As you probably know, I think you are 100% wrong here. Wizards has made several bannings because of a deck/card being unfun to play with in several formats(for example Marvel in Standard, and -I know you disagree here- Top and Second Sunrise in modern).
A deck being super unfun to play against, is a reason to ban it, and some of those "logistical issues" reads that "the deck is unfun, so we disguise this argument into the logistic issues criteria here" to me.
This does not mean that KCI does not face logistical issues-it does. But it's also super resilient to hate, can kill on t3 rarely (but it did on the finals of GP Las Vegas for example), and it's unfun to play against.
It fits all of the criteria to ban it. And Emma presents it fairly well in her article, if you ask me.
This isnt Standard so I dont really care about Standard ban criteria. No Modern card has been banned solely for being unfun. They were banned for violating criteria that Wizards uses as indicators of truly unfun decks, not subjectively unfun decks.
As for Top and Sunrise, these cards are only unfun in that they push rounds to time or make extra turns go long. Again, that's a criterion. Unfun is operationalized in that regard, it's not just that something is subjectively unfun. How does Handy's article prove that KCI has this logistical effect on tournaments such that a card needs banning? She literally uses one example and doesn't even use that example well.
As you probably know, I think you are 100% wrong here. Wizards has made several bannings because of a deck/card being unfun to play with in several formats(for example Marvel in Standard, and -I know you disagree here- Top and Second Sunrise in modern).
A deck being super unfun to play against, is a reason to ban it, and some of those "logistical issues" reads that "the deck is unfun, so we disguise this argument into the logistic issues criteria here" to me.
This does not mean that KCI does not face logistical issues-it does. But it's also super resilient to hate, can kill on t3 rarely (but it did on the finals of GP Las Vegas for example), and it's unfun to play against.
It fits all of the criteria to ban it. And Emma presents it fairly well in her article, if you ask me.
This isnt Standard so I dont really care about Standard ban criteria. No Modern card has been banned solely for being unfun. They were banned for violating criteria that Wizards uses as indicators of truly unfun decks, not subjectively unfun decks.
As for Top and Sunrise, these cards are only unfun in that they push rounds to time or make extra turns go long. Again, that's a criterion. Unfun is operationalized in that regard, it's not just that something is subjectively unfun. How does Handy's article prove that KCI has this logistical effect on tournaments such that a card needs banning? She literally uses one example and doesn't even use that example well.
I tried to point this out to @gkourou prior, but he seems convinced by Emma's two anecdotes (and one doesn't even seem particularly egregious). Someone, Emma or otherwise, would need to show that KCI is causing this issue with some kind of regularity. I don't believe WoTC has shared where the line is drawn with previous bans (e.g. once a 15 round tournament) but one person saying "hey this took us deep into turns once" isn't meaningful on its own.
Side note -- taken by itself, I don't think a deck taking a 5 minute turn when attempting to "go off" is grounds for further action. Over the course of several turns, many players will drag out their decisions on non-combo decks to the point they're eating a similar amount of clock. A bit preferential to say that's fine but using your time in a single turn isn't. If you're worried about time equity, the only solution is a chess/MTGO-style clock.
Why even worry about it right now, is still a fringe deck. The true elephant in the room is a Tron shaped one, I really hope that is proven by this PT.
Why even worry about it right now, is still a fringe deck. The true elephant in the room is a Tron shaped one, I really hope that is proven by this PT.
Seriously, when is enough enough with Tron? For a while it was "well this deck is just inconsistent and has polarized matchups". Then it became "well it never puts up major tournament results". Like where is the justification now? A good number of it's bad matchups have been pushed from the format, it still has insanely good matchups running around, it's no longer inconsistent, it's been putting up tournament results in droves now and part of that is even with new hate cards like Damping Sphere in the format.
Hitting Stirrings will help because then you at least have a choke point for them. Hit all their threats out of hand. They'll easily get mana still but hitting their threats and they'll have to rely on draws and eggs to find their threats. Then if the deck still puts up these kinds of results. Swing the hammer.
Why even worry about it right now, is still a fringe deck. The true elephant in the room is a Tron shaped one, I really hope that is proven by this PT.
Seriously, when is enough enough with Tron? For a while it was "well this deck is just inconsistent and has polarized matchups". Then it became "well it never puts up major tournament results". Like where is the justification now? A good number of it's bad matchups have been pushed from the format, it still has insanely good matchups running around, it's no longer inconsistent, it's been putting up tournament results in droves now and part of that is even with new hate cards like Damping Sphere in the format.
Hitting Stirrings will help because then you at least have a choke point for them. Hit all their threats out of hand. They'll easily get mana still but hitting their threats and they'll have to rely on draws and eggs to find their threats. Then if the deck still puts up these kinds of results. Swing the hammer.
Yup. Axeing Stirrings will certainly help power down both Tron and KCI. I think this is enough without having to ban anything else from KCI. It is a very wise choice indeed, even if a lot of pros are divided on this issue
Why even worry about it right now, is still a fringe deck. The true elephant in the room is a Tron shaped one, I really hope that is proven by this PT.
Seriously, when is enough enough with Tron? For a while it was "well this deck is just inconsistent and has polarized matchups". Then it became "well it never puts up major tournament results". Like where is the justification now? A good number of it's bad matchups have been pushed from the format, it still has insanely good matchups running around, it's no longer inconsistent, it's been putting up tournament results in droves now and part of that is even with new hate cards like Damping Sphere in the format.
Hitting Stirrings will help because then you at least have a choke point for them. Hit all their threats out of hand. They'll easily get mana still but hitting their threats and they'll have to rely on draws and eggs to find their threats. Then if the deck still puts up these kinds of results. Swing the hammer.
I honestly dont know. I play a lot of MTGO, I win often enough (more than 50%) to think I know at least somewhat, how to play this game. Tron is simply too much. All it does, is tutor lands, and threats, and slam them. Its not enough that they can get those Turn 3 Karns, and Wurmcoils, but its the World Breakers and Ulamogs that really tilt things.
The fact its sooooooooo consistent, and potent? I mean I dont care if you bring hate. I dont care if you bring pressure. A turn 4 ulamog is 'I reset the board, and oh here's my 10/10.'
Tron also promotes awful gameplay, as the only way to beat it with any shred of consistency is to play a fast linear deck. Disruption does nothing to Tron without back to back to back to back hate pieces and a strong clock.
Engineered plague seems like the kind of card that would never even enter Standard. It destroys the kind of playstyle that WotC encourages for their flagship format.
As for Engineered Plague, if something like that came about, I think it would be fine for Modern. It is very strong, but there is a real cost to sideboarding something like that and skimping on grave hate or artifact hate. There is already a similar card in Night of Soul's Betrayal and it doesn't see play anymore (used to be a 1 of in the Jund SB). Also I agree that a card like that would never see PRINT in Standard, outside of 6 mana or more. It would probably be 7 or more.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Oh I believe in its power. If this was seen at 'normal' events like SCG or MTGO Challenge, I would be shocked though. KCI is not that common. This is the Pro Tour though, and the best decks see the most play.
I do believe this event will be the one to get Stirrings popped.
UW Mana Denial, or Miracles, or a Combo. We will see.
Not shocked on Humans, Tron %.
The Standard meta is 40% Red Black Aggro. lul
Dunno if they are doing what MTGTop8 does (lump multiple archetypes together to inflate numbers) or what WOTC usually does (split similar archetypes to inflate diversity). Either way, it's a team event and it's likely that both Legacy and Standard will finish first for those teams, making the UW deck irrelevant much of the time.
But the best thing about this info is being able to very easily calculate conversion rates day to day.
"WotC, please ban Paper. Scissors is fine. Thanks."
-Rock
I will acknowledge that Tron is leading the # of top 8 appearances in GPs for 2018, but half of those are from one event (4 appearances in GP Lyon) which is an outlier. This trend could of course change, but I don't see anything alarming in the numbers from an objective standpoint (1.33 top 8 appearances per GP WITH GP Lyon, .8 without in 2018 so far).
You know what's really sad about that metagame snapshot. Where is highest fair thoughtseize midrange deck? Mardu at only 3 people in the room. Just wow. If that isn't a testament to how poor it is to interact in this metagame idk what is. Like even UW Control is just literally packed to the gills with answers and tends to go to time a lot because they don't have good wincons. Just ew.
You know what's really sad about that metagame snapshot. Where is highest fair thoughtseize midrange deck? Mardu at only 3 people in the room. Just wow. If that isn't a testament to how poor it is to interact in this metagame idk what is. Like even UW Control is just literally packed to the gills with answers and tends to go to time a lot because they don't have good wincons. Just ew.
Luckily we will actually get ALL the decklists of EVERY player by the end of the weekend, so we can see exactly what they're up to. But I wouldn't be surprised that the UW decks are just a safety valve for the other two decks. This gives them the flexibility to sure up their good/predicted matchups and then simply hope to dodge the bad ones. When you don't actually have to win all your matches, these decks can be a beating. Probably why they're popular in team formats.
You know what's really sad about that metagame snapshot. Where is highest fair thoughtseize midrange deck? Mardu at only 3 people in the room. Just wow. If that isn't a testament to how poor it is to interact in this metagame idk what is. Like even UW Control is just literally packed to the gills with answers and tends to go to time a lot because they don't have good wincons. Just ew.
Luckily we will actually get ALL the decklists of EVERY player by the end of the weekend, so we can see exactly what they're up to. But I wouldn't be surprised that the UW decks are just a safety valve for the other two decks. This gives them the flexibility to sure up their good/predicted matchups and then simply hope to dodge the bad ones. When you don't actually have to win all your matches, these decks can be a beating. Probably why they're popular in team formats.
That's super fair. I also think that is a reason to play UW Control over something else right now. Dodge your bad matchups and your good matchups you should be able to stomp through. I know for this Modern PPTQ season I have been advocating that my team doesn't play fair interactive magic. Most are on KCI and I've been bouncing between various liniar decks as well. We've had 2 people make the top 8 of each of the 2 PPTQs so far (including a 110 man one last weekend).
That's super fair. I also think that is a reason to play UW Control over something else right now. Dodge your bad matchups and your good matchups you should be able to stomp through. I know for this Modern PPTQ season I have been advocating that my team doesn't play fair interactive magic. Most are on KCI and I've been bouncing between various liniar decks as well. We've had 2 people make the top 8 of each of the 2 PPTQs so far (including a 110 man one last weekend).
Damn! A 110 person PPTQ? By seeing your location, I believe it too. You live near the Moxboarding House, Cardkingdom?, and Wizards headquarters.
It's funny. On my team, our main advocate was telling us all to go KCI, but from what I gather recently, he is testing UW now. One of our team members won the first PPTQ we played in, while I got 8th, and 2 others missed it. But this was a … 16 person PPTQ. Biiiiiiig difference. This particular place caps, although most other PPTQs locally are 32-64 players, capped. (California)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
That's super fair. I also think that is a reason to play UW Control over something else right now. Dodge your bad matchups and your good matchups you should be able to stomp through. I know for this Modern PPTQ season I have been advocating that my team doesn't play fair interactive magic. Most are on KCI and I've been bouncing between various liniar decks as well. We've had 2 people make the top 8 of each of the 2 PPTQs so far (including a 110 man one last weekend).
Damn! A 110 person PPTQ? By seeing your location, I believe it too. You live near the Moxboarding House, Cardkingdom?, and Wizards headquarters.
It's funny. On my team, our main advocate was telling us all to go KCI, but from what I gather recently, he is testing UW now. One of our team members won the first PPTQ we played in, while I got 8th, and 2 others missed it. But this was a … 16 person PPTQ. Biiiiiiig difference. This particular place caps, although most other PPTQs locally are 32-64 players, capped. (California)
Yeah, stores cap based on space here so both the ones this weekend cap at 64 but we have a few large stores. Last weekends was 110 and I'm sure we will pass that at MBH this year. You essentially have to preregister to at some stores or you wont get in. The Seattle area has a lot of tier 2 grinders too. That'd be grinders that go to a lot of GPs, occasionally make the PT but aren't perennial PT competitors. We do have a few ofcourse that are very well known (Gerry T, Randy Bueheler etc.). Cedric Phillips and Kent Ketter moved out here pretty recently as well. FNMs get interesting when you are just hanging out and then get paired against someone like Gerry Thompson though. He's a nice guy though so it's always good times. Our meta is pretty heavily skewed to midrange and control decks on the whole. It's strange but because most of us like interactive magic, we know how to play against it very well and that is a reason we are avoiding it this season. Also not all the stores in our area have AC (like the one last weekend) and you'd rather not have to play to time every round.
I never bought the idea that SFM existing prevents the printing of strong equipment. If its too broken they can simply ban it.
Well there's also the thing that equipment has been unplayable trash for at least 7 years. So SFM or not, any good equipment going forward is going to be an accident, or designed with Commander in mind.
Looks like they just put up the Modern meta on stream.
Glad to see Day 1 #s. Sadly, it will be very hard to draw meaningful conclusions from any of this due to the nature of the PT plus the nature of a team event. We cant even trust Day 2 comparisons because other players and decks can carry their teammates. This makes metagame shares largely irrelevant for determining what is good or bad. Moreover, we know PT metas are highly skewed to begin with. GP Prague and all subsequent GP will matter much more.
I never bought the idea that SFM existing prevents the printing of strong equipment. If its too broken they can simply ban it.
Well there's also the thing that equipment has been unplayable trash for at least 7 years. So SFM or not, any good equipment going forward is going to be an accident, or designed with Commander in mind.
Yeah that is another point...SFM has been stuck in Jail for ages and during that time we haven't gotten great equipment. Granted you can make the case we haven't really went to many Artifact Planes in that time...Kaladesh had Vehicles and Dominaria was a mix of everything which we stayed on for one set of which I am still salty.
I just want Allied Swords of Cycle. And yeah I know MARO was like HurDurr we finished the cycle but please. But this is WOTC so I assume when they need to goose sales they will be back of course granted they could end up like the manlands where the Allied Half is great and the Enemy half is garbage.
Spirits
This isnt Standard so I dont really care about Standard ban criteria. No Modern card has been banned solely for being unfun. They were banned for violating criteria that Wizards uses as indicators of truly unfun decks, not subjectively unfun decks.
As for Top and Sunrise, these cards are only unfun in that they push rounds to time or make extra turns go long. Again, that's a criterion. Unfun is operationalized in that regard, it's not just that something is subjectively unfun. How does Handy's article prove that KCI has this logistical effect on tournaments such that a card needs banning? She literally uses one example and doesn't even use that example well.
I tried to point this out to @gkourou prior, but he seems convinced by Emma's two anecdotes (and one doesn't even seem particularly egregious). Someone, Emma or otherwise, would need to show that KCI is causing this issue with some kind of regularity. I don't believe WoTC has shared where the line is drawn with previous bans (e.g. once a 15 round tournament) but one person saying "hey this took us deep into turns once" isn't meaningful on its own.
Side note -- taken by itself, I don't think a deck taking a 5 minute turn when attempting to "go off" is grounds for further action. Over the course of several turns, many players will drag out their decisions on non-combo decks to the point they're eating a similar amount of clock. A bit preferential to say that's fine but using your time in a single turn isn't. If you're worried about time equity, the only solution is a chess/MTGO-style clock.
Spirits
Seriously, when is enough enough with Tron? For a while it was "well this deck is just inconsistent and has polarized matchups". Then it became "well it never puts up major tournament results". Like where is the justification now? A good number of it's bad matchups have been pushed from the format, it still has insanely good matchups running around, it's no longer inconsistent, it's been putting up tournament results in droves now and part of that is even with new hate cards like Damping Sphere in the format.
Hitting Stirrings will help because then you at least have a choke point for them. Hit all their threats out of hand. They'll easily get mana still but hitting their threats and they'll have to rely on draws and eggs to find their threats. Then if the deck still puts up these kinds of results. Swing the hammer.
Yup. Axeing Stirrings will certainly help power down both Tron and KCI. I think this is enough without having to ban anything else from KCI. It is a very wise choice indeed, even if a lot of pros are divided on this issue
I honestly dont know. I play a lot of MTGO, I win often enough (more than 50%) to think I know at least somewhat, how to play this game. Tron is simply too much. All it does, is tutor lands, and threats, and slam them. Its not enough that they can get those Turn 3 Karns, and Wurmcoils, but its the World Breakers and Ulamogs that really tilt things.
The fact its sooooooooo consistent, and potent? I mean I dont care if you bring hate. I dont care if you bring pressure. A turn 4 ulamog is 'I reset the board, and oh here's my 10/10.'
Hate it. I'm sorry, but I hate it.
Spirits
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Is Tocatli Honor Guard what you're looking for?
