What would a Dark Depths unban look like for the format?
It could help blue for one thing, what other decks would it slot into or create?
The original deck was Vampire Hexmage+Dark Depths (HexDepths) which was a player in Extended although it later combined itself with the Thopter Foundry+Sword of the Meek combo (ThopterSword) to make a deck called ThopterDepths which was able to be highly successful due to having two separate combos that required totally different answers.
I'm dubious as to how good HexDepths or ThopterDepths would be in Modern, though. It's worth remembering that ThopterSword was a huge player in Extended (even when not playing the Dark Depths combo alongside it), whereas it's a nonentity in Modern.
What I'm more concerned about is the new Thespian's Stage+Dark Depths combo, and I think that's where you'd see it have a bigger effect. A problem with HexDepths is you need to be running multiple copies of Dark Depths and Vampire Hexmage to have the combo be any good, but not so much Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage. There are decks that already run a decent amount of land search and they can just plop in one copy of each and use them to get some free combo wins if their regular plan isn't going so well. Gx Tron, Loam, and any decks running Knight of the Reliquary would likely happily throw one copy of each in and utilize them to get some easy wins at very little expense. Though to be fair, Loam and Knight aren't exactly tearing up the format anyway so them getting better would not be the worst thing in the world, but people already complain some about Tron.
That really isn't a good argument against unbanning Jace. What blue planeswalkers other than Jace, Vryn's Prodigy (which would have been viable even with jace in the format and sees little play today) and Jace, Architect of Thought (which sees barely any play) are even remotely playable in Modern? in fact, what planeswalkers see a significant amount of play in Modern other than Liliana of the Veil and Karn Liberated?
Ugin the Spirit Dragon, Liliana the Last Hope, and Nahiri the Harbinger.
So I didn't see a thread just for discussing MM2017 but I just wanted to say I feel like they're really nailing it with the reprints this time around, PTE and IOK at uncommon and the fetches at rare? plus goblin guide, damnation and stony silence? I know MM15 set the bar pretty low but this set really seems to be trying to address the reprint needs of a lot of cards that have really been wanting them.
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My Decks:
UG Merfolk RG 8-Whack BWG Abzan midrange GRB Living End UWB Spirit Control
GU Kruphix's "Hug Assassin" RW Kalemne's "Play Fatties and Hope for the Best!" BUGW Atraxa's "All counters, all the time"
What would a Dark Depths unban look like for the format?
It could help blue for one thing, what other decks would it slot into or create?
The original deck was Vampire Hexmage+Dark Depths (HexDepths) which was a player in Extended although it later combined itself with the Thopter Foundry+Sword of the Meek combo (ThopterSword) to make a deck called ThopterDepths which was able to be highly successful due to having two separate combos that required totally different answers.
I'm dubious as to how good HexDepths or ThopterDepths would be in Modern, though. It's worth remembering that ThopterSword was a huge player in Extended (even when not playing the Dark Depths combo alongside it), whereas it's a nonentity in Modern.
What I'm more concerned about is the new Thespian's Stage+Dark Depths combo, and I think that's where you'd see it have a bigger effect. A problem with HexDepths is you need to be running multiple copies of Dark Depths and Vampire Hexmage to have the combo be any good, but not so much Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage. There are decks that already run a decent amount of land search and they can just plop in one copy of each and use them to get some free combo wins if their regular plan isn't going so well. Gx Tron, Loam, and any decks running Knight of the Reliquary would likely happily throw one copy of each in and utilize them to get some easy wins at very little expense. Though to be fair, Loam and Knight aren't exactly tearing up the format anyway so them getting better would not be the worst thing in the world, but people already complain some about Tron.
...Though to be fair, Loam and Knight aren't exactly tearing up the format anyway so them getting better would not be the worst thing in the world, but people already complain some about Tron.
Yeah, Knight without mom would be what it is now, crap.
its not just jund in which i am talking about. there are lof of fair decks that cannot beat the current big/fast mana strategies in this format.
