This perception comes from so many games where the outcome is decided upon whether or not somebody draws exactly one card. Either they draw it and they win, or they don't draw and they lose. Those are not good, healthy, or engaging games. And those are exactly the kinds of games we just saw in this SCG top8
If you have numbers to prove that allegation, I would love to see them. If not, I am going to stick with the numbers I have that show the MWP and matchup spectrum between top decks in thousands of 2018 games. Those numbers show that for the most part, matches are in the 45-55 range. It is unlikely this would happen if "the outcome is decided upon whether or not somebody draws exactly one card."
Dredge causes the players to have the exact one sideboard card, or lose though. a-la, sideboard wars. Same with hollow one, bridgevine.
KCI, you need to draw stony (graveyard hate is not enough most of the times).
Tron, if you are a fair deck, you need to draw land hate or you lose.
@CF is not exactly right. That's because he is wrong in the lower tier matchups. But in the top tier decks, he is up to a point(not completely).
Only GGT Dredge was proven to have this problem. So far this year, we have not yet seen a clear battle of sideboard metagame. If someone wants to make this case by comparing 2018 stats to 2016 GGT stats, sweet. I'd love to see that. Until that's done, however, I am unwilling to make format wide characterizations based on anecdotal observations and hyperbolic pro and player opinions.
Well, you or me maybe aren't, because you or me are too data driven. Pros, who are playing the game more than us, have arrived to this sentiment, and their opinion matters more than raw data.
RE Dredge: It is a deck that is creating sideboard wars. Look at it's game 1's. It has an incredible win rate. If you are willing to measure it, you would probably arrive at the same conclusion. This would be a proof that the deck is causing those sideboard wars.
Pro opinion is routinely wrong. Many pros said JTMS would break Modern. Same with AV. LSV wanted DS banned in 2017. Many pros have called for outrageous bans in the last 2 years and hold outrageous and unsupportable format opinions, which we know Wizards has not acted on. This is no different unless there is a measurable change in the way games are playing out which, to my knowledge, no one has proven.
I would imagine the Phoenix version gains some percentage points for sure, because it can put pressure on much better. But I rarely see it, most people on
Phoenix are playing UR or Mono-Red.
Sorry if I’m way off here: from what I understand, since thus far no commentator has really been able to explain the combo - which is its own problem imo - the KCI combo is due to a very specific rules interaction. If R&D changed the rule around that interaction, would this solve the problem? Does that interaction matter in any other deck or format?
KCI's sac effect is a mana ability so it doesn't use the stack, therefore allowing you to bypass the abilities of Trawlers and Retrievers entering the stack. While changing it to an activated ability will nerf the deck, it'll open another can of worms where each land tap is an activated ability and will probably lead to some even weirder game lines.
As for the general "Battle of the Sideboards" mentality, this time it isn't JUST dredge that's (ab)using the GY. It's Dredge. It's Phoenix decks, It's Hollow One. It's Death's Shadow. It's KCI. It's Storm. You're designing your sideboard wrong if you don't respect your opponents' (and yours for that matter) graveyard.
For 6 months I'm buying modern staples - I already have a decent collection and I wanted to play some competetive magic - someday - but now Wizards really confuses and scares me...
I also read about standard plus - a new extended format.
Now I don't know if I should go on with my modern collection or leave (a sinking ship?) it alone and start something else - like full time modern.
Modern is fine. AF just Tweeted that it's an important part of their plans going forward. MTGO might be an economic mess, but Modern remains the most popular and played format by all the metrics I've seen.
Re: KCI
Unlike most of the Modern alarm, this weekend is rapidly proving that KCI alarm is justified. If we get 2+ copies in the GP Portland T8, I'm switching to red flag ban mode. 1 copy would be an orange flag and 0 would diminish my worries until at least GP Oakland. Even then, however, the writing is mostly on the wall for KCI as far as I'm concerned. It's the best deck in Modern. If you aren't playing it you are willfully playing a worse deck OR you know your local metagame enough to know it's too hated.
I think the conversation is beginning to loop back on itself. Any guess why we might see a resurgence of KCI after its most recent hiatus? Decks like Izzet/Monored Phoenix and Dredge have resulted in a meta that chased off the (at least more) midrange and control decks that were best equipped to deal with it. You can worry about the (potential) resurgence of KCI, but it's a symptom not the cause.
Just to be clear, I don't think Dredge or Phoenix are the problem either. The issue is a rock/paper/scissor meta where all three options are linear aggro/combo decks. Hopefully the meta shakes itself clear of this.
KCI has been the best deck for a while. It just keeps cementing that position. All the other Modern-related alarms this last year have not panned out over any appreciable length of time. Heck, that's been true for the past 2 years. But the KCI issue continues to return. It continues to disproportionately perform and continues to have the highest MWP of any Modern deck.
Assuming the bolded sentence is true (and I'm hesitant to take that at face value), what's your explanation for KCI's several month disappearance especially at the top tables?
After finally breaking down and playing it, I can say KCI is a deck that has significant vulnerabilities much like Dredge. From a meta perspective, the unfortunate thing is that the decks best equipped to play those hate cards (Meddling Mage, RiP, Stony Silence, etc.) are pushed out by the swarm of linear aggro/combo. In my opinion, it dropped off when UW Control and Humans picked up enough to make it a poor choice in a more interactive meta. KCI popping back up is a symptom, not the disease.
I'm not saying the sky is falling, but a meta that only cycles from Dredge to Izzet Phoenix to KCI is more Knife-Sword-Scimitar than Paper-Rock-Scissors. It's a race to the bottom with speed.
I can second the high win percentage of Tron over Mardu, and Mill over tron. Both feel completely lopsided
Even though Ive only played against Tron once during my time playing Mardu (the guy played VERY poorly, so I won) but I don't actually know how Mardu beats tron reliably/consistently. I played against mill a few weeks ago at the LCQ and ran over the guy. Scapeshift seems similar to ton in a sense, you can tear their hand apart but you can still lose to their top decks if you don't produce the exact set of cards.
Dredge has ben ever so slowly falling, is that because the hype has been falling off after Guilds of Ravnica release? It seems like a lot of the people who picked up the deck have given it up now, or maybe the format has shifted?
[quote from="idSurge »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/801804-the-state-of-modern-thread-b-r-26-11-2018?comment=529"]Lol there are no 90/10s between real decks.
My ears always perk up when I hear someone say, "90/10 matchup." 80/20s happen in my opinion, but are rare, but the 90/10 is truly a super rare unicorn. [/quote
Man stop talking about sideboardwars vs grave, this is soooo oldschool, put it now in your main. Welcome in the new century. How many tier 1 grave based decks some of us need? Is it so difficult to see?
Man stop talking about sideboardwars vs grave, this is soooo oldschool, put it now in your main. Welcome in the new century. How many tier 1 grave based decks some of us need? Is it so difficult to see?
I would actually love to see more main-boardable graveyard hate. Gerard Fabiano was playing Nihil Spellbombs which I thought was great for the meta, although he still lost to KCI in the semis.
More cards along the line of that would be great. Something like this:
Ghostly Void BW
Enchantment
When Ghostly Void enters the battlefield, each opponent discards a card (or even better, a thoughtseize effect).
If a card would be put into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead.
IME Tron vs Mardu Pyromancer is 90/10, or pretty damn close. Oliver Tiu said this as well, as someone with a lot of experience with Mardu. He actually took the Molten Rains out of his deck because it just didn't translate to winning any more games, and I've found this to be the case from the Tron side. But I don't know of any other matchups that are that extreme. I still beat Infect 25% of the time as Tron.
Actually, Mill vs Tron might be 90/10 in Mill's favor, but thankfully I don't have a large enough sample size to say that with confidence.
Mardu Pyromancer vs. Tron isn't good, but it's sure as heck not 90/10. The deck had easy access to the hate cards that hurt Tron considerably, and Fulminator Mage combines nicely with Kolaghan's Command to keep Tron down.
Mill vs Tron is really awful, though, unless you packed one of the original Eldrazi in your deck (most likely sideboard); playing one of those singlehandedly swings games slightly into Tron's favor. Back when Emrakul, the Aeons Torn was a staple in Tron, Mill was actually a positive matchup (and if you were running original Ulamog also, as some did, it was a nearly unwinnable matchup for Mill). Unfortunately, nowadays the original Eldrazi are fairly unimpressive in Tron against anything that's not Mill, so there's not much incentive to run them normally.
Tell me about it. The last time I ever ran Burn was Ru Treasure Cruise Burn and basically the prevalence of Soul Sisters was what pushed me off Treasure Cruise Burn. In a few week span playing only at TNM (which isn't the most competitive), I lost only to Soul Sisters. Pretty humiliating stuff...
As to the topic of whether there is a problem in Modern, I don't think you can solve whatever you think the problem is with a ban to KCI OR Dredge. Both are problems in their own way. I personally feel that Dredge has pushed the envelope a bit far. Creeping Chill is insane. This card makes it impossible to race Dredge unless you kill before turn 4, nail them with grave hate, or have infinite damage or another win-con (mill). I personally think it is indeed super similar to Golgari Grave-Troll Dredge. Maybe because the meta is stronger now, with several decks that are as good as previous Gitaxian Probe Infect? That's the only thing that makes Dredge "okay" now.
I realize that Ancient Stirrings is somewhat a problem. I believe that Preordain should be unbanned; allow Colorless decks to have their Demonic Tutor. Just some ramblings of a Modern only (95% of my play) player...
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)
Midrange and control are format pillars and super-archetypes we need to be having at a healthy format.
Those going extinct(especially midrange) is super alarming and should easily be a red flag.
I agree. Even though I HATE Midrange and actually very rarely play Control, I see the importance of them being represented. It is important to the pendulum of decks that are on top and their sway from getting good matchups to getting bad matchups, then back again. I'm not sure if Human (Aggro) is enough.
I have seen a bit of a resurgence in straight GB Rock played over Jund. Does anyone know why this is the case? I guess a 4 of Scavenging Ooze is needed for this type of meta?
Just more consistent mana issues and Field of Ruin for Tron.
It doesn't solve any of the issues I addressed about midrange this week.
Midrange, in my opinion, is still in a lot of trouble.
Gerald Fabiano did get into top 8 with an overload of GY hate in the main deck, along with being a top tier player. It still doesn't make me think Jund is good, despite it hitting a top 8.
These results overall look very poor and linear, as have a ton of the recent top 8s
2018 has been a good year, it's the ending year that is looking worrisome for the format.
Midrange and control are format pillars and super-archetypes we need to be having at a healthy format.
Those going extinct(especially midrange) is super alarming and should easily be a red flag.
I agree. Even though I HATE Midrange and actually very rarely play Control, I see the importance of them being represented. It is important to the pendulum of decks that are on top and their sway from getting good matchups to getting bad matchups, then back again. I'm not sure if Human (Aggro) is enough.
I have seen a bit of a resurgence in straight GB Rock played over Jund. Does anyone know why this is the case? I guess a 4 of Scavenging Ooze is needed for this type of meta?
Just more consistent mana issues and Field of Ruin for Tron.
It doesn't solve any of the issues I addressed about midrange this week.
Midrange, in my opinion, is still in a lot of trouble.
Gerald Fabiano did get into top 8 with an overload of GY hate in the main deck, along with being a top tier player. It still doesn't make me think Jund is good, despite it hitting a top 8.
These results overall look very poor and linear, as have a ton of the recent top 8s
2018 has been a good year, it's the ending year that is looking worrisome for the format.
GP Portland's T8 is a critical data point. If it is more of the same that we saw in GP ATL, GP Liv, and the SCG Invitational, that's a big issue. If not, it undercuts those other results, as they were from less applicable formats (team unified and dual Standard/Modern). If they are the same, however, it really reinforces what the top decks are, and the main issues.
Sorry if I’m way off here: from what I understand, since thus far no commentator has really been able to explain the combo - which is its own problem imo - the KCI combo is due to a very specific rules interaction. If R&D changed the rule around that interaction, would this solve the problem? Does that interaction matter in any other deck or format?
KCI's sac effect is a mana ability so it doesn't use the stack, therefore allowing you to bypass the abilities of Trawlers and Retrievers entering the stack. While changing it to an activated ability will nerf the deck, it'll open another can of worms where each land tap is an activated ability and will probably lead to some even weirder game lines.
(Most) mana abilities *are* activated abilities; there is a reason Null Rod turns off Sol Ring.
As to the rest of your points though: therein lies the problem of "fixing" this interaction. The rules are written to allow mana abilities to function this way. This is the most common activated ability in the game so changing them to fix this one interaction (or a couple more if you really care about things like using Wall of Roots for mana and convoke when it already has 4 counters on it for example) is likely to create many larger issues with the way other things work and interact with the game. You can't just say "you can't do this anymore" when talking about KCI. The rules need to support it and the rules would require a major change to actually stop the deck from doing what it is doing.
This is different than the Squee/Ixalan's Binding interaction that could be fixed to follow more with intuition. KCI's use of the rule regarding activating mana abilities could be argued as unintuitive due to many players not knowing the way the rules actually work with casting a spell or activating an ability, but there is only so much that can be done to match that intuition.
My ears always perk up when I hear someone say, "90/10 matchup." 80/20s happen in my opinion, but are rare, but the 90/10 is truly a super rare unicorn.
I can name 2 that are fairly close, but probably more 80/20.
Elves v Merfolk, its a super hard fish match
Mill v Storm, Ive won 3 games against mill with my storm deck, but ive only played it on paper against 1 person, so maybe its their build
Well, 2 KCI players(Matthew nass & Eli Kassis) are at 11-3, potentially going up to 12-3 if they win. I think that's not enough to win them the top 8 position, but they will probably top 32 the event.
Truth be told, either of those players would have similar records with Hardened Scales or Dredge as well. They're just 2 really strong, tight players and they happen to play one of the best decks in the format. I don't think everything should be judged based on them. Yes, it's an indicator, but it's not a tell-all. Heck, my friend at his 2nd GP running Hardened Scales was 8-2 before falling to 9-5 today. He could have gotten 13-2. That would have been insane, especially considering that Scales is not the easiest deck to play (but he has extensive Affinity reps).
Two local players and close acquaintances are up there as well; one on Burn I'm presuming and the other on Storm. The Burn player has been running that forever, but he did the SCG Team Event on Tron. I know because he faced our team.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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)
Jonathan Corzo(UR Storm)
Richard Tan
Tyler Putnam
Daniel Geiter
Yuta Takahasi(maybe Faeries)
Adam Courtney
Steven Riecken
Aren Kasner(educated guess, Merfolk, maybe wrong)
Shoddy text coverage is making me annoyed. We have T8 results via Twitter but no decks. GP landing page says seven unique decks in the T8, but no decks actually listed. It's just so easy to Tweet this information and it's always so frustrating to see Wizards fall through so consistently on communication.
Jonathan Corzo(UR Storm)
Richard Tan
Tyler Putnam
Daniel Geiter
Yuta Takahasi(maybe Faeries)
Adam Courtney
Steven Riecken
Aren Kasner(educated guess, Merfolk, maybe wrong)
Shoddy text coverage is making me annoyed. We have T8 results via Twitter but no decks. GP landing page says seven unique decks in the T8, but no decks actually listed. It's just so easy to Tweet this information and it's always so frustrating to see Wizards fall through so consistently on communication.
Right, it's like an extra 3 minutes of work to type out the deck archetypes. Clearly they know what they are since they know there are 7 unique ones.
The MTGO Challenge was also supremely healthy today. This really undercuts the Team and SCG Invitational results and puts us in a weird position to determine format health.
Lack of coverage is quite disappointing. They could easily have covered the top 8 at the very least, now that the other two major tournaments are over. There really is no excuse for this.
I still think there is a KCI issue, but without numbers which Wizards hides, we likely never know.
The thing is, KCI is not actually an issue on MTGO. It's not a good playing experience for the pilot and many of the best loops don't work online. It's also horrible with the chess clock. All of this lowers its overall share even if MTGO data were freely available. It could insulate it from too much ban scrutiny.
American GP tend to have the most linear, least diverse metagame. This is a real breath of fresh air which could show many top decks are more vulnerable to metagame shifts than expected.
Notably absent is Dredge, Hardened Scales, UW control, Humans, Hollow One, and Jeskai control. Modern continues to look as diverse as ever, with the most played deck in the top 16 being UR phoenix - the new breakout sensation
Do we have any idea what the Day 2 numbers looked like?
Pro opinion is routinely wrong. Many pros said JTMS would break Modern. Same with AV. LSV wanted DS banned in 2017. Many pros have called for outrageous bans in the last 2 years and hold outrageous and unsupportable format opinions, which we know Wizards has not acted on. This is no different unless there is a measurable change in the way games are playing out which, to my knowledge, no one has proven.
Spirits
Phoenix are playing UR or Mono-Red.
KCI's sac effect is a mana ability so it doesn't use the stack, therefore allowing you to bypass the abilities of Trawlers and Retrievers entering the stack. While changing it to an activated ability will nerf the deck, it'll open another can of worms where each land tap is an activated ability and will probably lead to some even weirder game lines.
As for the general "Battle of the Sideboards" mentality, this time it isn't JUST dredge that's (ab)using the GY. It's Dredge. It's Phoenix decks, It's Hollow One. It's Death's Shadow. It's KCI. It's Storm. You're designing your sideboard wrong if you don't respect your opponents' (and yours for that matter) graveyard.
Assuming the bolded sentence is true (and I'm hesitant to take that at face value), what's your explanation for KCI's several month disappearance especially at the top tables?
After finally breaking down and playing it, I can say KCI is a deck that has significant vulnerabilities much like Dredge. From a meta perspective, the unfortunate thing is that the decks best equipped to play those hate cards (Meddling Mage, RiP, Stony Silence, etc.) are pushed out by the swarm of linear aggro/combo. In my opinion, it dropped off when UW Control and Humans picked up enough to make it a poor choice in a more interactive meta. KCI popping back up is a symptom, not the disease.
I'm not saying the sky is falling, but a meta that only cycles from Dredge to Izzet Phoenix to KCI is more Knife-Sword-Scimitar than Paper-Rock-Scissors. It's a race to the bottom with speed.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
StaffEven though Ive only played against Tron once during my time playing Mardu (the guy played VERY poorly, so I won) but I don't actually know how Mardu beats tron reliably/consistently. I played against mill a few weeks ago at the LCQ and ran over the guy. Scapeshift seems similar to ton in a sense, you can tear their hand apart but you can still lose to their top decks if you don't produce the exact set of cards.
Dredge has ben ever so slowly falling, is that because the hype has been falling off after Guilds of Ravnica release? It seems like a lot of the people who picked up the deck have given it up now, or maybe the format has shifted?
My ears always perk up when I hear someone say, "90/10 matchup." 80/20s happen in my opinion, but are rare, but the 90/10 is truly a super rare unicorn. [/quote
and that unicorn is called soul sister vs burn
I would actually love to see more main-boardable graveyard hate. Gerard Fabiano was playing Nihil Spellbombs which I thought was great for the meta, although he still lost to KCI in the semis.
More cards along the line of that would be great. Something like this:
Ghostly Void
BW
Enchantment
When Ghostly Void enters the battlefield, each opponent discards a card (or even better, a thoughtseize effect).
If a card would be put into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead.
Mill vs Tron is really awful, though, unless you packed one of the original Eldrazi in your deck (most likely sideboard); playing one of those singlehandedly swings games slightly into Tron's favor. Back when Emrakul, the Aeons Torn was a staple in Tron, Mill was actually a positive matchup (and if you were running original Ulamog also, as some did, it was a nearly unwinnable matchup for Mill). Unfortunately, nowadays the original Eldrazi are fairly unimpressive in Tron against anything that's not Mill, so there's not much incentive to run them normally.
Tell me about it. The last time I ever ran Burn was Ru Treasure Cruise Burn and basically the prevalence of Soul Sisters was what pushed me off Treasure Cruise Burn. In a few week span playing only at TNM (which isn't the most competitive), I lost only to Soul Sisters. Pretty humiliating stuff...
As to the topic of whether there is a problem in Modern, I don't think you can solve whatever you think the problem is with a ban to KCI OR Dredge. Both are problems in their own way. I personally feel that Dredge has pushed the envelope a bit far. Creeping Chill is insane. This card makes it impossible to race Dredge unless you kill before turn 4, nail them with grave hate, or have infinite damage or another win-con (mill). I personally think it is indeed super similar to Golgari Grave-Troll Dredge. Maybe because the meta is stronger now, with several decks that are as good as previous Gitaxian Probe Infect? That's the only thing that makes Dredge "okay" now.
I realize that Ancient Stirrings is somewhat a problem. I believe that Preordain should be unbanned; allow Colorless decks to have their Demonic Tutor. Just some ramblings of a Modern only (95% of my play) player...
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)Just more consistent mana issues and Field of Ruin for Tron.
It doesn't solve any of the issues I addressed about midrange this week.
Midrange, in my opinion, is still in a lot of trouble.
Gerald Fabiano did get into top 8 with an overload of GY hate in the main deck, along with being a top tier player. It still doesn't make me think Jund is good, despite it hitting a top 8.
These results overall look very poor and linear, as have a ton of the recent top 8s
2018 has been a good year, it's the ending year that is looking worrisome for the format.
GP Portland's T8 is a critical data point. If it is more of the same that we saw in GP ATL, GP Liv, and the SCG Invitational, that's a big issue. If not, it undercuts those other results, as they were from less applicable formats (team unified and dual Standard/Modern). If they are the same, however, it really reinforces what the top decks are, and the main issues.
As to the rest of your points though: therein lies the problem of "fixing" this interaction. The rules are written to allow mana abilities to function this way. This is the most common activated ability in the game so changing them to fix this one interaction (or a couple more if you really care about things like using Wall of Roots for mana and convoke when it already has 4 counters on it for example) is likely to create many larger issues with the way other things work and interact with the game. You can't just say "you can't do this anymore" when talking about KCI. The rules need to support it and the rules would require a major change to actually stop the deck from doing what it is doing.
This is different than the Squee/Ixalan's Binding interaction that could be fixed to follow more with intuition. KCI's use of the rule regarding activating mana abilities could be argued as unintuitive due to many players not knowing the way the rules actually work with casting a spell or activating an ability, but there is only so much that can be done to match that intuition.
I can name 2 that are fairly close, but probably more 80/20.
Elves v Merfolk, its a super hard fish match
Mill v Storm, Ive won 3 games against mill with my storm deck, but ive only played it on paper against 1 person, so maybe its their build
Truth be told, either of those players would have similar records with Hardened Scales or Dredge as well. They're just 2 really strong, tight players and they happen to play one of the best decks in the format. I don't think everything should be judged based on them. Yes, it's an indicator, but it's not a tell-all. Heck, my friend at his 2nd GP running Hardened Scales was 8-2 before falling to 9-5 today. He could have gotten 13-2. That would have been insane, especially considering that Scales is not the easiest deck to play (but he has extensive Affinity reps).
Two local players and close acquaintances are up there as well; one on Burn I'm presuming and the other on Storm. The Burn player has been running that forever, but he did the SCG Team Event on Tron. I know because he faced our team.
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)Shoddy text coverage is making me annoyed. We have T8 results via Twitter but no decks. GP landing page says seven unique decks in the T8, but no decks actually listed. It's just so easy to Tweet this information and it's always so frustrating to see Wizards fall through so consistently on communication.
Right, it's like an extra 3 minutes of work to type out the deck archetypes. Clearly they know what they are since they know there are 7 unique ones.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gppor18/top-8-decklists-2018-12-09
2 Izzet Phoenix
GDS
Storm
Elves
BG Rock
Faeries (!!)
Abzan Evolution
The MTGO Challenge was also supremely healthy today. This really undercuts the Team and SCG Invitational results and puts us in a weird position to determine format health.
Edit: Top 8 decks are out
https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gppor18/top-8-decklists-2018-12-09
I still think there is a KCI issue, but without numbers which Wizards hides, we likely never know.
Spirits
The thing is, KCI is not actually an issue on MTGO. It's not a good playing experience for the pilot and many of the best loops don't work online. It's also horrible with the chess clock. All of this lowers its overall share even if MTGO data were freely available. It could insulate it from too much ban scrutiny.
American GP tend to have the most linear, least diverse metagame. This is a real breath of fresh air which could show many top decks are more vulnerable to metagame shifts than expected.
Also, unban SFM.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gppor18/9th-16th-decklists-2018-12-09
2 Izzet Phoenix
2 Bant Spirits
2 Tron
1 KCI
1 Storm
That means for the top 16 we have:
4 Izzet Phoenix
2 Storm
2 Tron
2 Bant Spirits
1 KCI
1 Elves
1 Golgari Midrange
1 Abzan Evolution
1 Dimir Control
1 Grixis Shadow
Notably absent is Dredge, Hardened Scales, UW control, Humans, Hollow One, and Jeskai control. Modern continues to look as diverse as ever, with the most played deck in the top 16 being UR phoenix - the new breakout sensation
Do we have any idea what the Day 2 numbers looked like?
No video coverage. </3
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!