WotC doesn't ever have to do anything, but they should at least attempt to cater to players of all styles and archetypes. Modern is their supported "eternal" format of choice now, so they should be making sure there is something for everyone in the format. Sure, you could just make Modern all linear aggro decks and say, "That's just what Modern is," but that would alienate a lot of players who don't want to play a deck like that. The existence of the Reserved List means that Legacy will eventually dwindle to a non-factor like Vintage is, but Modern doesn't have those shackles and is the future of non-rotating Magic. It's best for the format and for Magic's future for Modern to be diverse not only in what decks are viable, but also in what archetypes are viable.
We probably will be until WotC addresses the problems with blue and reactive play in Modern, lol. The problem isn't so much that they banned Twin, the problem was that Twin was the only top tier blue deck, and they haven't moved fast enough to bolster the foundation of blue tempo/control in Modern to make it a more viable archetype to play. I'll be completely fine with Twin being banned if we get some unbannings, reprints that weren't formerly legal in the format, or more new cards that help the archetype. Nahiri was a nice step in the right direction, as it put Jeskai Control in that Tier 1.5 bubble, but she doesn't help any of the other blue decks, which is why there's only one blue deck in all of Tiers 1 and 2 right now.
No, you don't know what you're talking about. Several former Twin players are here telling you what we would have done if Twin and AV were both legal, and you're telling us we're wrong and you know what we would do better than we do? That's really arrogant. And no, I never said anywhere that DTT + Twin would be ok in Modern, not sure where you pulled that from. And yes, the Elves MU is important for me, because as I've said before, there are like 3 regular Elves players at my LGS.
No one in here has been personally attacking anyone besides you. You've been throwing around ad hominem attacks towards me and others just because of our choice of archetype to play, or our avatar on this site, or how many upvotes we have on our posts. It's getting stale man, glad to see you seem to be sick of it finally, though. Good luck in life.
Twin has just as much spots as any non-linear deck in fact it could have more because many of it's cards like electrolyze, cryptic, non serum visions cantrips etc are actually a lot lower in quality than it's core (sv,bolt,snap,remand and the combo), having no spots is one of the most ridiculous arguements one can possibly find to 'explain' why a card doesn't improve his deck, you don't even understand that cards like electrolyze or cc are not core of the deck and can be replaced any time, not to mention spots like peek or image which are truly placeholders till a better cantrip takes their place
That last sentence just really shows that you have no clue what you're talking about. You don't know why those cards are in the deck, so you think they're easy cuts for AV. Twin players know why they were in the deck, so we're not so quick to want to cut them. Electrolyze was one of our best cards against several decks, like Infect, Affinity, Elves, Lingering Souls decks, even in the mirror. Even against GBx decks you could pick off a Bob and maybe finish a Lili that had just edicted. Cryptic Command is the one card in that deck that probably saved my life more than any other card. I boarded them out in some matchups, but I would always want 2 in my 75. Peek or Probe were more than just a 5th cantrip, they were often used to see if the coast was clear to go for the combo. Finally, Twisted Image was the best answer to Spellskite, which EVERYONE brought in against us.
Like I've said, I would try to fit in 2 AV in my sideboard, but what do I take out? Here's BBD's list from before the ban, mine was about the same as his: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=10481&d=259961&f=MO. My list had one less Jace and an Engineered Explosives, and I had Angers instead of Pyroclasm. Otherwise our lists were identical. The cards you would bring in against GBx were 2 Blood Moon, Jace, 2 Keranos, and a Roast. Which of those are you cutting for AV? I'm not cutting Keranos, he was the best wincon against GBx and blue decks (although he would be unplayable against Jeskai Nahiri now). Blood Moon is not cuttable. You could say cut the Jace and Roast, but Twin struggled against creatures with more than 3 toughness, so you really wanted 2 Roast or Harvest Pyre against people running Tarmogoyf. Even Jace had very specific niche uses. He was excellent against any token strategies, he shut down the Exarch combo in the mirror, provided card advantage against GBx, and he was pretty good against swarm decks like Affinity and Elves. Cutting Jace for an AV gains you some traction against GBx, but actually loses you some effectiveness against other decks. And then you still need to cut another card from the SB, and every one of those cards had certain matchups they were there for. 2 SB AVs might make Twin much better against GBx, but we would have lost traction against other decks to do so.
I've gathered a ton of information reading this thread, and playing Magic Online lately. I feel that there is one elephant in the room when it comes to potential bannings, and nothing else in my mind comes close to a possibility. On the other hand when it comes to unbanning, I feel we have 3 candidates. To summarize here is my list;
I would not ban Become Immense at this time. There's a very real possibility for it to become a problem at some point, but it's not right now. It enables both Infect and Suicide Zoo to be T1 decks, but neither are oppressive at the moment.
I would love to see the crazy brewing that would ensue if all 3 of those cards were unbanned at the same time. Temur Midrange would probably become a viable archetype with BBE cascading into AV. I know this sounds crazy, but I honestly don't know if Jund would even play BBE, I think Kalitas is that good. Jund players will have to tell me their opinions on that, I don't wanna speak for them. SFM could go in Death and Taxes, alongside Delver and Geist, or make Stoneblade control in Modern viable. Jace would just be huge for all the control decks, and let us actually win games that we make it to the late game in.
The one thing that really bothers me about the banlist is how many cards on there that we just don't know if they would be ok or not because they were banned from the outset. No one really knows if SFM or JtMS would be ok or not in Modern. These cards need to be let back in so we can find out. It would really suck if they unbanned something and then had to reban it, but at least then we would know for sure and there wouldn't be this discussion.
Another card that I want to see would be Dig Through Time. DTT got banned for Treasure Cruise's sins, kinda like BBE and DRS. They assumed that the tempo decks would just replace TC with DTT since it was the next best thing, and preemptively banned it, but we don't know how that would have gone. Dig is 2 mana vs. 1 for TC, and it's 2 cards instead of 3, even though it's better card quality. And we can't really judge it based on what happened in Legacy because DTT is better the better the cards are you're searching for, and there's no Omniscience combo deck in Modern to loop it with. It could be the case that DTT would still be way too busted for Modern, but it irks me that we'll never know.
That list with the MB Keranos is not a standard build. 99% of Twin lists looked more like the other one. There were really only 5 maindeck flex spots, but 2 of those were almost always Peak/Probe and Roast/Harvest Pyre. For his 3, he went with 2 extra Dispel and the Twisted Image. I was going with 1 extra Dispel, 1 extra Spell Snare, and a Grim Lavamancer because I have a couple Elves players at my LGS. Other than that our lists were identical. As a former Twin player, I would say I would want to run probably 2 AV in the sideboard and bring them in when I side out the combo, but I honestly can't say what I could cut for them. The other guy is right, the Twin lists were very tight, every card was important for some matchup.
I like that design, it might be good enough to work. I think WotC really just needs to open up another way to get cards into Modern without passing them through Standard. I don't think every supplemental product should become Modern legal (nobody wants Sol Ring in Modern...), but there needs to be something. Maybe they just need to be less scared of banning things from Standard. Print Counterspell, if it's a problem in Standard ban it there. Maybe even preemptively ban it. I think everyone would be ok with this if they explained that this was their compromise of how to introduce cards into Modern that they don't want in Standard.
Yeah, I think Preordain would be fine in Modern. Ponder is too much, that card is insane. But I agree with what you said, Preordain would mostly help the combo decks and Delver decks, and would help control a little. The only concern is if it helps combo too much. Storm is non-existent now, so it actually needs a power boost. Ad Naus would probably just replace Either Serum Visions or Sleight of hand with it. Ad Naus has always hovered in Tier 2, and I don't think Preordain alone would push it into T1, let alone make the deck broken. The only combo deck that would worry me is Goryo's Vengeance. That deck is on the fringes of acceptable power level, and is only held back because it's not very consistent. If it became a problem, Goryo's Vengeance is an easy ban, though. That card probably just shouldn't be Modern legal anyway...
Jace... I just don't know to be honest. I've heard arguments both ways. I personally think he would not be as good in Modern as he is in Legacy, but maybe he'd still be too good. Lili is legal in the format, and she's nowhere near ban territory, so my personal take is that he would probably be ok, but I could be wrong. I plan on doing some testing with him in Grixis and Jeskai shells just for research purposes to better inform my opinion here.
What I think Modern really needs is Counterspell, and maybe Daze or Stifle. I don't think we need Force of Will or Wasteland, it's fine to leave those as hallmarks of Legacy. Blue in Modern does need some better ways to interact, though. It's so frustrating as a blue control player to successfully survive into the late game, only to be staring at a Mana Leak when our opponent top decks something that's going to kill us. Daze and/or Stifle would also really help the Delver decks. Temur Delver would become a pretty good deck with either of those.
Yes, I'm still salty about the Twin banning because I loved that deck. When I started getting into Modern, I spent a lot of time watching coverage of SCG Open matches, and Splinter Twin completely fascinated me. The concept of making infinite clones to attack or sideboarding into a control deck with Blood Moon and artifacts like Vedalken Shackles and Batterskull was so cool to me. So I bought the deck and started learning Modern. I only got to play it for like a year before it was taken from me. It's like if you saved up $50k to buy yourself a sweet new BMW, and a week later someone stole it. It's not just a financial loss, it's a loss on an emotional level as well.
And telling blue mages to "go to Legacy" if they don't like the all linear aggro meta is completely unfair and selfish. Why should you be the only one to have fun? Shouldn't we be inclusive of all players and all play styles? If blue control decks were completely dominating Modern and pushed all the aggro decks out of the format, I would absolutely be calling for changes to balance the archetypes. Why can't the aggro players do the same for us? It's like you guys have blinders on and won't even admit that one of the major archetypes is struggling.
I will say this, the banning of Splinter Twin does create the potential for a healthier format. It's not there yet, but with an unban or two, maybe blue decks will come up to the power level of the linear aggro decks, which would be great! I think Twin was obfuscating the problems blue had in Modern. With it gone, WotC can make moves to power up the rest of the blue decks, but they need to act quickly. They probably should have unbanned AV and SotM in the same update they banned Twin. Now that they've seen that those two unbans weren't enough, I hope we get something in the next announcement to help us out.
See, this is something that bothers me. Saying some play style is "not fun" is completely subjective. Maybe it's not fun for some people, but it is fun for other people. I personally find clogged board states with 20 creatures on both sides and no one able to attack to be not fun, but WotC seems to be pushing that strategy.
Why is he still trying with the deck and putting some (minor they be) results and you jumped ship so quickly? IMO, it's that blue mages are lazy and netdeck more than any one else in magic. Of course, not all of them. I have met a lot of interesting people whose choice of colour is the blue one and are playing control decks. Temur Delver is a valid choice and bill_zagoudis confirmed that in a previous post. But you do not like it and seem to believe it's bad? Maybe you did not try that much. In this meta, Grixis Delver won a Gp and even if blue has some functional problems, I am pretty much sure that TEMUR DELVER COULD WIN THE NEXT GP and it would come as no surprise in anybody's ears!
I'm just not one to have a "pet deck," at least not since Twin. It's fine if someone really likes Temur Delver and wants to tweak it. Maybe they'll discover something everyone else missed and have a breakthrough with the deck. In its current iteration, though, the power level of the deck is just not in the same ballpark as what some other people are doing. I would be thoroughly shocked if someone even top 32'd the next GP with it.
Grixis Delver, on the other hand, I think is pretty good. I played that right after Temur Delver, and it felt a lot better. It's on Tier 2 power level, and probably the second best URx deck behind Nahiri Jeskai.
now for the best deck being allowed, in any other format i'd agree, in Modern i don't, proof is the current meta in which there are at least 5 decks sitting at the top at the moment (i'm refering to BGx,infect, affinity, zooicide and Bant Eldrazi) so no after seeing this i find it a huge compromise to just have 1 deck sitting at it's throne, that 70% extra top8s it's ridiculous, currently there's nothing even close to it and it's a number that came from an entire year, i didn't just handpick a couple of months to find this number, in fact it's the longest relevant period of time possible (from TC/DTT/Pod being banned to Twin being banned)- here's your metric too, meta shares are vastly overrated, you don't determine the quality of a deck by visiting mtggoldfish.com and looking at meta shares
Twin had 12 top 8s over the course of 8 tournaments for an average of 1.5 T8s per GP or PT in 2015. That is not, to me, ban territory. If a deck is regularly putting up 3-4 copies per GP or PT, then we're talking about bans. Besides that, it didn't even perform well in those Top 8s. Twin averaged a finish of between 4th and 5th when it made a top 8, while Affinity averaged a finish of a little shy of 2nd.
But besides that, is that really where you want to go? Twin had 70% more Top 8s over the second highest deck over 8 tournaments, and that's ban worthy to you? Are you prepared to ban Affinity out of the format now? It has 60% more top 8s in 2016 than the second highest deck (that is still legal) over the course of 8 GPs and the PT. So by your logic, Affinity needs to go. How about next year? We ban whichever deck performs the best in the GPs in 2017 as well? Why not just make it a nice rotating format where the best deck gets retired every year, sounds great right?!
more balance, more diversity... increased linearity and low representation of blue controlling strategies
Huh? I believe you just contradicted yourself. The meta is horribly imbalanced in favor of fast, linear aggro and combo. Interactivity is at the lowest it's ever been (outside of Eldrazi Winter). And AV and SotM were not anywhere near enough. SotM had no impact on the format, and AV has had very little impact.
PS: i find any arguement over how Twin would be weaker today complete and utter nonsense
Why? Twin wasn't always dominant in the format, it just had a good 2015. It was pretty much non-existent when TC Delver and Pod were running rampant, those decks basically pushed Twin out. If it had already done so before, why do you find it impossible to believe that the meta could have evolved to a place where Twin had a harder time? The GBx decks have gotten even better tools, AV would have helped the non-Twin blue decks more than it helped Twin, Eldrazi would have been a really difficult matchup because Twin struggled against creatures with more than 3 toughness and hand disruption, plus they run Cavern of Souls, and I think Suicide Zoo would have been rough because we probably couldn't kill a Death's Shadow.
what do they say about when the mirror your worst MU?
The mirror was never Twin's worse matchup, the GBx decks and non-Twin blue decks were.
And you seem much more optimistic about WotC printing things for blue decks than I am. They've actively been going away from printing good control cards, what makes you think they'll start giving them to us again all of a sudden?
Temur Delver is a viable deck(I never said it is a tier 1 deck or one of the bes decks), but a this deck needs exploration and testing, just like this guy from Modern Nexus does(sorry for not remembering his name) with his Monkey Grow list. So, go tell him his
Temur Delver/Temur Grow sucks and it's that bad
. But this laziness of picking up a blue deck and just leaving it off because a blue mage want the best one deck available at right seems like the problem of blue decks.
I'm well aware of Jordan Boisvert and his writing. His list was what I based mine from, along with some of the guys in the temur delver thread here at mtgsalvation. I really wanted the deck to work, but it has major problems. You can't limit your opponent's mana development like in Legacy without Wasteland and Stifle, so people end up going over the top of you very quickly and there's not a lot you can do about it. I don't think Delver is the right shell for Temur, I've been toying around with more of a midrange build with Collected Company and Eldritch Evolution, including the Kiki-Jiki package as a wincon.
so essentially you want to have your cake and eat it by not only having superb new blue answers in blue but by also having an oppresive wincon in Twin (+AV to demolish slower fair decks) which would make Modern enter an era of blue dominance
I never said that. I'm fully aware that if they unban Twin they can't unban things like Preordain, JtMS, or SFM. It's one or the other, and I would be happy with either one. I just don't like how in Modern, playing proactively is the only way to play because the threats are so much better than the answers. I want some better answers for blue decks so that reactive gameplay can be more viable in the format.
why Twin didn't rise above it's already high meta share? because no deck ever did unless it was totally and ridiculously broken? none ever claimed that this was the case for Twin, but it was the best deck and pretty much every spike out there knew it
As someone else said further up in this threat, there's allowed to be a best deck. UR Twin didn't even have the highest metashare when it was banned, it was at like 6.2%, which was 4th highest in the format. If you added up all the Twin variants it was at like 11%, but so were the GBx variants. No matter what metric you use, Twin didn't warrant a ban. That said, if Twin not existing allows them to unban or print blue cards that would help the rest of the blue decks, then I would be ok with it. AV and SotM weren't enough, though.
Temur Delver isn't Tier 2, it's like .2% of the meta. I played the deck after the Twin ban and moved on because it's not anywhere near good enough. And just because a bunch of decks exist in Modern doesn't mean diversity of archetypes is in a good place. July's Tier 1 was 6 linear aggro decks, 2 midrange decks, and 1 control deck. Jeskai has already slid 2% since then, so Tier 1 won't have any control, blue tempo, or blue midrange decks. The fact that all those decks combine for only 10% of the meta says that blue strategies are under-powered in Modern, so something needs to be done to balance that out.
@gkourou
I don't personally feel the meta is fantastic. As I said before, it's great that there is diversity in decks, but there is no diversity in archetypes. The meta is like 50% linear aggro. I loved Twin and want to play it again so badly, but I would give up my dreams of seeing Twin again if blue could be strong enough to have a couple top tier decks. I would love to see something like Temur Delver, Grixis midrange, and Jeskai Control all be legitimate Tier 1 decks that could slow down the linear aggro decks. As it is now, Jeskai is about to slide back into Tier 2, so there won't even be one Tier 1 blue deck.
a)a number of us,pretty much anyone who disagrees are morons to be blunt, nice way to make your debutt in a thread
Maybe "moron" was a bit harsh, but anyone who actually thinks the format is healthier now without Twin is kidding themselves. Sure, there is a ton of deck diversity, maybe the most there's ever been in Modern, but all of those decks do basically the same thing: try to kill you as quickly as possible while ignoring what you're doing. There is very little archetype diversity.
b)random innacurate numbers thrown in about blue being ~10%, while you mean that blue based CONTROL is about 10% and again you're wrong because in 2015 blue based control excluding Twin was certainly not at 10% of the meta so there was some increase but no as much as most would like, suffice to say for reasons of your own blue aggro, blue combo and blue tempo are not blue decks according to your opinion
Not random, and not inaccurate. Go to MTGGoldfish and add up the total meta share of every delver, geist, blue midrange, blue control, and blue scapeshift deck. It's ~10%. Now go look at mtgtop8.com for 2015. Blue decks were 26% of the meta, with Twin making up 11% of that. 1 month of that was TC Delver, so post-TC would be a little lower, but still in the 20s for the year. There was an article on ModernNexus a couple weeks after the Twin ban and before Eldrazi really took off that said 25% for blue decks before the ban, but I can't seem to find it on the site.
e)your case about how you lost with Boggles with Jeskai but would have won with Twin totally convinced me about the need to unban it, how dares a boggle noob claim victory against a blue-blood? completely unacceptable
The difference is that with Twin I had a chance. It came down to him misplaying by not holding up removal, and I had to have both combo pieces ready for turn 4. If he held up removal or I didn't have both pieces for turn 4, I lose that game. On Jeskai, I would have had no chance. I can't race him, and the nature of his deck nulifies most of my interaction. Even bringing in Engineered Explosives for post sideboard games doesn't do enough, because their Totem Armor auras protect the creature from it.
also you say that Twin was arguably the best deck and that's nonsense, the only arguable part about it is that some idiot technically can argue about it but those folks argue about everything so... the facts are that Twin was the most successful deck in 2015 with a number of GP+PT Top8s 70% higher than the second most successful deck
Being widely considered the best and most successful deck doesn't mean it should have been banned. Miracles is 16% of the Legacy metagame, which is much higher than Twin ever was, but do you think it should be banned out of Legacy? And only looking at the GPs and PT is really narrowing the sample size to fit your narrative. All the Twin variants combined for about 11-12% of the meta. If Twin was heads and shoulders above everyone else like you are trying to make it out to be, it would have reached the +20% shares we've seen when broken decks like TC Delver, Pod, and Eldrazi have existed.
@Wraithpk and are you sure that Twin with Ancestral Vision would not be oppressive? And shutting the door on unbanning Preordain as well is the way to go?
AV would help Twin against the GBx decks, but I'm not even sure they would Mainboard it. It would most likely be a sideboard card to bring in against GBx and other blue control decks. AV is just too slow against the linear aggro decks, which is why the Delver and blue midrange decks aren't running it. And no, I wouldn't shut the door on unbanning Preordain. I think it would be completely fine in the format.
that's my point as well, let's help FAIR blue decks by giving them answers and not overlook the need for more generic answer by turning them into combo decks
I completely agree with you. The problem with blue is that our answers suck. We have no way to stop a T1 Slippery Bogle on the draw. A bunch of our counterspells just suck after like turn 4 or 5, meaning we can suddenly lose a game we had fought hard to control when our opponent top decks a spell that kills us with 3 open mana and we're staring at a Mana Leak in hand. The only good card advantage spell we have takes 4 turns to resolve. This is why the blue control decks have gone towards combo finishers with Twin, Scapeshift, and now Nahiri. We have to finish the game before our very conditional answers come back to bite us. A perfect example of the problem is Grixis Control. It's a great deck full of super powerful cards and interactions... and it has disappeared from the meta because it didn't have a fast enough closing speed. I would actually prefer to play Grixis, but I have to play Jeskai because Nahiri makes that deck so much better than Grixis is.
That said, there's a catch-22 with our problem. Blue answers suck, but WotC refuses to make a secondary way to get cards into Modern, and they don't want to print powerful blue counters in Standard. One of these two things has to give. Personally, I think they need to come up with another way to get cards into Modern without having to go through Standard.
WotC doesn't ever have to do anything, but they should at least attempt to cater to players of all styles and archetypes. Modern is their supported "eternal" format of choice now, so they should be making sure there is something for everyone in the format. Sure, you could just make Modern all linear aggro decks and say, "That's just what Modern is," but that would alienate a lot of players who don't want to play a deck like that. The existence of the Reserved List means that Legacy will eventually dwindle to a non-factor like Vintage is, but Modern doesn't have those shackles and is the future of non-rotating Magic. It's best for the format and for Magic's future for Modern to be diverse not only in what decks are viable, but also in what archetypes are viable.
We probably will be until WotC addresses the problems with blue and reactive play in Modern, lol. The problem isn't so much that they banned Twin, the problem was that Twin was the only top tier blue deck, and they haven't moved fast enough to bolster the foundation of blue tempo/control in Modern to make it a more viable archetype to play. I'll be completely fine with Twin being banned if we get some unbannings, reprints that weren't formerly legal in the format, or more new cards that help the archetype. Nahiri was a nice step in the right direction, as it put Jeskai Control in that Tier 1.5 bubble, but she doesn't help any of the other blue decks, which is why there's only one blue deck in all of Tiers 1 and 2 right now.
No, you don't know what you're talking about. Several former Twin players are here telling you what we would have done if Twin and AV were both legal, and you're telling us we're wrong and you know what we would do better than we do? That's really arrogant. And no, I never said anywhere that DTT + Twin would be ok in Modern, not sure where you pulled that from. And yes, the Elves MU is important for me, because as I've said before, there are like 3 regular Elves players at my LGS.
No one in here has been personally attacking anyone besides you. You've been throwing around ad hominem attacks towards me and others just because of our choice of archetype to play, or our avatar on this site, or how many upvotes we have on our posts. It's getting stale man, glad to see you seem to be sick of it finally, though. Good luck in life.
That last sentence just really shows that you have no clue what you're talking about. You don't know why those cards are in the deck, so you think they're easy cuts for AV. Twin players know why they were in the deck, so we're not so quick to want to cut them. Electrolyze was one of our best cards against several decks, like Infect, Affinity, Elves, Lingering Souls decks, even in the mirror. Even against GBx decks you could pick off a Bob and maybe finish a Lili that had just edicted. Cryptic Command is the one card in that deck that probably saved my life more than any other card. I boarded them out in some matchups, but I would always want 2 in my 75. Peek or Probe were more than just a 5th cantrip, they were often used to see if the coast was clear to go for the combo. Finally, Twisted Image was the best answer to Spellskite, which EVERYONE brought in against us.
Like I've said, I would try to fit in 2 AV in my sideboard, but what do I take out? Here's BBD's list from before the ban, mine was about the same as his: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=10481&d=259961&f=MO. My list had one less Jace and an Engineered Explosives, and I had Angers instead of Pyroclasm. Otherwise our lists were identical. The cards you would bring in against GBx were 2 Blood Moon, Jace, 2 Keranos, and a Roast. Which of those are you cutting for AV? I'm not cutting Keranos, he was the best wincon against GBx and blue decks (although he would be unplayable against Jeskai Nahiri now). Blood Moon is not cuttable. You could say cut the Jace and Roast, but Twin struggled against creatures with more than 3 toughness, so you really wanted 2 Roast or Harvest Pyre against people running Tarmogoyf. Even Jace had very specific niche uses. He was excellent against any token strategies, he shut down the Exarch combo in the mirror, provided card advantage against GBx, and he was pretty good against swarm decks like Affinity and Elves. Cutting Jace for an AV gains you some traction against GBx, but actually loses you some effectiveness against other decks. And then you still need to cut another card from the SB, and every one of those cards had certain matchups they were there for. 2 SB AVs might make Twin much better against GBx, but we would have lost traction against other decks to do so.
I would not ban Become Immense at this time. There's a very real possibility for it to become a problem at some point, but it's not right now. It enables both Infect and Suicide Zoo to be T1 decks, but neither are oppressive at the moment.
I would love to see the crazy brewing that would ensue if all 3 of those cards were unbanned at the same time. Temur Midrange would probably become a viable archetype with BBE cascading into AV. I know this sounds crazy, but I honestly don't know if Jund would even play BBE, I think Kalitas is that good. Jund players will have to tell me their opinions on that, I don't wanna speak for them. SFM could go in Death and Taxes, alongside Delver and Geist, or make Stoneblade control in Modern viable. Jace would just be huge for all the control decks, and let us actually win games that we make it to the late game in.
The one thing that really bothers me about the banlist is how many cards on there that we just don't know if they would be ok or not because they were banned from the outset. No one really knows if SFM or JtMS would be ok or not in Modern. These cards need to be let back in so we can find out. It would really suck if they unbanned something and then had to reban it, but at least then we would know for sure and there wouldn't be this discussion.
Another card that I want to see would be Dig Through Time. DTT got banned for Treasure Cruise's sins, kinda like BBE and DRS. They assumed that the tempo decks would just replace TC with DTT since it was the next best thing, and preemptively banned it, but we don't know how that would have gone. Dig is 2 mana vs. 1 for TC, and it's 2 cards instead of 3, even though it's better card quality. And we can't really judge it based on what happened in Legacy because DTT is better the better the cards are you're searching for, and there's no Omniscience combo deck in Modern to loop it with. It could be the case that DTT would still be way too busted for Modern, but it irks me that we'll never know.
That list with the MB Keranos is not a standard build. 99% of Twin lists looked more like the other one. There were really only 5 maindeck flex spots, but 2 of those were almost always Peak/Probe and Roast/Harvest Pyre. For his 3, he went with 2 extra Dispel and the Twisted Image. I was going with 1 extra Dispel, 1 extra Spell Snare, and a Grim Lavamancer because I have a couple Elves players at my LGS. Other than that our lists were identical. As a former Twin player, I would say I would want to run probably 2 AV in the sideboard and bring them in when I side out the combo, but I honestly can't say what I could cut for them. The other guy is right, the Twin lists were very tight, every card was important for some matchup.
I like that design, it might be good enough to work. I think WotC really just needs to open up another way to get cards into Modern without passing them through Standard. I don't think every supplemental product should become Modern legal (nobody wants Sol Ring in Modern...), but there needs to be something. Maybe they just need to be less scared of banning things from Standard. Print Counterspell, if it's a problem in Standard ban it there. Maybe even preemptively ban it. I think everyone would be ok with this if they explained that this was their compromise of how to introduce cards into Modern that they don't want in Standard.
Yeah, I think Preordain would be fine in Modern. Ponder is too much, that card is insane. But I agree with what you said, Preordain would mostly help the combo decks and Delver decks, and would help control a little. The only concern is if it helps combo too much. Storm is non-existent now, so it actually needs a power boost. Ad Naus would probably just replace Either Serum Visions or Sleight of hand with it. Ad Naus has always hovered in Tier 2, and I don't think Preordain alone would push it into T1, let alone make the deck broken. The only combo deck that would worry me is Goryo's Vengeance. That deck is on the fringes of acceptable power level, and is only held back because it's not very consistent. If it became a problem, Goryo's Vengeance is an easy ban, though. That card probably just shouldn't be Modern legal anyway...
Jace... I just don't know to be honest. I've heard arguments both ways. I personally think he would not be as good in Modern as he is in Legacy, but maybe he'd still be too good. Lili is legal in the format, and she's nowhere near ban territory, so my personal take is that he would probably be ok, but I could be wrong. I plan on doing some testing with him in Grixis and Jeskai shells just for research purposes to better inform my opinion here.
What I think Modern really needs is Counterspell, and maybe Daze or Stifle. I don't think we need Force of Will or Wasteland, it's fine to leave those as hallmarks of Legacy. Blue in Modern does need some better ways to interact, though. It's so frustrating as a blue control player to successfully survive into the late game, only to be staring at a Mana Leak when our opponent top decks something that's going to kill us. Daze and/or Stifle would also really help the Delver decks. Temur Delver would become a pretty good deck with either of those.
Yes, I'm still salty about the Twin banning because I loved that deck. When I started getting into Modern, I spent a lot of time watching coverage of SCG Open matches, and Splinter Twin completely fascinated me. The concept of making infinite clones to attack or sideboarding into a control deck with Blood Moon and artifacts like Vedalken Shackles and Batterskull was so cool to me. So I bought the deck and started learning Modern. I only got to play it for like a year before it was taken from me. It's like if you saved up $50k to buy yourself a sweet new BMW, and a week later someone stole it. It's not just a financial loss, it's a loss on an emotional level as well.
And telling blue mages to "go to Legacy" if they don't like the all linear aggro meta is completely unfair and selfish. Why should you be the only one to have fun? Shouldn't we be inclusive of all players and all play styles? If blue control decks were completely dominating Modern and pushed all the aggro decks out of the format, I would absolutely be calling for changes to balance the archetypes. Why can't the aggro players do the same for us? It's like you guys have blinders on and won't even admit that one of the major archetypes is struggling.
I will say this, the banning of Splinter Twin does create the potential for a healthier format. It's not there yet, but with an unban or two, maybe blue decks will come up to the power level of the linear aggro decks, which would be great! I think Twin was obfuscating the problems blue had in Modern. With it gone, WotC can make moves to power up the rest of the blue decks, but they need to act quickly. They probably should have unbanned AV and SotM in the same update they banned Twin. Now that they've seen that those two unbans weren't enough, I hope we get something in the next announcement to help us out.
See, this is something that bothers me. Saying some play style is "not fun" is completely subjective. Maybe it's not fun for some people, but it is fun for other people. I personally find clogged board states with 20 creatures on both sides and no one able to attack to be not fun, but WotC seems to be pushing that strategy.
I'm just not one to have a "pet deck," at least not since Twin. It's fine if someone really likes Temur Delver and wants to tweak it. Maybe they'll discover something everyone else missed and have a breakthrough with the deck. In its current iteration, though, the power level of the deck is just not in the same ballpark as what some other people are doing. I would be thoroughly shocked if someone even top 32'd the next GP with it.
Grixis Delver, on the other hand, I think is pretty good. I played that right after Temur Delver, and it felt a lot better. It's on Tier 2 power level, and probably the second best URx deck behind Nahiri Jeskai.
Twin had 12 top 8s over the course of 8 tournaments for an average of 1.5 T8s per GP or PT in 2015. That is not, to me, ban territory. If a deck is regularly putting up 3-4 copies per GP or PT, then we're talking about bans. Besides that, it didn't even perform well in those Top 8s. Twin averaged a finish of between 4th and 5th when it made a top 8, while Affinity averaged a finish of a little shy of 2nd.
But besides that, is that really where you want to go? Twin had 70% more Top 8s over the second highest deck over 8 tournaments, and that's ban worthy to you? Are you prepared to ban Affinity out of the format now? It has 60% more top 8s in 2016 than the second highest deck (that is still legal) over the course of 8 GPs and the PT. So by your logic, Affinity needs to go. How about next year? We ban whichever deck performs the best in the GPs in 2017 as well? Why not just make it a nice rotating format where the best deck gets retired every year, sounds great right?!
Huh? I believe you just contradicted yourself. The meta is horribly imbalanced in favor of fast, linear aggro and combo. Interactivity is at the lowest it's ever been (outside of Eldrazi Winter). And AV and SotM were not anywhere near enough. SotM had no impact on the format, and AV has had very little impact.
Why? Twin wasn't always dominant in the format, it just had a good 2015. It was pretty much non-existent when TC Delver and Pod were running rampant, those decks basically pushed Twin out. If it had already done so before, why do you find it impossible to believe that the meta could have evolved to a place where Twin had a harder time? The GBx decks have gotten even better tools, AV would have helped the non-Twin blue decks more than it helped Twin, Eldrazi would have been a really difficult matchup because Twin struggled against creatures with more than 3 toughness and hand disruption, plus they run Cavern of Souls, and I think Suicide Zoo would have been rough because we probably couldn't kill a Death's Shadow.
The mirror was never Twin's worse matchup, the GBx decks and non-Twin blue decks were.
And you seem much more optimistic about WotC printing things for blue decks than I am. They've actively been going away from printing good control cards, what makes you think they'll start giving them to us again all of a sudden?
I'm well aware of Jordan Boisvert and his writing. His list was what I based mine from, along with some of the guys in the temur delver thread here at mtgsalvation. I really wanted the deck to work, but it has major problems. You can't limit your opponent's mana development like in Legacy without Wasteland and Stifle, so people end up going over the top of you very quickly and there's not a lot you can do about it. I don't think Delver is the right shell for Temur, I've been toying around with more of a midrange build with Collected Company and Eldritch Evolution, including the Kiki-Jiki package as a wincon.
I never said that. I'm fully aware that if they unban Twin they can't unban things like Preordain, JtMS, or SFM. It's one or the other, and I would be happy with either one. I just don't like how in Modern, playing proactively is the only way to play because the threats are so much better than the answers. I want some better answers for blue decks so that reactive gameplay can be more viable in the format.
As someone else said further up in this threat, there's allowed to be a best deck. UR Twin didn't even have the highest metashare when it was banned, it was at like 6.2%, which was 4th highest in the format. If you added up all the Twin variants it was at like 11%, but so were the GBx variants. No matter what metric you use, Twin didn't warrant a ban. That said, if Twin not existing allows them to unban or print blue cards that would help the rest of the blue decks, then I would be ok with it. AV and SotM weren't enough, though.
I don't personally feel the meta is fantastic. As I said before, it's great that there is diversity in decks, but there is no diversity in archetypes. The meta is like 50% linear aggro. I loved Twin and want to play it again so badly, but I would give up my dreams of seeing Twin again if blue could be strong enough to have a couple top tier decks. I would love to see something like Temur Delver, Grixis midrange, and Jeskai Control all be legitimate Tier 1 decks that could slow down the linear aggro decks. As it is now, Jeskai is about to slide back into Tier 2, so there won't even be one Tier 1 blue deck.
Maybe "moron" was a bit harsh, but anyone who actually thinks the format is healthier now without Twin is kidding themselves. Sure, there is a ton of deck diversity, maybe the most there's ever been in Modern, but all of those decks do basically the same thing: try to kill you as quickly as possible while ignoring what you're doing. There is very little archetype diversity.
Not random, and not inaccurate. Go to MTGGoldfish and add up the total meta share of every delver, geist, blue midrange, blue control, and blue scapeshift deck. It's ~10%. Now go look at mtgtop8.com for 2015. Blue decks were 26% of the meta, with Twin making up 11% of that. 1 month of that was TC Delver, so post-TC would be a little lower, but still in the 20s for the year. There was an article on ModernNexus a couple weeks after the Twin ban and before Eldrazi really took off that said 25% for blue decks before the ban, but I can't seem to find it on the site.
The difference is that with Twin I had a chance. It came down to him misplaying by not holding up removal, and I had to have both combo pieces ready for turn 4. If he held up removal or I didn't have both pieces for turn 4, I lose that game. On Jeskai, I would have had no chance. I can't race him, and the nature of his deck nulifies most of my interaction. Even bringing in Engineered Explosives for post sideboard games doesn't do enough, because their Totem Armor auras protect the creature from it.
Being widely considered the best and most successful deck doesn't mean it should have been banned. Miracles is 16% of the Legacy metagame, which is much higher than Twin ever was, but do you think it should be banned out of Legacy? And only looking at the GPs and PT is really narrowing the sample size to fit your narrative. All the Twin variants combined for about 11-12% of the meta. If Twin was heads and shoulders above everyone else like you are trying to make it out to be, it would have reached the +20% shares we've seen when broken decks like TC Delver, Pod, and Eldrazi have existed.
AV would help Twin against the GBx decks, but I'm not even sure they would Mainboard it. It would most likely be a sideboard card to bring in against GBx and other blue control decks. AV is just too slow against the linear aggro decks, which is why the Delver and blue midrange decks aren't running it. And no, I wouldn't shut the door on unbanning Preordain. I think it would be completely fine in the format.
I completely agree with you. The problem with blue is that our answers suck. We have no way to stop a T1 Slippery Bogle on the draw. A bunch of our counterspells just suck after like turn 4 or 5, meaning we can suddenly lose a game we had fought hard to control when our opponent top decks a spell that kills us with 3 open mana and we're staring at a Mana Leak in hand. The only good card advantage spell we have takes 4 turns to resolve. This is why the blue control decks have gone towards combo finishers with Twin, Scapeshift, and now Nahiri. We have to finish the game before our very conditional answers come back to bite us. A perfect example of the problem is Grixis Control. It's a great deck full of super powerful cards and interactions... and it has disappeared from the meta because it didn't have a fast enough closing speed. I would actually prefer to play Grixis, but I have to play Jeskai because Nahiri makes that deck so much better than Grixis is.
That said, there's a catch-22 with our problem. Blue answers suck, but WotC refuses to make a secondary way to get cards into Modern, and they don't want to print powerful blue counters in Standard. One of these two things has to give. Personally, I think they need to come up with another way to get cards into Modern without having to go through Standard.