Question about how Alpine Moon works in regards to tron: The card says it loses abilities and type, but it doesn't mention name. If I name Urza's Tower, do mine and power plant still generate 2 mana since they are checking for card names?
The Tron lands all have land types. For example Urza's Tower has the typeline "Land - Urza's Tower"
When the Tron lands are checking requirements for whether they produce more than one mana, they are checking land types, not card names. As such Alpine Moon turns off Tron is you name one of the Tron lands.
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Amazing how the results of one tournament has whipped up such a frenzy. Magic players are a fickle bunch.
As for Friedman, he was also the most hyperbolic of the Jace and Bloodbraid doomsayers, saying that they would warp the entire format into midrange decks, and we see how that comment panned out.
It's not one tournament, and it's not one deck. It's about 3 or 4 decks, that causes various issues(possible dominance issues in Tron, possible logistics or possible dominance issues in the future in KCI, and possible logistic issues in the MTGO platform, possible time issues and the deck being "obnoxious" in Lantern control). And even those arguments, might be fragile. I feel it in the water, I smell it in the air.
The big argument is that the card is not on par with the other cantrips in Modern(Serum Visions much, much weaker and being played at about the same decks[some control decks, storm]). It was ok before as it was being played in 1 fringe deck. It's being played in multiple decks now and adding extreme consistency.
Bingo. Much like vintage, Wizards needs to keep colorless cards under a tighter watch in formats with larger card pools.
I actually agree with Ben on this one. Making a big Mana deck less consistent than it should be keeps it tame and at a level where a lot of decks now have a better chance at beating them. Since they have to rely on map as their sole tutor for consistency.
It also is good for KCI to tune down a notch as well, ancient stirrings has no equal. But the power it gives for colorless is basically an all powerful cantrip.
Everyone loves statistics and numbers, but as much as anyone loves math to prove the problem. Serum visions is played more because players innately want to play blue decks, so there is personal bias in data.
i think you could hypothesize some psychological trends in nerd and gaming culture lead to various play patterns or styles being more widely preferred, but that would require extensive research and data collection to even step towards a semblance of proof.
without that, making the statement that 'players innately want to play blue decks' is just unfounded. visions is one of the best effects in its color, with very little deckbuilding cost and open to plenty of synergies (ie effects that care about cheap spells). so there are more decks that can use it.
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i think you could hypothesize some psychological trends in nerd and gaming culture lead to various play patterns or styles being more widely preferred, but that would require extensive research and data collection to even step towards a semblance of proof.
without that, making the statement that 'players innately want to play blue decks' is just unfounded. visions is one of the best effects in its color, with very little deckbuilding cost and open to plenty of synergies (ie effects that care about cheap spells). so there are more decks that can use it.
Don't think its just nerds if you equate Blue Decks or more specifically Control in general to Defense then its not a really a surprise as most sports (basketball, baseball, football) are all about increasing Offense roughly equivalent to Aggro. Cause casuals want to see points, runs, goals, etc.
Granted I say the reason more so Blue is Popular is two-fold one most Nerds have character traits that line up with Blue's qualities or at least think they do and two that historically blue has the strongest cards. Ergo people want to win, now sure that is not the only reason people play but even in casual scenarios losing repeatedly is not fun. I may date myself but I use to play Melee with my friends in High School all the time and one of our buddies was to good so I hated playing him 1 on 1. Hence why I even though Brawl sure doesn't have the depth of Melee, I was quite happy to switch cause it leveled the playing field and meant I went from once in a Blue Moon in Super Smash Brothers Melee, to even odds in Brawl. I remember beating him twice in Melee in a row and celebrating like a won the Mega Millions Lotto. Sure it didn't have the depth but I was winning way more. Anecdotal of course but I think it holds true for most even in casual situations much less competitive.
