I am surprised by people not running grave hate, and more surprised to hear about people complaining that they have to run it.
That's like whining that you have to be able to answer creatures, or you have to have an answer for control/midrange. Graveyards are a part of the game and a ton of top tier decks rely on their graveyard to a point that running grave hate is not just a hedge against Dredge, it is fhe correct thing to do in the format.
Its kind of like the talk about JTMS and SFM coming off the ban list. When a person says those cards are dead to the format and they have other formats they can be played in. I dont think they are even considering ever unbanning them no matter what they say to appease the hivemind on twitter.
I believe that Wizard's reps say things ambiguously on purpose to leave room to change their minds. They changed their minds on Sword of the Meek, which supposedly was going to power up Lantern Control "too much." There were many times during Modern that they probably felt like Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, the Mind Sculptor would have been too strong. I personally feel that those feelings are closer to 50/50 either way right now. If their goal is to appease certain types of Modern players and mix up the meta, then those unbans could definitely do so.
I compare it to Preordain. Could you imagine if Preordain was banned previous to Rite of Flame Storm or Twin? It certainly isn't right to unban it in that scenario. Flash to today's meta. Preordain is not really going to affect much, other than making a super consistent deck in Storm more consistent and make a "not so consistent" deck in Ad Nauseam more consistent. In fact, it helps Ad Nauseam quite a bit. I don't know if it would make metagame numbers on Ad Nauseam go up from their 1% to much more than 5%, but to me at least, it doesn't seem like it will polarize much - DISCARD is King in Modern right now and I don't see Preordain affecting that much. Brainstorm, on the other hand...
I take your point, but there is a huge difference in saying a card has a grave in Modern and can be played in other formats, and this card may power up a fringe deck too much.
I personally think there is a group of cards on the list that will never come off the list, but Wotc will never come out and say it because a portion of the player base would be up in arms their pet banned card is never going to be playable in the format.
It feels awful running Leylines and then mulliganing to 4 or 5 and still not seeing one. There needs to be better hate that is not all or nothing and does a thing in addition - at least cards like Nihil Spellbomb and Relic can cycle. We really need Containment Priest and more cards like that. Some hate enchantments/artifacts that cantrip like Ground Seal as well. I think what Modern has trended to even more in the past year is that the decks have become so polarized and linear that often times "fair" decks 60 card MB have become much less of consequence and the games tend to be binary; Did I draw my SB hate card > Yes? Great, now you have a 85% chance to win the game > No? Back to 15% with you. It's indicative of the poor universal answers in the format.
It's like WoTC is doing this intentionally - each new set boomerangs the power-level of linear aggro and combo decks (See: Dredge into Living End into Vizer combo, etc.), while fair decks become weaker. Relying on an OP 1 mana creature is not indicative of format health for fair decks. Before anyone brings up the false claim that as long as more cards continue to enter the format the format will become more degenerate, I just have to point to Legacy. The ratio of fair to unfair decks is laughably better than Modern and the format is a higher power level when it comes to unfair things you could be doing. Which comes back to my point. WoTC, your game is becoming worse, not better. Let's just say I'm not as optimistic as Kenshin that they're going to "learn" and abandon market research uber alles. Their new direction has killed standard, but everything points to them continuing the same ol same ol.
WotC not printing the type of permission spells that regulate Legacy isn't a new thing and FoW and Daze are by no means fair cards they are simply necessary evils that are tolerated because they cannot win you the game but can prevent you from losing it, since when has casting spells for free been considered fair.
There's nothing unfair about Daze. Not too hard to play around and the downside is significant.
I agree that the downside of daze is huge, especially in a shockland format like modern. I would also add however, that I don't want that card printed into the current modern format as grixis death shadow would become far too powerful. And I don't think Delver would get a look in.
The problem card in Shadow is Shadow. The ability to produce absurd ahead of curve pressure of of 4 Tarmogoyf cards (the real goyf, tasigur, fish, shadow) is what is consistently keeping these decks a thing. Shadow as the best of them makes the deck. Everything else without Shadow is merely okay, even mediocre.
A Grixis delver list with Daze would be much more fair than a Grixis Shadow list is now.
We should not be held hostage because of WotC's creature related design failures.
But is there any reason why Grixis Shadow wouldn't just run Daze though? For me, I didn't switch from Delver to Shadow just because TS/IoK is more effective than counter magic. Another huge reason was because Death's Shadow was in general more reliable than Delver since DS can go online while I proactively go after my opponent, whereas flipping early Delvers can be unreliable with only Serum Visions to manipulate the top of my deck. Maybe I'm missing something, but if Daze were reprinted for Modern, it just seems like Grixis Shadow would be getting a powerful new tool that they can easily add to the deck by dropping Stubborn Denial and 1-2 other spells while Delver decks would continued to overshadowed (heh) due to the lack of good cantrips
As for whether or not Daze would be fine in a format full of shocklands, I couldn't say for sure because a player could just fetch for a basic Island and bounce that, but I know that doing so could create awkward mana situations in 3-color decks, and from what I see from Legacy games, it's not the hardest card to play around if you plan for it. I have some Dazes coming in soon, so hopefully I'll find some free time to test Daze in decks with a Modern format manabase and see how it feels firsthand
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Decks
Modern: UWUW Control UBRGrixis Shadow URIzzet Phoenix
The only reason B/G is what it is/has been in Modern is b/c of Goyf.
Give U/W a beater for 1 and a colorless that grows simply by playing the game and benefits from your opponent's deck construction and let's see what happens.
Cards to combat specific strategies are basically a must at this point.
Its not going to change because the card pool is so deep and because nobody in Modern is playing a fair game of Magic. When the "fair" deck is casting 8/8's for 1 mana the bar for "fairness" has been pushed so far its all but meaningless.
What I'm trying to say is, there is literally no space in this type of format for sideboards that don't lean hard or hose hard on one thing or another. The strategies are far too powerful to make anything but the best obligatory.
If one of the more narrower decks gets a wider metagame share to the point that it becomes annoying then bans are warranted. Otherwise, its a feature of the format, even if by normal Magic standards it could be seen as a bug.
I personally find it to be a bug. Wish wizards would give us main deckable hate cards so that linearity was easier to keep in check.
Hey guys, serious question here, I'm thinking to get a set of death's shadow so I can play the grixis variant (already have everything else), right now I don't plan to play competitively but I don't want to throw money into the garbage, so What do you think are the odds of a banning? (When is the next ban announcement btw?).
I am surprised by people not running grave hate, and more surprised to hear about people complaining that they have to run it.
That's like whining that you have to be able to answer creatures, or you have to have an answer for control/midrange. Graveyards are a part of the game and a ton of top tier decks rely on their graveyard to a point that running grave hate is not just a hedge against Dredge, it is fhe correct thing to do in the format.
fair enough. But it's pretty Bad when you have to mulligan to your sideboard card just to have a chance in some cases. I getbad matchups, but not such polarizing ones in the top tiers of the game.
Games of Modern do not feel like I am trying to beat my human opponent but their deck. Outcomes of matches are heavily decided on what 75 you decided to bring more often than not. You literally need to cross your fingers that you don't encounter the 75 that trumps yours. Predicting what 75 that the field brings is next to impossible in a format as wide open as Modern. Unless you have a deck on the level of Eye of Ugin Eldrazi, then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
Games of Modern do not feel like I am trying to beat my human opponent but their deck. Outcomes of matches are heavily decided on what 75 you decided to bring more often than not. You literally need to cross your fingers that you don't encounter the 75 that trumps yours. Predicting what 75 that the field brings is next to impossible in a format as wide open as Modern. Unless you have a deck on the level of Eye of Ugin Eldrazi, then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
Of course you need to hope you avoid bad match-ups. Literally every deck in existence hopes to avoid its bad MU's. Again, you aren't going to get a deck good against the entire field, let alone a field as wide open as the current modern meta. You narrow down your bad MU's, build your sideboard accordingly, then play tight magic to improve your odds.
Where you see a problem in a wide and diverse meta, a larger proportion of the player base sees that as a positive.
If you don't want to feel like you are mulliganing to hate every other game, play a toolbox deck that can tutor for stuff or a play stuff that generically hates out strategies not specific archetypes so that you have more copies in board.
Also, you either get an interesting and diverse format or you get easy meta predictions and sideboard choices. If you want to know every deck in the format and have simple sideboards, modern might not be your format.
~2017 string of creatures, planeswalkers and uncounterable flash into play monsters with cast triggers tearing standard a new ******** for longer than a year, 4 emergency bans in the space of a few months, format becomes one of the most reviled in the game
what do you expect?
PS: the last sentence of that article explains everything
Since you posted that article Im curious what people think about this quote from it in relation to modern, particularly the bolded part
"That argument makes sense on the surface, because it's true: we make creatures a lot better than we used to. But the reality (beyond the fact that you can prove mathematically that creatures were too weak for most of Magic's history, based on the number of turns it takes to resolve an average "goldfish" game state) is simply that spells are much more inherently powerful than creatures. Spells have haste, whereas creatures have "Suspend 1." Spells can only be interacted with for the moment they are on the stack, whereas creatures can be interacted with at sorcery speed. So you have to work a lot harder to make creatures relevant than you have to work to make spells relevant.
If you don't want to feel like you are mulliganing to hate every other game, play a toolbox deck that can tutor for stuff or a play stuff that generically hates out strategies not specific archetypes so that you have more copies in board.
Also, you either get an interesting and diverse format or you get easy meta predictions and sideboard choices. If you want to know every deck in the format and have simple sideboards, modern might not be your format.
Diversity is a good thing. Linearity is even fine in the right doses. As long as there is a way game 1 to beat it with interaction..
And right now aggro and combo have a game vs everything. because even their bad matchups they can steam roll half the time. And midrange is at least proactive so that the sideboard hate comes with a tempo.
That leaves us with control who has to rely so heavily on the sideboard because we need better maindeckable answers.
Saying the format is just not for control players is quite harsh if you ask me
I really don't know where the idea spawned that one/two specific archtypes are somehow more unfun than everything else. Personally, I don't think it's tenable. Control stops you from playing the game by countering your spells. BG/x stops you from playing the game by destroying your hand. Burn stops you from playing the game by beating you before you can get started, etc. Every deck has haters. In my experience they tend to have an even distribution. If someone could show me statisics to disprove that claim I'd love to see them.
~2017 string of creatures, planeswalkers and uncounterable flash into play monsters with cast triggers tearing standard a new ******** for longer than a year, 4 emergency bans in the space of a few months, format becomes one of the most reviled in the game
what do you expect?
PS: the last sentence of that article explains everything
Since you posted that article Im curious what people think about this quote from it in relation to modern, particularly the bolded part
"That argument makes sense on the surface, because it's true: we make creatures a lot better than we used to. But the reality (beyond the fact that you can prove mathematically that creatures were too weak for most of Magic's history, based on the number of turns it takes to resolve an average "goldfish" game state) is simply that spells are much more inherently powerful than creatures. Spells have haste, whereas creatures have "Suspend 1." Spells can only be interacted with for the moment they are on the stack, whereas creatures can be interacted with at sorcery speed. So you have to work a lot harder to make creatures relevant than you have to work to make spells relevant.
A response written to this article points out the flaw of this reasoning.
"Creatures may have "Suspend 1" but they also have "Flashback 0" every turn."
They also seem to have forgotten creatures can block too. The game would play out very differently if every creature literally had suspend 1. Awful comparison.
Edit - Containment Priest would be sweet and totally fit in flavour wise with an Egyptian themed set. Especially if in the story any of the denizens of Amonkhet decide to beat up on Bolas.
The problem card in Shadow is Shadow. The ability to produce absurd ahead of curve pressure of of 4 Tarmogoyf cards (the real goyf, tasigur, fish, shadow) is what is consistently keeping these decks a thing. Shadow as the best of them makes the deck. Everything else without Shadow is merely okay, even mediocre.
A Grixis delver list with Daze would be much more fair than a Grixis Shadow list is now.
We should not be held hostage because of WotC's creature related design failures.
Don't blame it on Shadow. The reason why the fair decks are becoming hyper-efficient is because of the pressure that the unfair decks put on the format. I lost a game against Tron the other day where I Thoughtseized him 3 times over the first 3 turns, played a turn 2 Angler and turn 4 Tasigur, and I died on his 4th turn when he top decked an Ulamog to exile both my threats. You just can't play slow fair decks in this format and be successful, your fair deck has to be fast and mostly proactive. If you ban Shadow, all you do is make fair decks worse. If you want slower fair decks to be better, we need better answers for them to play, like Counterspell, and we need better ways to fight decks that rely on lands.
But is there any reason why Grixis Shadow wouldn't just run Daze though? For me, I didn't switch from Delver to Shadow just because TS/IoK is more effective than counter magic. Another huge reason was because Death's Shadow was in general more reliable than Delver since DS can go online while I proactively go after my opponent, whereas flipping early Delvers can be unreliable with only Serum Visions to manipulate the top of my deck. Maybe I'm missing something, but if Daze were reprinted for Modern, it just seems like Grixis Shadow would be getting a powerful new tool that they can easily add to the deck by dropping Stubborn Denial and 1-2 other spells while Delver decks would continued to overshadowed (heh) due to the lack of good cantrips
I don't think Grixis Shadow would drop Denials for Daze, Denial is the better counter spell, believe it or not. 1 mana Negate is a really good card in Modern. If Shadow decks started playing Daze, they would probably cut something like Lightning Bolt for a couple copies.
As for the whole discussion about Shadow decks. Everyone is getting drunk on the fact that they have a T1 "fair" deck, neglecting to notice that the deck's truly bad matchups are either garbage decks or T2 decks. Saying DS has a weakness to U/W control or Elves is like saying "my deck sucks because it loses to 8 rack". Lul, what? And that's why the deck is winning so much, because most of its opponents are one dimensional and get crushed out by other things along the way - like Juza got with Elves.
Anyway I'm not saying anything about bans. I just notice that what h0lydiva said was right all along - the deck is 10% of the meta for a reason, but its the kind of busted everyone in modern likes. If Dredge or Storm was 10% people would be screaming bloody murder.
Dredge, Burn, Abzan, and Death & Taxes are all top tier decks that are unfavorable matchups, and the jury's still out on the Company matchup. I think it's bad. And on the other hand, the deck doesn't really have any lopsided matchups in its favor either. Storm is probably the only deck we outright crush, and that's only if we have a hand with a lot of interaction and a fast clock. Shadow can still easily lose to Storm with a mediocre hand.
As to your last point, there's a big difference between decks like Dredge and Storm being top decks, and decks like Shadow or Twin being top decks, and that's the pressure they put on the format. Dredge and Storm push the format to be fast and uninteractive, although the new version of Storm is a little more fair because you can slow them down by killing their creatures. Decks like Shadow and Twin push the format towards more interaction, because the best way to fight them is with lots of removal and card advantage. There will always be a best deck, and right now the best deck in Modern is one that has a healthy influence on the rest of the format. That's why decks like that deserve more leeway than decks like Dredge and Storm.
[quote from="BloodyRabbit_01 »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/773038-state-of-modern-thread-bans-format-health-metagame?comment=2552"]
If it has so many problems near the top of the format how do you explain its performance in SCG Open Baltimore? 6 Death's shadow variants in the top 15?
And none in the rest of the top 32, stop cherry picking.
Since you posted that article Im curious what people think about this quote from it in relation to modern, particularly the bolded part
"That argument makes sense on the surface, because it's true: we make creatures a lot better than we used to. But the reality (beyond the fact that you can prove mathematically that creatures were too weak for most of Magic's history, based on the number of turns it takes to resolve an average "goldfish" game state) is simply that spells are much more inherently powerful than creatures. Spells have haste, whereas creatures have "Suspend 1." Spells can only be interacted with for the moment they are on the stack, whereas creatures can be interacted with at sorcery speed. So you have to work a lot harder to make creatures relevant than you have to work to make spells relevant.
He's generally correct, but this is exactly why creatures with no cast or ETB effects rarely see play in Modern. They have to be very efficient for the mana cost if they don't, like Goyf, Shadow, Guide, Nacatl, Delver, and the delve creatures. On the other side of his argument, creatures create a permanent battlefield presence, while spells generally do not.
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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
I did not call for a ban, I was merely observing that the deck is as busted as the "unfair" decks its supposed to combat. Try playing something that gets appropriate effects on curve (so, no 8/8's for 1) against a Shadow Deck and see how you fare. I'm not disputing its interactivity, just asserting that what it can do is basically as degenerate as a T4 Ulamog.
But that's by necessity, because the "gets appropriate effects on curve" decks aren't good enough in Modern anymore. The last good deck like that was classic Jund, but as many people on here have said over the past year, classic Jund hasn't actually been great in Modern since the Twin ban. The only reason why Abzan can still hold onto a thread now is because it has great game against the Shadow decks.
I'm also asserting that the deck has an edge over the rest of the format and that's why its standing out in results. You don't get to top 2 tournaments in a few days on account of a fluke. The edge may be small and visible only in a large sample of games but its still there.
Oh, I don't think it's a fluke, both Grixis and Jund Shadow are two of the best decks in Modern. I don't think it's obvious that either are the objective best deck in the format, though. Hell, Grixis performed better over the weekend than Jund did, but most people believed Jund was the better version up to that. And keep in mind, we were very close to having Dredge be the deck that won 2 events, as it made the finals of both SCG Baltimore and GP Kobe. It's a shame we don't have the footage of Kobe, but I can tell you that Brad got very lucky against Ben Friedman at the SCG Open. It's a bad matchup for Shadow, but Ben drew very poorly in the games Brad won.
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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
So I made a comment on a reddit thread proposing a hypothetical card that seems like an ok solution for the 'problem lands' in Modern.
A hypothetical 'wasteland 2.0' that only hits lands that produce colorless mana. Gets tron lands, cavern of souls, eldrazi temple, utility lands like township, wolf-run, desolate lighthouse and the affinity man-lands and the such.
Cannot be used aggressively to color screw players by destroying shocklands like wasteland does so it won't be an automatic 4-of inclusion in decks. But is impactful enough in certain matchups that it'll probably see some level of play.
Including it in your deck will require some level of consideration since it's as good as a basic wastes and has little to no impact against decks like grixis or jund that are very color-intensive.
My main reason for suggesting something like this is that it's a card that answers these 'problem lands' at parity, unlike ghost quarter which gives the opponent another land. Let's face it, using ghost quarter to blow up a tron piece / eldrazi temple / cavern but giving the opponent a basic land out of it is not an elegant answer. You're setting yourself back and the opponent still comes out ahead.
But at the same time, ghost quarter can hit things this card doesn't like shocklands, colored manlands and even basics if need be. So there will be pros and cons to using this hypothetical card.
It is also not at a power level where decks will widely want to play this card as more than a 2-of. This is where deck building considerations come in. Would a Jund player want to just jam 4 of these for the tron matchup knowing that they might lose games because they can't get the colors required to cast their spells ?
Exactly this, I manage to fit 2 ghost quarters main in my jeskai flash deck so I could replace them with 2 wasteland 2.0. But if I somehow wanted to hedge against Tron even more, I would have to sacrifice additional sideboard slots OR reduce my main deck color consistency to fit more in OR build my deck in a way that it doesn't run any color-intensive spells like cryptic command. That's a fair trade off for a 3 color deck.
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
Don't blame it on Shadow. The reason why the fair decks are becoming hyper-efficient is because of the pressure that the unfair decks put on the format. I lost a game against Tron the other day where I Thoughtseized him 3 times over the first 3 turns, played a turn 2 Angler and turn 4 Tasigur, and I died on his 4th turn when he top decked an Ulamog to exile both my threats. You just can't play slow fair decks in this format and be successful, your fair deck has to be fast and mostly proactive. If you ban Shadow, all you do is make fair decks worse. If you want slower fair decks to be better, we need better answers for them to play, like Counterspell, and we need better ways to fight decks that rely on lands.
I did not call for a ban, I was merely observing that the deck is as busted as the "unfair" decks its supposed to combat. Try playing something that gets appropriate effects on curve (so, no 8/8's for 1) against a Shadow Deck and see how you fare. I'm not disputing its interactivity, just asserting that what it can do is basically as degenerate as a T4 Ulamog.
I'm also asserting that the deck has an edge over the rest of the format and that's why its standing out in results. You don't get to top 2 tournaments in a few days on account of a fluke. The edge may be small and visible only in a large sample of games but its still there.
As for answers, I'll just leave this here:
One of the problems is that Mana Leak is simply a much more powerful card than we would be comfortable printing under modern development rules... After all, there are all kinds of spells that we would never print nowadays that ran rampant in old environments, such as Compulsive Research, Force Spike, Remand, 'Signets,' etc."
When all the removal in the format is 1 mana the threats being 1 mana are on curve.
Firstly, not all of it is. Secondly, removal should be cheaper then threats, (on average,) because removal only exists to answer threats. If there are no threats, (say, when both players are in topdeck mode,) removal is dead but threats are not. If they costed the same, there'd be no good reason for anyone to run removal as opposed to threats.
I feel like right now these cards can come off the ban list:
Stoneforge Mystic: It battles shadow decks well, it can't go into shadow decks because batterskull gains life, and none of the decks that want this card are in a great spot right now. Mystic would: push a UW(x) deck to tier 1, push death and taxes tier 1, other strategies in modern are way stronger than mystic's power level right now (dying to storm turn 3, dying to devoted druid combo, dying to affinity/burn early, etc) and enable a lot more strategies. The best time that there has ever been to unban it.
Bloodbraid Elf: Similar to Mystic, there hasn't ever been a greater time to unban BBE. Shadow doesn't want this card over Ranger of Eos since eos gets you guaranteed cards while BBE will usually cast discard spells off of a BBE cast, it would power up the struggling zoo/jund decks, it may create a RUG strategy, it's power level is lower than the other strategies that are going on in modern right now.
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On mtgsalvation people don't want to discuss ideas, so I give people something else to discuss: my controversial opinions.
~2017 string of creatures, planeswalkers and uncounterable flash into play monsters with cast triggers tearing standard a new ******** for longer than a year, 4 emergency bans in the space of a few months, format becomes one of the most reviled in the game
what do you expect?
PS: the last sentence of that article explains everything
Since you posted that article Im curious what people think about this quote from it in relation to modern, particularly the bolded part
"That argument makes sense on the surface, because it's true: we make creatures a lot better than we used to. But the reality (beyond the fact that you can prove mathematically that creatures were too weak for most of Magic's history, based on the number of turns it takes to resolve an average "goldfish" game state) is simply that spells are much more inherently powerful than creatures. Spells have haste, whereas creatures have "Suspend 1." Spells can only be interacted with for the moment they are on the stack, whereas creatures can be interacted with at sorcery speed. So you have to work a lot harder to make creatures relevant than you have to work to make spells relevant.
A response written to this article points out the flaw of this reasoning.
"Creatures may have "Suspend 1" but they also have "Flashback 0" every turn."
While it's true that creatures create a permanent presence on the battlefield, it's also true that if they don't have some kind of etb effect they will generate no value if they get destroyed.
I think that he is pointing out a basic flaw of the game that leads to the fact that only U and B get to interact with sorceries and instants while G,W,R can only interact with permanents.
That is not a flaw, Moonshield. That is part of balancing the game and giving each color its own identity so that all the colors are not the same. Blue for instance has trouble interacting with permanents b/c that color is supposed to be good at making sure permanents do not hit the board.
That's like whining that you have to be able to answer creatures, or you have to have an answer for control/midrange. Graveyards are a part of the game and a ton of top tier decks rely on their graveyard to a point that running grave hate is not just a hedge against Dredge, it is fhe correct thing to do in the format.
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
I take your point, but there is a huge difference in saying a card has a grave in Modern and can be played in other formats, and this card may power up a fringe deck too much.
I personally think there is a group of cards on the list that will never come off the list, but Wotc will never come out and say it because a portion of the player base would be up in arms their pet banned card is never going to be playable in the format.
I agree that the downside of daze is huge, especially in a shockland format like modern. I would also add however, that I don't want that card printed into the current modern format as grixis death shadow would become far too powerful. And I don't think Delver would get a look in.
As for whether or not Daze would be fine in a format full of shocklands, I couldn't say for sure because a player could just fetch for a basic Island and bounce that, but I know that doing so could create awkward mana situations in 3-color decks, and from what I see from Legacy games, it's not the hardest card to play around if you plan for it. I have some Dazes coming in soon, so hopefully I'll find some free time to test Daze in decks with a Modern format manabase and see how it feels firsthand
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
Give U/W a beater for 1 and a colorless that grows simply by playing the game and benefits from your opponent's deck construction and let's see what happens.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.
Hmmm dont see any good blue cards In that list.....
decks playing:
none
decks playing:
none
Of course you need to hope you avoid bad match-ups. Literally every deck in existence hopes to avoid its bad MU's. Again, you aren't going to get a deck good against the entire field, let alone a field as wide open as the current modern meta. You narrow down your bad MU's, build your sideboard accordingly, then play tight magic to improve your odds.
Where you see a problem in a wide and diverse meta, a larger proportion of the player base sees that as a positive.
Affinity
Death & Taxes
Mardu Nahiri
Forcing people to merge with twitch is stupid
Also, you either get an interesting and diverse format or you get easy meta predictions and sideboard choices. If you want to know every deck in the format and have simple sideboards, modern might not be your format.
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
I agree that this would be an excellent addition to the Modern cardpool.
Since you posted that article Im curious what people think about this quote from it in relation to modern, particularly the bolded part
"That argument makes sense on the surface, because it's true: we make creatures a lot better than we used to. But the reality (beyond the fact that you can prove mathematically that creatures were too weak for most of Magic's history, based on the number of turns it takes to resolve an average "goldfish" game state) is simply that spells are much more inherently powerful than creatures. Spells have haste, whereas creatures have "Suspend 1." Spells can only be interacted with for the moment they are on the stack, whereas creatures can be interacted with at sorcery speed. So you have to work a lot harder to make creatures relevant than you have to work to make spells relevant.
Diversity is a good thing. Linearity is even fine in the right doses. As long as there is a way game 1 to beat it with interaction..
And right now aggro and combo have a game vs everything. because even their bad matchups they can steam roll half the time. And midrange is at least proactive so that the sideboard hate comes with a tempo.
That leaves us with control who has to rely so heavily on the sideboard because we need better maindeckable answers.
Saying the format is just not for control players is quite harsh if you ask me
decks playing:
none
Also, given that they keep giving creatures ETB effects or on-cast triggers, a lot of creatures are just spells that leave a body behind.
They also seem to have forgotten creatures can block too. The game would play out very differently if every creature literally had suspend 1. Awful comparison.
Edit - Containment Priest would be sweet and totally fit in flavour wise with an Egyptian themed set. Especially if in the story any of the denizens of Amonkhet decide to beat up on Bolas.
I don't think Grixis Shadow would drop Denials for Daze, Denial is the better counter spell, believe it or not. 1 mana Negate is a really good card in Modern. If Shadow decks started playing Daze, they would probably cut something like Lightning Bolt for a couple copies.
Dredge, Burn, Abzan, and Death & Taxes are all top tier decks that are unfavorable matchups, and the jury's still out on the Company matchup. I think it's bad. And on the other hand, the deck doesn't really have any lopsided matchups in its favor either. Storm is probably the only deck we outright crush, and that's only if we have a hand with a lot of interaction and a fast clock. Shadow can still easily lose to Storm with a mediocre hand.
As to your last point, there's a big difference between decks like Dredge and Storm being top decks, and decks like Shadow or Twin being top decks, and that's the pressure they put on the format. Dredge and Storm push the format to be fast and uninteractive, although the new version of Storm is a little more fair because you can slow them down by killing their creatures. Decks like Shadow and Twin push the format towards more interaction, because the best way to fight them is with lots of removal and card advantage. There will always be a best deck, and right now the best deck in Modern is one that has a healthy influence on the rest of the format. That's why decks like that deserve more leeway than decks like Dredge and Storm.
And none in the rest of the top 32, stop cherry picking.
He's generally correct, but this is exactly why creatures with no cast or ETB effects rarely see play in Modern. They have to be very efficient for the mana cost if they don't, like Goyf, Shadow, Guide, Nacatl, Delver, and the delve creatures. On the other side of his argument, creatures create a permanent battlefield presence, while spells generally do not.
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
Oh, I don't think it's a fluke, both Grixis and Jund Shadow are two of the best decks in Modern. I don't think it's obvious that either are the objective best deck in the format, though. Hell, Grixis performed better over the weekend than Jund did, but most people believed Jund was the better version up to that. And keep in mind, we were very close to having Dredge be the deck that won 2 events, as it made the finals of both SCG Baltimore and GP Kobe. It's a shame we don't have the footage of Kobe, but I can tell you that Brad got very lucky against Ben Friedman at the SCG Open. It's a bad matchup for Shadow, but Ben drew very poorly in the games Brad won.
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
My main reason for suggesting something like this is that it's a card that answers these 'problem lands' at parity, unlike ghost quarter which gives the opponent another land. Let's face it, using ghost quarter to blow up a tron piece / eldrazi temple / cavern but giving the opponent a basic land out of it is not an elegant answer. You're setting yourself back and the opponent still comes out ahead.
But at the same time, ghost quarter can hit things this card doesn't like shocklands, colored manlands and even basics if need be. So there will be pros and cons to using this hypothetical card.
It is also not at a power level where decks will widely want to play this card as more than a 2-of. This is where deck building considerations come in. Would a Jund player want to just jam 4 of these for the tron matchup knowing that they might lose games because they can't get the colors required to cast their spells ?
When all the removal in the format is 1 mana the threats being 1 mana are on curve.
Stoneforge Mystic: It battles shadow decks well, it can't go into shadow decks because batterskull gains life, and none of the decks that want this card are in a great spot right now. Mystic would: push a UW(x) deck to tier 1, push death and taxes tier 1, other strategies in modern are way stronger than mystic's power level right now (dying to storm turn 3, dying to devoted druid combo, dying to affinity/burn early, etc) and enable a lot more strategies. The best time that there has ever been to unban it.
Bloodbraid Elf: Similar to Mystic, there hasn't ever been a greater time to unban BBE. Shadow doesn't want this card over Ranger of Eos since eos gets you guaranteed cards while BBE will usually cast discard spells off of a BBE cast, it would power up the struggling zoo/jund decks, it may create a RUG strategy, it's power level is lower than the other strategies that are going on in modern right now.
Decks I'm playing in Modern right now:
URB Grixis Reveler (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-grixis-reveler/)
UB Faeries (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/ub-fae-2/)
UW Azorious Control (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-ojutai-control-2/)
That is not a flaw, Moonshield. That is part of balancing the game and giving each color its own identity so that all the colors are not the same. Blue for instance has trouble interacting with permanents b/c that color is supposed to be good at making sure permanents do not hit the board.
I play Magic: the Gathering, not Magic: the Commandering.