead of giving us the cards and just kill the win con. If anything, I think they should have used a broader brush and just said 'we don't want storm, we don't want dredge, we don't want caw blade, we don't want infect, and we don't want turbo-ramp, here's 30 cards you can't have, now go nuts'.
Modern, as many have said, has an identity crisis from the beginning and the more the format is 'solved' the less fun it seems to be to play it. I already cashed out a couple months back. I had the cards for almost any deck I wanted, but I got tired of skills not meaning as much as what deck is on the other side of the table. Like Legacy, Modern punishes mistakes, but if you're in a bad matchup, it doesn't reward skill for crap.
@sephx I think you're being a bit unfair with respect to those bannings.
There's precedent in other nonrotating formats (vintage and legacy, but also EDH) for certain types of consistency tools being too good. Gifts ungiven is banned in edh and was banned in vintage for a good long while. Dig through Time and Treasure Cruise are both banned in legacy, and brainstorm and ponder are both restricted in vintage. I do believe that the combination of ponder and preordain together was too strong for modern in its earlier incarnations, and I would be very hesitant to release both of them into the wild without a LOT of testing. Ponder has a power level in the hands of a skilled pilot that is significantly higher than that of both serum visions and preordain.
Equally, cloudpost wasn't banned because wizards didn't want ramp decks or tron-like decks in the format. It was banned because decks were CONSISTENTLY casting emrakul, the aeons torn on turn 4. In that sense, it was a literal turn 4 kill in many games, and it was immune in many cases to early discard and countermagic because the important components were lands. While a turn three karn liberated is very strong in modern, it is not actually game over. If you actually sit down and work it out, the earliest most tron decks can kill a goldfish is combat on their 6th turn, either via 3 wurmcoil engine hits + a shockland from the opponent, or turn 4 ulamog, the ceaseless hunger smacking in twice. OK, turn 3 wurmcoil into turn 4 ugin can kill on turn five with assistance from the opponent, but all of their actual goldfish clocks are turn 6. 12 post could cast a turn four emrakul, get a free turn, smack you for annihilator 6 and make you sack basically your entire board, then they could RE CAST another emrakul for another turn and kill you, and they could find the emrakuls more consistently at the time than tron decks can find threats now (eye of ugin being banned has reduced the consistency potential, but not the powerlevel of the nut draw).
There are reasonable arguments for blazing shoal to not be required on the banlist anymore since it's not effectively better than the become immense package that infect currently runs, and it certainly is too clunky for the other temur battle rage decks to employ effectively without increasing their goldfish turn significantly.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Cloudpost
The threat of facing decks which could generate fifteen or more mana each turn starting on turn four kept a lot of different decks out of the tournament, greatly reducing the diversity. There are alternatives for people who wish to play mana-ramp decks, but they do not appear to be as crushing.
12Post wasn't a T4 rule violator. 12Post wasn't even bad because it was a ramp deck. 12Post was problematic because it reduced diversity. This is not the case with Tron, which has never sustained more than a 6%-8% meta share for more than a month or two and is frequently much lower. Tron also coexists with Titan Valakut decks, so it's not even monopolizing ramp strategies. Midrange players love to complain about Tron keeping their decks down, but this has never held up in practice. Especially not in 2016, where Jund was the most-played or second most-played deck since April despite Tron being Tier 1 in a number of those months.
I agree that Modern needs better nonbasic land safety valves, although Wasteland is too strong. That said, this doesn't mean the current ramp strategies are oppressive, and it definitely doesn't mean they need banning. Control and midrange players should stop blaming this small segment of the metagame for their challenges. Every deck has challenging matchups in this format. As control players, that is your challenging matchup, just like a combo player might struggle against Jund.
I think it's kinda ridiculous to think that Counterspell would break Standard if they tried to pass it through to get it in Modern. We had Silumgar's Scorn not that long ago, which was often just Counterspell in Esper Dragons, and it didn't break Standard.
