I agree with your criteria which is why I believe advocating for ancient stirrings or mox opal to be banned at this moment is premature at best.
As for blue cantripping spells I see your point and I partly agree. Once you throw in the detail of "critical mass" then your argument becomes much stronger however I stand by mine in that blue cantrips have to be built around just like ancient stirrings does and I truly believe preordain wouldnt be any different. I can agree ponder is too strong but the fact remains these cards do have to be built around in some way or another, the degree to which they do is what i believe makes them bannable because if its application is too broad(think DRS in legacy or faithless looting in modern) then they become format warping and do fit well within the criterion you defined. This leads me to my analysis of ancient stirrings having to be built around to a very high degree. It cant be jammed like faithless looting was or ponder would be. It just so happens that the builds stirrings calls for are inherently strong already and at this point no one can say they are format warping thus you cant make an argument for its banning.
You bring up a very good point however and I cant disagree or argue against most of what youve said.
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Modern RUAffinityUR GMono Green StompyG CEldrazi TronC URWJeskai GeistWRU WRBoros BurnRW BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
So I have been looking at SFM for aggro, midrange and control in various colors. I know UW Control would be the immediate home, but what else do people think is worth trying?
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I think its fine here actually... most of the people over there are the usual folks plying their own wishlists for bannings and unbannings. I would rather there be more constructive discussions such as brewing... a lack of discussion on bannings might actually mean things are alright.
I’m a dredgevine player and the whole reason I turned to modern was because of combo decks and interesting ways to brew with Faithless Looting. I wish Hogaak never would’ve been printed. It destroyed my favorite archetype by getting Bridge from Below banned, and then destroyed every other deck I play with the Faithless Looting ban.
I understand Hogaak was unfair and thought it would’ve gotten banned long before causing the graveyard witch-hunt that followed.
Even with a large chunk of decks being killed by the reckless banning of looting...combo decks like NeoBrand and Twiddle storm still survive. Tron still reigns supreme and the meta just became less diverse with this decision.
I was all for SFM getting unbanned...but killing a ton of other decks that may have helped keep SFM in check with decent power level just makes for a worse format all together.
Faithless Looting was a staple of modern...killing that many decks is a bad choice and people like me who have invested lots of money into graveyard strategies get burned very badly.
I basically can’t even play modern at my LGS because the looting ban hit ALL of my decks!
Its been depowered quite a bit, my hollowed one deck got its best card nuked... currently trying cathartic reunion, ironically that was in the initial list i had the current dredgevine thread seems to be looking at going g/b only
The reason KCI was so powerful was due to it being very strong against any hate. At first glace the deck seems like it should lose to graveyard hate and artifact hate. However, due to it maindecking 3-4 Engineered Explosives, easily slotting in any number of Nature's Claim and similar effects in the sideboard, and due to the deck's main point of recurring artifacts from the graveyard at instant speed, it basically dealt with everything. Ancient Stirrings only made the deck consistent, but the true power was in the core of the shell, nothing else. The question we need to ask is if Stirrings and Mox Opal make the deck broken or not, and in most cases, even in KCI I would say it isn't the case. I think in the same vein, one could even argue the same for Faithless Looting in the graveyard decks. Its the argument of enablers vs payoff.
However, Wotc did ban Looting because of the implications it could have on the future meta game, and how a card like looting can enable decks like Dredge to be super powerful and format warping. While I'd personally argue that Izzet Phoenix, while once the top deck or one of the top decks, it was on its last legs as a top tier deck at the time of the banning even with Hogaak gone. But by banning looting it overall slows down the format, so I guess its warranted to slow down the format and could, and probably so, will create a better format overall.
The thing is about banning cards in an eternal format, I am for only one criterion of banning: format warping. This is slightly vague but I will give two other criteria under the "format warping" title. (1) Meta game share and (2) homogenization of deck construction strategy. Hogaak is a good example of the first. It's obvious success across pretty much every tournament since its printing had a huge share of not just the overall meta game, but also the winning meta game. As for the second, we can look to cards like Ponder and Preordain for an example.
I'll reply to your quote:
I dont think its fair that blue gets all of its good cantripping spells banned while green can keep this powerful one even if it is one you have to build around
The reasoning here is incorrect. You even said it later yourself and how you can't simply put Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal in any (green) deck, and how Serum Visions doesn't go into ever blue deck. While you are right about Opal and Stirrings, I think you are wrong about blue decks and its cantrips. Serum Visions doesn't go into every blue deck because there aren't as many "pile" decks in Modern. The decks that do care about drawing do play Serum Visions, and there's a good chance that even the blue decks that don't currently run it would play a card like Ponder or even Preordain due to the immense increase in power compared to Serum Visions. In how the mechanics work with Fetch Lands, Serum Visions becomes a vastly inferior card compared to the other two. If we look to pretty much every blue deck that isn't a specific critical mass deck (e.g. Urza wants critical mass of artifacts, spirits wants creatures, etc), then I'd argue that they all would play Ponder or Preordain, as they all already are playing Serum. This then becomes format warping as we see in Legacy where most decks start with 52 cards after Brainstorm and Ponder.
Going back to my original criterion about banning cards, i'd like to share a quote I have shared in the past from Brian Kibler to show why I believe this is the only valid criterion:
"This is the problem with eternal formats. New interactions are going to keep coming up, new powerful things are going to keep happening If you're response is 'we're going to get rid of that one', then you are going to lose the point of having an eternal format. In Modern, people can't play the decks they've put together that they like and they want to play, which is really a lot of the appeal of the format to a lot of people."
7:13
We need to ask ourselves what is the point of an eternal format like Modern. To Kibler's point, Modern is there for us to play cards that were printed from 8th edition. If we take some other criterion than what I proposed, they we will continue to ride the ban carousal and continue to keep banning what ever deck is on top (e.g Pod, Splinter Twin), or what cards people simply don't like. As he says, new interactions will keep coming up, and yes, we sometimes need to ban these under strict criteria, but in the case of weaker arguments such as potential enabling of a certain strategy, we have to avoid that way of thinking.
This whole statement lays out a good argument for banning either Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal actually. Big green ramp in modern is basically big colorless ramp because Ancient Stirrings makes big colorless ramp more consistent than big green ramp decks. It's not really a choice at this point. Not to say other ramp decks don't or can't exist at all. They just don't work pound for pound as well as Tron. Even the Titan ramp decks aren't as good because they lack the ability to search out their key cards as well as Tron! On the other hand Ancient Stirrings has also enabled decks like KCI, Eldrazi, Lantern Control, and Second Breakfast if anyone remembers that fiasco to get to or near bannable points and probably weighs heavily on card design when they go to do a colorless set. It meets criteria on both fronts. Mox Opal also qualifies for both of these catagories as well but I really hope "it's fast mana" is enough of an argument at this point to explain itself! I'm not really just saying this to complain about Tron and/or Affinity. My argument for banning Ancient Stirrings is because Ancient Stirrings literally fits the exact same criteria as Faithless Looting does and there was no resolve offered as to why it got the pass. Just a passing mention of it being on a "watch list". The decision was non uniform without explanation. Like I said before, I personally don't believe Mox Opal to be responsible for power level issues so it getting a pass without explanation is ok to me.
Also Modern is a Non Rotating Format, not an eternal one. Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Pauper are examples eternal formats. They don't exclude black boarder expansions. Just individual cards.
New B&R announced, so there is a new thread coming up. Seeing as this one only got 33 replies, and the forums are crawling to a halt the future threads may just stay as on.
As for blue cantripping spells I see your point and I partly agree. Once you throw in the detail of "critical mass" then your argument becomes much stronger however I stand by mine in that blue cantrips have to be built around just like ancient stirrings does and I truly believe preordain wouldnt be any different. I can agree ponder is too strong but the fact remains these cards do have to be built around in some way or another, the degree to which they do is what i believe makes them bannable because if its application is too broad(think DRS in legacy or faithless looting in modern) then they become format warping and do fit well within the criterion you defined. This leads me to my analysis of ancient stirrings having to be built around to a very high degree. It cant be jammed like faithless looting was or ponder would be. It just so happens that the builds stirrings calls for are inherently strong already and at this point no one can say they are format warping thus you cant make an argument for its banning.
You bring up a very good point however and I cant disagree or argue against most of what youve said.
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
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Oooh Dicey:
[dice=1]100[/dice]
I understand Hogaak was unfair and thought it would’ve gotten banned long before causing the graveyard witch-hunt that followed.
Even with a large chunk of decks being killed by the reckless banning of looting...combo decks like NeoBrand and Twiddle storm still survive. Tron still reigns supreme and the meta just became less diverse with this decision.
I was all for SFM getting unbanned...but killing a ton of other decks that may have helped keep SFM in check with decent power level just makes for a worse format all together.
Faithless Looting was a staple of modern...killing that many decks is a bad choice and people like me who have invested lots of money into graveyard strategies get burned very badly.
I basically can’t even play modern at my LGS because the looting ban hit ALL of my decks!
Reality is but a perception of your being --
Visit my blog!!! - http://huffalump-magic.blogspot.com/
"The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside."
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881
Oooh Dicey:
[dice=1]100[/dice]
This whole statement lays out a good argument for banning either Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal actually. Big green ramp in modern is basically big colorless ramp because Ancient Stirrings makes big colorless ramp more consistent than big green ramp decks. It's not really a choice at this point. Not to say other ramp decks don't or can't exist at all. They just don't work pound for pound as well as Tron. Even the Titan ramp decks aren't as good because they lack the ability to search out their key cards as well as Tron! On the other hand Ancient Stirrings has also enabled decks like KCI, Eldrazi, Lantern Control, and Second Breakfast if anyone remembers that fiasco to get to or near bannable points and probably weighs heavily on card design when they go to do a colorless set. It meets criteria on both fronts. Mox Opal also qualifies for both of these catagories as well but I really hope "it's fast mana" is enough of an argument at this point to explain itself! I'm not really just saying this to complain about Tron and/or Affinity. My argument for banning Ancient Stirrings is because Ancient Stirrings literally fits the exact same criteria as Faithless Looting does and there was no resolve offered as to why it got the pass. Just a passing mention of it being on a "watch list". The decision was non uniform without explanation. Like I said before, I personally don't believe Mox Opal to be responsible for power level issues so it getting a pass without explanation is ok to me.
Also Modern is a Non Rotating Format, not an eternal one. Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Pauper are examples eternal formats. They don't exclude black boarder expansions. Just individual cards.
New thread found here.
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