This would require a lot more transparency than WotC has had thus far, but it could be done.
Its a huge ban list, but part of doing it all at once was to counteract some of that "and what all are they going to ban next time?" fear.
This list is very much about going 150% into a safe format, and then hopefully being able to scale back with time.
This would need to come with a very clear statement of what their intentions are, and that this ban announcement should not be seen as the typical modern ban announcement. "Let's move on like these mistakes were never printed, and go back to using the banned list only when something gets out of hand. We think though, that without leaning on mistakes like these, any decks will be much less likely to create an unanswerable domination of the format."
There would be a very serious backlash, that I do not doubt for a second. But I think there would still be plenty of people playing. And if those players then started telling everyone how Modern was the best format ever, even those that really do not like the rationale used for the bans would give it a try, and possibly get hooked.
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Jan 28, 2013Eepop posted a message on Nuked from OrbitThis was written a couple months ago, pretty much right after PT:RTR. In fact, I had been writing the draft of it up for awhile before that. You can look though my post history and see where I initially proposed such a list before PT:RTR as well.Posted in: Eepop Blog
I did have access to the RTR spoiler though, so maybe I should have caught DRS. But plenty of people missed seeing how powerful he was.
If I redrafted the list today, I probably would include him.
As for Liliana, I think she was fine before DRS. She would very much be a staple of the format, but I think WotC likes planeswalkers being somewhat relevant in modern.
All that said, this plan was very much a "lets get it all out of the way plan". It looks like even if WotC is looking to get to the same endpoint, they are doing so in a slower approach: banning only a couple cards at a time. That can get to the same end point, just a bit more gradually.
I was advocating to ban like crazy, and then scale back. They appear to be banning slowly so they don't need to scale back as much. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
1) Any new deck must push out other decks, not might, but MUST.
2) There are no new decks in modern, for example Bogle is just Enchantress.
3) Anything that enables a turn 3 combo, regardless of consistency, should be banned, even down to something like Freed from the Real.
4) Reprinting any card from before 8th edition and introducing it to the modern card pool is a bad thing, even if that card would see no play.
Are all absurd.
I am probably the most sympathetic to the idea Bocephus espouses that its not the end of the world if more cards get banned, and that its at least possible that its what is best for the health and growth of the format.
But things like the above just make you seem like a troll, Bocephus. Or that you are trying like hell to pull some serious Overton Window tactics.
Even without Mox Opal, just artifact lands could be a huge boon for control decks. A major hole in control decks right now is in the early-mid game card advantage, particularly at instant speed. Making Thirst for Knowledge live with 8ish artifact lands would be HUGE. It makes countermagic much better when you have a solid backup option to do if the opponent decides to just not play anything. Right now if you hold up counters, your opponent pretty much knows that at best you are cantripping. If they instead knew that not playing something meant you were gaining solid card advantage, they would feel more pressured to actually play spells into countermagic.
Mox Opal + Artifact lands does have the completely separate possibility of enabling some metalcraft cards that hadn't seen the light of day though. Two artifact lands and a mox Opal is a turn 3 8/8 with Erzuri's Brigade. Maybe thats not good enough for modern, but its within the realm of possible.
I am not saying its wise, or something that should happen any time soon. Just that its not something altogether unreasonable if in 3-4 years time they are looking for ways to spice things up or just reduce the raw number of cards on the banned list.
I'm not trying to enable any pet deck here, I'm the type of guy that wants them to ban any card they think was a mistake to print, which they obviously think about artifact lands. I'm just giving Slip the respect of considering what there would be to gain from his proposal.
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I am also at a loss of where people are seriously worried right now out about something from Pod being banned soon. We are a good ways away from that. The last time an analogous card got banned* was Bloodbraid Elf. It took Jund having a run of great top 8s in 5 major tournaments (PT:RTR, GP: Lyon, GP: Chicago, GP: Toronto, GP Bilbao) before they took action, and a series of the deck evolving to hate upon itself.
We've had ONE tournament where Melira Pod had a great top 8. Lets have another tournament with a great top 8 for melira pod, with the winning decklist being the Pod list thats tuned to beat other Pod lists before we start thinking the sky is falling.
The Seething Song and Second Sunrise bans are a completely different type of ban.
WotC has been much more aggressive about offenders of the turn 4 rule.
For a card from pod to be banned it would have to be about dominance and format warping, which they have set a higher burden of proof for.
I could buy into this.
Control would get a nice boost by being able to play more than 4 artifact lands to make Thirst for Knowledge more playable.
Metalcraft cards that have never seen the light of modern might be considered playable.
The only thing I really worry about here is it has the capacity to make affinity even more instant-fold vs directed artifact hate. Games with affinity vs directed hate can already feel very one dimensional, but the opponent is at least at relatively low life, so if the affinity player draws right, they usually stand some chance of coming back from it. If something like a Creeping Corrosion is not just Wrath of God against you, but Armageddon too, you are much less likely to give the game another push.
But without plating and disciple, maybe affinity wouldn't feel the need to go over the deep end with artifact lands, instead just jamming in 4 or so (beyond the citadels they already have).
I don't think we're quite at the place in modern where they try stuff like that, but it is an interesting proposition. Maybe in a few years things will be settled enough for them to try things like that.
Honestly, reduced prices is what I want to see too, but we can't act like that is objectively what they are saying MM would do.
Not sure about that. Unbanning Skullclamp would probably not be good.
But in a case where it is abundantly clear that the card isn't a danger, like GGT, it should be unbanned.
The rest of the banned list at least has some reason to give pause before unbanning, but GGT without Dread Return is really only even fringe playable.
Enjoy
I don't think any of the common effects used for shuffling actually require the search in order to shuffle. Shadow of Doubt does not counter a card that searches, it just modifies the rules of the game for that turn so that you can't search libraries. You still resolve the rest of the effects of any cards that would instruct you to search your library, which usually means you are shuffling your library.
We tried in the bantest thread, but it was too difficult to get people to agree on how to build the deck.
Someone should start a kickstarter to pay Raphael Levy to stream testing of Dredgevine with gravetroll (and pay some other pro to run the gauntlet).
I don't care in the least if GGT gets unbanned. But I'd throw down a few bucks to see that. I imagine it would be quite entertaining.
I am not at all saying it was ever a bad deck, just that there was a perception that other decks were better choices. And that perception bled over into people not being as prepared for it as they should have been.
They consider it, but don't do it often. They did unban Valakut about a year ago though.
As for the bans themselves, there are generally three things at play there.
a) Some of them were banned early on in Modern because they were an issue in similar pre-cursor formats, and WotC wanted to be safe to start with. They had just had a particularly bad experience with 4-year extended, due at least in part to some powerful cards dominating the environment. They wanted to overshoot and be safe.
b) The effects of some of the cards on the environment are sometimes difficult to see. Wild Nacatl is probably the posterchild for this. On paper it seems innocuous, but when you are actually building decks with the card pool, it shrinks the aggro archetype drastically.
c) Some of these were problems that did not have good answers at the time, but have since gotten better answers available. Abrupt Decay single handedly makes many cards a lot safer, and we've gotten a flood of graveyard answers as of late.
There is not any philosophical opposition on their part to unbanning things, but they are very cautious about doing it in a safe way. Unbanning something only to have to reban it is such an awful prospect, that they even when its only a remote possibility, it gives them pause. Modern is a growing format. Until it is fully established and stable, they are likely to be hesitant to make any moves that they consider to be risky.
As for your specific cards:
Bitterblossom - There is some testing going on in the banned list testing thread to try to show that Bitterblossom is safe to unban. Many things have changed from the formats where its a problem, and we have several answers for this now. Eventually it will likely be unbanned, but there are probably still some inside WotC who remember being burned by Bitterblossom's effect on other formats. It will likely take some time for that feeling of risk to be overcome.
Golgari Grave Troll - The consensus seems to be that his time has come. I did a larger breakdown of why in another post a bit up on this page.
Dread Return - This is unlikely to be banned for quite some time. The deck it creates has been described as "not real magic". When not properly contained it can have very pernicious effects upon a format. The binary nature of the possible interaction with it makes it skew sideboards in a way that WotC does not like. Maybe in 2017.
Artifact Lands - This one is tricky. There may be a time when its looked on as safe to unban these, but unlikely that there would be a time when its deemed worth it to do so. Affinity is already very much a real deck, so there is very little reason to do anything to super-charge it. Even if the environment could deal with it, it would likely be by packing more artifact destruction, which just makes the games one-sided based on if the opponent has the artifact destruction or not. Right now, there is a lot of play to the affinity match ups, but incentivize all its opponents to run more removal and you just end up with affinity players stone-rained out of games. Instead of having interesting back and forth, we just get a "do you have it?" check. Unbanning these makes Thirst for Knowledge better, which does fill a niche that is somewhat missing in this format. But we come back to whether the risk of making Affinity either oppressive or just less interesting is worth the prospective gain. I doubt it would be considered worth it any time in the next few years.
Melira Pod was a deck that everyone seemed to acknowledge was reasonable, but that that few people were playing. People repeatedly set it aside as "Fine, but Kiki-Pod is a better Pod combo deck, and I get to play restoration angels instead of junk like viscera seer and melira." or "It relies on the graveyard, its too easy to hate out its combo. If I want to play a midrange durdle deck, I'll just play an actual midrange deck and not mess around with Birthing Pod."
I don't think there is anything inherent about the deck that makes it outside the constraints of current Modern. Its good, but many considered it a fringe deck before Voice of Resurgence. Voice is good, and it fits the deck well, but I don't think its going to push the deck into being oppressive.
We have plenty of tools to combat the deck, and the tools to combat it are things that have plenty of applicability in the format at large. The format had just been skimping on those things for awhile.
I think GP:KC will have a format less vulnerable to Melira Pod. The Top 8 is likely to be the people that properly intuit where people are going shave cards to make room for more against Melira Pod.
Even if Melira Pod somehow fights through the hate, its likely WotC would not pull the trigger on any ban, and instead hope that Scavenging Ooze does the trick of pulling them back from the brink.
As for what they actually will do, I tend to agree with LBS that we may be getting GGT unbanned.
It has long been accepted by nearly everyone that GGT is safe to unban. Even people who want more aggressive banning generally agree that GGT doesn't actually pose a danger.
Modern Masters has a dredge subtheme.
Scavenging Ooze is being added to the modern card pool at the same time the next announcement would take effect.
WotC could use another point to push back on the "All they do is ban" image that some like to repeat.
A concern before was that WotC may be being cautious in the case that any graveyard-ish things added in Innistraad or RtR Block might be unexpectedly synergistic with the Dredge deck. Those blocks are now locked in stone, and we can all be fairly sure that as-is Dredge is not a threat to Modern. We currently have no reason to believe Theros would offer anything dealing with the graveyard that Dredge would have any interest in. So this concern can now be put to rest.
The only remaining objection is that unbanning it is unlikely to do anything. Its going to make the Dredgevine deck better, but very likely its not going to make it relevant in general. If there is no gain in gameplay, why bother? As I mentioned above, there are benefits outside the game itself, with WotC's image on Modern that have room to gain.
The chance of Dredge re-breaking with GGT is very low, and even if we hit those odds, the real enabler is unlikely to be GGT.
I think for the M14 announcement we get GGT unbanned, and nothing added to the banned list.
I believe he is saying that Emrakul, more than any other card is what is keeping control out of the environment. So the banning of Emrakul would make control a larger proportion of the metagame.
That larger portion of control may be enough to dissuade people from playing very all in strategies like blazing shoal infect.
I was trying to explain that if the reason to test is that if the guantlet wins out before even changing anything then it is a strong statement toward the safety of a potential unbanning (at least in cases where the only decks that would use the card are crystal clear like Bitterblossom and GGT).
That's not to say the decks shouldn't be reacting, just that they don't have to in order to get meaningful results.
I think the changes you made to Jund are fine, as they wouldn't look odd to turn up in a tournament with an unchanged banned list. Boil is a little oddly specific, but I kind of doubt it would even turn out to be all that good, so whatever.