MTG Salvation

Thank you Splinter Twin. You have been a valuable partner and an amazing adversary.

I wonder if ktkenshinx will quit Modern after this. I think he mentionned such a ban as his breaking point. (Please don't quit!)

These are the six decks I would recommend.

Aggro
-Burn (best deck to allow players to dive into an unknown format)

Control
-UW Control (for those who would rather live long than kill the other fast)

Combo
-Living End (very cool combo deck that isn't too unfun for new players like Splinter Twin or Scapeshift)

Midrange
-Kiblers Naya Midrange (one of the greatest luxuries in Modern is the mana base, this should let them enjoy 3-colored decks without proxying BGx/URW decks)

Tempo
-Merfolk (lots of players love the idea of tribal decks and this one is no slouch)

Ramp
-RG Tron (if they are Commander players, they might like the idea of a deck that Turn 3 Karns often)

I know you said 8 decks, but these 6 are the best I can think of when restricting budget and representing deck archetypes.

Quote from TylerStegman »

I would like to mention 2 things I noticed in khans.... twin now has another way to win and it avoids Rakdos charm. Altar of the Brood and affinity got 1 1/2 cards in tomb of the spirit dragon and ghostfire blade I think this officially makes shattering spree better than smash. We simply can't let them gain that kind of life. It wrecks us. And on twin, the just go off and mill us with altar. Any thoughts about those issues. I mean I doubt altar is main board or .aye not even playable in twin but it gets around our Rakdos charm and some other cards. And I think if affinity starts gaining 5+ life, we are in trouble. I was kinda sad to not see anything that really helps us but we did get a big boost out of eidolon?

Tomb of the Spirit Dragon and Ghostfire Blade will not see play in Affinity (you should check out the Affinity thread for discussion regarding Ghostfire Blade, Hardened Scales and Tomb of the Spirit Dragon), so there is no need to worry about those cards in this particular matchup. I also think Altar of the Brood will not see play in Twin because "going off" just kills you regardless of Altar's presence. Basically, it's flat out win-more. And for the record, in order to mill you, they STILL need to generate like 40 tokens which puts them in Rakdos Charm range. There is nothing to worry about.

Burn is looking really solid and I embrace its return to Tier 1.

Quote from Skanedog »

Tomb of the Spirit Dragon has been spoiled for Khan.

Land - Taps for 1, 2T: gain 1 life for each colourless creature you control.

Probably to clunky for us but could it be used to keep Burn in check?

Our landbase is perfect the way it is.

Darksteel Citadel is an artifact land that synergizes extremely well with the deck.
Blinkmoth Nexus and Inkmoth Nexus are our answers to boardwipes and decks like BGx who rely on "Destroy target nonland permanent" and "Discard a nonland card" to beat us.
Glimmervoid is our INVALUABLE any-color mana source that doesn't require any life payment to be effective.
Island/Mountain is for Path to Exile. If Path to Exile wasn't a thing, this would be a fourth Glimmervoid.

While this land may appear to synergize well with a colorless creatures deck, Modern Affinity is not one of them because it does not help us achieve our goals (we are an aggro deck, life is a resource and we do not plan to play grindy matches) and it faces serious competition with the other lands in our arsenal. Our plan is to kill our opponent as soon as possible, not to stay alive as long as possible.

Quote from Hezekai »

Has anyone considered running Time Sieve?

There is little to no purpose in running this card. It is very difficult to cast and its activation cost makes our deck useless (if we sacrifice 5 artifacts, we don't have many threats left for us to use the extra turn well). Leave artifact saccing to Arcbound Ravager and Shrapnel Blast.

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Quote from Navyat87 »

I want damnation reprinted because it's only had one printing. I want LotV reprinted because it's $100 and played in every format except standard. Same with snapcaster mate except he's only about $50.

Is that Snapcaster Mage's Australian pal?

Modern PTQ results look pretty familiar too

Quote from ktkenshinx »

Six of the Top 8 locked (and two more added as an edit):

1. Shuhei Nakamura (Eldrazi)
2. Ivan Floch (Chalice Eldrazi)
3. Andrew Brown (UR Eldrazi)
4. LSV (Chalice Eldrazi)
5. Pascal Maynard (Affinity)
6. Patrick Dickmann (Affinity)
7. Frank Lepore (UB Eldrazi)
8. JC Tao (UR Eldrazi)

Updated. I'm so embarrassed to be a Modern player.

Quote from Some_Soggy_Tacos »

That was actually a really fun mirror match to watch. At least the Eldrazi deck can interact with itself interestingly.

please keep any comments about enjoying these games to yoursel, this discussion is about how modern is terrible.

This Burn deck tech is so enlightening. I am glad I finally get to understand how burn works.

Sadly, this is believable. Why reprint cards when you can reprint them at hyper mythic rare, right?

Quote from lucashungaro »

Decks like Scapeshift, Gifts, UWR Control/Geist just all got *worse*, not better. They lost a good matchup + the bad matchups got a bump. I really don't get the rationale.

Precisely.

I'd like to address two bad arguments that I've seen crop up.

1. "The Splinter Twin ban makes sense, because it allows for more diversity in tempo/control/blue decks."

This relies on a misunderstanding of why diversity exists and why decks are viable (or not viable). Magic is roughly a Rock–Paper–Scissors type of game. An idealized version of a healthy Magic format is: Midrange beats Aggro, Combo and Ramp beat Midrange, Control and Tempo (Aggro-Control) beat Combo and Ramp, and finally Aggro beats Control and Tempo.

However, decks and archetypes are not viable in a vacuum, they are *only* viable because they beat something else. Think of it like this: a format in competitive equilibrium doesn't want to keep the Scissors decks viable just because, instead it "wants" to have as few decks and archetypes as possible. Scarcity, not surplus, is the natural rule.

So, let's say Twin was the best Scissors deck. It could usually beat Paper (Tron and linear Aggro like Infect or Affinity) and lose to Rock (UWR Control, or other blue/control decks; also Jund and other BGx midrange and disruptive decks). When Scissors disappears because of something external to the game (a banning), the Rock decks won't magically step in to fill its role. Instead, they'll become worse because they've lost their natural prey. With Scissors dead, Rock begins to starve, and Paper cleans up.

I know it's a bummer to be brewer and always be told, "If you like blue control, why not play Twin?" but you have to appreciate that Twin is what created the niche for other control decks to exist in the first place. With the major Tempo/Control deck gone, the Ramp, Combo (except Bloom), and linear Aggro (nearly combo decks themselves) decks have nothing to fear.

When the dinosaurs died out, our rat-like mammalian ancestors peaked out of their holes and said, "What's stopping us now?" The answer was nothing.


2. "The Splinter Twin ban makes sense, because WOTC doesn't want a solved format."

This incorrectly implies that Modern was solved or was near to being solved. It was not. In the past year we've seen the competitive ascent of some old decks (Amulet Bloom, Grishoalbrand, Lantern) and we've seen entirely new decks (Eldrazi, CoCo, Grixis) thanks to new cards being printed (BFZ cards, Collected Company, and Tasigur/KCommand/Angler, respectively).

If absolutely no cards had been banned for another year, I guarantee that the meta would have continued to evolve. Slowly and subtlely, yes, but surely. Slow and subtle changes are what we should want for a non-rotating format. (Even chess — considered by some to be a "static" game — has an evolving metagame.) Standard should be fast and drastic, obviously appealing to new players. Modern should be slow and subtle, appealing to players who have been playing for at least two years and who plan to play for many more. The only bad thing about Legacy is its price*, its barrier to entry, not its stability or subtlety.

*And perhaps its lack of color balance. I will go on the record as saying archetype balance (which Legacy has) is far more important than color balance, because balance is only worth having when the things being balanced are inherently different. I'd much rather have a format where, for example, blue control, blue combo, and blue aggro are all viable, than a format with five colors of midrange.

Quote from Bigeyes1992 »

Ohhh my god! The Twin matchup is gone! No longer do we have to sit sweating on turn their turn 4 when we don't have a Path to Exile.

It's Christmas!

Anything but. Twin was one of our few "good" matchups.

This makes our deck worse. Plus twin kept a lot of combo decks at bay. Now they have free rein, plus it incentivizes people who want to interact to play more junk and jund.

This announcement is horrible for us.