Mark Rosewater does head to head polls on a fairly regular basis, but this time round it was interesting to modern players.
The categories were modern banned cards and interestingly they all seemed to be cards that are in the "probably safe to unban" pile, like stoneforge, bloodbraid, jace etc.
This seems to indicate a new direction for Wizards and it's very interesting. Many people have been down on the company's community engagement in the past couple of years with regards to modern, and this is a stark message to the modern community that they are clearly thinking about the format. Unfortunately it seems to have gone mostly unnoticed? (at least I haven't heard anyone talking about it yet)
jace the Mindsculptor won in the finals. Personally, I'm tempted to buy a couple jaces on the off-chance that it means something more than just a superficial "what's your fave card" vote. Read into it what you will, of course.
Mods: to differentiate this thread from pure banlist discussion (which already has a thread) this seems like a good place to discuss Wizards' (and by extension MaRo's) community engagement with the management of the format, and how things like this twitter vote or any future initiatives might impact the format or its card pool.
It actually doesn't sound like a bad idea to buy a couple JtMS when they are going for sub $60 on eBay. Lowest it's been in a while. While I doubt it sees an unban, it's still a good card to have around. Funny how JtMS wins this when other card are way more realistic unbans.
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Modern
Competitive: GW Hatebears - UG Infect - BGW Liege Rhino
Casual: GR Titan Ramp - BR Aggro
WIP: BUW Control Mill
Thing is though, in a format of lightning fast wins, what does a four mana planeswalker do that doesn't threaten some kind of fairly immediate combo win (a-la Nahiri)? Without twin to easily slot into, jace seems slow.
Good for control though. But that's a positive thing, right?
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
also, if Maro (public front of a company) is asking what people want, there's going to be a good reason for it. Right?
Maro is a designer and has little to no say in what gets banned or unbanned. It was just a fun poll to gauge public opinion.
A lot of people ask him about Kamigawa, which is a popular topic amongst his followers both on Tumblr and Twitter but R&D has deemed that set too unpopular to return.
As for Jace himself I wouldn't object to seeing him in Modern but I feel the negative back lack because of "muh Standard nightmares, whaa" would be too great.
also, if Maro (public front of a company) is asking what people want, there's going to be a good reason for it. Right?
Maro is a designer and has little to no say in what gets banned or unbanned. It was just a fun poll to gauge public opinion.
If I may; why would a company (any company) want to gauge public opinion, if it wasn't for the purpose of improving their service so that it fit more closely with what a paying audience wants?
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
If I may; why would a company (any company) want to gauge public opinion, if it wasn't for the purpose of improving their service so that it fit more closely with what a paying audience wants?
Most people who are content with the game don't post on social media, only a small, yet vocal minority do. Thus one Twitter poll isn't an accurate way to fully comprehend what a majority of Modern players want or don't want. It's a step in the right direction but having Twitter polls to decide what is banned and unbanned could be disastrous.
If I may; why would a company (any company) want to gauge public opinion, if it wasn't for the purpose of improving their service so that it fit more closely with what a paying audience wants?
Most people who are content with the game don't post on social media, only a small, yet vocal minority do. Thus one Twitter poll isn't an accurate way to fully comprehend what a majority of Modern players want or don't want. It's a step in the right direction but having Twitter polls to decide what is banned and unbanned could be disastrous.
That didn't answer my question though. Lol.
Also, i don't like to be a pedant but short of using social media and maybe trawling some popular forums (maybe reddit), how would a company gauge consumer interest anyway? There are scant few channels which don't include mostly the vocal minority. That's kind of how consumer insight works unfortunately.
Also, that vocal minority on social media have an influencing factor on the silent majority. This is a noticeable effect and occurs in a wide range of industries from computer games to the beauty sector.
Only 3,634 people voted in Maro's poll, 2180 of which voted for Jace. That is hardly the number of people playing Modern right now to get a big enough picture. Also, they don't always go by what the consumer wants, look at how many people want the reserved list abolished.
However, if you confident enough in Maro's little poll you should be snatching every copy of Jace out there.
This may have to do something with Modern and unban/ban cards but I wouldn't give it too much credit so far. Considering Jace for example it's one of those cards that seems highly unlikely to see unban in my opinion just for the reason how busted card it is. Another problem with it is that he wouldn't help all that much against faster linear aggro and other decks of that nature but would be very good against slower fair decks and I don't think we need a card that beats them because there are already enough of them.
Any push for a fair card unbanned would be coupled with some linear strategy getting a hit. Whatever that is up to interpretation in the B&R thread.
Only 3,634 people voted in Maro's poll, 2180 of which voted for Jace. That is hardly the number of people playing Modern right now to get a big enough picture. Also, they don't always go by what the consumer wants, look at how many people want the reserved list abolished.
However, if you confident enough in Maro's little poll you should be snatching every copy of Jace out there.
It's like I'm saying one thing and you're arguing against something else haha.
Erm. Anyway my point was that it seems like Wizards are stepping up their interest in consumer insight and the only reason there can possibly be for this is that they'd consider acting on it to better please their customers.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Nothing related to "safe unbans", seems to me he wanted to know what people's favorite banned card is, more like a fun poll rather than a poll to gauge public opinion regarding unbans.
There's a huge difference between "what players want unbanned" and "what wizards can unban safely". You also have to keep in mind that according to Aaron Forsythe, Jace is one of the four cards that wizards "cannot" unban in modern - not that they won't, they can't. (The other three being Stoneforge Mystic, Green Sun's Zenith and Seething Song)
Until I hear AF walking back that comment, or at least explaining why those cards can't come off (and more of an explanation than what they give about the reserve list) then I will ignore any speculation of JTMS coming back.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Can someone explain to me why this is a distinct topic from the banlist thread? New communication about bans is still pretty clearly a banlist topic.
admittedly the title of the thread isn't the best choice - i'll change it.
my aim was to discuss the community engagement, polls, customer insight and various other tidbits that Wizards are beginning to put out there that specifically concern Modern as a format.
this is a fairly new thing for the company to do (direct engagement and opinion-seeking) and denotes a subtle (welcome!) change in approach from before, where Wizards seemed to mostly ignore Modern in the public sphere. And while this particular twitter-poll regarded a handful of banned modern cards, subsequent Modern-centric communications from Wizards will no doubt focus on something else.
so for now - the focus of discussion was "hey look, Maro/Forsythe/Wizards made a poll or asked a direct question on topic X, do we reckon they'll do anything with the feedback the community gave, to inform the format going forward?"
it's half-speculative and half-people's experienced opinions on the format and its future.
I expect WotC to have taken a look at the recent WMCQ's and concluded that Modern is healthy. All strategies are viable, so no bans or unbans are needed.
There's a huge difference between "what players want unbanned" and "what wizards can unban safely". You also have to keep in mind that according to Aaron Forsythe, Jace is one of the four cards that wizards "cannot" unban in modern - not that they won't, they can't. (The other three being Stoneforge Mystic, Green Sun's Zenith and Seething Song)
Until I hear AF walking back that comment, or at least explaining why those cards can't come off (and more of an explanation than what they give about the reserve list) then I will ignore any speculation of JTMS coming back.
Did he say that before or after the Twin ban? If it's before, I think we all know why, so that wouldn't apply anymore.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
There's a huge difference between "what players want unbanned" and "what wizards can unban safely". You also have to keep in mind that according to Aaron Forsythe, Jace is one of the four cards that wizards "cannot" unban in modern - not that they won't, they can't. (The other three being Stoneforge Mystic, Green Sun's Zenith and Seething Song)
Until I hear AF walking back that comment, or at least explaining why those cards can't come off (and more of an explanation than what they give about the reserve list) then I will ignore any speculation of JTMS coming back.
Did he say that before or after the Twin ban? If it's before, I think we all know why, so that wouldn't apply anymore.
I believe it was before the Pro Tour changes as I don't recall him saying anything about definite un-unbanables recently. Also with how much bannings/unbannings have been in the front of people's minds from the eldrazi; I think him saying SFM and Jace are never coming off would have squashed all the hub ub around them.
So, final words? I guess this thread is closing in less than 24 hours.
I vote No bans/No unbans/No changes in Modern. Maybe they could surprise us with a Stoneforge Mystic or BBE unban, but my gut says "No changes".
But I would expect 1 unban before January for sure.
I bought a playset of BBE just in case, since they were only like $3/ea, but I don't have my hopes set too high. I do still have my fingers crossed for a Splinter Twin unban, though. Still salty.
Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
I bought a playset of BBE just in case, since they were only like $3/ea, but I don't have my hopes set too high. I do still have my fingers crossed for a Splinter Twin unban, though. Still salty.
I get the feeling many people who are upset about the Twin ban are just mad that they no longer have a deck that has zero opportunity cost attached to it.
If you want to play a combo deck, you have to accept the fact that you will have a shaky contingency plan if your plan A fails. If you're a control deck, you have to accept the fact you can't just win games out of nowhere and that you need to grind someone out of the game. Twin erased both of these weaknesses by combining both the strengths of combo and control into a single deck.
I bought a playset of BBE just in case, since they were only like $3/ea, but I don't have my hopes set too high. I do still have my fingers crossed for a Splinter Twin unban, though. Still salty.
I get the feeling many people who are upset about the Twin ban are just mad that they no longer have a deck that has zero opportunity cost attached to it.
0 Opportunity cost. Right. Because Splinter Twin is never a bad draw and the combo is great against every single deck. That statement alone makes me believe you've never actually played with or against the deck.
If you want to play a combo deck, you have to accept the fact that you will have a shaky contingency plan if your plan A fails. If you're a control deck, you have to accept the fact you can't just win games out of nowhere and that you need to grind someone out of the game. Twin erased both of these weaknesses by combining both the strengths of combo and control into a single deck.
Uh. Why do you think the GBx G1 matchup was so hard? Twin was at it's worst against fair decks, as having your creature removed in response to the twin was a HUGE blowout, and extremely hard to come back from. Game 1 against fair decks (Jund, UWR, Grixis, Junk, etc..) meant you often had 6+ dead cards in your deck game one (Twin is almost 100% a dead draw against anything with abrupt decay, pestermite dies to a wayward sneeze).
I could spend the next hour writing a response about why Twin was what kept the format healthy and would improve the format tenfold if unbanned, but PVDDR did that for me back in January so I'll just link his article here instead. http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/why-the-twin-ban-was-a-mistake/
Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
I bought a playset of BBE just in case, since they were only like $3/ea, but I don't have my hopes set too high. I do still have my fingers crossed for a Splinter Twin unban, though. Still salty.
I get the feeling many people who are upset about the Twin ban are just mad that they no longer have a deck that has zero opportunity cost attached to it.
If you want to play a combo deck, you have to accept the fact that you will have a shaky contingency plan if your plan A fails. If you're a control deck, you have to accept the fact you can't just win games out of nowhere and that you need to grind someone out of the game. Twin erased both of these weaknesses by combining both the strengths of combo and control into a single deck.
And yet, the deck never held an oppressive meta share. Its strengths are becoming something of legends; exaggerated to the point of absurdity. The deck was not flawless by any means and to say it was this unbeatable beast is just absurd. Eldrazi was an unbeatable beast and made up 40% of the meta. Pod was nearly 24% of the meta when banned. Jund was over 20% for a considerable amount of time (with BBE stints pushing 30%). Treasure Cruise decks pushed 20%. All Twin flavors combined averaged 12.8% for the entirety of 2015, and it was banned at 12.1% (which is less than the current share BGx Midrange holds right now: 13.7%). If it was as powerful, unbeatable, and broken as everyone is making it out to be, it would be up in the 20%+ range with all the other banned decks.
Maybe Twin players are salty because not only was their deck banned into oblivion (unlike every other previous ban, which allowed the shell to survive in another form), but it essentially destroyed the URx shell all together. Nahiri was heralded as the second coming of Twin and has been nothing but mediocrity and falling popularity (barely clinging to a 4% status). It's a deck that sufferes a LOT of problems, not the least of which is trying to be an answers deck in a format currently defined by fast linear decks attacking on several different fronts. Grixis Control and Grixis Delver are both worse off after the ban (each falling by about half their previous meta shares), and we actually consider Delver's current 1.5% a great position for it to be in! Rather than the celebrated archetype diversity we used to have, the entire format has spiraled into BGx and Linear.dec. And on top of it all, the deck that had stood the test of time since the beginning of Modern, that had never held an oppressive meta share, that had done an excellent job policing linear degeneracy, that offered a unique style of gameplay unable to get out of any other deck, that often led to rich, engaging, and highly interactive games, that never broke Turn 4 rules, was removed for borderline idiotic reasoning, unfounded on any basis in reality, and has almost entirely produced the opposite results as intended, in addition to being far lower on the levels of diversity for any other previous diversity ban.
We all knew it was banned because Wizards hated the fact that it showed up at lot at GP and PT top tables. Perhaps not because it was a superpowered monstrosity of a deck, but maybe because pros who hate Modern (or don't test for the format) made it their automatic go-to when it came to picking a deck. That made for coverage that was not up to their standards, especially when many pros would have gone right back to it at PT Oath. And worst of all, despite a relatively mediocre year (especially when compared to every other banned deck), Twin had a ridiculous performance at the last GP of the season (3 spots in the T8, as well as a win). Apparently that outweighed it's run-of-the-mill Tier 1 performances at all other events that year (which only included 1 GP win out of 6 and about 1 copy per top 8), and likely served as the tipping point for Wizards to say "F-this deck. Statistics be damned, this will look bad for us at PT Oath!" Well, they looked bad for PT Oath anyway, but for completely different reasons. And even after their apology tour of AV/Sword of the Meek, blue reactive decks are essentially continuing to fall into obscurity. Not just Twin, but the entire collection of all blue reactive decks. The ones that are sticking around (or trying to stay afloat) are mostly abandoning any semblance of being a reactive deck in favor of things like 4x main deck Geist of Saint Traft and trading half a dozen counterspells for extra burn and Young Pyromancer.
I do not have any expectations that Twin will come off tomorrow, but if something does not change for what used to be an important part of the game (and a representation of an entire archetype), I expect it to come off at some point.
Some last thoughts on Preordain: I think it would be fine to come off because I think it won't actually do anything to help any deck. Serving as Serum Visions 5-8 (or rather, Visions serving as Preordain 5-8) does not fix the fundamental problems Uxx reactive decks still face. It would be another bone tossed our way in hopes to shut us up and stop complaining. It might help something like Delver, and would certainly help all-in combo decks. But in another 3-6 months, when it has little to no effect, we'll be right back where we were. But considering Wizards' stance on card filtering and how they absolutely do not want powerful draw/filtering spells (unless they cost G), I do not see them taking Preordain off.
Predictions for tomorrow: No changes. No bans, no unbans.
I bought a playset of BBE just in case, since they were only like $3/ea, but I don't have my hopes set too high. I do still have my fingers crossed for a Splinter Twin unban, though. Still salty.
I get the feeling many people who are upset about the Twin ban are just mad that they no longer have a deck that has zero opportunity cost attached to it.
0 Opportunity cost. Right. Because Splinter Twin is never a bad draw and the combo is great against every single deck. That statement alone makes me believe you've never actually played with or against the deck.
If you want to play a combo deck, you have to accept the fact that you will have a shaky contingency plan if your plan A fails. If you're a control deck, you have to accept the fact you can't just win games out of nowhere and that you need to grind someone out of the game. Twin erased both of these weaknesses by combining both the strengths of combo and control into a single deck.
Uh. Why do you think the GBx G1 matchup was so hard? Twin was at it's worst against fair decks, as having your creature removed in response to the twin was a HUGE blowout, and extremely hard to come back from. Game 1 against fair decks (Jund, UWR, Grixis, Junk, etc..) meant you often had 6+ dead cards in your deck game one (Twin is almost 100% a dead draw against anything with abrupt decay, pestermite dies to a wayward sneeze).
I could spend the next hour writing a response about why Twin was what kept the format healthy and would improve the format tenfold if unbanned, but PVDDR did that for me back in January so I'll just link his article here instead. http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/why-the-twin-ban-was-a-mistake/
I may be biased here as I've only played Abzan Company Combo in Modern prior to the Twin ban, but you (and by extension PVDDR) are severely undervaluing the ability to go from all-in combo to tempo with a combo backup. Winning from nowhere is one thing that a lot of strategies already encourage to some extent (my deck for instance, Twin's "successor" in Kikki-Chord, even Infect), but being able to do that or counterburn your way to victory off the back of a Pestermite or Snapcaster Mage and Lightning Bolt is what caused most of my losses.
As far as being a format-police, the same could have been said about LOR-ALA UB/x Faeries, as in both Twin and Faeries polarized the format into a Rock-Paper-Scissors of Faeries/Twin, Five Color Control (or just Midrange/Control in the case of Twin), and whatever aggro deck that could easily challenge 5CC but still lost to Faeries (aka the Aggro/pure-Combo of Modern now). That's a lot of pressure on just one archetype to hold the format together.
Anyhow, my predictions for Modern: no bans, no unbans, no changes.
Mark Rosewater does head to head polls on a fairly regular basis, but this time round it was interesting to modern players.
The categories were modern banned cards and interestingly they all seemed to be cards that are in the "probably safe to unban" pile, like stoneforge, bloodbraid, jace etc.
This seems to indicate a new direction for Wizards and it's very interesting. Many people have been down on the company's community engagement in the past couple of years with regards to modern, and this is a stark message to the modern community that they are clearly thinking about the format. Unfortunately it seems to have gone mostly unnoticed? (at least I haven't heard anyone talking about it yet)
jace the Mindsculptor won in the finals. Personally, I'm tempted to buy a couple jaces on the off-chance that it means something more than just a superficial "what's your fave card" vote. Read into it what you will, of course.
Mods: to differentiate this thread from pure banlist discussion (which already has a thread) this seems like a good place to discuss Wizards' (and by extension MaRo's) community engagement with the management of the format, and how things like this twitter vote or any future initiatives might impact the format or its card pool.
Competitive: GW Hatebears - UG Infect - BGW Liege Rhino
Casual: GR Titan Ramp - BR Aggro
WIP: BUW Control Mill
Thing is though, in a format of lightning fast wins, what does a four mana planeswalker do that doesn't threaten some kind of fairly immediate combo win (a-la Nahiri)? Without twin to easily slot into, jace seems slow.
Good for control though. But that's a positive thing, right?
Don't read too deep into Maro's Twitter polls as they are a way to gauge what his followers want.
Probably won't get merged. Read the OP
also, if Maro (public front of a company) is asking what people want, there's going to be a good reason for it. Right?
Maro is a designer and has little to no say in what gets banned or unbanned. It was just a fun poll to gauge public opinion.
A lot of people ask him about Kamigawa, which is a popular topic amongst his followers both on Tumblr and Twitter but R&D has deemed that set too unpopular to return.
As for Jace himself I wouldn't object to seeing him in Modern but I feel the negative back lack because of "muh Standard nightmares, whaa" would be too great.
If I may; why would a company (any company) want to gauge public opinion, if it wasn't for the purpose of improving their service so that it fit more closely with what a paying audience wants?
Most people who are content with the game don't post on social media, only a small, yet vocal minority do. Thus one Twitter poll isn't an accurate way to fully comprehend what a majority of Modern players want or don't want. It's a step in the right direction but having Twitter polls to decide what is banned and unbanned could be disastrous.
That didn't answer my question though. Lol.
Also, i don't like to be a pedant but short of using social media and maybe trawling some popular forums (maybe reddit), how would a company gauge consumer interest anyway? There are scant few channels which don't include mostly the vocal minority. That's kind of how consumer insight works unfortunately.
Also, that vocal minority on social media have an influencing factor on the silent majority. This is a noticeable effect and occurs in a wide range of industries from computer games to the beauty sector.
Only 3,634 people voted in Maro's poll, 2180 of which voted for Jace. That is hardly the number of people playing Modern right now to get a big enough picture. Also, they don't always go by what the consumer wants, look at how many people want the reserved list abolished.
However, if you confident enough in Maro's little poll you should be snatching every copy of Jace out there.
Any push for a fair card unbanned would be coupled with some linear strategy getting a hit. Whatever that is up to interpretation in the B&R thread.
It's like I'm saying one thing and you're arguing against something else haha.
Erm. Anyway my point was that it seems like Wizards are stepping up their interest in consumer insight and the only reason there can possibly be for this is that they'd consider acting on it to better please their customers.
Nothing related to "safe unbans", seems to me he wanted to know what people's favorite banned card is, more like a fun poll rather than a poll to gauge public opinion regarding unbans.
Until I hear AF walking back that comment, or at least explaining why those cards can't come off (and more of an explanation than what they give about the reserve list) then I will ignore any speculation of JTMS coming back.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
admittedly the title of the thread isn't the best choice - i'll change it.
my aim was to discuss the community engagement, polls, customer insight and various other tidbits that Wizards are beginning to put out there that specifically concern Modern as a format.
this is a fairly new thing for the company to do (direct engagement and opinion-seeking) and denotes a subtle (welcome!) change in approach from before, where Wizards seemed to mostly ignore Modern in the public sphere. And while this particular twitter-poll regarded a handful of banned modern cards, subsequent Modern-centric communications from Wizards will no doubt focus on something else.
so for now - the focus of discussion was "hey look, Maro/Forsythe/Wizards made a poll or asked a direct question on topic X, do we reckon they'll do anything with the feedback the community gave, to inform the format going forward?"
it's half-speculative and half-people's experienced opinions on the format and its future.
My H/W list
My gut says "no changes" as well
My hope is to see either sfm or Preordain unbanned, but can wait till next announcement, im patient
Any bans would be extremely disappointing at this point in time, and would shake my trust in the format, which is still shaky since the twin ban
UWRjeskai nahiri UWR
UBRgrixis titi UBR
UBRgrixis delverUBR
UR ur kikimite UR
EDH
RUG Riku of Two Reflections RUG
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose UBR
UBRGYidris, Maelstrom Wielder UBRG
UBRJeleva, Nephalia's ScourgeUBR
Did he say that before or after the Twin ban? If it's before, I think we all know why, so that wouldn't apply anymore.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
I believe it was before the Pro Tour changes as I don't recall him saying anything about definite un-unbanables recently. Also with how much bannings/unbannings have been in the front of people's minds from the eldrazi; I think him saying SFM and Jace are never coming off would have squashed all the hub ub around them.
I bought a playset of BBE just in case, since they were only like $3/ea, but I don't have my hopes set too high. I do still have my fingers crossed for a Splinter Twin unban, though. Still salty.
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
I get the feeling many people who are upset about the Twin ban are just mad that they no longer have a deck that has zero opportunity cost attached to it.
If you want to play a combo deck, you have to accept the fact that you will have a shaky contingency plan if your plan A fails. If you're a control deck, you have to accept the fact you can't just win games out of nowhere and that you need to grind someone out of the game. Twin erased both of these weaknesses by combining both the strengths of combo and control into a single deck.
0 Opportunity cost. Right. Because Splinter Twin is never a bad draw and the combo is great against every single deck. That statement alone makes me believe you've never actually played with or against the deck.
Uh. Why do you think the GBx G1 matchup was so hard? Twin was at it's worst against fair decks, as having your creature removed in response to the twin was a HUGE blowout, and extremely hard to come back from. Game 1 against fair decks (Jund, UWR, Grixis, Junk, etc..) meant you often had 6+ dead cards in your deck game one (Twin is almost 100% a dead draw against anything with abrupt decay, pestermite dies to a wayward sneeze).
I could spend the next hour writing a response about why Twin was what kept the format healthy and would improve the format tenfold if unbanned, but PVDDR did that for me back in January so I'll just link his article here instead.
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/why-the-twin-ban-was-a-mistake/
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
And yet, the deck never held an oppressive meta share. Its strengths are becoming something of legends; exaggerated to the point of absurdity. The deck was not flawless by any means and to say it was this unbeatable beast is just absurd. Eldrazi was an unbeatable beast and made up 40% of the meta. Pod was nearly 24% of the meta when banned. Jund was over 20% for a considerable amount of time (with BBE stints pushing 30%). Treasure Cruise decks pushed 20%. All Twin flavors combined averaged 12.8% for the entirety of 2015, and it was banned at 12.1% (which is less than the current share BGx Midrange holds right now: 13.7%). If it was as powerful, unbeatable, and broken as everyone is making it out to be, it would be up in the 20%+ range with all the other banned decks.
Maybe Twin players are salty because not only was their deck banned into oblivion (unlike every other previous ban, which allowed the shell to survive in another form), but it essentially destroyed the URx shell all together. Nahiri was heralded as the second coming of Twin and has been nothing but mediocrity and falling popularity (barely clinging to a 4% status). It's a deck that sufferes a LOT of problems, not the least of which is trying to be an answers deck in a format currently defined by fast linear decks attacking on several different fronts. Grixis Control and Grixis Delver are both worse off after the ban (each falling by about half their previous meta shares), and we actually consider Delver's current 1.5% a great position for it to be in! Rather than the celebrated archetype diversity we used to have, the entire format has spiraled into BGx and Linear.dec. And on top of it all, the deck that had stood the test of time since the beginning of Modern, that had never held an oppressive meta share, that had done an excellent job policing linear degeneracy, that offered a unique style of gameplay unable to get out of any other deck, that often led to rich, engaging, and highly interactive games, that never broke Turn 4 rules, was removed for borderline idiotic reasoning, unfounded on any basis in reality, and has almost entirely produced the opposite results as intended, in addition to being far lower on the levels of diversity for any other previous diversity ban.
We all knew it was banned because Wizards hated the fact that it showed up at lot at GP and PT top tables. Perhaps not because it was a superpowered monstrosity of a deck, but maybe because pros who hate Modern (or don't test for the format) made it their automatic go-to when it came to picking a deck. That made for coverage that was not up to their standards, especially when many pros would have gone right back to it at PT Oath. And worst of all, despite a relatively mediocre year (especially when compared to every other banned deck), Twin had a ridiculous performance at the last GP of the season (3 spots in the T8, as well as a win). Apparently that outweighed it's run-of-the-mill Tier 1 performances at all other events that year (which only included 1 GP win out of 6 and about 1 copy per top 8), and likely served as the tipping point for Wizards to say "F-this deck. Statistics be damned, this will look bad for us at PT Oath!" Well, they looked bad for PT Oath anyway, but for completely different reasons. And even after their apology tour of AV/Sword of the Meek, blue reactive decks are essentially continuing to fall into obscurity. Not just Twin, but the entire collection of all blue reactive decks. The ones that are sticking around (or trying to stay afloat) are mostly abandoning any semblance of being a reactive deck in favor of things like 4x main deck Geist of Saint Traft and trading half a dozen counterspells for extra burn and Young Pyromancer.
I do not have any expectations that Twin will come off tomorrow, but if something does not change for what used to be an important part of the game (and a representation of an entire archetype), I expect it to come off at some point.
Some last thoughts on Preordain: I think it would be fine to come off because I think it won't actually do anything to help any deck. Serving as Serum Visions 5-8 (or rather, Visions serving as Preordain 5-8) does not fix the fundamental problems Uxx reactive decks still face. It would be another bone tossed our way in hopes to shut us up and stop complaining. It might help something like Delver, and would certainly help all-in combo decks. But in another 3-6 months, when it has little to no effect, we'll be right back where we were. But considering Wizards' stance on card filtering and how they absolutely do not want powerful draw/filtering spells (unless they cost G), I do not see them taking Preordain off.
Predictions for tomorrow: No changes. No bans, no unbans.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I may be biased here as I've only played Abzan Company Combo in Modern prior to the Twin ban, but you (and by extension PVDDR) are severely undervaluing the ability to go from all-in combo to tempo with a combo backup. Winning from nowhere is one thing that a lot of strategies already encourage to some extent (my deck for instance, Twin's "successor" in Kikki-Chord, even Infect), but being able to do that or counterburn your way to victory off the back of a Pestermite or Snapcaster Mage and Lightning Bolt is what caused most of my losses.
As far as being a format-police, the same could have been said about LOR-ALA UB/x Faeries, as in both Twin and Faeries polarized the format into a Rock-Paper-Scissors of Faeries/Twin, Five Color Control (or just Midrange/Control in the case of Twin), and whatever aggro deck that could easily challenge 5CC but still lost to Faeries (aka the Aggro/pure-Combo of Modern now). That's a lot of pressure on just one archetype to hold the format together.
Anyhow, my predictions for Modern: no bans, no unbans, no changes.
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