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.
I don't wholly disagree but shadows "place" has been very competitive. It didn't settle, it displaced.
The meta is a 100% pie, whose slices see slight flux from time to time. You could certainly argue that shadow evolved from the jund/abzan/twin piece of the meta (lots of card overlap, fetch base already acquired by the players, interactive game plan in turns 1-3 followed by a clock fits the play style) and I wouldn't refute it. My concern is that Jace and BBE bring enough to the table where introducing a new archetype could be a thing - and consequently what it pulls meta share from. Kind of like BR hollow one or humans, which were still ironing out the impact of.
What I don't want to happen, and I don't think it'll be this extreme, is for the meta to shift when eldrazi came around and then have to correct itself afterwards. "Eldrazi winter" threw the meta in flux for months during legality, and even afterwards had lasting impacts as decks adjusted to force the linear strata back into place. Jace isn't as bad as eye of Ugin imho, but I'm skeptical of a 1-2 month adjustment period. That's just compounded by the issue of supply as well as the rest of what's in masters 25. These are big unknowns.
Valid concern, and something I saw noted by a few pros. Even if we can handle these cards, as a format, will the resulting decks leave us in a better or worse state, not just because of Jace/BBE, but in general.
I think we likely will be, if my own experience is anything close to the average.
We will see grindy decks, a demand for interaction in the first few turns (paths, bolts, iok, counters) or disruption in the form of Thalia, Field of Ruin, or, you will need to have a serious clock, or consistency in your combo, to stick around.
"Tron is criminally underplayed"
"Mardu is the best deck in Modern nobody plays."
"JDS, no GDS, no 4C Traverse JDS with Stubborn...is a Legacy Deck in Modern"
Yet nothing is like the Eldrazi decks that overran the format, and nobody is out there in the 'talking head' space of forums, blogs, sites, and Twitter, saying 'This Jace deck is the truth, and you better get on board now.'
Its various pro's saying it will or will not be good, will or will not lower diversity, will or will not spawn new decks.
If people can tell me right now what the best Jace deck is going to be in 4 months, I'd be shocked if they were right, and that deck was overwhelmingly 'tier 1', whatever that still means.
And DeCandio won the entire event. Curious to see whether his next article is gonna be about how great Modern is right now.
I'm sure he'll say something self-deprecating about how he was wrong and was just bitter that he wasn't winning events. He tends to backtrack after particularly egregious articles. Like I said earlier, he's not a bad player and he's probably not a bad guy. He just gives into major hyperbole and succumbs to the immaturity of the internet a lot. See his most recent comments in his most recent article, which were laughably immature.
It's just easier for authors on major sites to write outrageous articles and make sensationalist claims than it is to be measured and analytic. For the most part, people re-post and click on the outrageous stuff. It's more interesting to read doomsaying than it is to read 12 months in a row of "Modern is fine, stop worrying." Also, if an outrageous claim is wrong, no one remembers you for it because pros/authors make them so regularly. But if you are right and get one correct outrageous claim out of 50 made, you can pick up major "internet right points" for getting that one. On top of that, it takes very little research, work, and/or time to make an outrageous claim. It takes much more to research, analyze, and test to promote something more measured. All of this incentivizes many authors/pros to be sensationalist instead of reasonable.
And DeCandio won the entire event. Curious to see whether his next article is gonna be about how great Modern is right now.
He'll be talking all about his sick plays. Because putting yourself to 7 without a Shadow in hand is always a good idea. Even Overturf commented tongue-in-cheek a number of times about the "skill" it took for him to "decide to draw" the perfect card at the perfect time throughout the match. He played SUPER loose and lucked into amazing draws. Will be interesting to see how he writes about it.
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.
It's good to see you haven't lost your taste for hyperbole. Not doom and gloom to say a single deck will be negatively impacted by the introduction of a new card. I wouldn't be the first to posit that Jace allows Uxx midrange to outvalue other midrange decks, so theoretically some midrange share (we can call them "less powerful" decks if it makes you feel better) coalesces around Uxx. If those are the decks GW Valuetown beats, that's going to hurt that particular deck.
Notice, there is no value judgement on my part. I'm simply taking a guess at Todd and Brennan's analysis of the impact of Jace on GW Valuetown (and likely similar midrange decks like Abzan).
Neither will I -- that's the nature of a revolving Modern meta. Rough for those with pet decks, but for the rest of us it's only worth pondering for the cascade effect on the meta. Pun intended, of course.
And DeCandio won the entire event. Curious to see whether his next article is gonna be about how great Modern is right now.
He'll be talking all about his sick plays. Because putting yourself to 7 without a Shadow in hand is always a good idea. Even Overturf commented tongue-in-cheek a number of times about the "skill" it took for him to "decide to draw" the perfect card at the perfect time throughout the match. He played SUPER loose and lucked into amazing draws. Will be interesting to see how he writes about it.
Or maybe he actually understood the deck well and played to his outs and roles in matchups, I'm not sure which ones he was putting himself to 7 without a death's shadow against but from what I saw he played the deck aggresively because he needed to in those matchups. If he waits around against eldrazi tron the deck is going to go over the top of him, its what a tron deck does, especially when it plays walking ballista. Not enough players play to their outs or game plan, if your deck can't win a matchup realistically without a quick large deaths shadow, you should aggresively play for it more often than not even if you don't have it in your opening hand, the deck has a lot of card draw.
And DeCandio won the entire event. Curious to see whether his next article is gonna be about how great Modern is right now.
