Also, DS is the 35th most played card in the format atm. Why is Snap no.4? Maybe because other control decks play that as well?
Again, any numbers obtained are marginal and difficult to pull any meaningful representation from. Very small values, very small sample sizes, very spread out over long periods of time (or selected through artificial diversity choices, which ACTIVELY misrepresent the format). The ability to use data to represent the meta in a meaningful way died when WOTC cut off the 10 random lists, which were ALREADY a fairly mediocre collection of numbers to begin with, and it's worse with such high variance among matchups, play/draw, and heavy sideboard dependence for such narrow decks that makeup the top of the format.
Seething song wouldn't be a problem and would even enable some tier2-3 deck like dragonstorm or all in red.
I've rewatched a game from yesterday against storm, I was testing my jeskai geist deck.
Game1 he comboes turn8 after trying to cast at the end of his last turns a gifts which I always remanded or tried to counter which he remanded to himself. I didn't put pressure on the field since I can't just tap out on my turn and he had all that time to sculpt his hand.
Game 2 I'm on the play, end of his turn2 he plays 2 opts. I untap T3, play geist to put some pressure before he can combo and pass the turn. Turn3 he plays an electromancer and proceeds to put 18 goblins in play after playing a Wipe Away on one of my 3 lands. So even if I had had a hate card in play he would have comboed anyways. Turn 3. And it's not something special. Happens very often. Yes. Needs a ban. A big one.
Another point is: storm plays a turn 2 bear. If you don't kill the bear before turn 3, storm is going off turn3 with what, a 90% chance? Some will say: of course storm is gonna kill you if you don't kill his bear. And I say, really?? Is a deck that consistently wins turn3 if you don't have removal for his bear on turn2 fair?
What is this crap? A turn 8 win + a turn 4 win = ban worthy? Come on.
Seething song wouldn't be a problem and would even enable some tier2-3 deck like dragonstorm or all in red.
I've rewatched a game from yesterday against storm, I was testing my jeskai geist deck.
Game1 he comboes turn8 after trying to cast at the end of his last turns a gifts which I always remanded or tried to counter which he remanded to himself. I didn't put pressure on the field since I can't just tap out on my turn and he had all that time to sculpt his hand.
Game 2 I'm on the play, end of his turn2 he plays 2 opts. I untap T3, play geist to put some pressure before he can combo and pass the turn. Turn3 he plays an electromancer and proceeds to put 18 goblins in play after playing a Wipe Away on one of my 3 lands. So even if I had had a hate card in play he would have comboed anyways. Turn 3. And it's not something special. Happens very often. Yes. Needs a ban. A big one.
Another point is: storm plays a turn 2 bear. If you don't kill the bear before turn 3, storm is going off turn3 with what, a 90% chance? Some will say: of course storm is gonna kill you if you don't kill his bear. And I say, really?? Is a deck that consistently wins turn3 if you don't have removal for his bear on turn2 fair?
What is this crap? A turn 8 win + a turn 4 win = ban worthy? Come one.
twin did a similar thing, and was considered unfun. how is someone supposed to play the game when they cant even tap out? sounds like a bad deck to have in the top tiers if you ask me.
I remember people used to say with a straight face that we are "now able to tap out on turn 3" since Twin is gone. And that "4 drops will see so much more play."
Best decks in the format have either an average CMC around 2 or massively ramping/cheating mana costs and are all wildly swingy and mostly miserable to play against.
But hey, a list of cards selected from a curated list of false representations says the format is "healthy"!
Seething song wouldn't be a problem and would even enable some tier2-3 deck like dragonstorm or all in red.
I've rewatched a game from yesterday against storm, I was testing my jeskai geist deck.
Game1 he comboes turn8 after trying to cast at the end of his last turns a gifts which I always remanded or tried to counter which he remanded to himself. I didn't put pressure on the field since I can't just tap out on my turn and he had all that time to sculpt his hand.
