MTGNexus

@drmarkb Thanks for the recap. Anything that negatively impact infects is meaningful, this change may even rise to the level of significant.

Splinter Twin unban coming soon I guess. It is added to the list of bonus cards in MH2. Doesn't make sense to me to include it otherwise since it is a Modern focuses set. I don't like it but lets wait and see what happens. This is the only post I will dedicate to Splinter Twin.

iTaLenTZ wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Splinter Twin unban coming soon I guess. It is added to the list of bonus cards in MH2. Doesn't make sense to me to include it otherwise since it is a Modern focuses set. I don't like it but lets wait and see what happens. This is the only post I will dedicate to Splinter Twin.

If you're talking about Splinter Twin being added to The List, that really doesn't mean anything. Cards from all throughout Magic's history can be added (in this same update, they added Animate Dead to The List), and by your logic, we'd have to conclude that Bridge from Below is also getting unbanned, which I don't really imagine them doing when we're about to get Magus of the Bridge.

Splinter Twin would be a terrible unban right now. That means WOTC will probably be inclined to do it. gg.

I can't even imagine Twin being good in today's meta. Why play a bad control deck when you can play Heliod, with tutors and amazing backup beat down plans? I mean, I would play the living hell out of it, but not because I think it's the best thing to be doing. Especially when real control decks are no longer unplayable trash and would rip it to shreds.

robertleva wrote: ↑

2 years ago

So yeah, expect to see grief combo all over the place. Now picture getting hit with it on turn 1 before you have even played a card. It's so devastating you are basically ruined right there. Dont forget, after he is done ripping 3 cards from your hand he's still on the table swinging at you. And oh look! I drew another ephemerate. I'll cast it when you try to kill the grief, or maybe I'll bounce it during your draw step for lulz! Talk about unfun! When combos are unfun + busted af = ban hammer.

I'm not quite sure about the 15% number, but lets take that as being accurate. You're going to win 15% of games for free essentially. Even if the deck only goes 40/60 otherwise that would put you at a 49% win rate overall which isn't a bad spot to be.

I'm not sure what the top build is going to end up being, but this seems really strong.

All we can count on is WOTC making the worst possible choices imaginable. These idiots couldn't find their Azcantas with an Expedition Map.

Yeah the day Splinter Twin comes back is the same day that the original artifact lands come back for affinity.

I've never really understood the fascination with Splinter twin deck players. It dominated too much and it was insanely hard for any other deck to actually interact with meaningfully. Whether its still viable in todays modern is debatable considering the sorta meta that's around atm.

EonAon wrote: ↑

2 years ago

It dominated too much and it was insanely hard for any other deck to actually interact with meaningfully.

It was borderline at best, and was easily interacted with using multiple, broad, main deck interaction like creature removal, discard, and counterspells. The myths and legends of the mighty Twin far surpass the actual realities. And honestly there have been dozens top tier decks decks that were/are more obnoxious and more difficult to interact with than Twin ever was. That's all I'll say on the matter. 🤷‍♂️

Wasn't the main cited issue with Twin that they thought it was keeping other UR strategies from seeing daylight, and thus 'reducing diversity' but what played out instead was that even without twin, those strategies generally just sucked, or wound up banworthy themselves related to the faithless looting ban? In that sense, I suspect they'll wait until we have at least two other top tier UR strategies that don't seem to be ban risks that they think can compete with Twin (rather than just have twin inserted into them or end up with better numbers than them) before they unban twin, just to excuse why they unbanned it.

if it was legal today, the new card Expressive Iteration could be helpful to find the combo.

and this is my last post on the twin. I remember, talk about it is still prohibited on this thread...

cfusionpm wrote: ↑

2 years ago

It was borderline at best, and was easily interacted with using multiple, broad, main deck interaction like creature removal, discard, and counterspells. The myths and legends of the mighty Twin far surpass the actual realities. And honestly there have been dozens top tier decks decks that were/are more obnoxious and more difficult to interact with than Twin ever was. That's all I'll say on the matter.

You keep repeating that and yet it was the best deck in the format, with it's supposed worse matchups (Jund/Abzan) being at worst 50/50. Control was awful and barely relevant, while Delver was relevant for a couple of months until Probe got banned. We've beaten this dead horse more than enough, but you still find the time to push the narrative that it wasn't a problem.

That said, I don't know how good it would be now, with Prowess where it's at or the tools Control has now. If they unbanned anything I'd rather they helped artifact decks that they decimated with the banning of Opal (by unbanning it), rather than add another flavor of URx combo/tempo deck akin to UR Breach, which has been putting up results lately.

The ONLY reason I wouldn't care about a Twin unban at this point is because of the power level of MH2. It would be white noise with all the new strats that are being looked it. Dredge is gross again, Rx prowess is probably the lowest hanging fruit for red mages these days.

