No just no It's 6 mana. We only run about 21 or 22 land. Why would we up that to 25 to play a 'win more' 6 mana creature?
If people lost against you while having that amount of life, they were obviously doing something horrible wrong :). Especially if the same thing happened in games 2 and 3. We run Stony Silence, which kills affinity pretty much on the spot. Sorry, but I highl;y doubt you win every single game against souls sisters, let alone against a soul sister player that has 80+ lives.
In most matchups soul sisters, depending on the build, will hover between 25 and 35 life, not around 40. All in all, it's a very bad card.
Strange there's a discussion about top's time issues again. If there wasn't an issue with it, it wouldn't be banned. The problem is that you never know if a person is really thinking through his options, or that he's trying to force a draw by thinking longer than needed.
Top will never be unbanned if only for that reason. So why test it?
Hmm don't know about War's toll. I tend to not like cards that are ineffective on their own in this deck. Evry dropped card should lock them further down, and War's toll seems more like overkill in combination with other cards, or useless on its own. Have you tried running a list without them and 4x Magus (+ extra spot left)
Also 23 land is imo not enough, even with two mind stones. We have a clunky mana curve with high cost cards. If you want to be able to play World Queller at least on turn 5, you should probably run 25+ land. Or never had mana troubles?
I always saw modern as having the same power level as old extended, 6 years of play.
The first time I saw extended I played with amazing decks. I saw UG Madness, Psychatog, Counter-Top, UWG Tron, Storm, Elves, Goblins, Belcher, Affinity, White Weenie, Balancing Tings, BubbleHulk, Zoo, RDW, Tooth and Nail, Eminent Domain, Death Cloud, and KCI.
So, how about we deal with these combo decks like this: unban seething song, blazing shoal, dread return, and golgari grave Troll. We then ban pact of negation, progenesis, myojin of infinite rage, bogardan hellkite, and bridge from below. Deal?
As far as banning Bogardan Hellkite, that made a Storm count 4 dragonstorm a 20 damage win. Bridge from Below is the only card that makes Dredge really scary. Pact of Negation as combo backup is a bit rediculous.
My Point of View:
dredge without BfB is good, scary, and turn 4.
dredge without GGT and Dread Return doesn't exist.
storm without bogardan hellkite ia good, scary, and can swing for lethal on turn 4.
storm without seething song doesn't exist.
You should probably play Legacy. Seems to be the format for you. Obviously you don't like Modern. it is what it is. Those unbans you suggest are never ever going to happen. Maybe some cards will come off within a couple of years depending on the meta and cards being print, but you can forget about all those cards being unbanned. You can also forget about losing the turn 4 rule. If you like turn 1 wins and more broken stuff, play legacy. Simple as that.
In Legacy you can play the storm you like
In Legacy you can play dredge
In legacy you can play with JTMS and other cards you mentioned
In Legacy you can win on T1 with belcher
Seems like the perfect format for what you like withing Magic.
affinity is already a consistent turn 3 deck, so there isn't really a 'turn 4' rule. blazing shoal is only bad because we decided poison counters were good for the game again (sigh).
Modern should be a lot closer to legacy than limited. I really don't think I'm in the minority, either. It should be more than "land, creature, attack, pass." "land, creature, removal, pass." and repeat.
tl;dr without really good combo decks, hand disruption decks and permission decks simply lose to aggro decks, so the format and meta is whittled down to Aggro vs. Midrange vs. Control.
Let's unban a lot of combo pieces so that this format can be like past extended formats and legacy, which had healthier meta games with Aggro vs. Combo vs. Control vs. Permission vs. Hand/Land disruption.
edit: People shouldn't be scared to bring dredge back when the format has so much hate for it already in place. I want to see a format where any of thirty decks could be considered serious contenders. Not just Jund, Affinity, splinter twin, and Pod. Four decks.
Biiiig issue with this post. FUN is subjective. How can you bring that up as argument to unban / ban things? Combo unrepresented in Modern? POD and TWIN are arguably the strongest decks of the format and hey, those are both combo decks.
No offense but I think you might know less about Modern than you think. Saying affinity is a consistent turn 3 deck does show that. It's simply not true. If it was, there would be something banned from the deck, plain and simple.
Modenr shouldn't be near anything. It's a format on its own. It shouldn't be Legacy 0.5 or 2.0. Modern is Modern and it should be as different as possible from other formats. Just like Legacy doesn't look anything like Vintage.
Trading the cards for the build I run. Almost have the deck finished irl
I am testing lightning helix in stead of Prisms now. I had a lot of games where I top-decked prism late game, and that's just horrible. It does speed the deck up quite a bit. I mean, a turn three Thundermaw Hellkite is pretty scary for a prison deck ;). With Helix I hope I can stall some more without having the horrible top deck. I might try Crucible in stead as a 3-off with 1 Lightning Helix maybe, but I ended up cutting crucible in previous versions of my build so I'm still unsure if it's really worth it in my deck. It's also another three drop, which hurts the curve.
Good to see you're taking over. You look beyond the known options, which is very helpful.
I'd like to add a few cards:
Thundermaw Hellkite It has been an absolute bomb for me. Stormwind dragon could also be a viable wincon, but I found it to be less useful since Thundermaw destroys/taps flying creatures which has synergy with Ajani (keeping a scary flyer tapped). It's also 5 damage that will always hit the target unless the opponent has spot removal in hand and untapped mana (which we can take care off). The crazy thing is, it can surprise the opponent completely. They expect us to win slowly, but Thundermaw can sometimes pull out a win within two turns suddenly. One reason I began testing it was because it compliments the land hate I run in my mana base and the greediness of mana bases in the current meta. Some games players gladly go to as low as 13/15 life to fix their mana. Big, big mistake. Thundermaw sets up a nice 2/3 round clock in those games. Additionally, the opponent now has to focus on dealing with the dragon, which gives us time to further lock the game.
Aven Mindcensor and Leonin Arbiter. these are used in hatebears but are obvious possible additions to me. Ghost Quarters become strip mines, and it gives us the option to tun Path to Exile without any downsides. It has worked pretty well for me.
One thing I' like to see in the RW stax version of the primer if possible, is a list of cards under viable options in stead of an explanation and card names here and there (sometimes without link). Like it's done in the Bridge part of the primer. It makes it easier to read and/or scan through to search for viable options.
If I come across any more viable option, I'll let you know :). Too bad Theros didn't really give us more hate/tax.
Go look at the top 16 of the last five big modern tournaments and the MODO meta. UWR control is <3% of the meta and hasn't been placing well for a while now.
According to MTG Gold Fish, UWR Control is 7% of the Meta and seems to be doing well. Nonetheless, I do think Control does need a boost. I am pro an AV unban.
I likw MTGgoldfish and I often look at it, but unfortunately it only shows the decks from the last 2 weeks and MTGO is a bit swingy. Besides that it sometimes groups the decks wrong. One day it bundles BG Rock with Jund and sometimes they are separate.
UWR control was a big deck (nr 2 or 3) shortly after the last B&R update, but it apparently didn't like the return of Jund and Tron. I guess that AV would be very good against Jund, but maybe all UWR needs is a meta change.
well, he was speaking about the last 5 big tournaments, MTG Goldfish counts Daily's as well...
Premier Events are not big tournaments. Often only 34 people participate and sometimes it doesn't even reach the 33 minimum player entry. Most likely the low attendance is because these tournaments are on MTGO, and as everybody knows, MTGO is often being... MTGO. It is actually easier to make a top 16 than to go 3-1 in a Daily.
Look at Grand Prix Richmond, Pro Tour Valencia, the two 160+ man tournaments that were held in Italy a month ago, etc. No UWR control in top 32 @ the Grand Prix, one in the Pro Tour top 32, and none in either of the top 8 of either Bologna or Arezzo. As for IDM, you can't tell the difference between a Control deck, which has a specific type of 'feel' and play style, compared to decks with 'control elements' aka in certain MU's they play the 'control' role. You also think legacy has more options to deal with Jace, when the decks that play Jace have Force of Will, Daze, and a bunch of free/cheap ways to defend him, not to mention mana denial is much stronger in legacy which makes Jace a lot stronger there. Jace in Modern would be a lot worse than he is in Legacy and ever was in Standard. Bolt takes care of him, he's bad against a host of decks (Affinity, Fish, Hatebears, etc.), and there are also cards around now like Dreadbore that would be good against him. Of course he is still powerful, but he's not going to take UWR from <3% to 30%. He'll make UWR/Esper competitive, and really he can only slot into Control decks so he doesn't have the problem of the boogeyman that is Twin (AV is awful in Twin imho).
Did I say anywhere that decks with control elements ARE control decks? I think I made clear by saying the word ELEMENTS that I'm not stating that at all. I'm also growing pretty tired of your condescending tone, constantly making assumptions. "You can't tell the difference". Please just try to stay on subject and not make assumptions about someone's experience with Magic. I think I might have played Magic while you were still in diapers. Ah well. No harm no fowl.
And ehm, Legacy does in fact have more answers to Jace than Modern. That is a fact. That the Jace player can answer those answers is neither here nor there, that is how legacy/Magic works. I could go on by saying that decks can answer that FoW of the Jace player to make sure the removal goes through, but it's just a useless discussion.
Other than that, I'm not going to try and convince you. You have a very different approach to the Modern format, and maybe even to Magic in general than me. So no need to discuss this further.
Though, don't hold your breath for Jace coming off the list. One can hope, but it's still not going to happen. WotC has admitted Jace was a mistake, and I would be very surprised if they would risk the second most popular format ever (a format they actually support) by unbanning a card that would instantly be the most desirable/expensive card and most broken card in Modern. It would warp the format and thinking it won't just baffles me. Ah well. It either shows you have a playset lying around and really want to play them in Modern, or you never played with Jace in any format and have no idea how format warping it would be. Either way, nothing in your post seems really objective (you even throw numbers around that are heavily influenced by your own opinion about the 'real' meta). You obviously love playing blue based control and really want OP cards to come off the list to support it more. Woops, now I made an assumption. See how annoying that is?
It still would just make blue decks even stronger, which they already are. There are many decks that run blue successfully, I really don't get why a boost for blue decks is needed with unbans. Blue got so many insane cards last years from which some are banned. I think WotC is doing well in trying to avoid that again. Blue has always been the strongest color in many peoples' eyes, and I think it's very well balanced at this point within Modern. No need to add more powerful cards to it.
And as far as mono colored decks go: Blue has Merfolk. White has Soul Sisters. Green has devotion to Green and elves. Black has 8-rack and devotion t black. Red has Burn.
Merfolk gets the best results at this point for mono-colored decks. Twin is probably the best deck and contains blue. UWR control does really well and contains blue. Maybe we will see decks like Counter-Cat making their return at some point. There are many options for blue decks. So I really don't get why blue cards need to come off the ban list. Blue decks do not need help.
You must be joking. UWR control doing really well? You doth protest a bit too much. Go look at the top 16 of the last five big modern tournaments and the MODO meta. UWR control is <3% of the meta and hasn't been placing well for a while now. Just because it won a Pro Tour (of which, no other UWR Control deck was in the top 32!) and Shenhar won Worlds (a 16 player event) with a more mid-range version, doesn't mean anything. If anything green is the best color in Modern right now what between Pod and RUG Twin. It's obvious that while blue is good, Twin decks revolve around a RED card and without it wouldn't exist, and decks like Scapeshift revolve around a green card and mountains. The only decks that rely on blue as a basis of their deck are UWR control, Fish, and 'Blue Moon'. The best deck in the format is a green based mid-range deck (Pod). Before that Modern was dominated by Jund, and GBx decks are still doing better than UWR control. Merfolk is doing pretty well, as is Blue Moon.
It seems to me regardless of facts you just simply dislike Blue, and blue based slice of the color pie. Control NEEDS a boost. Either Jace or AV or getting FoF into the format somehow.
I don't dislike blue at all, I'm just being realistic. I love blue, and have had many blue decks in the past, so no, that's not it. I was trying to be objective. I never said blue was the best color in Modern by the way. It probably isn't. It's kind of hard to determine though as it is pretty subjective.
Anyway, Twin wouldn't exist without exarch/pestermite and blue dig abilities. So yes, blue is a very important part of the Twin deck, as is red of course. One could not exist without the other, so it's a mood point to say red is the most important part of the deck. It's called Twin/Exarch for a reason. Twin is already 15% of the meta, so that's a pretty good deal for blue (and red) and it's only one of the blue decks that exists.
Control in general does not need a boost imo. We've been over this. Control in Modern has a different face. There's only a couple of decks that are pure control. Other than that control is part of many strategies. The blue draw/go type of decks (not talking about PURE and ONLY draw/go, since that doesn't really exist anymore anyway) are not really present in Modern and only will be if WotC decides to print some new cards that add to that strategy. Should blue be able to control as it does in Legacy? I disagree with that if that's what you mean. There's always going to be a color that's a bit more represented than other colors. Maybe now that's green. So what? In two years it could be white, or blue or... Like I said, it's not as if blue is vastly underplayed in Modern. That's simply not true.
Maybe blue based control could use a slight boost, but that has to be done with future printings, not with unbanning Jace (seriously come on... Adding one of the most OP cards ever printed to a format that doesn't even come close to having the amount of answers Legacy has? That's just silly) nor with unbanning AV (which would buff Twin/Exarch more which we really don't want).
Be realistic. Control cannot get a boost by unbanning cards that are currently on the ban list without destroying the meta. Future printings are the answer.
It still would just make blue decks even stronger, which they already are. There are many decks that run blue successfully, I really don't get why a boost for blue decks is needed with unbans. Blue got so many insane cards last years from which some are banned. I think WotC is doing well in trying to avoid that again. Blue has always been the strongest color in many peoples' eyes, and I think it's very well balanced at this point within Modern. No need to add more powerful cards to it.
And as far as mono colored decks go: Blue has Merfolk. White has Soul Sisters. Green has devotion to Green and elves. Black has 8-rack and devotion t black. Red has Burn.
Merfolk gets the best results at this point for mono-colored decks. Twin is probably the best deck and contains blue. UWR control does really well and contains blue. Maybe we will see decks like Counter-Cat making their return at some point. There are many options for blue decks. So I really don't get why blue cards need to come off the ban list. Blue decks do not need help.
I like how you changed the ghost-quarters / tec-edges for Cavern of Souls because of your meta. Same goes for the main deck Auriok. Though did you test with Auriok in the SB and 2 extra sisters? Worth a try probably.
The sideboard however seems a bit strange to me. Burrenton Forgetender looks underwhelming. Against burn it's not really needed. Soul Sister vs Burn is pretty much an auto-win for us :). I'd put 1 more RiP and one more Stony Silence (if your meta has 0% POD and Affinity and almost no TRON, you could try one more suppression field in stead. The Elspeth seems a bit random too. I'm not that fond of one-offs in decks/sideboards when there's no draw/tutor engine unless it's a fourth or fith 'version' of another card.
Other than that it looks solid. Control and Combo are our worst matchups, so don't expect to get too good results against those decks. Versus Twin I never put too many creatures in play in games two and three because of Anger of the Gods. Keep that Ranger in your hand if you already have three or four creatures on the board. After a whipe he fills up your hand and you can keep the flow going. If you know you play against snapcasters, I'd board in 2-3 RiPs. It seems narrow, but shutting down snapcaster actually works really well.
Hope it helpes, and curious on what your results will be
See the post above yours. He explains it very well. No it's not an instant win, but it is a combo that will hurt a lot more decks than splinter twin does now. Additionally, the combo is 'tutorable' (tezzeret, treasure mage), so the redundancy thing doesn't really apply imo since it would be near as consistent as twin, maybe even more consistent. Having another combo that can fit in multiple decks, seems like a very bad idea, but that's just my gut feeling.
If people lost against you while having that amount of life, they were obviously doing something horrible wrong :). Especially if the same thing happened in games 2 and 3. We run Stony Silence, which kills affinity pretty much on the spot. Sorry, but I highl;y doubt you win every single game against souls sisters, let alone against a soul sister player that has 80+ lives.
In most matchups soul sisters, depending on the build, will hover between 25 and 35 life, not around 40. All in all, it's a very bad card.
Top will never be unbanned if only for that reason. So why test it?
Also 23 land is imo not enough, even with two mind stones. We have a clunky mana curve with high cost cards. If you want to be able to play World Queller at least on turn 5, you should probably run 25+ land. Or never had mana troubles?
You should probably play Legacy. Seems to be the format for you. Obviously you don't like Modern. it is what it is. Those unbans you suggest are never ever going to happen. Maybe some cards will come off within a couple of years depending on the meta and cards being print, but you can forget about all those cards being unbanned. You can also forget about losing the turn 4 rule. If you like turn 1 wins and more broken stuff, play legacy. Simple as that.
In Legacy you can play the storm you like
In Legacy you can play dredge
In legacy you can play with JTMS and other cards you mentioned
In Legacy you can win on T1 with belcher
Seems like the perfect format for what you like withing Magic.
Biiiig issue with this post. FUN is subjective. How can you bring that up as argument to unban / ban things? Combo unrepresented in Modern? POD and TWIN are arguably the strongest decks of the format and hey, those are both combo decks.
No offense but I think you might know less about Modern than you think. Saying affinity is a consistent turn 3 deck does show that. It's simply not true. If it was, there would be something banned from the deck, plain and simple.
Modenr shouldn't be near anything. It's a format on its own. It shouldn't be Legacy 0.5 or 2.0. Modern is Modern and it should be as different as possible from other formats. Just like Legacy doesn't look anything like Vintage.
I am testing lightning helix in stead of Prisms now. I had a lot of games where I top-decked prism late game, and that's just horrible. It does speed the deck up quite a bit. I mean, a turn three Thundermaw Hellkite is pretty scary for a prison deck ;). With Helix I hope I can stall some more without having the horrible top deck. I might try Crucible in stead as a 3-off with 1 Lightning Helix maybe, but I ended up cutting crucible in previous versions of my build so I'm still unsure if it's really worth it in my deck. It's also another three drop, which hurts the curve.
Anybody any results with lockdown lately?
I'd like to add a few cards:
Thundermaw Hellkite It has been an absolute bomb for me. Stormwind dragon could also be a viable wincon, but I found it to be less useful since Thundermaw destroys/taps flying creatures which has synergy with Ajani (keeping a scary flyer tapped). It's also 5 damage that will always hit the target unless the opponent has spot removal in hand and untapped mana (which we can take care off). The crazy thing is, it can surprise the opponent completely. They expect us to win slowly, but Thundermaw can sometimes pull out a win within two turns suddenly. One reason I began testing it was because it compliments the land hate I run in my mana base and the greediness of mana bases in the current meta. Some games players gladly go to as low as 13/15 life to fix their mana. Big, big mistake. Thundermaw sets up a nice 2/3 round clock in those games. Additionally, the opponent now has to focus on dealing with the dragon, which gives us time to further lock the game.
Aven Mindcensor and Leonin Arbiter. these are used in hatebears but are obvious possible additions to me. Ghost Quarters become strip mines, and it gives us the option to tun Path to Exile without any downsides. It has worked pretty well for me.
One thing I' like to see in the RW stax version of the primer if possible, is a list of cards under viable options in stead of an explanation and card names here and there (sometimes without link). Like it's done in the Bridge part of the primer. It makes it easier to read and/or scan through to search for viable options.
If I come across any more viable option, I'll let you know :). Too bad Theros didn't really give us more hate/tax.
Did I say anywhere that decks with control elements ARE control decks? I think I made clear by saying the word ELEMENTS that I'm not stating that at all. I'm also growing pretty tired of your condescending tone, constantly making assumptions. "You can't tell the difference". Please just try to stay on subject and not make assumptions about someone's experience with Magic. I think I might have played Magic while you were still in diapers. Ah well. No harm no fowl.
And ehm, Legacy does in fact have more answers to Jace than Modern. That is a fact. That the Jace player can answer those answers is neither here nor there, that is how legacy/Magic works. I could go on by saying that decks can answer that FoW of the Jace player to make sure the removal goes through, but it's just a useless discussion.
Other than that, I'm not going to try and convince you. You have a very different approach to the Modern format, and maybe even to Magic in general than me. So no need to discuss this further.
Though, don't hold your breath for Jace coming off the list. One can hope, but it's still not going to happen. WotC has admitted Jace was a mistake, and I would be very surprised if they would risk the second most popular format ever (a format they actually support) by unbanning a card that would instantly be the most desirable/expensive card and most broken card in Modern. It would warp the format and thinking it won't just baffles me. Ah well. It either shows you have a playset lying around and really want to play them in Modern, or you never played with Jace in any format and have no idea how format warping it would be. Either way, nothing in your post seems really objective (you even throw numbers around that are heavily influenced by your own opinion about the 'real' meta). You obviously love playing blue based control and really want OP cards to come off the list to support it more. Woops, now I made an assumption. See how annoying that is?
I don't dislike blue at all, I'm just being realistic. I love blue, and have had many blue decks in the past, so no, that's not it. I was trying to be objective. I never said blue was the best color in Modern by the way. It probably isn't. It's kind of hard to determine though as it is pretty subjective.
Anyway, Twin wouldn't exist without exarch/pestermite and blue dig abilities. So yes, blue is a very important part of the Twin deck, as is red of course. One could not exist without the other, so it's a mood point to say red is the most important part of the deck. It's called Twin/Exarch for a reason. Twin is already 15% of the meta, so that's a pretty good deal for blue (and red) and it's only one of the blue decks that exists.
Control in general does not need a boost imo. We've been over this. Control in Modern has a different face. There's only a couple of decks that are pure control. Other than that control is part of many strategies. The blue draw/go type of decks (not talking about PURE and ONLY draw/go, since that doesn't really exist anymore anyway) are not really present in Modern and only will be if WotC decides to print some new cards that add to that strategy. Should blue be able to control as it does in Legacy? I disagree with that if that's what you mean. There's always going to be a color that's a bit more represented than other colors. Maybe now that's green. So what? In two years it could be white, or blue or... Like I said, it's not as if blue is vastly underplayed in Modern. That's simply not true.
Maybe blue based control could use a slight boost, but that has to be done with future printings, not with unbanning Jace (seriously come on... Adding one of the most OP cards ever printed to a format that doesn't even come close to having the amount of answers Legacy has? That's just silly) nor with unbanning AV (which would buff Twin/Exarch more which we really don't want).
Be realistic. Control cannot get a boost by unbanning cards that are currently on the ban list without destroying the meta. Future printings are the answer.
And as far as mono colored decks go: Blue has Merfolk. White has Soul Sisters. Green has devotion to Green and elves. Black has 8-rack and devotion t black. Red has Burn.
Merfolk gets the best results at this point for mono-colored decks. Twin is probably the best deck and contains blue. UWR control does really well and contains blue. Maybe we will see decks like Counter-Cat making their return at some point. There are many options for blue decks. So I really don't get why blue cards need to come off the ban list. Blue decks do not need help.
I like how you changed the ghost-quarters / tec-edges for Cavern of Souls because of your meta. Same goes for the main deck Auriok. Though did you test with Auriok in the SB and 2 extra sisters? Worth a try probably.
The sideboard however seems a bit strange to me. Burrenton Forgetender looks underwhelming. Against burn it's not really needed. Soul Sister vs Burn is pretty much an auto-win for us :). I'd put 1 more RiP and one more Stony Silence (if your meta has 0% POD and Affinity and almost no TRON, you could try one more suppression field in stead. The Elspeth seems a bit random too. I'm not that fond of one-offs in decks/sideboards when there's no draw/tutor engine unless it's a fourth or fith 'version' of another card.
Other than that it looks solid. Control and Combo are our worst matchups, so don't expect to get too good results against those decks. Versus Twin I never put too many creatures in play in games two and three because of Anger of the Gods. Keep that Ranger in your hand if you already have three or four creatures on the board. After a whipe he fills up your hand and you can keep the flow going. If you know you play against snapcasters, I'd board in 2-3 RiPs. It seems narrow, but shutting down snapcaster actually works really well.
Hope it helpes, and curious on what your results will be
It's a very powerful combo, probably too powerful for Modern, and I don't see it coming off the list like ever tbh