Honestly the more I watch Jace the more I think it might still wind up being a problem, but that it's going to take a while to materialize in the right deck. It's pretty ubiquitous in blue and it's definitely better than all the other 4 mana planeswalkers at closing games, and by a lot.
My prediction is that by this time next year a "best blue deck" will have emerged, and it will be playing ~3 jaces in the 75, taking the role of format gatekeeper once occupied by Jund.
It's totally possible I'm wrong there and I'll eat crow if I'm incorrect gladly.
Edit to say: It's also totally possible that the best blue deck (whatever it is) with a 10-15% meta share is a fine thing. I dunno. I will say I have really not enjoyed being on the receiving end of the old fateseal again.
I dont know, sometimes I feel like that Jace deck is Turns, and I'm this unassailable lord of space and time, then I run into some random Jank that completely destroys my pet deck, laughs in the face of a resolved Jace, and doesnt care that I COULD take all the turns, because I just die.
Sometimes, I wonder if I watch the same tournament as everyone else.
No, Jace is not breaking modern, but he *is* dominating games where he lands. Just watched blue moon in Cincinatti multiples times and multiple times Jace got played turn 4 or 5 and then the multi-brainstorm defined the game. It not dominating in the sense of of a turn-3 karn can be, but it's absolutely the best thing a blue deck do to control the game.
Same thing for BBE. It's not dominating in the sense that it ends the game on the spot, but it's dominating in the sense that it gets jammed successfully in a wide number of decks and it looks like it's destined to stay that way.
Both of these things were exactly what many feared. No one claimed that Jace wins game on the spot. No one said BBE resolving handed the game to its conroller. What did get said was that they are very very good cards that would become more and more ubiquitous. Jace is now the finisher of choice for blue. BBE is jammed in almost every deck that produces RG. It's quite a bit of a bore. Beyond sprucing up Jund, BBE does not promote diversity. Jace, a bit more, because it helped struggling blue decks.
Honestly the more I watch Jace the more I think it might still wind up being a problem, but that it's going to take a while to materialize in the right deck. It's pretty ubiquitous in blue and it's definitely better than all the other 4 mana planeswalkers at closing games, and by a lot.
My prediction is that by this time next year a "best blue deck" will have emerged, and it will be playing ~3 jaces in the 75, taking the role of format gatekeeper once occupied by Jund.
It's totally possible I'm wrong there and I'll eat crow if I'm incorrect gladly.
Edit to say: It's also totally possible that the best blue deck (whatever it is) with a 10-15% meta share is a fine thing. I dunno. I will say I have really not enjoyed being on the receiving end of the old fateseal again.
I think it's the total opposite, BBE alone has blue decks worse, in my opinion.
I still think blue decks have to have too much to align for them, and the win-cons are still too slow.
I'm pretty over blue, it's not like we should be giving modern brainstorm, ponder, FOW or Daze. I accept it's just ok. Not bad, not good. It's ok. If you really like that archetype, go for it.
I'm not sure I see much of a reason to play control over midrange in modern.
Love the format, happy with it, the meta is healthy, I'm not knocking modern. Jace and his presence has kinda convinced me blue is just ok and not much is going to change that. Maybe SFM AND Jace will make blue like great, but I think at this point the format should rely on just having good sets come out by the new play design team.
No, Jace is not breaking modern, but he *is* dominating games where he lands. Just watched blue moon in Cincinatti multiples times and multiple times Jace got played turn 4 or 5 and then the multi-brainstorm defined the game. It not dominating in the sense of of a turn-3 karn can be, but it's absolutely the best thing a blue deck do to control the game.
Maybe this was your worry, but it definitely was not the worry of many vocal critics in the community. Their worry was clearly that JTMS was going to take over the format and reduce diversity. There worry was not that he would be a widespread staple like Snapcaster or Push. They very clearly argued it would reduce or ruin Modern's diversity: see articles by Friedman, DeCandio, Davis, and others.
Weeks later, we see these doomsaying predictions did not happen at all. Modern diversity actually looks slightly higher than pre-unbans, or at least the same.
Same thing for BBE. It's not dominating in the sense that it ends the game on the spot, but it's dominating in the sense that it gets jammed successfully in a wide number of decks and it looks like it's destined to stay that way.
Again, this was not the worry of many (and I don't even know if it was your worry at the time). It wasn't even the prediction of many, let alone the worry; most people thought BBE would just benefit Jund. I struggle to think of someone who predicted it would also benefit random decks like Zoo, Ponza, and RG Eldrazi. Almost all the JTMS commentary was Jund-focused. So even those predictions were off the mark, let alone the worry that BBE would reduce diversity.
Both of these things were exactly what many feared. No one claimed that Jace wins game on the spot. No one said BBE resolving handed the game to its conroller. What did get said was that they are very very good cards that would become more and more ubiquitous.
As I said, I am really struggling to find where the vocal critics said this. The most egregious JTMS and BBE doomsayers did not say this at all. They feared the format polarizing to these cards and Modern's awesome diversity getting destroyed. See quotes like Jim Davis': "My biggest fear is that the insane value that Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor bring to Modern will serve to fully polarize the format between very fast decks and very slow decks, murdering the middle of the spectrum." See Sperling: "The risks with Jace, for example, are that all the cool things people are doing with Snapcaster Mage converge onto a small handful of ways to best utilize both Snapcaster and Jace." See Stevens: "Many players who are smarter than me and have been around longer believe that Modern is vast enough to absorb the bomb of Jace and come out diverse, but I'm skeptical." These players are CLEARLY worried about macro-diversity issues with this card, not just that JTMS is a good addition to decks. These are the worries that got resoundingly debunked over the first month or so of JTMS/BBE legality, and I predict will continue to be resoundingly debunked as we go forward.
Sometimes, I wonder if I watch the same tournament as everyone else.
No, Jace is not breaking modern, but he *is* dominating games where he lands. Just watched blue moon in Cincinatti multiples times and multiple times Jace got played turn 4 or 5 and then the multi-brainstorm defined the game. It not dominating in the sense of of a turn-3 karn can be, but it's absolutely the best thing a blue deck do to control the game.
Same thing for BBE. It's not dominating in the sense that it ends the game on the spot, but it's dominating in the sense that it gets jammed successfully in a wide number of decks and it looks like it's destined to stay that way.
Both of these things were exactly what many feared. No one claimed that Jace wins game on the spot. No one said BBE resolving handed the game to its conroller. What did get said was that they are very very good cards that would become more and more ubiquitous. Jace is now the finisher of choice for blue. BBE is jammed in almost every deck that produces RG. It's quite a bit of a bore. Beyond sprucing up Jund, BBE does not promote diversity. Jace, a bit more, because it helped struggling blue decks.
One thing they're not, is innocuous.
Well they are both powerful cards, but fundamnetally they are not 'breaking' Modern, they are not 'ruining' Modern, and just because they are in decks of their colours, doesnt mean well, much of anything.
Is Jace the best card you can be playing in Blue? Probably. Thats why he was Unbanned.
Is BBE a huge tempo and value swing? It sure can be.
This is not exactly what many feared.
Many feared that diversity would die, that Pyromancer decks would disappear, that value town (suspect since it was always bad) would disappear, that Hollow One would disappear, and that 'death by fateseal' would be a thing.
Its revisionist to say that 'this meta' is what was feared. The sky ACTUALLY was going to fall this time. It has not, and just because the cards see play this time (hi thopter/sword and AV) doesnt mean this is a negative. Its actually working out as hoped.
We have multiple blue decks, still trying to find their footing.
We have some new contenders in RG like Ponza.
We STILL have Tron, Affinity, Eldrazi (even Stompy Colourless) and Burn and Humans.
Blue gained a few %, and Jund came back.
That is NOT what people 'feared'.
BTW, Turns was in the elimination rounds in GP Kyoto.
What I feared was that Jace would wind up in every blue deck and that he would overall become a large percentage of the meta, and the card is generally unpleasant to play against. Oddly enough I think that's what happened but I'm not sure it's bad for the format.
One of the weird little quirks that cropped up is that originally there was no Wasteland in modern, and control decks had to make big sacrifices to beat Cavern of Souls in modern. Now with Field of Ruin, even 3 color jace decks can have up to 2 copies of Field of Ruin and this has fixed some of the Cavern problems (Elves, Humans, Merfolk) that control shells had. I'm again not sure if this is good or bad, but I do think Field was an elegant solution that made Cavern less of an issue without doing all the damage Wasteland does to a format.