I agree but R&D has had a aversion towards hard counters like that since Ravnica: City of Guilds standard. I think the chances of getting something on par with counterspell would have been more likely with the faster standard rotation because if it is greatly disliked by standard players it will not be around for so long that it does prolonged damage. Silumgar's Scorn is much closer to Deprive than Counterspell the restrictions on it were real and demanded that players have a high enough density of Dragons to be worth playing it wasn't a card that could slide into tempo or aggro decks. Maybe current standard players wouldn't be to upset by counterspell.deck but when counterspell was legal it was most the time accompanied by 3-4x the other lesser counterspell and 8 counters plus 4-6 removal spells is something most current standard players have never dealt with and WotC seems pretty set on Cancel being the eternal replacement for that affect.
Think about what they're saying with Cloudpost banning and Eye of Ugin. Ramp that strong shouldn't be there. So why is tron?
Asking "if Cloudpost is too strong, why isn't Tron too strong?" is akin to asking "if Deathrite Shaman is too strong, why isn't Noble Hierarch too strong?" In both cases, the answer is obvious: The latter is quite a bit weaker than the former. 12-Post is quite a bit stronger than Urzatron is. It ramps more effectively, it's thwarted less by land destruction, and it staves off aggro better thanks to Glimmerpost gaining life.
In regards to Eye of Ugin vs. Tron, you ignore the fact that Eye of Ugin starts the ramp (for Eldrazi) on turn 1, whereas Tron can't get any ramp until the third turn (well I guess with a crazy good hand you can get 3 mana off an Urza's Tower on the second turn if you're running Explore, but almost all Tron builds have dropped that card). There's a big difference between a card that instantly gives you 2 mana versus one that can't give you that ramp until the third turn and requires you to assemble two other specific lands.
Basically, Eye of Ugin and Cloudpost ramp way better than Tron. So wondering why Tron is okay but those aren't is like asking why Time Warp isn't banned when one considers how amazing Time Walk is.
People have always hyped up how strong Hypergenesis is. In the context of NBL Modern, I would call it trash tier. It's inconsistent at best, it folds to disruption (Chalice on 0 is a thing in NBL Modern because it shuts off Hivemind combo as well), and it can't really run interaction beyond Dismember. Compare this to Storm, the tier 1 pure combo deck which can consistently win through disruption on turn 3 by dealing 21 damage to the dome or by resolving Hivemind. The only thing going for Hypergenesis is its speed, which is comparable to Belcher- a much better deck which I'd still only put at tier 2 because it often loses to itself. Having played Hypergenesis against some of the tier 1 and 2 decks in the format, IMO it's too weak for NBL Modern. Why would you play this over Storm? I'm not really sold on the idea of Bloom Titan either. Remember, fair decks are often 1-2 turns ahead of unfair decks, thanks to Chrome Mox. Heck, Tezzerator can be upwards of 3 Turns ahead since it runs Mox Opal as well- and gets some of the best card draw printed since Alpha.
It actually doesn't. Note the words on the card. Chalice of the Void triggers if they cast a spell. Hive Mind makes you copy the spell. The only spell that gets countered is the original Pact; the copied versions bypass Chalice of the Void.
It does stop them from using their Pacts "normally" though.
I just read the latest "Latest Developments" - article by Sam Stoddard and found it to be very interesting
and despite talking mostly about standard, it addresses a lot of points the modern community regularly discusses too.
To the mods: I'm not sure where to post this. It just seems too interesting to just post it in
the "state of modern" - thread. If it's the wrong place I apologise and would ask you to just move it where it belongs
I just read the latest "Latest Developments" - article by Sam Stoddard and found it to be very interesting
and despite talking mostly about standard, it addresses a lot of points the modern community regularly discusses too.
To the mods: I'm not sure where to post this. It just seems too interesting to just post it in
the "state of modern" - thread. If it's the wrong place I apologise and would ask you to just move it where it belongs
Especially the topics of "lack of good answers" and "what to ban" seemed very relevant !
This was discussed in the ban thread that was open for a week, and the discussion has now moved to the State of Modern thread. Merging this thread there.
Well dredge is still 5-0'ing modern leagues on MTGO. GGT while rightly hated on was not the "engine" of the dredge deck, the engine is Amalgam + Bloodghast, dredge is just the enabler.
