I don't deal much in speculation (waiting for the cards to come out), but is Combo Elves looking to take the format by storm?
If so, this could be a great example of a "slow enough" (aka T4) "engine combo" deck, to satisfy all the combo-in-Modern nay-sayers.
I doubt it. The combo can be easily hated out, and like the other creature combos there are answers for this in nearly every other modern deck. It will be a fair, welcome addition to modern's combo roster, probably drifting between tier 1 and 1.5 depending on the meta.
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You can't always win, and just because you lose doesn't mean you played badly.
Even if you lose, it is important to remain confident in your ability to make good plays and decisions. Lose that and you are truly lost.
Testing is great, and the better the testing is, the better off you'll be.
It is impossible to tilt and play well.
It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose.
And on top of that there are way to many factors in attencandance numbers to use them without extensive analyisis how they come together)
That's correct. there's no way to tell what is causing the increase in attendance. It could be new players, the bans, standard pressures, pricing out of other formats, etc.
I don't think the ban list affects a significant portion of attendance at the ptq or gp level. I bet 9/10 competitive players will play what will get them q'd for a pro tour regardless of what it is. Like I said before, I'll play grizzly bears.format if that's what it takes to reach the pro tour.
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You can't always win, and just because you lose doesn't mean you played badly.
Even if you lose, it is important to remain confident in your ability to make good plays and decisions. Lose that and you are truly lost.
Testing is great, and the better the testing is, the better off you'll be.
It is impossible to tilt and play well.
It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose.
To kickstart this discussion, I'll reiterate one of my former points: Why are Modern cards seeing such rapid increases in price if the format, as others are arguing, isn't popular?
It should be noted that a lot of the Modern cards that are going up noticeably in price are played in Legacy also. For example, Vendilion Clique, Liliana of the Veil, and Thoughtseize are all Legacy staples as well. And Jace isn't even legal in Modern and his price is spiking. I don't know how much of the price increase is due to Modern and how much is due to Legacy.
Or to get back on the banlist discussion: A lot of people are very much in favor of Wizards announcing "unbannings". What is the best card at the moment to be unbanned?
Golgari Grave-Troll. It being banned still is an utter joke.
I think there are cards on the banned list that would do more interesting/good things in the format than Golgari Grave-Troll, but Golgari Grave-Troll just should not be on that ban list.
Assuming the metagame stays relatively stable (and it should) the M14 B&R announcement would be the perfect time to unban Bitterblossom. I think it's inevitable that we see that happen eventually, and there would be enough time before the next Modern PTQ season to give it a re-ban if everything goes sideways.
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It's not your job to win games of Magic where you're mana screwed.
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A golgari grave troll unban should be fine. Without dread return I doubt that deck can do much harm. It would basically be a worse goryo's deck.
There is a stigma against dredge, but idk if its anywhere close to the stigma assosciated with flash, faeries, or caw blade. I remember playing dredge in a few legacy tournaments and having one guy tell me dredge "was not magic" but everyone else was fine with it.
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You can't always win, and just because you lose doesn't mean you played badly.
Even if you lose, it is important to remain confident in your ability to make good plays and decisions. Lose that and you are truly lost.
Testing is great, and the better the testing is, the better off you'll be.
It is impossible to tilt and play well.
It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose.
Assuming the metagame stays relatively stable (and it should) the M14 B&R announcement would be the perfect time to unban Bitterblossom. I think it's inevitable that we see that happen eventually, and there would be enough time before the next Modern PTQ season to give it a re-ban if everything goes sideways.
There are safer cards then BB to be unbanned before BB comes off. I dont expect BB coming off for at least another year. Especially if they are doing the 1 card at a time and see how it effects the format. Now if something drastic happens, things may change.
GGT unban can be thrown in any B&R update they choose I feel as the card may enable a Dredge-esque deck, but without Dread Return or Psychatog I find it hard for the deck to be that good, maybe a Crypt Of Agadeem based reanimator deck fueled by Dredge? With all the GY Hate I can't see a deck like that as a problem at all (although it sounds fun to play)
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There are safer cards then BB to be unbanned before BB comes off. I dont expect BB coming off for at least another year. Especially if they are doing the 1 card at a time and see how it effects the format. Now if something drastic happens, things may change.
