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.
you know there is something wrong with a deck when people have to run super narrow cards against it in the sideboard and hope to draw then before turn 3 or probably lose.
There is not adequate hate vs big mana in this format so we either print a maindeckable versatile answer or we ban tron lands.
Race it or join em is a bad approach to an already linear enough format.
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.
you know there is something wrong with a deck when people have to run super narrow cards against it in the sideboard and hope to draw then before turn 3 or probably lose.
There is not adequate hate vs big mana in this format so we either print a maindeckable versatile answer or we ban tron lands.
There is no we print a maindeckable versatile answer. We don't print cards. Wizards does. And Wizards hates land destruction in Modern. Field of ruins is the best thing we got for 3 years now and for the next 3 years also.
Land destruction is something Wizards despise; expect no better answer.
I already know that. Didn't catch the sarcasm?
Ban tron lands is the only option here.
Unless wizards reads this forum and listens to ktk.
Lots of really atrong opinions about poor Prismatic Moon when half of you already knew the solution. Just make it cost 1G or GG instead. Problem solved.
As for other cards, we've already talked about this guy:
Desert Wasteland Land t: Add 1 to your mana pool. t, Sacrifice Desert Wasteland: Destroy target nonbasic land with no basic land types.
This could make it through a shockland Standard while not breaking non-rotating formats. It's less good against Valakut but strong against Tron and Temple plus random manlands. I understand it's worse than Wasteland proper, but that card ain't getting through Standard.
This might be able to get through Standard though:
Deadlands Land t: Add 1 to your mana pool. t, Exile a land card from your graveyard, Sacrifice Desert Wasteland: Destroy target nonbasic land.
Now you need to play it with fetches or cycling lands and Standard would probably never use it.
Lots of really atrong opinions about poor Prismatic Moon when half of you already knew the solution. Just make it cost 1G or GG instead. Problem solved.
As for other cards, we've already talked about this guy:
Desert Wasteland Land t: Add 1 to your mana pool. t, Sacrifice Desert Wasteland: Destroy target nonbasic land with no basic land types.
This could make it through a shockland Standard while not breaking non-rotating formats. It's less good against Valakut but strong against Tron and Temple plus random manlands. I understand it's worse than Wasteland proper, but that card ain't getting through Standard.
This might be able to get through Standard though:
Deadlands Land t: Add 1 to your mana pool. t, Exile a land card from your graveyard, Sacrifice Desert Wasteland: Destroy target nonbasic land.
Now you need to play it with fetches or cycling lands and Standard would probably never use it.
desert wasteland would be good. I wish you worked for wizards with a great idea like this. Unfortunately they probably won't make this card unless someone tips them off with the idea.
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.
It would need to cost 2 mana. On the other hand, I don't see how it couldn't cost 2 mana.
Well, the question is, can this cost 2 mana in Standard and be acceptable. I think it can; most Standard decks and formats would be totally fine operating under a Prismatic Moon. Just look at the current Standard; except for Aether Hub, basically every land would effectively function and no deck would get shut down. This card only does something in formats with lands that do things other than produce 1 mana of a given color; accelerating lands, manlands, utility lands, etc. Many Standard formats are light on those effects so this could probably be fine.
Another option that could easily get through Standard:
Mana NeutralityW Enchantment
If a source would add more than one mana to a mana pool, that source adds one mana of any color it could produce instead.
This screws with rituals, unfair acceleration strategies like Elves, Tron lands, Temple, and a lot more. It doesn't do a thing against fair decks and probably would see zero Standard play. Admittedly, it does not hit Valakut at all, but I think that's probably okay because it's hitting other decks that Prismatic Moon or Desert Wasteland isn't hitting.
But, why don't we get ourselves to the ground for a little bit? How possible is that Wizards will print targeted land hate having their mind in Modern?
Not super likely, but more likely with Ross on the Play Design team.
So, where do you all base your belief that such card is going to be printed? Do you have a source from Wizards or a quote that indicates they intend to? Or is it just wishful thinking?
100% wishful thinking, but maybe with a more Modern-focus on Play Design we can see cards like this in the future. We discuss lots of things in this thread that Wizards is probably not considering; this is just a little less apocalyptic than stuff like "Ban SSG/Opal."
Tron/Titanshift needs their predators. Otherwise it's broken. And we did have two(*redacted*/Infect-DSZoo). They banned both. There is no solution now.
They have predators, but those predators are decks, not cards. Fast combo and aggressive decks beat these strategies, but the issue is if you're playing a "fair" deck you can't just switch to a different deck type. But, as we know, Wizards doesn't care. They don't want Modern to contain decks that are 50/50+ against the field, and they want the "fair" decks to have bad matchups. So this isn't changing. It's only an issue if the ramp decks aren't actually bad against the aggressive decks, in which case THEY become the 50/50+ decks in the field. But I don't think we have any evidence to suggest we're there.
