Brennan claims that Jace will "push all of the tier 2 decks out of the format" and lists "GW valuetown" as an example of one of these decks.
Is this really true? Why is it assumed that something like this will happen? Because Jace beats all other midrange decks?
Hard to say for certain, but the biggest proponent of GW Valuetown (Todd Stevens) at least thinks so. I'm extrapolating his reasoning to, more or less, you need to go over/under Jace or at least have a clean answer to him; none of which GW really does. Keep in mind GW Valuetown doesn't play the Vizier-Druid combo.
Unless Jace ends up being like 40%+ of the format, all this doom and gloom is meaningless. It's no different than any other bad matchup for decks like GW Valuetown. These decks are mediocre, Tier2+ for a reason, and if they're not successful, it's not Jace's fault, but the fact that every other deck in Modern is doing more powerful things.
Brennan claims that Jace will "push all of the tier 2 decks out of the format" and lists "GW valuetown" as an example of one of these decks.
Is this really true? Why is it assumed that something like this will happen? Because Jace beats all other midrange decks?
The decks will evolve, as always happens in Modern. It's not going to make tier 2 decks not exist, it's just going to change what the tier 2 decks are. Yeah, the current version of GW valuetown might cease to exist, but Todd will tweak the list for the new meta. Caleb was playing a deck that was basically GW valuetown, but it was UG instead, running Jace, Nissa steward of elements, mystic snake, and some other sweet simic cards. What was good before Jace might change, but I think there's still going to be a ton of diversity in the format.
To end my side of the arguments today, I'm not calling world is ending or anything close. I hope and think Modern will be at least "fine", I believe it will be more fun to play than recently, since the decks that are expected to get better make for more interesting games.
Jeff Hoogland ran Reid Duke's BBE Jund list he posted to twitter through a league yesterday, and the match he played against a UW Jace control opponent was one of the most fun matches I've ever watched. They were super grindy back-and-forth games. Match is here in case anyone wants to watch!
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Well, guess which whiny dingbat just pulled down SCG Indy with GDS.
I'm sure we'll get another article with more Modern hyperbole, either that he's solved the format and takes it all back, or that the post-unban metagame means that his recent success doesn't mean anything and the format is still dying.
Also, it's crazy that players get better results when they play decent decks. Not like Mono G Devotion at a GP.
Yep, now he will figure his blather is justified with his win and his head will swell as well. I saw a lot of luck on his side in that final game vs. ETron. His opponent drew poorly and mulliganed into poor hands as well while he basically had the nut draw Game one and close to it Game three.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Well, guess which whiny dingbat just pulled down SCG Indy with GDS.
I'm sure we'll get another article with more Modern hyperbole, either that he's solved the format and takes it all back, or that the post-unban metagame means that his recent success doesn't mean anything and the format is still dying.
Also, it's crazy that players get better results when they play decent decks. Not like Mono G Devotion at a GP.
Yep, now he will figure his blather is justified with his win and his head will swell as well. I saw a lot of luck on his side in that final game vs. ETron. His opponent drew poorly and mulliganed into poor hands as well while he basically had the nut draw Game one and close to it Game three.
He also played extremely loose and aggressive, to the point that he would have lost each of the games he won if he had anything other than perfect draws while his opponent bricked. It was insulting seeing him recklessly and carelessly play that deck, and get rewarded with incredible positive variance.
Yep, now he will figure his blather is justified with his win and his head will swell as well. I saw a lot of luck on his side in that final game vs. ETron. His opponent drew poorly and mulliganed into poor hands as well while he basically had the nut draw Game one and close to it Game three.
He also played extremely loose and aggressive, to the point that he would have lost each of the games he won if he had anything other than perfect draws while his opponent bricked. It was insulting seeing him recklessly and carelessly play that deck, and get rewarded with incredible positive variance.
Funny that users here are shredding DeCandio with the very cop-outs they supposedly dislike him for making. Dude's a baby about Modern, but obviously a good player. Some of his aggressive lines payed off on-camera. How is it then reasonable to assume he got through the entire tournament on luck and variance alone? I can understand being frustrated with DeCandio's articles, but not then being so quick to stoop to his level.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
I've never personally said that DeCandio's a bad player, but I do think the fact that they keep letting him write articles about a format he expressly dislikes and doesn't have that much experience in is perhaps an ill-considered move on the part of StarCityGames.
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Well, I can saw a woman in two, but you won't wanna look in the box when I'm through.
Its hard to say he got lucky to get that far. Luck is needed to win any of these huge tournaments
Really don't like the guy, he's going to write an obnoxious article
All I said was that he had good luck in the final game and his opponent did not. But yes it does take a certain amount of luck to make it to the final 8 as well. It takes skill as well. I think the skill aspect gets drowned out by luck or variance quite a bit more than some people think. Many would argue that Todd Stevens is one of the most skilled players on the SCG tour. He didn't make top 8 while some "unknown" 15 year old that owns a single modern deck made it. It takes skill but luck/variance makes some players look better than they really may be.
Frankly his winning actually disproves his stupid point on JTMS anyway. Someone will get lucky/variance enough with enough skill to beat the JTMS card/deck. Heck, Bogles pulled down a GP recently. Its an aspect of the game that I like. Without variance/luck you might as well play Chess.
My contention is that DeCandio is young, cocky and loud-mouthed enough to think that a victory will justify his absurd earlier article and continue on with it. He needs a dose of Humble-Pie.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I'm really confused. Are people using paper tournaments as evidence that blood braid and jace haven't affected the format? They aren't legal in paper until monday...
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Hey guys, I don't have mtgo so I was wondering if anyone has seen a shift in the types of curves for Uxx decks specifically to deal with decks trying to go under Jace. Are we still seeing 4 bolts and 2-4 helix as jeskais removal suite?
Is anyone putting up results with the temur shell with Jace and BBE? If so what decks do you have a difficult time with?
Is anyone still rocking good results with elves/counter company/chord decks against Uxx? I feel like they can get under Jace but hard lose to Jund. Would love some stories from the trenches.
It looks like after reading a bit since last week and watching a handful of streams (between the open and GP) that combo decks that don't rely on creatures as heavily are pretty good with the expected meta shift. Storm and ad Nauseum in particular? I just don't see many counters floating around outside of maybe leak, maybe a couple logic knots.
I'll be playing paper at my LGS tomorrow and I know a few guys will be on Jace. I'll probably just swap to 8 whack or storm until the meta settles in. Just wanted some feedback on the online meta and if those I'd decks are upping the interaction to deal with creature/combo strats really.
DeCandio will be proven wrong over JTMS. Modern will absorb it and continue to be diverse/wide open and thrive until WotC prints something or unbans something to unbalance it from its current state.
Enjoy the format folks, its pretty good right now, not perfect, but pretty good.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
From my limited testing mapccu, Bolts and Helix are looking worse right now, as Tracker, Courser, Goyf, and BBE levels rise. 1 for 1 tools are being left at a disadvantage, and Path seems really poor again.
UWR started to rise again I believe because Push, in other decks of course, was helping to keep down Goyf numbers, as Goyf comes back, with a RUG build for example, Bolt/Helix decks are not going to be able to keep up.
Omg, I just read the DeCandio article, and it's just embarrassing. It comes off like a toddler whining and stomping their feet about everything being unfair.
I've said a few times already, but as I'm grinding out games online, that RUG deck just flat out murdered me. Even the beating you can get from Traverse 4C DS isnt as bad.
BBE, AV, Jace + Scooze + Goyf + Bolt + Tracker, just buried me, and its not like I didnt interact (I was on UWR w/Jace), I just didnt have enough to get the job done, even when I got my own Jace online, I didnt have the pressure needed to make any kind of comeback.
