Well, 20% Modern maybes is still almost 50 new cards that might be Modern playable. That's huge. We usually get what, like 2 or 3 cards from each Standard set? And I like what they did. We got some powerful answers, which is something the format has sorely lacked from its inception, but we also got a lot of support for several different archetypes that have been underpowered or just didn't exist before, like Slivers, Ninjas, Goblins, Seismic Loam, support for some kind of Sultai snow deck, an Astral Drift blink deck, some strong tempo threats, and some sweet new lands. There's a lot to like in this set for Modern.
The GDS vs. UW matchup isn't as bad as it used to be when GDS was a new deck. Back then, UW was playing Verdict and Condemn, and a lot of GDS pilots didn't know how to play the matchup. I would always see people try to side into a grindy plan post-board, but you're just not going to out-grind UW Control. You have to be the aggro deck, strip all their answers and then kill them quickly before they find another.
With GDS pilots starting to figure that out, and UW moving towards Terminus and Oust, the matchup improved. I think it's still very unlikely to be an even matchup, though. If UW moves back towards Verdict, it'll make it bad again.
Turn 1 Forcing a Faithless Looting or Ancient Stirrings is going to feel SOOOO good. I don't care if it's correct or not; my body needs this.
Even Forcing a Vial from Humans. The hardest games to play against Humans are the ones where they overwhelm you with tempo advantage because they played a turn 1 Vial. Humans playing on curve is a VERY fair deck. I would probably board the card out in sideboard games, but my point is that it does have some play even against a deck like Humans in game 1. It's going to be a main deck card for fair blue decks. I don't know if it's a 4-of, but if you want it at all you want it in the main, and you can board it out if it's bad like people do in Legacy with Force of Will.
You guys are missing the point of Force of Negation. It's not just that it's a Negate effect, it's that it's a Negate effect that you can play to counter your opponent's turn 1 play when you're on the draw. Almost every deck in Modern has 1 mana noncreature enablers that they want to play on the first turn, and if you counter that enabler it really sets them back. I've played a lot of Dredge because my buddy has the deck, and you're often keeping hands on the back of a turn 1 Looting. If that Looting gets countered, it can slow down the Dredge player considerably. Those extra turns you get while the Dredge deck is stumbling is how a fair deck beats them.
And it doesn't matter that it doesn't counter creatures. Decks that play Force of Negation are also going to play creature removal. The only deck that makes it really unfortunate that it doesn't counter creatures is Bogles. Otherwise, you have other counter spells and removal for creatures. Force isn't for them, it's for the turn 1 enablers and to let you tap out without dying later.
Not just a combo breaker, but it's a way to answer all the busted 1 mana turn 1 plays that different decks play when you're on the draw. Ancient Stirrings, Faithless Looting, Aether Vial, Thoughtseize (if you really want to protect something in your hand), Mox Opal, Amulet of Vigor, a Chalice powered out by a SSG. The only deck I can think of where it's REALLY unfortunate that this doesn't hit creatures is Bogles.
If this card sees wide adoption by fair decks, it will go a long way towards slowing down the format, and I think that's a good thing. It hits almost every busted turn 1 play that enables so many decks. And it does so while not being something that combo decks will want. Great design.
I don't buy the argument that Belcher suddenly becomes playable with Chrome Mox. It's still a glass-cannon deck, much like Griselbrand combo and Cheerios. These type of strategies tend to mulligan terribly and fold to commonly played sideboard effects
I think his points stands. Modern Belcher is going to need a lot more than just Chrome Mox to become "playable." And when I say playable, I realize that everyone has a different definition. Some people believe that only UR Phoenix, Dredge, Amulet, Whir Prison, and Grixis Shadow are playable right now and I can't fault them for that line of thinking (yes, even with the 1 win that a Jund Titanshift deck did this weekend) We are talking about giving yourself the BEST chance, not just spiking a tournament with a deck that put you at a disadvantage from the start, even if you out tested all other 2,000 players at the GP.
Even though many of us assume it, I don't think Wizards has ever said explicitly that Mox Opal to be close to a banning. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here.
But I do believe that your point also stands because Wizards seemingly does not want (and I say this loosely because honestly there isn't any proof) fast mana to be prevalent in Modern. I guess there technically is proof with Rite of Flame and Seething Song banned, but other cards are not banned. This is the most likely conclusion one can have.
My point is that you can't blame someone for questioning the line of thinking - Chrome Mox won't get unbanned because of Belcher because Belcher has no relevance in the current meta and there is some percentage of players over 0% that don't believe Belcher to potentially be a problem if Chrome Mox is unbanned. My own opinion is that I don't think it currently should be unbanned, but I think it's close. I think 5 unbannings down the line, it SHOULD come off. I just don't know if that time period is 2 years or 22 years.
This video is a few years old, but the point still stands. Belcher requires a certain amount of free fast mana to be consistent enough to be a real deck. There is a mono-green version now that's sort of a meme deck because it's capable of very quick kills, but it's inconsistent. Raising the number of free fast mana spells in the format from 8 copies to 12 greatly increases the consistency of this strategy, especially if they end up going with the London Mulligan. There is a very real possibility that adding Chrome Mox to the format makes Belcher consistent enough to be a real player in the meta, and do we really need another turn 1 or 2 deck in Modern? No, we don't.
Even if it's not Belcher specifically, Chrome Mox would absolutely result in the format speeding up, because that's what free fast mana does. We need to go in the opposite direction, so Chrome Mox is a huge no-go for an unbanning.
It doesn't fit into any of the current top decks. Phoenix, Dredge, Humans, Spirits, Death's Shadow, Hardened Scales, Tron, UW control, Amulet, Rock, Jund, Burn, Whir Prison.
The only deck it fits into is Ad Nauseam, and even there its awkward and probably worse than Spirit Guide. So can someone explain this to me? Are there any decks I am forgetting?
Chrome Mox makes Modern Belcher a thing, and nobody wants that. Even if it wasn't for Belcher, think about what that card does. Fast mana only speeds decks up, and the decks that would most want something like this are fast combo decks. Does Modern really need to be faster and even more unfair than it currently is? No, it does not. So Chrome Mox would not be a good card to put into Modern.
Even if SFM is unbanned there is no way wizards ever reprints her in standard regardless of the power level of the equipment in the format at the time. Her being previously banned in standard is very different than her being banned in a non rotating format like modern
Not that I think they'll actually print her in Standard, but SFM was actually fine in Standard until they printed Batterskull. If the equipment in the format isn't good, she's not even playable.
Well I hope they know something about War of the Spark or Modern Horizons that we don't cause I don't see this being self corrected.
Phoenix hasn't really been around that long. It took people a while to find that deck, so it's only been putting up results for like 3 months. People will figure out how to beat it. The players who play the deck probably already know what beats it. I remember when people thought GDS was unstoppable back in 2017. I had been playing the deck since right after the Jund version broke out in GP Vancouver because I love shoving blue cards into a good deck and making it a bad deck. Turns out the blue cards were actually good this time, though, lol. I knew the deck had some very serious vulnerabilities, though, and others who played it knew what its weaknesses were as well. It took the meta in general a while to figure that out, though. I remember so many people calling for bans, but they left it and people eventually figured out how to beat it.
No changes was expected, and I think the right call. They shouldn't make any major changes to Modern until we get Modern Horizons. I've always been a firm unban proponent of SFM and Twin, but I want to wait until we see how the format looks after MH1. We all know that they'll never print an equipment on par with Batterskull into Standard, but they might in MH1. So, let's wait and see. Likewise with bans, things that are maybe too powerful right now very well might not be after MH1.
Yep, I'd say you really nailed it on the head. Faithless Looting has been in Modern for forever, and it was never a problem until now. WotC has been printing a bunch of graveyard payoff cards in recent years to make the graveyard a more active part of the game, but not a lot of answers to those things.
What kind of effects could they staple graveyard hate onto to make it main deckable? Maybe something like a card that's a Shock that also exiles a card or two from a graveyard, or a modal card with graveyard hate along with effects that people often want main?
I thought I saw the most recent GDS is now running it while they search for the best way to dig for their limited threats? I saw that on Twitter by at least 2 GDS players on the SCG/GP grind.
If I'm wrong, no worries.
GDS plays like 1, or max 2, copies of Faithless Looting mostly because we're not allowed to play more than 4 Thought Scours. It's a worse Thought Scour for the purposes of powering out a turn 2 Angler, but it does have the added bonus of helping mitigate flood in the late game, which can be a serious problem for GDS.
I would agree Modern should pick one. Either we want card selection to be good and thus card selection should be good in the color whose core is card selection or we dont want card selection to be good in such a case then Looting and to a lesser extent Stirrings should get banned cause Green and Red should not have better card selection then Blue if the color pie matters as much as guys like MARO claim. I am fine either way personally.
