My point wasn't that FoF was too strong, but rather that it and CoCo are on par with each other and do two very different things (one being hand advantage, the other being battlefield advantage).
So it looks like Burn, UR Storm, and Knighfall take the big tournaments this weekend. Didn't see that coming. People still think GDS and E-Tron are oppressive?
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WoTC, thank you for finally announcing the Modern format, an eternal format where everyone can participate.
With two BGx decks in the GP Birmingham T8 and BOTH straight BG Rock and Abzan making it into the T4, I'm not seeing a BBE unban in the future. We know that Wizards views the BGx decks as relatively intechangeable (see their language in the DRS ban), and we know they prefer diversity. Unbanning BBE to shift all the BGx players to Jund doesn't seem like something they are interested in, especially with two BGx decks in a GP T4.
As I said on an earlier page, my guess is that BGx is more viable than many people think. Maybe not Jund as a subset of BGx, but the general BGx core seems better than many give it credit.
This is also why I'm not optimistic about an SFM unban. We have stuff like D&T winning an earlier GP, we have Abzan and Bant Knightfall doing well this weekend, and we have UW Control doing well on MTGO. None of this makes me optimistic that Wizards wants to unban the white card.
Unfortunately, I think you're right about BBE
But hasn't GBx's results been poor since December, can we really say BBE is off the table because of a single GP tournament?
Idk format seems fairly wide open so when else would you want an unban?
Unbans have historically ONLY coincided with massive and predictable bans. Wizards has showed no deviation from this pattern other than their very first unban: Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, which was unbanned just before a Modern PT, likely to "shake up" the meta.
We have seen zero unbans since April 2016, despite running the gamut of horrendous misery and huge diversity since then.
I predict they will do nothing until the PT, at which point they will follow suit with their unspoken policy of "PT Shake Ups" and unban something (and probably ban something too).
They have shown literally nothing that would lead anyone to believe they will unban anything under any other circumstances.
Idk format seems fairly wide open so when else would you want an unban?
I just don't know what you would unban. It's an ideal time to unban a card that doesn't improve a top-tier deck and does make other strategies more viable, but what is an example of such a card? Basically everything on the list either breaks the T4 rule, reduces diversity through metagame oppression, breaks a logistical rule, or helps a top-tier deck. The closest are JTMS, BBE, and SFM in no order, but I see Wizards finding issues with all of them.
I think the "helps a top-tier deck" metric is problematic. Most people seem to interchange "helps a top-tier deck" with 'shares a colour with a top-tier deck' when they consider these things, and I wonder how much WotC does as well. A card like BBE or SFM would likely show in testing only a marginal gain at best for the decks that include them, calling into question just how much 'help' is a reasonable floor when used as a justification to remain banned.
But I doubt WotC would even make it to a testing phase where a card could prove itself innocuous if it shares a colour with a deck somewhere in the top tier. Which is strange because all but the most closed modern metas have had some kind of representation of each colour,
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
With two BGx decks in the GP Birmingham T8 and BOTH straight BG Rock and Abzan making it into the T4, I'm not seeing a BBE unban in the future. We know that Wizards views the BGx decks as relatively intechangeable (see their language in the DRS ban), and we know they prefer diversity. Unbanning BBE to shift all the BGx players to Jund doesn't seem like something they are interested in, especially with two BGx decks in a GP T4.
As I said on an earlier page, my guess is that BGx is more viable than many people think. Maybe not Jund as a subset of BGx, but the general BGx core seems better than many give it credit.
This is also why I'm not optimistic about an SFM unban. We have stuff like D&T winning an earlier GP, we have Abzan and Bant Knightfall doing well this weekend, and we have UW Control doing well on MTGO. None of this makes me optimistic that Wizards wants to unban the white card.
Unfortunately, I think you're right about BBE
But hasn't GBx's results been poor since December, can we really say BBE is off the table because of a single GP tournament?
Well, I really hope that BBE's chances for an unban haven't droped on a single turnament. In GP Richmond's first 32, GBx decks were totally absent. Also, we should check the overall distribution of decks in GP Birmingham as to see if the GBx's presence was a coincidence determined by a lower percentage of Tron or other natural predators.
