So what? What do this have to do with GSZ? if you think that DRS is absurd, GSZ is more... because it is also an DRS...
And what the problem with one creature being strong? You compare DRS with noble and birds, yet DRS did not replace neither of them. So... what is the problem?
Statement of current enviroment? Which enviroment is this that BW tokens uses liliana that i don't know?
This is not the current enviroment, it just your opinion...
This argument is weak? Correct me if i'm wrong... but was not YOU the one who said this:
You said "any deck utilizing black", right? Or i'm wrong?
A deck that splashes black is utilizing black, right? Or i'm wrong?
A combo deck that uses black is utilizing black, right? Or i'm wrong?
BW tokens is utilizing black, right? Or i'm wrong?
Yet, none of these utilizes liliana.
So your argument is the one weak, since only a single tier archetype that uses black, uses liliana actively (the GBx shell). No other tier decks that uses black uses liliana (no matter if it a small splash, a combo deck, or a token deck)
So yes, your post is an exaggeration, since there is no enviroment where "any deck utilizing black uses Liliana"
This is what happens when you add a good card into a mediocre deck, what is the problem with that?
GSZ is a spell that is used once. DRS is 3 abilities on 1 creature that is repeatedly used over the course of a game. Are you seriously trying to say that over the course of a game DRS use will not out advantage 1 GSZ activation??
Splashing is not a full utilization that I'm referring to and I'm sorry you couldn't understand the difference between the two. Just because you haven't seen someone utilizing a card and I have doesn't mean it's not viable or in the environment.
Do all 3 still have niche placement yes but DRS is the swiss army knife of many dorks and is preferred if it can be used over birds and noble. Those will accompany DRS if the additions are needed.
You have Rock, Jund, and 4C utilizing her plus any random deck you might run into that wants to take advantage of that power using black for more than a splash. These are 3 of the strongest and no in small part because of her. If that is not prevalence I don't know what is. The other decks are not in those colors so obviously they wouldn't use her. That's rather asinine to state. Even dredgevine is a much better deck because of her.
Going down to 1 bridge is a recipe for disaster with Abrupt and the new RG artifact enchantment destroyer in Theros coming soon. I'd say no less than 2 with 2 Beseech since it can grab other necessary cards. If pod is the most difficult MU then the most sb slots have to dedicated towards it if the aim is to consistently beat it.
Depending on its metashare it may not be worth trying to beat it. If we're talking large tourneys then half your sb could be set up for it. LOTV combined with bridge should be almost enough to hold them at bay. Pithing needle to shutdown pod should be the best total plan. That being said, they only actually have 3 artifact enchantment destruction cards mb right? If they can be forced to exhaust those limited resources on the wrong cards then the lock can hold.
I honestly think beseech or some tutor will be necessary to get what's need to win that MU. Also, has anyone been utilizing sadistic in that MU? That seems like a very good way to help stifle their plan. This is all theory but it seems to be the best overall plan I can come up with having played against the deck and been roundly trounced.
EDIT: I checked a bunch of lists and it seems that they have 4 cards in total between the mb and sb that can blowup our important artifacts and enchantments and only 2 of them can be podded into play. 2 Abrupt 1 Harmonic 1 Qasali
What up? It was kind of quiet in here, so I'm glad to see the activity pick up again. I know people have tried splashes with suboptimal success. My question is what has been the real issue with any splashes you've tried?
If we try to figure out what the real issue is maybe we can mitigate it to make the splash work better than the mono version. I just can't wrap my head around a W or G splash not working when there are on color fetches and duals. Those 2 colors fix all the problems that mono B can't handle.
Maybe the solution is to be mono B mb and then side in the lands and hate cards you want based on your splash. 4 fetches mb with 2 or 3 duals in the sb should be enough for the kind of splash needed. For instance, 4 verdant catacombs, 2-3 overgrown tombs is good enough to support 4-5 green hate cards. Beast within combined with krosan grip should be enough to deal with anything. Another way could be 4 marsh flats and 2-3 Godless shrines. Some number of oblivion rings and some number of instant artifact enchantment hate based on the MU.
