Yet where is Jund lately? im sure many out there want it to do well and know it intimately. BUT, if a meta is too hostile to a certain archetype or deck it will fail/underperform no matter how hard you prepare.
funny how some say pros words mean nothing, all the way up until one says something that matches their rhetoric.
there are many factors to a deck doing well. skill and preparation with your deck is big, but I would argue in a huuge playing field its only half the story, especially in modern.
of course I blame this on maindeckable better answers to the vast amount of linear POWERFUL strategies that exist in this format.
it simply doesn't make sense in this game to play fair( for the most part), and its the reason my lgs has faded into pokemon.
and the: "leave things be" attitude wizards has is not helping confidence of some players. unfortunately there are even more players who enjoy this kind of format as it currently is. I don't get it, but to each there own I guess.
Why is everyone's fallback "Well where is Jund?" Seriously. That is the stupidest argument every. Jund has no right to always be a Tier 1 deck.
Even stupider when you consider B/G rock just got 2nd in a GP
Ive won games bc of torpot orbs so I would disagree
It literally shuts down eldrazi and taxes, Soul sisters, UB fairies,
It definitely has the capacity to shut down decks, but your examples:
Taxes - we're favored already
Soul sister - tier 3/incredibly uncommon
Faeries - tier 3/uncommon/we're favored.
We're also very favored against E-tron, the current big eldrazi deck. And that deck isn't running mimics.
If you're meta has a ton of taxes, faeries, and soul sisters, totally jam it in your sideboard. Sideboards are for meta-calls anyway. But if you were to play at a larger event, it will more often than not be a dead card as it does very little against most tier 1/2 decks. Those where it would put in some work we just have better alternative SB cards.
Then call those decks out by name or call them 'lands' decks or 'land matters' decks. But big mana is a bad name that is not descriptive. Especially when all three of those decks are doing such radically different things.
I think if the biggest point of contention right now is the semantics of archetype names, modern is probably in a pretty good spot.
they dont need to move away from anti aggro cards, cause midrange and control cant beat them anyway
edit to elaborate a little more: the decks that can beat big mana decks are getting destroyed by death shadow, and the decks that can beat death's shadow have bad matchup against big mana decks, so i think that the meta is warped by these 2 strategies
What you're describing is the check and balance nature of a meta. Not just the modern meta, any meta. A beats B beats C beats A, or in this case, aggro beats big mana beats midrange beats aggro.
Big mana decks can dilute their strategy to hedge against their bad MU (aggro), but it also hurts their advantage over their good MU's. This is all a natural part of meta-gaming/deck creation and not really a "problem" IMO.
I just can't buy into this idea that big mana decks are terrorizing tier 1. E-tron has close to a 50-50 MU against GDS, the most played deck. It's a dog against affinity, and titanshift isn't much better there. Titanshift is still weak to combo and storm seems to be keeping things in check there. Of course they're both really good decks, but I don't think they're warping things, and I DEFINITELY don't things are anywhere close to clear enough to be saying they're the strongest decks in the format right now.
Good sideboard cards against Jeskai decks are:
Aether Grid (if they pack Stony)
The problem I have with this is that if they land Stony Silence then 8 of the sources of colored mana in your deck are unusable. It makes it reasonably possible that you won't be able to cast the Aether Grid even if you have it in your hand.
Well the problem really revolves around how stony crushes us in general. I've found the best ways to combat stony is preemptively with thoughtseize and to hedge your bets with an aether grid. The added benefit aether grid provides in the board vs go wide decks/lingering souls outweighs running a card like wear//tear IMO.
There's a big different between having a complaint about modern and hyperbole to suit your needs. When Cfusion says things like "I just dislike that all the top decks of the format are based around attacking on a narrow or unconventional axis, forcing opponents to either race them or hope to draw extremely specific, narrow hate cards", it is purposefully clouding reality while hurting legitimate complaints about the format.
Look at some of the top decks. GDS is a tempo/control deck attacking from the same axis that jund did - not exactly narrow or unconventional. The only thing unconventional about it is how aggressively they attack their own life, immediately putting them in a dangerous position. Affinity can be answered with every piece of removal in the game as well as the biggest SB hosers in modern. UW/jeskai control are control decks, generally the exact type of deck that those complaining about control/color parity in modern ask for, the latter of which has a fantastic affinity MU. The other top decks represent big mana, midrange, combo, and aggro - AKA *every modern archetype represented in top tier decks*
So yes, it definitely comes off as wanting 0 bad MU's when you take what people say and actually evaluate it against the meta.
Meanwhile, Cfusion is still unhappy unless it's 2015. If you don't like the format now you never will, the meta is wide open; it doesn't matter if Jeskai did poorly on camera. I'm not trolling you, I just really think maybe modern isn't for you if only one deck (I guess two, counting delver before the probe ban) was keeping you in the format.
I just dislike that all the top decks of the format are based around attacking on a narrow or unconventional axis, forcing opponents to either race them or hope to draw extremely specific, narrow hate cards (or hope to have an excellent matchup). The nature of games and matches is just so much more toxic and polarizing than what I would like. In the meantime, I'm playing a UR Faerie/Delver build (modified from this list). It's not good, but at least it's fun and I don't pull my hair out in games like the miserable on-camera match of GDS vs Martyr of Sands.dec. School is starting soon though, and I will probably stop playing in paper entirely until I get settled into my new classroom. So I guess it's a win-win?
Cfusion, dude, Sheridan is right on the mark, cfusion, you just want a deck that doesn't have too many weaknesses. GBX has some atrocious matchups, with a ton of barely favorable matchups in the 5 to 10 percent favorable zones, along with a bunch of Grindy, hard earned wins. You honestly need to suck it up, don't play a fair deck if you're worried about not having free wins but some really bad blowout matches.
If you're worried about chalice and caverns shutting down your deck, make a meta call and don't play your control deck
That's not what I'm saying at all and I already replied to this multiple times, including specifically to the post you quoted. Regardless, I'm not even playing in paper anymore, as I also mentioned, so what difference does it make what I think of the format?
Well they do care, mods silence people like me and Hellfire if we say anything bad about the format. I don't find it rewarding enough to work on getting good at the format which is why I dread the 3 months PPTQ season when it's Modern. It's not like Modern has 10x the payout in prizes because it is at least 10x the work to win a sufficient amount of matches to justify the time and money. Modern just doesn't have the type of decks I typically enjoy playing so I dislike it for that reason.
Technically, the mods repeatedly ban you for breaking several of the forum rules in every post, including but not limited to:
Flaming, off topic personal grievances w/o constructive feedback, and the big one - format bashing. Hurry up and list which wildly exaggerated scenario/ game of chance you'd have better success with than modern and move on.
Both jeskai and u/w control were well represented between both GP Sao Paulo and the SCG. I've stated this here many times before, but control decks should 100% be a meta decision, because if you were able to sleeve up the same 75 from tournament to tournament the deck is most likely way too strong. This is because modern is such a wide open format. Do you want to play control and think tron/GDS will be more prevalent, well U/W would probably be the choice. If you expect a lot of go wide decks, go jeskai. We can see people were rewarded for these meta calls between the top 8 and 32.
Let's say you see a lot of u/w control in one tournament, then none in the next but there is jeskai, it doesn't mean that u/w suddenly became unplayable and jeskai is the new go-to control deck, it means that people made a meta call. It could very well switch the very next week. We have examples of very good builds for both decks, the onus is just on the control player to decide which will be better for any given tournament/meta.
yeah kind of tired of BBE being broken discussion. This card would be a pain for me to play against but it doesn't deserve to be on the list neither does sfm or preordain but hey it might make waves among the top decks and we wouldn't want that would we?
Accusatory tone aside, I thought everyone hated the ban list being used as a tool to "shake up" the format. Isn't that why that red card which shall not be named faced so much opposition?
There will always be top decks. That's the nature of the format, and in eternal formats you can either have stability with bans coming when decks go bazonkers (legal term, I believe) or an unofficial rotation caused by ban/unban decisions coming every six months to rotate decks in and out of play.
As far as I can tell, this is the best the format has been in a long time. Any unban made in an attempt to make one or two decks better will come at the expense of others. Seeing as how no deck has been dominant for a sustained period of time since last year's dredge, let alone eldrazi winter, I want to hear how these unbans make the format *better*. So far, I'm basically just seeing complaints that people want decks A B C and D on top instead of E F G and H, thus any ban or unban to cause a rotation is good. I don't see that as making the format better or worse, just changes one set of preferences with another.
How does it make the format better?
-It reduces the ban list
-It adds more decks in viability
-Possibly produces a Temur build for the first time modern
Shake up bans is what people were upset by, not unbans.
First off, reducing the ban list does not automatically make the format better. The fact that there are cards virtually everyone agrees should stay banned is proof of this. The whole "keep the list as short as possible" really isn't grounded in any empirical data. It just is a feel-good thing. Second, the introduction or improvement of any deck or decks comes at the expense of metagame shares of other decks. We can't have a meta composition over 100% of the playerbase, so unless an unban like BBE just causes thousands of people to jump into modern who were waiting to play...it hurts a deck's viability for each deck improved. BBE makes Jund shoot up an additional three percentage points, and let's say temur midrange appears at two or three percentage points. Those five to six points have to come from somewhere, and it may result in other existing decks being replaced.
Shake up unbans may not be as easily visible, but the potential for damage is still there. The argument against bans is that decks become banned entirely and consumer confidence is damaged. If a shake up unban boosts one archetype up and invalidates other decks as a result, the same result occurs in a way that is just slightly tougher to point at in outrage.
Again. I'll keep playing modern regardless, but the claim that these three or four unbans will cause a net gain is a really hefty assumption. People I think are looking at the immediate impact and not so much the ripple effect further out. Those can occur, and are a risk well worth noting.
Finally...just as I mentioned with jund, temur doesn't HAVE to exist. The card pool dictates that some shards/guilds are better, especially for control or midrange. The idea that all twenty combinations of two and three color decs will be viable is a pipe dream.
Reducing the banned list gives us more cards to play with and is directly in line with wizard's goal of maintaining the smallest banned list possible. Yes, there are cards that (almost) everyone agrees should stay banned; looking at you, skullclamp. Those aren't the cards people are discussing should come off and is completely unrelated to BBE/SFM discussion.
Your statement that BBE unban makes jund shoot up 3% isn't grounded in any empirical data, either. It's a potential 3(?) of in a deck that isn't played very heavily right now. I don't get what the issue is with temur decks appearing at the cost of current decks since they currently represent <1% meta share. If a current tier 2 deck is replaced by a tier 2 temur build, or some tier 1 decks lose % points, then that's either an even swap or net gain.
And finally, you're right, jund and temur decks don't have to exist. Nobody is stating they have to exist. They're saying that they're tier 2 decks or lower that would potentially play the card. One of those decks would be new to the format altogether, and I feel like we're in agreement that new viable decks that don't warp the format benefit everyone, no?
In my experience, wear//tear isn't a great answer to stony. You need to have access to the mana the turn it lands or hope to draw a glimmervoid/spire. A better (IMO) way to combat stony is a combination of thoughtseize/ghirapur aether grid. Thoughtseize works surprisingly well since people have a tendency to mull towards stony given how much of a beating it is. If you do want to keep wear/tear, i'd probably still run an ancient grudge given the prevalence of affinity decks.
Mountain vs. island really comes down to preference/build. If you're running more thoughtcasts/master of etheriums/glint nest, an island is good. If you're all in on galvanic blast/bomat, then mountain would be the choice. How it affects the merfolk MU shouldn't really play that big of a role given that we're favored there and we're only running 1 basic anyway.
"Goldfishing" is playing by yourself to practice playlines/sequencing. It's also a good way to see example hands and experiment w/ numbers in your deck to tune it rather than just "trial by fire" in actual games.
Oh man, I feel like such a stickler. Better! But i'd still try to cut at least 1 more colored source for consistencies sake.
Also way more minor, but maybe switch the inkmoth/blinkmoth numbers. Poison is the backup plan, and I feel as if having the additional normal source of damage would help more often than the additional infect source.
It would definitely help to just sit down and goldfish a few times for 4 turns. See how often you end up with dead cards or sub-optimal playlines due to colored sources. It's super important you feel comfortable with the deck and like it, I just think you could raise your win %, even if just a few points, cutting back. And those percentage points add up a lot over the course of a GP. Again, just my 2 cents!
Edit: So rude of me: Good luck at the GP! Be sure to let us know how you do.
Hello thanks for help here the image larger, about your considerations i will run 5 multi colored lands.
Sweet. The board looks fine, but I am still very much pro etched for the main. That's what keeps MU's against top decks like death's shadow as close as they are. The bigger issue to me are all of the colored spells maindeck.
To make sure they can all be cast when you draw them with 13 color producing sources (between glimmervoid/spire/opal/springleaf), you should try to cut 2, ideally 3 colored cards. Some combination of 1/2 of the masters, galvanic, and glint-nest. Replace those with 2 etched and a 3rd steel overseer maybe and your deck looks significantly more streamlined.
With the SB slots that opens up, you've got tons of options depending on what sort of meta you expect. Maybe the 4th etched and a aethersworn canonist or rule of law or something? Lots of good options for the robots.
Even stupider when you consider B/G rock just got 2nd in a GP
It definitely has the capacity to shut down decks, but your examples:
Taxes - we're favored already
Soul sister - tier 3/incredibly uncommon
Faeries - tier 3/uncommon/we're favored.
We're also very favored against E-tron, the current big eldrazi deck. And that deck isn't running mimics.
If you're meta has a ton of taxes, faeries, and soul sisters, totally jam it in your sideboard. Sideboards are for meta-calls anyway. But if you were to play at a larger event, it will more often than not be a dead card as it does very little against most tier 1/2 decks. Those where it would put in some work we just have better alternative SB cards.
I think if the biggest point of contention right now is the semantics of archetype names, modern is probably in a pretty good spot.
What you're describing is the check and balance nature of a meta. Not just the modern meta, any meta. A beats B beats C beats A, or in this case, aggro beats big mana beats midrange beats aggro.
Big mana decks can dilute their strategy to hedge against their bad MU (aggro), but it also hurts their advantage over their good MU's. This is all a natural part of meta-gaming/deck creation and not really a "problem" IMO.
Well the problem really revolves around how stony crushes us in general. I've found the best ways to combat stony is preemptively with thoughtseize and to hedge your bets with an aether grid. The added benefit aether grid provides in the board vs go wide decks/lingering souls outweighs running a card like wear//tear IMO.
Look at some of the top decks. GDS is a tempo/control deck attacking from the same axis that jund did - not exactly narrow or unconventional. The only thing unconventional about it is how aggressively they attack their own life, immediately putting them in a dangerous position. Affinity can be answered with every piece of removal in the game as well as the biggest SB hosers in modern. UW/jeskai control are control decks, generally the exact type of deck that those complaining about control/color parity in modern ask for, the latter of which has a fantastic affinity MU. The other top decks represent big mana, midrange, combo, and aggro - AKA *every modern archetype represented in top tier decks*
So yes, it definitely comes off as wanting 0 bad MU's when you take what people say and actually evaluate it against the meta.
Technically, the mods repeatedly ban you for breaking several of the forum rules in every post, including but not limited to:
Flaming, off topic personal grievances w/o constructive feedback, and the big one - format bashing. Hurry up and list which wildly exaggerated scenario/ game of chance you'd have better success with than modern and move on.
Let's say you see a lot of u/w control in one tournament, then none in the next but there is jeskai, it doesn't mean that u/w suddenly became unplayable and jeskai is the new go-to control deck, it means that people made a meta call. It could very well switch the very next week. We have examples of very good builds for both decks, the onus is just on the control player to decide which will be better for any given tournament/meta.
Reducing the banned list gives us more cards to play with and is directly in line with wizard's goal of maintaining the smallest banned list possible. Yes, there are cards that (almost) everyone agrees should stay banned; looking at you, skullclamp. Those aren't the cards people are discussing should come off and is completely unrelated to BBE/SFM discussion.
Your statement that BBE unban makes jund shoot up 3% isn't grounded in any empirical data, either. It's a potential 3(?) of in a deck that isn't played very heavily right now. I don't get what the issue is with temur decks appearing at the cost of current decks since they currently represent <1% meta share. If a current tier 2 deck is replaced by a tier 2 temur build, or some tier 1 decks lose % points, then that's either an even swap or net gain.
And finally, you're right, jund and temur decks don't have to exist. Nobody is stating they have to exist. They're saying that they're tier 2 decks or lower that would potentially play the card. One of those decks would be new to the format altogether, and I feel like we're in agreement that new viable decks that don't warp the format benefit everyone, no?
Mountain vs. island really comes down to preference/build. If you're running more thoughtcasts/master of etheriums/glint nest, an island is good. If you're all in on galvanic blast/bomat, then mountain would be the choice. How it affects the merfolk MU shouldn't really play that big of a role given that we're favored there and we're only running 1 basic anyway.
-1 Master of etherium, +1 etched champion
-1 galvanic, +1 overseer
-1 spire/glimmervoid, +1 blinkmoth
Make 1, 2, or all of those changes, goldfish a bit, and see how you like it!
Also way more minor, but maybe switch the inkmoth/blinkmoth numbers. Poison is the backup plan, and I feel as if having the additional normal source of damage would help more often than the additional infect source.
It would definitely help to just sit down and goldfish a few times for 4 turns. See how often you end up with dead cards or sub-optimal playlines due to colored sources. It's super important you feel comfortable with the deck and like it, I just think you could raise your win %, even if just a few points, cutting back. And those percentage points add up a lot over the course of a GP. Again, just my 2 cents!
Edit: So rude of me: Good luck at the GP! Be sure to let us know how you do.
Sweet. The board looks fine, but I am still very much pro etched for the main. That's what keeps MU's against top decks like death's shadow as close as they are. The bigger issue to me are all of the colored spells maindeck.
To make sure they can all be cast when you draw them with 13 color producing sources (between glimmervoid/spire/opal/springleaf), you should try to cut 2, ideally 3 colored cards. Some combination of 1/2 of the masters, galvanic, and glint-nest. Replace those with 2 etched and a 3rd steel overseer maybe and your deck looks significantly more streamlined.
With the SB slots that opens up, you've got tons of options depending on what sort of meta you expect. Maybe the 4th etched and a aethersworn canonist or rule of law or something? Lots of good options for the robots.