He'll be talking all about his sick plays. Because putting yourself to 7 without a Shadow in hand is always a good idea. Even Overturf commented tongue-in-cheek a number of times about the "skill" it took for him to "decide to draw" the perfect card at the perfect time throughout the match. He played SUPER loose and lucked into amazing draws. Will be interesting to see how he writes about it.
Or maybe he actually understood the deck well and played to his outs and roles in matchups, I'm not sure which ones he was putting himself to 7 without a death's shadow against but from what I saw he played the deck aggresively because he needed to in those matchups. If he waits around against eldrazi tron the deck is going to go over the top of him, its what a tron deck does, especially when it plays walking ballista. Not enough players play to their outs or game plan, if your deck can't win a matchup realistically without a quick large deaths shadow, you should aggresively play for it more often than not even if you don't have it in your opening hand, the deck has a lot of card draw.
Considering this is the same guy that brought a green stompy deck to his last event and writes extremely questionable articles about Modern, that's giving him quite a lot of credit. It was already told to us that someone who knew Modern much better than he did gave him that deck to play and likely gave him a brief rundown. So if his mantra was "play loose and hope for the best," then sure, he took a huge risk and got paid off with extremely good variance luck. There are a lot of Modern decks that benefit from these kinds of play lines. Sometimes they get horribly punished, and sometimes they win big tournaments.
And DeCandio won the entire event. Curious to see whether his next article is gonna be about how great Modern is right now.
He'll be talking all about his sick plays. Because putting yourself to 7 without a Shadow in hand is always a good idea. Even Overturf commented tongue-in-cheek a number of times about the "skill" it took for him to "decide to draw" the perfect card at the perfect time throughout the match. He played SUPER loose and lucked into amazing draws. Will be interesting to see how he writes about it.
Or maybe he actually understood the deck well and played to his outs and roles in matchups, I'm not sure which ones he was putting himself to 7 without a death's shadow against but from what I saw he played the deck aggresively because he needed to in those matchups. If he waits around against eldrazi tron the deck is going to go over the top of him, its what a tron deck does, especially when it plays walking ballista. Not enough players play to their outs or game plan, if your deck can't win a matchup realistically without a quick large deaths shadow, you should aggresively play for it more often than not even if you don't have it in your opening hand, the deck has a lot of card draw.
Considering this is the same guy that brought a green stompy deck to his last event and writes extremely questionable articles about Modern, that's giving him quite a lot of credit. It was already told to us that someone who knew Modern much better than he did gave him that deck to play and likely gave him a brief rundown. So if his mantra was "play loose and hope for the best," then sure, he took a huge risk and got paid off with extremely good variance luck. There are a lot of Modern decks that benefit from these kinds of play lines. Sometimes they get horribly punished, and sometimes they win big tournaments.
The fact that he played a bad mono green devotion deck or that I generally really don’t respect his opinion on the format doesn’t change the fact that in a lot of matchups where you’re not at risk of being burned out it’s usually correct to put yourself into decently sized shadow range as your fetches are a limited resource that you can’t pay more life for after the fact when you top deck a deaths shadow at 12 life. It’s not about playing loose and hoping to top deck, it’s simply how the deck plays and it’s usually going to be correct to optimize your future draws.
RG Eldrazi is a faster deck with more low-to-the-ground creatures and more/better interaction than Eldrazi Tron. It can handle aggressive creature decks better which E-tron and Gx Tron struggle with. Access to better sideboard cards due to having access to red and green. 8 Haste creatures and particularly with Obligator's ability is really strong against a Jace, whereas E-tron only gets 4 Smashers. On the flipside, without having access to Tron to play Karns and Walking Ballistas, Ulamog, etc, RG lacks the topend/lategame power of the other 2 decks and can fall behind in longer games.
The meta is a 100% pie, whose slices see slight flux from time to time. You could certainly argue that shadow evolved from the jund/abzan/twin piece of the meta (lots of card overlap, fetch base already acquired by the players, interactive game plan in turns 1-3 followed by a clock fits the play style) and I wouldn't refute it. My concern is that Jace and BBE bring enough to the table where introducing a new archetype could be a thing - and consequently what it pulls meta share from. Kind of like BR hollow one or humans, which were still ironing out the impact of.
What I don't want to happen, and I don't think it'll be this extreme, is for the meta to shift when eldrazi came around and then have to correct itself afterwards. "Eldrazi winter" threw the meta in flux for months during legality, and even afterwards had lasting impacts as decks adjusted to force the linear strata back into place. Jace isn't as bad as eye of Ugin imho, but I'm skeptical of a 1-2 month adjustment period. That's just compounded by the issue of supply as well as the rest of what's in masters 25. These are big unknowns.
So here's the difference between Shadow (and what I think Jace/BBE will do) and Eldrazi. Yes, Shadow changed Modern. Some decks that were good before Shadow were not as good after. At the same time, however, some decks that were not good before Shadow became good. We didn't really see an increase or decrease in the sheer quantity of viable decks, we just saw a shifting of what those decks actually were. With Eldrazi, on the other hand, we saw a HUGE decrease in viable decks. You basically played Eldrazi or Affinity if you wanted to win anything.