It would be nice to get back BBE and maybe, finally alowing a viable Temur deck to emerge.
We shall see!
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GBR May the Jund'ish side of the Force be with you! GBR
From the Top 8/32 of GP Birmingham I would write off a SFM unban. I think a BBE unban is far more likely than SFM but is still unlikely, given the results. From what I'm hearing, from people who went there this weekend, was that there was an incredibly low amount of Tron variants at the tournament. This fits in line with some of the player choices I know happened, inasmuch as, many of the players who would normally have taken Eldra/Tron were expecting a tonne of hate from every deck and decided to go with a different choice for the event.
I think BBE and SFM were on the agenda for unbanning the next unbanning announcement but as of the results are back on the "wait and see" list.
The results in from the weekend look amazing though and, more importantly, there is absolutely no reason for a banning.
Yep the dreaded wait and see for eternity. I still think sfm and bbe are fine. I would like to unban some things that are silly and honestly, I'm tired of no stoneblade variant, and I think bbe could open alot of midrange space which would be fun for people to explore. I just want people to have their toys back that aren't going to break the format.
Eldrazi Tron, such an oppressive deck. Ban Temple immediately.
I know that you're being sarcastic and all, and I agree that a temple ban isn't going to solve much. I still think unbans are the way to approach the format. I think however, you can't use one tournament to say something is or isn't broken. I think fundamentally a lot of things are broken in modern which is fine as long as they balanced against each other.
Overall metagame breakdown of all top 32 of the three major events:
Archetypes, by No. of Top 32 Appearances
15 Scapeshift
14 Death's Shadow
7 Jeskai Control
6 Collected Company
6 GBx Midrange
6 UR Storm
5 Affinity
5 Eldrazi Tron
3 Bant Knightfall
3 Gx Tron
2 Bant Eldrazi
2 Blood Moon Control
2 Burn
2 Dredge
2 Faeries
2 Skred
2 UW Control
1 Ad Nauseaum
1 Death and Taxes
1 Elves
1 GR Ponza
1 Hexproof
1 Kiki Chord
1 Lantern Control
1 Living End
1 W Martyr
There are some interesting things to note about these Top 32 setups.
1) Scapeshift and Grixis Shadow together only make up less than 1/3 of all archetypes present, with them each being basically 1/6 of the field each. This means that approximately 16% of the field is Scapeshift or Death's Shadow, while 66% of the meta is other decks. Go go deck diversity!
2) The next 4 highest represented decks, Jeskai Control, Collected Company, BGx Midrange, and UR Storm, are all basically half of the two highest represented decks, with their total field share being the same as Scapeshift and Death's Shadow. So essentially the top 6 most played decks only make up about 2/3 of the total field. Once again I say GO GO DECK DIVERSITY!!
3) Eldrazi Tron only had 5 decks between all 3 Top 32's. I think we can safely say that it is just another good Modern deck and not at all oppressive. So we can stop clamoring for Eldrazi Temple bans
4) I think the 2 Faeries lists are interesting and want to go over the decklists themselves to take a look at them. Has Fatal Push finally had the meta evolve to a point where Faeries can push itself into the Tier 2 arena?
5) Good to see a Lantern Control list. Every needs to be constantly reminded of the existance of the Modern Fun Police
6) Mono-White Martyr. Wow. Burn players everyone collectively had a mini heart-attack.
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Modern Decks: UBG Lantern Control GBU BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
I think we also see that scapeshift/titanshift can be a natural predator on eldratron. This is a good thing so everyone with their pitchforks up about temple can put them down.
Modern feels like it's in a great place right now but it's definitely different from before. Grixis DS and eldrazi have sculpted a new modern from the old jund/twin sculpted meta. It's slower, different cards are good, some previously good cards have become worse.
