Also, your incessant personal crusade against Eldrazi Temple, which isn't even putting up big results, is definitely getting old.
I'd like to add that, personally, I have nothing wrong with Eldrazi Temple as long as Eldrazi are all 8+ mana Titans or something big and crazy. The land is all kinds of broken when it's casting massively pushed creatures, that are already insane value for their printed cost, 1-3 turns early. The problem isn't Temple, it's stuff like TKS, Reality Smasher, and all the other low-cost hyper-value Oath Eldrazi creatures being powered out several turns early with incredible reliability. They have been a cancer on the format for nearly two years, and will continue to be so as long as they (and Temple) are legal.
TKS and Smasher are really strong, yes. They're why I play the deck. But so are cards like Tasigur, Tarmogoyf, etc. Like a wise person on this thread likes to say, if you're not doing something overpowered in Modern, you don't stand a chance.
except tasigur and goyf are rarely on the same power level as tks and reality smasher on turn 2-3.
and its those situations/varience, that make dealing with those decks much too difficult for anything but an opposing broken deck to keep up with.
to be fair death shadow is busted as well.
but the whole point of the discussion on the last couple pages is how much more powerful/high varience and broken the top tiers are vs the rest of the meta. and how (mostly) linear these decks are( 2 ships passing in the night). I hardly could imagine much enjoyment from players and spectators in such a meta game. of course there will be a (bg/x dnt uw/x ect) finish from time to time. but overall I can see why some consider this meta( especially the top tiers) to be toxic atm.
Because of this, I wouldn't be surprised if they shook up the format with some bans before or after the pro tour in order to make the top tiers less stale and less linear.
Wizards is paranoid about land destruction as a strategy to the point that they wouldn't do good land destruction spells even if Standard got a regenerating 0-mana artifact that passively gave lands you control hexproof.
Finally, an interesting idea.
People want stronger land hate, which I don't agree with, but giving anti-land hate cards makes sense too. People complain about wanting answers to land-based strategies, but land hate is difficult to answer. There's no way to stop cards like Ghost Quarter and Tec Edge. Once Fulminator Mage hits the field, it can't be stopped. Spreading Seas (and enchantments in general) can be hard to remove for non-green/white decks. Crucible of Worlds is nice, but it's slow both in terms of cost and tempo loss (and its expensive af).
Your logic is flawed to the core. You are the one that casting threats, and the blue mages are the ones that try to answer them.
Magic is a nice game for many spectators and players, when it's most interactive. In other words, they are trying to create the situation in which a game has back and forths.
On top of that, in Modern the one who is casting threats has almost always the upper hand. In other words, the one who is trying to make mana ahead of the curve and gain more mana than he should have thus cast a powerful eldrazi early one(let's say a turn 4 or turn 5 Ulamog) should be the one who is supposed to be stopped. If the control player can not successfully stop him at at least 4 out of the 10 games(and in modern a blue control player can't stop an eldra tron or a tron player), then the game becomes too uninteractive, since the control player who is trying to force interaction is being "kicked" out of the game.
From all of those, you can safely deduct that the control players need strong answers to at least be able to stop a respectable amount of times the unfair players(a thing that is being sucessfully done at Legacy) if you want to have a non-linear, interesting, skill based games where the decisions actually mean something, instead of having "2 ships passing in the night" games.
After all, if you are going to have many of those, Wizards will act and ban something.
TL&DR: If the ramp or the unfair player is unstoppable, thus Modern becomes too linear, Wizards will act and ban your card(and Eldrazi Temple seems like the best candidate for now-even if the chance is not too real).
All of the land hate in Modern is either too slow or too bad. We need better land hate if you want your deck to be safe.
gkourou glad to see you can look past the bias. You sway in and out of it but this is certainly a good example at wisely looking at the big picture.
The ideal format is one where we have a balance between linearity and non linearity. Otherwise we either have a midrange fest or 2 ships passing in the night. (Personally I would prefer the midrange fest over the other) But we mostly have the other one right now in the top tier of the game.(with the exception of Gds)
This is why I feel modern is currently unhealthy atm.
And unless we get better answers to this, and get more strategic diversity amongst the top tier long term, the best answer will be a ban. which will inevitably happen with modern being a pro tour format.
As of today, the Splinter Twin moratorium is over. We will try to get a new thread rolled out today, and we will also be keeping an eye on the the topic. If we fall back into the same issues, we will take more action.
not allowing the conversation to involve that topic was extreme.
Sure if someone on a daily basis argues its return and never ceases. Then they can be asked to not dilute everything to that.
But if noone can even speak the word splinter twin in this forum just because people don't want to hear the word is nonsensical. And is a very fascist way of running a thread that should allow civil conversation about everything pertaining to modern. This has gotten ridiculous and pathetic on the mods behalf.
