People only accept strong discard, because we have it already.
Imagine a world where we dont have Thoughtseize, and IOK, and instead have to make use of all the more narrow discards.
Thats exactly where we are with counters.
Yes, and that is what Im trying to delve into. Is that a world where combo still gets put in its place? What do we lose out to if we only have Collective Brutality and Duress?
Im asking because DSx would be far less powerful if it didnt have so much powerful discard at its disposal.
Do we need an arms race? Or do we need Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? So, stronger permission, or weaker discard?
Speaking only for myself, but its why the actual fair decks (GW) are unplayable to me. No counters at all? No discard at all? You are at the mercy of your opponent to do whatever degenerate things they want?
RIP.
To me, thats the greatest disparity in the format. Discard is closer to Legacy, while Counters are closer to Standard.
People only accept strong discard, because we have it already.
Imagine a world where we dont have Thoughtseize, and IOK, and instead have to make use of all the more narrow discards.
Thats exactly where we are with counters.
Yes, and that is what Im trying to delve into. Is that a world where combo still gets put in its place? What do we lose out to if we only have Collective Brutality and Duress?
Im asking because DSx would be far less powerful if it didnt have so much powerful discard at its disposal.
Do we need an arms race? Or do we need Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? So, stronger permission, or weaker discard?
Im not going to pretend i have the foresight to accurately claim that stronger permission is the answer, but the last few years have shown that trying to use bans to bring power levels in to balance will always fail when not used on something utterly broken like drs jund/eldrazi winter, attempting to lower the power level of decks in both standard and modern has shown that you just create an environment for mistakes to annihilate a format and lead to more bans.
I do not understand the comments about losing to Jace as being so unbearable.
Is it worse than double Guide into Eidolon?
Is it worse than Karn, Ulamog, Mindslaver?
Is it worse than Lanter Locks?
Is it worse than double Goyf beats when you lack hard removal after having your hand shredded?
8rack?
I'll never get why people have an anversion to losing 'certain ways'. I admit. I hated UW Collonade beats, but I've gotten to a point where I can see how its going, and if you have lost, actual or virtual, just scoop.
I agree. I wonder what kind of correlation there is between what type(s) of deck Player X plays and what types of deck(s) Player X hates losing to...
Personally, I only really dislike losing to decks that are tuned so strongly towards beating a specific archetype that it's basically a bye, but that aren't capable of performing well against the field -- because then it feels like the entire match has come down to matchup luck for both parties. Otherwise, anything is fine by me. Sure, some win conditions (looking at you, Lantern) aren't exactly fun but I'm not going to whine about it. I'm going to try to figure out whether and how I can win, whether and how I need to adjust my play in games 2 and 3, whether I need to adjust my sideboard, etc.
But that's the reason I like Magic in the first place, and why I like U in particular -- there's design space in deckbuilding and play patterns to solve problems. I somewhat doubt that any control player, Lantern player, Ad Nauseam player, Tron player, etc. is going to be upset that they lost to JTMS' fateseals. After all, they're trying to do something unfair as well. And really, no one who plays Modern should get worked up about how he or she loses. There are all sorts of 'unfair' strategies, and Jace is hardly a worse offender (in terms of how 'unfun' his win condition is) than Lantern or 8-Rack.
I'd like to think that anyone who can afford to play Modern should be mature enough to handle their creatures getting killed, their spells getting countered, losing to a resolved and protected Jace, etc. Maybe this is overly optimistic, though...
JTMS soft lock is something Id prefer battling over than Lantern soft lock (let's be honest, its basically a hard lock). Though, I doubt JTMS would stop the current big threats.
I agree. I wonder what kind of correlation there is between what type(s) of deck Player X plays and what types of deck(s) Player X hates losing to...
I've played and play against every deck in the format. I play aggro and control in Modern. I've played aggro and control and midrange in Standard. I play Jace routinely in Legacy Miracles, the hardest control deck in Magic atm. In my opinion, Jace is one of the most unfun cards ever printed. I'm glad he's staying out of Modern.
Spiegal, let me rephrase perhaps.
Let us say GB/x decks only had 3-4% of the meta total for around one year. And were utterly in the gutter for a variety of reasons, just like U/X is today.
But U/X Reactive/Permission decks were making up a total of 20% of the meta. So instead of asking for a ban from U/X deck is on top (for sake of discussion let us say Jace or Twin).