I definitely agree that Modern is vastly different, but I don't think it's for the better. If we look at what used to be the top decks (Jund, *redacted*, Tron, Burn, Affinity, Infect, CoCo, etc.), it seems that pretty much all of them could be attacked with fairly traditional means. Basic, main deck interaction like discard, counters, and removal were able to handle just about every T1 deck (and even old Gx Tron was much more susceptible to land hate than new E-Tron). It wasn't until we got into the more fringe T2 and T3 strategies that we had these extremely narrow "battle of sideboards" style of decks; things like Dredge, Storm, Valakut, etc. These decks require very specific and precise means of attack, and usually cause matches to devolve into "two ships passing in the night" race while if players don't aggressively dig to their hate cards. Those decks are now the face of the format with essentially the entirety of old T1 decks now gone. Without any meaningful control presence in the format (combo/control or otherwise), the clear and best option since the great shift of 2016 has been to attack through a narrow and specific axis and simply hope your opponent can't deal with it. That's what our best decks currently represent and why I don't feel this actually makes Modern "better."
Modern feels like it's in a great place right now but it's definitely different from before. Grixis DS and eldrazi have sculpted a new modern from the old jund/twin sculpted meta. It's slower, different cards are good, some previously good cards have become worse.
I definitely agree that Modern is vastly different, but I don't think it's for the better. If we look at what used to be the top decks (Jund, *redacted*, Tron, Burn, Affinity, Infect, CoCo, etc.), it seems that pretty much all of them could be attacked with fairly traditional means. Basic, main deck interaction like discard, counters, and removal were able to handle just about every T1 deck (and even old Gx Tron was much more susceptible to land hate than new E-Tron). It wasn't until we got into the more fringe T2 and T3 strategies that we had these extremely narrow "battle of sideboards" style of decks; things like Dredge, Storm, Valakut, etc. These decks require very specific and precise means of attack, and usually cause matches to devolve into "two ships passing in the night" race while if players don't aggressively dig to their hate cards. Those decks are now the face of the format with essentially the entirety of old T1 decks now gone. Without any meaningful control presence in the format (combo/control or otherwise), the clear and best option since the great shift of 2016 has been to attack through a narrow and specific axis and simply hope your opponent can't deal with it. That's what our best decks currently represent and why I don't feel this actually makes Modern "better."
Jeskai control was the third most popular archetype over the weekend in top 32s! And Death's shadow decks running interaction were second most popular! So this statement is disproven on the same page with data.
Modern feels like it's in a great place right now but it's definitely different from before. Grixis DS and eldrazi have sculpted a new modern from the old jund/twin sculpted meta. It's slower, different cards are good, some previously good cards have become worse.
I definitely agree that Modern is vastly different, but I don't think it's for the better. If we look at what used to be the top decks (Jund, *redacted*, Tron, Burn, Affinity, Infect, CoCo, etc.), it seems that pretty much all of them could be attacked with fairly traditional means. Basic, main deck interaction like discard, counters, and removal were able to handle just about every T1 deck (and even old Gx Tron was much more susceptible to land hate than new E-Tron). It wasn't until we got into the more fringe T2 and T3 strategies that we had these extremely narrow "battle of sideboards" style of decks; things like Dredge, Storm, Valakut, etc. These decks require very specific and precise means of attack, and usually cause matches to devolve into "two ships passing in the night" race while if players don't aggressively dig to their hate cards. Those decks are now the face of the format with essentially the entirety of old T1 decks now gone. Without any meaningful control presence in the format (combo/control or otherwise), the clear and best option since the great shift of 2016 has been to attack through a narrow and specific axis and simply hope your opponent can't deal with it. That's what our best decks currently represent and why I don't feel this actually makes Modern "better."
Jeskai control was the third most popular archetype over the weekend in top 32s! And Death's shadow decks running interaction were second most popular! So this statement is disproven on the same page with data.
A couple placements over one weekend doesn't change the trends of nearly two years. We saw Uxx "control" decks get torn to pieces on camera several times and just showcases the increased polarity of matchups and coin-flip nature of dealing with the top decks. Rather than succeed on the backs of great answers on a traditional axis, it's a matter of dodging matchups and drawing hate cards. Let's see if this weekend is a fluke or the beginning of a new trend. Based on the top decks and the variety of narrow axes they attack from, I think it's going to be difficult to repeat, but I hope I'm wrong.
I would really like to see some more versatile cards printed that can interact profitably with valakut, temple, and tron. Preventing someone from making land drops is kinda hard. Ghost quarter is a speed bump at best and we cant all run blood moon
Yes there are other ways to interact or race those decks but there should be some kind of sb card that effectively hits decks with nonbasic land driven win cons that isnt blood moon. I dont want it to mana screw players, so just a non-moon way to punish those land decks the way stony silence punishes artifacts and rest in peace punishes graveyards.
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
The “golden age” of Modern is gone and I think a lot of people’s problems with the format revolve around wanting it to be like the good ol’ days. I think people have rose-colored glasses when they look at the format’s history. The format will never be that again unless we have mass bannings (which I think few people would approve of).
In reality, we’re just doing now what we did back then—choosing cards that invalidate our opponent’s game plan before we even sit down for the match. Tarmogoyf is a prime example of this. He was king of the beaters for a long time, since he dodges Lightning Bolt, the premiere removal card of the format. Every other card had to trade with him on parity. It’s better just going into the match knowing you have a threat that turns your opponent’s cards into dead cards.
Fast forward to today and what cards are popular? Lands that accelerate mana, or are part of a win combo win… because most maindeckable interaction is dead to it. Delve threats… because they dodge the premiere removal of the format (Fatal Push) and Eldrazi that have card disadvantage for your opponent stapled right into them and are costed to invalidate Fatal Push (Reality Smasher) or at least for your opponent to jump through hoops (TKS). Affinity is the slight anomaly to this idea, but that’s because the deck is fast enough to just get there through sheer speed, followed up by payoff cards.
Modern will always gravitate towards this trend, we’ve just gotten better at it and received more tools to do this.
The only way to dissuade this kind of trend is to add more main-deckable interaction to the format, so it becomes more and more difficult to just dodge interaction through card choice. Collective Brutality and Kolaghan’s Command are the model that WotC needs to continue. Charm-like cards that have sort of a swiss-army knife application, so it’s not a liability to have them in your main deck.
Look at the top decks: Gifts Storm, Grixis Shadow, Eldrazi Tron, Scapeshift, Affinity, Jeskai Control, Collected Company, BGx
Out of these Punishing Fire is really only very good against Affinity and Collected Company. Against Eldrazi Tron and Scapeshift it doesn't do much. Against Grixis Shadow, you can use Grove to mess with the opponent's life but Fire itself isn't so good. Against Jeskai and BGx its just ok.
Now out of these decks, only Valakut or Jund would play it but Valakut can't afford to play lands that are not mountains for its combo, and Jund hasn't been doing so well lately anyway. Jund Shadow wouldn't play it because it's not a land that makes you lose life
I think it's no better than the Thopter/Sword combo and look how well that is doing.
Look at the top decks: Gifts Storm, Grixis Shadow, Eldrazi Tron, Scapeshift, Affinity, Jeskai Control, Collected Company, BGx
Out of these Punishing Fire is really only very good against Affinity and Collected Company. Against Eldrazi Tron and Scapeshift it doesn't do much. Against Grixis Shadow, you can use Grove to mess with the opponent's life but Fire itself isn't so good. Against Jeskai and BGx its just ok.
Now out of these decks, only Valakut or Jund would play it but Valakut can't afford to play lands that are not mountains for its combo, and Jund hasn't been doing so well lately anyway. Jund Shadow wouldn't play it because it's not a land that makes you lose life
I think it's no better than the Thopter/Sword combo and look how well that is doing.
From what I remember last time somebody suggested this, unbanning Punishing Fire is essentially equal to banning creature decks...
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Vorthos-y Johnny. All will be One
Modern - Cheeri0s (building), Belcher (building), Lantern (building), UW Control (building)
RIP Magic Duels. Wizards will regret what they did to you.
From what I remember last time somebody suggested this, unbanning Punishing Fire is essentially equal to banning creature decks...
It's not quite that bad, but any creature decks playing x/2s are going to get severely pushed out of the meta if Punishing Fire is legal. Admittedly, it doesn't seem super bad right now, but it would certainly suck for those "go wide" strategies that do well vs. GDS like Elves and Merfolk.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
jeskai control-4
titanshift-4
eldrazi tron-3
grixis death shadow-3
storm-3
affinity-3
GW company-2
elves-1
GR ponza-1
WR prison-1
Blue moon-1
Skred Red-1
Boogles-1
mono white martyr-1
Bant Company-1
Bant Eldrazi-1
GB tron-1
Avatar and Signature by XenoNinja via Heroes of the Plane Studios
Unfortunately, I think you're right about BBE
But hasn't GBx's results been poor since December, can we really say BBE is off the table because of a single GP tournament?