I agree. I think it comes down to what you want the games to be like in Modern. If you have good card selection the games will often play out in similar ways, so you have less variety of gameplay, but on the other hand, if you don't have good card selection there are more non-games where one player's deck just doesn't function and he doesn't get to play Magic.
I think I prefer having more card selection. I don't think non-games are good Magic from either side of the table, so I'm ok with losing some variety of gameplay if what we're losing is mostly poor games.
I really hope they don't make any more ban decisions before we get Modern Horizons. That set is probably going to cause some changes in the format, so I'd rather wait and see what happens with that than ban anything right now.
Maro also said on his blog that they had the Play Design team play testing this set in Modern. I'm hoping the overall effect is a small bump in power to some decks, but mostly cards that enable new archetypes.
Daze might be too good in decks like GDS and Phoenix right now, but keep in mind that we're likely to see a systematic upwards shift of the power level of the format with this set, so there's a good chance that it won't be too good when the dust settles.
It'll also make unban discussions more interesting. Pretty much everyone here thinks SFM is already fine, and probably about 40% of us think Twin is fine. The format becoming more powerful almost certainly makes SFM even more ok than she already was. As for Twin, it depends on what a hypothetical Twin shell would get from this set. It'll be interesting to revisit when we see the actual cards.
With GDS pilots starting to figure that out, and UW moving towards Terminus and Oust, the matchup improved. I think it's still very unlikely to be an even matchup, though. If UW moves back towards Verdict, it'll make it bad again.
And it doesn't matter that it doesn't counter creatures. Decks that play Force of Negation are also going to play creature removal. The only deck that makes it really unfortunate that it doesn't counter creatures is Bogles. Otherwise, you have other counter spells and removal for creatures. Force isn't for them, it's for the turn 1 enablers and to let you tap out without dying later.
If this card sees wide adoption by fair decks, it will go a long way towards slowing down the format, and I think that's a good thing. It hits almost every busted turn 1 play that enables so many decks. And it does so while not being something that combo decks will want. Great design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF0_3hFMX-4&list=PL04lbfeNAaS8W-BSi1u7JHHM4YesThl2V
This video is a few years old, but the point still stands. Belcher requires a certain amount of free fast mana to be consistent enough to be a real deck. There is a mono-green version now that's sort of a meme deck because it's capable of very quick kills, but it's inconsistent. Raising the number of free fast mana spells in the format from 8 copies to 12 greatly increases the consistency of this strategy, especially if they end up going with the London Mulligan. There is a very real possibility that adding Chrome Mox to the format makes Belcher consistent enough to be a real player in the meta, and do we really need another turn 1 or 2 deck in Modern? No, we don't.
Even if it's not Belcher specifically, Chrome Mox would absolutely result in the format speeding up, because that's what free fast mana does. We need to go in the opposite direction, so Chrome Mox is a huge no-go for an unbanning.
Phoenix hasn't really been around that long. It took people a while to find that deck, so it's only been putting up results for like 3 months. People will figure out how to beat it. The players who play the deck probably already know what beats it. I remember when people thought GDS was unstoppable back in 2017. I had been playing the deck since right after the Jund version broke out in GP Vancouver because I love shoving blue cards into a good deck and making it a bad deck. Turns out the blue cards were actually good this time, though, lol. I knew the deck had some very serious vulnerabilities, though, and others who played it knew what its weaknesses were as well. It took the meta in general a while to figure that out, though. I remember so many people calling for bans, but they left it and people eventually figured out how to beat it.
What kind of effects could they staple graveyard hate onto to make it main deckable? Maybe something like a card that's a Shock that also exiles a card or two from a graveyard, or a modal card with graveyard hate along with effects that people often want main?
I agree. I think it comes down to what you want the games to be like in Modern. If you have good card selection the games will often play out in similar ways, so you have less variety of gameplay, but on the other hand, if you don't have good card selection there are more non-games where one player's deck just doesn't function and he doesn't get to play Magic.
I think I prefer having more card selection. I don't think non-games are good Magic from either side of the table, so I'm ok with losing some variety of gameplay if what we're losing is mostly poor games.
It'll also make unban discussions more interesting. Pretty much everyone here thinks SFM is already fine, and probably about 40% of us think Twin is fine. The format becoming more powerful almost certainly makes SFM even more ok than she already was. As for Twin, it depends on what a hypothetical Twin shell would get from this set. It'll be interesting to revisit when we see the actual cards.