I like fast mana and I also like having land destruction. This is why old school magic is cool, and why I hate the current Standard design philosophy. Cards like Sinkhole is awesome and powerful. Same with Dark Ritual (although should be Red now probably). Printing something like Mana Neutrality I'm not against, but I also think that we shouldn't be clamoring for something that shuts down so many strategies. To me, its like you guys are mad at the idea that combo decks simply exist. I like powerful magic, but I'd rather have something that promotes powerful strategies than prohibits it
Once they print something like that or ban a card, we just have this cyclical system of wanting to get rid of whatever is on top of the meta.
DRS craze? Ban Death's Shadow.
Storm Craze? Ban Grapeshot.
I dont see a big difference in calling for a ban and clamoring over something easy to shut down these decks.
I'd rather discuss possible strategies to beat these deck.
PS: I agree that such card should be printed. It's just that it isn't happening.
Tron/Titanshift needs their predators. Otherwise it's broken. And we did have two(*redacted*/Infect-DSZoo). They banned both. There is no solution now.
The hyperbole over here is astounding. "The sky is falling, our Tron overlords are here to stay! Tron Winter!" Give me a break.
Burn, Storm, Affinity, etc. Plenty of decks race Tron/Titanshift no problem. If Tron/Titanshift uprise is sustained the meta will correct itself and the big baddies will be brought down, as we've seen time and time again. To say there are no natural predators is a false statement.
Would it be nice if fair decks had more interaction with big mana decks? Yes. I would like that. However, nothing off the ban list would help the majority of fair decks on this front. Field of Ruin was a good step in this direction, and hopefully we see more cards like it.
The problem is there's really no deck that "murders" Tron. All the decks that are heavily favored vs it on paper are easy for Tron to fight with the right SB cards. Storm "should" murder Tron, but in reality if Tron is commited to it the matchup can be brough close to a 50/50 one. I got 2 people bringing around 10 sb cards against me in Madrid. I didn't expect it, I even talked to my teammate, something like:
Me: Listen I won G1 and I'm heavily favored vs Tron pre-SB so my first instinct is just bringing an Empty and some bounce to deal with whatever problematic cards they have and just do my thing. But look at the guy, he's got like 10 sb cards there.
Teammate: Idk I trust your judgement
Turns out they had minimum 3 Relics AND 3 Surgicals. Which is an awful lot, I guess they both were terrified of Storm.
The other classic answers for Tron that haven't been killed are Affinity and Burn. Both have gotten better with Push, Brutality is great vs Burn, and they have more easy choices for those matchups.
In the end, those decks that should keep Tron in check don't really keep Tron in check. In reality, I would say the one that actually beats Tron pretty well is Titanshif, but well.
not to mention when the best way to beat a deck is with a faster deck instead of hate cards it shows its resiliency. and with wizards current design philosophy I just don't see any super good hosers coming anytime soon.
The new land from standard is a turn 3 effect which is too slow vs tron lands or eldrazi lands.
(When you have to dedicate at least 3 sideboard cards to have a chance vs a linear/hard to interact with deck, it is not competitively healthy)
Nor is it fun for anyone except the troll playing the deck.
I don't know why I'm still surprised by this, but the hyperbole and quick overreaction to a single top 8 (which contained a diverse and interactive top 32) is astounding. The top 8 was bad, sure, but let's not rewrite history and pretend tron has been unbeatable for the past 6 months and has 50/50 mu's across the field. That's insane and disingenuous.
Sometimes people bring 6 cards in from the sb for you. It's fairly easy when you make sure your sideboard cards are broadly effective enough to help in other bad mu's. It's not like relic of progenitus has subtext reading *note: only bring for storm*
This was a single event. Let's look at at least one more before we get into our bomb shelters.
The problem is there's really no deck that "murders" Tron. All the decks that are heavily favored vs it on paper are easy for Tron to fight with the right SB cards. Storm "should" murder Tron, but in reality if Tron is commited to it the matchup can be brough close to a 50/50 one. I got 2 people bringing around 10 sb cards against me in Madrid. I didn't expect it, I even talked to my teammate, something like:
Me: Listen I won G1 and I'm heavily favored vs Tron pre-SB so my first instinct is just bringing an Empty and some bounce to deal with whatever problematic cards they have and just do my thing. But look at the guy, he's got like 10 sb cards there.
Teammate: Idk I trust your judgement
Turns out they had minimum 3 Relics AND 3 Surgicals. Which is an awful lot, I guess they both were terrified of Storm.
The other classic answers for Tron that haven't been killed are Affinity and Burn. Both have gotten better with Push, Brutality is great vs Burn, and they have more easy choices for those matchups.
In the end, those decks that should keep Tron in check don't really keep Tron in check. In reality, I would say the one that actually beats Tron pretty well is Titanshif, but well.
It seems like the decks that are fast enough to race Tron before it stabilizes (Death Shadow Zoo, Infect, Grave Troll Dredge) get hit with bannings due to them being too fast.
I do think the Breach / Blue Moon decks look like they may be favored, having enough counters and blood moon to slow Tron down while threatening them with the combo kill. That would probably be my pick if I were looking for a way to gain an edge in a big-mana dominated meta
The problem is there's really no deck that "murders" Tron. All the decks that are heavily favored vs it on paper are easy for Tron to fight with the right SB cards. Storm "should" murder Tron, but in reality if Tron is commited to it the matchup can be brough close to a 50/50 one. I got 2 people bringing around 10 sb cards against me in Madrid. I didn't expect it, I even talked to my teammate, something like:
Me: Listen I won G1 and I'm heavily favored vs Tron pre-SB so my first instinct is just bringing an Empty and some bounce to deal with whatever problematic cards they have and just do my thing. But look at the guy, he's got like 10 sb cards there.
