I still get the feeling that many people on this forum and across the internet continue to complain, as they have for years, that X deck has bad matchups against Y because Twin ate the bullet and they can't have a 50/50 oops I win tempo/combo/control deck. They romanticize 2014-15ish Modern, like it's some golden age or something. It's not. It wasn't fun at all to not be able to tap out on turn three. It wasn't fun at all when they top decked Twin on turn 7 and killed you. It wasn't fun at all how many other UR decks weren't played because Twin was around. Take off the rose tinted glasses. If you can't win at Modern, its on you. It's not the cards, its not the matches, its not the ban list, no. The one consistent thing in your games is you.
If what you are interested in is a format with 1-5 decks total where you can leverage all your skills and all your copy pasted from CFB/SCG/wherever sideboard tech, let me tell you about Standard. You want a format where you can play goodstuff pile and be safe against nearly everything, but with more decks than Standard? Friends, Legacy is a format.
But you know what makes Modern special? In Modern, we don't have a 5 deck format. We don't have Deathrite Shaman vs Combo decks the format. We have the largest variety of competitive decks available to play in one format. If what you want is diversity, have I got a format for you!
It blows my goddamn mind that we have people arguing for less diversity after just a year ago arguing for more diversity. What in the actual f-
The meta has reached a cyclical point. Pay attention and you'll stop losing.
But the amount of continued tolerance given to the same people in this thread, whining and complaining constantly for year, YEARS about the same trite drivel about how Jund isn't the best is completely absurd and getting quite sickening. Literally all of the numbers we are capable of procuring point to Modern being great, whether it's personal winrates of top players, format breakdowns by deck variety or strategy, color representation, whatever. It's all here and it's all okay. Last year alone we saw the rise (and fall) of Shadow, Eldrazi, Storm, Humans, UWR, and Tron. That's 4 new decks and two decks that were on their deathbeds.
It's so incredibly frustrating that some of you are complaining just to complain. You complained when Twin made you hold up mana the whole game, you complained when you chose Jund (you greedy 50/50 seeking spikenugget) and got paired against Tron and you complained most of all when you lost. Enough is enough. There are archives of this very forum, literally thousands of pages, of the same garbage arguments about how unhappy you all are with Modern, but how incapable so many of you are at adapting or furthering discussion in a meaningful way. Seriously, stop.
THIS 100X!!! If you don't agree with this then there is no amount of logic that will ever convince you that good, non-oppressive, combos should be allowed. If you don't agree with it then just don't play this game, and you certainly shouldn't feel entitled to make any comment on ban lists ever.
THIS 100X!!! If you don't agree with this then there is no amount of logic that will ever convince you that good, non-oppressive, combos should be allowed. If you don't agree with it then just don't play this game, and you certainly shouldn't feel entitled to make any comment on ban lists ever.
Dredge is still a very small number, and unlike Tron and Valakut, there are appropriate answers in the sideboard for that deck.
Tron and Titan are just part of modern; Jund was still doing well a few years ago when those two decks were present, there is no reason to believe something like Jeskai can't do well now.
You read it in the pro articles all the time, even if a deck is 7% to 10% of the meta, you can easily not run into it once in a huge tournament.
In a tournament like an Open or GP, in any format, there still is a pairings lottery to an extent.
Yes, I know Sheridan went on about knowing your deck inside and out, and I do believe that's true
But if you don't run into a bunch of atrocious 30/70s all day, and instead a bunch of 50/50s and some 40/60s, yeah, you can totally make top 8
Tron and Titanshift were also heavily punished for even being brought last weekend. It all ebbs and flows.
Affinity players keep jamming their decks even when they're horribly positioned because eventually in a tournament people stop bringing in hate.
You can say Jeskai isn't viable, but results do speak for themselves, the deck has done extremely well in the last 6 months or so, and has even taken the whole thing multiple times now.
Even at the GP were land ramp went amok, multiple blue decks didn't make the top 8 from tie breakers.
It just feels as though you speak as though you're a huge authority in modern, Diva. I'm sure you're a more accomplished player than me, Diva, but you haven't really won anything to speak in such a confident tone where you can declare where modern is. You've been accurate about some things, but you've also been wrong about quite a few; please don't take any of this as me insulting you, none of it is meant to come off as nasty or rude.
I think if anything, it sounds like Foodchains Goblin has the most experience and results out of all of us
THIS 100X!!! If you don't agree with this then there is no amount of logic that will ever convince you that good, non-oppressive, combos should be allowed. If you don't agree with it then just don't play this game, and you certainly shouldn't feel entitled to make any comment on ban lists ever.
Jund could beat Tron and Titanshift, it was just a bad matchup. Jeskai Draw & Go basically can't.
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
@ktkenshinx plus jeskai gets to have an even better matchup vs all kind of creature decks, like humans, affinity, coco decks compared to uw, gds or jund.
So, there you are, trading something for something else. Its the circle of life.
In a specific metagame like that, jeskai is the better choice.
The deck is fully playable and those two guys finetuned it also greatly.
I was telling you for almost half a year that Jeskai was a good deck...
@ktkenshinx plus jeskai gets to have an even better matchup vs all kind of creature decks, like humans, affinity, coco decks compared to uw, gds or jund.
So, there you are, trading something for something else. Its the circle of life.
In a specific metagame like that, jeskai is the better choice.
The deck is fully playable and those two guys finetuned it also greatly.
I was telling you for almost half a year that Jeskai was a good deck...
Except that "Jeskai" is at least three distinctly different decks that all function and operate independently of each other. As pointed out already, Geist is different from Control is different from Breach/Kiki. It's like grouping together Abzan Midrange and Abzan CoCo.
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
As for anecdotal stories... last night at FNM I remembered what it was like to play Titanshift with Jeskai Geist. Game 1, I keep fully-functioning, but reactive hand, and lost to my opponent playing lands. Game 2, I stomp him with a turn 3 Geist on the play. Game 3, I have the same turn 3 Geist (but on the draw) and die from 20 life to a turn 4 Breached Titan.
Besides, 6 samples is nearly meaningless, especially when you're trying to group three totally different decks together. The matchup is miserably bad and almost entirely reliant on two things: They need to stumble, and you have to have an amazing, aggressive opening hand. If either of those two things don't happen, you are most likely losing that game.
Jund could beat Tron and Titanshift, it was just a bad matchup. Jeskai Draw & Go basically can't.
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
We're talking about Jeskai Control, Jeskai Draw & Go, the one in the finals of SCG. Not all versions of Jeskai.
Logan Martin ran a very passive Gearhulk/Ajani/Search/no-Geist build at GP OKC. In games, He went 4-3 against Titanshift and 4-2 against Tron variants. In matches, he was 2-1 against Titanshift, 1-0 against Gx Tron, and 1-0 against ETron. He did just fine.
This is to show two things. First, that any personal anecdotes we can find in our own experience almost always have a counterexample that challenges them. Second, that this deck was viable at a high-level event even against its so-called impossible matchups.
Like GK, I'm not saying this deck is truly Tier 1 from a pure performance standpoint. I am saying this deck is significantly more viable than many of its detractors claim, and I wish those critics would look for examples of where it can succeed rather than continue to shoot down every one of its finishes. If we look through the post history of users who doubt Jeskai, we find an outrageous ratio of posts against Jeskai to posts for Jeskai; it's like they don't' even want it to succeed.
@ktkenshinx plus jeskai gets to have an even better matchup vs all kind of creature decks, like humans, affinity, coco decks compared to uw, gds or jund.
So, there you are, trading something for something else. Its the circle of life.
In a specific metagame like that, jeskai is the better choice.
The deck is fully playable and those two guys finetuned it also greatly.
I was telling you for almost half a year that Jeskai was a good deck...
I never said it deserves the tier 1 spot. Being playable and being a true tier 1 are two different things though.
There are probably 50 Modern 'playable' decks...so being playable is well and good, but not if the majority of the field you face isnt even fun (subjectively) to play with and against.
@ktkenshinx plus jeskai gets to have an even better matchup vs all kind of creature decks, like humans, affinity, coco decks compared to uw, gds or jund.
So, there you are, trading something for something else. Its the circle of life.
In a specific metagame like that, jeskai is the better choice.
The deck is fully playable and those two guys finetuned it also greatly.
I was telling you for almost half a year that Jeskai was a good deck...
Except that "Jeskai" is at least three distinctly different decks that all function and operate independently of each other. As pointed out already, Geist is different from Control is different from Breach/Kiki. It's like grouping together Abzan Midrange and Abzan CoCo.
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
As for anecdotal stories... last night at FNM I remembered what it was like to play Titanshift with Jeskai Geist. Game 1, I keep fully-functioning, but reactive hand, and lost to my opponent playing lands. Game 2, I stomp him with a turn 3 Geist on the play. Game 3, I have the same turn 3 Geist (but on the draw) and die from 20 life to a turn 4 Breached Titan.
Besides, 6 samples is nearly meaningless, especially when you're trying to group three totally different decks together. The matchup is miserably bad and almost entirely reliant on two things: They need to stumble, and you have to have an amazing, aggressive opening hand. If either of those two things don't happen, you are most likely losing that game.
Maybe tapping out on turn 3 so they could just kill you on turn 4 wasn't the right way to play your deck...
Maybe tapping out on turn 3 so they could just kill you on turn 4 wasn't the right way to play your deck...
Maybe, maybe not. The longer the game goes, the more I'm likely going to lose anyway (like G1) and I have to provide pressure as early as possible. But to somehow use this as an example for it being a reliably winnable matchup is pretty thin.
I'm...a little disheartened how long people have been upset about the state of blue.
Jeskai is the new Jund, and it's slower, clunkier version is similar to Abzan. These two decks have a lot of game against everything. Jund and Junk had it's weaknesses, too, and when blue is finally good we have some people, especially in this thread say, "oh, but it's bad against big mana"
I'm convinced a lot of blue players at MTGsalvation won't be happy until FOW, a 2 mana blue counter, and brainstorm is legal, all at the same time. It's kind of unbelievable.
For some reason, in mtgsalvation, a lot of people attack jund and junk players, but if you look in the threads and on the Facebook community, they really aren't complaining at all. I can't speak for your personal metas and the people you know in person, but the online portion of GBx players aren't whining and demanding to be tier 1. GBx players are still jamming their deck regardless of lacking raw power to be in tier 1, or they moved onto some form of Shadow or Jeskai.
Jeskai is a true tier 1 deck, and it's been like that for half a year now. I'm sorry you dislike feeling helpless against Titanshift, but guess what, when Jund was king, we felt the same way.
I truly believe Jeskai is easily a top 8 deck in modern.
It's something like
Grixis Shadow, Storm, Whir Lantern. I believe those decks are the three best, and then I believe the rest is something like, in no order, Jeskai, Tron variant, Titanshift, Affinity, Burn.
I love some of the actual data I get from this thread...but some of this thread is really discouraging as a player of this format with all these personal stories.
Instead, for some reason, your resident GBx player seems to be it's biggest supporter of blue midrange/control while once in a while, someone attacks old Jund players. I haven't complained about GBx once in months, even if I would personally love a BBE unban.
I just don't get what there is this mentality to see blue decks fail.
Meanwhile,people write personal stories how they couldn't win and skirt around the idea that their deck can't be a true 50 50
You mean the people who've played these decks for years and know the matchups fairly well?
But you're frustrated that your deck lost, or lost from the die roll
I mean, I can literally count three games in one match this monday where I was on Abzan and my opponent was on Elves. Had he been on the play, he most likely would have won. Game 2, I was on the draw and certain had I been on the play instead of the backfoot, I would have won. Game 3 I destroyed every mana dork until I had pressure and a removal to play in one turn to win.
Your deck has a ton of 50/50s, 45/55s, 55/45, 40/60 and 60/40s
Blue players should be thrilled. I don't see articles by John Rosum, Firer, Jones, Ali Anzi or Ben Nikovitch talk this down...
At this point, it's really coming from this thread
I don't think that "Blue players" and I use the term loosely because it can have many connotations (I personally played Blue exclusively for 8 years straight, but now I shy away from it in Modern) need to have FoW, Counterspell, and Preordain.
It's just that none of the Blue decks compare to the Blue deck that many players had before. I personally LOOOOVED playing Bloom Titan. Yet, I have rarely played the deck since the banning of Summer Bloom. It just isn't the same to me and no substitute is "close enough" in my eyes. Sorry. Everyone's different.
Now, with something like Birthing Pod vs. Collected Company, I will be honest here. I didn't enjoy Pod all that much, but just adore playing Company decks of all kinds, including Abzan Counters, Knightfall, Elves, and even Slivers. These are much more fun to me, even though with my Spike-like attitude, the variance of Company gets tiring at times.
I don't believe that you can just tell people that loved a deck before to adapt and everything's fine in Modern because there is a deck that you personally find to be similar. You can't be in their shoes until you actually are (just like Bloom players felt when Pod got banned, yet their deck remained).
I am getting a bit too wordy here, so I will leave this, going off on another tangent - I still don't understand what's wrong with a deck in Modern having a bunch of nearly 50% win percentages, give or take? I don't see why a deck NEEDS to have polarized matchups.
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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)
If all your matches are 50/50 (or thereabouts), you don't have any "free wins." So hypothetically, you give up having free wins in order avoid having terrible matchups. Decks with horrendously bad matchups should be balanced by having about as many free win matchups too. It should be a risk/reward system. Want to play Storm? Cool, you take your unwinnable matchups alongside your totally free wins. Decks like Jeskai have a bunch of relatively even matchups, several really, really bad matchups, and very few (if any) "free-win" matchups. It's a high risk/low reward deck. It's fun to play, challenging, and engaging. But it has virtually no "free wins" to balance out it's laughably bad matchups (of which there are several in the top tiers). So it's probably not a good choice to bring to a large tournament unless you just cross your fingers to dodge/get lucky in your bad matchups.
For good players, I can see this being true. Not so much for other players, who may try to avoid those decks because those 50/50 matchups turn slightly lower when they can't leverage their play skill to gain the small edges.
For Pro Players that can leverage their play skill to gain those small edges, having a lot of 50/50 matchups is good for them and they kind of deserve to win more by using their play skill. It can be balanced out by there being very few polarized matchups, but players knowing they have an advantage against at least the 50/50 deck if they need to beat that. I just personally feel that these polarized matchups lead to a lot of feelsbad in the current Modern. For what it's worth, I'm not saying that a deck needs to have ALL 50/50 matchups; just a lot of them.
Modern has always been like this, but it is getting more extreme. Tron always beat Pod. Bloom always beat Tron and Burn. But nowadays, it's nearly getting to the point where matchups are decided before the die roll. Sometimes it's worth trying because your opponent can always mull to 4, miss land drops, get mana flooded, or make a huge egregious mistake. But if these things don't happen, you literally have no chance. And yes, I'm exaggerating. But me being 4-23 lifetime vs. Infect with Grishoalbrand is just not acceptable to me. (just an example)
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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)
If all your matches are 50/50 (or thereabouts), you don't have any "free wins." So hypothetically, you give up having free wins in order avoid having terrible matchups. Decks with horrendously bad matchups should be balanced by having about as many free win matchups too. It should be a risk/reward system. Want to play Storm? Cool, you take your unwinnable matchups alongside your totally free wins. Decks like Jeskai have a bunch of relatively even matchups, several really, really bad matchups, and very few (if any) "free-win" matchups. It's a high risk/low reward deck. It's fun to play, challenging, and engaging. But it has virtually no "free wins" to balance out it's laughably bad matchups (of which there are several in the top tiers). So it's probably not a good choice to bring to a large tournament unless you just cross your fingers to dodge/get lucky in your bad matchups.
Give me a break
This was exactly what Jund was two years ago
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Spirits
If what you are interested in is a format with 1-5 decks total where you can leverage all your skills and all your copy pasted from CFB/SCG/wherever sideboard tech, let me tell you about Standard. You want a format where you can play goodstuff pile and be safe against nearly everything, but with more decks than Standard? Friends, Legacy is a format.
But you know what makes Modern special? In Modern, we don't have a 5 deck format. We don't have Deathrite Shaman vs Combo decks the format. We have the largest variety of competitive decks available to play in one format. If what you want is diversity, have I got a format for you!
It blows my goddamn mind that we have people arguing for less diversity after just a year ago arguing for more diversity. What in the actual f-
Let me give you some tips. If you suspect Tron is going to be at your event, try playing some of these: Grapeshot, Glistener Elf. Arcbound Ravager, Boros Charm, Ad Nauseam, Scapeshift. You think creature decks are going to be good? How about some of this Supreme Verdict, Maelstrom Pulse, Pyroclasm, Oblivion Stone. You think Midrange is going to be good? How about your old buddies Primeval Titan, Stinkweed Imp or Karn Liberated. Or if you absolutely must ruin everyone's fun, try out some of these: Cryptic Command, Thoughtseize, Logic Knot, Ensnaring Bridge.
The meta has reached a cyclical point. Pay attention and you'll stop losing.
But the amount of continued tolerance given to the same people in this thread, whining and complaining constantly for year, YEARS about the same trite drivel about how Jund isn't the best is completely absurd and getting quite sickening. Literally all of the numbers we are capable of procuring point to Modern being great, whether it's personal winrates of top players, format breakdowns by deck variety or strategy, color representation, whatever. It's all here and it's all okay. Last year alone we saw the rise (and fall) of Shadow, Eldrazi, Storm, Humans, UWR, and Tron. That's 4 new decks and two decks that were on their deathbeds.
It's so incredibly frustrating that some of you are complaining just to complain. You complained when Twin made you hold up mana the whole game, you complained when you chose Jund (you greedy 50/50 seeking spikenugget) and got paired against Tron and you complained most of all when you lost. Enough is enough. There are archives of this very forum, literally thousands of pages, of the same garbage arguments about how unhappy you all are with Modern, but how incapable so many of you are at adapting or furthering discussion in a meaningful way. Seriously, stop.
Really, honestly, truly - Enough.
There are good decks for everyone, quite literally.
10 Tier 1 Decks, across the spectrum of archetypes.
15 Tier 2 Decks, across the spectrum of archetypes.
Some of these 'decks' are not even a single deck, UWR Tempo, is not UWR Control, is not UWR Kiki.
If you dont like the angle of the conversation, why post?
ktk asked why people are frustrated, he is getting answers.
Spirits
Nothing in my post is directed at KTK.
Tron and Titan are just part of modern; Jund was still doing well a few years ago when those two decks were present, there is no reason to believe something like Jeskai can't do well now.
You read it in the pro articles all the time, even if a deck is 7% to 10% of the meta, you can easily not run into it once in a huge tournament.
In a tournament like an Open or GP, in any format, there still is a pairings lottery to an extent.
Yes, I know Sheridan went on about knowing your deck inside and out, and I do believe that's true
But if you don't run into a bunch of atrocious 30/70s all day, and instead a bunch of 50/50s and some 40/60s, yeah, you can totally make top 8
Tron and Titanshift were also heavily punished for even being brought last weekend. It all ebbs and flows.
Affinity players keep jamming their decks even when they're horribly positioned because eventually in a tournament people stop bringing in hate.
You can say Jeskai isn't viable, but results do speak for themselves, the deck has done extremely well in the last 6 months or so, and has even taken the whole thing multiple times now.
Even at the GP were land ramp went amok, multiple blue decks didn't make the top 8 from tie breakers.
It just feels as though you speak as though you're a huge authority in modern, Diva. I'm sure you're a more accomplished player than me, Diva, but you haven't really won anything to speak in such a confident tone where you can declare where modern is. You've been accurate about some things, but you've also been wrong about quite a few; please don't take any of this as me insulting you, none of it is meant to come off as nasty or rude.
I think if anything, it sounds like Foodchains Goblin has the most experience and results out of all of us
No, its directed at myself, or anyone else who is dissatisfied, who are expressing opinions because ktk asked for them.
Spirits
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
I was telling you for almost half a year that Jeskai was a good deck...
Except that "Jeskai" is at least three distinctly different decks that all function and operate independently of each other. As pointed out already, Geist is different from Control is different from Breach/Kiki. It's like grouping together Abzan Midrange and Abzan CoCo.
As for anecdotal stories... last night at FNM I remembered what it was like to play Titanshift with Jeskai Geist. Game 1, I keep fully-functioning, but reactive hand, and lost to my opponent playing lands. Game 2, I stomp him with a turn 3 Geist on the play. Game 3, I have the same turn 3 Geist (but on the draw) and die from 20 life to a turn 4 Breached Titan.
Besides, 6 samples is nearly meaningless, especially when you're trying to group three totally different decks together. The matchup is miserably bad and almost entirely reliant on two things: They need to stumble, and you have to have an amazing, aggressive opening hand. If either of those two things don't happen, you are most likely losing that game.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
And the GP example was running a very unexpected Breach/Emrakul "gotcha" package out of Jeskai, making it even less relevant.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Logan Martin ran a very passive Gearhulk/Ajani/Search/no-Geist build at GP OKC. In games, He went 4-3 against Titanshift and 4-2 against Tron variants. In matches, he was 2-1 against Titanshift, 1-0 against Gx Tron, and 1-0 against ETron. He did just fine.
This is to show two things. First, that any personal anecdotes we can find in our own experience almost always have a counterexample that challenges them. Second, that this deck was viable at a high-level event even against its so-called impossible matchups.
Like GK, I'm not saying this deck is truly Tier 1 from a pure performance standpoint. I am saying this deck is significantly more viable than many of its detractors claim, and I wish those critics would look for examples of where it can succeed rather than continue to shoot down every one of its finishes. If we look through the post history of users who doubt Jeskai, we find an outrageous ratio of posts against Jeskai to posts for Jeskai; it's like they don't' even want it to succeed.
Meanwhile,people write personal stories how they couldn't win and skirt around the idea that their deck can't be a true 50 50
There are probably 50 Modern 'playable' decks...so being playable is well and good, but not if the majority of the field you face isnt even fun (subjectively) to play with and against.
Who? Who are these people who write about how they couldnt win even with a true 50/50 deck?
I keep seeing these sniping comments, and I'm struggling to figure out if people are talking about me?
Spirits
You mean the people who've played these decks for years and know the matchups fairly well?
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Maybe tapping out on turn 3 so they could just kill you on turn 4 wasn't the right way to play your deck...
Maybe, maybe not. The longer the game goes, the more I'm likely going to lose anyway (like G1) and I have to provide pressure as early as possible. But to somehow use this as an example for it being a reliably winnable matchup is pretty thin.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I'm...a little disheartened how long people have been upset about the state of blue.
Jeskai is the new Jund, and it's slower, clunkier version is similar to Abzan. These two decks have a lot of game against everything. Jund and Junk had it's weaknesses, too, and when blue is finally good we have some people, especially in this thread say, "oh, but it's bad against big mana"
I'm convinced a lot of blue players at MTGsalvation won't be happy until FOW, a 2 mana blue counter, and brainstorm is legal, all at the same time. It's kind of unbelievable.
For some reason, in mtgsalvation, a lot of people attack jund and junk players, but if you look in the threads and on the Facebook community, they really aren't complaining at all. I can't speak for your personal metas and the people you know in person, but the online portion of GBx players aren't whining and demanding to be tier 1. GBx players are still jamming their deck regardless of lacking raw power to be in tier 1, or they moved onto some form of Shadow or Jeskai.
Jeskai is a true tier 1 deck, and it's been like that for half a year now. I'm sorry you dislike feeling helpless against Titanshift, but guess what, when Jund was king, we felt the same way.
I truly believe Jeskai is easily a top 8 deck in modern.
It's something like
Grixis Shadow, Storm, Whir Lantern. I believe those decks are the three best, and then I believe the rest is something like, in no order, Jeskai, Tron variant, Titanshift, Affinity, Burn.
I love some of the actual data I get from this thread...but some of this thread is really discouraging as a player of this format with all these personal stories.
Instead, for some reason, your resident GBx player seems to be it's biggest supporter of blue midrange/control while once in a while, someone attacks old Jund players. I haven't complained about GBx once in months, even if I would personally love a BBE unban.
I just don't get what there is this mentality to see blue decks fail.
But you're frustrated that your deck lost, or lost from the die roll
I mean, I can literally count three games in one match this monday where I was on Abzan and my opponent was on Elves. Had he been on the play, he most likely would have won. Game 2, I was on the draw and certain had I been on the play instead of the backfoot, I would have won. Game 3 I destroyed every mana dork until I had pressure and a removal to play in one turn to win.
Your deck has a ton of 50/50s, 45/55s, 55/45, 40/60 and 60/40s
Blue players should be thrilled. I don't see articles by John Rosum, Firer, Jones, Ali Anzi or Ben Nikovitch talk this down...
At this point, it's really coming from this thread
It's just that none of the Blue decks compare to the Blue deck that many players had before. I personally LOOOOVED playing Bloom Titan. Yet, I have rarely played the deck since the banning of Summer Bloom. It just isn't the same to me and no substitute is "close enough" in my eyes. Sorry. Everyone's different.
Now, with something like Birthing Pod vs. Collected Company, I will be honest here. I didn't enjoy Pod all that much, but just adore playing Company decks of all kinds, including Abzan Counters, Knightfall, Elves, and even Slivers. These are much more fun to me, even though with my Spike-like attitude, the variance of Company gets tiring at times.
I don't believe that you can just tell people that loved a deck before to adapt and everything's fine in Modern because there is a deck that you personally find to be similar. You can't be in their shoes until you actually are (just like Bloom players felt when Pod got banned, yet their deck remained).
I am getting a bit too wordy here, so I will leave this, going off on another tangent - I still don't understand what's wrong with a deck in Modern having a bunch of nearly 50% win percentages, give or take? I don't see why a deck NEEDS to have polarized matchups.
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)This is literally what has happened to standard.
If all your matches are 50/50 (or thereabouts), you don't have any "free wins." So hypothetically, you give up having free wins in order avoid having terrible matchups. Decks with horrendously bad matchups should be balanced by having about as many free win matchups too. It should be a risk/reward system. Want to play Storm? Cool, you take your unwinnable matchups alongside your totally free wins. Decks like Jeskai have a bunch of relatively even matchups, several really, really bad matchups, and very few (if any) "free-win" matchups. It's a high risk/low reward deck. It's fun to play, challenging, and engaging. But it has virtually no "free wins" to balance out it's laughably bad matchups (of which there are several in the top tiers). So it's probably not a good choice to bring to a large tournament unless you just cross your fingers to dodge/get lucky in your bad matchups.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
For good players, I can see this being true. Not so much for other players, who may try to avoid those decks because those 50/50 matchups turn slightly lower when they can't leverage their play skill to gain the small edges.
For Pro Players that can leverage their play skill to gain those small edges, having a lot of 50/50 matchups is good for them and they kind of deserve to win more by using their play skill. It can be balanced out by there being very few polarized matchups, but players knowing they have an advantage against at least the 50/50 deck if they need to beat that. I just personally feel that these polarized matchups lead to a lot of feelsbad in the current Modern. For what it's worth, I'm not saying that a deck needs to have ALL 50/50 matchups; just a lot of them.
Modern has always been like this, but it is getting more extreme. Tron always beat Pod. Bloom always beat Tron and Burn. But nowadays, it's nearly getting to the point where matchups are decided before the die roll. Sometimes it's worth trying because your opponent can always mull to 4, miss land drops, get mana flooded, or make a huge egregious mistake. But if these things don't happen, you literally have no chance. And yes, I'm exaggerating. But me being 4-23 lifetime vs. Infect with Grishoalbrand is just not acceptable to me. (just an example)
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)Give me a break
This was exactly what Jund was two years ago