it's the allure of one mana pseudo-cryptic command.. It's not Cryptic Command. It's powerful, and it's very efficient when you can use it, but it equals one of the 6 modes Cryptic offers, and that mode still only works against decks with specific colors. Notably, it's completely useless against whi...

Has Wizards of the Coast ever said how they messed up so badly with Oko? I remember when they banned it, some people complained about their lack of an explanation, even in their separate article that supposedly was supposed to give more light into it (compare it back to their in-depth articles on S...

As Reid Duke said on Twitter, and GK quoted above, bans will always disappoint some people and make others happy. Wizards cannot and should not try to make everyone happy with a ban decision. That's bad leadership and bad management which results in bad decisions. I see some negativity in this threa...

Big day for Modern! Obviously, I'm pretty excited about the changes and think Wizards was on the money with all three. I've already given my rationale for why all three of those cards needed banning and Wizards added in their own plus data; not much more to say except "job well done!" I do...

ktkenshinx RE Hot takes from pros: Again, your analysis is correct, but your conclusions are, a little too quaint I guess is the best way to put it. There is no secret "deeper discussion" taking place by these so-called pros. What you see is what you get. You have correctly identified tha...

Oh Jund making is nice to see. But I think this cements Oko ban plus something from the Urza deck at the bare minimum. At same time I can't see wizards banning more than 3 cards in one go As I wrote on Reddit, the Jund pilot also made T8 with zero byes. That's an impressive feat for any GP, let alo...

3. Hot takes squander the influence of top players/pros/personalities. These people absolutely have a valuable voice in the community. Players hear them, Wizards hears them, and they truly do have unique and valuable game experiences. Hot takes dishonor that experience and voice by trivializing the...

For tomorrow announcement: My expectations : Bans : Arcum's astrolabe, Veil of summer, Once upon a time at least, and maybe Urza lord high artificer, Oko thief of crowns too Seems reasonable and I think most people are in this general category, plus/minus on Urza vs. Opal vs. Astrolabe. But at leas...

Can someone explain me why my Twitter feed has been exploding with "Ponder & Preordain is going to be unbanned" feeds? All of this talk makes more and more certain some cards will be unbanned tomorrow, but Ponder and Preordain are silly options, I feel like. They might, but then decks...

Honestly I know oko is an issue but how would a possible banning look if we banned around other issue cards just to see what happens. How would the meta look if we did the following. Ban Astrolobe, veil, Emery as this alone is a massive nerf to both urza and oko style decks without hitting the key ...

Day 1 tells us what people prefer to play. Day 2 and Top 8 tells us what's actually successful. Definitely, but without Day 1 numbers, we don't have a good sense of what is truly successful. The gold standard of data at these kinds of events is conversion data from Day 1 to Day 2 to T64/32/16/8. Of...

The biggest blight on this format has always been expensive zen fetches and rarity bumps to stuff like tarmogoyf and dark confidant. Modern has a lot of issues right now, but calling rarity bumps and prices the "biggest blight" is definitely inaccurate. There are so many larger issues Mod...

Aazadan - I agree with you. That's why I said in my original post that as a business decision for WOTC that digital is definitely more profitable because the cost to create cards is so much less (no printing, no shipping, etc). From a purely profit standpoint it's the way of the future. I am just a...

https://twitter.com/BasicMountain/status/1215714337743990784 This renews at least a tiny bit of faith into WOTC.... let's see if they can keep it going with Monday's announcement too. :hmm: :party: Remote consultants are a good addition to the team, as it saves Wizards some money but also puts more...

More updates, more bad news for Modern: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/mtg-arena-state-game-january-2020-01-10 This article includes zero mention of Modern but some concrete steps towards Pioneer becoming the Arena nonrotating format of choice: We've also added Pioneer S...

Seems like WoTC finding YET another way to screw around with competitive play now for I wanna say the 3rd time since 2019 began? https://magic.gg/news/2020-grand-prix-player-points-cap Yikes. Everything about this is low-key, or maybe not so low-key, one of the worst pieces of Magic news I've heard...

I would point out though, that most of the ban list would probably end up rebanned. There's 36 cards currently on the ban list, of those 36 there are 18 that have never been in the format (I'm including Dig Through Time in this, because it saw zero play before Treasure Cruises banning). Of those, a...

Re: radical Modern changes I've seen a few posts in here suggesting some more radical shifts to Modern. These include, but are not limited to, banning cards to nuke a specific archetype (RL was mentioning virtually all Dredge staples), changing the cutoff point to Mercadian Masques (I believe this w...

I'm holding off on the article until next week for a few reasons: 1. GP Austin data is super relevant to my GP attendance section. 2. Wizards seems likely to make ban decisions on Monday. They may also make a Modern statement. 3. I want to add article data to the content section, which will take a l...

Thanks for those that provided feedback and @ comments. I think I've addressed almost all of it via edits, either by changing something or sharing my thought on a point you brought up. The big things I haven't addressed are noted below: [mention]Aazadan[/mention] and [mention]Yawgmoth[/mention] re: ...

My article soft-launch draft is up. Please don't share it on any other sites because I'm still looking for feedback and a soft-launch publish is the easiest way to do that. This forum is valuable in that regard because it's a smaller group of committed Modern players who know the format, know its is...

@idsurge I just saw your tweet about cards to consider banning and you named nature's claim as one of them. That is not the first time I've seen that card mentioned as a ban target but I do not understand the idea behind banning nature's claim. It seems to me that there are many many easy replaceme...

Re: bans Lattice, Veil, and OUaT all fit my so-called "nerf ban" model of eliminating problematic cards without killing their core decks. Oko needs to go for format dominance reasons at this point, even if it's the core of certain UGx strategies. At a minimum, all four of those cards shou...

I...would absolutely hate that. I mean if you want to see when paper dies, its when they begin 'patching' the game. We've had this conversation before and I will continue to go on record with my stance. It hasn't changed: Patching is a SIGNIFICANT net positive for the game and is the ultimate evolu...

I think I finally understand the rationale for stopping video coverage. Hard to complain about stuff when there's no meaningful data and there's no spotlight shined on it. Again, let's not attribute these kinds of actions to unfounded, hyperbolic conspiracy theories. Wizards pulled back video cover...