They asked for
Deathrite Shamen
Green Sun Zenith*
Punishing Fire
Because it would allow them to compete better vs Aggro decks (DRS and Fire), be a slow win condition that is interactable with (Deathrite, killable by every removal in format), and allows you access to silver bullet your deck (no clean comparison beside homogenizing deck akin to Twin.)
How would you argue that those two/three cards are fundamentally different than Jace/Twin, in terms of coming off the list or why they should remain banned? (Personally as I said in my above post first is Mana Cost, DRS is 1 Mana to Jace 4, and in regards to Punishing Fire vs Twin, they suppress in different ways. GSZ my view if Pod is banned so should GSZ, and Traverse (unless Traverse is shown over next couple months to fade back in obscurity.)
*GSZ is the weakest comparison here, but is the best one I could think of with 'homogenizing' GB/X decks like Twin did for U/X
This is a completely moot argument you are making here because GB/x has never been 3-4% while blue control was 20%. I know you are just trying to do a thought experiment but it really isn't working. We have no context to this supposed meta you are asking us to imagine, and it would have to be so clearly different than where we are now that who knows what cards are in the format to know what DRS or GSZ or PF would do in comparison. Those cards have all demonstrated they are clearly no good for the format by multiple metrics while Jace was never given a chance and Twin was probably banned to mix up the PT.
This homogenization effect everyone is referring to is stupid. Midrange decks are a pile of the best cards those colors can offer, there is only so much variety you can have to the win conditions before you stop dropping percentage points against the field. Sure, Splinter twin was that homogenization effect for UR but look what happened when it was taken out. The deck didn't split into other decks doing similar things, it just disappeared because the thing taken was so much better than the other things that deck could do. Tarmogoyf does this same thing for green midrange but no one seems to care about that, as they shouldn't. If SFM came off all white midrange decks would use it as the win con, but it's better than not having a white midrange deck isn't it? You can only ban the best thing so many times before there are no viable replacement options and you are just better off doing something else and it only took one banning of this to show just how weak the shell was around twin compared to the BGx shell. Most 3 color combinations just don't work for midrange in modern because other colors have no substitute for tarmogoyf.
People only accept strong discard, because we have it already.
Imagine a world where we dont have Thoughtseize, and IOK, and instead have to make use of all the more narrow discards.
Thats exactly where we are with counters.
Yes, and that is what Im trying to delve into. Is that a world where combo still gets put in its place? What do we lose out to if we only have Collective Brutality and Duress?
Im asking because DSx would be far less powerful if it didnt have so much powerful discard at its disposal.
Do we need an arms race? Or do we need Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? So, stronger permission, or weaker discard?
For the record, I'm not trying to call you out or anything. However, I still don't really get this argument.
IF discard was weaker, I think we would see an even bigger uptick in linear and/or combo shenanigans. The less one can expect disruption, the less flexible your strategy has to be. In a hypothetical world, strong counterspells could pick up the slack at least some of the time. If we only had our current level of counterspells and lost TS and IoK, I believe the format would be worse, not better. Are you arguing that, without IoK or TS, blue becomes viable?
But I think you are presenting the idea that the reason for no counterspell support in Modern is that WotC doesn't want both strong discard and counterspell in the format. I doubt that is the case; rather, they don't want strong permission in standard, which is the only way we get cards. I also doubt we will see the likes of TS or IoK anytime soon in standard either.
On the other hand, if you are just suggesting that DSJ would be weaker without discard, I mean sure, but I'm not sure how that is relevant.
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I imagine people would still be complaining about duress and ostracized...
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I mean, you're wrong, something doesn't have to be done, WOTC isn't obligated to make Blue amazing in modern (Although I'd like to see blue help police the meta).
WOTC hasn't done anything about white for years.
Do I think Jace would be dangerous? Probably not, but I do think the risk is too great. I also think that if he isn't oppressive, blue continues to have the same problem. I simply don't see the upside.
Preordain/SFM is still my choice,
A preordain and real 2 mana counter-spell would also be a big deal. With standard being such a disaster, maybe WOTC will actually start printing good spells again.
I'm actually not wrong. Balancing archtypes HAS to be done eventually.or we will always have an imbalance. Not to mention after hurting reactive blue in the Twin ban, I feel they are obligated.
It doesn't have to be blue. However blue is the counterspell colour....
And if we want to be helping colours in modern both blue and white need help.
This then points to a jace sfm and preordain unban.
