This is awesome work. Well done to all involved. If only we had this for every event.
I will say that we need to take the win percentages with many grains of salt. N is just too low for many decks. Our highest N for any matchup appears to be 42 for Affinity vs. GDS, and and N=42 sample is hardly a convincing one. But as a tournament descriptor, this is awesome, and this level of data is significantly better than no data at all. The small Ns are also bootstrappable to get some ranges of possible win %s.
EDIT: As an example of this, the N=42 GDS matchup can be bootstrapped (n=10000) to a 95% confidence interval of 38%-66.7% in Affinity's favor. So even though Affinity pulled out slightly ahead here, the true win percentage is somewhere between 38% and 67%, which is a huge range. This is a big limitation of small N samples for calculating win percentages.
That said, this is not nearly as problematic for the overall win-rate of decks across the tournament. Something like GDS has about 200 matches in the sample, so there's less variance around the 57% WR estimate. There will definitely be some which should be noted, but it's not as swingy as the individual matchups.
Look at how Wizards has skewed the Standard Metagame results in the matter of a single week. It used to border 46%, now it's less than 25%. That doesn't happen overnight. Also, Mono Red metagame percentage dropped in Standard, by almost 7%. Where did these percentages go?
Jeskai overall is not a good deck, It had inflated ratings and most likely prayed on playing against affinity and humans. Not a single Island based deck, won on Camera vs any single fast mana strategy. There is no 50/50 matchup here. It's just a complete slaughter.
I know there are tons of arguments out there like "They don't always have their combo on turn 2-3" and that may be true, but what you are all not completely understanding, is that these decks are fundamentally built on having their god draw on turns 2-3-4. Look at how Tron is constructed, it has just AS MANY LANDS AS GRIXIS DEATHS SHADOW.
That turn 3 Karn Liberated, comes from a 19 land deck.
Yes, and... so? What does it matter the number of lands in the deck? That's wholly irrelevant to anything outside of just being a bit of trivia. It's got nothing to do with anything in regards to whether something is problematically powerful or not.
What's funny is you say this to compare it to Grixis Death's Shadow... when Grixis Death's Shadow casts some high-costing stuff of its own despite its low land count. Tron can get a 7-mana spell out on turn 3, but so can Grixis Death's Shadow... and unlike Tron, Grixis Death's Shadow can manage it on turn 2. But much like your comment which you bold as if it's somehow super important, that fact doesn't really mean much of anything.
Let that sink in. This Metagame needs a Green Sun's Zenith into a Gaddock Teeg with some backup Wasteland. Those SCG videos prove that BBE banning has been a joke since 2013.
Well, the data point you want to "sink in" is meaningless. So how about a more meaningful data point: You're saying that the metagame needs more cards to deal with Tron, a deck that's never managed to sustain a particularly high metagame percentage and has, with only a few exceptions, generally put up a dearth of results on the top tournaments, only popping up every now and then. Was this a really big finish for it? Of course. But prior to this, there was only one Grand Prix in the history of Modern where Gx Tron managed to get two decks into a Top 8, which was GP Brisbane, back in 2013. Also note that this was in a metagame where Deathrite Shaman was legal, meaning the format was stuffed with BGx. Even if we extend the criteria to Star City Games Opens, we have to go back nearly 2 years (January of 2016, SCG Columbus) before we find another case of a double Gx Tron top 8.
Setting aside the questionable assertion that the format needs those cards to deal with Tron to begin with, you were talking about how Tron threatens Blue decks. How is Green Sun's Zenith, a card that doesn't go into predominately Blue decks, supposed to help Blue decks against Tron?
Well, the data point you want to "sink in" is meaningless. So how about a more meaningful data point: You're saying that the metagame needs more cards to deal with Tron, a deck that's never managed to sustain a particularly high metagame percentage and has, with only a few exceptions, generally put up a dearth of results on the top tournaments, only popping up every now and then. Was this a really big finish for it? Of course. But prior to this, there was only one Grand Prix in the history of Modern where Gx Tron managed to get two decks into a Top 8, which was GP Brisbane, back in 2013. Also note that this was in a metagame where Deathrite Shaman was legal, meaning the format was stuffed with BGx. Even if we extend the criteria to Star City Games Opens, we have to go back nearly 2 years (January of 2016, SCG Columbus) before we find another case of a double Gx Tron top 8.
Setting aside the questionable assertion that the format needs those cards to deal with Tron to begin with, you were talking about how Tron threatens Blue decks. How is Green Sun's Zenith, a card that doesn't go into predominately Blue decks, supposed to help Blue decks against Tron?
Perhaps my stance isn't clear, so I'll post it for the 100th time in about 4 years; Too many decks are abusing the basic resource of Magic (Mana) in the Modern format without any tools sufficient enough to combat them.
It's not just Tron, It's Scapeshift, Ad Nauseam, Goryo's Vengeance, Through the Breach, Eldrazi Tron, Bant Eldrazi, and sometimes Affinity and Living End.
Having a Tool box maindeckable card that can be answered sufficiently and add a level of consistency to some green decks is exactly why GSZ was banned initially.
Here is the exact quote from the DCI;
Quote from Green Sun"s Zenith »
On turn one, this can give the acceleration of a Llanowar Elves by getting a Dryad Arbor. On later turns, it can get a large creature or a one-of "toolbox" creature such as Gaddock Teeg. While this is interesting, it is also too efficient. If one intends to build a deck that has turn-one accelerants, Green Sun's Zenith is a great choice. If one wants to more access to utility green creatures, Green Sun's Zenith is a great choice. If one wants to more reliably get a large green creature, such as a Primeval Titan, onto the battlefield, Green Sun's Zenith is a great choice. However, this ends up with fewer different decks being played in practice, as Green Sun's Zenith is such a good choice that there are fewer green decks that do anything else. The DCI hopes that banning Green Sun's Zenith increases diversity among Modern green decks.
Since then, the number of Green decks have decreased, or in the extreme sense depending on your personal restrictions, been nearly the exact same. So in essence, the decks using GSZ just became invalid when they tried to replace the card, and nothing else spawned out of the format since it's banning. It was used as a police tool for Cloudpost and Storm, we could seriously use it now. It would force Tron Decks to once again run some type of cheap removal like Pyroclasm, instead of going balls deep on just assembling their pieces ignoring the opponent. Yet that's not the only benefactor, it would actually police all the combo decks in their construction. That means most all in combo decks, couldn't be as they are now. The format would slow down as a result, and force higher levels of interaction.
I also understand there is a significant level of risk as well, a deck like Elves could appear to become Tier 1, but could that really be an unstoppable problem in a format with Fatal Push?
It tutors creatures at a higher cost, has a one time use, and is restricted on creature color. And no, I wouldn't even ban Dryad Arbor.
I have been saying it too, we require something along the lines of Wasteland in the format. Too many decks just assembling their pieces without having to fear any sort of mana disruption. I believe its one of the reasons there is almost no interaction in the game anymore as everyone is just too busy getting their game plan sorted without paying any attention to the other player.
I just can't see wizards putting Wasteland into standard right now. If anything, they'd put something like this in:
Path of Simplicity
1W
Aura
Enchant Player
Nonbasic lands the enchanted player controls do not untap during his/her untap step.
EDIT
I don't think Tron is quite the Boogeyman this board is making it out to be, but time will tell. I just think in the immediate future, if anything regarding land interaction is going to be printed, it'll be more in the vein of the card above than an out right land destruction card.
There is no chance in hell we will get a better land destruction tool than Field Of Ruins.
Well, Wizards could print a slightly better tectonic edge. Like reducing the land count to 2. (Even 3 would make it much better, but 2 would make it solid sideboard material.)
new article up on scg regarding bans and unbans. unfortunately only for premium members, so i won't (can't?) give away any of the details
"What I do like about cards like Ponder and Preordain is that they allow you to play fewer lands, which means you'll flood out less. This is one reason why Brainstorm, while a dominant card in Legacy, is very unlikely to be banned. Brainstorm generally promotes interaction, extends games, and allows for players to continue playing Magic even when they've drawn a few too many lands."
I like this quote and why I love cantrips. With better cantrips, we have less variance in general which means games are less likely to come down to luck. There are obvious drawbacks, like Turbo Xerox/Tempo/Delver decks usually rise to the top. But without Brainstorm and Force of Will, it would be hard to say that a Delver deck would rise to the top besides Death's Shadow (which might be too good if we unban these cantrips).
Also better cantrips would mean more consistent combo decks. The hard part to determine would be how much it would add to the current combo decks consistency. As he said, they just used worse versions in Serum Visions, Opt, Sleight of Hand
I also believe that Modern's early days were totally different than it is now. The biggest and most important difference is the current popularity and amount of tournaments. Wizards had like 3 tournies a year for modern, saw only a few decks and did quick and non-thought out bans
No we don't. Modern has improved dramatically without bans for awhile now. New cards have improved the format. New cards will continue to improve the format.
Ugh, I'm a Jund player and even I hated the DRS era, DRS was so obviously broken - I swear, when WotC was designing DRS they must have had a discussion like:
Head Designer: "what are the best 1 drops in every format?"
Head Designer: "Great!, now lets make it have all of those abilities toned down!"
Rest of Designers: "HUH?!"
Head Designer: ... "also, lets make it easier to cast by making it Black or Green... and hate on graveyards like a slightly better first ability of Relic of Progenitus."
Anyway, I agree with you that I'd like to see more than BBE unbanned too. The way I see it that if they don't unban BBE, there is little chance of anything else coming off the list as I'd argue BBE is significantly less risk than any of other cards on the list.
If I remember correctly, DRS was originally intended to only be able to use your graveyard (which would have created a solid, but a lot less overpowered card). They changed it last minute before the cards went to print.
I really liked Anderson's article. We need unbans in modern. And I am not talking about Elf. It's really unneccessary, since Jund Shadow is a thing and it's a great thing also. Jund players get to play this deck. But, they could, whatever, it won't help that much. Stoneforge Mystic or Jace, The Mind Sculptor though would be hugely better unbans. I really hope it's one of those come February.
The only thing I disagree with is that he equals Gitaxian Probe with Street Wraith. He literally thinks if the one is legal, the other should be too completely negleting the fact that the one looks your hand for free, adds storm counters, etc...
I'm not on premium, but from what I read in the preview, I agreed with most of what Todd Anderson said. I never thought I'd see the day when I agree with Todd, but I am completely on board with what he said.
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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)
I just can't see wizards putting Wasteland into standard right now. If anything, they'd put something like this in:
Path of Simplicity
1W
Aura
Enchant Player
Nonbasic lands the enchanted player controls do not untap during his/her untap step.
Are you serious? A one-sided version of Back to Basics (already stronger than they'd like) that also costs less mana? Forget Modern, pretty much every White deck in every competitive format it'd be legal in would be running that card.
Ugh, I'm a Jund player and even I hated the DRS era, DRS was so obviously broken - I swear, when WotC was designing DRS they must have had a discussion like:
Head Designer: "what are the best 1 drops in every format?"
Head Designer: "Great!, now lets make it have all of those abilities toned down!"
Rest of Designers: "HUH?!"
Head Designer: ... "also, lets make it easier to cast by making it Black or Green... and hate on graveyards like a slightly better first ability of Relic of Progenitus."
Anyway, I agree with you that I'd like to see more than BBE unbanned too. The way I see it that if they don't unban BBE, there is little chance of anything else coming off the list as I'd argue BBE is significantly less risk than any of other cards on the list.
I doubt they had any thoughts of Modern when designing it; Deathrite Shaman was made for Standard and balanced in that way. Quite honestly, all the stuff they did, making it Black/Green and giving it another piece of toughness and hitting all graveyards, was probably necessary to make the thing playable at all in Standard, where it (even with all of those things) ended up not seeing that much play.
Though they probably could've fixed the card for Modern (while keeping it about the same in Standard) if they had just made its first effect require a colorless mana to activate, changing it from mana ramp to simple mana fixing. That was the least relevant ability in Standard anyway. Of course, that'd also make it likely unplayable in Modern or Legacy.
While the example I gave is extreme, I firmly believe we're more likely to get something like a back to basics effect than another land destruction card. I was surprised we got Field of Ruin tbh.
While the example I gave is extreme, I firmly believe we're more likely to get something like a back to basics effect than another land destruction card. I was surprised we got Field of Ruin tbh.
I'd like to see more of a Prismatic Omen kind of hoser. I posted this on a previous page; don't remember the exact wording but it was something like this:
Prismatic Moon2G Enchantment
Nonbasic lands lose all abilities and have t: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
This hoses Eldrazi Temple, Tron lands, and Valakut while not messing up fetches or shocks. This is also very safe for Standard.
I could see a world where DRS comes off in the future, it's probably broken, but i really WASN'T all that impressed with it. If I wanted to throat-punch Jund any given FNM, my Tron and burn decks didn't have a meaningfully more difficult time than they do now. That said, I am in no hurry for it, and it will be a LONG time. If we see it in the next 5 years, i will be shocked. It is certainly towards the lower end of power in cards on that list, but it means very little because some of those cards are really and truly stupid. Most of the banned cards are much, MUCH stronger than it in my eyes, but there are still a good 7-9 cards I would unban before it, and with how crazy cautious they are about it.....I would unban the card in a mass unban, I don't think it would be that bad with a few others, but I don't think it will be unbanned or even seriously looked at until some of the current bigwigs leave. I am more inclined to fore them than some people, but we definitely need an actual player having a say in Modern, ideally one who actually plays Modern.
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While the example I gave is extreme, I firmly believe we're more likely to get something like a back to basics effect than another land destruction card. I was surprised we got Field of Ruin tbh.
I'd like to see more of a Prismatic Omen kind of hoser. I posted this on a previous page; don't remember the exact wording but it was something like this:
Prismatic Moon2G Enchantment
Nonbasic lands lose all abilities and have t: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
This hoses Eldrazi Temple, Tron lands, and Valakut while not messing up fetches or shocks. This is also very safe for Standard.
I can dig that kind of effect, a softer Blood Moon. It seems like Wizards is very averse to cheap land destruction, so if they are/were thinking of ways to deal with nonbasics, they'd go a different route than another variant of Wasteland.
Of course, if they would allow cards to come into Modern more ways than just through Standard, it'd help a ton, but that conversation is a dead end.
While the example I gave is extreme, I firmly believe we're more likely to get something like a back to basics effect than another land destruction card. I was surprised we got Field of Ruin tbh.
I'd like to see more of a Prismatic Omen kind of hoser. I posted this on a previous page; don't remember the exact wording but it was something like this:
Prismatic Moon2G Enchantment
Nonbasic lands lose all abilities and have t: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
This hoses Eldrazi Temple, Tron lands, and Valakut while not messing up fetches or shocks. This is also very safe for Standard.
I'm not sure if this card would be better than Blood Moon, too slow to impact anything, or become some weird combo card instead.
While the example I gave is extreme, I firmly believe we're more likely to get something like a back to basics effect than another land destruction card. I was surprised we got Field of Ruin tbh.
I'd like to see more of a Prismatic Omen kind of hoser. I posted this on a previous page; don't remember the exact wording but it was something like this:
Prismatic Moon2G Enchantment
Nonbasic lands lose all abilities and have t: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
This hoses Eldrazi Temple, Tron lands, and Valakut while not messing up fetches or shocks. This is also very safe for Standard.
I'm not sure if this card would be better than Blood Moon, too slow to impact anything, or become some weird combo card instead.
it wouldn't see play. For obvious reasons. It can only hit sol/tron/utility lands which is way narrower than moon, it isn't cheaper meaning you still need to ramp to get it out, so its strictly worse as a lock piece. If I'm in green and ramping, I'll just play sprawls on basic forests and use Blood Moon.
It won't be a combo card because there is already a cheaper AND strictly better version for yourself: Prismatic Omen. Ergo, Prismatic Moon is worse than dollar bin trash.
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BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
I could see a world where DRS comes off in the future, it's probably broken, but i really WASN'T all that impressed with it. If I wanted to throat-punch Jund any given FNM, my Tron and burn decks didn't have a meaningfully more difficult time than they do now. That said, I am in no hurry for it, and it will be a LONG time. If we see it in the next 5 years, i will be shocked. It is certainly towards the lower end of power in cards on that list, but it means very little because some of those cards are really and truly stupid. Most of the banned cards are much, MUCH stronger than it in my eyes, but there are still a good 7-9 cards I would unban before it, and with how crazy cautious they are about it.....I would unban the card in a mass unban, I don't think it would be that bad with a few others, but I don't think it will be unbanned or even seriously looked at until some of the current bigwigs leave. I am more inclined to fore them than some people, but we definitely need an actual player having a say in Modern, ideally one who actually plays Modern.
I don't mean to be rude, but if you think DRS isn't that impressive, you probably don't really know enough about the card or the archetype to have much of an opinion on it; the card is oppressively good. In fact, right now it's the primary target of a ban in legacy in the same way SDT was.
DRS will never, ever be unbanned in modern unless the power level is way off the charts more powerful years from now.
I'm not sure prismatic moon would really be good enough, on the draw it already feels like I'm behind. It wouldn't work well on Tron, it would mainly just hose Valakut but we can't afford to just have land destruction solely for that deck
I also think this prismatic moon wont see play because on the draw, it's awful. It's a great idea, but it can't hose T3 Karn, which is the real problem.
So it seems we need something stronger than ktk's Prismatic Moon, but not as strong as the Path of Simplicity I suggested earlier. I think it'd have to be an artifact or enchantment, but CMC two or less. Here goes:
Contested Ground
1G
Enchantment
Whenever a player plays a nonbasic land, that land's owner pays 2 or sacrifices a nonbasic land. At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are no nonbasic lands in play, sacrifice Contested Ground.
Apologies for the clumsy language, I just got off of a 10 hour night shift.
Prismatic moon has been thought up many times by many people but is supposed to cost two mana, not three. That guarantees you can resolve it in time vs tron, and makes it a prismatic omen variant where you cant run manlands or valakut but do get to incidentally hose your opponent. They end up two cards that look similar but actualy have wildly different uses (since omen is a valakut enabler while moon would be a valakut killer)
We dont know if the card makes any difference but it sure looks safe to try it. It doesnt force you to warp your manabase like blood moon does and doesnt randomly crush three colour midrange decks. It does put a serious hurt on eldrazi but thats fine as its a deck we're actually explicitly targetting here.
Hard to say if it would be strong enough since it can just be nature's claimed away - perhaps it has to cantrip or have a sacrifice effect or both (sacrifice this: draw a card) that would make it maindeckable the way relic of progenitus is.
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* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
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This is awesome work. Well done to all involved. If only we had this for every event.
I will say that we need to take the win percentages with many grains of salt. N is just too low for many decks. Our highest N for any matchup appears to be 42 for Affinity vs. GDS, and and N=42 sample is hardly a convincing one. But as a tournament descriptor, this is awesome, and this level of data is significantly better than no data at all. The small Ns are also bootstrappable to get some ranges of possible win %s.
EDIT: As an example of this, the N=42 GDS matchup can be bootstrapped (n=10000) to a 95% confidence interval of 38%-66.7% in Affinity's favor. So even though Affinity pulled out slightly ahead here, the true win percentage is somewhere between 38% and 67%, which is a huge range. This is a big limitation of small N samples for calculating win percentages.
That said, this is not nearly as problematic for the overall win-rate of decks across the tournament. Something like GDS has about 200 matches in the sample, so there's less variance around the 57% WR estimate. There will definitely be some which should be noted, but it's not as swingy as the individual matchups.
What's funny is you say this to compare it to Grixis Death's Shadow... when Grixis Death's Shadow casts some high-costing stuff of its own despite its low land count. Tron can get a 7-mana spell out on turn 3, but so can Grixis Death's Shadow... and unlike Tron, Grixis Death's Shadow can manage it on turn 2. But much like your comment which you bold as if it's somehow super important, that fact doesn't really mean much of anything.
Well, the data point you want to "sink in" is meaningless. So how about a more meaningful data point: You're saying that the metagame needs more cards to deal with Tron, a deck that's never managed to sustain a particularly high metagame percentage and has, with only a few exceptions, generally put up a dearth of results on the top tournaments, only popping up every now and then. Was this a really big finish for it? Of course. But prior to this, there was only one Grand Prix in the history of Modern where Gx Tron managed to get two decks into a Top 8, which was GP Brisbane, back in 2013. Also note that this was in a metagame where Deathrite Shaman was legal, meaning the format was stuffed with BGx. Even if we extend the criteria to Star City Games Opens, we have to go back nearly 2 years (January of 2016, SCG Columbus) before we find another case of a double Gx Tron top 8.
Setting aside the questionable assertion that the format needs those cards to deal with Tron to begin with, you were talking about how Tron threatens Blue decks. How is Green Sun's Zenith, a card that doesn't go into predominately Blue decks, supposed to help Blue decks against Tron?
Perhaps my stance isn't clear, so I'll post it for the 100th time in about 4 years; Too many decks are abusing the basic resource of Magic (Mana) in the Modern format without any tools sufficient enough to combat them.
It's not just Tron, It's Scapeshift, Ad Nauseam, Goryo's Vengeance, Through the Breach, Eldrazi Tron, Bant Eldrazi, and sometimes Affinity and Living End.
Having a Tool box maindeckable card that can be answered sufficiently and add a level of consistency to some green decks is exactly why GSZ was banned initially.
Here is the exact quote from the DCI;
Since then, the number of Green decks have decreased, or in the extreme sense depending on your personal restrictions, been nearly the exact same. So in essence, the decks using GSZ just became invalid when they tried to replace the card, and nothing else spawned out of the format since it's banning. It was used as a police tool for Cloudpost and Storm, we could seriously use it now. It would force Tron Decks to once again run some type of cheap removal like Pyroclasm, instead of going balls deep on just assembling their pieces ignoring the opponent. Yet that's not the only benefactor, it would actually police all the combo decks in their construction. That means most all in combo decks, couldn't be as they are now. The format would slow down as a result, and force higher levels of interaction.
I also understand there is a significant level of risk as well, a deck like Elves could appear to become Tier 1, but could that really be an unstoppable problem in a format with Fatal Push?
It tutors creatures at a higher cost, has a one time use, and is restricted on creature color. And no, I wouldn't even ban Dryad Arbor.
We need Wasteland or something similar. Period.
Path of Simplicity
1W
Aura
Enchant Player
Nonbasic lands the enchanted player controls do not untap during his/her untap step.
EDIT
I don't think Tron is quite the Boogeyman this board is making it out to be, but time will tell. I just think in the immediate future, if anything regarding land interaction is going to be printed, it'll be more in the vein of the card above than an out right land destruction card.
Well, Wizards could print a slightly better tectonic edge. Like reducing the land count to 2. (Even 3 would make it much better, but 2 would make it solid sideboard material.)
new article up on scg regarding bans and unbans. unfortunately only for premium members, so i won't (can't?) give away any of the details
I like this quote and why I love cantrips. With better cantrips, we have less variance in general which means games are less likely to come down to luck. There are obvious drawbacks, like Turbo Xerox/Tempo/Delver decks usually rise to the top. But without Brainstorm and Force of Will, it would be hard to say that a Delver deck would rise to the top besides Death's Shadow (which might be too good if we unban these cantrips).
Also better cantrips would mean more consistent combo decks. The hard part to determine would be how much it would add to the current combo decks consistency. As he said, they just used worse versions in Serum Visions, Opt, Sleight of Hand
I also believe that Modern's early days were totally different than it is now. The biggest and most important difference is the current popularity and amount of tournaments. Wizards had like 3 tournies a year for modern, saw only a few decks and did quick and non-thought out bans
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
He basically just talks about ponder and preordain and completely acts like combo decks wouldn't benefit from it
It wasn't a good article.
If I remember correctly, DRS was originally intended to only be able to use your graveyard (which would have created a solid, but a lot less overpowered card). They changed it last minute before the cards went to print.
I'm not on premium, but from what I read in the preview, I agreed with most of what Todd Anderson said. I never thought I'd see the day when I agree with Todd, but I am completely on board with what he said.
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)Though they probably could've fixed the card for Modern (while keeping it about the same in Standard) if they had just made its first effect require a colorless mana to activate, changing it from mana ramp to simple mana fixing. That was the least relevant ability in Standard anyway. Of course, that'd also make it likely unplayable in Modern or Legacy.
I'd like to see more of a Prismatic Omen kind of hoser. I posted this on a previous page; don't remember the exact wording but it was something like this:
Prismatic Moon 2G
Enchantment
Nonbasic lands lose all abilities and have t: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
This hoses Eldrazi Temple, Tron lands, and Valakut while not messing up fetches or shocks. This is also very safe for Standard.
I can dig that kind of effect, a softer Blood Moon. It seems like Wizards is very averse to cheap land destruction, so if they are/were thinking of ways to deal with nonbasics, they'd go a different route than another variant of Wasteland.
Of course, if they would allow cards to come into Modern more ways than just through Standard, it'd help a ton, but that conversation is a dead end.
I'm not sure if this card would be better than Blood Moon, too slow to impact anything, or become some weird combo card instead.
it wouldn't see play. For obvious reasons. It can only hit sol/tron/utility lands which is way narrower than moon, it isn't cheaper meaning you still need to ramp to get it out, so its strictly worse as a lock piece. If I'm in green and ramping, I'll just play sprawls on basic forests and use Blood Moon.
It won't be a combo card because there is already a cheaper AND strictly better version for yourself: Prismatic Omen. Ergo, Prismatic Moon is worse than dollar bin trash.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
I don't mean to be rude, but if you think DRS isn't that impressive, you probably don't really know enough about the card or the archetype to have much of an opinion on it; the card is oppressively good. In fact, right now it's the primary target of a ban in legacy in the same way SDT was.
DRS will never, ever be unbanned in modern unless the power level is way off the charts more powerful years from now.
I'm not sure prismatic moon would really be good enough, on the draw it already feels like I'm behind. It wouldn't work well on Tron, it would mainly just hose Valakut but we can't afford to just have land destruction solely for that deck
So it seems we need something stronger than ktk's Prismatic Moon, but not as strong as the Path of Simplicity I suggested earlier. I think it'd have to be an artifact or enchantment, but CMC two or less. Here goes:
Contested Ground
1G
Enchantment
Whenever a player plays a nonbasic land, that land's owner pays 2 or sacrifices a nonbasic land. At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are no nonbasic lands in play, sacrifice Contested Ground.
Apologies for the clumsy language, I just got off of a 10 hour night shift.
We dont know if the card makes any difference but it sure looks safe to try it. It doesnt force you to warp your manabase like blood moon does and doesnt randomly crush three colour midrange decks. It does put a serious hurt on eldrazi but thats fine as its a deck we're actually explicitly targetting here.
Hard to say if it would be strong enough since it can just be nature's claimed away - perhaps it has to cantrip or have a sacrifice effect or both (sacrifice this: draw a card) that would make it maindeckable the way relic of progenitus is.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron