You are calling for a mod to crack down on comments against Stirrings? Is that correct?
I'll just leave this here.
"Bear in mind that this is based on the current state of the metagame, and that Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal are not being given a free pass in perpetuity."
Which means in the current meta game, the around 27% of Top 8 finishes for stirrings decks including KCI was deemed fine (working from memory, so +/- on %). While a mod crackdown request is a bit of an overreach, people SHOULD temper their critiques and contributions based on precedent from WotC (one can wish anyway). It was deemed not a problem at the moment, but it would be absolutely foolish to believe it is forever safe. Every ban decision depends on the metagame context the decision was made in, so perhaps the % goes up this year and becomes a problem... or maybe it goes down.
I always find it curious that people have such a problem with combo decks on coverage but enjoy linear aggro matches. There's nothing that turns me off more but I see so few complaints. The meta feels like it's focused around this weird play pattern of throwing away your cards for vanilla beaters and hoping to kill your opponent before they can do anything and it's never really brought up as an issue. I was hoping maybe SFM could stem the tide of phoenix, dredge, hollow one, burn, to a lesser extent humans, spirits and affinity.
I always find it curious that people have such a problem with combo decks on coverage but enjoy linear aggro matches. There's nothing that turns me off more but I see so few complaints. The meta feels like it's focused around this weird play pattern of throwing away your cards for vanilla beaters and hoping to kill your opponent before they can do anything and it's never really brought up as an issue. I was hoping maybe SFM could stem the tide of phoenix, dredge, hollow one, burn, to a lesser extent humans, spirits and affinity.
I think you'll find a lot of the vocal players, and especially Twitch Chat/Twitter, are not all cool with Aggro either.
I am of the opinion that the aggro of today is not as easy to disrupt as it once was. This is why many are/were mistakenly calling the format faster (myself included); the cards that once acted as real speed bumps are no longer as effective, so while aggro is still ending the game on T5ish, there is less stopping them.
Even today's Modern players will have most likely 'grown up' in the modern (small m) design space, where Aggro is simply one of 2 accepted archetypes.
Aggro, and Midrange.
Its only Control, and especially Combo, that are reviled by the majority of players, and disruption of Aggro has little to do with its acceptance beyond 'its always been there'.
People are also still playing slow, durdly midrange decks like traditional Jund. I've spent the last few months on straight Jund Shadow and it feels as powerful in this metagame as Jund did in 2015.
People are also still playing slow, durdly midrange decks like traditional Jund. I've spent the last few months on straight Jund Shadow and it feels as powerful in this metagame as Jund did in 2015.
Modern is a format in which players play what they own and play what they like, regardless of how well positioned the deck actually is. This leads to lots of wide, wonky matchups, and a complete inability to metagame effectively in any kind of event outside of a predictable LGS.
I am of the opinion that the aggro of today is not as easy to disrupt as it once was. This is why many are/were mistakenly calling the format faster (myself included); the cards that once acted as real speed bumps are no longer as effective, so while aggro is still ending the game on T5ish, there is less stopping them.
I really should have clarified. It's about perceptions. When you're fighting an aggro deck, until the end you often have at least the illusion that you can win, and a lot of decks pack some form of interaction that is good for aggro matchups. When you're playing things like Ad Nauseam or Storm, you just don't know. More inexperienced players feel cheated when the house comes crashing down in their end step seemingly out of nowhere.
The fact is that both decks probably beat you in the same time frame and whether you went from 20 to 0 in five turns or one makes for no real difference, but the psychology of the majority of the player base is that a 'good game' has to have some sort of board development, a bit of give and take, a few dead creatures on each side which means that the preferred way to play has become Aggro or Midrange.
And WotC has more or less explicitly said that this is the design goal and as they're in the pleasing-people business and not the achieving-ultimate-archetype-balance business, Control had to be marginalized and Combo could only exist in a specific niche as viable but not on top (for extensive periods of time).
People are also still playing slow, durdly midrange decks like traditional Jund. I've spent the last few months on straight Jund Shadow and it feels as powerful in this metagame as Jund did in 2015.
Modern is a format in which players play what they own and play what they like, regardless of how well positioned the deck actually is. This leads to lots of wide, wonky matchups, and a complete inability to metagame effectively in any kind of event outside of a predictable LGS.