Thats the scary deck to me.
Yeah, the Temur deck is basically built to crush control and other midrange decks. They have a really hard time against combo and big mana, though. I'm not sure the deck is even viable because of how bad those matchups are, even with Jace.
As for the unbans so far, I haven't been playing much Magic recently but I've been watching a ton on streams since the unbans. Here's my hot take: BBE is going to be more impactful than Jace. It's the complete opposite of what I would have thought before the unban. I thought BBE would be played in Jund, and maybe create a Temur deck, but I didn't think it would do much beyond that. Jace I thought would be very good. BBE has been totally nuts in the different shells I've seen people testing it in, while Jace has been really good in some shells at times, but mediocre to bad at other times. It's also reminded me that the shells BBE goes into were just better decks already than the shells Jace goes into. I think there will be a tier 1 Jace deck when the dust settles, but the lower power of the rest of the blue control suite will keep it from being the broken monster people are afraid of Jace creating.
Honestly, most of the existing control shells are bad for Jace because people aren't going in on blue enough. My deck splashes white for Hindering Light and Supreme Verdict and red for Mindswipe. That's it. I don't even run Cryptic, it's too mana greedy for what it does.
I feel like tapout control is the wrong style of deck for Jace. You either want him to tutor up a backbreaker or something cheap and instant that gains advantage in some way.
From my limited testing mapccu, Bolts and Helix are looking worse right now, as Tracker, Courser, Goyf, and BBE levels rise. 1 for 1 tools are being left at a disadvantage, and Path seems really poor again.
UWR started to rise again I believe because Push, in other decks of course, was helping to keep down Goyf numbers, as Goyf comes back, with a RUG build for example, Bolt/Helix decks are not going to be able to keep up.
Bolt and helix also line up poorly to savage knuckleblade, this makes a lot of sense for temur. Also line up very poorly be hollow one decks.
Thanks!
Just trying to be one step ahead of the paper game next week. I have a feeling most of what shows up tomorrow will be heavily skewed to jamming Jace/BBE in existing shells without much tweaking outside of some optimization with changes made on a weekly basis from there once the local crew gets a feel for what they need the decks to do.
Trying to figure out what decks I should invest reps/money into over the next couple of months while the meta adjusts.
My meta is humans lists from pro tour, Reid dukes abzan list from pro tour, jund (now with BBE), dredge, RB hollow one, burn, jeskai and UW control (now with Jace), boggles, tron (varying flavors with eldrazi tron too), elves, eldrazi and taxes, and shadow decks.
I'm leaning towards a RB vampire brew because the madness lines up well with discard and so can outgrow damage based removal. None of the above aside from abzan/humans do particularly well against flying either. Anywho, this helps a bunch. Thanks again.
Ironically, after discussing his great distaste in modern, Brennan DiCandio is currently in the semifinals of the Open today.
He admitted in his post game interview that his distaste for modern came entirely from his lack of success. That entire article was disingenuous in the extreme.
I just don't understand how people can hate Tron so much and clamor for Control. Like I keep saying, Tron is my primary deck. I kinda feel that it is very close to what people are looking for in a Modern control deck. it tries to stall, both try to win off of powerful lands, and both try to win off of just a few backbreaking threats. Every deck tries to make it hard to interact in a way that could stop their game plan. if you aren't doing that, it's not a good deck, period. What is the justification for being eager for a Draw-Go deck that may very well win with just manlands and hating a deck that uses strong lands in another way?
My big thing is that I can't relate to so many ban maniacs because I really only look at speed. I dislike Storm because it is too fast. I disliked Bloom because....well, fast and the Pact win just felt really cheap. I loved life during full power Jund. it was strong as hell, but it wasn't hugely FAST. idk, that's just me.
I'm probably the biggest Draw-Go advocate on this board and I don't feel that Tron needs any sort of ban. I feel like Magic as a game is at its best when one player can get everything together to make their deck work at the expense of the other player. This only becomes a problem when a deck is too good at doing it against the field. Tron doesn't meet that criteria by a long shot.
Week 1 Day 1 of the new paper metagame. We've already had about a week of MTGO unban legality, so this will be the first week where BBE and JTMS are legal across the board. Based on the Modern trajectory from last year, I think it's pretty clear what the metagame is likely to do, and it's pretty obvious what I'm going to predict: the format will absorb both of these cards without much issue. We'll see short-term increases in both BBE and JTMS decks, but these will fold into the general Modern cycle of metagames shifts. We will also see no significant, corresponding uptick in linear decks beyond what we normally saw in pre-unban Modern. This means that big mana, Dredge, Affinity, Bogles, etc. will not exceed their 2017 metagame highs, despite sensationalist claims that these decks will explode to prey on BBE/JTMS decks. By a similar token, we should not see JTMS decks homogenize around any single strategy. We should continue to see a variety of JTMS decks depending on the metagame, just as Grixis, Jeskai, and UW are all viable in different metagames. We'll also see decks like Temur Scapeshift, Temur Midrange, UR Moon/Breach, Miracles, etc. see more legs as they ride off JTMS's power.
Overall, we'll see Modern's diversity continue. We'll be back here in 6/8/12 months defending Modern from naysayers and doomsayers who want 12+ cards banned and have secretly solved the format with some new broken deck that needs immediate banning.
Re: DeCandio
His articles are typically horrible, but he's a good player and I'm sure he's a fine dude in person. The internet just brings out the worst in people, and DeCandio's "worst" just happens to be extremely annoying when it comes to Modern. I don't think a lot of people take his Modern writing very seriously, however, so I think it's mostly a fleeting annoyance and not a lasting problem.
EDIT: I'll also add on DeCandio that he's in the same category of Modern haters that tend to only hate the format when they are doing badly in it. Once they do well, their outlook improves. It's pretty immature but that's the internet for you.
I mean its hard in Modern to 'predict' anything, did anyone predict BR Hollow One? Or this Mardu deck, or whatever else? No, they got tweaked, found out, explored and iterated on.
I just find it hard to believe that Jace by himself, will do anything to empower 1 specific deck, to unheard of (for today's diverse field) meta shares. Its a great card, but its not that great.
I mean its hard in Modern to 'predict' anything, did anyone predict BR Hollow One? Or this Mardu deck, or whatever else? No, they got tweaked, found out, explored and iterated on.
I just find it hard to believe that Jace by himself, will do anything to empower 1 specific deck, to unheard of (for today's diverse field) meta shares. Its a great card, but its not that great.
That is true, we rarely have 1 card single-handedly destroying modern. The Eldrazi winter, our recent worst modern ever saw an influx of cards breaking the format.
Pod was banned exactly because there would be more creatures making it better.
There have been cases where 1 card was just too strong, but these were mostly banned in the beginning. There have also been single cards which were too strong for the format (i.e. Deathrite), but these are extreme exceptions, and I don't think Jace will be one of them.
I fully agree with Ktk, in a year from now, we will probably be looking at a decent format, with different decks, and people hating on the flavor of the month.
I mean its hard in Modern to 'predict' anything, did anyone predict BR Hollow One? Or this Mardu deck, or whatever else? No, they got tweaked, found out, explored and iterated on.
I just find it hard to believe that Jace by himself, will do anything to empower 1 specific deck, to unheard of (for today's diverse field) meta shares. Its a great card, but its not that great.
I agree that it can be hard to predict if any single deck will be particularly strong. Things like Hollow One and Mardu spring out of the woodwork, and although a deep dive MTGO analysis might reveal them, there are still plenty of busts.
That said, predicting overall metagame trends is not impossible. For instance, most people who looked at the macro data over the last year were able to predict no bans, a post-PT unban, and that no single deck would become dominant at any stage of time. This was absolutely not predicted by everyone; many players were predicting the apocalypse at any single event. There are some key metagame indicators that tend to suggest format health, and as long as you read those, you can generally tell if a deck is going off the rails.
Oh sure, high level, where are things going, thats all something that can be tracked over time, thats not the same as releasing Jace, and then we say 'This RUG deck is the nuts draw, it will dominate.'
We're definitely going to see a huge influx of Jace and BBE decks early on as people are trying them out, which will of course lead to some people proclaiming that the sky is falling. After a month or two, the novelty will wear off and they'll both settle into a comfortable spot in the metagame. This is exactly what happened with Death's Shadow, and I think it's the same thing that will happen with Jace and BBE.
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Spirits
Unless Jace ends up being like 40%+ of the format, all this doom and gloom is meaningless. It's no different than any other bad matchup for decks like GW Valuetown. These decks are mediocre, Tier2+ for a reason, and if they're not successful, it's not Jace's fault, but the fact that every other deck in Modern is doing more powerful things.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Jeff Hoogland ran Reid Duke's BBE Jund list he posted to twitter through a league yesterday, and the match he played against a UW Jace control opponent was one of the most fun matches I've ever watched. They were super grindy back-and-forth games. Match is here in case anyone wants to watch!
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Yep, now he will figure his blather is justified with his win and his head will swell as well. I saw a lot of luck on his side in that final game vs. ETron. His opponent drew poorly and mulliganed into poor hands as well while he basically had the nut draw Game one and close to it Game three.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Really don't like the guy, he's going to write an obnoxious article
He also played extremely loose and aggressive, to the point that he would have lost each of the games he won if he had anything other than perfect draws while his opponent bricked. It was insulting seeing him recklessly and carelessly play that deck, and get rewarded with incredible positive variance.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
but gotta give credit where credit is due. the guy is a skilled magic player
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
All I said was that he had good luck in the final game and his opponent did not. But yes it does take a certain amount of luck to make it to the final 8 as well. It takes skill as well. I think the skill aspect gets drowned out by luck or variance quite a bit more than some people think. Many would argue that Todd Stevens is one of the most skilled players on the SCG tour. He didn't make top 8 while some "unknown" 15 year old that owns a single modern deck made it. It takes skill but luck/variance makes some players look better than they really may be.
Frankly his winning actually disproves his stupid point on JTMS anyway. Someone will get lucky/variance enough with enough skill to beat the JTMS card/deck. Heck, Bogles pulled down a GP recently. Its an aspect of the game that I like. Without variance/luck you might as well play Chess.
My contention is that DeCandio is young, cocky and loud-mouthed enough to think that a victory will justify his absurd earlier article and continue on with it. He needs a dose of Humble-Pie.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Spirits
Is anyone putting up results with the temur shell with Jace and BBE? If so what decks do you have a difficult time with?
Is anyone still rocking good results with elves/counter company/chord decks against Uxx? I feel like they can get under Jace but hard lose to Jund. Would love some stories from the trenches.
It looks like after reading a bit since last week and watching a handful of streams (between the open and GP) that combo decks that don't rely on creatures as heavily are pretty good with the expected meta shift. Storm and ad Nauseum in particular? I just don't see many counters floating around outside of maybe leak, maybe a couple logic knots.
I'll be playing paper at my LGS tomorrow and I know a few guys will be on Jace. I'll probably just swap to 8 whack or storm until the meta settles in. Just wanted some feedback on the online meta and if those I'd decks are upping the interaction to deal with creature/combo strats really.
DeCandio will be proven wrong over JTMS. Modern will absorb it and continue to be diverse/wide open and thrive until WotC prints something or unbans something to unbalance it from its current state.
Enjoy the format folks, its pretty good right now, not perfect, but pretty good.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
UWR started to rise again I believe because Push, in other decks of course, was helping to keep down Goyf numbers, as Goyf comes back, with a RUG build for example, Bolt/Helix decks are not going to be able to keep up.
Spirits
Honestly, most of the existing control shells are bad for Jace because people aren't going in on blue enough. My deck splashes white for Hindering Light and Supreme Verdict and red for Mindswipe. That's it. I don't even run Cryptic, it's too mana greedy for what it does.
I feel like tapout control is the wrong style of deck for Jace. You either want him to tutor up a backbreaker or something cheap and instant that gains advantage in some way.
Bolt and helix also line up poorly to savage knuckleblade, this makes a lot of sense for temur. Also line up very poorly be hollow one decks.
Thanks!
Just trying to be one step ahead of the paper game next week. I have a feeling most of what shows up tomorrow will be heavily skewed to jamming Jace/BBE in existing shells without much tweaking outside of some optimization with changes made on a weekly basis from there once the local crew gets a feel for what they need the decks to do.
Trying to figure out what decks I should invest reps/money into over the next couple of months while the meta adjusts.
My meta is humans lists from pro tour, Reid dukes abzan list from pro tour, jund (now with BBE), dredge, RB hollow one, burn, jeskai and UW control (now with Jace), boggles, tron (varying flavors with eldrazi tron too), elves, eldrazi and taxes, and shadow decks.
I'm leaning towards a RB vampire brew because the madness lines up well with discard and so can outgrow damage based removal. None of the above aside from abzan/humans do particularly well against flying either. Anywho, this helps a bunch. Thanks again.
He admitted in his post game interview that his distaste for modern came entirely from his lack of success. That entire article was disingenuous in the extreme.
I'm probably the biggest Draw-Go advocate on this board and I don't feel that Tron needs any sort of ban. I feel like Magic as a game is at its best when one player can get everything together to make their deck work at the expense of the other player. This only becomes a problem when a deck is too good at doing it against the field. Tron doesn't meet that criteria by a long shot.
Overall, we'll see Modern's diversity continue. We'll be back here in 6/8/12 months defending Modern from naysayers and doomsayers who want 12+ cards banned and have secretly solved the format with some new broken deck that needs immediate banning.
Re: DeCandio
His articles are typically horrible, but he's a good player and I'm sure he's a fine dude in person. The internet just brings out the worst in people, and DeCandio's "worst" just happens to be extremely annoying when it comes to Modern. I don't think a lot of people take his Modern writing very seriously, however, so I think it's mostly a fleeting annoyance and not a lasting problem.
EDIT: I'll also add on DeCandio that he's in the same category of Modern haters that tend to only hate the format when they are doing badly in it. Once they do well, their outlook improves. It's pretty immature but that's the internet for you.
I just find it hard to believe that Jace by himself, will do anything to empower 1 specific deck, to unheard of (for today's diverse field) meta shares. Its a great card, but its not that great.
Spirits
Pod was banned exactly because there would be more creatures making it better.
There have been cases where 1 card was just too strong, but these were mostly banned in the beginning. There have also been single cards which were too strong for the format (i.e. Deathrite), but these are extreme exceptions, and I don't think Jace will be one of them.
I fully agree with Ktk, in a year from now, we will probably be looking at a decent format, with different decks, and people hating on the flavor of the month.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
I agree that it can be hard to predict if any single deck will be particularly strong. Things like Hollow One and Mardu spring out of the woodwork, and although a deep dive MTGO analysis might reveal them, there are still plenty of busts.
That said, predicting overall metagame trends is not impossible. For instance, most people who looked at the macro data over the last year were able to predict no bans, a post-PT unban, and that no single deck would become dominant at any stage of time. This was absolutely not predicted by everyone; many players were predicting the apocalypse at any single event. There are some key metagame indicators that tend to suggest format health, and as long as you read those, you can generally tell if a deck is going off the rails.
I just dont think thats going to happen.
Spirits
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW