MTG Salvation

Quote from pinkmex »

also, wth do you guys/girls have going with SFM? why the obsession with this friggin' creature? it's only a win package. there's things way less deserving of being on the list, like jitte.

I'd argue the opposite. As you say, SFM is a win package. That means that unbanning it can potentially create new decks using Stoneforge as a win condition. In particular, if Legacy is any indicator, it'd open the way for more midrange oriented decks like Abzan or UWx midrange. That's not to say that this is guaranteed or even likely in any way, but it at least gives a possibility.

On the other hand, what does Jitte do for the meta? It doesn't really create new decks. It mostly just acts as an anti-creature tool and an anti-burn tool, neither of which is really necessary given Modern's card pool. So while a deck running Jitte likely won't be meta-defining because of Jitte, it won't generate anything new either.

So if I had to choose between the two, I'd much rather have Stoneforge back, and unless there's a huge spike in the quantity and quality of creature decks, I'd rather see other cards come off the list before Jitte.

Pretty sure with Hogaak, it'll depend on 3 things:

1. Is the data they have sufficient enough to determine if Hogaak needs a ban?
2. Is the strain it's putting on sideboards too high?
3. Is it winning too often before T4?

If they believe the answer to question 1 is "no", the answer to the other two questions won't really matter right now since that'll mean that they're withholding judgment for another month. Question 2's probably the biggest question because GGT got banned for doing just that, except the post Hogaak meta seems to require no less than 6 anti-grave cards in every deck, which is more than what people were running before GGT's ban. I don't know what the answer to question 3 is, but I'd be interested if anyone knows anyone who's done a lot of grinding with the deck who can give a more definite answer.

Being asked to run 8 main decked removal cards is not nearly as bad as the other examples you presented. If you're running Control or Midrange, you should already be running 8-12 removal spells main deck just by the nature of those decks. Moreover, even if you're not running Midrange or Control, Burn by design is full of spells to throw at small creatures if you really need to, more traditional aggro decks like Affinity can trade off creatures or maneuver themselves into positions with better tempo, and combo decks can just straight-up ignore the board and kill the opponent. The only decks I can really think of that can't jam a lot of removal into the deck or creatures to deal with combat are Ramp decks, which seems perfectly acceptable and something they can deal with post-side.

While I agree that Stoneforge isn't busted (and arguably Twin), a poor performance in NBL Modern doesn't prove that a card isn't busted in Modern, only that a card isn't busted in a format with an objectively higher power ceiling. The NBL tournaments in the long run will only ever show what needs to stay on the list, not what can come off the list.

That being said, it does make me laugh that the most busted deck in NBL Modern is the only busted deck I've seen since I started Modern (a little before the Twin ban for perspective). Not super meaningful, but good for a chuckle

Have to agree that a card with both insane selection and card advantage at instant speed for (usually) very low mana is pretty ridiculous. I'm all for Blue reactive decks getting more tools, but to me that's just taking it a step too far in the opposite direction. I'd rather they reprint Fact or Fiction or come up with something similar to DtT but less powerful.

Quote from Teysa_Karlov »

Quote from Albegas »

Quote from thnkr »

@Albegas, What do the numbers show? *Why* were those decks bad?

http://mtgtop8.com/format?f=MO&meta=118
All the decks from 2016 that made it to top 8s. You will notice on further inspection that the 3% Grixis holds isn't even held solely by Grixis Control, but rather by both Grixis Control and Grixis Delver.

A year later...
http://mtgtop8.com/archetype?a=477&meta=142&f=MO
...and nothing's breaking 2%.

As cfusionpm said, MTGTop8 is notorious for categorizing decks incorrectly, but in this case I believe the numbers are correct enough to show that URx decks after the Twin ban did not spike in popularity after the ban, implying that Splinter Twin being the best URx deck was not why those decks died out. Otherwise, we'd at least see something get somewhere close to Twin's metashares

Of course there isn't. No other deck can kill on Turn 3.5 with extreme consistency while still dedicating a large chunk of the (23-27 cards) protecting its combo kill. Doesn't mean the deck is good for the format.

I honestly don't miss Twin in the format if it means other styles of reactive Blue decks can safely receive new tools without WotC worrying about breaking the format, and Twin was my first Modern deck. What I hate is the low standard Twin represents when it comes to potential future bans. And when I say "low standard", I mean the explicit standards set by WotC in the ban announcement, i.e. excess cannibalizing of similar decks and too many top 8 wins despite a relatively low meta share compared to other decks that have eaten a ban due to high meta shares.

Unless there are other articles about Twin that WotC printed stating other reasons beyond the cannibalizing argument and the Top 8 argument that I'm not aware of (and if there are I really would like to see them), I really don't care to argue about conjectured reasons why Twin might have been banned.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/august-28-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-08-28

The last B&R announcement said the 17th, so unless there's a more recent article stating otherwise, the announcement is tomorrow

Quote from Billiondegree »

I would eliminate the current mulligan system and just allow each player 2 free mulligans. After that, you have to keep what you draw.

Having any player go down an entire card just because they didn't draw enough lands is just too imbalanced

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/mulligans-2015-08-07

They actually tested a 7-7-stop style before and found that it led to bigger blowouts, and a 7-7-7-stop style would likely lead to too many mulligans, which goes against their second stated goal.

Quote from Deadkitten »

They just did a double ban in Vintage because of the duopoly of that format. But there Mentor and Workshops were what? 80% combined? Here Eldrazi and GDS is what? Just over 30% according to TheMoonShield's data? Maybe 35% across a few variants? What have other decks been at that have previously gotten the Banhammer? I think it's a good idea to think about percentage of the field, but even 15% doesn't exactly come off as oppressive. Especially if there's a bit of variations on a theme as opposed to a specific build. Maybe that's the risk of the PT? Some of the variants fall away as players coalesce around a clear favorite.

EDIT: What's the appropriate target meta-game share for top-tier decks? How many should there be? Probably 1 or 2 per archetype? What about the combined Tier 1 percentage of the field?

Sadly, when Twin was banned, the combined meta game percentages of all the URx Twin builds only came out to about 11.5%, which (as far as I know) has been the lowest meta share of any deck banned for being too good in Wizards's eyes. Hopefully since then they've decided that 10-11% is a reasonable meta share, but I'd imagine that 10-11% is the soft cap for any deck, and that if a deck's meta share consistently stays at or beyond 12% for too long Wizards will start eyeing the ban hammer.

This is just speculation though since the only deck I know of that was nerfed after hitting 15% (Miracles) relied on SDT, and I could only imagine that WotC was looking for any reason to ban SDT just for logistical reasons. I'd be surprised if they knew a deck had steadily risen to 15% and they didn't hit something out of it

Just a few points:

• To be frank, calling two decks Tier 0 with only 11% of the meta split between the two is a huge exaggeration, and anyone can tell you that in practice neither deck is so unbeatable as to be called tier 0. 11% is a pretty mild number, especially when we've had other decks take up as much as 18% (and way more than during Eldrazi Winter),
• Jund DS and Jund Midrange shouldn't be considered the same deck. Same for Abzan DS and Abzan Midrange. They just have too many differences in the cards they run and their overall pace to be considered the same deck. I know that you didn't combine their usage in the spread sheet, but you brought it up in your second post, so I thought I should say something.
• For your score calculations, are you taking into account how many rounds of Swiss are being played before the Top 8 cutoffs? I wasn't sure based on your OP, and it would be an important factor since fewer rounds before top 8 = more variance. I'm no statistics major, so I couldn't tell you how much of a factor it should be, but I don't think it should be ignored

Other than that, it seems like a good project to start early. Keep up the good work

Hey @Albegas I don't usually post on this forum but I have been a Jeskai player for a very long time and also play UW miracles/Taking Turns as well..
I think if your local store has more creature based decks like: Elves, Humans, Hollow One, etc.. then you would probably have better luck with Miracles since 4x Terminus as well as access to Detention Sphere/and Supreme Verdict helps in those matchups..

It really depends on what specific decks you see.. Hope this helps

FYI I have updated the SCG MWP by format comparison to see if the matchup lottery analysis still holds. This includes the new SCG Legacy Open and another SCG Modern Open. With all said and done, the MWP ceiling is still identical for both formats. This comparison looks at "good" players in their respective format (+1 standard deviation over average MWP) and "great" players (+2 stdevs). As we see below, there is no difference between their performance in respective formats.

Good Legacy players in Legacy: 57.3% MWP
Good Modern players in Modern: 58.5% MWP
Great Legacy players in Legacy: 67.8% MWP
Great Modern players in Modern: 67.6% MWP

Interestingly, there IS a difference between the average MWP in Modern vs. Legacy for players with 3+ events in both Modern/Legacy and 4+ events in both Modern/Legacy.

3+ events average Legacy MWP: 39.5%
3+ events average Modern MWP: 43.2%
4+ events average Legacy MWP: 44.6%
4+ events average Modern MWP: 49.2%

This means that players who have 3+ Modern events AND 3+ Legacy events (same for 4+ events) under their belts have a 4% better MWP in Modern than in Legacy. This is interesting but also does not support the matchup lottery theory; because their performance is better in Modern than in Legacy, variance clearly is not bringing it down. This might mean that Modern mastery is more important than in Legacy, it might mean Modern is easier than Legacy once you put in lots of events, etc. I don't know what it means! But I do know what it doesn't mean, and it doesn't mean matchup lottery is at play. At least, not insofar as it adversely affects the MWP of regulars and strong players.

Again, based on this analysis, the "Modern matchup lottery" effect is either a) not real at all, b) identical in Modern and Legacy, and/or c) does not have a negative impact on the top players' MWP. Naturally, all data limitations apply due to SCG being the event of choice, 15 round events being the size of choice, N being 8,000 instead of the 100,000 many people prefer, etc.

I actually have a few opinions (mostly objections) on the classifications proposed here. If anyone personally pilots these decks and disagrees, feel free to correct me. I cannot say I've played all of these decks, but I've played Modern long enough to be able to speak my mind with confidence and knowledge of the format.

First, Aggro and Tempo should not be grouped together. While I agree that Tempo and Aggro do share similarities, and that Tempo should be grouped with another archetype, I think Midrange and Tempo is the more appropriate grouping. Aggro decks want to dump all of their resources into the ending the game as fast as possible. This is why we typically think of Aggro decks as playing many cards that all share some quality, such as Burn playing as much direct damage as possible, Merfolk playing multiple lords, or Affinity looking to abuse artifact interactions. This isn't always synergy, such as in Merfolk or Affinity's case: it is all of the cards coming together for a cohesive gameplan. Burn and Zoo have little to no synergy in their deck at all, but every card in the deck is looking to drop the opponent's life total as fast as possible. Compare this to Midrange. Midrange decks are looking to disrupt the opponent, either with hand attack, removal, or sometimes even counterspells, and then start playing the best threats possible and grind card advantage. This is why we generally refer to Midrange decks to want to two-for-one the opponent, or at the very least one-for-one with the caveat of winning with a single threat or two because they are of the highest quality. Now let's breakdown Tempo. Tempo decks want to stick a threat on the board and then disrupt their opponent so they cannot remove it. This is why Tempo plays cheap threats and cheap removal/counters. Isn't that just the reverse of Midrange? Putting it simply, Midrange plays disruption and then threats to keep their opponent on the backfoot. Tempo plays their threat first and then disruption to force their opponent on to the backfoot. The two archetypes are very similar when you sit down and analyze them critically. While they are not the same archetype, they are two archetypes built upon being in the middle ground between Aggro and Control. True, they have many differences as well. Midrange typically plays the best cards on each part of the curve, whereas Tempo is typically using precision timing to get the most advantage out of their cards. Tempo also tends to be more aggressive than Midrange. Despite these differences, however, I believe Midrange to be more similar to Tempo than Aggro. Both are generally looking to be disruptive (more on that later), and while Aggro can and sometimes will play disruption, it isn't a core element of the strategy like it is with Tempo and the stereotypical Modern Midrange deck. While the two are certainly different, their gameplans align more closely together than Aggro and Tempo. As such, I believe Death's Shadow, Infect, Delver variants, Faeries, Bant Spirits, and Eternal Command should be ported over with Midrange to make the sections Aggro and Midrange&Tempo. Furthermore, I also believe BW Tokens, Bant Eldrazi, and RUG should also move over with the Tempo decks. Looking at their decklists, it becomes apparent that they do not share the same qualities that most Aggro decks have. They are not trying to end the game as quickly as possible, and they are not dedicating every card in the deck to doing so. When you look at an Aggro decklist, you see that they are built for speed. These three decks are not doing that. While the RUG link here links to Monkey Grow, or Temur Delver, this logic should apply to whatever RUG Midrange deck arises with the BBE and JTMS unbans as well. Bant Eldrazi is certainly not as disruptive as, say, Jund and Abzan. However, it is built to jam threats that are superior to everything else that would be cast at that point in the game. Similarly, Midrange decks want to play the best cards at every spot on the curve. Thus, despite it not following the stereotypical model of hand attack and Dark Confidant, it is trying to win through superior card quality: the defining factor of a Midrange deck. There's a reason people like Todd Stevens and Ben Friedman talk about it being a midrange/ramp deck, not an aggro deck. While these are dated, even modern-day decklists bear little resemblance to an aggro deck, if any at all. As for BW Tokens, this is coming from the personal experience of someone who played it for roughly a year: the deck is wholeheartedly a Midrange deck. No Aggro deck is looking to start playing its creatures on turn three and four and grind card advantage with Lingering Souls and Bitterblossom. We even had discussion in the thread about how it isn't an Aggro deck. In fact, I remember when the current primer went up and me, along with other posters, heavily contested how the primer defined it as an "aggro-swarm deck." It's literally my first post on the primer thread.

Second, "Big Mana" is mostly comprised of decks that tangentially make large amounts of mana, but ultimately fall into other categories. While making large amounts of mana with ramp is a defining factor of these decks, I do not believe it should be the defining factor for all of them. For example, Mono-Blue Tron is a Tron deck. However, unlike other Tron decks, it wants to play a more traditional Control game. It isn't looking to turbo out Karns. It isn't even seeking to assemble Tron on turn three. It wants to use it's large swaths of mana to cast large artifact creatures and abuse things like Spell Burts or the Mindslaver + Academy Ruins lock. If anything, I believe this deck is far more of a Control deck than a Big Mana deck. If I was a new Modern player looking to read up on Blue Tron, I know I would look under the Control heading. The deck is referred to as a Control deck for a reason, and while it is abusing mana advantage, I don't believe that defines it in the same way that it does for Gx Tron. As such, I believe that Mono-U Tron, along with the similar UW Tron (another deck I have experience with personally and can attest to being a Control deck) should be moved with Control because that is the go-to classification when many people think of them. In a similar vein, I do not believe Titanshift and Amulet Titan belong with Big Mana. Both of these decks are combo decks, and while they also can generate a lot of mana, it isn't necessarily because they need it to cast all of their spells. In Titanshift's case, the only high-CMC card in the deck is Primeval Titan, and while that is a choice ramp target, it isn't looking to abuse all of the mana it has. In reality, the deck wants to abuse having many lands, not having a lot of mana. True, it can use all of its mana with Kessig Wolf Run. But it isn't a deck that primarily wants to cast large threats ahead of the curve. It just wants more lands in play than it should so it can kill with a turn four Scapeshift. It doesn't care about the insane mana ramp it generates so much as that it just has lands in play. Amulet Titan is a deck that realistically could fit into Big Mana, so perhaps I'm just being pedantic with this one. I think that the core aspect of Big Mana is that it wants to always be doing something with the mana advantage that it gets, and is dedicated to utilizing that mana advantage. Unlike Titanshift, Amulet Titan actually does do this a lot of the time. It's constantly digging for lands and playing multiple lands in a single turn. However, I think that the given gameplan of the deck is to assemble a critical mass of lands, Primetime, and Slayer's Stronghold and/or Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion: In other words, a combo that typically ends the game. I think that, given this gameplan, Combo is a better home for it, but like I said before I think I may be off base a little on this one. While I assert that Titanshift belongs in combo, I think Amulet Titan could realistically fall in either but should be in Combo. While I see that I am putting us in the difficult spot of classifying decks that are hybrids of different archetypes, I think there are more proper classifications for them, and I also think that the size of each section should not be a concern for us, so Big Mana only having a few decks in it is a nonissue.

Crunched some number for Storms after quickly coding 89 games Caleb played on Twitch and then bootstrapping the sample to get a confidence interval.

Caleb GWP (n=89): 56%
Caleb T3 win% (n=89): 14.6%
Caleb avg win turn (n=89): 5
T3 win-rate range for Storm (n=10,000): 7.8% - 22.5%

Looking at past articles where I analyzed T4 rules violators using similar methods, here's a comparison of previous offenders.

T3 win-rate range for Song Storm: 17% - 33%
T3 win-rate range for Amulet Bloom: 15% - 30%
T3 win-rate range for Baral Storm: 7.8% - 22.5%

All of those ranges overlap, so it's possible (but not likely) that Baral Storm's true T3 win percentage is higher than the calculated average of 14.6% and is in Amulet Bloom or Song Storm range. But it is definitely less offensive than either Amulet Bloom or Song Storm before it. I'm not sure how it compares to Probe Infect, another T4 rule violator that got banned. This is enough to have some worry, but as the range is much lower than that of the other violators, we need to temper that worry.

Forgot two key stats! The chance Baral Storm has the same win % as Song Storm is only 10%. The chance Baral Storm has the same win % as Amulet Bloom is 36%. Stated differently, I'd say based on our data, there's a roughly 36% chance that Baral Storm is a T4 rule violator given our limited N.

Yeah I think the current standard format is a bit land heavy (and has ramunap excavator, guh) but there are definitely standard formats where something like this would be fine or at least not defining.

It doesn't completely shatter 3-color manabases in modern either, just a little tug on the reins.

In general I am against the whole 'stony silence for lands' idea of a single card that just completely destroys them. It'd more desirable in my opinion to cut back the whole "overpowered sideboard hoser" strategy and try to adjust the metagame in more subtle ways.

We already have enough of that dynamic IMHO, with RIP-Dredge and Shatterstorm/Stony Sielnce-Affinity.

Hey, a friend of mine got a hold of the "Feline Ferocity" deck from Commander 2017 early.
Pure cat theme through the whole deck. It's beautiful.





There's like a hundred cards in there, of course.
Tons of goodies.

Kind of too much to try and pic and post all at once.
So I thought I'd just show off the really good new cards:

He said shake up unbans

I appreciate your analysis but I find several of your points either weak or misguided (no offense).

1. It's not as fast as the godhands from various decks.
Things like t3 breach are not comparable and not useful to bring up in the conversation. T3 breach is also faster and more broken than esper charm if it had a -5/-5 option, or a hexproof dark confidant. Comparing a single card to an undisrupted godhand that requires the entire deck be constructed around said godhand is silly.

It is not about comparing it to crazy godhands. Through the Breach can pretty consistently be casted T4 in GR titan decks. Storm can pretty consistently kill T4. There are several broken things in modern which don't require god hands. The comparison with the fictional cards is irrelevant because these are not cards.

You can compare SFM to say, a T3-4 7/7 Death's Shadow. It doesn't really require a god hand to do that and the building resctricitons are pretty minimal (fetch lands and shock lands which you would play anyway, thoughtseizes which are already great cards and wraiths which make for a 56 card deck). Yyes you put your life at risk but the payout is so huge that it doesn't matter.

SFM needs some dedicated space in the deck (4 slots for SFM + 3-4 equipments) and creates dead draws if you draw your equipments without SFM. It is not an all out answer and, comparing it with average draws of broken things is pretty much on the same level.

2. It doesn't slot directly into any of the current t1 decks
True enough, and it would certainly be true that stoneforge would create new decks. However, that doesn't mean it's safe. If you banned prized amalgalm, dredge would be tier 3. Does that mean that dread return is ok? Of course not.

No indeed but your dredge comparison is irrelevant. Dread return promotes a single unfair strategy, SFM promotes fair AND diverse strategies.

3. Ok but it's not good enough to be broken.
This is the most complex one to answer. I think people are fixating too much on trying to imagine overwhelming kill turns. That is very much not what stoneforge mystic does. Stoneforge mystic is strong because it is a cheap, efficient win-con, which significantly alleviates deck-building constraints. The ability to include a 7 card package with a 2 drop which wins the game by itself, no matter the actual clock, is extremely significant.

7 card package is not insignificant.

It is a 2 drop indeed, it requires tap out for 2 turns however and absolutely no interaction by the opponent. You will rarely just slam T2 Mystic, T3 Sword and T4 attack and win. Besides batterskull, swords don't promote that big of a lead. Plus, 2x Tier 1 decks mainboard Kholagan's command and 2-4 Fatal Pushes. It is not a combo that is hard to disrupt.

Your legacy deck assessment is also a bit misguided. That is a death and taxes deck. It doesn't have a weak creature package. Maybe each individual creature looks unique in a vacuum but their effects add up so much that they create heavily imbalanced boards. It is a VERY tight deck, not just a random white weenie aggro deck. The deck is good exactly because it has a whole game plan which denies opponent resources in order to make SFM effective. It doesn't win because it plays SFM. That is true because similar strategies are viable in modern, without SFM and they can still win. Resource denying plans are very effective. Plus, SFM works good because even if killed, the equipments are not dead since they can be worn by other creature which often have evasion and/or protection.

As such I don't think it is a good example to prove that SFM doesn't require any deck building constrains.

Finally, if yo agree that it wouldn't be broken, and if you think that the dead would not be unbeatable, how do you come to the conclusion that it would have a 55% win rate against almost everything? How would it fix control's issues against Eldrazi? T3 TKS into Reality Smasher would still crash it (which is not a god hand draw). Also, the problem against aggro is not stabilizing at T5 and then winning from there, that is something that control decks can already do, is actually surviving to T5 that is the problem.

All in all, I think you are underplaying too much the format's strength and assessing the wrong aspects of SFM.

Sorry if I come across as offensive, I don't mean to be offensive, just arguing.

Quote from Albegas »

However, I don't think it's really wrong for players who want to play a more reactive game to ask for the tools necessary for a control deck to break the barrier into T1 and either stay there or at least sit in the high T2/low T1 category.

Nobody's saying that's wrong. Pretty sure most here do agree that those tools are necessary.

What is wrong is the idea of banning out a good number of other perfectly fine decks for the implicit purpose of possibly improving reactive decks instead of giving them those tools.

That's what people are taking issue with.

I took some time off to eat my feelings. I'm pretty even about this whole thing. Reread the thread, and I wanted to highlight these posts and bring up my major points about why I DONT MIND THIS BANNING, BUT I HATE WHAT IT MEANS.

Quote from BadMcFadden »

Quote from JovianHomarid »

Someone in here suggested the probe ban
with almost word-for-word the same explanation that Wizards gave.

Well done.

I'd like to think this was me. Called probe ban for facilitating t3 kills although lost confidence with fatal push reveal. Whiffed on SFM unban call - maybe next time.

Needless to say happy to see Probe gone and happy to see dredge nerf. Don't see infect or dredge dying just becoming more manageable. I'm actually more scared by the fact wizards banned THREE cards from the format they supposedly test for. Fire the entire R&D team?

This hits exactly why I am face palming all the time about this crazy announcement. Because this whole time they said "we dont test for modern, if it breaks it breaks. We focus on standard." Apparently they just suck at testing... since it took just a month to break the first card, less than a week for people to make cheap emis running around without the turn 4 craziness that was found out a set later with new cards, and it took the world... literally 0 real world days to break smugglers copter. Everyone knew it was broke from the spoiler.

They literally must not actually know how to test. The rest of the world hire actual gamer's to test. they apparently dont.

Quote from Lord Hazanko »

Quote from Earthbound21 »

Quote from Lord Hazanko »

Quote from The Greendale Human Being »

Second, I don't recall seeing a pro list that eschewed the Probes pre ban. If you're calling them poor to mediocre then I've no clue what to say in response.

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=3652&d=221918

Ari Lax played infect without probes from the start.

Ari Lax is wholly irrelevant to the format.

Ari lax has been one of my favorite pros for a very long time. As a major player of the old Legacy ANT lists, Lax was a huge inspiration to me as a magic player. He's been in the scene forever.

Side note. I beat him once, because I knew his deck better than him, so I made bad plays to bait him. It was awesome.

But he among all the other pros are like "Infect is fine" because of one single reason... Infect doesnt win against "real control" Well, assuming real control is real. Which its not. So infect is perfectly fine. Because they didnt suddenly make interaction a thing. They banned uninteraction, soon to be replaced with different uninteraction.

Quote from ktkenshinx »

The anger at this announcement is unusually overblown and unwarranted, even considering the general Modern outcry at such changes. Although there are definitely some legitimately scary elements of the ban update, most people are complaining about elements that are totally fine, or even heartening.

The GGT ban is perfectly fine. It keeps the deck a top-tier contender without leaving it a Tier 1 mainstay. This lets other GY decks return (remember old faithful Abzan Company?) and lets everyone free up SB slots to fight other decks. The "scary" part about this ban is that it's a reversal of a previous ban, which is unprecedented but not really that scary. I'm fine with companies and organizations changing their minds based on new realities. In these regards, the GGT ban gets top marks from me.

Probe ban gets a B-. Yes, it's effective at taking a little bit off the top of most fast decks without killing any of them outright. In that regard, it's a solid A. Unfortunately, it does this at the expense of very fair Delver decks, which were great for format health. That's C-, unintended consequence ban territory. More importantly, these kinds of silly bans just underscore Modern's problems: WHERE THE HECK ARE OUR GENERIC ANSWERS AND POLICING CARDS/STRATEGIES?? You don't see these absurd bans in Legacy because the format has internal regulation from cards, not external regulations from bans. I'm not saying we need Legacy's exact answers, but we do need answers and we needed them a year ago. Push is a good step in the right direction, but it can't be the final step. If we don't get these kinds of cards, we'll keep stomaching more corner-case bans like Probe and keep inciting even more ban mania and format instability.

So, if the bans themselves aren't that terrible, what's the real problem?

The problem is the update itself. It doesn't cite tournament finishes, doesn't refer back to format guidelines and rules, doesn't anticipate objections to the bans, and overall doesn't build format confidence. It looked like the article was thrown together in less than an hour, when I'm sure Wizards did mountains of testing and analysis before deciding on some of those bans. If Wizards communicated this to their audience, people wouldn't be so up in arms about these changes. Especially if they threw us a bone about how they want to see how the new format shakes out before deciding on possible unbans. That would have been great! Instead, we got a very elementary update with extremely basic reasons. No wonder people are upset: Wizards hasn't done anything to try and build confidence after a big banlist shakeup.

I hope we get some clarification in the coming weeks. I'm sick and tired of delving through AMAs and Twitter posts to figure out Wizards' banlist policy and process. This lack of transparency makes it very difficult to advocate on behalf of the format and entice players to join. With ban mania everywhere, it's hard to stay evidence-based and level-headed, particularly when Wizards doesn't give us any tools to help that fight.

So I even agree. These two bans... are all correct. I'm not mad at that. I'm mad that instead of fixing the illness, they treat the symptoms. Are these banns correct? Yes, because modern apperently cant handle them because the tools to deal with these dont exist.

They treat the ban list like its the control deck of the format. But simply making control viable would infact... fix this problem AND FUTURE ONES. Instead of banning, then banning the next thing that rises in the power vacuum left.

Quote from Ghostwslker »

Pardon my asking here, but is it not true that in the State of the Meta thread, almost everybody was asking for better control decks? Is it not true that many, many, MANY players, both professional and not have expressed major dislike of the fact that to be competitive you have to build these non-interactive combo or combo-esque style decks? Many naming Infect, Suicide Zoo, and other similar decks as the examples?
So wizards bans a card that takes care of Infect and suicide Zoo, making said combo decks harder to win with and making it easier to play a midrange/control deck and all everybody wants to do is say that theyre quitting for the attempt at moving a format toward the style of play that the majority of players say they wish that they could have?

And this is one of the problems too. Not blaming you, but most of the magic world seems perfectly fine with these bans. Standard players even going further and going "finally I dont have to deal with Emi every freakin day!" with out realizing that their savors ARE THE SAME PEOPLE THAT BROKE THEIR GAME. And with modern... its been litteral years of this. They refuse to print balanced answers because its unfun or doesnt sell well, and the health sufferes, so they ban. Then it happens again, 3 months later.