MTG Salvation

I said a possible turn 3 kill. I didn't say anything of the frequency of it. Splinter Twin decks could win on turn 3 if they put Simian Spirit Guide into their list, but that would be TERRIBLE. Humans does not need to add Simian Spirit Guide to have a possible turn 3 win.

*Turn 1 Aether Vial. Turn 2, tick up Aether Vial to 1, use it for Champ. Play Champ/Champ. Turn 3, tick up Aether Vial to 2, Thalia's Lieutenant, cast Thalia's Lieutenant and a 1 drop Human. 8 + 7 + 6 = 21 damage. I didn't say it would happen with any regularity, but they just as well can cast Meddling Mages, Kitesail Freebooters, or Images on any of those to seriously hamper your plans of doing much in the game.

Like Pokken said, Humans does well vs. Spell Based Combo. I want to throw in Amulet, and KCI in there as well. It does well vs. Turns. It beats Grixis Shadow and has a 50/50 matchup vs. Jund and Titanshift. It goes toe to toe with the Company and Tribal decks, although those are favored overall. It can be close, depending on who draws slightly better is what I'm getting at.

humans not eating a ban has nothing to do with wotc's preferences. its not eating a ban because nothing the deck is doing is ban worthy. if the deck gets out of hand in the future because of some new printing, you are delusional if you think wotc would give it a free pass.

decks rising to the top in sufficient numbers is what allows the metagame to cycle. if its just a bunch of random stuff going on that is relatively equally distributed then no one knows how to get an edge with card or deck choices. diversity is a sufficient condition for the format to be good, not a necessary one. too much of it is just as bad as too little.

It's certainly not bannable as of now.

Had a pretty decent, albeit short, discussion about humans at the LGS this week. Historically, tribal decks haven't been able to commit board presence AND disruption in one card. GB elves has to run spells (which weakens every other card in the deck) to fight combo. Spirits have to sacrifice themselves. Fae are all small, and stay small for the most part. Slivers are forced to hit critical mass, and are open to sweepers and generally slower than other tribes. Humans has none of these weaknesses and switches gears very quickly. A few disruption pieces into a lieutenant is an2 turn clock often.

So the issue imo is if it does eat a ban you're kind of hamstrung on what you hit when though collateral damage. Thalia 1.0 hurts D&T or other fringe decks. The 5c lands, like ziggurat, do nothing as it just slots in mana confluence. Imo the deck, if it co th he's to gain meta share and establish itself as too powerful, should lose lieutenant. It makes th deck soft to sweepers like pyroclasm and similar variants again.

I agree that it's not there yet, but I'm not sure if the deck has any "bad" matchups like other decks do. When I play elves and sit accross from storm, it's almost 85-15 in their favor because I'm t4-5 every game and they can just be faster than me. Humans has no matches like that.

Fish have been disruptive aggro with a clock since forever though?

Quote from mapccu »

I agree that it's not there yet, but I'm not sure if the deck has any "bad" matchups like other decks do. When I play elves and sit accross from storm, it's almost 85-15 in their favor because I'm t4-5 every game and they can just be faster than me. Humans has no matches like that.

I know it wasn't the focus of what you were saying, but this is interesting. I felt like Elves is just slightly slower than Storm, although I do believe that Storm is more consistent too. I played Elves vs. a newer Storm player and he thought it was actually pretty close. I felt somewhere between what he said and what you said. (I did win 2-0, but that was because he mulled to 5 twice and couldn't go off while I goldfished nearly a turn 3 and a solid turn 4. The results were pretty meaningless, so we did some theorycrafting.)

It's clear to me that Meddling Mage is the problem card. It's weird to me how people overlook this card, yet the salt flows freely over things like Ensnaring Bridge or Blood Moon. It's a two drop free win card that Humans run 8 copies of, with each copy after the first protecting the rest. Cards like Thalia and Freebooter are great, and exactly the right kind of disruption for a healthy format, Meddling Mage is a braindead relic from an age past and isn't really adding anything to the format.

There are sooo many ways to do 2 damage to a creature...I would much rather Mage exist, than Freebooter.

I'm fine with both existing though.

if humans was top8'ing twice the amount that pod and twin were then it would be near eldrazi levels of stupidness. i dont care what its promoting. the deck would be bad for the format. drs jund, which was a fair deck by any definition, is evidence of that.

luckily humans isnt THAT good of a deck. if it was we would have seen it by now.

I know that you know Meddling Mage can name Path, Bolt...

And you're still at level 1. Getting rid of "Puke Combo" is bad for the meta game at large, independent of Humans, because that has an effect on other decks viability. Adding Combo back to the meta makes decks that aren't Combo better as well.

I think Humans is fine as well. Like others have said, there's probably no reason to talk about bans right now. But if you're a newer player getting into the format, you should probably realize which decks have the longest "staying power." (probability of not getting banned in the future; it just saves people money and time)

Quote from Click5 »

I know that you know Meddling Mage can name Path, Bolt...

And you're still at level 1. Getting rid of "Puke Combo" is bad for the meta game at large, independent of Humans, because that has an effect on other decks viability. Adding Combo back to the meta makes decks that aren't Combo better as well.

But it can only name one at a time. That just means that decks need to diversify their removals, instead of just running 4 Pushes and 2 Bolts and then call it good.

Quote from LeoTzu »

Quote from Click5 »

I know that you know Meddling Mage can name Path, Bolt...

And you're still at level 1. Getting rid of "Puke Combo" is bad for the meta game at large, independent of Humans, because that has an effect on other decks viability. Adding Combo back to the meta makes decks that aren't Combo better as well.

But it can only name one at a time. That just means that decks need to diversify their removals, instead of just running 4 Pushes and 2 Bolts and then call it good.

The issue is this expectation that one removal spell is sufficient. Its not.

Spot removal, sweepers, etc, if you are not running them you are at risk.

'Interact or die.' is a statement many many decks make.

Between the 4x Meddling Mages and the 4x Phantasmal Images it's pretty easy to cover multiple angles of removal.

I do think you are right though, and the meta hasn't fully adapted to Humans or the other go wide creature based aggro yet, with removal choices. Sweepers in general should be in way more decks. Settle the Wreckage, for example, is criminally underrated in Modern right now.

For GP Vegas right now I'm leaning towards Titan Shift with a spread of something like 2-3x Bolt, 2-3x Sweltering Suns, 1x Anger, 1x Slag Storm main deck as a hedge against the creature aggro that's so prevalent

edit: Even so, Meddling Mage is a poorly designed card

Quote from Click5 »

Between the 4x Meddling Mages and the 4x Phantasmal Images it's pretty easy to cover multiple angles of removal.

I do think you are right though, and the meta hasn't fully adapted to Humans or the other go wide creature based aggro yet, with removal choices. Sweepers in general should be in way more decks. Settle the Wreckage, for example, is criminally underrated in Modern right now.

For GP Vegas right now I'm leaning towards Titan Shift with a spread of something like 2-3x Bolt, 2-3x Sweltering Suns, 1x Anger, 1x Slag Storm main deck as a hedge against the creature aggro that's so prevalent

edit: Even so, Meddling Mage is a poorly designed card

First, I agree with most of what you are saying. But this

"edit: Even so, Meddling Mage is a poorly designed card :)"

Why? What makes that so?

speaking of being good against removal. i played against karn affinity for the first time. baby karn is ridiculous in that deck. i got handily dumpstered by early karns pumping out pseudo cranial platings.

None of those are a two drop that isn't bad on the board in multiples and is good independent of your opponents deck choice. And a lot of people do think Ensnaring Bridge is a problem card

Quote from tronix »

speaking of being good against removal. i played against karn affinity for the first time. baby karn is ridiculous in that deck. i got handily dumpstered by early karns pumping out pseudo cranial platings.

I think ktk tipped me off on that card being in affinity now. Colourless cards, a hell of a drug eh Wizards?

When is gp vegas?

Las Vegas Modern 14-17 June 2018

I don’t think anything in humans should be banned, but if humans continues to rise and control and combo continue to fall, I think a preordain or ponder unban should happen.

i cant see another unban happening this year, and the format looking like it does right now after 6 more months is pretty unlikely.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

It's certainly not bannable as of now.

This is what I actually find interesting about the format. We definitely have a double standard but I feel like WotC has learnt a valuable lesson. I know Jund was slightly above the rest of the decks for a period of time, and had a larger metagame percentage, but they banned fair cards in the past in order to "increase diversity" and "tailor power level". This is exactly the position I had against Wizards from banning Bloodbraid Elf all those years ago. So the fact the haven't touched Humans seems interesting to me.

That's why I feel it's more likely we see an unban happening in rapid succession than we have in the past. Preordain and Stoneforge Mystic top the list as candidates for such a strategy moving forward to increase balance among the archetypes. The best deck in the format being an Aether Vial deck is somewhat unexpected, but also creates a few non-games which can make it feel strenuous and repetitive.

Quote from tronix »

speaking of being good against removal. i played against karn affinity for the first time. baby karn is ridiculous in that deck. i got handily dumpstered by early karns pumping out pseudo cranial platings.

This was my first experience against it. He had turn 1 Steel Overseer, turn 2 Karn make a 7/7. I just had to laugh. I think it also has legs in Eldrazi Tron but it's really hard for that deck to get any traction when Humans and Affinity are widely played.

Quote from sicsmoo »

Quote from tronix »

speaking of being good against removal. i played against karn affinity for the first time. baby karn is ridiculous in that deck. i got handily dumpstered by early karns pumping out pseudo cranial platings.

This was my first experience against it. He had turn 1 Steel Overseer, turn 2 Karn make a 7/7. I just had to laugh. I think it also has legs in Eldrazi Tron but it's really hard for that deck to get any traction when Humans and Affinity are widely played.

Affinity plus Karn is real. MTGO trophies don't lie and I've been seeing this trend for a few weeks; see the Affinity thread for one of the better grinders and their match history. I expect Karn is good elsewhere too and we'll see more of it in a few more decks.