RGTron
UGInfect
URStorm
WUBRAd Nauseam
BRGrishoalbrand
URGScapeshift
WBGAbzan Company
WUBRGAmulet Titan
BRGLiving End
WGBogles
Unbans have historically ONLY coincided with massive and predictable bans. Wizards has showed no deviation from this pattern other than their very first unban: Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, which was unbanned just before a Modern PT, likely to "shake up" the meta.
I predict they will do nothing until the PT, at which point they will follow suit with their unspoken policy of "PT Shake Ups" and unban something (and probably ban something too).
They have shown literally nothing that would lead anyone to believe they will unban anything under any other circumstances.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I just don't know what you would unban. It's an ideal time to unban a card that doesn't improve a top-tier deck and does make other strategies more viable, but what is an example of such a card? Basically everything on the list either breaks the T4 rule, reduces diversity through metagame oppression, breaks a logistical rule, or helps a top-tier deck. The closest are JTMS, BBE, and SFM in no order, but I see Wizards finding issues with all of them.
But I doubt WotC would even make it to a testing phase where a card could prove itself innocuous if it shares a colour with a deck somewhere in the top tier. Which is strange because all but the most closed modern metas have had some kind of representation of each colour,
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
Well, I really hope that BBE's chances for an unban haven't droped on a single turnament. In GP Richmond's first 32, GBx decks were totally absent. Also, we should check the overall distribution of decks in GP Birmingham as to see if the GBx's presence was a coincidence determined by a lower percentage of Tron or other natural predators.
It would be nice to get back BBE and maybe, finally alowing a viable Temur deck to emerge.
We shall see!
Yep the dreaded wait and see for eternity. I still think sfm and bbe are fine. I would like to unban some things that are silly and honestly, I'm tired of no stoneblade variant, and I think bbe could open alot of midrange space which would be fun for people to explore. I just want people to have their toys back that aren't going to break the format.
I know that you're being sarcastic and all, and I agree that a temple ban isn't going to solve much. I still think unbans are the way to approach the format. I think however, you can't use one tournament to say something is or isn't broken. I think fundamentally a lot of things are broken in modern which is fine as long as they balanced against each other.
There are some interesting things to note about these Top 32 setups.
1) Scapeshift and Grixis Shadow together only make up less than 1/3 of all archetypes present, with them each being basically 1/6 of the field each. This means that approximately 16% of the field is Scapeshift or Death's Shadow, while 66% of the meta is other decks. Go go deck diversity!
2) The next 4 highest represented decks, Jeskai Control, Collected Company, BGx Midrange, and UR Storm, are all basically half of the two highest represented decks, with their total field share being the same as Scapeshift and Death's Shadow. So essentially the top 6 most played decks only make up about 2/3 of the total field. Once again I say GO GO DECK DIVERSITY!!
3) Eldrazi Tron only had 5 decks between all 3 Top 32's. I think we can safely say that it is just another good Modern deck and not at all oppressive. So we can stop clamoring for Eldrazi Temple bans
4) I think the 2 Faeries lists are interesting and want to go over the decklists themselves to take a look at them. Has Fatal Push finally had the meta evolve to a point where Faeries can push itself into the Tier 2 arena?
5) Good to see a Lantern Control list. Every needs to be constantly reminded of the existance of the Modern Fun Police
6) Mono-White Martyr. Wow. Burn players everyone collectively had a mini heart-attack.
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
I definitely agree that Modern is vastly different, but I don't think it's for the better. If we look at what used to be the top decks (Jund, *redacted*, Tron, Burn, Affinity, Infect, CoCo, etc.), it seems that pretty much all of them could be attacked with fairly traditional means. Basic, main deck interaction like discard, counters, and removal were able to handle just about every T1 deck (and even old Gx Tron was much more susceptible to land hate than new E-Tron). It wasn't until we got into the more fringe T2 and T3 strategies that we had these extremely narrow "battle of sideboards" style of decks; things like Dredge, Storm, Valakut, etc. These decks require very specific and precise means of attack, and usually cause matches to devolve into "two ships passing in the night" race while if players don't aggressively dig to their hate cards. Those decks are now the face of the format with essentially the entirety of old T1 decks now gone. Without any meaningful control presence in the format (combo/control or otherwise), the clear and best option since the great shift of 2016 has been to attack through a narrow and specific axis and simply hope your opponent can't deal with it. That's what our best decks currently represent and why I don't feel this actually makes Modern "better."
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Jeskai control was the third most popular archetype over the weekend in top 32s! And Death's shadow decks running interaction were second most popular! So this statement is disproven on the same page with data.
A couple placements over one weekend doesn't change the trends of nearly two years. We saw Uxx "control" decks get torn to pieces on camera several times and just showcases the increased polarity of matchups and coin-flip nature of dealing with the top decks. Rather than succeed on the backs of great answers on a traditional axis, it's a matter of dodging matchups and drawing hate cards. Let's see if this weekend is a fluke or the beginning of a new trend. Based on the top decks and the variety of narrow axes they attack from, I think it's going to be difficult to repeat, but I hope I'm wrong.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Yes there are other ways to interact or race those decks but there should be some kind of sb card that effectively hits decks with nonbasic land driven win cons that isnt blood moon. I dont want it to mana screw players, so just a non-moon way to punish those land decks the way stony silence punishes artifacts and rest in peace punishes graveyards.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
In reality, we’re just doing now what we did back then—choosing cards that invalidate our opponent’s game plan before we even sit down for the match. Tarmogoyf is a prime example of this. He was king of the beaters for a long time, since he dodges Lightning Bolt, the premiere removal card of the format. Every other card had to trade with him on parity. It’s better just going into the match knowing you have a threat that turns your opponent’s cards into dead cards.
Fast forward to today and what cards are popular? Lands that accelerate mana, or are part of a win combo win… because most maindeckable interaction is dead to it. Delve threats… because they dodge the premiere removal of the format (Fatal Push) and Eldrazi that have card disadvantage for your opponent stapled right into them and are costed to invalidate Fatal Push (Reality Smasher) or at least for your opponent to jump through hoops (TKS). Affinity is the slight anomaly to this idea, but that’s because the deck is fast enough to just get there through sheer speed, followed up by payoff cards.
Modern will always gravitate towards this trend, we’ve just gotten better at it and received more tools to do this.
The only way to dissuade this kind of trend is to add more main-deckable interaction to the format, so it becomes more and more difficult to just dodge interaction through card choice. Collective Brutality and Kolaghan’s Command are the model that WotC needs to continue. Charm-like cards that have sort of a swiss-army knife application, so it’s not a liability to have them in your main deck.
Look at the top decks: Gifts Storm, Grixis Shadow, Eldrazi Tron, Scapeshift, Affinity, Jeskai Control, Collected Company, BGx
Out of these Punishing Fire is really only very good against Affinity and Collected Company. Against Eldrazi Tron and Scapeshift it doesn't do much. Against Grixis Shadow, you can use Grove to mess with the opponent's life but Fire itself isn't so good. Against Jeskai and BGx its just ok.
Now out of these decks, only Valakut or Jund would play it but Valakut can't afford to play lands that are not mountains for its combo, and Jund hasn't been doing so well lately anyway. Jund Shadow wouldn't play it because it's not a land that makes you lose life
I think it's no better than the Thopter/Sword combo and look how well that is doing.
From what I remember last time somebody suggested this, unbanning Punishing Fire is essentially equal to banning creature decks...
Modern - Cheeri0s (building), Belcher (building), Lantern (building), UW Control (building)
RIP Magic Duels. Wizards will regret what they did to you.
It's not quite that bad, but any creature decks playing x/2s are going to get severely pushed out of the meta if Punishing Fire is legal. Admittedly, it doesn't seem super bad right now, but it would certainly suck for those "go wide" strategies that do well vs. GDS like Elves and Merfolk.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)