I'm extremely excited for this banlist announcement, but at the same time very cautiously apprehensive of it. I'd be very interested to know exactly what thought processes and what(if any) testing went into the unban decisions. All in all this B&R announcement seems orders of magnitude less conservative than their usual approach. Hopefully Eldrazi ceases to be a problem, and while I've been convinced for a long time that both AV and SotM were safe for modern, removing both from the banlist at the same time in such a tumultuous time for the format makes things a lot more difficult to fully assess.
Here's to seeing how the new Modern Metagame pans out. Cant wait until an optimized ThopterSword Control list surfaces, I've been brewing a lot in the UW/Esper Gifts territory, and there is certainly a lot of potential there. UW Gifts Tron and Tezzerator are obvious alternatives as well. Luckily I bought all my Visions and Thopter Sword pieces a long time ago. Definitely pleased I picked up the foil Foundries a few months ago, though I feel for everyone who got immediately priced out of both AV and Thopter Foundry. This is just one more instance of how card prices/availability need to be better addressed for the sake of the players, but thats a whole other conversation that is probably best left to other threads. I am fairly confident the prices will drop from their current points even if the combo sees a successful shell, if only because people are buying them as playsets when you only want 2-3 copies of each in your deck at the very most. As for the price point on AV, not so sure.
In the end I think everything in this update was at least a big step in the right direction for the format, and I would much prefer having seen SotM and AV in the format and having to reban them down the line than never having given them a chance in the format (to be clear though I highly doubt either of these cards will prove banworthy). On the flip side, if Temple proves too good even on its own then at least we will know for sure one way or another. Kudos to Wizards for explicitly acknowledging the poor state of Control in the format, perhaps they will come around to getting better answers into the format in the near future.
So on the MTGO Beta client Eye of Ugin is banned. Temple, SSG, and Mox Opal are still legal. Still trying to get more info on the source.
Please do. My interests have peaked.
I have heard that, and also heard people say that nothing is banned in the Beta yet, so I wouldn't put much faith into that.
Some time last week my friend who has access to the beta client sent me a message saying he couldn't add Eye to any modern decks, but then later he sent me another message saying that it was back to being legal. I was gonna post something here if it had stayed banned but figured that if it got patched that quickly it was either to prevent another banlist update leak or simply because whatever provisional banlist changes the beta Eye ban represented weren't necessarily final. FWIW though it happened but was removed very quickly.
EDIT: I had him also check SSG, AV, SotM, Stoneforge, Eldrazi Temple, Mox Opal, Chalice of the Void and I think Cranial Plating and none of them had been changed from their current legality at the time.
Theoretical what happens, when Ancestral Vision gets unbanned?
How does the 10 Islands camp feel about playing this card? I saw people playing Serum Visions since they consider it better then TFK. So instand of drawing 1 random card and sry two
why not wait and draw in 4 turns.
I feel like some control matchups can get worse for us if they have access to this card and I dont really see it work in UTron.
If anyone followed Paul he is tearing leagues apart with UWControl. A boost for this deck for sure.
I think AV is extremely well suited for our deck for a couple of reasons
1) We can and will take games longer than almost any other deck in this format
2) It gives us a proactive turn 1 play, of which we have few.
3) Seeing three cards is a lot when assembling tron especially
and lastly but I think this one is very big
4) This gives us a 1 mana play even with a Chalice for 1 in play.
I would definitely test AV with 3+ copies especially alongside main board chalices. It could easily not pan out, but I think there are a lot of draws to playing the card for a deck willing to go as long and big as ours.
How is nobody discussing the imposing rise of the Melira/Anafenza combo decks that have started to run rampant with the disappearance of Twin???
This deck can easily get to infinite proportions in terms of lifegain, damage, counters, etc.
You heard it here folks. Ktkenshinx said they are going to ban Ensnaring Bridge!
In all seriousness, there is no way Wizards is going ban or unban crazy this time around. We are getting something banned from Eldrazi and maybe, just maybe, we get something like Ancestral Vision unbanned. That's it.
And for people worrying about Melira Company; in a format once again filled with Bolts, Viscera Seer, Anafenza, and Melira are going to struggle to stay in play.
PS. I have a love-hate relationship with Ensnaring Bridge. I love the card, love the idea of the decks that use it, hate playing against it, and hate that I don't own any.
when alot of people say they hate playing against it, that to me screams unfun, and shouldnt modern be fun?
The problem with this argument is that it can't discriminate between someone having fun operating a lock deck and someone having fun tossing burn spells. Neither is intrinsically more fun. The goal is to make room in the format for all deck styles (edit: really the goal is to balance the format, which entails archetype diversity as a consequence of said balance) so all types of fun are represented, and removing cards just because they are "unfun" without concern or reference to format balance only hurts the format as well as the "fun" in the long run.
The UR shell isnt dead by any means. You still have access to cantrips, counters, removal, you just need a good win con. They are out there.
If a Twin player is trying to claim that playing Twin didnt increase his/her win ratio then they didnt deserve to play it.
All im saying is blue control is NOT dead. Im currently 30-5 play testing a new control deck that me and my team started working on.
