Looking at the ban/unban poll, it’s notable that 100% of the potentially problematic cards there are either red or “colorless.” Stirrings is green of course, but it’s only powerful and controversial because it grabs colorless cards. The only other exception is bridge/vine—both of which only work in the deck in question as a result of Faithless Looting (a red card) and the colorless xx cost artifacts. (Neither bridge nor vine will EVER actually get cast for their listed mana costs.)
Its just a blip in the function of the format. For a good while we had a meta that said 'card advantage is meaningless' and it was either card quality, or filtering, or as we see now, GY abuse.
These things are all fine, unless it becomes oppressive. I have MAJOR doubts BridgeVine will be oppressive.
When the deck isn't killing on turn 3 it reminds me of Amulet Titan and Twin in that while it doesn't actually kill you on turn 3, it sets you up to have 0 outs for the turn 4 kill so while you aren't actually dead on turn 3, you are effectively dead.
I am confused. Artifact destruction is in R, G. Enchantments destruction is in G,W.
2 for both. Seems fair. Nothing is going to change in that department. Disenchant is a colour shifted time spiral card, don't forget.
White also gets artifact destruction. It's generally not the best at it, but it can do it. Disenchant is an early spell but by modern color pie standards Cleansing Nova, Consulate Crackdown, Decommission, Forsake the Worldly, Fragmentize, and Invoke the Divine are all current standard legal white artifact destruction spells.
Creature - All 5
Land - Green, Red, Black
Artifact - Red, Green, White
Enchantment - Green, White
Planeswalker - Red, Green, Black
From that perspective enchantments are a little too difficult to destroy. I would actually argue that a color other than blue should get it though because blue is the only color that can interact with instants and sorceries.
I think it makes much more sense from a balance perspective for black to have the ability to interact with enchantments.
i mean is all of this in the context of just blood moon? generally for the color pie it makes sense that colors are just going to have certain strengths and weaknesses. grixis colors having no way to deal with blood moon isnt some inherent design failure, but rather just a testament to how obnoxious a card blood moon is.
also as someone else pointed out both blue and black can deal with enchantments before they come into play with discard and counter magic.
frankly ive always thought that modern would be a better format without blood moon, however at this point its been too ingrained into the ecology of the format to get rid of it without some very clear justification.
one thing i cant ever get behind though is the argument that its some necessary evil to punish greedy mana. it works to severely constrict resources, and often times outright generate free wins. modern doesnt have true dual lands, and each has downsides that are being taxed plenty through more traditional means (ie tempo, aggression). a deck playing 5 colors with fetches and shocks wouldnt be any more viable if blood moon wasnt in the equation, and a turn 3 blood moon is much the same as a turn 3 karn.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Just watched Hoogland casual turn 3 - ing people extremely often. This deck is super explosive.
Hoogland went 2-3 in that League. That's not consistent at all even within the scope of that single League, let alone the ridiculously small sample that represents.
Can we all just wait for some real results and not anecdotal MTGO clips? Like, a GP maybe?
Moon, on Turn 3, is not close to Karn. First, if it's game 2 and 3, you can play around that. And your deck may not even care.
Not a lot of decks can say that about Karn.
I do believe that Moon can pull free wins. It's part of the point of Blue Moon.
It does punish certainly, and frankly that's a good thing. I would hate to see it gone, the same way other bans enabled decks to go all in with less need to respect losing if they tap out.
i meant more that playing moon on turn 3, much like karn, is to gain a significant advantages in resources/tempo. its played as a main deck card not because its some safety valve to make sure people arent too greedy with their mana bases, but rather as an integral piece to strategies for decks that choose to employ it. it also sometimes just ends games on the spot when they opponent can no longer function.
ive been playing UW control more, and ive still been punked out in game 1's by blood moon even though im running 8 basics with 5 fetches and 4 fields. likewise its come into play against blue moon to constrict my blue sources. those are the types of things i see the card doing in the format, not being some white knight saving us from 4 or 5 color goodstuff decks; which run into the problem of some rando aggro deck kicking their teeth in when they have to take 6+ damage to get their colors online.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Oh it certainly is played for effect, and its not just a random sideboard card. Alpine Moon has been great for me coming out of the side for specific decks.
I'm just saying its not like Karn, but my bias is incredible against Tron so to me, every card in the deck is essentially evil.
Poking my head here to say a few things as a control player. I've been monitoring in lurk mode for months and have seen the new deck. Yes, Vengevine has and always will be a way to get at control decks, the additional ways of getting it into the yard and the addition of Bridge from Below is also nasty, am I out for it's head? No.
Yes it hoses my strategy along with a few other decks casting things along the lines of faithless looting, burning inquiry, and ancient stirrings. All I really want is a SFM and Preordain unban or maybe even a DTT which I'm sure everyone will bemoan, but yes I'd like a toy just like everyone else who has a pet card on that list. Preordain and DTT I would cast, SFM I wouldn't, but that doesn't mean it deserves to be on the ban list at this point.
Until the meta is having to main deck things like RIP or Relic of Progenitus, can we just leave the ban hammers out of this?
Also, everyone wanting a ban on stirrings is nuts to request that if they ever want a good modern cantrip off the list or printed again.
In addition, these cries against blood moon are hilarious. I play all flavors of control, sultai, grixis, esper, jeskai, uw, ub, and ur. Have I been in a non-game with blood moon? Of course. Do I think it's hilarious that I can look at a board state of choke and blood moon because of 8th and 9th? Not really. But those DO serve a purpose in this game regardless. Most of the time decks casting Blood Moon sit on their hands and give me time to try and play. If I win games by soft locking the games most of the time, I can't really get angry at other people for doing a similar thing.
The only thing I really wish for in modern as a non ban list addition is Counterspell and a variant of Delay/Remand that actually exiled instead of countered. I really just want more exile target spells to be a thing. With all the anti-counter magic readily available to this meta I wouldn't mind a couple of situational low cost counters that exile spells and delay them.
I don't know, but modern is pretty fun and yes randomly due to variance you die on turn 3 just like sometimes I will Jace your library on turn 16. It happens and the game has a lot more games that are neither of those extremes. Should probably embrace the reality of that.
I don't know, but modern is pretty fun and yes randomly due to variance you die on turn 3 just like sometimes I will Jace your library on turn 16. It happens and the game has a lot more games that are neither of those extremes. Should probably embrace the reality of that.
Just a thought.
For all the griping we do...this is on point. We all play and enjoy Modern, to various degrees, and we all do things that others consider unfun, unfair, or busted.
I've LITERALLY had people telling me Teferi is too strong. Same with Search. Same with Jace.
Everyone in Modern, playing 'real' decks, is doing powerful things, and the quoted portion especially, resonated.
In addition, these cries against blood moon are hilarious. I play all flavors of control, sultai, grixis, esper, jeskai, uw, ub, and ur. Have I been in a non-game with blood moon? Of course. Do I think it's hilarious that I can look at a board state of choke and blood moon because of 8th and 9th? Not really. But those DO serve a purpose in this game regardless. Most of the time decks casting Blood Moon sit on their hands and give me time to try and play. If I win games by soft locking the games most of the time, I can't really get angry at other people for doing a similar thing.
Could you explain the purpose of the non-games they create? Instead of just dismissing/softening arguments and thoughts as hilarious. No one said this was about control, only those against talking about Moon have brought up counters (and by extension, control). You're right and I agree, it's not funny.
There's a huge difference between soft locking the opponent after 8+ turns of decision making (that has many many foils and faults) and 2-3 turns of "mana, mana, mana, Blood Moon, you virtually have no lands".
I hear you about just enjoying the game, I do enjoy the game, but we come here to this thread to have difficult discussions about the game and try to make sense of things in Modern. I have posed a topic, there has been some discussion, may we continue now?
The whole reason I bring the Blood Moon bit to the table now is that it's not some dominant force and decks that use it are at an all time low. I think this is the best time to have a level headed discussion about it, but instead of "this is why blood moon is necessary" I hear, "blue has counter spells and black has discard", "just enjoy the game", "it's not even strong right now". Please, to say the least, "change my mind".
I do not think Blood Moon is necessary in Modern. At all. I think it creates poor interactions among decks and players. No other card in modern is so uniquely and undeniably game warping when it comes into play. Not RiP vs yard decks, not Damping Sphere vs Storm or tron, Stony Silence vs Affinity or KCI, nothing. To achieve similarly robust "soft" locks you need multiple different hate cards. Most of which ironically die to Engineered Explosives on 2. Moon? Warps your mana to prevent getting not just to 2, but to 3.
i mean is all of this in the context of just blood moon? generally for the color pie it makes sense that colors are just going to have certain strengths and weaknesses. grixis colors having no way to deal with blood moon isnt some inherent design failure, but rather just a testament to how obnoxious a card blood moon is.
also as someone else pointed out both blue and black can deal with enchantments before they come into play with discard and counter magic.
No, not just Blood Moon, but the ones that really stick out to me are the Leylines. Grixis has no way to ever interact with a turn 0 Leyline, unless you're a slower Grixis Control shell playing Cryptics. And it's not just, "Well, not every color combination can deal with everything," because Grixis colors are literally the only 3 color combination that can't deal with a type of permanent. It just seems like an oversight that enchantment removal is limited to fewer colors than any other permanent type. I just like adding it to blue for flavor reasons, but I don't really care if it's added to red or black instead.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Blue can not only counter but also bounce. I suspect a time will come when more echoing truths are seen in modern to clean up zombie tokens and turn one hollow ones. Repeal is also a pretty decent card that ur decks use a bit and u tron leans on heavily.
I could see blue getting enchant removala flavour wise sure, but its a bit narrow to not include bounce spells as an answer. I cant tell how many times ive eot repealed a blood moon or damping sphere and untapped with tron mana online to win the game from there.
Bounce has to count. Repeal, cryptic, echoing truth are answers too. Esp when you can bounce and then counter or discard.
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
I don't know, but modern is pretty fun and yes randomly due to variance you die on turn 3 just like sometimes I will Jace your library on turn 16. It happens and the game has a lot more games that are neither of those extremes. Should probably embrace the reality of that.
Just a thought.
Agreed to that. There are easy games, and there are difficulat ones. Got killed by two 11/11 shadows from 20 life, during the time that Grixis Shadow was king of Modern. After that happened, for a time.. all my fnm decks had some grave removers of some sort. hehe
Anyway, on to the present... it seems the new Bridgevine deck is not really overpowered. Not very consistent from what I've read at their thread.
@arkmer: The purpose of those games is pretty clear. Punishing manabases. Now you may not like that blood moon hits all your utility lands or whatnot but Blood Moon and similar effects are one piece of the puzzle to stop modern and eternal formats from being 4-5 color goodstuff decks and to create a cost for building multiple colors to remove weaknesses.
For example, the grixis dealing with enchantments discussion earlier in this thread shows us that without white or green it's very difficult for those decks to reliably deal with enchantments. Without effects and cards like BM you'd see more and more splashes of lands for utility cards and the decks may not be 5 color but would certainly start melding more into a 3 mana deck with a splash way more easily.
One of the other complaints even earlier in this thread was about humans and it's ability to cast whatever human they want, whenever. Now imagine the 4 color monstrosities you'd probably get from control/midrange players who are not punished at all by BM. That's why it exists. It's a mechanism to stop that reality from happening and I am OK with paying the cost of non games for that.
I decided to try out the Bridge from Below deck as it looked quite explosive in some games where I played against it with KCI. While the deck felt powerful when it was working, it felt quite inconsistent to me. Your deck hinged on getting Bridge from Below or Vengevine into your graveyard early, and it didn’t have much of a backup plan against graveyard hate. While I was winning a decent amount on Magic Online, I recognized mistakes from my opponents on multiple occasions, and situations where I ran hot that led to me winning more than I thought I would at the Pro Tour. The deck mulliganed a lot, and most importantly, I noticed it struggled against Humans, a deck I thought would be quite popular at the PT. Humans could simply set up a battlefield and leave creatures untapped to block and the Bridgevine deck would usually struggle to produce enough attackers to make a lethal attack. If they make early trades, they lose Bridges from their graveyard. The very explosive draws were of course more difficult, but they were fewer and farther between than I’d like them to be.
...
While this is a very early iteration of the deck, and other versions may be better, I’m not in love with archetype right now.
Sure, of course Moon is about punishing greedy mana bases. However, even you have stated that in a 2 color deck with plenty of basics you get "punked" by it sometimes. I don't think Humans is a problem in the meta, but I also don't think that 2 wrongs make a right (ie; Human's mana base shouldn't be justification for having Moon around).
"Similar affects" are fine by me; I'm not sure to which specific ones you refer, but Field of Ruin is a great addition to the meta that forces people to have some number of basics, Damping Sphere has it's obvious uses, etc. None of these are as powerful and hard to remove as Moon. Field of Ruin can and has knocked me off colors in my decks, I have to adapt and not play some thing a few turns while I recover, but I am not locked out of the game permanently. I've played against Stony Silence as Affinity and while its really debilitating, I can still play new cards when I draw them to find a state to win or fight back with. Moon just doesn't allow these things. I've played GW decks with main board Rec Sage and Qasali(!) and been Blood Mooned out of the game simply because I didn't mull into them or they Moon'd before I could get a basic.
With Moon so absent in the meta right now, where are those 4 and 5 color monstrosities? I understand it's impossible to prove a negative, but this is probably as free as those decks can be right now and they're absent. This is because those mana bases are painful in their own right, they take some set up to get rolling due often to color requirements, and fast decks like 8-whack/affinity/combo tend to keep them in check.
I do not think Grixis needs or deserves enchantment hate. I want Blood Moon to disappear in its entirety.
If you want to talk about things I want Grixis to have, let's talk about Lightning Helix. I know that won't be a thing though.
In any case, thanks for humoring me; I don't know if you want to continue or not, but I think the thread would like to move on.
With Moon so absent in the meta right now, where are those 4 and 5 color monstrosities? I understand it's impossible to prove a negative, but this is probably as free as those decks can be right now and they're absent.
Moon is less a thing for several reasons.
1. The biggest target, knows it's a target. Tron 100% is ready for it.
2. Most decks are able to deal, if they don't get locked. A single basic island and 3 'mountains' can bounce it. A single green, or white, is enough.
3. There are none of those decks applying a pressure to bring in Moon. But if you are on say Blue Moon and someone shows up with a greedy deck? Yeah, you win most of the time.
4. It's slow. Turn 3 can be late game with some decks.
Just like most cards you have to work to leverage Moon, and it's often not worth it.
I decided to try out the Bridge from Below deck as it looked quite explosive in some games where I played against it with KCI. While the deck felt powerful when it was working, it felt quite inconsistent to me. Your deck hinged on getting Bridge from Below or Vengevine into your graveyard early, and it didn’t have much of a backup plan against graveyard hate. While I was winning a decent amount on Magic Online, I recognized mistakes from my opponents on multiple occasions, and situations where I ran hot that led to me winning more than I thought I would at the Pro Tour. The deck mulliganed a lot, and most importantly, I noticed it struggled against Humans, a deck I thought would be quite popular at the PT. Humans could simply set up a battlefield and leave creatures untapped to block and the Bridgevine deck would usually struggle to produce enough attackers to make a lethal attack. If they make early trades, they lose Bridges from their graveyard. The very explosive draws were of course more difficult, but they were fewer and farther between than I’d like them to be.
...
While this is a very early iteration of the deck, and other versions may be better, I’m not in love with archetype right now.
Good article. I agree completely. I am considering what to play this weekend for PPTQ(s). I am probably going to go Humans, although it sucks that I will be lending it to a friend at FNM, so I won't get some last minute practice.
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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 don't remember saying anything about a two color deck with plenty of basics being punked by BM. One of the reasons I play miracles in modern is the ease in which I don't care about BM, and have a good shot against creature based decks which are in greater numbers these days. Also, I've found my way out of more than a few BM soft locks and always craft my decks with a plan for BM, just like I plan for other things as well.
This all comes down to design and how someone chooses to build their deck and how they mulligan. As you've stated people should be including basics in their deck for BM which forces them to stay more honest.
Also, if someone loses their first game to BM, they know what they're getting into, and it's time to plan accordingly. Obviously, that is not fool proof and people will lose some matches where even with the best sideboard plans and the draws just don't line up.
This situation of losing to something that you planned very well for and the draws don't line up isn't just a BM problem. There are plenty of format warping cards and I think we've established that modern is diverse; which means sometimes there will be a game warping effect you tried your best to plan for but still lost to.
I think at the end of the day I'd rather see that card exist to punish strategies that BM punishes even if there is some games I lose even planning for it. That's just my two cents.
Its just a blip in the function of the format. For a good while we had a meta that said 'card advantage is meaningless' and it was either card quality, or filtering, or as we see now, GY abuse.
These things are all fine, unless it becomes oppressive. I have MAJOR doubts BridgeVine will be oppressive.
Spirits
White also gets artifact destruction. It's generally not the best at it, but it can do it. Disenchant is an early spell but by modern color pie standards Cleansing Nova, Consulate Crackdown, Decommission, Forsake the Worldly, Fragmentize, and Invoke the Divine are all current standard legal white artifact destruction spells.
Creature - All 5
Land - Green, Red, Black
Artifact - Red, Green, White
Enchantment - Green, White
Planeswalker - Red, Green, Black
From that perspective enchantments are a little too difficult to destroy. I would actually argue that a color other than blue should get it though because blue is the only color that can interact with instants and sorceries.
I think it makes much more sense from a balance perspective for black to have the ability to interact with enchantments.
also as someone else pointed out both blue and black can deal with enchantments before they come into play with discard and counter magic.
frankly ive always thought that modern would be a better format without blood moon, however at this point its been too ingrained into the ecology of the format to get rid of it without some very clear justification.
one thing i cant ever get behind though is the argument that its some necessary evil to punish greedy mana. it works to severely constrict resources, and often times outright generate free wins. modern doesnt have true dual lands, and each has downsides that are being taxed plenty through more traditional means (ie tempo, aggression). a deck playing 5 colors with fetches and shocks wouldnt be any more viable if blood moon wasnt in the equation, and a turn 3 blood moon is much the same as a turn 3 karn.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Hoogland went 2-3 in that League. That's not consistent at all even within the scope of that single League, let alone the ridiculously small sample that represents.
Can we all just wait for some real results and not anecdotal MTGO clips? Like, a GP maybe?
Not a lot of decks can say that about Karn.
I do believe that Moon can pull free wins. It's part of the point of Blue Moon.
It does punish certainly, and frankly that's a good thing. I would hate to see it gone, the same way other bans enabled decks to go all in with less need to respect losing if they tap out.
Spirits
ive been playing UW control more, and ive still been punked out in game 1's by blood moon even though im running 8 basics with 5 fetches and 4 fields. likewise its come into play against blue moon to constrict my blue sources. those are the types of things i see the card doing in the format, not being some white knight saving us from 4 or 5 color goodstuff decks; which run into the problem of some rando aggro deck kicking their teeth in when they have to take 6+ damage to get their colors online.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I'm just saying its not like Karn, but my bias is incredible against Tron so to me, every card in the deck is essentially evil.
Spirits
4 decks I believe.
Mono Red Prison.
Skred (they are not the same)
Blue Moon
Mardu ?
Either way, if they are good or not, was not the point.
Spirits
Yes it hoses my strategy along with a few other decks casting things along the lines of faithless looting, burning inquiry, and ancient stirrings. All I really want is a SFM and Preordain unban or maybe even a DTT which I'm sure everyone will bemoan, but yes I'd like a toy just like everyone else who has a pet card on that list. Preordain and DTT I would cast, SFM I wouldn't, but that doesn't mean it deserves to be on the ban list at this point.
Until the meta is having to main deck things like RIP or Relic of Progenitus, can we just leave the ban hammers out of this?
Also, everyone wanting a ban on stirrings is nuts to request that if they ever want a good modern cantrip off the list or printed again.
In addition, these cries against blood moon are hilarious. I play all flavors of control, sultai, grixis, esper, jeskai, uw, ub, and ur. Have I been in a non-game with blood moon? Of course. Do I think it's hilarious that I can look at a board state of choke and blood moon because of 8th and 9th? Not really. But those DO serve a purpose in this game regardless. Most of the time decks casting Blood Moon sit on their hands and give me time to try and play. If I win games by soft locking the games most of the time, I can't really get angry at other people for doing a similar thing.
The only thing I really wish for in modern as a non ban list addition is Counterspell and a variant of Delay/Remand that actually exiled instead of countered. I really just want more exile target spells to be a thing. With all the anti-counter magic readily available to this meta I wouldn't mind a couple of situational low cost counters that exile spells and delay them.
I don't know, but modern is pretty fun and yes randomly due to variance you die on turn 3 just like sometimes I will Jace your library on turn 16. It happens and the game has a lot more games that are neither of those extremes. Should probably embrace the reality of that.
Just a thought.
For all the griping we do...this is on point. We all play and enjoy Modern, to various degrees, and we all do things that others consider unfun, unfair, or busted.
I've LITERALLY had people telling me Teferi is too strong. Same with Search. Same with Jace.
Everyone in Modern, playing 'real' decks, is doing powerful things, and the quoted portion especially, resonated.
Good post.
Spirits
There's a huge difference between soft locking the opponent after 8+ turns of decision making (that has many many foils and faults) and 2-3 turns of "mana, mana, mana, Blood Moon, you virtually have no lands".
I hear you about just enjoying the game, I do enjoy the game, but we come here to this thread to have difficult discussions about the game and try to make sense of things in Modern. I have posed a topic, there has been some discussion, may we continue now?
The whole reason I bring the Blood Moon bit to the table now is that it's not some dominant force and decks that use it are at an all time low. I think this is the best time to have a level headed discussion about it, but instead of "this is why blood moon is necessary" I hear, "blue has counter spells and black has discard", "just enjoy the game", "it's not even strong right now". Please, to say the least, "change my mind".
I do not think Blood Moon is necessary in Modern. At all. I think it creates poor interactions among decks and players. No other card in modern is so uniquely and undeniably game warping when it comes into play. Not RiP vs yard decks, not Damping Sphere vs Storm or tron, Stony Silence vs Affinity or KCI, nothing. To achieve similarly robust "soft" locks you need multiple different hate cards. Most of which ironically die to Engineered Explosives on 2. Moon? Warps your mana to prevent getting not just to 2, but to 3.
"Reveal a Dragon"
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Moon is part of that. So is Choke.
Why is it necessary? That's hard to say. No card is necessary, but it exists and in doing so informs play patterns.
Someone fetching plains? Sun and Moon.
Someone fetching islands? Blue moon.
Someone powering out a turn 1 chalice on 1 with SSG + Mountain? Pyro Prison.
At those points, you need to play around it. Or interact more, if you can.
It's simply a card, that can make for free wins.
Why is TKS necessary? World Breaker? They simply do now, and so the format is richer for it.
Spirits
I could see blue getting enchant removala flavour wise sure, but its a bit narrow to not include bounce spells as an answer. I cant tell how many times ive eot repealed a blood moon or damping sphere and untapped with tron mana online to win the game from there.
Bounce has to count. Repeal, cryptic, echoing truth are answers too. Esp when you can bounce and then counter or discard.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Agreed to that. There are easy games, and there are difficulat ones. Got killed by two 11/11 shadows from 20 life, during the time that Grixis Shadow was king of Modern. After that happened, for a time.. all my fnm decks had some grave removers of some sort. hehe
Anyway, on to the present... it seems the new Bridgevine deck is not really overpowered. Not very consistent from what I've read at their thread.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
For example, the grixis dealing with enchantments discussion earlier in this thread shows us that without white or green it's very difficult for those decks to reliably deal with enchantments. Without effects and cards like BM you'd see more and more splashes of lands for utility cards and the decks may not be 5 color but would certainly start melding more into a 3 mana deck with a splash way more easily.
One of the other complaints even earlier in this thread was about humans and it's ability to cast whatever human they want, whenever. Now imagine the 4 color monstrosities you'd probably get from control/midrange players who are not punished at all by BM. That's why it exists. It's a mechanism to stop that reality from happening and I am OK with paying the cost of non games for that.
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Big Johnny.
"Similar affects" are fine by me; I'm not sure to which specific ones you refer, but Field of Ruin is a great addition to the meta that forces people to have some number of basics, Damping Sphere has it's obvious uses, etc. None of these are as powerful and hard to remove as Moon. Field of Ruin can and has knocked me off colors in my decks, I have to adapt and not play some thing a few turns while I recover, but I am not locked out of the game permanently. I've played against Stony Silence as Affinity and while its really debilitating, I can still play new cards when I draw them to find a state to win or fight back with. Moon just doesn't allow these things. I've played GW decks with main board Rec Sage and Qasali(!) and been Blood Mooned out of the game simply because I didn't mull into them or they Moon'd before I could get a basic.
With Moon so absent in the meta right now, where are those 4 and 5 color monstrosities? I understand it's impossible to prove a negative, but this is probably as free as those decks can be right now and they're absent. This is because those mana bases are painful in their own right, they take some set up to get rolling due often to color requirements, and fast decks like 8-whack/affinity/combo tend to keep them in check.
I do not think Grixis needs or deserves enchantment hate. I want Blood Moon to disappear in its entirety.
If you want to talk about things I want Grixis to have, let's talk about Lightning Helix. I know that won't be a thing though.
In any case, thanks for humoring me; I don't know if you want to continue or not, but I think the thread would like to move on.
"Reveal a Dragon"
Moon is less a thing for several reasons.
1. The biggest target, knows it's a target. Tron 100% is ready for it.
2. Most decks are able to deal, if they don't get locked. A single basic island and 3 'mountains' can bounce it. A single green, or white, is enough.
3. There are none of those decks applying a pressure to bring in Moon. But if you are on say Blue Moon and someone shows up with a greedy deck? Yeah, you win most of the time.
4. It's slow. Turn 3 can be late game with some decks.
Just like most cards you have to work to leverage Moon, and it's often not worth it.
It is however a safety valve.
Spirits
Good article. I agree completely. I am considering what to play this weekend for PPTQ(s). I am probably going to go Humans, although it sucks that I will be lending it to a friend at FNM, so I won't get some last minute practice.
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)Spirits
This all comes down to design and how someone chooses to build their deck and how they mulligan. As you've stated people should be including basics in their deck for BM which forces them to stay more honest.
Also, if someone loses their first game to BM, they know what they're getting into, and it's time to plan accordingly. Obviously, that is not fool proof and people will lose some matches where even with the best sideboard plans and the draws just don't line up.
This situation of losing to something that you planned very well for and the draws don't line up isn't just a BM problem. There are plenty of format warping cards and I think we've established that modern is diverse; which means sometimes there will be a game warping effect you tried your best to plan for but still lost to.
I think at the end of the day I'd rather see that card exist to punish strategies that BM punishes even if there is some games I lose even planning for it. That's just my two cents.