Yeah you kind of answered it yourself, its the double white. White is a fairly unattractive color in modern, but the decks that are running enough white are actually running Runed Halo. YOu see it in UW control, pillowfort, RW lockdown...and that's pretty much it. You don't see it often in DnT because they like creature spells, non creature spells are a nonbo.
So 77% chance of drawing the land if you do all the math. But on the fly there is no hard math to review before you make a decision. Like in poker, experts play by "feel". Keeping a 2 lander in hopes of drawing a 3rd land "feels" like a solid choice to me. The math makes it as close as you can get to a safe bet that you're likely to find in MTG. Is it a guarantee? No, but nothing is a guarantee.
Now I believe that ktk is a good player and as such he should probably retract his earlier statement. IMO he just got a bad case of hindsight being an exact science.
Legend said it perfectly about the balance of the urza lands.
Memory lapse made a good point too about what people think when they hear "tron" deck, I agree that I don't think of e.tron or mono U tron either even though they both use the tron lands. I played mono U for a long time and assembling tron isn't top priority,its much slower.
Would tron be so hated if it wasn't for turn 3 karn? For the most part I feel that's what the issue is, not the lands themselves. Ugin, ulamog, emmy, all these huge threats are turn four or more.
Ban Karn and the deck changes from a polarized nightmare to a perfectly fair deck.
End result of this thread = BAN KARN!
I'll do it with a concurrent ban of Liliana of the Veil. Sounds good right? (I already know your answer)
Why bring up Liliana? We aren't even talking about that. Spam.
Legend said it perfectly about the balance of the urza lands.
Memory lapse made a good point too about what people think when they hear "tron" deck, I agree that I don't think of e.tron or mono U tron either even though they both use the tron lands. I played mono U for a long time and assembling tron isn't top priority,its much slower.
Would tron be so hated if it wasn't for turn 3 karn? For the most part I feel that's what the issue is, not the lands themselves. Ugin, ulamog, emmy, all these huge threats are turn four or more.
Ban Karn and the deck changes from a polarized nightmare to a perfectly fair deck.
End result of this thread = BAN KARN!
I'm pretty sure the Pros found colourless eldrazi when no one else did. Sure, with colourless eldrazi in the meta other eldrazi builds were ended up being superior - but those were found by pros as well.
And you're totally wrong. Eldrazi was an established archetype well before the "Eldrazi Winter" when every "pro" adopted the deck. People were experimenting with everything from colorless to black, blue and eventually what became bant eldrazi. The pros settled on colorless, mostly. That doesn't mean the pros invented colorless. Pros are not to be revered or emulated. They are to be questioned about their life choices and silently mocked (my opinion).
So why do we see the same top players winning or topping the same events over and over? Or, to cite my analysis earlier, why is it that the top 50 Legacy and top 50 Modern players have the same number of overall top 150 players in their pools? If Modern was as luck-intensive as you allege, we would expect to see far fewer pros in the top 50 Moderners. Instead, we see actually more than in Legacy: 18 vs. 16.
Ha. Haha. Hahahhahhahhaha.
Buddy the reason we see the same top players over and over is because there is only a handful of people stupid enough to play MTG professionally. This isn't the NBA where there are millions of dollars to be made. This is closer to an organized basketball tournament at your local YMCA.
Do you really think the pros are substantially better than you are? I don't. I see pros making misplays on camera all the time. Ask yourself this, where does all the innovation come from? The community. If the pros were really the ones pushing the envelope we would see THEM coming up with new dcks and new strats, instead they just champion the strat they think has the best matchups for this current week and roll the dice.
I've been warning people about this for years. Pro's are not to be emulated. Their judgment and decision making abilities are highly in question before the tourney even starts.
I saw a perfect example of poor decisions being written off as variance on Twitch this weekend. The streamer kept a two-lander on the play that was very strong if they ever hit three lands. They proceeded to brick on lands for 5 turns and lose the game. Naturally, the saltometer was sky high as they ripped on variance and the MTGO shuffler. All I could ask was, why the hell didn't this player mull that hand?? They knew they had zero cantrips to increase velocity, and they knew most of their bombs required three mana or more. With just 20ish lands left in their deck, they had around a 40% or so chance of drawing that land each turn, and only around a 60% cumulative chance of hurting it by T4 or so. The bad deckbuilding decision of running that curve with no consistency tools and that land count, and THEN not mulling, was not variance at work.
Say whhhhaaaa???
Monday morning QB skills aside, I think its perfectly reasonable to keep a 2 lander and assume the deck will pay out a 3rd land by turn 4. The odds are well in my favor of that happening. No it's not a lock, but it's perfectly fine to call the 5 bricks in a row variance imo.
The critical detail there is that Aegraen was talking about Gx Tron, and you're talking about Eldrazi Tron. Completely missed the point.
agreed, no one is really complaining about etron. its Gx tron that is hated.
I feel the need to point out that there are 2 members just on this page of the thread that are complaining about E-Tron. (Look for the ones griping about Eldrazi Temple.)
I also find it amusing that Tron (all variants) has to wait until turn 3 to do its thing (Tron) and it gets called out when there are a few decks out there that can pull off a win by Turn 2 if the stars align.
Frankly I find one of the most "unfair" or "unfun" plays is from black on turn 1 on the play with Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek. Nothing like not even having a card on the board to respond and having your hand picked apart. But hey, its part of the game and I deal with it.
...but this isn't a post about black being hated?
You may be right though that the distinction between what "Tron(tm)" actually is varies a bit. To me when someone uses the generic "Tron" name I assume it to mean Gx tron. Not Blue tron. Not Eldrazi tron. I have no problem with blue tron, and very little problem with eldrazi tron.
There is no viable blue control shell in Modern period. Blue is a splash color for control, it cannot stand on its own. Black on the other hand has it all. Efficient proactive threat removal with discards. Efficient board removal with Fatal Push. Tasigur, angler, Death's Shadow for cheap finishers. Card draw in multiple flavors. Oh yeah and Liliana...
Blue's weaksauce counterspells are dumpster jank by comparison. All blue does in modern is make other strategies a bit more efficient. Cards like Serum visions and Thoughscour fills up the graveyard and dig towards the cards that actually make a real impact, which are black... Stubborn Denial is probably the best counterspell in modern under 4cc, and that is really sad. Stubborn Denial basically ASSUMES the deck it's being used in has proper non blue critters to do the actual work.
The reason behind it is pretty obvious to me. Blue counterspell draw go decks lead to boring matches. Seriously who wants to have games where no one does anything for 4-5 turns then MAYBE a 1-2cc spell gets resolved. It's bad for business to encourage those kinds of decks.
I disagree with you. Tasigur and Angler are the splash in blue/red decks. With it now being Grixis colors it gave options for better removal in the form of terminate, push, k-command. Most Grixis control decks are splashing for the efficient beaters then better removal. Those delve creatures are insane because of blue. How often do you see a turn 2 Tasigur or angler in jund or Abzan?
Esper gives it the same level of frequency on turn 2.
Honestly i feel blue based decks playing against one another is more fun then any other game i have played with mirror matches. Blue decks are handicapped not by the countermagic, but by your limitations and thoughts of what to counter. Also modern is full of non interactive decks which hurts too.
I think we're actually saying the same thing, I just wish blue was better and you do not. Nothing in your post contradicts my assessment of where blue stands and what it does.
I've said since the release of the new eldrazi's that they were to overpowered with temples and eyes, they banned the eye but it wasn't enough. The deck is a pain to beat soley because of temple, if they had to assemble Tron rather than hit a single temple they wouldn't be nearly as fast. Magic screwed up when they created the eldrazi's, didnt look at the big picture enough IDK.
People wouldn't hate tron so much right now either if it wasn't for temple, all the "tron" hate is actually temple hate.Eldrazi tron is actually eldrazi temple that happens to use tron lands as backup.
Eldrazi tron doesn't even care about land tutors, they want a temple in their opener.
Eldrazi isnt really the problem. They are a pretty fair deck with lots of interaction points. Turn 3 Reality Smasher or Endbringer is way more fair than turn 3 Karn. Eldrazis also have silver bullets that shut them down like Ensnaring Bridge. To stop actual tron with sideboard cards you need 3 pithing needles naming ostone, karn and ugin. Then you need to pray they dont draw ulamog before you can beat them. It's ridiculous. The only way to stop them is to attack their lands, and modern just doesn't have a reliable way to do that outside of RG ponza.
I still think a strip mine that only hits lands that produce colorless would even the playing field.
While I concede the point that U is weak in Modern, it does fill a crucial role in non-prison control decks that are viable. No, we don't have a mono U control deck, but that's not the sole metric by which we should measure U's contribution to control, as it still fills an essential role. Permission control is an essential facet of UW control, the best control deck in the format, and without it, the deck couldn't exist.
I know you've said it relies heavily on W, but I'd argue that it's more about W shoring up U's innate weaknesses. U stops additional threats from resolving whereas W answers threats that have already resolved, giving it a greater spectrum of control. Even if U were strong by its own merits, we would still want the W splash. Conversely, W has poor options for dealing with non-creature threats, a weakness that U handles exceptionally well.
My point is that the color pair synergizes extremely well and would exist whether U is weak or not. Again, I do agree that U needs more support than it receives, but I don't want people to confound that with control being unplayable in Modern, which the whole "Blue can't stand on its own" suggests. It lends itself towards being a support color, strong or not. I believe a better argument is that U doesn't pull enough of its own weight in control decks, despite the fact that U's inclusion is still necessary for the decks to function.
I agree with enough of this to drop the argument. We both think blue is weak, and basically relegated to a support role in control decks. Conversely, black is strong and has no limitations. Black does not dominate every deck the way blue does in Legacy, but clearly blue needs some love in modern.
Now I believe that ktk is a good player and as such he should probably retract his earlier statement. IMO he just got a bad case of hindsight being an exact science.
Why bring up Liliana? We aren't even talking about that. Spam.
Ban Karn and the deck changes from a polarized nightmare to a perfectly fair deck.
End result of this thread = BAN KARN!
And you're totally wrong. Eldrazi was an established archetype well before the "Eldrazi Winter" when every "pro" adopted the deck. People were experimenting with everything from colorless to black, blue and eventually what became bant eldrazi. The pros settled on colorless, mostly. That doesn't mean the pros invented colorless. Pros are not to be revered or emulated. They are to be questioned about their life choices and silently mocked (my opinion).
Ha. Haha. Hahahhahhahhaha.
Buddy the reason we see the same top players over and over is because there is only a handful of people stupid enough to play MTG professionally. This isn't the NBA where there are millions of dollars to be made. This is closer to an organized basketball tournament at your local YMCA.
Do you really think the pros are substantially better than you are? I don't. I see pros making misplays on camera all the time. Ask yourself this, where does all the innovation come from? The community. If the pros were really the ones pushing the envelope we would see THEM coming up with new dcks and new strats, instead they just champion the strat they think has the best matchups for this current week and roll the dice.
I've been warning people about this for years. Pro's are not to be emulated. Their judgment and decision making abilities are highly in question before the tourney even starts.
Say whhhhaaaa???
Monday morning QB skills aside, I think its perfectly reasonable to keep a 2 lander and assume the deck will pay out a 3rd land by turn 4. The odds are well in my favor of that happening. No it's not a lock, but it's perfectly fine to call the 5 bricks in a row variance imo.
You may be right though that the distinction between what "Tron(tm)" actually is varies a bit. To me when someone uses the generic "Tron" name I assume it to mean Gx tron. Not Blue tron. Not Eldrazi tron. I have no problem with blue tron, and very little problem with eldrazi tron.
Your mileage may vary.
I think we're actually saying the same thing, I just wish blue was better and you do not. Nothing in your post contradicts my assessment of where blue stands and what it does.
agreed, no one is really complaining about etron. its Gx tron that is hated.
I still think a strip mine that only hits lands that produce colorless would even the playing field.
I agree with enough of this to drop the argument. We both think blue is weak, and basically relegated to a support role in control decks. Conversely, black is strong and has no limitations. Black does not dominate every deck the way blue does in Legacy, but clearly blue needs some love in modern.