you would rather bans than having blue police things a bit better in this game so less bans are needed long term?
It took me years to realize that Force of Will and Daze are good for the Legacy format because they police unfair decks better than bans ever could.
exactly! imagine how many bans legacy would have had without them?
But look how ubiquitous those cards are to the legacy game now. Half the decks in legacy have force of will in them. Is it really better to say that rather than ban some cards we are going to have half the format run 4 specific cards and they also have to run a lot of blue cards to make it work?
No, but what is the same is having some one ***** and whine 'cause their deck isn't viable, when the format is out there and looks amazingly diverse and is thriving. God people just don't understand hyperbole.
The difference between "werewolves aren't good" and "reactive Blue isn't good" is that the former is one specific deck whereas the latter is a larger archetype. For the comparison to be valid, you'd have to be complaining there aren't good RGx aggro decks (not just complaints about the specific werewolf deck). But there are good RxG aggro decks, so the comparison falls apart.
But there are archetypes that compare. White weenie isn't viable. Prison is arguably as viable as U control. What makes reactive blue different from those?
After several different discard suites, I'm playing 4 Brutality 3 IOK 2 Thoughtseize for a while now and it's great! If you feel the need for it you could play a 3rd Thoughtseize in the SB.
I see people cutting down on Surgical Extraction, is there a reason? I think it's the single best card against Tron and some combo decks (especially the upcoming Expertise Goryos deck) & in my opinion a necessary evil to have at least 3 Surgicals. I would rather cut a Cage and still play 4 Surgical Extraction.
Surgical isn't great against the fusion decks. It's not bad but you can't respond between breaking and entering to get what they mill so you are basically hoping to TS a fatty and surgical to cut down their outs
Roar of Reclamation is sweet particularly since it means you aren't bring back stony silence or rest in peace that you've already dealt with. Or if you are against burn that pesty Eidolon. That extra mana is rough, but maybe it's worth it?
Otherwise I've been playing a Scrap Trawler list I saw on mtggoldfish https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-trawler-kci-modern and I have to say it's sweet. Scrap Trawler is just so brutal with ironworks and it needs so little to go off with that it's great. A few of the choices have felt kind of akward to me (Etherium Sculpter just never does much honestly). But it's great fun. Just gets tiring after clicking so much on modo though.
Thinking on this, what I'd really like to see are more fair decks in modern. Jund is basically the only fair deck outside of possibly merfolk (pending definition of fair) and trying to create a control deck in modern given the sheer power level the format holds may require designing something that likely will be game breaking down the road. People are saying modern needs stronger answers, but what I'm afraid of is wizards printing an answer that is functionally the tarmogoyf of answers. It's okay at first, but as more sets and mechanics get released it becomes stronger and stronger, until it literally is the answer that every deck, let alone control decks, ends up playing if it's in the right colors. What form that answer takes can be anybody's guess, but it would have to be a scalable mechanic that gets underestimated.
Jund is the only fair deck? The Death's Shadow deck is ultimately pretty fair (its creatures get pretty big but it's just playing hand disruption and removal until it can stick a threat), Grixis Control and Delver are pretty similar and combine to about 4.3% or so according to MTGGoldfish (which is more than Jund). Abzan is similar to Jund but different in several ways and is very popular atm.
lol, no, bud, you're confusing fair with interactive.
Shadow can play an 8/8 for 1 mana, or a 7/8 Goyf for 2 mana, that's massively unfair. The deck is very interactive, but it's cheating out fat, huge threats for cheap, unfair mana. The deck is good because it's doing incredibly unfair things
Again,
Interactive =/= Fair
What do you consider fair then? Undercosted beatsticks are pretty much the definition of fair. They have no evasion and can be targetted by removal. What would be fair if not them?
I like Todd as a streamer, but I don't really give much credence to his opinion on Jace. He's talked about this topic on stream before, and his reasoning was basically, "He's too strong, don't you remember what he did in Standard?" It's just a really weak argument because Standard is not Modern, so you can't judge his power in Modern by what he does in other formats. His arguments against Jace are very surface level, and not very convincing to me.
A better argument was made by Caleb Durward on the topic. He said that Jace is not too strong for Modern, but it's just not fun to play against. When you're losing to Jace's fatesealing, it takes like 6 turns. I can understand that argument, but we have Lantern Control as a deck in this format, and that's far slower and more helpless feeling than losing to Jace upticking.
same with a turn 3 karn, who likes to play against that as a slow deck? jace on the banlist is a joke.
Seriously, who likes playing against deck as any deck?
This exchange is exactly why subjective play experience does not factor into Wizards ban decisions. You may like a matchup that I hate just as I might love a matchup that you loathe. Data-driven banning aims to avoid this subjective mess.
The closest ban to a "play experience" ban was the GGT rebanning, but even there, Wizards framed it as an issue of a war of sideboards. Specifically, sideboard slots; play experience was not mentioned. So maybe that was a factor in the actual banlist meeting, but we shouldn't speculate on it and should stick with the publicized evidence.
I wouldn't mind playing against karn if we were on an equal footing. What I do object is that a deck gets the tools for a t3 karn, whilst another is buying a lottery ticket with company.
Except they spent the first two turns setting up that Karn. By the same logic company can use Congregation at Dawn to set up their company.
The only reason I suggest Grapeshot is because Storm would still exist with Warrens, but it would be at least a turn slower and goblins can be blocked if you have enough creatures for it to matter. I know there are other decks P&P would help, but none that Wizards hates half as much, nothing that couldn't be tolerated doing well. I am sure that I am missing one, but it would also be the fastest deck and probably the most powerful with the canttips. I don't hate the deck, my hand disruption UB decks enjoys eating all combo decks equally
Just because I don't pay attention to the really minor decks the way I should, what other decks would become too much with those cards?
Infect becomes a lot more consistent in particular with Become Immense. Cheerio's would probably be t1 with them. It slows them down, but the ability to find protection or another Paladin just makes them a lot more consistent. The issue is that preordain and ponder make a lot of these decks a lot more consistent.
I could see explore if someone wanted to be spicy since it means t3 Ugin/O-stone Pop or just an easier t3 World breaker. With a t1 Egg and natural Tron you can even drop a t3 Ulamog. Not sure it's actually worth it, but it's probably better than Azusa
Whenever multiple blockers are declared the attacking player sets a blocking order. This is the order in which damage gets assigned. In your scenario the attacking player can choose to deal damage to the 2/3 or the 1/1 first. Any damage that is done over the lethal amount to that creature will go to the next creature in the order.
The IPG says the following:
Generally speaking, the point at which a player needs to demonstrate awareness of a triggered ability is after it has triggered, but no later than when that ability would “first matter.” For triggers with physical actions, a verbal acknowledgement of the trigger is not sufficient; the physical actions must be performed at the correct time. There are thousands of triggers in the game, and they each work a little differently. Some require targets, some require choices made by opponents, some have physical actions on resolution, some are invisible, etc., so when a trigger “first matters” is not something that can be defined in a single sentence. We’ll revisit this phrase throughout this section.
The short answer is that a trigger is considered missed once someone has taken an action or acknowledged something that would be impossible otherwise. If someone attacks with a Quasali Pridemage and says 'no blocks take 2' that would be considered missing the exalted trigger because his power is only 2. In your case showing his hand is enough to indicate the spell is resolving.
As someone who doesn't care about blue one way or the other my only question is, at what point do we say reactive blue decks are good enough? They are pretty reasonably tier 2 with top 8's, top 32's and 5-0 competitive leagues online with Grixis, UW, or UWx. Are they only good enough once they have won a gp and top 8 nearly every GP and if that is the case what makes reactive blue special over any other archtype. RW Prison doesn't win GP's do we then push it so prison players have something tier one? There can only be so many tier one decks realistically so what makes blue based control so special?
It does trigger the ability. Any ability that triggers on a counter being placed on a creature will trigger if it enters with one. Notably graft creatures, modular creatures or creatures affected by Master Biomancer.
I don't know if this has ever been brought up before but, now with collective brutality has anyone tried cutting red for white and run Terminus? That would also give us access to Horizon Canopy which is pretty good.
One issue is that it can be very clunky. It can easily get stranded in your own hand as we will almost never be hard casing it.
But look how ubiquitous those cards are to the legacy game now. Half the decks in legacy have force of will in them. Is it really better to say that rather than ban some cards we are going to have half the format run 4 specific cards and they also have to run a lot of blue cards to make it work?
But there are archetypes that compare. White weenie isn't viable. Prison is arguably as viable as U control. What makes reactive blue different from those?
Surgical isn't great against the fusion decks. It's not bad but you can't respond between breaking and entering to get what they mill so you are basically hoping to TS a fatty and surgical to cut down their outs
Otherwise I've been playing a Scrap Trawler list I saw on mtggoldfish https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-trawler-kci-modern and I have to say it's sweet. Scrap Trawler is just so brutal with ironworks and it needs so little to go off with that it's great. A few of the choices have felt kind of akward to me (Etherium Sculpter just never does much honestly). But it's great fun. Just gets tiring after clicking so much on modo though.
What do you consider fair then? Undercosted beatsticks are pretty much the definition of fair. They have no evasion and can be targetted by removal. What would be fair if not them?
Except they spent the first two turns setting up that Karn. By the same logic company can use Congregation at Dawn to set up their company.
Infect becomes a lot more consistent in particular with Become Immense. Cheerio's would probably be t1 with them. It slows them down, but the ability to find protection or another Paladin just makes them a lot more consistent. The issue is that preordain and ponder make a lot of these decks a lot more consistent.
Lantern Control, the new Hardened Scales snake build, an assortment of t3 decks like eggs. It's not the most common card, but it is out there.
Generally speaking, the point at which a player needs to demonstrate awareness of a triggered ability is after it has triggered, but no later than when that ability would “first matter.” For triggers with physical actions, a verbal acknowledgement of the trigger is not sufficient; the physical actions must be performed at the correct time. There are thousands of triggers in the game, and they each work a little differently. Some require targets, some require choices made by opponents, some have physical actions on resolution, some are invisible, etc., so when a trigger “first matters” is not something that can be defined in a single sentence. We’ll revisit this phrase throughout this section.
It's quite a long article but here is a link if you wish to read the specifics
https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg2-1/
The short answer is that a trigger is considered missed once someone has taken an action or acknowledged something that would be impossible otherwise. If someone attacks with a Quasali Pridemage and says 'no blocks take 2' that would be considered missing the exalted trigger because his power is only 2. In your case showing his hand is enough to indicate the spell is resolving.
One issue is that it can be very clunky. It can easily get stranded in your own hand as we will almost never be hard casing it.