its actually an oldschool thing. My brother john does the same. Back in the day, before fields were printed in 7th edition to show where things go, thats just what people did.
Sorry, I've played since 1994 and I don't think I've ever seen someone play with their lands in front until the past year or so.
Wasn't Dickmann the one who said he likes Modern cause you can play longer games, and doesn't like Legacy cause you can lose on turn 2?
I like Dickmann. I consider him to be one of the best Modern players, if not the best. Still in my opinion, Legacy is a lot more skill based. There is a higher percentage of games that I lose or win in Modern where I feel like not much else could have been done compared with Legacy. Maybe there are just a higher variance in the matchups?
I've seen LSV fail at Magic many times before. Him not making Day 2 is why he sometimes does commentary for Day 2.
LSV is the 3rd best Magic player of all time in my opinion. I have played against him before, or I should say I've lost to him before. He doesn't put nearly as much time into Modern as other successful Modern players. He is the President of CFB, so he does have many other things to do. If he put in as much time as any other current Modern player, he would probably be doing much better.
When I watch LSV videos, I honestly feel like he is just messing around most of the time. Where he is at, it goes beyond winning. It's almost as if he wants to be able to see how far he can go down a certain road and still win. And I'm not saying winning is not important to him. It's as important as any other Pro Player.
I'd assume that the 2 better players are Budde and Finkel. And LSV is a great player. But he isn't a great Modern player. Most of the pros aren't. Even Finkel failed to make Day 2 at PT BNG. The pros just really aren't that good at Modern.
Just wanted to point out this is a pretty poor representation of Finkel's performance; he excelled at playing Storm in the constructed portion of the event and performed terrible in Limited.
I think storm will just be a meta deck like Dredge is in legacy. It's easily hated out post board. I really don't see a problem with the deck. The meta will fix it by itself probably. We'll see.
If we must point out a problem, I would say it's kiki-jiki/twin. I wouldn't be sad if kiki got banned so Twin becomes slightly less consistent and Kiki-Pod will cease to exist. It's just a very unfun combo in my opinion. The 'oops I win' factor makes games very dull. I don't think they can justify such a ban yet though. So far the current meta seems pretty healthy :).
The key to playing Kikipod is knowing you are playing Kikipod and saving removal for Kiki. Most decks only play 2 or 3 Kikis and once you remove those they have to play comboless Magic, evening the playing field.
I have a problem with the thinking the meta will sort itself out. It has not in the past, I dont think it can. Until it starts to happen, I dont believe it can.
The meta doesn't need to be sorted out. It is fine now except for a couple of archetypes which could be helped by new printings and unbans.
To you. That does not mean the meta is fine.
That statement can easily go the other way. "To you. That does not mean the meta isn't fine." The only thing that we can use to make this assessment is statistical evidence (a large, unbiased sample size without cherrypicking events or Top 8s), and I expect when MTGSalvation releases its own spreadsheet in a couple of weeks the results will suggest the metagame is currently fine, with Splinter Twin possibly teetering the line.
Now that Storm is playing 2 Grapeshots in the maindeck, if it ever got out of hand the meta could probably self-correct with more Thalia or Delver decks.
I'm curious what people would recommend for a budgeted manabase (no fetchlands). I think 4 Steam Vents and 4 Shivan Reefs make sense, so how would you distribute the last 8 lands between Mountain and Island if you were playing the 2 Grapeshot, 3 Ravings, 4 Thought Scour configuration?
I don't like unbans to shake up the format, particularly when they're this dangerous. Bitter blossom and the kitty were pretty clearly safe. I'm actually enjoying the current format, and I think brimaz was a nice addition while other enjoy nykthos.
For me, the most important thing to come out of the Nacatl/BB unban is the lack of these decks at top tables. They aren't great on MTGO (Faeries barely sees play!), they didn't do better than anything else at PT Valencia or GP Richmond, and they overall haven't broken the format in any way. Sure, the decks might still evolve and I might eat my words in a few months, but for now the cards are totally safe.
What does that mean? It means that a lot of doomsayers who ranted against these cards were wrong. (Again, maybe they will be proven right down the road, but for now they are very wrong). We saw countless posts in this thread and elsewhere about how outrageous BB/Nacatl would be and how they would break the format. We heard the same garbage about Valakut. People backed this up with theoretical arguments, impassioned rhetoric, and questionable testing data. And in the end, all of them were wrong. The anti-Valakut camp has been completely discredited by this time, and the same will probably be true of the anti-Kitty/BB camp by the end of the year.
This suggests two things to me. First, it suggests that Wizards was wrong in more of their early bans. The initial rationale for banning Valakut and BB is no longer true today. Perhaps it was true at the time (probably not, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt). But it is no longer true now. That means we are justified in revisiting earlier bans to see if they were wrongly made.
I think it is unfair to hold these "incorrect" bannings against Wizards of the Coast. While it has been proven that Bitterblossom is not too powerful for Modern, it may have been at its inception and stagnated the growth and development of all these well-tuned decklists that now don't care about the Faeries menace. In this same way I would say a lot of the early bannings were not "wrong," because it is the exclusion of these cards for a couple years that may allow Modern to develop other decks at a pace that these banned cards are no longer too good. I do agree that it is time to explore further unbannings now.
I think the greatest thing about having Faeries as a deck is that it's a good safety valve against combo's share of the metagame. Even if it isn't "Tier 1" I feel it can play a very important role in establishing a healthy, cyclical metagame.
Pyrostatic Pillar is played in Legacy Burn decks. It's easy to break the symmetry if your spells deal direct damage and theirs do not. It's also easy to break the symmetry when your opponents are playing Shocklands, Thoughtseize, Gitaxian Probe, etc. At the same time, it is annoying that the Eidolon trigger resolves and deals damage to you before you deal damage to them.
Modern sees more 4cmc+ cards than Legacy does, however. Engine combo like Storm cares, but it's not a big deal for decks like Splinter Twin. Delver decks actually find this effect miserable. On the other hand, the opponent doesn't mind too much if they Lightning Helix and Electrolyze it.
As far as red two-drops go, I'm convinced Young Pyromancer is of a higher power level than this card, but Eidolon is very effective against particular decks. At the very least, Burn can sideboard him in against Storm decks.
It's also worse than the Swords, Batterskull, and Jitte in Legacy, so the initial premise of the argument of being playable in Legacy doesn't necessarily hold anyway. Even against TNN, you'd rather have Sword of Fire and Ice than Godsend.
I think most people would agree that Miracles is one of the purest control decks you can find in Legacy. Permission, card draw, removal, sweepers, as many land drops as it can make...it's much more interactive than any combo deck.
Top doesn't see play in Legacy Delver decks because while they love Ponder-like effects, 1 mana every turn is pretty intensive in a Wasteland + Daze deck. In Modern, though? I think it might be playable, since it's far less likely you're on 2 lands the entire match.
Anything that costs 2 mana is NOT going to replace Visions. Visions is powerful exactly because it costs only 1 mana. You can keep a hand of 1 land, 1 Visions and 5 other spells because of this.
Desperate Ravings is better because it provides net card advantage. Vs slower decks like UWR Control you can sit there and slowly draw cards with Ravings until you have enough to go off through disruption. Looting is absolutely horrendous when you just spent your whole hand to power up Ascension - with 0 cards in hand, all it does is mill yourself. In the same situation, Ravings will leave you with 2 cards in hand. Much better than 0.
Quicken as a cantrip substitute sounds hilarious as it potentially lets you go off on your opponent's turn.
In before Pod overtakes Storm as the new "must ban now" fad. Perhaps we've arrived at a cyclic metagame? People packed combo hate and less Anger of the Gods this week, maybe?
While I don't believe WotC "hates" control or blue (afraid of, now, is a different story) and wants to cripple it in Modern, I suspect they worry Top Control might make the format less appealing to newcomers, or the players they believe they have a real shot at convincing to go into Modern. Let's look at all the cries to ban something from Storm, for example. The deck has received several bannings due to power level concerns, and there is no evidence that in its current form is too good for Modern (currently it has neither warped the metagame nor demonstrated a consistent violation of the Turn 4 rule). Yet it is clear many people don't like it and don't want it in the format.
At its current pace, I would say Storm isn't doing anything too good for Modern. But if this holds true up to the next update and Storm receives a banning anyway, at that point I think it would be clear that WotC uses the banlist to also protect the "image" of Modern. And under that same guiding principle I believe it would be unlikely for Top to come off the banlist either. To what extent this is actually a reality is unknown, of course.
The initial idea was to make Storm players rage in Game 1: "Really, Dryad Militant? Really, Thalia? Really, Spirit of the Labyrinth?" But then I became interested in the idea of a B/W deck that could target a broad range of Steam Vents decks, from combo to control to tempo. The hatebears decks in Modern right now like to attack their opponents' mana, so I wanted to see if it was possible to take a Deadguy Ale approach by attacking the hand. Initial testing has proved better than I expected, and I think with some tuning this could solid. Here's a rough draft of the main deck:
There's some awkward tension between Thalia and the 20 noncreature spells, but so far I haven't minded it. It matters very little on Aether Vial draws, and against decks where Thalia shines the symmetry favors you anyway, since your discard is cheap. Then when they've finally killed her, they don't have enough mana up to stop you from slamming down Liliana or shredding their hand apart.
3 Spirit of the Labyrinth is likely excessive and comes from the original shell's desire to target sorcery-speed cantripping.
I think one of the biggest distinctions of the deck is that it's a shell which can support Tidehollow Sculler.
Just wanted to point out this is a pretty poor representation of Finkel's performance; he excelled at playing Storm in the constructed portion of the event and performed terrible in Limited.
That statement can easily go the other way. "To you. That does not mean the meta isn't fine." The only thing that we can use to make this assessment is statistical evidence (a large, unbiased sample size without cherrypicking events or Top 8s), and I expect when MTGSalvation releases its own spreadsheet in a couple of weeks the results will suggest the metagame is currently fine, with Splinter Twin possibly teetering the line.
Now that Storm is playing 2 Grapeshots in the maindeck, if it ever got out of hand the meta could probably self-correct with more Thalia or Delver decks.
I think it is unfair to hold these "incorrect" bannings against Wizards of the Coast. While it has been proven that Bitterblossom is not too powerful for Modern, it may have been at its inception and stagnated the growth and development of all these well-tuned decklists that now don't care about the Faeries menace. In this same way I would say a lot of the early bannings were not "wrong," because it is the exclusion of these cards for a couple years that may allow Modern to develop other decks at a pace that these banned cards are no longer too good. I do agree that it is time to explore further unbannings now.
I think the greatest thing about having Faeries as a deck is that it's a good safety valve against combo's share of the metagame. Even if it isn't "Tier 1" I feel it can play a very important role in establishing a healthy, cyclical metagame.
Modern sees more 4cmc+ cards than Legacy does, however. Engine combo like Storm cares, but it's not a big deal for decks like Splinter Twin. Delver decks actually find this effect miserable. On the other hand, the opponent doesn't mind too much if they Lightning Helix and Electrolyze it.
As far as red two-drops go, I'm convinced Young Pyromancer is of a higher power level than this card, but Eidolon is very effective against particular decks. At the very least, Burn can sideboard him in against Storm decks.
Top doesn't see play in Legacy Delver decks because while they love Ponder-like effects, 1 mana every turn is pretty intensive in a Wasteland + Daze deck. In Modern, though? I think it might be playable, since it's far less likely you're on 2 lands the entire match.
Quicken as a cantrip substitute sounds hilarious as it potentially lets you go off on your opponent's turn.
http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/97792
http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/97794
http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/97806
http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/97738
At its current pace, I would say Storm isn't doing anything too good for Modern. But if this holds true up to the next update and Storm receives a banning anyway, at that point I think it would be clear that WotC uses the banlist to also protect the "image" of Modern. And under that same guiding principle I believe it would be unlikely for Top to come off the banlist either. To what extent this is actually a reality is unknown, of course.
4 Dark Confidant
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Serra Avenger
3 Spirit of the Labyrinth
4 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
4 Artifacts:
4 Aether Vial
1 Enchantment:
4 Instants:
4 Path to Exile
9 Sorceries:
3 Inquisition of Kozliek
3 Thoughtseize
3 Lingering Souls
2 Planewalkers:
2 Liliana of the Veil
21 Lands:
4 Marsh Flats
4 Arid Mesa
2 Verdant Catacombs
3 Godless Shrine
2 Isolated Chapel
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Eiganjo Castle
There's some awkward tension between Thalia and the 20 noncreature spells, but so far I haven't minded it. It matters very little on Aether Vial draws, and against decks where Thalia shines the symmetry favors you anyway, since your discard is cheap. Then when they've finally killed her, they don't have enough mana up to stop you from slamming down Liliana or shredding their hand apart.
3 Spirit of the Labyrinth is likely excessive and comes from the original shell's desire to target sorcery-speed cantripping.
I think one of the biggest distinctions of the deck is that it's a shell which can support Tidehollow Sculler.