He compares stirrings to the other consistency tools in modern and concludes that it's far more powerful. As much as I generally don't like stirrings decks, I'd rather they unban consistency tools (ie preordain/ponder) rather than ban stirrings. If they ban it, it will crush my hopes of ever getting good blue cantrips
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yeah i dont think its completely unreasonable to think that the game of magic is already attracting a certain demographic, and that it will have an impact when there is a choice of play styles. you see this across a lot of games or related activities.
however the point was that its just a loose hypothesis. so i cant get behind someone saying visions is played a proportionately high amount because of it; when there is a much simpler explanation with fewer assumptions (ie visions fits into more decks).
from my experience, historically, there has been an unnaturally high bias amongst blue mages to believe that blue is more skill intensive, and therefore non-blue mages are somehow less for not playing it. there are a lot of reasons for this, one of which may be the color philosophy. even as a blue mage myself ive always tried to push back against this. its just a negative and narrow minded perspective.
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I don't think it's narrow and negative to say a lot of people play blue is proportionate to the decks playing serum visions because of color bias.
Will all players be like this? No, definitely not. But when players are introducing new players, you can say they will gravitate towards certain colors, especially blue for counters and drawing cards. They like the feel and playstyle of blue, and so they will delve into modern with 4 serum visions in hand. I never said anything about skill-based decks, I am just saying if there is a chance blue is good, people will gravitate back towards blue and that increases the amount of serum visions being played since they changed decks to fit the current meta at that point in time.
It's not one tournament, and it's not one deck. It's about 3 or 4 decks, that causes various issues(possible dominance issues in Tron, possible logistics or possible dominance issues in the future in KCI, and possible logistic issues in the MTGO platform, possible time issues and the deck being "obnoxious" in Lantern control). And even those arguments, might be fragile. I feel it in the water, I smell it in the air.
The big argument is that the card is not on par with the other cantrips in Modern(Serum Visions much, much weaker and being played at about the same decks[some control decks, storm]). It was ok before as it was being played in 1 fringe deck. It's being played in multiple decks now and adding extreme consistency.
Maybe not one deck, but one tournament. There weren't many calls for it to be banned (yes, there were some, but not many, and usually it was more complaining about Blue not getting something like it than complaining Ancient Stirrings itself was too good). Then we had this tournament and suddenly everyone's on about banning it.
The claim of "dominance issues" in Tron is just plain inaccurate. Tron wasn't putting up much in the way of results prior to this tournament, then all of a sudden it does decently, most probably due to people discounting it due to it not appearing much in the Top 8's of the last few big tournaments, and then people complain about it being overpowered.
Also, Lantern Control has fallen off so much since the unbannings that citing it seems downright disingenuous. There wasn't even a single copy in the Top 32 of GP Las Vegas.
Also, Serum Visions does have noticeably more play than Ancient Stirrings, so claiming "about the same decks" seems inaccurate also. Interestingly, at times when Serum Visions was the 2nd most played card in the format, no one was calling for bannings or claiming that it was much better than the rest of the cantrips, even though in such cases it was seeing significantly more play than Ancient Stirrings is now... that seems rather inconsistent.
I don't think it's narrow and negative to say a lot of people play blue is proportionate to the decks playing serum visions because of color bias.
Will all players be like this? No, definitely not. But when players are introducing new players, you can say they will gravitate towards certain colors, especially blue for counters and drawing cards. They like the feel and playstyle of blue, and so they will delve into modern with 4 serum visions in hand. I never said anything about skill-based decks, I am just saying if there is a chance blue is good, people will gravitate back towards blue and that increases the amount of serum visions being played since they changed decks to fit the current meta at that point in time.
my comment on negativity and narrow mindedness wasnt a response to you, but just a general observation. as i said though, what you are proposing is just an unfounded hypothesis. people being innately drawn to blue isnt a fact.
i must be misunderstanding your point though, because you say that when blue looks promising people will play serum visions; which isnt saying anything about color bias but rather that the card is just powerful and isnt specific in application; therefore it fits into a lot of decks. there are more flavors of blue decks in the market for a generically powerful card than green decks with enough colorless cards; hence it sees more play than stirrings. that isnt bias, its just numbers.
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He compares stirrings to the other consistency tools in modern and concludes that it's far more powerful. As much as I generally don't like stirrings decks, I'd rather they unban consistency tools (ie preordain/ponder) rather than ban stirrings. If they ban it, it will crush my hopes of ever getting good blue cantrips
I agree they should do one or the other though in my book. You cannot say most of the blue cantrips are too good on one hand for Modern and then let Colorless decks abuse Ancient Stirrings. Now granted I get the idea that cards that are more restrictive should compensate by being stronger then generic options.
My issue is two fold again
1) Given the Power of Artifact and Eldrazi Based Decks, Colorless is not a restrictive negative or the restriction doesn't matter compared to dig 5 cards for 1 mana. It lets you see what 8.33% of your deck at instant speed so basically you got 6 chances to find something useful counting your next draw.
2) Why is Ancient Stirrings Green anyway? Most colorless cards are artifacts which suggest it should be Blue, Red ...or White (well we know white is not allowed to have good card advantage). This is more a problem for Tron which gets to combine Land Ramp with The best Cantrip in Modern.
I also dispute the notion that amount of play is the only measure of strength. Yeah Serums sees more play but that doesn't make it a better card.
I think that the fact that Preordain is banned while Stirrings is legal is nonsense. Preordain digs 3 cards deep at most, while Stirrings digs 5 cards deep. The colorless restriction is totally not worth 2 cards less and while it might have been a greater restriction before the printing of Devoid and lower cmc generic cards, it is now pretty much a joke in decks that are built for it.
Since Stirrings decks aren't a problem right now, we should unban Preordain.
I think that the fact that Preordain is banned while Stirrings is legal is nonsense. Preordain digs 3 cards deep at most, while Stirrings digs 5 cards deep. The colorless restriction is totally not worth 2 cards less and while it might have been a greater restriction before the printing of Devoid and lower cmc generic cards, it is now pretty much a joke in decks that are built for it.
Since Stirrings decks aren't a problem right now, we should unban Preordain.
I agree 100%. Colorless decks having Ancient Stirrings while Blue decks can't have Preordain is contradictory to me at best and heavily biased at worst. Please bring Preordain back so players can realize that it is not as scary as they think. The age of consistent turn 2 kills is gone (unless you play against that "lucky" Grishoalbrand player at your LGS, lol).
I've talked to a lot of Affinity players and a lot of Tron players. Many of them DO in fact think that something should be banned. Tron players believe it's Mox Opal. Affinity players believe it's Ancient Stirrings. I don't think it should be either. Matt Nass, Sam Pardee, Andrew Baekstrom, and possibly Eli Kassis were all on the same team for this GP. I went to this GP. They seemed super prepared, might I say the most prepared (and skilled of the competing players)? Someone was bound to get there. Andrew Baekstrom made 9th. I saw him make a misplay with an Engineered Explosives in the 14th round, putting it on 1 instead of 2 like he should. His opponent called it out on him and the Judge (correctly) sided with the opponent. I'm not sure if that cost him that match, as I had other things going on. But it could have easily been another Ironworks in the top 8. It's a solid deck. I personally am a bit unconvinced that it's better than Humans or Affinity, but maybe it's better than Hollow One?
It reminds me a bit of Birthing Pod. Even before the printing of Siege Rhino, Pod decks did amazing because the best players in the world consistently played them and mastered them - LSV, Jacob Wilson, Seth Manfield, Josh McClain, Sam Pardee, etc. Eventually because of Rhino and other potential creatures, Pod needed a ban. Collected Company came in later, along with Eldritch Evolution, to possibly soak up some of the sting though and turned into Tier 1 decks (for CoCo). This situation is a bit different because of the creatures that WotC wants to print, but when the best players in the world play a good deck, it WILL have results. That's the bottom line for KCI. I honestly bet that the same team could have tested the same amount on Affinity or Humans and probably 4-5 other decks and still had similar results. Matt Nass found his sweet spot in a deck that he loves and is good playing.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
I won't confuse midrange with ramp
I won't confuse midrange with ramp
I won't confuse midrange with ramp
Happy now doods?
What so outrageous about Ancient Stirrings? That it digs for five? So does Commune with nature. Two thirds of the what the cards dig for (lands and colorless creatures) are green's area of specialty, admittedly the artifact part is odd but something on the spirit of Rise of Eldrazi. It's not like other colors didn't get their chance at doing better stuff than the color specialized on it. Which also brings the following: the card is eight years old, why is it suddenly broken until now?
At this rate I really want Preordain unbanned along Glimpse of Nature. Everyone gets satisfied and is left to play what they want at their full capacity.