Which is what I think they should do. All at once.
I've already explained multiple times with Jace. Does. Not. Fix.
They have tons of viable archetypes, blue, interactive control just happens to be a bad one. I don't blame WOTC for announcing no changes, the format is doing well in the grand scheme of things
I've already explained multiple times with Jace. Does. Not. Fix.
They have tons of viable archetypes, blue, interactive control just happens to be a bad one. I don't blame WOTC for announcing no changes, the format is doing well in the grand scheme of things
that is your opinion, let me show you facts:
there is an imbalance in power level in colours.
there is an imbalance in archtypes.
and this format is more linear than it is not.
if anything I would objectively say that this format is "average" and could be improved.
I've already explained multiple times with Jace. Does. Not. Fix.
They have tons of viable archetypes, blue, interactive control just happens to be a bad one. I don't blame WOTC for announcing no changes, the format is doing well in the grand scheme of things
I think leaving the format the way it is was 100% the right choice for now. They shook the format up a lot last year, then in January they banned a few problem cards. Now I feel they should just leave the format for the rest of the year.
I feel there are a few changes I'd like to see (at least try SFM and JTMS in the format) but let's see how the format settles for now
This is false. Jace was in modern briefly following the formats creation, and was banned after the community cup. Note that the community cup wasn't the only source of testing that was going on prior to the banning of Jace, but it was the only major modern event.
This is false. Jace was in modern briefly following the formats creation, and was banned after the community cup. Note that the community cup wasn't the only source of testing that was going on prior to the banning of Jace, but it was the only major modern event.
The Community Cup was a laughable form of testing data collection. Team Unified Modern is one of the most artificial ways to determine if a card is healthy or not. Indeed, three cards from that post-Community Cup proposal have since been unbanned, one of which is top-tier and fine (Valakut), one of which is barely playable (AV), and one of which sees next to no play in top-tier strategies (BB).
Are you saying that other testing was down outside of the CC? If so, what was that testing? I've heard this claim before and it's wholly unsupported by evidence.
My LGS wants to charge 40euro for MM17 Draft do you think this is to much? (is this the right thread for this question?)
The few LGS drafting in my area are $40 usd with one pack per player going into the pool. Payout is 4 packs for 1st, 2 packs for 2nd, and 1 pack for each 3rd and 4th.
A few LGS are doing league only at $75 per player and 6 weeks you buy a pack at $10. $15 per player goes into the prize pool and the more that play, the farther down it paysout.
I dont know the conversion from euro to the dollar, but that should give you a rough base line.
My major issue with Jace is that he makes it difficult for any deck that wants to go past turn 4 to win without being a "jace" deck or a deck that has even more powerful late game options. I think with a Jace unban, you would see the meta shift to decks that can go under Jace (uninteractive hyper-aggro and spell-based combo), and decks like tron that have powerful enough plays to laugh at him. My guess is that the format would turn into a format with 2 types of decks: uninteractive decks and Jace decks. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I'm wrong (and I kind of hope I am), but this, I think, would be the major concern with bringing him back into the format.
My major issue with Jace is that he makes it difficult for any deck that wants to go past turn 4 to win without being a "jace" deck or a deck that has even more powerful late game options. I think with a Jace unban, you would see the meta shift to decks that can go under Jace (uninteractive hyper-aggro and spell-based combo), and decks like tron that have powerful enough plays to laugh at him. My guess is that the format would turn into a format with 2 types of decks: uninteractive decks and Jace decks. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I'm wrong (and I kind of hope I am), but this, I think, would be the major concern with bringing him back into the format.
You forget BG based midrange deck, which should be able to compete with Jace blue decks.
My major issue with Jace is that he makes it difficult for any deck that wants to go past turn 4 to win without being a "jace" deck or a deck that has even more powerful late game options. I think with a Jace unban, you would see the meta shift to decks that can go under Jace (uninteractive hyper-aggro and spell-based combo), and decks like tron that have powerful enough plays to laugh at him. My guess is that the format would turn into a format with 2 types of decks: uninteractive decks and Jace decks. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I'm wrong (and I kind of hope I am), but this, I think, would be the major concern with bringing him back into the format.
So… basically it would be Modern but with Jace? Aggro that goes under him, high-inevitability decks like Tron and Valakut and combo that go over him, and midrange/control decks. Only difference being now some midrange/control decks have Jace in them.