My hope is that Jace making decks like Rugshift and Esper better is enough of a net positive to outweigh the whole ubiquity of UWx and URx in the semi-competitive community. UWR today does very similar stuff to what Jund does (and has always done), which is demolish random decks with extreme prejudice.
My expectation is that Jund and UWx Jace will wind up chewing up around 20-25% of the meta collectively, which will serve to be a diversity limiter in much the same way Splinter Twin-Jund was (where you either play a deck that has game against both or you go home).
But again I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing, it might be fine. And it might not even happen.
What I feared was that Jace would wind up in every blue deck and that he would overall become a large percentage of the meta, and the card is generally unpleasant to play against. Oddly enough I think that's what happened but I'm not sure it's bad for the format.
One of the weird little quirks that cropped up is that originally there was no Wasteland in modern, and control decks had to make big sacrifices to beat Cavern of Souls in modern. Now with Field of Ruin, even 3 color jace decks can have up to 2 copies of Field of Ruin and this has fixed some of the Cavern problems (Elves, Humans, Merfolk) that control shells had. I'm again not sure if this is good or bad, but I do think Field was an elegant solution that made Cavern less of an issue without doing all the damage Wasteland does to a format.
My hope is that Jace making decks like Rugshift and Esper better is enough of a net positive to outweigh the whole ubiquity of UWx and URx in the semi-competitive community. UWR today does very similar stuff to what Jund does (and has always done), which is demolish random decks with extreme prejudice.
My expectation is that Jund and UWx Jace will wind up chewing up around 20-25% of the meta collectively, which will serve to be a diversity limiter in much the same way Splinter Twin-Jund was (where you either play a deck that has game against both or you go home).
But again I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing, it might be fine. And it might not even happen.
Lol, I don't really know, it is highly possible I have said this exact thing before. I don't do regular reviews of my post history and make sure I'm not repeating myself
I'm almost positive I said the exact same thing about the whole "gatekeeper" idea back when the format was basically Tron/Twin/Jund but that was a long time ago.
the issue with pointing out X jace deck or Y BBE decks is that you imply that these decks are either being propped up by these cards, or are only good because of these cards. they are just a piece of the puzzle, and arent entirely instrumental in how those decks particularly function. it would be like saying that Rxx lightning bolt decks are some percent of the meta, or Uxx snapcaster decks, or Gxx tarmogoyf, or Bxx thoughtseize, etc. if you start looking at it in that context then there are way more broken cards than jace and bbe.
the flip side of this is something like valakut. you can clearly see that "this is a valakut deck". because without it, it would be a pile of nonsense cards.
as for jund. i personally think the deck numbers showing up are still inflated by its popularity, rather than its actual power level. its definitely tier 1, but the deck is also the poster child for GBx which is a pretty beloved archetype. when jund fell out of favor, a lot of people moved off of it. so i would posit that the number of people playing jund last december is significantly less than the number playing it now. there is a rather significant correlation between how many people are playing a deck, and its success rate. a salient example would be lantern. it isnt a secret that many pros consider it one of the best decks in the format, but because the number of people who play the deck has never been that high it fails to post consistent results.
lastly, as an aside on cavern of souls, it is an annoyance for some blue decks but has never been particularly influential in the format because modern counter magic sucks. blue decks, in particular control, basically have to build their decks on the assumption that their suite of counter magic is just going to be dead some amount of the time. if your conditional counters dont line up the opponent could be playing 20 caverns as their land base, and the game would be no different.
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My expectation is that Jund and UWx Jace will wind up chewing up around 20-25% of the meta collectively, which will serve to be a diversity limiter in much the same way Splinter Twin-Jund was (where you either play a deck that has game against both or you go home).
This does not seem very likely, unless you are also including any blue-based JTMS deck such as Blue Moon, Taking Turns, Temur, Sultai, etc., not just UWx ones. If you included these, and then you also included BBE midrange decks generally, not just Jund, I guess we could see 25% of the metagame split between these cards.
But honestly, who cares? Even if that happened, the comparison misses a significant difference between a potential UWx/Ux/Jund hegemony and the Twin hegemony; Twin did not have a lot of bad matchups and was a better deck. Jund and UWx/Ux, however, have plenty of bad matchups and just aren't as good as Twin. They also have bad matchups against some of the same decks (e.g. both struggling vs. big mana). This means the metagame can quickly cycle from one deck being on top to another and any Jund/JTMS plurality won't actually have a diversity impact. We'll see no single deck, JTMS/BBE or otherwise, being on top because it's impossible to find a deck that is strong against the entire field. We couldn't see this more clearly than in the results of the past month. With Twin in the picture, you're 45/55 - 55/45+ against all the Tier 1 decks, and then 60/40+ against all the random stuff. That's a true gatekeeper. Jund/JTMS Blue decks don't have anywhere near this matchup spectrum, so them having a big share doesn't have a negative impact on field diversity.
Stated simply, Jund/JTMS Blue decks aren't good enough to be format gatekeepers. They have too many bad matchups across all tiers. This makes them just as viable as any other strategy in Modern.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf seem fine. I am never going to be that guy that says that the cards are not powerful. They are super powerful. But I could say the same about Serum Visions, Liliana otv, Kologhan's Command, Thoughtseize, Collected Company, Lightning Bolt, Karn Liberated, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, and on and on. Heck, even Time Warp and Ethereal Armor are powerful in their own way! It's part of the reason people play Modern. They don't play so it's 2/1 vanillas vs. Doomfalls. There is another format where you can open up packs to do that. There's also a format where you can play all the Blue spells to your heart's content and a format where it's only been Aggro/Midrange/some Control with every Combo deck being banned. Modern is something different, which brings me to another point.
I absolutely HATE it when people tell me that Modern is just Legacy lite if Stoneforge Mystic/JTMS/Bloodbraid Elf/Preordain etc. etc. get unbanned. Modern will NEVER be Legacy. We will never have Force of Will, Brainstorm, Daze, true dual lands, Wasteland, and many more. Please do not tell me that if Preordain is unbanned, Modern is basically Legacy. Do people even know that there are at least 2 other cantrips that make Preordain look like garbage in Legacy? (Portent is probably a bit less good than Preordain though.)
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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)
of those cards the outlier to me is preordain. i dont see that card ever making it into modern just on principle. wotc set their standard, and outside of blue decks across the board (combo, control, aggro/tempo, etc) needing serious help there is no reason to reevaluate this stance.
its a consistency tool that is just an upgrade to what people are already playing, so basically just a card swap. it doesnt promote diversity, nor would it substantially help decks that arent doing that great compared to similar counterparts.
for instance i dont think its a stretch to say that jeskai ascendancy storm is inferior to gifts storm. both would get preordain so nothing would change.
delver would profit a little bit with a better cantrip, but with counterspells typically starting at the 2cmc point and decks running 8+ removal spells for a creature heavy format, a 1 mana 3/2 flier is kind of a joke without the tools to protect it.
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Sometimes, I wonder if I watch the same tournament as everyone else.
No, Jace is not breaking modern, but he *is* dominating games where he lands. Just watched blue moon in Cincinatti multiples times and multiple times Jace got played turn 4 or 5 and then the multi-brainstorm defined the game. It not dominating in the sense of of a turn-3 karn can be, but it's absolutely the best thing a blue deck do to control the game.
Sure, sometimes Jace can run away with a game. He'd better be able to, when he costs 4 mana and isn't an Instant. But then you have plenty of games where he doesn't do much, or games where he looks great, but then you stop and realize that Jace was ultimately win-more in that game.
Both of these things were exactly what many feared. No one claimed that Jace wins game on the spot. No one said BBE resolving handed the game to its conroller. What did get said was that they are very very good cards that would become more and more ubiquitous.
Cards being good and seeing a good amount of play wasn't what people were crying about, by virtue of the fact there's no reason to cry about that.
Jace is now the finisher of choice for blue.
Well, first, this isn't true. A number of Blue decks don't run Jace at all. Setting aside combo decks like Storm, there's certainly Grixis Death's Shadow which has, at least so far eschewed Jace.
But even if we grant Jace as the default finisher for Blue, so what? I don't really see how that's an issue.
BBE is jammed in almost every deck that produces RG. It's quite a bit of a bore. Beyond sprucing up Jund, BBE does not promote diversity.
It turned Ponza from a fringe deck into a legitimate contender and made RG Eldrazi into a thing. How is introducing a new deck and improving a previously fringe one not promoting diversity? If this was accomplished by pushing out more decks than were introduced that could be an issue, but can you point to any decks that were pushed out by Bloodbraid Elf? There is Abzan, but that wasn't really pushed out so much it swapped places with Jund. Swapping two decks doesn't decrease diversity.
Stated simply, Jund/JTMS Blue decks aren't good enough to be format gatekeepers. They have too many bad matchups across all tiers. This makes them just as viable as any other strategy in Modern.
Artifact Lands no under no conditions should Artifact Lands be allowed...Affinity doesn't need help.
Green Sun Zenith? Green is pretty strong as a color already, I am not sure it needs the help but I don't think it will break the meta.
Stoneforge Mystic, yes mostly because White needs all the help it can get. It provides a few sideboard cards and Gideons to control decks unless your playing Humans. White needs all the help it can get and it could use some serious help in the two drop slot where it lacks a signature option compared to other colors unless of course your playing Humans. I also don't think SFM is going to get more broken overtime...WOTC is not likely to print any amazing new equipment besides finishing the Sword of Cycle sometime.
of those cards the outlier to me is preordain. i dont see that card ever making it into modern just on principle. wotc set their standard, and outside of blue decks across the board (combo, control, aggro/tempo, etc) needing serious help there is no reason to reevaluate this stance.
its a consistency tool that is just an upgrade to what people are already playing, so basically just a card swap. it doesnt promote diversity, nor would it substantially help decks that arent doing that great compared to similar counterparts.
for instance i dont think its a stretch to say that jeskai ascendancy storm is inferior to gifts storm. both would get preordain so nothing would change.
delver would profit a little bit with a better cantrip, but with counterspells typically starting at the 2cmc point and decks running 8+ removal spells for a creature heavy format, a 1 mana 3/2 flier is kind of a joke without the tools to protect it.
My problem with cards like Ponder and Preordain was with decks like Grixis Death's Shadow. However, they are no where near as popular as they were pre unbanning of jace and BBE.
I'm in the camp that thinks that Preodrain would be fine in Modern, only really helping out combo decks like Storm very marginally. I also believe that the whole entire point of an Eternal Format is to play with all the cards you can, and I think that the bannings of cards like Ponder and Preordain come from an era that doesn't represent the current format whatsoever.
Its just a little funny to see Jace, the Mind Sculptor unbanned and a card like Preordain is not
Considering Dominaria is bringing a card made to hose Storm...Storm might need the help although I get the feeling that WOTC is not especially a fan of Storm.
Still considering BBE and JTMS has been a grand success by not breaking Modern, they might be more open on letting through more cards of which I rate White and Blue in most need of some help.
Well I don't know if they hate it, its just Storm was the most powerful deck at Modern's inception and overall a very dangerous mechanic. That's why they banned Ponder and Preordain initially. But really, if you look at Modern's combo decks, Storm is really the only good blue based combo deck that would utilize Ponder and/or Preordain. The only other blue based combo deck that comes to mind is Ad Nauseum, and that is hardly a threat. So with the printing of Dampening Sphere, I don't really understand the reasoning behind the fear that is Preordain.
Well I don't know if they hate it, its just Storm was the most powerful deck at Modern's inception and overall a very dangerous mechanic. That's why they banned Ponder and Preordain initially. But really, if you look at Modern's combo decks, Storm is really the only good blue based combo deck that would utilize Ponder and/or Preordain. The only other blue based combo deck that comes to mind is Ad Nauseum, and that is hardly a threat. So with the printing of Dampening Sphere, I don't really understand the reasoning behind the fear that is Preordain.
The ranking of broken mechanics is referred to as a "storm scale." WOTC has hated storm basically since the cards were released.
Well I don't know if they hate it, its just Storm was the most powerful deck at Modern's inception and overall a very dangerous mechanic. That's why they banned Ponder and Preordain initially. But really, if you look at Modern's combo decks, Storm is really the only good blue based combo deck that would utilize Ponder and/or Preordain. The only other blue based combo deck that comes to mind is Ad Nauseum, and that is hardly a threat. So with the printing of Dampening Sphere, I don't really understand the reasoning behind the fear that is Preordain.
The ranking of broken mechanics is referred to as a "storm scale." WOTC has hated storm basically since the cards were released.
Haha, yeah but they have printed many a card that slows down or stops storm decks. And they are printing another in Dominaria. Its not like people don't have tools to beat these style decks.
True I suppose its more the hate uniteractive decks of which Bogles and Storm are the most obvious examples. The difference is Bogles still wins by having creatures smash your face in over a few turns whereas Storm wins by deleting you in one turn.
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My prediction is that by this time next year a "best blue deck" will have emerged, and it will be playing ~3 jaces in the 75, taking the role of format gatekeeper once occupied by Jund.
It's totally possible I'm wrong there and I'll eat crow if I'm incorrect gladly.
Edit to say: It's also totally possible that the best blue deck (whatever it is) with a 10-15% meta share is a fine thing. I dunno. I will say I have really not enjoyed being on the receiving end of the old fateseal again.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Thats kind of Modern though isnt it?
Spirits
No, Jace is not breaking modern, but he *is* dominating games where he lands. Just watched blue moon in Cincinatti multiples times and multiple times Jace got played turn 4 or 5 and then the multi-brainstorm defined the game. It not dominating in the sense of of a turn-3 karn can be, but it's absolutely the best thing a blue deck do to control the game.
Same thing for BBE. It's not dominating in the sense that it ends the game on the spot, but it's dominating in the sense that it gets jammed successfully in a wide number of decks and it looks like it's destined to stay that way.
Both of these things were exactly what many feared. No one claimed that Jace wins game on the spot. No one said BBE resolving handed the game to its conroller. What did get said was that they are very very good cards that would become more and more ubiquitous. Jace is now the finisher of choice for blue. BBE is jammed in almost every deck that produces RG. It's quite a bit of a bore. Beyond sprucing up Jund, BBE does not promote diversity. Jace, a bit more, because it helped struggling blue decks.
One thing they're not, is innocuous.
I think it's the total opposite, BBE alone has blue decks worse, in my opinion.
I still think blue decks have to have too much to align for them, and the win-cons are still too slow.
I'm pretty over blue, it's not like we should be giving modern brainstorm, ponder, FOW or Daze. I accept it's just ok. Not bad, not good. It's ok. If you really like that archetype, go for it.
I'm not sure I see much of a reason to play control over midrange in modern.
Love the format, happy with it, the meta is healthy, I'm not knocking modern. Jace and his presence has kinda convinced me blue is just ok and not much is going to change that. Maybe SFM AND Jace will make blue like great, but I think at this point the format should rely on just having good sets come out by the new play design team.
Maybe this was your worry, but it definitely was not the worry of many vocal critics in the community. Their worry was clearly that JTMS was going to take over the format and reduce diversity. There worry was not that he would be a widespread staple like Snapcaster or Push. They very clearly argued it would reduce or ruin Modern's diversity: see articles by Friedman, DeCandio, Davis, and others.
Weeks later, we see these doomsaying predictions did not happen at all. Modern diversity actually looks slightly higher than pre-unbans, or at least the same.
Again, this was not the worry of many (and I don't even know if it was your worry at the time). It wasn't even the prediction of many, let alone the worry; most people thought BBE would just benefit Jund. I struggle to think of someone who predicted it would also benefit random decks like Zoo, Ponza, and RG Eldrazi. Almost all the JTMS commentary was Jund-focused. So even those predictions were off the mark, let alone the worry that BBE would reduce diversity.
As I said, I am really struggling to find where the vocal critics said this. The most egregious JTMS and BBE doomsayers did not say this at all. They feared the format polarizing to these cards and Modern's awesome diversity getting destroyed. See quotes like Jim Davis': "My biggest fear is that the insane value that Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor bring to Modern will serve to fully polarize the format between very fast decks and very slow decks, murdering the middle of the spectrum." See Sperling: "The risks with Jace, for example, are that all the cool things people are doing with Snapcaster Mage converge onto a small handful of ways to best utilize both Snapcaster and Jace." See Stevens: "Many players who are smarter than me and have been around longer believe that Modern is vast enough to absorb the bomb of Jace and come out diverse, but I'm skeptical." These players are CLEARLY worried about macro-diversity issues with this card, not just that JTMS is a good addition to decks. These are the worries that got resoundingly debunked over the first month or so of JTMS/BBE legality, and I predict will continue to be resoundingly debunked as we go forward.
Well they are both powerful cards, but fundamnetally they are not 'breaking' Modern, they are not 'ruining' Modern, and just because they are in decks of their colours, doesnt mean well, much of anything.
Is Jace the best card you can be playing in Blue? Probably. Thats why he was Unbanned.
Is BBE a huge tempo and value swing? It sure can be.
This is not exactly what many feared.
Many feared that diversity would die, that Pyromancer decks would disappear, that value town (suspect since it was always bad) would disappear, that Hollow One would disappear, and that 'death by fateseal' would be a thing.
Its revisionist to say that 'this meta' is what was feared. The sky ACTUALLY was going to fall this time. It has not, and just because the cards see play this time (hi thopter/sword and AV) doesnt mean this is a negative. Its actually working out as hoped.
We have multiple blue decks, still trying to find their footing.
We have some new contenders in RG like Ponza.
We STILL have Tron, Affinity, Eldrazi (even Stompy Colourless) and Burn and Humans.
Blue gained a few %, and Jund came back.
That is NOT what people 'feared'.
BTW, Turns was in the elimination rounds in GP Kyoto.
Spirits
One of the weird little quirks that cropped up is that originally there was no Wasteland in modern, and control decks had to make big sacrifices to beat Cavern of Souls in modern. Now with Field of Ruin, even 3 color jace decks can have up to 2 copies of Field of Ruin and this has fixed some of the Cavern problems (Elves, Humans, Merfolk) that control shells had. I'm again not sure if this is good or bad, but I do think Field was an elegant solution that made Cavern less of an issue without doing all the damage Wasteland does to a format.
My hope is that Jace making decks like Rugshift and Esper better is enough of a net positive to outweigh the whole ubiquity of UWx and URx in the semi-competitive community. UWR today does very similar stuff to what Jund does (and has always done), which is demolish random decks with extreme prejudice.
My expectation is that Jund and UWx Jace will wind up chewing up around 20-25% of the meta collectively, which will serve to be a diversity limiter in much the same way Splinter Twin-Jund was (where you either play a deck that has game against both or you go home).
But again I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing, it might be fine. And it might not even happen.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
This is a copy paste, isnt it?
Spirits
I'm almost positive I said the exact same thing about the whole "gatekeeper" idea back when the format was basically Tron/Twin/Jund but that was a long time ago.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
EDIT: I do think UWx wont claim that percentage. I think its likely a Tron/Jund breakdown, more than a UW/Jund, but thats just me.
Spirits
the flip side of this is something like valakut. you can clearly see that "this is a valakut deck". because without it, it would be a pile of nonsense cards.
as for jund. i personally think the deck numbers showing up are still inflated by its popularity, rather than its actual power level. its definitely tier 1, but the deck is also the poster child for GBx which is a pretty beloved archetype. when jund fell out of favor, a lot of people moved off of it. so i would posit that the number of people playing jund last december is significantly less than the number playing it now. there is a rather significant correlation between how many people are playing a deck, and its success rate. a salient example would be lantern. it isnt a secret that many pros consider it one of the best decks in the format, but because the number of people who play the deck has never been that high it fails to post consistent results.
lastly, as an aside on cavern of souls, it is an annoyance for some blue decks but has never been particularly influential in the format because modern counter magic sucks. blue decks, in particular control, basically have to build their decks on the assumption that their suite of counter magic is just going to be dead some amount of the time. if your conditional counters dont line up the opponent could be playing 20 caverns as their land base, and the game would be no different.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)This does not seem very likely, unless you are also including any blue-based JTMS deck such as Blue Moon, Taking Turns, Temur, Sultai, etc., not just UWx ones. If you included these, and then you also included BBE midrange decks generally, not just Jund, I guess we could see 25% of the metagame split between these cards.
But honestly, who cares? Even if that happened, the comparison misses a significant difference between a potential UWx/Ux/Jund hegemony and the Twin hegemony; Twin did not have a lot of bad matchups and was a better deck. Jund and UWx/Ux, however, have plenty of bad matchups and just aren't as good as Twin. They also have bad matchups against some of the same decks (e.g. both struggling vs. big mana). This means the metagame can quickly cycle from one deck being on top to another and any Jund/JTMS plurality won't actually have a diversity impact. We'll see no single deck, JTMS/BBE or otherwise, being on top because it's impossible to find a deck that is strong against the entire field. We couldn't see this more clearly than in the results of the past month. With Twin in the picture, you're 45/55 - 55/45+ against all the Tier 1 decks, and then 60/40+ against all the random stuff. That's a true gatekeeper. Jund/JTMS Blue decks don't have anywhere near this matchup spectrum, so them having a big share doesn't have a negative impact on field diversity.
Stated simply, Jund/JTMS Blue decks aren't good enough to be format gatekeepers. They have too many bad matchups across all tiers. This makes them just as viable as any other strategy in Modern.
I absolutely HATE it when people tell me that Modern is just Legacy lite if Stoneforge Mystic/JTMS/Bloodbraid Elf/Preordain etc. etc. get unbanned. Modern will NEVER be Legacy. We will never have Force of Will, Brainstorm, Daze, true dual lands, Wasteland, and many more. Please do not tell me that if Preordain is unbanned, Modern is basically Legacy. Do people even know that there are at least 2 other cantrips that make Preordain look like garbage in Legacy? (Portent is probably a bit less good than Preordain though.)
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)its a consistency tool that is just an upgrade to what people are already playing, so basically just a card swap. it doesnt promote diversity, nor would it substantially help decks that arent doing that great compared to similar counterparts.
for instance i dont think its a stretch to say that jeskai ascendancy storm is inferior to gifts storm. both would get preordain so nothing would change.
delver would profit a little bit with a better cantrip, but with counterspells typically starting at the 2cmc point and decks running 8+ removal spells for a creature heavy format, a 1 mana 3/2 flier is kind of a joke without the tools to protect it.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Cards being good and seeing a good amount of play wasn't what people were crying about, by virtue of the fact there's no reason to cry about that.
Well, first, this isn't true. A number of Blue decks don't run Jace at all. Setting aside combo decks like Storm, there's certainly Grixis Death's Shadow which has, at least so far eschewed Jace.
But even if we grant Jace as the default finisher for Blue, so what? I don't really see how that's an issue.
It turned Ponza from a fringe deck into a legitimate contender and made RG Eldrazi into a thing. How is introducing a new deck and improving a previously fringe one not promoting diversity? If this was accomplished by pushing out more decks than were introduced that could be an issue, but can you point to any decks that were pushed out by Bloodbraid Elf? There is Abzan, but that wasn't really pushed out so much it swapped places with Jund. Swapping two decks doesn't decrease diversity.
So then begs the question, are cards like Green Sun's Zenith, Stoneforge Mystic, and the Artifact Lands in the same category?
GSZ and SFM you can kinda envision what they would be like in the format. artifact lands though? those cards are way too open ended.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Artifact Lands no under no conditions should Artifact Lands be allowed...Affinity doesn't need help.
Green Sun Zenith? Green is pretty strong as a color already, I am not sure it needs the help but I don't think it will break the meta.
Stoneforge Mystic, yes mostly because White needs all the help it can get. It provides a few sideboard cards and Gideons to control decks unless your playing Humans. White needs all the help it can get and it could use some serious help in the two drop slot where it lacks a signature option compared to other colors unless of course your playing Humans. I also don't think SFM is going to get more broken overtime...WOTC is not likely to print any amazing new equipment besides finishing the Sword of Cycle sometime.
My problem with cards like Ponder and Preordain was with decks like Grixis Death's Shadow. However, they are no where near as popular as they were pre unbanning of jace and BBE.
I'm in the camp that thinks that Preodrain would be fine in Modern, only really helping out combo decks like Storm very marginally. I also believe that the whole entire point of an Eternal Format is to play with all the cards you can, and I think that the bannings of cards like Ponder and Preordain come from an era that doesn't represent the current format whatsoever.
Its just a little funny to see Jace, the Mind Sculptor unbanned and a card like Preordain is not
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Still considering BBE and JTMS has been a grand success by not breaking Modern, they might be more open on letting through more cards of which I rate White and Blue in most need of some help.
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
The ranking of broken mechanics is referred to as a "storm scale." WOTC has hated storm basically since the cards were released.
Haha, yeah but they have printed many a card that slows down or stops storm decks. And they are printing another in Dominaria. Its not like people don't have tools to beat these style decks.
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]