As part of our new update to our forums, ban list announcements gets their own thread for one week, before it is closed. You can use this thread to complain or praise the announcement, and voice your opinion. All rules that apply in the State of Modern Thread: bans, format health, reprints, new cards, and more! Thread.
Rule of thumbs:
Keep it civil, don't flame people
If something is banned or unbanned, do not make fun of people whose deck is effected. Remember, this can have lasting player and financial repercussions.
I'm clearly bias about Troll, so I wont defend it. The only thing I will say is legacy deals with a much more powerful version of dredge with the same hate we have here, and does perfectly fine, and the data has shown that prepared modern decks do the same.
I will make a more important note here, that isn't even about this banning, but how wizards has handled modern for sometime now. I've been here since the beginning of modern, and I feel like someone beat down year after year. I want to defend my favorite format in magic, but I have a hard time doing it when wizards bans decks instead of fixing the meta (one might argue this is something akin to cutting off your hand when you break a finger.)
Now more people have to either enjoy losing all the time as their deck is still playable, but bad, or cash out their deck to retirement, salvage their mana base, and pay more money than they lost to make a different deck. Modern is where players seek to avoid rotation, not surgically extracted force deck changes.
The last time they unbanned things worth mentioning is 2012 when they unbanned valakut, 2014 (2 years between) when they unbanned nacatl admitting that ban was a mistake, 2015 (a year later) where they unbanned troll, which they banned again one year later in 2016 and unbanning a blue card worth mentioning, after killing a huge protion of blue decks.
When is this going to stop? When will they see people are already looking at a "new modern format" because they screwed up standard and modern so bad people are just looking for ways to play magic. I mean... why are they just constantly banning cards because there isnt enough answers to threats. You cant keep banning threats as an excuse to not have a control deck in the format.
We all knew the dredge ban was coming. Not sure how I feel about the Probe ban. On the one hand the only deck that used it remotely fairly was delver. On the other hand it's literally just a cantrip that lets you look at your opponent's hand.
Just putting out a reminder that if you still want the effect that Peek is a modern legal card that's instant speed.
To port over what I said on the old thread, I'm OK with both of these bannings in terms of what they'll do to/for the format. However, this continues Wizards' trend from January 2016 of loosening their ban criteria. Git Probe does fuel some turn-3 (and even very rare turn-2) kills, but they didn't give any reasoning along the lines of "The format is too fast and here's why." Same with GGT; maybe Dredge is oppressive, but our (very sketchy) data says it's being beaten back.
IIRC, they haven't banned decks for reducing diversity without giving justification of it being a top deck. Which, again Dredge may be, but they didn't make the case. It sounds like both are more a matter of principle than a matter of numbers. Which, again, is fair. But it's going to shake some people's confidence in the format, and it's a different direction than they originally laid out.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
Well there you have it. GGt is not surprising, but disappointing. Gitaxian probe seems pretty silly - clearly paying for the crimes of become immense imo.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
i believe GGT shouldn't have ever been taken off the banlist, and I've always hated Gitaxian Probe. To be honest, the most infuriating ban on that list is Reflector Mage.
Gitaxian Probe has a subtle, yet extremely impactful effect in the decks it's in, and makes already great decks like Infect and U/R Prowess even better. I've always believed that it needed to go. Honestly, the fact that they're banning so frivolously in standard is more worrying to me right now, especially since they refused to take action during Rally and CoCo (the metas that truly killed the format). I hope Wizards doesn't become too active with these things
GGT is not too surprising, they hate Dredge anyway. The deck can still hang out in tier 3 with the ghosts of old combo decks like Amulet.
They actually went ahead and banned Probe. Now these decks are going to have to look for a Probe replacement:
Infect
Suicide Zoo
UR Kiln Fiend
Grixis Delver (in fact, any color combo of Delver)
Storm (yeah, who still plays that LOL)
Jeskai Ascendancy (see Storm)
Thing/PA
Probe ban hit the first three decks the hardest. Seriously, the first page of results for Probe on mtgtop8 is nothing but Infect, Suicide Zoo and Kiln Fiend decks.
With Probe banned, it's harder to hit 5 cards for Become Immense, so you either switch to Groundswell or Might of Alara, or continue playing BI in the knowledge that you're going to have to make trades before it's live. I don't play Kiln Fiend, so I have no idea what they'd do.
I was building two decks that I thought had potential with AER cards (Chapin's Delve, and a red Belcher build with Renegade Map and Mox Opal). Now I can safely delete both of them. At least Super Vengevine is safe (for now).
concealed information is huge. pump spell decks (of any color combination) could run probe to see if the coast is clear then become immense or TBR with full information about what to play around.
To show my real discretion about this Wizards announcement; I don't in particular mind the bans, why I lack in faith for Wizards results directly in the lack of any unbans.
If you are banning Gitaxian Probe, why not allow for Preordain to enter as its replacement? You are just essentially forcing us to play with Sleight of Hand etc. They definitely did a number on Delve, Suicide Blue/Zoo strategies and Delver Strategies yet gave us nothing in return. Was Stoneforge Mystic and Bloodbraid Elf too much to ask? Do you even think banning GGT is going to stop the ridiculous Dredge draws? It's like they keep taking this scalp to the format, and one day they will trim too much. Personally for me, that day is today, I do honestly plan on selling half of my Modern collection now. I won't quit the format, but I've lost my confidence for the long term potential growth. I will keep the other half of my decks that I feel have potential, but now more than ever I am happy for investing in Legacy.
They need to rectify this in April with some unbans for fair cards, you cannot defend this format with a straight face anymore; Nothing is safe.
good job wizards! youve slowed the game down AND harmed a huge sideboard lottery offender!
and if need be, down the road we could make some solid unbans to cards that never got to see the light of day in modern!
Agreed. The next four months will be very interesting with these bans and the new Aether Revolt cards. Towards the end of that period wizards can make any unbans if necessary. I personally think this is a very fun time to play modern (and I play 4 probes in my delver deck).
March 13 is 4 days before Modern Masters 2017 drops. I was thinking they'd want to announce something big before the set dropped to build hype. Well, there you have it.
Of course there are other reasons for the change. But I do have my suspicions...
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
I'm fine with the bans. I'm pretty disappointed about no unbans though. Maybe March will be the day... MM3 is right around the corner from that date as well.
Probe and preordrain do completely different things though.
Probe is using mostly in aggressive strategies that don't care about the life loss to check if the coast is clear and to later turn the card in the gy into resources. Preodrain on the other hand are used by combo and control decks mostly to find specific answers or key cards. Probe beeing gone have absolutely no affect on preordrain getting unbanned or not, they are nothing like each other.
To show my real discretion about this Wizards announcement; I don't in particular mind the bans, why I lack in faith for Wizards results directly in the lack of any unbans.
If you are banning probe, why not allow for Preordain to enter as its replacement? You are just essentially forcing us to play with Sleight of Hand etc. They definitely did a number on Delve, Suicide Blue/Zoo strategies and Delver Strategies yet gave us nothing in return. Was Stoneforge Mystic and Bloodbraid Elf too much to ask? Do you even think banning GGT is going to stop the ridiculous Dredge draws? It's like they keep taking this scalp to the format, and one day they will trim too much. Personally for me, that day is today, I do honestly plan on selling half of my Modern collection now. I will keep the other half of my decks that I feel have potential, but now more than ever I am happy for investing in Legacy.
They need to rectify this in April with some unbans for fair cards, you cannot defend this format with a straight face anymore; Nothing is safe.
the bans were good for the game, whether or not it hurts players investments, things like this need to be looked past.
and realize modern had and still possibly has problems with it, and wizards addressed some of them.
unbans will happen just wait and see. sfm bbe and jace will be welcome with open arms when that day comes.
Oh man did I just get bad beats, haha. I have two primary decks in Modern: Dredge and Suicide Zoo. I own cards for Eggs, Elemental Combo, and Cheerios, but dang if those aren't terrible, especially with Fatal Push coming soon.
So, Legacy manaless Dredge? Or are Amalgam, Cathartic Reunion, Haunted Dead, and Insolent Neonate good enough for Dredgevine?
I absolutely agree with both of these bans. Heck, I agree with the Standard bans, too.
Gitaxian Probe is pretty broken. It's essentially, "You start the game with 18 life. You get to see your opponent's hand at least one time, when you want. You may play with 56 cards in your deck instead of 60. One or more spells of your choice may cost one less. One or more creatures may get +1/+1 until end of turn, or +2/+2 permanently."
While my pet deck didn't have any problems keeping Dredge under control, I could understand that it did start to push other decks out of the format, as ktshinx (spelling) pointed out. I don't know that the deck is wholly destroyed. It may still be playable. But it is likely much more manageable for other decks without resorting to dedicating large swathes of sideboard space.
I understand that some people may not agree, but considering that WotC has the most reliable source of data out of all of us, by a margin that we can't even fathom, they likely know what they are doing. Especially moreso than randoms on the internet who haven't compiled even three digit's worth of gameplay data and trends, and go off of their emotions and assumed "expertise".
I'm bias on troll, so I won't even attempt to make a defense for it, other than legacy uses the same exact grave hate we do and its doing fine against the stronger form of dredge.
Overall, bannings after bannings have worn on me. I've been with modern from the very beginning. And rather than create an environment you support your players with, they just kill decks rather than fix meta games, and refuse to reprint cards which leads to ever increasing prices.
Cool, if dredge is unplaybe now, I have "lost" around 200 dollars (not including the mana base) and need to use that mana base to build something like jund now, which will cost me an extra 1000 or so.
To show my real discretion about this Wizards announcement; I don't in particular mind the bans, why I lack in faith for Wizards results directly in the lack of any unbans.
If you are banning Gitaxian Probe, why not allow for Preordain to enter as its replacement? You are just essentially forcing us to play with Sleight of Hand etc. They definitely did a number on Delve, Suicide Blue/Zoo strategies and Delver Strategies yet gave us nothing in return. Was Stoneforge Mystic and Bloodbraid Elf too much to ask?
Note the just-before-Modern-Masters banlist announcement schedule change. I sense shenanigans.
I'm not angry or even slightly miffed at no unbans, despite wanting to see a few. This plus Fatal Push is a huge shift to the format. The last thing they're going to want to do is also release new cards into an unknown meta. Just like they didn't take of Sword of the Meek and Ancestral Vision until a few months after they banned Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom.
I expected no unbans January 2016 and no unbans January 2017. I expect something big in March 2017.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
Rule of thumbs:
Keep it civil, don't flame people
If something is banned or unbanned, do not make fun of people whose deck is effected. Remember, this can have lasting player and financial repercussions.
Modern:
Gitaxian Probe is banned.
Golgari Grave-Troll is banned.
Reasonings: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/january-9-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-01-09
I will make a more important note here, that isn't even about this banning, but how wizards has handled modern for sometime now. I've been here since the beginning of modern, and I feel like someone beat down year after year. I want to defend my favorite format in magic, but I have a hard time doing it when wizards bans decks instead of fixing the meta (one might argue this is something akin to cutting off your hand when you break a finger.)
Now more people have to either enjoy losing all the time as their deck is still playable, but bad, or cash out their deck to retirement, salvage their mana base, and pay more money than they lost to make a different deck. Modern is where players seek to avoid rotation, not surgically extracted force deck changes.
The last time they unbanned things worth mentioning is 2012 when they unbanned valakut, 2014 (2 years between) when they unbanned nacatl admitting that ban was a mistake, 2015 (a year later) where they unbanned troll, which they banned again one year later in 2016 and unbanning a blue card worth mentioning, after killing a huge protion of blue decks.
When is this going to stop? When will they see people are already looking at a "new modern format" because they screwed up standard and modern so bad people are just looking for ways to play magic. I mean... why are they just constantly banning cards because there isnt enough answers to threats. You cant keep banning threats as an excuse to not have a control deck in the format.
Just putting out a reminder that if you still want the effect that Peek is a modern legal card that's instant speed.
"Well, in Redditvile they say – that Jeff Hoogland's small heart grew three sizes that day."
with almost word-for-word the same explanation that Wizards gave.
Well done.
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
IIRC, they haven't banned decks for reducing diversity without giving justification of it being a top deck. Which, again Dredge may be, but they didn't make the case. It sounds like both are more a matter of principle than a matter of numbers. Which, again, is fair. But it's going to shake some people's confidence in the format, and it's a different direction than they originally laid out.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
RGTron
UGInfect
URStorm
WUBRAd Nauseam
BRGrishoalbrand
URGScapeshift
WBGAbzan Company
WUBRGAmulet Titan
BRGLiving End
WGBogles
and if need be, down the road we could make some solid unbans to cards that never got to see the light of day in modern!
decks playing:
none
Gitaxian Probe has a subtle, yet extremely impactful effect in the decks it's in, and makes already great decks like Infect and U/R Prowess even better. I've always believed that it needed to go. Honestly, the fact that they're banning so frivolously in standard is more worrying to me right now, especially since they refused to take action during Rally and CoCo (the metas that truly killed the format). I hope Wizards doesn't become too active with these things
GGT is not too surprising, they hate Dredge anyway. The deck can still hang out in tier 3 with the ghosts of old combo decks like Amulet.
They actually went ahead and banned Probe. Now these decks are going to have to look for a Probe replacement:
Infect
Suicide Zoo
UR Kiln Fiend
Grixis Delver (in fact, any color combo of Delver)
Storm (yeah, who still plays that LOL)
Jeskai Ascendancy (see Storm)
Thing/PA
Probe ban hit the first three decks the hardest. Seriously, the first page of results for Probe on mtgtop8 is nothing but Infect, Suicide Zoo and Kiln Fiend decks.
With Probe banned, it's harder to hit 5 cards for Become Immense, so you either switch to Groundswell or Might of Alara, or continue playing BI in the knowledge that you're going to have to make trades before it's live. I don't play Kiln Fiend, so I have no idea what they'd do.
I was building two decks that I thought had potential with AER cards (Chapin's Delve, and a red Belcher build with Renegade Map and Mox Opal). Now I can safely delete both of them. At least Super Vengevine is safe (for now).
TL;DR you still have Peek
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
If you are banning Gitaxian Probe, why not allow for Preordain to enter as its replacement? You are just essentially forcing us to play with Sleight of Hand etc. They definitely did a number on Delve, Suicide Blue/Zoo strategies and Delver Strategies yet gave us nothing in return. Was Stoneforge Mystic and Bloodbraid Elf too much to ask? Do you even think banning GGT is going to stop the ridiculous Dredge draws? It's like they keep taking this scalp to the format, and one day they will trim too much. Personally for me, that day is today, I do honestly plan on selling half of my Modern collection now. I won't quit the format, but I've lost my confidence for the long term potential growth. I will keep the other half of my decks that I feel have potential, but now more than ever I am happy for investing in Legacy.
They need to rectify this in April with some unbans for fair cards, you cannot defend this format with a straight face anymore; Nothing is safe.
Agreed. The next four months will be very interesting with these bans and the new Aether Revolt cards. Towards the end of that period wizards can make any unbans if necessary. I personally think this is a very fun time to play modern (and I play 4 probes in my delver deck).
March 13 is 4 days before Modern Masters 2017 drops. I was thinking they'd want to announce something big before the set dropped to build hype. Well, there you have it.
Of course there are other reasons for the change. But I do have my suspicions...
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
Probe is using mostly in aggressive strategies that don't care about the life loss to check if the coast is clear and to later turn the card in the gy into resources. Preodrain on the other hand are used by combo and control decks mostly to find specific answers or key cards. Probe beeing gone have absolutely no affect on preordrain getting unbanned or not, they are nothing like each other.
the bans were good for the game, whether or not it hurts players investments, things like this need to be looked past.
and realize modern had and still possibly has problems with it, and wizards addressed some of them.
unbans will happen just wait and see. sfm bbe and jace will be welcome with open arms when that day comes.
decks playing:
none
So, Legacy manaless Dredge? Or are Amalgam, Cathartic Reunion, Haunted Dead, and Insolent Neonate good enough for Dredgevine?
Gitaxian Probe is pretty broken. It's essentially, "You start the game with 18 life. You get to see your opponent's hand at least one time, when you want. You may play with 56 cards in your deck instead of 60. One or more spells of your choice may cost one less. One or more creatures may get +1/+1 until end of turn, or +2/+2 permanently."
While my pet deck didn't have any problems keeping Dredge under control, I could understand that it did start to push other decks out of the format, as ktshinx (spelling) pointed out. I don't know that the deck is wholly destroyed. It may still be playable. But it is likely much more manageable for other decks without resorting to dedicating large swathes of sideboard space.
I understand that some people may not agree, but considering that WotC has the most reliable source of data out of all of us, by a margin that we can't even fathom, they likely know what they are doing. Especially moreso than randoms on the internet who haven't compiled even three digit's worth of gameplay data and trends, and go off of their emotions and assumed "expertise".
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Overall, bannings after bannings have worn on me. I've been with modern from the very beginning. And rather than create an environment you support your players with, they just kill decks rather than fix meta games, and refuse to reprint cards which leads to ever increasing prices.
Cool, if dredge is unplaybe now, I have "lost" around 200 dollars (not including the mana base) and need to use that mana base to build something like jund now, which will cost me an extra 1000 or so.
Note the just-before-Modern-Masters banlist announcement schedule change. I sense shenanigans.
I'm not angry or even slightly miffed at no unbans, despite wanting to see a few. This plus Fatal Push is a huge shift to the format. The last thing they're going to want to do is also release new cards into an unknown meta. Just like they didn't take of Sword of the Meek and Ancestral Vision until a few months after they banned Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom.
I expected no unbans January 2016 and no unbans January 2017. I expect something big in March 2017.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
GGT was expected
Probe was unexpected but ultimately good for the format by slowing it down
Combo and aggro lose the most from this, meaning midrange and control win out
I think we will see unbans in march, after they analyze how the new format plays out.