Game 2 I'm on the play, end of his turn2 he plays 2 opts. I untap T3, play geist to put some pressure before he can combo and pass the turn. Turn3 he plays an electromancer and proceeds to put 18 goblins in play after playing a Wipe Away on one of my 3 lands. So even if I had had a hate card in play he would have comboed anyways. Turn 3. And it's not something special. Happens very often. Yes. Needs a ban. A big one.
Another point is: storm plays a turn 2 bear. If you don't kill the bear before turn 3, storm is going off turn3 with what, a 90% chance? Some will say: of course storm is gonna kill you if you don't kill his bear. And I say, really?? Is a deck that consistently wins turn3 if you don't have removal for his bear on turn2 fair?
What is this crap? A turn 8 win + a turn 4 win = ban worthy? Come one.
I don't think Storm deserves a ban, and that post does a terrible job of arguing that it does.
Firstly, sample size. A couple of particular games can certainly make you feel a deck is unfair (and Storm is definitely an "unfair" deck). That is reasonable; I've had games in which the opponent did something completely busted early on, and I had no chance. But a couple of games do very little to demonstrate what a deck is consistently capable of, especially in actual games.
Secondly, as you pointed out, a deck winning on turn 8 and turn 4 doesn't make it seem busted. If anything (and we are once more afflicted by sample size), I'd say this demonstrates how to fight Storm: clock them and disrupt them. In the first game, Jeskai didn't have a clock established. This gave Storm plenty of time to develop a great hand that would eventually win the game, probably even through disruption. In the second game, Jeskai established a clock via Geist, but was unable to disrupt the Storm player due to tapping out. Tapping out for Geist puts the shields down, and basically is a decision to race Storm, one of the fastest decks in the format. I think it would be better to hold onto the Geist until you have enough lands in play to at least have Bolt, Dispel, or Spell Snare up. To be fair, if you don't have your fourth land in hand and thus don't know when you'll be making the pivotal land drop, slamming Geist could be the right play. It still isn't a great one. I don't think Geist is great against Storm for this reason. Tapping out on turn 3 feels really risky against them.
I'm not sure how often Storm is able to combo off (if not disrupted) on turn 3. In practice, I always assume that they will be able to if they have a Baral/Electromancer on turn 2 (and don't like tapping out even when they don't), and play accordingly, but I don't know how consistently they actually are able to do it. Regardlessly, I don't think the deck deserves a ban. There is probably a non-zero amount of bias there because I have a great Storm matchup with efficient threats (Delver, Goyf, and Mandrills usually don't require you to tap out on pivotal turns).
As far as I understand it, the Turn Four Rule pertains to actual games, not goldfishing. That means that it doesn't matter if Storm (or Infect for example) can frequently win on turn 3 if not disrupted, as long as a stiff breeze is all you need to disrupt them, and the actual games don't play out with early wins occurring. If Storm only ends up winning 10% of its games on turn 3 because people are Bolting, Pushing, Pathing, and Snaring their accelerators, why does it matter that when goldfishing Storm will win 30% (arbitrary number) of its games on turn 3?
I also think Storm is sort of good for Modern. In the same manner that Grixis Death's Shadow does, Storm encourages people to play interactive decks. I believe most people like when the meta has interactive decks, because it causes people to interact with each other's plays (as opposed to "two ships passing in the night"). Storm also makes things worse for other linear decks. Storm is usually faster and more consistent (I could be wrong on that. Does anyone have quality stats for this?) than other linear decks, making people not want to run them. That is similar to how Grixis Shadow dissuades people from playing linear strategies by picking them apart and closing out games.
So, while Storm is an unfair deck, I don't think it breaks any rules, and I don't think it makes the format specifically worse off. So why would we want it to get hit with a ban? Unless it turns out that it is so completely busted and consistent (which we would need stats on to argue) that even interactive decks can't handle it, but that would make for an obvious ban to take it down a notch.
