i dont know about birthing pod and GSZ coming off together. the same goes for jitte and stoneforge.
the format keeps growing in power. even in these last 2 years a ton of new decks or interactions emerged. in the face of decks like gifts storm, humans, hollow one, kci, eldrazi, death shadow, and mardu pyromancer; stuff like twin, pod, and punishing fire just dont look as threatening. none of the cards/decks really overlap, and the thought that those existing decks would get tossed to the wayside seems unlikely. its the decks on the bottom rungs that would get pushed out, but they are destined to either get a new card that propels them upward or fade into obscurity anyways.
i also dont think jitte would be too good, but honestly the card is just crappy to play against. games tend to revolve around it. the first person to get counters has this quickly snowballing advantage that is near impossible to come back from. so its play might be curbed relative to everything else going on in the format, but the games where it does come up arent very enjoyable.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
i cannot say that birthing pod is safe, cause it's the same as humans. With every set, new powerful ETB/value creatures are printed, so pod will become more powerful, non stop. That is why was banned on the first place, and it is why it should stay banned (i like the deck, it is skill intensive and rewarding. im not a hater, but that's the reality)
i cannot say that birthing pod is safe, cause it's the same as humans. With every set, new powerful ETB/value creatures are printed, so pod will become more powerful, non stop. That is why was banned on the first place, and it is why it should stay banned (i like the deck, it is skill intensive and rewarding. im not a hater, but that's the reality)
No doubt it would continue to get more powerful, but everything gets more powerful with every passing year. The question is 'is this deck in the format unhealthy?', and to that, I don't know. I don't think it's any more busted than anything else the top decks are doing, but I don't know that there is really a way to know for sure.
On Jitte - yeah, it's busted good, but it also requires some setup in modern that many decks simply don't have time to do, and we all know about the myriad of answers that decks have to artifacts post-board. Again, big question marks abound. What are we really scared of getting hosed by Jitte, the linear decks that are around in abundance? Burn? Those decks find a way to compete in even the harshest of metagames, they always do.
Why aren't there more cards in Modern that attack creature strategies from a unique angle? (Aside from sweepers) What I mean is that creature strategies have been given all these tools to provide more play and resiliency as opposed to just spilling their hand on the board turn after turn just to have everything swept up. (Cavern of Souls, Vial, Collected Company, Chord, Undying, Return to battlefield triggers, Cost reduction etc etc etc..) However, there are very few cards that fight creatures in a general sense and from different angles. Sure, there are the usual sweepers but more controlling decks haven't been given much in the form of resilient countermeasures if you will. I think Modern could really benefit from something like an enchantment that made a player pay 2 colorless whenever a creature came into play for example. The only effective one I can think of is Ensnaring Bridge.
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Standard:
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
Now, I don't think most of the things suggested will happen, and I don't think that any one (or many) NBL tournaments will really give us useful data about what these cards would look like in normal modern, but he brings up some points that I think are pretty valid.
Cards he thinks are too good to ever be legal:
Dark Depths
Eye of Ugin
Sensei's Divining Top
Dig Through Time
Treasure Cruise
Gitaxian Probe
I agree with all of these being far too good or far too much of a problem with the exception of Dig deserving some exploration as to possibly coming off. All of these cards are tier 1 never getting unbanned, while that one seems like it's tier 1.5. Still busted, but maybe appropriately so with the rest of the things we're doing in this format already?
No, this is a pretty good list of the fundamentally broken cards in the Modern card pool. Add Skullclamp, Chrome Mox, Mental Misstep, and Jitte to this list, and I'd agree. The Dig/Cruise debate is more about which decks benefit more from which card, rather than which card is more fundamentally broken.
Cards that were difficult to properly evaluate after one tournament - either because they didn't show up or were dramatically outclassed by *more* broken things:
Ancient Den
Blazing Shoal
Chrome Mox
Cloudpost
Deathrite Shaman
Dread Return
Glimpse of Nature
Golgari Grave-Troll
Green Sun's Zenith
Great Furnace
Hypergenesis
Mental Misstep
Ponder
Preordain
Punishing Fire
Rite of Flame
Seething Song
Seat of the Synod
Second Sunrise
Skullclamp
Splinter Twin
Summer Bloom
Tree of Tales
Umezawa's Jitte
Vault of Whispers
Of the above, he suggests that Jitte, GSZ, Twin, Punishing Fire, and Preordain could probably come off due to their impact on the modern meta in that all of these cards promote slowing down games. I *really* like this line of thinking because I definitely think that giving some fair decks, or heck, decks that are centered around interactions, a shot in the arm might help those decks keep up with the linearity arms race. Something to think about.
To be fair, it's hard to get a coherent image of what NBLM looks like from a tournament like this.
These are cards he thinks were completely outclassed by the rest of the busted cards and should just come off:
Stoneforge Mystic
Birthing Pod
Yeah, I agree with this. We've had countless stoneforge conversations for years in this thread and we always get to the same spot, it's good, but it's not busted good. It helps white. Neat. Pod I think is in a weird spot in that it definitely re-enables a top tier strategy, but not one that I personally feel is anything as close to the degeneracy or the potential for dominance that we've seen out of modern both in the past and recently.
Thoughts?
One of the interesting things about Pod is how well it can work with the Eldrazi decks. You can take cheap cards like Mimic, Skyspawner, or Reshaper, and turn them into Thought-Knots and Smashers. I've seen a few builds like that which are fairly effective in basically using Pod as Thought-Knot 5-8. Stoneforge is obviously not really overpowered.
One of the interesting things about Pod is how well it can work with the Eldrazi decks. You can take cheap cards like Mimic, Skyspawner, or Reshaper, and turn them into Thought-Knots and Smashers. I've seen a few builds like that which are fairly effective in basically using Pod as Thought-Knot 5-8. Stoneforge is obviously not really overpowered.
This is an interesting point and Eldrazi Pod could be a cool deck - but is it better than the current Eldrazi lists?
Why aren't there more cards in Modern that attack creature strategies from a unique angle? (Aside from sweepers) What I mean is that creature strategies have been given all these tools to provide more play and resiliency as opposed to just spilling their hand on the board turn after turn just to have everything swept up. (Cavern of Souls, Vial, Collected Company, Chord, Undying, Return to battlefield triggers, Cost reduction etc etc etc..) However, there are very few cards that fight creatures in a general sense and from different angles. Sure, there are the usual sweepers but more controlling decks haven't been given much in the form of resilient countermeasures if you will. I think Modern could really benefit from something like an enchantment that made a player pay 2 colorless whenever a creature came into play for example. The only effective one I can think of is Ensnaring Bridge.
why do there need to be different angles? the best solution has, and will always be, just removing them. then there is just blocking.
unless your deck is uniquely suited for bridge, or pillow fort with stuff like ghostly prison; then just play more removal and sweepers.
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One of the interesting things about Pod is how well it can work with the Eldrazi decks. You can take cheap cards like Mimic, Skyspawner, or Reshaper, and turn them into Thought-Knots and Smashers. I've seen a few builds like that which are fairly effective in basically using Pod as Thought-Knot 5-8. Stoneforge is obviously not really overpowered.
This is an interesting point and Eldrazi Pod could be a cool deck - but is it better than the current Eldrazi lists?
It's not better against other Eldrazi lists, that's for sure. Colorless Eldrazi is fairly resilient against Thought-Knot, interestingly. You're trading some interaction for Pod's consistency and fixing, which can be worth it if you're running a colored Eldrazi list. The result is that you gain points against Tezz, Storm, and Miracles, but lose them against Elves, Affinity, URx Pyroclamp, Eldrazi, and other aggressive decks.
Honestly, I think Birthing Pod and Stoneforge Mystic are okay to unban. Pod against the current field of decks just doesn't sound all that broken, and SFM is probably going to do worse than Jace did.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Somehow, I'm just not seeing that as too good for modern. There's enough ways to stop a finks combo that if someone loses to it they deserved it.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
i think id just rather see GSZ before pod, and GSZ is even questionable. the thing about pod, and similarly twin, is that they create that one deck and thats it. pod had different variations back when it was legal, and i assume it would be the same now; the same for twin. however its not like a deck such as elves can make use of pod, nor could a deck like esper control use twin. so id rather see cards that can help out a bunch of decks, enhancing some or opening the door for others to come to the forefront.
for instance id love to play twin again, but i realize that a card like preordain offers more to the format as a whole. both may be able to coexist, but they would never be unbanned at the same time.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
For those that are saying that Pod would now be okay in this meta, I'm curious as to what would currently prey on Pod decks that would prevent it from reaching the same level of dominance it had back when it was banned. I didn't play Modern when it was legal, but it seems to have all the tools it would need to maintain the dominance it had then even in this meta
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Decks
Modern: UWUW Control UBRGrixis Shadow URIzzet Phoenix
Why aren't there more cards in Modern that attack creature strategies from a unique angle? (Aside from sweepers) What I mean is that creature strategies have been given all these tools to provide more play and resiliency as opposed to just spilling their hand on the board turn after turn just to have everything swept up. (Cavern of Souls, Vial, Collected Company, Chord, Undying, Return to battlefield triggers, Cost reduction etc etc etc..) However, there are very few cards that fight creatures in a general sense and from different angles. Sure, there are the usual sweepers but more controlling decks haven't been given much in the form of resilient countermeasures if you will. I think Modern could really benefit from something like an enchantment that made a player pay 2 colorless whenever a creature came into play for example. The only effective one I can think of is Ensnaring Bridge.
why do there need to be different angles? the best solution has, and will always be, just removing them. then there is just blocking.
unless your deck is uniquely suited for bridge, or pillow fort with stuff like ghostly prison; then just play more removal and sweepers.
Not to mention that is not how WOTC designs the game anymore...Creatures and Planeswalkers are King. If those Ensnaring Bridge decks took off, I have no doubt that WOTC would have put Bridge straight on the banlist. Drags game out and boring to watch.
I disagree its boring, there is tension, unless its Lantern...when someone plays out a bridge. All it takes is one Destructive Revelry for example and that Bridge player is crying.
Bridge only locks games out when people are greedy, or you know, Lantern.
I disagree its boring, there is tension, unless its Lantern...when someone plays out a bridge. All it takes is one Destructive Revelry for example and that Bridge player is crying.
Bridge only locks games out when people are greedy, or you know, Lantern.
Sure that was my point I meant Lantern if it and its ensnaring bridge slow down the game to a crawl had risen to the top of the meta. WOTC would have wasted no time in taking out Bridge to the back and putting it down.
For those that are saying that Pod would now be okay in this meta, I'm curious as to what would currently prey on Pod decks that would prevent it from reaching the same level of dominance it had back when it was banned. I didn't play Modern when it was legal, but it seems to have all the tools it would need to maintain the dominance it had then even in this meta
i dont think anyone really knows. who knows what a good version of pod would look like now. its a toolbox deck with access to like 4 different combos.
its unlikely to go off before turn 4, runs limited removal, and without pod its only drawing the silver bullets the deck provides. youd think spell based combo would eat it up (storm, kci, ad naus), midrange and control could disrupt its creature synergies, and big mana could go over the top sans a combo. however the deck was so good because it was a swiss army knife; especially post board.
its not the safest unban candidate. i just dont see it coming off before other things.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Why aren't there more cards in Modern that attack creature strategies from a unique angle? (Aside from sweepers) What I mean is that creature strategies have been given all these tools to provide more play and resiliency as opposed to just spilling their hand on the board turn after turn just to have everything swept up. (Cavern of Souls, Vial, Collected Company, Chord, Undying, Return to battlefield triggers, Cost reduction etc etc etc..) However, there are very few cards that fight creatures in a general sense and from different angles. Sure, there are the usual sweepers but more controlling decks haven't been given much in the form of resilient countermeasures if you will. I think Modern could really benefit from something like an enchantment that made a player pay 2 colorless whenever a creature came into play for example. The only effective one I can think of is Ensnaring Bridge.
Not sure but would be great to have some sort of WW or U/W enchantment which said something ensuring only one creature a turn can etb under a player's control. That would slow down the vomit your hand decks and reduce effectiveness of vial activations.
I want several cards unbanned, but pod is not one I will ever push for. I believe pod made a smaller percentage of the field than Jund or twin did when it wad banned, but it won a large percentage of big tournaments that last year or so of it got banned. And remember combo pod is not what got it banned, those were the kiki-jiki combos and infinite life gain or infinite damage combos based on melira or angle of Thune. It was banned because of value pod which just ramped into better and better creatures using voice of resurgence, kitchen finx, seige rhino and resto angle. It was so good it ran main board hate for the mirror with linvalla, Keeper of silence. I built this deck right before it got banned and if you never got to play this deck you may not believe how good it was. It was hard to compete against 1 mana seige rhinos and resto angels that regain your life loss over and over. Or if needed just tutor up your one of silver bullets, like magus of the moon, spell skite, reclamation sage or many others depending on what you want in your build, if that will shut your opponent down. WOTC is going to keep making better and better creatures over time and that means this deck will continue to get better with either new combo pieces, new value peices or new silver bullets and that is why I do not ever see pod getting unbanned.
If wotc unbans splinter twin is because they had given up on modern promoting modern as a format and probably creating a "new modern" format)
What kind of logic brings you to that conclusion?
The two main premises for banning twin were the was oppressive and the hurt diversity of the URx decks.
It was oppressive in many ways, you could lose at turn 4, you could lose if you tappedout and you could lose from 2 card combo from the top. on top of that the deck was too consistent doing all the above.
as for diversity, there was only one good URx deck, it was simple why would you play any other URx deck with bolts and snapcasters without splinter twin, when if you had splinter twin your deck becomes 2 times better.
So if this were the two main points for banning twin and wotc knows this is what will probably happen again to the format. why would they unban twin? there nothing to gain from unbanning it. so if they unban twin my conclusion is that they will no longer promote the modern format and it will became a more casual format.
I want several cards unbanned, but pod is not one I will ever push for. I believe pod made a smaller percentage of the field than Jund or twin did when it wad banned, but it won a large percentage of big tournaments that last year or so of it got banned. And remember combo pod is not what got it banned, those were the kiki-jiki combos and infinite life gain or infinite damage combos based on melira or angle of Thune. It was banned because of value pod which just ramped into better and better creatures using voice of resurgence, kitchen finx, seige rhino and resto angle. It was so good it ran main board hate for the mirror with linvalla, Keeper of silence. I built this deck right before it got banned and if you never got to play this deck you may not believe how good it was. It was hard to compete against 1 mana seige rhinos and resto angels that regain your life loss over and over. Or if needed just tutor up your one of silver bullets, like magus of the moon, spell skite, reclamation sage or many others depending on what you want in your build, if that will shut your opponent down. WOTC is going to keep making better and better creatures over time and that means this deck will continue to get better with either new combo pieces, new value peices or new silver bullets and that is why I do not ever see pod getting unbanned.
This is wrong. Pod was sitting on ~20%, while Twin was sitting on less than 9%.
@KTKENSHINX could give you the corresponding metagame shares, I am sure of it.
Ok I may be wrong on the percentage of the field it made up, I'm not going to go look that up. The rest of my point about why it is banned still stands. I dont remember it being that hight but if it was it is even less likely to be unbanned. I remember it won lots of events and the hall of fame commentators discussing how pod was obviously the best deck in the format when it was being shown at events. Don't unban pod,
please, for the love of god, lets not talk about 'twin was banned because of X...'. those discussions never go anywhere and have been beat to death continuously.
the only thing that is relevant is whether or not the card would be too powerful for the format right now, which is entirely different than it was 2 and a half years ago.
the same goes for pod. the reason it was axed was spelled out pretty explicitly. it was winning too much, limited diversity amongst creature decks, and was likely to improve at a faster rate than the rest of the format because a repeatable tutor removes a bunch of deck-building restrictions. if you believe those would still hold true right now, then clearly you dont think the card should be unbanned.
the format keeps growing in power. even in these last 2 years a ton of new decks or interactions emerged. in the face of decks like gifts storm, humans, hollow one, kci, eldrazi, death shadow, and mardu pyromancer; stuff like twin, pod, and punishing fire just dont look as threatening. none of the cards/decks really overlap, and the thought that those existing decks would get tossed to the wayside seems unlikely. its the decks on the bottom rungs that would get pushed out, but they are destined to either get a new card that propels them upward or fade into obscurity anyways.
i also dont think jitte would be too good, but honestly the card is just crappy to play against. games tend to revolve around it. the first person to get counters has this quickly snowballing advantage that is near impossible to come back from. so its play might be curbed relative to everything else going on in the format, but the games where it does come up arent very enjoyable.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)No doubt it would continue to get more powerful, but everything gets more powerful with every passing year. The question is 'is this deck in the format unhealthy?', and to that, I don't know. I don't think it's any more busted than anything else the top decks are doing, but I don't know that there is really a way to know for sure.
On Jitte - yeah, it's busted good, but it also requires some setup in modern that many decks simply don't have time to do, and we all know about the myriad of answers that decks have to artifacts post-board. Again, big question marks abound. What are we really scared of getting hosed by Jitte, the linear decks that are around in abundance? Burn? Those decks find a way to compete in even the harshest of metagames, they always do.
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
No, this is a pretty good list of the fundamentally broken cards in the Modern card pool. Add Skullclamp, Chrome Mox, Mental Misstep, and Jitte to this list, and I'd agree. The Dig/Cruise debate is more about which decks benefit more from which card, rather than which card is more fundamentally broken.
To be fair, it's hard to get a coherent image of what NBLM looks like from a tournament like this.
One of the interesting things about Pod is how well it can work with the Eldrazi decks. You can take cheap cards like Mimic, Skyspawner, or Reshaper, and turn them into Thought-Knots and Smashers. I've seen a few builds like that which are fairly effective in basically using Pod as Thought-Knot 5-8. Stoneforge is obviously not really overpowered.
This is an interesting point and Eldrazi Pod could be a cool deck - but is it better than the current Eldrazi lists?
why do there need to be different angles? the best solution has, and will always be, just removing them. then there is just blocking.
unless your deck is uniquely suited for bridge, or pillow fort with stuff like ghostly prison; then just play more removal and sweepers.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)It's not better against other Eldrazi lists, that's for sure. Colorless Eldrazi is fairly resilient against Thought-Knot, interestingly. You're trading some interaction for Pod's consistency and fixing, which can be worth it if you're running a colored Eldrazi list. The result is that you gain points against Tezz, Storm, and Miracles, but lose them against Elves, Affinity, URx Pyroclamp, Eldrazi, and other aggressive decks.
I think not.
Spirits
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
How exactly is this any better than Podding into Deceiver Exarch? Or Siege Rhino? Or Sunscourge Champion? Or Renegade Rallier?
I mean, Pod is almost certainly fine for Modern, but what makes Felidar break it?
for instance id love to play twin again, but i realize that a card like preordain offers more to the format as a whole. both may be able to coexist, but they would never be unbanned at the same time.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
Not to mention that is not how WOTC designs the game anymore...Creatures and Planeswalkers are King. If those Ensnaring Bridge decks took off, I have no doubt that WOTC would have put Bridge straight on the banlist. Drags game out and boring to watch.
Bridge only locks games out when people are greedy, or you know, Lantern.
Spirits
Sure that was my point I meant Lantern if it and its ensnaring bridge slow down the game to a crawl had risen to the top of the meta. WOTC would have wasted no time in taking out Bridge to the back and putting it down.
i dont think anyone really knows. who knows what a good version of pod would look like now. its a toolbox deck with access to like 4 different combos.
its unlikely to go off before turn 4, runs limited removal, and without pod its only drawing the silver bullets the deck provides. youd think spell based combo would eat it up (storm, kci, ad naus), midrange and control could disrupt its creature synergies, and big mana could go over the top sans a combo. however the deck was so good because it was a swiss army knife; especially post board.
its not the safest unban candidate. i just dont see it coming off before other things.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Not sure but would be great to have some sort of WW or U/W enchantment which said something ensuring only one creature a turn can etb under a player's control. That would slow down the vomit your hand decks and reduce effectiveness of vial activations.
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
The two main premises for banning twin were the was oppressive and the hurt diversity of the URx decks.
It was oppressive in many ways, you could lose at turn 4, you could lose if you tappedout and you could lose from 2 card combo from the top. on top of that the deck was too consistent doing all the above.
as for diversity, there was only one good URx deck, it was simple why would you play any other URx deck with bolts and snapcasters without splinter twin, when if you had splinter twin your deck becomes 2 times better.
So if this were the two main points for banning twin and wotc knows this is what will probably happen again to the format. why would they unban twin? there nothing to gain from unbanning it. so if they unban twin my conclusion is that they will no longer promote the modern format and it will became a more casual format.
Ok I may be wrong on the percentage of the field it made up, I'm not going to go look that up. The rest of my point about why it is banned still stands. I dont remember it being that hight but if it was it is even less likely to be unbanned. I remember it won lots of events and the hall of fame commentators discussing how pod was obviously the best deck in the format when it was being shown at events. Don't unban pod,
the only thing that is relevant is whether or not the card would be too powerful for the format right now, which is entirely different than it was 2 and a half years ago.
the same goes for pod. the reason it was axed was spelled out pretty explicitly. it was winning too much, limited diversity amongst creature decks, and was likely to improve at a faster rate than the rest of the format because a repeatable tutor removes a bunch of deck-building restrictions. if you believe those would still hold true right now, then clearly you dont think the card should be unbanned.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)