The issue with banning cards like Ensnaring Bridge is where do you draw the line. Bridge and Blood Moon people point at as obvious ones. But Choke and Boil can be even more brutal because they are one sided. Then what about Grafdiggers Cage or Rest in Peace which hose decks. Hate cards exist and part of Modern's appeal should be that you have to know about and plan for these cards.
I wanted to focus more on SSG, and how it powers out cards way too early. And it almost always powers out cards that shouldnt be played that early (or at least weren't meant to be). And SSG cannot be responded to in anyway that would stop it (I mean, I guess Stifle (not in Modern) and Disallow are a thing)
If SSG was "R: add RR" to your mana pool, it would be fairer (still over-powered) than "Exile this card, add R to your mana pool".
I skimmed through it and see no convincing argument for even a sideways glance at Ensnaring Brige, let alone a ban.
SSG is a very good card, that could be problematic in the right environment but isn't at the moment.
Exactly, we agreed that EB wasn't really ban worthy, though a game stopper once resolved game 1 especially (basically a free win game 1 most of the time). Starting a match 1-0 is a good leg up, dont you think?
SSG allows for degenerate plays, but I agreed I cannot agree with an all out ban right now (though I wouldn't fight back if it got the axe).
Simian Spirit Guide and Ensnaring Brige are a problem how?
Particularly Ensnaring bridge. It dies to literally every sideboard artifact destruction card.
Please read the mini discussion that stemmed from that response. Thanks!
I skimmed through it and see no convincing argument for even a sideways glance at Ensnaring Brige, let alone a ban.
SSG is a very good card, that could be problematic in the right environment but isn't at the moment. Maybe not play a manabase that is shredded by BM? In fact BM is perhaps one of the good antidotes to super greedy manabases that enable easy cherrypicking of the best cards in the format and goodstuff.dec.
I play Blood Moon. I love it. And I agree it is a good check card. Im talking about resolving it too early. Same goes for Chalice.
I'm alarmed, but not particularly surprised, that most of the conversation focuses on so much rehashed speculation and not new information. In addition to the B&R update content, Forsythe published a few relevant Tweets in the past few days. Modern-related gems include:
So much to discuss here! And so much better to speculate about actual statements from the R&D man himself, rather than speculate on the same old tired speculations we've been speculating on for years. I believe some users mentioned these quotes, but the conversation would really be elevated if more people stayed in dialogue with interesting statements like these and the actual content of the B&R update.
I have never been a Twit before, but yesterday I was and saw those quotes. I didn't really think they were noteworthy - although I guess since it's from the source they should be noted.
From the first quote, it sounds like they are considering if the pre - PT ban announcement date still makes sense without a modern PT. Could see the timing shifted as if that matters to the modern community at all. The timing is not relevant to me - only what they do once the date arrives.
The second quote sounds like standard PR platitudes, didn't find it noteworthy.
The third quote is just pointing out the obvious reasons why Gitaxian probe is a superior free cantrip to the others mentioned. Not noteworthy.
The fourth quote is noteworthy insofar as Mr.Foresythe points out that the cost of bannings is both feared and perhaps more empirically supported than the public is able to see.
And finally, the fifth simply goes back to the first one where they are deciding if they even need the pre-PT banning window if they are going to accept "new set might shake up the format" as a reason to avoid a ban that would otherwise be desirable.
Overall, I didn't really find much new information there - but maybe I'm not reading enough into it?
What points of discussion did you find interesting?
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
That alone(being the best deck of the format for years) is not necessarily enough to move to ban a card from the deck
Is this really the case for Wizards? Or they will just move in for the ban to not have a semi-stale format just for the sake of not having a semi-stale format? Because, they got me, and many other users, confused. A LOT.
not necessarily enough to move to ban
not necessarily
The answer is fairly nebulous, and is basically "maybe". Fairly typical PR dodge.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
That alone(being the best deck of the format for years) is not necessarily enough to move to ban a card from the deck
Is this really the case for Wizards? Or they will just move in for the ban to not have a semi-stale format just for the sake of not having a semi-stale format? Because, they got me, and many other users, confused. A LOT.
not necessarily enough to move to ban
not necessarily
The answer is fairly nebulous, and is basically "maybe". Fairly typical PR dodge.
