If I have any gripe with Modern, it's that in many fields, a significant portion of the meta can be pretty linear. While linear is good to have in some amount, stop/race the opponent's particular gimmick gets boring when it's 70%+ of what you get to do. What would it take to slow things down a little?
I'm going to rephrase my question so it could be received less aggressively:
Can someone describe this ideal interactive deck to me? What do its matchups look like? How does it fit in the format?
I don't really mind what we have, I just want the ratio of more interactive decks to less interactive decks to be different than what it is currently. Right now some nights of modern are just a string of "now answer this!" games, which can feel like a waste of a night, win or lose.
Probably should get an actual spike to answer though, I mostly like games to go long because I find them fun.
I'm going to rephrase my question so it could be received less aggressively:
Can someone describe this ideal interactive deck to me? What do its matchups look like? How does it fit in the format?
:]
It would be weaker to Big Mana, potentially soft to Discard, have available hate against it, run a tempo/burn plan B, while leaning on Counters.
I honestly dont think the issue is that the 'ideal' is not available. At least close to, is available. I think what you'll find is that people are having issues with A, the wide variance between decks, and B, that many of those decks are not playing remotely interactive or fair.
If I chose an interactive deck, would I be guaranteed the 4-0?
*Also, I have to at least laugh a little inside that Abzan Company is a non-interactive deck.
If you are guaranteed a 4-0 at any given event, the deck is broken and should be banned.
I just do not understand this logic or its underlying premises. It flatly does not consider the game from the opponent's perspective. Is everyone supposed to bring this deck that goes 4-0 at every/most events? What does that format look like where everyone is bringing the same crazy 4-0 deck? Seems like a picture of every horrible Modern/Standard that resulted in bans and unhappy players. Or is only the one skillful player supposed to discover and use this deck with no one else figuring it out? It just dones't make any sense.
I still believe the core of this for most players is that their winning is the most important thing and the implications for the wider format don't matter. And the reason I think they want to win regardless of the format cost is, among other reasons, because they exhibit this psychological profile where winning is a personal validation. This isn't true of all players who complain about these things. But I am sure we would find it is true of many, probably most, of them.
I'm not asking for a deck that is guaranteed to go 4-0. There has never been a deck like that in the history of Magic. No, not even when Eldrazi Winter happened. My win percentage during that time was close to 85%. Not 100%.
My response was that the person who quoted me said that I "lost" because I played a non interactive deck. My record was 3-1, so I assumed that he meant that I would do better than that if I had played an interactive deck. (My feel is that if I ran Jund, I'd be 1-3 at best that night.) 4-0 is better than 3-1, but I'm sorry if he actually meant 3-0-1.
I'm going to rephrase my question so it could be received less aggressively:
Can someone describe this ideal interactive deck to me? What do its matchups look like? How does it fit in the format?
I'm not sure what that type of deck looks like, nor do I care. But I should say something that I don't particularly agree with. You previously mentioned that no deck should have nearly all 50% win percentages vs. most of the field. That type of deck is guaranteed to get banned. You used Splinter Twin as an example. You may very well be right; maybe that is one of Wizard's criteria. But I do actually think that such a deck is all right for Modern. It is all right to have a deck with a few 40/60 matchups, as many 60/40 matchups, and very few other (worse) matchups. I don't see a problem with that. And I'm not saying that a deck should be at least 51% any deck in the field either. I just don't think that a deck HAS to have some 30/70 matchups in order to be "free" from the ban list.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
I also think if you asked these frustrated spikes what they want, it may be when BGx and URx policed the lower tier decks.
That's simply not happening now.
Who knows. There may be a strong case of memory bias and rose tinted glasses happening.
Go back far enough and jund was rattling around at the top of the pile, routinely in every top8 and fluctuated around a pretty high tide-mark in terms of metagame share, up to 15%. Maybe even a little more on occasion (I got bored of looking haha).
That's over double the share of the current most played deck in modern.
Go back a few years, modern was more obviously stratified. There were a handful of decks which were far-and-away better than everything else, and much like standard there were a couple of huge targets to build sideboards for.
In that way, I feel it may have been a psychologically easier prospect for that cohort of players who feel they need to win, or need to feel like they have an obvious avenue to victory 'on paper' when doing tournament prep. Then they'd chalk up losses and bad tournaments to 'lousy topdecks' or something equivalent, essentially passing the buck away from lack of reps, opponent skill or lack of the pilot's own skill. For certain I've seen this behaviour numerous times to varying degrees, so I'm not speculating or unfairly projecting here.
It's a tired story now, although it's still persistent in the magic community. The tone of it has changed though, more towards the popular trashing of variety and variance within modern as the reason for someone's anecdotally bad run at a tournament. Forget their practice, deck choices, play skill, mulligan decisions etc. - The *real* reason they bombed at that last tournament was because "there's too many decks in modern" or sometimes it's more specific such as "there's too many linear decks in modern" (or equally "there's not enough midrange" or any number of similar statements like "big mana" which has gained popularity over the last 12 months as a nucleus for blame). Either way they are piling on metaphorical heaps of cognitive dissonance and trying to free themselves of any responsibility for poor performances, because it's easier to blame some vague intangible format-wide plague that means everyone's just losing all the time and nobody can consistently do well because modern's just *so* high variance.
Well, those assertions are weak but we still hear them. What's troubling is that we get this rhetoric from salty pro players through certain large websites with huge audiences and deep influence in the community. I don't want to be that guy saying "with great power, responsibility blah blah" because if they want to write crappy opinion pieces full of hyperbole, misunderstandings and salt, that's their prerogative! We can't and shouldn't stop them. But jeez, if we shouldn't shake them a bit and say "hey dude just use your damn brain for two seconds and take a more reasonable view on things"
*shrug*
I mean... Provably modern's fine. The 'variance argument' implying it's impossible to plan and consistently do well in the format is spurious and misleading.
What I have noticed though is that a transformation happens. Newer players (talking the win-obsessed spikes mainly, and pros who are dipping into the format and mainly run standard or limited) will try modern or be forced into playing it (maybe for the pro tour or a GP) and will initially have this "ahhh too much variance" knee jerk reaction. What happens next is interesting; either these players retreat from modern entirely, failing to understand it properly and they'll just borrow decks off their teammates or friends when they have to play it, or,.. They immerse themselves more fully into the format and their opinion mellows significantly once they come to understand the nuance and flow of it (and the idea that mastering a specific deck or two is a good way to increase your format capital).
In a way, modern is the Go to standard's Chess. Standard has a simpler initial condition, less pieces, less going on and of course the games can be challenging and engaging. Modern has a far more complex initial condition, requires more pre-learning of the underpinnings and can still give those challenging and engaging games, but requires you to put in the time/reps to learn the ins and outs of the format to a much greater level of detail first, in a way that standard doesn't.
Obviously modern and standard are both still Magic. The principles are the same, you do the same stuff. A good "magic player" (vague as that is) can do well in any format, right? That's where I've seen pros get caught out though. I've seen them venerate Legacy and reference the high ceiling in terms of skill, putting it on a pedestal of "knowing your deck" and similar ideas, but in the same breath slate modern for 'variance' or something without affording it the same treatment. Then, they are summarily disappointed when they find their performances lacking in modern. The reason is simple; modern requires the same treatment and knowing your deck approach as legacy. Clearly this isn't ingrained in the collective conscious yet though. Over time, I believe more people are coming round to it, and I can see improvement from the tiny fragment of the MTG community which posts stuff online.
I'd say the picture is getting better. I'm optimistic.
Oh hey. I wrote a wall of text :S.
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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
I don't think it's petty or unreasonable to want your playskill and gameplay decisions to have a bigger impact in any given game (and not simply as an aggregate over hundreds of matches).
For the most part, I agree with this sentiment, but I've been around Ravager Affinity, Fae, and Caw-Blade. Once this spectrum of skill testing format overrides all evidence of a balanced metagame the game is significantly less enjoyable. When specific lines of play are simply deduced, the only way out of a tough situation are already decided before they happen and the game becomes frustrating to play. No matter if you are part of the meta, or the significantly shrinking portion trying to fight against it, small metagames are problems, and we see this in Standard over the last few cycles.
There needs to be a balance, it's debatable that Modern has swayed too far past a point, but I'm not convinced. It's more than likely that we could swing further and be in dangerous territory. I do believe we could pull that pendulum back and make the game more fascinating to both play and watch with some unbans.
I understand that there are players who would prefer more consistently interactive game experiences. That's reasonable even if your main goal isn't winning; maybe you just want to enjoy a two-sided game of Magic with lots of shared counterplay. I also understand that BGx players are not satisfied with a status quo that makes their deck choice worse than something like GDS.
Here's a list of things I don't understand:
1. Ux and URx players who are still unhappy with their options. There are 2-3 clear, viable options for you that provide extensive decisionmaking and interplay: Jeskai Control, UW Control, and GDS. Pick one and play one.
2. Players who want skill-testing games that then conflate "skill testing" with their own high win rates. There is this implicit arrogance in this conflation which assumes if one puts in the reps, they will be entitled to having a 60%+ win rate at events. Or higher, as some have argued for. This doesn't make sense. We can't all have 60% win rates just by playing the skill testing interactive deck.
3. Players who keep switching decks and then complaining about their win rate. We know anecdotally and statistically you need to stay on a deck in Modern. If you switch decks every time you go <50% at an event (or whatever your bail-out threshold is), you'll never improve.
4. Players who think a low variance deck will always go 60%+ (or whatever your desired win threshold is) at every event. This doesn't even happen in Legacy. At least, it hasn't happened since they banned Miracles. Joe Lossett did achieve this for a while with Miracles but it was on a broken deck.
A year ago, many of these criticisms were legitimate as Modern was awful. This just isn't the case any more by any metric we can find outside of angry anecdotes from players not performing to their desired standard.
To be clear, I still think Modern has 2-3 best decks that the PT will expose. But I don't think that has mattered in events for the last 6-8 months.
I'll speak to my personal feelings on some of these things.
I got in to modern with UWR control, and eventually shifted to the various flavors of twin, while still coming back to control depending on the day. I really enjoyed the meta while twin was legal; twin just fit my play style. With it gone, I was definitely in the camp of 'modern sucks' for a while. I definitely think the format has improved since then, I've come to the realization that I just don't enjoy the format as much anymore. I know blue based control is viable, but I just don't enjoy playing against the current best decks (exception being DS, since that feels the most like a hybrid of control vs twin and control vs gbx).
Additionally, I felt like I could brew a little better when the meta was more stable in the twin days (keeping in mind I'm a terrible deck builder haha). When building a new deck I would come up with my core and then I would ask, "How do I deal with twin/affinity/jund etc?" And then proceed from there. Now there are too many angles of attack. When brewing, you are basically trying to do something linear and faster than those. I liked brewing interactive decks, so this is not good for me personally. So I say again, format is not for me, and that's fine. I've since made the dive in to legacy.
As for the matchup lotto idea: I think modern is guilty of this to some extent. Standard just doesn't have enough decks to make this a problem, and legacy has better universally useful cards/answers that you can win bad matchups without drawing hate. In modern, some matchups are defined by whether to see sideboard cards or not (I'm thinking specifically of uwx control vs dredge). It just feels bad to win or lose based on sideboarding. I think with enough games, the better player will come out on top, but there are a lot of 'bad feels' in modern for me. If you guys love the format, that's awesome. I want to love it again (really hoping for some fun unbans). I like deck diversity, but I like strategic diversity more, and I don't think a long standing, stable meta game is inherently bad. I enjoy those types of formats. I'm a current modern detractor, but if the format isn't for me going forward, that's fine. I don't like standard, but I won't ever complain that it should be changed to fit how I think it should be.
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Modern: UWR Breach, UWB Esper control
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
I'll speak to my personal feelings on some of these things.
I got in to modern with UWR control, and eventually shifted to the various flavors of twin, while still coming back to control depending on the day. I really enjoyed the meta while twin was legal; twin just fit my play style. With it gone, I was definitely in the camp of 'modern sucks' for a while. I definitely think the format has improved since then, I've come to the realization that I just don't enjoy the format as much anymore. I know blue based control is viable, but I just don't enjoy playing against the current best decks (exception being DS, since that feels the most like a hybrid of control vs twin and control vs gbx).
Additionally, I felt like I could brew a little better when the meta was more stable in the twin days (keeping in mind I'm a terrible deck builder haha). When building a new deck I would come up with my core and then I would ask, "How do I deal with twin/affinity/jund etc?" And then proceed from there. Now there are too many angles of attack. When brewing, you are basically trying to do something linear and faster than those. I liked brewing interactive decks, so this is not good for me personally. So I say again, format is not for me, and that's fine. I've since made the dive in to legacy.
As for the matchup lotto idea: I think modern is guilty of this to some extent. Standard just doesn't have enough decks to make this a problem, and legacy has better universally useful cards/answers that you can win bad matchups without drawing hate. In modern, some matchups are defined by whether to see sideboard cards or not (I'm thinking specifically of uwx control vs dredge). It just feels bad to win or lose based on sideboarding. I think with enough games, the better player will come out on top, but there are a lot of 'bad feels' in modern for me. If you guys love the format, that's awesome. I want to love it again (really hoping for some fun unbans). I like deck diversity, but I like strategic diversity more, and I don't think a long standing, stable meta game is inherently bad. I enjoy those types of formats. I'm a current modern detractor, but if the format isn't for me going forward, that's fine. I don't like standard, but I won't ever complain that it should be changed to fit how I think it should be.
I think it really just comes down to some people like having a format where everyone who is trying to win seriously plays the same 4 decks, while others like having more variety. Of course a format that has more viable decks means your pairings could be different every time you enter a tournament, but I find it boring to play against the same 4 decks every single tournament.
Also, when approaching brewing in a broader format like modern, it is usually not best to think of how your deck counters the best x decks, but instead to devise a deck that has a or multiple plans to win, then slowly tweak the build based on performance against the field. This makes brewing easier for linear decks like storm where your goal is to win by turn 4, but it is still a good approach for control decks. I believe this is why in a new meta-shift or a ban list change we immediately see the linear decks rise to the top first, then the midrange or control decks follow later.
I believe we are finally seeing the control decks rise up after a long period of trial and error on their builds. One example of this is the new mono-u living end which is a combo-control deck. When As Foretold was first spoiled, everyone was brewing around for a way to break that card. Everyone searched the linear strategies more reminiscent of the old cascade living end deck first since that was easier to create. It wasn't until much later a new deck started to crop up that has performed much better than the earlier iterations which is much more interactive. Other obvious examples are the UWR tempo decks which now seem to have evolved into a more UWR control deck even later.
Another example would be the death's shadow decks which is extremely interactive. They took a loooooong time to start appearing. The reason being devising a mid-range, or tempo deck is much harder then creating some linear deck, just as creating a good control deck is even harder.
1. Ux and URx players who are still unhappy with their options. There are 2-3 clear, viable options for you that provide extensive decisionmaking and interplay: Jeskai Control, UW Control, and GDS. Pick one and play one.
2. Players who want skill-testing games that then conflate "skill testing" with their own high win rates. There is this implicit arrogance in this conflation which assumes if one puts in the reps, they will be entitled to having a 60%+ win rate at events. Or higher, as some have argued for. This doesn't make sense. We can't all have 60% win rates just by playing the skill testing interactive deck.
3. Players who keep switching decks and then complaining about their win rate. We know anecdotally and statistically you need to stay on a deck in Modern. If you switch decks every time you go <50% at an event (or whatever your bail-out threshold is), you'll never improve.
4. Players who think a low variance deck will always go 60%+ (or whatever your desired win threshold is) at every event. This doesn't even happen in Legacy. At least, it hasn't happened since they banned Miracles. Joe Lossett did achieve this for a while with Miracles but it was on a broken deck.
1. I dont think there is much mystery here. There was a deck which provided what many people wanted. It policed 'random' linear piles, it had game with the top decks in the format, and it ALWAYS felt like you had a chance, even if the odds were not with you.
Yes, we now have many options, and yes some decks having a bit of an ebb has given some meta's (SCG pretty much has its own meta at this point, its hard to argue thats not the case) more ability to play the URx decks which appeal to many.
The decks we have however, are still not a replacement for what was lost, and as HolyDiva (I think it was) states, some still view Jeskai Control as 'bad' because it will fold to certain match ups.
2. I cannot speak for everyone, but I want to be able to walk away from loses thinking I could have done something. I could have tweaked my sideboard, or main decked a different answer. I'm not here to 4-0 every event, I just want to feel like I'm playing the game, and have a shot, win or lose.
3. Quite true. Its been said for as long as I've been around on the forum 'Play what you want and get good at it.'
4. I'm not sure this is true, or like you say it is people who have no grasp on the real numbers and they are the type that think Jund is a 20/80 dog to Tron, or whatever.
The biggest thing I think your posts are conveying is that the dissatisfaction is out of personal performance. I dont feel thats always the case. Many of us are just sick of certain decks even existing, when what we had, was taken away.
yeah, I'm still of the opinion (until someone tells me otherwise) that there are a few busted decks in the format that invalidate UWR, and I think we will see it play out that way at the Pro Tour.
Until then though, I'm fine with it being like you say a medium deck that can dodge the stupid decks, and do ok.
Yeah, I've been on Snapcaster-Bolt decks for 3+ years now and Jeskai Geist is about all I can ask for out of a deck in the current Modern. I mean, so long as I accept a few seemingly unwinnable matchups and most of my wins will be hard-fought. Once I make peace with that, and never play more than 5-round events, it's all gravy. I'd never take it to a GP main event, but I'd happily play the side events with it (which I am planning on for Vegas and LA, barring any crazy shake-ups).
This is absurd---Jeskai has won two Opens in the last six months and done well as a whole.
The deck legit doesn't have that many awful matchups barring things like Dredge, Tron, Titanshift, etc. It has game against midrange, combo and creature aggro.
yeah, I'm still of the opinion (until someone tells me otherwise) that there are a few busted decks in the format that invalidate UWR, and I think we will see it play out that way at the Pro Tour.
Until then though, I'm fine with it being like you say a medium deck that can dodge the stupid decks, and do ok.
Because I think thats essentially what you just said.
This is absurd---Jeskai has won two Opens in the last six months and done well as a whole.
The deck legit doesn't have that many awful matchups barring things like Dredge, Tron, Titanshift, etc. It has game against midrange, combo and creature aggro.
This deck is about as 50/50 as WOTC will allow.
It's good matchups are 55/45, maybe 60/40 at best. It's bad matchups are basically unwinnable with a moderately competent opponent who has remotely reasonable draws. In tournaments where X-3 isn't good enough, it's a pretty rough call to make unless you are expecting/hoping to dodge several powerful top tier decks.
4. I'm not sure this is true, or like you say it is people who have no grasp on the real numbers and they are the type that think Jund is a 20/80 dog to Tron, or whatever.
It was also clearly the best deck in the format both anecdotally (most Legacy players knew it and stated so in Legacy content) and empirically (consistently best results), although it was not quite 50/50+ against everything; Miracles had known bad matchups too. Wizards even said it was the best deck in the format, although that wasn't the only reason Top got banned.
The biggest thing I think your posts are conveying is that the dissatisfaction is out of personal performance. I dont feel thats always the case. Many of us are just sick of certain decks even existing, when what we had, was taken away.
I disagree with this. I think many people think or claim it is just the game experience, but once we unpack that, we see it's actually tied to performance. This is even true of your post. For instance, you stated:
1. I dont think there is much mystery here. There was a deck which provided what many people wanted. It policed 'random' linear piles, it had game with the top decks in the format, and it ALWAYS felt like you had a chance, even if the odds were not with you.
...
2. I cannot speak for everyone, but I want to be able to walk away from loses thinking I could have done something. I could have tweaked my sideboard, or main decked a different answer. I'm not here to 4-0 every event, I just want to feel like I'm playing the game, and have a shot, win or lose.
This is clearly performance/results driven. The random linear piles haven't really changed much since previous eras of Modern. We've lost some (DSZ, Infect) and gained others (Dredge, Storm) while keeping others still the same (Affinity, Griselbrand). The thing that HAS changed is that players have lost a clear trump deck to the random linear piles, i.e. specific kinds of interactive decks that more or less guaranteed a certain performance in events. No one really complained about the existence of those decks when they had interactive options to beat them. Sure, they didn't really enjoy those "linear piles", but there were far fewer complaints when people were regularly beating them.
I had an argument with someone yesterday on stream and I believe some people just refuse to accept the reality that some decks in Modern are better than some other decks in Modern. They will tell you the tale about how if you are a master and have all the experience in the world with whatever mediocre deck you will do great etc. Sure. And they either forget or straight ignore that this guy here has all the experience in the world and is a master with Storm or GDS, and you are handicapping yourself by playing a mediocre deck.
yeah, I'm still of the opinion (until someone tells me otherwise) that there are a few busted decks in the format that invalidate UWR, and I think we will see it play out that way at the Pro Tour.
Until then though, I'm fine with it being like you say a medium deck that can dodge the stupid decks, and do ok.
I still agree that there are secretly 2-3 best Modern decks, but this doesn't actually matter at most event levels. At most event levels, you can win with anything you have experience on. This includes Jeskai, although one definitely needs to work harder with Jeskai than they did with many of the previous best decks in Modern that got banned.
Its not just performance and results though, its about the perception of if someone is in the same game as you are, or is playing past you.
I don't think anyone can say this with a straight face. For one, I've never seen someone who played a strong deck complain that their opponent was totally not able to keep up with them. This is true of all the major banned Modern strategies that were banned for being too good. No Delver players said "huh, I want my TC banned because those BGx mages just aren't playing the same game as me and it's totally unfair." No Dredge opponents said "It sucks that now that I have Leyline out, my opponent can't even play Magic any more." The complaints always aim uphill at the decks that are causing a complainant to lose and have a bad performance.
I will also say that the worst Modern complainers in SCG, CF, TCG, etc. articles are always the players with the worst records. For instance, DeCandio, Handy, and PVDR all had some pretty terrible Modern performances at the height of their Modern complaints. Hoogland is another one who is pretty darn salty on camera when he's losing and that often leads into anti-Modern articles. Meanwhile, Modern players with better records were almost always more measured. This isn't true across the board and in all cases, but it is true in many of those cases.
To be clear, I don't think it's bad that Modern complainers want to win more. That makes sense; if you're a vocal player on a Magic forum or in a Magic article, you probably have a vested interest in the game. That interest probably drives you to compete, which suggests you are a competitive person who enjoys winning. I think all of that is totally fine and understandable. It's less fine to deny that and make it about experience, especially when the winners rarely care what kind of experience the losers are having. I'm willing to acknowledge that experience PLUS performance might matter together. But anyone suggesting this is all about experience and not about their results is probably not telling the whole truth/isn't fully exploring their motives.
I don't think anyone can say this with a straight face. For one, I've never seen someone who played a strong deck complain that their opponent was totally not able to keep up with them. This is true of all the major banned Modern strategies that were banned for being too good. No Delver players said "huh, I want my TC banned because those BGx mages just aren't playing the same game as me and it's totally unfair." No Dredge opponents said "It sucks that now that I have Leyline out, my opponent can't even play Magic any more." The complaints always aim uphill at the decks that are causing a complainant to lose and have a bad performance.
Having been on the other side of frustrating situations plenty of times, it's pretty easy to feel empathy for opponents. It's not fun to steamroll an opponent stuck on lands, flooding out, in a horrible matchup, or otherwise just not really getting to play the game and getting frustrated. I'll take the W all day, but neither of us had fun.
I don't think anyone can say this with a straight face. For one, I've never seen someone who played a strong deck complain that their opponent was totally not able to keep up with them. This is true of all the major banned Modern strategies that were banned for being too good. No Delver players said "huh, I want my TC banned because those BGx mages just aren't playing the same game as me and it's totally unfair." No Dredge opponents said "It sucks that now that I have Leyline out, my opponent can't even play Magic any more." The complaints always aim uphill at the decks that are causing a complainant to lose and have a bad performance.
Having been on the other side of frustrating situations plenty of times, it's pretty easy to feel empathy for opponents. It's not fun to steamroll an opponent stuck on lands, flooding out, in a horrible matchup, or otherwise just not really getting to play the game and getting frustrated. I'll take the W all day, but neither of us had fun.
That's very empathetic if you have that kind of feeling for a player. Magic would be better if we had more of that. But I think we all know that almost all the people complaining about Modern are not basing their complaints off an opponent's bad game experience if the complainers are winning. They are based on losses. I'm pretty sure if we were to compare articles/comments complaining about personal performance vs. opponent performance, we would find an absurd imbalance. The most acute example of this is in matchup writeups where we see players describe their games in one of three ways:
1. One-sided win for the writer. The writer tends to hammer it out with little commentary: e.g. "T1 Thoughtseize into T2 Tasigur with Denial backup. T3 Shadow and it's pretty much game from there."
2. Hard-fought win for the writer. The writer explains the intricate steps he took to win the match based on skill and tight play.
3. One-sided loss for the writer. The writer laments bad luck, bad draws, bad matchups, variance, or various factors out of their control.
I rarely if ever see writers congratulate an opponent on their tight win, or graciously accept their loss to whatever factors are at play in their opponent's favor. This is because most players who take the time to a) compete, b) take notes on their matchups/remember them, c) write them up in an article/forum are very high on the competitive spectrum and probably really want to win. That's fine! But let's not pretend that performance, results, and winning are not a huge driving force behind this. Player empathy for the opponent rarely factors.
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Can someone describe this ideal interactive deck to me? What do its matchups look like? How does it fit in the format?
I don't really mind what we have, I just want the ratio of more interactive decks to less interactive decks to be different than what it is currently. Right now some nights of modern are just a string of "now answer this!" games, which can feel like a waste of a night, win or lose.
Probably should get an actual spike to answer though, I mostly like games to go long because I find them fun.
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It would be weaker to Big Mana, potentially soft to Discard, have available hate against it, run a tempo/burn plan B, while leaning on Counters.
I honestly dont think the issue is that the 'ideal' is not available. At least close to, is available. I think what you'll find is that people are having issues with A, the wide variance between decks, and B, that many of those decks are not playing remotely interactive or fair.
Spirits
I'm not asking for a deck that is guaranteed to go 4-0. There has never been a deck like that in the history of Magic. No, not even when Eldrazi Winter happened. My win percentage during that time was close to 85%. Not 100%.
My response was that the person who quoted me said that I "lost" because I played a non interactive deck. My record was 3-1, so I assumed that he meant that I would do better than that if I had played an interactive deck. (My feel is that if I ran Jund, I'd be 1-3 at best that night.) 4-0 is better than 3-1, but I'm sorry if he actually meant 3-0-1.
I'm not sure what that type of deck looks like, nor do I care. But I should say something that I don't particularly agree with. You previously mentioned that no deck should have nearly all 50% win percentages vs. most of the field. That type of deck is guaranteed to get banned. You used Splinter Twin as an example. You may very well be right; maybe that is one of Wizard's criteria. But I do actually think that such a deck is all right for Modern. It is all right to have a deck with a few 40/60 matchups, as many 60/40 matchups, and very few other (worse) matchups. I don't see a problem with that. And I'm not saying that a deck should be at least 51% any deck in the field either. I just don't think that a deck HAS to have some 30/70 matchups in order to be "free" from the ban list.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)That's simply not happening now.
Spirits
Who knows. There may be a strong case of memory bias and rose tinted glasses happening.
Go back far enough and jund was rattling around at the top of the pile, routinely in every top8 and fluctuated around a pretty high tide-mark in terms of metagame share, up to 15%. Maybe even a little more on occasion (I got bored of looking haha).
That's over double the share of the current most played deck in modern.
Go back a few years, modern was more obviously stratified. There were a handful of decks which were far-and-away better than everything else, and much like standard there were a couple of huge targets to build sideboards for.
In that way, I feel it may have been a psychologically easier prospect for that cohort of players who feel they need to win, or need to feel like they have an obvious avenue to victory 'on paper' when doing tournament prep. Then they'd chalk up losses and bad tournaments to 'lousy topdecks' or something equivalent, essentially passing the buck away from lack of reps, opponent skill or lack of the pilot's own skill. For certain I've seen this behaviour numerous times to varying degrees, so I'm not speculating or unfairly projecting here.
It's a tired story now, although it's still persistent in the magic community. The tone of it has changed though, more towards the popular trashing of variety and variance within modern as the reason for someone's anecdotally bad run at a tournament. Forget their practice, deck choices, play skill, mulligan decisions etc. - The *real* reason they bombed at that last tournament was because "there's too many decks in modern" or sometimes it's more specific such as "there's too many linear decks in modern" (or equally "there's not enough midrange" or any number of similar statements like "big mana" which has gained popularity over the last 12 months as a nucleus for blame). Either way they are piling on metaphorical heaps of cognitive dissonance and trying to free themselves of any responsibility for poor performances, because it's easier to blame some vague intangible format-wide plague that means everyone's just losing all the time and nobody can consistently do well because modern's just *so* high variance.
Well, those assertions are weak but we still hear them. What's troubling is that we get this rhetoric from salty pro players through certain large websites with huge audiences and deep influence in the community. I don't want to be that guy saying "with great power, responsibility blah blah" because if they want to write crappy opinion pieces full of hyperbole, misunderstandings and salt, that's their prerogative! We can't and shouldn't stop them. But jeez, if we shouldn't shake them a bit and say "hey dude just use your damn brain for two seconds and take a more reasonable view on things"
*shrug*
I mean... Provably modern's fine. The 'variance argument' implying it's impossible to plan and consistently do well in the format is spurious and misleading.
What I have noticed though is that a transformation happens. Newer players (talking the win-obsessed spikes mainly, and pros who are dipping into the format and mainly run standard or limited) will try modern or be forced into playing it (maybe for the pro tour or a GP) and will initially have this "ahhh too much variance" knee jerk reaction. What happens next is interesting; either these players retreat from modern entirely, failing to understand it properly and they'll just borrow decks off their teammates or friends when they have to play it, or,.. They immerse themselves more fully into the format and their opinion mellows significantly once they come to understand the nuance and flow of it (and the idea that mastering a specific deck or two is a good way to increase your format capital).
In a way, modern is the Go to standard's Chess. Standard has a simpler initial condition, less pieces, less going on and of course the games can be challenging and engaging. Modern has a far more complex initial condition, requires more pre-learning of the underpinnings and can still give those challenging and engaging games, but requires you to put in the time/reps to learn the ins and outs of the format to a much greater level of detail first, in a way that standard doesn't.
Obviously modern and standard are both still Magic. The principles are the same, you do the same stuff. A good "magic player" (vague as that is) can do well in any format, right? That's where I've seen pros get caught out though. I've seen them venerate Legacy and reference the high ceiling in terms of skill, putting it on a pedestal of "knowing your deck" and similar ideas, but in the same breath slate modern for 'variance' or something without affording it the same treatment. Then, they are summarily disappointed when they find their performances lacking in modern. The reason is simple; modern requires the same treatment and knowing your deck approach as legacy. Clearly this isn't ingrained in the collective conscious yet though. Over time, I believe more people are coming round to it, and I can see improvement from the tiny fragment of the MTG community which posts stuff online.
I'd say the picture is getting better. I'm optimistic.
Oh hey. I wrote a wall of text :S.
For the most part, I agree with this sentiment, but I've been around Ravager Affinity, Fae, and Caw-Blade. Once this spectrum of skill testing format overrides all evidence of a balanced metagame the game is significantly less enjoyable. When specific lines of play are simply deduced, the only way out of a tough situation are already decided before they happen and the game becomes frustrating to play. No matter if you are part of the meta, or the significantly shrinking portion trying to fight against it, small metagames are problems, and we see this in Standard over the last few cycles.
There needs to be a balance, it's debatable that Modern has swayed too far past a point, but I'm not convinced. It's more than likely that we could swing further and be in dangerous territory. I do believe we could pull that pendulum back and make the game more fascinating to both play and watch with some unbans.
EDIT; Grammatical and Lecture cleaning
For better or worse.
Spirits
Here's a list of things I don't understand:
1. Ux and URx players who are still unhappy with their options. There are 2-3 clear, viable options for you that provide extensive decisionmaking and interplay: Jeskai Control, UW Control, and GDS. Pick one and play one.
2. Players who want skill-testing games that then conflate "skill testing" with their own high win rates. There is this implicit arrogance in this conflation which assumes if one puts in the reps, they will be entitled to having a 60%+ win rate at events. Or higher, as some have argued for. This doesn't make sense. We can't all have 60% win rates just by playing the skill testing interactive deck.
3. Players who keep switching decks and then complaining about their win rate. We know anecdotally and statistically you need to stay on a deck in Modern. If you switch decks every time you go <50% at an event (or whatever your bail-out threshold is), you'll never improve.
4. Players who think a low variance deck will always go 60%+ (or whatever your desired win threshold is) at every event. This doesn't even happen in Legacy. At least, it hasn't happened since they banned Miracles. Joe Lossett did achieve this for a while with Miracles but it was on a broken deck.
A year ago, many of these criticisms were legitimate as Modern was awful. This just isn't the case any more by any metric we can find outside of angry anecdotes from players not performing to their desired standard.
To be clear, I still think Modern has 2-3 best decks that the PT will expose. But I don't think that has mattered in events for the last 6-8 months.
I'll speak to my personal feelings on some of these things.
I got in to modern with UWR control, and eventually shifted to the various flavors of twin, while still coming back to control depending on the day. I really enjoyed the meta while twin was legal; twin just fit my play style. With it gone, I was definitely in the camp of 'modern sucks' for a while. I definitely think the format has improved since then, I've come to the realization that I just don't enjoy the format as much anymore. I know blue based control is viable, but I just don't enjoy playing against the current best decks (exception being DS, since that feels the most like a hybrid of control vs twin and control vs gbx).
Additionally, I felt like I could brew a little better when the meta was more stable in the twin days (keeping in mind I'm a terrible deck builder haha). When building a new deck I would come up with my core and then I would ask, "How do I deal with twin/affinity/jund etc?" And then proceed from there. Now there are too many angles of attack. When brewing, you are basically trying to do something linear and faster than those. I liked brewing interactive decks, so this is not good for me personally. So I say again, format is not for me, and that's fine. I've since made the dive in to legacy.
As for the matchup lotto idea: I think modern is guilty of this to some extent. Standard just doesn't have enough decks to make this a problem, and legacy has better universally useful cards/answers that you can win bad matchups without drawing hate. In modern, some matchups are defined by whether to see sideboard cards or not (I'm thinking specifically of uwx control vs dredge). It just feels bad to win or lose based on sideboarding. I think with enough games, the better player will come out on top, but there are a lot of 'bad feels' in modern for me. If you guys love the format, that's awesome. I want to love it again (really hoping for some fun unbans). I like deck diversity, but I like strategic diversity more, and I don't think a long standing, stable meta game is inherently bad. I enjoy those types of formats. I'm a current modern detractor, but if the format isn't for me going forward, that's fine. I don't like standard, but I won't ever complain that it should be changed to fit how I think it should be.
Legacy: UW RiP/Helm, UR Sneak and Show
I think it really just comes down to some people like having a format where everyone who is trying to win seriously plays the same 4 decks, while others like having more variety. Of course a format that has more viable decks means your pairings could be different every time you enter a tournament, but I find it boring to play against the same 4 decks every single tournament.
Also, when approaching brewing in a broader format like modern, it is usually not best to think of how your deck counters the best x decks, but instead to devise a deck that has a or multiple plans to win, then slowly tweak the build based on performance against the field. This makes brewing easier for linear decks like storm where your goal is to win by turn 4, but it is still a good approach for control decks. I believe this is why in a new meta-shift or a ban list change we immediately see the linear decks rise to the top first, then the midrange or control decks follow later.
I believe we are finally seeing the control decks rise up after a long period of trial and error on their builds. One example of this is the new mono-u living end which is a combo-control deck. When As Foretold was first spoiled, everyone was brewing around for a way to break that card. Everyone searched the linear strategies more reminiscent of the old cascade living end deck first since that was easier to create. It wasn't until much later a new deck started to crop up that has performed much better than the earlier iterations which is much more interactive. Other obvious examples are the UWR tempo decks which now seem to have evolved into a more UWR control deck even later.
Another example would be the death's shadow decks which is extremely interactive. They took a loooooong time to start appearing. The reason being devising a mid-range, or tempo deck is much harder then creating some linear deck, just as creating a good control deck is even harder.
That is just my opinion however...
1. I dont think there is much mystery here. There was a deck which provided what many people wanted. It policed 'random' linear piles, it had game with the top decks in the format, and it ALWAYS felt like you had a chance, even if the odds were not with you.
Yes, we now have many options, and yes some decks having a bit of an ebb has given some meta's (SCG pretty much has its own meta at this point, its hard to argue thats not the case) more ability to play the URx decks which appeal to many.
The decks we have however, are still not a replacement for what was lost, and as HolyDiva (I think it was) states, some still view Jeskai Control as 'bad' because it will fold to certain match ups.
2. I cannot speak for everyone, but I want to be able to walk away from loses thinking I could have done something. I could have tweaked my sideboard, or main decked a different answer. I'm not here to 4-0 every event, I just want to feel like I'm playing the game, and have a shot, win or lose.
3. Quite true. Its been said for as long as I've been around on the forum 'Play what you want and get good at it.'
4. I'm not sure this is true, or like you say it is people who have no grasp on the real numbers and they are the type that think Jund is a 20/80 dog to Tron, or whatever.
The biggest thing I think your posts are conveying is that the dissatisfaction is out of personal performance. I dont feel thats always the case. Many of us are just sick of certain decks even existing, when what we had, was taken away.
Spirits
Until then though, I'm fine with it being like you say a medium deck that can dodge the stupid decks, and do ok.
Spirits
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Because its softer to bolt/removal, if I had to guess.
Spirits
The deck legit doesn't have that many awful matchups barring things like Dredge, Tron, Titanshift, etc. It has game against midrange, combo and creature aggro.
This deck is about as 50/50 as WOTC will allow.
EDIT: For context, is this absurd?
Because I think thats essentially what you just said.
Spirits
It's good matchups are 55/45, maybe 60/40 at best. It's bad matchups are basically unwinnable with a moderately competent opponent who has remotely reasonable draws. In tournaments where X-3 isn't good enough, it's a pretty rough call to make unless you are expecting/hoping to dodge several powerful top tier decks.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
It was also clearly the best deck in the format both anecdotally (most Legacy players knew it and stated so in Legacy content) and empirically (consistently best results), although it was not quite 50/50+ against everything; Miracles had known bad matchups too. Wizards even said it was the best deck in the format, although that wasn't the only reason Top got banned.
I disagree with this. I think many people think or claim it is just the game experience, but once we unpack that, we see it's actually tied to performance. This is even true of your post. For instance, you stated:
This is clearly performance/results driven. The random linear piles haven't really changed much since previous eras of Modern. We've lost some (DSZ, Infect) and gained others (Dredge, Storm) while keeping others still the same (Affinity, Griselbrand). The thing that HAS changed is that players have lost a clear trump deck to the random linear piles, i.e. specific kinds of interactive decks that more or less guaranteed a certain performance in events. No one really complained about the existence of those decks when they had interactive options to beat them. Sure, they didn't really enjoy those "linear piles", but there were far fewer complaints when people were regularly beating them.
I still agree that there are secretly 2-3 best Modern decks, but this doesn't actually matter at most event levels. At most event levels, you can win with anything you have experience on. This includes Jeskai, although one definitely needs to work harder with Jeskai than they did with many of the previous best decks in Modern that got banned.
Spirits
I don't think anyone can say this with a straight face. For one, I've never seen someone who played a strong deck complain that their opponent was totally not able to keep up with them. This is true of all the major banned Modern strategies that were banned for being too good. No Delver players said "huh, I want my TC banned because those BGx mages just aren't playing the same game as me and it's totally unfair." No Dredge opponents said "It sucks that now that I have Leyline out, my opponent can't even play Magic any more." The complaints always aim uphill at the decks that are causing a complainant to lose and have a bad performance.
I will also say that the worst Modern complainers in SCG, CF, TCG, etc. articles are always the players with the worst records. For instance, DeCandio, Handy, and PVDR all had some pretty terrible Modern performances at the height of their Modern complaints. Hoogland is another one who is pretty darn salty on camera when he's losing and that often leads into anti-Modern articles. Meanwhile, Modern players with better records were almost always more measured. This isn't true across the board and in all cases, but it is true in many of those cases.
To be clear, I don't think it's bad that Modern complainers want to win more. That makes sense; if you're a vocal player on a Magic forum or in a Magic article, you probably have a vested interest in the game. That interest probably drives you to compete, which suggests you are a competitive person who enjoys winning. I think all of that is totally fine and understandable. It's less fine to deny that and make it about experience, especially when the winners rarely care what kind of experience the losers are having. I'm willing to acknowledge that experience PLUS performance might matter together. But anyone suggesting this is all about experience and not about their results is probably not telling the whole truth/isn't fully exploring their motives.
Having been on the other side of frustrating situations plenty of times, it's pretty easy to feel empathy for opponents. It's not fun to steamroll an opponent stuck on lands, flooding out, in a horrible matchup, or otherwise just not really getting to play the game and getting frustrated. I'll take the W all day, but neither of us had fun.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
That's very empathetic if you have that kind of feeling for a player. Magic would be better if we had more of that. But I think we all know that almost all the people complaining about Modern are not basing their complaints off an opponent's bad game experience if the complainers are winning. They are based on losses. I'm pretty sure if we were to compare articles/comments complaining about personal performance vs. opponent performance, we would find an absurd imbalance. The most acute example of this is in matchup writeups where we see players describe their games in one of three ways:
1. One-sided win for the writer. The writer tends to hammer it out with little commentary: e.g. "T1 Thoughtseize into T2 Tasigur with Denial backup. T3 Shadow and it's pretty much game from there."
2. Hard-fought win for the writer. The writer explains the intricate steps he took to win the match based on skill and tight play.
3. One-sided loss for the writer. The writer laments bad luck, bad draws, bad matchups, variance, or various factors out of their control.
I rarely if ever see writers congratulate an opponent on their tight win, or graciously accept their loss to whatever factors are at play in their opponent's favor. This is because most players who take the time to a) compete, b) take notes on their matchups/remember them, c) write them up in an article/forum are very high on the competitive spectrum and probably really want to win. That's fine! But let's not pretend that performance, results, and winning are not a huge driving force behind this. Player empathy for the opponent rarely factors.