I'm playing freaking Wilderness Reclamation Bant Control. This is the truth, the eternal truth of Modern, outside something stupid like Eldrazi Winter.
People are also still playing slow, durdly midrange decks like traditional Jund. I've spent the last few months on straight Jund Shadow and it feels as powerful in this metagame as Jund did in 2015.
Modern is a format in which players play what they own and play what they like, regardless of how well positioned the deck actually is. This leads to lots of wide, wonky matchups, and a complete inability to metagame effectively in any kind of event outside of a predictable LGS.
I'm playing freaking Wilderness Reclamation Bant Control. This is the truth, the eternal truth of Modern, outside something stupid like Eldrazi Winter.
I literally just played against this deck on <not official MTG program>. It wasn't too shabby, honestly.
THIS 100X!!! If you don't agree with this then there is no amount of logic that will ever convince you that good, non-oppressive, combos should be allowed. If you don't agree with it then just don't play this game, and you certainly shouldn't feel entitled to make any comment on ban lists ever.
People are also still playing slow, durdly midrange decks like traditional Jund. I've spent the last few months on straight Jund Shadow and it feels as powerful in this metagame as Jund did in 2015.
Almost anything can win online and in a local store. Just a look at MTGGoldfish daily results shows that the power and randomness are at a level that is sufficient for any decent deck to ride it out to the finish line. Obviously not all things are equal, and some win much more than others, but it's not like people's pet deck xyz is utterly worthless in the online environment or in the average store.
I mean, my U Tron is still good after all these years, albeit with some updates.
That's the beauty of the format. Legacy is inaccessible and too small and Standard is a waste of money, and in a sense, even more pay to win than any other format because you have to keep on paying in order to even play.
People are also still playing slow, durdly midrange decks like traditional Jund. I've spent the last few months on straight Jund Shadow and it feels as powerful in this metagame as Jund did in 2015.
Modern is a format in which players play what they own and play what they like, regardless of how well positioned the deck actually is. This leads to lots of wide, wonky matchups, and a complete inability to metagame effectively in any kind of event outside of a predictable LGS.
I'm playing freaking Wilderness Reclamation Bant Control. This is the truth, the eternal truth of Modern, outside something stupid like Eldrazi Winter.
I literally just played against this deck on <not official MTG program>. It wasn't too shabby, honestly.
I always find it curious that people have such a problem with combo decks on coverage but enjoy linear aggro matches. There's nothing that turns me off more but I see so few complaints. The meta feels like it's focused around this weird play pattern of throwing away your cards for vanilla beaters and hoping to kill your opponent before they can do anything and it's never really brought up as an issue. I was hoping maybe SFM could stem the tide of phoenix, dredge, hollow one, burn, to a lesser extent humans, spirits and affinity.
From the Ban Announcement itself:
"Games with Krark-Clan Ironworks can often involve excessively arcane rules interactions using mana ability timing windows, the understanding of which are necessary for players to agree on the game state. This can create a barrier to entry to Modern for players playing against the deck and to those who would feel obligated to play with it because of its strong win rate."
The issue is not people do not want to play against combo decks. The issue is these combo decks are really non-intuitive about how to disrupt.
For example as a Gift Control player, almost every single large event I go to, I have someone call the judge about Gifts Ungiven to find Unburial Rites and Iona, Shield of Emeria and fail to find the other 2 (I use the foil from the vault when says "find 4 not find up to 4").
This includes a 2-1 Gifts Storm player.
I personally would prefer more combo decks to be present in the environment as it present a very different dimension to the game. The issue with these archetypes is Scapeshift, Amulet Bloom, Storm, KCI, Living End, Gifts Control etc all involve a very non-intuitive way cards are used.
My proposal for helping to support more combo decks is players at causal levels should be able to describe roughly how they want to disrupt the combo and judges/ the opponent should assist with the request/ question. (The key here is causal)
E.g.
- Thespian's Stage copies Dark Depths -> I like to use my wasteland at a point on the stack such that the Thespian stage becomes the dark depths and the legendary trigger is on the stack or something.
- Or I cast remand targeting Violent Outburst. Its pretty clear the intention counter the combo, but the person didn't know cascade puts it onto the stack without needing the resolve.
I think in the case of something like Remand on Violent Outburst (at a causal level) and the newer player didn't understand the ruling, they should be allowed to take the play back and allowed to cast remand on the living end itself.
[quote from="chrstphrbrnnn »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/804541-the-state-of-modern-thread-b-r-21-01-2019?comment=103"]
I think in the case of something like Remand on Violent Outburst (at a causal level) and the newer player didn't understand the ruling, they should be allowed to take the play back and allowed to cast remand on the living end itself.
So we should warp the rules and let players at GPs get away with misplays that would cost them the game otherwise so long as they say 'oh I'm new, I meant to do that', rather than letting new players make a lethal mistake once and remember it forever?
Oh my bad, yeah casual's whatever. I think it still sets the wrong precedent for players if you let them get away with that stuff.
Yeah, I'd let them lose and walk them through why/how it works, but thats the joy of Magic to me. The worst that happens is you shuffle up and go again.
And WotC has more or less explicitly said that this is the design goal and as they're in the pleasing-people business and not the achieving-ultimate-archetype-balance business, Control had to be marginalized and Combo could only exist in a specific niche as viable but not on top (for extensive periods of time).
you do realize that wizards has been focused on arena right? a completely free-to-play, or at least absurdly cheap, access point to standard. a standard where control has been alive and well, as it has been in most standard seasons. doesnt exactly align with your points about them marginalizing the archetype and that standard is pay-to-win; or some version of it. or that the UWx control archetype was one of the best performing archetypes of 2018 thanks to upgrades from recent standard sets, and a major unban in a series of unbans explicitly chosen to help slower decks (control being one of them).
as for player perception favoring creatures, and creature aggro; id agree. id also extend it to counterspells vs some sort of permanent removal after the fact.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Wait, does Living End see much play still? Even accounting for local metas, there is just so much against the deck between the fast graveyard decks, hate, non-graveyard board wipes, and the likes of humans and spirits.
Wait, does Living End see much play still? Even accounting for local metas, there is just so much against the deck between the fast graveyard decks, hate, non-graveyard board wipes, and the likes of humans and spirits.
Living End sees play because Modern is a format in which people play decks they like and decks they own, regardless of how well positioned they may be. Someone, somewhere, is playing this deck, because they own it and they like it. It is no more or less reasonable to expect to see this deck as it is for any of the other 50 decks that see play in Modern.
To be fair every company does research on the internet. They would be ******* stupid to not read free feedback on their product.
lol fact. Been saying this for years. WotC might be incompetent, but they're not completely clueless. Many companies pay a solid chunk of change to third parties to conduct market research and gather data from their customers/target audience. WotC just needs to task an intern with making a dummy Reddit account and taking notes.
to elaborate on cfusionpm's point about living end. its a deck, like many in the 'tier 2' scrum, that subsist on exploiting weak spots or holes in a meta.
im not expert on living end, but the way i see it, it is a deck that is extremely powerful but narrow. or at least more narrow and rigid than what are most certainly requirements to be a consistently top performing deck - resiliency and flexibility. for instance during eldrazi winter. living end wasnt exactly keeping a tier 0 deck in check, but it was one of the few that could do well.
or like that brief period last year when elves started posting more results than normal. elves is a pretty decent deck, but suddenly humans cycled to the top of the format in a big way and elves got a window to exploit that.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
to elaborate on cfusionpm's point about living end. its a deck, like many in the 'tier 2' scrum, that subsist on exploiting weak spots or holes in a meta.
im not expert on living end, but the way i see it, it is a deck that is extremely powerful but narrow. or at least more narrow and rigid than what are most certainly requirements to be a consistently top performing deck - resiliency and flexibility. for instance during eldrazi winter. living end wasnt exactly keeping a tier 0 deck in check, but it was one of the few that could do well.
or like that brief period last year when elves started posting more results than normal. elves is a pretty decent deck, but suddenly humans cycled to the top of the format in a big way and elves got a window to exploit that.