I feel like the recent bannings will have this out come. Jund/Junk/Grixis will be more poorly positioned. It just lost multiple good matches and its worst match ups Tron, Titanshift etc.. just lost their worst match ups. And with the printing of Fatal Push even less of the types of decks "fair" decks prey on will be in the format. Dredge isn't going anywhere and keeping GY hate is probably smart.
Well dredge is still 5-0'ing modern leagues on MTGO. GGT while rightly hated on was not the "engine" of the dredge deck, the engine is Amalgam + Bloodghast, dredge is just the enabler.
I feel like the recent bannings will have this out come. Jund/Junk/Grixis will be more poorly positioned. It just lost multiple good matches and its worst match ups Tron, Titanshift etc.. just lost their worst match ups. And with the printing of Fatal Push even less of the types of decks "fair" decks prey on will be in the format. Dredge isn't going anywhere and keeping GY hate is probably smart.
Of course dredge is still good but it is much easier to beat thug than troll. It is interesting to have a deck like dredge exist but in its former form it was too much now it is still not known but it will still be a good deck. Infect is not dead either and every aggro deck is still too fast for tron and still ok against push decks. Once the whole aggro is dead nonesense that is going on ends people will hate out big mana decks with aggro.
Well dredge is still 5-0'ing modern leagues on MTGO. GGT while rightly hated on was not the "engine" of the dredge deck, the engine is Amalgam + Bloodghast, dredge is just the enabler.
I feel like the recent bannings will have this out come. Jund/Junk/Grixis will be more poorly positioned. It just lost multiple good matches and its worst match ups Tron, Titanshift etc.. just lost their worst match ups. And with the printing of Fatal Push even less of the types of decks "fair" decks prey on will be in the format. Dredge isn't going anywhere and keeping GY hate is probably smart.
Of course dredge is still good but it is much easier to beat thug than troll. It is interesting to have a deck like dredge exist but in its former form it was too much now it is still not known but it will still be a good deck. Infect is not dead either and every aggro deck is still too fast for tron and still ok against push decks. Once the whole aggro is dead nonesense that is going on ends people will hate out big mana decks with aggro.
I don't think dredge is really hurt by the ban that much. People talk about the deck like it was some super fast aggro deck and it just wasn't the real "engine" of the deck is the Amalgam + bloodghast attrition engine that drains Jund's removal and invalidates Lilly and the rest of the discard package. Losing GGT just helps in the SB match ups when he would come in handy.
DSZ and URprowess which where all of 6% of the metagame with probe are going to take a dip, both leaned heavily on probe as a card that greases up the moving parts of the deck and it just slows them down a bit to much. They are not strict aggro decks and if your beating Tron with either of them your normally hitting them with the combo because if they stick Karn, Wurmcoil, Ugyn its lights out. Maybe a zoo style aggro deck will rise up but with Jund/Junk/Grixis all getting a all star removal spell against those types of strategies which they are already heavily favored against I don't see that as likely.
It's been a week, I've played a bit on MTGO and discussed with lots of people, my opinions really haven't changed, even with the new article of Wizards saying that the pendulum has swung too far in one direction.
Banning Gitaxian Probe, acclaimed by some, still feels like one of those awkward bans like Manamorphose. Even the proposition when it was first heard, still makes me sick to my stomach. Although playing against Infect actually feels a bit easier, you still can't beat any of their decent draws. I haven't seen a Suicide Zoo, but I've seen an alteration of the UR prowess deck that I am interested in playing myself.
It's been a week, I've played a bit on MTGO and discussed with lots of people, my opinions really haven't changed, even with the new article of Wizards saying that the pendulum has swung too far in one direction.
Banning Gitaxian Probe, acclaimed by some, still feels like one of those awkward bans like Manamorphose. Even the proposition when it was first heard, still makes me sick to my stomach. Although playing against Infect actually feels a bit easier, you still can't beat any of their decent draws. I haven't seen a Suicide Zoo, but I've seen an alteration of the UR prowess deck that I am interested in playing myself.