The mods.. Whom Ban people for standing up and retaliate versus harsh flaming. after Thier reports of flaming are never met by the bias mods who favor those who agree with them. Like seriously this is the rudest most arrogant and pretentious forum I have ever been on.
And while there are great ppl on here. there are some I wonder how they function in society with such ignorant and rude behavior(either that or they are just keyboard warriors)
Later fellas it's been good at times and bad at times.
Not only that Probe was a good ban(which admittedly thought it was unneccesary back then) but it could also be banned in Legacy before seeing the light of Modern again. The criteria WOTC used for the ban was correct and a good understanding of the effect Gitaxian Probe presents on formats. It really does too much for too litlle cost.
Cfusion is right that Probe wasn't particularly problematic before Become Immense, but after KTK, it clearly reached its full potential and became problematic in 2016, when 3 Top Tier decks where using it to kill on T3 consistently through disruption, and all 3 where basically a different flavor of the same deck.
Control is certainly in a good spot right now(because of Death's Shadow). The metagame is being kind to it and its taking advantage. I still believe a pure reactive deck like the UW that took the Classic yesterday can't really Top 8 the GP without major help from the matchup roulette.
It will be really interesting to see how WOTC handles the format come Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan. I still believe they can ban Shadow/Wraith and no one will be surprised. Against a format completely adapted to it, it still puts several copies in the Top 8. I guess it doesn't do it by comboing so that's good.
EDIT:Correcting spelling mistakes.
hopefully they do some shake up's for the pro tour, This format is getting stale
A temple Ban alongside an SFM unban would do wonders for this format Imo.
Look. xxhellfirexx3, I accept that your opinion is a valid one, and that your opinion probably represents a reasonable sector of the Modern playerbase.
However, your arguments are almost exclusively "Deck [X] I don't like is something other than control or midrange. Why have WotC not banned it into the ground?" And the answer is simply "because WotC and the majority of players accept that having a wider degree of playstyles is healthy for the game".
Not every player enjoys playing an interactive, grindy game. Those players tend to be drawn to decks wherein the grindy, interactive game is minimised. Your arguments tend to indicate that you think that those players aren't "as interested in format health" or "as legitimate Magic players" as you are, and it's getting old.
Also, frankly... Storm loses super badly to the decks you profess to prefer - control and midrange strategies. At this point, it feels like you're complaining just for the sake of complaining.
I'm fine with unfair/linear decks though is the thing.
My problem is when they make up a large majority of the meta.
I like burn and play burn. I like jund and play jund. And I like valakut and play valakut.
But just because I play these decks doesn't mean I let my bias get in the way of my views on the format.
Modern I's a linear format by majority. And I don't think that is right. Whether it be to ban/unban a card or print a better answer I feel something should be done on wizards behalf.
and yet its TOP tier. ive seen other unfair decks hit alot harder than storm has been. again, why does it get a pass?
and now we have opt incoming.
We might as well complain about Affinity and the Artifact lands being banned. Or Green Sun's Zenith and Elves winning every once and then. This logic has no end, because it has no good premise to it's conclusion.
Re: Storm and the reason why they did not ban Grapeshot:
Sam Stoddart: Eggs was a deck that, if it had stayed at that power level, would've been a fine thing to have in the format. It was much less adorable as a deck that was strong enough to win Pro Tours, especially considering the amount of time it added to tournament rounds.
Going by that logic, Storm is a fine deck to have, because it does not win THAT much.
You should not ban decks out of oblivion just because your biased opinion comes in. People want to be playing with uninteractable linear combo decks, and you should let them do exactly that.
As long as the combo does not kill consistently turn 3 and it isn't totally uninteractable. Storm does not win consistently pre-turn 4, and it's not that uninteractable as it once was Ascension. Also, it does not even win that much.
There is literally no reason to nerf Storm at the moment.
Storm is totally fine and it will probably be fine, unless Opt pushes the deck too much and convince people buy it on MODO, because of the extremely low price of it.
if it doesn't even win that much than why is it top tier?
and yet its TOP tier. ive seen other unfair decks hit alot harder than storm has been. again, why does it get a pass?
and now we have opt incoming.
Storm got nerfed multiple times. Stop ignoring that. It did not get any free pass. It's heavily nerfed, and it's fine as it is. If anything, you should be happy as a control player, because you can fight Storm off just fine.
Even me, that I currently go by UW Control, and Storm is an awful matchup, don't complain about it, since it isn't an uninteractable Ascension deck.
Again, I am showing the cards that got banned, directly because of Storm, or the cards that indirectly nerfed it.
Modern Banlist:
{..}
Gitaxian Probe
Ponder
Preordain
Rite Of Flame
Seething Song
{..}
im not the one ignoring that its one of the best decks in the format regardless of nerfs. and the fact that its much like an old deck that got banned for requiring "interaction or lose".
why didnt grapeshot get banned in the first place? instead of all those cards? wizards surely went through alot of trouble keeping it around. which is more than I can say for "you know what .dec"
Storm isn't too hard to hate out IMO. People will start running more Eidolons (both red and white) as well as more graveyard hate if the deck ever begins to take up too many meta slots. Add to this the fact that spot removal is already good against them - I don't think storm can ever completely take over modern to the point where bans are needed.
Storm may not even become the best turbo Xerox style deck once Opt becomes legal. There could be something else lurking in the shadows that is ready to abuse 12+ decent cantrips and requires fewer pieces to assemble (let's face it, storm still requires a lot of different cards to execute the kill).
storm isnt to hard to hate out? than why is it one of the best decks in the format regardless of shadow and uw/x decks being prevalent, burn being prevalent, and graveyard hate being prevalent.
the same could be said about titanshift and etron. look what happens when we dont have adequate hate for them, and they have a high power level? they hold top tier status.
(let's face it, storm still requires a lot of different cards to execute the kill).
. Don't want to pick any single arguments from your post but in this chase I must say that the storm pretty much needs maybe a random non land card, Baral and Gifts to execute a kill.
I mean it still has to eventually cast a bunch of different cards (multiple rituals, gifts, past in flames, grapeshot) during the combo turn.
Compare this to something like Splinter Twin where you are only casting two different cards and then winning.
This matters most for deck building because you have very few flex slots left afterwards.
Yes, I know this was your point Splinter Twin had the main plan of tempo kill your opponent (by scaring them with your threat of combo to not to play anything big on their turn). But it is also a fact that on storm's combo turn outside of their library they actually just cast a single spell to win which is Gifts. It creates a big illusion like there is something opponent can do or choose during that very turn.
But of course storm can't win in any other way than Grapeshotting or via Goblins (of course they can Blood Moon and attack with Electromancer but that is like playing Chalice on one vs infect and kill them with Blinkmoth Nexus :D). I think we might eventually see Gifts Ungiven getting banned when high level pro players start to pick up storm. It is not alone that the mechanic is stupidly broken but also that it seems Wizards is disliking the whole archtype.
It's more interactable this time around though. Without a 'Mancer or a Baral, it's so difficult to go off. And you can bolt/push/path this damn thing.
and you couldn't bolt path or push their creature with the other deck? why does storm get the pass? it can win on turn 3 on top of this..
The issue is that most of the previous "best decks" all attacked on a traditional axis, and were all relatively easy to interact with using basic, maindeckable interaction and answers. With almost all of those now gone, the current collection of "best decks" all attack on narrow, specific axes, that are mostly difficult to interact with. This means that, while the quantity of "diversity" is about the same, the quality is much more toxic in terms of how the decks play and matchup/sideboard lotteries are more and more exaggerated as a result. At least that's my view. Games have been less and less fun, win or lose, because of the nature of how most decks match up against each other nowadays.
unfortunately not many on this forum see this and plug Their ears when you say it. Nothing shows bias more than ignorance(Rose tinted glasses).
This format is ok but It certainly needs a few changes.
Great avatar/post combo.
nice example of what I meant by my previous post
So is it all opinions opposite of yours that are the result of "rose tinted glasses?" Because if you want to talk about your feelings of modern as if they were facts then more evidence is required than simply questioning the judgment of its proponents.
I'm not talking about my feelings of modern when I say it isn't perfect.
And anything that isn't perfect could use improvement
The issue is that most of the previous "best decks" all attacked on a traditional axis, and were all relatively easy to interact with using basic, maindeckable interaction and answers. With almost all of those now gone, the current collection of "best decks" all attack on narrow, specific axes, that are mostly difficult to interact with. This means that, while the quantity of "diversity" is about the same, the quality is much more toxic in terms of how the decks play and matchup/sideboard lotteries are more and more exaggerated as a result. At least that's my view. Games have been less and less fun, win or lose, because of the nature of how most decks match up against each other nowadays.
unfortunately not many on this forum see this and plug Their ears when you say it. Nothing shows bias more than ignorance(Rose tinted glasses).
This format is ok but It certainly needs a few changes.
Great avatar/post combo.
nice example of what I meant by my previous post
I'm just saying the guy with the avatar about the card so decisive we had to ban any mention of it might not have an objective opinion on rose-tinted glasses.
someone saying modern is ok but could use improvement is called being realistic/objective.
Are we going to ban that from the discussion too because people can't handle the truth?
I swear this whole forum(moderators included) has such inbred opinions and is against opposing ones. much like a hillbilly settlement far in the woods, away from any other human contact.
I've seen similiar statements
like cpfusion, siscat and I made outside of this forum, and met with warmer more understanding/relatable responses.
Heck there was even quite a bit of agreement.
This forum isn't all that there is in the modern community. It's hardly a mosquito bite.
Opt is a spectacular reprint. Combo lists will likely prefer the greater dig of Visions and Sleight, which means control and tempo decks will benefit from the selectivity and instant-speed nature of Opt. The T3 Snapcaster sure got a whole lot better! Great bone thrown by Wizards.
Also, I'd wager that Opt's reprinting means Preordain and Ponder are probably off the unban menu indefinitely, if they were ever on that menu at all.
which is fine cuz opt is decent. Now if they could print a better counterspell and maybe do some unbans.
So it sounds like diversity is the same as it has always been or at least generally there. My own anecdotal evidence is otherwise, but that's why we don't use anecdotal evidence. What I don't understand is what this is supposed to mean good or bad for anyone. The format is just as diverse as it always has been which means that it should be just as difficult or easy to sideboard or metagame. Which means, at least in my opinion, the format used to be good and still is.
The issue is that most of the previous "best decks" all attacked on a traditional axis, and were all relatively easy to interact with using basic, maindeckable interaction and answers. With almost all of those now gone, the current collection of "best decks" all attack on narrow, specific axes, that are mostly difficult to interact with. This means that, while the quantity of "diversity" is about the same, the quality is much more toxic in terms of how the decks play and matchup/sideboard lotteries are more and more exaggerated as a result. At least that's my view. Games have been less and less fun, win or lose, because of the nature of how most decks match up against each other nowadays.
unfortunately not many on this forum see this and plug Their ears when you say it. Nothing shows bias more than ignorance(Rose tinted glasses).
This format is ok but It certainly needs a few changes.
and its those situations/varience, that make dealing with those decks much too difficult for anything but an opposing broken deck to keep up with.
to be fair death shadow is busted as well.
but the whole point of the discussion on the last couple pages is how much more powerful/high varience and broken the top tiers are vs the rest of the meta. and how (mostly) linear these decks are( 2 ships passing in the night). I hardly could imagine much enjoyment from players and spectators in such a meta game. of course there will be a (bg/x dnt uw/x ect) finish from time to time. but overall I can see why some consider this meta( especially the top tiers) to be toxic atm.
Because of this, I wouldn't be surprised if they shook up the format with some bans before or after the pro tour in order to make the top tiers less stale and less linear.
The ideal format is one where we have a balance between linearity and non linearity. Otherwise we either have a midrange fest or 2 ships passing in the night. (Personally I would prefer the midrange fest over the other) But we mostly have the other one right now in the top tier of the game.(with the exception of Gds)
This is why I feel modern is currently unhealthy atm.
And unless we get better answers to this, and get more strategic diversity amongst the top tier long term, the best answer will be a ban. which will inevitably happen with modern being a pro tour format.
Sure if someone on a daily basis argues its return and never ceases. Then they can be asked to not dilute everything to that.
But if noone can even speak the word splinter twin in this forum just because people don't want to hear the word is nonsensical. And is a very fascist way of running a thread that should allow civil conversation about everything pertaining to modern. This has gotten ridiculous and pathetic on the mods behalf.
The mods.. Whom Ban people for standing up and retaliate versus harsh flaming. after Thier reports of flaming are never met by the bias mods who favor those who agree with them. Like seriously this is the rudest most arrogant and pretentious forum I have ever been on.
And while there are great ppl on here. there are some I wonder how they function in society with such ignorant and rude behavior(either that or they are just keyboard warriors)
Later fellas it's been good at times and bad at times.
A temple Ban alongside an SFM unban would do wonders for this format Imo.
My problem is when they make up a large majority of the meta.
I like burn and play burn. I like jund and play jund. And I like valakut and play valakut.
But just because I play these decks doesn't mean I let my bias get in the way of my views on the format.
Modern I's a linear format by majority. And I don't think that is right. Whether it be to ban/unban a card or print a better answer I feel something should be done on wizards behalf.
why didnt grapeshot get banned in the first place? instead of all those cards? wizards surely went through alot of trouble keeping it around. which is more than I can say for "you know what .dec"
If one isnt fine then the other isnt either.
and yet its TOP tier. ive seen other unfair decks hit alot harder than storm has been. again, why does it get a pass?
and now we have opt incoming.
the same could be said about titanshift and etron. look what happens when we dont have adequate hate for them, and they have a high power level? they hold top tier status.
And anything that isn't perfect could use improvement
Are we going to ban that from the discussion too because people can't handle the truth?
I swear this whole forum(moderators included) has such inbred opinions and is against opposing ones. much like a hillbilly settlement far in the woods, away from any other human contact.
I've seen similiar statements
like cpfusion, siscat and I made outside of this forum, and met with warmer more understanding/relatable responses.
Heck there was even quite a bit of agreement.
This forum isn't all that there is in the modern community. It's hardly a mosquito bite.
nice example of what I meant by my previous post