I don't really feel that anything on the ban list would help blue based control very much. The trouble blue has isn't really digging or protecting. DTT just digs for what you need. As much as I would love the cantrips, same deal. The trouble is that blue doesn't have the same caliber of actual win conditions. Wizards missed a great chance with Khans block. The blue cards with Delver absolutely laid waste to the format, but they only LOOKED for cards or DREW cards. Cruise wasn't usually what you were hoping to draw off of Cruise. What we needed was a blue Hooting Mandril or Gurmag Angler. Blue has very little for huge creatures at a Modern rate.
TiTi is a great card, I love it, I have been bending over backwards to find a good build that doesn't use Red. I think that it or something similar in the future will be the thing to revolutionize Blue control, we just need somethingbesides Delver that is a valid threat in andof itself, at a rate and power level that matters in Modern.
well having efficient creatures isn't really in blues portion of the color pie.
i think what you are referring to in terms of win conditions is a symptom of the problem, rather than the problem itself.
ask yourself why these blue decks want a better win condition. obviously it is so you can win faster. but why do you want/need to win faster?
the pervasive issue with blue controlly type decks in modern is that they have a problem of holding an advantage once they take control of the game. conditional permission and removal spells coupled with the wide variety of threats in the format gives opposing decks opportunities to swing games back into their favor. this places an impetus on the control player to switch gears and close the game out quickly.
so while an efficient beater alleviates this pressure, the same could be said for better card selection/draw.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
So, I've been playing a ton of Jund and blue control decks like Jeskai, Grixis and UW Control.
Jace hasn't felt unfair or backbreaking at all. The card is powerful, but it feels pretty damn fair. I've had so many games where the opponent desperately drops him and thats it. He can't really pull you ahead if you're behind---he's ok at parity but not fantastic, at parity he needs to brainstorm for exactly what you need.
He really seems to punish clunky combo decks. I ulted him against Tron and some prison decks, but for the most part he just brainstorms. The card was powerful against Tron, as it shuts the door.
I actually think BBE has been more outrageous. I played a game tonight against UW Control. BBE into Goyf. Next BBE into Goyf. K Command back BBE. Force the player to tap the team with cryptic, play BBE into LOTV, have the player conceded.
I literally beat a UW player tonight who had Gideon Jura and Gideon of the Trials on board at the same time, and this was after they disrupted my mana heavily. The card feels more powerful in modern than Jace, since modern lacks legacy tools.
Maybe some of the pros will break Jace----or a good deck hasn't optimized Jace.
As of now, Jace is just a reasonably good blue card modern needed and it doesn't feel oppressive to play with or against.
I don't really feel that anything on the ban list would help blue based control very much. The trouble blue has isn't really digging or protecting. DTT just digs for what you need. As much as I would love the cantrips, same deal. The trouble is that blue doesn't have the same caliber of actual win conditions. Wizards missed a great chance with Khans block. The blue cards with Delver absolutely laid waste to the format, but they only LOOKED for cards or DREW cards. Cruise wasn't usually what you were hoping to draw off of Cruise. What we needed was a blue Hooting Mandril or Gurmag Angler. Blue has very little for huge creatures at a Modern rate.
Why exactly does blue need creatures as good as Angler or Mandrils? Are you demanding monoblue control be viable? If you really feel like your list needs an equivalent to Angler or Tasigur, you can just play Grixis and run them.
doesn't need to be mono-blue (although branching out from UR is important to me, SO bored with UR). I just see people talking about Blue-based, but blue base to me means that the win-con be blue. You need another color most of the time to really deal with creatures, but it doesn't strike me as fair that 4 of the 5 colors get the kind of creature I am asking for.
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I don't really feel that anything on the ban list would help blue based control very much. The trouble blue has isn't really digging or protecting. DTT just digs for what you need. As much as I would love the cantrips, same deal. The trouble is that blue doesn't have the same caliber of actual win conditions. Wizards missed a great chance with Khans block. The blue cards with Delver absolutely laid waste to the format, but they only LOOKED for cards or DREW cards. Cruise wasn't usually what you were hoping to draw off of Cruise. What we needed was a blue Hooting Mandril or Gurmag Angler. Blue has very little for huge creatures at a Modern rate.
TiTi is a great card, I love it, I have been bending over backwards to find a good build that doesn't use Red. I think that it or something similar in the future will be the thing to revolutionize Blue control, we just need somethingbesides Delver that is a valid threat in andof itself, at a rate and power level that matters in Modern.
well having efficient creatures isn't really in blues portion of the color pie.
i think what you are referring to in terms of win conditions is a symptom of the problem, rather than the problem itself.
ask yourself why these blue decks want a better win condition. obviously it is so you can win faster. but why do you want/need to win faster?
the pervasive issue with blue controlly type decks in modern is that they have a problem of holding an advantage once they take control of the game. conditional permission and removal spells coupled with the wide variety of threats in the format gives opposing decks opportunities to swing games back into their favor. this places an impetus on the control player to switch gears and close the game out quickly.
so while an efficient beater alleviates this pressure, the same could be said for better card selection/draw.
I respectfully disagree. I have tried the Serpent, I really like TiTi, but I run mono-blue brew. better card draw would help, better selection, better counters. better is better.....but I can sit there and counter stuff all day. I play TiTi, Delver, and Snappy in my deck. look, do you remember being a new player? I remember when the archetypes were first broken down for me, my mentor said that control was all about answers and buying time until you can play one mjor threat, then protect it and ride it to victory. What does blue have that is that? I can drop Goyf, a Delve creature, a Phoenix, heck even an angel or Gideon's Avenger (a pet card of mine) but blue doesn't have things that are even passable. I don't play blue creatures in Sealed if I have a choice. I am not asking for Goyf, if they printed a Gideon's Avenger type card in blue, I would be perfectly happy. I would get my playset and go play in the corner until the next shiny thing caught my eye. I would rather have a blue Avenger than have Counterspell itself
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I don't really feel that anything on the ban list would help blue based control very much. The trouble blue has isn't really digging or protecting. DTT just digs for what you need. As much as I would love the cantrips, same deal. The trouble is that blue doesn't have the same caliber of actual win conditions. Wizards missed a great chance with Khans block. The blue cards with Delver absolutely laid waste to the format, but they only LOOKED for cards or DREW cards. Cruise wasn't usually what you were hoping to draw off of Cruise. What we needed was a blue Hooting Mandril or Gurmag Angler. Blue has very little for huge creatures at a Modern rate.
Why exactly does blue need creatures as good as Angler or Mandrils? Are you demanding monoblue control be viable? If you really feel like your list needs an equivalent to Angler or Tasigur, you can just play Grixis and run them.
doesn't need to be mono-blue (although branching out from UR is important to me, SO bored with UR). I just see people talking about Blue-based, but blue base to me means that the win-con be blue. You need another color most of the time to really deal with creatures, but it doesn't strike me as fair that 4 of the 5 colors get the kind of creature I am asking for.
Out of curiosity, what are the red and white versions of this huge creature for a Modern rate? I hear Goyf and Angler/Tasigur for G and B, and I'm curious what you pick as the R and W representatives.
I'm seeing a lot of odd and outright inaccurate suggestions about why JTMS was unbanned. This is puzzling to me because Wizards states it very clearly in the update: they want to give controlling decks an alternative way to close out prolonged games. In doing so, they wanted to give another option beyond blue players feeling they had to adopt an explosive win condition. Basically all the other claims about why JTMS was unbanned are speculation, at best, or conspiracy theorizing/misinformation at worst.
I don't really feel that anything on the ban list would help blue based control very much. The trouble blue has isn't really digging or protecting. DTT just digs for what you need. As much as I would love the cantrips, same deal. The trouble is that blue doesn't have the same caliber of actual win conditions. Wizards missed a great chance with Khans block. The blue cards with Delver absolutely laid waste to the format, but they only LOOKED for cards or DREW cards. Cruise wasn't usually what you were hoping to draw off of Cruise. What we needed was a blue Hooting Mandril or Gurmag Angler. Blue has very little for huge creatures at a Modern rate.