I've talked to a lot of Affinity players and a lot of Tron players. Many of them DO in fact think that something should be banned. Tron players it's Mox Opal. Affinity players believe it's Ancient Stirrings. I don't think it should be either.
lol at Affinity players saying there's a problem and proposing a ban that doesn't touch them in the slightest. Last time someone did a recap of Modern the conclusion was that Affinity dodged bans like Neo in the matrix. Opal hits both Affinity and KCI without crippling them as much.
EDIT: damn, we have been dragged to a Tron witchhunt. And here I was ready with the pitchforks for some Human casualties.
How are colorless creatures Green Color Pie? Eldrazi are abominations against Nature. The other creatures are Artifacts which are definitely not Green's Color Pie and the rest are just straight Artifacts which are again not Green's Color Pie. Artifacts make up the vast majority of colorless cards and Green is about wrecking Artifacts. The only part of Green's color Pie it digs for are Lands and mainly it used to dig for Tron Lands which are absolutely not Green. Urza was as far from an environmentalist as one could get.
The difference is obvious Commune limits you to Creatures, Stirrings can find anything colorless a much broader pool of card types making it extremely unlikely to ever be dead and almost impossible to whiff and not get anything useful.
If Stirrings was redone, it would be Oath of Nissa. Thats really all there is to it.
Pretty much maybe you let them find Enchantments. But yeah no Green card should be primarily used for finding Artifacts that is for sure. And it certainly shouldn't be able to dig 5 deep over that many card types.
How are colorless creatures Green Color Pie? Eldrazi are abominations against Nature. The other creatures are Artifacts which are definitely not Green's Color Pie and the rest are just straight Artifacts which are again not Green's Color Pie. Artifacts make up the vast majority of colorless cards and Green is about wrecking Artifacts. The only part of Green's color Pie it digs for are Lands and mainly it used to dig for Tron Lands which are absolutely not Green. Urza was as far from an environmentalist as one could get.
The difference is obvious Commune limits you to Creatures, Stirrings can find anything colorless a much broader pool of card types making it extremely unlikely to ever be dead and almost impossible to whiff and not get anything useful.
Welp back in Rise of the Eldrazi the colorless creatures were this stupid big expensive creature requiring tons of mana ramp to cast them so it made a lot of sense mechanically for the set where it was created. And lands, green searches them all, it's not that we're going to put flavor restrictions on it anytime soon.
I'll agree that the forests feel utterly out of place in KCI but Tron uses the Stirrings just as intended: lands first, big creatures and even planeswalkers then and artifacts at a distant third place. That's basically why I'm all for a ban that hits KCI while leaving Tron alone, which gets stomped and pushed out of the metagame anyway.
And man Oath of Nissa feels like such a downgrade... like let's declare a war on cantrips and have both Stirrings and Serum Visions banned so Oath of Nissa, Commune with Nature, Sleight of Hand and Index became the staples lol.
Eh Tron could make Oath of Nissa work, it is a downgrade...cannot get you your artifacts but you got enough lands, walkers and creatures to make it work. Granted it means you can only get what 50% of your deck instead of 75%. KCI though takes a pretty critical hit though as it should.
Re: Stirrings
Again, the issue is not that Stirrings digs 5 vs. some other arbitrarily acceptable number, or that it predates Oath of Nissa design, or that green shouldn't have access to colorless dig. These arguments, and others like them, do not apply to powerful cards in non-rotating formats. No one makes sincere arguments that Bolt is broken because Lightning Strike is the updated version. Or that Cryptic Command is too strong in a world of Failed Inspections and Insidious Wills. These are the kinds of arguments we use when we are upset at a card and we can't articulate a real reason it is too strong other than "this card is beating me." These aren't real reasons that justify a ban discussion.
This dynamic has finally changed. There is now a legitimate problem with Stirrings due to months of results compiling to paint a new picture. When Preordain was banned, and when Stoddard justified its banning again in 2015, they emphasized that this was a key enabler for a wide range of blue-based combo decks. These combo decks were collectively violating the T4 rule and needed banning. That is to say, a set of decks was violating a rule and a card was banned as a result; they picked the card that increased the consistency of those decks. At that time, Stirrings was not doing the same thing. It truly was a niche enabler of Gx Tron and that's about it. Today, however, we see that Stirrings empowers a broad set of colorless decks far more than SV (or a hypothetically unbanned Preordain) would empower blue decks.
