Xerox decks remain the problem, despite players loving to play them. There is very little counter play in existence to them. It's no surprise Chalice, Tron, and Amulet decks are rising.
That channel fireball article is interesting and I'll finish it later. But I disagree with preordain being unfit for modern play.
I feel like it is the line that would ensure control decks can hit their land drops while also lowering overall land count, stopping them control decks missing their land drops so they just die.
You could say but it also allows them to dig for combo pieces but I feel like the gain for decks that beat combo/xerox would be better than for the xerox (faithless looting is probably more powerful than preordain in the current meta).
On the one hand, I agree that for the most part, non-rotating format metagames will gravitate towards cantrip-heavy Xerox decks. They provide more options and consistency, which generally makes for a stronger deck. This is doubly noticeable in high-level events with top players, who personally want to play the kind of high consistency, low variance, high selection decks enabled by cantrips. I fully expect the MC to be overrun with Phoenix due to this pro preference and the fact that IP is a clear Tier 1 deck, if not the clear best deck.
On the other hand, this gravitation doesn't fully explain IP's current dominance. GDS never came close to these numbers in the past. Indeed, peak 2017 GDS performance never really exceeded peak Tron or Humans performance in 2018, and only one of those decks (Tron) has any resemblance to a Xerox deck: Stirrings, Sphere, and Star provide a LOT of velocity and selection. Even there, however, it's clearly not true Driver-Deck Xerox. Other factors are driving IP's run aside from simple Xerox gravitation and success.
I fully believe part of that drive is an echo chamber effect that trumpets IP as a best deck, with many players seeing no reason to disagree and picking it up blindly. They aren't wrong that it's a best deck, but they also are probably overselling the degree that it's the best. Another driving factor hss got to be Arena and Standard, which have pulled many away from Modern. When they return to the format after spending hours/days in Arena land, it's easy to audible to a deck that has such proven success. Add in the deck's inherent power/resilience/consistency, and the Magic community's penchant for alarmism instead of adaptation, and you have a perfect storm of factors leading to a 20%+ deck. This makes IP a different metagame force than GDS, which did not have all these factors at play to the same extent.
The point is not whether UR Phoenix is or is not the best deck. The point is that you have a Xerox deck showing up in wildly large numbers. You can argue that it's because its professional players say it is great, or because people like to play xerox decks, or because a flying vengevine pushed it over the top, or there are too many cantrips, or its threat diversity isn't hosed by any one line of counterplay, whatever. What makes it powerful and prevalent is not important. It's powerful because its a Xerox deck. It's prevalent because it is. The important questions are "Why is it dominating?"and "How can we fight it?"
For the first, I will repost the articles I linked originally, explaining how and why Xerox decks are powerful.
For the second, the answer is that there are no real good anti-Xerox decks in modern except, just like in vintage, Dredge. I posted the article explaining this. The three methods to overcome Xerox are to go under it, over it, or attack the cantrips directly. Modern has so few decks that can get under it, and the ones that can are pretty jank. The best of them is probably Affinity, but other's include Goryo's Vengeance, 8 Whack, Infect, and maybe Death's Shadow with the nut Street Wraith/Berserk hand.
Going over it is fine, but the Xerox deck hedges against that with Pyro Ascension, Thing in the Ice, and Crackling. This is why Tron (also a pseudo Xerox deck) and Primeval Titan are on the rise. Valakut is just hard to interact with, Amulet can kill you with a resolved Titan immediately, and Tron can swing the free tempo gained by Phoenixs back in their favor by playing a bomb on turn three. While these three decks are good against Phoenix, it isn't a stomp, and they can still fold to a few of the Phoenix plan Bs.
Attacking Xerox directly is also pretty unfeasible in Modern. There are only four playable cards in existence that punish Xerox players: Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Ameythest, Thalia Guardian of Tharben, and Chalice of the Void. I know there are a few others but they cost too much to really be playable, like Trinisphere or Vryn Wingmare. Of three modern legal answers, Thalia lacks her supporting cast of Rishadan Port and Wasteland and Thalia decks are typically weak to Thing in the Ice, Thorn of Ameythest sees no play, and Chalice has none of its supporting cards (Ancient Tomb, Workshop) and while there are few Tezzerator/Whir of Invention/Thopter Sword Chalice decks that can go toe to toe with Phoenix, they are still susceptible to Pyro Ascension and Surgical Extraction and Shatterstorm and such. It's not a stomp, but you can squeak out a win there.
That leaves Modern with just Dredge to combat Phoenix, same as it is/was in Vintage, and the results show it. We are in a Xerox/Dredge/Shops metagame without the shops, and with less scary dredge/ramp strategies. The same thing happened when Death's Shadow was the top deck. Eldrazi Tron (Chalice) rose to fight it.
The issue at hand is that Modern will almost always be weak to Xerox decks because Modern's current answers to Xerox are not particularly good. What is interesting, what what should be the topics of discussion are:
"Are there new or not-yet-discovered ways to combat Xerox decks?"
and
"Why did WOTC choose to restrict Mentor over cantrips and how can that affect Izzet Phoenix?"
