I actually think it's interesting that Eldrazi decks are seeing more results lately, it goes with my theory that I think E-Tron may be the best deck while grixis takes all the heat with hate cards in the form of interactivity and GY hate.
I'm pleased with results seeing a lot of different decks though, modern is looking wide open.
I'm hoping the GP's coming up say otherwise though, those hold a lot more weight.
I've been with you on the opinion that etron is the best deck for awhile now, even before it was putting up the best results. Numbers are great and extremely important to any unbiased discussion but they rarely tell the whole story, glad to see others looking at the big picture and not getting hung up on a few percentage points here and there.
The fact is that the deck is extremely efficient and the hate cards for it are not. All the other extremely powerful decks can be meta gamed out with specific hate for it and the argument here was always that sbs were too small to bring hate for everything, I never really thought that an issue, it rewards predicting the meta correctly, but no amount of Sb space can effectively hate out etron with what is currently available. Instead you just pick decks to beat it.
DISCLAIMER: it still isn't a huge problem right now. The meta is great and diverse, but if we have to pick a top dog to hate in this thread it should be etron, not GDS.
I'm not saying Eldrazi Tron is a problem. A poster asked what would be good cards to be printed in the next set which would be good for the modern metagame, and I said I'd like to see some tribal hate, like engineered plague.
I imagine we will have to wait until we have another Eldrazi focused block, it will happen unless WotC decides to abandon the current story line which still has 2 of the 3 big Eldrazi running around the multiverse. Hopefully they print a useful "destroy target colorless creature" spell but i would be willing to bet that they would cost it at 3-4 mana
Why? Narrow hate cards rarely cost that much. The newest mono-color hate cards are all inexpensive. If the "destroy target colorless creature" is a sorcery, I expect it will cost 1 mana. 2 mana if it's an instant.
Because things printed generally need to have some relation to the set/block it gets printed in. C.Rejection for instance was printed in a block with a ton of colorless targets. I doubt we will see another artifact focused block before we have another Eldrazi focused block.
I think it will be even less likely with the single set block structure that we will see after the last 2 set block, WotC will have even less space to just put a non-functional card with regards to the set design. Its not like a destroy target colorless creature spell would be nearly as potentially useful as something like Negate which while narrow always has a potential for being useful given that ruffly half of the non-land cards in a set are non-creature spells. You would really need enough targets in a set to even consider designing a card like that.
I only put the cost so high because of the eldrazi's standing in the story, they are intended to be the Lovecraftian extra-dimensional monsters, which makes me think it would be "harder" and hence more expensive to deal with one in such a direct way. Then again maybe the next time we see the Eldrazi will be the last and WotC plans on letting the gatewatch win over them and finish this story line off in which case maybe we get a cycle of "kill" spells in each color that are cheap and target colorless or specifically Eldrazi creature types.
I certainly hope that the next set isn't a slew of more 2-5 costed intentionally OP'ed creatures with no real means of regulating them effectively but that is also a possibility.
I've been with you on the opinion that etron is the best deck for awhile now, even before it was putting up the best results. Numbers are great and extremely important to any unbiased discussion but they rarely tell the whole story, glad to see others looking at the big picture and not getting hung up on a few percentage points here and there.
I agree that E-Tron is a better topic than GDS, but I disagree with the suggestion that it's just "a few percentage points here and there." E-Tron isn't even close to a dominant force as a percentage of the metagame. It might be an influencing (arguably, "warping") force, but banning based on its current performance and prevalence would be just too subjective. The last thing Modern needs is more subjectivity in its ban decisions. If there's a more objective measure of "the big picture," I'm all ears. But the bottom line is that E-Tron doesn't come close to a problematic metagame share, doesn't have a trajectory towards that share, and isn't otherwise hitting on any of the other banlist metrics Wizards has used in the past.
I've been with you on the opinion that etron is the best deck for awhile now, even before it was putting up the best results. Numbers are great and extremely important to any unbiased discussion but they rarely tell the whole story, glad to see others looking at the big picture and not getting hung up on a few percentage points here and there.
