i mean they have to pull that trigger some time. there is this looming threat that most anything can be reprinted if its not on the reserved list. choosing never to do standard reprints if a card is over some arbitrary threshold just emboldens speculators and hoarders. masters, and these other specialty/premium products just dont instill the same level of fear; because the nature of the product is a source of scarcity in itself.
the real obstacle is the power of the cards. they most likely cost what they do for a reason, and creating a standard environment that can contain such cards isnt an easy feat. to put it frankly though, wizards needs to try harder. following this false assumption that lower power equates to more entertaining gameplay is obviously taking them in a direction they dont/shouldnt want to go.
Most of the cards >50$ are quite powerful format warping cards, just not very fun (ensnaring bridge / chalice / etc.), or hard to put in a set for flavor/mechanical reasons (e.g. Karn Liberated, Noble Hierarch, Arcbound Ravager/Mox Opal, etc.). Expecting WoTC to reprint these types of cards in a standard booster is wishful thinking. The last time this happened was with Thoughtseize. I think they're very leery of re-doing it. I think something is going to have to replace Modern Masters to get these cards reprinted so it'll be interesting how WoTC decides to do it. Perhaps they should take this opportunity and do like The International and have a yearly Legacy/Modern product where 25% of the proceeds go to boosting next years GP / Pro Tour pay outs. That's almost a win-win.
I feel like any UBx deck should be running at least 2 Kalitas in the 75. That card is so good in MU's like HS Affinity plus it helps some of your meh MU's like Burn, Dredge/H1/etc. Overall, if I'm HS control isn't the MU I'm looking to play against, it's other creature/GY decks. You just go way over the top. Maybe combo decks like Storm are also OK MU's if you're playing a bunch of hate pieces in the board.
So, in regards of toolbox decks (and some more green decks), getting forced out of modern,
I was thinking that Coco/Chord/Evolution decks, are forced out of the meta, because they fold to combo plus Terminus is a thing.
Vs Terminus: Persist does not matter, indestructible does not matter, other similar mechanics do not matter. The powerful miracle sweeper just wipes them clean.
Those decks are powerful, but as long combos(mainly KCI), and Terminus are things, I can not see those decks returning to modern.
If this trend continues, Green Sun's Zenith should be the card unbanned together with Stoneforge Mystic in Modern, as early as the upcoming February.
I mean green creature strategies have pretty good answers to KCI, though notably many are also white - Teeg, Revoker, Damping Sphere, Thorn of Amethyst, etc. If you're also in white there are more good permanent based answers. If you can ever get the KCI in the GY then surgical also works, but not sure how effective that is. That's mostly just the nature of the beast though that green creature decks are weak to combo and control and beat up on aggro and other mid-range decks, UNLESS, you have Pod then you just beat mostly everything.
I think GSZ is perfectly fine in the format, though my only consternation with the card is that it gives Bogles a tiny weeny bit more consistency - also helps them grab Teeg post-board. Overall though, it's probably on the weaker side - probably with a slightly larger effect than the unban of Bitterblossom.
SFM is also an easy one to unban as well. I think they're more hesitant to unban SFM because its play patterns are extremely repetitive rather than any power concerns (my speculation anyways).
That is a sweet list! Congrats on winning your PPTQ; much more than I could do this time.
Every time someone says that UB Control is viable in Modern, I am very unconvinced (being a super skeptical UB mage). Hopefully this and Guilds of Ravnica makes it a reality (cuz Mill is pretty played out and not really what I'm interested in playing).
It's definitely viable, but it's more difficult to play than UW control. I think Guilds gives it some upgrades for sure as while Gearhulk and Search can be good, more often they're just too slow even if you generally prolong the game enough for them to be very useful, and Briefing is more efficient and redundant making my SB cards much better (e.g. more likely to be able to recast Brutality on 4, Surgical on T2, Thoughtseize T3, etc.). Plus I think Insight is quite a bit better than Glimmer and if BGx gets more popular this card is bananas against them.
UB Control destroys KCI, doubly so with the new card as well. Counter/Discard/Thought Scour > surgical your KCI and it's pretty much trivial to win from there assuming you had the foresight to board in such a way that you acknowledge that Sai is also a card. Now that we have 6+ Snap effect with Briefing and Unmoored Ego, I'm frothing at the mouth to just play KCI every round. In our local PPTQ I went 2-0, 2-0, against KCI in the Swiss. I've only lost against the deck once. Granted, you can say UB control is super niche, but I think it's probably one of the best meta decks right now. Crushing KCI, UW Control, and being fairly decent against Humans and other aggro strats (such as Spirits). As long as you can dodge having to play Tron/H1/HollowVine/Burn 2+ times in a long tournament then you should do very well (and burn is fairly close as well as long as you play 3+ Brutalities and some number of Kalitas).
Whats a UB list look like, I'm only familiar with Faeries.
I tightened up the list I won my PPTQ with and it looks like this right now:
UB Control destroys KCI, doubly so with the new card as well. Counter/Discard/Thought Scour > surgical your KCI and it's pretty much trivial to win from there assuming you had the foresight to board in such a way that you acknowledge that Sai is also a card. Now that we have 6+ Snap effect with Briefing and Unmoored Ego, I'm frothing at the mouth to just play KCI every round. In our local PPTQ I went 2-0, 2-0, against KCI in the Swiss. I've only lost against the deck once. Granted, you can say UB control is super niche, but I think it's probably one of the best meta decks right now. Crushing KCI, UW Control, and being fairly decent against Humans and other aggro strats (such as Spirits). As long as you can dodge having to play Tron/H1/HollowVine/Burn 2+ times in a long tournament then you should do very well (and burn is fairly close as well as long as you play 3+ Brutalities and some number of Kalitas).
This is 90% doom blade in standard. Card will see constructed play if there is a Jeskai control list. I doubt any RW aggressive deck wants something like this.
It's an extraction effect so we can use our heuristic from others to know when this will be good and bad, HOWEVER, this is different than all the others in that you can proactively name trouble lands. Naming Valakut, a Tron piece on the play (or if they stumble on the draw), Dark Depths, etc. is very nice. A little too niche I think since UB is all ready favored against most combo decks without an effect like this and surgical is better because you can interact with difficult to answer stuff as early as T1 (e.g. against GY recursion based decks) and since you have counters and discard getting the combo piece in the GY for surgical isn't the hardest thing to do. For that reason I don't see this being better unless Tron/Valakut become an overwhelming part of the meta.
For standard if the Nexus fog decks are still around or if UW control only plays Teferi as a win-con then this will be a good SB card.
I actually think this guy is constructed viable - thanks to the cantrip. Having a huge flyer that cantrips for 4 mana is quite powerful. You really have to warp your manabase though. No field of ruins. Probably have to play 3 or 4 gates / highland lakes (finally get to play with that sweet noah bradley art). He's more of a 5 drop in limited and you need a good spell density. A pod can probably only support 1 UR player.
Fact I sold out of my BG cards..means I won't be on the BUG train.
This new card is neat if we could get one to go to the face as well. A UR bolt that has this kind of rule...
Jump Start continues to underwhelm
But we got Ionize! We should be thankful for such generosity!
If they gave Ionize Jump-start, it'd actually make it an interesting card choice. I think people are under-valuing Jump-start and WoTC is definitely playing it safe, but man, even just straight Cancel with Jump-Start would be interesting (could see it as a 1-of at that point).
So, I had sometime to mull this over. I actually think Mausoleum Secrets is an excellent 1-of in UBx control decks, assuming you run at least 7 creatures. With Thought Scour, you have an 89% chance of having at least 1 or more creatures in your bin by the 15th card which will usually be around the mid-game. The versatility afforded of getting a Push, Thoughtseize, Countersquall/Brutality, Cast Down, late-game Liliana the Last Hope/Damnation, and post-SB it acts as effectively an additional Surgical Extraction, Flaying Tendrils, etc. is pretty huge (especially being able to re-use with Snap/Mission Briefing). If you wanted to make the card have a 0% fail rate (like say your opening hand) then playing something like Slaughter Pact would be advised, though I'm not entirely sure of its efficacy since it misses some important cards.
I'm interested to see what you guys think - if it's worth it to run this as a 1-of.
Blue is not oppressed, nor was it oppressive in Modern.
Blue was never oppressive? What about the Treasure Cruise era?
I mean, sure, that era ended pretty quickly, but it still happened.
UR Delver was a great deck and people like Shenhar playing TC in their burn deck was just silly (and bad), but it wasn't even the best deck in that era. Rhino Pod was. Granted, oppressive doesn't necessarily mean Tier 0 deck. Semantics....
Anyways. Briefing is an interesting card. It probably fits better into UW miracles, but it works well with delve cards too. Also, it's pretty nice value with Snapcaster late game. Fixes top of your deck and you recast a removal/counter. Solid 1-2 of. Definitely want to be playing more blue sources and 1-2 CMC cards if you're going to play 5 or 6 Snap effects. Thought Scour gets better as does Search (since this helps Search flip and you can find it off of Search).
Also, is anyone disappointed that there isn't a Charm or a Command cycle yet? It's so weird seeing a Selesnya creature getting the modal treatment rather than spells/other guilds.
I tend to agree with Jim Davis...Counters and Discard do not play well together, ie they are highly redundant without even going into Snapcaster vs Delve.
I disagree. I think overloading on one or the other makes little sense, but playing Thoughtseize in UB Control is definitely underrepresented. I think it's a little too much life loss for a deck like Grixis to run though. Being able to get full information and strip their important card, and then hold up a counter for their other relevant card is really good. If this theorem held, decks like Grixis Control in Legacy wouldn't both play discard and counters, but it does, and it plays quite well. Personally, I play 3 Thoughtseize in my UB Control deck (that I won a 6 round + 3 top 8 matches PPTQ with) that has been performing quite well over the past month since I started playing it. Being able to grab Karn, KCI, Through the Breach, CoCo, etc. for 1 mana is quite nice. I view them as redundant pieces for the most part. IMHO Thoughtseize > Logic Knot. I'd rather my early interaction be Thoughtseize rather than Knot.
Just to note I have nothing against control (I know I was against it in the past but I got over it), in fact I'm currently playing UW Control. I'm just saying that control is fine and thus printing cards that make it better doesn't make sense to me. If it becomes worse then it might be a different story but as long as it's doing as it is I see no reason to give it additional boost.
There are multiple flavors of mid-range (Mardu Pyro, BGx, Shadow/Traverse decks, E-Tron, Taxes decks, etc.), but non UWx control decks are really lacking. Printing better UB multi-color cards for control wouldn't affect the potency of UW decks, just like bringing something like Containment Priest wouldn't affect the potency of BGx decks. The same can be said for UR control cards. Blue Moon is poop. Coming back to Ravnica was a great chance to help UR/UB decks, but so far, we got nearly zero. The only playable card I see is Chemister's Insight as a 1-of. A minor upgrade over the other non-permanent CA options, especially in Thought Scour lists (like a big daddy Think Twice). It just irks me that BG and UW get really pushed multi-color cards every Ravnica, but UB and UG and to a lesser extent UR get complete crap. The power imbalance is staggering.
Most of the cards >50$ are quite powerful format warping cards, just not very fun (ensnaring bridge / chalice / etc.), or hard to put in a set for flavor/mechanical reasons (e.g. Karn Liberated, Noble Hierarch, Arcbound Ravager/Mox Opal, etc.). Expecting WoTC to reprint these types of cards in a standard booster is wishful thinking. The last time this happened was with Thoughtseize. I think they're very leery of re-doing it. I think something is going to have to replace Modern Masters to get these cards reprinted so it'll be interesting how WoTC decides to do it. Perhaps they should take this opportunity and do like The International and have a yearly Legacy/Modern product where 25% of the proceeds go to boosting next years GP / Pro Tour pay outs. That's almost a win-win.
I mean green creature strategies have pretty good answers to KCI, though notably many are also white - Teeg, Revoker, Damping Sphere, Thorn of Amethyst, etc. If you're also in white there are more good permanent based answers. If you can ever get the KCI in the GY then surgical also works, but not sure how effective that is. That's mostly just the nature of the beast though that green creature decks are weak to combo and control and beat up on aggro and other mid-range decks, UNLESS, you have Pod then you just beat mostly everything.
I think GSZ is perfectly fine in the format, though my only consternation with the card is that it gives Bogles a tiny weeny bit more consistency - also helps them grab Teeg post-board. Overall though, it's probably on the weaker side - probably with a slightly larger effect than the unban of Bitterblossom.
SFM is also an easy one to unban as well. I think they're more hesitant to unban SFM because its play patterns are extremely repetitive rather than any power concerns (my speculation anyways).
It's definitely viable, but it's more difficult to play than UW control. I think Guilds gives it some upgrades for sure as while Gearhulk and Search can be good, more often they're just too slow even if you generally prolong the game enough for them to be very useful, and Briefing is more efficient and redundant making my SB cards much better (e.g. more likely to be able to recast Brutality on 4, Surgical on T2, Thoughtseize T3, etc.). Plus I think Insight is quite a bit better than Glimmer and if BGx gets more popular this card is bananas against them.
I tightened up the list I won my PPTQ with and it looks like this right now:
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Torrential Gearhulk
1 Vendillion Clique
1 Nimble Obstructionist
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Removal:
4 Fatal Push
2 Cast Down
1 Murderous Cut
2 Damnation
Counters:
1 Spell Snare
2 Countersquall
3 Cryptic Command
Discard:
3 Thoughtseize
Utility:
3 Thought Scour
1 Dimir Charm
1 Collective Brutality
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Search for Azcanta
1 Hieroglyphic Illumination
1 Glimmer of Genius
Lands:
4 Field of Ruin
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
3 Creeping Tar Pit
1 River of Tears
2 Drowned Catacomb
2 Watery Grave
4 Island
2 Swamp
1 Dispel
2 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Disfigure
1 Cast Down
2 Collective Brutality
1 Flaying Tendrils
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Kalitas Traitor of Ghet
1 Vendillion Clique
After Guilds of Ravnica comes out I intend to:
-1 Gearhulk
-1 Search for Azcanta
-1 Glimmer
-1 Field of Ruin
for:
+2 Mission Briefing
+1 Chemister's Insight
+1 River of Tears
and SB:
-1 Disdainful Stroke
+1 Unmoored Ego
Possible I want to try a second Ego out in the board, but not entirely sure what to replace.
For standard if the Nexus fog decks are still around or if UW control only plays Teferi as a win-con then this will be a good SB card.
If they gave Ionize Jump-start, it'd actually make it an interesting card choice. I think people are under-valuing Jump-start and WoTC is definitely playing it safe, but man, even just straight Cancel with Jump-Start would be interesting (could see it as a 1-of at that point).
I'm interested to see what you guys think - if it's worth it to run this as a 1-of.
UR Delver was a great deck and people like Shenhar playing TC in their burn deck was just silly (and bad), but it wasn't even the best deck in that era. Rhino Pod was. Granted, oppressive doesn't necessarily mean Tier 0 deck. Semantics....
Anyways. Briefing is an interesting card. It probably fits better into UW miracles, but it works well with delve cards too. Also, it's pretty nice value with Snapcaster late game. Fixes top of your deck and you recast a removal/counter. Solid 1-2 of. Definitely want to be playing more blue sources and 1-2 CMC cards if you're going to play 5 or 6 Snap effects. Thought Scour gets better as does Search (since this helps Search flip and you can find it off of Search).
Also, is anyone disappointed that there isn't a Charm or a Command cycle yet? It's so weird seeing a Selesnya creature getting the modal treatment rather than spells/other guilds.
I disagree. I think overloading on one or the other makes little sense, but playing Thoughtseize in UB Control is definitely underrepresented. I think it's a little too much life loss for a deck like Grixis to run though. Being able to get full information and strip their important card, and then hold up a counter for their other relevant card is really good. If this theorem held, decks like Grixis Control in Legacy wouldn't both play discard and counters, but it does, and it plays quite well. Personally, I play 3 Thoughtseize in my UB Control deck (that I won a 6 round + 3 top 8 matches PPTQ with) that has been performing quite well over the past month since I started playing it. Being able to grab Karn, KCI, Through the Breach, CoCo, etc. for 1 mana is quite nice. I view them as redundant pieces for the most part. IMHO Thoughtseize > Logic Knot. I'd rather my early interaction be Thoughtseize rather than Knot.
There are multiple flavors of mid-range (Mardu Pyro, BGx, Shadow/Traverse decks, E-Tron, Taxes decks, etc.), but non UWx control decks are really lacking. Printing better UB multi-color cards for control wouldn't affect the potency of UW decks, just like bringing something like Containment Priest wouldn't affect the potency of BGx decks. The same can be said for UR control cards. Blue Moon is poop. Coming back to Ravnica was a great chance to help UR/UB decks, but so far, we got nearly zero. The only playable card I see is Chemister's Insight as a 1-of. A minor upgrade over the other non-permanent CA options, especially in Thought Scour lists (like a big daddy Think Twice). It just irks me that BG and UW get really pushed multi-color cards every Ravnica, but UB and UG and to a lesser extent UR get complete crap. The power imbalance is staggering.