BBE and SFM I don't see being unbanned in near future. MTGGoldfish has Jund as the #1 deck that isn't dredge and WotC isn't going to unban a card that auto slots into a Tier 1 deck. SFM is in company with JtmS and GGT of cards that where banned preemptively for similar if not identical justifications and it slides right into Junk which like Jund is currently a Tier 1 deck with MTGGoldfish has it exactly right behind Jund with only a 0.22% difference in representation.
The banning of Gitaxian Probe has me thinking that a 1c.c. cantrip that are all strictly better than any of the ones available currently(including probe) are not likely targets for a unbanning. I mean Preordain is slightly pie in the sky fingers crossed but ponder is probably never going to see the outside of that ban prison its serving a life term.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
There are answers to all of these things in the format. T2 tks is answered by fatal push or terminate, t3 tron can be interrupted by ghost quarter (i literally run 1-2 of these in every deck with a rough tron matchup, and don't understand why more people don't), and valakut decks get rekt by blood moon. You can answer all of these things with the tools in the format. In addition, you can also play moderns faster decks and just race big mana if you are anticipating large amounts of them. Making good meta calls is critical in every magic format.
In addition, it is pretty hard to call those decks linear. Tron runs around 16 maindeck pieces of interaction, bant eldrazi runs around 20 pieces of interaction. Even rg valakut, the least interactive of the bunch, runs around 6 pieces of interaction maindeck, not including the Valakut’s which arguably could be called pieces of interaction, but in gameplay rarely function as such. It is very easy to think of these strategies as non-interactive when playing against them as a control/midrange deck, but interaction simply isn't their role in that matchup, they are the beatdown there. The goal is only to ramp into bomb after bomb until they have just gotten way to car ahead for their midrange/control opponent to come back. Throw them against infect/affinity and suddenly their role shifts completely. In addition, most midrange/control decks are not packing meaningful maindeck interaction against these types of strategies. When you are playing a rather reactive deck in nature and are used to having all of the answers , it can feel pretty hopeless when none of your cards line up well against what they are doing. No one likes feeling this way, so it is quite understandable that people are often so opposed to these strategies regardless of their lack of metagame prevalence and high profile results. However, none of this means any action needs to be taken against these decks. As you stated yourself, we do not need more bans in this format, but unbanning drs because jund has a bad tron matchup isn't a viable option either. Making decks good enough to trump their naturally bad matchups will only lead to disaster. This means we have decks with no real bad matchups anymore, which is not the key to a healthy meta.
This is not to say we must leave midrange/control without the tools to stand somewhat a fighting chance against big mana. I stated earlier that there are answers to these strategies in the format, but it doesn't take a lot of modern experience to know that the aforementioned answers are often inadequate to fight back. Giving more ways for modern to fight big mana would be beneficial provided said answers don't tip the scales to broken. A quick glance at the banlist reveals nothing obvious to help fair decks fight big mana. This means new prints are indeed the best solution to the problem you described. As you also stated, as long as these answers have to come through standard, they will probably never be adequate.
So, are we just hosed then? We can't ban stuff since that will kill the format eventually and just reveal the new "problem" in the meantime. We don't have any good options for unbans, and our source of new cards will never provide what we need. To me the clear answer here is that MODERN NEEDS A SOURCE OF CARDS OUTSIDE OF STANDARD. many have said in here before that wizards won't do it, but wizards goes 180 on themselves so often i take most of what they say for granted. If enough people are loud enough, they will listen eventually.
The best solution in my eyes:
-Either create a new "Conspiracy" or change mm sets to an unlimited print run at normal msrp
-include in this set both new prints and reprints meant to both create new, interesting strategies and bolster existing ones
-make this set an annual release or semi-annual as to prevent it from taking away from standard
This solution addresses the common problem cited of modern not being a money maker for them. If modern players are suddenly cracking packs like madmen to get the new, exciting cards for the format, then they are making plenty of money from the format, which is win-win. The irregularity of print runs coupled with the lack of a modern PT should assure that modern doesn't take away from standard.
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
Huh?
RG Ramp, sure. It can just ramp until it has enough lands to cast Scapeshift and win. But Tron? Eldrazi? How in the world is Eldrazi non-interactive in its early turns? Okay, maybe it's "not interactive" in its first turn, which is usually where it casts Ancient Stirrings or Noble Hierarch, but after that it's casting creatures and interacting, and it certaily doesn't "win on the spot." As for Tron... that's almost as puzzling. How does it "win on the spot"? Sure, it can make some powerful plays once it's gotten the lands assembled, but none of them, in fact, win on the spot. Against some decks an Ugin is really hard to come back from, but it's still not winning on the spot and in those cases Ugin isn't any really any worse worse than something like Supreme Verdict. And a sweeper is certainly interaction.
There are totally answers to all of those things, or ways to stop them.
At this point is is 100% clear that you're making up stuff, arbitrarily assuming those will be the best decks and misrepresenting how they play.
This part is more reasonable, but the stuff you started out with was basically nonsense.
While I would love for them to print a real counterspell that isn't just worse than mana-leak I doubt its going to happen with the slower rotations staying around. You have to assume that the design team would have had knowledge of the up coming changes in the rotation cycle for standard and where probably told they could print more potent answers like Fatal Push because they will not be sticking in standard for as long. I doubt that they will continue to print strong answers like that if the slower rotation stick around, R&D was fairly unanimous that they thought that thoughtseize in standard was a mistake and that its to powerful for standard.
I think the changes to the B&R cycle is probably related to the fact that they probably designed the next few upcoming sets with the planned faster rotation and are now worried that the shorter term more powerful effects they designed into the sets will be around longer than anticipated and they needed a release valve for getting them out if needed since redesigning the sets is probably impossible given they are working on sets multiple sets ahead of the next few.
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
There are plenty of answers to those things. A Thought-Knot Seer, even as early as turn 2 (which is quite rare), is a waste of mana against an opponent holding two cheap removal spells (I recall resolving a topdecked Seer the other night and conceding once I saw my opponent's hand was three ways to remove it). Crumble to Dust is a great answer to Tron, and Ghost Quarter slows it down a lot, as does having a lot of bolts or creatures to deal with its walkers. Ramp is tricky to interact with, but not impossible.
It's untrue to say that you can't interact with these decks, and it's certainly untrue to say that they never interact. I've played Tron for a while now, and while there are games where I just goldfish for the first few turns in an attempt to get Tron on and deal with issues then, there are games where I spend my mana dealing with threats and staying alive because of a slow hand or a fast opponent. A lot of games with Tron are won or lost based on judging how much time you have to respond to your opponent's game plan. There's no "t3 Tron, win on the spot." While it's certainly possible in some matchups to lock your opponent down with a t3 Karn or whatnot, it's silly to suggest games are just automatically won by having 7 mana.
If you honestly feel you're playing solitaire, I think you should step back and reevaluate your choices in those matchups. Because my experience playing with and against more combo-based decks is that the games are often quite interactive and involve a lot of tough choices (ignoring bad hands or players who just don't understand their opponent's gameplan).
With the limited amount of answers in Magic was mainly for Limited, which hurts constructed and the trickle down towards us in Modern. The Eldrazi and new dredge cards made the format more diverse over time, the lack of new answers has stagnated decks. With Khans we saw the creation of Grixis into a tier 1 deck for a while and settling around a good Tier 2 deck for control. That was in part because of land options finally being reprinted and new removal options with Kolaghan's Command. Once those two were set in place, we also saw Mardu control peak around more as well.
The issue with Magic is not to much that there is a lack of diversity, that there is a lack of diversity within removal itself for different color combinations. Sultai's problem is not blue black, rather black and blue itself is weak on removal. Black and White face a lack of creature support that would otherwise dominate to allow Mardu to be better. With increased removal diversity over the years we may see Sultai and Mardu go the way of Grixis and become better if not already with Fatal Push.
So the move in design to return removal to it's old power level is a great start, that may very well begin to diversify Magic control once more. While Jund is an awesome deck, Sultai and other decks, similar to Grixis, need to shine.