Oh for Pete's sake. It's not a PR dodge. It's an "I can't see the future" dodge. They need to keep things fairly fluid/general/vague so they don't back themselves into a corner in the future. Of course everybody always wants more clarity and transparency and data, but that's not always possible - and for very good reasons. I'd much rather have what we do now than a WOTC who can't act, or is forced to act too much, because they opened their mouth 3 years ago when they shouldn't have. That's how that ridiculous Reserved List came about.
ok, so you should babn all the rituals, and all the mana dorks, cause they can power up blood moon and chalice faster than normal. Look at rg ponza. Turn 1 utopia sprawl, turn 2 blood moon, or, on the same deck, you can change the utopia with birds of paradise, or arbor elf
Or in storm, turn 2 ritual into blood moon
This kind of thinking is just so empty of real analysis...
Can you respond to Mana dorks, sprawl, and other ramp spells? The easy answer is, yes. You cannot respond to SSG in any meaningful way.
This kind of response is just so empty of critical thinking.
you can respond to blood moon, or play more basics...
If people would stop making false statements, as if they ever really played the deck, there wouldnt be the back and forth we often see. Thankfully at least one of the users doing it was banned.
If its broken, but not seeing all the play in the world, does it need a ban?
Thats an open question really. To me, no, I dont care if something is the 'best deck' if it can be played around, unless it takes over the meta like Eldrazi did.
I don't care about twin. I thought it was annoying to play against but not that great and that the reason for removing it didn't pan out as expected. I don't care if it comes back or not.
On the twitter quotes, I agree with gkourou and wpgstevo. If they print some undercosted BR fatty that has life loss as a cost and shadow decks go to 18% I would fully expect them to reexamine bauble, and frankly I think it was dumb of him to come out and say as much as he did. if he does go back and ban it under some other pretense such as deck thinning and delirium he is still in the clear from this statement, but people are going to bring it up anyway.
I keep getting told that I am too harsh on R&D but they have said on many occasions that they don't think about the format. They haven't considered it in the ban discussions, they don't playtest for it, they don't consider new cards before they go into the format...
I would've much preferred a "With the introduction of khans of tarkir, we will be preemptively banning treasure cruise from modern. With testing it showed to favor fast delver strategies and decks that preyed on them. We will be monitoring dig through time to see its potential impact on the format."
Why would you not consider modern? Even if they didn't consider the cards being printed for modern it would still be a good idea to give R&D a heads up that new cards could interact in specific ways with other effects. If they had two modern testers looking at new cards coming out then copy cat would not be a standard deck right now. They should've had a list "If ___ then ____" checks for every effect, it was so clear that with felidar guardian you check every permanent that doesn't have summoning sickness, including planeswalkers.If/when they want a new format (not to take this down that path) it would be nice to have a list of these things compiled
The fact that they let that slip through into the format that they DO test just shows how little of a clue what they are doing. It's easy to sit down here from my pleb stool saying how easy it is to run a company, but I know I would at least want a functioning company with components talking to each other. They could've prevented the unban/ban GGT incident and we may or may not still have twin. As he alluded to, the cost of banning is real, is it more than hiring a few testers to smooth out your product?
They are like NFL coaches, nothing they say can be taken at face value. They have a gameplan to hide, or a lack of one. I don't necessarily expect them to catch every lantern deck or grishoalbrand but some things are pretty obvious and I don't see why it is so much to ask for some data driven dialogue on their part. They throw some crap out there like comdemn is a thing or Temur dynavolt is gonna own! but I want to see some numbers, "here are some statistics showing why we think card x is fine or not, and we encourage the community to expand upon these results." Data sets are good. Big ones are better. Why they wouldn't want to get the jump on that on their own product is beyond me.
If they want to claim modern then claim it, but you don't see cars being advertised without being tested.
If its broken, but not seeing all the play in the world, does it need a ban?
Thats an open question really. To me, no, I dont care if something is the 'best deck' if it can be played around, unless it takes over the meta like Eldrazi did.
Every format will always have a "best deck" or at least 2 or 3 competing for that title. What they just did in Vintage, for example, baffles me. They said Shops preys on Mentor so we're going to nerf Mentor. Umm, what?!?