People have cited inaccurate MTG Goldfish/MTG T8 numbers to try and paint a different picture, but this does not align with how Wizards informs banlist decisions. Those decisions are largely based on PT/GP data. To that end, I compared the number of GP/PT T8 decks, as well as those PT decks with 8-2 scores or better, from 02/2017 through present, tracking decks that use Stirrings vs. decks that use SV/could use Preordain. Stirrings is in far more decks. Moreover, this has grown even more disproportionate in 2018 than in 2017.
Stirrings is no longer a niche enabler. It is a major player in a huge group of colorless strategies including Gx Tron, RG Eldrazi, Amulet Titan, Lantern, and KCI. Either this kind of card is okay in Modern, and Preordain should be unbanned to help out the lagging SV/"Preordain" decks, or this kind of card is not okay in Modern and Stirrings should join Preordain on the banlist. At this point, there is only a single "unfair" combination deck that uses Preordain at the GP/PT level and that's Storm, which had literally a single showing in 2018 at the tracked levels. Ban Stirring or unban Preordain. The contradiction no longer makes sense.
How are colorless creatures Green Color Pie? Eldrazi are abominations against Nature. The other creatures are Artifacts which are definitely not Green's Color Pie and the rest are just straight Artifacts which are again not Green's Color Pie. Artifacts make up the vast majority of colorless cards and Green is about wrecking Artifacts. The only part of Green's color Pie it digs for are Lands and mainly it used to dig for Tron Lands which are absolutely not Green. Urza was as far from an environmentalist as one could get.
The difference is obvious Commune limits you to Creatures, Stirrings can find anything colorless a much broader pool of card types making it extremely unlikely to ever be dead and almost impossible to whiff and not get anything useful.
Welp back in Rise of the Eldrazi the colorless creatures were this stupid big expensive creature requiring tons of mana ramp to cast them so it made a lot of sense mechanically for the set where it was created. And lands, green searches them all, it's not that we're going to put flavor restrictions on it anytime soon.
I'll agree that the forests feel utterly out of place in KCI but Tron uses the Stirrings just as intended: lands first, big creatures and even planeswalkers then and artifacts at a distant third place. That's basically why I'm all for a ban that hits KCI while leaving Tron alone, which gets stomped and pushed out of the metagame anyway.
And man Oath of Nissa feels like such a downgrade... like let's declare a war on cantrips and have both Stirrings and Serum Visions banned so Oath of Nissa, Commune with Nature, Sleight of Hand and Index became the staples lol.
It's supposed to feel like a down grade, it's not Serum = Stirrings. It's Preordain (still lower power really) = Stirrings.
Just want to say, this is easily the best post I've seen in regards to preordain vs ancient stirings I've seen in ages.
I started modern 2ish years ago, and it was fine when stirings was a niche card in tron, but now there's so many apparently colourless decks making use of it, it's starting to feel bad.
i can see that as reasoning to unban preordain, but not for banning stirrings.
you said it yourself a while back ktkenshinx (when you were defending stirrings). cards arent a problem unless the deck itself is problematic. none of the decks that play stirrings have crossed any line yet as far as i know. so whats the justification for the ban? avoiding hypocrisy? a stirrings banning entails hurting multiple decks, none of which are too good; which in itself is hypocritical.
so we can debate balance amongst various effects, but lets not forget that we are talking about seriously nerfing decks that a lot of people are invested in for reasons completely unrelated to performance. bans seriously blow. they are the extreme, and should be avoided at all costs.
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The Tron lands all have land types. For example Urza's Tower has the typeline "Land - Urza's Tower"
When the Tron lands are checking requirements for whether they produce more than one mana, they are checking land types, not card names. As such Alpine Moon turns off Tron is you name one of the Tron lands.
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
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As for Friedman, he was also the most hyperbolic of the Jace and Bloodbraid doomsayers, saying that they would warp the entire format into midrange decks, and we see how that comment panned out.
I also dont know if we are fickle, as much as vindictive and petty. "Oh I cannot have Preordain? Then put that Stirrings in a binder."
Anyone see that new Storm hate card too? 3 (or 4 if you count Field of Ruin) hate cards within a few sets for Tron/Storm...
