I'm pretty sure Midrange will make a comeback at the next major Standard event. Look at how aggro won Pro Tour Brussels, then after the pro tour came Krakow where UBx control, a deck which loses to red aggro, made a comeback, now its time for midrange, the deck which loses to control, to make its comeback.
Actually, I have no idea it will happen like this, but it often happens this way, where alot of folks tend to play the deck which won the last event whereas smart players will choose something off the radar.
Midrange.....isn't viable if a third of the format is running Counterspell. Midrange wastes a lot of slots on extra mama and acceleration, for it to work as a strategy its threats have to resist removal. Counterspell answers anything regardless of quality or power level and also blows midrange out on tempo when you answer their 4-5 mana threats for two mana.
Esper Dragons, despite being the most represented deck at a whopping 28%, overperformed and HALF the top 16 was Esper Dragons.
Well, I guess this is what happens when you reprint Counterspell in standard.
Alright, enough doomsaying and hyperbole.
I'm hopeful it won't stay this absurd for long though, nothing has been consistently the best deck since Delver, although Mono Black Devotion tried its best. Hopefully Esper Dragons won't remain king for long.
- Salty Midrange Player
And people still think that Counterspell could be reprinted some day.
Good they are not in charge
Force of Will is a much safer reprint than Counterspell. Force of Will was only really broken in the days when card drawing was very overpowered so it was trivial to take the 2-for-1. These days the 2-for-1 is a real cost.
Flores' new 5-color blue version has a decent chance of requiring a ban of something. Unlike Esper Dragons which loses Hero's Downfall with the next rotation, this deck basically only loses Dissolve, and it's pretty much guaranteed that there will be some kind of 3-cmc hard counter in Standard to replace. Mistcutter Hydra and the Heroic cards are all rotating leaving the deck with with a massively favorable matchup against basically everything except 1-drops.dec. Counterspell has always ***** all over midrange for pretty much of all of MTG history and the Dragon chargeland will single-handedly win you any control mirror.
If they print some kind of artifact CMC-based sweeper in the next set like Ratchet Bomb or Engineered Explosives, the deck will have no bad matchups at all.
I don't think the manabase of the format would default to fetchland-shockland. I've seen quite a lot of Modern decks that use that only as the backbone of their manabase, and run plenty of other duals, like Scars, M10/Innistrad and Shadowmoor/Eventide duals. I suspect this format would exhibit a similar manabase.
The current Legacy manabases exist because of the one mana cantrips, which are banned or restricted in pretty much every other format. Legacy lets you take a deck that would otherwise require 22-24 lands and just do -6-8 lands +4 Brainstorm +4 Ponder. Modern has to run those lands because in Modern you can't do ***** like build an entire deck full of 0-1 CC spells plus Tarmogoyf, or run ridiculous mana bases like 12 fetchlands and 4 Volcanic Island. (Hi, Treasure Cruise Delver)
Jace is basically the only 4+ CC card that sees play in Legacy that's not in a combo deck with sol lands or Gaea's Cradle. Even then, a card as broken as Jace is almost not good enough to make the cut due to the absurd mana starvation situation that exists in Legacy. Miracles often cuts Jace down to a 2-of these days because 4 mana is just too much.
There's no supplementing Jace, you can't put five 4+ CC cards in a Legacy deck without automatically having a pile of crap.
The "Standard legal" argument is totally irrelevant here. Jace was "Standard legal" just a couple of years ago.
That said, I agree Narset will never ever replace Jace, that's obvious.
(supplement isn't replacing, to supplement: to complete, add to, or extend by a supplement. )
But she might show up in the right Legacy deck, the real question is which... if any.
Jace is basically the only 4+ CC card that sees play in Legacy that's not in a combo deck with sol lands or Gaea's Cradle. Even then, a card as broken as Jace is almost not good enough to make the cut due to the absurd mana starvation situation that exists in Legacy. Miracles often cuts Jace down to a 2-of these days because 4 mana is just too much.
There's no supplementing Jace, you can't put five 4+ CC cards in a Legacy deck without automatically having a pile of crap.
Will Containment Priest prevent Liliana from returning transformed? I'm not sure if this is one of those cases where you look at how the card appears in exile/graveyard or how it would appear once it's in play.
Snapcaster costs too much mana. Three mana is generally the limit for playable Legacy spells unless you're using sol lands or Gaea's Cradle, and neither of those plays well with Snapcaster. That means Snapcaster is limited to flashing back 1 CC spells, and there's not many 1 CC spells whose effect plus a 2/1 body is worth spending three mana on.
Hard to argue with these numbers. Anybody who thinks that meta was in need of a ban is clearly not concerned with diversity! More likely folks are concerned about the lack of midrange - particularly midrange without blue. There is absolutely no other objective complaint about those results. Actually, Prison is a bit lacking, but nobody cares about that because diversity means midrange I guess.
But if that's not diverse and healthy, show me any eight major evens in a row (over the entire format's history) that are more diverse. If you can't do that, you have no business decrying the pre-ban meta on the basis of diversity. Don't ell me about ho0w your favourite decks or strategies were pushed out, or how fair matches aren't as much fun as they used to be. That's not how you define diversity! Everything anybody has said defending the ban is not objective nor based on any real data. Guess folks just love their midrange.
Like I've said before, I was concerned about an even more mana starved metagame than existed before. With almost every Legacy deck limited to 20 lands or less, Deathrite Shaman was like the only thing allowing even 3 CC spells to be common. That card doesn't play well with Delve so we were very much headed to a metagame where 80% of the format either plays nothing that costs more than 2 mana or has to play sol lands/Gaea's Cradle to cast them. I mean, of that entire list, only Miracles, Lands, and D&T have more than 20 lands in them. Miracles is heading towards the 20 land point very quickly (the winning Miracles lists from the last GP played 21) and Lands is a gimmicky deck like Dredge so it's questionable if it's relevant to include it in such a comparison.
The absurd mana starvation in Legacy just kept getting more and more <retarded>. True Name was considered ban-worthy at one point, but before the TC ban it was just a joke. Three mana was just too much unless it was something like Show and Tell and winning you the game on the spot. Even Show and Tell honestly wasn't good enough to spend 3 mana on anymore unless you had Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors to cast it off two lands. Decks were showing up with manabases consisting of literally 12 fetchlands and 4 volcanic island. Where's Shardless BUG on your list? That was another Tier 1 deck that was completely gone, because Liliana of the Veil, Shardless Agent, Abrupt Decay, and Baleful Strix were all just too expensive to cast anymore. No, in the new Legacy, threats had to cost max 2 mana and answers had to cost only one. Honestly, people weren't even happy with 2 and 1, and we were very much moving towards a format where threats cost 1 mana and answers cost 0. 2 mana was reserved for threats that were very hard to answer 1:1 even if immediately removed, like SFM and Young Pyromancer. Gut Shot was starting to get played quite a bit towards the end there as well, and I even saw some Delver players start to replace Lightning Bolt with Forked Bolt because if I'm spending a whole one mana on my reactive card, it better be a two for one.
This issue is also why Dig Through Time has zero chance of becoming a problem. UU is an immense amount of mana in Legacy, and with the insane restrictions Legacy manabases have you have to make serious sacrifices to be able to reliably cast it. I don't think you can put Dig Through Time in a three color deck without getting locked out of either it or your third color by Wasteland.
If you target an opponent's Platinum Angel with Nin, the Pain Artist's ability and X is greater than the number of cards they have left in their library, will that cause them to lose the game? I'm not sure if state based effects have an order, or what the result is when you try to process both Platinum Angel's destruction and the effect that says the player loses at the same time.
What happens if you have Assault Suit attached to a creature with an ability that requires you to sacrifice it if some condition is true, like a Floodgate that gains flying, or an animated Dark Depths with no counters on it?
While I do enjoy both of those creatures, seeing that spelled out demonstrates how amazing Birthing Pod is. It doesn't require a discard, it puts the creature directly into play instead of casting it and the cost is usually 1G at most.
I'm sad the card is gone, because I've been using it since the inception of the format, but it probably does inhibit design space and creates a level of consistency that many other decks can't touch. It was fun while it lasted, but there are plenty of other things to try out now.
Actually, Fauna Shaman and Birthing Pod's abilities are of a similar power level. To get a specific creature into play with Pod, you need to pay its casting cost plus one mana and 2-10 life, or two mana. With Fauna Shaman, it's also the creature's CC plus one mana. Pod has the advantage of triggering CIP abilities as you go up the chain, but Fauna Shaman lets you trade your Birds of Paradise for a five drop right now, not four turns from now.
This is all a moot point, however, as there's a very good reason Pod is ubiquitous and Fauna Shaman sees no play: You can't Lightning Bolt a Birthing Pod. Bolt is one of the most oppressive cards in existence. Any creature that dies to it and costs more than 1 is automatically unplayable in Modern. Even powerhouse cards like Dark Confidant are completely pushed out by Lightning Bolt.
WOTC just doesn't want a repeat of U/W aggro control being the dominant deck in a format for three years. We had that in Standard with Caw Blade followed by Delver (Ok, calling Caw Blade aggro control is a bit of a stretch, but it wasn't pure control) and everyone despised it.
Midrange.....isn't viable if a third of the format is running Counterspell. Midrange wastes a lot of slots on extra mama and acceleration, for it to work as a strategy its threats have to resist removal. Counterspell answers anything regardless of quality or power level and also blows midrange out on tempo when you answer their 4-5 mana threats for two mana.
Force of Will is a much safer reprint than Counterspell. Force of Will was only really broken in the days when card drawing was very overpowered so it was trivial to take the 2-for-1. These days the 2-for-1 is a real cost.
If they print some kind of artifact CMC-based sweeper in the next set like Ratchet Bomb or Engineered Explosives, the deck will have no bad matchups at all.
The current Legacy manabases exist because of the one mana cantrips, which are banned or restricted in pretty much every other format. Legacy lets you take a deck that would otherwise require 22-24 lands and just do -6-8 lands +4 Brainstorm +4 Ponder. Modern has to run those lands because in Modern you can't do ***** like build an entire deck full of 0-1 CC spells plus Tarmogoyf, or run ridiculous mana bases like 12 fetchlands and 4 Volcanic Island. (Hi, Treasure Cruise Delver)
Goblins, Tezzerator, Jund, and Helm/Leyline combo are Tier 3 at BEST. You don't see them show up in the T8s at SCG Opens, let alone at GPs.
Jace is basically the only 4+ CC card that sees play in Legacy that's not in a combo deck with sol lands or Gaea's Cradle. Even then, a card as broken as Jace is almost not good enough to make the cut due to the absurd mana starvation situation that exists in Legacy. Miracles often cuts Jace down to a 2-of these days because 4 mana is just too much.
There's no supplementing Jace, you can't put five 4+ CC cards in a Legacy deck without automatically having a pile of crap.
Will Containment Priest prevent Liliana from returning transformed? I'm not sure if this is one of those cases where you look at how the card appears in exile/graveyard or how it would appear once it's in play.
Like I've said before, I was concerned about an even more mana starved metagame than existed before. With almost every Legacy deck limited to 20 lands or less, Deathrite Shaman was like the only thing allowing even 3 CC spells to be common. That card doesn't play well with Delve so we were very much headed to a metagame where 80% of the format either plays nothing that costs more than 2 mana or has to play sol lands/Gaea's Cradle to cast them. I mean, of that entire list, only Miracles, Lands, and D&T have more than 20 lands in them. Miracles is heading towards the 20 land point very quickly (the winning Miracles lists from the last GP played 21) and Lands is a gimmicky deck like Dredge so it's questionable if it's relevant to include it in such a comparison.
The absurd mana starvation in Legacy just kept getting more and more <retarded>. True Name was considered ban-worthy at one point, but before the TC ban it was just a joke. Three mana was just too much unless it was something like Show and Tell and winning you the game on the spot. Even Show and Tell honestly wasn't good enough to spend 3 mana on anymore unless you had Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors to cast it off two lands. Decks were showing up with manabases consisting of literally 12 fetchlands and 4 volcanic island. Where's Shardless BUG on your list? That was another Tier 1 deck that was completely gone, because Liliana of the Veil, Shardless Agent, Abrupt Decay, and Baleful Strix were all just too expensive to cast anymore. No, in the new Legacy, threats had to cost max 2 mana and answers had to cost only one. Honestly, people weren't even happy with 2 and 1, and we were very much moving towards a format where threats cost 1 mana and answers cost 0. 2 mana was reserved for threats that were very hard to answer 1:1 even if immediately removed, like SFM and Young Pyromancer. Gut Shot was starting to get played quite a bit towards the end there as well, and I even saw some Delver players start to replace Lightning Bolt with Forked Bolt because if I'm spending a whole one mana on my reactive card, it better be a two for one.
This issue is also why Dig Through Time has zero chance of becoming a problem. UU is an immense amount of mana in Legacy, and with the insane restrictions Legacy manabases have you have to make serious sacrifices to be able to reliably cast it. I don't think you can put Dig Through Time in a three color deck without getting locked out of either it or your third color by Wasteland.
Warning issued for inappropriate language.
- Teia
Actually, Fauna Shaman and Birthing Pod's abilities are of a similar power level. To get a specific creature into play with Pod, you need to pay its casting cost plus one mana and 2-10 life, or two mana. With Fauna Shaman, it's also the creature's CC plus one mana. Pod has the advantage of triggering CIP abilities as you go up the chain, but Fauna Shaman lets you trade your Birds of Paradise for a five drop right now, not four turns from now.
This is all a moot point, however, as there's a very good reason Pod is ubiquitous and Fauna Shaman sees no play: You can't Lightning Bolt a Birthing Pod. Bolt is one of the most oppressive cards in existence. Any creature that dies to it and costs more than 1 is automatically unplayable in Modern. Even powerhouse cards like Dark Confidant are completely pushed out by Lightning Bolt.
Standard has more decks containing blue than any other color.