Alright, I'm an idiot on the Sparksmith thing. You can see what I think about playing goblins. That I don't.
I do like the idea of Moment of Silence, but more because it gives me a little time in game one. Might still not be enough time, but at least it's something. I still want to have a more permanent solution in there though for post-board, because I don't want to have to depend on having multiples just to gain two turns' reprieve. But I do think I'm going to take your suggestion for the main deck.
As for burn...yeah, it's difficult, almost unwinnable in game one because you have so many dead cards. Post board, after boarding in no less than 11 cards, it's much more manageable. I feel good about the matchup, because once the CoP goes down their only possible response is Flaring Pain, and I should have enough counters to deal with that even through the flashback (they probably don't have more than two copies).
I do most of my pauper online, though it's just for fun largely because I don't have the time to play 8-mans or PE's very much at all. But this list has been very successful for me in one-off matches.
Of course I don't have the option of all of the green fogs, so I've eliminated green entirely except for the four Moment's Peace. This is about the next best thing to having a two-color deck, and with the full set of fetchlands, it's just never a problem to have the colors I need. The worst is having transmute mana for Muddle the Mixture, but even that isn't too much to ask most of the time.
I have not had a problem with the fetchlands basically being CIPT. Fogs can reasonably start on turn 3 or so while leaving up the mana for card draw, and there aren't many decks that can kill that fast anymore.
Since I am using the fetchlands, I'm using Brainstorm over Ponder. I also use Vision Skeins and Words of Wisdom instead of some of the more expensive draw spells, like X spells and Deep Analysis (which I tried but didn't like) because I play this deck in a very low-mana sort of way. Seldom do I have more than six lands out, since it's enough and since I'm happy to pitch any others to Oona's Grace. I do like that card a lot, by the way, and I added a second copy because I'm never unhappy to have one available.
The sideboard is unusual for me in that I seldom carry extra copies of cards in the sideboard, but I do it with both Muddle the Mixture and Arcane Denial here. This is in large part because of Burn, which sees plenty of play online. All I want then are counters, and 10 fogs (the ones which aren't Dawn Charm, which is nearly as good as a Counterspell against them) can come out, leaving plenty of space. Even with the CoP:R in there, the counters are necessary for Flaring Pain, which they'll have in post-board if they're paying any attention at all.
The O-Rings are for Sparksmith and Ulamog's Crusher, basically. Capsize is one that I'm thinking about replacing. When it's good, it's really good, but it's not really good often enough to justify costing 6 mana (basically) in a deck where I don't have anything that costs more than 3 even post-board.
Thing is, quite a lot of advice has been given, and so far OP sorta-kinda thinks Eldrazi Monument might be okay. All the other advice has been deemed poor. Indeed, some of the things he cites for the advice being poor make no logical sense, and that only contributes to the impression that he's here to defend his deck rather than to benefit from advice.
You can't reject Ezuri, Renegade Leader because of Craterhoof Behemoth and at the same time reject Winding Canyons in favor of Yeva, Nature's Herald, at least not with a straight face. That's saying "I don't need this really good card because my commander is always available to do its function, but I don't need this other commander that's always available to do its function because there's this other really good card."
It also looks slightly silly to name your thread EDH COMBO ELVES and then claim that "i've played alot of elves, so if it's not good advice i'll call you on it," while then rejecting Ezuri because you're not playing enough elves.
I don't say any of this without a point. This deck wants to be two different decks, but it doesn't have the proper commander for either. If it wants to be elves, it should do it with a commander that actually enables elves (and yes, it should probably use more than 23 elves). If it wants to be a big mana deck, it should use a commander that actually enables big mana. Yeva doesn't do either of those things. Given that there are three other perfectly reasonable cards that do what she does, in some cases better, she doesn't really bring anything to the table other than her color identity.
If her big advantage is this "Yeva float" or just simply being able to play at the end of your right-side opponent's turn, then using some of those cards (Yeva as a non-commander, Aluren, Winding Canyons, Vedalken Orrery) lets Omnath, Locus of Mana do the same thing, only much much better.
I enjoy mono-green enough that in the last three months I've played Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, and Omnath, Locus of Mana. They're all very different decks, and Yeva doesn't even make an appearance in any of them. She just does so little compared to the other tools you have available in mono-green.
Metamorph just becomes one of those catch-all creatures whose value can be very high but is very variable.
It's a really hard card to evaluate. As Birthing Pod number 2 it's very good of course, but that's about the only good use that you can count on for it. There are a whole slew of quite powerful but also very narrow uses (the most relevant might be copying Etched Champion) that mean its value is more uncertain than most cards. I think it's really hard to say "Metamorph is better/worse than X" as a general rule and I've gotten tired of debating myself about whether it should go in or not.
What has it in my deck right now is 1) I want four 4-drops, 2) Linvala doesn't do much in enough matchups that she's back in my sideboard, and 3) I'd much rather have Shriekmaw than Nekrataal. In other words, by default. It's not a glowing recommendation, but it's a useful enough card to warrant consideration even if it can't kill legends anymore.
@Rickster - My mind has been blown. The insight and improvement that I received from switching a Woodland Cemetery for a marsh flats was astounding. Thank you for the constructive helpful criticism
Wow, are you serious? You post a list and ask about it, one of the most solid contributors to this thread provides you with valuable advice, and you act like you don't have the time for him. If you just wanted someone to say, "Yay, your list is great," then don't bother asking people to tell you what they think.
Yes, the question of fetchlands in this deck is important, whichever opinion you end up taking. That you don't seem to comprehend that indicates that you a) haven't even bothered to read the last 20 pages of this thread, so you're not terribly serious about figuring out the deck anyway, and b) you don't have the first clue of what's important and what isn't.
Aside from that question (my opinion is the same as rickster_'s), there are a couple of other things that look off.
First, you're using seven mana dorks. That's not enough even in a deck that isn't trying to carry three five-drops. That the eighth is replaced by a Wasteland Viper is another indication that you'd do better to listen to advice than to carry yourself as though you already know it all. This is a card that can only be useful if you draw it, and you have one in the deck. You'll never, ever tutor for it because you can't bloodrush off tutoring. If you get it with a Ranger of Eos then the entire world knows you have it, and it will be terribly ineffective. Approximately 99 times out of 100, you will prefer to have a third Deathrite Shaman, especially if you want any chance to cast all of those big creatures you're including.
Along the same lines, Restoration Angel is not a good card in this deck. It's too expensive to reliably Chord for, it's ability is too useless if you Pod for it, and it doesn't have any of the utility or synergy that it does in a Kiki Pod deck. It's another card you want to draw, and like Wasteland Viper, one-of's that you want to draw are disappointing an overwhelming percentage of the time. Your best bet is to pod into it off a Kitchen Finks, giving you a 3/4 non-flash flier and 2 life for 2 mana, which doesn't sound bad. But when would you ever want to tutor for this when you have Murderous Redcap and Ranger of Eos as choices instead? (If you actually have to think about the answer to that question, then play the deck a little more...you'll never want to tutor for the Angel.)
Both Phyrexian Metamorph and Linvala, Keeper of Secrets are serious upgrades to that slot. The former isn't as good as it was when it could kill legends, but at least it has a reasonable chance of actually having an effect. The latter is a must-include at least in the sideboard, and if you want a fourth 4-drop without using Metamorph (a reasonable desire), this angel is much, much better than the other one.
There is undoubtedly an element of luck, but I think the element of skill gets downplayed consistently by a pretty sizable number of average-level players. I think there are two reasons for this.
The first is easy. We don't like to think of ourselves as bad players or even average players. If we have a bad tournament, we like to make excuses like "I got a lot of bad matchups" or "my opponents kept getting great topdecks" or "the cards just weren't running well." Then we don't have to put the blame on ourselves for not doing well.
The second reason is that good Magic players do everything they can, through both game play and deck construction, to minimize the role of luck. They seem to draw the right card an inordinate amount of time, and it's not because they're lucky. It's because they play to their outs and set of their deck to provide them with the right answers as often as possible. So perhaps an FNM-level event is much more dependent upon luck, but it's because the players aren't good enough to reduce the role of luck in their matches, leaving themselves to depend on coin flips more often than a pro player would.
Anyone can win a single Magic match. You could sit down with Kai Budde and get lucky enough to win if you just played him once. I beat a five-time GP Top 8 player in a tournament two months ago, and it's not because I was better than he was.
But that same player promptly went and Top 8'd GP Detroit a few weeks later with the same deck, and I did not. The same players consistently do well over and over in big tournaments, whatever your definition of "big" (we have a number of 50-ish player Legacy tournaments in the Baltimore area, and the same people keep showing up in the Top 8's of those, too). It's not because they're luckier than everyone else, it's because they're better players.
If you ascribe too much of Magic success to luck, then you never have reason to try to get better. Why bother? Maybe you'll just get lucky next time.
GGT and Sword of the Meek only worth considering, but Jitte, BBE, and Jace should be unbanned? That is incredibly stupid. The idea of a rotating banned list is even worse. Having Hypergenesis and Mental Misstep in the format for a year and the artifact lands and Blazing Shoal the next is a bad idea. Modern is a legitimate format. It is not where Wizards should introduce new rules for no reason. And why would they unban BBE when Jund is dominating the format? Why would they unban Jitte when aggro is already struggling? Why would they unban Jace when BGx could easily become BUG with no consequences? It all seems ridiculous (to be fair, I haven't read the article because I don't have premium).
The thing about all of these proposed multiple changes to the ban list is that they cannot exist in a vacuum. You can't say "unbanning X would be bad" if you don't take into account whether Y changes the equation.
It's really easy for anyone to talk about which one card needs to be banned/unbanned next, but when you get into the articles like Chapin and Cunningham wrote recently, you can't just evaluate one card without evaluating the others. It's an entirely different discussion.
BBE and JTMS are perfectly good cards to have in the format...if you haven't already banned the cards that answer them. Even Jitte is a good card to have, if you accept it as an answer to aggro decks that are suddenly very powerful because of two or three other unbannings.
We (mostly) all agree that Jitte would be a bad unban right now because aggro struggles anyway. But that doesn't apply if it's only one of many. Not that I expect Wizards to take such a radical step as that, but it's an interesting thing to think about anyway.
I like it, except for two things. How is Bitterblossom more dangerous than Jace and as dangerous as Shoal? And wouldn't the artifact lands still be problematic with Arcbound Ravager.
I just read the article, and it's quite a read. Even if you don't agree with it, if you have Premium, I think it's worth it just to see what his reasoning is.
He believes that the real "broken" card in Affinity is Cranial Plating and that the artifact lands are unlikely to add enough to it to break it. I actually tend to agree at least with that part of it, as the artifact lands were banned in a time when there weren't these other tremendously useful manlands to use (well, at least not Inkmoth Nexus, which is pretty clearly the more important of the two).
As for Bitterblossom, that seemed to be on the back of the first two turns that 2008 Standard players hated so much: turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 2 Bitterblossom. He didn't really add more to it than that. I think in the sort of format that he's talking about, there's not much need to even flag Bitterblossom.
The format he's talking about is one where extremely powerful decks exist, but other extremely powerful decks keep them honest. While I'm not certain that his way of doing it is the best way, I do like the intention at least. Right now we have an environment where the best way to deal with a powerful deck is to ban it into oblivion, and that can't be the right way. Enabling other decks to beat it seems better, though it is undoubtedly more complicated.
The most alarming part of Cunningham's proposed changes is how strong combo would become. I'm pretty sure the turn-four rule would be consistently violated, and there just aren't enough good permission spells in the Modern card pool to stop it.
He actually broke the banned list out into categories, and the one that he kept most of was the one dealing with keeping turn 3 combo decks out. Of that "category" he only proposed unbanning Seething Song, Preordain, Ponder, and Blazing Shoal (while keeping an eye on the last one). It's a fair question to wonder whether the two blue spells mean that consistent turn 3 combo happens again, but his intention was to just pare that part of the list rather than destroy it.
Again, I'm not advocating for Cunningham's particular ideas. In fact, he's really not either, recognizing that they'd need a lot of playtesting to work out the kinks. I don't know if it's simply too hard to do, with such a dependence upon powerful decks having predators that one begins to dominate if its enemy loses popularity somehow. But if it could work, a solid 10-14 card banned list sure sounds a lot better to me than 31.
Yeah, agreed entirely. I haven't played against Affinity a ton, but the results I have are pretty clear cut between non-Master (win) and Master (lose) decks. The other thing that Master does is put all of their guys into a safe range against Lingering Souls tokens, if you use that as sideboard tech against them.
Several pages ago there was a lot of talk about whether Affinity was a good or bad matchup for us, and I was pretty adamant that it's good. I still believe that with non-Master lists, but I suspect that some of the feeling in the other direction was based on playing against Master of Etherium. At least Steel Overseer gives you a turn to find an answer. Master is often even immune to Dismember if they don't attack with it.
The good news is that it seems like most of the "best" Affinity lists go without. Hopefully that's a trend that will continue.
Oh man, I forgot, this wasn't just stupid for "popularity," it was also awful since 4x Jace was ~$100 when he was banned in standard, so if $100 in standard bans didn't "kill standard" then how is $600 going to kill modern? Please defend either or both poorly reasoned thoughts.
EDIT TBC I have no interest in banning fetches, but some of the reasoning people throw up on here is mindblowing.
Because...this is Modern and not Caw Blade Standard? Seriously, this constant reasoning that "Magic is Magic" no matter the format just plain betrays such a lack of interest in applying actual thought that it's making my head spin.
Breaking news: Standard rotates. JTMS was banned three months before it was going to rotate out of the format anyway. Those people that were spending $100 on him at the time already had other plans. They either already accepted that they were getting very limited use out of him or were already planning on playing him in Legacy. Do you remember how little blowback there was on that decision? Even the JTMS owners knew it was coming and for the most part didn't care. Do you actually expect the same out of a Goyf ban?
Modern doesn't rotate. People getting Goyfs are expecting to use them for years, not just for three extra months.
A little further news: bans don't happen in Standard except in extraordinary circumstances. JTMS getting banned made exactly zero people concerned that Primeval Titan was next.
Modern's history has been virtually defined by the ban list.
Now again...how is JTMS being banned in Standard anything like Goyf being banned in Modern?
While we're at it...you didn't explicitly say this, choosing to attack my line of reasoning rather than put forth any of your own, so I don't honestly know the answer to this question. Are you actually trying to advocate that bans based on price are a good idea?
I'm just replying to the poster that suggested having Tarmogoyf banned. Yes, Tarmo is really strong, probably OP. Another card mentioned in that original thread was Deathrite Shaman. Personally I think Shaman is a bigger problem in modern.
Anyway, how to fix both of those cards without banning them? Easy, ban fetchlands. Yes, I know, many people will ***** at my suggestion, perhaps mostly because they're heavily invested in them at a high cost already. I have a few of them myself.
But when you think about the larger issue, the health of the modern format... if you ban fetchlands, you fix Tarmogoyf and Shaman at the same time. No need to ban either one anymore. Not to mention the much reduced deck shuffling in games.
People will ***** about the suggestion, and perhaps some of them would be doing it because of the investment that you talk about. Many more people will ***** about it because it has no purpose. Fetchlands exhibit exactly zero of the characteristics that have defined cards that have been banned in Modern thus far, and in fact they don't exhibit any of the characteristics that have led to bans in any format.
It would also make the format significantly less healthy, as a sizable number of players would simply play some other format. Again, maybe that's because they want to use the cards they invested in. For me, it's because I expect Modern to be a more powerful format than Standard, given its much wider selection of available cards. If I'm forced into playing a ISD/RTR-era Standard mana base (as good as that was...for Standard), then I might as well just play Standard.
And finally, the shuffling argument is completely irrelevant. If shuffling is an actual logistical problem in any Modern match, then it's because the players are doing it wrong, not because the cards tell them to shuffle.
i bring this up in every scepter thread. the 2 for 1 situation that most people fear is avoidable in the majority of cases. only play scepter when you have 4 mana. this will allow you to respond to the scepter being targeted by activating the scepter. as long as the spell you imprint trades 1 for 1 then the whole thing is an even trade. the only way that scepter is a 2 for 1 is if you play it without enough mana to activate it, or you imprint a card that cant trade.
Then your big problem is that you're waiting until you have four mana, and this isn't a card that's often played in decks with mana accelerators. One of the original arguments higher in this thread was that the Scepter is too slow, and that doesn't seem to assuage it much.
Another argument is that in order to prevent yourself from being 2-for-1'd, you're spending four mana on a one- or two-mana spell. You're giving yourself a choice between card disadvantage or tempo disadvantage. That also doesn't seem terribly advantageous.
Arguments can be made back and forth about whether these considerations are enough to make the card subpar. They must be enough though, on the simple fact that Isochron Scepter isn't a card that you find in winning lists. And not because it's a card that just hasn't been thought of...it's been tried, and it's been found to not be as good as other cards that UWR and other decks are using in its place.
Bitterblossom says hi. Oh, so does eggs. Laziness to improve a flawed tournament system isn't a warrant for not allowing people to play certain cards imo, but oh well.
Oh, Jace sends his regards ala Lannister as well.
P.S. Don't take this the wrong way, trying to be hilarious not offensive or anything.
No offense taken, and all that. But where did you get the impression that any of these cards were banned out of a lack of popularity?
Just because a card happens to be unpopular, it doesn't follow that its unpopularity was the reason for its banning. Eggs is case in point. Second Sunrise was a very unpopular card (except among the people who played it), but it was banned because it made tournament games take too long.
Bitterblossom and Jace, the Mind Sculptor were banned from the beginning because Faeries and Caw Blade were too powerful and oppressive during the time that they were in their respective rotating formats. Perhaps they were unpopular, though I'm not at all sure that anyone can claim that JTMS ever was. But Wizards didn't ban them because people were clamoring for it (by this point, it's quite the opposite). They banned them because they were afraid that their decks would be too good, as they had been once before.
1) if you're running green (seemingly regardless of archetype) and you're not running goyf, you're seen as "doing it wrong". A legitimate modern control decklist, subbing out 'goyf for more synergistic considerations was immediately trash-talked and said to be a "budget list" and therefore not worthy of consideration. It's just a vanilla beater, but people are so brainwashed into jamming it into everything that they refuse to see good deckbuilding when it comes along. This is unhealthy for the game.
2) it's stupidly, ridiculously expensive. It's a crazy statistical outlier. Despite your individual opinions on 'goyf and his cost, there's a problem with it being significantly more expensive than any other single card by quite some margin. It's the elephant in the room as far as cost goes, and wizards should understand that because of point 1, this becomes a problem for most people. Sure, some people can afford to blow money on this guy (myself included) but let's be clear, the forces that make a card expensive usually reach a sort of ceiling. vendilion clique is at that ceiling, more or less. The market has deigned to treat goyf like it's a different sort of resource, worthy of different prices to everything else. It's not healthy for the game
No disrespect intended, but these are two really bad ideas.
The ban list is not a popularity contest. Cards don't get banned because they "rile people up". Good thing too, because who knows where in the world the banned list would go if it was determined by a huge number of people that don't have any reason to give any thought to - and that have no way to determine - the direction that the format takes.
Beyond that, saying that Goyfs are in all green decks is simply a fallacy, and a huge one. More green archetypes don't run Goyfs than do.
Banning cards because of price is wrong on so many levels that it's impossible to overstate it.
Want to kill a format? Ban based on price. Tell the guy who just shelled out $600 on a set of Goyfs that he can't use them now, specifically because he just had to spend $600 on them. Try to assure all of the people in the format who don't play Goyfs that it's safe to invest in the cards that they want to play when they know darned good and well that if the price of a certain card goes up, something which is entirely beyond their control, that it'll get banned too.
I used to believe this. But looking back, the Seething Song banned killed not just UR Storm, but also Ritual Gifts, Enduring Ideal, Hive Mind, and Dragonstorm. I think that DRS or Scooze should be banned, but if we are aiming for not killing other decks, then Liliana of the Veil or Dark Confidant would be the best choices.
I actually changed the wording of the text you highlighted before I submitted, away from something more definitive like "Wizards only bans cards that are only used by the oppressive deck." It's clearly not the case, though I do believe that's what they try to do.
None of the decks that you listed were anywhere near top-tier at the time, and it could even be argued that Seething Song allowed decks like Hive Mind to potentially win before turn 4 as well. For that reason, particularly in light of the fact that the Seething Song ban came at the same time as the Bloodbraid Elf ban that did satisfy that stricture (and that stricture was specifically cited by Wizards as a reason why BBE in particular was banned instead of some other card), I still think my statement that they try to do it that way is accurate.
The idea of the post was to try to divine what might get banned based on Wizards' own stated intentions, and I think those intentions preclude the banning of Deathrite Shaman no matter how successful they are in actually doing it the way they say they want to.
I do like the idea of Moment of Silence, but more because it gives me a little time in game one. Might still not be enough time, but at least it's something. I still want to have a more permanent solution in there though for post-board, because I don't want to have to depend on having multiples just to gain two turns' reprieve. But I do think I'm going to take your suggestion for the main deck.
As for burn...yeah, it's difficult, almost unwinnable in game one because you have so many dead cards. Post board, after boarding in no less than 11 cards, it's much more manageable. I feel good about the matchup, because once the CoP goes down their only possible response is Flaring Pain, and I should have enough counters to deal with that even through the flashback (they probably don't have more than two copies).
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Forest
7 Island
5 Plains
4 Terramorphic Expanse
Fogs (14)
4 Ethereal Haze
2 Holy Day
4 Dawn Charm
4 Moment's Peace
4 Brainstorm
4 Vision Skeins
4 Words of Wisdom
2 Compulsive Research
2 Oona's Grace
Counters (4)
2 Arcane Denial
2 Muddle the Mixture
Mill (4)
4 Jace's Erasure
2 Arcane Denial
1 Capsize
4 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Counterspell
2 Muddle the Mixture
3 Oblivion Ring
Of course I don't have the option of all of the green fogs, so I've eliminated green entirely except for the four Moment's Peace. This is about the next best thing to having a two-color deck, and with the full set of fetchlands, it's just never a problem to have the colors I need. The worst is having transmute mana for Muddle the Mixture, but even that isn't too much to ask most of the time.
I have not had a problem with the fetchlands basically being CIPT. Fogs can reasonably start on turn 3 or so while leaving up the mana for card draw, and there aren't many decks that can kill that fast anymore.
Since I am using the fetchlands, I'm using Brainstorm over Ponder. I also use Vision Skeins and Words of Wisdom instead of some of the more expensive draw spells, like X spells and Deep Analysis (which I tried but didn't like) because I play this deck in a very low-mana sort of way. Seldom do I have more than six lands out, since it's enough and since I'm happy to pitch any others to Oona's Grace. I do like that card a lot, by the way, and I added a second copy because I'm never unhappy to have one available.
The sideboard is unusual for me in that I seldom carry extra copies of cards in the sideboard, but I do it with both Muddle the Mixture and Arcane Denial here. This is in large part because of Burn, which sees plenty of play online. All I want then are counters, and 10 fogs (the ones which aren't Dawn Charm, which is nearly as good as a Counterspell against them) can come out, leaving plenty of space. Even with the CoP:R in there, the counters are necessary for Flaring Pain, which they'll have in post-board if they're paying any attention at all.
The O-Rings are for Sparksmith and Ulamog's Crusher, basically. Capsize is one that I'm thinking about replacing. When it's good, it's really good, but it's not really good often enough to justify costing 6 mana (basically) in a deck where I don't have anything that costs more than 3 even post-board.
You can't reject Ezuri, Renegade Leader because of Craterhoof Behemoth and at the same time reject Winding Canyons in favor of Yeva, Nature's Herald, at least not with a straight face. That's saying "I don't need this really good card because my commander is always available to do its function, but I don't need this other commander that's always available to do its function because there's this other really good card."
It also looks slightly silly to name your thread EDH COMBO ELVES and then claim that "i've played alot of elves, so if it's not good advice i'll call you on it," while then rejecting Ezuri because you're not playing enough elves.
I don't say any of this without a point. This deck wants to be two different decks, but it doesn't have the proper commander for either. If it wants to be elves, it should do it with a commander that actually enables elves (and yes, it should probably use more than 23 elves). If it wants to be a big mana deck, it should use a commander that actually enables big mana. Yeva doesn't do either of those things. Given that there are three other perfectly reasonable cards that do what she does, in some cases better, she doesn't really bring anything to the table other than her color identity.
If her big advantage is this "Yeva float" or just simply being able to play at the end of your right-side opponent's turn, then using some of those cards (Yeva as a non-commander, Aluren, Winding Canyons, Vedalken Orrery) lets Omnath, Locus of Mana do the same thing, only much much better.
I enjoy mono-green enough that in the last three months I've played Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, and Omnath, Locus of Mana. They're all very different decks, and Yeva doesn't even make an appearance in any of them. She just does so little compared to the other tools you have available in mono-green.
It's a really hard card to evaluate. As Birthing Pod number 2 it's very good of course, but that's about the only good use that you can count on for it. There are a whole slew of quite powerful but also very narrow uses (the most relevant might be copying Etched Champion) that mean its value is more uncertain than most cards. I think it's really hard to say "Metamorph is better/worse than X" as a general rule and I've gotten tired of debating myself about whether it should go in or not.
What has it in my deck right now is 1) I want four 4-drops, 2) Linvala doesn't do much in enough matchups that she's back in my sideboard, and 3) I'd much rather have Shriekmaw than Nekrataal. In other words, by default. It's not a glowing recommendation, but it's a useful enough card to warrant consideration even if it can't kill legends anymore.
Wow, are you serious? You post a list and ask about it, one of the most solid contributors to this thread provides you with valuable advice, and you act like you don't have the time for him. If you just wanted someone to say, "Yay, your list is great," then don't bother asking people to tell you what they think.
Yes, the question of fetchlands in this deck is important, whichever opinion you end up taking. That you don't seem to comprehend that indicates that you a) haven't even bothered to read the last 20 pages of this thread, so you're not terribly serious about figuring out the deck anyway, and b) you don't have the first clue of what's important and what isn't.
Aside from that question (my opinion is the same as rickster_'s), there are a couple of other things that look off.
First, you're using seven mana dorks. That's not enough even in a deck that isn't trying to carry three five-drops. That the eighth is replaced by a Wasteland Viper is another indication that you'd do better to listen to advice than to carry yourself as though you already know it all. This is a card that can only be useful if you draw it, and you have one in the deck. You'll never, ever tutor for it because you can't bloodrush off tutoring. If you get it with a Ranger of Eos then the entire world knows you have it, and it will be terribly ineffective. Approximately 99 times out of 100, you will prefer to have a third Deathrite Shaman, especially if you want any chance to cast all of those big creatures you're including.
Along the same lines, Restoration Angel is not a good card in this deck. It's too expensive to reliably Chord for, it's ability is too useless if you Pod for it, and it doesn't have any of the utility or synergy that it does in a Kiki Pod deck. It's another card you want to draw, and like Wasteland Viper, one-of's that you want to draw are disappointing an overwhelming percentage of the time. Your best bet is to pod into it off a Kitchen Finks, giving you a 3/4 non-flash flier and 2 life for 2 mana, which doesn't sound bad. But when would you ever want to tutor for this when you have Murderous Redcap and Ranger of Eos as choices instead? (If you actually have to think about the answer to that question, then play the deck a little more...you'll never want to tutor for the Angel.)
Both Phyrexian Metamorph and Linvala, Keeper of Secrets are serious upgrades to that slot. The former isn't as good as it was when it could kill legends, but at least it has a reasonable chance of actually having an effect. The latter is a must-include at least in the sideboard, and if you want a fourth 4-drop without using Metamorph (a reasonable desire), this angel is much, much better than the other one.
The first is easy. We don't like to think of ourselves as bad players or even average players. If we have a bad tournament, we like to make excuses like "I got a lot of bad matchups" or "my opponents kept getting great topdecks" or "the cards just weren't running well." Then we don't have to put the blame on ourselves for not doing well.
The second reason is that good Magic players do everything they can, through both game play and deck construction, to minimize the role of luck. They seem to draw the right card an inordinate amount of time, and it's not because they're lucky. It's because they play to their outs and set of their deck to provide them with the right answers as often as possible. So perhaps an FNM-level event is much more dependent upon luck, but it's because the players aren't good enough to reduce the role of luck in their matches, leaving themselves to depend on coin flips more often than a pro player would.
Anyone can win a single Magic match. You could sit down with Kai Budde and get lucky enough to win if you just played him once. I beat a five-time GP Top 8 player in a tournament two months ago, and it's not because I was better than he was.
But that same player promptly went and Top 8'd GP Detroit a few weeks later with the same deck, and I did not. The same players consistently do well over and over in big tournaments, whatever your definition of "big" (we have a number of 50-ish player Legacy tournaments in the Baltimore area, and the same people keep showing up in the Top 8's of those, too). It's not because they're luckier than everyone else, it's because they're better players.
If you ascribe too much of Magic success to luck, then you never have reason to try to get better. Why bother? Maybe you'll just get lucky next time.
The thing about all of these proposed multiple changes to the ban list is that they cannot exist in a vacuum. You can't say "unbanning X would be bad" if you don't take into account whether Y changes the equation.
It's really easy for anyone to talk about which one card needs to be banned/unbanned next, but when you get into the articles like Chapin and Cunningham wrote recently, you can't just evaluate one card without evaluating the others. It's an entirely different discussion.
BBE and JTMS are perfectly good cards to have in the format...if you haven't already banned the cards that answer them. Even Jitte is a good card to have, if you accept it as an answer to aggro decks that are suddenly very powerful because of two or three other unbannings.
We (mostly) all agree that Jitte would be a bad unban right now because aggro struggles anyway. But that doesn't apply if it's only one of many. Not that I expect Wizards to take such a radical step as that, but it's an interesting thing to think about anyway.
I just read the article, and it's quite a read. Even if you don't agree with it, if you have Premium, I think it's worth it just to see what his reasoning is.
He believes that the real "broken" card in Affinity is Cranial Plating and that the artifact lands are unlikely to add enough to it to break it. I actually tend to agree at least with that part of it, as the artifact lands were banned in a time when there weren't these other tremendously useful manlands to use (well, at least not Inkmoth Nexus, which is pretty clearly the more important of the two).
As for Bitterblossom, that seemed to be on the back of the first two turns that 2008 Standard players hated so much: turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 2 Bitterblossom. He didn't really add more to it than that. I think in the sort of format that he's talking about, there's not much need to even flag Bitterblossom.
The format he's talking about is one where extremely powerful decks exist, but other extremely powerful decks keep them honest. While I'm not certain that his way of doing it is the best way, I do like the intention at least. Right now we have an environment where the best way to deal with a powerful deck is to ban it into oblivion, and that can't be the right way. Enabling other decks to beat it seems better, though it is undoubtedly more complicated.
He actually broke the banned list out into categories, and the one that he kept most of was the one dealing with keeping turn 3 combo decks out. Of that "category" he only proposed unbanning Seething Song, Preordain, Ponder, and Blazing Shoal (while keeping an eye on the last one). It's a fair question to wonder whether the two blue spells mean that consistent turn 3 combo happens again, but his intention was to just pare that part of the list rather than destroy it.
Again, I'm not advocating for Cunningham's particular ideas. In fact, he's really not either, recognizing that they'd need a lot of playtesting to work out the kinks. I don't know if it's simply too hard to do, with such a dependence upon powerful decks having predators that one begins to dominate if its enemy loses popularity somehow. But if it could work, a solid 10-14 card banned list sure sounds a lot better to me than 31.
Yeah, agreed entirely. I haven't played against Affinity a ton, but the results I have are pretty clear cut between non-Master (win) and Master (lose) decks. The other thing that Master does is put all of their guys into a safe range against Lingering Souls tokens, if you use that as sideboard tech against them.
Several pages ago there was a lot of talk about whether Affinity was a good or bad matchup for us, and I was pretty adamant that it's good. I still believe that with non-Master lists, but I suspect that some of the feeling in the other direction was based on playing against Master of Etherium. At least Steel Overseer gives you a turn to find an answer. Master is often even immune to Dismember if they don't attack with it.
The good news is that it seems like most of the "best" Affinity lists go without. Hopefully that's a trend that will continue.
Because...this is Modern and not Caw Blade Standard? Seriously, this constant reasoning that "Magic is Magic" no matter the format just plain betrays such a lack of interest in applying actual thought that it's making my head spin.
Breaking news: Standard rotates. JTMS was banned three months before it was going to rotate out of the format anyway. Those people that were spending $100 on him at the time already had other plans. They either already accepted that they were getting very limited use out of him or were already planning on playing him in Legacy. Do you remember how little blowback there was on that decision? Even the JTMS owners knew it was coming and for the most part didn't care. Do you actually expect the same out of a Goyf ban?
Modern doesn't rotate. People getting Goyfs are expecting to use them for years, not just for three extra months.
A little further news: bans don't happen in Standard except in extraordinary circumstances. JTMS getting banned made exactly zero people concerned that Primeval Titan was next.
Modern's history has been virtually defined by the ban list.
Now again...how is JTMS being banned in Standard anything like Goyf being banned in Modern?
While we're at it...you didn't explicitly say this, choosing to attack my line of reasoning rather than put forth any of your own, so I don't honestly know the answer to this question. Are you actually trying to advocate that bans based on price are a good idea?
People will ***** about the suggestion, and perhaps some of them would be doing it because of the investment that you talk about. Many more people will ***** about it because it has no purpose. Fetchlands exhibit exactly zero of the characteristics that have defined cards that have been banned in Modern thus far, and in fact they don't exhibit any of the characteristics that have led to bans in any format.
It would also make the format significantly less healthy, as a sizable number of players would simply play some other format. Again, maybe that's because they want to use the cards they invested in. For me, it's because I expect Modern to be a more powerful format than Standard, given its much wider selection of available cards. If I'm forced into playing a ISD/RTR-era Standard mana base (as good as that was...for Standard), then I might as well just play Standard.
And finally, the shuffling argument is completely irrelevant. If shuffling is an actual logistical problem in any Modern match, then it's because the players are doing it wrong, not because the cards tell them to shuffle.
Then your big problem is that you're waiting until you have four mana, and this isn't a card that's often played in decks with mana accelerators. One of the original arguments higher in this thread was that the Scepter is too slow, and that doesn't seem to assuage it much.
Another argument is that in order to prevent yourself from being 2-for-1'd, you're spending four mana on a one- or two-mana spell. You're giving yourself a choice between card disadvantage or tempo disadvantage. That also doesn't seem terribly advantageous.
Arguments can be made back and forth about whether these considerations are enough to make the card subpar. They must be enough though, on the simple fact that Isochron Scepter isn't a card that you find in winning lists. And not because it's a card that just hasn't been thought of...it's been tried, and it's been found to not be as good as other cards that UWR and other decks are using in its place.
No offense taken, and all that. But where did you get the impression that any of these cards were banned out of a lack of popularity?
Just because a card happens to be unpopular, it doesn't follow that its unpopularity was the reason for its banning. Eggs is case in point. Second Sunrise was a very unpopular card (except among the people who played it), but it was banned because it made tournament games take too long.
Bitterblossom and Jace, the Mind Sculptor were banned from the beginning because Faeries and Caw Blade were too powerful and oppressive during the time that they were in their respective rotating formats. Perhaps they were unpopular, though I'm not at all sure that anyone can claim that JTMS ever was. But Wizards didn't ban them because people were clamoring for it (by this point, it's quite the opposite). They banned them because they were afraid that their decks would be too good, as they had been once before.
No disrespect intended, but these are two really bad ideas.
The ban list is not a popularity contest. Cards don't get banned because they "rile people up". Good thing too, because who knows where in the world the banned list would go if it was determined by a huge number of people that don't have any reason to give any thought to - and that have no way to determine - the direction that the format takes.
Beyond that, saying that Goyfs are in all green decks is simply a fallacy, and a huge one. More green archetypes don't run Goyfs than do.
Banning cards because of price is wrong on so many levels that it's impossible to overstate it.
Want to kill a format? Ban based on price. Tell the guy who just shelled out $600 on a set of Goyfs that he can't use them now, specifically because he just had to spend $600 on them. Try to assure all of the people in the format who don't play Goyfs that it's safe to invest in the cards that they want to play when they know darned good and well that if the price of a certain card goes up, something which is entirely beyond their control, that it'll get banned too.
I actually changed the wording of the text you highlighted before I submitted, away from something more definitive like "Wizards only bans cards that are only used by the oppressive deck." It's clearly not the case, though I do believe that's what they try to do.
None of the decks that you listed were anywhere near top-tier at the time, and it could even be argued that Seething Song allowed decks like Hive Mind to potentially win before turn 4 as well. For that reason, particularly in light of the fact that the Seething Song ban came at the same time as the Bloodbraid Elf ban that did satisfy that stricture (and that stricture was specifically cited by Wizards as a reason why BBE in particular was banned instead of some other card), I still think my statement that they try to do it that way is accurate.
The idea of the post was to try to divine what might get banned based on Wizards' own stated intentions, and I think those intentions preclude the banning of Deathrite Shaman no matter how successful they are in actually doing it the way they say they want to.