As I see it, the format balance issue is if all midrange/control coalesces around Jace, but that seems very unlikely. Sultai is the only BGx configuration that can run him (UU is prohibitively hard to splash for), and I don't see that becoming the one-and-only midrange deck because 1) I see no reason to believe that DS wouldn't still be the format's best deck, and 2) Abzan gives blue decks a headache anyways. And BGx still has a disproportionate concentration of the format's best cards. I don't see Jace becoming a singularity with so much other goodstuff floating around, and no deck being able to use all of it plus Jace.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
Spiegal, let me rephrase perhaps.
Let us say GB/x decks only had 3-4% of the meta total for around one year. And were utterly in the gutter for a variety of reasons, just like U/X is today.
But U/X Reactive/Permission decks were making up a total of 20% of the meta. So instead of asking for a ban from U/X deck is on top (for sake of discussion let us say Jace or Twin).
They asked for
Deathrite Shamen
Green Sun Zenith*
Punishing Fire
Because it would allow them to compete better vs Aggro decks (DRS and Fire), be a slow win condition that is interactable with (Deathrite, killable by every removal in format), and allows you access to silver bullet your deck (no clean comparison beside homogenizing deck akin to Twin.)
How would you argue that those two/three cards are fundamentally different than Jace/Twin, in terms of coming off the list or why they should remain banned? (Personally as I said in my above post first is Mana Cost, DRS is 1 Mana to Jace 4, and in regards to Punishing Fire vs Twin, they suppress in different ways. GSZ my view if Pod is banned so should GSZ, and Traverse (unless Traverse is shown over next couple months to fade back in obscurity.)
*GSZ is the weakest comparison here, but is the best one I could think of with 'homogenizing' GB/X decks like Twin did for U/X
With regards to Jace, it is the only card listed here that has never been allowed in modern.
Nearly 6 years after the creation of modern we still have cards on the banned list simply because they where boogie-men of past standard formats.
Remember the following:
Jace is banned because cawblade.
Stoneforge is banned because cawblade.
And ironically Jitte is banned because of it's interaction with Stoneforge, Stoneforge wasn't on the first draft of the banned list.
For some reason there was an irrational fear of Ux control being the only deck in modern at it's creation.
Yet looking at the cards banned since modern has been out in the wild, how man of them got banned because infect, combo, Gx "control" decks? Basically every single card banned.
How are we supposed to believe that Jace is too strong for modern, when the same "data" showed faeries, scapeshift, thopter-sword, ancestral visions are all to powerful for modern, all while somehow missing a storm deck that can kill T1, blazing infect, punishing jund, cloudpost decks, etc.
Although I'm not sure the person I responded to is active enough to see this, I might as well reply to something in the previous topic. For context, the message I'm quoting to was in reply to this one. The bolding is my emphasis:
And you believe him? Why? There was so much hate for blue decks leading up to the formation of modern, it really surprises me that people don't remember this. Blue has always a vocal base, but its never been really popular with newer players (when I say newer, I mean from about 2000 onward.) I think a lot of the push is because a good portion of the community is too new to remember what sitting through a game of permission magic was like. I've built permission decks and sat and made my opponent miserable. It's a troll deck. Glad its gone and hope it never comes back.
Why wouldn't I believe Tom LaPille when he said that the starting point of Modern was chosen just because the new face ended up being the last arbitrary point they could pick rather than any particular consideration for which cards were legal? What reason would he have to outright lie about that, especially as he was no longer working for Wizards of the Coast at the time? Indeed, he was rather bluntly honest about some things in the podcast, such as admitting some bans were made with the goal of trying to shake up the Pro Tour for Modern or that some of the original bans (such as Bitterblossom) were put on the banlist even though they thought they would probably be at an acceptable level, but wanted to take no chances in regards to a deck that dominated Extended or Standard to win the Modern Pro Tour.
There are some dumb things the man has said, but I see no reason to believe he would be outright lying about this.
Your appeal to Counterspell not being legal proving that Modern was somehow deliberately designed to be "anti-Blue" falls completely flat. Its starting point was unrelated to Counterspell (or really any cards), and the reason it never got printed since is because Wizards of the Coast doesn't want to put it in Standard. If it was Modern preventing them from putting Counterspell in Standard, then why haven't they ever put the weaker and already-Modern-legal Mana Leak into Standard? It's because they think that card is too good for Standard also. Now, I consider them wrong on both cards and think they'd be fine in Standard, but the point is the lack of Counterspell in Modern clearly does not stem from a specific desire to exclude it from the format.