@Ness I forgot it went up to 4 and not 3 but that illustrates my point all too well. They "fixed" what they believed was the issue which was the cost to play not the power itself. I feel this is the same with JTMS. People are smart enough to know what's what by now. They could issue 5 drop versions of jace to anyone who has copies or simply require you to check your deck in and change all your 4 drop JTMS for 5 drop token copy at the judges table. It wouldn't be that difficult.
As far as GGT and many other cards on the list, I don't disagree with you at all. They did a Bush II era preemptive strike. Any deck that was top tier in a previous standard with the exception of Jund had a card or cards banned. Jund sucked until liliana and then drs came out. These bans that were supposedly going to make the format healthy led directly to combo PT philly and all the problems we've faced since then. They didn't let the format write itself now we have this mess with too many moving parts that we can't fix.
The reason it won't ever feel like it's right is because of the preemptive bans that didn't allow innovation and play determine what was good, bad, or too strong. The only cards that needed to start out banned were Hyper G, skullclamp, and possibly chrome mox and jitte. Other than that, it should have been the wild west until people figured things out.
They banned Wild Nacatl. If this is their idea of a healthy format, I need to just stop playing. We have dismember in the format. Are they that scared to have an actually good aggro deck that doesn't just fold to combo and midrange decks??
WOTC should run internal tournaments with top and mid level players with cards that are being considered for unbanning or bans. This would be a much better way to tell whether or not these situations are warranted. WOTC playing guesswork just pisses everyone off and using MTGO as the barometer seems to be very suspect since it isn't paper and doesn't always follow the active season.
They already do that to a good extent. They just change the name. Since that's how it has to work these days, since any unbanned card is played "as it's written" on the card. So to make a change in casting cost, they need to reprint a new card with a different name. Even if every other aspect of the card is the same.
I could cite so many examples of this, but I'm sure you can think of plenty on your own.
Obviously planeswalkers are harder to do this with, as they have a lot of independent text, meaning lots of variables. So Jayce would be an exception.
But as to the original statement...Bogle is for some reason one of the 'top decks'(at least according to this forum). And they don't run many/any "best" cards. Usually the strongest individual card is Rancor, which is barely enough to see fringe play in other decks.
There will always be those exception to the rules decks like bogles. One specific instance and this is dating myself is Orcish Oriflame. The card was originally printed at 2 cmc 1 colorless and one R. It ended up being too powerful at the time so they reprinted at 3. If was disseminated that the new cost was 3 and new printings were made as well.
Let's lay out the reasons for bans.
1. The card(s) is/are so powerful it isn't easily defeatable with any strategy main or sb
2. Even if the card(s) is/are defeatable it requires too much effort and forces the choice of said card(s) or deck to win.
3. The card(s) is/are ubiquitous in nature. It shows up in many decks.
4. The card(s) is/are format warping requiring it be played to negate the opponent's play of the card(s).
5. It allows a deck(s) to slow the game too much down damaging tournament play.
6. It breaks a earliest turn win condition in a format as set by WOTC.
The is basically the set of rules that WOTC has been following for their bans. The only one that I have a serious problem with is number 3. I think this will help the discussion onward if we know which rule we are really discussing or having problems with.
It's not a great matchup to be sure, but there are loads of Sideboard action Living End has for Scapeshift.
Most run Brindle Boar or Gnaw to the Bone combined with Mainboard Kitchen Finks or Spike Feeders.
Almost every LE deck runs tons of maindeck Land destruction. I myself run 9 land destruction cards out of my 60 main.
Your best bet against Living End is a Relic of Progenitud. Even so the, the cyclers are like the F1 racer of card draw. So you really need to pop the relic to be really effective.
I will say this once so there is no confusion: GRAFDIGGER'S CAGE does nothing to Living End. Zip, Zero.
On to another topic: Can anyone give me the generally accepted vanilla Titan Scape list?
I believe we discussed Graf's some pages back and I think everyone is well aware that LE exiles so Graf's can't work. That being said, LE is probably a beast against the Titan build with less counters but I don't believe that's the case with the cryptic version.
As far as a vanilla list, you can pretty much grab any list from the dailies that 3-1 or 4-0 or take a list from one of the more recent major top 16 finishes. There aren't a whole lot of differences right now.
