The rule has always been that any deck that consistently wins on turn3 gets a ban. Of course every deck that can do that, will get slowed down a few turns if it's disrupted. Couldn't infect shoal be disrupted with thoughtseize????
But the turn3 rule doesn't take into account any interaction.
The devoted druid combo is a 2-card combo that doesn't even win the game on the spot (although admitedly is quite strong cos you can play your entire hand). But still is a 2 card combo, and the possibilities of drawing those 2 cards by turn 3 in a 60 card deck are not that high.
I said this on the Storm thread and got infracted for talking about bans outside of this thread, so I'll say it here:
How can a combo deck like storm be TIER1 in a field where there is a tier1 deck packing 4 chalices main, a tier1 deck packing 4 eidolons main, and another tier1 deck packing 6 1CMC discard spells, 6 removal spells and 3 counterspells along with cheap big clocks???
The answer is: a super overpowered deck that can still have a decent win% against those 3 decks while it ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS all the other decks.
What kind of win percentage do you think Storm has against Eldrazi Tron and Grixis Death Shadow? I'd be willing to bet that it's not as 'decent' as you believe. There's a guy I play magic with every week at fnm, he has a ETron deck and a storm deck. Which one do you think he wins more often with?
Those cards are nonland cards, and mtgtop8 is "to blame" for this result. Opinions, please?
What do those most played Modern cards say about the format's health?
There's an interesting gap between Thoughtseize and Noble Hierarch. Taking these numbers at face value, it looks like Grixis colors are being played more than others. Kind of interesting that Death's Shadow didn't make the top 20. Also tells me that white is still the weakest color in the format despite having the best silver bullets.
EDIT: As far as format health, that really depends on what a healthy format looks like to you. That's also kind of hard to draw a conclusion about just looking at the top 20 played cards. People like removal, cantrips, and Mana fixing, but since when is that breaking news?
I've only got my experiences watching pro tour games and having attended a few opens to go on regarding the 'big picture' meta, but I play FNM every chance I get. While I agree that watching games between something like Valakut and E-Tron can be boring as hell, games involving GDS and/or Affinity are very appealing to me. I used to pilot affinity years ago, so I might be a bit biased there, lol. In my local meta, there's only one Robots pilot, a few Tron players, and GDS all over the place. FNM is a ton of fun for Modern right now, at least from where I sit; I brought a Faeries deck tonight and shocked the hell out of everyone. Only loss was to Abzan Shadow, but I'm pretty positive half the guys are gonna bring burn next week to fry my deck. The whole point of all this is just to iterate that while there might be some problems on the large scale of Modern, I feel that at the local level, Modern is doing just fine, and is still the most fun format I play, although Ixalan standard looks pretty sweet.
Are they never going to print fetchlands in a standard set again?
My guess is probably not. It reaaally seems like they are setting up for their own frontier starting with origins. The fact that they "wasted" the potential to put these in a standard set I think is very telling. Also shows they are probably thinking about the long term health of said format over immediate returns for whatever that is worth.
How is the printing of fetches in MM3 relevant in any way with the introduction of a new format like Frontier?
Because it keeps them out of a standard set that would make them legal in that frontier format? They clearly think fetch lands are a mistake and even worse with the battle lands. They don't want their new format to be 4-5 color goodstuff. They put by their own admission one of the most dangerous mechanics in delve in the same set as fetches in a set with the wedges that hadn't really been a thing before and it's the block before a set called origins (as in beginning). Seemed like a ton of loose end tying at the time and then they passed the opportunity to print straight money by putting the fetches in a mm set instead of standard? If you can't see the writing on the wall or how this all relates I don't know what to tell you.
Because printing the fetches in MM3 wont make any money at all.
How is it a missed opportunity when MM3 is going to to fly off the shelves faster than a speeding bullet?
What kind of win percentage do you think Storm has against Eldrazi Tron and Grixis Death Shadow? I'd be willing to bet that it's not as 'decent' as you believe. There's a guy I play magic with every week at fnm, he has a ETron deck and a storm deck. Which one do you think he wins more often with?
There's an interesting gap between Thoughtseize and Noble Hierarch. Taking these numbers at face value, it looks like Grixis colors are being played more than others. Kind of interesting that Death's Shadow didn't make the top 20. Also tells me that white is still the weakest color in the format despite having the best silver bullets.
EDIT: As far as format health, that really depends on what a healthy format looks like to you. That's also kind of hard to draw a conclusion about just looking at the top 20 played cards. People like removal, cantrips, and Mana fixing, but since when is that breaking news?
Because printing the fetches in MM3 wont make any money at all.
How is it a missed opportunity when MM3 is going to to fly off the shelves faster than a speeding bullet?