Blue Moon finished 9th(or was it 10th?) ppl think Blue Moon is garbage (cuz who looks past Top8 anyways) and think URx is dead, if Blue moon managed to get into the top 8 and beat an affinity or moon some Eldrazi like it was doing all day long, now Blue Moon would be taking Modo by storm...
Blue Moon is not that good. It looked extremely mediocre (and lucky) on camera and has shown no success outside of that one guy's one deck at that one event. Its main win con is basically hoping Blood Moon breaks your opponent's deck. And if your opponent can deal with your Batterskull/P&K, you no longer have a way reliable to actually win. Also, his Modern record was 7-3, which is good, but not amazing. His final position was probably helped quite a bit by his 5-1 Limited record.
people can evalutate individual cards fine (the fair ones at least), after that they need the guidance of the pros to figure out in which shell to put them and how to fine tune it
That could also be that not everyone has dozens of teammates and hundreds of hours to test and build high caliber brews. I can't tell you how many times I've brought a "great idea" brew to a local Modern Monday and went 0-5. You can only take so much of that until you pick up a good list and then tweak it to your personal tastes and local metas.
The best thing wizards could do for control would be to switch ponder for serum visions and sleight of hand on the banned list. Ponder is 3x as likely to find the answer you need this turn vs serum visions. Counterspell would be awesome but i dont think its necessary. We need to be able cast a filter spell and get the card we need this turn rather than next turn.
As long as Storm is a deck, they will never do this. Wizards hates Storm and I would have no problem them banning Storm out of existence if it meant blue got better toys. Which is an odd thing for me to feel, because I love the idea of Storm and would probably be playing it myself if it wasn't a constant degenerate ban target (lolz investing in Twin, #waitingforbluetoys).
I'm shocked that people continue to believe WOTC wants a balanced format. Modern doesn't have a turn 4 clock. It has at best a turn 3 clock. Because Wizards refuses to print better generic answers there is no reason to think things will get any better.
If you are sick of people complaining about how uninteractive modern is, go watch PT BNG and then go watch PT OGW. There's a world of difference in what modern used to be and what it has become.
Oh, I believe they want a balanced format. I just think they're incompetent at actually doing that, with the Splinter Twin ban showcasing that quite nicely.
While i agree that the splinter twin ban was wrong, its still not the main reason for the current warped format. eldrazi ist the big offender and twin would not have been enough to keep it in check
Well it depends on what warped format you're referring to. Technically, the format did warp pre-PT into 80% aggro/combo, then Eldrazi came in to take advantage of that. Now the field is 40-50% Eldrazi, 12-15% Affinity, and 0-3% everything else. So removing the pillar control deck from the format forced it into uninteractivity, highlighted by aggro/combo, then Eldrazi took it to the extreme by being the best aggro deck by a considerable margin. Midrange is heavily fallen out, Tron and non-Eldrazi ramp has fallen out, control has disappeared, and we're left here scratching our heads wondering how to make control playable again.
I really hope this isn't the implication that twin would have contained eldrazi again.
No, just that Eldrazi would probably be 25-30% of the field instead of 40-50%. The fact that it is SO GOOD is because there's no reason to run interaction in the format. And there is currently no interaction that successfully deals with Eldrazi, so there's still no real reason to run them. It's more effective to ignore the opponent and play magic AT them rather than WITH them; as demonstrated by the 80% aggro/combo meta. Twin forced interaction, meaning Eldrazi would need to slow themselves down and run-past-you aggro/combo wouldn't be as viable either.
I'm also working ahead of myself and imagining what we'll be having to deal with once Eldrazi is banned or neutered in April. Because that will be happening; I have no doubts whatsoever. These decks are holding metashare percentages and win rates that Treasure Cruise Delver never even had. Eldrazi is a temporary annoyance as far as I'm concerned, and the bigger problem we'll have to deal with is what do we do after that?
I'm shocked that people continue to believe WOTC wants a balanced format. Modern doesn't have a turn 4 clock. It has at best a turn 3 clock. Because Wizards refuses to print better generic answers there is no reason to think things will get any better.
If you are sick of people complaining about how uninteractive modern is, go watch PT BNG and then go watch PT OGW. There's a world of difference in what modern used to be and what it has become.
Oh, I believe they want a balanced format. I just think they're incompetent at actually doing that, with the Splinter Twin ban showcasing that quite nicely.
While i agree that the splinter twin ban was wrong, its still not the main reason for the current warped format. eldrazi ist the big offender and twin would not have been enough to keep it in check
Well it depends on what warped format you're referring to. Technically, the format did warp pre-PT into 80% aggro/combo, then Eldrazi came in to take advantage of that. Now the field is 40-50% Eldrazi, 12-15% Affinity, and 0-3% everything else. So removing the pillar control deck from the format forced it into uninteractivity, highlighted by aggro/combo, then Eldrazi took it to the extreme by being the best aggro deck by a considerable margin. Midrange is heavily fallen out, Tron and non-Eldrazi ramp has fallen out, control has disappeared, and we're left here scratching our heads wondering how to make control playable again.
that X card is bad due to linear decks being to many is easily a terrible arguement
the meta was not always like this and won't be either
and since the linear are a problem, common sense dictates that we need better answers (especially in counterspells)
if we unban JTMS/Preordain/AV and the like, perhaps we will not be able to give blue anything else
+Snapcaster is still the most powerful individual card in Modern and was close to ban with Twin legal, how premature is it to just pair him with broken or boarderline broken cards?...
i can see close to 0 chance in which we can unban those and keep snap legal, it just makes Blue leagues better than the other colors in terms of midrange/control cards
We get it, you hate blue. It's ok to have opinions, but not to try and pass them off as fact.
Nevermind the fact that blue is hot garbage right now and outside of Merfolk, has no Tiered representation except the very bottom of T2/2.5 with a single deck that has been expressed as "technically T2 but with an unbelievably massive gap between T1"
yeah, i hate it so much that i play it on a weekly basis
because your opinions are so perfect that there must be some sinister motive if someone disagrees with them
i am an all round player with tempo/midrange being my favorite archetypes and look at your signature, are you certain that i'm the biased one? you're just being childish now
as for blue being bad, it's a mix of temporary meta meta positioning due to ramp/combo and a L2P issue for anyone who at least won't accept that Blue is a pretty powerful color with access to many good cards among them the very best in modern: Snapcaster Mage
once again: COntrol is bad(borderline viable atm), blue is not, but currently the Eldrazi are broken so we can't see what the meta will actually look like after they get the axe
If Snapcaster is so good, why is it that the only top tier deck he was consistently good in was Splinter Twin?
Blue is not a powerful color in modern because blue is not allowed to do blue things. Black and green both have better card draw, red has better card filtering, black has better disruption, green has better graveyard recursion, and all counterspells available are either narrow, temporary, or overcosted. Everything remotely powerful is banned and the color itself is borderline unplayable unless it's splashed into other colors or playing blue elves (merfolk).
Keep telling yourself blue is really good though.
I honestly think they've failed to strike a proper balance in what is playable for draw, counters, and other consistency tools for blue. I don't think the solution to that is on the ban list. If blue needs twin to be good, then the problems with blue STILL EXIST. So not gonna disagree there, though historically this format has been described as BG vs UR so I don't think blue has been shafted really in moderns history. I don't think a powerful blue deck (outside of merfolk and UR eldrazi) is going to emerge until eldrazi is gone. White on the other hand... Well the solutions for that aren't on the ban list either. Fact is control shells like the one you want for blue really struggle with eldrazi and ramp decks which are everywhere, but a UW or UR control shell would find an aggro meta without eldrazi to be much more manageable.
The other issue with general lack of good tools is there are little to now powerhouse cards in blue. There's no real finisher and no inevitability. Even with Eldrazi out of the picture, a green deck with red splash holds the best long game, green/black decks hold the best midgame, and colorless/red/green hold the best fast game. Blue is just not a powerful color in a format where threats are more powerful than answers. Twin allowed blue to be a top tier deck in that kind of format. Without it, blue needs lots of better answers or lots of other threats need to be banned. Simple as that. Hopefully this means blue will get new tools soon. The new U Counter target Sorcery spell with Delirium recently leaked looks nice, though I have a hard time thinking of when I would choose to play it over Spell Pierce, for example. I guess the big question is "How do blue decks win? And is that good enough in a format filled to the brim with high-value, low-cost threats?"
that X card is bad due to linear decks being to many is easily a terrible arguement
the meta was not always like this and won't be either
and since the linear are a problem, common sense dictates that we need better answers (especially in counterspells)
if we unban JTMS/Preordain/AV and the like, perhaps we will not be able to give blue anything else
+Snapcaster is still the most powerful individual card in Modern and was close to ban with Twin legal, how premature is it to just pair him with broken or boarderline broken cards?...
i can see close to 0 chance in which we can unban those and keep snap legal, it just makes Blue leagues better than the other colors in terms of midrange/control cards
We get it, you hate blue. It's ok to have opinions, but not to try and pass them off as fact.
Nevermind the fact that blue is hot garbage right now and outside of Merfolk, has no Tiered representation except the very bottom of T2/2.5 with a single deck that has been expressed as "technically T2 but with an unbelievably massive gap between T1"
yeah, i hate it so much that i play it on a weekly basis
because your opinions are so perfect that there must be some sinister motive if someone disagrees with them
i am an all round player with tempo/midrange being my favorite archetypes and look at your signature, are you certain that i'm the biased one? you're just being childish now
as for blue being bad, it's a mix of temporary meta meta positioning due to ramp/combo and a L2P issue for anyone who at least won't accept that Blue is a pretty powerful color with access to many good cards among them the very best in modern: Snapcaster Mage
once again: COntrol is bad(borderline viable atm), blue is not, but currently the Eldrazi are broken so we can't see what the meta will actually look like after they get the axe
If Snapcaster is so good, why is it that the only top tier deck he was consistently good in was Splinter Twin?
Blue is not a powerful color in modern because blue is not allowed to do blue things. Black and green both have better card draw, red has better card filtering, black has better disruption, green has better graveyard recursion, and all counterspells available are either narrow, temporary, or overcosted. Everything remotely powerful is banned and the color itself is borderline unplayable unless it's splashed into other colors or playing blue elves (merfolk).
that X card is bad due to linear decks being to many is easily a terrible arguement
the meta was not always like this and won't be either
and since the linear are a problem, common sense dictates that we need better answers (especially in counterspells)
if we unban JTMS/Preordain/AV and the like, perhaps we will not be able to give blue anything else
+Snapcaster is still the most powerful individual card in Modern and was close to ban with Twin legal, how premature is it to just pair him with broken or boarderline broken cards?...
i can see close to 0 chance in which we can unban those and keep snap legal, it just makes Blue leagues better than the other colors in terms of midrange/control cards
We get it, you hate blue. It's ok to have opinions, but not to try and pass them off as fact.
Nevermind the fact that blue is hot garbage right now and outside of Merfolk, has no Tiered representation except the very bottom of T2/2.5 with a single deck that has been expressed as "technically T2 but with an unbelievably massive gap between T1"
Eye of Ugin + Urborg doesn't let you cast Thought-Knot on turn 2. maybe read the cards before posting. The deck DOES sacrifice a lot for the 2 mana lands. You just have to have them in your opening hand, forcing you to mulligan aggressively for them. It's something called consistency.
You can easily cast TKS on T2 with either Eye + Temple, or double Temple. I did it several times during the PT Gauntlet on mtgo.
Alright, today is the PERFECT day to see the meta shift. Both links to pie charts I listed have the 138 decks reported. So that means they are mirrors of eachother. They show the real data of what the difference in these two metas. on one side with the after twin ban meta you have 6 decks making 13-8% of the meta. on the after PT side you have 41% eldrazi, 15% affinity... and the next closest amount is Infect at 3%.
lets repeat.
Eldrazi- 41%
Affinity- 15%
Infect 3%
Is that healthy?
Sure it is. It's healthy because it shows just how awful netdeckers are. Netdeckers are too lazy / simple / uncreative to make a deck that can beat Eldrazi. Netdeckers can't think for themselves, so their only option is to follow the other lemmings and play Eldrazi. Once a "pro" (and believe me I use that term very loosely) beats the hell out of ELdrazi with decks like 8Rack or something else new entirely, ONLY THEN will the lemmings be able to get off the Eldrazi train. You will see the meta balance out.
The question is, will WOTC be smart enough to let the format self correct naturally or will they just insta-ban Eye because lemmings are the lowest common denominator of paying customers so they need to be catered too?
Or this showcases the smoldering wreckage left behind after banning out the premiere control deck and ushering in a Legacy-powered aggro deck into a meta already heavily shifted into aggro/combo.
you think Twin got ->RANDOMLY<- banned? you were playing the very best deck and you didn't even know it?...
how many times has Burn Top8 a major event and how many times Twin? how many PTs has Burn won and how many Twin? how many pros were on burn and how many on Twin? are those stuff random too?
No, I don't think Twin got randomly banned. The claim I was responding to was that "Twin warped the format." I made several attempts to clarify exactly what that meant, and all I got was "I changed my 75!" which made me seek to further clarify if proof of format warping was decided by dedicated sideboard slots and main deck flex slots (which is very different from tuning an entire deck specifically to beat another deck). Apparently things like "creature removal" are considered "constraints" that Twin put on the format? I used burn as an example because it's a silly analogy that is easy to relate to, since just about every deck has dedicated slots for the burn matchup. Clearly that point was not understood very well. I'm still curious how Twin warped the format and how "warped" is defined. 90% of people were not playing Twin and we had as many as 40 deck archetypes represented in Top 8s all year. But I guess Twin was warping the format?
Man I wish artificial rotations weren't a thing, like when they rotated cruise out of legacy and vintage...
That's not an artificial rotation, that was the banning of a card actually warping the format to a level that was degenerate towards other archetypes and the possibilities of decks to spawn.
That's a huge twist on words, I don't think they apply to the current situation.
Lets call a spade a spade. Twin warped the meta in it's own way, there's no denying that, and once eldrazi is out we'll see if it was suppressing things (im willing to bet a deck or two will pop up with twin out of the way).
The twist on words is using the term "artificial rotation" in the first place. It's ONLY used to create narrative that's in line with certain players agendas.
It was a ban. That's what you call it. Stop the stupid rhetoric.
I'm having a hard time understanding how Twin was warping the format. It held around 10% of the field, meaning as much as 90% of people were *not* playing Twin. There were 30-40 different archetypes represented in Top 8s across PTs, GPs, and SCG Opens all year through 2015. Are you saying it's a bad thing that people had to be "forced" to play interaction? Basic things like creature removal, discard, or counters? This is "warping"? Are you implying that any deck which requires sideboard slots is "warping"? Are the slots dedicated to Burn or Affinity or Jund mean those decks are "warping" the format? Every deck I've ever built has had the burn matchup in mind, the only thing that changed was how much was main deck and how much sideboard. Is that warping?
My 75 as a BGx okay changed SIGNIFICANTLY with twin gone, and it certainly makes me happier. I don't think it's bad to be forced to play interaction, but I do think it's great not having to worry about tapping out turn 3 or twin just pressing the I win button. It certainly heavily influenced the meta on deck building requirements. Twin definitely put constraints on what is viable and not and was much too close to a 50-50 deck for my comfort.
Keep throwin your tantrums though, these sweet sweet twin tears will feed me for months to come seeing as I expect you'll still be whining a 100 pages later.
The point remains that your arguments hold no ground though. The same could be said if Burn were randomly banned. I know I would change several of my flex slots and sideboard cards if Burn suddenly disappeared. Does that mean Burn is warping for format? I have 4 sideboard slots currently dedicated to Affinity (more if you account for crossover cards that apply elsewhere too). That's 27% of my sideboard dedicated to one deck. Is that warping?
...
as for the yearly rotation part none said that and it isn't happening, only people salty about Twin claim that it simply 'rotated; Twin was problematic in many ways
That's factually incorrect. You have Twin, but previously you have other decks that went the same way. Jund only survived due to its 'pile of good stuff' nature, otherwise it would also be gone. WotC said it, they just banned to shake things for the Pro Tour. It was not me who said it. They did. That is an artifical rotation.
As to Legacy dying. Yeah, we heard that before, every year its dying, yet...
Man I wish artificial rotations weren't a thing, like when they rotated cruise out of legacy and vintage...
That's not an artificial rotation, that was the banning of a card actually warping the format to a level that was degenerate towards other archetypes and the possibilities of decks to spawn.
That's a huge twist on words, I don't think they apply to the current situation.
Lets call a spade a spade. Twin warped the meta in it's own way, there's no denying that, and once eldrazi is out we'll see if it was suppressing things (im willing to bet a deck or two will pop up with twin out of the way).
The twist on words is using the term "artificial rotation" in the first place. It's ONLY used to create narrative that's in line with certain players agendas.
It was a ban. That's what you call it. Stop the stupid rhetoric.
I'm having a hard time understanding how Twin was warping the format. It held around 10% of the field, meaning as much as 90% of people were *not* playing Twin. There were 30-40 different archetypes represented in Top 8s across PTs, GPs, and SCG Opens all year through 2015. Are you saying it's a bad thing that people had to be "forced" to play interaction? Basic things like creature removal, discard, or counters? This is "warping"? Are you implying that any deck which requires sideboard slots is "warping"? Are the slots dedicated to Burn or Affinity or Jund mean those decks are "warping" the format? Every deck I've ever built has had the burn matchup in mind, the only thing that changed was how much was main deck and how much sideboard. Is that warping?
What do you guys think about Hangarback Walkers? Pick or dump?
Dump as fast as you can. This card will not be $20 again any time soon. With the inclusion in the BFZ Event Deck and overall decline of play in both Standard and Modern, it would take some drastic new breakout strategy to bring the prices back up. Pick em up if you want to play with them, but I don't see it as a good investment return at all. I should have sold mine when they were $20, and I was lucky to get $9 a piece.
Yea Liliana of the Veil is definitely not going to be reprinted in Shadows over Innistrad. Only chance is if the "Echoes" rumor turns out to be true and they print it at expedition rarity, which would only reduce it's cost by about 10%, if at all.
This. Why do people think they'll reprint her? They have NEVER reprinted a planeswalker or a legendary creature. That will be especially true after WOTC has "doubled down on story."
Several Planeswalkers have been reprinted in multiple sets. Chandra Pyromaster, Chandra Nalaar, Chandra, the Firebrand, Ajani Goldmane, Ajani Caller of the Pride, Garruk Wildspeaker, Garruk, Primal Hunter, Jace Beleren, Jace, Memory Adept, Liliana Vess, Liliana of the Dark Realms, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, and Sorin Markov have all had 2 or more standard-legal set printings. This does not include reprints from Modern Masters or Duel Decks, which would expand another 5 or 6 names to the list.
Blue Moon is not that good. It looked extremely mediocre (and lucky) on camera and has shown no success outside of that one guy's one deck at that one event. Its main win con is basically hoping Blood Moon breaks your opponent's deck. And if your opponent can deal with your Batterskull/P&K, you no longer have a way reliable to actually win. Also, his Modern record was 7-3, which is good, but not amazing. His final position was probably helped quite a bit by his 5-1 Limited record.
That could also be that not everyone has dozens of teammates and hundreds of hours to test and build high caliber brews. I can't tell you how many times I've brought a "great idea" brew to a local Modern Monday and went 0-5. You can only take so much of that until you pick up a good list and then tweak it to your personal tastes and local metas.
As long as Storm is a deck, they will never do this. Wizards hates Storm and I would have no problem them banning Storm out of existence if it meant blue got better toys. Which is an odd thing for me to feel, because I love the idea of Storm and would probably be playing it myself if it wasn't a constant degenerate ban target (lolz investing in Twin, #waitingforbluetoys).
No, just that Eldrazi would probably be 25-30% of the field instead of 40-50%. The fact that it is SO GOOD is because there's no reason to run interaction in the format. And there is currently no interaction that successfully deals with Eldrazi, so there's still no real reason to run them. It's more effective to ignore the opponent and play magic AT them rather than WITH them; as demonstrated by the 80% aggro/combo meta. Twin forced interaction, meaning Eldrazi would need to slow themselves down and run-past-you aggro/combo wouldn't be as viable either.
I'm also working ahead of myself and imagining what we'll be having to deal with once Eldrazi is banned or neutered in April. Because that will be happening; I have no doubts whatsoever. These decks are holding metashare percentages and win rates that Treasure Cruise Delver never even had. Eldrazi is a temporary annoyance as far as I'm concerned, and the bigger problem we'll have to deal with is what do we do after that?
Well it depends on what warped format you're referring to. Technically, the format did warp pre-PT into 80% aggro/combo, then Eldrazi came in to take advantage of that. Now the field is 40-50% Eldrazi, 12-15% Affinity, and 0-3% everything else. So removing the pillar control deck from the format forced it into uninteractivity, highlighted by aggro/combo, then Eldrazi took it to the extreme by being the best aggro deck by a considerable margin. Midrange is heavily fallen out, Tron and non-Eldrazi ramp has fallen out, control has disappeared, and we're left here scratching our heads wondering how to make control playable again.
The other issue with general lack of good tools is there are little to now powerhouse cards in blue. There's no real finisher and no inevitability. Even with Eldrazi out of the picture, a green deck with red splash holds the best long game, green/black decks hold the best midgame, and colorless/red/green hold the best fast game. Blue is just not a powerful color in a format where threats are more powerful than answers. Twin allowed blue to be a top tier deck in that kind of format. Without it, blue needs lots of better answers or lots of other threats need to be banned. Simple as that. Hopefully this means blue will get new tools soon. The new U Counter target Sorcery spell with Delirium recently leaked looks nice, though I have a hard time thinking of when I would choose to play it over Spell Pierce, for example. I guess the big question is "How do blue decks win? And is that good enough in a format filled to the brim with high-value, low-cost threats?"
If Snapcaster is so good, why is it that the only top tier deck he was consistently good in was Splinter Twin?
Blue is not a powerful color in modern because blue is not allowed to do blue things. Black and green both have better card draw, red has better card filtering, black has better disruption, green has better graveyard recursion, and all counterspells available are either narrow, temporary, or overcosted. Everything remotely powerful is banned and the color itself is borderline unplayable unless it's splashed into other colors or playing blue elves (merfolk).
Keep telling yourself blue is really good though.
We get it, you hate blue. It's ok to have opinions, but not to try and pass them off as fact.
Nevermind the fact that blue is hot garbage right now and outside of Merfolk, has no Tiered representation except the very bottom of T2/2.5 with a single deck that has been expressed as "technically T2 but with an unbelievably massive gap between T1"
You can easily cast TKS on T2 with either Eye + Temple, or double Temple. I did it several times during the PT Gauntlet on mtgo.
Bogles. The annoying deck that runs hexproof 1 drops and LOTS of powerful, cheap enchantments.
Or this showcases the smoldering wreckage left behind after banning out the premiere control deck and ushering in a Legacy-powered aggro deck into a meta already heavily shifted into aggro/combo.
The point remains that your arguments hold no ground though. The same could be said if Burn were randomly banned. I know I would change several of my flex slots and sideboard cards if Burn suddenly disappeared. Does that mean Burn is warping for format? I have 4 sideboard slots currently dedicated to Affinity (more if you account for crossover cards that apply elsewhere too). That's 27% of my sideboard dedicated to one deck. Is that warping?
I'm having a hard time understanding how Twin was warping the format. It held around 10% of the field, meaning as much as 90% of people were *not* playing Twin. There were 30-40 different archetypes represented in Top 8s across PTs, GPs, and SCG Opens all year through 2015. Are you saying it's a bad thing that people had to be "forced" to play interaction? Basic things like creature removal, discard, or counters? This is "warping"? Are you implying that any deck which requires sideboard slots is "warping"? Are the slots dedicated to Burn or Affinity or Jund mean those decks are "warping" the format? Every deck I've ever built has had the burn matchup in mind, the only thing that changed was how much was main deck and how much sideboard. Is that warping?
Dump as fast as you can. This card will not be $20 again any time soon. With the inclusion in the BFZ Event Deck and overall decline of play in both Standard and Modern, it would take some drastic new breakout strategy to bring the prices back up. Pick em up if you want to play with them, but I don't see it as a good investment return at all. I should have sold mine when they were $20, and I was lucky to get $9 a piece.
Several Planeswalkers have been reprinted in multiple sets. Chandra Pyromaster, Chandra Nalaar, Chandra, the Firebrand, Ajani Goldmane, Ajani Caller of the Pride, Garruk Wildspeaker, Garruk, Primal Hunter, Jace Beleren, Jace, Memory Adept, Liliana Vess, Liliana of the Dark Realms, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, and Sorin Markov have all had 2 or more standard-legal set printings. This does not include reprints from Modern Masters or Duel Decks, which would expand another 5 or 6 names to the list.