I agree that E-Tron is a better topic than GDS, but I disagree with the suggestion that it's just "a few percentage points here and there." E-Tron isn't even close to a dominant force as a percentage of the metagame. It might be an influencing (arguably, "warping") force, but banning based on its current performance and prevalence would be just too subjective. The last thing Modern needs is more subjectivity in its ban decisions. If there's a more objective measure of "the big picture," I'm all ears. But the bottom line is that E-Tron doesn't come close to a problematic metagame share, doesn't have a trajectory towards that share, and isn't otherwise hitting on any of the other banlist metrics Wizards has used in the past.
I don't think either of us were talking about banning or the possibility of banning e tron. It was a meta observation
I think as a whole grixis is a more powerful deck, the thing I'm observing is that modern is less equipped to hate out eldrazi tron. It doesn't really have a huge weakness, land hate is very poor against it, and it has mana deceleration, expensive cantrips through relics and stones, bolt proof beaters, caverns and Seagate wreckage to grind
The deck is more likely to lose to itself than hate. It has difficulty with affinity and scapeshift, but in this current mets I think e tron is less susceptible to hate in a long tournament
DsJ isn't that powerful, it's too all in, delirium is a shaky mechanic to rely on, and the meta stopped being plagued with all in big mana and combo decks, the deck straight up folds to an interactive meta
It's kind of what I think infect would be like right now, inherently powerful but very weak in a lot of metas
I know magic players love to complain, but I find this meta very boring. Will probably sit this one out until January, and then maybe build a new deck.
Let's be real, ceremonious rejection isn't actually a hate card. It's a counterspell that lets you 1 for 1 eldrazi tron sometimes if they don't have cavern or chalice on 1. I'm not saying it's bad against the deck but it's a bit of a stretch calling it a hate card
Let's be real, ceremonious rejection isn't actually a hate card. It's a counterspell that lets you 1 for 1 eldrazi tron sometimes if they don't have cavern or chalice on 1. I'm not saying it's bad against the deck but it's a bit of a stretch calling it a hate card
Thats fair, its not a TRUE hate card (Boil, is a true hate card) but its a strong card against ETron.
I didn't mean to be discussing the deck in regards to bans, that last "we should be hating..." comment was just a snarky comment toward the general nature of magic players and ban hysteria.
The bigger point I was trying to get at is that while certain decks are probably stronger than etron in a vacuum (another of our favorite cliches around here) it doesn't have nearly as much effective hate against it. We've seen triple top 8 GDS, affinity, and counters company, only to see them quickly fall off when people are prepared for them. this is a sign that these decks aren't truly a problem but more so a valid option. The "bigger picture" I was getting at is mostly just a call to step back, view why certain decks spiked a tournament, and see if the answers are available for several strategies or decks to combat it as opposed to getting caught up in immediately demanding bans. In that regard a few meta percentage points for one deck over a short period of time doesn't necessarily reflect on the future of the deck and that was what I was meaning to convey, albeit poorly I will admit.
My concern is that etron is harder to hate with specific deck building and sb considerations compared to these other decks and may lead to people needing to play decks that have a better matchup vs etron, but that they don't actually want to play. Maybe it's nothing, but to me this is the thing to be keeping an eye on over the next few months more than anything.
The proper way to handle it, if it needs to be handled, is to introduce better answers like the land hate we've been discussing in other posts. Not more bans.
Let's be real, ceremonious rejection isn't actually a hate card. It's a counterspell that lets you 1 for 1 eldrazi tron sometimes if they don't have cavern or chalice on 1. I'm not saying it's bad against the deck but it's a bit of a stretch calling it a hate card
Thats fair, its not a TRUE hate card (Boil, is a true hate card) but its a strong card against ETron.
It's only strong because the other options are soo weak. The card is fine against them but it's very narrow and they have multiple ways around it
Let's be real, ceremonious rejection isn't actually a hate card. It's a counterspell that lets you 1 for 1 eldrazi tron sometimes if they don't have cavern or chalice on 1. I'm not saying it's bad against the deck but it's a bit of a stretch calling it a hate card
Thats fair, its not a TRUE hate card (Boil, is a true hate card) but its a strong card against ETron.
It's only strong because the other options are soo weak. The card is fine against them but it's very narrow and they have multiple ways around it
Yep, you wont find disagreement from me, I think without some real land hate, its an uphill battle. Like Spsiegel mentioned (as he goes to the dark side...) its the best 'midrange' deck right now, and midrange is hard to hate out.
To me, it seems that there is not a clear cut best deck anymore.
DSJ was the one supposedly, and it faded away.
Then Grixis Shadow, and the meta kept the deck in check.
Now E-Tron seems like the flavour of the month, but that deck is fine also.
Also, Claim // Fame seems mediocre in GDS and a bad metacall with all that yard hate running around.
Claim//Fame seems a lot better in DS Jund, where you have plenty of juicy recursion targets.
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Level 1 Judge
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Yeah, I haven't liked Claim//Fame at all. It gets hit by the same graveyard hate that everyone brings in against GDS anyway, and becomes a completely dead card. It's just way too situational to be good enough, K Command can at least shock + discard if you don't have anything to regrow with it.
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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
Yeah, I haven't liked Claim//Fame at all. It gets hit by the same graveyard hate that everyone brings in against GDS anyway, and becomes a completely dead card. It's just way too situational to be good enough, K Command can at least shock + discard if you don't have anything to regrow with it.
Interestingly, I just played against an Affinity list with at least two maindeck copies of Claim//Fame. By the time they were online, I had too many cards for them to matter, but I think the card would've been strong on a slightly less controlled board. Returning Overseer and then hasting it is quite strong.
Yeah, I haven't liked Claim//Fame at all. It gets hit by the same graveyard hate that everyone brings in against GDS anyway, and becomes a completely dead card. It's just way too situational to be good enough, K Command can at least shock + discard if you don't have anything to regrow with it.
Interestingly, I just played against an Affinity list with at least two maindeck copies of Claim//Fame. By the time they were online, I had too many cards for them to matter, but I think the card would've been strong on a slightly less controlled board. Returning Overseer and then hasting it is quite strong.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
Interestingly, I just played against an Affinity list with at least two maindeck copies of Claim//Fame. By the time they were online, I had too many cards for them to matter, but I think the card would've been strong on a slightly less controlled board. Returning Overseer and then hasting it is quite strong.
That's pretty interesting, and I can see it working for them because nobody brings in graveyard hate against Affinity. I think the card is good, it's just not good in GDS because it's fighting on the same axis that the deck already fights on.
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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
Yeah, I haven't liked Claim//Fame at all. It gets hit by the same graveyard hate that everyone brings in against GDS anyway, and becomes a completely dead card. It's just way too situational to be good enough, K Command can at least shock + discard if you don't have anything to regrow with it.
Interestingly, I just played against an Affinity list with at least two maindeck copies of Claim//Fame. By the time they were online, I had too many cards for them to matter, but I think the card would've been strong on a slightly less controlled board. Returning Overseer and then hasting it is quite strong.
I think it's still a good pick up in modern despite the poor performance right now. The power is there, just the meta isn't right for it, which is much like the story for Tarmogoyf.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I'm not saying Eldrazi Tron is a problem. A poster asked what would be good cards to be printed in the next set which would be good for the modern metagame, and I said I'd like to see some tribal hate, like engineered plague.
I imagine we will have to wait until we have another Eldrazi focused block, it will happen unless WotC decides to abandon the current story line which still has 2 of the 3 big Eldrazi running around the multiverse. Hopefully they print a useful "destroy target colorless creature" spell but i would be willing to bet that they would cost it at 3-4 mana
Why? Narrow hate cards rarely cost that much. The newest mono-color hate cards are all inexpensive. If the "destroy target colorless creature" is a sorcery, I expect it will cost 1 mana. 2 mana if it's an instant.
Because things printed generally need to have some relation to the set/block it gets printed in. C.Rejection for instance was printed in a block with a ton of colorless targets. I doubt we will see another artifact focused block before we have another Eldrazi focused block.
I think it will be even less likely with the single set block structure that we will see after the last 2 set block, WotC will have even less space to just put a non-functional card with regards to the set design. Its not like a destroy target colorless creature spell would be nearly as potentially useful as something like Negate which while narrow always has a potential for being useful given that ruffly half of the non-land cards in a set are non-creature spells. You would really need enough targets in a set to even consider designing a card like that.
I only put the cost so high because of the eldrazi's standing in the story, they are intended to be the Lovecraftian extra-dimensional monsters, which makes me think it would be "harder" and hence more expensive to deal with one in such a direct way. Then again maybe the next time we see the Eldrazi will be the last and WotC plans on letting the gatewatch win over them and finish this story line off in which case maybe we get a cycle of "kill" spells in each color that are cheap and target colorless or specifically Eldrazi creature types.
