I largely agree with this article. It's why players like Craig Wescoe T8 a GP with a deck they've been playing for years. Or why Daniel Wong got to the Vegas T8 with Taking Turns. Or why Todd Stevens and his beloved Eldrazi Tron have so much recent success. Just take a look at some of the MTGO regulars who play their decks all the time and routinely repeat 5-0 performances in the Leagues, whether in this current metagame or in past ones. The format is significantly more skill-rewarding than many claim.
In Legacy, you have fewer matchups and overall less diversity, so skill plays out in choices on Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, FoW, Daze, Wasteland, Therapy, etc. These cards are hugely skill-tesitng, and the matchups between the top decks reflect the skill in using those cards effectively. In Modern, you don't have those same kinds of skill-testing cards (indeed, we don't have any of the above cards) but you have significantly more deck diversity. This requires more knowledge of more decks, their sideboards, your sideboarding plan against them, and your/their overall gameplan. It means you need to change how you use your cards every game.
I've watched the pros and vocal streamers that complain about variance, and when I see their games, I see endless misplays and small errors that result in losses. Slamming TS on T1 against decks with no significant T1 or T2 plays and then moaning about a topdeck that won the opponent the game. Mindlessly Bolting dorks before losing to Druid combo. Picking the wrong card off IoK/TS. Choosing the wrong mode on Esper Charm, K-Command, or Cryptic for the matchup. Killing a Baral and then tapping out with more removal in hand and getting wrecked by a T4 Electromancer into the combo after an opponent cantripped three times in the match. Keeping Affinity or Elves hands with no business spells against decks with sweepers. Making awful sideboard decisions like Leyline of Sanctity against Ad Nauseam. Choosing to stay on the play against discard decks like 8Rack. Endless misplays and misjudgments of opposing decks.
Then I watch the games of more technical pilots with deeper format knowledge and see them pick up huge margins from format knowledge. They don't tilt, complain, or blame external factors, and they break down all their choices against opposing possibilities. I don't remember the player, but I recently watched a game where a streamer was in G2 or G3 against a Storm deck. Without even looking up the opposing list, he was worried about the opponent boarding in a Blood Moon plan B and he mulliganed his first hand because it didn't have fetchlands. He kept his second and fetched an Island to Serum Visions on the draw. Sure enough, the opponent rituals into a Moon on their second turn. This is where players in that first category I described above would rage about swingy Modern cards but this guy already knew it and already had the out. Modern needs more of that play and clarity, not the complaining.
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ktkenshinx posted a message on Ne w (6-27-17) Channelfireball Article - Brian DemarsPosted in: Modern -
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ktkenshinx posted a message on Banlist change for 1/9/2017Posted in: Modern ArchivesQuote from Lilijuana »
Their reason for banning probe was as succinct and to the point as it gets...and correct. I don't see how tournament reports are necessary when they are addressing how the card influences gameplay.
You mentioned the Delver deck above. It runs 17 lands and essentially 56 cards b/c Probe enables such a composition to be viable when normally it would not.
This rationale is arbitrary and applies to dozens of cards in the format. Gameplay reasons are all subjective. That is why we should prefer objective reasons like T4 rule violations and format diversity violations. Name a Tier 1 staple in Modern and I'm sure half a dozen people in this thread could knit together a rhetorical argument about why that card is busted because it is too strong in gameplay. We cannot have Wizards start banning cards for those reasons because it's completely unpredictable and doesn't necessarily improve the format.
Here's the Probe rationale I would have written, assuming I had their data:
"Looking at the results of Modern games on MTGO, we found that no single top-tier deck was consistently winning before turn four and violating the turn four rule. That said, many players complained about how fast the format was. We did a deeper dive and also found that too many overall games were ending before turn four as a result of numerous fast, linear, aggressive strategies, although no single deck was to blame. Rather than ban individual cards from each of these decks (no one of which was alone in violation), we looked at cards shared between all of them to decrease the overall number of games won before turn four. Probe was the most offensive of those shared cards, appearing in the greatest percentage of pre-turn four wins relative to any other shared card.
This finding is supported by Probe's gameplay: it gives perfect information, draws a card, fuels delve, and even pumps creatures for basically no investment. Although it is unfortunate other decks will suffer from Probe's removal (e.g. Delver, U/R Storm), we believe Probe's banning will have a net positive on the format as it overall decreases the chance of fast, top-tier decks winning before turn four. Those decks will likely also find replacements and stay viable. In the interest of the turn four rule, Gitaxian Probe is banned."
This took me ten minutes to write and probably summarizes Wizards' analysis of the card. It also would have preemptively addressed most of the anger around the ban. -
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ktkenshinx posted a message on Banlist change for 1/9/2017The anger at this announcement is unusually overblown and unwarranted, even considering the general Modern outcry at such changes. Although there are definitely some legitimately scary elements of the ban update, most people are complaining about elements that are totally fine, or even heartening.Posted in: Modern Archives
The GGT ban is perfectly fine. It keeps the deck a top-tier contender without leaving it a Tier 1 mainstay. This lets other GY decks return (remember old faithful Abzan Company?) and lets everyone free up SB slots to fight other decks. The "scary" part about this ban is that it's a reversal of a previous ban, which is unprecedented but not really that scary. I'm fine with companies and organizations changing their minds based on new realities. In these regards, the GGT ban gets top marks from me.
Probe ban gets a B-. Yes, it's effective at taking a little bit off the top of most fast decks without killing any of them outright. In that regard, it's a solid A. Unfortunately, it does this at the expense of very fair Delver decks, which were great for format health. That's C-, unintended consequence ban territory. More importantly, these kinds of silly bans just underscore Modern's problems: WHERE THE HECK ARE OUR GENERIC ANSWERS AND POLICING CARDS/STRATEGIES?? You don't see these absurd bans in Legacy because the format has internal regulation from cards, not external regulations from bans. I'm not saying we need Legacy's exact answers, but we do need answers and we needed them a year ago. Push is a good step in the right direction, but it can't be the final step. If we don't get these kinds of cards, we'll keep stomaching more corner-case bans like Probe and keep inciting even more ban mania and format instability.
So, if the bans themselves aren't that terrible, what's the real problem?
The problem is the update itself. It doesn't cite tournament finishes, doesn't refer back to format guidelines and rules, doesn't anticipate objections to the bans, and overall doesn't build format confidence. It looked like the article was thrown together in less than an hour, when I'm sure Wizards did mountains of testing and analysis before deciding on some of those bans. If Wizards communicated this to their audience, people wouldn't be so up in arms about these changes. Especially if they threw us a bone about how they want to see how the new format shakes out before deciding on possible unbans. That would have been great! Instead, we got a very elementary update with extremely basic reasons. No wonder people are upset: Wizards hasn't done anything to try and build confidence after a big banlist shakeup.
I hope we get some clarification in the coming weeks. I'm sick and tired of delving through AMAs and Twitter posts to figure out Wizards' banlist policy and process. This lack of transparency makes it very difficult to advocate on behalf of the format and entice players to join. With ban mania everywhere, it's hard to stay evidence-based and level-headed, particularly when Wizards doesn't give us any tools to help that fight. -
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MakoEyesX posted a message on [Primer] Kiki Pod (7/2012 - 1/2015)I actually wasn't a huge fan of exarch. The key situations came up slightly less frequently than the mana caused problems.Posted in: Modern Archives - Established - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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There's not a lot of buzz around Eternal Command anymore since it hasn't put up any big results in a while and also didn't really receive substantial upgrades in a long time.
IMO it's still a solid deck, especially for FNM level where you can plan your metagame a little better. More importantly though, it's a blast to play!
The traditional version is RUG, although people have been brewing with BUG quite a bit as well recently. I personally still prefer the RUG version, thanks to Bolt it has a way better tempo game, BUG offers actual hard removal for big creatures though.
I suggest you just read over the primer and like last 2 pages of this thread and then feel welcome to ask any further questions you might have!
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If I remember correctly, DRS was originally intended to only be able to use your graveyard (which would have created a solid, but a lot less overpowered card). They changed it last minute before the cards went to print.
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Yeah that was sweet!
Does anybody know the record of the guy?
I would love to see the decklist!
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Opt in the Modern cardpool guys! A real 1cmc blue cantrip in Standard again! What do you think?
Edit: Duress, Slice in Twain, Opt
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Not sure if linking stuff is allowed here, but in case people don't believe me:
Here at around 4:05 or here for just the image
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and we've got some amazing commons and uncommons coming your way—including some fantastic reprints you probably didn't see coming.
(I don't really want to believe it but...) Counterspell hype?!
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GSZ is one of the best things green can and could do on turn since pretty much forever: play a mana dork, while not having any of the downsides mana dorks usually have. It does not get worse as the game goes on. You shouldn't ask the question if desks playing tutors will replace them with GSZ, you need to ask if decks that play mana dorks have a reason not to replace them with GSZ.
And I'm not saying there aren't any reasons not to continue to play Noble Hierarchs and Birds. They also fix your mana, CoCO wants a high creature count, exalted is way to good for Indect to pass up on etc.
Reading the last page here just made me feel like people are hugely underselling GSZ. I would like to play with, but I don't think it's time yet. We have a really nice meta right now, several blue decks and strategies are finally viable again. Wizards won't put that on the line with a risky unban like GSZ (and I agree with them here). BBE and SM stay the most likely cards be unbanned and seeing how they have handled unbans in Modern until now, the chances are slim.
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Has the card been confirmed somewhere or was this just posted because MTGS includes it in the spoilers now?
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Here and here you can find the Bans and Unbans Polls.
Only 10% for banning DTT, 61% wanting to unban BBE and 43% for banning TC while 40% wanted no bans. It was kind of a either Modern powers up from here with some unbans or come back to more traditional modern forces by a ban situation.
The metagame was definitely not healthy 20% UR Delver, 20% Pod and decks like Merfolk and RG Valakut packing mainboard Chalices Relics to fight Delver.
In hindsight I definitely agree with the TC ban, I wish they would have let us have DTT a little longer (like in legacy). Yes it would have just fitted into Delver but it was arguably stronger on Scapeshift and Twin decks which would have created an interesting dynamic between the 3.
But that ship has sailed as I preeeeeetty sure DTT is gone for good. What I wanted to make clear with this post is just that the playerbase was polarized a lot more during TC era, with lots of players thinking the card was fine (which we tend to blend out nowadays because the card was banned out of every competitive eternal format) while Eldrazi Winter was a completely different beast where the only question of discussion ended up being what to ban and not if.
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Even more reason to not only look at the top 8 but better top 16/32 of such a big tournament if you wanna judge format health.
Since nobody posted them yet here you can find the top 8 decklists and here place 9 to 32.
-No Grixis Shadow in the top 8 really surprised me (and probably pretty much everyone)
-6 Grixis Death Shadow and 6 Affinity decks in the top 32. Besides that 18 different archetypes.
-Notably Taking Turns in top 8! BW Smallpox, Jeskai Control, 'Faeries' (playing only BB and SSS main), and the GW Humans deck in top 32. No Storm to be seen.
I think this is really good news for modern overall. The 'best deck' Grixis Shadow is a new force to be prepared for, but you can beat it if you are prepared for it. Affinity seems to profit from the fact that people finally run more gravehate in the SB.
Modern is still the format where you can take some 'bad' Tier 3 deck and Top 8 a huge tournament with it (Taking Turns) and it's still worth it to play the deck you know and love instead of just hopping onto the next 'best' deck (see Wescoe and his Hatebears).
The format seems to be in pretty decent shape right now.