MTG Salvation

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from Nyzzeh »

Shelter spoiled. Hurray! I don't understand wizard's repring policy. Why this instead of moment's peace?! Same set even! Is aggro bad in Modern?

The noninclusion of fire//ice was also a big bummer for me. It's a very good card for control vs tron, which needs a lot of help.

There was a noninclusion of a number of cards that made a number of us very sad.

Considering the vast amount of potential reprints, even if the set consisted ONLY of reprints, a number of people would still be very sad. There is absolutely no way to please everyone ever. Imho, if the set goes well, there will be another Modern Horizons to both hype some people and depress others, but still include more cards in modern which, overall, I find a good thing.

Imho now that the set is spoiled let just the brew happen, people try decks, and the we can properly evaluate it in 6 months, rather than lingering in a misery of "they didn't reprint my pet card".

PS: Yey for me actually NOT ordering these Psychatog FNMs I was eyeing as potential reprints

Quote from idSurge »

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I'm absolutely glued to this spoiler season so I can say, "SEE, I TOLD YOU SO!" to absolutely ******* nobody; it's actually quite unhealthy. I'm not usually expecting much if anything from spoilers and sets, but WOTC and the community have hyped this set up so much as being a second coming...

...who exactly are you going to 'i told you so' to? Most of us that I saw trying to get some hype up for ourselves in this set did so because we see Modern as toxic, Wizards as hands off, and want a reset of the top decks.

In the scenario Horizon's does not accomplish this, you are going to 'told you so' to the same people who are disappointed that their own desires are not met?

He quite explicitly said "to absolutely ******* nobody"

I still don't see the negativity for the set in general. I can see why BGx players can be a bit frustrated, but at the same time, the set overall seems quite impactfull so let's drop the "if it sucks the join the club" camp for a bit. Heck, we've been discussing tricolored snow decks! So far things look promising.

Nether Spirit reprint! This brings back memories of when I couldn't comprehend as a kid how you win with a stupid 2/2 creature and a bunch of spells! Now I only want Cabal Coffers!

Quote from cfusionpm »

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It's more a matter of I don't want someone misquoting or misrepresenting, to me, what my beliefs or views are or should be. Especially when I have explained them thoroughly multiple times. Honestly, I don't care as much as it probably seems like online, but online discussions usually trend toward extremes fairly quickly (I'm also only teaching part time this year to spend time with my newborn, and have WAY TOO MUCH FREE TIME to sit in front of a computer). For me personally, my tie is mostly because I spent thousands of dollars and years of my life playing Snap Bolt decks and loving every minute of it. All I want in Magic is to play a competitive Snap Bolt deck, which is what I'd spent the last 3 and a half years searching for (and found a few before Probe and Push took away Delver, Geist became irrelevant, and Moon ain't what it used to be, no matter what wincon you shove in, etc). All the while, having people tell me to play these other things that are nothing like it, and to shut up and enjoy it because it plays islands. Whatevs. I play bad decks and no longer care about winning.

Really this is not a valid general argument. A personal desire or grudge, sure. But we all have one. I would love to have a competitive UB Faeries deck or a competitive Cruel Ultimatum/Grixis deck, but I don't have it. And no, I don't want to play GDS, hence I am not playing it. I do jam my Faeries or Grixis control almost every FNM, unless I want to practice UW for a bigger tournament. I get frustrated that UB colors get stupid mill cards. But it is what it is, there is still a playable Faeries deck, and I pilot it to the best of my abilities (admittedly not that great). That's how ANY format works.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from Ym1r »

I guess you mean URx control decks, because UR phoenix is doing just find. As a matter of fact, right now there are 2 mainly U and 1 party U decks at tier 1: UW control, UR Phoenix, and Grixis DS. That's not only 3 blue decks, but three distinctly different blue decks.

Yep, you have an aggro/combo deck, which is basically just replacing Storm, you have black-based "Jund with Negate", and then you have the only reasonable U-based reactive deck, as well as a variant of the same deck that plays Bolt and is considerably worse. Sure, I guess UW isn't "reducing diversity by supplanting similar decks"?

Phoenix supplanted Storm, GDS supplanted Jund, and UW supplanted every other reactive blue deck.

I honestly don't understand what is that you want (besides Twin unban). You are jumping from logical loop to logical loop to create a narrative that Twin was unjustly banned, a point which, at several points, people have agreed. Yes, it is possible that Twin would be safe now. Yes, the argument about deck diversity doesn't necessarily stand, although at THAT point when it was made, it stood (even though it didn't work, I hope I won't have to restate it).

HOWEVER, at this point, the format DOES have a variety of U decks. Whether you choose to describe them in weird ways to fit your narrative is a different matter.
Phoenix did not supplant Storm, Storm is still a relevant Tier 1 strategy.
GDS description of Jund with negate I think is rather unfair. It's like describing 8-rack Jund with 1 color. Just because both decks are midrange it doesn't mean that they are the same. The deck plays 12-14 U cards maindeck, and 4-6 on the SB.
Regarding UW control, yes it is the best control deck you can play atm, although Esper and Jeskai have a lot to show, whether you choose to see it or not.

So what is it EXACTLY that you expect, besides a Twin unban?

Quote from ktkenshinx »

Blue on its own is definitely fine. It just got Narset, little Teferi, Ashiok, and Veto in WAR alone. It's about to get FoN and Charm assuming there are no other hits in the set. There's a popular, or at least vocal, opinion that blue is struggling and needs some support in Modern. UW Control is consistently a top 5 deck at most events with significant recent performance in both paper and MTGO venues. Blue doesn't need more help. I know that folks like CFP will point out that URx is doing much worse than UWx, but that's not a plausible indictment of blue's viability. That's just a complaint about a specific pairing.

I guess you mean URx control decks, because UR phoenix is doing just find. As a matter of fact, right now there are 2 mainly U and 1 party U decks at tier 1: UW control, UR Phoenix, and Grixis DS. That's not only 3 blue decks, but three distinctly different blue decks. Meanwhile, Jeskai is solidly at Tier 2 if not 1,5 when people figure out how to play the new cards, and the same goes for Esper which has several strong showings and sits easily at Tier 1,5. So yeah, I think U is both at an ok spot, and reasonably diverse, definitely much more diverse than when you would either play URx Twin or basically bust, since even Jeskai had developed into a twin variant.

Quote from Thenarus »

Firebolt, Goblin Matron, Wing Shards...and full-art Snow-Covered basics!

The Firebolt reprint has me excited for potential Chainer's Edict reprint!

Quote from BlueTronFTW »

Quote from Ym1r »

Quote from BlueTronFTW »

I thought Confidant wasn't affected because you don't "draw" the card explicitly, but rather just reveal it, then put it into your hand?

Other note, here's the thing I love about the tron hate: it is well known that several decks are good against tron. Valakut, burn, infect, storm, ad nausea, all great choices. What tron is good against is known, yet the folks who hate tron also hate everything that beats tron.

Well, isn't that logical? Why on earth would you love (or not hate for that matter) Tron as a midrange or control player? Playing against it is mostly a miserable uphill experience that can blow you up at any random point. It is very easy to have played the perfect game as a control deck, have set up an advantage, have them on 0 cards in hand, and they just draw their random Ulamog and win any way.

Or have them draw T3 tron into Karn which you counter, into T4 Ulamog which you also counter, but then lose anyway. You are punished for having the answers to their threats basically. I don't see why you wouldn't hate it.

Except that wasn't the point I made. The point was that Tron's weaknesses are well-known. You go underneath. If you want to beat tron, play something that is better against tron. It feels to me that oftentimes the people who only like midrange and control want to ban everything that beats them. I have, however, addressed your post's general point before: everyone in modern has to sometimes sit across from an opponent where they will be a three to one underdog. ***** happens.

I don't disagree. I hate Tron. I hate playing against it, and every time I win against it I feel like I FLIPPING DESERVED IT. But do I want Tron banned? No. And I don't think your generalization holds. I don't see any bandwagon of midrange/control players wanting to ban anything from Tron.

There was (and still is I think) a case for Ancient Stirring but that was related to KCI and similar colorless decks and not Tron so much.

Quote from BlueTronFTW »

I thought Confidant wasn't affected because you don't "draw" the card explicitly, but rather just reveal it, then put it into your hand?

Other note, here's the thing I love about the tron hate: it is well known that several decks are good against tron. Valakut, burn, infect, storm, ad nausea, all great choices. What tron is good against is known, yet the folks who hate tron also hate everything that beats tron.

Well, isn't that logical? Why on earth would you love (or not hate for that matter) Tron as a midrange or control player? Playing against it is mostly a miserable uphill experience that can blow you up at any random point. It is very easy to have played the perfect game as a control deck, have set up an advantage, have them on 0 cards in hand, and they just draw their random Ulamog and win any way.

Or have them draw T3 tron into Karn which you counter, into T4 Ulamog which you also counter, but then lose anyway. You are punished for having the answers to their threats basically. I don't see why you wouldn't hate it.

I think it is a fundamentally wrong question. We know that Wizards designs only with Standard in mind and not Modern.

In every set there will be cards fitting all archetypes (i.e. aggro, midrange, control). From this cards, it follows that at some point there will be printings powerful enough to slot into decks of that type in eternal formats.

Further, there will be cards that are "fun" designs, but that can be broken in card pools as large as modern.

I don't think it's either a personal or a design bias. It is literally how magic is designed. If anything, we know that in the last decade or so Wizards would like to have a more creature focused environment, without pushing spells completely out of the way. Even in this environment, however, we still get tools for all and any deck. Quantifying and qualifying them doesn't really show anything about design intention.

If anything, it shows that the design team can still come up with unique and powerful card designs that have play even in eternal formats and can compete with old, broken spells. That's something we should compliment the design team for and not bash them, as they often get way too much flack.

Re: Challenge results
As I wrote in the Reddit post, the Challenge results are both laughably bad (32% Hogaak Vine = lulz) and relatively isolated. Did Hogaak have an outrageous debut at this single Challenge? Absolutely, and it would be misleading to deny that. But it's just as misleading to oversell the results of a single Challenge. For one, it's a single datapoint on the debut weekend of a deck. There are so many factors that both artificially increase (e.g. players don't know how to play against it, SB decisions, hype, etc.) and decrease (card availability, untuned decks, pilots don't know tricks with the deck, etc.) prevalence in such a single datapoint. Given these limitations, it's hard to draw a meaningful conclusion. Second, it's not even a major paper event. It's "just" an MTGO Challenge, which we have routinely (and rightfully) questioned as representative of the metagame on any given weekend. Significant paper results or repeat online results are needed to really figure out where the deck stands in the metagame.

Re: ban decisions
Wizards has issued one emergency ban in over a decade (Felidar), which was more of an oversight acknowledgement than a response to a pattern of troubling results. There is no way we see emergency ban action based on a single Challenge. Wizards has repeatedly shown, despite the blaring ban mania in online communities, that they will wait for sustained results before acting on a ban.

I encourage community members to stick to the proven method of ban analysis: waiting for more data and taking a long, conservative view of the format. Recognize the metagame's ability to adapt and acknowledge that most decks have more weaknesses than we think. This method has produced consistent predictions of changes and no changes for years now. Even if Hogaak Vine is ultimately bannable, that does not mean we throw out the proven, conservative method and revert to a ban mania mindframe. If you throw enough darts at a board, eventually you'll get a bullseye even if your technique is horrible. That doesn't mean we look at the bullseye and say "NAILED IT" with all of our bad technique throws. We stick with the technique that works.

Quote from user-100015232 »

buying this set basically feels like getting mugged by a cop. a few cool cards I want to play with, but a lot of filler.

That's every single set ever, though. You either draft or buy singles

Quote from Kathal »

Quote from Amerigo99 »

Where is Wild Growth? T_T

Why only 2 swords?

Why only opposing colors horizon lands?

Most likely because of slots, there is only that much room in a set, so cramming all 5 swords in AND all 10 Horizon lands takes to much space away from other inclusions (especially the Swords since they are Mythic).

Greetings,
Kathal

Also lets them test the waters to see how much we want something like this without eating up a ton of space. I'm glad they didn't print the sword cycle, without stoneforge the existing stronger ones don't even see play.

Quote from javert »

Gotta say I'm also disappointed by MH, looks like 60% draft fodder, 20% Commander and 20% Modern maybes. Laughed at the Commander Masters meme.

My idea of a MH draft is to pick some Fatal Pushes or Accumulated Knowledge at common, Sinkholes and Berserks at uncommon and Armageddons or Back to Basics at rare. I'm surprised that even in the set for Spikes they didn't dare to put land destruction that actually cuts people of mana.

But whatever, at least my Life from the Loam deck will lose by having different cards uncast in the hand this time.

I really don't understand the negative reception to MH. It feels like many of the people who are disappointed set their own expectations and standards based on personal preferences, and then when Wizards failed to meet those subjective, personal, impossible expectations, they were disappointed/frustrated. Can people who are unhappy with MH actually cite a Wizards pitch, advertisement, promise, or claim that justified expectations of stuff like Sinkhole at uncommon?

From what I've found, here was the most definitive promise Wizards made about MH: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/announcing-modern-horizons-2019-02-28

"Powerful new options mixed with flavorful updates for favorite characters means Modern Horizons is going to be a wild ride. The set is full of cards that build up favorite Modern strategies, create new ones, and bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal."

Breaking this promise down, I'd identify five distinct expectations we should have:

1. "Powerful new options"
2. "Flavorful updates for favorite characters"
3. "Cards that build up favorite Modern strategies"
4. Cards that "create new ones"
5. Cards that "bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal

Three of these have unquestionably been met: 1, 2, and 5. Two of those objectives are flavor-based, not even power-based, and #1 has plenty of cards that fit the mold. 3 and 5 remain to be seen. I will remind everyone that even pros and pundits are notoriously inconsistent at card evaluation. Almost everyone missed the impact of stuff like Narset in non-rotating formats. Literally every author I've read missed Arclight Phoenix as a Tier 1 Modern enabler.

If someone can point me towards a different promise or advertisement by Wizards that promised something else/more, I'd love to read it. But most people who are disappointed with MH are not citing a claim that was unmet.

Oh man, I thought this was a thread on how its been added!

Personally, I would love it.

In reality, I believe the format is ok, even though I hate playing against Dredge and Tron (specially when I know they are bad players...). What matters is what Wizards sees with the paper and online results and that's the objective discussion I believe we should have when addressing this issue. Even if our LGS has a stupid and obnoxious meta.

Exactly this.

I also hate playing vs Dredge (just saying) but I can't complain about its presence in the metagame.

It's not Eldrazi Winter, guys.

Quote from Slowgod »

Hmm, it is starting to look like Mono Blue could do cool stuff... maybe even Uw Monastery Mentor could finally be good. I actually did ok with it for a little bit recently.

I've been saying that ever since Force of Negation was spoiled. I have every intention of making some UW based Mentor deck. Right now, it's just a matter if I want to make it midrangey as Esper, controlly as UW, or burn-heavy as Jeskai. I've got everything I need, just waiting on the Forces to be in my hand.

I'm legit shocked so many people are complaining.

Tons of cards in this set are going to Top 8 GP/PT's over the next year and we STILL have cards left to go...

Sad news. I hate reddit, and I've not found a better Modern forum.

This is depressing, as I did use established section as a real resource for fine tuning decks. Man, this is a bummer