My major issue with Jace is that he makes it difficult for any deck that wants to go past turn 4 to win without being a "jace" deck or a deck that has even more powerful late game options. I think with a Jace unban, you would see the meta shift to decks that can go under Jace (uninteractive hyper-aggro and spell-based combo), and decks like tron that have powerful enough plays to laugh at him. My guess is that the format would turn into a format with 2 types of decks: uninteractive decks and Jace decks. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I'm wrong (and I kind of hope I am), but this, I think, would be the major concern with bringing him back into the format.
The meta can't shift to what it already is. There are linear hyper Aggro decks and big mana decks, even the traditional midrange decks seem to be getting squeezed out by ds jund, we will see if this continues.
Jace is probably not too strong for Modern. However it is a midgrange(goodstuff) card by nature. If i had to bet my money on an outcome, it would be that Jace would be a reason to play Sultai Midrange. Thoughtseize it's still the best interaction spell in the format, Goyf the best efficient threat, Decay the best catch-all and Liliana of the Veil the best planeswalker. Counterspells still suck in Modern, whether they die in the late game or are just too narrow.
That's why we shouldn't be cheering for WOTC to unban Jace if we want the 'Reactive' spectrum to catch up with the rest of the format. I just think that if banlist is the topic, Dig Through Time is a much better card for test. There are a plenty of reasons to belive that DTT would empower blue reactive decks more than anything else, and not break the format in a haf.
Last but not least, Stoneforge Mystic doens't accomplish what we are trying to do. It fits into TWO Tier 1 strategies, and it isn't even a blue card, which leads into Mystic empowering a much shorter spectrum of blue decks as you take Sultai and Grixis out of the equation.
In conclusion, we all know blue pretty much sucks in contrast to BG/x. I would leave the banlist untouched and bring the heat with future sets, including Amonkhet.
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Yes, and that is what Im trying to delve into. Is that a world where combo still gets put in its place? What do we lose out to if we only have Collective Brutality and Duress?
Im asking because DSx would be far less powerful if it didnt have so much powerful discard at its disposal.
Do we need an arms race? Or do we need Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? So, stronger permission, or weaker discard?
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
Speaking only for myself, but its why the actual fair decks (GW) are unplayable to me. No counters at all? No discard at all? You are at the mercy of your opponent to do whatever degenerate things they want?
RIP.
To me, thats the greatest disparity in the format. Discard is closer to Legacy, while Counters are closer to Standard.
Spirits
Im not going to pretend i have the foresight to accurately claim that stronger permission is the answer, but the last few years have shown that trying to use bans to bring power levels in to balance will always fail when not used on something utterly broken like drs jund/eldrazi winter, attempting to lower the power level of decks in both standard and modern has shown that you just create an environment for mistakes to annihilate a format and lead to more bans.
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
Bans should be reserved for broken cards like DRS, POD, TC, DDT, Eye of Ugin, etc.
I agree. I wonder what kind of correlation there is between what type(s) of deck Player X plays and what types of deck(s) Player X hates losing to...
Personally, I only really dislike losing to decks that are tuned so strongly towards beating a specific archetype that it's basically a bye, but that aren't capable of performing well against the field -- because then it feels like the entire match has come down to matchup luck for both parties. Otherwise, anything is fine by me. Sure, some win conditions (looking at you, Lantern) aren't exactly fun but I'm not going to whine about it. I'm going to try to figure out whether and how I can win, whether and how I need to adjust my play in games 2 and 3, whether I need to adjust my sideboard, etc.
But that's the reason I like Magic in the first place, and why I like U in particular -- there's design space in deckbuilding and play patterns to solve problems. I somewhat doubt that any control player, Lantern player, Ad Nauseam player, Tron player, etc. is going to be upset that they lost to JTMS' fateseals. After all, they're trying to do something unfair as well. And really, no one who plays Modern should get worked up about how he or she loses. There are all sorts of 'unfair' strategies, and Jace is hardly a worse offender (in terms of how 'unfun' his win condition is) than Lantern or 8-Rack.
I'd like to think that anyone who can afford to play Modern should be mature enough to handle their creatures getting killed, their spells getting countered, losing to a resolved and protected Jace, etc. Maybe this is overly optimistic, though...
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
I've played and play against every deck in the format. I play aggro and control in Modern. I've played aggro and control and midrange in Standard. I play Jace routinely in Legacy Miracles, the hardest control deck in Magic atm. In my opinion, Jace is one of the most unfun cards ever printed. I'm glad he's staying out of Modern.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
This is a completely moot argument you are making here because GB/x has never been 3-4% while blue control was 20%. I know you are just trying to do a thought experiment but it really isn't working. We have no context to this supposed meta you are asking us to imagine, and it would have to be so clearly different than where we are now that who knows what cards are in the format to know what DRS or GSZ or PF would do in comparison. Those cards have all demonstrated they are clearly no good for the format by multiple metrics while Jace was never given a chance and Twin was probably banned to mix up the PT.
This homogenization effect everyone is referring to is stupid. Midrange decks are a pile of the best cards those colors can offer, there is only so much variety you can have to the win conditions before you stop dropping percentage points against the field. Sure, Splinter twin was that homogenization effect for UR but look what happened when it was taken out. The deck didn't split into other decks doing similar things, it just disappeared because the thing taken was so much better than the other things that deck could do. Tarmogoyf does this same thing for green midrange but no one seems to care about that, as they shouldn't. If SFM came off all white midrange decks would use it as the win con, but it's better than not having a white midrange deck isn't it? You can only ban the best thing so many times before there are no viable replacement options and you are just better off doing something else and it only took one banning of this to show just how weak the shell was around twin compared to the BGx shell. Most 3 color combinations just don't work for midrange in modern because other colors have no substitute for tarmogoyf.
For the record, I'm not trying to call you out or anything. However, I still don't really get this argument.
IF discard was weaker, I think we would see an even bigger uptick in linear and/or combo shenanigans. The less one can expect disruption, the less flexible your strategy has to be. In a hypothetical world, strong counterspells could pick up the slack at least some of the time. If we only had our current level of counterspells and lost TS and IoK, I believe the format would be worse, not better. Are you arguing that, without IoK or TS, blue becomes viable?
But I think you are presenting the idea that the reason for no counterspell support in Modern is that WotC doesn't want both strong discard and counterspell in the format. I doubt that is the case; rather, they don't want strong permission in standard, which is the only way we get cards. I also doubt we will see the likes of TS or IoK anytime soon in standard either.
On the other hand, if you are just suggesting that DSJ would be weaker without discard, I mean sure, but I'm not sure how that is relevant.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
It doesn't have to be blue. However blue is the counterspell colour....
And if we want to be helping colours in modern both blue and white need help.
This then points to a jace sfm and preordain unban.
Which is what I think they should do. All at once.
decks playing:
none
They have tons of viable archetypes, blue, interactive control just happens to be a bad one. I don't blame WOTC for announcing no changes, the format is doing well in the grand scheme of things
that is your opinion, let me show you facts:
there is an imbalance in power level in colours.
there is an imbalance in archtypes.
and this format is more linear than it is not.
if anything I would objectively say that this format is "average" and could be improved.
decks playing:
none
I think leaving the format the way it is was 100% the right choice for now. They shook the format up a lot last year, then in January they banned a few problem cards. Now I feel they should just leave the format for the rest of the year.
I feel there are a few changes I'd like to see (at least try SFM and JTMS in the format) but let's see how the format settles for now
This is false. Jace was in modern briefly following the formats creation, and was banned after the community cup. Note that the community cup wasn't the only source of testing that was going on prior to the banning of Jace, but it was the only major modern event.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/modern-proposal-2011-05-27
The Community Cup was a laughable form of testing data collection. Team Unified Modern is one of the most artificial ways to determine if a card is healthy or not. Indeed, three cards from that post-Community Cup proposal have since been unbanned, one of which is top-tier and fine (Valakut), one of which is barely playable (AV), and one of which sees next to no play in top-tier strategies (BB).
Are you saying that other testing was down outside of the CC? If so, what was that testing? I've heard this claim before and it's wholly unsupported by evidence.
The few LGS drafting in my area are $40 usd with one pack per player going into the pool. Payout is 4 packs for 1st, 2 packs for 2nd, and 1 pack for each 3rd and 4th.
A few LGS are doing league only at $75 per player and 6 weeks you buy a pack at $10. $15 per player goes into the prize pool and the more that play, the farther down it paysout.
I dont know the conversion from euro to the dollar, but that should give you a rough base line.
I will draft this at that price as long as I can.
