Tron still has its explosive/unfair draws. It lost the late game lock, but should survive.
I have to applaud them for finally taking more risks. This slows down Eldrazi but probably keeps the deck alive, while also enable some new decks. Yes, AV and Sword could lead to some decks that are just too good, but it's the right time to take that chance.
I don't mind having another good deck in the format if it's not broken. It's a good thing.
Since it's pretty good against stuff like Burn and Tron (i.e. completely pushed these decks out of the format), it can be exactly what traditional Control needs to be viable. A slow version of Eldrazi is probably still good enough to keep Burn and Tron in check (but not good enough to suppress them) while being a decent matchup for something like UW or Esper Control.
According to what he said, they're going to test the deck in various possible scenarios (read, without Eye, without Temple, without both, without a land + a creature etc) to see if they can just slow it down. They should just do this for all decks going forward. The bad part is that this probably means no unbans, since it would be very difficult to gauge the format with too many changed variables.
They should just pay for a bunch of pros to spend a weekend retreat to some house and break the format. That would be the best way to test cards for bannings/unbannings.
That's something I always suggested when the discussion arises, but otoh I think the risk of leaks is something they don't want to take.
I'm also incredibly worried, he said they were not intending to nuke the deck. Sigh. This means we still have a chance of a broken deck reoccurring with a new solution if one banned land isn't enough.
If eldrazi is still somehow oppressive after April that's going to be a big problem
In some earlier discussions I said that, if I was in their position, I would probably ban at least two cards to make sure the deck isn't still too good after the bans, because that would be a PR nightmare.
But note that he said this time they will be testing some of the possible bans (something they never do) to ensure that, while the deck can still exist, it's not a level above the rest of the field. Now we just have to sit tight and hope they do it right.
They screwed up Modern (and probably Legacy) and I don't believe it was intentional as in "let's make Eldrazi 50% of the metagame and sell packs yay!", but they definitely decided to take a very big risk and were 100% aware of it. It was mentioned at least 3 times during the PT coverage: they knew it could be too good but decided to ignore other formats and just think about Standard and Limited. Then, they could use bans to fix the mess in case the worst happened. Well, it did happen.
The deck is going to get banned pretty hard (at this point I wouldn't be surprised in case they ban both Eye and Temple), but I'm really concerned about other thing. Modern always lacked its own system of "checks and balances" and that's the reason things like this happen. I mean, you might hate stuff like FoW, Daze, Brainstorm, Stifle (and a couple non-Blue cards like Price of Progress too) but they fit that role. It's kind of a necessary evil. Eldrazi is probably one of the 3 best decks in Legacy at this point, but it's not as broken/warping as it is in Modern, exactly because of that.
So, my main concern is: how do we balance Modern to prevent things like this happening again? Because it will happen if the format continues to be managed and shaped the way it is.
EDIT: just realized this is the GP topic and not really the place to discuss the format as a whole. Sorry.
Chris Cousens (Abzan Company)
Kentaro Yamamoto (Living End)
Lee Shi Tian (Living End - I thought he was on Loam from his tweets, but apparently it's LE)
Jason Chung (Zombie Loam)
Yuuki Ichikawa (Living End)
Maitland Cameron (UW Eldrazi)
Louis Thomson-Gregg (x Eldrazi)
David Mines (x Eldrazi)
x: there's one UW Eldrazi and one RG Eldrazi, but not sure who's playing which version yet.
Living End taking advantage of the broken metagame to put 3 players in the Top 8.
I often found myself struggling to brew any deck with blue and/or red because after a while I would just tell myself "I can't beat twin with this... Might as well just add it to the deck". It pigeon holes the two most popular colors in the format into one deck type.
This is reversed logic. This logic (same one WoTC claimed) affirms that people aren't playing other URx decks because they just play Twin instead. Okay, that's true, but that's because these other decks all suck. You can't play a fair URx deck in this format without a combo. It would be valid if we had URx decks pretty close to tier 1 + some kind of unban to make them stronger. But you just remove a good matchup these decks had, a deck that held random unfair crap in check and expect it to get better?
Sure, you can play your Blue Moon, UR tempo/Delver deck now for lack of a better option. But that doesn't make these decks any better. They were all weak, and if anything they're even weaker now.
In fact, more often than not, when brewing, people would bring up twin to see if a deck archetype was viable. If it wasn't, then that deck archetype would die pretty much on the spot. Removing the question "What about twin?" means more decks can bubble to the surface. Buy your ghost quarters and tech edges asap, those are bound to increase in price very soon.
This makes no sense. You always have to keep the best decks in mind while brewing or building your SB. You just replace "what about Twin" with "what about <next best deck>"?. This is not reason to ban a deck, otherwise you'd just ban deck after deck since people would have to play cards to beat it.
So they banned Twin to make more space for blue spells without worrying about making Twin better. That's why they unbanned AV and JTMS right?
Oh wait, they didn't.
It also makes no sense to ban Twin to make Ux decks more playable. Twin was a good matchup for these decks and kept decks like Tron (awful matchups for most fair decks) in check. So you ban a deck that actually helped the other Ux decks to make they more playable... ok?
Decks like Scapeshift, Gifts, UWR Control/Geist just all got *worse*, not better. They lost a good matchup + the bad matchups got a bump. I really don't get the rationale.
I never mentioned that Control was brought down because of Twin's MU, in fact Twin was a relatively GOOD MU for control. I said however that one didn't really have any serious reason to innovate, brew, and play control, because he could play Twin.
Because every Control deck without a combo sucks in Golfishing.format? The tier 1 is Tron, Affinity, Burn and Infect. It's not that you could play the Twin combo in these decks, the issue is that you can't beat these decks consistently without a combo.
I'm more of an old school player that generally prefers consistency too. I think you have the correct mindset in regards to how the deck plays out.
I like O-Stone because sometimes all you need is that "reset button". It's not the most flashy card nor it's a silver bullet, but it's more of a necessary evil.
The new Ulamog is really sweet. Maybe you should try that too.
What do you think about Compulsive Research? It's a sorcery, but as a 1-of it should be just what the doctor ordered.
Really tough decision to make. I'd personally hit at least the Confidant (I played Jund for a while and that card is just nuts). The more conservative decision is Bob + Goyf since your life total is low, but a Lili would just reset the board anyway (although that would buy you a couple turns). Bob + Mire/Crypt would probably be my choice (Mire to avoid Lili, Crypt to avoid Bolts).
Here's the playlist of the coverage for the event, it'd be neat to see more coverage of the deck and how it plays, of course, pierakor's videos are great, but I'm always interested in seeing more matchups.
Most of my card purchases in the last 4 years were done with them and I never had any issues.
Fully recommended.
I have to applaud them for finally taking more risks. This slows down Eldrazi but probably keeps the deck alive, while also enable some new decks. Yes, AV and Sword could lead to some decks that are just too good, but it's the right time to take that chance.
Since it's pretty good against stuff like Burn and Tron (i.e. completely pushed these decks out of the format), it can be exactly what traditional Control needs to be viable. A slow version of Eldrazi is probably still good enough to keep Burn and Tron in check (but not good enough to suppress them) while being a decent matchup for something like UW or Esper Control.
According to what he said, they're going to test the deck in various possible scenarios (read, without Eye, without Temple, without both, without a land + a creature etc) to see if they can just slow it down. They should just do this for all decks going forward. The bad part is that this probably means no unbans, since it would be very difficult to gauge the format with too many changed variables.
That's something I always suggested when the discussion arises, but otoh I think the risk of leaks is something they don't want to take.
In some earlier discussions I said that, if I was in their position, I would probably ban at least two cards to make sure the deck isn't still too good after the bans, because that would be a PR nightmare.
But note that he said this time they will be testing some of the possible bans (something they never do) to ensure that, while the deck can still exist, it's not a level above the rest of the field. Now we just have to sit tight and hope they do it right.
The deck is going to get banned pretty hard (at this point I wouldn't be surprised in case they ban both Eye and Temple), but I'm really concerned about other thing. Modern always lacked its own system of "checks and balances" and that's the reason things like this happen. I mean, you might hate stuff like FoW, Daze, Brainstorm, Stifle (and a couple non-Blue cards like Price of Progress too) but they fit that role. It's kind of a necessary evil. Eldrazi is probably one of the 3 best decks in Legacy at this point, but it's not as broken/warping as it is in Modern, exactly because of that.
So, my main concern is: how do we balance Modern to prevent things like this happening again? Because it will happen if the format continues to be managed and shaped the way it is.
EDIT: just realized this is the GP topic and not really the place to discuss the format as a whole. Sorry.
Yes, there's a total of 3 Eldrazi decks, I just mentioned I'm not sure who's playing the UW one and the RG one between the 7th and 8th placed players.
Chris Cousens (Abzan Company)
Kentaro Yamamoto (Living End)
Lee Shi Tian (Living End - I thought he was on Loam from his tweets, but apparently it's LE)
Jason Chung (Zombie Loam)
Yuuki Ichikawa (Living End)
Maitland Cameron (UW Eldrazi)
Louis Thomson-Gregg (x Eldrazi)
David Mines (x Eldrazi)
x: there's one UW Eldrazi and one RG Eldrazi, but not sure who's playing which version yet.
Living End taking advantage of the broken metagame to put 3 players in the Top 8.
This is reversed logic. This logic (same one WoTC claimed) affirms that people aren't playing other URx decks because they just play Twin instead. Okay, that's true, but that's because these other decks all suck. You can't play a fair URx deck in this format without a combo. It would be valid if we had URx decks pretty close to tier 1 + some kind of unban to make them stronger. But you just remove a good matchup these decks had, a deck that held random unfair crap in check and expect it to get better?
Sure, you can play your Blue Moon, UR tempo/Delver deck now for lack of a better option. But that doesn't make these decks any better. They were all weak, and if anything they're even weaker now.
This makes no sense. You always have to keep the best decks in mind while brewing or building your SB. You just replace "what about Twin" with "what about <next best deck>"?. This is not reason to ban a deck, otherwise you'd just ban deck after deck since people would have to play cards to beat it.
Oh wait, they didn't.
It also makes no sense to ban Twin to make Ux decks more playable. Twin was a good matchup for these decks and kept decks like Tron (awful matchups for most fair decks) in check. So you ban a deck that actually helped the other Ux decks to make they more playable... ok?
Decks like Scapeshift, Gifts, UWR Control/Geist just all got *worse*, not better. They lost a good matchup + the bad matchups got a bump. I really don't get the rationale.
Because every Control deck without a combo sucks in Golfishing.format? The tier 1 is Tron, Affinity, Burn and Infect. It's not that you could play the Twin combo in these decks, the issue is that you can't beat these decks consistently without a combo.
I'm more of an old school player that generally prefers consistency too. I think you have the correct mindset in regards to how the deck plays out.
I like O-Stone because sometimes all you need is that "reset button". It's not the most flashy card nor it's a silver bullet, but it's more of a necessary evil.
The new Ulamog is really sweet. Maybe you should try that too.
What do you think about Compulsive Research? It's a sorcery, but as a 1-of it should be just what the doctor ordered.
That's for last year's event