Why exactly does blue need creatures as good as Angler or Mandrils? Are you demanding monoblue control be viable? If you really feel like your list needs an equivalent to Angler or Tasigur, you can just play Grixis and run them.
doesn't need to be mono-blue (although branching out from UR is important to me, SO bored with UR). I just see people talking about Blue-based, but blue base to me means that the win-con be blue. You need another color most of the time to really deal with creatures, but it doesn't strike me as fair that 4 of the 5 colors get the kind of creature I am asking for.
Out of curiosity, what are the red and white versions of this huge creature for a Modern rate? I hear Goyf and Angler/Tasigur for G and B, and I'm curious what you pick as the R and W representatives.
I'm seeing a lot of odd and outright inaccurate suggestions about why JTMS was unbanned. This is puzzling to me because Wizards states it very clearly in the update: they want to give controlling decks an alternative way to close out prolonged games. In doing so, they wanted to give another option beyond blue players feeling they had to adopt an explosive win condition. Basically all the other claims about why JTMS was unbanned are speculation, at best, or conspiracy theorizing/misinformation at worst.
The Red version is pretty clearly Bedlam Reveler . I don't feel that White has one per se, although I noted in my next post that I was fine with something like Gideon's Avenger but in blue. The other colors have something that doesn't even have to be doing it through a huge body, but it directly wins the game without need for other cards. the other colors (white needs better, but it's passable) have a creature that gets you there in a way that the drawback is just something that you do in gameplay. to get TiTi running in time, you may need to cast other cards at non-optimal times, Goyf and Delve creatures and Reveler don't actually ask or much, just that you play cards or engage in creature combat. if Wizards is going to nerf the things that blue is supposed to do, they should let it do things that all 4 others get
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wasnt there some event recently that had 4 tron in the top 8? i was expecting to read a bunch of comments on that
grand prix lyon just this past weekend.
the results are pretty irrelevant though since the unbannings weren't in effect.
afaik there hasnt been any evidence in the history of the modern format to suggest that tron is too good. tbh i dont think its a topic worth discussing until more data about the new metagame comes in
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
afaik there hasnt been any evidence in the history of the modern format to suggest that tron is too good. tbh i dont think its a topic worth discussing until more data about the new metagame comes in
For basically all of Modern's history, Tron is fine and has always been fine. In particular, Tron was fine from about July 2017 through February 2018, the period of Modern health and diversity that Wizards expressly stated was healthy and diverse. Everyone needs to look at what Tron was doing in that period of time. That performance is considered healthy per Wizards. If Tron is doing that again, it's also fine and healthy. If Tron ever exceeds that then maybe we'll have problems, true. But at that particular level, Tron is not a problem and was not a problem during that period of time.
At this point, I'm comfortable saying that anyone who thinks otherwise is just fundamentally in disagreement with Wizards about what Modern is as a format. That's a personal preference and opinion, which is fine. But it's just so far afield from Modern's current trajectory that I don't really think it deserves too much consideration. It would be like arguing that Standard was secretly healthy and fun for the last year and Wizards was wrong in banning things and explaining the rationale for those bans. Or like saying Pod/TC Delver era was actually skill-testing and diverse and Wizards erred in banning those cards. I don't know if those kinds of opinions are "right" or "wrong" in the abstract. I do know, however, they are so misaligned with Wizards' actions on the format that it's hard to talk about them in any serious or consistent way. People who believe these things are just speaking a different language.
Yeah, Tron is not and never has been too powerful. The only reason it sees so much discussion is that high-profile whiners like Nassif and Pikula are so salty about it.
Yeah, Tron is not and never has been too powerful. The only reason it sees so much discussion is that high-profile whiners like Nassif and Pikula are so salty about it.
That's not the only reason. There are other reasons, like the fact that people losing to a natural T3 Tron into Karn feels like you didn't had the chance to do anything in the game, because (beside blue counters) there is no way to interact with lands so early. Thus often people feel like they are losing to worse players with no way to react.
Tron's not too good, it's just not fun because the games suck. Either they don't find their haymakers and get beat down, or they Karn you on turn 3 and the game is over. You pretty much never get fun and interesting games. That's not to say that I think it should be banned, but I wouldn't shed a single tear for it if it ever was.
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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
Yeah, Tron is not and never has been too powerful. The only reason it sees so much discussion is that high-profile whiners like Nassif and Pikula are so salty about it.