As for Engineered Plague, if something like that came about, I think it would be fine for Modern. It is very strong, but there is a real cost to sideboarding something like that and skimping on grave hate or artifact hate. There is already a similar card in Night of Soul's Betrayal and it doesn't see play anymore (used to be a 1 of in the Jund SB). Also I agree that a card like that would never see PRINT in Standard, outside of 6 mana or more. It would probably be 7 or more.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Spirits
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Not shocked on Humans, Tron %.
The Standard meta is 40% Red Black Aggro. lul
Spirits
I do believe this event will be the one to get Stirrings popped.
Spirits
Dunno if they are doing what MTGTop8 does (lump multiple archetypes together to inflate numbers) or what WOTC usually does (split similar archetypes to inflate diversity). Either way, it's a team event and it's likely that both Legacy and Standard will finish first for those teams, making the UW deck irrelevant much of the time.
But the best thing about this info is being able to very easily calculate conversion rates day to day.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
-Rock
I will acknowledge that Tron is leading the # of top 8 appearances in GPs for 2018, but half of those are from one event (4 appearances in GP Lyon) which is an outlier. This trend could of course change, but I don't see anything alarming in the numbers from an objective standpoint (1.33 top 8 appearances per GP WITH GP Lyon, .8 without in 2018 so far).
Luckily we will actually get ALL the decklists of EVERY player by the end of the weekend, so we can see exactly what they're up to. But I wouldn't be surprised that the UW decks are just a safety valve for the other two decks. This gives them the flexibility to sure up their good/predicted matchups and then simply hope to dodge the bad ones. When you don't actually have to win all your matches, these decks can be a beating. Probably why they're popular in team formats.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
That's super fair. I also think that is a reason to play UW Control over something else right now. Dodge your bad matchups and your good matchups you should be able to stomp through. I know for this Modern PPTQ season I have been advocating that my team doesn't play fair interactive magic. Most are on KCI and I've been bouncing between various liniar decks as well. We've had 2 people make the top 8 of each of the 2 PPTQs so far (including a 110 man one last weekend).
Damn! A 110 person PPTQ? By seeing your location, I believe it too. You live near the Moxboarding House, Cardkingdom?, and Wizards headquarters.
It's funny. On my team, our main advocate was telling us all to go KCI, but from what I gather recently, he is testing UW now. One of our team members won the first PPTQ we played in, while I got 8th, and 2 others missed it. But this was a … 16 person PPTQ. Biiiiiiig difference. This particular place caps, although most other PPTQs locally are 32-64 players, capped. (California)
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Yeah, stores cap based on space here so both the ones this weekend cap at 64 but we have a few large stores. Last weekends was 110 and I'm sure we will pass that at MBH this year. You essentially have to preregister to at some stores or you wont get in. The Seattle area has a lot of tier 2 grinders too. That'd be grinders that go to a lot of GPs, occasionally make the PT but aren't perennial PT competitors. We do have a few ofcourse that are very well known (Gerry T, Randy Bueheler etc.). Cedric Phillips and Kent Ketter moved out here pretty recently as well. FNMs get interesting when you are just hanging out and then get paired against someone like Gerry Thompson though. He's a nice guy though so it's always good times. Our meta is pretty heavily skewed to midrange and control decks on the whole. It's strange but because most of us like interactive magic, we know how to play against it very well and that is a reason we are avoiding it this season. Also not all the stores in our area have AC (like the one last weekend) and you'd rather not have to play to time every round.
Well there's also the thing that equipment has been unplayable trash for at least 7 years. So SFM or not, any good equipment going forward is going to be an accident, or designed with Commander in mind.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Glad to see Day 1 #s. Sadly, it will be very hard to draw meaningful conclusions from any of this due to the nature of the PT plus the nature of a team event. We cant even trust Day 2 comparisons because other players and decks can carry their teammates. This makes metagame shares largely irrelevant for determining what is good or bad. Moreover, we know PT metas are highly skewed to begin with. GP Prague and all subsequent GP will matter much more.
Yeah that is another point...SFM has been stuck in Jail for ages and during that time we haven't gotten great equipment. Granted you can make the case we haven't really went to many Artifact Planes in that time...Kaladesh had Vehicles and Dominaria was a mix of everything which we stayed on for one set of which I am still salty.
I just want Allied Swords of Cycle. And yeah I know MARO was like HurDurr we finished the cycle but please. But this is WOTC so I assume when they need to goose sales they will be back of course granted they could end up like the manlands where the Allied Half is great and the Enemy half is garbage.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate