It seriously seems disingenuous to make any correlation between the recent bans and Wizard's stance on Control. CopyCat was literally ruining Standard, which can be measured through its metagame numbers and tournament success, and Miracles has been eating up about 14-15% of the meta for over a year. If these were aggro decks eating crippling bans, can you say in good faith that you'd claim that these bans were unjustified based on metagame shares and tournament success?Quote from cfusionpm »Quote from Aazadan »Wizards will eventually realize their mistake with removal, and start printing better answers again (Push not withstanding). At which point Twin will definitely be safe.
They banned Saheeli in Standard, Twin in Modern, Miracles in Legacy, and Mentor in Legacy. Wizards hates spells, hates control, hates blue cards, and hates combos. In their perfect world, we would have big dumb creatures smashing into each other turn after turn, just like Hearthstone.
People need to stop assuming that these recent bans have anything to do with some secret anti-Control agenda. Both decks were pulling meta shares that for their respective formats was simply too high. Getting rid of Copy Cat is the first step to making Standard playable, and if you want to play control in Legacy, both Sultai Control and 4 Color Control are very strong decks that are completely untouched by this ban. This isn't WotC secretly plotting control, this is Wizards improving diversity in one format and fixing a blatant mistake in another
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Modern hasn't been enjoyable to me since the latter part of 2018, so I moved on. That's all. I have the luxury of doing that, others might not, or have a stronger attachment to Modern.
I still have my Modern decks, good for jamming casual games within my playgroup. Competition? No thanks. Consuming Modern content? Rarely if any.
Great that there are many out there who enjoy Modern for what it is. Keep doing what you guys are doing.
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Who are you to tell people they are wrong and biased when you yourself have literal nothing but theories based on what you presume is an educated opinion, just like them. Everything you accused them of, you have done yourself just in the opposite direction.
Unless twin actually gets unbanned and played with, nobody has the ability to prove anything.
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Well yes and no. The formats are so radically different that it's difficult to measure. For instance, blue is heads and shoulders above every other colour in Legacy, followed by black. And just by virtue of playing brainstorm, ponder and force you have game vs almost everything. You could bring something whacky like BUG ninjas and not feel bad about it.
Regarding Grixis Death's Shadow. I've already acknowledged in a previous post that the format has evolved for better or worse and that GDS is the new standard for midrange, the natural evolution if you will. BG rock has put up spattering of placings here and there but it's a distant 2nd place. If 'traditional' midrange dying off is the direction that Modern is going then so be it.
As to your last question. A little bit of background about my history in Modern. I've never played tier 1 decks until 2018 when I picked up Humans and Spirits. I've been rocking various flavours of GWx Midrange(Naya Company, Bant Retreat, Domain Zoo etc), decks that are on the more aggressive side of the midrange spectrum. Basically decks that hover around tier 2. And despite playing only Tier 2 or lower decks for a good 2 years, I've always felt like I could enter an event and be relatively competitive.
This changed drastically in the latter half of 2018. Sure if I really wanted to do well at an event, I could bring out spirits or humans. I did well with these decks but it just wasn't fun. So I tried tuning and playing my pet GWx midrange decks and I basically became a walking bye. Weeks worth of tuning and re-tuning with no semblance of results to show for it.
So what I want is for any Modern player, to be able to register any archetype (aggro, midrange, combo, ramp, control, Tier 1, Tier 2, whatever) at a competitive event and not feel like you're doing yourself a disservice. The one thing that drew me and many people to Modern is because we can "play what we know and we can do well".
Can anyone really say that the current Modern format is one where we can compete with any deck as long as we put the time into practicing and mastering it? Modern is so much more than Looting vs Stirrings vs Vial vs Terminus.
At this point, I'd like to emphasize for context that this series of terminus 'rants' started off by idSurge suggesting that in a hypothetical scenario where Stirrings, Looting etc take bans to slow down the format, Terminus might have to go along with them because hyper aggro and 1 mana sweeper are foils to each other. I agree with him and offered the viewpoint that in a hypothetical slowed down format, there is little incentive to play interactive midrange decks because without hyper-streamlined linear decks keeping Terminus in check, UW control would dominate any other archetype attempting to play 'fair'. Therefore, in a scenario where Looting and Stirrings go, Terminus would probably need to go too. Neither of us actually think this will happen or are calling for a Terminus ban in the context of the current modern format. We've also repeated a few times at least that Terminus is NECESSARY right now because of those decks.
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Yes actually. Midrange is actually doing just fine in legacy compared to modern. Both blue-based and otherwise. Maverick continues to find its way around. Greedy 4 color value machines like Czech pile can carve a niche just fine in legacy. Grixis control, despite its name plays very much like a midrange deck, as does stoneblade.
If anything, legacy lacks in aggro, not midrange.
Not strong enough to be at the top consistently but able to perform decently to carve out a niche for dedicated players. Is that an unreasonable expectation for midrange in modern?
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Newsflash: Wanting Midrange to be able to compete in Modern does not equate to wanting Midrange to be the best archetype.
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Am I giving Terminus too much credit? Perhaps, but I highly doubt so. My playgroup has a very dedicated UW control player. UW control is also the archetype I have the most testing reps again. He's been playing different iterations of UW against me for close to 3 years now.
You're right that UW has been getting steady upgrades over time (Teferi, Azcanta etc that you mentioned), but Terminus is really the straw that broke the camel's back. I will stress that this is against midrange specifically. Terminus is a necessary evil to fight decks that don't pay mana to cast their creatures.
The fact that it often costs a single white mana means that counterplay options are very limited, as are the timing window for those counterplay options.
Your last statement actually agrees with me though. I can fight through the slow incremental effect of Search, I can bolt or use creature combat to take down planeswalkers. It's possible to grind through all those vs Verdict/Wrath with resilient creatures like Voice or Finks, and in the absence of those, it at least gives me a free turn to rebuild.
Terminus negates all of that, leaves nothing behind, and can be cast on my turn for a measly 2 mana, likely able to remove or counter my follow up play with open mana still on my turn. That's the difference. That's why I don't think I'm laying too much at the feet of Terminus. And the rest is exactly as you say it, untap, slam the teferi and tick up against an empty board. Game over.
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Context matters. Terminus was suggested together with a heavy list of Modern's top 'Offenders' by IdSurge. Nobody actually thinks this will happen.
Regardless, I stick by my statement that midrange will never have a solid foothold in Modern as long as Terminus is the sweeper of choice and it only gets stronger if Modern slows down.
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