guess wizards has to hold back on artifact design cause karn right? smh
I'm interested in which direction WoTC would go on this. Would they stop printing narrow but powerful sideboard type artifacts because Karn can tutor them? With Tron's ability to produce large amounts of mana, there is a good chance the tutored artifact will be cast on the same turn.
guess wizards has to hold back on artifact design cause karn right? smh
I'm interested in which direction WoTC would go on this. Would they stop printing narrow but powerful sideboard type artifacts because Karn?
nah, i was just being sarcastic because many players still hold up 'limiting equipment design' as a reason SFM hasnt been unbanned.
as i see it, wizards has and will continue to (hopefully) primarily design for standard and limited. new powerful utility artifacts will be printed, just like new cheap spells or creatures in whatever tribes. if anything gets out of hand, that is when banlist decisions can be made. i mean that is why it exists after all. besides, most of the powerful stuff the new karn is doing is with artifacts that design has moved away from in general like ensnaring bridge.
as far as im concerned, the only 'this card(s) get better over time' (thus limiting design space) case that made any sense was birthing pod. the scope of 'creatures that do stuff' was just too broad especially since the deck was firmly at the top of the format. even still, the game/formats are complex enough with deep enough card pools that the assumption birthing pod would scale at an overwhelming rate is questionable. unfortunately the bar to unban cards continues to be set much higher than the bar to ban them; so its likely we will never know.
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I hope that almost nobody will use that combo...it is just atrocious. Question also is, if enough people could get their hands on lattice before it exploded in price.
I hope that almost nobody will use that combo...it is just atrocious. Question also is, if enough people could get their hands on lattice before it exploded in price.
Not going to directly weigh in on the Karn question because there simply isn't enough data out there, but I will say that Karn highlights the advantage of digital cards and errata. Design and balance mistakes happen all the time in all games, especially Magic, and especially once you move out of Limited/Standard to older formats. In a world where you are stuck with paper cards and the text printed on them, you can't retroactively fix these cards. This applies to both broken cards, e.g. everything that has ever been banned in any format, and very bad cards, e.g. cards that totally miss the mark and don't see play.
Digital Magic and errata/patches give Wizards an alternate solution to this problem. It allows them to make small/large adjustments to cards in order to make them better or worse, depending on the context. Take Karn, for example. Any of the following adjustments would avoid the Lattice combo, if one's goal is to remove that synergy:
1. Change to "Activated abilities of nonland artifacts your opponents control can’t be activated."
2. Change to "-2: You may choose an artifact card you own with converted mana cost 4 or less from outside the game or in exile, reveal that card, and put it into your hand."
3. Change to "-X: You may choose an artifact card you own with converted mana cost X or less from outside the game or in exile, reveal that card, and put it into your hand."
4. Change Lattice to "All nonland permanents are artifacts in addition to their other types. All nonland cards that aren’t in play, spells, and nonland permanents are colorless. Players may spend mana as though it were mana of any color."
This errata/patching approach would improve balance for so many banned cards, underplayed decks, and broken metagames. It's also the model used by all major online games. I believe Wizards will eventually go in this direction, and/or are actively trying to figure out how to do this without creating a huge gap between online and paper Magic. Banning Nexus in BO1 and nowhere else is just the start of this journey, as was the functional Pridemate change.
Of course, this approach is not without risk. Wizards can become too balance-happy and issue errata for things that simply don't need it based on mass panics or outcry. Imagine if Wizards nerfed Teferi to only untap one land, or Wilderness Reclamation to untap only a few lands, because of MTG Arena complaints. Or increased CoCo's mana cost by 1 at the height of its power. Tweaks like this, and countless others we could speculate on, might assuage a short-term hysteria but would limit long-term feasibility of those cards/decks, especially if Wizards is balancing across formats. After all, if Wizards messed up the design to begin with, they can certainly mess it up again down the road. Additionally, part of the beauty of non-rotating formats is in finding design mistakes and exploiting them for powerful decks, and too much errata would make that challenging. Patching/errata is not a perfect solution by any means, but I do think if done correctly it would really open up Magic play and design space in ways that would benefit players and formats like Modern.
Of course, this approach is not without risk. Wizards can become too balance-happy and issue errata for things that simply don't need it based on mass panics or outcry. Imagine if Wizards nerfed Teferi to only untap one land, or Wilderness Reclamation to untap only a few lands, because of MTG Arena complaints. Or increased CoCo's mana cost by 1 at the height of its power. Tweaks like this, and countless others we could speculate on, might assuage a short-term hysteria but would limit long-term feasibility of those cards/decks, especially if Wizards is balancing across formats. After all, if Wizards messed up the design to begin with, they can certainly mess it up again down the road. Additionally, part of the beauty of non-rotating formats is in finding design mistakes and exploiting them for powerful decks, and too much errata would make that challenging. Patching/errata is not a perfect solution by any means, but I do think if done correctly it would really open up Magic play and design space in ways that would benefit players and formats like Modern.