They've only ever unbanned one card from Modern: Valakut. Let's look at their reasoning for that unban:
Recent Modern tournaments have been diverse, with no deck dominating the metagame. Since Modern is a non-rotating format, banned cards never rotate out. The DCI is unbanning a card to see how that affects the format. We looked for cards that were on the initial banned list for Pro Tour Philadelphia. We wanted a card that would not easily slot into an existing top deck and also wanted to enable a deck with a different play pattern than the current top decks. After examining the options, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle was selected as the card to unban.
I feel confident that a similar logic will be used for the next unban. Modern is healthy right now (I'd like to see a good engine combo deck legal, but that's a different discussion), with a good mix of top tier decks. We should be looking for a card that won't just slot into a top-tier deck, and we should be looking for cards that were banned early rather than cards that have proven to be problems over time.
Let's look at the banned list for Pro Tour Philly: Ancestral Vision, Ancient Den, Bitterblossom, Chrome Mox, Dark Depths, Dread Return, Glimpse of Nature, Golgari Grave-Troll, Great Furnace, Hypergenesis, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mental Misstep, Seat of the Synod, Sensei's Divining Top, Skullclamp, Stoneforge Mystic, Sword of the Meek, Tree of Tales, Umezawa's Jitte, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, Vault of Whispers.
We know the artifact lands are never coming off. Jace, Stoneforge, Misstep, Top, Skullclamp, Jitte, Dread Return, Hypergenesis, and Dark Depths are also pretty obviously too risky to unban. Chrome Mox is possibly safe, but it's the type of fast mana that Wizards tends to be pretty scared of, so that stays. They just printed a "fixed" Glimpse of Nature, so that stays too. So what does that leave?
Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, Golgari Grave-Troll, Sword of the Meek.
Ancestral Vision would slot right into any number of the Ux control decks that are consistently putting up good finishes. There's no reason to unban a card that does nothing but makes good decks better - there's too much of a risk of upsetting the metagame in favor of blue-based grindy decks.
Golgari Grave-Troll would be a boring unban. It wouldn't all of a sudden make Dredgevine top tier. It wouldn't enable any sort of interesting graveyard strategy that's currently not viable. It would do stone nothing to the format. So why bother?
This leaves Sword of the Meek and Bitterblossom. Of the two, I genuinely think that Bitterblossom is the safer card to unban. We've seen a lot of hate printed for tempo strategies in the past year - Abrupt Decay being the most obvious example. Only the Faeries deck would actually want this card, and there's no clear indication that the deck would dominate in this metagame.
That's my opinion on it, anyway. The summer would be the perfect time to test an unban, and I genuinely believe that Bitterblossom is the right card to test in the format next.
Golgari Grave-Troll would be a boring unban. It wouldn't all of a sudden make Dredgevine top tier. It wouldn't enable any sort of interesting graveyard strategy that's currently not viable. It would do stone nothing to the format. So why bother?
Because if a card would do nothing to the format, it shouldn't be banned. Even if Golgari Grave-Troll's contribution to the format is even less than what Land Tax did in Legacy, it should not be banned if it's innocuous.
This leaves Sword of the Meek and Bitterblossom. Of the two, I genuinely think that Bitterblossom is the safer card to unban. We've seen a lot of hate printed for tempo strategies in the past year - Abrupt Decay being the most obvious example. Only the Faeries deck would actually want this card, and there's no clear indication that the deck would dominate in this metagame.
That's my opinion on it, anyway. The summer would be the perfect time to test an unban, and I genuinely believe that Bitterblossom is the right card to test in the format next.
While I agree Bitterblossom is probably a safe unban, you're incorrect that only Faeries would want it. BW Tokens seems another strong candidate for it.
Because if a card would do nothing to the format, it shouldn't be banned. Even if Golgari Grave-Troll's contribution to the format is even less than what Land Tax did in Legacy, it should not be banned if it's innocuous.
You should only unban one card at a time. If they unban Golgari Grave-Troll, that's a waste of an unban opportunity. So while it "shouldn't" be banned, it also "shouldn't" be chosen for an unban when there are "better" unbans available. Again; just my opinion on it.
While I agree Bitterblossom is probably a safe unban, you're incorrect that only Faeries would want it. BW Tokens seems another strong candidate for it.
I dunno. It seems far too slow for Tokens. I think they would test it, and then drop it. Rock decks would also test it, and probably drop it as well.
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It's not your job to win games of Magic where you're mana screwed.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
Even ignoring the fact they've unbanned/unrestricted multiple cards at once on more than one occasion, has anyone ever actually complained? "Oh man, they shouldn't have unbanned Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith together! They should've unbanned one, waited a few months, and then unbanned the other!" ...is what I saw no one say.