You forget BG based midrange deck, which should be able to compete with Jace blue decks.
Anything, but nothing at the moment...
Modern:
WUBRGAmulet Titan, WUBRGHuman
WUBRAd Nauseam, WBRGDeath Shadow, UBRGScapeshift, UBRGDredge
WURJeskai Nahiri, WURCheeri0s, WBGCounter Company, WRGBurn, UBRMadcap Moon, BRGJund Midrange
UBTurn,BRGriselbrand Reanimator, WGKnight Company, RGRG Tron, RGRG Ponza, XAffinity, XEldrazi Tron
So… basically it would be Modern but with Jace? Aggro that goes under him, high-inevitability decks like Tron and Valakut and combo that go over him, and midrange/control decks. Only difference being now some midrange/control decks have Jace in them.
As I see it, the format balance issue is if all midrange/control coalesces around Jace, but that seems very unlikely. Sultai is the only BGx configuration that can run him (UU is prohibitively hard to splash for), and I don't see that becoming the one-and-only midrange deck because 1) I see no reason to believe that DS wouldn't still be the format's best deck, and 2) Abzan gives blue decks a headache anyways. And BGx still has a disproportionate concentration of the format's best cards. I don't see Jace becoming a singularity with so much other goodstuff floating around, and no deck being able to use all of it plus Jace.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
With regards to Jace, it is the only card listed here that has never been allowed in modern.
Nearly 6 years after the creation of modern we still have cards on the banned list simply because they where boogie-men of past standard formats.
Remember the following:
Jace is banned because cawblade.
Stoneforge is banned because cawblade.
And ironically Jitte is banned because of it's interaction with Stoneforge, Stoneforge wasn't on the first draft of the banned list.
For some reason there was an irrational fear of Ux control being the only deck in modern at it's creation.
Yet looking at the cards banned since modern has been out in the wild, how man of them got banned because infect, combo, Gx "control" decks? Basically every single card banned.
How are we supposed to believe that Jace is too strong for modern, when the same "data" showed faeries, scapeshift, thopter-sword, ancestral visions are all to powerful for modern, all while somehow missing a storm deck that can kill T1, blazing infect, punishing jund, cloudpost decks, etc.
Why wouldn't I believe Tom LaPille when he said that the starting point of Modern was chosen just because the new face ended up being the last arbitrary point they could pick rather than any particular consideration for which cards were legal? What reason would he have to outright lie about that, especially as he was no longer working for Wizards of the Coast at the time? Indeed, he was rather bluntly honest about some things in the podcast, such as admitting some bans were made with the goal of trying to shake up the Pro Tour for Modern or that some of the original bans (such as Bitterblossom) were put on the banlist even though they thought they would probably be at an acceptable level, but wanted to take no chances in regards to a deck that dominated Extended or Standard to win the Modern Pro Tour.
There are some dumb things the man has said, but I see no reason to believe he would be outright lying about this.
Your appeal to Counterspell not being legal proving that Modern was somehow deliberately designed to be "anti-Blue" falls completely flat. Its starting point was unrelated to Counterspell (or really any cards), and the reason it never got printed since is because Wizards of the Coast doesn't want to put it in Standard. If it was Modern preventing them from putting Counterspell in Standard, then why haven't they ever put the weaker and already-Modern-legal Mana Leak into Standard? It's because they think that card is too good for Standard also. Now, I consider them wrong on both cards and think they'd be fine in Standard, but the point is the lack of Counterspell in Modern clearly does not stem from a specific desire to exclude it from the format.
The meta can't shift to what it already is. There are linear hyper Aggro decks and big mana decks, even the traditional midrange decks seem to be getting squeezed out by ds jund, we will see if this continues.
That's why we shouldn't be cheering for WOTC to unban Jace if we want the 'Reactive' spectrum to catch up with the rest of the format. I just think that if banlist is the topic, Dig Through Time is a much better card for test. There are a plenty of reasons to belive that DTT would empower blue reactive decks more than anything else, and not break the format in a haf.
Last but not least, Stoneforge Mystic doens't accomplish what we are trying to do. It fits into TWO Tier 1 strategies, and it isn't even a blue card, which leads into Mystic empowering a much shorter spectrum of blue decks as you take Sultai and Grixis out of the equation.
In conclusion, we all know blue pretty much sucks in contrast to BG/x. I would leave the banlist untouched and bring the heat with future sets, including Amonkhet.