Just wait for the Eldrazi ban, watch the Modern GPs and hopefully, maybe someone is playing the deck right under everyone noses.
you're absolutely right
in fact UW control has some success even in this broken meta, in which BGx suffers
It's worth pointing out that in every other context, people rightly dismiss most conclusions drawn from this metagame because it is so abnormal. UW control (titan) was a thing pre eldrazi too, and it barely made its way into tier 2 before falling out of the meta. It's playable but definitely not "good" in a strictly competitive sense next to the other options in the format. Grixis control variants even did better than UW outside of this current meta and never breached the ceiling into establishing itself as a tier 1 presence. Part of the reason UW is doing better now than normal is because it has basically one angle of the meta it needs to attack, and so can get away with deck building choices that are the result of huge meta inbreeding, like 4x main deck wrath effects.
Not to say that Uxx control anything is unplayable, but it would be very strange for them to suddenly be tier 1 after losing a (typically) good matchup and the rest of the field continuing to get the boosts they have been getting. It's very counterintuitive to expect these shells to do better in a post Eldrazi/Twin environment from the perspective of players who have been invested in those shells for years. The various Ux shells have been around and have their successes, but the fact that they don't make or stick around in the tier 1 range is no accident or fluke. I would be very surprised if it didn't take a radical change to the card pool/metagame to see those decks enter tier 1 as things stand.
It's definitely something to watch but as someone who has played with a great number of the Uxx shells in modern and owns the pieces to rotate into most of them, this kind of "wait and see" response that is expected of Uxx players gets very tiresome, as its basically present in every single ban cycle when it comes to the issues of U control decks. People have been waiting watching and brewing for quite a long time at this point, and have seen various non twin Uxx brews come in and fall out of the meta with fairly predictable regularity at this point. We watched it happen with Delver, Grixis Control, UW Titan, "blue jund" builds of grixis etc; there is a lot of reason to believe whatever the next Ux deck will follow this trend without something fairly drastically different than has been built before, and we are talking about some very well travelled brewing territory. This is a big part of the reason why Uxx players were typically very upset with the Banlist Update rationale of suppressing other Uxx decks: we watched the very evidence against this idea happen over the course of the last year with 2-3 different Uxx shells.
In short, its smart not dismiss the successes of UW out of hand, but we have also seen the same UWx decks (and other Uxx decks) fail in the "normal" meta that we can expect to soon be returning too, and at a certain point the "wait and see" attitude becomes very frustrating to respond to. For the UW decks' success to translate into the April ban list meta, that will likely require it to be able to attack the meta the same way, which seems unlikely if Eldrazi are eating the hammer.
Dread Return breaks the turn 4 rule consistently, and Mental Misstep is just a poorly designed magic card that leads to a lot of silly stuff and has the capacity to be very warping. Neither should come off. As far as Eggs, there is no way they are going to intentionally boost Eggs now or ever.
Twin committed the terrible crime of obliterating all non-twin control decks.
If you played UR control you would just go twin. This is ok.
Grixis Control? Let's go Grixis Twin.
Temur? Let's go Temur Twin. No need for Temur aggro.
Jeskai Control? Let's go Jeskai Twin.
I made the same thing. Because I got tired from losing to Tron and not being able to cope with the crazy diersity. I know a lot of people that did the same thing.
This is kind of sad for Control decks.
I completely agree with this statement. Pre Twin Ban, I went to my LGS testing a proxied Jeskai Control list and a Jeskai Delver list. Everyone immediately asked why I wasn't playing Twin. I tried to argue, but then I realised that it would just take changing 8 slots in my deck and it would be instantly better. That was the main problem with twin. If you were playing the colours for twin, twin was a better deck.
The answer to this "why aren't you just playing Twin" question was that you wanted to beat up on twin and other value oriented decks, which Twinless control strategies were very good at by having better threats and higher card quality.
Twin was a better deck than Control not because Twin pushed control out but because the card pool for control is of a fundamentally lower power level than a proactive strategy like Twin. Control's options are simply limited and weak compared to the how it needs to address field. It's got numerous problems on its own, none of which had to do with the existence of Twin in the meta or as an alternative. Blaming Twin for the lack of control in Modern misdiagnoses what keeps control down because it dismisses all of the problems U control has like: 1) Weak CA+ card draw 2) Weak generic answers (i.e. Mana leak, which is awful for a deck trying to play the long game) 3) Slow/Fragile finishers that don't provide enough inevitability to overcome problems 1 and 2.
The problems with control are so much more nuanced and complex than "Twin pushed out control." It is a complete misdirection of attention to point at twin for U control's weaknesses when Twin was one of the few good matchups for Twinless U control.
That said, I think there is some merit to the idea that with Twin gone U control can get more tools, but my general attitude towards it is "I'll believe it when I see it." When Twin was legal, the scapegoat was Storm, now that its gone theres no scapegoat left but U control has really not received the kind of support from either standard printings nor ban list updates to improve the areas it needs help in, so while it is now more technically likely, I don't think the Twin banning is going to change the kind of cards we get through standard. Perhaps we get AV at some point, I think Sword would probably help Control more specifically, but until those cards actually get added to the modern pool this is all moot, and control will continue to have all of the problems control has always had.
TL;DR- Twin was better deck choice than control, but banning Twin didn't actually make control any better.
honestly, I didn't necessarily want twin banned, but the amount of times I'd get some things going and then "t3 end of your turn Deceiver Exarch, t4 BOOM Splinter Twin 10 billion dudes w/ haste you're dead gg" was pretty annoying
As someone who played Twin for the past year, that scenario was more the exception than the rule. The Turn 4 combo was rarely pulled off as any number of things could disrupt it.
Same could be said for the Turn 2 Titan from Bloom. Didn't stop people from complaining about it.
Again, while this might or might not be true of specifically a turn 2 titan (but almost definitely not true of the aggregate odds of going off any turn pre turn 4), no the same could not be said for Bloom Titan, as any number of number crunching articles and Bloom's general MWP could attest to. Comparing a pre turn 4 kill to a turn 4 kill is also comparing apples to oranges even if all other things were equal, which they really aren't.
Edit:
"People complaining about it" is not and shouldn't be a reason why something gets banned. If the numbers for Bloom came out such that it proved not to break the Turn 4 rule, I would not have been in favor of the ban even though I found playing against it miserable (incidentally this is why I don't think Grishoalbrand should get banned because I don't think its a format guideline violator, even though I don't really like playing against it). The unfortunate fact for Bloom is that it did violate format guidelines, so the ban's justification is completely irrespective of how much or how loudly people complain about it. The only things that should be a consideration for whether a ban is good or not is if we have quantifiable justification for why the ban should or should not take place.
I honestly do not understand how going from Splinter Twin to Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker takes the deck from tier 1 to unplayable. that one extra mana completely kills the deck.....
What bothers me personally, is that people only see a difference of R.
You want to know what the real difference is?
It's an untap step, a draw, & a more vulnerable card to basic removal (AKA Lightning Bolt). The only thing in common that Splinter Twin and Kiki-Jiki have is their function text. They are dissimilar in card type, mana cost, and fastest possible turn played.
yeah I'm aware that kiki-jiki is a creature. and mana cost and fastest possible turn played are kind of the same thing. I just don't buy that that makes the deck unplayable.
and it's worth noting I guess that I've asked this question at least 5 times on this website and this is the first actual answer I've gotten.
The mana cost isn't the significant thing here, it's almost entirely that you could previously put Splinter Twin on Deceiver Exarch and not lose to Lightning Bolt (aka the single most played card in the format). Kiki can get bolted in response to his activation. To a lesser extent, T3 Exarch into T4 Twin is a powerful curve as you could often tap out your opponent from being able to play answers to the combo. That tempo advantage is gone by T4-5.
Would people have felt any better about the twin combo ban if exarch was the one banned (as was suggested by many here)?
Probably, with there being a tempo/midrange alternative in Bounding Krasis and a 4 toughness alternative in Temple Bell Ringer. Going the Temur route leaves the combo open to bolt but gives you access to Goyfs and a more potent midrange plan while the Jeskai variant would have been better at actually sticking the combo, and both versions of the deck would have retained its ability to threaten a turn 4 win. Don't get me wrong, they are both meaningfully worse than Exarch, but since a Deceiver Exarch ban was often discussed and suggested before the Jan update I suspect it would have gone down much easier and come across as significantly more understandable and even handed.
I am convinced that unless Wizards changes their pattern of behavior, something will be banned from Affinity next Jan. I wouldnt buy Opals for that reason alone.
It's quite possible that this happens if Affinity will continue to do well in the upcoming months.
Yeah, I fear an affinity ban. Since it's the only non-eldrazi deck that can somewhat compete, people have been leaning towards it and in the future, it will be over represented as an after shock of the current meta warp. Most people look towards opal as an offender as it's free mana, but looking at the new sets clue mechanic, I'm checking closely at what cards ca npush clues over the top. Free artifacts that pop like that are just begging to break arcbound ravager. There's probably a lot of other cards I'm not thinking of right now that could be a problem also.
So, if a deck is good and sees a lot of play potentially, it's automatically ban-worthy? Okay, by that logic, I think that in March 2017 after Affinity gets banned that Tron is going to be overpowered, so let's ban the Urza lands while we're at it.
Like the line has to be drawn haha. Mox Opal is a good card, but it's not ban-worthy even if it is played in a tier 1 deck and has a lot of use in it, but's it's not what makes the deck win... The deck doesn't when because a Legendary Artifact exists in it. So should we just ban every good card because people hate that it exists?
You know what, let's make a new format called core-set modern. It's like Modern, but you can only play with 8th and 9th edition cards, and maybe some of the other core sets.
Like, grow up kids, cards that are powerful should exist and see play to enable decks to be competitive. Opal has been around since Scars of Mirrodin and hasn't been a problem and isn't a problem now... It's also not specific to Affinity. It sees play in a lot of other fringe or sub-tier 1 decks like Puresteel-Mentor Aggro, Open the Vaults Eggs and Lantern Control... Look at the recent ban-list history: Birthing Pod, Splinter Twin, Amulet Bloom, and so on... Most have been banned explicitly because of the eponymous decks they are played in because it doesn't bring down other decks that may capitalize on the card as well. Cards can be overpowered and really good as long as it's a shared power. For this reason, I think that if any card should get banned in the upcoming list announcement, it will should be Eldrazi Temple. The card sees play only in Eldrazi decks, and no other deck has an opportunity to capitalize from it. Eye of Ugin sees play in Tron and significant is to it.
Eldrazi also won't go away because a land or two is banned. The creatures are so f---ing good to not see play some other way.
Also, using the Grand Prix and Pro statistics as a measurement of what should be banned is stupid. That's comparing the problems of the 1% to the 99%. I'm not saying that all LGS's don't have an Eldrazi problem, but most don't and I've hit up LGS's in the Boston, NYC, Hartford, Manchester, and Cleveland area and haven't encountered Eldrazi running the tables at all. A problem at the Pro level is not a problem at the LGS level necessarily.
You're arguing against positions no one in this comment chain is holding. Pay careful attention to the language used: "...unless Wizards changes their pattern of behavior..." They are talking about what they find likely given WotC's banning history, not what they personally think should happen.
A line most certainly has to be drawn, but since the Twin banning the player base's understanding of exactly where that line is has been fundamentally put into question. By the numbers, Affinity has the next strongest track record after Twin, which is why people fear a banning. Is Affinity's historical performance egregious in the eyes of WotC? Apparently we won't know until the day they drop the hammer on it and not a day sooner, because until they ban it we don't have any way to measure their standards. All we can do is guess.
The last paragraph though is particularly baffling; what should bans be based off of if not hard data and tournament performance? What is the suggested alternative here? Why would the WotC ban list seek to address kitchen table or local FNM metagames when that has nothing to do with the official events which WotC holds for the format?
Your metagame is not any different or strange but this is how it is, this is how general metagame looks like. Modern is flooded by Eldrazi. This is because the deck is so good, basically broken, and it doesn't require much skills to play at high level.
i have a question. is correct to ban a deck just because is a tier1, good and easy to play?
the metagame is made by choice.
people choice to play eldrazi because they like to play this deck. and yes, because you can do top8 also if you are not the best player.
but i still don't see any reason to ban the deck.
modern is flooded by eldrazi. is a truth.
but is flooded because people want to play this dack, not because is unbeatable.
You won't ever be convinced if you don't accept that the reason the metagame looks the way it looks across the global stage is due to the fact that Eldrazi is simply overpowered. The Eldrazi archetype and its variants have outperformed all previously dominant decks and have warped the metagame more severely than its predecessors in this regard as well. It is one of, if not the, single most unhealthy presences ever to have graced the Modern format. Yes, people want to play it: because there is no reason to play anything else if you want to win. This metagame is not made by choice, but by a massive power imbalance.
There are very many articles and datasets that attest to this fact. I highly recommend you read around on why people are calling for a ban on this archetype and what exactly makes it so much more powerful than the other decks. Like other users have said, the numbers that have been gathered since the pro tour heavily support the idea that the Eldrazi archetype is simply broken and far too powerful for the Modern format to handle. No other deck has warped Modern the way this deck has, so to conclude that its popularity is simply due to players wanting to play it for some reason or another is highly unconvincing.
Spirit Guide is absolutely fine. It has only seen play in Griselbrand, Ad Nauseam (Not oppressive decks by any metric), early versions of Summer Bloom, and this CFB Eldrazi deck. In fact, the ONLY reason the colorless Eldrazi deck can get away with Guide into Chalice is because of the lands that allow them not have to play any one mana spells. If they had to curve out like a normal deck, there would be no place for monkeys and chalices.
Almost exactlyy this. The only real room for arguing for a Spirit Guide ban is that it has been a secondary offender in numerous decks that broke the turn 4 rule, but SSG is entirely secondary to the problem of the eldrazi decks in this case just as in many others (like Bloom, which even eventually dropped SSG). As a side note, if you think banning SSG will bring Eldrazi into line, you're mistaken.
Not that I would be sad to see SSG go, I think it is more likely to harm the modern metagame than benefit it, but I'm not sure it is the number one priority at the moment.
A) Ban Eye Of Ugin + Vesuva and unban Cloudpost while you are at it. 12post remains bad deck. You know how it works. They will have Eldrazi Temple and nothing to copy it with. The deck will be good but tier 2-tier 2.5.
Tron remains a strong deck and still has a good mu vs fair decks.
B) Ban Eldrazi Temple and Simian Spirit Guide. They have though Turn 1 Eldrazi Mimic's but Seers and Smashers are kind of late to the party.
Two problems with that though: This still leaves a strong deck(not as strong as with SSG though)
and Grishoalbrand/Ad Nauseaum become unplayable. That is a shame.
I prefer no.1, but a combination of either one should be applied in order to make certain it won't be dominating the format after the bans.
Thespian's Stage still exists and would be run in place of vesuva which is still bad. Tron REALLY doesn't need any buffs right now once eldrazi is gone.
They will have Eldrazi Temple + Vesuva. I can tell you that this will be dangerous as hell.
I would be ok with the bans you suggest though, just a little worried and as street mage states they want to be certain.
I don't think they want to kill the deck so I think one of the lands will be left over. (probably temple because eye does the most broken stuff out of the two lands by far.) As for unbannings, they will unban vision and it will do a lot less than bitterblossom or grave troll have done in modern.