If they unban Golgari Grave-Troll, that's a waste of an unban opportunity. So while it "shouldn't" be banned, it also "shouldn't" be chosen for an unban when there are "better" unbans available. Again; just my opinion on it.
I don't see how unbanning Golgari Grave-Troll is any more of a "waste" than unbanning nothing at all.
When you're making a deliberate, sculpted change to a metagame, you should be very careful about doing it. Unbanning more than one card at a time makes it difficult to asses the impact of that unban in isolation. Unbanned card #1 could end up shutting down the deck that would have otherwise kept the unbanned card #2 in check, allowing unbanned card #2 to run wild and creating a problem.
Ideally you also only ban cards one at a time as well, although it's generally easy to spot cards that are currently a problem, so multiple bannings aren't as dangerous.
While we're at it, I also firmly believe it's a huge mistake to announce bannings alongside set releases. The B&R list should be updated halfway between set releases. This allows you to examine the impact of the banning in isolation from the effect of releasing a new set. The current scheme makes it difficult to assess whether the ban or the set release was responsible for changes to the metagame.
And yes, I'm in favor of a Golgari Grave-Troll unban over nothing. But I'm infavor of a Bitterblossom unban over Golgari Grave-Troll, and I believe you should unban one at a time for the reasons stated above.
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It's not your job to win games of Magic where you're mana screwed.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
When you're making a deliberate, sculpted change to a metagame, you should be very careful about doing it. Unbanning more than one card at a time makes it difficult to asses the impact of that unban in isolation. Unbanned card #1 could end up shutting down the deck that would have otherwise kept the unbanned card #2 in check, allowing unbanned card #2 to run wild and creating a problem.
...
And yes, I'm in favor of a Golgari Grave-Troll unban over nothing. But I'm infavor of a Bitterblossom unban over Golgari Grave-Troll, and I believe you should unban one at a time for the reasons stated above.
That's all well and good in theory, but is it historically how Wizards has done unbans? Again, this is another historical perspective post where I make some comparisons between Modern and another format, but it is purely from the perspective of bannings.
It isn't a big dataset, but looking over it, I think it very unlikely that Wizards would unban more than 1 (MAYBE 2) cards at a time in Modern. Wizards is most likely to unban just 1, given the historical pattern of unbanning over time.
Here are the unbannings from 2003 through 2013, with announcements split into single unbans and multiple unbans. First, let's look over the announcements where multiple cards in one format were unbanned simultaneously:
It's a small dataset, so there's only so much we can do with it that will have any statistical significance. Here are some basic numbers anyway
-Multiple unban announcements as a % of total announcements: 57% (8/14)
-Multiple unban announcements as a % of total announcements before 2010: 80% (8/10)
-Single unban announcements as a % of total announcements after 2010: 67% (4/6)
-Single unban announcements as a % of total announcements before 2010: 25% (2/8)
-Post-2010 single unban announcements as a % of total multiple unban announcements: 67% (4/6)
As the numbers above show, single unban announcements really took off in late 2010 and haven't stopped since. Of all the 6 single unban announcements ever, 4 of them happened after 2010. Of all the 6 unbanning announcements (multiple and single) that occurred after 2010, 4 of them had only one card unbanned. Before that time in the pre-2010 era, of all the unbanning announcemnts, only 25% (2/8) had only one unban.
Looking at those numbers, one pattern really stands out to me. Starting in 2010, Wizards basically stopped unbanning multiple cards at a time. Again, I know it's only a small dataset, and I know that we aren't getting any statistically significant take-homes from it. Hopefully the professional, student, and Wikipedia mathematicians can look past that problem. Because that point notwithstanding, the analysis is still very interesting from a historical perspective.
What does this mean for Modern? Wizards is extremely unlikely to unban more than 1-2 cards. Why 2 cards and not just 1? Because I think GGT is such a safe unban that it doesn't even count. But after GGT, Wizards is only going to want to unban one card to see how it floats in the format.
If we have learned anything, what has happened in the past in other formats, does not mean it will happen in Modern. Modern is its own thing and Wotc is handling it in a different manner.
Bitterblossom could also make Polymorph decks somewhat more viable again, so that's probably a strike against it (who really needs another Emrakul deck?).
No, i don't think there is a chance of unbanning Bitterblossom, regardless of my wishes. If they do set it free somehow, that will probably still mean that Ancestral Vision will remain in the BanHouse for the foreseeable future. Reasoning here is that Faeries was at the peak of it's power while Ancestral Vision was legal in Standard and that duo is what alienated a lot of players from Standard back then. So much so that that people (probably very strange ones to my mind) were happy to play Jund mirrors throughout the next Standard season.
In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Looking at those numbers, one pattern really stands out to me. Starting in 2010, Wizards basically stopped unbanning multiple cards at a time. Again, I know it's only a small dataset, and I know that we aren't getting any statistically significant take-homes from it. Hopefully the professional, student, and Wikipedia mathematicians can look past that problem. Because that point notwithstanding, the analysis is still very interesting from a historical perspective.
To be fair vintage/type 1.5 had a conservative BR list and most of the cards that came off (Sans gush) did nothing. Unrestrictions in vintage are very different from bannings as well in that some cards (Doomsday for example) do the exact same job as a 1 of as they would a 4 of.
They could unban GGT but it would be the same as unbanning nothing. Unbanning bitterblossom after some testing wouldn't even make it a deck. Without a blue 1 drop (Visions/ponder) the deck just isn't that strong in the advent of abrupt decay and LotV. When you play a turn 2 BB against their T1 DRS T2 Liliana you're losing on the draw you're just behind. The format simply has too many tools to deal with it.
if you play a modern deck, and you are not happy to play against a Polymorph deck you should probably rethink your deckchoice.
Don't get me wrong. I don't mind playing against much of anything, but if the idea behind taking cards off of the ban list is to promote deck diversity, unbanning Bitterblossom doesn't really accomplish much in that respect.
Ancestral Vision on the other hand would reinstate control as relevant archetype all by itself, without enabling any particular craziness. I remember people saying they shouldn't unban AV because BBE was still in the format but now even that point was made mute.
If they were to unban that card, I could probably get behind the rest of their banning policy decisions, warts and all.
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Don't get me wrong. I don't mind playing against much of anything, but if the idea behind taking cards off of the ban list is to promote deck diversity, unbanning Bitterblossom doesn't really accomplish much in that respect.
Ancestral Vision on the other hand would reinstate control as relevant archetype all by itself, without enabling any particular craziness. I remember people saying they shouldn't unban AV because BBE was still in the format but now even that point was made mute.
Wizards has said that they don't want to unban a card if all it would do is be added to decks that are already playing at the top tables. Ancestral Vision is exactly that sort of card. It would slot right into the blue-based decks that are already hanging out at the top of the metagame. I see no reason why that card should be unbanned.
On the other hand, Bitterblossom would give what is currently a low-tier deck a shot in the arm. If you're looking for a card to unban to promote diversity, you should be looking for a card that could enable an archetype that's not currently viable, rather than a card that makes a good deck better.
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It's not your job to win games of Magic where you're mana screwed.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
Wizards has said that they don't want to unban a card if all it would do is be added to decks that are already playing at the top tables. Ancestral Vision is exactly that sort of card. It would slot right into the blue-based decks that are already hanging out at the top of the metagame. I see no reason why that card should be unbanned.
Did they really say that? If it's true, we can all forget about anything coming off the banned list. No BB, no Seething Song, no Grave-Troll.
If we have learned anything, what has happened in the past in other formats, does not mean it will happen in Modern. Modern is its own thing and Wotc is handling it in a different manner.
Although I agree that Wizards wants Modern to be its own thing, that does not at all mean that Wizards will handle it in a different manner than they handle other formats. If anything, the banlist is direct proof that Modern bannings are informed by deck/card performance in other formats.
As Tom LaPille said in this "Welcome to the Modern World" article:
Our second criterion was that any deck that dominated a seven-year or four-year Extended format that only included Modern-legal sets had the danger of being crushingly powerful in Modern. There are also a few Legacy decks that can be easily ported into Modern that had a similar potential.
This shows at the least that Modern is being informed by the historical experience with other formats, a point reflected in the bannings of Jace, BB, AV, etc. It does not mean that Modern can't be its own thing. It just means that Modern is (thankfully) not going to exist in a historical vacuum; why repeat old mistakes like Skullclamp and Jace in a new format?
Moreover, in that same article, LaPille also explicitly mentions the relationship between banning/unbanning policy in other formats and in Modern:
If one deck is so powerful that it forces multiple other interesting decks out of playability, banning something from that deck is likely to raise the number of functionally playable cards in the format, despite reducing the number of theoretically allowed cards. In Legacy, for example, the bannings of both Mystical Tutor and Survival of the Fittest increased the format's diversity by allowing slightly less powerful decks to be playable.
This lesson about a "diversity ban" directly comes from the Legacy experience. Without Legacy to provide the broken examples of Tutor and Survival, Wizards would not have had experience with the concept of a diversity ban. Tom strongly suggests that such bans will happen in Modern, and that is because of the historical backdrop of the Legacy banning experience. Indeed, the GSZ ban fits squarely into this category.
Again, I fully agree with you that Modern is its own thing. But that should not mean that its overarching decisions (re. bannings/unbannings in particular) should exist in a vacuum. Bannings should be informed by the experience of other formats. LaPille's quotes show that Wizards understands this point and fully intends on using the history of bannings to inform their future.
Returning to Modern, I stand by my initial assessment that the history of Wizards unbanning policy to this point is a gradual move towards the single unban. Again, it isn't a big dataset, and September might totally prove me wrong. But at least using the information that we have, it is a safe bet that Wizards will unban either 1 card or 1 card plus the ultra safe GGT.
Wizards has said that they don't want to unban a card if all it would do is be added to decks that are already playing at the top tables. Ancestral Vision is exactly that sort of card. It would slot right into the blue-based decks that are already hanging out at the top of the metagame. I see no reason why that card should be unbanned.
Interesting. Do you remember where you heard/read this bolded bit?
if the game has grown as much as they say it has, then the % of players who are mentally and physically maimed by fae would be like < 25% of the current playing population, if that (probably more like 10%).
GGT would do nothing. its been said a ton. AV would be decent, but given how fast midrange can establish itself and how fast aggro can win, it might just be a little slow.
also, isn't there one more b/r update when m14 comes out?
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I speak in sarcasm because calling people ******* ******** is not allowed.
Recent Modern tournaments have been diverse, with no deck dominating the metagame. Since Modern is a non-rotating format, banned cards never rotate out. The DCI is unbanning a card to see how that affects the format. We looked for cards that were on the initial banned list for Pro Tour Philadelphia. We wanted a card that would not easily slot into an existing top deck and also wanted to enable a deck with a different play pattern than the current top decks. After examining the options, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle was selected as the card to unban.
It follows that in a healthy metagame, they would use similar criteria for choosing the next unban. Anyone campaigning for unbanning Ancestral Vision is wasting their energy.
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It's not your job to win games of Magic where you're mana screwed.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
Ktk basically explained how WOTC is handling bannings in Modern. Modern is it's own thing but they aren't blind or stupid, so these use lessons learned from the past and lessons learned from other formats.
Wizards has said that they don't want to unban a card if all it would do is be added to decks that are already playing at the top tables. Ancestral Vision is exactly that sort of card. It would slot right into the blue-based decks that are already hanging out at the top of the metagame. I see no reason why that card should be unbanned.
On the other hand, Bitterblossom would give what is currently a low-tier deck a shot in the arm. If you're looking for a card to unban to promote diversity, you should be looking for a card that could enable an archetype that's not currently viable, rather than a card that makes a good deck better.
Except there are no true blue control decks that would just slot it in.
MUTron cares about haymakers more than it cares about strict card advantage and either already has inevitability by t4 or is in a world of hurt.
Any other blue based deck is generally a tempo deck. Sure, Ux control is a thing, but it's not one of the top decks compared to BG shell or Ux tempo.
As such, the two top decks aren't in a position to use it. Ux control would dearly love to be more than one archetype, not a cluster of related decks that don't warrant separate entries. The true control deck we've got these days would never want to use it.
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I doubt it. The combo can be easily hated out, and like the other creature combos there are answers for this in nearly every other modern deck. It will be a fair, welcome addition to modern's combo roster, probably drifting between tier 1 and 1.5 depending on the meta.
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That's correct. there's no way to tell what is causing the increase in attendance. It could be new players, the bans, standard pressures, pricing out of other formats, etc.
I don't think the ban list affects a significant portion of attendance at the ptq or gp level. I bet 9/10 competitive players will play what will get them q'd for a pro tour regardless of what it is. Like I said before, I'll play grizzly bears.format if that's what it takes to reach the pro tour.
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Golgari Grave-Troll. It being banned still is an utter joke.
I think there are cards on the banned list that would do more interesting/good things in the format than Golgari Grave-Troll, but Golgari Grave-Troll just should not be on that ban list.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
There is a stigma against dredge, but idk if its anywhere close to the stigma assosciated with flash, faeries, or caw blade. I remember playing dredge in a few legacy tournaments and having one guy tell me dredge "was not magic" but everyone else was fine with it.
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There are safer cards then BB to be unbanned before BB comes off. I dont expect BB coming off for at least another year. Especially if they are doing the 1 card at a time and see how it effects the format. Now if something drastic happens, things may change.
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Hermit Druid Combo:
They've only ever unbanned one card from Modern: Valakut. Let's look at their reasoning for that unban:
I feel confident that a similar logic will be used for the next unban. Modern is healthy right now (I'd like to see a good engine combo deck legal, but that's a different discussion), with a good mix of top tier decks. We should be looking for a card that won't just slot into a top-tier deck, and we should be looking for cards that were banned early rather than cards that have proven to be problems over time.
Let's look at the banned list for Pro Tour Philly: Ancestral Vision, Ancient Den, Bitterblossom, Chrome Mox, Dark Depths, Dread Return, Glimpse of Nature, Golgari Grave-Troll, Great Furnace, Hypergenesis, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mental Misstep, Seat of the Synod, Sensei's Divining Top, Skullclamp, Stoneforge Mystic, Sword of the Meek, Tree of Tales, Umezawa's Jitte, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, Vault of Whispers.
We know the artifact lands are never coming off. Jace, Stoneforge, Misstep, Top, Skullclamp, Jitte, Dread Return, Hypergenesis, and Dark Depths are also pretty obviously too risky to unban. Chrome Mox is possibly safe, but it's the type of fast mana that Wizards tends to be pretty scared of, so that stays. They just printed a "fixed" Glimpse of Nature, so that stays too. So what does that leave?
Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, Golgari Grave-Troll, Sword of the Meek.
Ancestral Vision would slot right into any number of the Ux control decks that are consistently putting up good finishes. There's no reason to unban a card that does nothing but makes good decks better - there's too much of a risk of upsetting the metagame in favor of blue-based grindy decks.
Golgari Grave-Troll would be a boring unban. It wouldn't all of a sudden make Dredgevine top tier. It wouldn't enable any sort of interesting graveyard strategy that's currently not viable. It would do stone nothing to the format. So why bother?
This leaves Sword of the Meek and Bitterblossom. Of the two, I genuinely think that Bitterblossom is the safer card to unban. We've seen a lot of hate printed for tempo strategies in the past year - Abrupt Decay being the most obvious example. Only the Faeries deck would actually want this card, and there's no clear indication that the deck would dominate in this metagame.
That's my opinion on it, anyway. The summer would be the perfect time to test an unban, and I genuinely believe that Bitterblossom is the right card to test in the format next.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
While I agree Bitterblossom is probably a safe unban, you're incorrect that only Faeries would want it. BW Tokens seems another strong candidate for it.
You should only unban one card at a time. If they unban Golgari Grave-Troll, that's a waste of an unban opportunity. So while it "shouldn't" be banned, it also "shouldn't" be chosen for an unban when there are "better" unbans available. Again; just my opinion on it.
I dunno. It seems far too slow for Tokens. I think they would test it, and then drop it. Rock decks would also test it, and probably drop it as well.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
Even ignoring the fact they've unbanned/unrestricted multiple cards at once on more than one occasion, has anyone ever actually complained? "Oh man, they shouldn't have unbanned Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith together! They should've unbanned one, waited a few months, and then unbanned the other!" ...is what I saw no one say.
I don't see how unbanning Golgari Grave-Troll is any more of a "waste" than unbanning nothing at all.
Ideally you also only ban cards one at a time as well, although it's generally easy to spot cards that are currently a problem, so multiple bannings aren't as dangerous.
While we're at it, I also firmly believe it's a huge mistake to announce bannings alongside set releases. The B&R list should be updated halfway between set releases. This allows you to examine the impact of the banning in isolation from the effect of releasing a new set. The current scheme makes it difficult to assess whether the ban or the set release was responsible for changes to the metagame.
And yes, I'm in favor of a Golgari Grave-Troll unban over nothing. But I'm infavor of a Bitterblossom unban over Golgari Grave-Troll, and I believe you should unban one at a time for the reasons stated above.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
That's all well and good in theory, but is it historically how Wizards has done unbans? Again, this is another historical perspective post where I make some comparisons between Modern and another format, but it is purely from the perspective of bannings.
It isn't a big dataset, but looking over it, I think it very unlikely that Wizards would unban more than 1 (MAYBE 2) cards at a time in Modern. Wizards is most likely to unban just 1, given the historical pattern of unbanning over time.
Here are the unbannings from 2003 through 2013, with announcements split into single unbans and multiple unbans. First, let's look over the announcements where multiple cards in one format were unbanned simultaneously:
March 2003:
Type 1 - Berserk, Hurkyll's Recall and Recall are unrestricted
Type 1.5 - Berserk, Hurkyll's Recall, and Recall are unbanned.
September 2004:
Vintage - Braingeyser, Doomsday, Earthcraft, and Fork are unrestricted.
June 2007:
Vintage - Voltaic Key, Black Vise, Mind Twist, and Gush are no longer restricted.
Legacy - Mind Over Matter and Replenish are unbanned.
September 2008:
Vintage - Chrome Mox, Dream Halls, Mox Diamond, Personal Tutor, and Time Spiral are no longer restricted.
June 2009:
Vintage - Crop Rotation, Enlightened Tutor, Entomb, and Grim Monolith are no longer restricted.
September 2009:
Legacy - Dream Halls, Entomb, and Metalworker are no longer banned.
June 2010:
Legacy - Grim Monolith and Illusionary Mask are no longer banned.
September 2010:
Vintage - Frantic Search and Gush are no longer restricted.
And here are the announcements where only a single card was unbanned:
December 2004:
Vintage - Stroke of Genius is unrestricted.
September 2005:
Vintage - Mind Over Matter is unrestricted.
December 2010:
Legacy - Time Spiral is unbanned.
September 2011:
Vintage - Fact or Fiction is no longer restricted.
June 2012:
Legacy - Land Tax is unbanned.
September 2012:
Modern - Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is unbanned.
Vintage - Burning Wish is unrestricted.
It's a small dataset, so there's only so much we can do with it that will have any statistical significance. Here are some basic numbers anyway
-Multiple unban announcements as a % of total announcements: 57% (8/14)
-Multiple unban announcements as a % of total announcements before 2010: 80% (8/10)
-Single unban announcements as a % of total announcements after 2010: 67% (4/6)
-Single unban announcements as a % of total announcements before 2010: 25% (2/8)
-Post-2010 single unban announcements as a % of total multiple unban announcements: 67% (4/6)
As the numbers above show, single unban announcements really took off in late 2010 and haven't stopped since. Of all the 6 single unban announcements ever, 4 of them happened after 2010. Of all the 6 unbanning announcements (multiple and single) that occurred after 2010, 4 of them had only one card unbanned. Before that time in the pre-2010 era, of all the unbanning announcemnts, only 25% (2/8) had only one unban.
Looking at those numbers, one pattern really stands out to me. Starting in 2010, Wizards basically stopped unbanning multiple cards at a time. Again, I know it's only a small dataset, and I know that we aren't getting any statistically significant take-homes from it. Hopefully the professional, student, and Wikipedia mathematicians can look past that problem. Because that point notwithstanding, the analysis is still very interesting from a historical perspective.
What does this mean for Modern? Wizards is extremely unlikely to unban more than 1-2 cards. Why 2 cards and not just 1? Because I think GGT is such a safe unban that it doesn't even count. But after GGT, Wizards is only going to want to unban one card to see how it floats in the format.
No, i don't think there is a chance of unbanning Bitterblossom, regardless of my wishes. If they do set it free somehow, that will probably still mean that Ancestral Vision will remain in the BanHouse for the foreseeable future. Reasoning here is that Faeries was at the peak of it's power while Ancestral Vision was legal in Standard and that duo is what alienated a lot of players from Standard back then. So much so that that people (probably very strange ones to my mind) were happy to play Jund mirrors throughout the next Standard season.
Given the choice, I would probably unban Ancestral Visions over Bitterblossom since that would benefit control strategies a lot more then a Bitterblossom unban would help combo by enabling another 2-3 card combo with Emrakul, the Eons Torn.
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To be fair vintage/type 1.5 had a conservative BR list and most of the cards that came off (Sans gush) did nothing. Unrestrictions in vintage are very different from bannings as well in that some cards (Doomsday for example) do the exact same job as a 1 of as they would a 4 of.
They could unban GGT but it would be the same as unbanning nothing. Unbanning bitterblossom after some testing wouldn't even make it a deck. Without a blue 1 drop (Visions/ponder) the deck just isn't that strong in the advent of abrupt decay and LotV. When you play a turn 2 BB against their T1 DRS T2 Liliana you're losing on the draw you're just behind. The format simply has too many tools to deal with it.
Wizards in relation to modern.
"The bannings will continue until attendance improves."
Not sure if trolling or just very stupid.:fry:
Don't get me wrong. I don't mind playing against much of anything, but if the idea behind taking cards off of the ban list is to promote deck diversity, unbanning Bitterblossom doesn't really accomplish much in that respect.
Ancestral Vision on the other hand would reinstate control as relevant archetype all by itself, without enabling any particular craziness. I remember people saying they shouldn't unban AV because BBE was still in the format but now even that point was made mute.
If they were to unban that card, I could probably get behind the rest of their banning policy decisions, warts and all.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Wizards has said that they don't want to unban a card if all it would do is be added to decks that are already playing at the top tables. Ancestral Vision is exactly that sort of card. It would slot right into the blue-based decks that are already hanging out at the top of the metagame. I see no reason why that card should be unbanned.
On the other hand, Bitterblossom would give what is currently a low-tier deck a shot in the arm. If you're looking for a card to unban to promote diversity, you should be looking for a card that could enable an archetype that's not currently viable, rather than a card that makes a good deck better.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
Did they really say that? If it's true, we can all forget about anything coming off the banned list. No BB, no Seething Song, no Grave-Troll.
GP San Diego Day 2 Decks:
Junk Tokens - 3
Through the Breach - 2
Dredgevine Zombies - 1
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Big Johnny.
Although I agree that Wizards wants Modern to be its own thing, that does not at all mean that Wizards will handle it in a different manner than they handle other formats. If anything, the banlist is direct proof that Modern bannings are informed by deck/card performance in other formats.
As Tom LaPille said in this "Welcome to the Modern World" article:
This shows at the least that Modern is being informed by the historical experience with other formats, a point reflected in the bannings of Jace, BB, AV, etc. It does not mean that Modern can't be its own thing. It just means that Modern is (thankfully) not going to exist in a historical vacuum; why repeat old mistakes like Skullclamp and Jace in a new format?
Moreover, in that same article, LaPille also explicitly mentions the relationship between banning/unbanning policy in other formats and in Modern:
This lesson about a "diversity ban" directly comes from the Legacy experience. Without Legacy to provide the broken examples of Tutor and Survival, Wizards would not have had experience with the concept of a diversity ban. Tom strongly suggests that such bans will happen in Modern, and that is because of the historical backdrop of the Legacy banning experience. Indeed, the GSZ ban fits squarely into this category.
Again, I fully agree with you that Modern is its own thing. But that should not mean that its overarching decisions (re. bannings/unbannings in particular) should exist in a vacuum. Bannings should be informed by the experience of other formats. LaPille's quotes show that Wizards understands this point and fully intends on using the history of bannings to inform their future.
Returning to Modern, I stand by my initial assessment that the history of Wizards unbanning policy to this point is a gradual move towards the single unban. Again, it isn't a big dataset, and September might totally prove me wrong. But at least using the information that we have, it is a safe bet that Wizards will unban either 1 card or 1 card plus the ultra safe GGT.
EDIT:
Interesting. Do you remember where you heard/read this bolded bit?
GGT would do nothing. its been said a ton. AV would be decent, but given how fast midrange can establish itself and how fast aggro can win, it might just be a little slow.
also, isn't there one more b/r update when m14 comes out?
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/09202012a
It follows that in a healthy metagame, they would use similar criteria for choosing the next unban. Anyone campaigning for unbanning Ancestral Vision is wasting their energy.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
Ktk basically explained how WOTC is handling bannings in Modern. Modern is it's own thing but they aren't blind or stupid, so these use lessons learned from the past and lessons learned from other formats.
Except there are no true blue control decks that would just slot it in.
MUTron cares about haymakers more than it cares about strict card advantage and either already has inevitability by t4 or is in a world of hurt.
Any other blue based deck is generally a tempo deck. Sure, Ux control is a thing, but it's not one of the top decks compared to BG shell or Ux tempo.
As such, the two top decks aren't in a position to use it. Ux control would dearly love to be more than one archetype, not a cluster of related decks that don't warrant separate entries. The true control deck we've got these days would never want to use it.