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
The "On formats and power level: a case for a lower power Modern" thread, and all its replies, have been merged with the "State of Modern" thread.
I think calling Valakut too powerful is dangerous thinking, and this is coming from a BGx player
Valakut is fine, it definitely has to fight through hate to win
You keep insisting on Affinities mox opal, which is also a little baffling. It's not like it's playing turn 2 blood moons and then stopping people from interacting with you, unless you yourself are playing something super degenerate (It only averages 1 Moon anyway, 2 when Bloom was a deck).
I'm definutely tired of people saying Tron and Valakut just lost two of their best matchups, infect isn't going anywhere. At worst, it's a very upper tier 2 deck, I think it'll be tier 1 once people get tired of experimenting with fatal push.
It's not like modern is about to become a midrange dominated format, Tron and Valakut, and maybe Eldrazi are going to prey on those decks, and then infect and friends are going to come back, rock-paper-scissors format
I've been saying for weeks now that I think burns going to make a huge comeback, cut the Nacatcl nonsense out (Which I never liked), and really punish decks
Affinity is coming back too, push doesn't suddenly make it a bad deck (not that Affinity polices Tron though)
I agree with you though, these 3 decks can help regulate things like Valakut.
I saw on reddit that HolyDiva was tired of being matched up against Tron as Abzan and went back to the drawing boards, good to know probe didn't kill her deck at all
Whats the DSZ thing you're referring to?
Please PM me if you have any questions about this rule.
I both agree and disagree with your sentiments about banning to contain the power cap. In a lot of ways, I don't think it's gone far enough, while standard kill spells/counter magic has become so conditional it's almost a joke. I'd be willing to bet you could right this second put Spell Snare in Standard and control still would struggle, as every hard card counter is still at a 3 cmc and board wipes are at 5. Modern has the opposite problem. In a field of some of the best answers ever printed, you can't silver bullet the stupid number of ways you can die.
A lot of more recent design philosophies are to blame for that. Basic 1 cmc cantrips went the way of the dodo, hexproof replaced shroud which reduced risk, and you started getting creatures that came in with a spell effect at half the cost of both combined. You get Eldrazi doing too much, you get sticky 1/1's that refused to die like Inkmoth Nexus, and primarily because of 1 deck, Preordain and Ponder went from fair to broken. It's not just that there aren't enough answers (I agree there isn't), it's also that some of the strategies that exist in Modern just shouldn't be there.
Think about what they're saying with Cloudpost banning and Eye of Ugin. Ramp that strong shouldn't be there. So why is tron? Look at Blazing Shoal - we can't have Inkmoth Nexus end the game Turn 2, but Turn 4 doesn't still feel ridiculous? Mental Misstep is too good to police Turn 1 plays, but they want a Turn 4 format? Birthing Pod was considered a format staple until they printed a cheap 4/5 trample with Lightning Helix on it, and it was the deck's fault, not the broken creature they made? They've literally banned/unintentionally crippled Storm's ability to go off instead of giving us the cards and just kill the win con. If anything, I think they should have used a broader brush and just said 'we don't want storm, we don't want dredge, we don't want caw blade, we don't want infect, and we don't want turbo-ramp, here's 30 cards you can't have, now go nuts'.
Modern, as many have said, has an identity crisis from the beginning and the more the format is 'solved' the less fun it seems to be to play it. I already cashed out a couple months back. I had the cards for almost any deck I wanted, but I got tired of skills not meaning as much as what deck is on the other side of the table. Like Legacy, Modern punishes mistakes, but if you're in a bad matchup, it doesn't reward skill for crap.
There's precedent in other nonrotating formats (vintage and legacy, but also EDH) for certain types of consistency tools being too good. Gifts ungiven is banned in edh and was banned in vintage for a good long while. Dig through Time and Treasure Cruise are both banned in legacy, and brainstorm and ponder are both restricted in vintage. I do believe that the combination of ponder and preordain together was too strong for modern in its earlier incarnations, and I would be very hesitant to release both of them into the wild without a LOT of testing. Ponder has a power level in the hands of a skilled pilot that is significantly higher than that of both serum visions and preordain.
Equally, cloudpost wasn't banned because wizards didn't want ramp decks or tron-like decks in the format. It was banned because decks were CONSISTENTLY casting emrakul, the aeons torn on turn 4. In that sense, it was a literal turn 4 kill in many games, and it was immune in many cases to early discard and countermagic because the important components were lands. While a turn three karn liberated is very strong in modern, it is not actually game over. If you actually sit down and work it out, the earliest most tron decks can kill a goldfish is combat on their 6th turn, either via 3 wurmcoil engine hits + a shockland from the opponent, or turn 4 ulamog, the ceaseless hunger smacking in twice. OK, turn 3 wurmcoil into turn 4 ugin can kill on turn five with assistance from the opponent, but all of their actual goldfish clocks are turn 6. 12 post could cast a turn four emrakul, get a free turn, smack you for annihilator 6 and make you sack basically your entire board, then they could RE CAST another emrakul for another turn and kill you, and they could find the emrakuls more consistently at the time than tron decks can find threats now (eye of ugin being banned has reduced the consistency potential, but not the powerlevel of the nut draw).
There are reasonable arguments for blazing shoal to not be required on the banlist anymore since it's not effectively better than the become immense package that infect currently runs, and it certainly is too clunky for the other temur battle rage decks to employ effectively without increasing their goldfish turn significantly.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
As amalek0 suggested, it's off base. Here's the actual explanation from the announcement itself (emphasis added):
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/explanation-september-2011-br-changes-2011-09-20-0
12Post wasn't a T4 rule violator. 12Post wasn't even bad because it was a ramp deck. 12Post was problematic because it reduced diversity. This is not the case with Tron, which has never sustained more than a 6%-8% meta share for more than a month or two and is frequently much lower. Tron also coexists with Titan Valakut decks, so it's not even monopolizing ramp strategies. Midrange players love to complain about Tron keeping their decks down, but this has never held up in practice. Especially not in 2016, where Jund was the most-played or second most-played deck since April despite Tron being Tier 1 in a number of those months.
I agree that Modern needs better nonbasic land safety valves, although Wasteland is too strong. That said, this doesn't mean the current ramp strategies are oppressive, and it definitely doesn't mean they need banning. Control and midrange players should stop blaming this small segment of the metagame for their challenges. Every deck has challenging matchups in this format. As control players, that is your challenging matchup, just like a combo player might struggle against Jund.
I agree but R&D has had a aversion towards hard counters like that since Ravnica: City of Guilds standard. I think the chances of getting something on par with counterspell would have been more likely with the faster standard rotation because if it is greatly disliked by standard players it will not be around for so long that it does prolonged damage. Silumgar's Scorn is much closer to Deprive than Counterspell the restrictions on it were real and demanded that players have a high enough density of Dragons to be worth playing it wasn't a card that could slide into tempo or aggro decks. Maybe current standard players wouldn't be to upset by counterspell.deck but when counterspell was legal it was most the time accompanied by 3-4x the other lesser counterspell and 8 counters plus 4-6 removal spells is something most current standard players have never dealt with and WotC seems pretty set on Cancel being the eternal replacement for that affect.
Asking "if Cloudpost is too strong, why isn't Tron too strong?" is akin to asking "if Deathrite Shaman is too strong, why isn't Noble Hierarch too strong?" In both cases, the answer is obvious: The latter is quite a bit weaker than the former. 12-Post is quite a bit stronger than Urzatron is. It ramps more effectively, it's thwarted less by land destruction, and it staves off aggro better thanks to Glimmerpost gaining life.
In regards to Eye of Ugin vs. Tron, you ignore the fact that Eye of Ugin starts the ramp (for Eldrazi) on turn 1, whereas Tron can't get any ramp until the third turn (well I guess with a crazy good hand you can get 3 mana off an Urza's Tower on the second turn if you're running Explore, but almost all Tron builds have dropped that card). There's a big difference between a card that instantly gives you 2 mana versus one that can't give you that ramp until the third turn and requires you to assemble two other specific lands.
Basically, Eye of Ugin and Cloudpost ramp way better than Tron. So wondering why Tron is okay but those aren't is like asking why Time Warp isn't banned when one considers how amazing Time Walk is.
It actually doesn't. Note the words on the card. Chalice of the Void triggers if they cast a spell. Hive Mind makes you copy the spell. The only spell that gets countered is the original Pact; the copied versions bypass Chalice of the Void.
It does stop them from using their Pacts "normally" though.
I just read the latest "Latest Developments" - article by Sam Stoddard and found it to be very interesting
and despite talking mostly about standard, it addresses a lot of points the modern community regularly discusses too.
To the mods: I'm not sure where to post this. It just seems too interesting to just post it in
the "state of modern" - thread. If it's the wrong place I apologise and would ask you to just move it where it belongs
Link:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/standard-2017-01-13
Especially the topics of "lack of good answers" and "what to ban" seemed very relevant !
Spirits
This was discussed in the ban thread that was open for a week, and the discussion has now moved to the State of Modern thread. Merging this thread there.
I feel like the recent bannings will have this out come. Jund/Junk/Grixis will be more poorly positioned. It just lost multiple good matches and its worst match ups Tron, Titanshift etc.. just lost their worst match ups. And with the printing of Fatal Push even less of the types of decks "fair" decks prey on will be in the format. Dredge isn't going anywhere and keeping GY hate is probably smart.
Of course dredge is still good but it is much easier to beat thug than troll. It is interesting to have a deck like dredge exist but in its former form it was too much now it is still not known but it will still be a good deck. Infect is not dead either and every aggro deck is still too fast for tron and still ok against push decks. Once the whole aggro is dead nonesense that is going on ends people will hate out big mana decks with aggro.
I don't think dredge is really hurt by the ban that much. People talk about the deck like it was some super fast aggro deck and it just wasn't the real "engine" of the deck is the Amalgam + bloodghast attrition engine that drains Jund's removal and invalidates Lilly and the rest of the discard package. Losing GGT just helps in the SB match ups when he would come in handy.
DSZ and URprowess which where all of 6% of the metagame with probe are going to take a dip, both leaned heavily on probe as a card that greases up the moving parts of the deck and it just slows them down a bit to much. They are not strict aggro decks and if your beating Tron with either of them your normally hitting them with the combo because if they stick Karn, Wurmcoil, Ugyn its lights out. Maybe a zoo style aggro deck will rise up but with Jund/Junk/Grixis all getting a all star removal spell against those types of strategies which they are already heavily favored against I don't see that as likely.
Banning Gitaxian Probe, acclaimed by some, still feels like one of those awkward bans like Manamorphose. Even the proposition when it was first heard, still makes me sick to my stomach. Although playing against Infect actually feels a bit easier, you still can't beat any of their decent draws. I haven't seen a Suicide Zoo, but I've seen an alteration of the UR prowess deck that I am interested in playing myself.
Banning Golgari Grave-Troll hasn't been that much more successful in stopping the Dredge numbers, or their amazing draws. They are dramatically weaker to Anger of the Gods, but other cards like Grafdiggers Cage/Rest in Peace still play out the same.
A Ponder/Preordain/Stoneforge Mystic/Bloodbraid Elf unban would have been amazing.
BBE and SFM I don't see being unbanned in near future. MTGGoldfish has Jund as the #1 deck that isn't dredge and WotC isn't going to unban a card that auto slots into a Tier 1 deck. SFM is in company with JtmS and GGT of cards that where banned preemptively for similar if not identical justifications and it slides right into Junk which like Jund is currently a Tier 1 deck with MTGGoldfish has it exactly right behind Jund with only a 0.22% difference in representation.
The banning of Gitaxian Probe has me thinking that a 1c.c. cantrip that are all strictly better than any of the ones available currently(including probe) are not likely targets for a unbanning. I mean Preordain is slightly pie in the sky fingers crossed but ponder is probably never going to see the outside of that ban prison its serving a life term.