Teammate: Idk I trust your judgement
Turns out they had minimum 3 Relics AND 3 Surgicals. Which is an awful lot, I guess they both were terrified of Storm.
The other classic answers for Tron that haven't been killed are Affinity and Burn. Both have gotten better with Push, Brutality is great vs Burn, and they have more easy choices for those matchups.
In the end, those decks that should keep Tron in check don't really keep Tron in check. In reality, I would say the one that actually beats Tron pretty well is Titanshif, but well.
not to mention when the best way to beat a deck is with a faster deck instead of hate cards it shows its resiliency. and with wizards current design philosophy I just don't see any super good hosers coming anytime soon.
The new land from standard is a turn 3 effect which is too slow vs tron lands or eldrazi lands.
(When you have to dedicate at least 3 sideboard cards to have a chance vs a linear/hard to interact with deck, it is not competitively healthy)
Nor is it fun for anyone except the troll playing the deck.
Hang on, it's going a bit far to say that people who play Tron are trolls. It is really challenging to fight Tron using a fair deck, and it's only real predator atm is Titanshift, which feels bad; however, it is not an unbeatable deck. For all the feelbads Tron gives, the only serious gripe I have with it is how well it can perform against the field compared to other decks.
I don't know why I'm still surprised by this, but the hyperbole and quick overreaction to a single top 8 (which contained a diverse and interactive top 32) is astounding. The top 8 was bad, sure, but let's not rewrite history and pretend tron has been unbeatable for the past 6 months and has 50/50 mu's across the field. That's insane and disingenuous.
Sometimes people bring 6 cards in from the sb for you. It's fairly easy when you make sure your sideboard cards are broadly effective enough to help in other bad mu's. It's not like relic of progenitus has subtext reading *note: only bring for storm*
This was a single event. Let's look at at least one more before we get into our bomb shelters.
As someone who is almost solely a midrange player, I feel like I'm losing my mind reading this thread. Nearly every deck I enjoy playing in modern has a medium to awful matchup against Tron and I don't find myself freaking out.
Tron has been a quiet, underperforming deck in 2017 in major tournaments, Tom Ross was mainly the only one getting good results earlier in the year, and then it disappeared for months. One awful tournaments and we lose our minds? Come on, man, it's really difficult to take this thread seriously, it's actually very toxic. If not for Sheridan and GK's awesome stats and findings I think this thread would lack some serious dialogue.
As someone who despises playing against the Tron archetype, stop...The deck has almost never over-performed for long periods of times. Yes, I hate that midrange decks can't just have a bunch of 50/50s but it does keep those decks honest, even if that's frustrating.
Of course I want an improved answer(s) to big ramp---but the sky is falling attitude is awful.
And people calling for Tron bans while they play Storm? Am I losing my mind here?
The only scenario that had me worried was when Tron received Ugin while Eye was legal.
Maps/stirrings/Tron lands is not ban worthy, not until it's results are consistent. If we get a protour and a GP coupled with it, then we can start freaking out.
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
That's quite the assumption on your part. You can't compare Modern and Legacy, I don't understand what part of that concept people find difficult. Modern Tron is a great deck right now, the Tron lands don't see Legacy play. Should we be worried about Monastery Mentor because that is a big deal in Eternal formats?
You are way off the mark on my knowledge of DRS, the says when it and BBE were both legal, the very height of Jund, that was when I had the most time to play. I have played with it a handful of times, and against it more times than I can count. Do you know what DRS generally did to hurt my odds against them with Tron? Squat, it did absolutely squat. It's a powerful card, but in a format full of broken things, it's no worse than half the other things I can do, ans the recent rise of big mana would hurt it badly. I do think DRS would bring Jund back up to being a real factor, but no more than that. I think the problem last time was people choosing to just pick up the 'best deck' instead of trying to beat it, not it actually being too much. I couldn't afford it for myself, so I put in the time to beat it. The format is much stronger these days. I know Wizards WON'T test it, maybe ever, but I think if they did, the card wouldn't impress them.
How we view the format is also part of it. I view it in terms of speed. Jund can't actually move super fast (for Modern) so I am more inclined to let it be good.
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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
That's quite the assumption on your part. You can't compare Modern and Legacy, I don't understand what part of that concept people find difficult. Modern Tron is a great deck right now, the Tron lands don't see Legacy play. Should we be worried about Monastery Mentor because that is a big deal in Eternal formats?
You are way off the mark on my knowledge of DRS, the says when it and BBE were both legal, the very height of Jund, that was when I had the most time to play. I have played with it a handful of times, and against it more times than I can count. Do you know what DRS generally did to hurt my odds against them with Tron? Squat, it did absolutely squat. It's a powerful card, but in a format full of broken things, it's no worse than half the other things I can do, ans the recent rise of big mana would hurt it badly. I do think DRS would bring Jund back up to being a real factor, but no more than that. I think the problem last time was people choosing to just pick up the 'best deck' instead of trying to beat it, not it actually being too much. I couldn't afford it for myself, so I put in the time to beat it. The format is much stronger these days. I know Wizards WON'T test it, maybe ever, but I think if they did, the card wouldn't impress them.