You present an extreme bias against these strategies in this thread. It's so extreme that many people believe you are just trying to improve your own strategies (those in your signature) at the expense of other strategies you personally dislike. Generally speaking, people that rail against big mana decks don't even consider how many other players play and enjoy these four major top-tier options: RG Valakut variants, Gx Tron variants, Bant Eldrazi, and Eldrazi Tron. Add Eldrazi and Taxes to that list, if we're talking about Temple decks. A good chunk of Modern plays these strategies and enjoys them, so the burden for killing any number of these decks to hypothetically open space to other strategies is very high.
Historically, when you kill a top-tier deck to open up space, only a few of the "opened" decks actually excel. See the Twin ban, which opened up a lot of space in theory, but in practice just allowed a few decks to rise to the top (Infect, DSZ, and Dredge). All the other decks which many said were suppressed by Twin were still bad in the post-Twin metagame.
Posts like yours represent a classic level of ban mania. You have invented an issue (a wide range of fair decks struggle) and then invented a solution that is ban-related (ban the decks that beat your preferred strategies). Even if this was an issue, which I'm not convinced it is, there are many non-ban ways to solve and address it. By immediately turning to bans and by building the issue in a ban context, you're perpetuating the same kind of ban mania which pushes many away from the format and leads to an overall hostile Modern climate.
Just to illustrate this point further, please list the fair strategies you think will suddenly excel in a post-big mana Modern.
"A good chunk of Modern plays these strategies and enjoys them, so the burden for killing any number of these decks to hypothetically open space to other strategies is very high."
wasn't the pod ban to open up more creature strategies?
"You have invented an issue (a wide range of fair decks struggle)
did i though? am i not right?
there is too much "rock" in this rock paper scissors meta game imo
Scissors, is that you?
A big mana ban is not going to help the format. BGx is doing fine and we're one counterspell variant away from blue control being a consistently strong contender. Modern is doing great right now and is only going to get better (unless WotC decides to bring out the band-aids for the perceived bullet wound in Blue).
except in this rock paper sciccors game there is more angles than just the 3, and bg/x and reactive ur/x dont fall under the same tree. as one is midrange ad the other is reactive control.
Umezawa's Jitte: This equipment isn't as terrifying with damage no longer using the stack. Aggro likely will not use this card, but it will do well policing 1-toughness creatures. Risk of re-ban: 2/10
Chrome Mox: Yeah, Chrome Mox is good. Mox Opal would have to be banned to allow this guy to see daylight. Banning Mox Opal practically neuters Cheeri0s, slows affinity a tad, and boosts Control. Control NEEDS a boost. Aggro decks like Burn don't want to exile an important burn spell to accelerate. Control and Midrange desperately needs Chrome mox to power out turn 2 Lilianas. Risk of re-ban: 6/10
except in this rock paper sciccors game there is more angles than just the 3, and bg/x and reactive ur/x dont fall under the same tree. as one is midrange ad the other is reactive control.
I don't know why you keep repeating this distinction between Ux and BGx as reactive and proactive. It doesn't actually matter for the big mana question. One of those decks is doing fine against big mana. The other is not. If you remove big mana decks, the deck that is doing fine against them (BGx) will no longer have any bad matchups and will just be the hands-down best deck. Meanwhile, the reactive deck (Ux) will lose its worst matchup, but will still be a worse choice than the deck that was just better to begin with (BGx). I know you are personally comfortable with BGx being the 50-50 best deck in the format, but Wizards is not. Every one of their banning decisions has been geared to stopping these 50-50 decks. This means a big mana ban will never happen so long as BGx is positioned where it is today.
Umezawa's Jitte: This equipment isn't as terrifying with damage no longer using the stack. Aggro likely will not use this card, but it will do well policing 1-toughness creatures. Risk of re-ban: 2/10
Chrome Mox: Yeah, Chrome Mox is good. Mox Opal would have to be banned to allow this guy to see daylight. Banning Mox Opal practically neuters Cheeri0s, slows affinity a tad, and boosts Control. Control NEEDS a boost. Aggro decks like Burn don't want to exile an important burn spell to accelerate. Control and Midrange desperately needs Chrome mox to power out turn 2 Lilianas. Risk of re-ban: 6/10
Jitte basically reads "connect once, win all creature combat for the rest of the round". For 2 and 2, I think that's too strong for the format.
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Death and Taxes Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
I think the real question is going to be if a blue card comes off (Jace/Preordain) whats that going to do to BUG. I play it as one of my ways to play Ashiok in the format, and it can have a CRUSHING game again Death's Shadow, with Push, and Spell Snare. Throw Jace in as the top end, and that deck starts to have some legs I think.
Umezawa's Jitte: This equipment isn't as terrifying with damage no longer using the stack. Aggro likely will not use this card, but it will do well policing 1-toughness creatures. Risk of re-ban: 2/10
Chrome Mox: Yeah, Chrome Mox is good. Mox Opal would have to be banned to allow this guy to see daylight. Banning Mox Opal practically neuters Cheeri0s, slows affinity a tad, and boosts Control. Control NEEDS a boost. Aggro decks like Burn don't want to exile an important burn spell to accelerate. Control and Midrange desperately needs Chrome mox to power out turn 2 Lilianas. Risk of re-ban: 6/10
Although I enjoy chrome mox I do not think wotc was too fond of the artifact prison decks from extended. I can a deck with thirst for knowledge, chalice of the void, blood moon, and ensnaring bridge emerging from this unban and we already have people wanting these prison cards to go away and this will just fuel that.
What would a Dark Depths unban look like for the format?
It could help blue for one thing, what other decks would it slot into or create?
The original deck was Vampire Hexmage+Dark Depths (HexDepths) which was a player in Extended although it later combined itself with the Thopter Foundry+Sword of the Meek combo (ThopterSword) to make a deck called ThopterDepths which was able to be highly successful due to having two separate combos that required totally different answers.
I'm dubious as to how good HexDepths or ThopterDepths would be in Modern, though. It's worth remembering that ThopterSword was a huge player in Extended (even when not playing the Dark Depths combo alongside it), whereas it's a nonentity in Modern.
What I'm more concerned about is the new Thespian's Stage+Dark Depths combo, and I think that's where you'd see it have a bigger effect. A problem with HexDepths is you need to be running multiple copies of Dark Depths and Vampire Hexmage to have the combo be any good, but not so much Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage. There are decks that already run a decent amount of land search and they can just plop in one copy of each and use them to get some free combo wins if their regular plan isn't going so well. Gx Tron, Loam, and any decks running Knight of the Reliquary would likely happily throw one copy of each in and utilize them to get some easy wins at very little expense. Though to be fair, Loam and Knight aren't exactly tearing up the format anyway so them getting better would not be the worst thing in the world, but people already complain some about Tron.
Would add that Depths-Stage is very difficult to interact with for most decks, especially without Karakas and Wasteland in the format. Off the top of my head Path and Displacer are the only particularly good maindeck ways to interact at all, and it's trivial to run discard and removal in turbo-depths (usually a BG deck).
This is aside from Turbo-depths being pretty fantastically boring and remarkably consistent; even if the format adapted well to it, I don't think it would make anyone particularly happy.
except in this rock paper sciccors game there is more angles than just the 3, and bg/x and reactive ur/x dont fall under the same tree. as one is midrange ad the other is reactive control.
I don't know why you keep repeating this distinction between Ux and BGx as reactive and proactive. It doesn't actually matter for the big mana question. One of those decks is doing fine against big mana. The other is not. If you remove big mana decks, the deck that is doing fine against them (BGx) will no longer have any bad matchups and will just be the hands-down best deck. Meanwhile, the reactive deck (Ux) will lose its worst matchup, but will still be a worse choice than the deck that was just better to begin with (BGx). I know you are personally comfortable with BGx being the 50-50 best deck in the format, but Wizards is not. Every one of their banning decisions has been geared to stopping these 50-50 decks. This means a big mana ban will never happen so long as BGx is positioned where it is today.
"It doesn't actually matter for the big mana question. "
but it does, without soo much big mana reactive blue will have more of a reason to be played, it can also focus more on beating bg/x which in turn can keep it in check.
1. The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to believe that Dig Through Time is the card that blue reactive decks actually need to be competitive. The problem with them in Modern is that so many decks attack from so many different angles, and we don't have good enough general answers. We do have pretty good specific answers, however, so what these decks need is a better way to find their specific answers in time. This lets blue decks run more 1-ofs to cover themselves from corner cases.
An aspect of the argument for/against this card that I realized the other day, which I don't think I've seen mentioned here before, is that most of the decks we fear becoming too broken by receiving DTT just got a huge nerf by the Probe ban. Cheeri0s can't really fill their graveyard fast enough to use the card. Scapeshift can, but I'm not sure DTT is better than BTL in that deck. Delver decks don't have Probe anymore to rapidly stock their graveyard, and DTT would fight with Tasigur and Angler over the graveyard, so it's not a free roll like the TC Delver decks. Storm probably doesn't want the card, their graveyard is too valuable and Gifts is probably better. I don't think Ad Nauseum fills their graveyard fast enough to make it too busted in that deck, but someone who plays the deck might know better. Twin is gone, so don't have to worry about that one anymore. Maybe a Grixis Goryo's deck abuses it, but that deck is barely seeing any play, and I'd rather just have Goryo's Vengeance banned than DTT if that's the only deck we have to fear abusing the card.
The only decks that can really get the most out of DTT in a Probeless meta is the slower blue decks. I wonder if the changes to Modern since it was banned are enough to make it a perfectly safe card now.
2. One of the inherent flaws with Modern, in the minds of a lot of people, is the pretty much arbitrary starting point. Where Modern begins was past the point where WotC realized that blue was too powerful and began really scaling back the power of control magic, but it was before they stopped printing powerful hosers and hate cards. So we have this format where control sucks, but there are still plenty of mistakes in power level because they didn't figure out about other parts of the game being too broken until after the Modern cutoff. One suggestion I see pros make a lot is to ban 8th and 9th edition. This gets rid of powerful hate cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Blood Moon, Choke, Boil, etc.
Here's a different idea, what if we legalized 7th edition? I was looking through 7th edition the other day, and the majority of cards in the set would be completely unplayable in Modern today, but a couple would be. We would get Counterspell, Memory Lapse and Force Spike for the blue decks, which would be pretty huge for them. We also get Goblin Matron, which is one of the missing pieces to a competitive Goblin Tribal deck in Modern. I could see Final Fortune being a fun brew-around. Pretty much everything else in the set would be unplayable because it's either too expensive or there's something already legal that's better. Thoughts on this?
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"It doesn't actually matter for the big mana question. "
but it does, without soo much big mana reactive blue will have more of a reason to be played, it can also focus more on beating bg/x which in turn can keep it in check.
It feels like you aren't reading my posts. I already agreed that reactive blue decks are struggling against big mana decks, so removing those big mana options would improve the reactive blue decks. HOWEVER, big mana decks are ALSO keeping down the BGx share and BGx is performing much better than reactive blue decks. If you remove big mana decks, BGx strategies benefit far more than reactive blue strategies. This will lead to a situation where BGx has no bad matchups and is just the best deck, whereas reactive blue has one fewer bad matchup but is still worse than BGx.
Do you see how risky and unsupportable your argument is? You want to ban four top-tier decks (Valakut, Gx Tron, Edlrazi Tron, Bant Eldrazi) so you can maybe improve reactive blue. But in reality, banning those decks would benefit BGx more than URx, so now we're gambling not only on reactive blue improving, but also that reactive blue can somehow check a newly empower BGx? It's an incredibly bad argument. This statement is particularly groundless:
"it can also focus more on beating bg/x which in turn can keep it in check."
Obviously, even if this did happen, BGx would now be able to focus more on beating reactive blue decks because it didn't need slots for big mana. So again, we find ourselves in a position where BGx is the best deck, reactive blue is still struggling, plus we've lost four top-tier decks AND there are no more checks against BGx.
The alternative? IMPROVE THE BLUE DECKS! Then the blue decks can compete against big mana, big mana can still check BGx, BGx doesn't become the de-facto best deck, and we don't wantonly eliminate four top-tier decks from the format.
That really isn't a good argument against unbanning Jace. What blue planeswalkers other than Jace, Vryn's Prodigy (which would have been viable even with jace in the format and sees little play today) and Jace, Architect of Thought (which sees barely any play) are even remotely playable in Modern? in fact, what planeswalkers see a significant amount of play in Modern other than Liliana of the Veil and Karn Liberated?
Ugin the Spirit Dragon, Liliana the Last Hope, and Nahiri the Harbinger.
I forgot about Ugin, but Liliana the Last Hope sees little play (IIRC, it only sees play in Death's Shadow and all of the Death's Shadow decks that made top 8 at GP Vancouver ran Liliana of the Veil instead) and Nahiri hasn't been good in Modern for several months.
"It doesn't actually matter for the big mana question. "
but it does, without soo much big mana reactive blue will have more of a reason to be played, it can also focus more on beating bg/x which in turn can keep it in check.
It feels like you aren't reading my posts. I already agreed that reactive blue decks are struggling against big mana decks, so removing those big mana options would improve the reactive blue decks. HOWEVER, big mana decks are ALSO keeping down the BGx share and BGx is performing much better than reactive blue decks. If you remove big mana decks, BGx strategies benefit far more than reactive blue strategies. This will lead to a situation where BGx has no bad matchups and is just the best deck, whereas reactive blue has one fewer bad matchup but is still worse than BGx.
Do you see how risky and unsupportable your argument is? You want to ban four top-tier decks (Valakut, Gx Tron, Edlrazi Tron, Bant Eldrazi) so you can maybe improve reactive blue. But in reality, banning those decks would benefit BGx more than URx, so now we're gambling not only on reactive blue improving, but also that reactive blue can somehow check a newly empower BGx? It's an incredibly bad argument. This statement is particularly groundless:
"it can also focus more on beating bg/x which in turn can keep it in check."
Obviously, even if this did happen, BGx would now be able to focus more on beating reactive blue decks because it didn't need slots for big mana. So again, we find ourselves in a position where BGx is the best deck, reactive blue is still struggling, plus we've lost four top-tier decks AND there are no more checks against BGx.
The alternative? IMPROVE THE BLUE DECKS! Then the blue decks can compete against big mana, big mana can still check BGx, BGx doesn't become the de-facto best deck, and we don't wantonly eliminate four top-tier decks from the format.
Yeah and we all know how that's progressed, absolutely NOWHERE. I have no faith in it happening and I've waited for 2 years and nothing. They should have seen this problem right when they banned Splinter Twin.
Absolutely no to DTT, I would literally rather risk unbanning Jace, BBE, Preordain and SFM all at once than unban DDT, I'm 100% against the idea of even entertaining the idea of DDT.
I'm not sure why hellfire is going on this, his proposal is just making GBx better, I'd be fine cutting Fulminator Mages and slotting in 3 cards dedicated to fair matchups that are absolute bombs.
I think if Jace gets unbanned it's just going to go into Sultai midrange and it'll be lulzy to blue control once again
Absolutely no to DTT, I would literally rather risk unbanning Jace, BBE, Preordain and SFM all at once than unban DDT, I'm 100% against the idea of even entertaining the idea of DDT.
I'm not sure why hellfire is going on this, his proposal is just making GBx better, I'd be fine cutting Fulminator Mages and slotting in 3 cards dedicated to fair matchups that are absolute bombs.
I think if Jace gets unbanned it's just going to go into Sultai midrange and it'll be lulzy to blue control once again
Agree on your first two points for sure, unbanning dtt would be a disaster. Banning ramp might help blue but at the cost of the format as a whole. I disagree about sultai though, i dont think jace does enough for that archetype to make it better than grixis, although i do agree that it brings it from unplayable to playable
Oh, true, blue's so bad I even forgot about Grixis
Anyone who knew me in Texas would hear my saltiness whenever I faced against the daily Tron players at the LGS, but I am adamantly against banning ramp decks, unless for some reason it's destroying the format.
Also, are you guys seeing these reprints in modern masters, it's literally looking like it'll be one of the best sets ever printed in the history of Magic.
this should really generate a lot of interest to new players in modern.
I'm a little sad I bought a playset of foil Death's Shadows, but I did sell off a bunch of modern staples and fetches before all these revealed cards
I'm horrible at limited, especially at 30 dollars a pop---but man, this would be a crazy fun draft. My only issue is that there's so many money pieces I'd feel obligated to rare draft if it's something huge
Oh, true, blue's so bad I even forgot about Grixis
Anyone who knew me in Texas would hear my saltiness whenever I faced against the daily Tron players at the LGS, but I am adamantly against banning ramp decks, unless for some reason it's destroying the format.
Also, are you guys seeing these reprints in modern masters, it's literally looking like it'll be one of the best sets ever printed in the history of Magic.
this should really generate a lot of interest to new players in modern.
I'm a little sad I bought a playset of foil Death's Shadows, but I did sell off a bunch of modern staples and fetches before all these revealed cards
"but I am adamantly against banning ramp decks, unless for some reason it's destroying the format. "
in regards to non bgx fair decks, it is imo
id love for unbans and new prints to be the answer instead of my ban ideas, but quite frankly this time next year I fear we will be having this same discussion about reactive blue being bad and needing help. it honestly wouldn't surprise me, and im tired of waiting.
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It could help blue for one thing, what other decks would it slot into or create?
The original deck was Vampire Hexmage+Dark Depths (HexDepths) which was a player in Extended although it later combined itself with the Thopter Foundry+Sword of the Meek combo (ThopterSword) to make a deck called ThopterDepths which was able to be highly successful due to having two separate combos that required totally different answers.
I'm dubious as to how good HexDepths or ThopterDepths would be in Modern, though. It's worth remembering that ThopterSword was a huge player in Extended (even when not playing the Dark Depths combo alongside it), whereas it's a nonentity in Modern.
What I'm more concerned about is the new Thespian's Stage+Dark Depths combo, and I think that's where you'd see it have a bigger effect. A problem with HexDepths is you need to be running multiple copies of Dark Depths and Vampire Hexmage to have the combo be any good, but not so much Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage. There are decks that already run a decent amount of land search and they can just plop in one copy of each and use them to get some free combo wins if their regular plan isn't going so well. Gx Tron, Loam, and any decks running Knight of the Reliquary would likely happily throw one copy of each in and utilize them to get some easy wins at very little expense. Though to be fair, Loam and Knight aren't exactly tearing up the format anyway so them getting better would not be the worst thing in the world, but people already complain some about Tron.
Ugin the Spirit Dragon, Liliana the Last Hope, and Nahiri the Harbinger.
RG 8-Whack
BWG Abzan midrange
GRB Living End
UWB Spirit Control
GU Kruphix's "Hug Assassin"
RW Kalemne's "Play Fatties and Hope for the Best!"
BUGW Atraxa's "All counters, all the time"
The best card in that deck was chrome mox btw.
Yeah, Knight without mom would be what it is now, crap.
except in this rock paper sciccors game there is more angles than just the 3, and bg/x and reactive ur/x dont fall under the same tree. as one is midrange ad the other is reactive control.
decks playing:
none
Umezawa's Jitte: This equipment isn't as terrifying with damage no longer using the stack. Aggro likely will not use this card, but it will do well policing 1-toughness creatures. Risk of re-ban: 2/10
Chrome Mox: Yeah, Chrome Mox is good. Mox Opal would have to be banned to allow this guy to see daylight. Banning Mox Opal practically neuters Cheeri0s, slows affinity a tad, and boosts Control. Control NEEDS a boost. Aggro decks like Burn don't want to exile an important burn spell to accelerate. Control and Midrange desperately needs Chrome mox to power out turn 2 Lilianas. Risk of re-ban: 6/10
I don't know why you keep repeating this distinction between Ux and BGx as reactive and proactive. It doesn't actually matter for the big mana question. One of those decks is doing fine against big mana. The other is not. If you remove big mana decks, the deck that is doing fine against them (BGx) will no longer have any bad matchups and will just be the hands-down best deck. Meanwhile, the reactive deck (Ux) will lose its worst matchup, but will still be a worse choice than the deck that was just better to begin with (BGx). I know you are personally comfortable with BGx being the 50-50 best deck in the format, but Wizards is not. Every one of their banning decisions has been geared to stopping these 50-50 decks. This means a big mana ban will never happen so long as BGx is positioned where it is today.
Jitte basically reads "connect once, win all creature combat for the rest of the round". For 2 and 2, I think that's too strong for the format.
Death and Taxes
Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron
Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
Spirits
Although I enjoy chrome mox I do not think wotc was too fond of the artifact prison decks from extended. I can a deck with thirst for knowledge, chalice of the void, blood moon, and ensnaring bridge emerging from this unban and we already have people wanting these prison cards to go away and this will just fuel that.
Would add that Depths-Stage is very difficult to interact with for most decks, especially without Karakas and Wasteland in the format. Off the top of my head Path and Displacer are the only particularly good maindeck ways to interact at all, and it's trivial to run discard and removal in turbo-depths (usually a BG deck).
This is aside from Turbo-depths being pretty fantastically boring and remarkably consistent; even if the format adapted well to it, I don't think it would make anyone particularly happy.
Might spike pithing needle though.
"It doesn't actually matter for the big mana question. "
but it does, without soo much big mana reactive blue will have more of a reason to be played, it can also focus more on beating bg/x which in turn can keep it in check.
decks playing:
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1. The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to believe that Dig Through Time is the card that blue reactive decks actually need to be competitive. The problem with them in Modern is that so many decks attack from so many different angles, and we don't have good enough general answers. We do have pretty good specific answers, however, so what these decks need is a better way to find their specific answers in time. This lets blue decks run more 1-ofs to cover themselves from corner cases.
An aspect of the argument for/against this card that I realized the other day, which I don't think I've seen mentioned here before, is that most of the decks we fear becoming too broken by receiving DTT just got a huge nerf by the Probe ban. Cheeri0s can't really fill their graveyard fast enough to use the card. Scapeshift can, but I'm not sure DTT is better than BTL in that deck. Delver decks don't have Probe anymore to rapidly stock their graveyard, and DTT would fight with Tasigur and Angler over the graveyard, so it's not a free roll like the TC Delver decks. Storm probably doesn't want the card, their graveyard is too valuable and Gifts is probably better. I don't think Ad Nauseum fills their graveyard fast enough to make it too busted in that deck, but someone who plays the deck might know better. Twin is gone, so don't have to worry about that one anymore. Maybe a Grixis Goryo's deck abuses it, but that deck is barely seeing any play, and I'd rather just have Goryo's Vengeance banned than DTT if that's the only deck we have to fear abusing the card.
The only decks that can really get the most out of DTT in a Probeless meta is the slower blue decks. I wonder if the changes to Modern since it was banned are enough to make it a perfectly safe card now.
2. One of the inherent flaws with Modern, in the minds of a lot of people, is the pretty much arbitrary starting point. Where Modern begins was past the point where WotC realized that blue was too powerful and began really scaling back the power of control magic, but it was before they stopped printing powerful hosers and hate cards. So we have this format where control sucks, but there are still plenty of mistakes in power level because they didn't figure out about other parts of the game being too broken until after the Modern cutoff. One suggestion I see pros make a lot is to ban 8th and 9th edition. This gets rid of powerful hate cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Blood Moon, Choke, Boil, etc.