I certainly hope that the next set isn't a slew of more 2-5 costed intentionally OP'ed creatures with no real means of regulating them effectively but that is also a possibility.
I wasn't calling for a specific Eldrazi hate card to be printed, I was calling for a generic tribal hate card like:
Fatal Push has changed the face of Modern, and will continue to do so. Dark Confidant, Noble Hierarch and Tarmogoyf are taking the massive hit. I'm surprised Spellskite has not skyrocketed. Might be a good buy right now, people may gravitate to it to protect their pieces.
That last line is extremely interesting to read, given today's context.
"At least with Push spoiled, the groundless calls for a Gitaxian Probe ban have subsided, which may allow the Modern community to unite its voices in decrying The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service. And we have something productive to do while we wait for January 16th"
I know most people here will now say that they cried for Gitaxian Probe to be banned, but before it did get banned, I super rarely ever saw someone be vocal about its banning. I did see some 12% of the community voting for it to be banned by WotC, but it was not even that much higher a percentage than something like Blood Moon or Ensnaring Bridge.
Maybe Gitaxian Probe pushes GDS too much since it is the best Fatal Push deck? But I'm not sure that it needed a ban when it did get hit with one.
I remember making the arguments for BI, because it was the primary means of T4 violations and targets only the decks perceived as a problem (DSZ/Infect), without hitting fair decks like Grixis Delver/Control. Maybe they had data on Bloo too? Dunno. Hard to give them much credit for spotting a deck with no real results yet. But they didn't really cite any data in the announcement anyway, just that they didn't like the "free" information. Either way, I just thought it was interesting to read those very words of someone downplaying "groundless calls for ban" for a card banned just a few days later. I agree that it was fairly groundless. And Wizards banned it anyway.
I'm not saying Eldrazi Tron is a problem. A poster asked what would be good cards to be printed in the next set which would be good for the modern metagame, and I said I'd like to see some tribal hate, like engineered plague.
I imagine we will have to wait until we have another Eldrazi focused block, it will happen unless WotC decides to abandon the current story line which still has 2 of the 3 big Eldrazi running around the multiverse. Hopefully they print a useful "destroy target colorless creature" spell but i would be willing to bet that they would cost it at 3-4 mana
Why? Narrow hate cards rarely cost that much. The newest mono-color hate cards are all inexpensive. If the "destroy target colorless creature" is a sorcery, I expect it will cost 1 mana. 2 mana if it's an instant.
Because things printed generally need to have some relation to the set/block it gets printed in. C.Rejection for instance was printed in a block with a ton of colorless targets. I doubt we will see another artifact focused block before we have another Eldrazi focused block.
I think it will be even less likely with the single set block structure that we will see after the last 2 set block, WotC will have even less space to just put a non-functional card with regards to the set design. Its not like a destroy target colorless creature spell would be nearly as potentially useful as something like Negate which while narrow always has a potential for being useful given that ruffly half of the non-land cards in a set are non-creature spells. You would really need enough targets in a set to even consider designing a card like that.
I only put the cost so high because of the eldrazi's standing in the story, they are intended to be the Lovecraftian extra-dimensional monsters, which makes me think it would be "harder" and hence more expensive to deal with one in such a direct way. Then again maybe the next time we see the Eldrazi will be the last and WotC plans on letting the gatewatch win over them and finish this story line off in which case maybe we get a cycle of "kill" spells in each color that are cheap and target colorless or specifically Eldrazi creature types.
I certainly hope that the next set isn't a slew of more 2-5 costed intentionally OP'ed creatures with no real means of regulating them effectively but that is also a possibility.
I wasn't calling for a specific Eldrazi hate card to be printed, I was calling for a generic tribal hate card like:
Tribal hate makes sense in a set that's about pirates vs. dinosaurs. Plus, it would fit the story if they decide to have dinosaurs go extinct.
oh yeah, I doubt WotC will ever print such strong hate ever again. They certainly don't want to make a tribal set and then produce a hate card that makes the entire theme of the set not good for constructed. They just don't do design the game that way anymore.
Fatal Push has changed the face of Modern, and will continue to do so. Dark Confidant, Noble Hierarch and Tarmogoyf are taking the massive hit. I'm surprised Spellskite has not skyrocketed. Might be a good buy right now, people may gravitate to it to protect their pieces.
That last line is extremely interesting to read, given today's context.
"At least with Push spoiled, the groundless calls for a Gitaxian Probe ban have subsided, which may allow the Modern community to unite its voices in decrying The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service. And we have something productive to do while we wait for January 16th"
I know most people here will now say that they cried for Gitaxian Probe to be banned, but before it did get banned, I super rarely ever saw someone be vocal about its banning. I did see some 12% of the community voting for it to be banned by WotC, but it was not even that much higher a percentage than something like Blood Moon or Ensnaring Bridge.
Maybe Gitaxian Probe pushes GDS too much since it is the best Fatal Push deck? But I'm not sure that it needed a ban when it did get hit with one.
I remember making the arguments for BI, because it was the primary means of T4 violations and targets only the decks perceived as a problem (DSZ/Infect), without hitting fair decks like Grixis Delver/Control. Maybe they had data on Bloo too? Dunno. Hard to give them much credit for spotting a deck with no real results yet. But they didn't really cite any data in the announcement anyway, just that they didn't like the "free" information. Either way, I just thought it was interesting to read those very words of someone downplaying "groundless calls for ban" for a card banned just a few days later. I agree that it was fairly groundless. And Wizards banned it anyway.
Guy who wrote that here, looking to provide some context around the quote.
I was down on the Probe ban when it happened; especially with Push on the horizon, and Dredge the apparent offender in Modern, I was very surprised to see the card banned, and the move came off to me as ham-fisted. I felt that since Dredge was polarizing the format so much, calls for a Probe ban of all things were indeed groundless.
But given the way the format evolved, which included the birthing of an archetype I'm very glad does not have access to Probe (UBx Shadow), I can't fault Wizards too much, and am now happy the card is gone. I hold that Shadow doesn't need a ban now, but if Probe were still around, my opinion would surely be different---and Shadow would almost certainly be pushing 20% metagame shares or worse. I very much like where Modern is at currently, and I think most players agree with me. I mean, look at the gorgeous Top 32 from the Cincinnati Classic!
So basically, I think Wizards demonstrated a good amount of foresight with the Probe ban, foresight I myself didn't have around the time it was banned. They recognized that Probe was a busted card that pushed the format into a direction they did not like, and axed it. A similar thing happened with Twin---somewhere near the end of the deck's dominance, Wizards said to themselves, "we want a format where players can tap out on turn three and aren't absolutely forced to run heavy-duty removal if they can't reliably end games before turn four." They didn't like the constraints Twin put on the format, so they removed it. Looking at the wealth of currently viable strategies in Modern, I think they did a great job there, too.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
The Cincinnati Classic pretty much solidifies no bans in August unless the GP looks atrocious. Only 1 copy of GDS in the entire top 32. I know myself and some other Grixis Shadow players were saying it all along, but the deck was being vastly overrated by people. It's a very good deck, and it's possible that it's the best deck in Modern, but it's not in a league of its own like so many people were making it out to be. The deck folds hard to specific hate, and it looks like the meta is hating it out right now. I haven't even been playing it online lately because the hate was too much, it was a bad meta choice on MTGO.
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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
Oof, SaffronOlive wrote a scathing review of WotC's decision to reduce the release of MTGO data. That's not entirely surprising, since the decision really hurts his website. MTGGoldfish was the go-to place for metagame statistics, but that's over now. I think this paragraph really sums up my feelings on the subject as well:
What Wizards doesn't seem to realize is that releasing all of the decklist data would actually help to save it from a lot of these problems. While it's possible that this wouldn't have worked with Felidar Guardian or Aetherworks Marvel because Wizards decided to not print reasonable answers, in most Standard formats, having the full picture of the format would allow brewers to find weaknesses in the best decks, create new tier archetypes, and keep the metagame fresh and exciting. If, as Wizards claims, the lack of good data on things like win percentages is causing players to (wrongly) gravitate toward certain decks, then releasing matchup data would be a much more logical solution to the problem (rather than reducing and releasing even worse data). Instead of destroying Standard, data has the power to save Standard, if Wizards will let it.
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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'm pleased with results seeing a lot of different decks though, modern is looking wide open.
I'm hoping the GP's coming up say otherwise though, those hold a lot more weight.
The fact is that the deck is extremely efficient and the hate cards for it are not. All the other extremely powerful decks can be meta gamed out with specific hate for it and the argument here was always that sbs were too small to bring hate for everything, I never really thought that an issue, it rewards predicting the meta correctly, but no amount of Sb space can effectively hate out etron with what is currently available. Instead you just pick decks to beat it.
DISCLAIMER: it still isn't a huge problem right now. The meta is great and diverse, but if we have to pick a top dog to hate in this thread it should be etron, not GDS.
Because things printed generally need to have some relation to the set/block it gets printed in. C.Rejection for instance was printed in a block with a ton of colorless targets. I doubt we will see another artifact focused block before we have another Eldrazi focused block.
I think it will be even less likely with the single set block structure that we will see after the last 2 set block, WotC will have even less space to just put a non-functional card with regards to the set design. Its not like a destroy target colorless creature spell would be nearly as potentially useful as something like Negate which while narrow always has a potential for being useful given that ruffly half of the non-land cards in a set are non-creature spells. You would really need enough targets in a set to even consider designing a card like that.
I only put the cost so high because of the eldrazi's standing in the story, they are intended to be the Lovecraftian extra-dimensional monsters, which makes me think it would be "harder" and hence more expensive to deal with one in such a direct way. Then again maybe the next time we see the Eldrazi will be the last and WotC plans on letting the gatewatch win over them and finish this story line off in which case maybe we get a cycle of "kill" spells in each color that are cheap and target colorless or specifically Eldrazi creature types.
I certainly hope that the next set isn't a slew of more 2-5 costed intentionally OP'ed creatures with no real means of regulating them effectively but that is also a possibility.
I agree that E-Tron is a better topic than GDS, but I disagree with the suggestion that it's just "a few percentage points here and there." E-Tron isn't even close to a dominant force as a percentage of the metagame. It might be an influencing (arguably, "warping") force, but banning based on its current performance and prevalence would be just too subjective. The last thing Modern needs is more subjectivity in its ban decisions. If there's a more objective measure of "the big picture," I'm all ears. But the bottom line is that E-Tron doesn't come close to a problematic metagame share, doesn't have a trajectory towards that share, and isn't otherwise hitting on any of the other banlist metrics Wizards has used in the past.
I don't think either of us were talking about banning or the possibility of banning e tron. It was a meta observation
I think as a whole grixis is a more powerful deck, the thing I'm observing is that modern is less equipped to hate out eldrazi tron. It doesn't really have a huge weakness, land hate is very poor against it, and it has mana deceleration, expensive cantrips through relics and stones, bolt proof beaters, caverns and Seagate wreckage to grind
The deck is more likely to lose to itself than hate. It has difficulty with affinity and scapeshift, but in this current mets I think e tron is less susceptible to hate in a long tournament
DsJ isn't that powerful, it's too all in, delirium is a shaky mechanic to rely on, and the meta stopped being plagued with all in big mana and combo decks, the deck straight up folds to an interactive meta
It's kind of what I think infect would be like right now, inherently powerful but very weak in a lot of metas
Thats fair, its not a TRUE hate card (Boil, is a true hate card) but its a strong card against ETron.
Spirits
The bigger point I was trying to get at is that while certain decks are probably stronger than etron in a vacuum (another of our favorite cliches around here) it doesn't have nearly as much effective hate against it. We've seen triple top 8 GDS, affinity, and counters company, only to see them quickly fall off when people are prepared for them. this is a sign that these decks aren't truly a problem but more so a valid option. The "bigger picture" I was getting at is mostly just a call to step back, view why certain decks spiked a tournament, and see if the answers are available for several strategies or decks to combat it as opposed to getting caught up in immediately demanding bans. In that regard a few meta percentage points for one deck over a short period of time doesn't necessarily reflect on the future of the deck and that was what I was meaning to convey, albeit poorly I will admit.
My concern is that etron is harder to hate with specific deck building and sb considerations compared to these other decks and may lead to people needing to play decks that have a better matchup vs etron, but that they don't actually want to play. Maybe it's nothing, but to me this is the thing to be keeping an eye on over the next few months more than anything.
The proper way to handle it, if it needs to be handled, is to introduce better answers like the land hate we've been discussing in other posts. Not more bans.
It's only strong because the other options are soo weak. The card is fine against them but it's very narrow and they have multiple ways around it
Yep, you wont find disagreement from me, I think without some real land hate, its an uphill battle. Like Spsiegel mentioned (as he goes to the dark side...) its the best 'midrange' deck right now, and midrange is hard to hate out.
Spirits
Claim//Fame seems a lot better in DS Jund, where you have plenty of juicy recursion targets.
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
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
Interestingly, I just played against an Affinity list with at least two maindeck copies of Claim//Fame. By the time they were online, I had too many cards for them to matter, but I think the card would've been strong on a slightly less controlled board. Returning Overseer and then hasting it is quite strong.
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
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 think it's still a good pick up in modern despite the poor performance right now. The power is there, just the meta isn't right for it, which is much like the story for Tarmogoyf.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I wasn't calling for a specific Eldrazi hate card to be printed, I was calling for a generic tribal hate card like:
Tribal hate makes sense in a set that's about pirates vs. dinosaurs. Plus, it would fit the story if they decide to have dinosaurs go extinct.
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
Looking back at the old poll, Gitaxian Probe did receive a decent amount of votes (16.6%), but it was a fair bit less than Become Immense (26.4%) for being a solid consensus. By comparison, the highest option was no bans (30.6%) followed by Become Immense, and then Golgari Grave-Troll (21.1%). But I mean, we also saw 52% for unbanning Preordain, 44% for unbanning Stoneforge Mystic, 38% for unbanning Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and 31% each for unbanning Splinter Twin and Bloodbraid Elf. So what do we know, right?
I remember making the arguments for BI, because it was the primary means of T4 violations and targets only the decks perceived as a problem (DSZ/Infect), without hitting fair decks like Grixis Delver/Control. Maybe they had data on Bloo too? Dunno. Hard to give them much credit for spotting a deck with no real results yet. But they didn't really cite any data in the announcement anyway, just that they didn't like the "free" information. Either way, I just thought it was interesting to read those very words of someone downplaying "groundless calls for ban" for a card banned just a few days later. I agree that it was fairly groundless. And Wizards banned it anyway.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
oh yeah, I doubt WotC will ever print such strong hate ever again. They certainly don't want to make a tribal set and then produce a hate card that makes the entire theme of the set not good for constructed. They just don't do design the game that way anymore.
I was down on the Probe ban when it happened; especially with Push on the horizon, and Dredge the apparent offender in Modern, I was very surprised to see the card banned, and the move came off to me as ham-fisted. I felt that since Dredge was polarizing the format so much, calls for a Probe ban of all things were indeed groundless.
But given the way the format evolved, which included the birthing of an archetype I'm very glad does not have access to Probe (UBx Shadow), I can't fault Wizards too much, and am now happy the card is gone. I hold that Shadow doesn't need a ban now, but if Probe were still around, my opinion would surely be different---and Shadow would almost certainly be pushing 20% metagame shares or worse. I very much like where Modern is at currently, and I think most players agree with me. I mean, look at the gorgeous Top 32 from the Cincinnati Classic!
So basically, I think Wizards demonstrated a good amount of foresight with the Probe ban, foresight I myself didn't have around the time it was banned. They recognized that Probe was a busted card that pushed the format into a direction they did not like, and axed it. A similar thing happened with Twin---somewhere near the end of the deck's dominance, Wizards said to themselves, "we want a format where players can tap out on turn three and aren't absolutely forced to run heavy-duty removal if they can't reliably end games before turn four." They didn't like the constraints Twin put on the format, so they removed it. Looking at the wealth of currently viable strategies in Modern, I think they did a great job there, too.
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
The Cincinnati Classic pretty much solidifies no bans in August unless the GP looks atrocious. Only 1 copy of GDS in the entire top 32. I know myself and some other Grixis Shadow players were saying it all along, but the deck was being vastly overrated by people. It's a very good deck, and it's possible that it's the best deck in Modern, but it's not in a league of its own like so many people were making it out to be. The deck folds hard to specific hate, and it looks like the meta is hating it out right now. I haven't even been playing it online lately because the hate was too much, it was a bad meta choice on MTGO.
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
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
Also, given the image he included in the article, I really think that WotC should probably discourage its staff from using Twitter...