Patching in paper doesn't make any sense at all. It would just be an extreme mess with rules and whatnot. The effects on the secondary market would be so huge that it's unthinkable. Besides it would just make their Design team more loose on doing real testing, like HS does. Actually it is the number one reason I dislike HS. I'd just quit if they started patching things up.
Unless you mean that we'll just kill paper magic before that happens. If that's the proposal then by all means do it. Even if Arena is cool and all, and it was the reason I returned from my hiatus, I can't stand the idea of not playing paper magic.
It's like jayjay says... Terminus is super bad with Narset. To be honest the deck is so explosive that you really need a miracle for it to be good. Against that deck in particular setting up with Jace is bad because they can control your top deck...
It's inefficient... Playing Surgical or Rip seems the way going forward. The number I'm not set yet. 4 felt too many based on the few matches I put in today. I've trimmed to 3 but for since we go through the deck a lot it seems to be constantly poping. Probably going down to 2 is the right number but I have to test more.
The point is not that Eldrazi's are good or not against mill. Its who the hell play's mill in any competitive environment and why would you spend a sideboard slot for it when you only have 15.
In a local meta or mtg, fair game I guess since those have weird metas sometimes, hehehe.
Wall is pretty good if you need more cantrips and a way to hold aggro or if you are more midrange.
I'm the one that "bashed" mill but at the same time I lost to a freaking Mill deck at GP Liverpool... Felt really bad but no way I'd play an Eldrazi titan on my sideboard just for that. That's modern for you. All you have to do is have a couple of byes or win the first two rounds and you won't have to face any of the nonsense and from that point on you can make a real run for it.
Anyway, following the uprising of the Bridgevine decks and the post I made on the State of the Format thread, this is the deck I'll be playing for now.
Not trying to play the devil's advocate but if we actually think about it, like idSurge said, most if not all of the decks use the graveyard in some way. Having hate for it, is it that "hateful"? Graveyard "hate" is "less" dead than creature removal since every player uses the graveyard because it's a part of the game and not all of the decks have creatures, like LeoTzu said.
Maybe this decks only looks this dumb because nobody wants to play MB GY hate and feels that they shouldn't but probably is the right way to go. As a UW Control Player it feels super bad when I'm paired against a mirror match and all I drew was Paths and Wipes and they have the walkers and the counters. Adding more potential blanks feels strange but I'm positive that probably this is the way forward. Modern has a lot going on for it that we all enjoy and love. It's the reason why I play it over Standard. It would be somewhat hypocritical if I said that I like Modern because there are a lot of weird and cool decks that play from strange angles but I don't want them to be any good because I'd have to play actual interaction for them.
Playing more with the Legacy analogy, if we actually think about it, Legacy is the "normal people" format where the real busted stuff can happen. Larger card pool meaning more dumb stuff... But playing it feels really good. At least I always enjoyed it a lot. Most of that was due to FoW and its role. If Surgical or GY Hate does this in Modern, the degenerate decks will have to settle down on the dumbness and be more down to earth. It will make for more interesting games because you're not just free to do your goldfish because there's the real risk of the losing the game on the spot if you overextend into the GY hate. This all would result in the format slowing down a lot and making for more compelling gameplay.
I was discussing this event with a couple of friends and for some reason I ended up defending the deck. I surely believe it's way too early for a ban but it's a deck that is doing really obnoxious things. It attacks through multiple angles and it's required a considerate amount of hate/interaction to win.
Regardless, the discussion was that the deck that was in number one on the Challenge was a UW Control with 4 snapcasters and 2 surgicals mainboard. One of my friends reply to that was that if we are mainboarding hate it means that the format is busted. That made me wonder...
Is the format broken? If we look at legacy... Force of Will is the safety valve of the format, a free spell that interacts with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format. In legacy the stack is where the degenerate decks win from... In modern our stack is the graveyard. Can't we accept that maybe we should just be playing Surgicals main?
If we really think about it Surgical is 100% analogue to Force of Will in legacy. It's card disadvantage, free, instant speed, costs life, deals with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format while being somewhat mediocre to bad in the fair match ups. It's also a card that we sideboard out in a lot of matches.
Probably I'll get some bash over this but it's a different point of view. To be honest it eases my mind looking at things this way. My only grief is that surgicals are super expensive (same as force of will) and playing 4 is a big hit in the budget.
I'd rather play more Cliques and Snapcasters before playing a Fblthp. That is a just Nassif being Nassif. He can get a away with playing really nonsense cards in his deck for the most part. I recall when he got kinda mad for losing to Mill that he started to play an Eldrazi titan in his board in order to get his cards back...
It wasn't even a good plan at that due to Surgical and Extirpate... but hey he's Nassif...
The purpose of Omen is to clog the board while being a free card. This guys does a poor job in blocking over multiple turns, the only aggro creature he trades with is Goblin Guide.
If you want to upgrade the Omen probably Augur of Bolas would be a tiny bit better at blocking, with 25 instants and sorceries for it to hit around 90% of the time. Since we are now playing more planeswalker heavy builds the number has decreased a lot so... not a good idea...
Basically if you want a 2 drop that draws a card a defends just play Wall of Omens. It's the perfect card for the job.
After g1 you bring in the Gearhulk so the Karn being taxed aspect isn't relevant. I was justing pointing out reasons to play the Gearhulk by itself. Usually dealing with anything but a creature is good enough. The Hulk has a big ass to play defense really well. With Vigilance you can freely start pressuring them without fearing being dead on the swing back.
I used to play the Baneslayer alongside Lyra but since everyone was on that plan it was less effective. The angels are great when we get to untap with them but if you need to drop them on 5 you'll end up on a bad spot. Wurmcoil although more expensive generates a bit of value when dealt with (instead of Pathing) and doesn't die to Dismember or Lava Axe that are the most common removal spells that people leave in or bring in to deal with the Angels if they suspect you're on that plan.
Karn isn't amazing by itself but it's good enough. Liquimetal Coating is a cheaper Lattice that Tron is using to bridge the gap and shutdown a troublesome permanent with Karn. It can also serve as a LD spell. We don't have that many free slots to afford playing a "do nothing" card but there have been situations where I would have won if I had it on my SB.
It has been increasingly good now that Humans is increasing in popularity. It's another wipe that they have to "guess" on Meddling Mage and it's not taxable by Thalia.
I like it a lot. It has been off and on in my sideboard depending on the meta. It's specially good if we play more creatures on the sideboard and do a Midrange transformational approach with 2/3 Restoration Angels but I like it as is. Being Wishable by K4rn has been relevant a couple of times. It doesn't come up that often because I only run one K4rn at the moment.
As I said in the post I'm running Cataclysmic Gearhulk and Wurmcoil in the sideboard. I'm still figuring out what slots if any I can dedicate to artifacts. These two cards were ones I'd consider playing without K4rn anyway.
I love the new Narset but sometimes having too many feels really bad specially against agressive decks. I was playing 3 and I dropped to 2. Maybe I should have dropped T3feri down to 1 before trimming on Narset because he's way less relevant than her. Anyway I like the split here and I'll see how it goes.
So far, I've been finding the combos with her way too cute. This "lock" is not really a great lock. However it's easier to setup and the Puzzle Box is a better magic card when compared to the Pool. I've tested the Knowledge Pool lock and although I liked it, when it was bad it was really bad so I ended up cutting it.
I'm currently playing 1 K4rn and I'm loving it. It's a 1 card combo. We are so "threat" dense now that people spend their bolts at all the walkers they see and this usually paves the way for a Karn 1, 2 punch KO. It's really easy to setup. By itself is a great card, in my case it's currently Wishing for the Lattice, a Gearhulk and a Wurmcoil. The slots are tight so I avoided overcomitting to more artifacts and elected a few that I would play regardless.
About we needing a lock or not... Theoretically we don't need one against everything besides Tron. We get so much card advantage (virtual and actual) by default that once we stabilize it's really difficult to lose. The problem sometimes is that not losing is not the same as winning and there are a lot of people out there that don't scoop when they know they can't win, locking someone out makes it more likely that they scoop while letting you turn the corner without fear. I've tied my fair share of matches over people not scooping and my colonnades/teferis/jaces were nowhere to be found... Against Tron though, it's not 100% guaranteed that we win the dragged down game, although they moved away from 15Emrakul which was what made them have the inevitability. Still if we have a lock it's the best way to make sure we win before they have a chance to win from the top of their deck. Besides it's super fun to win games when they try to Lattice lock you and you let their Lattice resolve and bounce their Karn, playing your own the following turn.
My latest favourite thing in Modern has been finding ways to screw Tron players and their overpowered colorless cards and Lattice locking them out with their own Lattice is amazing.
About fetching a Snow Plains it's not really needed actually. It's actually preferable to enchant an Island that a Plains just for the offchance of getting Ghost Quartered, since we don't have more than 2 Plains and in case we're also Blood Mooned.
With my current mana base which means 25 lands and 4 SV, which is 20 U sources (enough for 95% Cryptic Command on curve) it's 81.3% to cast Archmage's Charm on curve which is acceptable...
I share jayjay's view on charm, it's not the type of card that we'll just die if we don't cast on curve because the effects aren't that detrimental. If we think about it we don't always cast Cryptic on curve either.
DaveJacinto, we do have experience, it was on MTGO. I dislike the fact that my opponents will 'always have it'. I dislike what it does for Tron, and ETron. I dislike how it makes Neoform even a thing.
The number of 'nongames' I had from the current rule was negligible, but then I play Blue.
I wasn't referring you in particular. But I do play blue only since 2015 and I appreciate the change.
I didn't feel that Neoform was actually a thing. It made some waves more due to hype than anything. There was a couple of crazy dudes that tried the deck on some event but it didn't prove to be anything reasonable. It loses to itself a lot. Truth be told I do think that the new GW spell could help in the consistency and make the deck something worrisome. I somewhat share your worry about Tron, but I think we are way better suited since WAR came out that I don't really mind the slight boost they get from it.
The number of non-games for me was far from negligible. Maybe I mulligan way more aggressively than you in order to find a better suited hand for the matchup and that has caused me some games where I get super punished for trying to find a more functional 6 and end up having a one-lander...
This is a decision that you have to make and is part of the mulligan game and it should reward better decision making and preparation and there are a lot of times that we are punished for being "bold". Instead of losing from having a hardly functional 7hand you lose because you try to get a better hand and end up with a non-hand, and then you have to keep a 5.
London Mulligan is a bliss for Modern. Let's be real, it will favor actual games instead of mulligans into Oblivion.
From my experience playing with it on MTGO and a couple of Cube events IRL I've been loving it.
Freaking hate the non-games mulligans cause.
Don't really enjoy the overreaction there is about this new rule when people have 0 factual experience with the mulligan being legal. There are a couple of corner-cases where people do mulligan to oblivion to find that one sideboard card but most of the time it backfires big time. It can lead into some situations where we need to adjust our sideboard plans by having some kind of transformational plan but it won't be as bad as people think it will.
(BTW I'm not refering to anyone in this thread... Most of my friends/people that play on my LGS went nuts with the announcement)
Unless you mean that we'll just kill paper magic before that happens. If that's the proposal then by all means do it. Even if Arena is cool and all, and it was the reason I returned from my hiatus, I can't stand the idea of not playing paper magic.
It's inefficient... Playing Surgical or Rip seems the way going forward. The number I'm not set yet. 4 felt too many based on the few matches I put in today. I've trimmed to 3 but for since we go through the deck a lot it seems to be constantly poping. Probably going down to 2 is the right number but I have to test more.
Anyway, following the uprising of the Bridgevine decks and the post I made on the State of the Format thread, this is the deck I'll be playing for now.
2 Snow-covered Plains
7 Snow-covered Island
3 Field of Ruin
1 Blast Zone
4 Flooded Strand
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Prismatic Vista
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Celestial Colonnade
Creatures:
1 Vendilion Clique
3 Snapcaster Mage
Planeswalkers:
1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Karn, the Great Creator
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 Opts
Permission:
2 Cryptic Command
2 Dovin's Veto
1 Spell Pierce
Removal:
4 Path to Exile
1 Detention Sphere
1 On Thin Ice
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Wrath of God
1 Settle the Wreckage
Other:
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Timely Reinforcements
2 Celestial Purge
2 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Lyra Dawnbringer
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Teferi Time Raveler
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Cataclysmic Gearhulk
Maybe this decks only looks this dumb because nobody wants to play MB GY hate and feels that they shouldn't but probably is the right way to go. As a UW Control Player it feels super bad when I'm paired against a mirror match and all I drew was Paths and Wipes and they have the walkers and the counters. Adding more potential blanks feels strange but I'm positive that probably this is the way forward. Modern has a lot going on for it that we all enjoy and love. It's the reason why I play it over Standard. It would be somewhat hypocritical if I said that I like Modern because there are a lot of weird and cool decks that play from strange angles but I don't want them to be any good because I'd have to play actual interaction for them.
Playing more with the Legacy analogy, if we actually think about it, Legacy is the "normal people" format where the real busted stuff can happen. Larger card pool meaning more dumb stuff... But playing it feels really good. At least I always enjoyed it a lot. Most of that was due to FoW and its role. If Surgical or GY Hate does this in Modern, the degenerate decks will have to settle down on the dumbness and be more down to earth. It will make for more interesting games because you're not just free to do your goldfish because there's the real risk of the losing the game on the spot if you overextend into the GY hate. This all would result in the format slowing down a lot and making for more compelling gameplay.
Regardless, the discussion was that the deck that was in number one on the Challenge was a UW Control with 4 snapcasters and 2 surgicals mainboard. One of my friends reply to that was that if we are mainboarding hate it means that the format is busted. That made me wonder...
Is the format broken? If we look at legacy... Force of Will is the safety valve of the format, a free spell that interacts with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format. In legacy the stack is where the degenerate decks win from... In modern our stack is the graveyard. Can't we accept that maybe we should just be playing Surgicals main?
If we really think about it Surgical is 100% analogue to Force of Will in legacy. It's card disadvantage, free, instant speed, costs life, deals with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format while being somewhat mediocre to bad in the fair match ups. It's also a card that we sideboard out in a lot of matches.
Probably I'll get some bash over this but it's a different point of view. To be honest it eases my mind looking at things this way. My only grief is that surgicals are super expensive (same as force of will) and playing 4 is a big hit in the budget.
It wasn't even a good plan at that due to Surgical and Extirpate... but hey he's Nassif...
If you want to upgrade the Omen probably Augur of Bolas would be a tiny bit better at blocking, with 25 instants and sorceries for it to hit around 90% of the time. Since we are now playing more planeswalker heavy builds the number has decreased a lot so... not a good idea...
Basically if you want a 2 drop that draws a card a defends just play Wall of Omens. It's the perfect card for the job.
I used to play the Baneslayer alongside Lyra but since everyone was on that plan it was less effective. The angels are great when we get to untap with them but if you need to drop them on 5 you'll end up on a bad spot. Wurmcoil although more expensive generates a bit of value when dealt with (instead of Pathing) and doesn't die to Dismember or Lava Axe that are the most common removal spells that people leave in or bring in to deal with the Angels if they suspect you're on that plan.
Karn isn't amazing by itself but it's good enough. Liquimetal Coating is a cheaper Lattice that Tron is using to bridge the gap and shutdown a troublesome permanent with Karn. It can also serve as a LD spell. We don't have that many free slots to afford playing a "do nothing" card but there have been situations where I would have won if I had it on my SB.
I like it a lot. It has been off and on in my sideboard depending on the meta. It's specially good if we play more creatures on the sideboard and do a Midrange transformational approach with 2/3 Restoration Angels but I like it as is. Being Wishable by K4rn has been relevant a couple of times. It doesn't come up that often because I only run one K4rn at the moment.
So far, I've been finding the combos with her way too cute. This "lock" is not really a great lock. However it's easier to setup and the Puzzle Box is a better magic card when compared to the Pool. I've tested the Knowledge Pool lock and although I liked it, when it was bad it was really bad so I ended up cutting it.
I'm currently playing 1 K4rn and I'm loving it. It's a 1 card combo. We are so "threat" dense now that people spend their bolts at all the walkers they see and this usually paves the way for a Karn 1, 2 punch KO. It's really easy to setup. By itself is a great card, in my case it's currently Wishing for the Lattice, a Gearhulk and a Wurmcoil. The slots are tight so I avoided overcomitting to more artifacts and elected a few that I would play regardless.
About we needing a lock or not... Theoretically we don't need one against everything besides Tron. We get so much card advantage (virtual and actual) by default that once we stabilize it's really difficult to lose. The problem sometimes is that not losing is not the same as winning and there are a lot of people out there that don't scoop when they know they can't win, locking someone out makes it more likely that they scoop while letting you turn the corner without fear. I've tied my fair share of matches over people not scooping and my colonnades/teferis/jaces were nowhere to be found... Against Tron though, it's not 100% guaranteed that we win the dragged down game, although they moved away from 15Emrakul which was what made them have the inevitability. Still if we have a lock it's the best way to make sure we win before they have a chance to win from the top of their deck. Besides it's super fun to win games when they try to Lattice lock you and you let their Lattice resolve and bounce their Karn, playing your own the following turn.
My latest favourite thing in Modern has been finding ways to screw Tron players and their overpowered colorless cards and Lattice locking them out with their own Lattice is amazing.
With my current mana base which means 25 lands and 4 SV, which is 20 U sources (enough for 95% Cryptic Command on curve) it's 81.3% to cast Archmage's Charm on curve which is acceptable...
I share jayjay's view on charm, it's not the type of card that we'll just die if we don't cast on curve because the effects aren't that detrimental. If we think about it we don't always cast Cryptic on curve either.
I didn't feel that Neoform was actually a thing. It made some waves more due to hype than anything. There was a couple of crazy dudes that tried the deck on some event but it didn't prove to be anything reasonable. It loses to itself a lot. Truth be told I do think that the new GW spell could help in the consistency and make the deck something worrisome. I somewhat share your worry about Tron, but I think we are way better suited since WAR came out that I don't really mind the slight boost they get from it.
The number of non-games for me was far from negligible. Maybe I mulligan way more aggressively than you in order to find a better suited hand for the matchup and that has caused me some games where I get super punished for trying to find a more functional 6 and end up having a one-lander...
This is a decision that you have to make and is part of the mulligan game and it should reward better decision making and preparation and there are a lot of times that we are punished for being "bold". Instead of losing from having a hardly functional 7hand you lose because you try to get a better hand and end up with a non-hand, and then you have to keep a 5.
Freaking hate the non-games mulligans cause.
Don't really enjoy the overreaction there is about this new rule when people have 0 factual experience with the mulligan being legal. There are a couple of corner-cases where people do mulligan to oblivion to find that one sideboard card but most of the time it backfires big time. It can lead into some situations where we need to adjust our sideboard plans by having some kind of transformational plan but it won't be as bad as people think it will.
(BTW I'm not refering to anyone in this thread... Most of my friends/people that play on my LGS went nuts with the announcement)