Here's a different idea, what if we legalized 7th edition? I was looking through 7th edition the other day, and the majority of cards in the set would be completely unplayable in Modern today, but a couple would be. We would get Counterspell, Memory Lapse and Force Spike for the blue decks, which would be pretty huge for them. We also get Goblin Matron, which is one of the missing pieces to a competitive Goblin Tribal deck in Modern. I could see Final Fortune being a fun brew-around. Pretty much everything else in the set would be unplayable because it's either too expensive or there's something already legal that's better. Thoughts on this?
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
But I think the UU requirement is a real thing that would limit decks playing it to core blue, which is weak enough I think dig would be fine.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
It feels like you aren't reading my posts. I already agreed that reactive blue decks are struggling against big mana decks, so removing those big mana options would improve the reactive blue decks. HOWEVER, big mana decks are ALSO keeping down the BGx share and BGx is performing much better than reactive blue decks. If you remove big mana decks, BGx strategies benefit far more than reactive blue strategies. This will lead to a situation where BGx has no bad matchups and is just the best deck, whereas reactive blue has one fewer bad matchup but is still worse than BGx.
Do you see how risky and unsupportable your argument is? You want to ban four top-tier decks (Valakut, Gx Tron, Edlrazi Tron, Bant Eldrazi) so you can maybe improve reactive blue. But in reality, banning those decks would benefit BGx more than URx, so now we're gambling not only on reactive blue improving, but also that reactive blue can somehow check a newly empower BGx? It's an incredibly bad argument. This statement is particularly groundless:
"it can also focus more on beating bg/x which in turn can keep it in check."
Obviously, even if this did happen, BGx would now be able to focus more on beating reactive blue decks because it didn't need slots for big mana. So again, we find ourselves in a position where BGx is the best deck, reactive blue is still struggling, plus we've lost four top-tier decks AND there are no more checks against BGx.
The alternative? IMPROVE THE BLUE DECKS! Then the blue decks can compete against big mana, big mana can still check BGx, BGx doesn't become the de-facto best deck, and we don't wantonly eliminate four top-tier decks from the format.
I forgot about Ugin, but Liliana the Last Hope sees little play (IIRC, it only sees play in Death's Shadow and all of the Death's Shadow decks that made top 8 at GP Vancouver ran Liliana of the Veil instead) and Nahiri hasn't been good in Modern for several months.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Yeah and we all know how that's progressed, absolutely NOWHERE. I have no faith in it happening and I've waited for 2 years and nothing. They should have seen this problem right when they banned Splinter Twin.
I'm not sure why hellfire is going on this, his proposal is just making GBx better, I'd be fine cutting Fulminator Mages and slotting in 3 cards dedicated to fair matchups that are absolute bombs.
I think if Jace gets unbanned it's just going to go into Sultai midrange and it'll be lulzy to blue control once again
Agree on your first two points for sure, unbanning dtt would be a disaster. Banning ramp might help blue but at the cost of the format as a whole. I disagree about sultai though, i dont think jace does enough for that archetype to make it better than grixis, although i do agree that it brings it from unplayable to playable
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
Anyone who knew me in Texas would hear my saltiness whenever I faced against the daily Tron players at the LGS, but I am adamantly against banning ramp decks, unless for some reason it's destroying the format.
Also, are you guys seeing these reprints in modern masters, it's literally looking like it'll be one of the best sets ever printed in the history of Magic.
this should really generate a lot of interest to new players in modern.
I'm a little sad I bought a playset of foil Death's Shadows, but I did sell off a bunch of modern staples and fetches before all these revealed cards
It's so good, I might actually play limited. Limited.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
"but I am adamantly against banning ramp decks, unless for some reason it's destroying the format. "
in regards to non bgx fair decks, it is imo
id love for unbans and new prints to be the answer instead of my ban ideas, but quite frankly this time next year I fear we will be having this same discussion about reactive blue being bad and needing help. it honestly wouldn't surprise me, and im tired of waiting.
decks playing:
none