How we view the format is also part of it. I view it in terms of speed. Jund can't actually move super fast (for Modern) so I am more inclined to let it be good.
Jund can't move super fast because ramp cards like DRS have been banned. DRS immediately speeds up jund and gives them significant percentage points in some of their worst mu's: burn and gy-centric strategies like dredge. It does way too much for way too little and has 0 drawback to running 4 of it in any green deck.
How do you find possibly the best 1 drop creature of all time "unimpressive?"
There's a reason it's called a 1 mana planeswalker. It's bonkers.
I hate when this, "legacy is a different format" rebuttal occurs. DRS was banned in modern for being oppressive in modern, it's now the hugest ban target in legacy, but you're telling me it's a different format? Come on, man...DRS was a massive design mistake, it's not coming back in modern, possibly ever, and that's ok.
I don't know why I'm still surprised by this, but the hyperbole and quick overreaction to a single top 8 (which contained a diverse and interactive top 32) is astounding. The top 8 was bad, sure, but let's not rewrite history and pretend tron has been unbeatable for the past 6 months and has 50/50 mu's across the field. That's insane and disingenuous.
Sometimes people bring 6 cards in from the sb for you. It's fairly easy when you make sure your sideboard cards are broadly effective enough to help in other bad mu's. It's not like relic of progenitus has subtext reading *note: only bring for storm*
This was a single event. Let's look at at least one more before we get into our bomb shelters.
As someone who is almost solely a midrange player, I feel like I'm losing my mind reading this thread. Nearly every deck I enjoy playing in modern has a medium to awful matchup against Tron and I don't find myself freaking out.
Tron has been a quiet, underperforming deck in 2017 in major tournaments, Tom Ross was mainly the only one getting good results earlier in the year, and then it disappeared for months. One awful tournaments and we lose our minds? Come on, man, it's really difficult to take this thread seriously, it's actually very toxic. If not for Sheridan and GK's awesome stats and findings I think this thread would lack some serious dialogue.
As someone who despises playing against the Tron archetype, stop...The deck has almost never over-performed for long periods of times. Yes, I hate that midrange decks can't just have a bunch of 50/50s but it does keep those decks honest, even if that's frustrating.
Of course I want an improved answer(s) to big ramp---but the sky is falling attitude is awful.
And people calling for Tron bans while they play Storm? Am I losing my mind here?
The only scenario that had me worried was when Tron received Ugin while Eye was legal.
Maps/stirrings/Tron lands is not ban worthy, not until it's results are consistent. If we get a protour and a GP coupled with it, then we can start freaking out.
I've hated Tron for a long while but this is the year when I have started talking about it being band. Gx Tron saw diminished play in the middle part of the year but Eldrazi Tron ramped up and put up serious numbers and results. While yes, Gx Tron and Eldrazi Tron have functionally different gameplans, they both abuse the hard to interact with and busted fast mana that Tron lands enable. We don't see Bant Eldrazi anymore, we barely see Eldrazi and Taxes anymore and why? Because Tron lands make the deck better. IMO the breaking point was Walking Ballista. The card has added another great payoff for Tron land decks that can aid them in bad matchups early by plinking creatures or combo pieces and it is an engine that can help them win the game late. Now it's the breaking point not because Walking Ballista itself is too good. It's the breaking point because over the last several years Tron has gotten better and better pieces to fight it's bad matchups while it's good matchups didn't get any worse. It's time Tron be shown the door. It had its stay and I for one am sick and tired of it. It promotes boring non-interactive lopsided games of magic and warps the format into a race it or lose to it mentality. Even with the loss of Eye of Ugin, Tron decks have barely missed stride as Sanctum of Ugin mixed with Newlamog have just jumped into prime poll position as a "late game" way to close things out. Did I say late? I mean turn 4 or 5....
I mean, of course we should worry about these last results. WotC focuses on GP/PT Top8 diversity for Modern bans after all. But come on guys, I come back to the thread after months and knee-jerk reactions still abound. Did someone at least run all the 2017 GP Top8 numbers? More level headed discussion and informed opinions would be nice, just saying.
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Yup I have to agree modern is the biggest luck format. Better to be lucky than good in modern imo. When you’ve been playing for al of Magic’s existence and you lose to nooby mc nooberson missingtriggers, miscounting damage, skipping phases, and slow rolling/playing because they don’t know any better is extremely frustrating. A guy win our local open last month with affinity and he misses leathal and misplays regularly on casual thursdays. It’s good for those players because they play things like burn, 8wack, affinity (see people misplay the crap out of that and win), and counters coco mostly. Then they try to step up to something like gds and actually have to learn how to be decent players.
