Wow guys. I know some of you have Phd's in Nitpicking but for real the post is just above. New Twin? Tron Unhealthy?. Not only i didn't say that but you seem to get your feelings hurt everytime someone puts Modern on a critical lens.
I was trying to say that DS might end with the same fate as Twin as both of them serve a similar purpose in this metagame.
Nitpicking- To look for small or unimportant errors or faults, especially in order to criticize unnecessarily. That is not at all what i was doing. I was simply disagreeing with every fiber of your entire post.
I picked out the most egregious of your errors but i agree with none of it. The fact that the "ramp" archetype (in which you hilariously lumped ad naus) is at or around 20% is a GOOD thing for the format (in the interests of checks and balances).
Certainly not the dominance that was projected here on these forums. Now there has not been enough time go by yet and it is always possible that more dominance is on its way, but claiming vindication on a combined 20% meta share is ridiculous.
Edit: as to DS seeing the same fate as Twin. DS is in one deck at 8.25% meta share. It also has only been prevalent for a short period of time where as Twin was the "best deck" for an extended period of time. I do not think the comparison is reasonable.
Just trying to be the disclaimer here but one could argue that the banning of Gitaxian Probe led to what most of us predicted, a resurgence and dominance by ramp decks. Recent TCG States showed Top 8's pretty crowded with 'Over the top' decks. As a whole, this decks ocuppy around 21% of the metagame. This are: Valakut,Tron,Eldrazi and Ad Nauseam(all flavors more or less).
I know this isn't the case right now but the shift towards Death's Shadow as a win condition and LOTS of Thoughtseize running around clearly show us that if you can't close the game in a hurry, Ramp will kill you sooner than later. Now we see Grixis decks adapting their decks to use Death's Shadow.
My initial guess is that Death's Shadow will be what Splinter Twin was back then. A safety valve. A card that can close out the game fast backed with disruption. Is that good? Yes. Does that generate diversity issues? Also, yes.
DS decks are clearly dominating the format in a passive way. However, i can envision a day where Death's Shadow is no longer legal because of diversity problems, just like Splinter Twin.
dominance? The fact that you need to lump all of those VERY different decks together to get a reasonably high number is very telling. (i mean lumping ad naus in with tron seriously?) All of this alarmist talk of tron becoming dominate has resulted in the highest meta share of any given one of those decks is 6.5% (on mtg goldfish anyway) that is not only not dominance that is healthy.
You may cast this card without paying its mana cost if you sacrifice an island
Control lives on always making its land drops and getting to the late game. The deckbuilding cost of this card would be real(needs islands), but would not be a "must play blue" that many people are worried about. It would also be harder for decks like ad naus to take advantage of because while they have blue mana they rarely have very many islands and having one in play before going off may or may not be able to happen.
What is the 'White Deck' play style that is missing, and what would it add to the formats depth? This isnt just about a colour (hi Fish) its about an archetype and play style.
It is about 1/5th of the color pie. if the colors where more evenly distributed with good cards mana choices would be harder. Right now it is easy. Play green, black, and red. win games. If you look back you will find that i am in favor of helping blue as well, but this discussion is folly without at least bringing up the other color that is actually WORSE by most metrics in almost every metagame.
Lets be honest, from what I'm hearing, do you guys really REALLY want modern to be like Legacy where Blue Reigns supreme and due to all the countering, no other color combination is viable unless they're running some sort of blue deck?
No, not at all. One competitive Tier 1 blue deck is not too much to ask for.
But having a tier 1 white deck IS to much to ask for? Every time white is brought up people say BUT BUT ABZAN!!!!! even tho that is a GB deck. The bias is real.
It would be different if a white deck had existed in Tier 1 for years, was banned out of existence in order to promote the growth of other white decks, and then no replacement white deck had emerged.
How is that different. No tier one white deck exists for those that want to play white. No tier 1 blue deck exists for those that want to play blue. Those people are on equal footing. EXCEPT for the fact that at least blue players have had their time in the sun for a while. So if anything you should be crusading for white to get its time in the sun, but you are not because you are bias.
Lets be honest, from what I'm hearing, do you guys really REALLY want modern to be like Legacy where Blue Reigns supreme and due to all the countering, no other color combination is viable unless they're running some sort of blue deck?
No, not at all. One competitive Tier 1 blue deck is not too much to ask for.
But having a tier 1 white deck IS to much to ask for? Every time white is brought up people say BUT BUT ABZAN!!!!! even tho that is a GB deck. The bias is real.
Lets be honest, from what I'm hearing, do you guys really REALLY want modern to be like Legacy where Blue Reigns supreme and due to all the countering, no other color combination is viable unless they're running some sort of blue deck?
It is true that this forum has an awful lot of blue bias but make no mistake blue is not in great shape currently, and having a discussion about how to fix that is not a bad thing.
Edit: for me personally that involves new prints and/or even a JTMS and/or preordain unban
The modern is really the most diverse and the best brewing format of magic.
Unless you want to brew a blue-based reactive Snapcaster deck.
I can definitely agree that it's a great place to brew as long as what you're doing is fast, broken, proactive, or hard to disrupt.
Come on this is just hyperbole and you know it. Whether people like it or not modern has an incredibly diverse meta game. Many of the upper tier strategies were brews a year or 2 ago (and no not all linear aggro i.e. lantern control, sun and moon)
It is true that a brew will rarely become tier 1 but modern is a great format for the random kitchen table tier 3 jank deck to come in and have a (slight) chance.
I 100% defend the Twin ban. I don't know if someone else does, though.
Why do you defend it? Twin was banned because it pushed out decks it beat from the competition. It was also banned because it supplanted similar decks. Finally, it was banned because Wizards thought Kiki, Temur, and Jeskai decks could do something similar to Twin. These were the three reasons for the ban and, as far as I can tell, it failed in basically every regard. The only are where it succeeded, which no one is really happy about, is that big mana decks got a lot better after the Twin ban. So based on all this, can you explain why you defend the ban?
Sure. I defend the twin ban because the color blue should not be held hostage by a red card (splinter twin). I am looking at this from wizards POV. They are mainly banlist active once a year.
They saw every good card being printed as "slotting right into twin" as well as every blue card on the banlist "slotting right into twin".
So from their perspective a good but not overpowered card (Ancestral Vision) was the low hanging fruit. Wizards unbanned it. They then wanted to watch the meta develop and see if blue was able to find equilibrium.
Blue has found equilibrium. It is on the low end of viable. Wizards intention is now to either unban further (Jace-Preordain) or help blue with more new prints. I just do not buy this argument that wizards needs to go back to old problems to help blue.
The issue with pod is not whether or not answers exist to foil it.
Pods problem was anytime wizards printed a really good creature it slotted directly into pod. Truly it is a shame because Birthing pod was a really fun deck with a lot of different lines of play. It just had to die because unless wizards had a change of heart and decided to stop printing good creatures the deck would just continue to get better.
Blue is a style though what is the merchant missing that is White?
I feel like I just had this conversation honestly. White has some flickers, some tax, some removal, some sweepers, and some tribal in humans, ally and I don't know sisters?
What does white offer, other than prison or pillow fort, or a side colour like GW hatebears?
I feel like this is a very important question. I really don't think R&D knows the answer to it. (at least not at a constructed level)
White is supposed to have the most efficient small creatures but EVERY COLOR gets efficient small creatures when it comes to constructed formats.
It gets taxing effects and the like but wizards does not want those things at a high power level.
Wraths used to be a very important tool in whites color slice but those have been scaled back to 5 cmc or larger.
It seems to me that maybe whites color pie is maybe not large enough or well enough defined.
(It is also possible that it is simply the easiest to design fair cards for and thus since modern is largely comprised of "broken" cards R&D just makes fewer mistakes with balancing the costs)
Edit: @ktk Please forgive my misinterpretation. I don't disagree with your followup response at all.
Interesting, I thought the diversity and lack of a clear "best option" was the goal and a format feature. Wouldn't one of those decks reaching tier 1 almost certainly take away from the shares of the others? If the others are all viable options capable of deep runs, why is their diversity a negative attribute?
I had the opposite view that you have taken, which is that 11% combined Uxx is close enough to 11% combined BGx to be acceptable. Is getting all the Uxx players on the same list really so important?
Remember that these metagame statistics are a winner's metagame (it's generally the only stats we have access to). Tier 1 strategies typically have decent conversion rates between the total number of entrants and the top tables. That's why we consider Tier 1 decks as representative of the "decks to beat" in the format at any level or event. Tier 2 decks are competitive but don't show up consistently. Their conversion rate may be lower but is generally not; they just see less play so we don't advocate preparing for all of them.
Tier 3 decks, however, generally don't have good conversion rates and just don't have the competitive chops to make it to Tier 1 or Tier 2. We can't treat them the same way because their Tier 3 status in a winner's metagame often indicates a losing status in the true metagame.
The goal should be to give all Uxx players 1-2 Tier 1 options that should always be good and then 1-2 (depending on Tier 1 share) options in Tier 2 that are more niche. Even just a 1-1 split in T1-T2 would be fine. But right now, the deck doesn't have what it takes to get into Tier 1. This isn't a problem with other established decks with multiple variations. It's a unique blue problem.
edit: For instance, I thought the best takeaways from this update was that
1) The bans had the intended effect
2) Reduced tier 1 overal metashare down combined with top tier 1 at only 6.6% shows a diversified metagame (transient or not)
Those are both true and definitely both happened. I'm just tired of seeing metagames where reactive blue decks are struggling.
I like blue as well but this is silly. White is clearly in a worse spot than blue. Even by the most biased interpretation white might scrap past by a hair but to call it UNIQUE? I cannot believe you posted that with a straight face.
At what point in time did Modern fall out of favor with Wizards?
As a community Mtg players are prone to "the sky is falling" mentality. If you would like more evidence you can go to youtube and search for magic is going to die and have numerous videos to watch on the topic.
However, there is a modicum of truth behind the hyperbole. One of the stated goals of the format is to be at a power level where standard sets can influence the metagame to a certain extent. As the format grows more powerful standard sets will have less and less impact on the format(barring power creep of course). Many players with this mentality consider it a "when" not an "if" that wizards will abandon modern like they did legacy.
That said Modern does serve a VERY important MONETARY purpose to wizards. Modern allows for rotated cards to maintain some of their previous value. This instills a consumer with confidence that their cards will always have at least some value. (whether or not that is true is irrelevant)
So it is far more likely that wizards current intent is not to kill modern but to move it to the back burner. The mitigating factor there is that wizards communication skills rival an angry toddler. With every announcement our community is forced to interpret its meaning on our own. (which leads back to "the sky is falling" type hyperbole)
We should still wait and see what happens at the GP, but I continue to see blue decks struggling across the board relative to other strategies. Grixis Delver had a strong Regionals performance, but its MTGO numbers are awful and its overall paper presence is much lower than it was at Regionals. That said, BGx is totally fine in all three venues of MTGO, Regionals, and the overall paper picture.
Again, this points away from the problem being ramp or some other anti-fair deck strategy. BGx, the epitome of fair decks, is doing great. The problem is that blue decks specifically just don't have the right tools to cut it in this format. Banning cards that beat up blue decks wouldn't change this. Those cards also beat up on non-blue decks, and those non-blue decks would benefit much more than the blue strategies. Why? Because the blue decks still suffer from a lack of proper tools.
Honestly, blue decks probably need better cards to be competitive in this format. This needs to come through unbans, reprints, or new cards. We'll see if this picture changes during the GP weekend, but right now it's not a good one. For reference, here's a rough metagame picture of post-ban Modern combining both MTGO and paper data in a weighted total to show all decks with 2%+:
Affinity (7.1%)
Abzan (6.1%)
Burn (5.9%)
Gx Tron (5.7%)
Jund (5.5%)
Bant Eldrazi (5.1%)
Ad Nauseam (3.1%)
Death's Shadow Zoo (2.9%)
Titan Breach (2.9%)
Eldrazi Tron (2.7%)
Grixis Control/Midrange (2.7%)
Titan Shift (2.6%)
Dredge (2.6%)
Abzan Company (2.3%)
Infect (2%)
Grixis Delver (2%)
If that is true after the GP, blue needs some serious help.
I'm interested to know why nobody seems to care that there aren't any white decks. Taxes, prison, white weenie, and even UW control don't exist in this format. There are literally more colorless decks (Tron, Eldrazi, Affinity) than white decks; so why is everyone only focused on blue-based control?
EDIT: Before someone corrects me, D&T, RW prison, and Esper control all exist in Modern. What I meant is that they have very small metagame shares, just like blue-based control.
Because this forum has turned into nothing but a blue circle jerk where every problem begins and ends with blue mages crying.
I never said RANDOM(SOME) PROS should balance the format. This is just Lord_Seth and his cherrypicking into which I am not going to delve more, because he has proven to all of us that his arguments lack the most basics of logic. Eg, he just said Karn is not a problem, because ehm, its happening on turn 3. So, what's the point of even answering to a guy who thinks Karn on Turn 3 is OK? Everybody has his opinion, I am sorry about his.
I said 3 CERTAIN PROS who Play and LOVE MODERN and alredy work for Wizards should.
1) LSV
2) Frank Karsten
3) William Jensen
Those people(let's cut Chapin for arguments sake) do some kind of work for Wizards already. Those people love Modern already. Those people have top 8 ed a lot in Modern already.
Karsten is a well known Affinity player and a great Mathematician/Statistician. Has played a LOT of modern.
LSV also. Has kind of created Grixis Twin, and has some Modern top 8's in his resume.
William Jensen is known for his love for infect and other decks and has done very well with the deck and the format.
All of them, do love Modern and share a common thing: They do not despise Modern and THEY DO WANT a healthy format in a really healthy way, unlike, let's say PVDDR who has writtern that Modern is a troll-ish format that should not exist. I never advocated for him and I never will.
Just to be clear on this.
For the record i also do not think that turn 3 karn is a problem. It is an insanely powerful play sure, but the entire deck is set up around trying to make this happen and it does not even happen that often.
If you are arranging your entire deck around trying to pull off a powerful play then there are very real deckbuilding restrictions placed on you. Tron is willing to endure those deckbuilding restrictions for the payoff that sometimes you get free wins with a turn 3 karn.
The problem is a turn 3 karn is still beatable. Sure more often than not it is backbreaking but not an actual "turn 3 win". In a format where decks are committing to significant deckbuilding restrictions to actually WIN on turn 3 i think calling for a tron ban is silly.
Edit: Also, to the second point what you are proposing is unreasonable. Karsten, LSV and Jensen all have full time jobs. To ask them to balance an entire format with their available time while also having them for coverage etc is unreasonable.
Nitpicking- To look for small or unimportant errors or faults, especially in order to criticize unnecessarily. That is not at all what i was doing. I was simply disagreeing with every fiber of your entire post.
I picked out the most egregious of your errors but i agree with none of it. The fact that the "ramp" archetype (in which you hilariously lumped ad naus) is at or around 20% is a GOOD thing for the format (in the interests of checks and balances).
Certainly not the dominance that was projected here on these forums. Now there has not been enough time go by yet and it is always possible that more dominance is on its way, but claiming vindication on a combined 20% meta share is ridiculous.
Edit: as to DS seeing the same fate as Twin. DS is in one deck at 8.25% meta share. It also has only been prevalent for a short period of time where as Twin was the "best deck" for an extended period of time. I do not think the comparison is reasonable.
dominance? The fact that you need to lump all of those VERY different decks together to get a reasonably high number is very telling. (i mean lumping ad naus in with tron seriously?) All of this alarmist talk of tron becoming dominate has resulted in the highest meta share of any given one of those decks is 6.5% (on mtg goldfish anyway) that is not only not dominance that is healthy.
"Force of give modern a safety valve"
UU2- maybe UU3
Counter target spell
You may cast this card without paying its mana cost if you sacrifice an island
Control lives on always making its land drops and getting to the late game. The deckbuilding cost of this card would be real(needs islands), but would not be a "must play blue" that many people are worried about. It would also be harder for decks like ad naus to take advantage of because while they have blue mana they rarely have very many islands and having one in play before going off may or may not be able to happen.
It is about 1/5th of the color pie. if the colors where more evenly distributed with good cards mana choices would be harder. Right now it is easy. Play green, black, and red. win games. If you look back you will find that i am in favor of helping blue as well, but this discussion is folly without at least bringing up the other color that is actually WORSE by most metrics in almost every metagame.
How is that different. No tier one white deck exists for those that want to play white. No tier 1 blue deck exists for those that want to play blue. Those people are on equal footing. EXCEPT for the fact that at least blue players have had their time in the sun for a while. So if anything you should be crusading for white to get its time in the sun, but you are not because you are bias.
But having a tier 1 white deck IS to much to ask for? Every time white is brought up people say BUT BUT ABZAN!!!!! even tho that is a GB deck. The bias is real.
It is true that this forum has an awful lot of blue bias but make no mistake blue is not in great shape currently, and having a discussion about how to fix that is not a bad thing.
Edit: for me personally that involves new prints and/or even a JTMS and/or preordain unban
Come on this is just hyperbole and you know it. Whether people like it or not modern has an incredibly diverse meta game. Many of the upper tier strategies were brews a year or 2 ago (and no not all linear aggro i.e. lantern control, sun and moon)
It is true that a brew will rarely become tier 1 but modern is a great format for the random kitchen table tier 3 jank deck to come in and have a (slight) chance.
Sure. I defend the twin ban because the color blue should not be held hostage by a red card (splinter twin). I am looking at this from wizards POV. They are mainly banlist active once a year.
They saw every good card being printed as "slotting right into twin" as well as every blue card on the banlist "slotting right into twin".
So from their perspective a good but not overpowered card (Ancestral Vision) was the low hanging fruit. Wizards unbanned it. They then wanted to watch the meta develop and see if blue was able to find equilibrium.
Blue has found equilibrium. It is on the low end of viable. Wizards intention is now to either unban further (Jace-Preordain) or help blue with more new prints. I just do not buy this argument that wizards needs to go back to old problems to help blue.
Pods problem was anytime wizards printed a really good creature it slotted directly into pod. Truly it is a shame because Birthing pod was a really fun deck with a lot of different lines of play. It just had to die because unless wizards had a change of heart and decided to stop printing good creatures the deck would just continue to get better.
I feel like this is a very important question. I really don't think R&D knows the answer to it. (at least not at a constructed level)
White is supposed to have the most efficient small creatures but EVERY COLOR gets efficient small creatures when it comes to constructed formats.
It gets taxing effects and the like but wizards does not want those things at a high power level.
Wraths used to be a very important tool in whites color slice but those have been scaled back to 5 cmc or larger.
It seems to me that maybe whites color pie is maybe not large enough or well enough defined.
(It is also possible that it is simply the easiest to design fair cards for and thus since modern is largely comprised of "broken" cards R&D just makes fewer mistakes with balancing the costs)
Edit: @ktk Please forgive my misinterpretation. I don't disagree with your followup response at all.
I like blue as well but this is silly. White is clearly in a worse spot than blue. Even by the most biased interpretation white might scrap past by a hair but to call it UNIQUE? I cannot believe you posted that with a straight face.
As a community Mtg players are prone to "the sky is falling" mentality. If you would like more evidence you can go to youtube and search for magic is going to die and have numerous videos to watch on the topic.
However, there is a modicum of truth behind the hyperbole. One of the stated goals of the format is to be at a power level where standard sets can influence the metagame to a certain extent. As the format grows more powerful standard sets will have less and less impact on the format(barring power creep of course). Many players with this mentality consider it a "when" not an "if" that wizards will abandon modern like they did legacy.
That said Modern does serve a VERY important MONETARY purpose to wizards. Modern allows for rotated cards to maintain some of their previous value. This instills a consumer with confidence that their cards will always have at least some value. (whether or not that is true is irrelevant)
So it is far more likely that wizards current intent is not to kill modern but to move it to the back burner. The mitigating factor there is that wizards communication skills rival an angry toddler. With every announcement our community is forced to interpret its meaning on our own. (which leads back to "the sky is falling" type hyperbole)
Because this forum has turned into nothing but a blue circle jerk where every problem begins and ends with blue mages crying.
For the record i also do not think that turn 3 karn is a problem. It is an insanely powerful play sure, but the entire deck is set up around trying to make this happen and it does not even happen that often.
If you are arranging your entire deck around trying to pull off a powerful play then there are very real deckbuilding restrictions placed on you. Tron is willing to endure those deckbuilding restrictions for the payoff that sometimes you get free wins with a turn 3 karn.
The problem is a turn 3 karn is still beatable. Sure more often than not it is backbreaking but not an actual "turn 3 win". In a format where decks are committing to significant deckbuilding restrictions to actually WIN on turn 3 i think calling for a tron ban is silly.
Edit: Also, to the second point what you are proposing is unreasonable. Karsten, LSV and Jensen all have full time jobs. To ask them to balance an entire format with their available time while also having them for coverage etc is unreasonable.