MTG Salvation

Quote from arcane7828 »

I miss the days when the meta would stew for months , not just days before everyone start talking about bans.

What days? I'll admit I started up in Modern in late 2012 and thus missed the first year or so of the format, but since I've started playing Modern there was basically no time when people didn't jump pretty quickly onto the ban(d)wagon.

Here's a card I feel is being overlooked: Veil of Summer.

I've long had a soft spot for Autumn's Veil as sideboard tech against counterspell decks, but it was never quite good enough to justify putting into the sideboard. Veil of Summer, however, is a strict upgrade, drawing you a card if an opponent played a Black or Blue spell, which of course they would have if you were casting it in response to a counterspell or creature removal spell. For that matter, even if they didn't cast one of those, it can function as a cantrip as long as they cast a blue or black spell--which is what will generally be the case for decks you bring it in against.

Quote from ed06288 »

Ross Merriam makes a good argument for never unbanning stoneforge mystic. Stoneforge isn't exactly strong but also doesn't warp the way a deck is constructed. "The opportunity cost to run twin or stoneforge packages is almost zero." I personally feel that stoneforge would make tempo decks too strong.

That's not a good argument. If lack of opportunity cost is a problem, then we should be banning Lightning Bolt; exactly what opportunity cost does that card have? Or Path to Exile? Or Thoughtseize? Or, heck, the fetchlands? In fact, I'd say all of those have less opportunity cost than Stoneforge Mystic. And while Tarmogoyf's stock has gone down considerably due to Fatal Push being printed, for a long time that card had the opportunity cost of... having to play cards that were already good. Reminds me of how I've seen it remarked that the "downside" of Delver of Secrets in Legacy is having to play what are already the best cards in the format.

As for the Splinter Twin example, that makes even less sense, because there is major opportunity cost. The combo requires 10 cards in your deck, which is hardly a minor amount, and all of them--all of them--are mediocre-to-terrible by themselves. That means that you've taking out 10 good cards in favor of cards that are not good in order to try to pull off or threaten the combo. The claim there's barely an opportunity cost is laughable.

To be fair, I am responding to your representation of his argument, so maybe he said it better originally... but as presented, it's a nonsense argument.

Quote from idSurge »

Quote from SFMnotunbannedin2030 »

Isn't it time for the obligatory SFM unban hype train?

Not with UW being a deck. It's not happening.

Is Stoneforge Mystic even particularly good in UW Control? It seems to lack general synergy with the deck (not to mention it's an easy target for all the removal spells that are otherwise mediocre against UW Control). Stoneforge Mystic is a midrange card, not a control card.

Granted, perhaps UW could adapt itself into a midrange deck, but that's a different deck than the one that's currently doing well.

Quote from Colt47 »

What does the mulligan fix, and why is it better than the old way?

Because people hate, hate, hate mana screw. It's possibly the single most disliked thing about Magic. And they especially hate getting mana screwed so hard they have to mulligan down to 5 or less and effectively lose the game before it's begun. It's why susbsequent TCGs have either eliminated the possibility of mana screw entirely (e.g. Hearthstone) or at least made it dramatically harder to occur (Pokemon TCG). I saw Richard Garfield say in a lecture he was giving that he regrets the way the mana system created mana screw.

Not only is it not fun to be the player, it's not particularly fun to watch someone on coverage lose a game due to having to mulligan repeatedly.

Unfortunately, the mana system is so engrained in the game you can't truly fix mana screw. Ideas like giving people guaranteed lands don't work because unlike Hearthstone, the game's balance is based around not being guaranteed to make all your land drops. But they can at least try to make it feel less punishing and not "well, I lost the game before my turn even started", which this mulligan rule is trying to do.

Am I the only one who, when looking at this set, think "man, I really wish this was a Standard set"?

The inclusion of the Swords makes me wonder if we may see the printing of a "fixed" Stoneforge Mystic that will work with the Swords but not Batterskull (e.g. a Stoneforge Mystic that only works with equipment that costs 3 or less).

*looks at Top 8 of last Grand Prix*

Hey, remember how there were people who would swear up and down that Jace was so broken that if unbanned, every Blue deck in the format would play him? Yep, he's sure dominating all right. Look at all those Blue decks that are totally running Jace.

Yeah, I know that was a long time ago, but I still want to laugh about it.

It's somewhat of a tangent, but it's amusing to look back at how people in the past would warn that a Jace unban couldn't happen because he'd be slammed into every Blue deck, and non-Blue fair decks couldn't compete... which this Top 8 seems to be a rebuttal against.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

How do you guys think the BB in Bedevil will affect its Modern play? I feel like Wizards may have given it BBR instead of 1BR to attempt to make it tougher in Modern to play, but it ends up just hurting its play in Standard much more, right? Maybe I'm off.

It's BBR because Hero's Downfall was 1BB, which already had double Black. The colorless was replaced with the more narrow Red to compensate for the fact this was a more powerful effect.

Comment Hidden

The effectiveness of hate particularly in comparison to other archetypes is debatable. Stony Silence is very good against Affinity for example, but it can be removed or gone around just like Dampening Sphere. Alpine Moon is a 1 mana card that completely invalidates Tron's entire gameplan. Yes they can remove it just like any other permanent based hate card, but in order to play around it they need a minimum of 6 turns to get to Wurmcoil. If a deck cannot close out the game in that time it doesn't deserve to win.

This is disappointing. Each time we are ready with the pitchforks to get something banned from Humans, someone says "Look, there's an Ancient Stirrings being cast" and people immediately lose their minds , forget the deck that is actually the bigger portion of the meta and go "argh this is so unfair!! I WANT TO SCRY BEFORE I DRAW!!".

Remain on Humans ban topic please.

Anyway, which archetypes do people talk about with the "Ancient Stirrings decks". KCI and Tron are the only ones really since Amulet Bloom, Hardenes Scales affinity or Lantern are scarcely played. Of the two, KCI is the one with multiple issues that I could see getting hit but Stirrings is such a secondary target that it could keep going. Given that Tron has its share of bad matchups and has periods when it doesn't win anything, it's awful the idea of killing a card that makes and archetype of its own for variety (of course, killing variety is exactly what pros want, but then, pros ain't our friends and their attempts to standardize Modern can keep being ignored).

EDIT: Man Alpha / Beta / Old sets Limited is so boring to watch... Magic may have seen better times but surely it was years or a decade after the beginning. Maybe the point is to make people think "That's old magic? Thank god we have M19"

Quote from Narvuntien »

I don't know if I can be sure that UW or Jeskai control decks would exist if you could play combo control of Twin instead.

Couple of things: Multiple other Uxx decks existed with Twin. Multiple Uxx decks had AMAZING matchups against Twin. Jeskai with Teferi and Azcanta is going to be a very different deck and probably isn't going to want Twin, it's also going to destroy Twin whenever paired. Blue Moon is not amazing, shuffles between multiple win cons (none of which are great or consistent), and would likely homogenize to Twin. UW is mostly irrelevant today anyway, regardless of Twin, but would likely beat up on Twin pretty hard between its mana denial, removal, and counterspells.

But basically, saying these decks wouldn't exist is completely ignoring the fact that multiple other Uxx decks DID coexist with Twin, often with better success than they are seeing today. The only deck that has actually seen an improvement is Jeskai, as a result of multiple new printings, and unbans that did either relatively little or literally nothing. Everything else has popped up for a week or two and then disappeared back to irrelevance, and NONE OF THEM have benefited directly from the removal of Twin.

Quote from BlueTronFTW »

That's really the only way I would be okay with a new rotating format - if it was accompanied by an expansion of the reserved list on modern cards that didn't also exist in that new format (which would probably start at BFZ or later to avoid fetchlands).

Never, ever going to happen. Period. The Reserved list was a mistake, long term, one that WotC will not commit again. Also, Modern is already too expensive. If anything everything should be reprinted again and again until the costs come down to a more reasonable level.

@tronix & Spsiegel1987, When was the last time you built a deck in which you picked out cards to allow the opponent to interact with the gamestate to their hearts content? If you've included removal into your deck(s), have you ever stopped to consider what the exact purpose of that removal is?

It is there to deny the opponent the option to attack with their creature. Artifact removal is there to deny the opponent the option to use their artifacts. Discard spells, counters, etc., all there to reduce the number and significance of options from the opponent's decision tree, before they can do the same to you.

This is a major issue that comes up when people tend to define "interaction" and "linear" in a subjective way. They are doing so based on their feelings of entitlement - They feel entitled to playing the game how they want to play it, and not allow the opponent(s) to play it how they want to. We are only as entitled as the metagame and our choices in deck selection and construction allow. Kitchen table players who decry those who "netdeck" do so because they feel entitled to winning with their pile, displaying the same behavior. It's not about interacting with the opponent, it's about interacting with the gamestate more than the opponent can. If you are building a deck to allow the opponent to make significant choices as they see fit, then you're doing it wrong.

A better definition of "linear", when referring to a deck, is an objective one, in the designs of the inherent decision trees and other single-minded characteristics. Examples of single-minded characteristics are when there is a greedy manabase that is easily shut off by Blood Moon (their manabase has a single aspect that can be shut off, or "lined out"), or when about everything in the deck has cmc 1 that can be shut off by Chalice of the Void (the curve has a single aspect that can be "lined out"), or the deck is all-in on creature combat and can be shut off by Ensnaring Bridge (and, again, all of the branches on their decision tree are now "lined out").

Now, when we build or choose our decks, we would be naive or obstinate to not accept that there is some inherent weak characteristic of the deck that can effectively be "lined out". If this were not the case, then there would be only one correct deck to play (see: Eldrazi Winter or Flash Hulk). None of us are entitled to win every game as we wish. None of us are even entitled to force other players to play the game how we wish. We can only build and choose our decks. That other player has just as much a claim on how the game should be played as we do, however much we find it "unfun".

Now, our method of recognizing this aspect of the game (and all games) says a lot about our character and level of maturity. How seriously would you take me if I insisted that, if we were to play chess, you were only allowed to attack the flanks (1. a4, 1. h4) and not go for control of the center of the board?

Quote from Pistallion »

Hard to see Hypergenesis and 12 post not being one of the top decks in no ban list.

I dont think storm would not be great, itll have to be pretty different than the current legal version.

I can see delver being super good, but 12 post and Hypergenesis can main deck things like Chalice or Trinisphere.

I personally would play Hypergenesis if i were to go

Why do people keep thinking Hypergenesis would be a good deck in NBLM? Because it's easy to play? I play the format pretty regularly, and my experience suggests it's pretty bad. It just loses to anything faster, like Storm, or with interaction, like Pyroclamp, or with prison elements, like Tezzerator. Maybe there's a list I haven't seen, but I've tried the all in variant, the more midrangey variant with Terrastodon and O-Ring shenanigans, I've tried using the better Expertise cards; I can't figure out what makes it so busted compared to a turn 2 20/20 indestructible flying creature at instant speed or a turn 1 21 damage Grapeshot. Hypergensis is a fragile, slow combo deck in the context of No Ban List Modern.

If you're looking to get a feel for the format, Breachpost is the way to go. It's a forgiving Tier 1 deck that can win out of nowhere, has access to a lot of great prison elements and interaction, and it's gotten a lot of love from newer sets, like with Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista. The only cards that are significantly different from Tron that you switch out the Tron lands for Locus lands and clone lands. Toss in a couple of Dark Depths, and you've got a great deck.

Quote from Draken »

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I kinda think E-Tron is on its way to sliding down the 1.5-2.0 tier, to be honest. It's had decent results in the past two classic side events though.

There is definitely a meta shift occurring, one where go wide strategies are taking place.

The more I watch and hear about Storm, the more it's just busted, man

If Storm gets 1 single top 8 in the pro-tour, I think it's getting banned.

I don't understand how other UR decks in the past are banned because it can win turn 4 but this deck can be allowed to continue to exist. Storm easily does that, ritual end of turn 3, gifts. Win on turn 4. It's doing similar things in that if you aren't playing the GY hate then you need to be a black deck with creature removal and discard.

Winning on the draw against Storm is nightmarish, especially as a linear deck. I actually haven't felt very confidant against Storm as a GBx/Shadow deck on the draw, since I also have to fade Blood Moon while keeping a reasonable hand to handle a quick combo.

It really is head and shoulders above the rest of the combo decks, I believe. The goblins backup plan is also a really resilient plan.

I truly think if trends continue:

Storm is banned
BBE is unbanned (as a litmus test).

Sheridan's thoughts on the risk of the old UR deck in the private threads kinda convinced me it's incredibly unlikely currently, it's too much of an unknown factor, they wouldn't do it unless the meta was stale and in risk of losing too many players.

I think white's results may not make a compelling case for SFM

A lot of pros and the articles written on BBE seem to agree it's a joke that the card is on the ban list, I think they're going to start there. It's unlikely Jund ravages this format. The deck is tier 3 and they'll unban something with the lowest risk factor first.

Still not very convinced Jace is coming off in the next three years.

So, right now I think it's like

75% of BBE
25% of SFM

0% of any other major unban for Feb

While I would love BBE to come off, I don't know how people can believe it actually with with the presence of death's shadow. Cascading into literally every spell in the deck (with only whiff being stubborn denial) would probably launch the deck into unsafe territory. I would think something would have to be banned from DS (not saying anything should) before BBE comes back. I don't think regular Jund is the problem; it's Death Shadow Variants

Jund DS hasn't really held a heavy presence in the meta for a while and it's doubtful that any variant of DS would want BBE. DS's top end is generally 3 mana and it already has plenty of options of outvaluing their opponent at a cheaper cost (Snapcaster, Tasigur, K-Command, both Lilianas, etc).

DS's main problem right now is that it sometimes struggles to establish a threat since it typically runs 8 in the deck—a problem that BBE does not fix.

Quote from shadowsaotome »

... but I'm surprised no one has tried to make the argument that it could elevate Living End.

So you would cut like Simian Spirit Guides, Fulminator Mages and possible Faerie Macabres and Beast Withins + all converted manacost of three sideboard cards for playing Elf?