Has WotC said that the Play Design team will be looking at Modern bans/unbans? My understanding is that the PD team will be looking primarily at the impact of new sets on Standard.
Dan Burdick said in an article that their main focus is on Standard and Limited, but that they will also be looking at everything they can. I would imagine that as they look to ban or unban cards for any format the PD team would be the main people involved to at least begin to look at feasibility, but with WotC you never really know.
Yeah, my interpretation of that is they're just focusing on the new sets, like you said in Standard and Limited. The "everything they can" part to me sounds like just blowing smoke.
Although I agree the team will primarily focus on Standard and Limited, it's unfair and not really supportable to assume "everything they can" is purely smoke-blowing. Recent M-Files articles indicate that even the last subpar D&D process looked at Modern, so I expect the new one will keep doing the same. Sure, it won't be in the spotlight as much as Standard and Limited, but even if they only look at 1-3 cards per set for Modern that would be awesome. Given the recent track record of considering Modern for D&D, and given this team's purpose at improving the overall testing process, there's no good reason to accuse them of lying/misleading here. Forums like ours are full of accusations like this and they are rarely reasonable. In most cases, big statements like this are well-intentioned and do play out to some extent, even if it isn't the extent we might prefer.
Yeah I think its more likely they will offer suggestions for "tweaks" to cards to be more Modern playable while still balanced in Standard. Don't really see them having much opportunity to Test for things like banned list issues.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor being a degenerate card, while a Sol Land, or an Ancient Tomb without you taking damage, but for only a specific type of creatures(and the most powerful in the game) is ok is beyond me!
If JTMS is not fine, then cards like Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, or heck even Collected Company are not fine as well.
Extended was terrible when JtmS was dominating, Jace is a slow death you died on turn 4 you just didn't realize it.
gotta say that comparing JtmS to SSG or CoCo is pretty laughable.
Have to agree. Even if I think JTMS is fine, just a strong fully blue Win Con, its not in the same realm as those 2.
Does not matter at all. I am not comparing cards. Just saying that JTMS is probably as safe as CoCo or the aforemention cards.
In other words, if CoCo was in the banlist, we would say the same things for that card(too strong in power level/etc). This applies to power level only and nothing else.
A format where fast mana is available in so many forms, but a very powerful 4cmc walker is not, is something that feels silly.
As was the case for Sword of The Meek and Ancestral. A format where Ancestral was banned and so many more powerful cards were legal was laughable. Yet, people there were in this very thread that were saying "Sword Of ThE Meek will mean the end to all of the aggro decks".
Seeing JTMS rotting in the banlist while watching Eldrazi Temple being legal trying to turn 2 TKS feels utterly buffling to me.
Agreed, it takes a lot for a 4 mana card that can't win the game immediately to be playable in modern. We have a format were 2 of the top decks are running a mox and a sol land, but people are worried about jace, stoneforge mystic and in some cases even Blood braid elf. Let's say in some alternative universe these cards are problematic and warp the format around them, is having a format with these cards and the decks they promote worse than what we have now. I know I would rather see more uw control, jund and d&t that rather than affinity, titan shift and eldrazi tron
JtmS is a slow death, you died on turn 4 you just didn't realize it for a few turns.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor being a degenerate card, while a Sol Land, or an Ancient Tomb without you taking damage, but for only a specific type of creatures(and the most powerful in the game) is ok is beyond me!
If JTMS is not fine, then cards like Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, or heck even Collected Company are not fine as well.
gotta say that comparing JtmS to SSG or CoCo is pretty laughable.
Have to agree. Even if I think JTMS is fine, just a strong fully blue Win Con, its not in the same realm as those 2.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor being a degenerate card, while a Sol Land, or an Ancient Tomb without you taking damage, but for only a specific type of creatures(and the most powerful in the game) is ok is beyond me!
If JTMS is not fine, then cards like Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, or heck even Collected Company are not fine as well.
gotta say that comparing JtmS to SSG or CoCo is pretty laughable.
Have to agree. Even if I think JTMS is fine, just a strong fully blue Win Con, its not in the same realm as those 2.
