This would require a lot more transparency than WotC has had thus far, but it could be done.
Its a huge ban list, but part of doing it all at once was to counteract some of that "and what all are they going to ban next time?" fear.
This list is very much about going 150% into a safe format, and then hopefully being able to scale back with time.
This would need to come with a very clear statement of what their intentions are, and that this ban announcement should not be seen as the typical modern ban announcement. "Let's move on like these mistakes were never printed, and go back to using the banned list only when something gets out of hand. We think though, that without leaning on mistakes like these, any decks will be much less likely to create an unanswerable domination of the format."
There would be a very serious backlash, that I do not doubt for a second. But I think there would still be plenty of people playing. And if those players then started telling everyone how Modern was the best format ever, even those that really do not like the rationale used for the bans would give it a try, and possibly get hooked.
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- Eepop
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Sadly, that seems to have not happened. Maybe the spring set will be where all the goodies are for us, but my hopes are greatly diminished at this point. And with no MM2 officially announced to give us the glimmer of hope that we might get new cards printed in it tailored for modern any time soon.
With all that in mind, I just want them to do SOMETHING. I have been a major advocate for extensive further bannings, and that is still my dream option, but I am still living in reality and understand thats very unlikely.
I think Chapin has a very good handle on where we are with the format.
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27795_Control-Ephara-The-Modern-Banned-List.html
He's not headlong behind either bannings or unbannings (he favors one as a personal interest and believes the other is better for the overall health of the format), but is mostly just against this living between worlds thing WotC has going right now.
I think there is some merit in his prospective list of new bans containing Deathrite Shaman/Melira/Kiki-Jiki/Snapcaster. But I'm on board with several other configurations they might try as well.
But we all know that I am ban-happy. But I am also down with them taking a hard look at what is already banned, and taking some chances with unbanning some things. There are some things on the list that haven't really earned their place. Then there are others that I can agree are correct to ban if you want to take the bannings to their logical conclusion (Wild Nacatl, Bitterblossom, Sword of the Meek, etc) but that make very little sense if you are going to continue to allow some of the things that are just as powerful as those (or more so) to remain legal.
So all I want is for them to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, and do it with conviction. I want them to set a clear precedent of what they want out of modern and stop tiptoeing about.
Darksteel citadel is the only artifact land you get to play.
You do not get Chrome Mox.
The lack of those two make Thirst for Knowledge a lot worse.
Tron goes over the top of Thopter/Sword very well.
GBx can break your thopter/sword combo very easily.
Affinity and combo decks generally win before you can even get thopter/sword really going.
Many sideboard cards that people are already running are very effective against your combo, like Stony Silence or Rest in Peace.
Everyone seems to only imagine SotM fitting into other formats where they had several other tools that Modern does not have.
SotM could be bad for some other mythical modern format where other aggro decks are actually viable, but there are so many things standing in aggro's way right now, ThopterSword would really just be a drop in the bucket.
That is not to say I think it needs to be unbanned. I lump it in with the likes of Golgari Grave Troll. Its unlikely to have any effect on the format at all, so the only gain is the psychological one of having a smaller banned list.
"Chance of Unbanning Grave-Troll resulting in something dangerous" is greater than "Chance of Unbanning Grave-Troll resulting in something that people actually play, but is not dangerous"
Then they will not unban it.
Its really weird, as both those seem like they are exceedingly small percentages.
If it does nothing, as most of us believe, the only gain WotC gets is that their banned list is one card smaller. Is dropping a list of 31 to 30 really going to be of any real gain? Probably not. It may even just draw more attention to the 30 that remain on the banned list and be a net negative for WotC.
If it does nothing positive for them, why would they bother?
Maybe we'll get him as a tack-on at some point when they feel they can unban something else.
But I don't think WotC is at the point where they want to unban something. The next two years of sets likely have a number of safety-valve cards for modern. Once those start rolling in, they may be more receptive to unbannings.
As much as forums may bemoan the state of modern, it is on a slow upward trajectory that very likely suits WotC's goals well enough. They could make moves to try to accelerate the growth, but any time they do that they are taking the chance (even if its low) to send the format spiraling downward. They have a proven effective tool for accelerating growth with Modern Masters sets, so there is little incentive to use a tool that could be good or bad like unbannings (or more aggressive bannings).
And just because they have data, does not mean that it is particularly useful data.
I support what they have done with bans for the most part. I think that if a few of the cards got banned didn't strictly need to be, they are acceptable casualties for the time being.
But what they were* doing was was sculpting to a vision, not some perfect mathematical equation of mountains of data equals X needs to be banned.
*
As much as people complain when they do either of those things, I find it hard to blame them.
I am not sure anyone on these boards is qualified to estimate what the cost would be.
It may require more server hardware, time setting it up, etc. Cost is not necessarily little in this case.
The most damning part to the idea at this moment is probably the fuss over major events online. After Kibler fanned that fire to the point that they had to address it, they likely went all hands on deck trying to plan out how to work through the problems.
Several of those people are likely the same people that would be needed to set up the infrastructure for a new format.
I agree with you that the cost may be worth it, but I don't think this is the moment for it. Testing their options online is something they probably should have done before PT Philadelphia even happened.
I am a fan of modern, but at the same time, I am probably going to be a fan of anything in the spectrum we're talking about, all the way from Masques-Forward, to Modern with a banlist twice as long as it is now.
I think the big miss was that they didn't use MTGO to do more research to see what people were hungry for. They can run as many different types of queues as they have ideas for. Run them for six months or a year and then see what the winners are.
They may have felt rushed by PT Philadelphia looming with CawBlade threatening to go wild. But how many tournaments had already been smashed by CawBlade, would one more really be the end of the world? Someone very well may have found some tech that could hold it down, but we'll never know. Or they could have just banned a card to make it less of an issue. The time table they were on, whatever they did was going to make some people upset for the event, so I don't know that going the new format route was so much better PR than the just banning something route.
I don't think there is anything particularly superior about overextended. I think it would have had just as many (if different) growing pangs as Modern has. The resultant format could be better or worse than current modern, there really is no way to know. Maybe it stabilizes very quickly, or maybe we end up needing twice as many bans to even get to the level that Modern is currently at.
I would have liked for them to have given several possible permutations a shot on MTGO, and we could have learned what was the best format to move forward with by experience instead of by gut.
Make it require a tap so that it doesn't cause time issues. Don't give it the tuck option so it can be answered. Just make it scry on a stick at a reasonable rate.
We dont have chrome mox, we can't use colored artifact lands, and the answers from that era are woefully incorrect for the threats we have now. How about a decklist that you could actually play in modern?
Ah, classic. You're aware that multiple people have tested it, and they have all said its not a threat. But your opinion is more valid?
Its pretty clear you haven't tested it, because every time you are asked, you can only provide LSV's old decklist that has several more banned cards on it.
Again, please, show us the decklist that would be legal with just SotM unbanned that would be good in modern.
Yes. I played vs it in old extended. I've playtested it in Modern. You are overestimating it.
Please, I am begging here, show us the Modern +SotM decklist you are so worried about.
Its common knowledge that I am pro-bans in general, I WANT to be convinced I am wrong on this. Show me the decklist I should be worried about. I will be glad to give it a whirl, and adjust my view based on new information. If its actually dangerous, I'll be vehemently against it being unbanned. But all the information I have right now from actual testing is that its not dangerous.
Please, please, show me I am wrong.
There are tons of control cards that see no play right now. There is no reason that more bans must lead to a format that "is down to smashing creatures into each other" rather than making those cards more playable.
Do you have a decklist for ThopterSword that is good against Jund?
You say amazing, but I am fine with good.
I am fine with it only being good against Jund and not other decks if that is really necessary.
I've tried numerous times to make a decent ThopterSword deck in modern (with the only ban change being having sword available). And it has never produced anything worth playing*. Sword is not the only thing that old school ThopterSword decks lost, and some of the other losses sting even harder than sword does (artifact lands and chrome mox in particular).
*
Absolutely nothing of the sort of "controlly blue" decks that people say would be good if they had sword.
Believe me, I am one of the most ban-happy people around, and if I had even the slightest fear of sword I wouldn't bother saying anything about it. But we've brewed, we've tested, and its just not even that good, let alone dangerous.
But as always, I would love to be proven wrong. But as many times as I have asked for a list, we've yet to have someone produce one that was any good in the modern format.
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe we haven't even gotten a list that was actually legal in the modern format (aside from the obvious sword unban that is the discussion at hand), the best anyone really ever offered was lists to old extended that
1) had other cards banned
2) was engineered to the threats of that format (sorry repeal isn't nearly as good in modern)
3) gave no mind to the fact that years and years of new cards have entered the equation
So please, I am begging here. If you want to continue believing that Sword is good, show us WHY.
And profound sadness for people like me who live a whole lot closer to San Antonio than we do to Boston.
Do you have a decklist that uses ThopterSword that is any good in Modern?
I am not disputing that it could be unbanned, my testing indicates that its a lot closer to the grave-troll-do-nothing than many people think. I'd love to see a ThopterSword deck that has reasonable matchups vs Jund/Pod/Tron.
That said, I am not sure what this does that Lotus Cobra doesn't do better. And Lotus Cobra is pretty fringe already.
I have long insisted that DRS just could not be put on the table for various reasons, but I think those are quickly being resolved.
1) RtR block is no longer going to be the primary cards being sold for standard. For awhile, there had been the danger of deflating the excitement of opening a good card in the currently sold sets. With Theros pushing RtR out of the spotlight, this will be less of an issue. It would certainly be preferable to wait another year until RTR is out of standard completely, but we're past the most volatile period already.
2) Scavenging Ooze is very capable of acting as the safety valve of graveyard shenanigans. For awhile, DRS was really the only maindeckable option for keeping graveyards in line. People had the very fair argument that while DRS may do some bad things for the format, the work he was doing on graveyards may have made it worth it to give him a pass. Now, even if he got the banhammer, the ooze would be on hand to pick up the slack in holding down the graveyard.
Again, I am not clamoring for the banning of Deathrite Shaman, just being forthright in rescinding my previous reservations against banning him.