-4 grove of the burnwillows +4 utility/shocks/basics
-4 punishing fire + 4 Tribal flames
yeah zoo got only slightly worse against aggro, but actually got better against control and combo because tribal flames is 10x better against those decks than punishing fire is.
Also note that bant got worse(or at least the ones that run 2 red shocks) since they don't have a viable replacement for nactl.
Jund also got worse because punishing fires was part of how they beat zoo, and was also pretty vital with liliana which will probably not see any more play.
so overall the best two decks are a little worse against one another, jund is a little worse in general(1-3%), zoo is slight worse against aggro(2-3%) and it is better against control and combo.
Well played wotc, well played. You keep the ignorant masses happy by banning two cards that really don't matter much to zoo all while making its popularity go down ever so slightly for like the 2 weeks it takes the average magic player to realize that the bans did next to nothing. I bet another 100 decided not to play modern just because of these bans.
The drop-off from 3 power to 2 power by going to Loam Lion is a lot more than you think. 2/3s for 1 are still some of the better creatures around, but 2 damage per hit instead of 3 is a difference for a deck that relies on burn to give it reach after it runs out of gas. Many more creatures can also cope with a 2/3 instead of a 3/3 as well; 2/3s can also be double-blocked much more efficiently than 3/3s can.
On another tangent, I honestly don't understand why you seem to make it almost like a mission to keep endlessly *****ing and moaning about Modern. Ever since this format came into fruition, you've been nothing but a negative nancy. Maybe it's just part of the optimism inside me, but Modern is going to be fine in the long run despite the large ban list. Formats don't take overnight to develop.
I think he was joking (I hope). I wonder what version will be better... Zoo with snapcaster tribal flames/ steppe lynx, Zoo with kotr/elspeth etc.. or a mix of both.
Thoughts?
take the average zoo deck replace the nactls with anther 1 drop that is really almost as good. replace the groves with better lands. replace the punishing fires with tribal flames.
slightly worse against other nonexistent aggro decks(still 60/40)
jund is no longer as good against zoo, and tribal flames makes up for the disparity of the 1 power twofold.
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In life all we can do is try to make things better. Sitting lost in old ways and fearing change only makes us outdated and ignorant.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
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Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
i've said it before, and i guess i'm wrong but: i was under the impression that zoo didn't play PK fire and did play tribal flames. wasn't PK fire too slow for it? i though it was only really in jund. oh well, i guess i'm wrong.
but anyways, kird ape and loam lion is nowhere close to nacatl. it is not "really almost as good".
This is ridiculous. Zoo just had two cards banned from it, and you go around claiming it's now a better deck, because apparently, the people building Zoo are stupid, and Wizards had to ban those two bad cards for them.
Edit: There are a lot of Zoo variants. Some run PK-Fire and some don't.
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On average, Magic players are worse at new card evaluation than almost every other skill, except perhaps sideboarding.
Shocks (with fetches) are still the best lands in the format. Their value didn't hinge upon the success of Wild Nacatl. If you think that, then don't worry, you still have Kird Ape, Loam Lion, and *gasp* Matca Riders (sweet tech!) to keep Shock prices up!
My bad, I have not told the reason.
I don't think it is worth to use Kird Ape, with 2/3 instead of just Elite Vanguard 2/1. Zoo is not my favour, but Jund may be.
Therefore, Price Shockland of white/red/green will lower while Black/Red/Green will be up.
This is ridiculous. Zoo just had two cards banned from it, and you go around claiming it's now a better deck, because apparently, the people building Zoo are stupid, and Wizards had to ban those two bad cards for them.
Edit: There are a lot of Zoo variants. Some run PK-Fire and some don't.
the ones that don't run PK-fire are better against combo and control while they are still good enough to push any other aggro decks out of the format.
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On another tangent, I honestly don't understand why you seem to make it almost like a mission to keep endlessly *****ing and moaning about Modern. Ever since this format came into fruition, you've been nothing but a negative nancy. Maybe it's just part of the optimism inside me, but Modern is going to be fine in the long run despite the large ban list. Formats don't take overnight to develop.
actually I was mostly fine with the format until they did the official ban list which included most of the remaining control cards such as Ancestral Vision. I was actually going back though the old teachings thread and I was actually the one trying to say the format was going to be great and trying to silence the skeptics. It is pretty funny to look back at now because those people were actually right.
In life all we can do is try to make things better. Sitting lost in old ways and fearing change only makes us outdated and ignorant.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
i know this won't make me any less unpopular, but..
Meh bans that do nothing do nothing. I do expect to see less graveyard hate so my gifts rock gets slightly better, but then against I don't have enough life gain to counteract the 1/4 of my life I will be losing to the tribal flames that replace the punishing fires..........
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In life all we can do is try to make things better. Sitting lost in old ways and fearing change only makes us outdated and ignorant.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
I am happy not to have to playtest against that one drop every time. This will give taxing some more punch with fetches being needed for the Tribal flames setups and Lynxes, I think those will replace the Nactyls.
I think the bans will make Zoo decks turn from more stable early-midgame to a more dangerous late game variant but it will depend on their choice of a one drop.
All the bull going around about Kird Ape and Loam Lion needs to stop, a 2/3 is not as dangerous of a clock as a 3/3 and is much easier to wall and stop.
Punishing Fire was just absurd. I may be bitter but that card was a nightmare for any control deck, Surgical Extractions included. Also with this gone Zoo will not throw their burn around recklessly at BoP, Cobras or other creatures of that nature.
Since when was zoo ever creative? The deck was designed to be all the same cards...
this.
I mean replace the groves with a few lands that make the mana base more sturdy and something like kessig wolf run or moorland haunt.
As a control player I was pretty happy to see punishing fire on the other side of the field since it is much worse against control than boom//bust or tribal flames.
goyf and KotR should have been banned to weaken zoos grip on other aggro decks. Nactl was a player, but it is much easier to replace than goyf or KotR. apes and lions are almost as strong and more consistent. Lynx is faster but less consistent. Neither banning has much of a huge barring on the meta game once people realize that this is the fact. At first people are going to shelf zoo until it wrecks a ptq. then people will jump back on the ban wagon.
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In life all we can do is try to make things better. Sitting lost in old ways and fearing change only makes us outdated and ignorant.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
actually I was mostly fine with the format until they did the official ban list which included most of the remaining control cards such as Ancestral Vision. I was actually going back though the old teachings thread and I was actually the one trying to say the format was going to be great and trying to silence the skeptics. It is pretty funny to look back at now because those people were actually right.
The old ban list had the format riddled with many explosive turn 3-4 combo decks like Elves, Hypergenesis, and nerfed Dredge decks. That's fine for a format that has Force of Will in it like Legacy, but Modern obviously doesn't have the same luxury. Hinotama said it best a while back; Force of Will is the one card that literally keeps Legacy from being unplayable and people seriously underestimate the magnitude of one card's importance of propping an entire format up on its back.
The old ban list had the format riddled with many explosive turn 3-4 combo decks like Elves, Hypergenesis, and nerfed Dredge decks. That's fine for a format that has Force of Will in it like Legacy, but Modern obviously doesn't have the same luxury. Hinotama said it best a while back; Force of Will is the one card that literally keeps Legacy from being unplayable and people seriously underestimate the magnitude of one card's importance of propping an entire format up on its back.
Invasion-forward Extended worked just fine with multiple fast combo decks and no FoW.
I'm happy to see PK-fire out of Modern primarily because it means I'll be able to find Groves for my Legacy Maverick deck more easily, in case I want to try that splash. Also, more utility dorks in Modern, which have always been one of my favorite ways to play the game. I'm glad mana dorks and hate bears are playable now.
Nacatl out of the format just means more diversity among aggro decks, I think, and that's a good thing.
I'm excited for the new format. I think it'll be fun to brew in.
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I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
The old ban list had the format riddled with many explosive turn 3-4 combo decks like Elves, Hypergenesis, and nerfed Dredge decks. That's fine for a format that has Force of Will in it like Legacy, but Modern obviously doesn't have the same luxury. Hinotama said it best a while back; Force of Will is the one card that literally keeps Legacy from being unplayable and people seriously underestimate the magnitude of one card's importance of propping an entire format up on its back.
Invasion-forward Extended worked just fine with multiple fast combo decks and no FoW.
This.
Not to mention the fact that Mrd-forward extended was pretty good. Now some decks were too good. Hypergen was a key culprit because even good control decks struggled with it. Dredge was a turn 4.25 average deck since it didn't have the enablers like cephalid Colosseum and breakthrough.(not to mention putrid imp)
Valakut-shift was a fair combo deck that got banned only because it beat zoo pretty well. It was easy to disrupt and had an average turn of like 5.3 or so.
Elves is so easy to hate out its funny. It was pretty fast, but any deck that wanted to could easily find cards to beat it. again this was another combo deck that beat zoo so it "was too good" for modern.
Storm was much harder to deal with yet control was still favorable.
A good format is a format were you must interact with your opponents. Powerful cards are what force interactions. Meta gaming should be a key part of playing in a format like modern just like it used to be in extended before it became standard 2.0.
This is the problem. I have with the format. Instead of banning only broken cards we start getting into staples such as ancestral visions, chrome mox, bitterblossom, green sun's zenith, and a ****ing vanilla 1 drop.
Then wotc seems so surprised that zoo is so good when they drop every other deck down like 3 pegs. Had they not be so extensive on control in the first place a deck like storm would have been fine in the meta. Maybe not swath-shot storm, but goblin storm would have definitely been fine.
Like honestabe said: i feel i`m being trolled. I have a name for the format now: the Banned Format.
Ban on nacalt is just crazy, zoo is suppossed to be a fair deck (slipknot don`t tell is not, because it is, if you can`t beat zoo decks is not my problem), what is a fair deck now?.
Aniway i´m enjoying the format in digital programs, but i can´t put my money on it because of the ridiculous amount of bannings and the obnoxious explanations of why`s, i think i´m not alone on that. I`ve been lucky to wait to buy grove for the RUG deck i was thinking of play irl.
Zoo was a fair deck. I honestly don't think it was OP. It was the perfect model for what an aggro deck should be in a non-rotating format. The only problem was the fact that control and combo had both been banned nearly into oblivion. Zoo had the highest power level, and was so dominant for that reason.
In life all we can do is try to make things better. Sitting lost in old ways and fearing change only makes us outdated and ignorant.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
Slipknot, you really need to take a break from this game. Your arguments are consistently short-sighted, especially in light of the fact that despite Zoo being a popular deck, it wasn't until Worlds that we saw Zoo go above 50% in terms of winning percentage for the field of Zoo pilots.
It's definitely strange to see Nactl get banned, simply because it's absurd to draw a line in the sand that goes between Goblin Guide/Kird Ape/Steppe Lynx/Loam Lion and Wild Nacatl. No one is debating the fact that Wild Nacatl is better than the alternatives 95% of the time, but getting competitive players to believe the fact that losing nacatl actually shaves points off the win-% of Zoo? Fat chance. Obviously, someone in R&D played an Extended game against RUG Goodstuff.dec and had to deal with Bloodbraid cascading into ancestral vision, and now we won't get to play with that card until that R&D member gets through his therapy sessions
It's definitely strange to see Nactl get banned, simply because it's absurd to draw a line in the sand that goes between Goblin Guide/Kird Ape/Steppe Lynx/Loam Lion and Wild Nacatl. No one is debating the fact that Wild Nacatl is better than the alternatives 95% of the time, but getting competitive players to believe the fact that losing nacatl actually shaves points off the win-% of Zoo? Fat chance.
It's the same philosophy as banning Ponder and Preordain. They are immediately replaced with the somewhat worse Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand, which makes the decks somewhat worse.
i am curious if this is enough so zoo players will need more creativity or to adapt to the format.
aside all still sad they ain t unbanning anything despite most banned cards weren t even tested -.-
Zoo will still be a deck, in pretty much the same form. you'll just see Kird Ape and Loam Lion instead of Nacatl.
I'm honestly very disappointed with Wizards. many MANY cards could come off the banlist to create some new decks. banning more doesn't put this format in a different position.
and I'm sorry, but no, your tribal plant deck will not be competitive even though Grove/Fire is gone.
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"Once you let go of your morals, everything becomes funny."
Slipknot, you really need to take a break from this game. Your arguments are consistently short-sighted, especially in light of the fact that despite Zoo being a popular deck, it wasn't until Worlds that we saw Zoo go above 50% in terms of winning percentage for the field of Zoo pilots.
You mean it wasn't until worlds that we actually had that sort of information from wotc. I could make a spreadsheet of my testing information with several decks, but I would just get told I was wrong still. I have supplied perfectly viable information in the past which still just gets shut down. Thus I don't go through the trouble anymore.
I will say it is nice to have another person on here realize how dumb banning nactls was. People were less responsive on things like ponder/preordain, and Av because they are blue cards and most people have an involuntary aversion to blue, whether it be in the form of an aggro, combo, control, or a midrange deck.
steppe lynx is going to be faster than nactl now that people are forced to run it instead. It is a bit less consistent, but meh. I have seen it played in extended to help combat fast combo decks like elves and hypergen so I know it is competitive.
@LordByron, yeah i`m serious about it, if zoo is not a fair deck could you show me what is it?. Zoo was so played because is the default deck to go in an untested format, I know people are not going to create a new deck until the pro's make it, but when the community lost this information?
Zoo is a fair deck, it will be probabily dominant until the next big event, but there is nothing wrong in terms of power level in Modern, Affinity can kill turn 3-4, PIF combo kill 3-4, Splinter twin kill 4-5, Teachings dominate the game in the T4 while it could play a tutor-for-a-game-ender. A non-rotating format have powerful cards and is fast-pace oriented, zoo was fine for the format killing T3-4 without any resistence, like the other decks on the format.
PIF does not kill on turn 3/4 consistantly. It is more like turn 4-6 and it is pretty easy to hate. Twin is uaully turn 6 now and is also easy to hate. Affinity can kill very fast, but all it takes is one ancient grudge and they will often be dead in the water.
Teachings does not dominate the game on turn 4. At the very best they are at like 10 life, with 3-4 cards in hand one of which is teachings for another removal spell or life gain to hopefully get out of burn range.
Zoo is fair and is not overpowered.
Almost every other deck is underpowered due to the ban list.
In life all we can do is try to make things better. Sitting lost in old ways and fearing change only makes us outdated and ignorant.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
Invasion-forward Extended worked just fine with multiple fast combo decks and no FoW.
+1 for this. A fun, balanced and diverse format was possible with a much smaller banned list, Over Extended is an even more impresive proof. The problem is that Wizards wanted not only that, but also a format that felt different from old extended and was slower, wich doesn't make much sense since they made the cut exactly were the cut for old extended was (mir-zen extended), so it's only natural the formats were similar, it was only a matter of time until they became different when more sets were added. Also the 4th turn kill rule sucks because it forces combo to have the same speed that aggro has, wich isn't fair since aggro is always more consistent.
But that's the way it is, it seems like they aren't taking a single step back so we'll just have to deal with it. Could Modern have been fun with a less aggresive ban policy? Definitely. Can it still be fun with a larger banned list? Of course it can, it'll just be less powerful overall.
Anyway, it seems that I'll just keep playing Over Extended casually, the format seems too watered down for my taste.
Punishing Fire definitely needed to go. But Wild Nacatl is just absurd. A one drop vanilla creature that swings sideways only to attack is getting the axe? Can't wait for the eventual From the Vault: Exiled Part II where Jace the Mindsculptor and Stoneforge Mystic can hang with Wild Nacatl.
Nothing in this game is degenerate or completely dominant. They haven't banned anything in standard in a long, long time. Hell they should have banned affinity right away, but they didn't until boxed sales collapsed too. Hasbro had to come in and fire people.
I'll enjoy watching all the whiners eat crow monday.
Nacatl ban is perfectly fair. I was gonna explain the reasons, but it looks like the DCI has written the exact same reasons I was thinking in their explanation. So read the damn explanation those of you that don't understand why it got banned.
Hint: if nacatl is better than any other drop any other aggro deck can play, if it's even better than tribal decks with multiple creatures on the play, why bother?
There's a whole world between kird ape and nacatl. The second is 50% better than the first. FREAKING 50% BETTER.
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The drop-off from 3 power to 2 power by going to Loam Lion is a lot more than you think. 2/3s for 1 are still some of the better creatures around, but 2 damage per hit instead of 3 is a difference for a deck that relies on burn to give it reach after it runs out of gas. Many more creatures can also cope with a 2/3 instead of a 3/3 as well; 2/3s can also be double-blocked much more efficiently than 3/3s can.
On another tangent, I honestly don't understand why you seem to make it almost like a mission to keep endlessly *****ing and moaning about Modern. Ever since this format came into fruition, you've been nothing but a negative nancy. Maybe it's just part of the optimism inside me, but Modern is going to be fine in the long run despite the large ban list. Formats don't take overnight to develop.
take the average zoo deck replace the nactls with anther 1 drop that is really almost as good. replace the groves with better lands. replace the punishing fires with tribal flames.
slightly worse against other nonexistent aggro decks(still 60/40)
jund is no longer as good against zoo, and tribal flames makes up for the disparity of the 1 power twofold.
Albert Einstein
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but anyways, kird ape and loam lion is nowhere close to nacatl. it is not "really almost as good".
Edit: There are a lot of Zoo variants. Some run PK-Fire and some don't.
My bad, I have not told the reason.
I don't think it is worth to use Kird Ape, with 2/3 instead of just Elite Vanguard 2/1. Zoo is not my favour, but Jund may be.
Therefore, Price Shockland of white/red/green will lower while Black/Red/Green will be up.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
the ones that don't run PK-fire are better against combo and control while they are still good enough to push any other aggro decks out of the format.
actually I was mostly fine with the format until they did the official ban list which included most of the remaining control cards such as Ancestral Vision. I was actually going back though the old teachings thread and I was actually the one trying to say the format was going to be great and trying to silence the skeptics. It is pretty funny to look back at now because those people were actually right.
Albert Einstein
Thomas Jefferson
Meh bans that do nothing do nothing. I do expect to see less graveyard hate so my gifts rock gets slightly better, but then against I don't have enough life gain to counteract the 1/4 of my life I will be losing to the tribal flames that replace the punishing fires..........
Albert Einstein
Thomas Jefferson
I think the bans will make Zoo decks turn from more stable early-midgame to a more dangerous late game variant but it will depend on their choice of a one drop.
All the bull going around about Kird Ape and Loam Lion needs to stop, a 2/3 is not as dangerous of a clock as a 3/3 and is much easier to wall and stop.
Punishing Fire was just absurd. I may be bitter but that card was a nightmare for any control deck, Surgical Extractions included. Also with this gone Zoo will not throw their burn around recklessly at BoP, Cobras or other creatures of that nature.
Just be glad it is gone and move on.
Since when was zoo ever creative? The deck was designed to be all the same cards...
this.
I mean replace the groves with a few lands that make the mana base more sturdy and something like kessig wolf run or moorland haunt.
As a control player I was pretty happy to see punishing fire on the other side of the field since it is much worse against control than boom//bust or tribal flames.
goyf and KotR should have been banned to weaken zoos grip on other aggro decks. Nactl was a player, but it is much easier to replace than goyf or KotR. apes and lions are almost as strong and more consistent. Lynx is faster but less consistent. Neither banning has much of a huge barring on the meta game once people realize that this is the fact. At first people are going to shelf zoo until it wrecks a ptq. then people will jump back on the ban wagon.
Albert Einstein
Thomas Jefferson
The old ban list had the format riddled with many explosive turn 3-4 combo decks like Elves, Hypergenesis, and nerfed Dredge decks. That's fine for a format that has Force of Will in it like Legacy, but Modern obviously doesn't have the same luxury. Hinotama said it best a while back; Force of Will is the one card that literally keeps Legacy from being unplayable and people seriously underestimate the magnitude of one card's importance of propping an entire format up on its back.
Invasion-forward Extended worked just fine with multiple fast combo decks and no FoW.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
Nacatl out of the format just means more diversity among aggro decks, I think, and that's a good thing.
I'm excited for the new format. I think it'll be fun to brew in.
Thanks to Gabgabdevo for the awesome sig image!
I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
This.
Not to mention the fact that Mrd-forward extended was pretty good. Now some decks were too good. Hypergen was a key culprit because even good control decks struggled with it. Dredge was a turn 4.25 average deck since it didn't have the enablers like cephalid Colosseum and breakthrough.(not to mention putrid imp)
Valakut-shift was a fair combo deck that got banned only because it beat zoo pretty well. It was easy to disrupt and had an average turn of like 5.3 or so.
Elves is so easy to hate out its funny. It was pretty fast, but any deck that wanted to could easily find cards to beat it. again this was another combo deck that beat zoo so it "was too good" for modern.
Storm was much harder to deal with yet control was still favorable.
A good format is a format were you must interact with your opponents. Powerful cards are what force interactions. Meta gaming should be a key part of playing in a format like modern just like it used to be in extended before it became standard 2.0.
This is the problem. I have with the format. Instead of banning only broken cards we start getting into staples such as ancestral visions, chrome mox, bitterblossom, green sun's zenith, and a ****ing vanilla 1 drop.
Then wotc seems so surprised that zoo is so good when they drop every other deck down like 3 pegs. Had they not be so extensive on control in the first place a deck like storm would have been fine in the meta. Maybe not swath-shot storm, but goblin storm would have definitely been fine.
Zoo was a fair deck. I honestly don't think it was OP. It was the perfect model for what an aggro deck should be in a non-rotating format. The only problem was the fact that control and combo had both been banned nearly into oblivion. Zoo had the highest power level, and was so dominant for that reason.
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It's definitely strange to see Nactl get banned, simply because it's absurd to draw a line in the sand that goes between Goblin Guide/Kird Ape/Steppe Lynx/Loam Lion and Wild Nacatl. No one is debating the fact that Wild Nacatl is better than the alternatives 95% of the time, but getting competitive players to believe the fact that losing nacatl actually shaves points off the win-% of Zoo? Fat chance. Obviously, someone in R&D played an Extended game against RUG Goodstuff.dec and had to deal with Bloodbraid cascading into ancestral vision, and now we won't get to play with that card until that R&D member gets through his therapy sessions
It's the same philosophy as banning Ponder and Preordain. They are immediately replaced with the somewhat worse Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand, which makes the decks somewhat worse.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
Zoo will still be a deck, in pretty much the same form. you'll just see Kird Ape and Loam Lion instead of Nacatl.
I'm honestly very disappointed with Wizards. many MANY cards could come off the banlist to create some new decks. banning more doesn't put this format in a different position.
and I'm sorry, but no, your tribal plant deck will not be competitive even though Grove/Fire is gone.
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You mean it wasn't until worlds that we actually had that sort of information from wotc. I could make a spreadsheet of my testing information with several decks, but I would just get told I was wrong still. I have supplied perfectly viable information in the past which still just gets shut down. Thus I don't go through the trouble anymore.
I will say it is nice to have another person on here realize how dumb banning nactls was. People were less responsive on things like ponder/preordain, and Av because they are blue cards and most people have an involuntary aversion to blue, whether it be in the form of an aggro, combo, control, or a midrange deck.
steppe lynx is going to be faster than nactl now that people are forced to run it instead. It is a bit less consistent, but meh. I have seen it played in extended to help combat fast combo decks like elves and hypergen so I know it is competitive.
PIF does not kill on turn 3/4 consistantly. It is more like turn 4-6 and it is pretty easy to hate. Twin is uaully turn 6 now and is also easy to hate. Affinity can kill very fast, but all it takes is one ancient grudge and they will often be dead in the water.
Teachings does not dominate the game on turn 4. At the very best they are at like 10 life, with 3-4 cards in hand one of which is teachings for another removal spell or life gain to hopefully get out of burn range.
Zoo is fair and is not overpowered.
Almost every other deck is underpowered due to the ban list.
Albert Einstein
Thomas Jefferson
+1 for this. A fun, balanced and diverse format was possible with a much smaller banned list, Over Extended is an even more impresive proof. The problem is that Wizards wanted not only that, but also a format that felt different from old extended and was slower, wich doesn't make much sense since they made the cut exactly were the cut for old extended was (mir-zen extended), so it's only natural the formats were similar, it was only a matter of time until they became different when more sets were added. Also the 4th turn kill rule sucks because it forces combo to have the same speed that aggro has, wich isn't fair since aggro is always more consistent.
But that's the way it is, it seems like they aren't taking a single step back so we'll just have to deal with it. Could Modern have been fun with a less aggresive ban policy? Definitely. Can it still be fun with a larger banned list? Of course it can, it'll just be less powerful overall.
Anyway, it seems that I'll just keep playing Over Extended casually, the format seems too watered down for my taste.
Who's eating crow?
Hint: if nacatl is better than any other drop any other aggro deck can play, if it's even better than tribal decks with multiple creatures on the play, why bother?
There's a whole world between kird ape and nacatl. The second is 50% better than the first. FREAKING 50% BETTER.