Does not matter at all. I am not comparing cards. Just saying that JTMS is probably as safe as CoCo or the aforemention cards.
In other words, if CoCo was in the banlist, we would say the same things for that card(too strong in power level/etc). This applies to power level only and nothing else.
A format where fast mana is available in so many forms, but a very powerful 4cmc walker is not, is something that feels silly.
As was the case for Sword of The Meek and Ancestral. A format where Ancestral was banned and so many more powerful cards were legal was laughable. Yet, people there were in this very thread that were saying "Sword Of ThE Meek will mean the end to all of the aggro decks".
Seeing JTMS rotting in the banlist while watching Eldrazi Temple being legal trying to turn 2 TKS feels utterly buffling to me.
No I don't think people would look at CoCo and say "this is to strong" one is a always fantastic swiss army card, and the other is a complete build around that can whiff.
Ancestral wasn't fine until they banned out the deck that made it the case.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor being a degenerate card, while a Sol Land, or an Ancient Tomb without you taking damage, but for only a specific type of creatures(and the most powerful in the game) is ok is beyond me!
If JTMS is not fine, then cards like Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, or heck even Collected Company are not fine as well.
gotta say that comparing JtmS to SSG or CoCo is pretty laughable.
JtmS is in a echelon above those.
Have to agree. Even if I think JTMS is fine, just a strong fully blue Win Con, its not in the same realm as those 2.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor being a degenerate card, while a Sol Land, or an Ancient Tomb without you taking damage, but for only a specific type of creatures(and the most powerful in the game) is ok is beyond me!
If JTMS is not fine, then cards like Eldrazi Temple, Simian Spirit Guide, or heck even Collected Company are not fine as well.
gotta say that comparing JtmS to SSG or CoCo is pretty laughable.
Maybe we should restrict Chalice of the Void too? After all, it's restricted in Vintage so it must be too strong for Modern. /s
All I did was apply the same logic to a different card, if you don't like the logical conclusion that isn't really my problem.
Its also worth noting that the entire justification given by WotC for it being banned has absolutely nothing to do with modern and everything to do with other formats. Same as SFM and MM.
I don't think JtmS gets ubanned likely ever. He is way more powerful than multiple cards that people wouldn't want off. Plus the entire justification for his banning still holds, he is still a Legacy/Vintage staple.
People way under value him
Cards do different things in different formats though. Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were well balanced for Standard’s card pool, while being broken in Legacy and Modern. You can’t always judge a card’s impact on a format by looking at how it affects older formats.
So what your saying is that we should unban Mental Misstep also.
I don't think JtmS gets ubanned likely ever. He is way more powerful than multiple cards that people wouldn't want off. Plus the entire justification for his banning still holds, he is still a Legacy/Vintage staple.
Deprive not being mentioned until this point is a travesty. It puts logic knot to shame in my opinion. In decks with a low curve bouncing a land can often net the user mana. Its not as great in a control deck but even then bouncing a land in a deck that always hits its land drops generally means you arnt hurting for mana at most phases in the game.
Stubborn denial is hands down the most powerful single counterspell in modern. Force spike is certainly passable and when ferocious it's one of the best in the game. It just requires specific builds so it will never see the copious amounts of play like a one mana negate should.
Remand is undervalued here as well. It needs the right home but when remand is the right counterspell choice for a deck, it's obscenely good. It just isn't control card. If people viewed it as a cantrip instead of a counter it would be held in a better regard. I personally think it's a great complement to mana leak.
ceremonious rejection is purely a sideboard card but I believe deserves a spot. Tron, affinity, eldrazi, and lantern control make up at least 25% of the mtgo meta right now, and rejection hits literally almost every relevant card in those matchups for a single mana unconditionally. That's a powerful hate card.
The Problem with Deprive is that its not good in Control or Tempo. Even in a deck like Delver falling back on land drops is often just putting you to far behind on Mana, its okay as a 1 of and possibly a 2 of but it would only be picked over something like Logic Knot if your deck is already taxing its own GY to much.