Eh personally I think the evoke Elemental Incarnations are going to be big for three months and then only Grief and occasionally Solitude will pop up randomly.

Empherea Grief may or may not be banworthy but people still forget in their combo delight that you still have to have three cards to start the chain and yeah depending on mulligans you could totally put your opponent off the chances of winning on turn one. You wanting to pitch said cards is a whole nother story.

Solitude is a bit different that I could see a control build use it as extra removal since it can actually flash itself in without evoke and still get its ability.

Subtlety would have been more useful as a negate, but as essence scatter plus planeswalker counter at 4cc to two cards lost, blue has much better things to do.

Fury is a standard card dressed up in a modern set. It really feels the most ah hell what could we do but not too pushed cause red.

Endurance is sorta good but other than niche applications atm I cant think of a deck it needs to defend against or a reason that Gaea's Blessing isnt superior. Maybe this is the directly Commander card of the set?

EonAon wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Yeah the day Splinter Twin comes back is the same day that the original artifact lands come back for affinity.

I've never really understood the fascination with Splinter twin deck players. It dominated too much and it was insanely hard for any other deck to actually interact with meaningfully. Whether its still viable in todays modern is debatable considering the sorta meta that's around atm.

To be fair, bringing the artifact lands back wouldn't be awful now. With Mox Opal gone, Affinity disappeared. Hardened Scales just barely hangs on, but just barely and it wouldn't play as many of the artifact lands anyways. That could bring back a deck that suffered collateral damage to Opals other problems.

EonAon wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Eh personally I think the evoke Elemental Incarnations are going to be big for three months and then only Grief and occasionally Solitude will pop up randomly.

Empherea Grief may or may not be banworthy but people still forget in their combo delight that you still have to have three cards to start the chain and yeah depending on mulligans you could totally put your opponent off the chances of winning on turn one. You wanting to pitch said cards is a whole nother story.

Solitude is a bit different that I could see a control build use it as extra removal since it can actually flash itself in without evoke and still get its ability.

Subtlety would have been more useful as a negate, but as essence scatter plus planeswalker counter at 4cc to two cards lost, blue has much better things to do.

Ephemerate is already a playable deck, pairing it with Grief opens up the possibility of a core WB rather than WU deck. What the third color is, I'm not sure, but we already know that green pairs well with Ephemerate and that color combo. We also know that red could be good.

As far as deck numbers go, if you need 20 black cards to pitch and assume you need 23 lands, that leaves 17 non black cards a deck could include at the most. Adding Ephemerate leaves 13 others, maybe a SFM package as many good Ephemerate decks have done leaves you with 7. Which covers third color removal. And anything else is black/multi color.

Definitely seems doable with tons of value engines and methods to close out a game.

On it's own though, Subtlety is the most broken of the bunch. Don't under estimate that card. Traditionally, creatures that also act as counterspells have done pretty well in any format they're in.

I would love to see Artifact Lands legal in a format that has Karn, The Great Creator. Go ahead. Run em.

Many bans from years ago are so laughably irrelevant today.

Funnily enough, so far it seems that whilst everyone was going nuts over the evoke creatures, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer was actually stealing the show, What a flavour win. There also appears to be another Hogaak-esque graveyard deck featuring Feasting Troll King, although the jury is out on how busted it is.

Aazadan wrote: ↑

2 years ago

On it's own though, Subtlety is the most broken of the bunch. Don't under estimate that card. Traditionally, creatures that also act as counterspells have done pretty well in any format they're in.

Eh I would argue that, since all the others I found on the gatherer were copies of Negate, Mana Leak, or Counterspell which have wider rages of use than Essence Scatter even with the planeswalker tag added on. I will admit that last tag on saves it somewhat but its still very very narrow.

@Beascape Ragavan is good and the dash is ok to sneak in when you can but it being legendary really hurts it. Very workable but unless more cheap treasure support is made (which is entirely possible considering how design is going now) its hard to say how much play in 1cc red space it actually will have considering the utility of the other cards.

Aazadan wrote: ↑

2 years ago

To be fair, bringing the artifact lands back wouldn't be awful now. With Mox Opal gone, Affinity disappeared. Hardened Scales just barely hangs on, but just barely and it wouldn't play as many of the artifact lands anyways. That could bring back a deck that suffered collateral damage to Opals other problems.

Artifact lands are useless, not only because of Karn as others noted, but also because they don't really add anything to either Affinity (Robots, really) or Scales, or hell, even Urza or Dice Factory decks. Modern has Legacy level artifact hate and artifact decks are playing with mediocre cards. At least Opal gave them the speed to be competitive. (And before anyone starts listing broken decks, no, KCI was by itself broken, as was Oko, Astrolabe, Uro and Emry is still absurd).

Aazadan wrote: ↑

2 years ago

On it's own though, Subtlety is the most broken of the bunch. Don't under estimate that card. Traditionally, creatures that also act as counterspells have done pretty well in any format they're in.

For once, I think White got the best of the cycle. While Grief has the obvious "combo" and is splashy enough, Solitude is both a removal and very good blink target, but also a decent body that can stabilize/race. I can't see Subtlety doing much outside of heavily Blue decks that don't really splash a removal color.

EonAon wrote: ↑

2 years ago

@Beascape Ragavan is good and the dash is ok to sneak in when you can but it being legendary really hurts it. Very workable but unless more cheap treasure support is made (which is entirely possible considering how design is going now) its hard to say how much play in 1cc red space it actually will have considering the utility of the other cards.

From what I've seen, Ragavan is more of a Tempo/Midrange card, rather than an Aggro card. Your deck needs to clear the way for Ragavan, but when it connects, the Treasure can REALLY push you ahead. And Dash can have some advantages of not really playing into wraths or sorcery speed removal (Planeswalkers etc.).

Pre-order of Solitude is sold out in most online stores. Looks like the hype is strong on this one.

Tzoulis wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Artifact lands are useless, not only because of Karn as others noted, but also because they don't really add anything to either Affinity (Robots, really) or Scales, or hell, even Urza or Dice Factory decks. Modern has Legacy level artifact hate and artifact decks are playing with mediocre cards. At least Opal gave them the speed to be competitive. (And before anyone starts listing broken decks, no, KCI was by itself broken, as was Oko, Astrolabe, Uro and Emry is still absurd).

That's why they would be safe. The Affinity mechanic is the only thing that can really abuse it, and that deck wouldn't be stronger with those lands and without Opal than it would have been had it still had Opal. It was a playable deck previously, but hadn't been a top deck for some time.

EonAon wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Eh I would argue that, since all the others I found on the gatherer were copies of Negate, Mana Leak, or Counterspell which have wider rages of use than Essence Scatter even with the planeswalker tag added on. I will admit that last tag on saves it somewhat but its still very very narrow.

Spellstutter Sprite, Spell Queller, etc, these cards are not Negate, Mana Leak, or Counterspell. They still see actual play.

Aazadan wrote: ↑

2 years ago

EonAon wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Eh I would argue that, since all the others I found on the gatherer were copies of Negate, Mana Leak, or Counterspell which have wider rages of use than Essence Scatter even with the planeswalker tag added on. I will admit that last tag on saves it somewhat but its still very very narrow.

Spellstutter Sprite, Spell Queller, etc, these cards are not Negate, Mana Leak, or Counterspell. They still see actual play.

Technically Spellstutter is three cards Clash of Wills, Rune Snag, and Priest of Titania sorta merged together. Which taken together is sorta a play on mana leak.

Spell Queller is a U/W Oblivion Ring for 4cc or less.

My point is that most of the heavily played creature based counters are very wide counters with applications to many different card types. Yes Blue has a few very very narrow counters stapled to creatures that see some play like Judge's Familiar and occasionally Siren Stormtamer but those are cheap and good threaten cards.

The Fluff wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Pre-order of Solitude is sold out in most online stores. Looks like the hype is strong on this one.

The density of white cards needed to make this free means it will likely be in HEAVY Wx creature decks. UWx decks don't actually run that many white cards, and the ones they do are generally things they want (Teferis or narrow SB hate cards) or mostly do the same thing (Path to Exile). I've played a lot of UW and there are very few times I have a spare white card I would throw away to get rid of a creature. That being said, it's still VERY good, but it all depends on how often you can cast it for free and how relevant the body is to you.

I jammed some games tonight with UW and Bant Stoneforge. Counterspell was nice. Kaldra Compleat was hit and miss. GDS conceded on the spot, and against another UW, I never fetched it, and instead grabbed BS. The only other new card I tried was Sanctifier en-vec, which was a BEATING any time it resolved out of the board. Didn't run into any Grief, and only saw Subtlety once, which was just OK. Never countered anything against me, and only came down as a 3/3 Flash Flier that died to a flashed in Clique blocker...

Yeah I don't really think solitude impacts the game the way grief can. It's cool in theory but doesnt UW control have better things to put in their deck? Same goes for subtlety.

EDIT: To elaborate a bit, both cards suffer from the same weakness...what if they are no targets for the effect? Grief is more universal, and its effect is strong early or late.

Got a question here since this is the most active thread on the modern forums. Does the testing and possibility of the new modular creatures need its own thread or should it carry on in the Affinity thread? I say this because I see nothing I would possibly want that actually has the affinity mechanic to include like Thoughtcast or even the new esper sphinx which is just too expensive even for modular.