Tangent aside, there will always be best decks but the gap between best and second best needs to be contained. We've seen with multiple bans what kind of gap is too large - Eldrazi, Storm, Jund, even Twin (though there were other, clearer justifications for that one). DS Jund must not be so far ahead of the second best deck right now for them to act, and I'm glad about that - I like the current meta a lot.
On the bauble/wraith comment, that pretty much says that shadow itself is gone if they need to hurt the deck, right? Mardu and esper don't need traverse and I don't think anyone here actually wants a thoughtseize ban.
As for the tweets, it's nice to see more engagement on these topics. I would like AF to write more about the timing of bans. Maybe when/if they change the timing.
They work hard...on Standard. Which despite their efforts has gone from bad to worse since the high of Khan's.
That's the reality.
So good on them for trying, but it's irrelevant to Modern, until Development changes their approach, Standard will continue to flounder, and we will continue to wait.
I don't care if they are trying for Standard. I don't play it, I hate it actually.
As for the tweets, it's nice to see more engagement on these topics. I would like AF to write more about the timing of bans. Maybe when/if they change the timing.
I don't think a lot of the vitriol comes from them missing the combo and other mistakes but rather failing to react and take decisive action. The give things time to boil and then whatever they do is not good enough. The typical scenarios are described here, by Zvi: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/pro-tour-copycat/
Yeah, people aren't complaining about how WOTC missed Copy Cat, they're complaining about how WOTC introduced extra ban announcements in order to specifically deal with problems exactly like this, and TWO ban announcements came and went with "No Changes" while 70% of Standard remains Saheeli and Vehicles.
We get that problems can happen. What's upsetting is they're doing nothing of value about those problems, and instead make bans in formats few people actually play and have essentially no support anyway. Nevermind the strange decisions FOR those formats, with people scratching their heads over the specifics behind the decisions.
The point is the two formats that could benefit most from bans and unbans are ignored while two formats nobody plays get hit with huge meta-altering bans. As I said earlier, it is fascinating where their priorities lie.
I think I'm going to make an experiment. I didn't want to do it but to be honest, a change wouldn't be bad after some lackluster results as of late. So I'm going to start playing DS Jund and tracking all the results. I will post them here. I will be 100% honest, meaning if I get worse results than I expected they will get posted anyway.
We'll see what I get over time, I will also have to learn to play the deck a bit.
Yaasssssss! Are you streaming tonight? Everybody else has been streaming limited...
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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
Assuming 40 5-0s done a day and 50% average winrate (probably not a good assumption since the people 5-0ing have higher winrate than 50%)
Someone with 50% has a chance of 5-0ing that is 0.5^5 = 1/32.
40 trophies/day * 32 leagues/trophy = 1280 leagues/day = 6400 matches/day = 192000 matches/month
I can tell you that 1.4 million matches are played each month from how much match IDs have increased since January 1st 2016. I think it's reasonable to assume at least 10% are modern which would be 140k/month, which is comparable to the earlier number.
About the "active players" I would say the average MTGO player plays like 50 matches/month. 1.4million matches / 50 matches/player = 28k players. If you look at league attendance it seems like a reasonable number, probably a bit high actually. But when you look at player numbers of other comparable games the number is abysmal. Paper Magic has a thousand times as many players, that means only 0.1% of paper players play MTGO! Other big online games like HS, Dota, Lol have comparable player numbers to Paper Magic, so again a thousand times more than MTGO.
EDIT: But yes, it's very low volume. And that's the reason using those metagame shares is worthless because they can change dramatically by the actions of even individual people. I put UR Prowess at 2% of the "metagame", meaning Tier 2, once, singlehandedly. Literally, 2% of the "Modern metagame" was me. Which obviously doesn't make any sense.
Well, in all fairness, you are the h0lydiva. WotC has already had to nerf you twice so far this year
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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
On the bauble/wraith comment, that pretty much says that shadow itself is gone if they need to hurt the deck, right? Mardu and esper don't need traverse and I don't think anyone here actually wants a thoughtseize ban.
