Obviously everyone's wrong time to time, but I'm inclined to agree. This is possibly the most in-demand set in Magic history, with a triple-DOM draft format. Teferi is great in Standard and will probably be a staple for his stay in the format, but compare him to Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Gideon was a 1-color 4-drop who was a staple in many decks, often run as a 3-4-of. He peaked at $40, immediately after his release. Within 3 months, he'd lost half of his value. He made it back up to $30 again for a bit before rotating.
I don't think that paints a favorable portrait of Teferi.
+1: Choose a color. Target opponent exiles the top 4 cards of their library. For each card of the chosen color exiled this way, create a 1/1 blue and black Faerie Rogue creature token with flying.
-1: Whenever a Faerie deals damage to an opponent this turn: Draw a card and you may discard a card.
-4: You get an emblem with "At the beginning of your upkeep, create a 1/1 blue and black Faerie Rogue creature token with flying. Faerie creatures you control have haste"
2 Loyalty
Agreed at reversing the +1 and -1.
The -4 isn't OP or anything, and is a nice callback to Bitterblossom. But haste is really far off of the UB color pie. I'd axe that part, personally.
Teferi is spiking. If you play Control at all, get em quick.
Question 1: Where are you getting your information? They spiked a week ago. Now they're settled and are actually dropping. You can get them for $30-$31 on eBay Buy It Now, and the auctions are going for around $27-$30. That's $7-$10 less than when it spiked.
Question 2: Are you so certain that he's a Modern staple that "Get them now" during peak demand and minimal supply is bulletproof advice?
@Jordan and people at Modern Nexus or in here: A nice experiment would be if someone could test SFM in that Mardu reveler deck.
I am getting increasingly confident that it's too much for this deck, even if it's OK as a card to have in the format.
I would love to find some time and test it out myself. Maybe I could.
You're making the same mistake that people make every time people evaluate unbans. You're looking at it as if Mardu Pyro is still has the same cards, draws, and plays it has now, and then on top of that it's also jamming on-curve Stoneforge Mystic.
Pyro would have to entirely change to accommodate Stoneforge. First by retooling its mana base in which white is an afterthought. Then by trying to make that new mana base work around Blood Moon. In a format bristling with unfair like Modern, you really need to evaluate how many points you're going to gain by shocking yourself down to 14 and playing Squire into Batterskull when you could just ended the game turn 3 because your opponent scoops to Blood Moon.
And then there's Death & Taxes, in which Stoneforge has anti-synergy with literally the entire architecture of the deck of the deck. I'm not a D&T player so I don't have much insight into that, but last time a Stoneforge unban came up, the D&T players were pretty lukewarm on it.
Legendary Planeswalker-Chandra
+1: Three Drop Chandra deals 2 damage divided as you choose among any number of targets.
-2: Choose one: Three Drop Chandra deals 3 damage to target creature or player, or exile the top card of your library and you may play it this turn.
-6: generic Chandra ult
3 Loyalty
I like the direction of this, but the tuning and wording is pretty off.
The first ability is kind of absurdly pushed. The only 3-drop planeswalker that can kill a creature with a + ability is the already-very-pushed Liliana, the Last Hope. But Lili can't go face, can't kill opposing 'Walkers, can't kill 2-toughness guys, and she certainly can't kill 2 creatures per turn. That ability could possibly be appropriately costed at 2RR though, or as a minus ability at 1RR.
For the second ability: two modes on one Planeswalker ability is a no-no AFAIK, but you can do it just without saying "choose one" like Torch of Defiance's first ability. It should work if restyled as: "Exile the top card of your library. You may cast that card. If you don't, ~ deals 3 damage to target creature player." Note that that's an upgrade since you can decide which mode to choose after you know what's on top, but it gets around the mechanical inconsistency. Alternately, take another page from Chandra, ToD and split it into two abilities with the same loyalty cost.
As for the second ability's balance, it's probably fine although often weaker than her +1 (but that's not this ability's fault). I do like the mechanical flavor of being part Searing Spear, part Jace Beleren -2 but Red.
Minor point on the first ability: it should probably read "...among one or two targets" since that's consistent with WotC's wording.
"generic Chandra ult"
I would love to have a playable 3-drop Chandra. Really like the direction of this one even if the tuning is a bit off yet!
I’m not against counterspell being in modern; I’d just like to see if Wizard’s retort can do anything in modern first.
I'd be really surprised if Wizard's Retort were what Delver needed to claw its way up from ~Tier 3, especially since a flipped Delver loses its Wizard subtype.
Apart from Delver, I can't see a deck being improved by jamming a bunch of Wizards in the hope of getting off a Turn-2 Counterspell (which, let's face it, isn't anything more than "just good" to begin with). Or the nonexistent wizards.dec becoming viable for that reason.
Impossible to say for sure of course, but for me personally Retort is a huge yuck. Wizards might be pretty good in Standard though, so this is all just in terms of Modern.
Tap two untapped knights you control: You may put a knight card from your hand onto the battlefield.
2/4
World WarriorW4
-Human Warrior
Vigilance
Whenever a nontoken permanent comes into play under your control, you may return another permanent you control that shares a permanent type with it to its owner's hand.
3/5
IDK about these cards themselves, but the colorless after the colored symbols is driving me bonkers.
IMO Prohibit wouldn't be the next Fatal Push. It would be the Opt: kind of neat I guess, but a sidegrade at best and not really enough to do anything.
The permission the format needs most is reliably countering turn-3 spells on the draw (Blood Moon, Liliana, Storm chain if possible, TKS or Smasher if they go nuts on the Sol Lands, etc.). That's why Logic Knot is run at 3+ in a lot of lists even though frankly it's a meh card that's terrible in multiples and has anti-synergy with the best Blue card in the format.
Prohibit does zilch for that. By the time you have mana to counter the format's game-ending 3- and 4-drops, they've already curved out over you. You'll be able to hit something eventually, but that's just not enough. And if overpaying for counters (which you do often with Prohibit) were good, Syncopate would be playable.
I can see getting a new 2CMC counter that does good things for the format (not to mention just Counterspell), but Prohibit is IMO just not one of them.
Return target creature to its owner's hand. Draw a most card.
That would help control.
They wouldn't print that at 1U, because it's strictly better than Negate. It would most likely be UU or have another stipulation on the counter like target instant or sorcery instead.
Alternatively, I could see something like
Counter target instant/sorcery
or
Bounce target non land permanent, draw a card
They do print strict upgrades to core staples like this from time to time. But I do think that this would be a good candidate for UU. This is a solid enough card that the extra hurdle is probably warranted.
Blue has weak counters, spells that are too conditional, no true, fast threat, and having to contend with Vial and Caverns, along with ramp decks with poor answers to land destruction.
Don't the best cantrip in the format being green. x.x
Re: different events
I'm curious why people are so keen on separating SCG results from GP results. Do all of you just play in GP-level events? If you do, I understand why you would want to separate them out and maximize your chances of winning a GP. But I suspect most of you are like most Modern players I know: you play either on MTGO or at your LGS/regional events where GP metagames/dynamics don't have a lot of relevance. Between the different round structure and incentives at these levels, I would expect people to just play decks for their metagame. For example, I am an almost exclusive MTGO player. I remember back when everyone raged about how much blue sucked, I rolled with UW Control on MTGO for months and went infinite in Leagues. Whether or not UW Control was the single best choice to take down a GP, it was clearly viable at the League level and I was very pleased with my results and game experience. I think people, especially the average player we see in online forums, place way too much value on what deck is most optimized to win a GP. Instead, you should pick decks that a) you enjoy enough to practice and b) give you strong results in your scene. I also suspect SCG scenes are way closer to your average LGS/regional scene than a GP, just because of the greater incentives at the GP level.
As for blue decks, which I know a vocal and small group of players are still unhappy about, the clear deck to iterate on is Breach Moon. In addition to its previous GP and Open finishes, we just added a T8 Classic finish this last weekend. It also has more free wins than most blue strategies, which is another thing I know blue mages want (never mind the potential cognitive dissonance there between "free wins" and "skill-testing decks"). If I had enough to invest in a new set of MTGO cards, I would happily pick up this deck and tune it, and I am confident I would have similar results with Breach Moon as I did with UW Control last year.
To me, there are two issues at work here, which often end up being conflate. (I admit I’m guilty of that myself.)
Issue 1: How viable is Control?
Issue 2: What does Control have to do to achieve that level of viability?
The answer to Issue 1 seems to be “Hovering around T2 for the most part.” I don’t mind that; I never seek out a deck because it’s T1 decks, unless what I’m fooling around with ends up at T1 (which happens time to time). There’s clearly room for new goodies to be introduced into Control, bur it’s not like it’s at the very bottom of the barrel. You can bring it to FNM and do fine.
It’s Issue 2 that feels gross to me. Modern’s skew of threats vs. answers has gotten to the point that to put up those OK but not stellar results, Control pretty much needs to tool itself into a bad Ponza deck. I like Control because I like evaluating game states and matching answers to threats in the most profitable manner possible. Remand – Blood Moon is pretty much the polar opposite of that.
Blue Moon/Breach Moon does look promising (especially as Thoughtseize loses points), but I’d be lying if I said I was jumping for joy at the thought. I’ll gladly start trading resources with my opponent again once we have the tools to do so profitably.
I think a split of Opt and Serum Vision is underrated. Both have their merits, and the times when you get to pick whichever fits the situation are really nice.
On Teferi, he seems more like Gideon Jura than Jace, the Mind Sculptor to me. Gideon doesn't draw us cards obviously, but they're both 5-drops with repeatable removal (with stipulations) and some method of gaining card advantage. I'd be evaluating those to against each other, separately of Jace.
That's just speaking in terms of the main deck. For sideboard, I can't imagine wanting to replace Elspeth, Sun's Champion if I feel like I need a huge, swingy planeswalker.
I think that Humans being good vs the heavy removal decks can be a problem. However, I think that it is mostly because these control decks are just not consistent enough to find the right cards they need especially with explosive starts that Humans can have. Which is why I believe that they should unban Preordain and even Stoneforge.
Those are both really promising vs. Humans. Both help get around the biggest problems of having various answers removed and blanked while the others are taxed. Preordain by making you a little better at grabbing what you need when you need, and Stoneforge with the strong walling power and life gain.
The great thing about Stoneforge vs. Humans is that while very powerful, it has plenty of counterplay. Freebooter can still name Batterskull, Reflector Mage can buy plenty of time by bouncing the Germ, you can just Meddling Mage the Mystic, and the sideboard has Vithian Renegades. It just adds one more "must-answer" card for Humans to deal with.
Personally I like Humans as a meta force. I kept trying to brew similar disrupt-the-degenerates decks for the last two years, but the mana base and aggressive elements of Humans was what I kept missing. (So long, Tidehollow Sculler. We tried.) It's (usually) not a blisteringly quick all-out aggro deck, and it punishes decks that overly rely on a few key cards and don't pack disruption. Those are both pluses in my book.
The one thing I find worrying about it is that it's actually pretty resilient to removal between its threat density, Thalia, MedMage, and Freebooter. To such an extent that I seem to remember seeing data indicating it had even-to-positive matchups against the removal decks that should be policing it. But it's nothing Stoneforge Mystic wouldn't swing back around, I'm sure.
I'm biased since I never liked Fish but kept trying to make disruptive aggro work, so I'm happy to have found a deck that hits that spot for me. I'm hoping we'll see some healthier numbers in the coming months as the meta adapts to Humans and H1.
Obviously everyone's wrong time to time, but I'm inclined to agree. This is possibly the most in-demand set in Magic history, with a triple-DOM draft format. Teferi is great in Standard and will probably be a staple for his stay in the format, but compare him to Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Gideon was a 1-color 4-drop who was a staple in many decks, often run as a 3-4-of. He peaked at $40, immediately after his release. Within 3 months, he'd lost half of his value. He made it back up to $30 again for a bit before rotating.
I don't think that paints a favorable portrait of Teferi.
Agreed at reversing the +1 and -1.
The -4 isn't OP or anything, and is a nice callback to Bitterblossom. But haste is really far off of the UB color pie. I'd axe that part, personally.
Question 1: Where are you getting your information? They spiked a week ago. Now they're settled and are actually dropping. You can get them for $30-$31 on eBay Buy It Now, and the auctions are going for around $27-$30. That's $7-$10 less than when it spiked.
Question 2: Are you so certain that he's a Modern staple that "Get them now" during peak demand and minimal supply is bulletproof advice?
You're making the same mistake that people make every time people evaluate unbans. You're looking at it as if Mardu Pyro is still has the same cards, draws, and plays it has now, and then on top of that it's also jamming on-curve Stoneforge Mystic.
Pyro would have to entirely change to accommodate Stoneforge. First by retooling its mana base in which white is an afterthought. Then by trying to make that new mana base work around Blood Moon. In a format bristling with unfair like Modern, you really need to evaluate how many points you're going to gain by shocking yourself down to 14 and playing Squire into Batterskull when you could just ended the game turn 3 because your opponent scoops to Blood Moon.
And then there's Death & Taxes, in which Stoneforge has anti-synergy with literally the entire architecture of the deck of the deck. I'm not a D&T player so I don't have much insight into that, but last time a Stoneforge unban came up, the D&T players were pretty lukewarm on it.
Throw the mana tag around the letter T.
I like the direction of this, but the tuning and wording is pretty off.
The first ability is kind of absurdly pushed. The only 3-drop planeswalker that can kill a creature with a + ability is the already-very-pushed Liliana, the Last Hope. But Lili can't go face, can't kill opposing 'Walkers, can't kill 2-toughness guys, and she certainly can't kill 2 creatures per turn. That ability could possibly be appropriately costed at 2RR though, or as a minus ability at 1RR.
For the second ability: two modes on one Planeswalker ability is a no-no AFAIK, but you can do it just without saying "choose one" like Torch of Defiance's first ability. It should work if restyled as: "Exile the top card of your library. You may cast that card. If you don't, ~ deals 3 damage to target creature player." Note that that's an upgrade since you can decide which mode to choose after you know what's on top, but it gets around the mechanical inconsistency. Alternately, take another page from Chandra, ToD and split it into two abilities with the same loyalty cost.
As for the second ability's balance, it's probably fine although often weaker than her +1 (but that's not this ability's fault). I do like the mechanical flavor of being part Searing Spear, part Jace Beleren -2 but Red.
Minor point on the first ability: it should probably read "...among one or two targets" since that's consistent with WotC's wording.
"generic Chandra ult"
I would love to have a playable 3-drop Chandra. Really like the direction of this one even if the tuning is a bit off yet!
I'd be really surprised if Wizard's Retort were what Delver needed to claw its way up from ~Tier 3, especially since a flipped Delver loses its Wizard subtype.
Apart from Delver, I can't see a deck being improved by jamming a bunch of Wizards in the hope of getting off a Turn-2 Counterspell (which, let's face it, isn't anything more than "just good" to begin with). Or the nonexistent wizards.dec becoming viable for that reason.
Impossible to say for sure of course, but for me personally Retort is a huge yuck. Wizards might be pretty good in Standard though, so this is all just in terms of Modern.
IDK about these cards themselves, but the colorless after the colored symbols is driving me bonkers.
The permission the format needs most is reliably countering turn-3 spells on the draw (Blood Moon, Liliana, Storm chain if possible, TKS or Smasher if they go nuts on the Sol Lands, etc.). That's why Logic Knot is run at 3+ in a lot of lists even though frankly it's a meh card that's terrible in multiples and has anti-synergy with the best Blue card in the format.
Prohibit does zilch for that. By the time you have mana to counter the format's game-ending 3- and 4-drops, they've already curved out over you. You'll be able to hit something eventually, but that's just not enough. And if overpaying for counters (which you do often with Prohibit) were good, Syncopate would be playable.
I can see getting a new 2CMC counter that does good things for the format (not to mention just Counterspell), but Prohibit is IMO just not one of them.
Edit: Neither is Wizards' Retort.
They do print strict upgrades to core staples like this from time to time. But I do think that this would be a good candidate for UU. This is a solid enough card that the extra hurdle is probably warranted.
Don't the best cantrip in the format being green. x.x
To me, there are two issues at work here, which often end up being conflate. (I admit I’m guilty of that myself.)
Issue 1: How viable is Control?
Issue 2: What does Control have to do to achieve that level of viability?
The answer to Issue 1 seems to be “Hovering around T2 for the most part.” I don’t mind that; I never seek out a deck because it’s T1 decks, unless what I’m fooling around with ends up at T1 (which happens time to time). There’s clearly room for new goodies to be introduced into Control, bur it’s not like it’s at the very bottom of the barrel. You can bring it to FNM and do fine.
It’s Issue 2 that feels gross to me. Modern’s skew of threats vs. answers has gotten to the point that to put up those OK but not stellar results, Control pretty much needs to tool itself into a bad Ponza deck. I like Control because I like evaluating game states and matching answers to threats in the most profitable manner possible. Remand – Blood Moon is pretty much the polar opposite of that.
Blue Moon/Breach Moon does look promising (especially as Thoughtseize loses points), but I’d be lying if I said I was jumping for joy at the thought. I’ll gladly start trading resources with my opponent again once we have the tools to do so profitably.
On Teferi, he seems more like Gideon Jura than Jace, the Mind Sculptor to me. Gideon doesn't draw us cards obviously, but they're both 5-drops with repeatable removal (with stipulations) and some method of gaining card advantage. I'd be evaluating those to against each other, separately of Jace.
That's just speaking in terms of the main deck. For sideboard, I can't imagine wanting to replace Elspeth, Sun's Champion if I feel like I need a huge, swingy planeswalker.
Those are both really promising vs. Humans. Both help get around the biggest problems of having various answers removed and blanked while the others are taxed. Preordain by making you a little better at grabbing what you need when you need, and Stoneforge with the strong walling power and life gain.
The great thing about Stoneforge vs. Humans is that while very powerful, it has plenty of counterplay. Freebooter can still name Batterskull, Reflector Mage can buy plenty of time by bouncing the Germ, you can just Meddling Mage the Mystic, and the sideboard has Vithian Renegades. It just adds one more "must-answer" card for Humans to deal with.
The one thing I find worrying about it is that it's actually pretty resilient to removal between its threat density, Thalia, MedMage, and Freebooter. To such an extent that I seem to remember seeing data indicating it had even-to-positive matchups against the removal decks that should be policing it. But it's nothing Stoneforge Mystic wouldn't swing back around, I'm sure.
I'm biased since I never liked Fish but kept trying to make disruptive aggro work, so I'm happy to have found a deck that hits that spot for me. I'm hoping we'll see some healthier numbers in the coming months as the meta adapts to Humans and H1.