im not seeing how anything in that top8 is random. none of the decks are jank, and they all align with the perceived 'winners meta'. the only thing id say is missing is amulet titan. GBx and GDS are well positioned against UR phoenix, which is highly popular. straight GB is decent to good against burn, and field of ruin + assassin's trophy are pretty good against the bouncelands from amulet titan. 4c whir is on the rise, both in thanks to kci being dead and because chalice and ensnaring bridge hit the top decks. surgical extraction is quickly becoming the GY disruption of choice against phoenix, and dredge can capitalize on that since while its disruptive its relatively low impact compared to something like RIP/leyline/cage. UR phoenix is obvious, a lot of people play it, a lot makes day 2, so it shows up.
so yeah play what you want and all that, that really isnt NOT true based on those results. however that top8 is hardly random. random would be jank or an assortment of decks that dont make sense when considering what is trending in the format.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
that...isnt a counterpoint to anything i said. in fact doing what you just said makes it very unlikely the top 8 would look anything like that. seriously, just go do it and see what comes out.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
that...isnt a counterpoint to anything i said. in fact doing what you just said makes it very unlikely the top 8 would look anything like that. seriously, just go do it and see what comes out.
Trying to metagame against a field of decks that is as wide as is available in Modern, you are leaving much of these results up to luck of the draw (or pairings, so to speak), and we can reverse-engineer justify why these decks may or may have done well, but it means nothing and provides no meaningful information in preparing for the next event. I'll be at GP LA next month, but doubtful I'll bother to register for the main event, unless that's the only way to get a foil Bolt. But if I do, I'm just going to play a powerful, fast, linear/semi-linear deck like GDS or Phoenix. Because it's not worth trying to play guessing games and hope to get lucky with stuff like control and midrange. Not when entry is $70.
im not seeing how anything in that top8 is random. none of the decks are jank, and they all align with the perceived 'winners meta'.
Yeah, take the 20 or 30 or so "good" decks in Modern, throw them into a hat and pull out 8. Ta da! You're now metagaming for Modern!
I'm not sure what this means or how it is a relevant response to tronix. He appears to be talking about a perceived "winners meta," which you quote. The Tornoto T8 has significant overlap with recent other GP T8s, which aligns with his comment about an observed winners meta:
GP Toronto T8 and GP Overlap
BG Rock (1 in GP Portland T8)
Tezzerator
Dredge
Jund
GDS (1 in GP Portland T8)
UR Phoenix (1 Oakland T8, 2 Portland T8)
UR Drakes (See above)
Titanshift (1 in GP Oakland T8)
Dredge is an MTGO mainstay with significant metagame presence, and I think we can all agree that it's a highly prevalent deck. Jund is more of an outlier, but even that was a T8 deck at GP HK. That said, I happily concede that a Tezzeret Prison deck is definitely the biggest outlier and is a clear "play what you want" Modern choice. But overall, 5 of the GP Toronto T8 decks were GP T8 repeaters from the last few months, plus Dredge which has remained a frequently played deck for months. That makes 6 more or less expected decks with established competitive pedigrees plus two outliers; hardly a throw-in-a-hat picture like you claim.
Trying to metagame against a field of decks that is as wide as is available in Modern, you are leaving much of these results up to luck of the draw (or pairings, so to speak), and we can reverse-engineer justify why these decks may or may have done well, but it means nothing and provides no meaningful information in preparing for the next event. I'll be at GP LA next month, but doubtful I'll bother to register for the main event, unless that's the only way to get a foil Bolt. But if I do, I'm just going to play a powerful, fast, linear/semi-linear deck like GDS or Phoenix. Because it's not worth trying to play guessing games and hope to get lucky with stuff like control and midrange. Not when entry is $70.
ktkenshinx covered most of it. for the vast majority of modern players, a real meta doesnt exist. so i agree with you on that front, and i believe ive said stuff similar to your post sans the defeatism.
however, as was pointed out by idsurge a while back, i think there IS a 'winners meta' that is driven by perception. ktkenshinx pointed out the literal previous GP results, but i would extend that to community hype and what players believe are the decks to beat at any point. maybe its because of some 'expert' arbitrarily saying so, buying into new deck hype, being told by another to 'play x', etc.
regardless, what this does is impact what the most competitive/skilled players (pros, grinders, etc) choose to sleeve up. call it self fulfilling, a feedback loop, or whatever. this has a definite impact on what is likely to show up at the top tables. that is the 'winners meta'.
so there are two options to be sucessful in modern, and subsequently large tournaments. specializing in a few (or one) decks, which is recommended for most players who dont have easy access to multiple. OR be just really freaking good at magic in general, then 'metagame' against what other really good magic players are likely to bring.
for the latter you may think that there is too much variance (in other words no skill), however its perfectly reasonable to seek out an advantage under the assumption some criteria is met. to put it another way its capitalizing on when or if you get lucky. maybe that luck is dodging matchups, maybe its running hot, or maybe its just getting paired with someone not very good at the game. if it doesnt work out, bad beats, whatever. if it does, suddenly you get an edge that improves your chances deeper in the tournament.
that top 8 aligns with what people think is good right now, so it being what it was isnt very random.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
So, does this GP result solidify for anyone else that GB Rock is the best build of the GBx Midrange decks? I know people have been trying to force Jund for the past year, but the consistency and power you get from the two color manabase seems to be where it's at.
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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
So, does this GP result solidify for anyone else that GB Rock is the best build of the GBx Midrange decks? I know people have been trying to force Jund for the past year, but the consistency and power you get from the two color manabase seems to be where it's at.
Probably? But for context, we have two locals that have been jaming Jund for at least the past 4 years and have mentioned they have no intention of playing Rock. That seems to be the trend of Modern: I'm going to play this deck, whether it's "good" or not. I mean, I guess that's what I've been doing for 3 years.
It's tough to tell if it's objectively better or not because we simply don't have enough information or data points. So 2 people did well with it on a particular weekend? Cool?
I think there is a lot of polarization starting to happen on the idea of "How open is modern?"
Modern is pretty open in the sense that yes, you can play whatever you want, and there are a lot of decks that can do well. But Modern also is a cyclical format which can be measured. Tronix points this out in the above posts pretty well. We can look at a series of Top 8's and see what decks are currently in the Winner's Circle and we can use that data for ideal deck selection for an event.
But yes, you can play just about whatever you want (within reason) and doe marginally well from time to time.
Modern is an open format in that the cyclical nature of it offers a wide array of decks which ebb and flow in effectiveness depending on the cycle. For example, we see Tron have these extended periods where it shows up often in top 8's and then we have periods where it doesn't. You can apply this to most decks in the format, and the number of decks that have done this is significant enough to where you can call it an "open format". However at any given time, the pool of decks we see that are experiencing this phase, is small enough to where you can metagame effectively.
Sure, you will have rounds where you are blindsided by a rather playable deck that is not in the "Winner's Circle", but you can calculate rough expected field representations in Modern - enough to hedge and significantly increase your odds of making it to the upper tables.
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LEGACY|UWStonebladeCOMMANDER|UBGThe Mimeoplsm Ooze & Aghhs!MODERN|UWAzorius Control THE JUICE[BOX]³ CUBE
PS: Twitter is a strong tool! Just 3 or 4 of us can ask for anything, and gentle people like Corbin do deliver! I kindly ask from you to regularly tweet Wizards to publish all Day 2 decklists from now on!
Here is the tweet as well: https://twitter.com/Chosler88/status/1094890812633161728
This is truly awesome. One could derive some valuable and very comprehensive MWP data from this data dump. I'm not going to do so myself due to lack of time and the likelihood that someone else does it; there's no reason to duplicate work that should have an identical end product. That said, I might compare final deck records to number of byes, which is a project I imagine other people won't gravitate towards.
Izzet Phoenix continues to cement itself as the reigning Modern deck, with GDS as a close second. Both of these decks are proactive, play a crap ton of cantrips and consistency effects, and have a rare and welcoming combination of a relatively low skill floor and a very high skill ceiling. I expect many pros and grinders will gravitate towards these decks, especially Phoenix which has an even lower floor than GDS (if for no other reason than it's less punishing if you misuse your resources, i.e. life). These are the kinds of high consistency decks that both Modern regulars and Modern occasionals will love.
sylvok explorer in Titanshift seems neat, will look into that later. Not having coverage is annoying though, I like going back to watch GPs. I'm friends with the Grixis Whir player who finished second though, Jaxon. He's a great player so I'm glad he did well
I feel playing Grixis Shadow was a good call but I hit a combination of bad matches and situations where I didn't play all that well early on
sylvok explorer in Titanshift seems neat, will look into that later. Not having coverage is annoying though, I like going back to watch GPs. I'm friends with the Grixis Whir player who finished second though, Jaxon. He's a great player so I'm glad he did well
I feel playing Grixis Shadow was a good call but I hit a combination of bad matches and situations where I didn't play all that well early on
Sylvok Explorer was a mistake. It was supposed to be Explore. Sylvan Caryatid would just be a better Sylvok Explorer if that effect was wanted.
The format looks alright except maybe for Faithless Looting decks still being a bit too strong.
I'm hoping whatever the Innovation set does, it shakes up modern in a good way and not a bad one. Containment Priest would be an example of making things much better, for instance. But if they inject too many new cards into the format there is also the possibility of making things much worse.
PS: Twitter is a strong tool! Just 3 or 4 of us can ask for anything, and gentle people like Corbin do deliver! I kindly ask from you to regularly tweet Wizards to publish all Day 2 decklists from now on!
Here is the tweet as well: https://twitter.com/Chosler88/status/1094890812633161728
This is truly awesome. One could derive some valuable and very comprehensive MWP data from this data dump. I'm not going to do so myself due to lack of time and the likelihood that someone else does it; there's no reason to duplicate work that should have an identical end product. That said, I might compare final deck records to number of byes, which is a project I imagine other people won't gravitate towards.
Is there a script someone could write to parse the data than look and compile automatically? If you have the text of every person + deck name, you could go round by round pairing players together and swapping for deck names. I know enough about programming to know this is likely possible, but not enough to actually do it. Would be great instead of doing it by hand in Excel (what I usually do).
So, does this GP result solidify for anyone else that GB Rock is the best build of the GBx Midrange decks? I know people have been trying to force Jund for the past year, but the consistency and power you get from the two color manabase seems to be where it's at.
As a longtime Jund player, I'm leaning that way right now, yeah. I think the combination of being able to play Field of Ruin as well as all of your discard spells is powerful. Fatal Push and Assassin's Trophy brought the number of cheap kill spells to a place where you can drop red without losing too much. Bolt, Ravine, BBE are all great but not always the most important things to be doing.
It's somewhat of a tangent, but it's amusing to look back at how people in the past would warn that a Jace unban couldn't happen because he'd be slammed into every Blue deck, and non-Blue fair decks couldn't compete... which this Top 8 seems to be a rebuttal against.
It's somewhat of a tangent, but it's amusing to look back at how people in the past would warn that a Jace unban couldn't happen because he'd be slammed into every Blue deck, and non-Blue fair decks couldn't compete... which this Top 8 seems to be a rebuttal against.
It's not really correct. There're still a lot of agressive decks that don't allow Jace.decks to dominate format as it was in Summer of 2018.
If you'll look at metagame of Day 2 GP Toronto - you'll see TONS of aggro decks and some Ad Nauseum\Dredge combos that are awfull match ups for Control decks.
So, does this GP result solidify for anyone else that GB Rock is the best build of the GBx Midrange decks? I know people have been trying to force Jund for the past year, but the consistency and power you get from the two color manabase seems to be where it's at.
The Rock was a "better" choice since Bolt lost it's appeal in Modern. When the format is either T4+ creatures (H1, TiTi, Goyf, Delve creatures, Crackling Drake, Death Shadow,...), re-curable creatures (Dredge creatures, Phoenix,...) or bring a massive ETB effect (Snappy e.g.) Bolt looks not that good anymore. Especially the combination of having to splash for a colour which doesn't offer a lot otherwise (K-Command (lost value since the printing of Lilli Last Hope), BBE (which is meh) and some SB cards (Anger, Magma Spry, Ancient Grudge,...)) makes it even worse.
Hence, I was on the Rock Train since BBE got unbanned, played a lot against Jund (with BBE) but always dreaded The Rock way more.
Is there a script someone could write to parse the data than look and compile automatically? If you have the text of every person + deck name, you could go round by round pairing players together and swapping for deck names. I know enough about programming to know this is likely possible, but not enough to actually do it. Would be great instead of doing it by hand in Excel (what I usually do).
As long as the decks can be extracted in a nice way (aka not via the website as an HTML mess, which would make it still doable but turn it into a huge headache) as the parings (which have already a nice format), it is quite easy to pull it off. Sadly, I have no time and willingness to do it atm.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Zen fetches really need a reprint again. $80 is absurd for a card that sees play in many top tier strategies as a 4-of. I expect them to be in the Innovation product, which I expect to be a combination of reprints and new cards.
So, does this GP result solidify for anyone else that GB Rock is the best build of the GBx Midrange decks? I know people have been trying to force Jund for the past year, but the consistency and power you get from the two color manabase seems to be where it's at.
In my opinion, Golgari has been better positioned than Jund overall since the printing of Trophy, and this GP result sure doesn’t hurt the case!
Conversations along these lines happens with great frequency:
- What are the advantages to playing straight BG over Jund (or Abzan/Sultai)?
- A relatively painless, more consistent, and utility-rich mana base, mostly.
- Well yeah, but is a better mana base really worth giving up Bolt/BBE/K-Command/Ravine/Path/Souls/Stony Silence?
- Yep, it sure is!
The beneficial ripple effects of such a mana base are legion, especially in the context of a midrange deck. Being just two colors saves a significant number of life points against aggro decks. 3-4 Fields of Ruin grants all kinds of edges against big mana decks, manlands, 3c goodstuff decks, and decks which play few basics (and the printing of Trophy has made Field even better). You’re very unlikely to lose to your own mana base via color screw. You get to play Treetop Village, which is a game-winning card. You’ve got a higher density of G sources for Scavenging Ooze relative to other BGx decks. You’re quite resilient to Blood Moon relative to other BGx decks.
I could go on, but woe to those who underestimate the importance of a clean and powerful mana base in a midrange deck.
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GB Golgari Midrange GB YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
It's somewhat of a tangent, but it's amusing to look back at how people in the past would warn that a Jace unban couldn't happen because he'd be slammed into every Blue deck, and non-Blue fair decks couldn't compete... which this Top 8 seems to be a rebuttal against.
Most of the doomsaying about cards on the banned list is laughably wrong or misguided.
So, does this GP result solidify for anyone else that GB Rock is the best build of the GBx Midrange decks? I know people have been trying to force Jund for the past year, but the consistency and power you get from the two color manabase seems to be where it's at.
In my opinion, Golgari has been better positioned than Jund overall since the printing of Trophy, and this GP result sure doesn’t hurt the case!
Conversations along these lines happens with great frequency:
- What are the advantages to playing straight BG over Jund (or Abzan/Sultai)?
- A relatively painless, more consistent, and utility-rich mana base, mostly.
- Well yeah, but is a better mana base really worth giving up Bolt/BBE/K-Command/Ravine/Path/Souls/Stony Silence?
- Yep, it sure is!
The beneficial ripple effects of such a mana base are legion, especially in the context of a midrange deck. Being just two colors saves a significant number of life points against aggro decks. 3-4 Fields of Ruin grants all kinds of edges against big mana decks, manlands, 3c goodstuff decks, and decks which play few basics (and the printing of Trophy has made Field even better). You’re very unlikely to lose to your own mana base via color screw. You get to play Treetop Village, which is a game-winning card. You’ve got a higher density of G sources for Scavenging Ooze relative to other BGx decks. You’re quite resilient to Blood Moon relative to other BGx decks.
I could go on, but woe to those who underestimate the importance of a clean and powerful mana base in a midrange deck.
BG was already better then the other gbx decks way before trophy was printed. Field of Ruin was the turning point imo,2 color decks can play it and dont suffer from it.
It's somewhat of a tangent, but it's amusing to look back at how people in the past would warn that a Jace unban couldn't happen because he'd be slammed into every Blue deck, and non-Blue fair decks couldn't compete... which this Top 8 seems to be a rebuttal against.
Most of the doomsaying about cards on the banned list is laughably wrong or misguided.
Don't be so hasty to only apply two extremes into those cards, @cfp.
There are some cards that are genuinely broken and have no place in this format. There are lots of cards placed there before Modern was a format, and have never been able to show whether or not they are broken. There are some that may or may not have been broken in a context and meta that is in no way relevant to today's Modern, or represent a power level that has long since been surpassed. But people believe sensationalized horror stories and curated, unrepresentative data, so who knows what's even real or relevant anymore.
so yeah play what you want and all that, that really isnt NOT true based on those results. however that top8 is hardly random. random would be jank or an assortment of decks that dont make sense when considering what is trending in the format.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Yeah, take the 20 or 30 or so "good" decks in Modern, throw them into a hat and pull out 8. Ta da! You're now metagaming for Modern!
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I'm not sure what this means or how it is a relevant response to tronix. He appears to be talking about a perceived "winners meta," which you quote. The Tornoto T8 has significant overlap with recent other GP T8s, which aligns with his comment about an observed winners meta:
GP Toronto T8 and GP Overlap
BG Rock (1 in GP Portland T8)
Tezzerator
Dredge
Jund
GDS (1 in GP Portland T8)
UR Phoenix (1 Oakland T8, 2 Portland T8)
UR Drakes (See above)
Titanshift (1 in GP Oakland T8)
Dredge is an MTGO mainstay with significant metagame presence, and I think we can all agree that it's a highly prevalent deck. Jund is more of an outlier, but even that was a T8 deck at GP HK. That said, I happily concede that a Tezzeret Prison deck is definitely the biggest outlier and is a clear "play what you want" Modern choice. But overall, 5 of the GP Toronto T8 decks were GP T8 repeaters from the last few months, plus Dredge which has remained a frequently played deck for months. That makes 6 more or less expected decks with established competitive pedigrees plus two outliers; hardly a throw-in-a-hat picture like you claim.
PS: Unban SFM.
however, as was pointed out by idsurge a while back, i think there IS a 'winners meta' that is driven by perception. ktkenshinx pointed out the literal previous GP results, but i would extend that to community hype and what players believe are the decks to beat at any point. maybe its because of some 'expert' arbitrarily saying so, buying into new deck hype, being told by another to 'play x', etc.
regardless, what this does is impact what the most competitive/skilled players (pros, grinders, etc) choose to sleeve up. call it self fulfilling, a feedback loop, or whatever. this has a definite impact on what is likely to show up at the top tables. that is the 'winners meta'.
so there are two options to be sucessful in modern, and subsequently large tournaments. specializing in a few (or one) decks, which is recommended for most players who dont have easy access to multiple. OR be just really freaking good at magic in general, then 'metagame' against what other really good magic players are likely to bring.
for the latter you may think that there is too much variance (in other words no skill), however its perfectly reasonable to seek out an advantage under the assumption some criteria is met. to put it another way its capitalizing on when or if you get lucky. maybe that luck is dodging matchups, maybe its running hot, or maybe its just getting paired with someone not very good at the game. if it doesnt work out, bad beats, whatever. if it does, suddenly you get an edge that improves your chances deeper in the tournament.
that top 8 aligns with what people think is good right now, so it being what it was isnt very random.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)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
Probably? But for context, we have two locals that have been jaming Jund for at least the past 4 years and have mentioned they have no intention of playing Rock. That seems to be the trend of Modern: I'm going to play this deck, whether it's "good" or not. I mean, I guess that's what I've been doing for 3 years.
It's tough to tell if it's objectively better or not because we simply don't have enough information or data points. So 2 people did well with it on a particular weekend? Cool?
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Spirits
Modern is pretty open in the sense that yes, you can play whatever you want, and there are a lot of decks that can do well. But Modern also is a cyclical format which can be measured. Tronix points this out in the above posts pretty well. We can look at a series of Top 8's and see what decks are currently in the Winner's Circle and we can use that data for ideal deck selection for an event.
But yes, you can play just about whatever you want (within reason) and doe marginally well from time to time.
Modern is an open format in that the cyclical nature of it offers a wide array of decks which ebb and flow in effectiveness depending on the cycle. For example, we see Tron have these extended periods where it shows up often in top 8's and then we have periods where it doesn't. You can apply this to most decks in the format, and the number of decks that have done this is significant enough to where you can call it an "open format". However at any given time, the pool of decks we see that are experiencing this phase, is small enough to where you can metagame effectively.
Sure, you will have rounds where you are blindsided by a rather playable deck that is not in the "Winner's Circle", but you can calculate rough expected field representations in Modern - enough to hedge and significantly increase your odds of making it to the upper tables.
THE JUICE[BOX]³ CUBE
This is truly awesome. One could derive some valuable and very comprehensive MWP data from this data dump. I'm not going to do so myself due to lack of time and the likelihood that someone else does it; there's no reason to duplicate work that should have an identical end product. That said, I might compare final deck records to number of byes, which is a project I imagine other people won't gravitate towards.
Izzet Phoenix continues to cement itself as the reigning Modern deck, with GDS as a close second. Both of these decks are proactive, play a crap ton of cantrips and consistency effects, and have a rare and welcoming combination of a relatively low skill floor and a very high skill ceiling. I expect many pros and grinders will gravitate towards these decks, especially Phoenix which has an even lower floor than GDS (if for no other reason than it's less punishing if you misuse your resources, i.e. life). These are the kinds of high consistency decks that both Modern regulars and Modern occasionals will love.
The Day 2 decklists are pretty messed up (a lot of them are repeats) but let's take a look at what we've got:
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StaffI feel playing Grixis Shadow was a good call but I hit a combination of bad matches and situations where I didn't play all that well early on
Sylvok Explorer was a mistake. It was supposed to be Explore. Sylvan Caryatid would just be a better Sylvok Explorer if that effect was wanted.
I'm hoping whatever the Innovation set does, it shakes up modern in a good way and not a bad one. Containment Priest would be an example of making things much better, for instance. But if they inject too many new cards into the format there is also the possibility of making things much worse.
Is there a script someone could write to parse the data than look and compile automatically? If you have the text of every person + deck name, you could go round by round pairing players together and swapping for deck names. I know enough about programming to know this is likely possible, but not enough to actually do it. Would be great instead of doing it by hand in Excel (what I usually do).
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
It's not really correct. There're still a lot of agressive decks that don't allow Jace.decks to dominate format as it was in Summer of 2018.
If you'll look at metagame of Day 2 GP Toronto - you'll see TONS of aggro decks and some Ad Nauseum\Dredge combos that are awfull match ups for Control decks.
The Rock was a "better" choice since Bolt lost it's appeal in Modern. When the format is either T4+ creatures (H1, TiTi, Goyf, Delve creatures, Crackling Drake, Death Shadow,...), re-curable creatures (Dredge creatures, Phoenix,...) or bring a massive ETB effect (Snappy e.g.) Bolt looks not that good anymore. Especially the combination of having to splash for a colour which doesn't offer a lot otherwise (K-Command (lost value since the printing of Lilli Last Hope), BBE (which is meh) and some SB cards (Anger, Magma Spry, Ancient Grudge,...)) makes it even worse.
Hence, I was on the Rock Train since BBE got unbanned, played a lot against Jund (with BBE) but always dreaded The Rock way more.
As long as the decks can be extracted in a nice way (aka not via the website as an HTML mess, which would make it still doable but turn it into a huge headache) as the parings (which have already a nice format), it is quite easy to pull it off. Sadly, I have no time and willingness to do it atm.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
In my opinion, Golgari has been better positioned than Jund overall since the printing of Trophy, and this GP result sure doesn’t hurt the case!
Conversations along these lines happens with great frequency:
- What are the advantages to playing straight BG over Jund (or Abzan/Sultai)?
- A relatively painless, more consistent, and utility-rich mana base, mostly.
- Well yeah, but is a better mana base really worth giving up Bolt/BBE/K-Command/Ravine/Path/Souls/Stony Silence?
- Yep, it sure is!
The beneficial ripple effects of such a mana base are legion, especially in the context of a midrange deck. Being just two colors saves a significant number of life points against aggro decks. 3-4 Fields of Ruin grants all kinds of edges against big mana decks, manlands, 3c goodstuff decks, and decks which play few basics (and the printing of Trophy has made Field even better). You’re very unlikely to lose to your own mana base via color screw. You get to play Treetop Village, which is a game-winning card. You’ve got a higher density of G sources for Scavenging Ooze relative to other BGx decks. You’re quite resilient to Blood Moon relative to other BGx decks.
I could go on, but woe to those who underestimate the importance of a clean and powerful mana base in a midrange deck.
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Most of the doomsaying about cards on the banned list is laughably wrong or misguided.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
BG was already better then the other gbx decks way before trophy was printed. Field of Ruin was the turning point imo,2 color decks can play it and dont suffer from it.
There are some cards that are genuinely broken and have no place in this format. There are lots of cards placed there before Modern was a format, and have never been able to show whether or not they are broken. There are some that may or may not have been broken in a context and meta that is in no way relevant to today's Modern, or represent a power level that has long since been surpassed. But people believe sensationalized horror stories and curated, unrepresentative data, so who knows what's even real or relevant anymore.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate