In addition to what the above posters said, it is often done to make card by card upgrades to your main deck for a specific matchup. Let's say that you have 1 card in your main deck that is truly horrible in the matchup you're currently facing. If you have 1 card in your sideboard that is great in that matchup, that is a swap which you will always want to make. True, you may not draw it. But if you do, it's much better than if you drew the card that it replaced.
This line from that article does not inspire confidence:
"We’ve just reached an agreement with Wizards of the Coast and we’ll be broadcasting coverage of select Grand Prix in 2019"
This very loudly says they are not covering all GPs. This doesn't even say they will be covering all constructed GPs.
That could mean a bunch of different things, including combinations of those things. It could mean no limited. It could mean only what CFB wants to do. It could mean that WotC wants to do their own coverage on some. Or a mix of what you think and any/all of those. Or anything else.
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.
I was on board with the idea of introducing new cards to Modern, but am a lot more apprehensive about it after the Gavin interview. In addition to the possibility of making existing cards and decks irrelevant or redundant (which is a huge bad thing in of itself, IMO), I fear we lack any of the meaningful safety valves in dealing with the broken nonsense likely to spout from this wave addition to the format. We already get some new linear deck broken every couple sets anyway, using just Standard cards. And given WOTC's general incompetence when it comes to Modern, I don't exactly trust them to "help us" by giving us anything meaningful without accidentally breaking things. This is a dev team that, just a few weeks ago, said with a straight face they believe UWx control decks are the next best deck in Modern after KCI. So if this is the same dev team in charge of making these hypothetical new cards, I don't have high hopes for anything that boosts reactive/control/interactive decks whatsoever.
I don't have any "evidence" to refute anything you said, since it's all speculation. But I'd speculate in a slightly different, more optimistic way.
You say that Modern lacks the safety valves to deal with what may be introduced to Modern through non-Standard releases. What's to say the safety valves themselves won't be part of those releases?
You also say that they have a poor track record of releasing broken things into Modern. However, that has always been through the context of Standard. They have never in the history of the format released a card into Modern that wasn't first designed for limited or Standard. Treasure Cruise and Dig were perfectly fine in their Standard format, for instance.
I can't necessarily disagree with you since we have no idea one way or another. But I think it's equally likely that the positives happen as the negatives.
How deep do we want to go on these graveyard decks? I'm thinking of playing two surgicals in the main right now
Cutting maybe a bolt and a push bringing me down to 3 and 2, respectively
Brainstorming for GP Toronto this weekend
That seems like an extreme meta call to me. At a GP you can expect to face just about anything. If you're at the top tables, you'll face more of the popular strategies. If you expect that you may coast in the X-2, X-3 bracket for a while, or worse, you can expect absolutely anything. I've always considered Surgical a bad card with situational usefulness - or a "necessary evil," in other words. For a deck that likes to survive on value it's hard for me to justify 2 Surgical in the 75, let alone the main.
disappointing from both wizards and cfb. certainly a step backwards for modern if this is the treatment we can expect going forward. march is going to be truly depressing.
now its up to SCG to double down and carry the torch alone for paper magic and specifically modern.
If their coverage of Legacy is anything to go by, they'll carry the torch for a while but it will eventually fade.
Legendary Land
Tap to produce blue mana
If a land you control would produce colorless mana it produces that much blue mana instead.
Basically like a much weaker Urborg. It doesn't make the lands into Islands, it doesn't fix all lands (only the colorless ones). Makes eldrazi/colorless spells pretty much uncastable. Other than that I'm not seeing anything too broken
So is it your intention that it be symmetrical? If so the "your" would make it only apply to your lands. I ask because I figured that if you're the one trying to cast eldrazi, you wouldn't want to hose yourself. Since you mentioned eldrazi I assumed you want it to be symmetrical.
In the top 50 most played spells in modern there are 10 blue cards. 4 are cantrips (so, essentially ways to create non-cards and increase deck consistency) and the rest are counterspells, most of which are fringe sideboard inclusions.
I think there is space there they just aren't using.
Doesn't this contradict your point, thought? There are 5 colors in Magic and blue takes up exactly 1/5th of the top spells? And 60% of those cards are more than just cantrips?
Fetch-able dual land cycle with land types. Something of a cross between a painland and shockland.
Example for R/G:
=============================
Krumholtz
Land - Mountain Forest
(T: Add R or G to your mana pool.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Krumholtz deals 1 damage to you.
Sacrifice Krumholtz: Draw a card.
=============================
The sac/draw may be wildly too powerful, but the idea is that these lands automatically ding you each turn (after the first) and as the game goes longer you need a way to get rid of them. Maybe sac: scry a certain number instead? Or maybe they're just so powerful that you shouldn't be able to get rid of them? Or maybe the sac costs 1 or 2 mana in addition?
Another idea is that the sac can do something color-pair specific. Like a U/W one can bounce or detain target creature.
For this one, I think I've landed on guild-themed activated abilities for the sac. Double colored cost, tap the land itself and sac to activate. So sticking with the RG version:
=============================
Krumholtz
Land - Mountain Forest
(T: Add R or G to your mana pool.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Krumholtz deals 1 damage to you.
RG, T, Sacrifice Krumholtz: Destroy target artifact or enchantment.
=============================
Yes, colorless undercosted Mana Short is also a really bad idea. Perhaps the card should cost more mana and/or have a more expensive activation cost, although many times turn 3 against Tron is too late to be useful.
Or maybe that clause comes with a drawback for you as well? Discard something(s), lose life, also can't make land drops? Actually, that may be it. That second clause could be "Players can't play lands until target opponent's next turn." Pop it in their upkeep or draw step, it affects you too, then the turn after yours they can make land drops again.
Second mode looks broken imo. Being on the play and playing this turn 2 gives you a huge advantage, and any deck can play it. I don't know which deck did you try to hate with that mode, but it goes well beyond your intention.
Trying to hate on big mana strategies with that. I'm looking for something on-curve that will time-walk them so their opponent can have 1 more turn before Tron is online, or Scapeshift, or Titan, etc. They still get to untap, use their current mana, etc. But you may be right that it's too strong.
Perhaps tapping all their lands is enough. In that situation I proposed, not playing a spell turn 2 isn't as harmful as being forced to miss a land drop.
That's a good idea, but are you sure that's less powerful? That means they won't have any way of interacting with anything I do until their next untap step. Whereas denying them a land drop still allows Tron, for instance, to play their baubles, Map, Sylvan Scrying, etc. or another deck to interact with whatever I'm doing.
Fetch-able dual land cycle with land types. Something of a cross between a painland and shockland.
Example for R/G:
=============================
Krumholtz
Land - Mountain Forest
(T: Add R or G to your mana pool.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Krumholtz deals 1 damage to you.
Sacrifice Krumholtz: Draw a card.
=============================
The sac/draw may be wildly too powerful, but the idea is that these lands automatically ding you each turn (after the first) and as the game goes longer you need a way to get rid of them. Maybe sac: scry a certain number instead? Or maybe they're just so powerful that you shouldn't be able to get rid of them? Or maybe the sac costs 1 or 2 mana in addition?
Another idea is that the sac can do something color-pair specific. Like a U/W one can bounce or detain target creature.
Second mode looks broken imo. Being on the play and playing this turn 2 gives you a huge advantage, and any deck can play it. I don't know which deck did you try to hate with that mode, but it goes well beyond your intention.
Trying to hate on big mana strategies with that. I'm looking for something on-curve that will time-walk them so their opponent can have 1 more turn before Tron is online, or Scapeshift, or Titan, etc. They still get to untap, use their current mana, etc. But you may be right that it's too strong.
You say that Modern lacks the safety valves to deal with what may be introduced to Modern through non-Standard releases. What's to say the safety valves themselves won't be part of those releases?
You also say that they have a poor track record of releasing broken things into Modern. However, that has always been through the context of Standard. They have never in the history of the format released a card into Modern that wasn't first designed for limited or Standard. Treasure Cruise and Dig were perfectly fine in their Standard format, for instance.
I can't necessarily disagree with you since we have no idea one way or another. But I think it's equally likely that the positives happen as the negatives.
=============================
Krumholtz
Land - Mountain Forest
(T: Add R or G to your mana pool.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Krumholtz deals 1 damage to you.
RG, T, Sacrifice Krumholtz: Destroy target artifact or enchantment.
=============================
Example for R/G:
=============================
Krumholtz
Land - Mountain Forest
(T: Add R or G to your mana pool.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Krumholtz deals 1 damage to you.
Sacrifice Krumholtz: Draw a card.
=============================
The sac/draw may be wildly too powerful, but the idea is that these lands automatically ding you each turn (after the first) and as the game goes longer you need a way to get rid of them. Maybe sac: scry a certain number instead? Or maybe they're just so powerful that you shouldn't be able to get rid of them? Or maybe the sac costs 1 or 2 mana in addition?
Another idea is that the sac can do something color-pair specific. Like a U/W one can bounce or detain target creature.