I don't think they will ban both of them (although it's not impossible) but rather go for one of them and possibly hit the other one if banning just one won't help. I agree with SSG ban too. It causes headaches for a long time in Modern as it has been here only to enable broken plays and make linear decks faster, more explosive and thus even harder to interact with.
I still don't see why they would even want to proceed with caution with respect to eldrazi. If ever a swift, decisive response was warranted it would be for a situation like this. People are already pissed without an Emergency Ban, could you imagine the outrage if eldrazi was still dominating after a ban in april?
This is also fair, but Eggs never presented anything close to the sheer power level and metagame warping that Delver did, much less Eldrazi. I think that if this logic holds it is due in large part to premise 3), because metagame dominance and diversity are very large parts of what is at stake with this ban and why it is even being considered in the first place. Eggs didn't threaten the health of the format or boast ridiculous Day2/top32/top16/top8 conversion rates at every single event, it threatened tournament logistics and possibly the turn 4 rule; more than this it was a solitaire combo deck that basically got speed nerfed by having to try and run Faith's Reward or Open the Vaults which are both significantly slower Second Sunrise. I don't think it would be possible even in principle to approach nerfing Eldrazi similarly to Eggs. It's also worth noting that Second Sunrise was clearly enough to put the deck out of the tournament scene, or else I have no doubt they would have simply banned Open the Vaults at the nearest opportunity.
I also think that "synergy-based" isn't necessarily the best descriptor for what these Eldrazi decks are. It's simply a fast-mana value midrange deck. The lands do have a lot of "synergy", but that synergy isn't neat interactions that produce novel effects like the Bloom land engine or Eggs loops, the "synergy" is just playing several turns ahead of what any other deck can achieve by abusing fast mana and poorly designed/costed creature oversights. They can't nerf Eldrazi by moving back it's critical turn like they would a combo deck because thats just not what it is or how it functions.
All point 3 says is that Eldrazi will have something banned from it. I don't believe that they have different standards depending on why a card should be banned from a problematic deck, like "if this deck is problematic because it's too strong, then we will apply this set of criteria A to determine what should be banned, but if it's problematic because of time, we will apply criteria B instead". If a deck has to be banned, they should hit the strongest card in it, regardless of why it has to be banned. They screwed up with BBE/Jund, but got it right with basically everything else.
I see Eldrazi as a synergy-based deck because the bulk of the deck is cards that are amazing if you draw them with certain other cards, but literally draft chaff otherwise. Compare it to Jund, where all your cards are good by themselves. You're not reliant on drawing any one card or combination of cards to win. Not all synergy has to be killing your opponent with 20 damage in one turn or performing 10 actions in one turn (even if Eldrazi is capable of doing both).
Except that we already know they are willing to hold different decks to different criteria and ban according to those difference. Not only do they explicitly outline different criteria of infractions (like the turn 4 rule, or dominance, or tournament logistics, etc), but they have already demonstrated the willingness to ban cards that look similar as it is explicitly stated in this ban list update for the rationale of the DtT banning (source: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19).
Decks playing the powerful card drawers have been winning a lot, and pushing a lot of other decks down in competitive play. Blue-Red Delver decks, playing efficient creatures, card drawers, burn, and some permission spells have been the most successful. Also, decks focused on more burn, or combination decks using Jeskai Ascendancy, have done well. However, as these decks have occupied a large portion of the competitive metagame, the overall variety of successful decks has been suppressed. It is imbalanced enough that Wizards of the Coast has decided to act. In Modern, these cards are easy replacements for one another—while a Delver deck might use Treasure Cruise over Dig Through Time, banning one but not the other would do little to change the deck. Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise are banned.
We know for an indisputable fact that they make different ban decisions based on different problems presented by decks and the format infractions those decks are guilty of.
My 3rd premise doesn't simply say that something will be banned. It goes further to say: this is a similar problem to the Delver dominance/metashare problem last year, therefore we have a strong reason to expect a similar solution. The fact that the problem is more severe merely emphasizes the likelihood that more drastic measures will be taken.
RE: Deck synergy, I can agree that I have somewhat undersold the synergies in eldrazi decks (especially the newer ones) but I still hesitate to classify it as anything similar to eggs or bloom, for examples of decks that produce a synergistic engine that only functions correctly as a whole, as opposed to Eldrazi where card choices complement each other and make each other more powerful but are only as powerful as they are because of the turn on which they are being played (read: 1-2 turns too early).
To put it as concisely as possible I guess my argument is this:
1) Functionally speaking, Eye of Ugin is to Eldrazi Temple as Treasure Cruise is to Dig Through Time. (*The major exception to this similarity is that Delver didn't run 4x TC + 4x DtT, but it is very likely that this was due to opportunity cost of having so many heavy Delve spells.)
2) Wizards of the Coast banned Dig Through Time based on its functional similarity to Treasure Cruise in order to avoid continued Delver dominance.
3) Eldrazi Decks are even more dominant than Delver decks as well as more format warping
--
Conclusion) It stands to reason that Wizards would ban what they see as the problematic card as well as any functionally equivalent cards similar to how they handled the Delver TC + DtT ban. If Eye is functionally similar to Temple, it stands to reason that a ban of one gives strong weight that the other will be banned as well to avoid future Eldrazi dominance.
They banned only one card from Eggs despite Open the Vaults having an identical effect.
I think they handle "synergy-based" and "goodstuff" decks differently. Synergy-based decks die very easily if they lose one critical piece. Even the same effect at an increased mana cost can't help - I already mentioned Open the Vaults, but Beck // Call is another example, that failed to live up to Glimpse of Nature. Or Journey of Discovery vs Summer Bloom. Goodstuff decks, on the other hand, just play the next best card they're not already playing if their best card gets banned. Jund has never truly died in Modern despite getting hit by 2 bans because there is always a "next best card" that they can play.
Having said that, I admit that there is a flaw in the BBE/DRS comparison, which is that Eldrazi is a synergy-based deck while Jund is a goodstuff deck. However, the only difference that makes is that I predict they will only ban one card instead of two - I think the Eldrazi deck will be sufficiently nerfed with just one land gone. The other rule (don't try to save other decks by banning the second best card instead of the best card) still holds.
This is also fair, but Eggs never presented anything close to the sheer power level and metagame warping that Delver did, much less Eldrazi. I think that if this logic holds it is due in large part to premise 3), because metagame dominance and diversity are very large parts of what is at stake with this ban and why it is even being considered in the first place. Eggs didn't threaten the health of the format or boast ridiculous Day2/top32/top16/top8 conversion rates at every single event, it threatened tournament logistics and possibly the turn 4 rule; more than this it was a solitaire combo deck that basically got speed nerfed by having to try and run Faith's Reward or Open the Vaults which are both significantly slower Second Sunrise. I don't think it would be possible even in principle to approach nerfing Eldrazi similarly to Eggs. It's also worth noting that Second Sunrise was clearly enough to put the deck out of the tournament scene, or else I have no doubt they would have simply banned Open the Vaults at the nearest opportunity.
I also think that "synergy-based" isn't necessarily the best descriptor for what these Eldrazi decks are. It's simply a fast-mana value midrange deck. The lands do have a lot of "synergy", but that synergy isn't neat interactions that produce novel effects like the Bloom land engine or Eggs loops, the "synergy" is just playing several turns ahead of what any other deck can achieve by abusing fast mana and poorly designed/costed creature oversights. They can't nerf Eldrazi by moving back it's critical turn like they would a combo deck because thats just not what it is or how it functions.
Here's to seeing how the new Modern Metagame pans out. Cant wait until an optimized ThopterSword Control list surfaces, I've been brewing a lot in the UW/Esper Gifts territory, and there is certainly a lot of potential there. UW Gifts Tron and Tezzerator are obvious alternatives as well. Luckily I bought all my Visions and Thopter Sword pieces a long time ago. Definitely pleased I picked up the foil Foundries a few months ago, though I feel for everyone who got immediately priced out of both AV and Thopter Foundry. This is just one more instance of how card prices/availability need to be better addressed for the sake of the players, but thats a whole other conversation that is probably best left to other threads. I am fairly confident the prices will drop from their current points even if the combo sees a successful shell, if only because people are buying them as playsets when you only want 2-3 copies of each in your deck at the very most. As for the price point on AV, not so sure.
In the end I think everything in this update was at least a big step in the right direction for the format, and I would much prefer having seen SotM and AV in the format and having to reban them down the line than never having given them a chance in the format (to be clear though I highly doubt either of these cards will prove banworthy). On the flip side, if Temple proves too good even on its own then at least we will know for sure one way or another. Kudos to Wizards for explicitly acknowledging the poor state of Control in the format, perhaps they will come around to getting better answers into the format in the near future.
Some time last week my friend who has access to the beta client sent me a message saying he couldn't add Eye to any modern decks, but then later he sent me another message saying that it was back to being legal. I was gonna post something here if it had stayed banned but figured that if it got patched that quickly it was either to prevent another banlist update leak or simply because whatever provisional banlist changes the beta Eye ban represented weren't necessarily final. FWIW though it happened but was removed very quickly.
EDIT: I had him also check SSG, AV, SotM, Stoneforge, Eldrazi Temple, Mox Opal, Chalice of the Void and I think Cranial Plating and none of them had been changed from their current legality at the time.
I think AV is extremely well suited for our deck for a couple of reasons
1) We can and will take games longer than almost any other deck in this format
2) It gives us a proactive turn 1 play, of which we have few.
3) Seeing three cards is a lot when assembling tron especially
and lastly but I think this one is very big
4) This gives us a 1 mana play even with a Chalice for 1 in play.
I would definitely test AV with 3+ copies especially alongside main board chalices. It could easily not pan out, but I think there are a lot of draws to playing the card for a deck willing to go as long and big as ours.
The problem with this argument is that it can't discriminate between someone having fun operating a lock deck and someone having fun tossing burn spells. Neither is intrinsically more fun. The goal is to make room in the format for all deck styles (edit: really the goal is to balance the format, which entails archetype diversity as a consequence of said balance) so all types of fun are represented, and removing cards just because they are "unfun" without concern or reference to format balance only hurts the format as well as the "fun" in the long run.
It's worth pointing out that in every other context, people rightly dismiss most conclusions drawn from this metagame because it is so abnormal. UW control (titan) was a thing pre eldrazi too, and it barely made its way into tier 2 before falling out of the meta. It's playable but definitely not "good" in a strictly competitive sense next to the other options in the format. Grixis control variants even did better than UW outside of this current meta and never breached the ceiling into establishing itself as a tier 1 presence. Part of the reason UW is doing better now than normal is because it has basically one angle of the meta it needs to attack, and so can get away with deck building choices that are the result of huge meta inbreeding, like 4x main deck wrath effects.
Not to say that Uxx control anything is unplayable, but it would be very strange for them to suddenly be tier 1 after losing a (typically) good matchup and the rest of the field continuing to get the boosts they have been getting. It's very counterintuitive to expect these shells to do better in a post Eldrazi/Twin environment from the perspective of players who have been invested in those shells for years. The various Ux shells have been around and have their successes, but the fact that they don't make or stick around in the tier 1 range is no accident or fluke. I would be very surprised if it didn't take a radical change to the card pool/metagame to see those decks enter tier 1 as things stand.
It's definitely something to watch but as someone who has played with a great number of the Uxx shells in modern and owns the pieces to rotate into most of them, this kind of "wait and see" response that is expected of Uxx players gets very tiresome, as its basically present in every single ban cycle when it comes to the issues of U control decks. People have been waiting watching and brewing for quite a long time at this point, and have seen various non twin Uxx brews come in and fall out of the meta with fairly predictable regularity at this point. We watched it happen with Delver, Grixis Control, UW Titan, "blue jund" builds of grixis etc; there is a lot of reason to believe whatever the next Ux deck will follow this trend without something fairly drastically different than has been built before, and we are talking about some very well travelled brewing territory. This is a big part of the reason why Uxx players were typically very upset with the Banlist Update rationale of suppressing other Uxx decks: we watched the very evidence against this idea happen over the course of the last year with 2-3 different Uxx shells.
In short, its smart not dismiss the successes of UW out of hand, but we have also seen the same UWx decks (and other Uxx decks) fail in the "normal" meta that we can expect to soon be returning too, and at a certain point the "wait and see" attitude becomes very frustrating to respond to. For the UW decks' success to translate into the April ban list meta, that will likely require it to be able to attack the meta the same way, which seems unlikely if Eldrazi are eating the hammer.
The answer to this "why aren't you just playing Twin" question was that you wanted to beat up on twin and other value oriented decks, which Twinless control strategies were very good at by having better threats and higher card quality.
Twin was a better deck than Control not because Twin pushed control out but because the card pool for control is of a fundamentally lower power level than a proactive strategy like Twin. Control's options are simply limited and weak compared to the how it needs to address field. It's got numerous problems on its own, none of which had to do with the existence of Twin in the meta or as an alternative. Blaming Twin for the lack of control in Modern misdiagnoses what keeps control down because it dismisses all of the problems U control has like: 1) Weak CA+ card draw 2) Weak generic answers (i.e. Mana leak, which is awful for a deck trying to play the long game) 3) Slow/Fragile finishers that don't provide enough inevitability to overcome problems 1 and 2.
The problems with control are so much more nuanced and complex than "Twin pushed out control." It is a complete misdirection of attention to point at twin for U control's weaknesses when Twin was one of the few good matchups for Twinless U control.
That said, I think there is some merit to the idea that with Twin gone U control can get more tools, but my general attitude towards it is "I'll believe it when I see it." When Twin was legal, the scapegoat was Storm, now that its gone theres no scapegoat left but U control has really not received the kind of support from either standard printings nor ban list updates to improve the areas it needs help in, so while it is now more technically likely, I don't think the Twin banning is going to change the kind of cards we get through standard. Perhaps we get AV at some point, I think Sword would probably help Control more specifically, but until those cards actually get added to the modern pool this is all moot, and control will continue to have all of the problems control has always had.
TL;DR- Twin was better deck choice than control, but banning Twin didn't actually make control any better.
Again, while this might or might not be true of specifically a turn 2 titan (but almost definitely not true of the aggregate odds of going off any turn pre turn 4), no the same could not be said for Bloom Titan, as any number of number crunching articles and Bloom's general MWP could attest to. Comparing a pre turn 4 kill to a turn 4 kill is also comparing apples to oranges even if all other things were equal, which they really aren't.
Edit:
"People complaining about it" is not and shouldn't be a reason why something gets banned. If the numbers for Bloom came out such that it proved not to break the Turn 4 rule, I would not have been in favor of the ban even though I found playing against it miserable (incidentally this is why I don't think Grishoalbrand should get banned because I don't think its a format guideline violator, even though I don't really like playing against it). The unfortunate fact for Bloom is that it did violate format guidelines, so the ban's justification is completely irrespective of how much or how loudly people complain about it. The only things that should be a consideration for whether a ban is good or not is if we have quantifiable justification for why the ban should or should not take place.
Probably, with there being a tempo/midrange alternative in Bounding Krasis and a 4 toughness alternative in Temple Bell Ringer. Going the Temur route leaves the combo open to bolt but gives you access to Goyfs and a more potent midrange plan while the Jeskai variant would have been better at actually sticking the combo, and both versions of the deck would have retained its ability to threaten a turn 4 win. Don't get me wrong, they are both meaningfully worse than Exarch, but since a Deceiver Exarch ban was often discussed and suggested before the Jan update I suspect it would have gone down much easier and come across as significantly more understandable and even handed.
You're arguing against positions no one in this comment chain is holding. Pay careful attention to the language used: "...unless Wizards changes their pattern of behavior..." They are talking about what they find likely given WotC's banning history, not what they personally think should happen.
A line most certainly has to be drawn, but since the Twin banning the player base's understanding of exactly where that line is has been fundamentally put into question. By the numbers, Affinity has the next strongest track record after Twin, which is why people fear a banning. Is Affinity's historical performance egregious in the eyes of WotC? Apparently we won't know until the day they drop the hammer on it and not a day sooner, because until they ban it we don't have any way to measure their standards. All we can do is guess.
The last paragraph though is particularly baffling; what should bans be based off of if not hard data and tournament performance? What is the suggested alternative here? Why would the WotC ban list seek to address kitchen table or local FNM metagames when that has nothing to do with the official events which WotC holds for the format?
You won't ever be convinced if you don't accept that the reason the metagame looks the way it looks across the global stage is due to the fact that Eldrazi is simply overpowered. The Eldrazi archetype and its variants have outperformed all previously dominant decks and have warped the metagame more severely than its predecessors in this regard as well. It is one of, if not the, single most unhealthy presences ever to have graced the Modern format. Yes, people want to play it: because there is no reason to play anything else if you want to win. This metagame is not made by choice, but by a massive power imbalance.
There are very many articles and datasets that attest to this fact. I highly recommend you read around on why people are calling for a ban on this archetype and what exactly makes it so much more powerful than the other decks. Like other users have said, the numbers that have been gathered since the pro tour heavily support the idea that the Eldrazi archetype is simply broken and far too powerful for the Modern format to handle. No other deck has warped Modern the way this deck has, so to conclude that its popularity is simply due to players wanting to play it for some reason or another is highly unconvincing.
Almost exactlyy this. The only real room for arguing for a Spirit Guide ban is that it has been a secondary offender in numerous decks that broke the turn 4 rule, but SSG is entirely secondary to the problem of the eldrazi decks in this case just as in many others (like Bloom, which even eventually dropped SSG). As a side note, if you think banning SSG will bring Eldrazi into line, you're mistaken.
Not that I would be sad to see SSG go, I think it is more likely to harm the modern metagame than benefit it, but I'm not sure it is the number one priority at the moment.
I still don't see why they would even want to proceed with caution with respect to eldrazi. If ever a swift, decisive response was warranted it would be for a situation like this. People are already pissed without an Emergency Ban, could you imagine the outrage if eldrazi was still dominating after a ban in april?
Except that we already know they are willing to hold different decks to different criteria and ban according to those difference. Not only do they explicitly outline different criteria of infractions (like the turn 4 rule, or dominance, or tournament logistics, etc), but they have already demonstrated the willingness to ban cards that look similar as it is explicitly stated in this ban list update for the rationale of the DtT banning (source: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19).
My 3rd premise doesn't simply say that something will be banned. It goes further to say: this is a similar problem to the Delver dominance/metashare problem last year, therefore we have a strong reason to expect a similar solution. The fact that the problem is more severe merely emphasizes the likelihood that more drastic measures will be taken.
RE: Deck synergy, I can agree that I have somewhat undersold the synergies in eldrazi decks (especially the newer ones) but I still hesitate to classify it as anything similar to eggs or bloom, for examples of decks that produce a synergistic engine that only functions correctly as a whole, as opposed to Eldrazi where card choices complement each other and make each other more powerful but are only as powerful as they are because of the turn on which they are being played (read: 1-2 turns too early).
This is also fair, but Eggs never presented anything close to the sheer power level and metagame warping that Delver did, much less Eldrazi. I think that if this logic holds it is due in large part to premise 3), because metagame dominance and diversity are very large parts of what is at stake with this ban and why it is even being considered in the first place. Eggs didn't threaten the health of the format or boast ridiculous Day2/top32/top16/top8 conversion rates at every single event, it threatened tournament logistics and possibly the turn 4 rule; more than this it was a solitaire combo deck that basically got speed nerfed by having to try and run Faith's Reward or Open the Vaults which are both significantly slower Second Sunrise. I don't think it would be possible even in principle to approach nerfing Eldrazi similarly to Eggs. It's also worth noting that Second Sunrise was clearly enough to put the deck out of the tournament scene, or else I have no doubt they would have simply banned Open the Vaults at the nearest opportunity.
I also think that "synergy-based" isn't necessarily the best descriptor for what these Eldrazi decks are. It's simply a fast-mana value midrange deck. The lands do have a lot of "synergy", but that synergy isn't neat interactions that produce novel effects like the Bloom land engine or Eggs loops, the "synergy" is just playing several turns ahead of what any other deck can achieve by abusing fast mana and poorly designed/costed creature oversights. They can't nerf Eldrazi by moving back it's critical turn like they would a combo deck because thats just not what it is or how it functions.