It’s bad. Really bad. Against Storm, it just counters the original Grapeshot. The storm trigger still happens and all the other copies get set at your face. You do get to “copy” Grapeshot, if that’s the spell you target with Psychic Rebuttal. You don’t get the storm trigger, since you’re “copying” it and not “casting” it.
Honestly, at 2 mana, you’re better off just running a Negate. It’s going to counter everything that a Psychic Rebuttal counters, along with planeswalkers, random problem artifacts and enchantments, etc.
Not having the fetch-shock combo is going to hurt you quite a bit. It allows you to eat up to 3 of your own life points per turn, accelerating your Death’s Shadow at a much faster rate than painlands could ever hope to. Fetches also help fill your graveyard to rush out Gurmag Anglers by turn 2. Combine this with the fact that you’re only running 2 Thought Scours and you’re REALLY going to have trouble getting Gurmag Angler out quickly. I would get rid of Thing in the Ice. It has some anti-synergies with your delve threats, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but since you’re already not running fetches, it makes it even clunkier. If you need extra threats, I would grab Young Pyromancer over Thing. Also, Thoughtseize. This card is part of the reason that GDS is playable. It enables Death’s Shadow and allows you to clear any problematic cards out of your opponent’s hand.
GDS is already a deck that needs to scrap for its wins. At its heart, it’s a fair deck. Fair decks sort of need to use the most efficient cards in each slot if they want to win, so by cutting some of the most important cards, you’re going to lose a lot of games because of it.
All of that being said, here are some of the easiest budget-friendly improvements you can make to this list. You need 4 Thought Scour if you ever want to hope to cast Gurmag Angler on a reasonable turn. I would even consider running some amount of Faithless Looting to help fuel the grave, since you’re not running fetches. Yes, yes. It's card disadvantage, but if we've learned anything about the recent days of Modern, keeping Tempo is often more important than CA. Also, since you’re not running a fetch-shock land base, I’d recommend using Dismember as your removal of choice. Cut some of the Fatal Pushes and/or Terminates for Dismember. It gives you another way to control your own life total while clearing the board for your threats.
I doubt it. Deathrite was ubiquitous in Legacy because it was reach, grave-hate, life-gain, mana ramp, and mana fixing, all rolled up into a one mana creature.
Heirarch is good, but fits into much fewer decks. The price might move a little, but Legacy folks who try to slot Noble as a DRS replacement are going to be sorely disappointed.
If this is what theyre gonna do with with Core sets, they might as well go back to not printing them. What a waste of time and cardboard.
This is not what a Core set should be used for (yes i know we havent seen everything but I dont suspect we'll see the things I think we should)
We got a couple of expensive reprints and a handful of cards that might see play.
Core Sets have never been designed for Modern. What, pray-tell, SHOULD the purpose of a Core Set be by your standards?
to me, the best shells for GSZ are gw company (and it will be like legacy's maverick, something that seems interesting in modern), elves (but i doubt that chord/company are worst to run than the zenith) and maybe amulet titan/scapeshift. The only thing that seems to keep zenith out of modern is the "all games plays the same" that wizards seems to hate
I'd jam GSZ in elves all day long over chord, all day. Not sure about coco as spitting out two dudes is still relevant a lot of the time.
The card is probably fine? I'm pretty sure jund shadow drops traverse though, so zenntih becomes shadow 5-8 for 2 mana and can find higher cmc threats as the game goes long (goyf, scooze, etc.) maybe not, I have no exp piloting the deck. Seems groovy on paper though.
GSZ doesn't find Death's Shadow. GSZ only finds green creatures, so it's at best Goyf 5-8. (If it could grab any creature, we wouldn't even be having a conversation about it coming off the list.)
The card provides a lot of raw consistency to color that doesn't necessarily need it right now. Not to mention that it shuffles right back into your deck. It's basically never a dead draw and there are ALWAYS 4 copies of it in your deck.
I don't know that it's anything that's too powerful for Modern, but it does anything really all that good for the format.
While many of us seem to agree that SFM is likely to be unbanned at some point in time, is there a change for Treasure Cruise or DTT to come off the list? How about Ponder or Preordain?
Cruise is dead. Cruise is banned in basically every format it has touched. Even Pauper, which allows Gush, cannot handle Cruise. DTT maybe has a slightly better chance, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Ponder is dead. Ponder is a slightly different case than Cruise. It is indeed VERY powerful, but it will never come off of the list purely because if any cantrip comes off, it will be Preordain. It's a minor upgrade to Serum Visions/Sleight of Hand in some decks, and a sidegrade in others. WotC doesn't want to hit a critical mass of cantrip cards though, so if we get either of them back into the format, it will be Preordain.
Disdainful stroke has some applications against scaepshift (scapeshift, titan), jeskai (cryptic command, teferi and jace), and there are few other things it hits.
I don't regularly play sultai, but I would imagine that it's a meta call.
Does Punishing Fire really add anything to the format that we need? We already have a large array of removal and CA based strategies that prey on creature based aggro, and it seems unnecessary.
All it really seems to do is add another way for Tron to deal with aggro strategies, which is an archtype that is supposed to struggle with fast aggro.
Elvish Harbinger is not good. It’s an overcosted body, that acts as an additional Llanowar Elves and it doesn’t draw you a card. We already have better consistency tools that allow us to dig through the deck AND get ahead on cards on the board or in the hand (Collected Company and Lead the Stampede). We also have access to a card that can grab the exact Elf we need and put it directly into play (Chord of Calling).
Harbinger just does a “meh” job at all of those things, so why not just select one of the cards that do most of those things, but better?
It seems to me that the argument against direct-to-modern is that standard provides a proving ground. Unfortunately that seems false. Wizards have printed cards that were:
So standard does not protect modern much. I don't see why it's fine to bring to modern a mistake from standard but risking to print a busted card direct to modern is bad.
Bannning a card like Mox Opal would be an obvious mistake.
Lets just say Affinity becomes broken. Lets look at what happened: new card comes into a format and breaks a deck that is a pillar of the format, has had Mox Opal in the deck since the beginning of Modern, yet they ban Opal instead of the new card? It will also kill many decks from tier 1 all the way to tier 100. Doesnt make any sense.
When 'x' is broken, you fix 'x', not 'y'.
Golgari-Grave Troll spent a fair deal in the format being fine. By that logic we should have banned Prized Amalgam and Cathartic Reunion instead, because they were the “new” cards.
The fact is Mox Opal is fast mana, which always has the spotlight focused on it. It enables a lot of degenerate combos, so I can see a scenario where it gets banned in Modern. I don’t think anything right now suggests that it’s in need of a banning though. Affinity just got a new toy. People haven’t figured out how to deal with it yet. Either people learn how to adapt to the new tech, or we’re unable to… that’s when it becomes a problem.
The fact is, power and “brokenness” of specific cards are relative. New cards enter the pool that make older cards broken. Does that mean we always ban the new card, because the card was fine for a long time in the format? Should we have banned Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher instead of Eye of Ugin, a card that was fine in the format for a very long time?
Again, I don't think Mox Opal is in need of any regulation, but I wouldn't assume that it's not an offending card just because it's been in the format for ages without causing any real problems.
I know that you know Meddling Mage can name Path, Bolt...
And you're still at level 1. Getting rid of "Puke Combo" is bad for the meta game at large, independent of Humans, because that has an effect on other decks viability. Adding Combo back to the meta makes decks that aren't Combo better as well.
But it can only name one at a time. That just means that decks need to diversify their removals, instead of just running 4 Pushes and 2 Bolts and then call it good.
Interactive vs non-interactive, in terms of casual conversation about Modern, is like the game Road Rash (any of you remember that old Sega Genesis game?).
A non-interactive deck is like a racer who focuses on getting the fastest bike with the best parts and has a game-plan of just cruising past the competition without getting into any scuffles.
An interactive deck is like the racer who brings a crowbar to the race to beat the tar out of other racers.
Anyone else get a look at Thran Temporal Gate in the Dominaria spoilers? Seems like something that could be busted in Modern, hell of a lot of legendary stuff to cheat out. Not sure if it's actually going to see play, but the Johnny in me really wants to try it out.
Probably won’t see play.
There are already better ways to cheat game-winning permanents into play that don’t require an 8 mana investment. Maybe you can use this to flash in a walker… by why not just Through the Breach Emrakul into play and basically just win on the spot instead? Or just play Tron and hard cast Karns and Ugins for 8 mana?
Honestly, at 2 mana, you’re better off just running a Negate. It’s going to counter everything that a Psychic Rebuttal counters, along with planeswalkers, random problem artifacts and enchantments, etc.
GDS is already a deck that needs to scrap for its wins. At its heart, it’s a fair deck. Fair decks sort of need to use the most efficient cards in each slot if they want to win, so by cutting some of the most important cards, you’re going to lose a lot of games because of it.
All of that being said, here are some of the easiest budget-friendly improvements you can make to this list. You need 4 Thought Scour if you ever want to hope to cast Gurmag Angler on a reasonable turn. I would even consider running some amount of Faithless Looting to help fuel the grave, since you’re not running fetches. Yes, yes. It's card disadvantage, but if we've learned anything about the recent days of Modern, keeping Tempo is often more important than CA. Also, since you’re not running a fetch-shock land base, I’d recommend using Dismember as your removal of choice. Cut some of the Fatal Pushes and/or Terminates for Dismember. It gives you another way to control your own life total while clearing the board for your threats.
Heirarch is good, but fits into much fewer decks. The price might move a little, but Legacy folks who try to slot Noble as a DRS replacement are going to be sorely disappointed.
We got a couple of expensive reprints and a handful of cards that might see play.
Core Sets have never been designed for Modern. What, pray-tell, SHOULD the purpose of a Core Set be by your standards?
GSZ doesn't find Death's Shadow. GSZ only finds green creatures, so it's at best Goyf 5-8. (If it could grab any creature, we wouldn't even be having a conversation about it coming off the list.)
The card provides a lot of raw consistency to color that doesn't necessarily need it right now. Not to mention that it shuffles right back into your deck. It's basically never a dead draw and there are ALWAYS 4 copies of it in your deck.
I don't know that it's anything that's too powerful for Modern, but it does anything really all that good for the format.
Cruise is dead. Cruise is banned in basically every format it has touched. Even Pauper, which allows Gush, cannot handle Cruise. DTT maybe has a slightly better chance, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Ponder is dead. Ponder is a slightly different case than Cruise. It is indeed VERY powerful, but it will never come off of the list purely because if any cantrip comes off, it will be Preordain. It's a minor upgrade to Serum Visions/Sleight of Hand in some decks, and a sidegrade in others. WotC doesn't want to hit a critical mass of cantrip cards though, so if we get either of them back into the format, it will be Preordain.
Disdainful stroke has some applications against scaepshift (scapeshift, titan), jeskai (cryptic command, teferi and jace), and there are few other things it hits.
I don't regularly play sultai, but I would imagine that it's a meta call.
All it really seems to do is add another way for Tron to deal with aggro strategies, which is an archtype that is supposed to struggle with fast aggro.
Harbinger just does a “meh” job at all of those things, so why not just select one of the cards that do most of those things, but better?
Treasure Cruise was never banned in standard.
Golgari-Grave Troll spent a fair deal in the format being fine. By that logic we should have banned Prized Amalgam and Cathartic Reunion instead, because they were the “new” cards.
The fact is Mox Opal is fast mana, which always has the spotlight focused on it. It enables a lot of degenerate combos, so I can see a scenario where it gets banned in Modern. I don’t think anything right now suggests that it’s in need of a banning though. Affinity just got a new toy. People haven’t figured out how to deal with it yet. Either people learn how to adapt to the new tech, or we’re unable to… that’s when it becomes a problem.
The fact is, power and “brokenness” of specific cards are relative. New cards enter the pool that make older cards broken. Does that mean we always ban the new card, because the card was fine for a long time in the format? Should we have banned Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher instead of Eye of Ugin, a card that was fine in the format for a very long time?
Again, I don't think Mox Opal is in need of any regulation, but I wouldn't assume that it's not an offending card just because it's been in the format for ages without causing any real problems.
But it can only name one at a time. That just means that decks need to diversify their removals, instead of just running 4 Pushes and 2 Bolts and then call it good.
A non-interactive deck is like a racer who focuses on getting the fastest bike with the best parts and has a game-plan of just cruising past the competition without getting into any scuffles.
An interactive deck is like the racer who brings a crowbar to the race to beat the tar out of other racers.
Probably won’t see play.
There are already better ways to cheat game-winning permanents into play that don’t require an 8 mana investment. Maybe you can use this to flash in a walker… by why not just Through the Breach Emrakul into play and basically just win on the spot instead? Or just play Tron and hard cast Karns and Ugins for 8 mana?