MTG Salvation

I’m pretty sure if the BAB was some awesome highly relevant card to modern we would all bemoan the idea of having to figure out how to afford it. And if this was the only printing it would only be available in foil.

Flusterstorm not being highly relevant to Modern makes it a great BAB, in my opinion. I hope this was chosen exactly for this reason and I hope that it shows how the community groaned over Nexus of Fate being a BAB.

... Still just hope though.

Yes, please.

This week of having done prerelease events then not being able to draft it is frustrating.

Being unbeatable in the late game feels like a weird statement to a control player, it's literally the goal of the deck to create an insurmountable advantage.

This is just begging to follow Liliana's -9.

https://whatsinstandard.com/
Typically what I use to figure out Standard. Doesn't give a specific date, but rotation is always in Q4 around September or October.

If they're blowing up Leyline on T1, why are they not blowing up your Relic when you play it? Nature's Claim hits both artifacts and enchantments, as does Assassin's Trophy, and Ancient Grudge is much more common than Ray of Revelation.

I find it hard to believe you're seeing Leylines hit the bin when Relics are somehow immune to the exact same anti-hate and more. Dredge players know that their Whir Prison match is abysmal so they pack more artifact hate. Relic makes less sense than Leyline or RIP for those reasons.

20% of the meta being Phoenix is certainly stunning, but I still think Dredge is the scary one here. I'm partially on Gokurou's side with the Dredge question, but we certainly differ on Looting.

I just can't accept a 1cmc card with such a high potential card advantage and no drawback. At it's worst it upgrades 2 cards in your hand, at it's best you discard 2 Phoenix for what is essentially "Draw 4".

Isn’t there some conflict when you say Modern is one of the best it’s ever been then also say “Modern will hopefully self regulate itself”? I’m not saying you need to show some panic that Modern is going to crumble or anything, I just think these two sentiments look strange together.

I guess the question is: Does Modern need to change (self regulate) or is it good to stay as is?

I know many people want Oubliette, but Black could really use a 2cmc unconditional exile target creature at instant speed. 2cmc makes it different enough from Path that I think you could even get away with a small bonus stapled to it... maybe.

I do think a 2cmc Nekratall would see Pauper play though.

I hope Force of Will is too good for Modern, then we can just ban it and forget that accident happened. To me it's a signal that it's okay to smash game wins right up to T1, and quite frankly I'm not okay with that. We don't even have Counterspell yet, I hope WotC has the wherewithal to chill and see how it pans out first.

There's plenty of cards from Legacy that can add new strategy to Modern without calling all decks to abide by a Force check to play the game. Because if Force is too good and they won't ban it... then what? As much as I like playing control, I never want to have to add FoW to my decks.

That feel when the most recent standard set has more modern impact then a set called "Modern" Horizons. The reason they gave is complete horse crap too. "We didn't want the reprints to outshine the new cards." Here's a thought, PRINT BETTER NEW CARDS. To think the card counterspell would even have any kind of sizable impact on modern is out and out laughable. If COUNTERSPELL is outshining the new cards in a set designed for eternal formats (Commander, modern, and legacy), then there is something fundamentally flawed with the sets design. We're 90+ cards into spoiler season and the cards you have good lands, two to three cards that might, MIGHT warrant testing, a bunch of sideboard cards, and chaff. It's not even interesting chaff. I wasn't expecting modern welcoming legacy staples and power-creep up the yin-yang like some people seemed to want, but I was expecting more innovation then dime-store bootlegs of legacy staples, random reprints of cards past there prime, Joke cards that feel more at home in an un-set, and snow (Who the heck wanted snow as a returning mechanic?)

I'm an older player. I've played this game close to twelve years, have legacy, modern and commander decks, and enjoy fun complicated draft formats. I was honestly excited to play with modern horizons cards because it felt like a set designed for someone like me. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and them to reveal more interesting cards for draft, more powerful cards for modern and legacy, and commander cards that are actually fun in a multiplayer setting and not oh that's a cool commander, but if you can say "We didn't want the reprints to outshine the new cards." with a straight face when talking about counterspell, freaking counterspell, then I'm beginning to realize it's never going to. I do sincerely hope I'm wrong, but currently this set feels like a joke with us as the punchline and the canopy lands as the cash grab. Not. A. Fan.

I'm just ready to facedesk when the white one turns out to be lifegain

Quote from Arkmer »

Translation? Or is it just fetch for anything?

Terramorphic Expanse that fetches untapped but costs 1 life.

Seems like the perfect day to unban and announce a reprint of Stoneforge. And give us 5 allied swords, too.

Quote from Arkmer »

Well that was fast... Probably precludes Counterspell. I'm conflicted, but this is very likely just fine if not hardly playable. Not hitting creatures is a real issue. I'm speculating that Prohibit sees more play than the FoNz in the current meta.

I'm on my backup prayer now; unconditional 2cmc Black creature exile.

A lot of the cards that facilitate many of the broken creatures though (Looting, Manamorphose, Cathartic Reunion, Stirrings) get hit by this though. I think it's a big win overall. Maybe not 4x staple like FoW, but I could see running 1-3 in any heavy blue deck moving forward.

Worth noting that the BaB (Flusterstorm) is both rare and non-foil.

Motivation for playing modern seems to be dwindling by the week. I asked myself why I make this a priority still, as attendance is continuing to fall week in and week out. Last Friday we had 11 people registered for Modern FNM, when it was fairly common to have anywhere from 20 to 40 people on average. Not sure if I am even going out tonight. The new B&R update, as well as Modern Horizons can't come soon enough.

Quote from cfusionpm »

I've asked this question on both Facebook and Twitter, but how does a company fairly sell 12,000 units of something to 50,000+ people who want it? What system would be fair? What would survive the DDOS-attack levels of internet traffic? I have an example (what is done for San Diego Comic Con tickets) but I'm curious how others would solve the issues facing this product.

Usually no matter what the solution people will be butthurt. The only answer is if everyone gets one and it's magically worth 10 times what they paid for it even if it's an unlimited print run.

Quote from Arkmer »

@eBay savvy users
Sooo... post Mythic Edition run. I have one question.

I got my brother to lend me his account for this so I should be okay trying to get 2 and 2.
On my account I have 1 paid, and 1 pending.
On his account I can see 2 paid for in his PayPal but nothing in his eBay for purchases.

Do I have 1, 2, 3, or 4 mythic editions?

This was pretty wild...

yeah it was crazy lol. the world vs. 12k boxes with the main victim being the server.

honestly i dont think there is any way to tell. the action seems to have died down, so im assuming its truly over. those who confirmed the purchase, had a payment pending, and then eventually cancelled can probably be ruled out. with instances of order confirmation + payment (ie money changing accounts) look the most promising. anything with one half or the other are probably up in the air.

just conjecture mind you, but thats my take on it. so highest chance of getting at least 1, less for the other 2 cases with your brothers account, and lowest for the one just pending. with some chance you get 0 or all 4

Quote from tronix »

what precedents do we have to work with? the only that come to mind are infect and amulet bloom where turn 4 or something akin to it were cited as reasons for bans.

even then you have to consider context. such as infect with probe being able to check if its okay to go for it, and bloom having overwhelming mid to lategame backup plans. if im reading things correctly what the neoform combo has going for it is pact of negation for protection and it doesnt use the GY to go off. tbh without more information ive no clue how those compare (in relation to improving the decks overall efficacy or whatever).

Back in 2015, I estimated that Amulet Bloom won approximately 23% of its games (estimated from a coverage and MTGO sample) before T4. This included concessions by an opponent. The confidence interval of that range, calculated in two independent samples, was 15%-30% in the smaller N sample, and 17%-29% in the larger sample. Seething Song Storm averaged about a 25% pre-T4 kill using similar methods. Based on this, I'm comfortable saying if a deck exceeds 20% for pre-T4 wins and is also top-tier, it's probably in trouble.

When I played Cheeri0s a lot on MTGO in 2017, I had about a 75% MWP overall with about 200 games total in the sample, winning on T2 or T3 in an outrageous 40% of games. Obviously, nothing from Cheeri0s ate a ban, so the "true" win turn in a larger sample was undoubtedly lower. The deck was also not strong enough to catch on at a top-tier level. This shows that single-player samples don't necessarily reflect the MTGO-wide sample. We need more data to draw meaningful conclusions about potential bans and T4 rule violators.

I did a coverage-based analysis for both Counters Company and Affinity in a sample of approximately 60 Affinity games and 40 Company games. In those analyses, I found that Affinity averaged a pre-T4 win rate of approximately 5.3% with a 95% CI somewhere between 0% and 14.2%. For Company, it was 3.5% with the CI at 0%-10.7%. Neither of these decks had bans, so I'm comfortable saying the deck needs to be winning at least 10%+ of its games before T4 in order to be on Wizards' radar.

Finally, I remember an analysis I did of over 100 Caleb Scherer MTGO Storm games back when Baral first came out and Storm looked a little scary. During that time, we calculated an approximate 12%-14% (don't remember the exact #) pre-T4 win-rate. This iteration of Storm also did not eat a ban, so I'm comfortable with 12%-14% being a safe range.

Overall, based on all this, I'd estimate that a deck is in danger if it is BOTH top-tier AND wins approximately 20%+ of games before T4.