I've been playing Mardu DS for about 3.5 weeks now. Granted, I only play in local paper events, but my list is pretty busted. I played Pod (really well too), I played Twin (...less well), I played Jund. I'm very familiar with what good decks feel like, and this is that. Whether others believe me or not is really only secondary at this point. The cantrips don't make DS deadly, from my experience they actually make the deck worse. The only things you can ban to actually reign in it's power are fetchlands, shocklands, or DS itself.
If the meta can't recalibrate by the next ban update, I'm 100% behind a DS ban.
My main concern is what a post DS world looks like. Jund probably comes back then, with the power of 10+ discard spells fresh in everyones minds. The underlaying unfun aspects of the format will remain in place.
Edit: If a ban isn't acceptable, a SFM unban would do a lot to reign in DS. The deck has legitimate issues with Batterskull, and both Sword of Light and Shadow and Sword of Feast and Famine are quite strong against them too. And, those are cards that DS itself can't run due to the lifegain components.
Alright. The 40 5-0s a day correspond to the highest points of the season in terms of traffic though. I've personally counted around 15 many times when I looked at it, I guess at times where people were playing less Modern.
Or it could also be that back when I was counting that stuff people just didn't want to play Modern at all. Keep in mind, while it was a shorter season, that the first season that had trophies implemented, I ended that season 1st in the leaderboard with I think 8 trophies. Where in this last one 8 trophies didn't even have you beak top30 I think, and the people at the top were close to 30 trophies.
Maybe people have just been playing A LOT more Modern as of late.
For what it's worth, I remember back in January there were about 23 trophies a day. If you say it goes from 15 to 40, we could assume the average day we get 25 online trophies, so 750 total for a 30-day month. If n=300, with 95% confidence, the sample error is roughly 4.4%. If you use 1200 instead of 750, it would be 4.9%. I think that's how it works
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Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
This resonates with me. I have a strong suspicion that they lose more people banning than just leaving a format broken most of the time. My assumption is that there needs to be conclusive evidence that people are completely withdrawing from the format before they'll make moves. (Note: I think this applies to standard not modern or legacy where we are more accustomed to bannings). It may be one of those situations where ignoring the problem is actually better most of the time than addressing it head on.
There's so much friction in bannings - people have to switch decks, their cards lose value, their belief in the format plummets, etc. I get why they use it as measure of last resort, and why they are so reluctant to do anything about copy cat given the recent bans. They probably look at Modern and see it as a proverbial paradise by comparison. Sure there's color imbalance and archetype imbalance, but it's not even close to a one or two deck format.
I can only imagine that internally there's a pretty significant upheaval as they try to figure out what they did wrong for standard to get this bad.
Yeah, maybe they are more interested in discussing stuff more related to the Modern format here, like cards that have been banned a year and a half ago. Thanks, I will post it where I want to post it and then we'll see.
People that play the deck don't need to know my winrates, or anyone's. They already know it's busted. The ones that desperately need to know the winrates are the ones that believe that because 3 fewer lists of some deck were randomly chosen to be posted in the random selection of 70 lists last week among the 250-300 lists that actually 5-0ed, that says anything at all about anything even vaguely related to deck strenght.
Is there any chance you can make your posts less aggressively hostile?
People disagree with you. They are using evidence gathered from what we have available. You are not omniscient. They aren't either. It is difficult to have a discussion when you are so dismissive of other people's argument by constant appeals to authority and evidence no one has access to. Warning for Flaming~ lantern
This resonates with me. I have a strong suspicion that they lose more people banning than just leaving a format broken most of the time. My assumption is that there needs to be conclusive evidence that people are completely withdrawing from the format before they'll make moves. (Note: I think this applies to standard not modern or legacy where we are more accustomed to bannings). It may be one of those situations where ignoring the problem is actually better most of the time than addressing it head on.
There's so much friction in bannings - people have to switch decks, their cards lose value, their belief in the format plummets, etc. I get why they use it as measure of last resort, and why they are so reluctant to do anything about copy cat given the recent bans. They probably look at Modern and see it as a proverbial paradise by comparison. Sure there's color imbalance and archetype imbalance, but it's not even close to a one or two deck format.
I can only imagine that internally there's a pretty significant upheaval as they try to figure out what they did wrong for standard to get this bad.
But Modern is also a format in which fear of bannings is a daily conversation. "What will be banned next?" is the kind of question that comes up more often than not, because the format is governed by bans. The best decks have been systematically removed from the format time and time again. While Death's Shadow hasn't been banned yet, it's one strong GP weekend away from joining the other decks that don't belong in exile. We can talk about format health all day, but Modern is the most ban-happy format in existence, and I think it thrives DESPITE banmania, not because of it. However, like you said, bans hurt and they hurt a lot. Especially when bans are made on shaky grounds with little supporting justifications, or they don't match with any previous decision, or are generally met with more confusion than praise. But sometimes bans are met with a collective agreement and, for the most part, received positively (like Summer Bloom and Eye of Ugin). I'm sure many people fully expected to see Saheeli banned, and their lack of banning in this ridiculously toxic Standard is just as equally perplexing as their lack of any action in Modern (bans OR unbans).
Some anecdotal numbers from stuff I've read in Twitter. Someone saying STD only has about 100 people signed up in the league.
It's very relevant. See, at this time, start of every season, Modern tends to be quite dead online because most people are busy playing Standard and Limited with the new cards.
And generally speaking, STD leagues tend to have twice or 3 times as many people signed up than MDN leagues.
Well, right now, at the very beginning of a new set, MDN has about 250 people, STD has about 100. Food for thought, seems to imply either people are REALLY disinterested about this STD, or people are quite happy about this MDN, or, most likely, both.
TBH, I think it's both too. And for the same reasons.
Standard feels like a solved format with little to no room for playing a preferred strategy, unless it happens to be saheeli combo or mardu vehicles. Modern on the other hand, even with the results of DS, feels open...like any deck could potentially give a surprise. I imagine that the reaction people is having towards this meta is due to that, and just the prospect of checking out if my pet deck or favorite archetype has a chance of dealing with the dominant strategy is entertaining.
I think I'm going to make an experiment. I didn't want to do it but to be honest, a change wouldn't be bad after some lackluster results as of late. So I'm going to start playing DS Jund and tracking all the results. I will post them here. I will be 100% honest, meaning if I get worse results than I expected they will get posted anyway.
We'll see what I get over time, I will also have to learn to play the deck a bit.
Looking forward to this. Also, what do you have against Living End? It's great!
I wanted to focus more on SSG, and how it powers out cards way too early. And it almost always powers out cards that shouldnt be played that early (or at least weren't meant to be). And SSG cannot be responded to in anyway that would stop it (I mean, I guess Stifle (not in Modern) and Disallow are a thing)
If SSG was "R: add RR" to your mana pool, it would be fairer (still over-powered) than "Exile this card, add R to your mana pool".
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
Exactly, we agreed that EB wasn't really ban worthy, though a game stopper once resolved game 1 especially (basically a free win game 1 most of the time). Starting a match 1-0 is a good leg up, dont you think?
SSG allows for degenerate plays, but I agreed I cannot agree with an all out ban right now (though I wouldn't fight back if it got the axe).
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
I play Blood Moon. I love it. And I agree it is a good check card. Im talking about resolving it too early. Same goes for Chalice.
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
YUP!
RUG Temur Deprive Delver
BUG Sultai Deprive Delver
From the first quote, it sounds like they are considering if the pre - PT ban announcement date still makes sense without a modern PT. Could see the timing shifted as if that matters to the modern community at all. The timing is not relevant to me - only what they do once the date arrives.
The second quote sounds like standard PR platitudes, didn't find it noteworthy.
The third quote is just pointing out the obvious reasons why Gitaxian probe is a superior free cantrip to the others mentioned. Not noteworthy.
The fourth quote is noteworthy insofar as Mr.Foresythe points out that the cost of bannings is both feared and perhaps more empirically supported than the public is able to see.
And finally, the fifth simply goes back to the first one where they are deciding if they even need the pre-PT banning window if they are going to accept "new set might shake up the format" as a reason to avoid a ban that would otherwise be desirable.
Overall, I didn't really find much new information there - but maybe I'm not reading enough into it?
What points of discussion did you find interesting?
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
you can respond to blood moon, or play more basics...
