As a massive Twin fan, I'm surprised anyone who plays Blue Control-Combo or Control period, cannot see just how 'next level' Twin is.
In nearly every game I lose, I can easily see where Twin would have had a better shot at winning. Nearly every game. Now, does UWR Control (not Queller) win? Yes it does. Would Twin win more? Yes it would. Its not even an argument.
People only accepted it, because it was around for so long, because you know what is almost exactly like Twin that tilts people to no end? Turns.
EoT 4 - Dictate
Turn 5 - Combo
Turn 5 + X = You die from a Waterfall punching you in the face 3 times, bonus points if its an Infect 7/7 Flying Waterfall.
And people hate it.
There is no world in which Twin comes off, unless Wizards wants to kill the format off. This isnt Jace where some people proclaimed that it would 'end the format, he's too good, and omg he's too expensive'. This is Twin, a deck we know all too well, and can easily draw a line between what people are doing now (UR Breach for example, or the more post-board Control version's of Blue decks) to what we used to be able to do.
Nobody who plays blue is being honest with themselves if they think Twin would be 'fine' for the format. Not saying busted, but 'fine' in terms of the displayed goals, preferences, and play patterns which Wizards have promoted.
EDIT: In fact I remember some Pod players making the same kind of statements I have made about Twin.
"I never felt out of the game, I always had a chance." Thats the hallmark of a deck that is probably too good.
Honestly, twin was never too good. People hate turns because you can't react to it and it's subject to high RNG (a turn 3 dictate could be game over... but it could also do nothing).
Twin never needed to be be banned. The "reasoning" behind the twin ban was faulty at best. They never attained what they hoped to achieve by banning it except for effectively killing control (at the time).
Now I don't think twin will ever be unbanned... at least not for another year or two.
If wizard can continue to print cards that push control decks, twin is unnecessary.
On the same day Wizards releases the competitive league 5-0 list showing 15 distinct Jace the Mind Sculptor decks, saying wizards hasn't achieved "competitive diversity" among blue decks is a very hard position to take.
I've adopted the 4 manamorphose 0 Lilly maindeck list and have been very impressed with it as I find I'm hitting my TBRs more often and winning more against stuff like Elves and affinity in game one. For the board I've got 2 Lilly and 4 lingering souls which is what I bring in for control and Jund. I've been liking this configuration quite a lot especially because I find myself stealing a lot of game ones against bad matchups with discard into shadow into TBR.
Interestingly, I actually think the return of decks like Storm and Infect is a result of Jund's impact on the meta. Jund has become the midrange deck to beat the other midrange decks but as a result it's chock full of midrangey cards that aren't great in the fast linear matchups (BBE, Kolaghans command, arguably scooze and Bob) and decks like Storm and counters Company are able to capitalize where they once struggled against the heavier disruption and faster clock of the deaths shadow decks. It's actually somewhat of a testament to how adaptable the modern metagame is that while BBE certainly puts pressure on other midrange decks to beat Jund, it makes Jund weaker to some of the matchups those decks it pushes out would normally beat. I see it more likely now that Jund and Shadow will wax and wane depending on the meta versus BBE just being strictly better than shadow. I would have absolutely rather played Traverse than Jund at that SCG event in retrospect and I think that's a positive sign for the deck moving forward.
I feel that that meta, was pushing out, or down, other strategies (mid range, and control) far too much.
All, of course, imo.
Sure, that's reasonable. I always felt that midrange decks were favoured against those matchups and I'd chose to play against Storm, Humans and Burn every single round of a GP over having to play midrange mirrors which were much closer to 50/50 and harder to win in my experience.
also deaths shadow didnt emerge as some response to format conditions. if you watch the evolution of the deck over the last 1.5-2 years starting with suicide zoo its clear it was a slow dawning realization that 'holy crap deaths shadow is really freaking powerful', and was then incorporated into every midrange strategy playing black. it was so powerful that decks warped around the card creating the DS decks we see today.
That's factually untrue. People played Death Shadow because it had a better matchup against linear decks and Tron while sacrificing the matchup against grindyer interactive decks. Non death shadow GBx continued to exist all throughout the past year alongside Death Shadow because Death Shadow is not, and has never been strictly better or "incorporated into every midrange strategy playing black".
GP Toronto, GP Lyon, Pro Tour RIX also had multiple non death shadow black midrange decks in top finishes. Death Shadow is and always has been an adaptation of GB midrange decks to better address combo and tron at the expense of beating midrange. It has never pushed out non shadow decks, it was never "warped" decks around it, and it's never been considered a strictly better evolution of the archetype.
The meta like ETron, GTron, Storm, Affinity, and GDS. That meta, is not good for the game.
Aside from the incredibly suspect inclusion of GDS in the non interactive category, you're making a subjective judgement and passing it off as given that "that meta, is not good for the game". Modern continued to see strong growth during periods when all of those decks were at the top of the metagame so I would argue that you're conflating "good for the game" with what you like to play. Personally I think there is substantially more interesting decision making in the midrange vs aggro/combo matchup, or the affinity mirror as opposed to midrange mirrors which often come down to the person top decking two good things beating the person who top decked two lands. That is however only my value based judgement and I wouldn't go so far as to say whether it's good for the game or not. I would suspect however that the metagame in which the most people are happy is one in which a variety of strategies from linear to interactive are competitively viable. People get caught up in this narrative that interactive strategies are the ones that belong in magic and seem to forget that cards like goblin guide were deliberately printed to enable aggro strategies and those strategies are every bit as valid as anything else.
Those 3 colour Goodstuffs have just as much right to win as 'plz dont make me play magic' Bogles.
Sure, and I don't think anyone is denying that. I'm of the opinion that those 3 colour goodstuff decks already do win a reasonable amount and my concern is more that we see the format being dominated by any one strategy in the future. I think the emergence of bogles and the recent explosion in popularity of Tron is a symptom of just how powerful midrange strategies have become in modern. We're somewhat seeing a meta right now where it's a perfectly viable strategy to say "my plan for this tournament is to just focus on beating midrange and lose to combo or aggro" and then still do quite well because decks like Storm, Counters Company, Infect, Ad Nauseum and the like are largely not competitively viable so you don't really have to do anything but be hard to interact with without interacting at all yourself.
This is also very true. I would much prefer a scenario like we saw with the emergence of Death Shadow decks (full disclosure, I play traverse shadow) where midrange strategies adjusted their decks to be faster to compete with Tron and unfair combo rather than just sideboarding away their bad matchups. We saw the same thing with Jeskai control becoming Jeskai Queller, and with the reintroduction of Jace and BBE we were likely to see those matchups switching back to Jeskai control and BBE Jund to adapt to the slower meta. It seems a lot more interesting than just jamming the same 60 regardless and tuning your sideboard but that's a personal preference and maybe isn't shared with most people.
My gripe with this new Ball thing is that it actually will effect Storm way more than Tron within the metagame. The reason for this is because Tron can Ostone it away (this seems like a slightly better Blood Moon) or even eventually just get a bunch of lands out to deal with something like this, but against Storm the card basically says "your opponent can't win the game." This is nothing new to Storm, as there are a plethora of cards that say "you can't win the game," and Storm players are very used to this. But why does another card like this need to exist? Why not just make it have the first part of the card?
The major problem is that now this card hits two major archetypes in the format. One of the perks of playing Storm is that while it has silver bullet cards like Rule of Law and Eidolon of Rhetoric (any many other), those cards are both very narrow and it negatively effects both players. This is very important. You might ask "why does Storm's hate only have to exist in very narrow instances?" Well, thats easy. No other archetype has a card that says "you can't win the game" besides Dredge, on top of having to deal with anti graveyard hate (all of witch are low effort cards, e.g. cards that fit into any deck very easily.) that severely gimps the deck while simultaneously hitting other decks.
My other problem with this card is that every sideboard besides Storm and Tron will have at least 1 slot dedicated to this card.
I'd rather this format not be all about drawing sideboard cards like it was in the past.
I also don't see that the meta really needed this particular hate card so I'm a little bit baffled that if the design team was testing for modern how they would think this was a good thing to introduce into the format. Storm is deader than dead already, Tron is neither unbeatable for midrange decks nor is it putting up particularly impressive finishes, and Jund is probably the best deck in modern currently. I don't see why we would want to have a card that makes the (arguably) best deck better while also limiting the metagame's ability to respond to that deck and keep it in check. We will really have to see how things pan out and it's too early to say anything, but I don't like what I suspect this card will do to the overall health of the metagame at all.
Well, I’m not sure with Jund being arguably the best deck in the format it makes any sense to print lights out hate cards for the best option there’s is to keeping Jund in check, but here we are. The format is already so heavily skewed towards midrange that bogles is having a renaissance, I think this is a really unfortunate thing to do to the format.
Stablization Ball 2
Artifact
If a land would produce two or more mana, it instead produces C instead (possibly no mana, translation unclear)
Each spell costs an additional X to cast, where X is the number of spells that spell's controller has previously cast this turn
Even with the nonbo of this card and BBE, I feel like this would make midrange oppressively strong in modern and lead to a pretty gross format if Jund no longer has to worry about decks that cantrip, Tron, or snapcaster based decks.
I could see something like a Bant Company pre con, 4 Collected Company, 4 spell quellers, 4 KOTR and then some mix of budget substitutions like avacyn's pilgrim and elvish mystics in the dorks slot, scavenging ooze and maybe strangleroot geists or something in the creature slots. The only real question is whether the manabase is at all workable on a budget and without fetches, which I'm not entirely sure they are.
Elves and Burn would both be super viable budget entries into the format via modern challenger deck. 8 rack wouldn't be too bad either with lots of hand disruption and fatal pushes and it would build towards a variety of black based discard decks like BGx or Mardu Pyromancer or Grixis or Shadow decks.
I'm gonna try it. I think with the way the current meta sits we want to leverage what we do best (disruption and early consistent pressure) vs trying to midrange out with LOTV at least in game one, and I think 4 manamorphose might be correct to cut us down to a 48 card deck which *hopefully* really ups the consistency. Post board I like lingering souls but I've always been more partial to the white splash for souls versus running stubbs.
what is RG eldrazi even soft to? spell based combo? breach decks?
I've been playing the deck a bunch. Hollow One is a pretty miserable matchup because they clog the ground up making your attacks unprofitable and just kill you with recurring flamewake phoenixes. We can't beat Ponza at all. Midrange like Jund or Mardu Pyromancer is an incredibly good matchup, but control decks that can leverage path to exile can be very difficult to beat since we generally leverage resolving one big threat per turn and path cleanly answers everything in our deck. I recently had a game against Jeskai where I cast TKS into Smasher into Smasher into Endbringer into Endbringer and still lost because my opponent just exiled everything with path and snap path. If your interaction is fatal push and bolts and abrupt decays you're going to get crushed. If your interaction is path to exile I think your chances go way up. If you're playing Jeskai Queller with the ability to answer stuff and close the game out quickly I think you're actually quite favoured over Eldrazi. Affinity is also slightly unfavoured.
Took the GP list to fnm last night and went 3-1. Played against goblins round one where scooze was an all star and then post board I hit k return, EE, and chalice in the same game so it was pretty lopsided. Played against Green Tron the next round where my opponent went Karn into Karn into Ulamog and still lost. Haste creatures really take the sting out of Karn liberated and getting an Ulamog with obligator is the dream. Game two hit crumble to dust for the win. Round three hit affinity and lost to multiple cranial platings. Round four hit E Tron and we're just faster and more consistent. I like the deck a lot, not sure I want BBE in it at all after testing it.
Changes to the manabases I made was cutting 3 cavern of souls for two wastes and a forest because field of ruin is a real card that exists
On the same day Wizards releases the competitive league 5-0 list showing 15 distinct Jace the Mind Sculptor decks, saying wizards hasn't achieved "competitive diversity" among blue decks is a very hard position to take.
Sure, that's reasonable. I always felt that midrange decks were favoured against those matchups and I'd chose to play against Storm, Humans and Burn every single round of a GP over having to play midrange mirrors which were much closer to 50/50 and harder to win in my experience.
Different perspectives are totally valid though.
That's factually untrue. People played Death Shadow because it had a better matchup against linear decks and Tron while sacrificing the matchup against grindyer interactive decks. Non death shadow GBx continued to exist all throughout the past year alongside Death Shadow because Death Shadow is not, and has never been strictly better or "incorporated into every midrange strategy playing black".
Jund - SCG Baltimore 4th Place http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15744&d=296488&f=MO
Abzan - GP Kobe top 16 http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15693&d=296002&f=MO
Abzan - GP Vegas top 16 http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15927&d=298105&f=MO
Abzan - GP Sao Paulo top 8 http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16542&d=302313&f=MO
Abzan - GP Birmingham top 4 http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16525&d=302196&f=MO
GB Rock - GP Birmingham 2nd Place http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16525&d=302198&f=MO
GP Toronto, GP Lyon, Pro Tour RIX also had multiple non death shadow black midrange decks in top finishes. Death Shadow is and always has been an adaptation of GB midrange decks to better address combo and tron at the expense of beating midrange. It has never pushed out non shadow decks, it was never "warped" decks around it, and it's never been considered a strictly better evolution of the archetype.
Aside from the incredibly suspect inclusion of GDS in the non interactive category, you're making a subjective judgement and passing it off as given that "that meta, is not good for the game". Modern continued to see strong growth during periods when all of those decks were at the top of the metagame so I would argue that you're conflating "good for the game" with what you like to play. Personally I think there is substantially more interesting decision making in the midrange vs aggro/combo matchup, or the affinity mirror as opposed to midrange mirrors which often come down to the person top decking two good things beating the person who top decked two lands. That is however only my value based judgement and I wouldn't go so far as to say whether it's good for the game or not. I would suspect however that the metagame in which the most people are happy is one in which a variety of strategies from linear to interactive are competitively viable. People get caught up in this narrative that interactive strategies are the ones that belong in magic and seem to forget that cards like goblin guide were deliberately printed to enable aggro strategies and those strategies are every bit as valid as anything else.
Sure, and I don't think anyone is denying that. I'm of the opinion that those 3 colour goodstuff decks already do win a reasonable amount and my concern is more that we see the format being dominated by any one strategy in the future. I think the emergence of bogles and the recent explosion in popularity of Tron is a symptom of just how powerful midrange strategies have become in modern. We're somewhat seeing a meta right now where it's a perfectly viable strategy to say "my plan for this tournament is to just focus on beating midrange and lose to combo or aggro" and then still do quite well because decks like Storm, Counters Company, Infect, Ad Nauseum and the like are largely not competitively viable so you don't really have to do anything but be hard to interact with without interacting at all yourself.
I also don't see that the meta really needed this particular hate card so I'm a little bit baffled that if the design team was testing for modern how they would think this was a good thing to introduce into the format. Storm is deader than dead already, Tron is neither unbeatable for midrange decks nor is it putting up particularly impressive finishes, and Jund is probably the best deck in modern currently. I don't see why we would want to have a card that makes the (arguably) best deck better while also limiting the metagame's ability to respond to that deck and keep it in check. We will really have to see how things pan out and it's too early to say anything, but I don't like what I suspect this card will do to the overall health of the metagame at all.
Even with the nonbo of this card and BBE, I feel like this would make midrange oppressively strong in modern and lead to a pretty gross format if Jund no longer has to worry about decks that cantrip, Tron, or snapcaster based decks.
Elves and Burn would both be super viable budget entries into the format via modern challenger deck. 8 rack wouldn't be too bad either with lots of hand disruption and fatal pushes and it would build towards a variety of black based discard decks like BGx or Mardu Pyromancer or Grixis or Shadow decks.
I could also see budget Tron
I've been playing the deck a bunch. Hollow One is a pretty miserable matchup because they clog the ground up making your attacks unprofitable and just kill you with recurring flamewake phoenixes. We can't beat Ponza at all. Midrange like Jund or Mardu Pyromancer is an incredibly good matchup, but control decks that can leverage path to exile can be very difficult to beat since we generally leverage resolving one big threat per turn and path cleanly answers everything in our deck. I recently had a game against Jeskai where I cast TKS into Smasher into Smasher into Endbringer into Endbringer and still lost because my opponent just exiled everything with path and snap path. If your interaction is fatal push and bolts and abrupt decays you're going to get crushed. If your interaction is path to exile I think your chances go way up. If you're playing Jeskai Queller with the ability to answer stuff and close the game out quickly I think you're actually quite favoured over Eldrazi. Affinity is also slightly unfavoured.
In my experience.
Changes to the manabases I made was cutting 3 cavern of souls for two wastes and a forest because field of ruin is a real card that exists