I'm a dedicated Living End player. It has gotten some improvements from Amonkhet, like our 3/4 is now a 6/4, and the demon that gives -1/-1 counters to all enemy creatures each time a card is cycled. As long as there are not too many leyline of the void going around, the deck can perform. Also, I'm glad that merfolk is low in numbers these days. Because living end has a jund manabase, getting spreading seas on my lands can make LE lose easily. One way to avoid grave hate for my deck is simply not bringing it every week.. for example first friday of the month I bring LE to FNM, 2nd and 3rd fri I bring ponza, then 4th fri of the month I bring my tier 3 UW emeria control deck.
Glad that Faithless Looting is safe, and not being mentioned in the article.. it's not even in WoTC radar for possible banning. ^___^
I was pretty scarred honestly that Faithless Looting was on the radar due to Dredge going quite well lately and the new spice that is Izzet Phoenix. Thankfully, Dredge may continue on!
Yeah it was a relief. Well, I think it's because Dredge and Phoenix have creatures as win cons.. and are easier to handle than KCI. So we escaped the eyes of the banhammer. It would have bombed my entire playgroup if looting got banned, because all of us have invested money on a faithless looting deck of some sort.
Well WOTC does like their creature combat especially the tribal sort...Problem is Board Wipes are too slow. We need Board Wipes with alternate cost reduction like Terminus. Maybe something like if your opponent puts three or more non token creatures into play. This Board Wipes cost X less than 4 where X is number of creatures above 2. Or something like an enchantment that says your opponents cannot cast creatures with CMC above the number of lands they control.
I think that was already discussed in a previous State of Modern thread.
Which means in the current meta game, the around 27% of Top 8 finishes for stirrings decks including KCI was deemed fine (working from memory, so +/- on %). While a mod crackdown request is a bit of an overreach, people SHOULD temper their critiques and contributions based on precedent from WotC (one can wish anyway). It was deemed not a problem at the moment, but it would be absolutely foolish to believe it is forever safe. Every ban decision depends on the metagame context the decision was made in, so perhaps the % goes up this year and becomes a problem... or maybe it goes down.
I think you'll find a lot of the vocal players, and especially Twitch Chat/Twitter, are not all cool with Aggro either.
Spirits
"Reveal a Dragon"
Aggro, and Midrange.
Its only Control, and especially Combo, that are reviled by the majority of players, and disruption of Aggro has little to do with its acceptance beyond 'its always been there'.
Spirits
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I really should have clarified. It's about perceptions. When you're fighting an aggro deck, until the end you often have at least the illusion that you can win, and a lot of decks pack some form of interaction that is good for aggro matchups. When you're playing things like Ad Nauseam or Storm, you just don't know. More inexperienced players feel cheated when the house comes crashing down in their end step seemingly out of nowhere.
The fact is that both decks probably beat you in the same time frame and whether you went from 20 to 0 in five turns or one makes for no real difference, but the psychology of the majority of the player base is that a 'good game' has to have some sort of board development, a bit of give and take, a few dead creatures on each side which means that the preferred way to play has become Aggro or Midrange.
And WotC has more or less explicitly said that this is the design goal and as they're in the pleasing-people business and not the achieving-ultimate-archetype-balance business, Control had to be marginalized and Combo could only exist in a specific niche as viable but not on top (for extensive periods of time).
I'm playing freaking Wilderness Reclamation Bant Control. This is the truth, the eternal truth of Modern, outside something stupid like Eldrazi Winter.
Spirits
I literally just played against this deck on <not official MTG program>. It wasn't too shabby, honestly.
Almost anything can win online and in a local store. Just a look at MTGGoldfish daily results shows that the power and randomness are at a level that is sufficient for any decent deck to ride it out to the finish line. Obviously not all things are equal, and some win much more than others, but it's not like people's pet deck xyz is utterly worthless in the online environment or in the average store.
I mean, my U Tron is still good after all these years, albeit with some updates.
That's the beauty of the format. Legacy is inaccessible and too small and Standard is a waste of money, and in a sense, even more pay to win than any other format because you have to keep on paying in order to even play.
I'm scared it will get banned in Standard.
Spirits
From the Ban Announcement itself:
"Games with Krark-Clan Ironworks can often involve excessively arcane rules interactions using mana ability timing windows, the understanding of which are necessary for players to agree on the game state. This can create a barrier to entry to Modern for players playing against the deck and to those who would feel obligated to play with it because of its strong win rate."
The issue is not people do not want to play against combo decks. The issue is these combo decks are really non-intuitive about how to disrupt.
For example as a Gift Control player, almost every single large event I go to, I have someone call the judge about Gifts Ungiven to find Unburial Rites and Iona, Shield of Emeria and fail to find the other 2 (I use the foil from the vault when says "find 4 not find up to 4").
This includes a 2-1 Gifts Storm player.
I personally would prefer more combo decks to be present in the environment as it present a very different dimension to the game. The issue with these archetypes is Scapeshift, Amulet Bloom, Storm, KCI, Living End, Gifts Control etc all involve a very non-intuitive way cards are used.
My proposal for helping to support more combo decks is players at causal levels should be able to describe roughly how they want to disrupt the combo and judges/ the opponent should assist with the request/ question. (The key here is causal)
E.g.
- Thespian's Stage copies Dark Depths -> I like to use my wasteland at a point on the stack such that the Thespian stage becomes the dark depths and the legendary trigger is on the stack or something.
- Or I cast remand targeting Violent Outburst. Its pretty clear the intention counter the combo, but the person didn't know cascade puts it onto the stack without needing the resolve.
I think in the case of something like Remand on Violent Outburst (at a causal level) and the newer player didn't understand the ruling, they should be allowed to take the play back and allowed to cast remand on the living end itself.
So we should warp the rules and let players at GPs get away with misplays that would cost them the game otherwise so long as they say 'oh I'm new, I meant to do that', rather than letting new players make a lethal mistake once and remember it forever?
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
I know I only tried to Counter an Outburst once, you live and learn.
Spirits
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Yeah, I'd let them lose and walk them through why/how it works, but thats the joy of Magic to me. The worst that happens is you shuffle up and go again.
Spirits
you do realize that wizards has been focused on arena right? a completely free-to-play, or at least absurdly cheap, access point to standard. a standard where control has been alive and well, as it has been in most standard seasons. doesnt exactly align with your points about them marginalizing the archetype and that standard is pay-to-win; or some version of it. or that the UWx control archetype was one of the best performing archetypes of 2018 thanks to upgrades from recent standard sets, and a major unban in a series of unbans explicitly chosen to help slower decks (control being one of them).
as for player perception favoring creatures, and creature aggro; id agree. id also extend it to counterspells vs some sort of permanent removal after the fact.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
lol fact. Been saying this for years. WotC might be incompetent, but they're not completely clueless. Many companies pay a solid chunk of change to third parties to conduct market research and gather data from their customers/target audience. WotC just needs to task an intern with making a dummy Reddit account and taking notes.
Link to Discord server where anybody from MTGS can keep up with thread topics while everything is being sorted out with the new site.
im not expert on living end, but the way i see it, it is a deck that is extremely powerful but narrow. or at least more narrow and rigid than what are most certainly requirements to be a consistently top performing deck - resiliency and flexibility. for instance during eldrazi winter. living end wasnt exactly keeping a tier 0 deck in check, but it was one of the few that could do well.
or like that brief period last year when elves started posting more results than normal. elves is a pretty decent deck, but suddenly humans cycled to the top of the format in a big way and elves got a window to exploit that.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I'm a dedicated Living End player. It has gotten some improvements from Amonkhet, like our 3/4 is now a 6/4, and the demon that gives -1/-1 counters to all enemy creatures each time a card is cycled. As long as there are not too many leyline of the void going around, the deck can perform. Also, I'm glad that merfolk is low in numbers these days. Because living end has a jund manabase, getting spreading seas on my lands can make LE lose easily. One way to avoid grave hate for my deck is simply not bringing it every week.. for example first friday of the month I bring LE to FNM, 2nd and 3rd fri I bring ponza, then 4th fri of the month I bring my tier 3 UW emeria control deck.
I think that was already discussed in a previous State of Modern thread.
There's enough board wipes in modern right now. Anger of the Gods, Damnation, Terminus, Settle the Wreckage..
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
Yeah, and like he said, they're all too slow (or too unreliable, like Terminus).
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki