@ktkenshinx plus jeskai gets to have an even better matchup vs all kind of creature decks, like humans, affinity, coco decks compared to uw, gds or jund.
So, there you are, trading something for something else. Its the circle of life.
In a specific metagame like that, jeskai is the better choice.
The deck is fully playable and those two guys finetuned it also greatly.
I was telling you for almost half a year that Jeskai was a good deck...
Except that "Jeskai" is at least three distinctly different decks that all function and operate independently of each other. As pointed out already, Geist is different from Control is different from Breach/Kiki. It's like grouping together Abzan Midrange and Abzan CoCo.
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
As for anecdotal stories... last night at FNM I remembered what it was like to play Titanshift with Jeskai Geist. Game 1, I keep fully-functioning, but reactive hand, and lost to my opponent playing lands. Game 2, I stomp him with a turn 3 Geist on the play. Game 3, I have the same turn 3 Geist (but on the draw) and die from 20 life to a turn 4 Breached Titan.
Besides, 6 samples is nearly meaningless, especially when you're trying to group three totally different decks together. The matchup is miserably bad and almost entirely reliant on two things: They need to stumble, and you have to have an amazing, aggressive opening hand. If either of those two things don't happen, you are most likely losing that game.
Maybe tapping out on turn 3 so they could just kill you on turn 4 wasn't the right way to play your deck...
I'll speak to my personal feelings on some of these things.
I got in to modern with UWR control, and eventually shifted to the various flavors of twin, while still coming back to control depending on the day. I really enjoyed the meta while twin was legal; twin just fit my play style. With it gone, I was definitely in the camp of 'modern sucks' for a while. I definitely think the format has improved since then, I've come to the realization that I just don't enjoy the format as much anymore. I know blue based control is viable, but I just don't enjoy playing against the current best decks (exception being DS, since that feels the most like a hybrid of control vs twin and control vs gbx).
Additionally, I felt like I could brew a little better when the meta was more stable in the twin days (keeping in mind I'm a terrible deck builder haha). When building a new deck I would come up with my core and then I would ask, "How do I deal with twin/affinity/jund etc?" And then proceed from there. Now there are too many angles of attack. When brewing, you are basically trying to do something linear and faster than those. I liked brewing interactive decks, so this is not good for me personally. So I say again, format is not for me, and that's fine. I've since made the dive in to legacy.
As for the matchup lotto idea: I think modern is guilty of this to some extent. Standard just doesn't have enough decks to make this a problem, and legacy has better universally useful cards/answers that you can win bad matchups without drawing hate. In modern, some matchups are defined by whether to see sideboard cards or not (I'm thinking specifically of uwx control vs dredge). It just feels bad to win or lose based on sideboarding. I think with enough games, the better player will come out on top, but there are a lot of 'bad feels' in modern for me. If you guys love the format, that's awesome. I want to love it again (really hoping for some fun unbans). I like deck diversity, but I like strategic diversity more, and I don't think a long standing, stable meta game is inherently bad. I enjoy those types of formats. I'm a current modern detractor, but if the format isn't for me going forward, that's fine. I don't like standard, but I won't ever complain that it should be changed to fit how I think it should be.
I think it really just comes down to some people like having a format where everyone who is trying to win seriously plays the same 4 decks, while others like having more variety. Of course a format that has more viable decks means your pairings could be different every time you enter a tournament, but I find it boring to play against the same 4 decks every single tournament.
Also, when approaching brewing in a broader format like modern, it is usually not best to think of how your deck counters the best x decks, but instead to devise a deck that has a or multiple plans to win, then slowly tweak the build based on performance against the field. This makes brewing easier for linear decks like storm where your goal is to win by turn 4, but it is still a good approach for control decks. I believe this is why in a new meta-shift or a ban list change we immediately see the linear decks rise to the top first, then the midrange or control decks follow later.
I believe we are finally seeing the control decks rise up after a long period of trial and error on their builds. One example of this is the new mono-u living end which is a combo-control deck. When As Foretold was first spoiled, everyone was brewing around for a way to break that card. Everyone searched the linear strategies more reminiscent of the old cascade living end deck first since that was easier to create. It wasn't until much later a new deck started to crop up that has performed much better than the earlier iterations which is much more interactive. Other obvious examples are the UWR tempo decks which now seem to have evolved into a more UWR control deck even later.
Another example would be the death's shadow decks which is extremely interactive. They took a loooooong time to start appearing. The reason being devising a mid-range, or tempo deck is much harder then creating some linear deck, just as creating a good control deck is even harder.
Since people mentioned Patrick & Sully vs the WOTC commentators (this might be a bit off topic), I found a comment by my wife who occasionally will watch some of them with me made. She said something to the extent of "These guys [P&S] know just how seriously to take this game, unlike those guys [WOTC] who are way too serious." I think the lighthearted attitude and not being afraid to hit topics that are not even magic related really makes it better.
On the note of data being worthless as discussed earlier, as an actual data scientist for a job that doesn't fly by me very well. Using the patterns of the past is the best way we know of to model for the future. This can be summarized by individual's personal tournament experiences which only includes a few data points by comparison to the summation of many more tournaments by large datasets pooling together the experiences of many players in a non-biased way.
Also that was an awesome final game at the SCG open. I think Ben definitely played better this time, but Kevin isn't a bad player either.
I could just as easily replace all of your yes's with nos and vice versa with no explination as well. What you are essentially suggesting is we ban out the entire format, but only the decks you don't like. However, what happens when all of the current top decks don't exist anymore and all of the current fringe decks become T1, do we just ban all of them again? You arn't making any logical sense. All of those statements are being extremely silly especially when you say things like "thoughtseize isn't broken" compared to every other thing listed.
It is almost like you have some specific pet-deck that you want to be t1 and isn't so you are complaining about it... wait let me guess... complaining about tron thinking... you want jund to be T1 again.
Don't be fooled by anyone that says "2015 was great for modern." I will give you my 2cents on the format from those days. Actually I will even go a little further back than that to 2013. So in 2013 the only deck worth playing was Jund, that was it, Jund or something built specifically to counter it. Then came the DRS ban and the format was 100% dominated by three decks, Pod, Twin and Afinity. Anything else was just hoping that you either hit specific match-ups of those 3 or dodged them. It was a little more diverse than before, but not much better. Then came the pod ban and we were essentially just left with Twin and Afinity. BGx still existed since it had a mediocre match-up against twin, but twin being the "plays control turns 1-3 then wins the game on turn 4 deck" was not fun for anyone involved since the entirety of the format was "build your deck to beat twin and sideboard for afinity."
Modern today is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was in 2015. You can play more than just three decks and still be relevant. A decent portion of the top decks are still interactive, you can play pure UW control to reasonable success, there is only 1 top tier combo deck unlike the days of Pod/Twin where you had 2 that sucked up around 1/3 of the large tournaments if not more. We have Grixis death's shadow which is way more interactive than Twin was. I will also mention twin's renowned interaction is greatly overstated, playing remand on turn 2, then EoT pestermite into splintertwin is not my idea of interaction.
My only suggestion for moving forward is a ban on mox opal. I think that card is what makes afinity too fast and was part of the big 3 from 2014 and has continued to dog the format ever-since. It is basically the dredge of legacy.
I think process of identifying linear and interactive decks, assuming it is simply a scale from linear to non-linear could be solved much more simply by defining a linear deck as:
A linear deck's ideal lines of play (decision trees) are the same or exceedingly similar regardless whether an opponent exists or an opponent with no cards and 20 life existed.
An interactive deck can be defined as follows:
An interactive deck actively modifies the solution to the opponent's decision tree for finding the best path to victory.
There are a lot of cards that are "interactive" in the above sense like bloodmoon, ensnaring bridge, ghostly prison, chalice of the void etc etc that modify your opponent's decision trees, or changes what your opponent's path to victory are, but are not considered very fun to play against (but fun is 100% opinion).
Also I think any mention in the "number of decision trees" has nothing to do with linearity or whether a deck is interactive enough. That is simply the complexity of the deck. Something like storm has much higher complexity than most other decks (believe it or not) because there are so many forking options available. Making the absolute ideal decision at every fork is extremely difficult when you are constantly scrying, deciding, gifts packaging etc. When playing storm you have the options to play around almost every card that exists HOWEVER you would not say that storm is interactive even if there are huge decision trees because it does not actively modify its opponent's best path to victory.
It is a pretty low sample size, but that local tournament proved my point exactly. SFM helps mid-range decks against fast and fair decks, but not combo or ones that go way over the top. As a result, SFM would push low to the ground or control decks even further out of the meta making combo and unfair decks even stronger. The fact that Tron and Valakut won is exactly what we would see have a large uptick in the meta share as a result. I would also guess storm would become even more amazing since it is good against tron, valakut and SFM is bad against it. So it is about which strategies will become strong or viable afterward and is that a meta you want.
I think there is some confusion about the effect of unbanning "fair" cards like BBE, SFM and Jace in an attempt to make fair strategies more prevalent. You have to think more than just "white isn't good enough so give it the most powerful white card" or "BBE is fair, and I want fair decks, specifically my pet deck jund to do well so unban it." You have to ask what decks will those cards be slotted into, what decks it will make stronger, which decks they are good against and will push out of the format and how many new strategies will be viable.
SFM - This card is good due to its interaction with batterskull which has vigilance, lifelink, 4/4 and is difficult to remove. Since batterskull is a house against control decks, fast aggro (due to lifelink vigilance), burn and midrange due to its difficulty to be removed. If you say that Kolligan's command will remove it so it isn't very good, that is an invalid argument since forcing decks to play one card, which requires two specific colors, to beat it is the very definition of format warping. I think we can expect the results of SFM being unbanned to increase the number of linear strategies since it is rather slow, reduce the amount of control, reduce the amount of burn and eliminate fast aggro strategies all due to its interaction with batterskull.
SFM p2 with swords - a deck playing 4 of SFM would likely also include some swords in the main or sideboard. This allows the deck to find the perfect card to destroy any decks that wins with attacking and blocking since the swords can absolutely destroy those decks assuming you can tutor up the correct sword for it.
I think with these assumptions, we would see mardu midrange essentially dominate all fair and aggro strategies with lingering souls, batterskull, sword package sideboard, SFM, k-command, and hand disruption to help against unfair decks. It would generally be weak against combo, so we would see either SFM decks or combo and that would be the entirety of modern.
I think there are are cards that are safe to unban for modern, which i won't discuss fully right now, but I think unbanning SFM would be horrible for the current modern environment. Just because it is used in control strategies in legacy does not mean that the card will make control t1 or it will even be slotted into control decks.
Couple of thoughts:
1) You might run into some issues trying to both keep cards in your GY for cryptic and be removing them with delve creatures.
2) Since you are not playing any counter magic, and you will be putting cards in (and sometimes benefit from) the graveyard, I would recommend Jace, Vryn's Prodigy over snapcaster mage. Maybe a 2-3 split or something.
3) if you are playing thought scour and such, I would just splash white for the lingering souls.
Maybe tapping out on turn 3 so they could just kill you on turn 4 wasn't the right way to play your deck...
I think it really just comes down to some people like having a format where everyone who is trying to win seriously plays the same 4 decks, while others like having more variety. Of course a format that has more viable decks means your pairings could be different every time you enter a tournament, but I find it boring to play against the same 4 decks every single tournament.
Also, when approaching brewing in a broader format like modern, it is usually not best to think of how your deck counters the best x decks, but instead to devise a deck that has a or multiple plans to win, then slowly tweak the build based on performance against the field. This makes brewing easier for linear decks like storm where your goal is to win by turn 4, but it is still a good approach for control decks. I believe this is why in a new meta-shift or a ban list change we immediately see the linear decks rise to the top first, then the midrange or control decks follow later.
I believe we are finally seeing the control decks rise up after a long period of trial and error on their builds. One example of this is the new mono-u living end which is a combo-control deck. When As Foretold was first spoiled, everyone was brewing around for a way to break that card. Everyone searched the linear strategies more reminiscent of the old cascade living end deck first since that was easier to create. It wasn't until much later a new deck started to crop up that has performed much better than the earlier iterations which is much more interactive. Other obvious examples are the UWR tempo decks which now seem to have evolved into a more UWR control deck even later.
Another example would be the death's shadow decks which is extremely interactive. They took a loooooong time to start appearing. The reason being devising a mid-range, or tempo deck is much harder then creating some linear deck, just as creating a good control deck is even harder.
That is just my opinion however...
On the note of data being worthless as discussed earlier, as an actual data scientist for a job that doesn't fly by me very well. Using the patterns of the past is the best way we know of to model for the future. This can be summarized by individual's personal tournament experiences which only includes a few data points by comparison to the summation of many more tournaments by large datasets pooling together the experiences of many players in a non-biased way.
Also that was an awesome final game at the SCG open. I think Ben definitely played better this time, but Kevin isn't a bad player either.
It is almost like you have some specific pet-deck that you want to be t1 and isn't so you are complaining about it... wait let me guess... complaining about tron thinking... you want jund to be T1 again.
Modern today is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was in 2015. You can play more than just three decks and still be relevant. A decent portion of the top decks are still interactive, you can play pure UW control to reasonable success, there is only 1 top tier combo deck unlike the days of Pod/Twin where you had 2 that sucked up around 1/3 of the large tournaments if not more. We have Grixis death's shadow which is way more interactive than Twin was. I will also mention twin's renowned interaction is greatly overstated, playing remand on turn 2, then EoT pestermite into splintertwin is not my idea of interaction.
My only suggestion for moving forward is a ban on mox opal. I think that card is what makes afinity too fast and was part of the big 3 from 2014 and has continued to dog the format ever-since. It is basically the dredge of legacy.
A linear deck's ideal lines of play (decision trees) are the same or exceedingly similar regardless whether an opponent exists or an opponent with no cards and 20 life existed.
An interactive deck can be defined as follows:
An interactive deck actively modifies the solution to the opponent's decision tree for finding the best path to victory.
There are a lot of cards that are "interactive" in the above sense like bloodmoon, ensnaring bridge, ghostly prison, chalice of the void etc etc that modify your opponent's decision trees, or changes what your opponent's path to victory are, but are not considered very fun to play against (but fun is 100% opinion).
Also I think any mention in the "number of decision trees" has nothing to do with linearity or whether a deck is interactive enough. That is simply the complexity of the deck. Something like storm has much higher complexity than most other decks (believe it or not) because there are so many forking options available. Making the absolute ideal decision at every fork is extremely difficult when you are constantly scrying, deciding, gifts packaging etc. When playing storm you have the options to play around almost every card that exists HOWEVER you would not say that storm is interactive even if there are huge decision trees because it does not actively modify its opponent's best path to victory.
SFM - This card is good due to its interaction with batterskull which has vigilance, lifelink, 4/4 and is difficult to remove. Since batterskull is a house against control decks, fast aggro (due to lifelink vigilance), burn and midrange due to its difficulty to be removed. If you say that Kolligan's command will remove it so it isn't very good, that is an invalid argument since forcing decks to play one card, which requires two specific colors, to beat it is the very definition of format warping. I think we can expect the results of SFM being unbanned to increase the number of linear strategies since it is rather slow, reduce the amount of control, reduce the amount of burn and eliminate fast aggro strategies all due to its interaction with batterskull.
SFM p2 with swords - a deck playing 4 of SFM would likely also include some swords in the main or sideboard. This allows the deck to find the perfect card to destroy any decks that wins with attacking and blocking since the swords can absolutely destroy those decks assuming you can tutor up the correct sword for it.
I think with these assumptions, we would see mardu midrange essentially dominate all fair and aggro strategies with lingering souls, batterskull, sword package sideboard, SFM, k-command, and hand disruption to help against unfair decks. It would generally be weak against combo, so we would see either SFM decks or combo and that would be the entirety of modern.
I think there are are cards that are safe to unban for modern, which i won't discuss fully right now, but I think unbanning SFM would be horrible for the current modern environment. Just because it is used in control strategies in legacy does not mean that the card will make control t1 or it will even be slotted into control decks.
1) You might run into some issues trying to both keep cards in your GY for cryptic and be removing them with delve creatures.
2) Since you are not playing any counter magic, and you will be putting cards in (and sometimes benefit from) the graveyard, I would recommend Jace, Vryn's Prodigy over snapcaster mage. Maybe a 2-3 split or something.
3) if you are playing thought scour and such, I would just splash white for the lingering souls.