In the long run is it good or bad to have modern be such an easy format to get into? It’s great to see more people playing magic and the community growing and modern allows for that much better than standard imo. If prices didn’t matter I think modern would still be the format for those people because it doesn’t have fow like legacy where if you try to play without a clue you can easily get punished extremely hard.
I dont necessarily agree with the "luck-sack" statement on the format. Sure, the format itself can be a bit frustrating when there are more opportunities to come back after making mistakes; however, as pointed before, the same faces always appear in the top of the biggest tournaments. You have to understand the knowledge of the meta you play in, you have to understand how to sideboard your deck properly to counteract against the deck you are playing against. You don't find new players often topping major tournaments in the format because of this, nor do you find new players topping local tournaments often. It took me quite some time before I began consistently succeeding at FNM, and that was because I learned from mistakes and my skill and knowledge of the game grew.
I mean, of course we should worry about these last results. WotC focuses on GP/PT Top8 diversity for Modern bans after all. But come on guys, I come back to the thread after months and knee-jerk reactions still abound. Did someone at least run all the 2017 GP Top8 numbers? More level headed discussion and informed opinions would be nice, just saying.
Quick glances at the numbers for top 8's:
GP Vancouver: 0
GP Brisbane: 1
GP Kobe: 1
GP Copenhagen: 0
GP Las Vegas: 1
GP San Paulo: 1
GP Brimmingham: 0
GP OKC: 3
Total: 7/64 - 10.9375%
That's a lot considering Eldrazi Tron was barely a deck a year ago and GR Tron was replaced with GB tron only recently. As lists get more and more tuned it's putting up results. Only 3/8 GPs without Tron lands in the top 8. For a deck that is supposed to have high variance matchups... that is a lot of top 8 results IMO.
Edit: So I see the site I was using didn't filter out the team events since that meta is inherently wonky. So the number is updated based on non team events. I am doing a calculation of the other archetypes in a second but my point still stands from above
Edit #2: removed team events completely from the list and put the GPs in chronological order like I did for Death Shadow below.
Edit #3: Not to derail this into an awful rehashed topic but just as a frame of reference. Twin was 17.86% of the top 8's in its last year in the format. We all know that the "too much" number is arbitrary and changes at WotC's discretion but that is what it was at when it was cited for bans for similar reasons we are discussing here.
Death Shadow: 9
Affintiy: 6
Counter Company: 5
Burn: 3
Death and Taxes: 3
Merfolk: 1
Lantern: 3
Dredge: 5
Living End: 3
WR Sun and Moon: 1
GBx: 3
BW Eldrazi (actual midrange, no taxes): 1
Ad Nauseum: 1
UWx: 4
Storm: 1
Titanshift: 5
Turns(Quad sleeved power): 1
Knightfall: 1
Now before you get to clickity clack responding about Death Shadow, here is the breakdown by GP in the order they happened:
GP Vancouver: 3
GP Brisbane: 0 (notably this is the same weekend of GP Vancouver and the birth of what we now call Death Shadow)
GP Kobe: 1
GP Copenhagen: 2
GP Las Vegas: 0
GP Sao Paulo: 2
GP Birmingham: 1
GP OKC: 0
Let's prempt the question "bUT wHaT AbOUt DeAtH sHaDOw?!". Yeah, those are some pretty big numbers. Yes, we could talk about how good GDS is overall. I will say that Death Shadow burst onto the scene with a flurry of power and then saw diminishing results as people found ways to deal with and beat it. That's because inherently it is a fair deck and there are fair ways to beat it (one of my big issues against Tron). Trons numbers stayed pretty consistent over the year even though they were bouncing from one variant to the next. Why? Because it doesn't matter what variant they are on. Tron lands add an inherent power to the deck that pushes it over the top. Sure maybe Death Shadow is too good but I see far fewer games where people are frustrated because they played against Death Shadow. Additionally, I feel that Death Shadow is just a symptom of the problem. Death Shadow came about because black based midrange players got tired of losing to big mana decks and tried to find a faster way to beat them. They developed a combo of their own through their own life resources and cards and managed to piece together one hell of a deck. We can talk about it as well as far as things putting up too many results over the year but I think Death Shadow is far less format warping than Tron.
There are a lot of fairly alarming assessments in this thread about Tron based on a single GP. Wizards has never banned anything, not even Eye of Ugin, after one bad event. It takes a consistent pattern to spur action. Given that Tron never saw more than 1 T8 appearance per GP for all of 2017 up until GPOKC, I feel fairly confident saying nothing is going to happen ban-wise until after the PT. Not even the vocal pros want cards banned, which hasn't been the case in 1-2 years. If the GP data isn't there and the public outcry isn't there, I'm just not seeing it.
To be clear, a bad PT would definitely prompt action. But we're not there yet. I think some vocal players, specifically those who prefer a certain decktype, just hate Tron. They wait month after month for any evidence to vindicate and support their dislike of the deck. We just happen to be coming off a heavy Tron GP T8 so the complaints are eapecially loud.
How do you find possibly the best 1 drop creature of all time "unimpressive?"
There's a reason it's called a 1 mana planeswalker. It's bonkers.
I hate when this, "legacy is a different format" rebuttal occurs. DRS was banned in modern for being oppressive in modern, it's now the hugest ban target in legacy, but you're telling me it's a different format? Come on, man...DRS was a massive design mistake, it's not coming back in modern, possibly ever, and that's ok.
It's not only the biggest Legacy ban target. It really is terribly oppressive in Legacy as well.
I understand why people think that DRS could come back, but I feel like the level of oppression that occurs with DRS is the exact bar a card needs to be banned in Modern. Just for note, I feel this list of cards is less oppressive than DRS.
On the topic of Cantrips in Modern, I do personally enjoy the fact that Opt is contesting Serum Visions within certain deck types. I feel if they print more cards like Opt we will find ourselves with Blue decks using a different variety of tools. Which would be beautiful to look at compared to Legacy's mandatory 8 cantrips.
Jeskai, Death's Shadow, Affinity, and Humans all posted better win rate margins than Tron, but honestly, there's a lot of potential overlap between the win rate brackets. For discrete win-rate percentage, Tron was only the 17th highest. Puts things into perspective; it's just another good deck of many that happened to run hot into the T8.
Jeskai, Death's Shadow, Affinity, and Humans all posted better win rate margins than Tron, but honestly, there's a lot of potential overlap between the win rate brackets. For discrete win-rate percentage, Tron was only the 17th highest. Puts things into perspective; it's just another good deck of many that happened to run hot into the T8.
Me and him have dramatically different numbers on basically the same data set.
We'd love to see your data set whenever you get done analyzing it.
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There is not adequate hate vs big mana in this format so we either print a maindeckable versatile answer or we ban tron lands.
Race it or join em is a bad approach to an already linear enough format.
Ban tron lands is the only option here.
Unless wizards reads this forum and listens to ktk.
As for other cards, we've already talked about this guy:
Desert Wasteland
Land
t: Add 1 to your mana pool.
t, Sacrifice Desert Wasteland: Destroy target nonbasic land with no basic land types.
This could make it through a shockland Standard while not breaking non-rotating formats. It's less good against Valakut but strong against Tron and Temple plus random manlands. I understand it's worse than Wasteland proper, but that card ain't getting through Standard.
This might be able to get through Standard though:
Deadlands
Land
t: Add 1 to your mana pool.
t, Exile a land card from your graveyard, Sacrifice Desert Wasteland: Destroy target nonbasic land.
Now you need to play it with fetches or cycling lands and Standard would probably never use it.
The first one would be better Imo
Well, the question is, can this cost 2 mana in Standard and be acceptable. I think it can; most Standard decks and formats would be totally fine operating under a Prismatic Moon. Just look at the current Standard; except for Aether Hub, basically every land would effectively function and no deck would get shut down. This card only does something in formats with lands that do things other than produce 1 mana of a given color; accelerating lands, manlands, utility lands, etc. Many Standard formats are light on those effects so this could probably be fine.
Another option that could easily get through Standard:
Mana Neutrality W
Enchantment
If a source would add more than one mana to a mana pool, that source adds one mana of any color it could produce instead.
This screws with rituals, unfair acceleration strategies like Elves, Tron lands, Temple, and a lot more. It doesn't do a thing against fair decks and probably would see zero Standard play. Admittedly, it does not hit Valakut at all, but I think that's probably okay because it's hitting other decks that Prismatic Moon or Desert Wasteland isn't hitting.
Not super likely, but more likely with Ross on the Play Design team.
100% wishful thinking, but maybe with a more Modern-focus on Play Design we can see cards like this in the future. We discuss lots of things in this thread that Wizards is probably not considering; this is just a little less apocalyptic than stuff like "Ban SSG/Opal."
They have predators, but those predators are decks, not cards. Fast combo and aggressive decks beat these strategies, but the issue is if you're playing a "fair" deck you can't just switch to a different deck type. But, as we know, Wizards doesn't care. They don't want Modern to contain decks that are 50/50+ against the field, and they want the "fair" decks to have bad matchups. So this isn't changing. It's only an issue if the ramp decks aren't actually bad against the aggressive decks, in which case THEY become the 50/50+ decks in the field. But I don't think we have any evidence to suggest we're there.
Once they print something like that or ban a card, we just have this cyclical system of wanting to get rid of whatever is on top of the meta.
DRS craze? Ban Death's Shadow.
Storm Craze? Ban Grapeshot.
I dont see a big difference in calling for a ban and clamoring over something easy to shut down these decks.
I'd rather discuss possible strategies to beat these deck.
"I think X deck can see a rise due to Big Mana."
Instead of "We need something like Wasteland"
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Burn, Storm, Affinity, etc. Plenty of decks race Tron/Titanshift no problem. If Tron/Titanshift uprise is sustained the meta will correct itself and the big baddies will be brought down, as we've seen time and time again. To say there are no natural predators is a false statement.
Would it be nice if fair decks had more interaction with big mana decks? Yes. I would like that. However, nothing off the ban list would help the majority of fair decks on this front. Field of Ruin was a good step in this direction, and hopefully we see more cards like it.
The new land from standard is a turn 3 effect which is too slow vs tron lands or eldrazi lands.
(When you have to dedicate at least 3 sideboard cards to have a chance vs a linear/hard to interact with deck, it is not competitively healthy)
Nor is it fun for anyone except the troll playing the deck.
Sometimes people bring 6 cards in from the sb for you. It's fairly easy when you make sure your sideboard cards are broadly effective enough to help in other bad mu's. It's not like relic of progenitus has subtext reading *note: only bring for storm*
This was a single event. Let's look at at least one more before we get into our bomb shelters.
Affinity
Death & Taxes
Mardu Nahiri
Forcing people to merge with twitch is stupid
The days of Storm beating up on Tron are over
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
I do think the Breach / Blue Moon decks look like they may be favored, having enough counters and blood moon to slow Tron down while threatening them with the combo kill. That would probably be my pick if I were looking for a way to gain an edge in a big-mana dominated meta
Hang on, it's going a bit far to say that people who play Tron are trolls. It is really challenging to fight Tron using a fair deck, and it's only real predator atm is Titanshift, which feels bad; however, it is not an unbeatable deck. For all the feelbads Tron gives, the only serious gripe I have with it is how well it can perform against the field compared to other decks.
As someone who is almost solely a midrange player, I feel like I'm losing my mind reading this thread. Nearly every deck I enjoy playing in modern has a medium to awful matchup against Tron and I don't find myself freaking out.
Tron has been a quiet, underperforming deck in 2017 in major tournaments, Tom Ross was mainly the only one getting good results earlier in the year, and then it disappeared for months. One awful tournaments and we lose our minds? Come on, man, it's really difficult to take this thread seriously, it's actually very toxic. If not for Sheridan and GK's awesome stats and findings I think this thread would lack some serious dialogue.
As someone who despises playing against the Tron archetype, stop...The deck has almost never over-performed for long periods of times. Yes, I hate that midrange decks can't just have a bunch of 50/50s but it does keep those decks honest, even if that's frustrating.
Of course I want an improved answer(s) to big ramp---but the sky is falling attitude is awful.
And people calling for Tron bans while they play Storm? Am I losing my mind here?
The only scenario that had me worried was when Tron received Ugin while Eye was legal.
Maps/stirrings/Tron lands is not ban worthy, not until it's results are consistent. If we get a protour and a GP coupled with it, then we can start freaking out.
That's quite the assumption on your part. You can't compare Modern and Legacy, I don't understand what part of that concept people find difficult. Modern Tron is a great deck right now, the Tron lands don't see Legacy play. Should we be worried about Monastery Mentor because that is a big deal in Eternal formats?
You are way off the mark on my knowledge of DRS, the says when it and BBE were both legal, the very height of Jund, that was when I had the most time to play. I have played with it a handful of times, and against it more times than I can count. Do you know what DRS generally did to hurt my odds against them with Tron? Squat, it did absolutely squat. It's a powerful card, but in a format full of broken things, it's no worse than half the other things I can do, ans the recent rise of big mana would hurt it badly. I do think DRS would bring Jund back up to being a real factor, but no more than that. I think the problem last time was people choosing to just pick up the 'best deck' instead of trying to beat it, not it actually being too much. I couldn't afford it for myself, so I put in the time to beat it. The format is much stronger these days. I know Wizards WON'T test it, maybe ever, but I think if they did, the card wouldn't impress them.
How we view the format is also part of it. I view it in terms of speed. Jund can't actually move super fast (for Modern) so I am more inclined to let it be good.
Jund can't move super fast because ramp cards like DRS have been banned. DRS immediately speeds up jund and gives them significant percentage points in some of their worst mu's: burn and gy-centric strategies like dredge. It does way too much for way too little and has 0 drawback to running 4 of it in any green deck.
Affinity
Death & Taxes
Mardu Nahiri
Forcing people to merge with twitch is stupid
There's a reason it's called a 1 mana planeswalker. It's bonkers.
I hate when this, "legacy is a different format" rebuttal occurs. DRS was banned in modern for being oppressive in modern, it's now the hugest ban target in legacy, but you're telling me it's a different format? Come on, man...DRS was a massive design mistake, it's not coming back in modern, possibly ever, and that's ok.
I've hated Tron for a long while but this is the year when I have started talking about it being band. Gx Tron saw diminished play in the middle part of the year but Eldrazi Tron ramped up and put up serious numbers and results. While yes, Gx Tron and Eldrazi Tron have functionally different gameplans, they both abuse the hard to interact with and busted fast mana that Tron lands enable. We don't see Bant Eldrazi anymore, we barely see Eldrazi and Taxes anymore and why? Because Tron lands make the deck better. IMO the breaking point was Walking Ballista. The card has added another great payoff for Tron land decks that can aid them in bad matchups early by plinking creatures or combo pieces and it is an engine that can help them win the game late. Now it's the breaking point not because Walking Ballista itself is too good. It's the breaking point because over the last several years Tron has gotten better and better pieces to fight it's bad matchups while it's good matchups didn't get any worse. It's time Tron be shown the door. It had its stay and I for one am sick and tired of it. It promotes boring non-interactive lopsided games of magic and warps the format into a race it or lose to it mentality. Even with the loss of Eye of Ugin, Tron decks have barely missed stride as Sanctum of Ugin mixed with Newlamog have just jumped into prime poll position as a "late game" way to close things out. Did I say late? I mean turn 4 or 5....
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
I dont necessarily agree with the "luck-sack" statement on the format. Sure, the format itself can be a bit frustrating when there are more opportunities to come back after making mistakes; however, as pointed before, the same faces always appear in the top of the biggest tournaments. You have to understand the knowledge of the meta you play in, you have to understand how to sideboard your deck properly to counteract against the deck you are playing against. You don't find new players often topping major tournaments in the format because of this, nor do you find new players topping local tournaments often. It took me quite some time before I began consistently succeeding at FNM, and that was because I learned from mistakes and my skill and knowledge of the game grew.
BB8-RackBB
Pauper:
UUDelverlUU
Quick glances at the numbers for top 8's:
GP Vancouver: 0
GP Brisbane: 1
GP Kobe: 1
GP Copenhagen: 0
GP Las Vegas: 1
GP San Paulo: 1
GP Brimmingham: 0
GP OKC: 3
Total: 7/64 - 10.9375%
That's a lot considering Eldrazi Tron was barely a deck a year ago and GR Tron was replaced with GB tron only recently. As lists get more and more tuned it's putting up results. Only 3/8 GPs without Tron lands in the top 8. For a deck that is supposed to have high variance matchups... that is a lot of top 8 results IMO.
Edit: So I see the site I was using didn't filter out the team events since that meta is inherently wonky. So the number is updated based on non team events. I am doing a calculation of the other archetypes in a second but my point still stands from above
Edit #2: removed team events completely from the list and put the GPs in chronological order like I did for Death Shadow below.
Edit #3: Not to derail this into an awful rehashed topic but just as a frame of reference. Twin was 17.86% of the top 8's in its last year in the format. We all know that the "too much" number is arbitrary and changes at WotC's discretion but that is what it was at when it was cited for bans for similar reasons we are discussing here.
Affintiy: 6
Counter Company: 5
Burn: 3
Death and Taxes: 3
Merfolk: 1
Lantern: 3
Dredge: 5
Living End: 3
WR Sun and Moon: 1
GBx: 3
BW Eldrazi (actual midrange, no taxes): 1
Ad Nauseum: 1
UWx: 4
Storm: 1
Titanshift: 5
Turns(Quad sleeved power): 1
Knightfall: 1
Now before you get to clickity clack responding about Death Shadow, here is the breakdown by GP in the order they happened:
GP Vancouver: 3
GP Brisbane: 0 (notably this is the same weekend of GP Vancouver and the birth of what we now call Death Shadow)
GP Kobe: 1
GP Copenhagen: 2
GP Las Vegas: 0
GP Sao Paulo: 2
GP Birmingham: 1
GP OKC: 0
Let's prempt the question "bUT wHaT AbOUt DeAtH sHaDOw?!". Yeah, those are some pretty big numbers. Yes, we could talk about how good GDS is overall. I will say that Death Shadow burst onto the scene with a flurry of power and then saw diminishing results as people found ways to deal with and beat it. That's because inherently it is a fair deck and there are fair ways to beat it (one of my big issues against Tron). Trons numbers stayed pretty consistent over the year even though they were bouncing from one variant to the next. Why? Because it doesn't matter what variant they are on. Tron lands add an inherent power to the deck that pushes it over the top. Sure maybe Death Shadow is too good but I see far fewer games where people are frustrated because they played against Death Shadow. Additionally, I feel that Death Shadow is just a symptom of the problem. Death Shadow came about because black based midrange players got tired of losing to big mana decks and tried to find a faster way to beat them. They developed a combo of their own through their own life resources and cards and managed to piece together one hell of a deck. We can talk about it as well as far as things putting up too many results over the year but I think Death Shadow is far less format warping than Tron.
To be clear, a bad PT would definitely prompt action. But we're not there yet. I think some vocal players, specifically those who prefer a certain decktype, just hate Tron. They wait month after month for any evidence to vindicate and support their dislike of the deck. We just happen to be coming off a heavy Tron GP T8 so the complaints are eapecially loud.
I understand why people think that DRS could come back, but I feel like the level of oppression that occurs with DRS is the exact bar a card needs to be banned in Modern. Just for note, I feel this list of cards is less oppressive than DRS.
Green Sun's Zenith
Bloodbraid Elf
Stoneforge Mystic
Ancient Den
Great Furnace
Tree of Tales
Seat of the Synod
Vault of Whispers
On the topic of Cantrips in Modern, I do personally enjoy the fact that Opt is contesting Serum Visions within certain deck types. I feel if they print more cards like Opt we will find ourselves with Blue decks using a different variety of tools. Which would be beautiful to look at compared to Legacy's mandatory 8 cantrips.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/7k4du2/gp_okc_data_analytics/
Jeskai, Death's Shadow, Affinity, and Humans all posted better win rate margins than Tron, but honestly, there's a lot of potential overlap between the win rate brackets. For discrete win-rate percentage, Tron was only the 17th highest. Puts things into perspective; it's just another good deck of many that happened to run hot into the T8.
We'd love to see your data set whenever you get done analyzing it.