Preordain is too strong currently with Grixis DS and Storm where they are. SFM is fine. Not sure about the other two.
What you say for preordain is probably right in that Wizards won't do it because of Storm mainly, but I don't think that the power level of the card changes depending on the decks that are actually playing the card.
No matter what combo or other decks we have in the format, Serum Visions is left behind as a one-mana cantrip nowadays. This is not to say it's a bad card, but it's mediocre or just good in a format we do have a lot of great consistency tools(for example Ancient Stirrings).
That said, I think Preordain would not be too strong in the current format, but just as strong as it needs to be.
(Still Wizards won't unban the card probably)
Having that kind of consistency for no opportunity cost except for playing island is dangerous. Serum Visions cannot be compared to stirrings or any of the other consistency tools in green currently used. The consistency tools in green require you to pigeonhole yourself into certain deck building limitations which is why they are more powerful. No matter how much people say serum visions is mediocre it is still a consistency tool that can be played in a pile of good cards unlike stirrings. It is the same reason why coco can exist in modern while blue draw spells like dig cannot. Coco cheats mana while also giving you card advantage but dig is unbiased towards cards types which makes it much more dangerous. A world where storm has both visions, and preordain and twin has both serum and preordain is a scary one.
So I'll say that my one complaint about Affinity and it's recent success is that I find the deck extremely dull to watch and play against. Even still it has a spot in the format and I'm not slamming my hands down hoping it gets banned. I just would like for events not to come down to Affinity mirrors in top 8 because... yawn. I'm a big fan of what Death Shadow has done to the format. It's forced folks to play extremely interactive games of magic and doesn't do so by threatening to just oops in the game on the spot. I honestly don't get the hate for it.
Affinity is actually a really skill intensive deck. Probably some of the most decision trees of any deck in modern. Of course the enjoyment of watching it is subjective but I personally find it interesting because there are sl many different plays that different players would make with the deck and it is difficult to say which is optimal.
Dredge has stayed. Its very much a viable deck still?
It is better than it current share is. Dredge is powerful and can still win through hate just not at theobnoxious levels that it did before. If the pt was still a thing I think we would see a lot more ds, eldrazi tron, and dredge as the bbig 3 decks to beat.
There is still a difference between diversity, and oppressiveness as far as causation goes. :]
You look at the old Meta's, and think 'Twin was holding things back'.
We have had how many sets since then though? How many cards simply did not exist to enable various decks? It literally can take ONE CARD to make a deck into a beast.
I'm not saying Twin wasnt the best.
I'm not saying the Twin meta's were better, I actually think this is the best meta we have had, since I started around Theros.
I'm not saying Twin will 'fix' the format, as I personally do not feel the format is in need of a fix!
I'm not even saying right now, that Twin should never have been banned!
I am simply saying Twin did not oppress any decks or strategies which existed at the time of its banning, and no UR diversity was being oppressed because 'why not just Twin', because nothing came out of the ban and Wizards is on record admitting it did not turn out as they hoped.
Call it a good ban if you want. Call Twin one of the best decks of all Modern time.
Simply do not misrepresent what it was, when it was simply not oppressive. Unfair? I'm not even touching that, but it WAS that good. It was a pleasure to play, and a pleasure to watch be played.
Oppressive though? Eldrazi were oppressive.
I'll admit that UR deck diversity didn't increase after the ban and that is fine as it showcases the reality of how good Twin was and how bad the cards surrounding it actually are. Essentially every other deck that caught a ban survived as a viable deck because the core cards were still powerful enough to maintain a viable T1-2 deck, why not for the UR core of Twin? Only a single card banned and every other card becomes garbage?
It was noxious to fair decks imo, in a similar way to Pod but probably not quite as heavily.
The cards that surrounded twin are by no means bad. They just encourage wincons which are not available in modern currently. Blue decks in powerful formats always encouraged compact combo wins, tempo (the cards are lacking for this), and prison. Out of the cards that are available in blue they seem to point to compact combo wins with tempo elements to buy time for said combo. We are lacking the proactive plan to surround with ur currently not the actual support. No matter how much people complain snapcaster mage, and serum visions are powerful cards and blue is the king of nonbiased consistencyy. Sure green cards search and sculpt better than serum visions but they pigeonhole you into a subset of cards such as creatures or colorless cards but those are huge limitations while serum visions is good in any deck and snap essentially acts as copies 5-8 of key cards in a matchhup after you draw the first copy. There are good blue cards like remand bbut these cards encourage a proactive plan that is currently not available in modern not that said cards are bad. Discard would be much worse if cheap efficient beaters were not available in abundance to take advantage of the short window in which discard provides for you to beatdown your opponent.
Nothing on the list helps mid-range with its current situations
those situations being that big mana is better than it was for the vast majority of Modern
As noted several times in the past few pages, mid-range decks are supposed to have bad match-ups against big mana decks. We aren't (and shouldn't be) looking for unbans that make mid-range's worst match-up the mirror. We are discussing unbans that allow for reasonable diversity among mid-range decks and there are several good options on the ban list currently.
I currently see no cards on the ban list that help. The cards on the list either help combo, will do nothing, or if they are good will be too good.
I think there are some interesting leaps of logic going on.
1. Jund was supplanted by DSJ and Grixis DS.
2. Jund had a hard game against big mana.
3. DS decks have more game against big mana.
4. Therefore Big Mana is suppressing mid-range to 'toxic' (god I hate that word in online context) levels??
Item 4 is a fallacy. DS decks are suppressing mid-range, as they are simple the same deck with the best creatures in a format which has been cultivated to run around creatures.
If you want to pretend something is holding down mid-range and control...look to the redundant monsters we have running DS, how efficient the decks are, and how much interaction they can pack.
Big Mana is a boogie man, but it's not the issue.
Mid-range evolved, and Control (UW) is running AAA league cards against Blacks pro league.
That's all there is to it.
Surge, how can you conclude that an entire archetype (midrange) lowering it's curved to avoid big mana means that the deck it turned into is the problem?
Logically if they had either nothing to avoid or a hope in hell against big mana then the midrange decks would feel no selective pressure to change.
Could you explain your logic a bit more, because I don't see how you get to your conclusion?
If I may weigh into this: the problem itself isn't that Bx aggro-control decks evolved to have better matchups all around (including big mana decks), but rather that in doing so they may have reached an iteration (Grixis Shadow) that is just too good of a deck. The Shadow package is essentially fixing midrange's worst matchup by design. It is yet to be seen if the deck actually reaches ban criteria though.
The key point here is that, as much as some people hate big mana decks and their influnce on the metagame, not a single one of those decks has been a "problem" (as in, bannable) since Eldrazi Winter. Right now, I only have hard numbers for the last 6 months but I'm confident "Tron, Eldrazi and Valakut decks average 21% together" still holds true if we go back. And that didn't stop BGx from being Tier 1 for years. People are just having more success with Grixis Shadow, can't blame them for jumping ship.
I think there are some interesting leaps of logic going on.
1. Jund was supplanted by DSJ and Grixis DS.
2. Jund had a hard game against big mana.
3. DS decks have more game against big mana.
4. Therefore Big Mana is suppressing mid-range to 'toxic' (god I hate that word in online context) levels??
Item 4 is a fallacy. DS decks are suppressing mid-range, as they are simple the same deck with the best creatures in a format which has been cultivated to run around creatures.
If you want to pretend something is holding down mid-range and control...look to the redundant monsters we have running DS, how efficient the decks are, and how much interaction they can pack.
Big Mana is a boogie man, but it's not the issue.
Mid-range evolved, and Control (UW) is running AAA league cards against Blacks pro league.
That's all there is to it.
Surge, how can you conclude that an entire archetype (midrange) lowering it's curved to avoid big mana means that the deck it turned into is the problem?
Logically if they had either nothing to avoid or a hope in hell against big mana then the midrange decks would feel no selective pressure to change.
Could you explain your logic a bit more, because I don't see how you get to your conclusion?
If I may weigh into this: the problem itself isn't that Bx aggro-control decks evolved to have better matchups all around (including big mana decks), but rather that in doing so they may have reached an iteration (Grixis Shadow) that is just too good of a deck. The Shadow package is essentially fixing midrange's worst matchup by design. It is yet to be seen if the deck actually reaches ban criteria though.
The key point here is that, as much as some people hate big mana decks and their influnce on the metagame, not a single one of those decks has been a "problem" (as in, bannable) since Eldrazi Winter. Right now, I only have hard numbers for the last 6 months but I'm confident "Tron, Eldrazi and Valakut decks average 21% together" still holds true if we go back. And that didn't stop BGx from being Tier 1 for years. People are just having more success with Grixis Shadow, can't blame them for jumping ship.
I think its both,
DS has become the norm for mid decks because its just a better version than its previous forms.
but the change was because of the big mana meta also.
it wasn't until probe was banned and eldrazi tron came into tier 1 until we started to see this shift.
but for someone to say the death shadow rise had NOTHING to do with big mana is just ignorant.
This. The reason traditional jund did ok back then was because all the aggro/combo running around that were running around ehich made big mana bad. I also believe bgx is just popular no matter what form it takes even when it is an actively subpar choice. There has been metas where pros said bgx was not tier 1 power wise but it had tier 1 popularity. Ds is the first time that we truly seen bxx decks be tier 1 in both power level and popularity since before eldrazi winter.
No changes was a good call. Let us have some unbans at the next time.
Nope, they will be evaluating how their "new improved answers" from HoD play into the format. Since that is the earliest they said the design philosophy could be implemented. It's so easy for them to continually point to this kind of argument as justification for inaction as opposed to doing any real testing. They want stability before unbanning things but they are constantly releasing new sets. It's a catch-22 that they are more than happy to be caught in.
Next announcement will also be "no changes" unless DS continues to put up the numbers it did at SCG.
It's been about 5 ban announcements in a row where the community seems to embrace a SFM unban only to see no action. Certainly enough to see a trend at this point and I see no reason they would change their approach now.
I don't think the community is embracing unbanning SFM. Just a particular portion of it.
This. I am against it and I am part of the community. Cards like stoneforge and bbe are less unfair than stuff currently in the format but the majority of those things come with oppertunity costs while stoneforge and bbe require so little and can be played in a pile of good stuff decks.
What I was thinking is how much has the format slowed down compared to the Infect/DSZoo period. We were witnessing A LOT of turn 3 kills, and the games were ending too fast. Now, we witnessed one of the slowest decks of the format winning a whole event yesterday(Eldrazi Tron). Meaning a deck that often hardcasts Batterskull.
The bannings of GGT & Gitaxian Probe were the best thing that could happen finally. Even if some of us were sceptical back then.
That's some great news I suppose.
8
I always heralded those as the best bans right off the bat. The feelings I had towards are how I feel about Street Wraith currently and if anything has to go I would say it is Wraith. Free spells are just not good for a resource based game.
It is not far from true. The deck is actually underplayed for how strong it is. I am not saying it is overwhelmingly strong but it is up there with DS and dredge when people do not respect it.
itcant be true 1 or 2 pages back it was stated ds grixis, ds jund, and da esper are the best decks with ds anything right behind it. My how quickly things change lol. Honestly though poor $goyf$ is just sitting there with what 3 decks in the top 30 this weekend?
I do not agree with the previous statement though even if the same person brought it up. In my opinion from what experienced and seen and opinions on people I trust the top decks are grixis ds, eldrazi tron, and dredge all being pretty even with shadow maybe being slightly better. After these company decks come in as the next step down in the power level ladder. I am sure if we had the modern protour back these 3 decks would see a huge amount of play and success.
It is not far from true. The deck is actually underplayed for how strong it is. I am not saying it is overwhelmingly strong but it is up there with DS and dredge when people do not respect it.
True! They know the problem with colour balance since a while and dont stop printing better and cheaper answers in the best modern colour too. Best creatures in black and green...now best answer too like push and best tutors in green. Hey, they even try a cheaper wrath in black. I dont think they can solve the colour problem with this strategy
The color balance is not as bad as it seems. Blue is actually a strong color in modern and it only lacked a proper wincon such as death's shadow. White is the only color that seems to be behind only really being a color to splash path and sideboard cards.
The only reason that blue was percieved as a weak color is because people want it to showcase a strategy that only works in narrow formats. I blame a lot of this urge to want a true control deck on miracles. A lot of people would point to miracles and say that control works in legacy but why not in modern when in rrality miracles is a proactive deck. Miracles was a combo prison deck which was just as degenerate as the fast combo decks with insane answers like 1 mana wraths in terminus. For any deck to work in eternal formats you need to be proactive which is why blue has been combo/control, tempo decks, or u midrange throughout the history of vintage and legacy and it won't be any different in modern. This is seen in the twin era and now the grixis shadow era.
Hi all, was able to get a little bit of testing in this weekend and FNM. I ran a fairly stock GWx list - will post later when I can.
For FNM, I went 2-2 with wins against Goblins and RW Prison/Hatebears, and losses to Tron and the new Living End list. The GWx version proved amazing in the winning MU's as Kitchen Finks and Voice of Resurgence can pretty much carry the day. Sitting at 2-0 headed into my 3rd match, I got obliterated 0-2 by Tron. That MU seems horrendous (I do not mainboard Ghost Quarter). G1: T3 Karn exiled my creatures, which obviously makes the Finks/VOR return effects null and void, followed by a T4 Ugin. G2 I windmill-slammed a T2 Stony Silence only to see him drop a T3 Karn into T4 Ugin anyway. Ridiculous. Then I got 0-2'ed by the new Living End which cast T3 Living End both games with a bunch of creatures in bin. I was looking to combo the following turn (I went T1 Birds of Paradise, T2 Finks, T3 Saheeli, and had Eldritch Evolution in hand) but he played Faerie Macabre in response to the persist trigger to exile my Finks. Feelsbadman. I was pretty bummed playing against Tron and Living End. Are these just tough MU's, is it me being inexperienced with the deck, or do we not have game against legit Tier 1 decks?
Also, I tried out the Jeskai version on the side against Eldrazi Tron. I did manage to go 2-0 there, but I wonder how competitive that shell is (UWR) versus the GWx version considering there are basically no postings out there (other than a Top 32 appearance months ago). Is that version just far inferior?
Jeskai list have been doing ok even with how vastly underplayed it is. As you said there was a top 32 in Brisbane mknths ago and a 25th place in one of the gps that just happened. Also smaller tournament sucess like a top 8 in an italian tournament. Those are pretty impressive showings for a deck that is played by just a handful of people. Anyway pretty much all green creature decks just lose to tron which even the vizier decks that are considered the second best decks in modern next to the shadow decks gets crushed by tron. You basically have to hope that they do not draw their best hand to give you time to beat down or just combo them out turn 3 if you are on the play.
So sure, I guess diversity and health now is just barely reaching what it was when Twin was still in the format. It only took a year and a half, multiple extraneous bannings, and there's still no competitively viable control or reactive tempo decks playable. But I guess Modern is doing great because there's so many ways you can kill your opponents quickly and through high variance.
Without even getting into whether or not "reactive tempo" is even a real thing, if it was, Grixis DS and DSJ would almost certainly fall into that category.
When your goal is to win by discarding the opponent's hand and riding a high-value threat to victory, your game plan lines up more with Jund than Delver. After Twin, I spent more than a year playing Delver and now Shadow, the decks are nothing alike.
This. Shadow actually has a lot of tempo negative plays with all the discard and the o ly real similarity to a fully powered delver deck is that they use undercosted creatures. No discard deck can be considered tempo because the whole premise of tempo decks is to negate the opponents mana usage by either restricting the mana or answering threats that were paid for for less mana.
The fact that you do not understand the following while the rest of us do really puzzles me:
Diversity reduction was the mere catalyst; the mere triggering event.
What numbers support this diversity reduction? GP Top 8s in 2015 had something like 30 different archetypes represented and 7 different winning decks across all 7 events (yes, 2 were Twin, but one was traditional UR, the other was Jeskai with Kiki Jiki, Resto Angel, and Elspeth). The overall collection of Tier 1 and 2 decks is about the same as it has been since after the ban, even with manipulation of cutoff numbers over the past year (lowering the % point where decks are classified). I suppose now that I'm done teaching for the year I have the time to crunch the numbers myself; at least through whatever relevant info is still available today now that Modern Nexus no longer does format updates. But from preliminary looks, the hard numbers now aren't really that much different than they were then. People keep making this claim about increased diversity, but I don't think I've seen anyone support that with numbers.
The real reason behind why most of the Control players on Jeskai, Grixis, UR or other control shells was jamming the combo in them and/or the real reason why so many players were sleeving up Splinter Twin to win GP's/PT's was that the deck had just a few to none bad matchups(Control decks that were Tier 2/3 only and BGx were and could be real even) And it had just a few bad matchups, because the 2 card combo was too good.
If it was so good, why wasn't it 20, 30, 50+% of the meta like every other diversity-ban deck? Pros sleeved it up because it preys on players that don't respect it and rewards careful play. There should be nothing wrong with a good deck that rewards good play and punishes bad play, like getting blown out trying to jam the combo turn 4. The myths and legends around this deck are greatly exaggerated, and even LESS relevant in the vicious and cutthroat meta we have now. Being in the format for 5 years it's not like the deck was some sleeper secret. If it was really as broken as people claim it was, it would have had metashare numbers to back that up, like every other banned deck. We have to face the reality that WOTC just didn't like the image of the deck; the idea of the deck, and especially didn't like the narrative it might have at the next PT. So they banned it, and then fed us a bunch of garbage BS reasons for doing so. (Though, the joke's on them for ruining Modern with Eldrazi anyway). Then we, the community, filled in the gaps with our misrepresented memories and retroactive justifications that were never actually made at the time (remember, this ban came as a shock to literally everyone). The feeling of justification now is one that has built up through people reiterating and exaggerating things, trying to make sense out of something that didn't make sense at the time. And now with the whole Saheeli/Guardian debacle, we have a whole new wave of retroactive opinions, despite vastly different circumstances at every possible level.
If the only thing the deck was guilty of was being "too good" then ban Deceiver Exarch and let the deck survive with a 2/1 or make massive concessions to run 3 colors in a weaker shell. This is not hard. But instead, in their infinite wisdom, they ripped out the deck's core and then had the audacity to even suggest that Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker would be fine as a replacement, or that "Temur Tempo" would be a great deck. Their ignorance of deck building and format metas seems to know no bounds, and this was a flagship example.
Now, I think with Fatal Push around we can really use it in the meta and I would welcome it back. As I told you during a GP in Twitch, I would still be playing Grixis Shadow, and I could have another good matchup against a ~10% of the meta deck with all of my Thoughtseize, Inquisition Of Kozilek, Fatal Push, Terminate, Stubborn Denial, Snapcaster Mage and some 6/6's that Roast can not kill and Remand is useless against them.
I agree. I think Shadow decks would rip Twin a new one. And Eldrazi would give it massive headaches. It would also likely bring back traditional Jund builds and help control to be relevant again.
You cannot welcome it back. It BREAKS control. Control needs to have a weakness in the early game. Twin eliminates that window when it can win w/ an "easy" button on turn 4. As somebody said on another thread it gives Control a dominant position over AGGRO and you cannot let Control have that position over aggro. With Twin in the format you have a 3-turn window to interact w/ the control deck before you are essentially locked out of victory, and that window goes down to 2 turns if you are on the draw.
Exaggerations like this show a massive lack of experience playing with or against the deck.
Yea considering that burn was one of the tougher matchups ffor twin and the fact that you do not always have the combo.
Yeah, but I mean if you're going to play control one of the key difficulties of the deck design is how to close out the game.
In modern the problem is twofold - with Modern answers (in blue in particular) you're not really establishing control at any given point in time, mostly you're just buying time and often a step behind even with the best of efforts. Once you've "bought" time you have to ride a Colonade to victory or some such garbage, which is laughable by the standards of things that Tron, Dredge and whatnot can throw at you.
So not only do you have a weaker early game than the old control decks your endgame is also poor. Naturally players will jam things like Twin in to give them some inevitability.
You just can't afford to durdle against most Modern decks, if you can win you need to win now now now.
This is super obvious when watching a match of U Tron vs U/W control where the latter is basically climbing a sheer cliff to maintain parity. And then they tap out for Gideon or something like that and you just lol and use 10 mana to slam and activate a mindslaver in response.
What I'm saying is that normal control (as in not cheating on mana) needs a finisher like Twin to be good in modern, among other things. Either its a combo or your permission spells are so good you can eventually terrorize them and beat them with a bear. The stuff inbetween is bound to be some sort of wonky compromise that's neither here nor there.
I think control players in general would prefer better permission to more I win wombos, if the choice were given to them. Espcially considering that many, (or even the majority,) of twin builds had a tempo/midrange back up plan, not a control one.
The only counter that currently exists that would make a difference is mental misstep and most I believe would not want that. I would rather take the good proactive gameplan to go with my interactive blue shell. Even with good counter magic modern is too diverse to not be playing to win or execute your own game plan in a reasonable amount of time.
Having that kind of consistency for no opportunity cost except for playing island is dangerous. Serum Visions cannot be compared to stirrings or any of the other consistency tools in green currently used. The consistency tools in green require you to pigeonhole yourself into certain deck building limitations which is why they are more powerful. No matter how much people say serum visions is mediocre it is still a consistency tool that can be played in a pile of good cards unlike stirrings. It is the same reason why coco can exist in modern while blue draw spells like dig cannot. Coco cheats mana while also giving you card advantage but dig is unbiased towards cards types which makes it much more dangerous. A world where storm has both visions, and preordain and twin has both serum and preordain is a scary one.
Edit: Meant preordain not Ponder.
Affinity is actually a really skill intensive deck. Probably some of the most decision trees of any deck in modern. Of course the enjoyment of watching it is subjective but I personally find it interesting because there are sl many different plays that different players would make with the deck and it is difficult to say which is optimal.
It is better than it current share is. Dredge is powerful and can still win through hate just not at theobnoxious levels that it did before. If the pt was still a thing I think we would see a lot more ds, eldrazi tron, and dredge as the bbig 3 decks to beat.
The cards that surrounded twin are by no means bad. They just encourage wincons which are not available in modern currently. Blue decks in powerful formats always encouraged compact combo wins, tempo (the cards are lacking for this), and prison. Out of the cards that are available in blue they seem to point to compact combo wins with tempo elements to buy time for said combo. We are lacking the proactive plan to surround with ur currently not the actual support. No matter how much people complain snapcaster mage, and serum visions are powerful cards and blue is the king of nonbiased consistencyy. Sure green cards search and sculpt better than serum visions but they pigeonhole you into a subset of cards such as creatures or colorless cards but those are huge limitations while serum visions is good in any deck and snap essentially acts as copies 5-8 of key cards in a matchhup after you draw the first copy. There are good blue cards like remand bbut these cards encourage a proactive plan that is currently not available in modern not that said cards are bad. Discard would be much worse if cheap efficient beaters were not available in abundance to take advantage of the short window in which discard provides for you to beatdown your opponent.
I currently see no cards on the ban list that help. The cards on the list either help combo, will do nothing, or if they are good will be too good.
This. The reason traditional jund did ok back then was because all the aggro/combo running around that were running around ehich made big mana bad. I also believe bgx is just popular no matter what form it takes even when it is an actively subpar choice. There has been metas where pros said bgx was not tier 1 power wise but it had tier 1 popularity. Ds is the first time that we truly seen bxx decks be tier 1 in both power level and popularity since before eldrazi winter.
This. I am against it and I am part of the community. Cards like stoneforge and bbe are less unfair than stuff currently in the format but the majority of those things come with oppertunity costs while stoneforge and bbe require so little and can be played in a pile of good stuff decks.
I always heralded those as the best bans right off the bat. The feelings I had towards are how I feel about Street Wraith currently and if anything has to go I would say it is Wraith. Free spells are just not good for a resource based game.
I do not agree with the previous statement though even if the same person brought it up. In my opinion from what experienced and seen and opinions on people I trust the top decks are grixis ds, eldrazi tron, and dredge all being pretty even with shadow maybe being slightly better. After these company decks come in as the next step down in the power level ladder. I am sure if we had the modern protour back these 3 decks would see a huge amount of play and success.
It is not far from true. The deck is actually underplayed for how strong it is. I am not saying it is overwhelmingly strong but it is up there with DS and dredge when people do not respect it.
The color balance is not as bad as it seems. Blue is actually a strong color in modern and it only lacked a proper wincon such as death's shadow. White is the only color that seems to be behind only really being a color to splash path and sideboard cards.
The only reason that blue was percieved as a weak color is because people want it to showcase a strategy that only works in narrow formats. I blame a lot of this urge to want a true control deck on miracles. A lot of people would point to miracles and say that control works in legacy but why not in modern when in rrality miracles is a proactive deck. Miracles was a combo prison deck which was just as degenerate as the fast combo decks with insane answers like 1 mana wraths in terminus. For any deck to work in eternal formats you need to be proactive which is why blue has been combo/control, tempo decks, or u midrange throughout the history of vintage and legacy and it won't be any different in modern. This is seen in the twin era and now the grixis shadow era.
Jeskai list have been doing ok even with how vastly underplayed it is. As you said there was a top 32 in Brisbane mknths ago and a 25th place in one of the gps that just happened. Also smaller tournament sucess like a top 8 in an italian tournament. Those are pretty impressive showings for a deck that is played by just a handful of people. Anyway pretty much all green creature decks just lose to tron which even the vizier decks that are considered the second best decks in modern next to the shadow decks gets crushed by tron. You basically have to hope that they do not draw their best hand to give you time to beat down or just combo them out turn 3 if you are on the play.
This. Shadow actually has a lot of tempo negative plays with all the discard and the o ly real similarity to a fully powered delver deck is that they use undercosted creatures. No discard deck can be considered tempo because the whole premise of tempo decks is to negate the opponents mana usage by either restricting the mana or answering threats that were paid for for less mana.
Yea considering that burn was one of the tougher matchups ffor twin and the fact that you do not always have the combo.
The only counter that currently exists that would make a difference is mental misstep and most I believe would not want that. I would rather take the good proactive gameplan to go with my interactive blue shell. Even with good counter magic modern is too diverse to not be playing to win or execute your own game plan in a reasonable amount of time.