Spirits
Bingo. Much like vintage, Wizards needs to keep colorless cards under a tighter watch in formats with larger card pools.
It also is good for KCI to tune down a notch as well, ancient stirrings has no equal. But the power it gives for colorless is basically an all powerful cantrip.
Everyone loves statistics and numbers, but as much as anyone loves math to prove the problem. Serum visions is played more because players innately want to play blue decks, so there is personal bias in data.
without that, making the statement that 'players innately want to play blue decks' is just unfounded. visions is one of the best effects in its color, with very little deckbuilding cost and open to plenty of synergies (ie effects that care about cheap spells). so there are more decks that can use it.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Don't think its just nerds if you equate Blue Decks or more specifically Control in general to Defense then its not a really a surprise as most sports (basketball, baseball, football) are all about increasing Offense roughly equivalent to Aggro. Cause casuals want to see points, runs, goals, etc.
Granted I say the reason more so Blue is Popular is two-fold one most Nerds have character traits that line up with Blue's qualities or at least think they do and two that historically blue has the strongest cards. Ergo people want to win, now sure that is not the only reason people play but even in casual scenarios losing repeatedly is not fun. I may date myself but I use to play Melee with my friends in High School all the time and one of our buddies was to good so I hated playing him 1 on 1. Hence why I even though Brawl sure doesn't have the depth of Melee, I was quite happy to switch cause it leveled the playing field and meant I went from once in a Blue Moon in Super Smash Brothers Melee, to even odds in Brawl. I remember beating him twice in Melee in a row and celebrating like a won the Mega Millions Lotto. Sure it didn't have the depth but I was winning way more. Anecdotal of course but I think it holds true for most even in casual situations much less competitive.
He compares stirrings to the other consistency tools in modern and concludes that it's far more powerful. As much as I generally don't like stirrings decks, I'd rather they unban consistency tools (ie preordain/ponder) rather than ban stirrings. If they ban it, it will crush my hopes of ever getting good blue cantrips
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
however the point was that its just a loose hypothesis. so i cant get behind someone saying visions is played a proportionately high amount because of it; when there is a much simpler explanation with fewer assumptions (ie visions fits into more decks).
from my experience, historically, there has been an unnaturally high bias amongst blue mages to believe that blue is more skill intensive, and therefore non-blue mages are somehow less for not playing it. there are a lot of reasons for this, one of which may be the color philosophy. even as a blue mage myself ive always tried to push back against this. its just a negative and narrow minded perspective.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Will all players be like this? No, definitely not. But when players are introducing new players, you can say they will gravitate towards certain colors, especially blue for counters and drawing cards. They like the feel and playstyle of blue, and so they will delve into modern with 4 serum visions in hand. I never said anything about skill-based decks, I am just saying if there is a chance blue is good, people will gravitate back towards blue and that increases the amount of serum visions being played since they changed decks to fit the current meta at that point in time.
The claim of "dominance issues" in Tron is just plain inaccurate. Tron wasn't putting up much in the way of results prior to this tournament, then all of a sudden it does decently, most probably due to people discounting it due to it not appearing much in the Top 8's of the last few big tournaments, and then people complain about it being overpowered.
Also, Lantern Control has fallen off so much since the unbannings that citing it seems downright disingenuous. There wasn't even a single copy in the Top 32 of GP Las Vegas.
Also, Serum Visions does have noticeably more play than Ancient Stirrings, so claiming "about the same decks" seems inaccurate also. Interestingly, at times when Serum Visions was the 2nd most played card in the format, no one was calling for bannings or claiming that it was much better than the rest of the cantrips, even though in such cases it was seeing significantly more play than Ancient Stirrings is now... that seems rather inconsistent.
my comment on negativity and narrow mindedness wasnt a response to you, but just a general observation. as i said though, what you are proposing is just an unfounded hypothesis. people being innately drawn to blue isnt a fact.
i must be misunderstanding your point though, because you say that when blue looks promising people will play serum visions; which isnt saying anything about color bias but rather that the card is just powerful and isnt specific in application; therefore it fits into a lot of decks. there are more flavors of blue decks in the market for a generically powerful card than green decks with enough colorless cards; hence it sees more play than stirrings. that isnt bias, its just numbers.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
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GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I agree they should do one or the other though in my book. You cannot say most of the blue cantrips are too good on one hand for Modern and then let Colorless decks abuse Ancient Stirrings. Now granted I get the idea that cards that are more restrictive should compensate by being stronger then generic options.