That's not the only reason. There are other reasons, like the fact that people losing to a natural T3 Tron into Karn feels like you didn't had the chance to do anything in the game, because (beside blue counters) there is no way to interact with lands so early. Thus often people feel like they are losing to worse players with no way to react.
Basically this.
There are other ways to interact, such as with discard or one of the few land destruction effects you can play before turn 3. Humans with Thalia can also help to slow them down.
Yes the other option is to kill them before their 3rd turn with a fast combo deck.
If you don't do any of these things, however, then the tron player will certainly snowball due to their mana advantage over you
Yeah, Tron is not and never has been too powerful. The only reason it sees so much discussion is that high-profile whiners like Nassif and Pikula are so salty about it.
That's not the only reason. There are other reasons, like the fact that people losing to a natural T3 Tron into Karn feels like you didn't had the chance to do anything in the game, because (beside blue counters) there is no way to interact with lands so early. Thus often people feel like they are losing to worse players with no way to react.
Affinity, Humans, Dredge, Storm, Burn, Hollow One, etc all frequently effectively end the game by turn 3 as well, with minimal to no interaction. I get that this is the thing that a lot of players dislike about Modern, but it's silly to hate Tron for that element more than any other deck. People just have their hate boners.
If you don't do any of these things, however, then the tron player will certainly snowball due to their mana advantage over you
You could say this, or some equivalent statement about basically every modern deck. Don't interact with an opponent over their first three turns in any way and I guarantee you're losing that game (unless you're linearly goldfishing a fast glass-cannon deck yourself). This is no reasonable basis to paint a target on tron as a deck. Not in the slightest.
Tron is like ad nauseam. Most of the deck is filtering and filler, with a small selection of powerful spells. The nature of those powerful spells can affect how a person "feels" about the experience but in reality there's no big difference whether you are losing to a breached primeval titan, an ad nauseam, a ramped out tooth & nail, a scapeshift, a madcap experiment, a cascaded Living End, devoted druid making infinite mana, a succession of stone rains followed by chandra torch of defiance, a suited up slippery bogle, or whatever.
It may be popular or satisfying to rally round a certain deck with pitchforks and torches but pick your battles. Tron rarely wins anything, is often stone-unplayable in certain metas and only occasionally rears its head as a reasonable deck choice for large tournaments.
If anything we should all be cheering the deck on when it occasionally has a decent string of results, because it's been a sideline staple of the format since the beginning, never broken or dominant and because doing nothing until turn 3 in modern is often a death sentence.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
I'm guessing it is futile to point out that your anecdotal "evidence" of Tron ruining the LGS scene vs "Big Data" includes WotC having WPN reports of event attendance at LGS across the world? There is a lot to pick apart in that diatribe, but if there was a deck that was truly hurting attendance (ie Eldrazi Winter), Wizards would take action. Tron is playing Magic. Aggro, Combo, Midrange, Control, Ramp... all play magic. Not every strategy interacts with another strategy favorably, but that is a feature, not a bug. I've never cared much for tron, but I can recognize that it is fine in the format.
In my opinion. these "Big Data" fan just tend to forget, that it is LGS based magic that built and builds this game (at least for now) and ultimately drives the sales. Sure, things may look great on surface when You just limit yourself to looking at numbers, MTGO, and discard or just disrespect other factors. Let me show You a different perspective.
Things look different from a LGS store mtg scene builder point of view. Especially one that has to build and upkeep a community in relatively small cities, in places where people want to buy a deck for a reasonable price and have it for years to come (so Standard is not a thing), but on the other hand Legacy is too expensive, cards are scarce, because MtG here was not a thing here until late 90s / early 00s.
Most people come to play tournaments to have interactive, reasonably long games. They do that to PLAY a game, have interesting interactions and sometimes win. When they do not get that, they stop attending tournaments or just choose another game. Some of them try to adapt, but the thing is, that they may not find decks optimal for local meta fun to play. And since it stops being "fun to play" the reason to come to the tournament is lost. And when local scene gets dominated by decks that are unfun to play with and against them (they don't have to be superior in numbers, my experience shows that sometimes even 1-2 are enough) things tend to get ugly.
Then, there are leeches that come to tournaments just to win them. Their motivation may differ, some of them have self esteem issues, some just love to win store credit. And from my observations (3 years of organizing tournaments) it seems like these guys just love to choose unfair, uninteractive decks, unfun decks. Win fast, cut the interaction - make your opponent just a witness, win the easiest way possible. They come to tournaments as long as long there are people to pray on.
When there is no one to pray on, these people are first to ask questions: "What's wrong?", "Why there are less and less people attending tournaments?", "Why aren't YOU (the store owner, TO) doing anything with it?" When you ask them to change their decks / attitude then the hell breaks loose with accusations of various sorts flying over. "This is not a modern format then, you cannot make your own banlists", "Why are you harassing me?", "You better ask those idiots to L2P", "You can't tell me what I can play and what I cannot", "Where is this inclusiveness that WotC is fighting for?" etc.
I actually found a partial solution, and bought on my own expense decks that are always present in LGS, ready to be lend, that are considered at least "even" matchups for Tron (yes, when there was a problem it was usually Tron player that was causing it). The thing is, those decks themselves are what I would consider "unfun" to play (Bant Eldrazi - Eldrazi - another WTF moment in M:tG history, Scapeshift). I don't like to play them, but they have to be there just to try to keep the leeches away or at least in check. I wonder for how long will it work, seeing cards like Blood Sun being printed.
What is my point. If WotC thinks that they can only base their actions on Modern on Big Data and not have principles of a good game play (interaction, fairness, reasonable win cons, no board lockdowns) as their main aim for the format, then I (store owner, TO) have to deal with consequences. The same stays true for places that don't have yet an established playerbase, where things are just starting to work.
As a side note, what may look bad in Big Data, actually may work for local communities. I had a lot of players that attended Standard and were happy with the state of format, they did not care, that meta was not "diversified". Things have changed after recent bans, attendance dropped and it seems like people finally lost confidence, this was probably enough for them when it comes to std.
I hope Dominaria will change things for better, not only when it comes to std. Having a good, hard hoser for Tron decks would really make things better (like some sort of cheap artifact, that limits amount of mana that a single land can generate). Something like Eldrazi became for Junk/Jund decks. You can cram it into anything and it will work.
I hope this gives you a different angle to look on things, when it comes to state of Modern.
TBH your anecdotal evidence is severely personal. My LGS is very diverse and the better players hardly play linear decks. Just adapt, beat the sharks that only care about winning and put in cards like Field of Ruin if Tron is really that much of a problem. Play Ponza or something
What is my point. If WotC thinks that they can only base their actions on Modern on Big Data and not have principles of a good game play (interaction, fairness, reasonable win cons, no board lockdowns) as their main aim for the format, then I (store owner, TO) have to deal with consequences. The same stays true for places that don't have yet an established playerbase, where things are just starting to work.
On the one hand, I appreciate that the "local perspective" player may have a difference that does not align with the "big data" vision. When this happens, that player can feel like their experience is consistently invalidated by both Wizards and proponents of a big data model. They may in fact be right that their experience is not great! Maybe their local scene really isn't very diverse and would benefit from macro changes.
Unfortunately for those players, the needs of the many are going to outweigh the needs of the few. If big data suggests the format is healthy on a wider level, why would Wizards make sweeping changes to benefit a non-representative group of players at a local level when the majority doesn't share their issues? This is neither good business nor good format management. Wizards is managing a global game and needs to make decisions that improve it for the most people who play that game. Its current mode of Modern management appears to be doing that; it's not a coincidence that Modern is the most popular format in Magic, both from a player and viewer perspective. If Wizards switches its management style from a subjective big data approach to an objective player experience one, it will likely alienate the majority who enjoy Modern and have supported Modern throughout the dynamic and healthy 2017 period. What even is a good "player experience?" Who is to say that your optimal experience is mine or someone else's? We resolve that question using big data metrics such as attendance, retention, growth, etc. Assuming Wizards is making decisions based on that, which we have every reason to believe they are, they will capture the widest range of experiences and make decisions based on the majority's preferences. This promotes the format and does not favor an elite, vocal few over the average Modern player.
Moreover, big data allows us to sort between legitimate problems and byproducts of small N samples. For instance, selection bias (e.g. maybe you just remember the Tron losses more than all the other diverse Modern experiences). If we're just looking at a few local scenes where things aren't healthy, we can't make changes that affect the entirety of the game because we're missing too many player experiences. This ends up preferencing enfranchised players who know how to make a vocal, articulate case either online or in other communication to Wizards. It misses the average player who is just experiencing Modern in their own way. How do we sort through that? Again, it's with big data.
As a side note, what may look bad in Big Data, actually may work for local communities. I had a lot of players that attended Standard and were happy with the state of format, they did not care, that meta was not "diversified". Things have changed after recent bans, attendance dropped and it seems like people finally lost confidence, this was probably enough for them when it comes to std.
This completely affirms my previous points. Standard was widely regarded as a train wreck for most of the year, and it really was by most datapoints. If your local scene disagreed with this or had a different experience, it is almost certainly not representative of the broader Magic/Standard community. Wizards would be making a huge mistake to decide format management based on a case that is clearly an outlier. We don't even need to prove that your scene is an outlying case. It's proof enough to see a Standard season with 9 bans in about 12 months; that suggests unprecedented levels of dissatisfaction, metagame illness, attendance drops, etc. When we add in the article/pro perspective and the general discontent from Standard players posting online and talking at the local level, we'd see a decisive picture that Standard really sucked. If you're scene disagreed, this further confirms it's a minority, outlying case.
To be clear, big data encounters ethical limitations when it comes to issues of human rights and life/liberty/safety/etc. There, it's not okay to say the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; if big data is promoting even a small injustice, it's probably unjust overall. But this is Magic and Modern, not healthcare, marriage equality, civil rights, etc. This isn't an ethical or moral issue. It's just a management one. And in the realm of cold hard management, big data is the best way to sort through experiences to produce a product that the most people will enjoy.
I hope this gives you a different angle to look on things, when it comes to state of Modern.
This might sound glib or flippant, but it's meant in good faith: Why not try organizing Pauper tourneys so local players can afford to diversify their deck selection options?
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well having efficient creatures isn't really in blues portion of the color pie.
i think what you are referring to in terms of win conditions is a symptom of the problem, rather than the problem itself.
ask yourself why these blue decks want a better win condition. obviously it is so you can win faster. but why do you want/need to win faster?
the pervasive issue with blue controlly type decks in modern is that they have a problem of holding an advantage once they take control of the game. conditional permission and removal spells coupled with the wide variety of threats in the format gives opposing decks opportunities to swing games back into their favor. this places an impetus on the control player to switch gears and close the game out quickly.
so while an efficient beater alleviates this pressure, the same could be said for better card selection/draw.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Jace hasn't felt unfair or backbreaking at all. The card is powerful, but it feels pretty damn fair. I've had so many games where the opponent desperately drops him and thats it. He can't really pull you ahead if you're behind---he's ok at parity but not fantastic, at parity he needs to brainstorm for exactly what you need.
He really seems to punish clunky combo decks. I ulted him against Tron and some prison decks, but for the most part he just brainstorms. The card was powerful against Tron, as it shuts the door.
I actually think BBE has been more outrageous. I played a game tonight against UW Control. BBE into Goyf. Next BBE into Goyf. K Command back BBE. Force the player to tap the team with cryptic, play BBE into LOTV, have the player conceded.
I literally beat a UW player tonight who had Gideon Jura and Gideon of the Trials on board at the same time, and this was after they disrupted my mana heavily. The card feels more powerful in modern than Jace, since modern lacks legacy tools.
Maybe some of the pros will break Jace----or a good deck hasn't optimized Jace.
As of now, Jace is just a reasonably good blue card modern needed and it doesn't feel oppressive to play with or against.
Spirits
doesn't need to be mono-blue (although branching out from UR is important to me, SO bored with UR). I just see people talking about Blue-based, but blue base to me means that the win-con be blue. You need another color most of the time to really deal with creatures, but it doesn't strike me as fair that 4 of the 5 colors get the kind of creature I am asking for.
I respectfully disagree. I have tried the Serpent, I really like TiTi, but I run mono-blue brew. better card draw would help, better selection, better counters. better is better.....but I can sit there and counter stuff all day. I play TiTi, Delver, and Snappy in my deck. look, do you remember being a new player? I remember when the archetypes were first broken down for me, my mentor said that control was all about answers and buying time until you can play one mjor threat, then protect it and ride it to victory. What does blue have that is that? I can drop Goyf, a Delve creature, a Phoenix, heck even an angel or Gideon's Avenger (a pet card of mine) but blue doesn't have things that are even passable. I don't play blue creatures in Sealed if I have a choice. I am not asking for Goyf, if they printed a Gideon's Avenger type card in blue, I would be perfectly happy. I would get my playset and go play in the corner until the next shiny thing caught my eye. I would rather have a blue Avenger than have Counterspell itself
Out of curiosity, what are the red and white versions of this huge creature for a Modern rate? I hear Goyf and Angler/Tasigur for G and B, and I'm curious what you pick as the R and W representatives.
I'm seeing a lot of odd and outright inaccurate suggestions about why JTMS was unbanned. This is puzzling to me because Wizards states it very clearly in the update: they want to give controlling decks an alternative way to close out prolonged games. In doing so, they wanted to give another option beyond blue players feeling they had to adopt an explosive win condition. Basically all the other claims about why JTMS was unbanned are speculation, at best, or conspiracy theorizing/misinformation at worst.
The Red version is pretty clearly Bedlam Reveler . I don't feel that White has one per se, although I noted in my next post that I was fine with something like Gideon's Avenger but in blue. The other colors have something that doesn't even have to be doing it through a huge body, but it directly wins the game without need for other cards. the other colors (white needs better, but it's passable) have a creature that gets you there in a way that the drawback is just something that you do in gameplay. to get TiTi running in time, you may need to cast other cards at non-optimal times, Goyf and Delve creatures and Reveler don't actually ask or much, just that you play cards or engage in creature combat. if Wizards is going to nerf the things that blue is supposed to do, they should let it do things that all 4 others get
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
grand prix lyon just this past weekend.
the results are pretty irrelevant though since the unbannings weren't in effect.
afaik there hasnt been any evidence in the history of the modern format to suggest that tron is too good. tbh i dont think its a topic worth discussing until more data about the new metagame comes in
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)For basically all of Modern's history, Tron is fine and has always been fine. In particular, Tron was fine from about July 2017 through February 2018, the period of Modern health and diversity that Wizards expressly stated was healthy and diverse. Everyone needs to look at what Tron was doing in that period of time. That performance is considered healthy per Wizards. If Tron is doing that again, it's also fine and healthy. If Tron ever exceeds that then maybe we'll have problems, true. But at that particular level, Tron is not a problem and was not a problem during that period of time.
At this point, I'm comfortable saying that anyone who thinks otherwise is just fundamentally in disagreement with Wizards about what Modern is as a format. That's a personal preference and opinion, which is fine. But it's just so far afield from Modern's current trajectory that I don't really think it deserves too much consideration. It would be like arguing that Standard was secretly healthy and fun for the last year and Wizards was wrong in banning things and explaining the rationale for those bans. Or like saying Pod/TC Delver era was actually skill-testing and diverse and Wizards erred in banning those cards. I don't know if those kinds of opinions are "right" or "wrong" in the abstract. I do know, however, they are so misaligned with Wizards' actions on the format that it's hard to talk about them in any serious or consistent way. People who believe these things are just speaking a different language.
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
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
Basically this.
There are other ways to interact, such as with discard or one of the few land destruction effects you can play before turn 3. Humans with Thalia can also help to slow them down.
Yes the other option is to kill them before their 3rd turn with a fast combo deck.
If you don't do any of these things, however, then the tron player will certainly snowball due to their mana advantage over you
Affinity, Humans, Dredge, Storm, Burn, Hollow One, etc all frequently effectively end the game by turn 3 as well, with minimal to no interaction. I get that this is the thing that a lot of players dislike about Modern, but it's silly to hate Tron for that element more than any other deck. People just have their hate boners.
You could say this, or some equivalent statement about basically every modern deck. Don't interact with an opponent over their first three turns in any way and I guarantee you're losing that game (unless you're linearly goldfishing a fast glass-cannon deck yourself). This is no reasonable basis to paint a target on tron as a deck. Not in the slightest.
Tron is like ad nauseam. Most of the deck is filtering and filler, with a small selection of powerful spells. The nature of those powerful spells can affect how a person "feels" about the experience but in reality there's no big difference whether you are losing to a breached primeval titan, an ad nauseam, a ramped out tooth & nail, a scapeshift, a madcap experiment, a cascaded Living End, devoted druid making infinite mana, a succession of stone rains followed by chandra torch of defiance, a suited up slippery bogle, or whatever.
It may be popular or satisfying to rally round a certain deck with pitchforks and torches but pick your battles. Tron rarely wins anything, is often stone-unplayable in certain metas and only occasionally rears its head as a reasonable deck choice for large tournaments.
If anything we should all be cheering the deck on when it occasionally has a decent string of results, because it's been a sideline staple of the format since the beginning, never broken or dominant and because doing nothing until turn 3 in modern is often a death sentence.
Field of Ruin seems to be much more popular now. Spreading Seas
TBH your anecdotal evidence is severely personal. My LGS is very diverse and the better players hardly play linear decks. Just adapt, beat the sharks that only care about winning and put in cards like Field of Ruin if Tron is really that much of a problem. Play Ponza or something
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
On the one hand, I appreciate that the "local perspective" player may have a difference that does not align with the "big data" vision. When this happens, that player can feel like their experience is consistently invalidated by both Wizards and proponents of a big data model. They may in fact be right that their experience is not great! Maybe their local scene really isn't very diverse and would benefit from macro changes.
Unfortunately for those players, the needs of the many are going to outweigh the needs of the few. If big data suggests the format is healthy on a wider level, why would Wizards make sweeping changes to benefit a non-representative group of players at a local level when the majority doesn't share their issues? This is neither good business nor good format management. Wizards is managing a global game and needs to make decisions that improve it for the most people who play that game. Its current mode of Modern management appears to be doing that; it's not a coincidence that Modern is the most popular format in Magic, both from a player and viewer perspective. If Wizards switches its management style from a subjective big data approach to an objective player experience one, it will likely alienate the majority who enjoy Modern and have supported Modern throughout the dynamic and healthy 2017 period. What even is a good "player experience?" Who is to say that your optimal experience is mine or someone else's? We resolve that question using big data metrics such as attendance, retention, growth, etc. Assuming Wizards is making decisions based on that, which we have every reason to believe they are, they will capture the widest range of experiences and make decisions based on the majority's preferences. This promotes the format and does not favor an elite, vocal few over the average Modern player.
Moreover, big data allows us to sort between legitimate problems and byproducts of small N samples. For instance, selection bias (e.g. maybe you just remember the Tron losses more than all the other diverse Modern experiences). If we're just looking at a few local scenes where things aren't healthy, we can't make changes that affect the entirety of the game because we're missing too many player experiences. This ends up preferencing enfranchised players who know how to make a vocal, articulate case either online or in other communication to Wizards. It misses the average player who is just experiencing Modern in their own way. How do we sort through that? Again, it's with big data.
This completely affirms my previous points. Standard was widely regarded as a train wreck for most of the year, and it really was by most datapoints. If your local scene disagreed with this or had a different experience, it is almost certainly not representative of the broader Magic/Standard community. Wizards would be making a huge mistake to decide format management based on a case that is clearly an outlier. We don't even need to prove that your scene is an outlying case. It's proof enough to see a Standard season with 9 bans in about 12 months; that suggests unprecedented levels of dissatisfaction, metagame illness, attendance drops, etc. When we add in the article/pro perspective and the general discontent from Standard players posting online and talking at the local level, we'd see a decisive picture that Standard really sucked. If you're scene disagreed, this further confirms it's a minority, outlying case.
To be clear, big data encounters ethical limitations when it comes to issues of human rights and life/liberty/safety/etc. There, it's not okay to say the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; if big data is promoting even a small injustice, it's probably unjust overall. But this is Magic and Modern, not healthcare, marriage equality, civil rights, etc. This isn't an ethical or moral issue. It's just a management one. And in the realm of cold hard management, big data is the best way to sort through experiences to produce a product that the most people will enjoy.