Bant is not a blue deck. It's a deck that happens to have two 1/3 blue creatures that are 3 mana and can be found with Coco. Blue is objectively not perfectly powerful or this thread would not exist for 4 pages. Thermo Vision is also not a blue deck but a red deck splashing blue for one 3 mana enchantment. The closest blue deck is the blue prison and crush deck, neither of which are in the top 10 decks played. Crush is the closest to tournament level. And even if it were a tier 1 deck, a single deck does not a healthy format make.
I respect your opinion but I must vehemently disagree. Blue has bad counterspells. Bad card draw, and creatures weaker than the rest of the format. With the exception of the latter, this means blue is bad right now. Good for a splash but definitely not in a good place. Kaladesh should change that but right now, not even close.
Bant is not a blue deck. It's a deck that happens to have two 1/3 blue creatures that are 3 mana and can be found with Coco. Blue is objectively not perfectly powerful or this thread would not exist for 4 pages. Thermo Vision is also not a blue deck but a red deck splashing blue for one 3 mana enchantment. The closest blue deck is the blue prison and crush deck, neither of which are in the top 10 decks played. Crush is the closest to tournament level. And even if it were a tier 1 deck, a single deck does not a healthy format make.
I respect your opinion but I must vehemently disagree. Blue has bad counterspells. Bad card draw, and creatures weaker than the rest of the format. With the exception of the latter, this means blue is bad right now. Good for a splash but definitely not in a good place. Kaladesh should change that but right now, not even close.
You wrote this as a reply to me, and I'm unsure why.
It's true that blue isn't in the best position right now, but in recent standard seasons blue has actually been quite powerful.
I merely say that it's a normal pendul swing. I know that there are a lot of blue players that feel that blue control should always be viable, but that's honestly quite juvenile. The pendulum has just swung. It's also wrong when people say WotC isn't aware of this. Development has outright stated that blue lacks in powerful card draw, this is the main reason blue has problems right now, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that most the power they delegated to the color recently was to little Jace, as such they pushed blue much less.
This is the same reason they're hesitant to reprint Counterspell by the way. It allows them to do much less with the color in order to not ruin the format. This means that if counterspell gets reprinted, we won't see new interesting and powerful blue cards, which is something many want to happen each season.
Blue has been among the worst colors in standard since Sphinx's Rev rotated. There have been blue decks since that time, but they were mostly just propped up by the delve spells and Jace.
Blue has been among the worst colors in standard since Sphinx's Rev rotated. There have been blue decks since that time, but they were mostly just propped up by the delve spells and Jace.
And fetchlands to fuel them.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
We are being a little unfair here. There have been blue decks that were decent to great.
Let's go back a bit, I sleeved up u/b control during khans/theros standard and did great with the deck. The core of the deck was its blue based card draw engine. The black spells were the filler and the win cons were good ol noodles (pearl lake ancient) and ashiok.
when fate reforged came out we got ugin. When dragons came out we got esper Dragons as we remember it. What kept both of those decks going ? Dig through time , jaces ingenuity, the scry lands and fetch lands.
The arrial of baby Jace was slow but as he began to shine in numerous shells , jeskai black broke out and the core of that deck was dig , Jace and treasure cruise. Not to mention crackling doom!
The fetches shaped the format and dig through time decks did fairly well. When khans rotated blue based decks at their core became extinct. Right now there aren't u based decks except prison and that is seeing almost no competitivd play.
Blue is an odd duck right now , I'm not sure what it's supposed to be doing on its own. It's got delirium themes and permission spells plus a few decent creatures but no where near as powerful as the green creature core. Tracker , advocate , nissa , ishkhanas , the entire green based delerium package. It's like ever other color combo works but those with blue are way off.
Is there a reason to make a u/b madness / delerium deck ? No, because what are the powerful blue pay off spells ? Maybe it's supposed a sultai deck ? Maybe zombies was the intended deck ? Zombies became a deck , but it's not good against anything save bant coco.
I'd like to see what wizards wants to do with blue and I'd like to see the new design space for this color , but it's hard to see when the spell / creature / pw quality don't compare. Yes Tamiyo is a partial blue walker , but she being played in a g/w coco deck out of the sb.
Given that we're going to an obvious Izzet-centric plane, I fully expect blue to get good stuff but I honestly don't think we'll be seeing mana leak or maybe even spell pierce level counters again. I am fully ok with cancel replacing counterspell. Having said that, I don't think a card like ponder or preordain(or heck, even it's modern cousin serum visions) would make blue OP unless they printed it with mana leak level counters(well, leak with serum visions would be ok). But blue cannot live on card draw alone if the cards it's drawing are horrible. So, WotC needs to start making good blue creatures.
They seem to have gone to this creature centric design except for blue. But, and maybe I am counting on it too much, but I think Kaladesh will be great and a giant reset button to green's dominance. The funny thing is though, people never seem to complain as much as when blue is the top deck. Something about being beat by blue feels worse than the other colors. Sure, beat me to death with small efficient white creatures or giant stompy monsters, but not with snapcaster backed up by counterspells. ***Ramble mode off***
They seem to have gone to this creature centric design except for blue. But, and maybe I am counting on it too much, but I think Kaladesh will be great and a giant reset button to green's dominance. The funny thing is though, people never seem to complain as much as when blue is the top deck. Something about being beat by blue feels worse than the other colors. Sure, beat me to death with small efficient white creatures or giant stompy monsters, but not with snapcaster backed up by counterspells. ***Ramble mode off***
I'm not sure it's true that people complain more about blue decks dominating than anything else. I've only been playing since just before M12 came out, and here are things I've seen quite a few people vehemently complain about (in Standard):
Delver
Thragtusk
Jund
Reanimator
Mono Red Aggro
Thoughtseize + Pack Rat
Mono Blue Devotion
UW Control
Abzan/Siege Rhino
4+ colour manabases
Rally the Ancestors
Collected Company
GW Tokens
Reflector Mage
I haven't really noticed a difference between blue and the rest of the colour wheel in terms of how much hate anything gets or how intensely that hate is expressed. In my experience, all colours and strategies get complained about pretty equally when they're at the top of the format. Which is pretty much the key: any time there's a top deck or an ubiquitous card (i.e. always), someone will have a complaint. It's probable that blue gets complained about more in general, for various reasons, but I haven't noticed this to be true in the context of Standard.
Regarding your hopes for Kaladesh, I'm not convinced that it's going to be quite as Izzet-centric as you seem to believe. Sure, Wizards felt that Blue-Red was the best colour combination to represent it when we saw it in Origins, and we know it's a Steampunk-type plane, so we can assume that this element will be strongly represented. However, since we've only seen Kaladesh through the lens of those two colours so far, it's also possible that these Izzet elements were somewhat more prevalent in our previous glimpse of Kaladesh than they will be on the plane itself. (After all, the other colours still have to be there and will likely get powerful cards.) That said, I'm still hopeful that the next set will bring balance back to the format. I'm just a little more skeptical about it than are you. The power level does seem to be increasing with Innistrad and Eldritch Moon, so I hope that continues in Kaladesh. I still miss Inn/RtR Standard...
They seem to have gone to this creature centric design except for blue. But, and maybe I am counting on it too much, but I think Kaladesh will be great and a giant reset button to green's dominance. The funny thing is though, people never seem to complain as much as when blue is the top deck. Something about being beat by blue feels worse than the other colors. Sure, beat me to death with small efficient white creatures or giant stompy monsters, but not with snapcaster backed up by counterspells. ***Ramble mode off***
I'm not sure it's true that people complain more about blue decks dominating than anything else. I've only been playing since just before M12 came out, and here are things I've seen quite a few people vehemently complain about (in Standard):
Delver
Thragtusk
Jund
Reanimator
Mono Red Aggro
Thoughtseize + Pack Rat
Mono Blue Devotion
UW Control
Abzan/Siege Rhino
4+ colour manabases
Rally the Ancestors
Collected Company
GW Tokens
Reflector Mage
I haven't really noticed a difference between blue and the rest of the colour wheel in terms of how much hate anything gets or how intensely that hate is expressed. In my experience, all colours and strategies get complained about pretty equally when they're at the top of the format. Which is pretty much the key: any time there's a top deck or an ubiquitous card (i.e. always), someone will have a complaint. It's probable that blue gets complained about more in general, for various reasons, but I haven't noticed this to be true in the context of Standard.
Regarding your hopes for Kaladesh, I'm not convinced that it's going to be quite as Izzet-centric as you seem to believe. Sure, Wizards felt that Blue-Red was the best colour combination to represent it when we saw it in Origins, and we know it's a Steampunk-type plane, so we can assume that this element will be strongly represented. However, since we've only seen Kaladesh through the lens of those two colours so far, it's also possible that these Izzet elements were somewhat more prevalent in our previous glimpse of Kaladesh than they will be on the plane itself. (After all, the other colours still have to be there and will likely get powerful cards.) That said, I'm still hopeful that the next set will bring balance back to the format. I'm just a little more skeptical about it than are you. The power level does seem to be increasing with Innistrad and Eldritch Moon, so I hope that continues in Kaladesh. I still miss Inn/RtR Standard...
You forgot Gary. Good lord did people complain how OP it was for a common.
They seem to have gone to this creature centric design except for blue. But, and maybe I am counting on it too much, but I think Kaladesh will be great and a giant reset button to green's dominance. The funny thing is though, people never seem to complain as much as when blue is the top deck. Something about being beat by blue feels worse than the other colors. Sure, beat me to death with small efficient white creatures or giant stompy monsters, but not with snapcaster backed up by counterspells. ***Ramble mode off***
I'm not sure it's true that people complain more about blue decks dominating than anything else. I've only been playing since just before M12 came out, and here are things I've seen quite a few people vehemently complain about (in Standard):
Delver
Thragtusk
Jund
Reanimator
Mono Red Aggro
Thoughtseize + Pack Rat
Mono Blue Devotion
UW Control
Abzan/Siege Rhino
4+ colour manabases
Rally the Ancestors
Collected Company
GW Tokens
Reflector Mage
I haven't really noticed a difference between blue and the rest of the colour wheel in terms of how much hate anything gets or how intensely that hate is expressed. In my experience, all colours and strategies get complained about pretty equally when they're at the top of the format. Which is pretty much the key: any time there's a top deck or an ubiquitous card (i.e. always), someone will have a complaint. It's probable that blue gets complained about more in general, for various reasons, but I haven't noticed this to be true in the context of Standard.
Regarding your hopes for Kaladesh, I'm not convinced that it's going to be quite as Izzet-centric as you seem to believe. Sure, Wizards felt that Blue-Red was the best colour combination to represent it when we saw it in Origins, and we know it's a Steampunk-type plane, so we can assume that this element will be strongly represented. However, since we've only seen Kaladesh through the lens of those two colours so far, it's also possible that these Izzet elements were somewhat more prevalent in our previous glimpse of Kaladesh than they will be on the plane itself. (After all, the other colours still have to be there and will likely get powerful cards.) That said, I'm still hopeful that the next set will bring balance back to the format. I'm just a little more skeptical about it than are you. The power level does seem to be increasing with Innistrad and Eldritch Moon, so I hope that continues in Kaladesh. I still miss Inn/RtR Standard...
You forgot Gary. Good lord did people complain how OP it was for a common.
You're right. I kind of mentally included him with Thoughtseize/Pack Rat.
[quote from="GW2GuruUser7586 »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/718496-the-current-state-of-u?comment=82"][quote from="savedsynner »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standardAnd no, cancel is not too powerful right now. Jeez, what do you want counterspells to cost 4 mana....do you secretly work for WotC.
I should have been more clear. "Based on what we've observed, Wizards considers Cancel to be too powerful, so a strictly better version of Cancel will not exist" It was more snide sarcasm at Wizard's philosophy than being my opinion that Cancel was too powerful.
I don't think we'd see a hard counter at 4 cmc. I actually think we won't see hard 'counter anything' at all without drawbacks anymore. All the simple counterspells without drawbacks will have the 'drawback' of being limited to one thing (Negate, dispel, horribly awry, etc)
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Rose tint my world, keep me safe from my trouble and pain.
They seem to have gone to this creature centric design except for blue. But, and maybe I am counting on it too much, but I think Kaladesh will be great and a giant reset button to green's dominance. The funny thing is though, people never seem to complain as much as when blue is the top deck. Something about being beat by blue feels worse than the other colors. Sure, beat me to death with small efficient white creatures or giant stompy monsters, but not with snapcaster backed up by counterspells. ***Ramble mode off***
I'm not sure it's true that people complain more about blue decks dominating than anything else. I've only been playing since just before M12 came out, and here are things I've seen quite a few people vehemently complain about (in Standard):
Delver
Thragtusk
Jund
Reanimator
Mono Red Aggro
Thoughtseize + Pack Rat
Mono Blue Devotion
UW Control
Abzan/Siege Rhino
4+ colour manabases
Rally the Ancestors
Collected Company
GW Tokens
Reflector Mage
I haven't really noticed a difference between blue and the rest of the colour wheel in terms of how much hate anything gets or how intensely that hate is expressed. In my experience, all colours and strategies get complained about pretty equally when they're at the top of the format. Which is pretty much the key: any time there's a top deck or an ubiquitous card (i.e. always), someone will have a complaint. It's probable that blue gets complained about more in general, for various reasons, but I haven't noticed this to be true in the context of Standard.
Regarding your hopes for Kaladesh, I'm not convinced that it's going to be quite as Izzet-centric as you seem to believe. Sure, Wizards felt that Blue-Red was the best colour combination to represent it when we saw it in Origins, and we know it's a Steampunk-type plane, so we can assume that this element will be strongly represented. However, since we've only seen Kaladesh through the lens of those two colours so far, it's also possible that these Izzet elements were somewhat more prevalent in our previous glimpse of Kaladesh than they will be on the plane itself. (After all, the other colours still have to be there and will likely get powerful cards.) That said, I'm still hopeful that the next set will bring balance back to the format. I'm just a little more skeptical about it than are you. The power level does seem to be increasing with Innistrad and Eldritch Moon, so I hope that continues in Kaladesh. I still miss Inn/RtR Standard...
while I agree that the colors getting complained about is more relative to tier one, I don't think most people understand that its not about the strength of the individual color, but it's ability to 'cheat' compared to the other colors. Every deck you listed save for 1-2 were decks that let you 'cheat' out more creatures than the opposing colors could possibly do. as long as creatures specifically can be cheated out (CoCo, pack rat, PW's that make tokens, Rally etc...) that will always be a dominant strategy. The real complaint, whether people fully understand it or not, is that in this case blue, and red to an extent, has no way at the moment to handle the current 'cheat'. counters cost to much or are too limited. card draw is non existent AND sorcery speed for the couple cards. Its creatures are incredibly inefficient. And it's cloning and creature stealing is limited to turn 4-5 and typically can only steal creatures cast on turns 1-2.
And to the ideas put out that the Delve blue draw spells made blue a powerful strategy, I need only point to reflector mage and our new counter geist. trying to jam two really good cards into every possible deck that can possibly splash for them does not make the color itself powerful. it just means it got a couple borderline broken cards. it's 4 color goodstuff decks trying to put rhino into every build. blue's last true dominant deck was mono blue devotion, and it was a notorious 'cheat' creatures in deck. WotC needs to realize that you either have to give every color a way to cheat in creatures, or no color, or else we will continue to have this same discussion every off spoiler season.
I should have been more clear. "Based on what we've observed, Wizards considers Cancel to be too powerful, so a strictly better version of Cancel will not exist" It was more snide sarcasm at Wizard's philosophy than being my opinion that Cancel was too powerful.
I don't think we'd see a hard counter at 4 cmc. I actually think we won't see hard 'counter anything' at all without drawbacks anymore. All the simple counterspells without drawbacks will have the 'drawback' of being limited to one thing (Negate, dispel, horribly awry, etc)
I still don't think you are being clear. Wizards has openly stated that they are fine with Cancel. Most blocks include at least 1 Cancel with upside card. Shadows over innistrad for example featured Broken Concentration, a strictly better Cancel.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
actually I take part of that last comment back. Let green cheat in creatures......but then ALSO let red cheat extra damage through efficient spells, and blue cheat extra card draws, and white cheat extra life/defensive tactics, and let black cheat with removal. But do them all at the same time. And don't let the other colors steal any of those cheats, i.e. Rally= white cheating creatures, grapple with the past= Green cheating self mill/ graveyard recursion, Avacyn= Cheating flash?! the one thing UG truly has over the other colors and the best flash card goes to white?!! .......but then not let other colors also cheat off of each others (no good Red Black or Blue cards stealing color pie cheats, at least not recently)............overall, let creatures be a green thing, and the other colors go back to THEIR slices of the pie.
I could see a replacement for Circular Logic that was 'instants and sorceries' in your GY instead of cards in your gy. That would fit with the direction they are trying to push Izzet (and blue in general) into.
That's the problem if WotC thinks that way. Circular Logic is a PERFECT card for right now. It's not OP at all. If you have to pay three, then it's cancel with a downside. It gives blue a good answer but it goes into a madness deck which should already have cards in the yard. Without fetches legal, it's basically instants and sorceries but there's not reason to limit it to that. If they would print halfway decent creatures for blue, it would be a fine spell to go with the current Thermo-Burn.
Actually, WoTC's problem with card design is trying to get cute with spells by forcing synergies into cards when they don't need them. What I would like to see is Remand or Spellsnare in Kaladesh rather than another round about spell or a spell that is just a heavily nerfed version of one of the former. I find the synergies work best with the permanents in Standard.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Forgive me if this is off-topic or is someone has already mentioned this but I've playing the Mono U Prison deck with Engulf the Shore and Prismatic Ring to decent effect over the past couple of weeks at my LGS. Anything creature based has been a great match up. U/R Burn w/haste critters has been the only deck that's be wrecking me on a regular basis. U could probably use a little love but to say that WOTC wants it to suck is a bit much. We have some tools to be successful. I think that if people just stopped netdecking, they'd be fine.
Forgive me if this is off-topic or is someone has already mentioned this but I've playing the Mono U Prison deck with Engulf the Shore and Prismatic Ring to decent effect over the past couple of weeks at my LGS. Anything creature based has been a great match up. U/R Burn w/haste critters has been the only deck that's be wrecking me on a regular basis. U could probably use a little love but to say that WOTC wants it to suck is a bit much. We have some tools to be successful. I think that if people just stopped netdecking, they'd be fine.
The deck is honestly pretty terrible against even moderately skilled opponents, and doesn't match up well with almost anything in the meta game. Anecdotal evidence doesn't really prove much. It's a cute deck, and if you have fun by all means play it. That doesn't mean that it is actually a good deck that is competitive in standard currently.
Of the spells you list, most of them are quite bad even when you only compare them to cards the other colors get in the same slot. Anticipate is ultimately much much much weaker than Grapple with the Past. Grapple imposes a minor deck building restriction, but putting the cards into the graveyard and letting you pick from the graveyard make the card just dramatically stronger than Anticipate. Brain in a Jar is just a garbage card. cards that are bad at cheating mana, are basically just garbage. It takes an absurdly long time for Brain to actually be efficient, and even then, its still not very good. Grip of The Roil doesn't do anything. It lets you pay 2 mana to cantrip and effectively gain 5 life. Its just not a strong card. Pieces of the Puzzle is terribad. It imposes a huge deckbuilding restriction on you, and isn't that good when you satisfy that restriction. Just compare it to something like CoCo. Pour over the Pages is only marginally better than divination. Rise from the tides is hated by everything in the format. White gets to totally blank the spell with two mana thanks to Declaration in Stone. Red answers it twice with a single card in Kozilek's return. Black gets to blank all copies of it with a single Virulent Plague. Green gets the much better and easier to use Ishkanah, Grafwidow which plays the same role while being faster, harder to answer, and easier to recur. And of course, blue can just counterspell the thing with any number of its generally inefficient counterspells and doesn't have to care about it all.
Part the Waterviel and Engulf the shore are the only cards you named that are reasonably good. I would add Day's undoing to that list of generally strong blue cards as well. The problem with all of these cards is that they are niche and don't impact the board.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
Another mechanic that blue has seemed to have lost is the ability to look at opponent's hands. This is staple blue (since they are the colour of mind reading) and yet that role is almost always given to black in the form of "Look at your opponent's hand and choose a card for them to discard". Most of the benefit there is looking at the opponent's hand.
I would love to see blue creatures ETB and let you look at the opponent's hand. That's a mechanic that needs to be brought back into blue, but is too minor to be worth putting on a sorcery (Because Duress is strictly better in black.) The only exception is the phyraxian sorcery that did that, because you can pay 2 life (and many players in modern do - even if they are not playing blue.)
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Rose tint my world, keep me safe from my trouble and pain.
I respect your opinion but I must vehemently disagree. Blue has bad counterspells. Bad card draw, and creatures weaker than the rest of the format. With the exception of the latter, this means blue is bad right now. Good for a splash but definitely not in a good place. Kaladesh should change that but right now, not even close.
You wrote this as a reply to me, and I'm unsure why.
It's true that blue isn't in the best position right now, but in recent standard seasons blue has actually been quite powerful.
I merely say that it's a normal pendul swing. I know that there are a lot of blue players that feel that blue control should always be viable, but that's honestly quite juvenile. The pendulum has just swung. It's also wrong when people say WotC isn't aware of this. Development has outright stated that blue lacks in powerful card draw, this is the main reason blue has problems right now, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that most the power they delegated to the color recently was to little Jace, as such they pushed blue much less.
This is the same reason they're hesitant to reprint Counterspell by the way. It allows them to do much less with the color in order to not ruin the format. This means that if counterspell gets reprinted, we won't see new interesting and powerful blue cards, which is something many want to happen each season.
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
And fetchlands to fuel them.
- Manite
Let's go back a bit, I sleeved up u/b control during khans/theros standard and did great with the deck. The core of the deck was its blue based card draw engine. The black spells were the filler and the win cons were good ol noodles (pearl lake ancient) and ashiok.
when fate reforged came out we got ugin. When dragons came out we got esper Dragons as we remember it. What kept both of those decks going ? Dig through time , jaces ingenuity, the scry lands and fetch lands.
The arrial of baby Jace was slow but as he began to shine in numerous shells , jeskai black broke out and the core of that deck was dig , Jace and treasure cruise. Not to mention crackling doom!
The fetches shaped the format and dig through time decks did fairly well. When khans rotated blue based decks at their core became extinct. Right now there aren't u based decks except prison and that is seeing almost no competitivd play.
Blue is an odd duck right now , I'm not sure what it's supposed to be doing on its own. It's got delirium themes and permission spells plus a few decent creatures but no where near as powerful as the green creature core. Tracker , advocate , nissa , ishkhanas , the entire green based delerium package. It's like ever other color combo works but those with blue are way off.
Is there a reason to make a u/b madness / delerium deck ? No, because what are the powerful blue pay off spells ? Maybe it's supposed a sultai deck ? Maybe zombies was the intended deck ? Zombies became a deck , but it's not good against anything save bant coco.
I'd like to see what wizards wants to do with blue and I'd like to see the new design space for this color , but it's hard to see when the spell / creature / pw quality don't compare. Yes Tamiyo is a partial blue walker , but she being played in a g/w coco deck out of the sb.
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now:
G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record)
C Eldrazi Tron (9-5)
UG Infect
RW Burn
They seem to have gone to this creature centric design except for blue. But, and maybe I am counting on it too much, but I think Kaladesh will be great and a giant reset button to green's dominance. The funny thing is though, people never seem to complain as much as when blue is the top deck. Something about being beat by blue feels worse than the other colors. Sure, beat me to death with small efficient white creatures or giant stompy monsters, but not with snapcaster backed up by counterspells. ***Ramble mode off***
I'm not sure it's true that people complain more about blue decks dominating than anything else. I've only been playing since just before M12 came out, and here are things I've seen quite a few people vehemently complain about (in Standard):
Delver
Thragtusk
Jund
Reanimator
Mono Red Aggro
Thoughtseize + Pack Rat
Mono Blue Devotion
UW Control
Abzan/Siege Rhino
4+ colour manabases
Rally the Ancestors
Collected Company
GW Tokens
Reflector Mage
I haven't really noticed a difference between blue and the rest of the colour wheel in terms of how much hate anything gets or how intensely that hate is expressed. In my experience, all colours and strategies get complained about pretty equally when they're at the top of the format. Which is pretty much the key: any time there's a top deck or an ubiquitous card (i.e. always), someone will have a complaint. It's probable that blue gets complained about more in general, for various reasons, but I haven't noticed this to be true in the context of Standard.
Regarding your hopes for Kaladesh, I'm not convinced that it's going to be quite as Izzet-centric as you seem to believe. Sure, Wizards felt that Blue-Red was the best colour combination to represent it when we saw it in Origins, and we know it's a Steampunk-type plane, so we can assume that this element will be strongly represented. However, since we've only seen Kaladesh through the lens of those two colours so far, it's also possible that these Izzet elements were somewhat more prevalent in our previous glimpse of Kaladesh than they will be on the plane itself. (After all, the other colours still have to be there and will likely get powerful cards.) That said, I'm still hopeful that the next set will bring balance back to the format. I'm just a little more skeptical about it than are you. The power level does seem to be increasing with Innistrad and Eldritch Moon, so I hope that continues in Kaladesh. I still miss Inn/RtR Standard...
You forgot Gary. Good lord did people complain how OP it was for a common.
Standard: BG Golgari Midrange
Modern: U Merfolk GWUBR 5 Color Humans UBW Esper Gifts GW Bogles
You're right. I kind of mentally included him with Thoughtseize/Pack Rat.
I should have been more clear. "Based on what we've observed, Wizards considers Cancel to be too powerful, so a strictly better version of Cancel will not exist" It was more snide sarcasm at Wizard's philosophy than being my opinion that Cancel was too powerful.
I don't think we'd see a hard counter at 4 cmc. I actually think we won't see hard 'counter anything' at all without drawbacks anymore. All the simple counterspells without drawbacks will have the 'drawback' of being limited to one thing (Negate, dispel, horribly awry, etc)
while I agree that the colors getting complained about is more relative to tier one, I don't think most people understand that its not about the strength of the individual color, but it's ability to 'cheat' compared to the other colors. Every deck you listed save for 1-2 were decks that let you 'cheat' out more creatures than the opposing colors could possibly do. as long as creatures specifically can be cheated out (CoCo, pack rat, PW's that make tokens, Rally etc...) that will always be a dominant strategy. The real complaint, whether people fully understand it or not, is that in this case blue, and red to an extent, has no way at the moment to handle the current 'cheat'. counters cost to much or are too limited. card draw is non existent AND sorcery speed for the couple cards. Its creatures are incredibly inefficient. And it's cloning and creature stealing is limited to turn 4-5 and typically can only steal creatures cast on turns 1-2.
And to the ideas put out that the Delve blue draw spells made blue a powerful strategy, I need only point to reflector mage and our new counter geist. trying to jam two really good cards into every possible deck that can possibly splash for them does not make the color itself powerful. it just means it got a couple borderline broken cards. it's 4 color goodstuff decks trying to put rhino into every build. blue's last true dominant deck was mono blue devotion, and it was a notorious 'cheat' creatures in deck. WotC needs to realize that you either have to give every color a way to cheat in creatures, or no color, or else we will continue to have this same discussion every off spoiler season.
I still don't think you are being clear. Wizards has openly stated that they are fine with Cancel. Most blocks include at least 1 Cancel with upside card. Shadows over innistrad for example featured Broken Concentration, a strictly better Cancel.
- Manite
Actually, WoTC's problem with card design is trying to get cute with spells by forcing synergies into cards when they don't need them. What I would like to see is Remand or Spellsnare in Kaladesh rather than another round about spell or a spell that is just a heavily nerfed version of one of the former. I find the synergies work best with the permanents in Standard.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
No love for these treasures?
4 Brain in a Jar
1 Disperse
4 Nagging Thoughts
4 Grip of the Roil
4 Pieces of the Puzzle
4 Engulf the Shore
4 Pore Over the Pages
4 Part the Waterveil
4 Rise from the Tides
15 Island
4 Mage-Ring Network
The deck is honestly pretty terrible against even moderately skilled opponents, and doesn't match up well with almost anything in the meta game. Anecdotal evidence doesn't really prove much. It's a cute deck, and if you have fun by all means play it. That doesn't mean that it is actually a good deck that is competitive in standard currently.
Of the spells you list, most of them are quite bad even when you only compare them to cards the other colors get in the same slot. Anticipate is ultimately much much much weaker than Grapple with the Past. Grapple imposes a minor deck building restriction, but putting the cards into the graveyard and letting you pick from the graveyard make the card just dramatically stronger than Anticipate. Brain in a Jar is just a garbage card. cards that are bad at cheating mana, are basically just garbage. It takes an absurdly long time for Brain to actually be efficient, and even then, its still not very good. Grip of The Roil doesn't do anything. It lets you pay 2 mana to cantrip and effectively gain 5 life. Its just not a strong card. Pieces of the Puzzle is terribad. It imposes a huge deckbuilding restriction on you, and isn't that good when you satisfy that restriction. Just compare it to something like CoCo. Pour over the Pages is only marginally better than divination. Rise from the tides is hated by everything in the format. White gets to totally blank the spell with two mana thanks to Declaration in Stone. Red answers it twice with a single card in Kozilek's return. Black gets to blank all copies of it with a single Virulent Plague. Green gets the much better and easier to use Ishkanah, Grafwidow which plays the same role while being faster, harder to answer, and easier to recur. And of course, blue can just counterspell the thing with any number of its generally inefficient counterspells and doesn't have to care about it all.
Part the Waterviel and Engulf the shore are the only cards you named that are reasonably good. I would add Day's undoing to that list of generally strong blue cards as well. The problem with all of these cards is that they are niche and don't impact the board.
- Manite
I would love to see blue creatures ETB and let you look at the opponent's hand. That's a mechanic that needs to be brought back into blue, but is too minor to be worth putting on a sorcery (Because Duress is strictly better in black.) The only exception is the phyraxian sorcery that did that, because you can pay 2 life (and many players in modern do - even if they are not playing blue.)
I take it sarcasm is not valid on these forums.....I am aware those blue cards are terrible
With a lot of bounce and counters. Mono-blue prism is a thing.