Welcome to competitive magic. Good decks play good cards.
Warning for spamming
-ktkenshinx-
I wish you hadn't warned him because what he said is actually more profound than sarcasm. The best decks need to play the best cards and even the worst decks would still need to rely on those same cards. You can't have a format without ubiquitous cards that are overpowered (because things are printed that are found later to be better than realized) or at the right power level. OP cards are banned and cards at equilibrium with the format stay but you will always have ubiquitous cards.
If you aim to ban every ubiquitous (of their choosing mind you) card than like in the case of ponder and preordain, you force people to use less optimal alternatives. This isn't necessarily where you want to be if you want a healthy format that allows for more powerful and creative things to happen.
Banning ubiquitous winds up coming down to WOTC discretion and preference. This is bad since they are subject to huge biases and whether or not a card is new and they want people to buy packs. In the case of DRS I'm sure that's a big reason he wasn't chosen to be banned and they went with a card that had previously caused vitriol in standard in BBE. Let's be honest though, DRS breaks all conventions, allows for 3 color and up decks a crazy amount of advantage and puts anyone playing a non combo deck that can use G or B at a disadvantage for not playing it.
Back in the day, even though it only happened once or twice WOTC changed the CC on cards to make them fair. If they make a mistake why not alter the cost to make it more fair? They could have bumped JTMS up to five to make him more palatable for future sets and Modern legal. Yes, it's not something you want to do often but in certain cases it's better than a ban and healthier in the long run.
GSZ is both a goyf and a DRS... and a Voice of Ressurgence, and Kitchen Finks, and a Gaddok Teg, and a Qasali Pridemage, and...
And DRS is graveyard hate, mana accelerant, direct damage, and a creature that can block and attack with or without equipment. There's a reason Noble and Birds of paradise don't have high toughness, only one ability and no power to attack.
I don't see this "all black use liliana".
No real BW token deck use it, neither pod (it uses black, don't?), neither living end (also uses black). The competitive decks that uses black and uses lili are part of the GB(x) shell, nothing new here.
This argument is weak since Pod's use of black is the most minor splash for cards like seer and abrupt. Plus it's combo is centered around getting it's creatures into play which doesn't allow time to play liliana. There plan is combo or beat down not utilizing planeswalkers.
No, it's suboptimal because Vampire tribal is not a strong shell, even if it had lili.
I never said the shell is amazing but adding liliana would completely change the deck just like it did with Jund. Compare Jund before lili and after and the difference is clear.
These statements about liliana are just exaggerations to make the point about GSZ more valid.
They aren't exaggerations. They are statement of the current environment.
Pod won't run GSZ as Chord does exactly what they want when they want instantaneously. Banning Chord and forcing them to run GSZ would actually slow the deck down and give other decks a better chance since GSZ can't grab redcap or any of the other combo pieces that aren't green.
DRS is currently ubiquitous as well as goyf and they still aren't banned so the GSZ hate by WOTC with that argument falls flat to me.
DRS shoehorns into more decks than GSZ ever did and he's still around. The ubiquitous bans have to stop if it's not breaking the format. There are certain cards that will always be better at what they do and they will be used more often. liliana of the veil goes into any deck utilizing black right now including tokens and is the default card for tier 1 and down decks using black. In modern, it's impossible to play black and not use her. Her abilities are too relevant and force her to be played. GSZ doesn't force you to play it as you can be a fast aggro deck using green and eschew GSZ. Lili doesn't give you that option. Having funeral charm, diabolic edict, and obliterate all on 1 card for 3 mana doesn't allow you not to play it.
I have a vampire deck that I like to play around with because it's fun. However, the deck is automatically suboptimal because it doesn't have lili in it. That is what is ubiquitous, format warping, and homogenizing. I don't actually want her banned but this how WOTC arguments don't make sense.
The other problem with decks like Song Storm that Wotc likes to curb is that they have too much of a 'Game 1 advantage.' They essentially win a 'free' G1 against most other decks, then place the onus on the other deck to side in hate AND draw it in order to stand a chance.
Esoteric combo decks like that are fine, and having a G1 advantage is also fine if you're metagaming to dodge, say, tons of maindeck creature removal. However, this is not cool if your deck ALSO breaks the turn 4 rule a third of the time.
Interactive games are not made when your deck is blisteringly fast and places all the decisions of interactivity on your opponent (to stop you from going off ridiculously fast)
The part about Wotc agreement might be a little bit of a cop-out, but he's still right. Decks that win through spells only and dodge 99 percent of the interactivity of the format shouldn't break the turn 3 rule consistently. This isn't a format with Daze, turn 1 Chalice of the Void (consistently with a Sol land) Force of Will, etc.
The problem with this is that GR tron, Splinter twin and Pod for that matter are the darlings of consistency. If we extend this argument out we'd have to ban most of the top tier decks because they win a lot of game ones just off consistency. I don't believe in all my years of magic have I seen decks that don't heavily rely on pure card draw be so consistent and hard to fight through. Modern more than any format is about hyper consistent decks that do very strong things. If you play a deck that cannot execute its plan with a level of consistency to match those three decks, you can't play in the format.
This is why the argument for card x or y will make it more consistent falls flat because the best decks can't really get more consistent they would have to get faster based on other cards. People are confusing speed and consistency and they aren't the same thing. You have to allow other consistent choices to exist to have a more varied format. Right now, as it stands, Modern is like Legacy in that it has a certain core of decks that ebb and flow and once in a blue moon a new deck props up but usually only for a little while before people are back to the mainstays. When they banned blazing shoal, that was enough to kill that deck and the P&P bans just show that WOTC hasn't learned a damn thing in 20 years since the reserve list decision. You overreact to a crisis and you make an overreaching decision that is hard to correct or reverse. Cooler heads never prevail at WOTC.
1. 'Restricted' cards (one ofs) just aren't really feasible in this format, as the only format with restrictions restricts ridiculously powerful stuff like Demonic Tutor, the Moxen, Mind's Desire, Yawg's Will, etc. There aren't really any modern banned cards that are analagous to that level of power.
2. Restricted cards tend warp the game around who drew their copy / more of their copies of the restricted cards. Jace the Mindsculptor, for instance, allowed in Modern at restricted would create games (Jace deck mirrors in particular) where it was clear that the winner of the game got their Jace and the other player did not.
Your first point is correct in how restriction is approached in Vintage but I find that doesn't hold true for modern and to a certain extent legacy. Drawing a 1 of ponder, preordain, wild nacatl, or any other card with the exception of skullclamp and hypergenesis (and a few other egregious offenders) will mostly likely be dealt with or the opponent wins. I'm fine with this as what's the difference in someone drawing the only out in the deck they have to win? Mirror matches between jund decks often came down to who drew broodmate dragon first or who had the early blightning.
These arguments can extend out past the point of being even reasonable if we say this or other statements about design space. If you prevent a card from existing or played, you're limiting design in the same way if you have it exist. It's a circular argument. I'd much rather take chances with cards existing than not. If they prove to be too powerful then we know what has to happen. However, preemptive banning, banning "ubiquitous cards", and banning things like seething which severely hurts other decks trying to come up and hurting another deck that even if it were T3 win 45% of the time most players wouldn't play because they don't like combo.
Also, I call shenanigans on Bocephus. He hss been writing about how much he's against reprints and in another thread (Modern prices thread if i remember correctly) he stated that he couldn't wait for reprints in Theros.
I don't think that is the issue, it is that this deck can be hosed by a lot of playable cards if people were actually taking it into consideration. Sure, there is always going to be the potential for luck on your side, and some "answers" can be played around, but it does this deck a disservice not to acknowledge it's achilles heel.
I believe we're both saying the same thing but in a different fashion. I think the worst two things this deck can face are Leyline of Sanctity and any deck that can play the value game to a great degree which pod and jund do in spades.
I'd also add that bad MU's don't always equate to losing. Even in a meta of Jund and pod you could still pull out victories. If you're in an 8 round tourney and you have to face jund and pod 4 times you really would only need to win 2 of those 4 games for a good day. It's not completely impossible to even pull 3 wins. This game is based on variance and if it's on your side this or even better could be the result.