My issue is two fold again
1) Given the Power of Artifact and Eldrazi Based Decks, Colorless is not a restrictive negative or the restriction doesn't matter compared to dig 5 cards for 1 mana. It lets you see what 8.33% of your deck at instant speed so basically you got 6 chances to find something useful counting your next draw.
2) Why is Ancient Stirrings Green anyway? Most colorless cards are artifacts which suggest it should be Blue, Red ...or White (well we know white is not allowed to have good card advantage). This is more a problem for Tron which gets to combine Land Ramp with The best Cantrip in Modern.
I also dispute the notion that amount of play is the only measure of strength. Yeah Serums sees more play but that doesn't make it a better card.
Since Stirrings decks aren't a problem right now, we should unban Preordain.
I agree 100%. Colorless decks having Ancient Stirrings while Blue decks can't have Preordain is contradictory to me at best and heavily biased at worst. Please bring Preordain back so players can realize that it is not as scary as they think. The age of consistent turn 2 kills is gone (unless you play against that "lucky" Grishoalbrand player at your LGS, lol).
I've talked to a lot of Affinity players and a lot of Tron players. Many of them DO in fact think that something should be banned. Tron players believe it's Mox Opal. Affinity players believe it's Ancient Stirrings. I don't think it should be either. Matt Nass, Sam Pardee, Andrew Baekstrom, and possibly Eli Kassis were all on the same team for this GP. I went to this GP. They seemed super prepared, might I say the most prepared (and skilled of the competing players)? Someone was bound to get there. Andrew Baekstrom made 9th. I saw him make a misplay with an Engineered Explosives in the 14th round, putting it on 1 instead of 2 like he should. His opponent called it out on him and the Judge (correctly) sided with the opponent. I'm not sure if that cost him that match, as I had other things going on. But it could have easily been another Ironworks in the top 8. It's a solid deck. I personally am a bit unconvinced that it's better than Humans or Affinity, but maybe it's better than Hollow One?
It reminds me a bit of Birthing Pod. Even before the printing of Siege Rhino, Pod decks did amazing because the best players in the world consistently played them and mastered them - LSV, Jacob Wilson, Seth Manfield, Josh McClain, Sam Pardee, etc. Eventually because of Rhino and other potential creatures, Pod needed a ban. Collected Company came in later, along with Eldritch Evolution, to possibly soak up some of the sting though and turned into Tier 1 decks (for CoCo). This situation is a bit different because of the creatures that WotC wants to print, but when the best players in the world play a good deck, it WILL have results. That's the bottom line for KCI. I honestly bet that the same team could have tested the same amount on Affinity or Humans and probably 4-5 other decks and still had similar results. Matt Nass found his sweet spot in a deck that he loves and is good playing.
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What so outrageous about Ancient Stirrings? That it digs for five? So does Commune with nature. Two thirds of the what the cards dig for (lands and colorless creatures) are green's area of specialty, admittedly the artifact part is odd but something on the spirit of Rise of Eldrazi. It's not like other colors didn't get their chance at doing better stuff than the color specialized on it. Which also brings the following: the card is eight years old, why is it suddenly broken until now?
At this rate I really want Preordain unbanned along Glimpse of Nature. Everyone gets satisfied and is left to play what they want at their full capacity.
lol at Affinity players saying there's a problem and proposing a ban that doesn't touch them in the slightest. Last time someone did a recap of Modern the conclusion was that Affinity dodged bans like Neo in the matrix. Opal hits both Affinity and KCI without crippling them as much.
EDIT: damn, we have been dragged to a Tron witchhunt. And here I was ready with the pitchforks for some Human casualties.
The difference is obvious Commune limits you to Creatures, Stirrings can find anything colorless a much broader pool of card types making it extremely unlikely to ever be dead and almost impossible to whiff and not get anything useful.
Spirits
Pretty much maybe you let them find Enchantments. But yeah no Green card should be primarily used for finding Artifacts that is for sure. And it certainly shouldn't be able to dig 5 deep over that many card types.