I believe Jace and BBE will result in the former example. Tier 1 probably won't change much at all besides maybe Jund coming back into tier 1 and the best of the Jace control decks maybe making it to tier 1. Tier 2 might see a shake-up, but I don't think the number of viable decks will decrease, it's just going to be different decks. This kind of change is completely fine to me. As long as we have a diversity of viable decks and a diversity of viable strategies, it doesn't really matter if it's these 20 decks or those 20 decks.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern 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
As long as we have a diversity of viable decks and a diversity of viable strategies, it doesn't really matter if it's these 20 decks or those 20 decks.
Are you not the same guy who essentially dismissed every viable blue deck in 2016 as "not Twin enough?"
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.
A top 32 could be less interactive as Tron and Dredge players prepare to meta
Have you seen these decks 75? They're skimping on grave hate and that's so reckless to do outside of an FNM
This was happening anyway before the unbans. The unbans don't change the fact that linear decks are going to be well-positioned in certain metagames. Throughout 2017 we saw periods where linear decks were better-positioned than non-linear decks, and I fully expect this to continue into 2018. These decks shouldn't be any better positioned at any single period of time, and there shouldn't be more periods where they are better-positioned. We'll just see a repeat of the 2017 metagame cycle but with BBE and JTMS added.
I don't know why people keep mentioning linear upswings as a bad thing in Modern. That's part and parcel to the massive diversity in the format. If you don't want that diversity and just want to play various shades of interactive (read: blue) decks, that's Legacy. If you want an "anything goes" metagame where you can play anything, that's Modern. Wizards made this extremely clear over the last 8 months or so. I feel there are players (not saying this is you, spiegel) who just want Modern to be Legacy. It's not going to happen so I don't know why we keep having to rehash it. Look at the period from about July 2017 through February 2018. That is what Wizards considers a healthy Modern metagame. They even said this explicitly! If one doesn't like that metagame, one needs to play a different format. That means if one doesn't like the level of linearity in that period, one must either accept it and move on or just move on to playing something else.
I'm not trying to shut down Modern criticism here. There are some legitimate criticisms we can make about the format because a healthy format is not a perfect format. But there is a pervasive suggestion that any metagame with Tron/Affinity/Dredge/SSG/Goryo's/Valakut/Eldrazi/etc. is too linear and unhealthy. This suggestion is borne out of personal biases and beliefs. It is not in dialogue with Wizards' stated goals for the format or Wizards' treatment of the format. This isn't "build your own Modern to fit your own desires." This is the Modern we have and the Modern we are going to have. And it's a fun, healthy, and exciting Modern where I can play Deck X, you can play Deck Y, and someone else can play Deck Z. No one color or card is dominant, no one gameplay style is best.
I think that certain cards constantly repeat themselves across decks and there is a serious lack of powerful white cards and white win conditions in modern.
It would be very helpful if we could have a statistics for every single card ever printed that state the following:
- ratio of (sum of all the cards of the same name (e.g. all the Serum Visions) that were played during a given season of modern play) and (sum of all the cards of the same color (all the blue cards) that saw play within that same modern season across all decks that utilized the same color) (e.g. blue). Example: ratio of all cards named Serum Vision during last modern season and all the purely blue cards that saw play within that same season
I guess the Wizards have a such a statistic but its for their internal use. If they don't I really recommend they should make one.
The first problem I see in modern is with the blue color. Usually, when I see a multicolored deck that has blue color in it, blue color will be the most represented one and within that blue color there will usually be the same cards that constantly repeat themselves across various archtypes; those are ofcourse the cantrips: Serum Visions, Sleight of hand, (Opt will surely be here as well) and some others too like: Thoughtscour, Remand etc. You can see this happen in grixis delver, jeskai delver, temur delver, UG delver, grixis control, jeskai control, UW control, UW tempo, Esper control, temur aggro...
Don't get me wrong. I like cantrips, I like drawing cards. That is because I like all the mechanisms of this fascinating game. I like its diversity. That is why I think these blue cards are narrowing the diversity of other playable blue cards but also the representation of other colors in vast number of decks.
Ofcourse, the most obvious card with that problem is the Lightning bolt, the card that is most played card ever. The rhetorical question is: If you play red color, why aren't you playing a playset of lightning bolts in it? Even further, if you have an almost finished deck, could it be better with 4 lightning bolts in it? If yes, the rhetorical question is: why don't you? Grixis delver and temur delver decks splash red color sometimes just because of lightning bolt. One obvious thing to mention and emphasize is: Lightning bolt is a win condition.
Now, let's look at the white color: there, the only powerful card that constanly pops up in various decks that utilize white color is Path to exile. And it is not a win condition.
When you look at the mechanism and traits the colors use: the greatest diversity there is is among green and black color while the blue color holds control over the most important mechanism that are the heart of the game and those are casting of the spell (rather NOT) and card draw.
White: exile creatures, taxation, others Path to exileThalia, guardian of thraben, Leonin arbiter , Puresteel paladin, Soul's attendant, Soul Warden, Martyr of sands, Lingering souls, Kor spirit dancer, Daybreak coronet, Selfless spirit. What powerful mechanism was white color gifted with? It has the most powerful sideboard hate but sideboard hate is not a win condition. It's a poor strategy to lose the first game so that you can use your powerful sideboard. Being splashed into a deck because of sideboard and not mineboard just proves how white color is secondary to any other. Puresteel paladin is not a win condition per se, it is a combo peace; a win condition in a puresteel paladin combo deck is usually Grapeshot which is a red burn spell or, rarely, Monastery mentor which is white. Soul Sisters and MartyProc decks were never tier 1 as far as I know. These 2 decks aren't played that much even in current metagame with no deck clearly dominating all the others. Life gaining effect is not a trait exclusive to white color. Black and green also have life-gaining effects. And altough life gaining effects would be mostly asociated with white color, I guess Wizards don't want to create cheap and powerful life-gaining cards because players would play such white cards more often and the there would be a shift of win-conditions from decreasing opponent's life to milling him or her, prolonging the games indefinetly. Personally, I would prefer that a few more decks like these exist. Losing life is the most common way of losing the game. Gaining life is a defensive measure, one mostly attributed to white color but unfortunately the Wizards keep this trait very low.
Vigilance is a rare trait that belongs solely to white color but it is basically a defensive trait and not an offesive one
I guess the main problem of white color in modern was made when colors were constructed. When one regards damage dealing capabilities:
1.Red: (direct burn, small haste creatures, P/T ration in favor of power)
2.Green: mana acceleration landing huge creatures early, trample
3.White: both small and big creatures
4.Black: both small and big creatures
5.Blue: creatures, P/T ratio in favor of toughness
Regarding control:
5.Green: almost none,
4. Red: direct creature burn, small board wipes
3.White: creature exile, creature destruction, mass-board wipe
2.Black: opponent discard, creature destruction, mass board-wipe
1.Blue: counter spell,
White is in the middle of everything. The sentence: „Jack of all trades but master of none“ unfortunately applies to it very well. It's not the master of aggro nor control but it seems to me that it's not even good in the middle, it's not even jack of all trades. It's a sink in the middle of everything.
There are many similarities between white color and black color and a few reasons why white color is in the shadow of the black. Black color does all the things that white color does, is better at control and is equally fast if not faster then white. Black and white have same mass sweepers (Damnation/Wrath of God; take a look at the difference of price in those to colors just to see how much more often Damnation is played or needed). Black recently got Bontu's last reckoning and white got Settle the wreckage. Regarding single target removals: white has Path to Exile while Black has: Fatal Push, Doom blade, Go for the throat, Vendetta, Murderous Cut, Ultimate price. Black has lifegaining effects and tokens just like white. But black also has access to powerful discard mechanisms which white doesn't. By that logic and and a given aggro-control continuoum that I layed out beforehand white color should be somewhat faster then black. But that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact: Goryo's vengenance breaks the pattern of speed: when combined with right cards it makes an explosively fast deck and there is no instance of white cards or combos able to do the same except for Puresteel paladin combo recently. Also, equipment storm deck was never able to kill on turn 1 like grixis reanimator could.
Let's return to blue color and its cantrips. Looking at the aggro continuoum: red is the fastest (aggro), blue should be the slowest (control), so if white is in the middle it should be tempo. But that is not the case. Tempo is usually associated with cantrips that belong to blue color. I argue that blue color simbolicaly stole the cantrips from white color. White color should be filled with one mana cantrips and not the blue color. I guess this is a remnant of the past when color paradigm was made at the inception of the game. This is way in modern mainboards there is na overpresence of blue cantrips and consequently blue color in certain decks in general and also underpresence of white color.
Except a few white planeswalkers, white color lacks emblamatic win conditions. Red has bolt, green has tarmogoyf, blue has snapcaster mage, black is a bit dispersed (sahdow, gurmag, griselbrand). On a side note, Black had powerful planeswalkers even before white (Liliana of the veil, liliana, the last hope. Path to exile is emblamatic but is not a win condition.
I articulated the problem, so I must offer a solution as well. Here are my suggestions and food for thought for:
1.To gradually introduce to modern play cheap (one mana) white cantrips.
2.Cheap single-target instant removals akin to Path to exile, Fatal push, Doomblade should be added to white color cardpool.
3.An introduction of small white creatures that are very troublesome under certain conditions.
4.Mana acceleration could be added to white color but in a weaker form than the one that green possess. Paying life for gaining mana could be added as activated ability to a specific white creature.
5.There is no need of looking at paying life for drawing cards as a necromantic or demonic deed (Griselbrand, Yawgmoth's bargain, Dark confidant, Phyrexian Arena). Sacrificing life to gain valuable insight can be a noble thing.
6.Angels and all the divine folk can be lofty and untroubled in their skies but one can say that their retribution is final and they easily become judgemental. That can be used as a mechanism and a flavor and a mechanism. If an opponent somehow damages the white player (reduces his or hers life total, destroys his creature, makes him or her discard cards), there are white cards that make swift and even greater damage back.
7.Following the divine theme, modern white card pool could be enchanced by some uncounterable cards.
Thank you for your time. Merged with State of the Meta. -- CavalryWolfPack
As long as we have a diversity of viable decks and a diversity of viable strategies, it doesn't really matter if it's these 20 decks or those 20 decks.
Are you not the same guy who essentially dismissed every viable blue deck in 2016 as "not Twin enough?"
I dismissed every blue deck in 2016 (outside of those couple months where Jeskai Nahiri was good) as not good, which they weren't. It wasn't about it being "Twin" enough, it was about having a legit tier 1 power-level blue deck to play after they banned the only one.
It wasn't until Grixis Shadow showed up that we had a legit tier 1 blue deck, and it's presence alone made other blue decks better, in the same way that Twin used to.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern 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
As long as we have a diversity of viable decks and a diversity of viable strategies, it doesn't really matter if it's these 20 decks or those 20 decks.
Are you not the same guy who essentially dismissed every viable blue deck in 2016 as "not Twin enough?"
What were all these "viable" blue decks in 2016???
Nothing of the sort even remotely existed until 2017 when a black deck (Shadow) started running cantrips and Snapcasters, and then later Jeskai went from totally awful to sort of OK.
A top 32 could be less interactive as Tron and Dredge players prepare to meta
Have you seen these decks 75? They're skimping on grave hate and that's so reckless to do outside of an FNM
This was happening anyway before the unbans. The unbans don't change the fact that linear decks are going to be well-positioned in certain metagames. Throughout 2017 we saw periods where linear decks were better-positioned than non-linear decks, and I fully expect this to continue into 2018. These decks shouldn't be any better positioned at any single period of time, and there shouldn't be more periods where they are better-positioned. We'll just see a repeat of the 2017 metagame cycle but with BBE and JTMS added.
I don't know why people keep mentioning linear upswings as a bad thing in Modern. That's part and parcel to the massive diversity in the format. If you don't want that diversity and just want to play various shades of interactive (read: blue) decks, that's Legacy. If you want an "anything goes" metagame where you can play anything, that's Modern. Wizards made this extremely clear over the last 8 months or so. I feel there are players (not saying this is you, spiegel) who just want Modern to be Legacy. It's not going to happen so I don't know why we keep having to rehash it. Look at the period from about July 2017 through February 2018. That is what Wizards considers a healthy Modern metagame. They even said this explicitly! If one doesn't like that metagame, one needs to play a different format. That means if one doesn't like the level of linearity in that period, one must either accept it and move on or just move on to playing something else.
I'm not trying to shut down Modern criticism here. There are some legitimate criticisms we can make about the format because a healthy format is not a perfect format. But there is a pervasive suggestion that any metagame with Tron/Affinity/Dredge/SSG/Goryo's/Valakut/Eldrazi/etc. is too linear and unhealthy. This suggestion is borne out of personal biases and beliefs. It is not in dialogue with Wizards' stated goals for the format or Wizards' treatment of the format. This isn't "build your own Modern to fit your own desires." This is the Modern we have and the Modern we are going to have. And it's a fun, healthy, and exciting Modern where I can play Deck X, you can play Deck Y, and someone else can play Deck Z. No one color or card is dominant, no one gameplay style is best.
This wasn't a complaint or criticism by me, it was just a meta prediction. Meta's cycle.
I just mean that there's going to be a larger than normal influx of interactive decks soft to things like Tron or Dredge that will get meta'd hard. People will adjust.
The revisionist history of 'viable blue' is...funny. Someone at one point argued that Bant Eldrazi was a blue deck...
Either way, people can play whatever these days and 5-0, so...just play. :]
I remember those days... *shutter*.
I honestly am really excited about Jace in the format. I hope it does what Twin used to without skewing the meta to an absurd degree (decks that use jace, decks that do not use jace, and those decks used to meta game).
So far the variation in decks is exciting. There appears to be a wider-range of blue based decks now than prior to the unban, but it's still too early to tell. It also looks like creature based strategies embracing BBE are making a come-back.
Difficult to tell the complete state of the meta without any official paper events yet though.
I don't wholly disagree but shadows "place" has been very competitive. It didn't settle, it displaced.
The meta is a 100% pie, whose slices see slight flux from time to time. You could certainly argue that shadow evolved from the jund/abzan/twin piece of the meta (lots of card overlap, fetch base already acquired by the players, interactive game plan in turns 1-3 followed by a clock fits the play style) and I wouldn't refute it. My concern is that Jace and BBE bring enough to the table where introducing a new archetype could be a thing - and consequently what it pulls meta share from. Kind of like BR hollow one or humans, which were still ironing out the impact of.
What I don't want to happen, and I don't think it'll be this extreme, is for the meta to shift when eldrazi came around and then have to correct itself afterwards. "Eldrazi winter" threw the meta in flux for months during legality, and even afterwards had lasting impacts as decks adjusted to force the linear strata back into place. Jace isn't as bad as eye of Ugin imho, but I'm skeptical of a 1-2 month adjustment period. That's just compounded by the issue of supply as well as the rest of what's in masters 25. These are big unknowns.
I think we likely will be, if my own experience is anything close to the average.
We will see grindy decks, a demand for interaction in the first few turns (paths, bolts, iok, counters) or disruption in the form of Thalia, Field of Ruin, or, you will need to have a serious clock, or consistency in your combo, to stick around.
I don't think that sounds bad at all.
Spirits
"Tron is criminally underplayed"
"Mardu is the best deck in Modern nobody plays."
"JDS, no GDS, no 4C Traverse JDS with Stubborn...is a Legacy Deck in Modern"
Yet nothing is like the Eldrazi decks that overran the format, and nobody is out there in the 'talking head' space of forums, blogs, sites, and Twitter, saying 'This Jace deck is the truth, and you better get on board now.'
Its various pro's saying it will or will not be good, will or will not lower diversity, will or will not spawn new decks.
If people can tell me right now what the best Jace deck is going to be in 4 months, I'd be shocked if they were right, and that deck was overwhelmingly 'tier 1', whatever that still means.
EDIT:
SCG Top 32 from the Open btw.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=28&start_date=02/17/2018&end_date=02/17/2018&start=1&finish=32&event_ID=47&city=Indianapolis&state=IN&start_num=0
Spirits
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
I'm sure he'll say something self-deprecating about how he was wrong and was just bitter that he wasn't winning events. He tends to backtrack after particularly egregious articles. Like I said earlier, he's not a bad player and he's probably not a bad guy. He just gives into major hyperbole and succumbs to the immaturity of the internet a lot. See his most recent comments in his most recent article, which were laughably immature.
It's just easier for authors on major sites to write outrageous articles and make sensationalist claims than it is to be measured and analytic. For the most part, people re-post and click on the outrageous stuff. It's more interesting to read doomsaying than it is to read 12 months in a row of "Modern is fine, stop worrying." Also, if an outrageous claim is wrong, no one remembers you for it because pros/authors make them so regularly. But if you are right and get one correct outrageous claim out of 50 made, you can pick up major "internet right points" for getting that one. On top of that, it takes very little research, work, and/or time to make an outrageous claim. It takes much more to research, analyze, and test to promote something more measured. All of this incentivizes many authors/pros to be sensationalist instead of reasonable.
He'll be talking all about his sick plays. Because putting yourself to 7 without a Shadow in hand is always a good idea. Even Overturf commented tongue-in-cheek a number of times about the "skill" it took for him to "decide to draw" the perfect card at the perfect time throughout the match. He played SUPER loose and lucked into amazing draws. Will be interesting to see how he writes about it.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Spirits
It's good to see you haven't lost your taste for hyperbole. Not doom and gloom to say a single deck will be negatively impacted by the introduction of a new card. I wouldn't be the first to posit that Jace allows Uxx midrange to outvalue other midrange decks, so theoretically some midrange share (we can call them "less powerful" decks if it makes you feel better) coalesces around Uxx. If those are the decks GW Valuetown beats, that's going to hurt that particular deck.
Notice, there is no value judgement on my part. I'm simply taking a guess at Todd and Brennan's analysis of the impact of Jace on GW Valuetown (and likely similar midrange decks like Abzan).
Spirits
Or maybe he actually understood the deck well and played to his outs and roles in matchups, I'm not sure which ones he was putting himself to 7 without a death's shadow against but from what I saw he played the deck aggresively because he needed to in those matchups. If he waits around against eldrazi tron the deck is going to go over the top of him, its what a tron deck does, especially when it plays walking ballista. Not enough players play to their outs or game plan, if your deck can't win a matchup realistically without a quick large deaths shadow, you should aggresively play for it more often than not even if you don't have it in your opening hand, the deck has a lot of card draw.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
saw it won the GP Lyon. I've know n of the deck for a bit, just never understood why you'd play it over the other options
The fact that he played a bad mono green devotion deck or that I generally really don’t respect his opinion on the format doesn’t change the fact that in a lot of matchups where you’re not at risk of being burned out it’s usually correct to put yourself into decently sized shadow range as your fetches are a limited resource that you can’t pay more life for after the fact when you top deck a deaths shadow at 12 life. It’s not about playing loose and hoping to top deck, it’s simply how the deck plays and it’s usually going to be correct to optimize your future draws.
RG Eldrazi is a faster deck with more low-to-the-ground creatures and more/better interaction than Eldrazi Tron. It can handle aggressive creature decks better which E-tron and Gx Tron struggle with. Access to better sideboard cards due to having access to red and green. 8 Haste creatures and particularly with Obligator's ability is really strong against a Jace, whereas E-tron only gets 4 Smashers. On the flipside, without having access to Tron to play Karns and Walking Ballistas, Ulamog, etc, RG lacks the topend/lategame power of the other 2 decks and can fall behind in longer games.
I believe Jace and BBE will result in the former example. Tier 1 probably won't change much at all besides maybe Jund coming back into tier 1 and the best of the Jace control decks maybe making it to tier 1. Tier 2 might see a shake-up, but I don't think the number of viable decks will decrease, it's just going to be different decks. This kind of change is completely fine to me. As long as we have a diversity of viable decks and a diversity of viable strategies, it doesn't really matter if it's these 20 decks or those 20 decks.
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
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
Have you seen these decks 75? They're skimping on grave hate and that's so reckless to do outside of an FNM
This was happening anyway before the unbans. The unbans don't change the fact that linear decks are going to be well-positioned in certain metagames. Throughout 2017 we saw periods where linear decks were better-positioned than non-linear decks, and I fully expect this to continue into 2018. These decks shouldn't be any better positioned at any single period of time, and there shouldn't be more periods where they are better-positioned. We'll just see a repeat of the 2017 metagame cycle but with BBE and JTMS added.
I don't know why people keep mentioning linear upswings as a bad thing in Modern. That's part and parcel to the massive diversity in the format. If you don't want that diversity and just want to play various shades of interactive (read: blue) decks, that's Legacy. If you want an "anything goes" metagame where you can play anything, that's Modern. Wizards made this extremely clear over the last 8 months or so. I feel there are players (not saying this is you, spiegel) who just want Modern to be Legacy. It's not going to happen so I don't know why we keep having to rehash it. Look at the period from about July 2017 through February 2018. That is what Wizards considers a healthy Modern metagame. They even said this explicitly! If one doesn't like that metagame, one needs to play a different format. That means if one doesn't like the level of linearity in that period, one must either accept it and move on or just move on to playing something else.
I'm not trying to shut down Modern criticism here. There are some legitimate criticisms we can make about the format because a healthy format is not a perfect format. But there is a pervasive suggestion that any metagame with Tron/Affinity/Dredge/SSG/Goryo's/Valakut/Eldrazi/etc. is too linear and unhealthy. This suggestion is borne out of personal biases and beliefs. It is not in dialogue with Wizards' stated goals for the format or Wizards' treatment of the format. This isn't "build your own Modern to fit your own desires." This is the Modern we have and the Modern we are going to have. And it's a fun, healthy, and exciting Modern where I can play Deck X, you can play Deck Y, and someone else can play Deck Z. No one color or card is dominant, no one gameplay style is best.
It would be very helpful if we could have a statistics for every single card ever printed that state the following:
- ratio of (sum of all the cards of the same name (e.g. all the Serum Visions) that were played during a given season of modern play) and (sum of all the cards of the same color (all the blue cards) that saw play within that same modern season across all decks that utilized the same color) (e.g. blue). Example: ratio of all cards named Serum Vision during last modern season and all the purely blue cards that saw play within that same season
I guess the Wizards have a such a statistic but its for their internal use. If they don't I really recommend they should make one.
The first problem I see in modern is with the blue color. Usually, when I see a multicolored deck that has blue color in it, blue color will be the most represented one and within that blue color there will usually be the same cards that constantly repeat themselves across various archtypes; those are ofcourse the cantrips: Serum Visions, Sleight of hand, (Opt will surely be here as well) and some others too like: Thoughtscour, Remand etc. You can see this happen in grixis delver, jeskai delver, temur delver, UG delver, grixis control, jeskai control, UW control, UW tempo, Esper control, temur aggro...
Don't get me wrong. I like cantrips, I like drawing cards. That is because I like all the mechanisms of this fascinating game. I like its diversity. That is why I think these blue cards are narrowing the diversity of other playable blue cards but also the representation of other colors in vast number of decks.
There seems to be an overrepresentation of single mana blue cantrips: Serum visions, Sleight of hand, Opt, banned ponder and brainstorm not to mention that there are other cantrips as well: Remand, Cryptic command, Ojutai's command, Spreading seas. Recently, on 4th February there was a modern challenge and this deck won: https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=18409&d=314296&f=MO . It contained 20 cantrips or card-drawing mechanims of some sort.
Ofcourse, the most obvious card with that problem is the Lightning bolt, the card that is most played card ever. The rhetorical question is: If you play red color, why aren't you playing a playset of lightning bolts in it? Even further, if you have an almost finished deck, could it be better with 4 lightning bolts in it? If yes, the rhetorical question is: why don't you? Grixis delver and temur delver decks splash red color sometimes just because of lightning bolt. One obvious thing to mention and emphasize is: Lightning bolt is a win condition.
Now, let's look at the white color: there, the only powerful card that constanly pops up in various decks that utilize white color is Path to exile. And it is not a win condition.
Other white cards that appear in modern are either combo pieces or sideboard cards: Puresteel paladin, Angel's grace, Stony silence, Rest in peace, Ethersworn canonist, Blessed alliance, Timely reinforcement, Mirran crusader...the list goes on.
White color is not-arguably the weakest color in modern.
When you look at the win conditions of other colors:
Green: Tarmogoyf Primeval titan Wild nacatl
Black: Death's shadow Gurmag angler Tasigur, the golder fang
Blue: Delver of secrets
Red: Lightning bolt and its variants goblin guide Monastery swiftspear
When you look at the mechanism and traits the colors use: the greatest diversity there is is among green and black color while the blue color holds control over the most important mechanism that are the heart of the game and those are casting of the spell (rather NOT) and card draw.
Blue: counter spell, draw a card, discard a card, the best creature and card ever printed, bunch of jaces
Spell pierce, Spell snare, Dispel, Remand, Cryptic command, Serum visions, sleight of hand, opt, spreading seas, Snapcaster mage, Jace the mind sculpter, Jace, architect of thought
Green: boosters, return from graveyard to hand, noxious revival, mana acceleration, search library for..
Blossoming defense, Become immense, Mutagenic growth, Might of old krosa, Eternal witness, Arbor elf, Birds of paradise, Collected company, Traverse the ulvenvald
Black: opponent discard, return from graveyard to play, destroy creatures, pay life for card draw, others
Inquistion, Thoughtseize, Liliana of the Veil, Goryo's vengenance, Bloodghast, Vendetta, Murderous cut, Go for the throat, Doom blade, Dark confidant, Fatal push, Ad nauseam, Griselbrand, Painful truths, Dark confidant, Living end, Dark blast, Small pox
White: exile creatures, taxation, others
Path to exile Thalia, guardian of thraben, Leonin arbiter , Puresteel paladin, Soul's attendant, Soul Warden, Martyr of sands, Lingering souls, Kor spirit dancer, Daybreak coronet, Selfless spirit. What powerful mechanism was white color gifted with? It has the most powerful sideboard hate but sideboard hate is not a win condition. It's a poor strategy to lose the first game so that you can use your powerful sideboard. Being splashed into a deck because of sideboard and not mineboard just proves how white color is secondary to any other. Puresteel paladin is not a win condition per se, it is a combo peace; a win condition in a puresteel paladin combo deck is usually Grapeshot which is a red burn spell or, rarely, Monastery mentor which is white. Soul Sisters and MartyProc decks were never tier 1 as far as I know. These 2 decks aren't played that much even in current metagame with no deck clearly dominating all the others. Life gaining effect is not a trait exclusive to white color. Black and green also have life-gaining effects. And altough life gaining effects would be mostly asociated with white color, I guess Wizards don't want to create cheap and powerful life-gaining cards because players would play such white cards more often and the there would be a shift of win-conditions from decreasing opponent's life to milling him or her, prolonging the games indefinetly. Personally, I would prefer that a few more decks like these exist. Losing life is the most common way of losing the game. Gaining life is a defensive measure, one mostly attributed to white color but unfortunately the Wizards keep this trait very low.
Vigilance is a rare trait that belongs solely to white color but it is basically a defensive trait and not an offesive one
I guess the main problem of white color in modern was made when colors were constructed. When one regards damage dealing capabilities:
1.Red: (direct burn, small haste creatures, P/T ration in favor of power)
2.Green: mana acceleration landing huge creatures early, trample
3.White: both small and big creatures
4.Black: both small and big creatures
5.Blue: creatures, P/T ratio in favor of toughness
Regarding control:
5.Green: almost none,
4. Red: direct creature burn, small board wipes
3.White: creature exile, creature destruction, mass-board wipe
2.Black: opponent discard, creature destruction, mass board-wipe
1.Blue: counter spell,
White is in the middle of everything. The sentence: „Jack of all trades but master of none“ unfortunately applies to it very well. It's not the master of aggro nor control but it seems to me that it's not even good in the middle, it's not even jack of all trades. It's a sink in the middle of everything.
There are many similarities between white color and black color and a few reasons why white color is in the shadow of the black. Black color does all the things that white color does, is better at control and is equally fast if not faster then white. Black and white have same mass sweepers (Damnation/Wrath of God; take a look at the difference of price in those to colors just to see how much more often Damnation is played or needed). Black recently got Bontu's last reckoning and white got Settle the wreckage. Regarding single target removals: white has Path to Exile while Black has: Fatal Push, Doom blade, Go for the throat, Vendetta, Murderous Cut, Ultimate price. Black has lifegaining effects and tokens just like white. But black also has access to powerful discard mechanisms which white doesn't. By that logic and and a given aggro-control continuoum that I layed out beforehand white color should be somewhat faster then black. But that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact: Goryo's vengenance breaks the pattern of speed: when combined with right cards it makes an explosively fast deck and there is no instance of white cards or combos able to do the same except for Puresteel paladin combo recently. Also, equipment storm deck was never able to kill on turn 1 like grixis reanimator could.
Let's return to blue color and its cantrips. Looking at the aggro continuoum: red is the fastest (aggro), blue should be the slowest (control), so if white is in the middle it should be tempo. But that is not the case. Tempo is usually associated with cantrips that belong to blue color. I argue that blue color simbolicaly stole the cantrips from white color. White color should be filled with one mana cantrips and not the blue color. I guess this is a remnant of the past when color paradigm was made at the inception of the game. This is way in modern mainboards there is na overpresence of blue cantrips and consequently blue color in certain decks in general and also underpresence of white color.
Except a few white planeswalkers, white color lacks emblamatic win conditions. Red has bolt, green has tarmogoyf, blue has snapcaster mage, black is a bit dispersed (sahdow, gurmag, griselbrand). On a side note, Black had powerful planeswalkers even before white (Liliana of the veil, liliana, the last hope. Path to exile is emblamatic but is not a win condition.
I articulated the problem, so I must offer a solution as well. Here are my suggestions and food for thought for:
1.To gradually introduce to modern play cheap (one mana) white cantrips.
2.Cheap single-target instant removals akin to Path to exile, Fatal push, Doomblade should be added to white color cardpool.
3.An introduction of small white creatures that are very troublesome under certain conditions.
4.Mana acceleration could be added to white color but in a weaker form than the one that green possess. Paying life for gaining mana could be added as activated ability to a specific white creature.
5.There is no need of looking at paying life for drawing cards as a necromantic or demonic deed (Griselbrand, Yawgmoth's bargain, Dark confidant, Phyrexian Arena). Sacrificing life to gain valuable insight can be a noble thing.
6.Angels and all the divine folk can be lofty and untroubled in their skies but one can say that their retribution is final and they easily become judgemental. That can be used as a mechanism and a flavor and a mechanism. If an opponent somehow damages the white player (reduces his or hers life total, destroys his creature, makes him or her discard cards), there are white cards that make swift and even greater damage back.
7.Following the divine theme, modern white card pool could be enchanced by some uncounterable cards.
Thank you for your time.
Merged with State of the Meta. -- CavalryWolfPack
It wasn't until Grixis Shadow showed up that we had a legit tier 1 blue deck, and it's presence alone made other blue decks better, in the same way that Twin used to.
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
What were all these "viable" blue decks in 2016???
Nothing of the sort even remotely existed until 2017 when a black deck (Shadow) started running cantrips and Snapcasters, and then later Jeskai went from totally awful to sort of OK.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
This wasn't a complaint or criticism by me, it was just a meta prediction. Meta's cycle.
I just mean that there's going to be a larger than normal influx of interactive decks soft to things like Tron or Dredge that will get meta'd hard. People will adjust.
Either way, people can play whatever these days and 5-0, so...just play. :]
Spirits
I remember those days... *shutter*.
I honestly am really excited about Jace in the format. I hope it does what Twin used to without skewing the meta to an absurd degree (decks that use jace, decks that do not use jace, and those decks used to meta game).
So far the variation in decks is exciting. There appears to be a wider-range of blue based decks now than prior to the unban, but it's still too early to tell. It also looks like creature based strategies embracing BBE are making a come-back.
Difficult to tell the complete state of the meta without any official paper events yet though.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
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Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA