UUX- Instant: Gain control of target creature with converted cost X.
Seems pretty good to fight blue control closing problems.
Useless/difficult to cast against Delve creatures, Eldrazi, Prime Time, creatureless combo, relatively ineffective against go-wide aggro, great against exactly Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf. Seems like a give-and-take "upgrade" to Threads of Disloyalty, but considering the best creatures are expensive ones being cast through cost reduction methods, the card loses utility fairly quickly. Card will be awesome in Commander.
UUX- Instant: Gain control of target creature with converted cost X.
Seems pretty good to fight blue control closing problems.
Useless/difficult to cast against Delve creatures, Eldrazi, Prime Time, creatureless combo, relatively ineffective against go-wide aggro, great against exactly Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf. Seems like a give-and-take "upgrade" to Threads of Disloyalty, but considering the best creatures are expensive ones being cast through cost reduction methods, the card loses utility fairly quickly. Card will be awesome in Commander.
I think it is quite a bit better than threads even if you are just trying to steal a 1 or 2 mana creature because of the instant speed. Not to mention they can't blow up the instant to get the creature back.
Also if all decks abide by the same rules than why was bloom or dredge hit? they where not even oppressive in numbers.
Stop inventing reasons for bans. Wizards said exactly why those decks were banned (T4 rule, sideboard imbalance) and it has nothing to do with the reasons Jund is struggling or blue control needs better cards.
Excepet sb are even more heavily reliant on gy hate now. A lot of decks have even gone to my with it.
I have no idea if this is true or not, so unless you have hard numbers behind that claim, you shouldn't be making it.
I'll also add that no one really knows what the "battle of sideboards" term meant in the GGT ban update. Too many anti-GY SB cards? Games were too heavily decided by SB cards? Games were lost when those cards weren't drawn? Some combination? No one outside of Wizards knows.
Well lets see 11/16 t1/t2 decks use the gy/free entering creatures (coco). So if you are burn or affinity sure you don't care and don't run 4-6 pieces of hate.
Yeah, I'll be clear that I'm not advocating a ban on anything. I really like where the format is. I am purely talking hypothetical and even in that hypothetical I was only talking about a hit on say Eldrazi Tron if they were hitting Death Shadow as well.
UUX- Instant: Gain control of target creature with converted cost X.
Seems pretty good to fight blue control closing problems.
Useless/difficult to cast against Delve creatures, Eldrazi, Prime Time, creatureless combo, relatively ineffective against go-wide aggro, great against exactly Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf. Seems like a give-and-take "upgrade" to Threads of Disloyalty, but considering the best creatures are expensive ones being cast through cost reduction methods, the card loses utility fairly quickly. Card will be awesome in Commander.
I think it is quite a bit better than threads even if you are just trying to steal a 1 or 2 mana creature because of the instant speed. Not to mention they can't blow up the instant to get the creature back.
No, I get that, it's definitely better for taking a 1cmc creature, but it takes 4 mana to take a 2cmc creature and scales up from there. Threads already sees zero play (maybe a TINY bit out of fringe decks, but nothing substantial). With the vast majority of cards this thing misses (or more accurately: requires 6, 7+ mana for), I don't see this as anything other than maybe a sideboard 1-of when we finally get it months from now.
It seems in line with a trend of recent "answers" that Wizards thinks are going to fix our formats. Many of them seem to be just off by a tiny bit. Either it costs just 1 mana too much or has just too much of a downside, it's clear they are the product of trying too hard. We only get "good" cards through their mistakes, so maybe them trying to give us answers will just give us more of these: answers just slightly too expensive or just slightly too much downside to be playable. But I guess if they keep banning the best decks out of the format every cycle, the power level will get low enough to make these cards relevant. I sincerely hope they don't do that, but every word and action on their side seems to point to that outcome.
Temple would be a great ban Imo. Maybe it would encourage midrange decks to hold down Grixis shadow better.
I don't know, I have a lot better time against Eldrazi Tron with the midrange decks than regular Tron. Personally I'd rather avoid going back to that near unwinnable nonsense.
Temple would be a great ban Imo. Maybe it would encourage midrange decks to hold down Grixis shadow better.
I don't know, I have a lot better time against Eldrazi Tron with the midrange decks than regular Tron. Personally I'd rather avoid going back to that near unwinnable nonsense.
It doesn't matter if you dislike the matchup against traditional Tron, it would leave it open for combo and aggro to balance things out to help all fair decks out
What I'm saying is, if Shadow does get banned, I think there's a chance it comes with a temple ban, or temple following eating a ban a year later
Well I think the main problem is that they accidentally over-pushed the Eldrazi and then we had an artifact block in the next year (and every artifact block as introduced awful broken things.. clearly they have issues balancing artifact themed blocks with everything else).
It wasn't accidentally they have said that they had been aware during development the the Newdrazi could very likely cause problems in Modern/Legacy because of Eye and Temple( and Tomb and City in Legacy)
They didn't fudge up Standard because the fast mana doesn't exist to make them anymore than very good but not broken.
Well I think the main problem is that they accidentally over-pushed the Eldrazi and then we had an artifact block in the next year (and every artifact block as introduced awful broken things.. clearly they have issues balancing artifact themed blocks with everything else).
It wasn't accidentally they have said that they had been aware during development the the Newdrazi could very likely cause problems in Modern/Legacy because of Eye and Temple( and Tomb and City in Legacy)
They didn't fudge up Standard because the fast mana doesn't exist to make them anymore than very good but not broken.
This is exactly what I mean by "accidentally" though, they don't test for Modern so they balanced based on Standard and it was purely an accident that they broke modern.
Also if all decks abide by the same rules than why was bloom or dredge hit? they where not even oppressive in numbers.
Stop inventing reasons for bans. Wizards said exactly why those decks were banned (T4 rule, sideboard imbalance) and it has nothing to do with the reasons Jund is struggling or blue control needs better cards.
Excepet sb are even more heavily reliant on gy hate now. A lot of decks have even gone to my with it.
I have no idea if this is true or not, so unless you have hard numbers behind that claim, you shouldn't be making it.
I'll also add that no one really knows what the "battle of sideboards" term meant in the GGT ban update. Too many anti-GY SB cards? Games were too heavily decided by SB cards? Games were lost when those cards weren't drawn? Some combination? No one outside of Wizards knows.
I think we can agree no one knows what the exact meaning of "battle of sideboards" is but prior to the banning of GGT, the Grixis and Jund decks were playing 4 copies of Leyline of the Void in their sideboard and Grixis Delver was going into 4 surgical + 5th grave hate (I know you love statistics, but my statement is based mostly on observations I'm noticing in top8 decklist posted during this time).
The point was no one wanted to play a format where its Jund vs Dredge. Turn 1, do you have Leyline of the Void? If yes, Jund wins the game, if no dredge wins. Or Abzan vs Ad Nauseam. Do you have Leyline of Sanctity? If yes, Ad Nauseam wins if no, Abzan wins.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Well I think the main problem is that they accidentally over-pushed the Eldrazi and then we had an artifact block in the next year (and every artifact block as introduced awful broken things.. clearly they have issues balancing artifact themed blocks with everything else).
It wasn't accidentally they have said that they had been aware during development the the Newdrazi could very likely cause problems in Modern/Legacy because of Eye and Temple( and Tomb and City in Legacy)
They didn't fudge up Standard because the fast mana doesn't exist to make them anymore than very good but not broken.
This is exactly what I mean by "accidentally" though, they don't test for Modern so they balanced based on Standard and it was purely an accident that they broke modern.
lol ok, well then what you really mean is "incidental" as they understood that by designing them this way that it very likely could be a problem in Modern/Legacy, the same is true for every delve spell also as WotC had known since Time Spiral block that Delve costs are very easy to achieve in formats with fetch lands and cheap cantrips.
For those knocking Wizards' ability to print Modern-relevant answers in Standard, can you point to a recent attempt that was off the mark? And I mean a real attempt at a Modern-specific answer that we confirmed was geared for Modern and then failed, not a Standard-designed card that can't cut it in Modern.
For those knocking Wizards' ability to print Modern-relevant answers in Standard, can you point to a recent attempt that was off the mark? And I mean a real attempt at a Modern-specific answer that we confirmed was geared for Modern and then failed, not a Standard-designed card that can't cut it in Modern.
Censor? disallow? I don't know if those were geared towards modern or not but they were certainly the pushed answers of the format.
I'm not sure that's a totally fair question because where are the ones that succeeded? Fatal push and? It doesn't seem that they really try to make modern cards for the most part, they are just happy when some incidentally are good enough.
For those knocking Wizards' ability to print Modern-relevant answers in Standard, can you point to a recent attempt that was off the mark? And I mean a real attempt at a Modern-specific answer that we confirmed was geared for Modern and then failed, not a Standard-designed card that can't cut it in Modern.
Censor? disallow? I don't know if those were geared towards modern or not but they were certainly the pushed answers of the format.
I'm not sure that's a totally fair question because where are the ones that succeeded? Fatal push and? It doesn't seem that they really try to make modern cards for the most part, they are just happy when some incidentally are good enough.
It's one problem if Wizards isn't trying and isn't succeeding. That suggests their current benchmarks just aren't at the Modern level and they are largely okay with that. It's a totally separate, and much worse, problem if Wizards is designing cards with Modern in mind above Standard and those cards are still failing. That suggests incompetence and an active disconnect from format realities.
The first is an example of an incompetent disconnect: Ethan Fleischer gets worried that three-mana Disallow is going to counter fetchland activations in Modern. Most of us would never look twice at this three-mana card creating ANY issues in Modern. We know that is way too expensive for the effect.
Then comes Push. Wizards thought it would be a big deal and it was. Development success!
Fatal Push is one of their first success' since K Command, which was more of an oversight
I was responding to CF's quote above and those who I think agree with him:
"It seems in line with a trend of recent "answers" that Wizards thinks are going to fix our formats. Many of them seem to be just off by a tiny bit. Either it costs just 1 mana too much or has just too much of a downside, it's clear they are the product of trying too hard. We only get "good" cards through their mistakes, so maybe them trying to give us answers will just give us more of these: answers just slightly too expensive or just slightly too much downside to be playable."
I don't think Wizards has really tried to print a lot of cards to help Modern, or even influence Modern, outside of Push. Most of the cards were just things for Standard first before someone said "huh, I wonder how this is in non-rotating formats?" Push, by contrast, was clearly aimed at Modern. It's a recent success that gives me hope Wizards can do more for the format with new cards, not the tired and tiresome cycle of bans, few unbans, and endless ban mania.
You literally just admitted the whole argument I am making.
If shadow is played because it has a better matchup vs big mana over other non combo urx and bg/x decks , than in fact big mana has warped jund out of moderns top tiers.
Proving that big mana is toxic to bgx midrange.
Then one wonders how Jund was able to exist for so long and be Tier 1 while the big mana decks were no less good.
It's the people who want to live In Lala land and not admit that there are still issues with modern.
Just because you hate bans doesn't mean you ignore all logic.
I feel like the guy who's telling everyone the earth is round in the 1400's
If you were the guy telling everyone the earth is round in the 1400's, you'd be telling them what they already knew and in fact had known for a very long time. People knew the Earth was round long before Columbus's voyage (and ironically, he actually didn't prove the world was round, because he bumped into a new continent altogether rather than Asia, though people initially thought he did reach India and the fact it was a new continent wasn't worked out until later).
So why was there skepticism back then that Columbus's voyage would be worth it? Again, as noted, people knew the world was round, and even had a good idea how big it was. What they didn't know was that North America existed.
Now, suppose North America didn't exist. Look at the distance (traveling westward) from Europe to Asia. That's an extremely long distance. There was no way for ships back in the 15th century to make such a journey, and people back then knew it so they didn't try it.
Columbus claimed that people were wrong about the size of the Earth, and that it was actually much smaller, so the distance (sailing westward) from Europe to Asia was actually possible to travel by boat. The thing is, Columbus was actually dead wrong. The world was too big for his voyage to work. But, again, they didn't know North America existed, so they basically bumped into the place on the way and as a result had a place to land. If not for North America being around, they would've either all died or been forced to turn back.
I know that's not particularly related to Magic but I'm tired of seeing the myth that people back in the 15th century thought the Earth was flat. Warning issued for spam. --CavalryWolfPack
I am keeping my eye on temple though
Evaporating Melody
UUX- Instant: Gain control of target creature with converted cost X.
Seems pretty good to fight blue control closing problems.
Useless/difficult to cast against Delve creatures, Eldrazi, Prime Time, creatureless combo, relatively ineffective against go-wide aggro, great against exactly Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf. Seems like a give-and-take "upgrade" to Threads of Disloyalty, but considering the best creatures are expensive ones being cast through cost reduction methods, the card loses utility fairly quickly. Card will be awesome in Commander.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I think it is quite a bit better than threads even if you are just trying to steal a 1 or 2 mana creature because of the instant speed. Not to mention they can't blow up the instant to get the creature back.
Temple would be a great ban Imo. Maybe it would encourage midrange decks to hold down Grixis shadow better.
decks playing:
none
No, I get that, it's definitely better for taking a 1cmc creature, but it takes 4 mana to take a 2cmc creature and scales up from there. Threads already sees zero play (maybe a TINY bit out of fringe decks, but nothing substantial). With the vast majority of cards this thing misses (or more accurately: requires 6, 7+ mana for), I don't see this as anything other than maybe a sideboard 1-of when we finally get it months from now.
It seems in line with a trend of recent "answers" that Wizards thinks are going to fix our formats. Many of them seem to be just off by a tiny bit. Either it costs just 1 mana too much or has just too much of a downside, it's clear they are the product of trying too hard. We only get "good" cards through their mistakes, so maybe them trying to give us answers will just give us more of these: answers just slightly too expensive or just slightly too much downside to be playable. But I guess if they keep banning the best decks out of the format every cycle, the power level will get low enough to make these cards relevant. I sincerely hope they don't do that, but every word and action on their side seems to point to that outcome.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I don't know, I have a lot better time against Eldrazi Tron with the midrange decks than regular Tron. Personally I'd rather avoid going back to that near unwinnable nonsense.
It doesn't matter if you dislike the matchup against traditional Tron, it would leave it open for combo and aggro to balance things out to help all fair decks out
What I'm saying is, if Shadow does get banned, I think there's a chance it comes with a temple ban, or temple following eating a ban a year later
It wasn't accidentally they have said that they had been aware during development the the Newdrazi could very likely cause problems in Modern/Legacy because of Eye and Temple( and Tomb and City in Legacy)
They didn't fudge up Standard because the fast mana doesn't exist to make them anymore than very good but not broken.
This is exactly what I mean by "accidentally" though, they don't test for Modern so they balanced based on Standard and it was purely an accident that they broke modern.
I think we can agree no one knows what the exact meaning of "battle of sideboards" is but prior to the banning of GGT, the Grixis and Jund decks were playing 4 copies of Leyline of the Void in their sideboard and Grixis Delver was going into 4 surgical + 5th grave hate (I know you love statistics, but my statement is based mostly on observations I'm noticing in top8 decklist posted during this time).
The point was no one wanted to play a format where its Jund vs Dredge. Turn 1, do you have Leyline of the Void? If yes, Jund wins the game, if no dredge wins. Or Abzan vs Ad Nauseam. Do you have Leyline of Sanctity? If yes, Ad Nauseam wins if no, Abzan wins.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
Source? I believe you, because at instant that was a fun card...and we don't want blue fun.
Spirits
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
lol ok, well then what you really mean is "incidental" as they understood that by designing them this way that it very likely could be a problem in Modern/Legacy, the same is true for every delve spell also as WotC had known since Time Spiral block that Delve costs are very easy to achieve in formats with fetch lands and cheap cantrips.
Censor? disallow? I don't know if those were geared towards modern or not but they were certainly the pushed answers of the format.
I'm not sure that's a totally fair question because where are the ones that succeeded? Fatal push and? It doesn't seem that they really try to make modern cards for the most part, they are just happy when some incidentally are good enough.
It's one problem if Wizards isn't trying and isn't succeeding. That suggests their current benchmarks just aren't at the Modern level and they are largely okay with that. It's a totally separate, and much worse, problem if Wizards is designing cards with Modern in mind above Standard and those cards are still failing. That suggests incompetence and an active disconnect from format realities.
Here are two recent examples of this in action:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/m-files-aether-revolt-part-1-2017-02-03
The first is an example of an incompetent disconnect: Ethan Fleischer gets worried that three-mana Disallow is going to counter fetchland activations in Modern. Most of us would never look twice at this three-mana card creating ANY issues in Modern. We know that is way too expensive for the effect.
Then comes Push. Wizards thought it would be a big deal and it was. Development success!
Fatal Push is one of their first success' since K Command, which was more of an oversight
K Command and Atarkas I think where just pushed for Standard.
Spirits
I was responding to CF's quote above and those who I think agree with him:
"It seems in line with a trend of recent "answers" that Wizards thinks are going to fix our formats. Many of them seem to be just off by a tiny bit. Either it costs just 1 mana too much or has just too much of a downside, it's clear they are the product of trying too hard. We only get "good" cards through their mistakes, so maybe them trying to give us answers will just give us more of these: answers just slightly too expensive or just slightly too much downside to be playable."
I don't think Wizards has really tried to print a lot of cards to help Modern, or even influence Modern, outside of Push. Most of the cards were just things for Standard first before someone said "huh, I wonder how this is in non-rotating formats?" Push, by contrast, was clearly aimed at Modern. It's a recent success that gives me hope Wizards can do more for the format with new cards, not the tired and tiresome cycle of bans, few unbans, and endless ban mania.
If you were the guy telling everyone the earth is round in the 1400's, you'd be telling them what they already knew and in fact had known for a very long time. People knew the Earth was round long before Columbus's voyage (and ironically, he actually didn't prove the world was round, because he bumped into a new continent altogether rather than Asia, though people initially thought he did reach India and the fact it was a new continent wasn't worked out until later).
So why was there skepticism back then that Columbus's voyage would be worth it? Again, as noted, people knew the world was round, and even had a good idea how big it was. What they didn't know was that North America existed.
Now, suppose North America didn't exist. Look at the distance (traveling westward) from Europe to Asia. That's an extremely long distance. There was no way for ships back in the 15th century to make such a journey, and people back then knew it so they didn't try it.
Columbus claimed that people were wrong about the size of the Earth, and that it was actually much smaller, so the distance (sailing westward) from Europe to Asia was actually possible to travel by boat. The thing is, Columbus was actually dead wrong. The world was too big for his voyage to work. But, again, they didn't know North America existed, so they basically bumped into the place on the way and as a result had a place to land. If not for North America being around, they would've either all died or been forced to turn back.
I know that's not particularly related to Magic but I'm tired of seeing the myth that people back in the 15th century thought the Earth was flat.
Warning issued for spam. --CavalryWolfPack