One of the other risks to this approach is that the old version of changed card effectively cease to exist, which can have unintended consequences in other formats. For example, let's say there is a card that is too strong for standard, yet is a lynchpin in a fairly inoffensive modern, legacy, or EDH deck (I can't think of an actual example, but Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic could have been this, had things been handled differently). Alternately, the card in question could be tearing up modern while being a strong, if not overwhelming presence in standard (Treasure Cruise and Dig through Time come to mind here). Bans isolate balance changes on a format-to-format basis, but full-on errata can cause collateral damage to decks that did not need balancing in the first place. The opposite could be true if the other function of errata, buffs designed to breathe new life into underplayed cards, is also used.
This issue is mostly nonexistant for many digital games on the market because rotation and format stratification is so rare, and, even when it does exist, the non-rotating format, such as Hearthstone's Wild, is largely ignored competitively. Serious errata in MTG is going to have fallout. That doesn't even get into total reworks, such as what has been commonplace in Gwent, that create entire versions of a game that simply can't be played. Magic might be trying to make the jump to the digital realm, but it still has plenty to tie it down.
R1 vs Sultai
G1 keeps a mull to 6 with turn 2 kill. Gets IoKed T1 and dies.
G2 keeps a mull to 6 with no lands and a Leyline of Sanctity. Stalls until turn 7, gets Griselbrand out, loses it to Assassin's Trophy but draws 14 cards. Plays Rider, loses it to Trophy again, GG.
R2 vs Burn
G1 mulls to 5 with all pieces for the combo except 2 lands, desperation Shoals his Rider away, dies anyway.
G2 mulls to 5 with 2 lands and Evolution. Down to 10 life and forced to combo out on turn 4 (opp had Eidolon in play). Pact to get Rider and shuffle away a revealed Leyline (8), didn't hit the land that he needed, died. It's unlikely he would have won even if he had hit a land, given he would be down to 6 after casting Evolution, and would have died to 2 burn spells or a Path.
R3 vs Elves
G1 mulls to 6 with all pieces except a land. Draws the land and T2 kills.
G2 mulls to 6 with Pact and Neoform but no lands. Never draws a land, dies.
G3 keeps a 7 with turn 2 kill. Gets the kill.
R4 vs 8 Rack
G1 mulls to 6 with all pieces except a second green card to pitch to Rider. Gets hit by a bunch of discard but pieces together the win on turn 10. His opponent made a mistake by taking Noxious Revival instead of Wild Cantor with discard; NR is deader since it screw you out of new draws.
G2 mulls to 4 with Leyline, Pact and no lands. Liliana comes down and locks the game away.
G3 mulls to 6, missing Rider/Pact. Topdecks Rider (clutch moment #1), spends Manamorphose to filter SSG into green and draws a green card without which he doesn't have enough to pitch to Rider (clutch moment #2). Gets the kill.
R5 vs U Tron
G1 keeps a 7 missing Neoform/Evolution. Fails to draw it and tries Rider beatdown. Eventually draws Neoform, goes for it, gets stopped by a counterspell and dies to Karn + Lattice lock.
G2 keeps a mull to 5 missing land and Rider/Pact. Dies uneventfully.
Note that the games were played under old mulligan rules. The new mulligan rules will help it a little, since you get to choose your best 5/6 out of 7. If you mull to 5 or 6 and Chancellor is the 7th card down, you get to use it anyway.
Mulliganing with the deck is very easy though: figure out how many cards you are from comboing off (you need Rider/Pact, Neoform/Evolution, and mana to cast it), and if the number is 2 or more, mull. If you're missing 2 lands then maybe you keep anyway, although this is usually followed with you questioning your life choices when you fail to draw even a second land. If you're down to 5 then just keep whatever you're dealt; yes, you might need to hit perfect draws to win, but going down to 4 hurts all the more because Rider costs two cards in hand.
Overall his record is what I expect of the deck: despite the turn 2 kills, it's very weak to disruption and loses to itself sometimes, like mulliganing to death or not drawing Shoal (which didn't happen in his games but has in mine).
I guess the big question now is, if the deck is an inconsistent pile but has random turn 1/2 kills, is it going to get banned? We've had decks that match this description (Cheeri0s, Blistercoil Weird) and they haven't been banned. Infect has turn 2 kills and is actually playable, but hasn't gotten anything banned other than Blazing Shoal (which happened like 100 years ago) and Probe (which fell on DS Zoo and UR Kiln Fiend too).
I hope that almost nobody will use that combo...it is just atrocious. Question also is, if enough people could get their hands on lattice before it exploded in price.
Not going to directly weigh in on the Karn question because there simply isn't enough data out there, but I will say that Karn highlights the advantage of digital cards and errata. Design and balance mistakes happen all the time in all games, especially Magic, and especially once you move out of Limited/Standard to older formats. In a world where you are stuck with paper cards and the text printed on them, you can't retroactively fix these cards. This applies to both broken cards, e.g. everything that has ever been banned in any format, and very bad cards, e.g. cards that totally miss the mark and don't see play.
Digital Magic and errata/patches give Wizards an alternate solution to this problem. It allows them to make small/large adjustments to cards in order to make them better or worse, depending on the context. Take Karn, for example. Any of the following adjustments would avoid the Lattice combo, if one's goal is to remove that synergy:
1. Change to "Activated abilities of nonland artifacts your opponents control can’t be activated."
2. Change to "-2: You may choose an artifact card you own with converted mana cost 4 or less from outside the game or in exile, reveal that card, and put it into your hand."
3. Change to "-X: You may choose an artifact card you own with converted mana cost X or less from outside the game or in exile, reveal that card, and put it into your hand."
4. Change Lattice to "All nonland permanents are artifacts in addition to their other types. All nonland cards that aren’t in play, spells, and nonland permanents are colorless. Players may spend mana as though it were mana of any color."
This errata/patching approach would improve balance for so many banned cards, underplayed decks, and broken metagames. It's also the model used by all major online games. I believe Wizards will eventually go in this direction, and/or are actively trying to figure out how to do this without creating a huge gap between online and paper Magic. Banning Nexus in BO1 and nowhere else is just the start of this journey, as was the functional Pridemate change.
Of course, this approach is not without risk. Wizards can become too balance-happy and issue errata for things that simply don't need it based on mass panics or outcry. Imagine if Wizards nerfed Teferi to only untap one land, or Wilderness Reclamation to untap only a few lands, because of MTG Arena complaints. Or increased CoCo's mana cost by 1 at the height of its power. Tweaks like this, and countless others we could speculate on, might assuage a short-term hysteria but would limit long-term feasibility of those cards/decks, especially if Wizards is balancing across formats. After all, if Wizards messed up the design to begin with, they can certainly mess it up again down the road. Additionally, part of the beauty of non-rotating formats is in finding design mistakes and exploiting them for powerful decks, and too much errata would make that challenging. Patching/errata is not a perfect solution by any means, but I do think if done correctly it would really open up Magic play and design space in ways that would benefit players and formats like Modern.
or...they could just ban really problematic cards and or continually release sets in relatively short intervals with new cards and interactions to keep balance in a fluid state.
'patching' cards, or in other words just arbitrarily telling people a card does something different than what it says, may be an alternative solution; however that doesnt make it a good one or even necessary for that matter.
you said it yourself, its implementation is unfeasible in paper. designing or making decisions with arena Bo1 in mind (nexus) or updating cards to remove archaic and mostly asinine rules text to smooth out the functionality on a digital client (pridemate) are one thing. implementing a new balancing system that runs contrary to the one already in place while also bringing along the baggage of well...not even working for the majority of your product line and users; is another thing entirely.
consider the world back before arena. if 'patch' based balancing offered significant benefits worth seeking out, then why hasnt wizards tried it in 25 years? were they just unaware that this was a method that digital tcgs or games in general used to make balance adjustments? i doubt it. so the question then becomes: what about arena would compel them to use it now? normally for digital games it'd be how quickly it could be implemented by pushing out a version with updated code and graphics to the entire playerbase, but that advantage was never on the table for mtg to begin with.
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Note that the games were played under old mulligan rules. The new mulligan rules will help it a little, since you get to choose your best 5/6 out of 7. If you mull to 5 or 6 and Chancellor is the 7th card down, you get to use it anyway.
Do you have an official source on this? Putting Chancellors on the bottom should exclude them from being part of your "opening hand." The following rulings indicate that Chancellors and other "opening hand" cards do not function until the end of the entire mulligan process, which includes placing cards on the bottom of one's library under the London Mulligan.
Gatherer:
6/8/2016
A player’s “opening hand” is the hand of cards the player has after all players have taken mulligans and “scryed” if applicable. If players have any cards in hand that allow actions to be taken with them from a player’s opening hand, the starting player takes all such actions first in any order, followed by each other player in turn order. Then the first turn begins.
Full comprehensive rules explanation of the mulligan:
103.4. Each player draws a number of cards equal to their starting hand size, which is normally seven. (Some effects can modify a player’s starting hand size.) A player who is dissatisfied with their initial hand may take a mulligan. First, the starting player declares whether they will take a mulligan. Then each other player in turn order does the same. Once each player has made a declaration, all players who decided to take mulligans do so at the same time. To take a mulligan, a player shuffles the cards in their hand back into their library, draws a new hand of cards equal to their starting hand size, then puts a number of those cards onto the bottom of their library in any order equal to the number of times that player has taken a mulligan. Once a player chooses not to take a mulligan, the remaining cards become the player’s opening hand, and that player may not take any further mulligans. This process is then repeated until no player takes a mulligan. A player can’t take a number of mulligans greater their starting hand size.
^What he means is that is you mulligan to 5, and Chancellor is the 7th card from the top of your deck, with the current Mulligan you will not get to see that Chancellor. But with London, you get to draw 7 and then keep that Chancellor (bottoming 2 other cards).
As for Digital Cardgames getting updates on their cards, I don't think that would be feasible even if current MtG was entirely digital. Power being format dependent would mean that a card having to be banned in Modern could wreck perfectly fine decks in Legacy or Vintage.
Now I think about it this actually happened to me, where the Hearthstone deck I built got made completely obsolete because they nerfed Mana Wyrm. Which had to be nerfed because of their eternal formal, whilst I was playing "standard", where the Mana Wyrm deck wasn't even tier 1. I played completely for free at that point so that was a month of grinding wasted and I just stopped playing altogether.
I never said that putting Chancellors on the bottom lets you use their effects. Read that again carefully, please.
Under old mulligan rules, if I decide to mull to 6, shuffle my library and (unknown to me) the top of my library is 6 cards followed by a Chancellor, I'll draw the first 6. Then if I decide to keep, I'll scry 1 and see the Chancellor which I can't use.
Under new mulligan rules, if the exact same thing happens including the order of the cards, I'll draw 7 cards including the Chancellor. Then I can put a non-Chancellor card on the bottom and start the game with the Chancellor effect, which would not have been available under the old mulligan rules.
I never said that putting Chancellors on the bottom lets you use their effects. Read that again carefully, please.
Under old mulligan rules, if I decide to mull to 6, shuffle my library and (unknown to me) the top of my library is 6 cards followed by a Chancellor, I'll draw the first 6. Then if I decide to keep, I'll scry 1 and see the Chancellor which I can't use.
Under new mulligan rules, if the exact same thing happens including the order of the cards, I'll draw 7 cards including the Chancellor. Then I can put a non-Chancellor card on the bottom and start the game with the Chancellor effect, which would not have been available under the old mulligan rules.
I think the total reprints in horizons is somewhere between like ten and twenty? I'd be wary of hoping for any cycle of cards due to how large a chunk of the reprint portion it takes. My personal hope is for a middle ground between force of will and disrupting shoal to the effect of:
Free Counter for Modern
XUU
Instant
You may remove a blue card with cmc X instead of paying this card's mana cost
Counter target spell unless its controller pays X
I think a card like this would immediately vault delver upwards to respectability.
I think the total reprints in horizons is somewhere between like ten and twenty? I'd be wary of hoping for any cycle of cards due to how large a chunk of the reprint portion it takes. My personal hope is for a middle ground between force of will and disrupting shoal to the effect of:
Free Counter for Modern
XUU
Instant
You may remove a blue card with cmc X instead of paying this card's mana cost
Counter target spell unless its controller pays X
I think a card like this would immediately vault delver upwards to respectability.
How is this any better than Shoal? Shoal is hardly played...
I'm confused as to what the goal is? Just having 8Shoal Delver?
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I think the total reprints in horizons is somewhere between like ten and twenty? I'd be wary of hoping for any cycle of cards due to how large a chunk of the reprint portion it takes. My personal hope is for a middle ground between force of will and disrupting shoal to the effect of:
Free Counter for Modern
XUU
Instant
You may remove a blue card with cmc X instead of paying this card's mana cost
Counter target spell unless its controller pays X
I think a card like this would immediately vault delver upwards to respectability.
How is this any better than Shoal? Shoal is hardly played...
I'm confused as to what the goal is? Just having 8Shoal Delver?
Shoal requires you to have a cmc of x to counter a cmc of x. A taxing effect like mana leak makes it much more playable.
For example, you could actually use an updated version on something like hollow one or gurmag angler.
I doubt they would be played together because it's too much card disadvantage.
I think the total reprints in horizons is somewhere between like ten and twenty? I'd be wary of hoping for any cycle of cards due to how large a chunk of the reprint portion it takes. My personal hope is for a middle ground between force of will and disrupting shoal to the effect of:
Free Counter for Modern
XUU
Instant
You may remove a blue card with cmc X instead of paying this card's mana cost
Counter target spell unless its controller pays X
I think a card like this would immediately vault delver upwards to respectability.
How is this any better than Shoal? Shoal is hardly played...
I'm confused as to what the goal is? Just having 8Shoal Delver?
As stated earlier, the difference between the exiled card having to match the spell to be countered vs the mana needed to override is huge. It also does the only thing blue control and tempo technically needs: a good way to handle a turn one or turn two play. I have always been fine with tron having inevitability, but this gives an out to turn one aether vial in humans, or a turn two eidolon.
I'd also like a three mana price of progress for burn, or sulfuric vortex on a RRR, 1/4 creature. Honestly I'd also like a return of Gitaxian Probe but whatever I'm reaching there.
My bad... I read it exactly like Shoal while being a soft counter at the same time. That's why I got confused. I read the post quite a few times but for some reason I still understood it was a Shoal...
I'm so sorry. It would make it way better than Shoal in my opinion. Matching the spells cmc is indeed a troublesome task specially against Tron, UW, Delve threats, etc...
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I think the total reprints in horizons is somewhere between like ten and twenty?
Is this confirmed? I have searched but couldn't find how many cards will be reprinted, I hope is a bit more than that, 20 cards out of 254 seems a bit underwhelming
Again, since reprints are on the low side, MH speculations are better focused on slight variations of cards. The only parameter we have is that it they are using the same design philosophies as the NWO. First and foremost, it means expect some of the powerful effects to be attached to creatures, hence my speculation about a sulfuric vortex on a creature much as pyrostatic pillar became eidolon of the great revel.
So Tron is now the top deck in the meta, just got Karn the Great Creator, gets even more powerful with the London Mulligan which will be implemented soon, and makes for miserable game play.
Can we finally start talking about how the Urzatron lands may be too strong in a format without wasteland?
Modern Horizons can change this, true. But, as weve seen, even all the recent tron hate printed lately has done very little
So Tron is now the top deck in the meta, just got Karn the Great Creator, gets even more powerful with the London Mulligan which will be implemented soon, and makes for miserable game play.
Can we finally start talking about how the Urzatron lands may be too strong in a format without wasteland?
Modern Horizons can change this, true. But, as weve seen, even all the recent tron hate printed lately has done very little
Meta will adapt to be more aggressive towards Tron. Lots of tron hate cards out there, just swap some in instead of banning stuff when it's popular. There's always an ebb and flow and Modern Horizons will almost definitely make a big change to that.
So Tron is now the top deck in the meta, just got Karn the Great Creator, gets even more powerful with the London Mulligan which will be implemented soon, and makes for miserable game play.
Can we finally start talking about how the Urzatron lands may be too strong in a format without wasteland?
Modern Horizons can change this, true. But, as weve seen, even all the recent tron hate printed lately has done very little
I won't, and here is why:
Infect
Burn
Storm
Valakut
Ad Nauseam
You can easily build a deck that preys on tron. I personally believe that the problem isn't tron, because these decks still exist with very good tron matchups. The problem really, is that tron has the best late game of just about any deck in modern. The other side is that people usually call for bans on decks that are fast. The slower the format becomes, the better tron gets. In short, the current situation is actually the result of UW control becoming so good. I say this based on years of seeing people complain about "mindless goldfish" decks which I have said for ages serve a critical role in keeping ramp down. It has only been a couple weeks of tron being #1. I would rather people start to gravitate towards these decks to beat tron (and other things, they certainly have other good matchups) and create something more akin to a rock/paper/scissors meta.***
***most of this is motivated by my extreme hatred of slow, boring control and midrange decks
So Tron is now the top deck in the meta, just got Karn the Great Creator, gets even more powerful with the London Mulligan which will be implemented soon, and makes for miserable game play.
Can we finally start talking about how the Urzatron lands may be too strong in a format without wasteland?
Modern Horizons can change this, true. But, as weve seen, even all the recent tron hate printed lately has done very little
Meta will adapt to be more aggressive towards Tron. Lots of tron hate cards out there, just swap some in instead of banning stuff when it's popular. There's always an ebb and flow and Modern Horizons will make almost definitely make a big change to that.
I agree, I'm not sure tron is really all that oppressive right now. It's consistent and strong with the new mulligan rule sure, but it's beatable. cermonious rejection is a great safety valve that can and will show up in Uxx control, grixis shadow, tempo decks, etc to combat it and eat up that meta share.
It only asks 4 sideboard slots and maybe some number of snapcaster mage and you're highly favored against them as you just answer the 10-11 threats they have total.
I'd imagine this is the route we go if tron starts to migrate towards a very high % of the meta.
In fact if you can squeeze in an appropriate amount of rejections and grave/spell hate for Phoenix you're going to be covering nearly 1/5th of your matches in some of the modern events we've seen. Grave hate also spills over to dredge.
Phoenix can run rejection if it needs it and it has the velocity to hit it by t3 if it needs to even on the draw.
I just can't see tron eating up too much meta if it's really that dominate. It loses horribly on the stack.
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I'm interested in which direction WoTC would go on this. Would they stop printing narrow but powerful sideboard type artifacts because Karn can tutor them? With Tron's ability to produce large amounts of mana, there is a good chance the tutored artifact will be cast on the same turn.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
Print cards until something breaks, then ban what breaks. Not preemptively.
nah, i was just being sarcastic because many players still hold up 'limiting equipment design' as a reason SFM hasnt been unbanned.
as i see it, wizards has and will continue to (hopefully) primarily design for standard and limited. new powerful utility artifacts will be printed, just like new cheap spells or creatures in whatever tribes. if anything gets out of hand, that is when banlist decisions can be made. i mean that is why it exists after all. besides, most of the powerful stuff the new karn is doing is with artifacts that design has moved away from in general like ensnaring bridge.
as far as im concerned, the only 'this card(s) get better over time' (thus limiting design space) case that made any sense was birthing pod. the scope of 'creatures that do stuff' was just too broad especially since the deck was firmly at the top of the format. even still, the game/formats are complex enough with deep enough card pools that the assumption birthing pod would scale at an overwhelming rate is questionable. unfortunately the bar to unban cards continues to be set much higher than the bar to ban them; so its likely we will never know.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)anyway, new Karn hasn't done anything broken over here yet. Not yet encountered the deck that uses the lattice combo.
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Not going to directly weigh in on the Karn question because there simply isn't enough data out there, but I will say that Karn highlights the advantage of digital cards and errata. Design and balance mistakes happen all the time in all games, especially Magic, and especially once you move out of Limited/Standard to older formats. In a world where you are stuck with paper cards and the text printed on them, you can't retroactively fix these cards. This applies to both broken cards, e.g. everything that has ever been banned in any format, and very bad cards, e.g. cards that totally miss the mark and don't see play.
Digital Magic and errata/patches give Wizards an alternate solution to this problem. It allows them to make small/large adjustments to cards in order to make them better or worse, depending on the context. Take Karn, for example. Any of the following adjustments would avoid the Lattice combo, if one's goal is to remove that synergy:
1. Change to "Activated abilities of nonland artifacts your opponents control can’t be activated."
2. Change to "-2: You may choose an artifact card you own with converted mana cost 4 or less from outside the game or in exile, reveal that card, and put it into your hand."
3. Change to "-X: You may choose an artifact card you own with converted mana cost X or less from outside the game or in exile, reveal that card, and put it into your hand."
4. Change Lattice to "All nonland permanents are artifacts in addition to their other types. All nonland cards that aren’t in play, spells, and nonland permanents are colorless. Players may spend mana as though it were mana of any color."
This errata/patching approach would improve balance for so many banned cards, underplayed decks, and broken metagames. It's also the model used by all major online games. I believe Wizards will eventually go in this direction, and/or are actively trying to figure out how to do this without creating a huge gap between online and paper Magic. Banning Nexus in BO1 and nowhere else is just the start of this journey, as was the functional Pridemate change.
Of course, this approach is not without risk. Wizards can become too balance-happy and issue errata for things that simply don't need it based on mass panics or outcry. Imagine if Wizards nerfed Teferi to only untap one land, or Wilderness Reclamation to untap only a few lands, because of MTG Arena complaints. Or increased CoCo's mana cost by 1 at the height of its power. Tweaks like this, and countless others we could speculate on, might assuage a short-term hysteria but would limit long-term feasibility of those cards/decks, especially if Wizards is balancing across formats. After all, if Wizards messed up the design to begin with, they can certainly mess it up again down the road. Additionally, part of the beauty of non-rotating formats is in finding design mistakes and exploiting them for powerful decks, and too much errata would make that challenging. Patching/errata is not a perfect solution by any means, but I do think if done correctly it would really open up Magic play and design space in ways that would benefit players and formats like Modern.
One of the other risks to this approach is that the old version of changed card effectively cease to exist, which can have unintended consequences in other formats. For example, let's say there is a card that is too strong for standard, yet is a lynchpin in a fairly inoffensive modern, legacy, or EDH deck (I can't think of an actual example, but Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic could have been this, had things been handled differently). Alternately, the card in question could be tearing up modern while being a strong, if not overwhelming presence in standard (Treasure Cruise and Dig through Time come to mind here). Bans isolate balance changes on a format-to-format basis, but full-on errata can cause collateral damage to decks that did not need balancing in the first place. The opposite could be true if the other function of errata, buffs designed to breathe new life into underplayed cards, is also used.
This issue is mostly nonexistant for many digital games on the market because rotation and format stratification is so rare, and, even when it does exist, the non-rotating format, such as Hearthstone's Wild, is largely ignored competitively. Serious errata in MTG is going to have fallout. That doesn't even get into total reworks, such as what has been commonplace in Gwent, that create entire versions of a game that simply can't be played. Magic might be trying to make the jump to the digital realm, but it still has plenty to tie it down.
G1 keeps a mull to 6 with turn 2 kill. Gets IoKed T1 and dies.
G2 keeps a mull to 6 with no lands and a Leyline of Sanctity. Stalls until turn 7, gets Griselbrand out, loses it to Assassin's Trophy but draws 14 cards. Plays Rider, loses it to Trophy again, GG.
R2 vs Burn
G1 mulls to 5 with all pieces for the combo except 2 lands, desperation Shoals his Rider away, dies anyway.
G2 mulls to 5 with 2 lands and Evolution. Down to 10 life and forced to combo out on turn 4 (opp had Eidolon in play). Pact to get Rider and shuffle away a revealed Leyline (8), didn't hit the land that he needed, died. It's unlikely he would have won even if he had hit a land, given he would be down to 6 after casting Evolution, and would have died to 2 burn spells or a Path.
R3 vs Elves
G1 mulls to 6 with all pieces except a land. Draws the land and T2 kills.
G2 mulls to 6 with Pact and Neoform but no lands. Never draws a land, dies.
G3 keeps a 7 with turn 2 kill. Gets the kill.
R4 vs 8 Rack
G1 mulls to 6 with all pieces except a second green card to pitch to Rider. Gets hit by a bunch of discard but pieces together the win on turn 10. His opponent made a mistake by taking Noxious Revival instead of Wild Cantor with discard; NR is deader since it screw you out of new draws.
G2 mulls to 4 with Leyline, Pact and no lands. Liliana comes down and locks the game away.
G3 mulls to 6, missing Rider/Pact. Topdecks Rider (clutch moment #1), spends Manamorphose to filter SSG into green and draws a green card without which he doesn't have enough to pitch to Rider (clutch moment #2). Gets the kill.
R5 vs U Tron
G1 keeps a 7 missing Neoform/Evolution. Fails to draw it and tries Rider beatdown. Eventually draws Neoform, goes for it, gets stopped by a counterspell and dies to Karn + Lattice lock.
G2 keeps a mull to 5 missing land and Rider/Pact. Dies uneventfully.
Mulliganing with the deck is very easy though: figure out how many cards you are from comboing off (you need Rider/Pact, Neoform/Evolution, and mana to cast it), and if the number is 2 or more, mull. If you're missing 2 lands then maybe you keep anyway, although this is usually followed with you questioning your life choices when you fail to draw even a second land. If you're down to 5 then just keep whatever you're dealt; yes, you might need to hit perfect draws to win, but going down to 4 hurts all the more because Rider costs two cards in hand.
Overall his record is what I expect of the deck: despite the turn 2 kills, it's very weak to disruption and loses to itself sometimes, like mulliganing to death or not drawing Shoal (which didn't happen in his games but has in mine).
I guess the big question now is, if the deck is an inconsistent pile but has random turn 1/2 kills, is it going to get banned? We've had decks that match this description (Cheeri0s, Blistercoil Weird) and they haven't been banned. Infect has turn 2 kills and is actually playable, but hasn't gotten anything banned other than Blazing Shoal (which happened like 100 years ago) and Probe (which fell on DS Zoo and UR Kiln Fiend too).
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
'patching' cards, or in other words just arbitrarily telling people a card does something different than what it says, may be an alternative solution; however that doesnt make it a good one or even necessary for that matter.
you said it yourself, its implementation is unfeasible in paper. designing or making decisions with arena Bo1 in mind (nexus) or updating cards to remove archaic and mostly asinine rules text to smooth out the functionality on a digital client (pridemate) are one thing. implementing a new balancing system that runs contrary to the one already in place while also bringing along the baggage of well...not even working for the majority of your product line and users; is another thing entirely.
consider the world back before arena. if 'patch' based balancing offered significant benefits worth seeking out, then why hasnt wizards tried it in 25 years? were they just unaware that this was a method that digital tcgs or games in general used to make balance adjustments? i doubt it. so the question then becomes: what about arena would compel them to use it now? normally for digital games it'd be how quickly it could be implemented by pushing out a version with updated code and graphics to the entire playerbase, but that advantage was never on the table for mtg to begin with.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Do you have an official source on this? Putting Chancellors on the bottom should exclude them from being part of your "opening hand." The following rulings indicate that Chancellors and other "opening hand" cards do not function until the end of the entire mulligan process, which includes placing cards on the bottom of one's library under the London Mulligan.
Gatherer:
6/8/2016
A player’s “opening hand” is the hand of cards the player has after all players have taken mulligans and “scryed” if applicable. If players have any cards in hand that allow actions to be taken with them from a player’s opening hand, the starting player takes all such actions first in any order, followed by each other player in turn order. Then the first turn begins.
Full comprehensive rules explanation of the mulligan:
103.4. Each player draws a number of cards equal to their starting hand size, which is normally seven. (Some effects can modify a player’s starting hand size.) A player who is dissatisfied with their initial hand may take a mulligan. First, the starting player declares whether they will take a mulligan. Then each other player in turn order does the same. Once each player has made a declaration, all players who decided to take mulligans do so at the same time. To take a mulligan, a player shuffles the cards in their hand back into their library, draws a new hand of cards equal to their starting hand size, then puts a number of those cards onto the bottom of their library in any order equal to the number of times that player has taken a mulligan. Once a player chooses not to take a mulligan, the remaining cards become the player’s opening hand, and that player may not take any further mulligans. This process is then repeated until no player takes a mulligan. A player can’t take a number of mulligans greater their starting hand size.
As for Digital Cardgames getting updates on their cards, I don't think that would be feasible even if current MtG was entirely digital. Power being format dependent would mean that a card having to be banned in Modern could wreck perfectly fine decks in Legacy or Vintage.
Now I think about it this actually happened to me, where the Hearthstone deck I built got made completely obsolete because they nerfed Mana Wyrm. Which had to be nerfed because of their eternal formal, whilst I was playing "standard", where the Mana Wyrm deck wasn't even tier 1. I played completely for free at that point so that was a month of grinding wasted and I just stopped playing altogether.
Under old mulligan rules, if I decide to mull to 6, shuffle my library and (unknown to me) the top of my library is 6 cards followed by a Chancellor, I'll draw the first 6. Then if I decide to keep, I'll scry 1 and see the Chancellor which I can't use.
Under new mulligan rules, if the exact same thing happens including the order of the cards, I'll draw 7 cards including the Chancellor. Then I can put a non-Chancellor card on the bottom and start the game with the Chancellor effect, which would not have been available under the old mulligan rules.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Well, you said it better this time.
But yeah while SFM gets blamed for strangling equipment that hasn't stopped Tron from getting plenty of colorless cards to boost it.
Granted an exception for Walkers since you know WOTC wants to push that as Walkers are the face of the franchise.
Free Counter for Modern
XUU
Instant
You may remove a blue card with cmc X instead of paying this card's mana cost
Counter target spell unless its controller pays X
I think a card like this would immediately vault delver upwards to respectability.
I'm confused as to what the goal is? Just having 8Shoal Delver?
WUMiracles ControlUW
RUBGrixis Death's ShadowBUR
Shoal requires you to have a cmc of x to counter a cmc of x. A taxing effect like mana leak makes it much more playable.
For example, you could actually use an updated version on something like hollow one or gurmag angler.
I doubt they would be played together because it's too much card disadvantage.
As stated earlier, the difference between the exiled card having to match the spell to be countered vs the mana needed to override is huge. It also does the only thing blue control and tempo technically needs: a good way to handle a turn one or turn two play. I have always been fine with tron having inevitability, but this gives an out to turn one aether vial in humans, or a turn two eidolon.
I'd also like a three mana price of progress for burn, or sulfuric vortex on a RRR, 1/4 creature. Honestly I'd also like a return of Gitaxian Probe but whatever I'm reaching there.
I'm so sorry. It would make it way better than Shoal in my opinion. Matching the spells cmc is indeed a troublesome task specially against Tron, UW, Delve threats, etc...
WUMiracles ControlUW
RUBGrixis Death's ShadowBUR
Is this confirmed? I have searched but couldn't find how many cards will be reprinted, I hope is a bit more than that, 20 cards out of 254 seems a bit underwhelming
Again, since reprints are on the low side, MH speculations are better focused on slight variations of cards. The only parameter we have is that it they are using the same design philosophies as the NWO. First and foremost, it means expect some of the powerful effects to be attached to creatures, hence my speculation about a sulfuric vortex on a creature much as pyrostatic pillar became eidolon of the great revel.
Can we finally start talking about how the Urzatron lands may be too strong in a format without wasteland?
Modern Horizons can change this, true. But, as weve seen, even all the recent tron hate printed lately has done very little
Meta will adapt to be more aggressive towards Tron. Lots of tron hate cards out there, just swap some in instead of banning stuff when it's popular. There's always an ebb and flow and Modern Horizons will almost definitely make a big change to that.
I won't, and here is why:
Infect
Burn
Storm
Valakut
Ad Nauseam
You can easily build a deck that preys on tron. I personally believe that the problem isn't tron, because these decks still exist with very good tron matchups. The problem really, is that tron has the best late game of just about any deck in modern. The other side is that people usually call for bans on decks that are fast. The slower the format becomes, the better tron gets. In short, the current situation is actually the result of UW control becoming so good. I say this based on years of seeing people complain about "mindless goldfish" decks which I have said for ages serve a critical role in keeping ramp down. It has only been a couple weeks of tron being #1. I would rather people start to gravitate towards these decks to beat tron (and other things, they certainly have other good matchups) and create something more akin to a rock/paper/scissors meta.***
***most of this is motivated by my extreme hatred of slow, boring control and midrange decks
I agree, I'm not sure tron is really all that oppressive right now. It's consistent and strong with the new mulligan rule sure, but it's beatable. cermonious rejection is a great safety valve that can and will show up in Uxx control, grixis shadow, tempo decks, etc to combat it and eat up that meta share.
It only asks 4 sideboard slots and maybe some number of snapcaster mage and you're highly favored against them as you just answer the 10-11 threats they have total.
I'd imagine this is the route we go if tron starts to migrate towards a very high % of the meta.
In fact if you can squeeze in an appropriate amount of rejections and grave/spell hate for Phoenix you're going to be covering nearly 1/5th of your matches in some of the modern events we've seen. Grave hate also spills over to dredge.
Phoenix can run rejection if it needs it and it has the velocity to hit it by t3 if it needs to even on the draw.
I just can't see tron eating up too much meta if it's really that dominate. It loses horribly on the stack.