Remand is pretty terrible right now because everything being cast is cheap, It was good in Twin because you only really needed to maybe buy a turn which Remand does well. Right now its biggest draw is bouncing your own Storm spell back to your hand. If counter wars were prevalent enough its stock would go up because bouncing your counters back to hand+draw a card is always a nice way to pull ahead on those types of exchanges but no Tempo deck in Modern exists that is either fast enough or resilient enough to make use of it well, even Delver would rather have Leak since Remanding any of the most common removal is a losing proposition.
Here I think that we have to divide the conditional counters from "full" counters.
Even if right now Stubborn denial is the most PLAYED counter is far from being the most powerful, at least for me. You have to build a deck that could support that. Quite frankly I think that Negate is more powerful just because it could be played in any blue deck, without ferocious.
The reason behind that list is the fact that I ranked unconditional counters higher than the conditional ones, and stubborn denial is a thing just because Grixis Shadow is a deck, otherwise, it would see random play as side in delver/control Grixis lists.
Logic Knot is conditional so shouldn't it be ranked lower than Negate, spell snare, deprive etc...
I personally put it lower on my list because its most often a 1 and is only better than Mana Leak in the later game, before T5 Mana Leak is strictly superior.
Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet.
Note this was from late 2012, hence the "we haven't had to [design "answer cards" for Modern] yet" (which is likely no longer true).
Big thanks, I was trying to remember and coming up with nothing.
In other news, MaRo has confirmed that Faithless Looting is at the time of writing impossible to reprint into Standard because of how Red now has to discard prior to drawing. (Source)
This, however, opens up for the possibility of a version colorshifted into Blue! Would any deck want it? Would it help the format?
Not too sure if Careful Study would even see play in standard, let alone modern. A draw 2, discard 1 would be fantastic or at this point I'm confident that Opt would be fine.
I bet we get Opt before the end of 2018. It's totally fine for the right Standard format, and I believe it's just a matter of time until we see a reprint. I think I'd play a full playset over SV in UW Control. Instant-speed is just so good overall, especially with Snapcaster, and I'd rather dig one less than have that first draw be totally random. Sorcery speed is also awkward with certain Colonnade hands.
Sure Opt would be fine in Modern, I just don't see them reprinting it for standard. They have no problem with 1cc blind cantrips but they really have pushed Anticipate as the standard acceptable variant for blue dig cantriping.
Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet.
Note this was from late 2012, hence the "we haven't had to [design "answer cards" for Modern] yet" (which is likely no longer true).
Even with that its obvious still a card that they heavily weighted for standard given the article I found about the card. It wasn't like it wasn't a very strong card in Standard it pretty much made 4cc stuff and up the better options when possible because it was just so punishing for the Rev decks to face down that uncounterable removal. Certainly a better attempt than Rending Volley which was designed specifically for Modern.
Volley is a great example of a modern answer comeing through standard. It unfortunately doesn't ever shine because blue creatures just aren't really relevant anymore.
Volley is a great example of a modern answer comeing through standard. It unfortunately doesn't ever shine because blue creatures just aren't really relevant anymore.
It's a great example of wotc saying we have x problem in modern so let's try to find a card we can print to help it. Rather than just not worrying about the format. I don't recall too much from that standard that would have justified volley although I may be wrong.
It saw play in standard, it was good against the some of the Dragon mid-range decks. Still a SB card.
Whats your source for it was created to Deal with counter-top? http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/top-decks/it-also-speaks-itself-2012-09-05 This is the only article I could find talking about it and the only mention of any specific card that it was great to Hate on was Delver of Secrets but again this card was clearly designed just to be a super flexible removal for anything 3 or less without protection from BG or Hexproof. WotC designs for Standard first and foremost always.
Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet.
Note this was from late 2012, hence the "we haven't had to [design "answer cards" for Modern] yet" (which is likely no longer true).
Even with that its obvious still a card that they heavily weighted for standard given the article I found about the card. It wasn't like it wasn't a very strong card in Standard it pretty much made 4cc stuff and up the better options when possible because it was just so punishing for the Rev decks to face down that uncounterable removal. Certainly a better attempt than Rending Volley which was designed specifically for Modern.
Volley is a great example of a modern answer comeing through standard. It unfortunately doesn't ever shine because blue creatures just aren't really relevant anymore.
Volley is a great example of a modern answer comeing through standard. It unfortunately doesn't ever shine because blue creatures just aren't really relevant anymore. [/quote]
Volley was not Great it was SB fodder and the deck it was designed to hate would often just SB out the reason you even wanted to bring it in for to begin with. Was it played yes, but only because you have to try to use what is available even if it is ineffective (look at hate for things like Tron lands etc... we have hate it see's play but isn't really effective at the desired goal)
Whats your source for it was created to Deal with counter-top? http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/top-decks/it-also-speaks-itself-2012-09-05 This is the only article I could find talking about it and the only mention of any specific card that it was great to Hate on was Delver of Secrets but again this card was clearly designed just to be a super flexible removal for anything 3 or less without protection from BG or Hexproof. WotC designs for Standard first and foremost always.
Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet.
Note this was from late 2012, hence the "we haven't had to [design "answer cards" for Modern] yet" (which is likely no longer true).
Even with that its obvious still a card that they heavily weighted for standard given the article I found about the card. It wasn't like it wasn't a very strong card in Standard it pretty much made 4cc stuff and up the better options when possible because it was just so punishing for the Rev decks to face down that uncounterable removal. Certainly a better attempt than Rending Volley which was designed specifically for Modern.
Yeah I think its more likely they will offer suggestions for "tweaks" to cards to be more Modern playable while still balanced in Standard. Don't really see them having much opportunity to Test for things like banned list issues.
JtmS is a slow death, you died on turn 4 you just didn't realize it for a few turns.
your right JtmS is in a completely higher echelon
No I don't think people would look at CoCo and say "this is to strong" one is a always fantastic swiss army card, and the other is a complete build around that can whiff.
Ancestral wasn't fine until they banned out the deck that made it the case.
gotta say that comparing JtmS to SSG or CoCo is pretty laughable.
All I did was apply the same logic to a different card, if you don't like the logical conclusion that isn't really my problem.
Its also worth noting that the entire justification given by WotC for it being banned has absolutely nothing to do with modern and everything to do with other formats. Same as SFM and MM.
So what your saying is that we should unban Mental Misstep also.
People way under value him
The Problem with Deprive is that its not good in Control or Tempo. Even in a deck like Delver falling back on land drops is often just putting you to far behind on Mana, its okay as a 1 of and possibly a 2 of but it would only be picked over something like Logic Knot if your deck is already taxing its own GY to much.
Remand is pretty terrible right now because everything being cast is cheap, It was good in Twin because you only really needed to maybe buy a turn which Remand does well. Right now its biggest draw is bouncing your own Storm spell back to your hand. If counter wars were prevalent enough its stock would go up because bouncing your counters back to hand+draw a card is always a nice way to pull ahead on those types of exchanges but no Tempo deck in Modern exists that is either fast enough or resilient enough to make use of it well, even Delver would rather have Leak since Remanding any of the most common removal is a losing proposition.
Logic Knot is conditional so shouldn't it be ranked lower than Negate, spell snare, deprive etc...
I personally put it lower on my list because its most often a 1 and is only better than Mana Leak in the later game, before T5 Mana Leak is strictly superior.
Sure Opt would be fine in Modern, I just don't see them reprinting it for standard. They have no problem with 1cc blind cantrips but they really have pushed Anticipate as the standard acceptable variant for blue dig cantriping.
It saw play in standard, it was good against the some of the Dragon mid-range decks. Still a SB card.
Volley was not Great it was SB fodder and the deck it was designed to hate would often just SB out the reason you even wanted to bring it in for to begin with. Was it played yes, but only because you have to try to use what is available even if it is ineffective (look at hate for things like Tron lands etc... we have hate it see's play but isn't really effective at the desired goal)
Even with that its obvious still a card that they heavily weighted for standard given the article I found about the card. It wasn't like it wasn't a very strong card in Standard it pretty much made 4cc stuff and up the better options when possible because it was just so punishing for the Rev decks to face down that uncounterable removal. Certainly a better attempt than Rending Volley which was designed specifically for Modern.