Big IF, since its not that good, but I would say if we hit some hypothetical where ANOTHER artifact deck breaks, Opal would finally eat it.
I think you're seriously underestimating the deck. I'd say that out of the currently 30-ish most played decks in modern it only has 3 bad matchups. Jeskai and UW primarily due to cryptic circumventing the welding jars/needles, and burn which is actually closer than expected.
It doesn't surprise me that many former kci players are turning to the deck as the next best mox opal deck, it's hard to master but has a very high ceiling.
from what ive seen of the deck its worst matchup is itself. not as bad as something like boggles or grishoalbrand, but its draws are polarized enough that the average suffers for it.
Not really. Bogles and Grishoalbrand are actually pretty bad against Whir Prison, IMO; they're just too flimsy and linear. The worst match up is by far BGx midrange. Abrupt Decay beats Chalice and Bridge (with no Jar, obviously), targeted discard is extremely effective against the deck before it gets an Academy Ruins online, and Goyf/Tasigur/Flayer/Ooze are fantastic threats against Whir Prison if they can't protect their Bridges, which they rarely can if they've been slowed enough. Grixis Death's Shadow is a close second, since they have the same discard as GBx but get countermagic to shut off your Whirs and kill you much faster. Tron is a pain in the neck too since they can topdeck Karn, Ostone, or Ugin to wipe your board. UW control is also great against Whir prison thanks to cards like Negate, Detention Sphere, and Stony Silence out of the sideboard.
I would say that Whir prison is well positioned against many of the decks that are currently popular (Izzet Phoenix and Dredge in particular) and it uses many of the same cards as the KCI decks.
Its difficult to say anyone is 'informed' about a format that doesnt see nearly enough play to make any kind of real statements about power level?
And the way to have NBLM see enough play for informed opinions, is for lots of people to play it, right?
Yeah but that simply isn't going to happen.
Without the number of reps and iteration you see in Modern or Standard, you are simply not going to get an accurate picture.
Ponza has spiked events, that doesn't make it Tier 1.
We need a lot more data to make any claims on NBLM.
Certainly not with that attitude, anyway.
Seriously though, it's never going to be a real, WotC endorsed format. From my experiences with NBLM, it's just way too opaque an environment to ever make sense to the average newish player. There's too many "tests" a deck can fail- like the Chalice Test, the Depths test, the Shoal test, or the Bridge test to name a few. If your deck fails a test, that's one or two decks that will beat you game 1, before sideboarding. Games tend to be very binary because of this. 'Turn 1 Land, Chrome Mox, Chalice on 1 or Spyglass on the most relevant fetchland, go' doesn't lead to the types of board states Wizards seems interested in pursuing.
And here we see a prime example from somebody, how has no freaking clue about NBL Modern.
Edrazi is good (Tier 1.5 if I would need to rate it), but not busted. Than why did people play it? Cause it was OBVIOUS good and it was tested recently in Modern. Both UR Delver as Miracles as Tezzerator just gumpa stomps it, heck even Storm is quite decent against it (but when they have a double Chalice draw, than it gets more iffy).
Sure, slamming 4/4 Thoughseize on turn 2 is good, but the deck has a real threat density problem, just 10 real threats (on average) is a real problem in a format, which just runs rampant with either value chains (TC + Skullclamp, which btw just got with Steam Kin a new toy to play around) or "Mass removal" (Terminus, Wrath, Bridge) or have just bigger creatures (yes, also quite common to have 5/6 or even bigger Goyfs in that format).
People need to do some basic research before posting. Eldrazi is Tier 0 in No Banned List Modern.
Most tournaments have had Eldrazi hit top 8, whether people are saying the results are inbred or not. The fact of the matter is that if you can't rickroll like Eldrazi, you can't play in the format.
"Eldrazi is tier 0" is going to be the new "Hypergensis is tier 0", isn't it? *facepalm*
People need to play NBLM more before having "informed" opinions on it.
And here we see a prime example from somebody, how has no freaking clue about NBL Modern.
Edrazi is good (Tier 1.5 if I would need to rate it), but not busted. Than why did people play it? Cause it was OBVIOUS good and it was tested recently in Modern. Both UR Delver as Miracles as Tezzerator just gumpa stomps it, heck even Storm is quite decent against it (but when they have a double Chalice draw, than it gets more iffy).
Sure, slamming 4/4 Thoughseize on turn 2 is good, but the deck has a real threat density problem, just 10 real threats (on average) is a real problem in a format, which just runs rampant with either value chains (TC + Skullclamp, which btw just got with Steam Kin a new toy to play around) or "Mass removal" (Terminus, Wrath, Bridge) or have just bigger creatures (yes, also quite common to have 5/6 or even bigger Goyfs in that format).
The deck is just to clunky to say it this way to be broken in NBL.
If Eldrazi was only tier 1.5 in NBL Modern, people playing the actual best decks would have beaten it, and it wouldn't have put 13 copies into the top 25. This was by far the biggest NBL Modern tournament ever held, so these results carry more weight than whatever smaller tournaments you're used to.
Actually, this a great example of why data analysis is important. The meta in SCG Roanoke was kind of inbred. Eldrazi stompy made up almost 40% of the day 1 decks, IIRC. If you look at the rate of top 25's of decklists with more than 2 copies in the tournament, BG Depths actually blows Eldrazi out of the water in terms of rate of return. Heck, there was only one Miracles deck in the tournament, and it came in second. Is that an outlier? Or is it that Miracles just kind of beats up on aggro decks and midrange decks and this was very favorable field? My experience in the format tells me it's the latter, and that people had the Eldrazi cards lying around- or could get them easily- so they sleeved up what they knew.
Sword of the Meek was the most hilarious unban. People were on tinterhooks about how broken it would be, only to find out that it wasn't even that good in the context of that meta. It also helped pave the way for more interesting unbans, like JtMS and BBE.
So the clear staple is Assassin's Trophy. Outside of that, Mission Briefing and Mausoleum Secrets seem like they just need a home, but are strong cards. Necrotic Wound could see play since it's a reasonably efficient removal in a graveyard-centric creature deck. Knight of Autumn is a combination of Reclaimation Sage and Kitchen Finks, so of course it will see play in any GWx creature deck. Pelt Collector isn't strong enough; the "power greater than Pelt Collector's" clause makes it basically useless in a tribal deck. If we ever get good Surveil cards outside of Mission Briefing, Dimir Spybug could be pretty strong. Lasav the Multifaious is neat, and it's awesome that its ability is instant speed- I just don't know of a deck that actually wants that combination of abilities. The split cards all seem a bit too slow for Modern, but the best of the bunch, IMO, are Discovery//Dispersal and Invert//Invent because they can be strong with cards like Torrential Gearhulk. Citywide Bust seems like a great sideboard card, but Ritual of Soot is way too expensive.
Some honorable mentions are Chemister's Insight and Radical Idea. I'm not sure that they're strong enough, but it's nice to see more reasonable instant speed draw spells getting printed. Creeping Chill could see play in Dredge sideboards against Burn. Selective Snare is a pretty nifty anti-tribal card too, but I don't think it's got enough impact for it to really catch on.
Toolbox decks are just worse versions of midrange decks. Rather than packing powerful generic answers, they have overall weaker answers that are very good in super specific scenarios. The only time that doesn't turn out to be the case is if the tutor card is so powerful it pushes out other midrange decks. This kinda goes back to an earlier discussion on strategy diversity where I posed the idea that at some point, the goal of diversity breaks down the categories into way too specific of items.
I disagree. Look at Birthing Pod. You'd probably say that Pod itself, being the tutor card, is super powerful. But if you look at it, it requires a creature already on the board plus 4 mana (if you count casting it), plus a good chunk of the deck to be designed around the whole +1 toughness mechanic. What made the Pod decks so good is that fact that it had so much flexibility, which is the innate power of a toolbox style deck. Its essentially a BGx shell with a toolbox put in.
To be fair though, what really busted Pod was getting added to Abzan midrange. You got to play good, solid cards and have way more copies than anyone else. Repeatable tutors do enable toolbox decks, but they're much stronger in midrange decks as a support element or in combo decks. GSZ is probably fine in the current meta, since most of the cards you'd want to get with it are Push/Bolt/Path targets and frankly, green creature combo could probably use a shot in the arm.
Well, geez. Who would be silly enough to print something this good? 2 CMC and can kill anything. Jesus. BGx is back in the meta, boys. At least it can be countered.
On an unrelated note: Hypothesizzle is an awesome name for a card.
So Jumpstart is a "fixed" flashback that can be printed on anything. Interesting. I'm betting we'll see one or two banned cards in Standard with this mechanic- especially creatures with good ETB effects.
Surveil is a very solid constructed mechanic. If Sinister Sabotage was Surveil 2, I'd seriously consider playing it in Grixis and Sultai decks. Ditto for Thought Erasure.
Undergrowth seems like an interesting build-around mechanic. I could see some instances where decks like Hollow One and Bridge Vine might actually want Necrotic Wound over Fatal Push.
Convoke has always been more effective in limited than in constructed, and I expect to see that trend continue.
As much as Mentor is clearly intended to be a limited mechanic, it could see some play alongside cards like Hardened Scales or Winding Constrictor. It's an easy way to spread +1/+1 counters among your creatures, especially with multiple mentor triggers.
Some things I'd like to see in this set: I'd like to see more UG support. If there's a single color combination in magic that doesn't get any support, it's UG. I'd love to see a UG 2 cmc permission spell in particular.
Ummm... no. Disenchant was a real card for the first magic sets. From 8th edition forward(which is in 2003, and the start of Modern era) the colour pie changed and W stopped having destroy artifact effects.
(White can imprison cards temporarily, as long as it remains on the battlefield though that's a different thing).
Then Time Spiral happened and Disenchant was printed as a colour shifted card, since this wasn't in it's colour pie anymore.
That said, regarding Modern, Disenchant is a colour shifted card that is outside of W's colour pie, from 8th edition onwards.
It's never happened again in a regular set (outside of Master, promo FNM, or other special sets of course), and it's not happening again.
Mate, you're conflating time shifted cards, like Claws of Gix and Disenchant with color shifted cards, like Akroma, Angel of Fury. Also, as has been made abundantly clear: White has wide and deep access to cheap artifact removal in Modern.
@wraith, Blue is never getting enchantment removal, neither is black, or blue.
The closer one can get is to ask for a better Perilous Voyage, but that's that. U is only getting bounce cards. Alternatively, one can play colourless cards like Engineered Explosives or destroy all permanent effects like Apocalypse(which is not Modern legal I believe-and find cards like this one).
You can ask Maro, and he will almost surely give you this exact answer.
I think I remember someone, might have been Maro, saying that red can't destroy enchantments because the color is too dumb, basically. They can smash artifacts and fling fireballs, but they don't know what to do with a persistent magical spell like an enchantment. I know that blue usually only gets bounce spells, but from a flavor perspective, if enchantments are supposed to be persistent spells, doesn't it make sense that blue should be able to undo them? I think it makes sense, and I really think enchantment destruction needs to be opened up to a third color anyway.
I am confused. Artifact destruction is in R, G. Enchantments destruction is in G,W.
2 for both. Seems fair. Nothing is going to change in that department. Disenchant is a colour shifted time spiral card, don't forget.
Um... no. Disenchant has been around since Alpha. Naturalize is a colorshifted Disenchant. Disenchant was a Timeshifted card in Timespiral, though.
As to the balance of enchantment destruction vs Artifact Destruction... I don't really see an issue. Anyone can use artifacts. You are exponentially more likely to run across a deck centered around artifacts than you are one about enchantments. It makes sense for more colors to have access to artifact destruction. Bogles is probably the most prominent enchantment themed deck in modern, and it's still pretty rare. Plus, enchantment hate is much stronger than most artifact hate. Compare Shatterstorm to Back to Nature or Tempest of Light
How do you feel about Tezzeret, Artifice Master? I think he's pretty solid for a Ux Artifact deck, his +1 gives a flying chumpblocker, his 0 draws two cards, and he curves straight out from Karn, Scion of Urza, another great walker that draws cards and creates tokens. Maybe in some sort of a Thoptersword shell?
The only problem with Tezzeret, Artifice Master is that there doesn't seem to be a deck that wants his effects. Most artifact based control decks rely very heavily on Ensnaring Bridge, which the new Tezzeret non-bos with. Teferi has proven that 5 cmc walkers can see play in Modern, if they're flexible enough, so I still have a little hope, but I haven't seen a list that would want new Tezz over any of his previous incarnations.
Not really. Bogles and Grishoalbrand are actually pretty bad against Whir Prison, IMO; they're just too flimsy and linear. The worst match up is by far BGx midrange. Abrupt Decay beats Chalice and Bridge (with no Jar, obviously), targeted discard is extremely effective against the deck before it gets an Academy Ruins online, and Goyf/Tasigur/Flayer/Ooze are fantastic threats against Whir Prison if they can't protect their Bridges, which they rarely can if they've been slowed enough. Grixis Death's Shadow is a close second, since they have the same discard as GBx but get countermagic to shut off your Whirs and kill you much faster. Tron is a pain in the neck too since they can topdeck Karn, Ostone, or Ugin to wipe your board. UW control is also great against Whir prison thanks to cards like Negate, Detention Sphere, and Stony Silence out of the sideboard.
I would say that Whir prison is well positioned against many of the decks that are currently popular (Izzet Phoenix and Dredge in particular) and it uses many of the same cards as the KCI decks.
Certainly not with that attitude, anyway.
Seriously though, it's never going to be a real, WotC endorsed format. From my experiences with NBLM, it's just way too opaque an environment to ever make sense to the average newish player. There's too many "tests" a deck can fail- like the Chalice Test, the Depths test, the Shoal test, or the Bridge test to name a few. If your deck fails a test, that's one or two decks that will beat you game 1, before sideboarding. Games tend to be very binary because of this. 'Turn 1 Land, Chrome Mox, Chalice on 1 or Spyglass on the most relevant fetchland, go' doesn't lead to the types of board states Wizards seems interested in pursuing.
And the way to have NBLM see enough play for informed opinions, is for lots of people to play it, right?
"Eldrazi is tier 0" is going to be the new "Hypergensis is tier 0", isn't it? *facepalm*
People need to play NBLM more before having "informed" opinions on it.
Actually, this a great example of why data analysis is important. The meta in SCG Roanoke was kind of inbred. Eldrazi stompy made up almost 40% of the day 1 decks, IIRC. If you look at the rate of top 25's of decklists with more than 2 copies in the tournament, BG Depths actually blows Eldrazi out of the water in terms of rate of return. Heck, there was only one Miracles deck in the tournament, and it came in second. Is that an outlier? Or is it that Miracles just kind of beats up on aggro decks and midrange decks and this was very favorable field? My experience in the format tells me it's the latter, and that people had the Eldrazi cards lying around- or could get them easily- so they sleeved up what they knew.
Some honorable mentions are Chemister's Insight and Radical Idea. I'm not sure that they're strong enough, but it's nice to see more reasonable instant speed draw spells getting printed. Creeping Chill could see play in Dredge sideboards against Burn. Selective Snare is a pretty nifty anti-tribal card too, but I don't think it's got enough impact for it to really catch on.
To be fair though, what really busted Pod was getting added to Abzan midrange. You got to play good, solid cards and have way more copies than anyone else. Repeatable tutors do enable toolbox decks, but they're much stronger in midrange decks as a support element or in combo decks. GSZ is probably fine in the current meta, since most of the cards you'd want to get with it are Push/Bolt/Path targets and frankly, green creature combo could probably use a shot in the arm.
On an unrelated note: Hypothesizzle is an awesome name for a card.
Is it?
-edit-
Yep. I was wrong about it being on creatures. Oops!
Surveil is a very solid constructed mechanic. If Sinister Sabotage was Surveil 2, I'd seriously consider playing it in Grixis and Sultai decks. Ditto for Thought Erasure.
Undergrowth seems like an interesting build-around mechanic. I could see some instances where decks like Hollow One and Bridge Vine might actually want Necrotic Wound over Fatal Push.
Convoke has always been more effective in limited than in constructed, and I expect to see that trend continue.
As much as Mentor is clearly intended to be a limited mechanic, it could see some play alongside cards like Hardened Scales or Winding Constrictor. It's an easy way to spread +1/+1 counters among your creatures, especially with multiple mentor triggers.
Some things I'd like to see in this set: I'd like to see more UG support. If there's a single color combination in magic that doesn't get any support, it's UG. I'd love to see a UG 2 cmc permission spell in particular.
Mate, you're conflating time shifted cards, like Claws of Gix and Disenchant with color shifted cards, like Akroma, Angel of Fury. Also, as has been made abundantly clear: White has wide and deep access to cheap artifact removal in Modern.
Um... no. Disenchant has been around since Alpha. Naturalize is a colorshifted Disenchant. Disenchant was a Timeshifted card in Timespiral, though.
As to the balance of enchantment destruction vs Artifact Destruction... I don't really see an issue. Anyone can use artifacts. You are exponentially more likely to run across a deck centered around artifacts than you are one about enchantments. It makes sense for more colors to have access to artifact destruction. Bogles is probably the most prominent enchantment themed deck in modern, and it's still pretty rare. Plus, enchantment hate is much stronger than most artifact hate. Compare Shatterstorm to Back to Nature or Tempest of Light
The only problem with Tezzeret, Artifice Master is that there doesn't seem to be a deck that wants his effects. Most artifact based control decks rely very heavily on Ensnaring Bridge, which the new Tezzeret non-bos with. Teferi has proven that 5 cmc walkers can see play in Modern, if they're flexible enough, so I still have a little hope, but I haven't seen a list that would want new Tezz over any of his previous incarnations.
I'd also recommend ditching the Kitsune Ascendant and the True Conviction, for more Serra Ascendants.