Spirits
Thats an open question really. To me, no, I dont care if something is the 'best deck' if it can be played around, unless it takes over the meta like Eldrazi did.
Spirits
On the twitter quotes, I agree with gkourou and wpgstevo. If they print some undercosted BR fatty that has life loss as a cost and shadow decks go to 18% I would fully expect them to reexamine bauble, and frankly I think it was dumb of him to come out and say as much as he did. if he does go back and ban it under some other pretense such as deck thinning and delirium he is still in the clear from this statement, but people are going to bring it up anyway.
I keep getting told that I am too harsh on R&D but they have said on many occasions that they don't think about the format. They haven't considered it in the ban discussions, they don't playtest for it, they don't consider new cards before they go into the format...
I would've much preferred a "With the introduction of khans of tarkir, we will be preemptively banning treasure cruise from modern. With testing it showed to favor fast delver strategies and decks that preyed on them. We will be monitoring dig through time to see its potential impact on the format."
Why would you not consider modern? Even if they didn't consider the cards being printed for modern it would still be a good idea to give R&D a heads up that new cards could interact in specific ways with other effects. If they had two modern testers looking at new cards coming out then copy cat would not be a standard deck right now. They should've had a list "If ___ then ____" checks for every effect, it was so clear that with felidar guardian you check every permanent that doesn't have summoning sickness, including planeswalkers.If/when they want a new format (not to take this down that path) it would be nice to have a list of these things compiled
The fact that they let that slip through into the format that they DO test just shows how little of a clue what they are doing. It's easy to sit down here from my pleb stool saying how easy it is to run a company, but I know I would at least want a functioning company with components talking to each other. They could've prevented the unban/ban GGT incident and we may or may not still have twin. As he alluded to, the cost of banning is real, is it more than hiring a few testers to smooth out your product?
They are like NFL coaches, nothing they say can be taken at face value. They have a gameplan to hide, or a lack of one. I don't necessarily expect them to catch every lantern deck or grishoalbrand but some things are pretty obvious and I don't see why it is so much to ask for some data driven dialogue on their part. They throw some crap out there like comdemn is a thing or Temur dynavolt is gonna own! but I want to see some numbers, "here are some statistics showing why we think card x is fine or not, and we encourage the community to expand upon these results." Data sets are good. Big ones are better. Why they wouldn't want to get the jump on that on their own product is beyond me.
If they want to claim modern then claim it, but you don't see cars being advertised without being tested.
EDIT: they also could've seen eldrazi winter
Tangent aside, there will always be best decks but the gap between best and second best needs to be contained. We've seen with multiple bans what kind of gap is too large - Eldrazi, Storm, Jund, even Twin (though there were other, clearer justifications for that one). DS Jund must not be so far ahead of the second best deck right now for them to act, and I'm glad about that - I like the current meta a lot.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
They work hard...on Standard. Which despite their efforts has gone from bad to worse since the high of Khan's.
That's the reality.
So good on them for trying, but it's irrelevant to Modern, until Development changes their approach, Standard will continue to flounder, and we will continue to wait.
I don't care if they are trying for Standard. I don't play it, I hate it actually.
Spirits
Yeah, people aren't complaining about how WOTC missed Copy Cat, they're complaining about how WOTC introduced extra ban announcements in order to specifically deal with problems exactly like this, and TWO ban announcements came and went with "No Changes" while 70% of Standard remains Saheeli and Vehicles.
We get that problems can happen. What's upsetting is they're doing nothing of value about those problems, and instead make bans in formats few people actually play and have essentially no support anyway. Nevermind the strange decisions FOR those formats, with people scratching their heads over the specifics behind the decisions.
The point is the two formats that could benefit most from bans and unbans are ignored while two formats nobody plays get hit with huge meta-altering bans. As I said earlier, it is fascinating where their priorities lie.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Yaasssssss! Are you streaming tonight? Everybody else has been streaming limited...
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
Someone with 50% has a chance of 5-0ing that is 0.5^5 = 1/32.
40 trophies/day * 32 leagues/trophy = 1280 leagues/day = 6400 matches/day = 192000 matches/month
I can tell you that 1.4 million matches are played each month from how much match IDs have increased since January 1st 2016. I think it's reasonable to assume at least 10% are modern which would be 140k/month, which is comparable to the earlier number.
About the "active players" I would say the average MTGO player plays like 50 matches/month. 1.4million matches / 50 matches/player = 28k players. If you look at league attendance it seems like a reasonable number, probably a bit high actually. But when you look at player numbers of other comparable games the number is abysmal. Paper Magic has a thousand times as many players, that means only 0.1% of paper players play MTGO! Other big online games like HS, Dota, Lol have comparable player numbers to Paper Magic, so again a thousand times more than MTGO.
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Well, in all fairness, you are the h0lydiva. WotC has already had to nerf you twice so far this year
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've been playing Mardu DS for about 3.5 weeks now. Granted, I only play in local paper events, but my list is pretty busted. I played Pod (really well too), I played Twin (...less well), I played Jund. I'm very familiar with what good decks feel like, and this is that. Whether others believe me or not is really only secondary at this point. The cantrips don't make DS deadly, from my experience they actually make the deck worse. The only things you can ban to actually reign in it's power are fetchlands, shocklands, or DS itself.
If the meta can't recalibrate by the next ban update, I'm 100% behind a DS ban.
My main concern is what a post DS world looks like. Jund probably comes back then, with the power of 10+ discard spells fresh in everyones minds. The underlaying unfun aspects of the format will remain in place.
Edit: If a ban isn't acceptable, a SFM unban would do a lot to reign in DS. The deck has legitimate issues with Batterskull, and both Sword of Light and Shadow and Sword of Feast and Famine are quite strong against them too. And, those are cards that DS itself can't run due to the lifegain components.
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
"There is no symbolism here. The impact of banning cards, especially repeatedly, is real and costly."
This resonates with me. I have a strong suspicion that they lose more people banning than just leaving a format broken most of the time. My assumption is that there needs to be conclusive evidence that people are completely withdrawing from the format before they'll make moves. (Note: I think this applies to standard not modern or legacy where we are more accustomed to bannings). It may be one of those situations where ignoring the problem is actually better most of the time than addressing it head on.
There's so much friction in bannings - people have to switch decks, their cards lose value, their belief in the format plummets, etc. I get why they use it as measure of last resort, and why they are so reluctant to do anything about copy cat given the recent bans. They probably look at Modern and see it as a proverbial paradise by comparison. Sure there's color imbalance and archetype imbalance, but it's not even close to a one or two deck format.
I can only imagine that internally there's a pretty significant upheaval as they try to figure out what they did wrong for standard to get this bad.
Is there any chance you can make your posts less aggressively hostile?
People disagree with you. They are using evidence gathered from what we have available. You are not omniscient. They aren't either. It is difficult to have a discussion when you are so dismissive of other people's argument by constant appeals to authority and evidence no one has access to.
Warning for Flaming~ lantern
But Modern is also a format in which fear of bannings is a daily conversation. "What will be banned next?" is the kind of question that comes up more often than not, because the format is governed by bans. The best decks have been systematically removed from the format time and time again. While Death's Shadow hasn't been banned yet, it's one strong GP weekend away from joining the other decks that don't belong in exile. We can talk about format health all day, but Modern is the most ban-happy format in existence, and I think it thrives DESPITE banmania, not because of it. However, like you said, bans hurt and they hurt a lot. Especially when bans are made on shaky grounds with little supporting justifications, or they don't match with any previous decision, or are generally met with more confusion than praise. But sometimes bans are met with a collective agreement and, for the most part, received positively (like Summer Bloom and Eye of Ugin). I'm sure many people fully expected to see Saheeli banned, and their lack of banning in this ridiculously toxic Standard is just as equally perplexing as their lack of any action in Modern (bans OR unbans).
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
TBH, I think it's both too. And for the same reasons.
Standard feels like a solved format with little to no room for playing a preferred strategy, unless it happens to be saheeli combo or mardu vehicles. Modern on the other hand, even with the results of DS, feels open...like any deck could potentially give a surprise. I imagine that the reaction people is having towards this meta is due to that, and just the prospect of checking out if my pet deck or favorite archetype has a chance of dealing with the dominant strategy is entertaining.
Looking forward to this. Also, what do you have against Living End? It's great!