While the example I gave is extreme, I firmly believe we're more likely to get something like a back to basics effect than another land destruction card. I was surprised we got Field of Ruin tbh.
I'd like to see more of a Prismatic Omen kind of hoser. I posted this on a previous page; don't remember the exact wording but it was something like this:
Prismatic Moon2G Enchantment
Nonbasic lands lose all abilities and have t: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
This hoses Eldrazi Temple, Tron lands, and Valakut while not messing up fetches or shocks. This is also very safe for Standard.
I can dig that kind of effect, a softer Blood Moon. It seems like Wizards is very averse to cheap land destruction, so if they are/were thinking of ways to deal with nonbasics, they'd go a different route than another variant of Wasteland.
Of course, if they would allow cards to come into Modern more ways than just through Standard, it'd help a ton, but that conversation is a dead end.
While the example I gave is extreme, I firmly believe we're more likely to get something like a back to basics effect than another land destruction card. I was surprised we got Field of Ruin tbh.
I just can't see wizards putting Wasteland into standard right now. If anything, they'd put something like this in:
Path of Simplicity
1W
Aura
Enchant Player
Nonbasic lands the enchanted player controls do not untap during his/her untap step.
EDIT
I don't think Tron is quite the Boogeyman this board is making it out to be, but time will tell. I just think in the immediate future, if anything regarding land interaction is going to be printed, it'll be more in the vein of the card above than an out right land destruction card.
Let's be honest modern is at it's best right know. I don't care about the deck that my opponents play. Yes playing vs end game one with GBx sucks and yes when my opponents is on Tron I get frustrated but that doesnt mean they should be banned by any means. Let's be honest once again there is no "such" thing as a brainless deck. Even Burn and Living End have a thought process. And for the final note combo players may frustrate us who play fair decks but salty storm players losing turn 3 to burn is my favorite thing to watch...
I have a question it is a bit biased (pls don't kill me I know Gbx would be stronger) would you ever consider a sideboard increase to 20?
One problem I see with that would be the possibility that 'transformative' sideboards become a real thing. What I mean by that is a sideboard that, instead of being stuffed with silver bullets for bad matchups, changes the deck into something else entirely. Imo that kind of deviates from the point of a sideboard to begin with, and it also might enable some broken stuff down the road.
Alright, here is a two part question: what do y'all think the odds are of a card in rivals of Ixalan having an impact on modern, and what kind of card(s) would y'all want to see?
It feels like you want midrange to dominate the format. That was my sense of it when you disliked the idea of a draw go control deck as tier 1 (which GBx is awful against).
Your vision of modern looks---selfish? I don't know how to word it better, I'm really not throwing that out as an insult.
I actually think a meta with control being a large chunk in it would be great.
And I know midrange wouldn't push it out for your mentioned reasons.
If you look at it as:"I want midrange the gathering so my jund deck can beat everyone" of course that looks selfish. But that's your view on it and its incorrect.
In my modern ideal world there would be equality in linearity it wouldn't dominate but it would still be good.
Where merfolk and humans elves ect where the aggro decks
Bgx and urx where control and midrange ect
And infect
Coco
Dredge
Boggles
Ad nauseam
Ect where combo
The fact is there are soo much decks in modern. It's foolish to think there wouldn't be others to rise in Thier place.
And I truly feel affinity is too much of a sideboard battle for soo many decks
Storm wins way too quick
Tron and Eldrazi and valakut(ie big mana) don't have adequate hate vs them so they just stomp slower decks.
I don't find that healthy....
If I was bias id be not complaining about affinity and storm cuz I play interactive decks wouldn't I? Ask yourself that.
I literally played every tier 1 to 3 deck intimately and have tried even the ones I hate. So that I can get an intimate understanding of modern. I've logged hours in the thousands in modern.
And in my travels I looked for the more skilled player winning more often. I did not find this enough. Instead I commonly found matchups and sideboards to often dictating the tide of the games. This is the core to what I find unhealthy.
Big picture man..
One question: do you primarily play modern on paper or online?
The other part of the discussion here is interactivity, and how that plays into the linearity of a given deck. While those two (linearity and interactivity) aren't the same, they do relate to each other. This may help clarify some things regarding ktk's current model; for example, Cranial Plating does present more options/decisions for Affinity, but those options end up with the same result, which in this case is increasing your creature's power and toughness. How does that weigh against something that offers options that all interact with your opponent, such as KCommand? Is there a way to put more weight on options that interact with your opponent? Is that even necessary/desirable? I don't know, it's 330am here and I'm spitballing, but it's something I thought should be discussed.
\I don't think Punishing Fire would be as bad in the current meta as it was when it first was a menace, though.
Fatal Push AND punishing fire? Sure. Why play decks like Death and Taxes, Abzan Company, Affnity or Merfolk anymore? There really is no reason at all.
Not that Wizards gives a flip about the secondary market, but the return of Punishing Fire would spike the already high price of Grove of the Burnwillows even further.
Punishing Fire seems like a risky unban to say the least. However, regarding this comment, I don't think $13 is really all that high (though I agree it would certainly go higher if Punishing Fire was unbanned).
Ah, I've misspoken, I was looking at the price of a Future Sight Grove. Even so, Punishing Fire is way riskier to unban than Jace, BBE, and SFM. Not sure what kind of Modern would have to exist for it to be a safer unban.
\I don't think Punishing Fire would be as bad in the current meta as it was when it first was a menace, though.
Fatal Push AND punishing fire? Sure. Why play decks like Death and Taxes, Abzan Company, Affnity or Merfolk anymore? There really is no reason at all.
Not that Wizards gives a flip about the secondary market, but the return of Punishing Fire would spike the already high price of Grove of the Burnwillows even further.
It still blows my mind that people think bbe is too strong. These must be the same folks who wanted sword to stay banned because it would break lantern control, and wild nacatl because no other aggro deck would exist.
If bbe is too strong then collected company must be too strong. Two cards on battlefield for four mana with a splash of variance.
That's cute. I agree. BBE is not too strong. But if you look it through developer's eyes, it's something that's difficult to unban.
I get where you're coming from, but it's worth pointing out that we don't know how big of a factor the developer angle is in considering an unban. It's hard to make an argument that BBE is too powerful at this point, so what other considerations are there? We know that whether or not a card would slot into a tier 1 deck is a factor, but unless something big changes in the next few months, I don't see Jund making that big of a comeback.
Getting back to the original point, does BBE really have a chance of dominating the 4cmc position in decks it would feasibly be put into? I don't know, I'm not a Jund player, but that is a valid concern.
Re: SSG
This card is totally fine. There is only one top-tier deck that uses it, Ad Naus, and it's not a T4 violator by any measure. It's also barely top-tier these days. No one cares about the random Tier 4 glass cannons because they are neither consistent nor top-tier. All the other alleged SSG T4 violators are also inconsistent and have been for years. People need to stop misinterpreting or misrepresenting the T4 format idea. A T4 format doesn't mean "no decks can ever win before T4." Wizards has been super clear about this in multiple updates.
Modern is fine right now. I wish we spent more time talking about real issues, like trying to predict the potentially warped PT metagame, rather than go back and forth on these tired ban suggestions that aren't even format factors. The PT is a real question we should be discussing; if this format has cracks, we'll see them ripped open in February.
As far as the PT goes, I'd imagine the pros will try to bust open whatever can win fastest. Right now that seems like Storm, but going all in on the combo leaves you open to all manner of hate. I could also see pros trying to do something with Tron, Eldrazi or otherwise. It's also entirely possible they'll find something else to try and slam through (Dredge, Infect, Goryo's Vengeance?). I'd like to see how pros take Death's Shadow, whether it's GDS or the 5c variant. Not sure if they'll hop on the Humans train.
Alrighty, I understand. I'm a big fan of countermagic myself, I even run Familiar's Ruse in my GDS alongside Stubborn Denial, which sometimes leads to some fantastic shenanigans with Snapcaster. My GDS build is tailored to deal with my local meta, if I ever got the time off from work to go to bigger tournaments I'd probably make some changes. For instance, there are two dedicated robots players here so I've got Hurkyl's Recall in the sideboard. Probably would axe those in favor of something a bit more generalized, Echoing Truth or Cyclonic Rift if I was feeling spicy.
I feel for cfusion somewhat, I really do. I know what kind of gameplay he is missing, and I guess thinking about those days makes me nostalgic too; snare that goyf, lose my delver to a decay, snap block, kommand retrieve snap and discard, activating manlands after 15 grueling turns of combat math, risk calcuation and card counting...
Welp, those days are over.
Tron stopped focusing on pyroclasms and sylvan scrying and instead replaced forests with sol lands that played 4/4 thoughtseizes. You don't midrange those.
Grixis had to play bigger threats than 3/2 fliers or midgame 4/5s or simply risk being run over.
Jund had to... well Jund will have to wait for a tron land to be banned.
Storm exploits the lack of interactive cards to excel. Ironically, this deck would be pretty crappy in a cfusion format.
So long as cheaty lands continue to be in the format as the ultimate go-over, the rest of us are going to have to race, that's just the fact. Well I never liked Tron and when they went colorless it was even worse, so even though grixis is my favorite shard I suck it up and play Storm even if its not really the ideal thing I want to do on Friday. Kicking Tron butt makes it worthwhile, though.
Did both of you forget about Grixis Death's Shadow? It's not the slam dunk over Tron that Storm is, but it definitely appeals to the kind of gameplay you both seem to enjoy.
I've posted multiple times that I'm a big fan (and pilot) of GDS, and while I'm tempted to give the 5c variant a spin, I've been tinkering with the deck in other ways. I'm extremely fortunate to have a local modern community that is very active, and so I'm able to test brews against everything from Timmy's first deck to Spike's ETron and Storm. I can't speak to much of what matchup percentages look like overall, nor can I speak to how healthy modern is from a totally objective point of view; my views are colored by my experiences playing the game for myself, and I just can't get behind an overly negative view of Modern. I'm currently working on compiling the data from my LGS to show what I've been working with as far as a competitive environment.
I can dig that kind of effect, a softer Blood Moon. It seems like Wizards is very averse to cheap land destruction, so if they are/were thinking of ways to deal with nonbasics, they'd go a different route than another variant of Wasteland.
Of course, if they would allow cards to come into Modern more ways than just through Standard, it'd help a ton, but that conversation is a dead end.
Path of Simplicity
1W
Aura
Enchant Player
Nonbasic lands the enchanted player controls do not untap during his/her untap step.
EDIT
I don't think Tron is quite the Boogeyman this board is making it out to be, but time will tell. I just think in the immediate future, if anything regarding land interaction is going to be printed, it'll be more in the vein of the card above than an out right land destruction card.
One problem I see with that would be the possibility that 'transformative' sideboards become a real thing. What I mean by that is a sideboard that, instead of being stuffed with silver bullets for bad matchups, changes the deck into something else entirely. Imo that kind of deviates from the point of a sideboard to begin with, and it also might enable some broken stuff down the road.
One question: do you primarily play modern on paper or online?
Ah, I've misspoken, I was looking at the price of a Future Sight Grove. Even so, Punishing Fire is way riskier to unban than Jace, BBE, and SFM. Not sure what kind of Modern would have to exist for it to be a safer unban.
Not that Wizards gives a flip about the secondary market, but the return of Punishing Fire would spike the already high price of Grove of the Burnwillows even further.
I get where you're coming from, but it's worth pointing out that we don't know how big of a factor the developer angle is in considering an unban. It's hard to make an argument that BBE is too powerful at this point, so what other considerations are there? We know that whether or not a card would slot into a tier 1 deck is a factor, but unless something big changes in the next few months, I don't see Jund making that big of a comeback.
Getting back to the original point, does BBE really have a chance of dominating the 4cmc position in decks it would feasibly be put into? I don't know, I'm not a Jund player, but that is a valid concern.
As far as the PT goes, I'd imagine the pros will try to bust open whatever can win fastest. Right now that seems like Storm, but going all in on the combo leaves you open to all manner of hate. I could also see pros trying to do something with Tron, Eldrazi or otherwise. It's also entirely possible they'll find something else to try and slam through (Dredge, Infect, Goryo's Vengeance?). I'd like to see how pros take Death's Shadow, whether it's GDS or the 5c variant. Not sure if they'll hop on the Humans train.
Did both of you forget about Grixis Death's Shadow? It's not the slam dunk over Tron that Storm is, but it definitely appeals to the kind of gameplay you both seem to enjoy.