As soon as I saw Bocephus return and receive a glorious reception celebrating his post, I knew today was going to be especially...interesting on the board.
I think you've pretty much got it nailed down to an idealized list. The only change I would suggest would be a swap ban-unban for Disciple of the Vault and the Artifact Lands. I don't think most Modern players care if Affinity gets a couple extra counters on its Ravagers for Flinging in a world where Spellskite exists so much as it does that they don't want to get double-dipped by losing life on all Pac-Man action Ravager provides before he gets thrown or buffs a friend. No one plays Disciple as is, and people would definitely brew with the Artifact Lands if they were available, so I see it as opening up brewing space which is already heavily policed by Stony Silence, Smash to Smithereens, Nature's Claim et al.
My only questions to you and are concerning Chrome Mox and Dread Return: What presence for fair interaction do you believe exists for Goblin Charbelcher and the Dredge subgame respectively in your supposed banlist's meta?
Somewhat related, I was wondering if anyone had considered the notion that perhaps Collected Company is supposed to be our Bloodbraid Elf replacement? I'd just like to point out that the announcement that took out BBE was January 28, 2013, and DTK was approximately 27 [months] later. Given that we also know that R+D designs 2-3 years in advance, so it wouldn't be a stretch to infer that R+D created it in response to or at least under serious consideration to the ban. From the mechanical standpoint, you can get a similar amount of value; 2 bodies, 4 mana with "haste" in that they ETB right before your turn to dodge summoning sickness. It also heavily rewards deckbuilding with the CMC constraints, similar to BBE rewarding you for having multiple powerful cards at 3CMC or less but making it a more creature-focused build makes it less than ideal to Jund, the deck that evoked the banning. I could be wrong or overanalyzing this, but it just seems obvious to me that that's what we've been given to play with in the stead of the Lottery Elf.
edit in bracketsbrackets
Second Edit: Wait, MM isn't in this list and very well should be. Same with Rite of Flame.
WotC have repeatedly stated that they do not care if a Standard card breaks Modern because they can just ban it. If they don't print stuff like Serum Visions or Brainstorm in Standard anymore it's beacuse they simply don't want to have those cards in Standard.
Serum Visions turned out too strong for Theros/RTR standard, and Opt they actually tested for Magic Origins, but it turned out to be too strong in Standard with Monastery Mentor. So I'd blame powerful cards that trigger off of such spells like Monastery Mentor and Young Pyromancer for lack of one cmc fixing cantrips in Standard.
With the above being said along with Prowess now as a full time ability post-Origins, I would think it very difficult for Wizards to now (re)print an appropriately costed 1cmc library manipulator. Although, part of me suspects that one of the final previews for Origins will have something involving Spell Mastery that may be very playable.
What should I buy in the event sword gets unbanned? Tezz AOB and mox opals, just in case? I'm really feeling it this time around.
UB Tezz maybe, but I don't think Mox Opal, 'cause it really shines when you have low cost artifacts that you can power out fast like how Affinity does with Ornithopter and friends. My money's on ThopterSword going into a Ux Tron Control shell.
Has anyone entertained the notion of an artifact based control deck going forward, it would give access to Stoic Rebuttal which, if you have metalcraft, is an unconditional 2 mana counterspell. It might be better then trying to base control around different, unorthodox colors.
What sort of shell do you propose would support such a thing? I assume you mean to suggest that Stoic Rebuttal would be used in conjuction with Sword of the Meek or Seat of the Synod to enable the metalcraft reduction to make Rebuttal viable turn 2 where it counts?
Ya u would never actually need it online for turn 2, since rebuttal would just take the place of other non-scaling counters like mana leak.
In that case, you're subbing it out for Mana Leak, either wholly or partially then? In what sort of shell, pertaining to the banlist at least, would this be necessary? I'm just asking 'cause it seems like if a UX artifact control shell that were potentially viable was out there, we would have seen it manifest itself thus far in one way, shape or form with Rebuttal already.
Counter-Snap-Counter is already out there with a 2CMC hard counter in the form of Deprive, which seems like much less work to build around to get the same sort of value. So far it's showing to be fine as you said in a late-game plan, but it is very hard to work with for tempo Turns 2-5. I'm not sure to what end this notion of Stoic Rebuttal as a sleeper hit is relevant to the banlist though. Am I missing something?
Has anyone entertained the notion of an artifact based control deck going forward, it would give access to Stoic Rebuttal which, if you have metalcraft, is an unconditional 2 mana counterspell. It might be better then trying to base control around different, unorthodox colors.
What sort of shell do you propose would support such a thing? I assume you mean to suggest that Stoic Rebuttal would be used in conjuction with Sword of the Meek or Seat of the Synod to enable the metalcraft reduction to make Rebuttal viable turn 2 where it counts?
And that's all nice and good, but control decks have limited ways to address a board state that is getting overwhelming. As an example, one drop zoo and sometimes burn or infect can put down a number of cheap creatures. When on the draw, this can be hard to stabilize - especially if you don't draw into a board wipe immediately. Cryptic command is used in this spot in order to delay death long enough to draw the needed answer. Bounce/draw and tap/draw or tap/bounce are very frequently used when the control deck is playing from behind, and counter/draw is more useful when already ahead or at parity.
This.
Whether you're ahead or behind, it's a card that's working for you. Not every card offers that kind of flexibility in a slot.
Anyway, we should probably wrap this up because we're getting way, way off topic for this thread. The point I'm trying to make here is that saying "three-cost counters are just fine because Cryptic Command" is pretty much right up there with Deathrite Shaman is okay because "dies to removal". A card that exists only to counter spells needs to be costed low enough to do so early enough to matter (or be stacked with other counters) or needs to do other things. At this point, Command is really a card type in and of itself (hopefully we'll have enemy-colored ones in the next set), so repeatedly comparing Cryptic to cards like Remand and Dissolve instead of the other nine Command cards makes no sense. I've already pointed out why it's important for counters to hit the 2-mana spot, so let's address that instead of arguing about the uses and misuses of Cryptic Command.
So what would you propose for an appropriate 2CMC counter that fills this gap? Personally I've been mulling over the idea of an anti-Remand type counter. Something like this:
UU - Counter target spell. If that spell is countered this way, its controller draws a card.
.
Thoughts?
Literally warned someone else about this a page ago AND it's still in the first post
I think this is really interesting. They've got Tom Lapille talking about the design, inception and shaping of the Modern format regarding bans and decision-making regarding said bans.
I don't think more bannings and no unbannings is exactly necessary. I mean, if there was no storm type decks in modern, is there a reason cards like ponder and preordain, seething song, and the the ritual (can't remember its name) would need to be on the list? I do agree with the spirit of your post though.
I think control would become more solvent without combo and I think there are a good number of cards that could come off the list by simply banning the right one first. We saw it with Pod, I just wish they would go back and take care of storm properly. Its weird because they did pretty good on dredge too. My thinking is someone important likes storm but as long as the storm mechanic exists, design space is going to limited by it.
As a former Storm player, I think we could get Seething Song back if we swapped it for Past in Flames on the list. I say PiF over Pyromancer's Ascension because it is more interactive and vulnerable to disruption than the former. PiF just gives too much gas to the storm combo and has less brewing application than PA, which could conceivably be used in burn or other variants. Alternatively, swap Grapeshot for Empty the Warrens and force the deck to use Goblin Bushwhacker to go for the all-in kill.
It's statements like this that really make me think this format isn't for you. Legacy or vintage sound like a much better fit despite your seeming distaste for legacy. There isn't much more to it, you and wixards just seem to have different visions here.
Clever of you to avoid discussion. Ad Hominem tactics are cool, despite how fallacious they might be. How about you share your thoughts on what "fair" magic is or whether or not it's something that is even happening in Modern currently?
I think what Sheepz is trying to say is that there is a prevailing general opinion of the state of the Modern format that most people have, and that your stated opinions show that you have made your own judgements on the format based on your experiences and desires from the game. Aside from the polarizing Treasure Cruise ban, most of the people who play the format (or at the very least, closely observe the movers and shakers) seem to be happy with where the format is within reason. We may theorycraft and analyse data concerning meta-presence and viability of archetypes because we want Modern to be a format where all decks and all colours are relatively equal to one another. We don't want Legacy-like degeneracy and colour skew, but we also don't want to be terribly beholden to rotation, both because it devalues the staples and skews the meta when some colours are clearly more viable than others (AVR's loner black theme comes to mind).
At the very least, your suggestion that Glimpse of Nature is a safe unban is confusing because regardless of Green Sun's Zenith's presence in the format, being able to draw a card off every dork you draw is incredibly too consistent and nearly impossible to interact with. Your complaint that there is only one fair deck in the format in BGx would be incredibly ill-suited to deal with such a combo, as would be any other deck that doesn't have access to countermagic. Glimpse would skew the meta too hard into 'Glimpse vs decks that can beat Glimpse' which is much more unfair that what perceived 'unfairness' exists now. Because of this contradictory positioning which you've taken, can you see why people who frequent this thread may question your experiences and desires with the format?
We can agree to disagree if you want but ultimately cruise was banned because the "pros" demanded it, not because data was backing it up. Cruise was in the process of LOSING ground when it was banned because people were starting to build decks around it. Yes, it took people a while to understand that they had to adapt but when they did, decks like Pod could beat it without much issue by adding consistent sources of life gain such as rhino to their lists.
Saying it held 20% of the meta is very deceptive when you take into account it was on a downward trend. Also, another reason it held such a high share, similar to pod, was because they were cheaper decks to put together, UR delver in particular's only true expense was getting the scalding tarns, everything else was super cheap to pick up, because it was a budget friendly deck that was also T1, of course a lot of people are going to pick it up to play it.
Of course though, Wizards got caught up in the mass hysteria and doom saying that the "pro" community was trying to incite which resulted in the ban, of course the card had only been given 3 months exist which is nothing, and if anything, the fact that the meta was already in the process of correcting itself to compensate for UR Delver after such a short period of time speaks volume of the fact that at it's core, cruise was a fair card.
Simply put, cruise demanded that you had to lower the card quality within your deck to make it work to begin with, which was the entire balancing factor of it, people like to say that it was literally ancestral recall which is hilarious but since they don't understand how the game works its not such a surprise I suppose. Also people saying that all decks could splash for it are morons, you can only splash for a card like that if you lower the card quality average within your deck, if you want to complain about a card that any deck can splash for a better example would be goyf, oh but of course nobody wants to ever acknowledge the elephant in the room so I guess that'l never be a point for discussion.
It was not just TC, it was mainly the Dig and Pod ban that people complained about. All because they wanted to shake up the meta before the PT and we saw how well that went with 30% Abzan...
I agree, people can say what they will about pod, ultimately in my opinion it was the lesser evil that held most of the bull in check. Without it, the meta seems so bland.
Would it be fair to say that the previous two blocks have been underwhelming in terms of their contribution to the Modern pool outside of Fetches? I think the problem might be is that with the loss of Pod (though it was deserved) we don't have any strong, engine-synergy based strategies that create new deck archetypes to shake up the format.
Maybe it is not a matter of banlists but more so of new cards entering the format. As of now the banlist seems pretty reasonable to me, besides Pod (The ban of which I will disagree till the end of eternity. I mean, that deck was hard to pilot, strong, yes, but beatable, and so freakin' beautiful, yes it can outvalue Junk/Rock, does that mean it has to be banned? I don't think so.) and on the same note Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek (We have a format with t3 wins and we can't stand a soft combo that offers lifegain and 1/1 tokens equal to the mana you have available and is easily disrupted?). I'd think that a value control deck that can actually fight decks like Junk Midrange would help a lot in the health of the format.
Since when is Abzan Midrange a problem? I don't think we really need tools to fight it. It's actually an important part in keeping the format from degenerating.
Maybe it's just me but the real problem are the non-interactive solitaire decks and the numbers in which they are played. We need new tools to fight these strategies.
They create a vicious and self-sustaining cycle in my opinion. You need counterspells, removal, discard and hate cards to profitably fight them. Just playing a few random creatures or whatever else will certainly not help you against an unblockable Infect creature crashing in for lethal.
And guess which decks are the best two decks that play those things. Twin and Abzan hence why they are at the top.
Reduce the number of decks that just want to do their own thing and decks can finally enter the meta that could win against a fair deck like Abzan for example but which currently just get obliterated by non-interactive strategies like Burn, Infect, Affinity, Bloom Titan, etc.
It's no coincidence that if you are playing a fair deck and want to compete you either play Blue or Black or your strategy gives you an natural advantage over some of these strategies like Soul Sisters against Burn for example.
Awww yew guise . Thanks for pointing out I failed to include the qualifier of competitive viability in my somewhat flippant remark.
I think Galerion is on the right page though with the solitare-type decks (outside of burn, 'cause burn should always be a viable deck) creating a bottleneck. I'm not sure though. On one-hand we have ultra-synergistic and non-interactive (Affinity, Bloom, Infect) and then we have goodstuff and interactive (GBx / Twin). What is necessary to make the middle ground (UX/x control, tempo) between these two deckbuilding strategies viable?
Maybe it is not a matter of banlists but more so of new cards entering the format. As of now the banlist seems pretty reasonable to me, besides Pod (The ban of which I will disagree till the end of eternity. I mean, that deck was hard to pilot, strong, yes, but beatable, and so freakin' beautiful, yes it can outvalue Junk/Rock, does that mean it has to be banned? I don't think so.) and on the same note Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek (We have a format with t3 wins and we can't stand a soft combo that offers lifegain and 1/1 tokens equal to the mana you have available and is easily disrupted?). I'd think that a value control deck that can actually fight decks like Junk Midrange would help a lot in the health of the format.
Honestly at this point I couldn't care if we get Ancestral Vision or not. Maybe Wizards just has a hard line on drawing more than 2 cards for 1 mana in any form.
Banning Bloodbraid Elf was an understandable mistake. At the time it was the poster child of Jund, and Jund had a ridiculous presence in the format at that time. The ubiquitous application of Deathrite Shaman was able to buy it a reprieve, despite it's ultimate guilt.
Punishing Fire had to go. It creates a broken, degenerate combo when paired with an otherwise fair, safe, and balanced card. Anyone who can't see the need for it to be on the ban list is choosing not to.
Second Sunrise, like Sensei's Divining Top, creates unnecessarily long games and drags out tournaments. These are on the ban list because of the way they drag out events.
Treasure Cruise is just as Degenerate as Deathrite Shaman. It needed to go. Dig Through Time...we could sit here and debate about all day. The argument for its banning hinges on there being no significant difference between it and Treasure Cruise. Can Dig be used fairly? Possibly. Maybe we'll find out someday.
Birthing Pod suffers from the same problem as the card that inspired it, Oath of Druids. The card isn't necessarily unbalanced, but it is an almost flawless engine. As the quality of the creature pool increases, it will only continue to improve. When the deck built around it has such fantastic card-quality to build from that it no longer needs its win condition, it's simply too powerful to keep around. As said above, Siege Rhino was the saturation point.
Why am I, yet again, bringing these points up? These bannings have nothing to do with the Turn Four Rule. The only bannings that are specifically tied to the Turn Four Rule that I'm aware of are Dread Return, Glimpse of Nature, and the various cards banned from Storm
.
Chrome Mox is banned on the grounds for unfair mana acceleration. We know thanks to Caleb Durward's testing that it's possible to run a consistently T3 or sooner Goblin Charbelcher list with it. Additionally, I'd make the argument that thanks to Arcbound Ravager and Disciple of the Vault being able to inflict degenerate amounts of lifeloss as early as T2, that the artifact lands are in this camp as well.
So courtesans and gentlefops, where do we go from here? Speculation is fun and all but given that the meta isn't polarized toward any action taken with the Origins update, it would seem the only real hard data we can point to is that control is lacking in meta share (and thus implied to be untenable in viability). Do we have the means to test unbans as a collective in the interest of furthering discussion regarding these findings by ktkenshinx? Is DTK Modern still an explored enough format to give hope cards like Monastery Mentor and Myth Realized can push the archetype? Are we still more or less agreed that the card quality of the BGx and tempo UR shells is strictly more competitive in a format without consistency enablers like P+P? What, besides a theoretical consistency-fixer that isn't beneficial to Twin or a more aggressive counter spell which we've discussed previously, could be done to bolster underperforming color pairs such as UW, UB and Esper?
All snark aside, welcome back Bocephus.
I think you've pretty much got it nailed down to an idealized list. The only change I would suggest would be a swap ban-unban for Disciple of the Vault and the Artifact Lands. I don't think most Modern players care if Affinity gets a couple extra counters on its Ravagers for Flinging in a world where Spellskite exists so much as it does that they don't want to get double-dipped by losing life on all Pac-Man action Ravager provides before he gets thrown or buffs a friend. No one plays Disciple as is, and people would definitely brew with the Artifact Lands if they were available, so I see it as opening up brewing space which is already heavily policed by Stony Silence, Smash to Smithereens, Nature's Claim et al.
My only questions to you and are concerning Chrome Mox and Dread Return: What presence for fair interaction do you believe exists for Goblin Charbelcher and the Dredge subgame respectively in your supposed banlist's meta?
Somewhat related, I was wondering if anyone had considered the notion that perhaps Collected Company is supposed to be our Bloodbraid Elf replacement? I'd just like to point out that the announcement that took out BBE was January 28, 2013, and DTK was approximately 27 [months] later. Given that we also know that R+D designs 2-3 years in advance, so it wouldn't be a stretch to infer that R+D created it in response to or at least under serious consideration to the ban. From the mechanical standpoint, you can get a similar amount of value; 2 bodies, 4 mana with "haste" in that they ETB right before your turn to dodge summoning sickness. It also heavily rewards deckbuilding with the CMC constraints, similar to BBE rewarding you for having multiple powerful cards at 3CMC or less but making it a more creature-focused build makes it less than ideal to Jund, the deck that evoked the banning. I could be wrong or overanalyzing this, but it just seems obvious to me that that's what we've been given to play with in the stead of the Lottery Elf.
edit in bracketsbrackets
Second Edit: Wait, MM isn't in this list and very well should be. Same with Rite of Flame.
With the above being said along with Prowess now as a full time ability post-Origins, I would think it very difficult for Wizards to now (re)print an appropriately costed 1cmc library manipulator. Although, part of me suspects that one of the final previews for Origins will have something involving Spell Mastery that may be very playable.
UB Tezz maybe, but I don't think Mox Opal, 'cause it really shines when you have low cost artifacts that you can power out fast like how Affinity does with Ornithopter and friends. My money's on ThopterSword going into a Ux Tron Control shell.
In that case, you're subbing it out for Mana Leak, either wholly or partially then? In what sort of shell, pertaining to the banlist at least, would this be necessary? I'm just asking 'cause it seems like if a UX artifact control shell that were potentially viable was out there, we would have seen it manifest itself thus far in one way, shape or form with Rebuttal already.
Counter-Snap-Counter is already out there with a 2CMC hard counter in the form of Deprive, which seems like much less work to build around to get the same sort of value. So far it's showing to be fine as you said in a late-game plan, but it is very hard to work with for tempo Turns 2-5. I'm not sure to what end this notion of Stoic Rebuttal as a sleeper hit is relevant to the banlist though. Am I missing something?
What sort of shell do you propose would support such a thing? I assume you mean to suggest that Stoic Rebuttal would be used in conjuction with Sword of the Meek or Seat of the Synod to enable the metalcraft reduction to make Rebuttal viable turn 2 where it counts?
So what would you propose for an appropriate 2CMC counter that fills this gap? Personally I've been mulling over the idea of an anti-Remand type counter. Something like this:
Thoughts?
Literally warned someone else about this a page ago AND it's still in the first post
I think this is really interesting. They've got Tom Lapille talking about the design, inception and shaping of the Modern format regarding bans and decision-making regarding said bans.
As a former Storm player, I think we could get Seething Song back if we swapped it for Past in Flames on the list. I say PiF over Pyromancer's Ascension because it is more interactive and vulnerable to disruption than the former. PiF just gives too much gas to the storm combo and has less brewing application than PA, which could conceivably be used in burn or other variants. Alternatively, swap Grapeshot for Empty the Warrens and force the deck to use Goblin Bushwhacker to go for the all-in kill.
I think what Sheepz is trying to say is that there is a prevailing general opinion of the state of the Modern format that most people have, and that your stated opinions show that you have made your own judgements on the format based on your experiences and desires from the game. Aside from the polarizing Treasure Cruise ban, most of the people who play the format (or at the very least, closely observe the movers and shakers) seem to be happy with where the format is within reason. We may theorycraft and analyse data concerning meta-presence and viability of archetypes because we want Modern to be a format where all decks and all colours are relatively equal to one another. We don't want Legacy-like degeneracy and colour skew, but we also don't want to be terribly beholden to rotation, both because it devalues the staples and skews the meta when some colours are clearly more viable than others (AVR's loner black theme comes to mind).
At the very least, your suggestion that Glimpse of Nature is a safe unban is confusing because regardless of Green Sun's Zenith's presence in the format, being able to draw a card off every dork you draw is incredibly too consistent and nearly impossible to interact with. Your complaint that there is only one fair deck in the format in BGx would be incredibly ill-suited to deal with such a combo, as would be any other deck that doesn't have access to countermagic. Glimpse would skew the meta too hard into 'Glimpse vs decks that can beat Glimpse' which is much more unfair that what perceived 'unfairness' exists now. Because of this contradictory positioning which you've taken, can you see why people who frequent this thread may question your experiences and desires with the format?
Would it be fair to say that the previous two blocks have been underwhelming in terms of their contribution to the Modern pool outside of Fetches? I think the problem might be is that with the loss of Pod (though it was deserved) we don't have any strong, engine-synergy based strategies that create new deck archetypes to shake up the format.
Awww yew guise
I think Galerion is on the right page though with the solitare-type decks (outside of burn, 'cause burn should always be a viable deck) creating a bottleneck. I'm not sure though. On one-hand we have ultra-synergistic and non-interactive (Affinity, Bloom, Infect) and then we have goodstuff and interactive (GBx / Twin). What is necessary to make the middle ground (UX/x control, tempo) between these two deckbuilding strategies viable?
Honestly at this point I couldn't care if we get Ancestral Vision or not. Maybe Wizards just has a hard line on drawing more than 2 cards for 1 mana in any form.
Can you demonstrate the necessary scenarios for consistent T1-3 Titan with haste presented by the commonly accepted lists?
Chrome Mox is banned on the grounds for unfair mana acceleration. We know thanks to Caleb Durward's testing that it's possible to run a consistently T3 or sooner Goblin Charbelcher list with it. Additionally, I'd make the argument that thanks to Arcbound Ravager and Disciple of the Vault being able to inflict degenerate amounts of lifeloss as early as T2, that the artifact lands are in this camp as well.
EDIT: Ninja'd by Valanarch.