Edit: Preemptive Counter Argument - 'But my BGx!'
While Green Black Rock has shown some strength in the Phoenix match, Rock is naturally at a disadvantage because they have to have everything line up correctly to win. Are they on the Phoenix plan? Need to have Surgical/Nihil Spellbomb/Scavenging Ooze/Kalitas (all of which cost more mana than a Phoenix). Are they on the Thing in the Ice plan? Hope you drew Fatal Push. Are they on the Ascension plan? Hope you have Pulse or Trophy. And while it can line up in Rock's favor, they have to get a little lucky to get there while the Xerox deck is leveraging its better average draw step every turn. If BG decks were better at fighting Phoenix, we'd see more of them. The whole internet is biased towards Midrange strategies, so you'd think they'd show up at tournaments and show how good their deck is against the Xerox deck. Thus far, that hasn't happened en masse, and Rock decks remain a small percent of the field while Phoenix grows.
Edit 2: I will not be replying to rebuttals that are not at least as fleshed out as my assertion. If you're grown up enough to use the internet, you are grown up enough to understand that posturing, nit picking, and corner cases are not enough to constitute a rebuttal to an argument. You will attack my argument in full or you will not be getting a response from me.
@whoever was disagree with the CFB article - The point isn't that X cantrip is too good or not good enough, the point is that a critical mass of cantrips regardless of goodness will always rise to the top. Reading things in full before commenting on them makes you seem less silly.
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.
what exactly is your argument? kinda hard to rebut a list of claims you believe to be true. like what is the conclusion, the correct course of action supported by what you propose to be the truth of izzet phoenix and xerox decks in modern.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Modern has a huge pool of cards and of course new strategies will rise to the top and the meta will adapt to it, exploring that huge pool and adapting to combat the new strategies. Saying that every time something happens doesnt really help the conversation, it keeps shifting the focus.
Of course some threats will break the format for a while and everyone will adapt to the strategy, but just repeating this everytime someting happens just shifts the focus from what matters. WOTC printed way too many free/1 mana cards that sculpt your hand and to make it worse they made a payoff for playing it. Being able to sculpt your hand this heavily allows players to hit the right plays way too often. Some lists will run 17-18 lands and hit every land drop they need, because they have those cards. Opt, Visions, Looting, Scour, etc. That alone just pushes players into those decks. Printing payoff for playing 3 cantrips a turn is an ever bigger mistake.
I wish they banned Looting, Stirrings, tron lands and maybe amulet, then the format would be mostly fair and a variety of strategies would be playable and fun.
Modern has a huge pool of cards and of course new strategies will rise to the top and the meta will adapt to it, exploring that huge pool and adapting to combat the new strategies. Saying that every time something happens doesnt really help the conversation, it keeps shifting the focus.
Of course some threats will break the format for a while and everyone will adapt to the strategy, but just repeating this everytime someting happens just shifts the focus from what matters. WOTC printed way too many free/1 mana cards that sculpt your hand and to make it worse they made a payoff for playing it. Being able to sculpt your hand this heavily allows players to hit the right plays way too often. Some lists will run 17-18 lands and hit every land drop they need, because they have those cards. Opt, Visions, Looting, Scour, etc. That alone just pushes players into those decks. Printing payoff for playing 3 cantrips a turn is an ever bigger mistake.
I wish they banned Looting, Stirrings, tron lands and maybe amulet, then the format would be mostly fair and a variety of strategies would be playable and fun.
Why do you want Tron and Amulet to be completely gone? Banning Stirrings already neuters those decks quite a bit. I would assume that would be enough for most people's tastes. The only thing bad that Tron ever did in this format is continually stomp fair decks and top deck well. It also killed a lot of rogue strategies before they even began.
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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)
I wish they banned Looting, Stirrings, tron lands and maybe amulet, then the format would be mostly fair and a variety of strategies would be playable and fun.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that train is long gone. Modern cannot become Standard++ nor can it become something like Pauper. It is shaped from all kinds of different and big (contextual) design mistakes over the years.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
I agree with your post, but I personally feel that most, if not all design mistakes have been already banned or preemptively banned. The ones I'm looking at are Eye of Ugin with later prints, Mental Misstep, Umezawa's Jitte, Skullclamp, possibly split cards with suspend cards, probably missing some... I don't see fast mana or many of the Phyrexian spells as "mistakes." They all served their purpose in other formats. For example, Seething Song was fine in AIR in Extended. Likewise for Jitte in Zoo in Extended.
Tron lands were and ARE fine. I played Tron in Extended quite a bit. I looooved Tron so much; most versions were Blue based, toolbox versions. Nowadays, Tron has such a negative connotation because of how much it changed, getting more consistent. People hate that in their opponents' decks - consistency.
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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)
I hate how often I get here and see this sweet new brew and realize they just lose to tron. Hate how often I go to the estabilished and someone asks about tron and people say its a lost match. I just think tron is harmfull to the format and kills creativity.
Titan I put as a maybe because they get lumped together often. But honestly its tron I hate
Strangely the whole article included content on hand disruption too. Maybe just don't add the bit about silly (those in glass houses) and we could focus on your excellent response.
Anyway the comments section of the CFB article also has an interesting point regards what players are happy to allow in a format (via ban list)
It says
Most modern players are ok with Xerox styled decks being the best decks and anything better and different tends to end up banned. Goes on to suggest that this is a player perception issue rather than a card power and Brian DeMars agrees that he couldn't think of a rebuttal for this.
Now that is what lead me to preordain it also leads us into the murky twin water. so instead of that do we have any eternal format players able to highlight times when Xerox was bested and something got banned?
Edit - I could never condone the banning of looting and stirrings. Kills to many brews. Tron lands stay to. Whenever I come back to this thread I feel like what modern players hate most is their opponents getting to play magic too.
WotC may not have realised but they're seeking to balance this same internal inconsistency by changing the Mulligan rule.
We want players to consistently play games of magic (because it's fun) but we don't want to give them consistency tools.(because that's not fun)??
It says
Most modern players are ok with Xerox styled decks being the best decks and anything better and different tends to end up banned. Goes on to suggest that this is a player perception issue rather than a card power and Brian DeMars agrees that he couldn't think of a rebuttal for this.
Now that is what lead me to preordain it also leads us into the murky twin water. so instead of that do we have any eternal format players able to highlight times when Xerox was bested and something got banned?
In Modern, the most infamous example is probably Pod. It took a giant dump on Delver, the UR Xerox deck of the time period, and it got banned. Was the deck actually OP? At the time, it was a surprisingly borderline case despite ballooning to over 20% of the meta due to how soundly it beat Delver, which was pushing 15% itself, IIRC. It was one of the early examples of when people began to cotton onto how the Meta might become imbalanced by indirect means.
I've tried to talk to it conceptually a few times but I'll reiterate some of what's been said about "Xerox" strategies. Modern is basically about how you try to achieve consistency -- every successful deck has been very consistent through one of two mechanisms:
1) playing all the same cards (Jund, burn))
2) playing cards that find other cards (stirrings/looting/serum visions/map/etc., and to a lesser extent collected company/chord of calling) (Tron, Twin, Phoenix, Storm)
I think that the critical mass of 'cards that find other cards' has kinda gotten to the point where it's largely incorrect to play a deck that is less consistent, but some of that is also that some extremely high quality threats have been printed that synerize with various 'finds other cards' approaches--
a) New Ulamog and Ugin lowered the critical turn for Tron a bit from Emrakul
b) Phoenix/Thing
c) Prized Amalgam and Chill increased the power of dredging
d) Hollow one
I agree with your post, but I personally feel that most, if not all design mistakes have been already banned or preemptively banned. The ones I'm looking at are Eye of Ugin with later prints, Mental Misstep, Umezawa's Jitte, Skullclamp, possibly split cards with suspend cards, probably missing some... I don't see fast mana or many of the Phyrexian spells as "mistakes." They all served their purpose in other formats. For example, Seething Song was fine in AIR in Extended. Likewise for Jitte in Zoo in Extended.
Tron lands were and ARE fine. I played Tron in Extended quite a bit. I looooved Tron so much; most versions were Blue based, toolbox versions. Nowadays, Tron has such a negative connotation because of how much it changed, getting more consistent. People hate that in their opponents' decks - consistency.
AIR had no good Storm cards (grabbing 4 Hellkites via Dragonstorm was the best you could have done back then) so they needed to relay on different things (prison elements and fatties and the occasional Dragonstorm build). So Song/Rite of Flames is fine in that deck. However, those two in a deck with PiF, Mancers/Ascension is a completely different animal. If you would ban Grapeshot, Empty and Dragonstorm there is little to no reason to not unban Song (still little bit wary about Rites, cause of Chalice).
And yeah, I totally agree with your statement with Tron. However, this mainly stems from the bonkers payoff cards you can nowadays grab. If the best thing you could have done with the mana is playing Keiga, the Tide Star or Tooth and Nail for Kiki-jiki + Sky Hussar (or something as filthy as Plow Under in the Mirror...) it is something completely different than if you slam a Karn, Wurmcoil or Ulamog with it. The payoff cards just are so far and beyond better, it is not even funny.
That is also the reason, that only the most dedicated old school Tron players are playing those Tron style decks. Why should I try to Mindslaver somebody out of the game (although quite funny to do so) when I can just Karn reliable on Turn 3? Why should I play UW Tron with the Gifts package, when I can play Ugin the same turn they usually reanimate a fatty?
That is the reason, why people are hating Tron. Not because of the mana that it generates, but what spells you can cast with it.
To get back to your initial point. A lot of "design mistakes" are always contextual. Is Eye of Ugin a problem? Only when you are printing pushed Eldrazie cards with CMC not a billion. Is Dark Depths a problem? Only if you print Hexmage/Thespian Stage. Is Grapeshot/Empty a problem? Only if you have the necessary tools to abuse it. Is DRS a mistake? As Standard would have suggested, no. As we know, yes.
You can reprint so many broken cards in different environments, which would be absolutely atrocious (DRS in standard as a prime example). However, in a format as Modern, which is a huge pond, a small ripple can result into some huge waves. So while in hindsight you can always say: "XYZ was a design mistake", the context matters a ton. And that is why Modern cannot and will not become Standard++ nor Pauper (Pauper, at least till a few years ago, was more treniding towards a Vintage style than anything else). You would need a huge banlist to do so, which would kill the format outright.
I hate how often I get here and see this sweet new brew and realize they just lose to tron. Hate how often I go to the estabilished and someone asks about tron and people say its a lost match. I just think tron is harmfull to the format and kills creativity.
Titan I put as a maybe because they get lumped together often. But honestly its tron I hate
There will always be big mana decks which will do a similar job to what Tron is doing. Should we now ban all big mana pay off cards too? So Titan, Scapeshift, Valakut,...?
Those decks struggle against big mana decks, cause they are weak to that archtype in general. If I play a Tempo deck (like Delver or Bug Shadow) I always moan when I need to play against Midrange decks, cause those are just the natural enemies of the deck. However, I am super happy when I can play against any form of Combo, which is usually a pretty darn good match-up.
That is the normal Rock-Paper-Scissor thematic of the Archetypes. If something has no bad match-ups it usually indicates that the deck is way to strong.
In Modern, the most infamous example is probably Pod. It took a giant dump on Delver, the UR Xerox deck of the time period, and it got banned. Was the deck actually OP? At the time, it was a surprisingly borderline case despite ballooning to over 20% of the meta due to how soundly it beat Delver, which was pushing 15% itself, IIRC. It was one of the early examples of when people began to cotton onto how the Meta might become imbalanced by indirect means.
IMO Wizard had two paths back in the day, two decision which would been shaping the whole format. One was the Path they took, ban Pod, TC, DTT. That was the more conservative Path, since it was still done with the "what-a-mole" mentality of trying to keep the ever increasing powerlevel of non rotating formats down (especially Modern). The rest is history.
The other one would not to go that route and instead go the unban route of unleashing more cards into the format, things like Stoneforge and BBE would have been great cards back than, but it would have been the more risky path, since no one could say, where this would have lead too.
So, to get back to your initial question, yes, Pod needed to be banned, cause they decided to continue "whack-a-mole". Pod in summer already had peak performances (and that was with a more harmful environment), although in the Kiki Pod version. When TC and DTT entered the format, Rhino.Pod (or rather Angel Pod) became the (in my opinion) second best deck in the format, only DTT Scapeshift (which nobody played for w/e reason, echo champer syndrome I assume) was better. Pod had a decent to great match-up against all the Tier 1 meta decks, either they outvalued any value deck (BGx and UWR) or could keep on par with the card advantage of TC Delver. That combo decks (as in pure combo decks like Storm, Ad Nauseam, Griselbanned or something like Amulet Titan) where either non existent (cause they either didn't "exist" yet (Amulet Titan or Dredge), got no attention at all (Griselbanned, Ad Nauseam) or were considered bad decks (Storm)) helped Pod a lot. Combo and somewhat big mana (depends on which Pod version you played) were the worst match-ups for Pod. Only Infect with the freshly printed Become Immense (in conjunction with Probe) and Affinity were the only top tier decks (which saw play) could have been labeled as a combo deck back than. Sure, there was still Burn with the freshly printed Eidolon (just one set old), but even against that deck Angle.Pod had little to no trouble (Kitchen Finks into Resto into Rhino is gg).
So, tl;dr: Given the path they have chosen back then, it absolutely needed to get banned.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
IMO Wizard had two paths back in the day, two decision which would been shaping the whole format. One was the Path they took, ban Pod, TC, DTT. That was the more conservative Path, since it was still done with the "what-a-mole" mentality of trying to keep the ever increasing powerlevel of non rotating formats down (especially Modern). The rest is history.
The other one would not to go that route and instead go the unban route of unleashing more cards into the format, things like Stoneforge and BBE would have been great cards back than, but it would have been the more risky path, since no one could say, where this would have lead too.
So, to get back to your initial question, yes, Pod needed to be banned, cause they decided to continue "whack-a-mole". Pod in summer already had peak performances (and that was with a more harmful environment), although in the Kiki Pod version. When TC and DTT entered the format, Rhino.Pod (or rather Angel Pod) became the (in my opinion) second best deck in the format, only DTT Scapeshift (which nobody played for w/e reason, echo champer syndrome I assume) was better. Pod had a decent to great match-up against all the Tier 1 meta decks, either they outvalued any value deck (BGx and UWR) or could keep on par with the card advantage of TC Delver. That combo decks (as in pure combo decks like Storm, Ad Nauseam, Griselbanned or something like Amulet Titan) where either non existent (cause they either didn't "exist" yet (Amulet Titan or Dredge), got no attention at all (Griselbanned, Ad Nauseam) or were considered bad decks (Storm)) helped Pod a lot. Combo and somewhat big mana (depends on which Pod version you played) were the worst match-ups for Pod. Only Infect with the freshly printed Become Immense (in conjunction with Probe) and Affinity were the only top tier decks (which saw play) could have been labeled as a combo deck back than. Sure, there was still Burn with the freshly printed Eidolon (just one set old), but even against that deck Angle.Pod had little to no trouble (Kitchen Finks into Resto into Rhino is gg).
So, tl;dr: Given the path they have chosen back then, it absolutely needed to get banned.
Greetings,
Kathal
Weren't both BBE and DRS legal during the TC meta? Also, Scapeshift, even with DTT, wasn't as good as people think it was. I was on it at the time, and my dude, that deck was a pile. It was way too slow for the format, was in the unenviable position of getting smacked around by Pod and Delver, and wasn't able to fuel DTT properly.
Weren't both BBE and DRS legal during the TC meta? Also, Scapeshift, even with DTT, wasn't as good as people think it was. I was on it at the time, and my dude, that deck was a pile. It was way too slow for the format, was in the unenviable position of getting smacked around by Pod and Delver, and wasn't able to fuel DTT properly.
DRS was banned in January 2014 and Khans of Tarkir was released on September 2014 so no, DRS was not legal by the time Treasure Cruise entered the format
Weren't both BBE and DRS legal during the TC meta? Also, Scapeshift, even with DTT, wasn't as good as people think it was. I was on it at the time, and my dude, that deck was a pile. It was way too slow for the format, was in the unenviable position of getting smacked around by Pod and Delver, and wasn't able to fuel DTT properly.
DRS was banned in January 2014 and Khans of Tarkir was released on September 2014 so no, DRS was not legal by the time Treasure Cruise entered the format
This.
Also you were right that Dig Scapeshift had problems with the 2 best decks in the format, but was actually pretty strong outside of those. That's scary because Wizard's had already decided to ban those cards.
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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)
Weren't both BBE and DRS legal during the TC meta? Also, Scapeshift, even with DTT, wasn't as good as people think it was. I was on it at the time, and my dude, that deck was a pile. It was way too slow for the format, was in the unenviable position of getting smacked around by Pod and Delver, and wasn't able to fuel DTT properly.
DRS was banned in January 2014 and Khans of Tarkir was released on September 2014 so no, DRS was not legal by the time Treasure Cruise entered the format
This.
Also you were right that Dig Scapeshift had problems with the 2 best decks in the format, but was actually pretty strong outside of those. That's scary because Wizard's had already decided to ban those cards.
Really? I remember it being pretty... well, bad, against everything except Tron and Ramp decks, which it ate for lunch. It just didn't have the interaction to protect itself against midrange or control's interactive elements, other combo decks just outpaced it, it raced poorly against aggro in general because the sweepers really weren't up to par, and it could only barely fuel DTT at all. Honestly, Azcanta and Growth Spiral make the current decks a lot stronger and more flexible. It's actually a pretty solid pick into Izzet Phoenix, since you can run Anger of the Gods and Echoing Truth pretty easily, though Death's Shadow is tough.
Not sure how anyone could read that meta data and think the meta is anything but well balanced. The difference between the 'good' decks and the 'bad' decks is 10% winrate. Phoenix isnt even top 3 in winrate, and prison has a great matchup against it and will grow in popularity(which should lower phoenix's winrate as well).
As always people just love to complain about anything and everything they can.
Phoenix
Phoenix
Dredge
Dredge
Tron
Humans
Shadow
UW
I mean, that's basically Modern (other than UW being relevant). Let's see what happens in the GP (that has no coverage )
To be fair, at least modern is consistent at the moment in it's adherence to graveyard resurrection shinanigans across the board. I swear I'd dread seeing a modern powered version of standards Wilderness Reclamation deck. Counter everything and wait forever as the opponent draws his deck and pings you to death. I didn't think I'd find something worse than Teferi ultimates.
To be fair, in paper we'd probably just say "look, I'm about to kill your field and do 20+ damage to you, so do you have an answer to this or can we move to game two?"
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
"look, I'm about to kill your field and do 20+ damage to you, so do you have an answer to this or can we move to game two?"
i dont know why but this made me laugh more than it should have. On a serious note i think pheonix and faithless looting are really good but not broken. I mean would i really care about pheonix if twin was legal? or KCI? There are many grave yard strats right now, so all that means is pack more hate.
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Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
@socketto
What is the best graveyard hate to have?
Surgical Extraction, just because it has so many broad applications. As for strict graveyard hate, nothing beats Rest in Peace when you're on the play.
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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)
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The point is not whether UR Phoenix is or is not the best deck. The point is that you have a Xerox deck showing up in wildly large numbers. You can argue that it's because its professional players say it is great, or because people like to play xerox decks, or because a flying vengevine pushed it over the top, or there are too many cantrips, or its threat diversity isn't hosed by any one line of counterplay, whatever. What makes it powerful and prevalent is not important. It's powerful because its a Xerox deck. It's prevalent because it is. The important questions are "Why is it dominating?"and "How can we fight it?"
For the first, I will repost the articles I linked originally, explaining how and why Xerox decks are powerful.
http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/1360/turbo-xerox-and-monastery-mentor
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/decks-like-deaths-shadow-will-always-become-the-best-deck/
For the second, the answer is that there are no real good anti-Xerox decks in modern except, just like in vintage, Dredge. I posted the article explaining this. The three methods to overcome Xerox are to go under it, over it, or attack the cantrips directly. Modern has so few decks that can get under it, and the ones that can are pretty jank. The best of them is probably Affinity, but other's include Goryo's Vengeance, 8 Whack, Infect, and maybe Death's Shadow with the nut Street Wraith/Berserk hand.
Going over it is fine, but the Xerox deck hedges against that with Pyro Ascension, Thing in the Ice, and Crackling. This is why Tron (also a pseudo Xerox deck) and Primeval Titan are on the rise. Valakut is just hard to interact with, Amulet can kill you with a resolved Titan immediately, and Tron can swing the free tempo gained by Phoenixs back in their favor by playing a bomb on turn three. While these three decks are good against Phoenix, it isn't a stomp, and they can still fold to a few of the Phoenix plan Bs.
Attacking Xerox directly is also pretty unfeasible in Modern. There are only four playable cards in existence that punish Xerox players: Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Ameythest, Thalia Guardian of Tharben, and Chalice of the Void. I know there are a few others but they cost too much to really be playable, like Trinisphere or Vryn Wingmare. Of three modern legal answers, Thalia lacks her supporting cast of Rishadan Port and Wasteland and Thalia decks are typically weak to Thing in the Ice, Thorn of Ameythest sees no play, and Chalice has none of its supporting cards (Ancient Tomb, Workshop) and while there are few Tezzerator/Whir of Invention/Thopter Sword Chalice decks that can go toe to toe with Phoenix, they are still susceptible to Pyro Ascension and Surgical Extraction and Shatterstorm and such. It's not a stomp, but you can squeak out a win there.
That leaves Modern with just Dredge to combat Phoenix, same as it is/was in Vintage, and the results show it. We are in a Xerox/Dredge/Shops metagame without the shops, and with less scary dredge/ramp strategies. The same thing happened when Death's Shadow was the top deck. Eldrazi Tron (Chalice) rose to fight it.
The issue at hand is that Modern will almost always be weak to Xerox decks because Modern's current answers to Xerox are not particularly good. What is interesting, what what should be the topics of discussion are:
"Are there new or not-yet-discovered ways to combat Xerox decks?"
and
"Why did WOTC choose to restrict Mentor over cantrips and how can that affect Izzet Phoenix?"
Edit: Preemptive Counter Argument - 'But my BGx!'
While Green Black Rock has shown some strength in the Phoenix match, Rock is naturally at a disadvantage because they have to have everything line up correctly to win. Are they on the Phoenix plan? Need to have Surgical/Nihil Spellbomb/Scavenging Ooze/Kalitas (all of which cost more mana than a Phoenix). Are they on the Thing in the Ice plan? Hope you drew Fatal Push. Are they on the Ascension plan? Hope you have Pulse or Trophy. And while it can line up in Rock's favor, they have to get a little lucky to get there while the Xerox deck is leveraging its better average draw step every turn. If BG decks were better at fighting Phoenix, we'd see more of them. The whole internet is biased towards Midrange strategies, so you'd think they'd show up at tournaments and show how good their deck is against the Xerox deck. Thus far, that hasn't happened en masse, and Rock decks remain a small percent of the field while Phoenix grows.
Edit 2: I will not be replying to rebuttals that are not at least as fleshed out as my assertion. If you're grown up enough to use the internet, you are grown up enough to understand that posturing, nit picking, and corner cases are not enough to constitute a rebuttal to an argument. You will attack my argument in full or you will not be getting a response from me.
@whoever was disagree with the CFB article - The point isn't that X cantrip is too good or not good enough, the point is that a critical mass of cantrips regardless of goodness will always rise to the top. Reading things in full before commenting on them makes you seem less silly.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Of course some threats will break the format for a while and everyone will adapt to the strategy, but just repeating this everytime someting happens just shifts the focus from what matters. WOTC printed way too many free/1 mana cards that sculpt your hand and to make it worse they made a payoff for playing it. Being able to sculpt your hand this heavily allows players to hit the right plays way too often. Some lists will run 17-18 lands and hit every land drop they need, because they have those cards. Opt, Visions, Looting, Scour, etc. That alone just pushes players into those decks. Printing payoff for playing 3 cantrips a turn is an ever bigger mistake.
I wish they banned Looting, Stirrings, tron lands and maybe amulet, then the format would be mostly fair and a variety of strategies would be playable and fun.
Why do you want Tron and Amulet to be completely gone? Banning Stirrings already neuters those decks quite a bit. I would assume that would be enough for most people's tastes. The only thing bad that Tron ever did in this format is continually stomp fair decks and top deck well. It also killed a lot of rogue strategies before they even began.
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)Sorry to burst your bubble, but that train is long gone. Modern cannot become Standard++ nor can it become something like Pauper. It is shaped from all kinds of different and big (contextual) design mistakes over the years.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Tron lands were and ARE fine. I played Tron in Extended quite a bit. I looooved Tron so much; most versions were Blue based, toolbox versions. Nowadays, Tron has such a negative connotation because of how much it changed, getting more consistent. People hate that in their opponents' decks - consistency.
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)Looting Yes. Stirring Maybe. Tron Lands No.
Titan I put as a maybe because they get lumped together often. But honestly its tron I hate
Anyway the comments section of the CFB article also has an interesting point regards what players are happy to allow in a format (via ban list)
It says
Most modern players are ok with Xerox styled decks being the best decks and anything better and different tends to end up banned. Goes on to suggest that this is a player perception issue rather than a card power and Brian DeMars agrees that he couldn't think of a rebuttal for this.
Now that is what lead me to preordain it also leads us into the murky twin water. so instead of that do we have any eternal format players able to highlight times when Xerox was bested and something got banned?
Edit - I could never condone the banning of looting and stirrings. Kills to many brews. Tron lands stay to. Whenever I come back to this thread I feel like what modern players hate most is their opponents getting to play magic too.
WotC may not have realised but they're seeking to balance this same internal inconsistency by changing the Mulligan rule.
We want players to consistently play games of magic (because it's fun) but we don't want to give them consistency tools.(because that's not fun)??
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
In Modern, the most infamous example is probably Pod. It took a giant dump on Delver, the UR Xerox deck of the time period, and it got banned. Was the deck actually OP? At the time, it was a surprisingly borderline case despite ballooning to over 20% of the meta due to how soundly it beat Delver, which was pushing 15% itself, IIRC. It was one of the early examples of when people began to cotton onto how the Meta might become imbalanced by indirect means.
1) playing all the same cards (Jund, burn))
2) playing cards that find other cards (stirrings/looting/serum visions/map/etc., and to a lesser extent collected company/chord of calling) (Tron, Twin, Phoenix, Storm)
I think that the critical mass of 'cards that find other cards' has kinda gotten to the point where it's largely incorrect to play a deck that is less consistent, but some of that is also that some extremely high quality threats have been printed that synerize with various 'finds other cards' approaches--
a) New Ulamog and Ugin lowered the critical turn for Tron a bit from Emrakul
b) Phoenix/Thing
c) Prized Amalgam and Chill increased the power of dredging
d) Hollow one
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
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
AIR had no good Storm cards (grabbing 4 Hellkites via Dragonstorm was the best you could have done back then) so they needed to relay on different things (prison elements and fatties and the occasional Dragonstorm build). So Song/Rite of Flames is fine in that deck. However, those two in a deck with PiF, Mancers/Ascension is a completely different animal. If you would ban Grapeshot, Empty and Dragonstorm there is little to no reason to not unban Song (still little bit wary about Rites, cause of Chalice).
And yeah, I totally agree with your statement with Tron. However, this mainly stems from the bonkers payoff cards you can nowadays grab. If the best thing you could have done with the mana is playing Keiga, the Tide Star or Tooth and Nail for Kiki-jiki + Sky Hussar (or something as filthy as Plow Under in the Mirror...) it is something completely different than if you slam a Karn, Wurmcoil or Ulamog with it. The payoff cards just are so far and beyond better, it is not even funny.
That is also the reason, that only the most dedicated old school Tron players are playing those Tron style decks. Why should I try to Mindslaver somebody out of the game (although quite funny to do so) when I can just Karn reliable on Turn 3? Why should I play UW Tron with the Gifts package, when I can play Ugin the same turn they usually reanimate a fatty?
That is the reason, why people are hating Tron. Not because of the mana that it generates, but what spells you can cast with it.
To get back to your initial point. A lot of "design mistakes" are always contextual. Is Eye of Ugin a problem? Only when you are printing pushed Eldrazie cards with CMC not a billion. Is Dark Depths a problem? Only if you print Hexmage/Thespian Stage. Is Grapeshot/Empty a problem? Only if you have the necessary tools to abuse it. Is DRS a mistake? As Standard would have suggested, no. As we know, yes.
You can reprint so many broken cards in different environments, which would be absolutely atrocious (DRS in standard as a prime example). However, in a format as Modern, which is a huge pond, a small ripple can result into some huge waves. So while in hindsight you can always say: "XYZ was a design mistake", the context matters a ton. And that is why Modern cannot and will not become Standard++ nor Pauper (Pauper, at least till a few years ago, was more treniding towards a Vintage style than anything else). You would need a huge banlist to do so, which would kill the format outright.
There will always be big mana decks which will do a similar job to what Tron is doing. Should we now ban all big mana pay off cards too? So Titan, Scapeshift, Valakut,...?
Those decks struggle against big mana decks, cause they are weak to that archtype in general. If I play a Tempo deck (like Delver or Bug Shadow) I always moan when I need to play against Midrange decks, cause those are just the natural enemies of the deck. However, I am super happy when I can play against any form of Combo, which is usually a pretty darn good match-up.
That is the normal Rock-Paper-Scissor thematic of the Archetypes. If something has no bad match-ups it usually indicates that the deck is way to strong.
IMO Wizard had two paths back in the day, two decision which would been shaping the whole format. One was the Path they took, ban Pod, TC, DTT. That was the more conservative Path, since it was still done with the "what-a-mole" mentality of trying to keep the ever increasing powerlevel of non rotating formats down (especially Modern). The rest is history.
The other one would not to go that route and instead go the unban route of unleashing more cards into the format, things like Stoneforge and BBE would have been great cards back than, but it would have been the more risky path, since no one could say, where this would have lead too.
So, to get back to your initial question, yes, Pod needed to be banned, cause they decided to continue "whack-a-mole". Pod in summer already had peak performances (and that was with a more harmful environment), although in the Kiki Pod version. When TC and DTT entered the format, Rhino.Pod (or rather Angel Pod) became the (in my opinion) second best deck in the format, only DTT Scapeshift (which nobody played for w/e reason, echo champer syndrome I assume) was better. Pod had a decent to great match-up against all the Tier 1 meta decks, either they outvalued any value deck (BGx and UWR) or could keep on par with the card advantage of TC Delver. That combo decks (as in pure combo decks like Storm, Ad Nauseam, Griselbanned or something like Amulet Titan) where either non existent (cause they either didn't "exist" yet (Amulet Titan or Dredge), got no attention at all (Griselbanned, Ad Nauseam) or were considered bad decks (Storm)) helped Pod a lot. Combo and somewhat big mana (depends on which Pod version you played) were the worst match-ups for Pod. Only Infect with the freshly printed Become Immense (in conjunction with Probe) and Affinity were the only top tier decks (which saw play) could have been labeled as a combo deck back than. Sure, there was still Burn with the freshly printed Eidolon (just one set old), but even against that deck Angle.Pod had little to no trouble (Kitchen Finks into Resto into Rhino is gg).
So, tl;dr: Given the path they have chosen back then, it absolutely needed to get banned.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Very interesting read btw.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Weren't both BBE and DRS legal during the TC meta? Also, Scapeshift, even with DTT, wasn't as good as people think it was. I was on it at the time, and my dude, that deck was a pile. It was way too slow for the format, was in the unenviable position of getting smacked around by Pod and Delver, and wasn't able to fuel DTT properly.
DRS was banned in January 2014 and Khans of Tarkir was released on September 2014 so no, DRS was not legal by the time Treasure Cruise entered the format
This.
Also you were right that Dig Scapeshift had problems with the 2 best decks in the format, but was actually pretty strong outside of those. That's scary because Wizard's had already decided to ban those cards.
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)Really? I remember it being pretty... well, bad, against everything except Tron and Ramp decks, which it ate for lunch. It just didn't have the interaction to protect itself against midrange or control's interactive elements, other combo decks just outpaced it, it raced poorly against aggro in general because the sweepers really weren't up to par, and it could only barely fuel DTT at all. Honestly, Azcanta and Growth Spiral make the current decks a lot stronger and more flexible. It's actually a pretty solid pick into Izzet Phoenix, since you can run Anger of the Gods and Echoing Truth pretty easily, though Death's Shadow is tough.
As always people just love to complain about anything and everything they can.
https://www.channelfireball.com/mtg-calgary-mcq-top-8-decklists/
Modern:
Mardu Pyromancer
Grixis Shadow
Traverse Shadow
Jund
Abzan
The Rock
So,
Phoenix
Phoenix
Dredge
Dredge
Tron
Humans
Shadow
UW
I mean, that's basically Modern (other than UW being relevant). Let's see what happens in the GP (that has no coverage )
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
To be fair, at least modern is consistent at the moment in it's adherence to graveyard resurrection shinanigans across the board. I swear I'd dread seeing a modern powered version of standards Wilderness Reclamation deck. Counter everything and wait forever as the opponent draws his deck and pings you to death. I didn't think I'd find something worse than Teferi ultimates.
To be fair, in paper we'd probably just say "look, I'm about to kill your field and do 20+ damage to you, so do you have an answer to this or can we move to game two?"
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
i dont know why but this made me laugh more than it should have. On a serious note i think pheonix and faithless looting are really good but not broken. I mean would i really care about pheonix if twin was legal? or KCI? There are many grave yard strats right now, so all that means is pack more hate.
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
What is the best graveyard hate to have?
Surgical Extraction, just because it has so many broad applications. As for strict graveyard hate, nothing beats Rest in Peace when you're on the play.
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)