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Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 11:44 pm
by The Fluff
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Arkmer wrote:
4 years ago
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
First is the notion that bans solve this problem. These are short-term fixes that just patch small issues until the next issue arises...
I agree that another issue will arise in the future, but if power levels are high (by whatever measure you prefer) how do you lower that level without banning the high power cards? Printing higher level removal just invalidates more things below those high level threats and forces people to play the things you were trying to counter in the first place.

I don't feel like I can get my thoughts out right without an example so bear with me while I use waaay overly simple cards to try to make my point: If I (pretending to be the authority of all MtG) want to rein in Goblin Guide because it's too good and feel Raging Goblin is the appropriate level of card I want to have, what am I designing to make Goblin Guide bad that doesn't affect Raging Goblin without being overly engineered?

It's much harder to print something to fit that bill without hammering 30 other things than it is to just ban Goblin Guide.

Now, I'm not disagreeing about the consumer confidence. It's absolutely a fact that bans hurt that and people get upset losing decks/cards/whatever. I'm talking purely about sculpting a meta (from whatever end goal perspective).

What is the best tool to sculpt a meta with from WotC's seat on high?
I'm not saying you can't ban cards. There's a lot of broken %$#% that probably needs to be banned in a few formats. For example, Veil of Summer. What a god awful design, regardless of the data that supports its bannability. Here's what I am saying a few things about the constant, clamorous ban mania in this thread and elsewhere.
it's a one mana cryptic command against my esper delve deck. Well, not asking for a ban... but the card is just really strong against my deck. I'm glad most people don't pack 4 of it in their green deck sideboards.
Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
And again fluff, this is NOT modern as usually it was over years and years and years. That's wrong! It's like going to work and immediately you have a new desk, new people which works with you, new chef, new working times, less money you earn for more work, Even a new company and someone say: this is your work, deal with it because this is your work. No man, it's not my work! That's not so easy man, it's unreal and we can change it. Powercreep is new and we need to change it
modern is not your "work", you don't have a "desk" here. No one is forcing you to play modern. If you feel unpleasant that the powercreep is too much, there are always lower power level formats that you might enjoy.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 11:45 pm
by Mtgthewary
You didn't understood this example it seems. Sleep again. Enough is enough like gkouru sayed allready

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 11:57 pm
by Mtgthewary
Eldrazi Tron beats urza on finals. Now you all can be happy again and say it's all fine, lol

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 11:58 pm
by Amalgam
Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
I allready explained this. Please read it again. Nature of mkm series is allways bg decks and control like it was only 3% hoogak on mkm series short bevore it was banned, in the hoogak timeline. Urza has only 5% and goes into top 8 as the best result deck and now it's on finals. Think about this please
Even if said argument about a single Oko deck making top 8 of a medium sized tournament and finals held any weight to begin with, the deck just got 2-0 on camera in one sided fashion to Eldrazi Tron.
Oko is one of the best decks in the format don't get me wrong but you might as well be someone from the Salem witch trials with how you treat everything like such a witchhunt

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 11:59 pm
by Mtgthewary
Look again, it was not the only oko deck in top 8 bevore you arguing like this. Thx wotc for this powercreep everywhere

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 12:02 am
by Amalgam
Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
Look again, it was not the only oko deck in top 8 bevore you arguing like this. Thx wotc for this powercreep everywhere
Sorry I misquote and meant Urza not Oko as that was the deck you seem to have the biggest amount of hate for. Also there is nothing wrong with the bant Oko deck. If we had to argue for a card to be removed it would be veil rather than Oko itself in modern anyway.
Also I'm not denying there is powercreep as every format has been power creeped recently but the fact that Modern isn't just about a single deck, Urza.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 12:05 am
by Amalgam
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
It's a positive thing that multiple people openly express their concerns about Modern, being in a bad shape. Pioneer dredged those issues, indeed. It's the broken format, where more bans will keep hapenning. 2019 is not the only thing to blame in Modern. In fact, I consider this a terrible statement. It's the large card pool. It's 8th/9th edition, it's some cards from Mirrodin, or other weird sets that is the problem.
I'm going to continue to push back against this suggestion that Modern is "THE broken format," as you said. Modern is just more obviously broken than other formats because a) games are literally ending earlier because decks are faster, and b) veteran Moderners (and jaded Moderners) are more inclined to concede games and recognize they are over. But Modern is just one of many broken, profoundly wrecked contemporary formats. Standard, Brawl, Historic, and Pioneer will all continue to face similar issues both now and in the future due to bad decisions at the design/dev/testing level. Since 2017, Modern has seen six bans (GGT, Probe, KCI, Bridge, Hogaak, Looting). Since 2017, Standard has seen 13 (!!) bans, 14 if you count Nexus in BO1 Arena. If anything, Standard is "THE" broken format of the last two years. More bans are not going to solve this issue, and more ban soundbytes on social media won't solve it either. Content creators and players need to be outraged about the design-level issues that create these problems, not the after-the-fact bandages.
I am pushing back your logic as well, which in my opinion, is just wrong and missing a lot of information.
If anything, and going by your logic, Modern is the ban format for ages now, some of those, such as Twin, unnecessary ones. How many bans did we see each year? And we all know there is a chance the colourless decks receive another one right now. The problem with your logic is that you are including two years, which were horrendous for Standard. It's greatly positioned now, and tbh, a beautiful and fair format. At the moment, if you bring a Standard player to Modern, and give him to experience the T3 Karns, T2 5/5's after TS with Denial, T3 Titans, and mainly T3 infinite thopters, he will be highly disappointed from the format. You know why? Because the more unfair play in Standard atm is T4 play fires of invention, play a teferi and something else, go.
But, I won't continue with that comparison, as I think it's wrong to the very core of it.

If you can't notice the difference between those two formats, we will have to settle to "agree to disagree".
Obviously Modern is the format to play the strongest cards, but enough is enough. As cfusionpm , even if Twin was unbanned, it would just be another deck in a sea of unfair decks, and combos. That's what Modern is.
Once, you could play fair decks, and those kind of decks were at like 50% of the meta. It's something like 20% now.

I guess there is Pioneer for us that does not want to lose to a T3 Karn or T2-3 TKS to a super lopsided matchup.
Imo, Modern is full of those lopsided matchups at the moment. It's also super unfair and completely broken, to the point no control can exist in Tier 1. At the MCM series somebody posted, an E-Tron player just went T3 Karn - T4 Mycosynth Lattice and stole the game out of the opponent that way. The game lasted 3 minutes. It was this. Just this.

Anyway, I can't keep up with this conversation. If you like Modern at the moment, it's your right. Just note that I was the one that usually defended Modern from anyone that was bashing it. Sorry, I would be a hypocrite to keep doing it, while I think the format is in such a terrible state.

I guess whoever doesn't like Modern now, should just go play Pioneer instead. I would like to see Twin and Pod unbanned, but I guess one can dream. They think those decks would be better than the current Urza deck. Sadly, no.
Except said Pioneer format has it's own major issues in different ways. As stated previously in the thread the Pioneer format is incredibly unhealthy right now and dominated by solitaire based decks or hyper aggro. The format has no answers and it will continue to get worse with how wizards track record for standard, power creeping every format in the game has anything to say about it

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 1:18 am
by Tzoulis
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
OuAt, Copter, Field will be banned sooner or later. Pioneer is still a draft format, but even then, losing to a mono black aggro deck and vamps and zombies attacking you down, is 'OK' and something I can accept. Getting turn 3'd in an atrocious way, this can't happen in Pioneer.
I'd argue Pioneer is as fair as an eternal fomat can be and I disagree with it being in a terrible shape. I think it's healthy and interesting, full of decisions, even with those 3 cards being 'too good'.
You're projecting what you want, not what WotC will do. They didn't ban them right after the SCG Invitational, so you're hoping they will. I really don't see how you say that Pioneer is as fair as an eternal format can be and then bash Modern when:

1. Pioneer is a %$#% of ramp and aggro decks, rarely interacting with one another
2. It's still too early to even pass judgement on a 2 month format.

But hey:
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Day 2 GP Columbus, with like archetypes grouped
21 Tron Variants 17.60%
16 Whirza Variants 13.40%
15 Death's Shadow Variants 12.60%
7 Burn 5.80%
7 Jund 5.80%
6 Humans 5.00%
DS, Jund, Burn and Humans at the top tables, but let's ignore them, because bias. If that's the meta you have your vaunted 2015 metagame of Rocks vs Paper vs Scissors, but there's no deck that you like there.

