I don't believe that's the case any longer. Tron, Scapeshift, Amulet, UW Control, and Lantern are all poised to be good now and all have positive matchups against Jund. Burn is still good and I believe that matchup slightly favors Burn. Affinity has morphed into a harder deck to beat with Hardened Scales. Jund has a positive matchupu against Storm, but that isn't overly prevalent right now. Humans and Spirits are probably 50/50 - Jund does well against creature decks but those 2 decks pack a lot of disruption on the bodies, which brings the matchups closer.
Lantern is a bad matchup?? How??
Also, Tron is definitely 50/50.
It's been my experience that Jund is too slow to go under Lantern's lock. Glad to hear that's not typical.
I agree Tron is a much closer matchup than all the doom/gloom "don't even SB for it because it's so bad" proponents suggest, and I personally have a great record against Tron, but it's not 50/50.
Is it still true that a jund has a 50/50 match up against most of the field?
I’m thinking about building a solid midrange deck and what to make an informed choice.
Appreciate your thoughts team.
I don't believe that's the case any longer. Tron, Scapeshift, Amulet, UW Control, and Lantern are all poised to be good now and all have positive matchups against Jund. Burn is still good and I believe that matchup slightly favors Burn. Affinity has morphed into a harder deck to beat with Hardened Scales. Jund has a positive matchupu against Storm, but that isn't overly prevalent right now. Humans and Spirits are probably 50/50 - Jund does well against creature decks but those 2 decks pack a lot of disruption on the bodies, which brings the matchups closer.
oh my word I just saw the price of Surgical Extraction. I've had my playset for years now so hadn't paid much attention. $55 for that card is ridiculous.
EDIT: That's the CardKingdom price shown on mtgtop8. I failed to look one line down at the TCGPlayer price of $43. Still insane, though.
Is there something better than peer through depths? I mean yeah its 1U and not U, and yeah is Instant/Sorc, instead of 'Blue Card' or something, but I'm curious. Since Peer see's no play that I'm aware of.
EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure I am curious. I'm pretty sure I know the answer and we all know how this goes.
Anyone seen any fun brews or updates to decks lately? I read the new Burn is pretty good.
Peer was played in Modern Storm until Opt was reprinted and Pieces of the Puzzle was printed.
Grixis control needs Baleful Strix. Pretty ok vs death's shadow/angler. It ain't happening, but I think modern would be better for it. Sweepers aren't getting better unless they give us deluge, or unban ponder/preordain making terminus the better-er sweeper.
With UW/Jeskai/Phoenix/gds top8's, Preordain is out of the question. Don't forget there is the looming fear of Storm for Wizards also.
Which is a shame, because Forsythe himself showed us that he fundamentally does not understand how these decks operate.
Preordain would be a huge red flag for the format right now. GDS, Phoenix are both top tier decks, Storm is also great, and UW is solidly tier 2. I don't regard Jeskai as a deck that can take down a GP to be honest and I disagree with Aaron there.
Don't forget that SFM is not such a problem, because she does not power up so many tiered strategies.
I have long thought that Preordain (not Ponder - just Preordain) was fine for Modern. Not any longer, unfortunately. Now Twin and SFM are really the only viable unban targets.
Phoenix is the death knell for Preordain. None of the other decks really factor into it. Yes, it's an upgrade for each of them. But in some cases it either does not impact the turn the deck wins (Storm), or simply makes a fair deck slightly more viable in a largely unfair field (UW/x, GDS). Unfortunately it really amps up the turbo-xerox nature of the Phoenix deck which just can't happen right now.
EDIT: And most importantly, the latest B&R announcement specifically juxtaposed Stirrings and Preordain/Ponder again, making me think they still feel those "generic" blue spells are too much for the format.
In TCC's interview with Gavin Verhey today, the question came up about designing and inserting Modern cards in supplemental products bypassing Standard; apparently it's something we shouldn't expect in the near future. Nice to get a confirmation one way or the other, at least. Maybe the poll didn't go so well?
We at least know that they are warm enough to the idea to ask about it, so it's a bit disappointing to know nothing like this is coming soon. On the other hand, if we do get such a set, it's nice to know they don't want to rush it either.
The term "near future" has had an incredibly squishy meaning from WotC. They often backtrack and change their minds, or use the term to play a game of misdirection.
I'm not saying we'll get non-Standard Modern cards any time soon (or at all). But let's consider the source.
I look at lines of play. If you are attempting to slow/kill/disrupt aggro, only to then land your own threat and ride that to victory, while being theoretically soft to Control? You are midrange.
Thats just me though. I had my fill of caring about this stuff too deeply when we had pages of 'thats not real control' years ago.
Ah, that makes sense. I didn't think of it that way. Paying closer attention to lines of play, I think aggro-control, Midrange, and Tempo all fit the description you just provided.
Sure, its tempo, cool. Thats an insanely disruptive tempo deck, able to both grind decks out with removal, and win out of nowhere.
In the end, this isnt the format some (many?) of us remember with rose coloured glasses, and yes 'traditional' midrange is struggling. That said, there are a lot of decks 'struggling' at the hands of a few right now.
I stayed out of the "what is GDS" debate because I find it kinda silly, but your post here has prompted me to weigh in. In my opinion disruption doesn't define Midrange. A Midrange deck can be completely devoid of disruption and still be Midrange.
Midrange is roughly defined, I believe, by being bigger and slower than aggro, but once it stops aggro being able to turn the corner as if it were a faster control deck, while simultaneously being smaller and faster than a control deck. They have historically, especially in Modern, featured plenty of kill and discard spells. But those tools are ancillary to the term's definition, which is pretty much all in the size and CC makeup of the creature base.
Tempo is roughly defined, I believe, as a deck that looks to knock its opponent off at least one axis of its resources and then presents a fast clock. The purest Tempo deck I can think of is RUG Delver in Legacy. Wasteland and Stifle backed by Delver and Mongoose and 'Goyf. Grixis Delver was the best Tempo deck in that format before they banned DRS. Some lists played Stifle, but more played Hymn and TS and Inquisition. The existence of those discard spells didn't switch Grixis Delver to being a Midrange deck.
From what I understand, "disruption" is more a feature of Tempo decks than it is of Midrange decks. We just associate discard with Midrange because of decks like Jund.
I've felt for a while that Modern and Vintage actually share quite a bit of characteristics with eachother. At least, Vintage from a few years ago before Mentor really took off. Dredge, Shops, and Blue were the top 3 archetypes. We're sort of at a similar spot in Modern.
In Vintage the "fair" decks NEEDED to slot 4+ gy hate AND 4+ artifact hate in their SBs. The reason they didn't lose to the rest of the field is because of cards like Force of Will and Wasteland being main-deck answers to the fringe shenanigans.
In Modern you can slot 4+ gy hate and 4+ artifact hate in the SB. In fact I think that's probably the right thing at the moment. But you still need enough answers to the rest of the field, which includes multiple strategies. Field of Ruin is a good start if you're in 2 colors. But we need a 0-mana answer like Force to be able to contain the shenanigans. When fair decks can't contain the field because they're focused on the other top dogs, we get results like today's.
I'm not necessarily advocating for Force in Modern. But we need something like that. We need something to help police the format instead of just banning things once the meta gets solved and results in degeneracy.
Other than that, the rest feels pretty spot on. Modern is a massive wide net of random crap, and most of the decks represented there are hoping to goldfish you as quickly or efficiently as possible. Welcome to Thunderdome. Enjoy your stay.
I guess I've just always had a disconnect with this type of complaint for as long as I've seen it on these boards and elsewhere. That's literally the point of the game. Kill your opponent before they can kill you. Yes, each strategy does it differently. But if this is the complaint then maybe you want to play tic tac toe where you always have a draw? One of the very first decks at one of the very first tournaments was just a bunch of lightning bolts and mana sources. Then Channel, lightning bolts, and mana sources. Then they implemented the 4-per playset rule because of that. I know the game has "evolved" over the last 25 years but what you're complaining about is what I feel the game has instructed us to do from the very beginning.
I don't mean this as a personal attack. You're not the only person to make this argument/complaint. There are plenty of SCG articles and pros complaining about it too. It was just the latest thing I saw.
Re: "feel" of the format
There is no indication that Wizards makes ban decisions in Modern based on the "feel" of the format. There are plenty of indications to the contrary, however, including 2 years of no bans despite numerous decks "feeling" too fast/broken to a subset of the community. Wizards is doing the right thing in Modern by not acting based on hyper-subjective feelings of players with radically different preferences, backgrounds, and motivations. We will enter a very dark and uncertain Modern era if this changes. Now, if we can put some numbers to "feel" so we're at least talking the same language and comparing apples to apples, that's another story. Thankfully, I believe this post might help accomplish that.
Feel plays directly into their decision making. A synonym for "feel" w/r/t the meta is "fun." If not synonymous, then greatly overlapping in a Venn diagram. If someone says they feel the format is too fast, they're implying it's not fun for them. Fun is the #1 piece of criteria for what Modern "should be," according to Aaron Forsythe. See his article here,halfway down in the "What Modern Should Be" section: https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptsoi/where-modern-goes-from-here-2016-04-24. Another item listed there is that Modern should be at a power level to allow Standard cards to break through. Though attenuated, an argument can be made that if a format is too fast, or even feels too fast, it becomes more difficult for Standard cards to break through (Phoenix being a recent breakthrough, of course).
In my opinion "feel" has a direct correlation to at least one criteria for the format.
As a control/tempo player for basically my entire time in Modern, I can safely say that I've seen the light on why it's not worth playing. What it essentially comes down to is that there are two main, basic scenarios that define proactive vs reactive decks, and it all comes down to "playing a thing." This "thing" represents both sides. For the proactive side, it says "you need to answer this, or you lose." For the reactive side, it says "I need to answer this or I lose." Inherently, one starts with a huge advantage that it loses as time goes on, the other starts with little to no advantage that it gains as time goes on.
Just some musings after discussions during Modern last night about play lines, and how it's almost always correct every time to jam an early threat to make your opponent have an answer. Rather than play slow to play around it and give them the time to DRAW the answer, since they are not under pressure.
With the years I've spent on one side of things, it's actually quite refreshing to be the beatdown. "You need to answer this, or be faster than me" should be the motto of Modern.
I know you didn't mention Twin in this post, but because of who you are and your post history for the last 3 years it's very hard not to see ALL of your posts through a Twin lens.
If you had come to this conclusion with Twin never even existing, that's fine. I wouldn't give it a second thought or respond to it. It's still fine, but given the history with your posts on Twin I feel the need to respond. Just to say that Twin was so good because it didn't neatly fit into either side of the coin you just presented. All tempo decks have the ability to be either proactive or reactive given the situation. But Twin is alone in that they can win the game on the spot with a combo finish. Regardless of whether WOTC's reasons have been backed up by numbers, or whether their references to other decks ever panned out, they obviously came to the conclusion that a deck that can switch between being proactive and reactive and can also win instantly with a combo wasn't something they wanted in the format. I'd have to assume 2 of those 3 things in a single deck are fine, but not all 3.
An alarming number of Phoenix decks in the Modern Day 2 SCG meta.
Plz don't be a busted deck...I can't lose another.
It's the new "it" thing with cards that are currently very good in Standard, which means many players have their copies and it's an easy port to Modern. Well, after the land-base hurdle I suppose.
I believe it's powerful enough to stay around but it will dwindle once the meta catches up to it, and I doubt it will be bannable in the long-term. I just hope we don't get a short-term knee-jerk reaction from WOTC like they did with Probe.
I agree Tron is a much closer matchup than all the doom/gloom "don't even SB for it because it's so bad" proponents suggest, and I personally have a great record against Tron, but it's not 50/50.
2
Artifact
Sacrifice Ark of Possibilities: Choose one:
EDIT: That's the CardKingdom price shown on mtgtop8. I failed to look one line down at the TCGPlayer price of $43. Still insane, though.
Phoenix is the death knell for Preordain. None of the other decks really factor into it. Yes, it's an upgrade for each of them. But in some cases it either does not impact the turn the deck wins (Storm), or simply makes a fair deck slightly more viable in a largely unfair field (UW/x, GDS). Unfortunately it really amps up the turbo-xerox nature of the Phoenix deck which just can't happen right now.
EDIT: And most importantly, the latest B&R announcement specifically juxtaposed Stirrings and Preordain/Ponder again, making me think they still feel those "generic" blue spells are too much for the format.
I'm not saying we'll get non-Standard Modern cards any time soon (or at all). But let's consider the source.
Midrange is roughly defined, I believe, by being bigger and slower than aggro, but once it stops aggro being able to turn the corner as if it were a faster control deck, while simultaneously being smaller and faster than a control deck. They have historically, especially in Modern, featured plenty of kill and discard spells. But those tools are ancillary to the term's definition, which is pretty much all in the size and CC makeup of the creature base.
Tempo is roughly defined, I believe, as a deck that looks to knock its opponent off at least one axis of its resources and then presents a fast clock. The purest Tempo deck I can think of is RUG Delver in Legacy. Wasteland and Stifle backed by Delver and Mongoose and 'Goyf. Grixis Delver was the best Tempo deck in that format before they banned DRS. Some lists played Stifle, but more played Hymn and TS and Inquisition. The existence of those discard spells didn't switch Grixis Delver to being a Midrange deck.
From what I understand, "disruption" is more a feature of Tempo decks than it is of Midrange decks. We just associate discard with Midrange because of decks like Jund.
In Vintage the "fair" decks NEEDED to slot 4+ gy hate AND 4+ artifact hate in their SBs. The reason they didn't lose to the rest of the field is because of cards like Force of Will and Wasteland being main-deck answers to the fringe shenanigans.
In Modern you can slot 4+ gy hate and 4+ artifact hate in the SB. In fact I think that's probably the right thing at the moment. But you still need enough answers to the rest of the field, which includes multiple strategies. Field of Ruin is a good start if you're in 2 colors. But we need a 0-mana answer like Force to be able to contain the shenanigans. When fair decks can't contain the field because they're focused on the other top dogs, we get results like today's.
I'm not necessarily advocating for Force in Modern. But we need something like that. We need something to help police the format instead of just banning things once the meta gets solved and results in degeneracy.
Maybe the answer really is "unban Twin."
I don't mean this as a personal attack. You're not the only person to make this argument/complaint. There are plenty of SCG articles and pros complaining about it too. It was just the latest thing I saw.
In my opinion "feel" has a direct correlation to at least one criteria for the format.
If you had come to this conclusion with Twin never even existing, that's fine. I wouldn't give it a second thought or respond to it. It's still fine, but given the history with your posts on Twin I feel the need to respond. Just to say that Twin was so good because it didn't neatly fit into either side of the coin you just presented. All tempo decks have the ability to be either proactive or reactive given the situation. But Twin is alone in that they can win the game on the spot with a combo finish. Regardless of whether WOTC's reasons have been backed up by numbers, or whether their references to other decks ever panned out, they obviously came to the conclusion that a deck that can switch between being proactive and reactive and can also win instantly with a combo wasn't something they wanted in the format. I'd have to assume 2 of those 3 things in a single deck are fine, but not all 3.
I believe it's powerful enough to stay around but it will dwindle once the meta catches up to it, and I doubt it will be bannable in the long-term. I just hope we don't get a short-term knee-jerk reaction from WOTC like they did with Probe.