Welp back in Rise of the Eldrazi the colorless creatures were this stupid big expensive creature requiring tons of mana ramp to cast them so it made a lot of sense mechanically for the set where it was created. And lands, green searches them all, it's not that we're going to put flavor restrictions on it anytime soon.
I'll agree that the forests feel utterly out of place in KCI but Tron uses the Stirrings just as intended: lands first, big creatures and even planeswalkers then and artifacts at a distant third place. That's basically why I'm all for a ban that hits KCI while leaving Tron alone, which gets stomped and pushed out of the metagame anyway.
And man Oath of Nissa feels like such a downgrade... like let's declare a war on cantrips and have both Stirrings and Serum Visions banned so Oath of Nissa, Commune with Nature, Sleight of Hand and Index became the staples lol.
Again, the issue is not that Stirrings digs 5 vs. some other arbitrarily acceptable number, or that it predates Oath of Nissa design, or that green shouldn't have access to colorless dig. These arguments, and others like them, do not apply to powerful cards in non-rotating formats. No one makes sincere arguments that Bolt is broken because Lightning Strike is the updated version. Or that Cryptic Command is too strong in a world of Failed Inspections and Insidious Wills. These are the kinds of arguments we use when we are upset at a card and we can't articulate a real reason it is too strong other than "this card is beating me." These aren't real reasons that justify a ban discussion.
This dynamic has finally changed. There is now a legitimate problem with Stirrings due to months of results compiling to paint a new picture. When Preordain was banned, and when Stoddard justified its banning again in 2015, they emphasized that this was a key enabler for a wide range of blue-based combo decks. These combo decks were collectively violating the T4 rule and needed banning. That is to say, a set of decks was violating a rule and a card was banned as a result; they picked the card that increased the consistency of those decks. At that time, Stirrings was not doing the same thing. It truly was a niche enabler of Gx Tron and that's about it. Today, however, we see that Stirrings empowers a broad set of colorless decks far more than SV (or a hypothetically unbanned Preordain) would empower blue decks.
People have cited inaccurate MTG Goldfish/MTG T8 numbers to try and paint a different picture, but this does not align with how Wizards informs banlist decisions. Those decisions are largely based on PT/GP data. To that end, I compared the number of GP/PT T8 decks, as well as those PT decks with 8-2 scores or better, from 02/2017 through present, tracking decks that use Stirrings vs. decks that use SV/could use Preordain. Stirrings is in far more decks. Moreover, this has grown even more disproportionate in 2018 than in 2017.
02/2017 - Present, Stirrings decks: 25%
02/2017 - Present, SV/"Preordain" decks: 18%
01/2018 - Present, Stirrings decks: 30%
01/2018 - Present, SV/"Preordain" decks: 17%
Stirrings is no longer a niche enabler. It is a major player in a huge group of colorless strategies including Gx Tron, RG Eldrazi, Amulet Titan, Lantern, and KCI. Either this kind of card is okay in Modern, and Preordain should be unbanned to help out the lagging SV/"Preordain" decks, or this kind of card is not okay in Modern and Stirrings should join Preordain on the banlist. At this point, there is only a single "unfair" combination deck that uses Preordain at the GP/PT level and that's Storm, which had literally a single showing in 2018 at the tracked levels. Ban Stirring or unban Preordain. The contradiction no longer makes sense.
It's supposed to feel like a down grade, it's not Serum = Stirrings. It's Preordain (still lower power really) = Stirrings.
Serum is Oath of Nissa in this comparison.
Spirits
Just want to say, this is easily the best post I've seen in regards to preordain vs ancient stirings I've seen in ages.
I started modern 2ish years ago, and it was fine when stirings was a niche card in tron, but now there's so many apparently colourless decks making use of it, it's starting to feel bad.
you said it yourself a while back ktkenshinx (when you were defending stirrings). cards arent a problem unless the deck itself is problematic. none of the decks that play stirrings have crossed any line yet as far as i know. so whats the justification for the ban? avoiding hypocrisy? a stirrings banning entails hurting multiple decks, none of which are too good; which in itself is hypocritical.
so we can debate balance amongst various effects, but lets not forget that we are talking about seriously nerfing decks that a lot of people are invested in for reasons completely unrelated to performance. bans seriously blow. they are the extreme, and should be avoided at all costs.
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