So, while Storm is an unfair deck, I don't think it breaks any rules, and I don't think it makes the format specifically worse off. So why would we want it to get hit with a ban? Unless it turns out that it is so completely busted and consistent (which we would need stats on to argue) that even interactive decks can't handle it, but that would make for an obvious ban to take it down a notch.
Wizards has shown that they do not need to follow any specific criteria for banning pretty much anything (especially if it represents something they don't like). If whatever they feel like banning does not follow explicit patterns of past bannings, they will just pull some explanation out of thin air and ban it anyway. What are we going to do about it? Stop them?
I don't think Storm deserves a ban, but I would no be surprised in the least bit to see something like a card from Storm banned before the next PT, as part of their "totally not a shake up" shake up. Until that announcement though, I think we can just expect "No Changes."
I played storm with seething song and prob way back when and it went off on turn 3 a lot and I even had a couple of turn two wins while goldfishing for testing. Seething song is never coming back and I don't think it deserves anymore bans.
So, while Storm is an unfair deck, I don't think it breaks any rules, and I don't think it makes the format specifically worse off. So why would we want it to get hit with a ban? Unless it turns out that it is so completely busted and consistent (which we would need stats on to argue) that even interactive decks can't handle it, but that would make for an obvious ban to take it down a notch.
Wizards has shown that they do not need to follow any specific criteria for banning pretty much anything (especially if it represents something they don't like). If whatever they feel like banning does not follow explicit patterns of past bannings, they will just pull some explanation out of thin air and ban it anyway. What are we going to do about it? Stop them?
I don't think Storm deserves a ban, but I would no be surprised in the least bit to see something like a card from Storm banned before the next PT, as part of their "totally not a shake up" shake up. Until that announcement though, I think we can just expect "No Changes."
Gee, this post is so subtly worded that I "totally can't tell" what you're alluding to...
Wizards has shown that they do not need to follow any specific criteria for banning pretty much anything (especially if it represents something they don't like). If whatever they feel like banning does not follow explicit patterns of past bannings, they will just pull some explanation out of thin air and ban it anyway. What are we going to do about it? Stop them?
I don't think Storm deserves a ban, but I would no be surprised in the least bit to see something like a card from Storm banned before the next PT, as part of their "totally not a shake up" shake up. Until that announcement though, I think we can just expect "No Changes."
Gee, this post is so subtly worded that I "totally can't tell" what you're alluding to...
Well, they're not wrong. I never played the deck in question, but I don't think it should have been banned. Then again, WotC doesn't care what I think, nor do they care what anyone except maybe some promotional or ex-promotional players think. I thought this thread was for expressing opinions...
So, while Storm is an unfair deck, I don't think it breaks any rules, and I don't think it makes the format specifically worse off. So why would we want it to get hit with a ban? Unless it turns out that it is so completely busted and consistent (which we would need stats on to argue) that even interactive decks can't handle it, but that would make for an obvious ban to take it down a notch.
Wizards has shown that they do not need to follow any specific criteria for banning pretty much anything (especially if it represents something they don't like). If whatever they feel like banning does not follow explicit patterns of past bannings, they will just pull some explanation out of thin air and ban it anyway. What are we going to do about it? Stop them?
I don't think Storm deserves a ban, but I would no be surprised in the least bit to see something like a card from Storm banned before the next PT, as part of their "totally not a shake up" shake up. Until that announcement though, I think we can just expect "No Changes."
Gee, this post is so subtly worded that I "totally can't tell" what you're alluding to...
Lots of things. But since it seems like I should spell it out, here's how I stand:
Twin: Was never dominant nor oppressive. Banned because of PT, to shake things up, especially after that awful "triple top 8 weekend." Reasonings given were thin and ultimately completely bogus (as history showed).
Probe: Gotta hit something out of these fast, pump-aggro decks. Rather than go for the main card that causes them break T4 rule (or even just.. you know.. wait and see how Fatal Push wrecks them), Probe is banned because... "primarily it gave perfect information" and "did too much for too little cost" despite being legal for the entirety of Modern and played with regularity for 6+ years without problem. Wrong choice of card and really forced reasoning.
GGT: Banned because of "battle of sideboards," a new and unknown metric for banning. A good deck to target, but nobody knows what this means for future bans. Also, GGT was fine on its own (and not even particularly good) until Wizards broke the deck by printing Prized Amalgam and Cathartic Reunion.
Twin was tied to the unofficial "diversity" justification, despite nearly everything being said about it proving untrue and virtually all measurable numbers were considerably less than every other diversity ban. Probe was solidly Turn 4 Rule, but really strangely targeted. The main driving force for consistent, early kills was specifically Become Immense... not Probe. Yeah, Probe gave information, but decks like Infect were already more than capable of T2 or T3 killing before that anyway. It only became a problem when BI was helping them do it more consistently, and another deck (also running BI) was also wildly popular and strong. Several on-camera T2 and 3 kills don't help, especially with big names on GP streams playing <5 turns across a 3-game match. As for GGT, nobody is losing any sleep over hitting Dredge, but its justification is extremely strange with no other precedent, and the target itself wasn't the main problem (PA/CR were).
These three, specifically, were targeted and banned because that's what Wizards wanted to do. And despite flimsy, loose, or new and inventive justifications, they still got banned. WOTC does what WOTC wants, and it doesn't matter if it follows past trends or not.
This doesn't even get into Reflector Mage getting banned preemptively from a deck that they (officially) didn't even know about yet (in addition to all the other blunders in Standard over the past two years). Or the way they have focused so heavily the 2-deck-dominated Vintage by hurting one of them only to have the other thrive and then it its own restriction later, based on justifications of being "frustrating to play against."
The whole management system is a complete mess and has done nothing but destroy any confidence that these people have any idea what they are doing with the formats.
So, the embargo in Twin talk has stopped and cfusionpm, despite his apparent antipathy to Modern, more work, and moving to playing Commander, has started posting about five times as regularly as he did when the embargo was active. Hm. I wonder if this indicates anything.
hellfire is also making a bunch of posts about how "modern sucks" and anyone who disagrees is apparently a drooling idiot rather than making any interesting and constructive points.
Jesus I need to stop reading this thread, it's giving me an aneurysm.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Well, I can saw a woman in two, but you won't wanna look in the box when I'm through.
I'm not going to nitpick anything you said, but i think there's one particular point you make that justs neglects reality.
"Probe was solidly Turn 4 Rule, but really strangely targeted. The main driving force for consistent, early kills was specifically Become Immense... not Probe. Yeah, Probe gave information, but decks like Infect were already more than capable of T2 or T3 killing before that anyway. It only became a problem when BI was helping them do it more consistently, and another deck (also running BI) was also wildly popular and strong. Several on-camera T2 and 3 kills don't help, especially with big names on GP streams playing <5 turns across a 3-game match."
Why do you only talk about DS Zoo and Infect when there was another clear violator of the T3 rule that didn't play Become Immense? UR Prowess was a very good deck and many players lastly opted to play that instead of the 2 aforementioned. The common denominator? Gitaxian Probe. All 3 decks abused it by enabling their most broken and explosive draws. That ban was really a great call by WOTC, even if Fatal Push was entering the format and COULD have mitigated the obnoxious speed of the format, ultimately that card is poorly designed and it would have been a much worse problem later.
So, the embargo in Twin talk has stopped and cfusionpm, despite his apparent antipathy to Modern, more work, and moving to playing Commander, has started posting about five times as regularly as he did when the embargo was active. Hm. I wonder if this indicates anything.
hellfire is also making a bunch of posts about how "modern sucks" and anyone who disagrees is apparently a drooling idiot rather than making any interesting and constructive points.
Jesus I need to stop reading this thread, it's giving me an aneurysm.
Maybe instead of killing you in a horrible fashion it will give you superpowers like Spider-Man and you'll be able to predict bans with 100% accuracy!
It's a *****ty superpower and I wouldn't count on it but at least then something good would have come from this thread! Never lose hope!
Public Mod Note
(Ulka):
Infraction for Flaming/Trolling
So, the embargo in Twin talk has stopped and cfusionpm, despite his apparent antipathy to Modern, more work, and moving to playing Commander, has started posting about five times as regularly as he did when the embargo was active. Hm. I wonder if this indicates anything.
Or, and stay with me here, or, this week was mostly review and tests for my students, all my stuff is already graded, and next week is all short days and conferences. But hey, I guess a direct response and explanation to someone else's provoking remarks is too much for some? Maybe those who complain about other posters this often are projecting their own issues onto others. Also, I'm not the only one to recognize the trends and changes in WOTC's clusterf*** of game management these past few years.
Jesus I need to stop reading this thread, it's giving me an aneurysm.
That ignore button works wonders. Perhaps it would reduce your stress.
Why do you only talk about DS Zoo and Infect when there was another clear violator of the T3 rule that didn't play Become Immense? UR Prowess was a very good deck and many players lastly opted to play that instead of the 2 aforementioned. The common denominator? Gitaxian Probe. All 3 decks abused it by enabling their most broken and explosive draws. That ban was really a great call by WOTC, even if Fatal Push was entering the format and COULD have mitigated the obnoxious speed of the format, ultimately that card is poorly designed and it would have been a much worse problem later.
Because two of those decks were wildly popular with multiple placements at multiple large paper tournaments, and one was fragile, goofy deck that had some sporadic MTGO success. I would have liked to see the impact of Fatal Push before "nuking the decks from orbit" and taking Delver with it, just for good measure. They could have either banned nothing and see what Push did, or banned their third Delve card. Choice seemed pretty simple to me (and was reflected in the polling here as well).
Not too sure tbh. Storm would love the control he gives you over your draws, but that 4 cmc is likely too much for storm decks to swallow. There was a Jeskai superfriends build I saw years ago (before Jeskai was a thing) that JTMS slots into perfectly, but I'm not convinced that deck could be better than Jeskai Nahiri.
So, the embargo in Twin talk has stopped and cfusionpm, despite his apparent antipathy to Modern, more work, and moving to playing Commander, has started posting about five times as regularly as he did when the embargo was active. Hm. I wonder if this indicates anything.
hellfire is also making a bunch of posts about how "modern sucks" and anyone who disagrees is apparently a drooling idiot rather than making any interesting and constructive points.
Jesus I need to stop reading this thread, it's giving me an aneurysm.
It's an open thread about bans and format health. deal with it or leave.
If combo (Storm and Scapeshift) decks are truly the problem with the Modern format today, then I'd argue the best solution isn't to ban Scapeshift, Valakut, or cards with the Storm triggered ability, but rather to print/reprint better combo-specific answers for control decks, which have traditionally been intended to prey on combo. See, e.g., Ah Yes. Very Standard., which, unless something has changed over the past few years, probably also applies to WotC's goals in developing the Modern metagame.
Welp, that enough of format bashing. Its agasint the rules in this thread anyways. So back on track:
Is there any tier lists left? It seems like all of the user maintained ones were just abandoned.
It's hard to maintain any semblance of data when we have virtually nothing to go off of. I mean look at us, we're praising MTGO Challenges for goodness sake. Unless WOTC lifts its embargo on MTGO data, there's little point in tracking small number, high-variance Top 8 results of random events, sometimes months apart from each other for big paper events. Same goes for sites using MTGO League data, which is purposefully-slanted and actively misrepresents the format.
Edit: also, it's not format bashing, it's management bashing. As someone who has spent the last decade in various forms of commercial management (and now a teacher), it pains me to see the choices and justifications Wizards has made numerous times over the past few years. From design fails to poorly justified bannings to wild changes and several walkbacks, their ability to create and manage their own game has seemingly fallen to pieces. They look like a sloppy amateur startup, not an established giant who's been around for 25 years. Their decision-making processes (along with horrendous communication OF those processes) are laughably bad and have severely hurt two decades of player confidence. Most of all, their poor justifications for many of these decisions are more thin and vague than a middle school book report. That is an entirely valid criticism of Wizards.
That should have happened April of 2016. Eldrazi have done nothing good for the format since Oath of the Gatewatch printed multiple low-cost, hyper-value, extremely-pushed creatures with massively impactful, stapled-on abilities, that can be powered out even earlier by lands that tap for 2+ mana.
Looking at the last few pages of discussion.. this place has to be one of the most toxic threads in the entire Modern forums. Anyway, would just like to say that the meta is still healthy.. over here in my area at least. Not wishing for any ban or unban.
As for prices discussion.. I hope that Chalice of the Void would be included in the next master set, to lower the price a little bit. Have seen some posts saying it will be the last masters, so I really hoping that chalice would be included.
Again, any numbers obtained are marginal and difficult to pull any meaningful representation from. Very small values, very small sample sizes, very spread out over long periods of time (or selected through artificial diversity choices, which ACTIVELY misrepresent the format). The ability to use data to represent the meta in a meaningful way died when WOTC cut off the 10 random lists, which were ALREADY a fairly mediocre collection of numbers to begin with, and it's worse with such high variance among matchups, play/draw, and heavy sideboard dependence for such narrow decks that makeup the top of the format.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
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
will do
decks playing:
none
decks playing:
none
Best decks in the format have either an average CMC around 2 or massively ramping/cheating mana costs and are all wildly swingy and mostly miserable to play against.
But hey, a list of cards selected from a curated list of false representations says the format is "healthy"!
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I don't think Storm deserves a ban, and that post does a terrible job of arguing that it does.
Firstly, sample size. A couple of particular games can certainly make you feel a deck is unfair (and Storm is definitely an "unfair" deck). That is reasonable; I've had games in which the opponent did something completely busted early on, and I had no chance. But a couple of games do very little to demonstrate what a deck is consistently capable of, especially in actual games.
Secondly, as you pointed out, a deck winning on turn 8 and turn 4 doesn't make it seem busted. If anything (and we are once more afflicted by sample size), I'd say this demonstrates how to fight Storm: clock them and disrupt them. In the first game, Jeskai didn't have a clock established. This gave Storm plenty of time to develop a great hand that would eventually win the game, probably even through disruption. In the second game, Jeskai established a clock via Geist, but was unable to disrupt the Storm player due to tapping out. Tapping out for Geist puts the shields down, and basically is a decision to race Storm, one of the fastest decks in the format. I think it would be better to hold onto the Geist until you have enough lands in play to at least have Bolt, Dispel, or Spell Snare up. To be fair, if you don't have your fourth land in hand and thus don't know when you'll be making the pivotal land drop, slamming Geist could be the right play. It still isn't a great one. I don't think Geist is great against Storm for this reason. Tapping out on turn 3 feels really risky against them.
I'm not sure how often Storm is able to combo off (if not disrupted) on turn 3. In practice, I always assume that they will be able to if they have a Baral/Electromancer on turn 2 (and don't like tapping out even when they don't), and play accordingly, but I don't know how consistently they actually are able to do it. Regardlessly, I don't think the deck deserves a ban. There is probably a non-zero amount of bias there because I have a great Storm matchup with efficient threats (Delver, Goyf, and Mandrills usually don't require you to tap out on pivotal turns).
As far as I understand it, the Turn Four Rule pertains to actual games, not goldfishing. That means that it doesn't matter if Storm (or Infect for example) can frequently win on turn 3 if not disrupted, as long as a stiff breeze is all you need to disrupt them, and the actual games don't play out with early wins occurring. If Storm only ends up winning 10% of its games on turn 3 because people are Bolting, Pushing, Pathing, and Snaring their accelerators, why does it matter that when goldfishing Storm will win 30% (arbitrary number) of its games on turn 3?
I also think Storm is sort of good for Modern. In the same manner that Grixis Death's Shadow does, Storm encourages people to play interactive decks. I believe most people like when the meta has interactive decks, because it causes people to interact with each other's plays (as opposed to "two ships passing in the night"). Storm also makes things worse for other linear decks. Storm is usually faster and more consistent (I could be wrong on that. Does anyone have quality stats for this?) than other linear decks, making people not want to run them. That is similar to how Grixis Shadow dissuades people from playing linear strategies by picking them apart and closing out games.
So, while Storm is an unfair deck, I don't think it breaks any rules, and I don't think it makes the format specifically worse off. So why would we want it to get hit with a ban? Unless it turns out that it is so completely busted and consistent (which we would need stats on to argue) that even interactive decks can't handle it, but that would make for an obvious ban to take it down a notch.
Interested in RUG (Temur) Delver in Modern? Find gameplay with live commentary at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UcKe8jVh1e2N4CHbd3fhg
Wizards has shown that they do not need to follow any specific criteria for banning pretty much anything (especially if it represents something they don't like). If whatever they feel like banning does not follow explicit patterns of past bannings, they will just pull some explanation out of thin air and ban it anyway. What are we going to do about it? Stop them?
I don't think Storm deserves a ban, but I would no be surprised in the least bit to see something like a card from Storm banned before the next PT, as part of their "totally not a shake up" shake up. Until that announcement though, I think we can just expect "No Changes."
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Gee, this post is so subtly worded that I "totally can't tell" what you're alluding to...
Lots of things. But since it seems like I should spell it out, here's how I stand:
Twin: Was never dominant nor oppressive. Banned because of PT, to shake things up, especially after that awful "triple top 8 weekend." Reasonings given were thin and ultimately completely bogus (as history showed).
Probe: Gotta hit something out of these fast, pump-aggro decks. Rather than go for the main card that causes them break T4 rule (or even just.. you know.. wait and see how Fatal Push wrecks them), Probe is banned because... "primarily it gave perfect information" and "did too much for too little cost" despite being legal for the entirety of Modern and played with regularity for 6+ years without problem. Wrong choice of card and really forced reasoning.
GGT: Banned because of "battle of sideboards," a new and unknown metric for banning. A good deck to target, but nobody knows what this means for future bans. Also, GGT was fine on its own (and not even particularly good) until Wizards broke the deck by printing Prized Amalgam and Cathartic Reunion.
Twin was tied to the unofficial "diversity" justification, despite nearly everything being said about it proving untrue and virtually all measurable numbers were considerably less than every other diversity ban. Probe was solidly Turn 4 Rule, but really strangely targeted. The main driving force for consistent, early kills was specifically Become Immense... not Probe. Yeah, Probe gave information, but decks like Infect were already more than capable of T2 or T3 killing before that anyway. It only became a problem when BI was helping them do it more consistently, and another deck (also running BI) was also wildly popular and strong. Several on-camera T2 and 3 kills don't help, especially with big names on GP streams playing <5 turns across a 3-game match. As for GGT, nobody is losing any sleep over hitting Dredge, but its justification is extremely strange with no other precedent, and the target itself wasn't the main problem (PA/CR were).
These three, specifically, were targeted and banned because that's what Wizards wanted to do. And despite flimsy, loose, or new and inventive justifications, they still got banned. WOTC does what WOTC wants, and it doesn't matter if it follows past trends or not.
This doesn't even get into Reflector Mage getting banned preemptively from a deck that they (officially) didn't even know about yet (in addition to all the other blunders in Standard over the past two years). Or the way they have focused so heavily the 2-deck-dominated Vintage by hurting one of them only to have the other thrive and then it its own restriction later, based on justifications of being "frustrating to play against."
The whole management system is a complete mess and has done nothing but destroy any confidence that these people have any idea what they are doing with the formats.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
hellfire is also making a bunch of posts about how "modern sucks" and anyone who disagrees is apparently a drooling idiot rather than making any interesting and constructive points.
Jesus I need to stop reading this thread, it's giving me an aneurysm.
"Probe was solidly Turn 4 Rule, but really strangely targeted. The main driving force for consistent, early kills was specifically Become Immense... not Probe. Yeah, Probe gave information, but decks like Infect were already more than capable of T2 or T3 killing before that anyway. It only became a problem when BI was helping them do it more consistently, and another deck (also running BI) was also wildly popular and strong. Several on-camera T2 and 3 kills don't help, especially with big names on GP streams playing <5 turns across a 3-game match."
Why do you only talk about DS Zoo and Infect when there was another clear violator of the T3 rule that didn't play Become Immense? UR Prowess was a very good deck and many players lastly opted to play that instead of the 2 aforementioned. The common denominator? Gitaxian Probe. All 3 decks abused it by enabling their most broken and explosive draws. That ban was really a great call by WOTC, even if Fatal Push was entering the format and COULD have mitigated the obnoxious speed of the format, ultimately that card is poorly designed and it would have been a much worse problem later.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Maybe instead of killing you in a horrible fashion it will give you superpowers like Spider-Man and you'll be able to predict bans with 100% accuracy!
It's a *****ty superpower and I wouldn't count on it but at least then something good would have come from this thread! Never lose hope!
Or, and stay with me here, or, this week was mostly review and tests for my students, all my stuff is already graded, and next week is all short days and conferences. But hey, I guess a direct response and explanation to someone else's provoking remarks is too much for some? Maybe those who complain about other posters this often are projecting their own issues onto others. Also, I'm not the only one to recognize the trends and changes in WOTC's clusterf*** of game management these past few years.
That ignore button works wonders. Perhaps it would reduce your stress.
Because two of those decks were wildly popular with multiple placements at multiple large paper tournaments, and one was fragile, goofy deck that had some sporadic MTGO success. I would have liked to see the impact of Fatal Push before "nuking the decks from orbit" and taking Delver with it, just for good measure. They could have either banned nothing and see what Push did, or banned their third Delve card. Choice seemed pretty simple to me (and was reflected in the polling here as well).
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
decks playing:
none
Is there any tier lists left? It seems like all of the user maintained ones were just abandoned.
It's hard to maintain any semblance of data when we have virtually nothing to go off of. I mean look at us, we're praising MTGO Challenges for goodness sake. Unless WOTC lifts its embargo on MTGO data, there's little point in tracking small number, high-variance Top 8 results of random events, sometimes months apart from each other for big paper events. Same goes for sites using MTGO League data, which is purposefully-slanted and actively misrepresents the format.
Edit: also, it's not format bashing, it's management bashing. As someone who has spent the last decade in various forms of commercial management (and now a teacher), it pains me to see the choices and justifications Wizards has made numerous times over the past few years. From design fails to poorly justified bannings to wild changes and several walkbacks, their ability to create and manage their own game has seemingly fallen to pieces. They look like a sloppy amateur startup, not an established giant who's been around for 25 years. Their decision-making processes (along with horrendous communication OF those processes) are laughably bad and have severely hurt two decades of player confidence. Most of all, their poor justifications for many of these decisions are more thin and vague than a middle school book report. That is an entirely valid criticism of Wizards.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
That should have happened April of 2016. Eldrazi have done nothing good for the format since Oath of the Gatewatch printed multiple low-cost, hyper-value, extremely-pushed creatures with massively impactful, stapled-on abilities, that can be powered out even earlier by lands that tap for 2+ mana.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
As for prices discussion.. I hope that Chalice of the Void would be included in the next master set, to lower the price a little bit. Have seen some posts saying it will be the last masters, so I really hoping that chalice would be included.
Nexus MTG News // Nexus - Magic Art Gallery // MTG Dual Land Color Ratios Analyzer // MTG Card Drawing Odds Calculator
Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread