Does anyone here enjoy playing against a draw-go control deck that just counters/ kills everything you play?
I heard from wizards that draw-go control is literally the archetype people hate playing against the most. (The other are these 30 minute non-interactive combo decks like 4 horsemen and eggs)
Control mirrors are the most interesting form of magic in my opinion.
I have a question, what control deck has ever been a Tier 1 deck in a meta-game with 10 different decks (i'm assuming your statement about play style is claiming 10 completely different decks and not just 3 BGx decks one for each color splash URx etc.. those types of differences I would not put as "totally different play styles")
I personally cannot think of 1 which has retained a T1 status in the face of such diversity, Control needs a settled and less varied meta-game to work. It only ever did well in the past in Modern because their were essentially only 4-5 decks to consider within reason for any event(Pod, BGx, Twin, Tron, Burn), with the meta-game more open to more decks it seems like a logical conclusion that Control would be a T2 deck.
Your "playstyle/variety" position seems counter to what WotC has directly stated they want for the format in which case you should learn to cope or nag WotC to print more powerful non-creature spells again. IMO this is what control is actually lacking in Modern. People constantly talk about bannings and unbannings I don't think either would help, the problem is that standard is a format in which Prophetic Bolt is a card far to powerful to ever see the light of day.It has been that way for nearly the entirety of scope of Modern playable control cards, powerful spells like Cryptic Command, Gifts Ungiven, Mana Leak, Spell Snare, Remand...those are like dusty relics of control from a pre-modern era; how can you expect draw-go control to do well when its stuck with tools from over a decade ago while essentially any mid-range or aggro strategies get new tech in nearly every set? While I don't have high hopes for ever seeing counterspell reprinted I still hold out hope for a reasonable hoop counterspell similar to how fatal push is a reasonable hoop kill target creature w/c.c. =/-4 (maybe UU1 counter target spell, if you control 2 basic Islands this spell cost-1) idk hard to imagine but still hopeful ( I really want Prophetic bolt rerint).
Have a diverse top-tier metagame featuring over a dozen archetypes
Offer different types of decks and gameplay than what you typically see in Standard http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptsoi/where-modern-goes-from-here-2016-04-24
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Even when modern gets solved it will still be difficult for a control deck unless something so dominate as eldrazi comes. Even the meta with twin, pod, bgx, and burn there are still so many tier 2 or random jank that you would see in the course of a big tournament that you need to just do your own thing. Standard control bombs are enough in that format due to how weak the format is. Like rtr/theros standard you pretty much could beat random jank due to having elspeth which was one of the most powerful proactive things you could do in that format. In modern you really need to be playing with extremely undercosted threats backed with poroactive disruption or a turn 4 combo to just have the better proactive plan than any janky deck can have. Those are the best plans for interactive decks anyway or you could just play a totally linear deck. Modern pure draw go will always at best be tier 2 and get better in smaller tournaments and very inbred metagames like the world championships. In open tournaments you have to be able to just get your free wins every once in a while.
I'd like to suggest a theorem with regards to Magic: "As the card depth of a format increases, the ability for a reactive strategy to be successful decreases." Even Miracles, which looks a lot like a reactive strategy is inherently proactive - the synergy between Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top is a move that proactively limits what your opponent can do rather than waiting for your opponent to do things.
I'd also like to point out that it's not just Magic where being proactive is rewarded. Most other card games, most sports, even military doctrine specifically favour being proactive and being the one who poses the questions rather than staying back and answering them. Of course in any game, sport and even military situation there are people and organisations that are defensive specialists, but those are almost always the exception rather than the norm.
I would argue that Magic's earlier history where reactive strategies were among the most powerful thing you could do was the aberration and that the current mode where being proactive is favoured is much more normal from a gameplay and design perspective. Admittedly, we've gotten to a point where we're probably too proactively focused rather than reactive in terms of design - the current design paradigm of crappy removal is certainly a mistake in my opinion - but threats are always going to be better than answers in Modern and Magic in general.
Truth. The only reason super reactive decks were even playable was due to the small card pool on just how crazy bad threats were back then. The crazy strong answer cards still exist in the older formats but long ago all blue control decks turned to combo or lock decks. Mindslaver lock, tinker, vaultkey, moat in old school, blood moon, mana denial in general (which weissman considered the most controlling thing to do), and oath control are all examples of proactivity in control decks. The point is that you eventually want to stop looking for answers and do your own thing because just a few times of missing on finding an answer and you can die and although cards like moat did this in the past it is best to tap out and put down the shields to kill your opponent in one swoop rather than the creature wincons in standard control decks. Twin was the best example of how a reactive deck should look in eternal formats and why I feel that copycat is better than 3 color good stuff control decks and why scapeshift became the best control deck when the proper support in dig through time was available.
What likely would happen in modern without fetches given the fact there are strong hate cards like blood moon is that we'd see more use of basics and a number of decks par down to two color with a light splash for a third, but given how fast the meta is in modern I'm highly inclined to believe we'd be pushed more towards a two color format entirely. Also, the land cycles that would see more play would likely be shocklands, check lands, and fast lands, along with the filter lands (which would probably become as expensive as the zen fetches without a reprint), and pain lands. Burn would get less effective since it's harder to deal with an opponent who has more than 15 life and other than that if anyone else has any input on what they could foresee changing in modern if the fetches were banned are free to chime in. I'm sure Kevin on Rogue Deckbuilder would have more input since he's had a love/hate relationship with modern for a while and runs an LGS so I'll see if maybe I can get input from him on it.
It is highly unlikely that we will see 2 colors become the norm. I say that because in Innistrad-RTR Standard, 3 color decks were the norm despite having no fetchlands, and that format had worse mana fixing than Modern does even without the fetchlands (at the time it was just the Shocklands, Checklands, and guildgates). It would make 4-color decks less feasible, but how many of those are there? Death's Shadow sometimes splashes for a fourth but it can just as easily stay in Jund. Amulet Titan is 4 colors, but it doesn't even use the fetchlands or shocklands!
Now you mention hate cards as a way to keep people into three colors, citing Blood Moon. It is true that it's a lot harder to play around Blood Moon without fetchlands, so it's more powerful. The problem is that it's harder for the player casting Blood Moon to play around it as well! The card might be more powerful, but it would see far less play.
I've said before that fetches were a good idea gone wrong. At the time they were designed card sleeves weren't as popular as they are now and the game was far younger with a smaller player base. I don't even think the design team at Wizards was as big as it is now, as card design has been getting better moving forward in time and they've been able to crank out more unique card designs than they were able to back in the day.
I'm not sure what the size of the playerbase or the popularity of card sleeves have to do with anything, but I can tell you that you are flat out incorrect when it comes to card sleeves. Those were extremely popular even back then, and you were the odd one out if you weren't using them.
Here is an example of decks from the Onslaught block where allied fetches were from:
Do you see any four color decks? Their are barely any three color decks! From the perspective of the designers at the time fetches were fine and worked great in the blocks they were originally printed in. It wasn't until modern that lands started to really get intermixed and we ended up with three and even four color decks, all of which have unheard of flexibility.
Are you joking? People realized what the fetchlands could do right from the get-go; to claim "it wasn't until Modern" that people used it when people were using the fetchland+dual land or fetchland+shockland combination for almost 10 years is downright laughable. True, at first the synergy was limited to Type 1 and Type 1.5, but the instant the shocklands were printed, that combo was a major force in Extended for years. The idea that this synergy was some kind of long-kept secret that only Modern revealed is just wrong.
Really, in the current day they are a mistake card because of basic land type dual lands turning what was once a "you got to pick which of two colors you want" to "you got to pick which two of four possible colors you want and pay 2 more life if you want to use that right away". That is an incredible amount of power to put into a land.
Nonrotating formats tend to have a higher power level. Nothing particularly odd about the lands keeping up.
For that matter, most of the cards or synergies that are decent enough to see play in Modern were "mistake cards" due to unexpected interactions.
Yes 3 color decks will still be the norm but everybody will just lose more to variance.
Isn't the logical extension of this to simply eliminate manabases entirely and do something similar to Hearthstone? Giving each player "guaranteed" mana every turn but fixing the rate at which it appears in your pool?
Or we could just take the middle ground: fetchland manabases are a good mix of some skill without making mana decisions a big deal. I enjoy seeing small changes in manabases, like deciding whether to add a 4th Temple Garden or a Tomb, Horizon Canopy, or Wildwood. Or swapping a Swamp for an Urborg. Most players probably enjoy that too. But we obviously don't need to take that to the extreme and remove all manabase construction just to make an absurd argument. I'll also emphasize that a post-fetchland manabase would still be "solved" by the massive MTG community and would ultimately be no more/less skill-testing than the current fetchland manabase. The format, however, would lose access to a lot of decks with no certain end. Why would anyone take that big risk for a problem that many don't care about or even acknowledge as a problem?
This also isn't wrong, but you've cherry-picked your examples. For example, it's hard to deny that Legacy is a Brainstorm-dominated format, and yet Legacy Merfolk, Affinity, and Burn don't run it, despite all of them being competitive strategies.
I don't care about Legacy. I care about Modern and am talking about Modern. In Modern, this Brainstorm/Tarmogoyf effect doesn't really happen. There are many decks that share colors and strategic orientations that don't splash just for a goodstuff card because fetchlands let them. There are plenty of non-goodstuff decks using fetchlands in Modern, and plenty of non-fetchlands decks doing non-goodstuff things in Modern. This argument appears to invent a diversity problem that doesn't exist.
I mostly agree with this. I don't think that shuffling issues are the primary driver for wanting fetchlands banned in Modern. However, your exact argument could also be made for Sensei's Divining Top, which I'm hoping that we can both agree should never be let out of its cage in Modern.
You're making the same style of argument you made above. I rarely, if ever, mention logical fallacies (it's generally annoying on forums), but this is the second instance of reducto ad absurdum in the same post.
Fetches takes less time than Top, so they are fine. Top almost necessarily takes much more time than fetches because they are often used in tandem with the fetchlands. That means you spend some amount of time on fetches (which is the same amount of time you use in a fetchland world sans Top), but then you add the before-and-after Top activation. Plus all the Top activations when fetchlands aren't even at play. Clearly, this takes way more time and that's why Top is a problem and fetches aren't.
This and to add on top requires some thinking. Slower players or those new to top decks or a format with top have to evaluate the cards on top of their deck each time.
It really hurts the game itself with how modern is getting support. I agree with a lot of people that they need another way to legalize cards for the modern format. Well, that and fetch lands are an abomination that need to be exiled from all formats and not just modern. The later looks like I'll just have to begrudgingly deal with, though.
All i see that doing is making the game more luck based. Sure fetches allow for good stuff decks but land disrution already punishes that kind of stuff. Also with shocks being one of the main things to fetch for that puts a real price for having good mana. Burn was a really good deck for a long time just because of how much damage people deal to themselves with fetches and the occasional shock. Richard Garfield himself hates the land system and if he were to start from scratch he would have gotten rid of it for something else that leads to less variance. Fetches alleviate the problems with the land system by allowing you to find your colors more readily while also making sure you draw more action later on. Besides that all of players like consistency. Look at legacy that format is loved by many players just because of brainstorm. Most legacy players I know say they would quit legacy if brainstorm was not in the format and I feel the same would be for fetchless modern.
stifle would be a good blue card to help ux strategies. it wouldn't push the control end of the blue spectrum, but it'd greatly help the tempo strategies.
the only card that's on the ban list that'll help permission blue control is top. and that brings up another batch of issues that wizards probably doesn't want to deal with in modern.
The argument against most blue cards and cheap costed cards in general is "well doesn't annoying combo/hyper aggro deck just play x card also". This can been seen clearly in the current standard, fatal push goes into the decks it is best against also.
Think infect and death's shadow are annoying now, wait until they can also counter your lands.
What modern really needs is high powered blue cards that don't fix into low to the ground aggro strategies or into combo, but that are costed cheap enough that they can be effective against those strategies.
No way stifle is fitting into infect or anything like that. Infect exists in legacy as a competitive deck and it does not use cards like stifle. Infect is a linear deck that relies on redundency in pump and pfotection. The only reason that hardcore tempo cards do not exist in modern is because of how bad new players would feel to get their fetches denied and lands wastelanded while the opponent can still play all their stuff. The old school of magic did not allow big spells that some players like to be remltely viable. Stifle will only fit into delver but delver would push some players away because they feel they are not eing allosed to play.
Well, I don't know Tom LaPille from a whole in the ground. I just know that they really could have started modern anywhere and they chose to start it in the first core without counterspell ever. I mean you realize counterspell was in like every core set up until 8th edition right? Further, the modern stipulation that any card entering modern must go through standard seems a little arbitrary doesn't it? I mean why does it need to go through standard? Why couldn't it be in a supplementary set? I just think it all seems awfully convenient. Nah, I think its pretty evident that modern was meant to be a blue light format. Yeah its conjecture, but its conjecture based on first hand knowledge of how much people hated blue leading up to modern. Again though, that is demographics. Some people loved blue. It's a troll deck though and it doesn't hurt my feelings it is gone.
I do appreciated the response though.
Reactive blue decks being a troll deck is just subjective. Why is it trolling to interact with your opponent in a reactive way. In fact is hatdly any different than removal heavy decks vs creature decks. You play your thing and it gets reacted to and the game continues. Yea sure counterspells stop more stuff but they are also very timming sensitive and skilled opponents can play around them.
Discard has never been too strong before. Have you ever had a spell countered in a format and thought, "what? That's so broken". It certainly wasn't or hasn't felt broken with Jund or Junk. Discard is fantastic early in a game and becomes significantly worse in long games, where counters shine and provide better topdecks
I don't think discard is too strong, I think without it's presence decks would try to do more broken things. Why shouldn't they, there's no true counters to the format.
All a IOK/Thoughtseize ban would do is significantly harm the format. Imagine what the format would look like with no GBx and no interactive blue deck to help?
Modern would literally be nothing but fast aggro and non-interactive combo (more so than ever, before someone cheeky decided to say it already is). No GBx deck would actually kill ramp decks in this format, they'd all be ran out by the aggro and combo decks that don't care about Scapeshift and Tron
Agreed. A ban on any of tge discard spells would be ridiculous. They just trade 1 for 1 at a mana disadvantage. They just work well because the wincons that enjoy discard spells are the best threats in the format. Discard are like taking a cheap shot in a street fight to get your opponent weakened for a short period of time for you to pummel them (goyf them). Non free counterspells require a wincon that takes over when it comes ojt due to you having to hold up mana to interact most of the game.
Well, in the end that's the point. If you like playing Blue you will probably keep playing it regardless. I think a lot of people don't care about how Blue is doing and just want Splinter Twin back.
There probably are some people like that around, but those of us around here who get accused of that (mostly Cfusion and myself) don't actually feel that way. I would rather they powered up the blue core itself so there would be a lot of different good decks I could play where I wouldn't always feel like I'm screwing myself by playing blue decks.
I'm at the point where I've actually played Delver nearly twice as long as I played Twin. I don't really care what the core of the deck is, I just want to play a Snapcaster reactive/tempo/control deck. If they do something to actually power up Delver to consistent Tier 1 status, Twin can sit and rot on the banned list for all I care. I only advocate so strongly for the Twin unban so much because I feel Wizards is either too incompetent or completely incapable of providing the help blue needs without otherwise totally destroying the format (tons more bans or format-breaking stuff like Cruise/DTT). Bringing back Twin is the easy fix that solves a lot of the problems correlated to its absence; problems that have snowballed for the past year, gotten worse with new printings, and created the need for additional and unnecessary bans. Basically, I don't trust Wizards whatsoever to fix the format with finesse and grace. Twin is the easy answer. That, or just ignore the problem until us blue mages stop complaining and go elsewhere.
Delver requres a lot more specific things to do well. It needs cantrips that actually help it, extremely cheap interaction in blue, and cheap land destruction. Most the blue cards in modern lean more towards combo control/tempo strats. Remands and such are awesome if you deck just needs to stall and dig until it can go off. All the best blue cards point to that strategy and delver will just require the introduction of too many cards to actually play tempo. The thing is the we are missing the gameplan that actually goes well with the available blue cards.
When Wizards unbans two cards to help blue strategies (AV for "blue-based control or attrition decks" and Sword for "controlling combo decks") and those decks are still bad almost a year later, that's a problem. It's doubly a problem when the Twin unban was supposed to open up space for all the allegedly "supplant[ed]" decks, and then those decks don't emerge in any serious competitive capacity. I don't understand why people don't see this as a problem; the failure of the AV/Sword unban alone would be troubling even if we ignored the Twin context.
Because Modern is incredibly diverse right now. Way more than it was during any point Twin was legal for. I don't care if there aren't many counterspell decks so long as Modern has a ton of viable decks, and I bet Wizards doesn't care either. The Twin ban may have promoted diversity in a way they didn't intend (they were counting on a bunch of different blue decks to take up some piece of the metagame share left behind), but the format's diversity itself is currently undeniable.
Besides, reactive blue is still playable, even if it's not much more playable than Death & Taxes or another Tier 2 Modern deck. UW Control and Grixis Control are examples of reactive blue decks that have decent showings every once in awhile. No, they're not even close to Tier 1. But given how diverse Modern is, and considering how maintaining that diversity seems to be Wizards' primary goal for the format, I don't think that's an issue at all for them. Why would they want to jeopardize Modern's current dynamism by unbanning a card like Preordain or Jace that has the potential to go awry?
I think that is more due to the probe ban. A lot of tge decks that are doing well now whefe not held back by twin but the crazyness that was aggro combo. I know bant eladrazi, ad nauseam, and other new decks can exist in a world with twin but not one with probe infect, ur prowess, and all in deaths shadow.
Saying this is fine and all, but why is this a problem? I like blue as much as the next person. I have nothing against it. But exactly when in Modern's history has reactive blue put up consistent results? And again, Twin doesn't count as "reactive blue."
Whoa there. Why is Twin not reactive blue? I don't think I've ever heard a reputable or Wizards-based source make that argument before.
Why does it have to come from WOTC? It's just how the deck played. It was a tempo-combo deck. Any tempo deck has reactive elements to it of course, and in Twin those were blue, sure. But when people on these boards say "reactive blue deck" I hear "control." Twin was absolutely not "control."
It had control elements, as well as combo and tempo elements. Whatever you want to call it, that kind of deck is not good in Modern today and has been bad since August 2016. If BGx were performing this badly, I guarantee a different group of players would be rioting. It just happens to be the blue players. As for me, I just go where the numbers point, and right now they point to a major blue decline that almost certainly was unintended by Wizards.
My point is that I'm wondering if you take Twin out of the equation, when has reactive blue EVER put up consistent results in Modern? The lack of this type of deck isn't new to the format, and it took a completely unfair combo interaction to make it good. Modern's simply not a good environment for blue and it never has been.
I do not feel twin is unfair in an enviornment such as modern. Many decks do a lot more degenerate things that are fine in the meta. Twin was a very easy to interact with combo but just having my strong thing to do to win is important in eternal formats. It is just that your gameplan to win has to mesh well with your gameplan which is why you never seen twin run a lot of discard despite being played in grixis shells. The best compact proactive plans in modern are goyf and deaths shadow and discard compliments that plan much better than countermagic and blue cantrips.
A bunch of scrubs don't just show up to all these tournaments and just then consistently fail to make top 32 on a daily basis since July.
If those scrubs are not trying to innovate and instead trying the old tried lists, then yea, they might keep failing to make day 2.
Im not saying blue is Tier 1. Im just saying blue can and is still competitive. Not enough people are trying it. Id like to see day 1 stats on the decks that actually show up.
They aren't playing it because it's bad. People rapidly adopt good decks when they are actually good. See DS Jund. See Bant Eldrazi. See Dredge. See Jeskai Nahiri for about 2 months before the metagame turned against it and people realized it wasn't good. If a deck is good and on the radar, people play it and win with it. Grixis is totally on the radar but just isn't very good so we don't see it.
You put too much faith in people knowing what is good, and what is bad. I dont have that much faith. DSJ works, and is easy to pick up. So a lot of people play it. Simple as that. You're the numbers guy, right? No matter how awesome blue is, if 5% of day 1 decks are blue, then the odds of showing up on day 2 are not with blue.
but people know blue isn't really good....
I think it is mkre people know you have to be proactive in modern and the known good proactive plans syrgenize better with discard rather than countermagic and draw spells. Cantrips counterspells and draw spells are best paired with some kind of combo or something that locks the game immediately or with things like delver (which is not reliable enough to flip with the lack of cantrips and lack of land destruction and free spells to tempo people out).
Fine. Perhaps the answer lies in the question "do we need a T1 reactive blue deck?" You ask and answered. No we don't need a reactive blue deck because the format is diverse and thriving as is. The argument gets oversimplified because the answer is in front of your face. You just said it for god's sake. The answer is no, modern doesn't need a T1 reactive blue deck. People can want it but hey they get what they want when I get my werewolf deck. Its total subjective selfish crap and it is soo tiresome hearing the whining and complaining day in and out.
There is a huge difference between a macro archetype and a specific deck. Werewolfs is aggro which there are plenty of decks that play that macro archetypes playstyle. When an entire playstyle is does not have a tier 1 option that is a problem. It is also not good that their isn't a tier 1 spell based combo deck unless ad nauseam is now good enough to be tier 1.
In short if you want to play aggro their is a plethora of good options. Sure it is not werewolves but the macro archetype for werewolves which is aggro is not absent from tier 1 play while decks with stack control and card advantage are totally missing.
Control mirrors are the most interesting form of magic in my opinion.
Even when modern gets solved it will still be difficult for a control deck unless something so dominate as eldrazi comes. Even the meta with twin, pod, bgx, and burn there are still so many tier 2 or random jank that you would see in the course of a big tournament that you need to just do your own thing. Standard control bombs are enough in that format due to how weak the format is. Like rtr/theros standard you pretty much could beat random jank due to having elspeth which was one of the most powerful proactive things you could do in that format. In modern you really need to be playing with extremely undercosted threats backed with poroactive disruption or a turn 4 combo to just have the better proactive plan than any janky deck can have. Those are the best plans for interactive decks anyway or you could just play a totally linear deck. Modern pure draw go will always at best be tier 2 and get better in smaller tournaments and very inbred metagames like the world championships. In open tournaments you have to be able to just get your free wins every once in a while.
Truth. The only reason super reactive decks were even playable was due to the small card pool on just how crazy bad threats were back then. The crazy strong answer cards still exist in the older formats but long ago all blue control decks turned to combo or lock decks. Mindslaver lock, tinker, vaultkey, moat in old school, blood moon, mana denial in general (which weissman considered the most controlling thing to do), and oath control are all examples of proactivity in control decks. The point is that you eventually want to stop looking for answers and do your own thing because just a few times of missing on finding an answer and you can die and although cards like moat did this in the past it is best to tap out and put down the shields to kill your opponent in one swoop rather than the creature wincons in standard control decks. Twin was the best example of how a reactive deck should look in eternal formats and why I feel that copycat is better than 3 color good stuff control decks and why scapeshift became the best control deck when the proper support in dig through time was available.
Yes 3 color decks will still be the norm but everybody will just lose more to variance.
This and to add on top requires some thinking. Slower players or those new to top decks or a format with top have to evaluate the cards on top of their deck each time.
All i see that doing is making the game more luck based. Sure fetches allow for good stuff decks but land disrution already punishes that kind of stuff. Also with shocks being one of the main things to fetch for that puts a real price for having good mana. Burn was a really good deck for a long time just because of how much damage people deal to themselves with fetches and the occasional shock. Richard Garfield himself hates the land system and if he were to start from scratch he would have gotten rid of it for something else that leads to less variance. Fetches alleviate the problems with the land system by allowing you to find your colors more readily while also making sure you draw more action later on. Besides that all of players like consistency. Look at legacy that format is loved by many players just because of brainstorm. Most legacy players I know say they would quit legacy if brainstorm was not in the format and I feel the same would be for fetchless modern.
No way stifle is fitting into infect or anything like that. Infect exists in legacy as a competitive deck and it does not use cards like stifle. Infect is a linear deck that relies on redundency in pump and pfotection. The only reason that hardcore tempo cards do not exist in modern is because of how bad new players would feel to get their fetches denied and lands wastelanded while the opponent can still play all their stuff. The old school of magic did not allow big spells that some players like to be remltely viable. Stifle will only fit into delver but delver would push some players away because they feel they are not eing allosed to play.
Reactive blue decks being a troll deck is just subjective. Why is it trolling to interact with your opponent in a reactive way. In fact is hatdly any different than removal heavy decks vs creature decks. You play your thing and it gets reacted to and the game continues. Yea sure counterspells stop more stuff but they are also very timming sensitive and skilled opponents can play around them.
Agreed. A ban on any of tge discard spells would be ridiculous. They just trade 1 for 1 at a mana disadvantage. They just work well because the wincons that enjoy discard spells are the best threats in the format. Discard are like taking a cheap shot in a street fight to get your opponent weakened for a short period of time for you to pummel them (goyf them). Non free counterspells require a wincon that takes over when it comes ojt due to you having to hold up mana to interact most of the game.
Delver requres a lot more specific things to do well. It needs cantrips that actually help it, extremely cheap interaction in blue, and cheap land destruction. Most the blue cards in modern lean more towards combo control/tempo strats. Remands and such are awesome if you deck just needs to stall and dig until it can go off. All the best blue cards point to that strategy and delver will just require the introduction of too many cards to actually play tempo. The thing is the we are missing the gameplan that actually goes well with the available blue cards.
Golem was restricted.
No changes seems great to me. I do not think the meta is solved enough to make any decisions.
I think that is more due to the probe ban. A lot of tge decks that are doing well now whefe not held back by twin but the crazyness that was aggro combo. I know bant eladrazi, ad nauseam, and other new decks can exist in a world with twin but not one with probe infect, ur prowess, and all in deaths shadow.
I do not feel twin is unfair in an enviornment such as modern. Many decks do a lot more degenerate things that are fine in the meta. Twin was a very easy to interact with combo but just having my strong thing to do to win is important in eternal formats. It is just that your gameplan to win has to mesh well with your gameplan which is why you never seen twin run a lot of discard despite being played in grixis shells. The best compact proactive plans in modern are goyf and deaths shadow and discard compliments that plan much better than countermagic and blue cantrips.
I think it is mkre people know you have to be proactive in modern and the known good proactive plans syrgenize better with discard rather than countermagic and draw spells. Cantrips counterspells and draw spells are best paired with some kind of combo or something that locks the game immediately or with things like delver (which is not reliable enough to flip with the lack of cantrips and lack of land destruction and free spells to tempo people out).
Also that spreading seas is the best chance to beat tron and eldrazi. I currently play 4 seas in my deck.
There is a huge difference between a macro archetype and a specific deck. Werewolfs is aggro which there are plenty of decks that play that macro archetypes playstyle. When an entire playstyle is does not have a tier 1 option that is a problem. It is also not good that their isn't a tier 1 spell based combo deck unless ad nauseam is now good enough to be tier 1.
In short if you want to play aggro their is a plethora of good options. Sure it is not werewolves but the macro archetype for werewolves which is aggro is not absent from tier 1 play while decks with stack control and card advantage are totally missing.