People have to get out of the habit of saying well it's a meta deck so there's no chance. There's almost always a way to outplay your opponent, for them to have bad draws, or to be just terribad at magic. If you know you'd face your worst matchup 50% or more then yes reconsidering and even changing your deck is a fair move. I just would be reluctant telling people to be too concerned because your opponent is random and the 2 mentioned decks have both dropped in popularity.
DRS was and is the card that should've been banned. It's 1 drop that can be played in legacy and single handedly brought Jund to the forefront in Modern. I hate cards being banned but BBE has a lot of other applications that weren't yet explored. The fact is every single Modern deck that runs black or green that isn't a normal control deck will try to shoehorn him into their 75.
That fits WOTC definition of a ubiquitous card which is the premise for banning green sun's. Getting a card that can remove spells from the yard, gain you life, take life from your opponent, and accelerate your spells is past acceptable. If this were a 3 drop, I could see the leeway. Unfortunately, we're talking about a 1 drop that can be cast with 2 different colors. DRS is Llanowar Elves on steroids. It's like comparing Superman man to the Flash. Yes, they both can run really fast but Supes can save your planet by himself, moves mountains, change the direction of rivers, and stop intergalactic threats. When something's that powerful, you have no choice but to use it. Only in GSZ's case, it wasn't winning like DRS was with jund which is why I feel GSZ still was an overreaction.
GSZ is a spell that is used once. DRS is 3 abilities on 1 creature that is repeatedly used over the course of a game. Are you seriously trying to say that over the course of a game DRS use will not out advantage 1 GSZ activation??
Splashing is not a full utilization that I'm referring to and I'm sorry you couldn't understand the difference between the two. Just because you haven't seen someone utilizing a card and I have doesn't mean it's not viable or in the environment.
Do all 3 still have niche placement yes but DRS is the swiss army knife of many dorks and is preferred if it can be used over birds and noble. Those will accompany DRS if the additions are needed.
You have Rock, Jund, and 4C utilizing her plus any random deck you might run into that wants to take advantage of that power using black for more than a splash. These are 3 of the strongest and no in small part because of her. If that is not prevalence I don't know what is. The other decks are not in those colors so obviously they wouldn't use her. That's rather asinine to state. Even dredgevine is a much better deck because of her.
Depending on its metashare it may not be worth trying to beat it. If we're talking large tourneys then half your sb could be set up for it. LOTV combined with bridge should be almost enough to hold them at bay. Pithing needle to shutdown pod should be the best total plan. That being said, they only actually have 3 artifact enchantment destruction cards mb right? If they can be forced to exhaust those limited resources on the wrong cards then the lock can hold.
I honestly think beseech or some tutor will be necessary to get what's need to win that MU. Also, has anyone been utilizing sadistic in that MU? That seems like a very good way to help stifle their plan. This is all theory but it seems to be the best overall plan I can come up with having played against the deck and been roundly trounced.
EDIT: I checked a bunch of lists and it seems that they have 4 cards in total between the mb and sb that can blowup our important artifacts and enchantments and only 2 of them can be podded into play. 2 Abrupt 1 Harmonic 1 Qasali
If we try to figure out what the real issue is maybe we can mitigate it to make the splash work better than the mono version. I just can't wrap my head around a W or G splash not working when there are on color fetches and duals. Those 2 colors fix all the problems that mono B can't handle.
Maybe the solution is to be mono B mb and then side in the lands and hate cards you want based on your splash. 4 fetches mb with 2 or 3 duals in the sb should be enough for the kind of splash needed. For instance, 4 verdant catacombs, 2-3 overgrown tombs is good enough to support 4-5 green hate cards. Beast within combined with krosan grip should be enough to deal with anything. Another way could be 4 marsh flats and 2-3 Godless shrines. Some number of oblivion rings and some number of instant artifact enchantment hate based on the MU.
As far as GGT and many other cards on the list, I don't disagree with you at all. They did a Bush II era preemptive strike. Any deck that was top tier in a previous standard with the exception of Jund had a card or cards banned. Jund sucked until liliana and then drs came out. These bans that were supposedly going to make the format healthy led directly to combo PT philly and all the problems we've faced since then. They didn't let the format write itself now we have this mess with too many moving parts that we can't fix.
The reason it won't ever feel like it's right is because of the preemptive bans that didn't allow innovation and play determine what was good, bad, or too strong. The only cards that needed to start out banned were Hyper G, skullclamp, and possibly chrome mox and jitte. Other than that, it should have been the wild west until people figured things out.
They banned Wild Nacatl. If this is their idea of a healthy format, I need to just stop playing. We have dismember in the format. Are they that scared to have an actually good aggro deck that doesn't just fold to combo and midrange decks??
WOTC should run internal tournaments with top and mid level players with cards that are being considered for unbanning or bans. This would be a much better way to tell whether or not these situations are warranted. WOTC playing guesswork just pisses everyone off and using MTGO as the barometer seems to be very suspect since it isn't paper and doesn't always follow the active season.
There will always be those exception to the rules decks like bogles. One specific instance and this is dating myself is Orcish Oriflame. The card was originally printed at 2 cmc 1 colorless and one R. It ended up being too powerful at the time so they reprinted at 3. If was disseminated that the new cost was 3 and new printings were made as well.
Let's lay out the reasons for bans.
1. The card(s) is/are so powerful it isn't easily defeatable with any strategy main or sb
2. Even if the card(s) is/are defeatable it requires too much effort and forces the choice of said card(s) or deck to win.
3. The card(s) is/are ubiquitous in nature. It shows up in many decks.
4. The card(s) is/are format warping requiring it be played to negate the opponent's play of the card(s).
5. It allows a deck(s) to slow the game too much down damaging tournament play.
6. It breaks a earliest turn win condition in a format as set by WOTC.
The is basically the set of rules that WOTC has been following for their bans. The only one that I have a serious problem with is number 3. I think this will help the discussion onward if we know which rule we are really discussing or having problems with.
I believe we discussed Graf's some pages back and I think everyone is well aware that LE exiles so Graf's can't work. That being said, LE is probably a beast against the Titan build with less counters but I don't believe that's the case with the cryptic version.
As far as a vanilla list, you can pretty much grab any list from the dailies that 3-1 or 4-0 or take a list from one of the more recent major top 16 finishes. There aren't a whole lot of differences right now.
I wish you hadn't warned him because what he said is actually more profound than sarcasm. The best decks need to play the best cards and even the worst decks would still need to rely on those same cards. You can't have a format without ubiquitous cards that are overpowered (because things are printed that are found later to be better than realized) or at the right power level. OP cards are banned and cards at equilibrium with the format stay but you will always have ubiquitous cards.
If you aim to ban every ubiquitous (of their choosing mind you) card than like in the case of ponder and preordain, you force people to use less optimal alternatives. This isn't necessarily where you want to be if you want a healthy format that allows for more powerful and creative things to happen.
Banning ubiquitous winds up coming down to WOTC discretion and preference. This is bad since they are subject to huge biases and whether or not a card is new and they want people to buy packs. In the case of DRS I'm sure that's a big reason he wasn't chosen to be banned and they went with a card that had previously caused vitriol in standard in BBE. Let's be honest though, DRS breaks all conventions, allows for 3 color and up decks a crazy amount of advantage and puts anyone playing a non combo deck that can use G or B at a disadvantage for not playing it.
Back in the day, even though it only happened once or twice WOTC changed the CC on cards to make them fair. If they make a mistake why not alter the cost to make it more fair? They could have bumped JTMS up to five to make him more palatable for future sets and Modern legal. Yes, it's not something you want to do often but in certain cases it's better than a ban and healthier in the long run.
They aren't exaggerations. They are statement of the current environment.
DRS is currently ubiquitous as well as goyf and they still aren't banned so the GSZ hate by WOTC with that argument falls flat to me.
DRS shoehorns into more decks than GSZ ever did and he's still around. The ubiquitous bans have to stop if it's not breaking the format. There are certain cards that will always be better at what they do and they will be used more often. liliana of the veil goes into any deck utilizing black right now including tokens and is the default card for tier 1 and down decks using black. In modern, it's impossible to play black and not use her. Her abilities are too relevant and force her to be played. GSZ doesn't force you to play it as you can be a fast aggro deck using green and eschew GSZ. Lili doesn't give you that option. Having funeral charm, diabolic edict, and obliterate all on 1 card for 3 mana doesn't allow you not to play it.
I have a vampire deck that I like to play around with because it's fun. However, the deck is automatically suboptimal because it doesn't have lili in it. That is what is ubiquitous, format warping, and homogenizing. I don't actually want her banned but this how WOTC arguments don't make sense.
The problem with this is that GR tron, Splinter twin and Pod for that matter are the darlings of consistency. If we extend this argument out we'd have to ban most of the top tier decks because they win a lot of game ones just off consistency. I don't believe in all my years of magic have I seen decks that don't heavily rely on pure card draw be so consistent and hard to fight through. Modern more than any format is about hyper consistent decks that do very strong things. If you play a deck that cannot execute its plan with a level of consistency to match those three decks, you can't play in the format.
This is why the argument for card x or y will make it more consistent falls flat because the best decks can't really get more consistent they would have to get faster based on other cards. People are confusing speed and consistency and they aren't the same thing. You have to allow other consistent choices to exist to have a more varied format. Right now, as it stands, Modern is like Legacy in that it has a certain core of decks that ebb and flow and once in a blue moon a new deck props up but usually only for a little while before people are back to the mainstays. When they banned blazing shoal, that was enough to kill that deck and the P&P bans just show that WOTC hasn't learned a damn thing in 20 years since the reserve list decision. You overreact to a crisis and you make an overreaching decision that is hard to correct or reverse. Cooler heads never prevail at WOTC.
Your first point is correct in how restriction is approached in Vintage but I find that doesn't hold true for modern and to a certain extent legacy. Drawing a 1 of ponder, preordain, wild nacatl, or any other card with the exception of skullclamp and hypergenesis (and a few other egregious offenders) will mostly likely be dealt with or the opponent wins. I'm fine with this as what's the difference in someone drawing the only out in the deck they have to win? Mirror matches between jund decks often came down to who drew broodmate dragon first or who had the early blightning.
These arguments can extend out past the point of being even reasonable if we say this or other statements about design space. If you prevent a card from existing or played, you're limiting design in the same way if you have it exist. It's a circular argument. I'd much rather take chances with cards existing than not. If they prove to be too powerful then we know what has to happen. However, preemptive banning, banning "ubiquitous cards", and banning things like seething which severely hurts other decks trying to come up and hurting another deck that even if it were T3 win 45% of the time most players wouldn't play because they don't like combo.
http://www.mulldrifting.com/2013/04/how-metagame-is-gaming-you.html
Also, I call shenanigans on Bocephus. He hss been writing about how much he's against reprints and in another thread (Modern prices thread if i remember correctly) he stated that he couldn't wait for reprints in Theros.
I believe we're both saying the same thing but in a different fashion. I think the worst two things this deck can face are Leyline of Sanctity and any deck that can play the value game to a great degree which pod and jund do in spades.
People have to get out of the habit of saying well it's a meta deck so there's no chance. There's almost always a way to outplay your opponent, for them to have bad draws, or to be just terribad at magic. If you know you'd face your worst matchup 50% or more then yes reconsidering and even changing your deck is a fair move. I just would be reluctant telling people to be too concerned because your opponent is random and the 2 mentioned decks have both dropped in popularity.
That fits WOTC definition of a ubiquitous card which is the premise for banning green sun's. Getting a card that can remove spells from the yard, gain you life, take life from your opponent, and accelerate your spells is past acceptable. If this were a 3 drop, I could see the leeway. Unfortunately, we're talking about a 1 drop that can be cast with 2 different colors. DRS is Llanowar Elves on steroids. It's like comparing Superman man to the Flash. Yes, they both can run really fast but Supes can save your planet by himself, moves mountains, change the direction of rivers, and stop intergalactic threats. When something's that powerful, you have no choice but to use it. Only in GSZ's case, it wasn't winning like DRS was with jund which is why I feel GSZ still was an overreaction.