Never mind that Control (especially UW Miracles) absolutely wrecks all of these archetypes, apart from Urza which it struggles against. That's another fair deck in the mix that can easily compete in that meta.

If those numbers stick, and I hazard a guess that Tron with GDS will over perform slightly, then the whining (about Urza) has been way overblown.

By all means though, continue whining about Modern and keep ignoring what me ktk and amalgam have been saying to you are the problems of Pioneer, Modern and Magic in general.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:20 am
by Aazadan
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
It's a positive thing that multiple people openly express their concerns about Modern, being in a bad shape. Pioneer dredged those issues, indeed. It's the broken format, where more bans will keep hapenning. 2019 is not the only thing to blame in Modern. In fact, I consider this a terrible statement. It's the large card pool. It's 8th/9th edition, it's some cards from Mirrodin, or other weird sets that is the problem.
I'm going to continue to push back against this suggestion that Modern is "THE broken format," as you said. Modern is just more obviously broken than other formats because a) games are literally ending earlier because decks are faster, and b) veteran Moderners (and jaded Moderners) are more inclined to concede games and recognize they are over. But Modern is just one of many broken, profoundly wrecked contemporary formats. Standard, Brawl, Historic, and Pioneer will all continue to face similar issues both now and in the future due to bad decisions at the design/dev/testing level. Since 2017, Modern has seen six bans (GGT, Probe, KCI, Bridge, Hogaak, Looting). Since 2017, Standard has seen 13 (!!) bans, 14 if you count Nexus in BO1 Arena. If anything, Standard is "THE" broken format of the last two years. More bans are not going to solve this issue, and more ban soundbytes on social media won't solve it either. Content creators and players need to be outraged about the design-level issues that create these problems, not the after-the-fact bandages.
Don't forget that Legacy and Vintage are having problems too, interestingly enough, suffering from a lack of answers. We just saw Legacy eat a Wrenn and Six ban because the format couldn't handle it, and Vintage took a restriction with Narset. It wouldn't surprise me if it sees a restriction on Oko soon too. In those formats, they're less creature based, and as such have a much harder time dealing with resolved planeswalkers which stems from a lack of decent answer cards to them in the formats, which from a big picture view is really no different than the problems plaguing every other format right now.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:24 am
by Aazadan
Amalgam wrote:
4 years ago
Except said Pioneer format has it's own major issues in different ways. As stated previously in the thread the Pioneer format is incredibly unhealthy right now and dominated by solitaire based decks or hyper aggro. The format has no answers and it will continue to get worse with how wizards track record for standard, power creeping every format in the game has anything to say about it
The old description for Modern decks was "two ships passing in the night". The format is a good deal more interactive from the days when that description was widely used. It is however rather appropriate for Pioneer, although that's not to say that Modern couldn't use more interaction.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 2:44 am
by cfusionpm
Aazadan wrote:
4 years ago
The old description for Modern decks was "two ships passing in the night". The format is a good deal more interactive from the days when that description was widely used.
Is it though? Because as someone who exclusively plays(ed) interactive decks, this definitely does not feel like that is the case.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 5:55 am
by Aazadan
cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Is it though? Because as someone who exclusively plays(ed) interactive decks, this definitely does not feel like that is the case.
Definitely. The most interactive decks in the format are gone (Pod/Twin), but out of the other decks, basically every single deck has adopted some interaction. Most do not seek to entirely play solitaire, decks actually care about who the opponent on the other side of the table is.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:06 am
by cfusionpm
Seems more like the "interaction" which has seen an increase is more along the lines of "I have XYZ hate card I intent to bring in game 2 against this" and "My opponent will likely bring in XYZ against me, so I need to bring in ABC do neutralize or invalidate it."

The correct choice for interaction seems to be to run as little as possible and only include what is absolutely necessary. Then hope that your own plan is strong enough to fight through or ignore your opponent's stuff, and then follow the plan above. Maybe it's just my bad luck, but I seem to face decks which follow this pattern pretty much every time I play in paper, and it's one of the driving reasons I'm moving to sell many of my cards.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:34 am
by Aazadan
Most good interaction in the format is proactive rather than reactive, but that doesn't mean it's not still interaction.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:34 am
by drmarkb
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
It's a positive thing that multiple people openly express their concerns about Modern, being in a bad shape. Pioneer dredged those issues, indeed. It's the broken format, where more bans will keep hapenning. 2019 is not the only thing to blame in Modern. In fact, I consider this a terrible statement. It's the large card pool. It's 8th/9th edition, it's some cards from Mirrodin, or other weird sets that is the problem.
I actually like the 8/9th edition cards. Ensnaring Bridge, Moon, Choke etc. are not issues, they are strengths of the format. I presume you mean those cards as issues, most of 8th/9th is chaff of course, when people have a negative opinion of those sets it is normally Moon/Bridge they dislike. If anything we need more hate permanents, especially for the Planeswalker cancer.

The huge card pool is an issue, but for me it is the fact that it is unbalanced, caught between the Magic:The Gathering and Creatures:The Gathering. Some decks get to make extra mana, some don't. Some permanent types have efficient hate, some don't (sodding planeswalkers). Some decks get permanent acceleration - Mox O- some don't. The imbalance is not color pie imbalance, but random cards being available.
It is the imbalance that hurt and stops self correction. If everyone gets Wasteland, Sol lands, Spirit Guides and Mox Diamond there is no issue. If no one does, no worries. But when some decks get it randomly whilst others don't, you get issues. They tried to fix the format with Forces of V and N but adding more control to the format does not work as you need to draw hate and manipulation in Modern is bad, outside of a few green strategies- where once again we come back to the imbalance - OUAT ok, Ponder not.
It is a muddled format for sure.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:39 am
by drmarkb
'Two ships passimg on the night, one of them on fire' is the general descrption.
Not sure twin was interactive, eot flash t3, probe, twin gg. Still I won't be discussing the sodding deck, I guess a fair few fell in love with it.
I think modern is still two ships.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 10:12 am
by The Fluff
Aazadan wrote:
4 years ago
Most good interaction in the format is proactive rather than reactive, but that doesn't mean it's not still interaction.
I very much prefer being proactive with targeted discard than to use counterspells, because I like to get a look at opponent's hand. Of course, there are situations where counters are still needed.. e,g. against Scapeshift decks, which is why I have a few counters in the sideboard +4 stubs in the main for use against such decks.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 10:35 am
by Mtgthewary
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
That's what I call a horrible Day 2 Metagame breakdown.

Day 2 GP Columbus, with like archetypes grouped
21 Tron Variants 17.60%
16 Whirza Variants 13.40%
15 Death's Shadow Variants 12.60%
7 Burn 5.80%
7 Jund 5.80%
6 Humans 5.00%

like allways decks comes and goes, except urza which stay allways on top. Where here is amulet all talking about? It's gone. It's destroyed. Now look at shadow, some weeks ago Noone played it and in some weeks it will gone too. This is fair and good, decks comes, people adapt, they go.... But urza is there allways. Reason? Easy to see why if we stop selflying. You can't really hate it out because reasons

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 12:22 pm
by Tzoulis
Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
like allways decks comes and goes, except urza which stay allways on top. Where here is amulet all talking about? It's gone. It's destroyed. Now look at shadow, some weeks ago Noone played it and in some weeks it will gone too. This is fair and good, decks comes, people adapt, they go.... But urza is there allways. Reason? Easy to see why if we stop selflying. You can't really hate it out because reasons
Damn it, I knew I should've been playing Urza decks all these years instead of stupid %$#% like Phoenix or UW Control. :/

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:41 pm
by cfusionpm
drmarkb wrote:
4 years ago
'Two ships passimg on the night, one of them on fire' is the general descrption.
Not sure twin was interactive, eot flash t3, probe, twin gg. Still I won't be discussing the sodding deck, I guess a fair few fell in love with it.
I think modern is still two ships.
This is a disingenuous to borderline insulting interpretation of the deck.
What it did was ask opponents: You can choose to play the most simple, basic, broad, and maindeckable answers, or you can choose to ignore me and risk outright losing.

What deck does that today? What deck says "You have to interact with me or lose"? What drawback is there to simply trying to ignore your opponent and race them instead? Or ignore your opponent and go wildly over the top of them instead? And then hope that your sideboard silver bullets + London Mulligan get you there?

It's a joke how brutally punished players are for playing decks that try to interact with each other, rather than being punished for playing ones that don't.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 5:03 pm
by ktkenshinx
Conversion rates! Basically just pasting my Reddit post here.

I'm just going to add in the percentage difference between Day 1 and Day 2. I'll also add their Day 1% --> Day 2%. This helps us see what decks over/underperformed their expected performance from Day 1 to Day 2, and will be useful when we analyze T8/T16/T32/T64. Anything greater than +0% means they overperformed. Anything less means underperformance. We only have 10 Day 1 deck prevalences, so here are those decks sorted by percent difference.
  1. Eldrazi Tron: 31.6% conversion, +4.38% overperformance (5.7% --> 10.08%)
  2. Sultai Whirza: 23.9% conversion, +3.3% overperformance (10.1% --> 13.4%)
  3. G Tron: 23.7% conversion, +1.86% overperformance (5.7% --> 7.56%)
  4. Grixis Death's Shadow: 20.8% conversion, +1.2% overperformance (7.2% --> 8.4%)
  5. Humans: 22.2% conversion, +1.04% overperformance (4% --> 5.04%)
  6. Sultai Death's Shadow: 20% conversion, +.5% overperformance (3.7% --> 4.2%)
  7. Azorius Control: 19.2% conversion, +.3% overperformance (3.9% --> 4.2%)
  8. Jund: 17.5% conversion, -.12% underperformance (6% --> 5.88%)
  9. Amulet Titan: 10.7% conversion, -1.68% underperformance (4.2% --> 2.52%)
  10. Burn: 13% conversion, -2.3% underperformance (8.1% --> 5.8%)
We can also infer that Devoted Druid Combo overperformed, as its Day 2 share (4.2%) is higher than the lowest of the top 10 reported Day 1 shares (Sultai DS at 3.7%).

Selected Day 1 shares on Twitter
Day 2 shares on Twitter

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 5:47 pm
by idSurge
drmarkb wrote:
4 years ago
'Two ships passimg on the night, one of them on fire' is the general descrption.
Not sure twin was interactive, eot flash t3, probe, twin gg. Still I won't be discussing the sodding deck, I guess a fair few fell in love with it.
I think modern is still two ships.
At the time Twin was banned, we didnt play Probe. When people say 'I wish there was more interaction' they mean BGx, and URx. They mean Discard, Removal, Counters. They mean Abrupt Decay, Bolt, Remand, and IoK. They mean Cryptic Command.

They dont mean 'I cast my chalice on 2, thats proactive interaction!'

That said, if I was in the market, I would play the UG/Sultai Urza deck in a heartbeat. There's no way its not the best deck once people put in the reps, and the lists I've seen look amazing.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:54 pm
by True-Name Nemesis
I get that there are people who dislike twin and have a negative view towards 2014 and 2015 for whatever reason, but y'all should really stop trying to disparage those times by presenting false information about Twin or the level of interaction present in that time frame.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:59 pm
by Aazadan
cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
What deck does that today? What deck says "You have to interact with me or lose"?
Almost all of them. Very few decks give zero consideration to who is sitting across the table from them.

Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 11/18/2019)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 7:00 pm
by ktkenshinx
CFB is crushing it with the conversion rate data today:


We can compare initial Day 1 share to their eventual 27+ point share. Ultimately, we'll expand this to the T8/T16/T32/T64 brackets, but 9-3+ is a good start. Looking at that bracket, we see Humans and Azorius Control overperforming all other decks. Both decks made up just 5.2% of Day 1 but jumped to 9.8% of the 27+ bracket. They had the best conversion rate, 20% each, for the most-played Day 1 decks. Sultai Whirza and Mono G Tron had respectable +2% jumps as well, and are just behind Humans and Azorius. Jund (-2%), Amulet Titan (-3.4%), Grixis DS (-3.5%), E Tron (-3.8%), and always laughable Burn (-6.7%) were all big losers going into the 27+ bracket. Excited to see how the T64 and higher brackets affect the picture!