[Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 07/13/2020)

[cfusionpm]

Lots of things holding Phoenix back. Like random, incidental GY hate for Uro, W6, Oops and TiTi being super susceptible to removal (do they even play that?). Plus it's not as fast as the other fast aggro/combo decks (wow Hammer Time is a real thing...😳), and it's not as resilient as other midrangey decks, like Titan and Rakdos builds.

I pop on for a few matches online about once every week or two. Switching between non-Omnath Uro builds (don't have W6s) and the fetchless Boil Kiki Exarch deck. It's whatever. Maybe I would get more satisfaction in paper. Modern doesn't feel great, but it's also not awful. And without the spotlight of real paper tournaments, I don't foresee anything changing any time soon.

[The Fluff]

Hammer Time? what kind of decks are those?

[cfusionpm]

Hammer Time? what kind of decks are those?

T1: Sigarda's Aid and 0 drop creature
T2: Attack, flash in Colossus Hammer

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/m ... time#paper

[The Fluff]

assuming they went first, being attacked on turn 2 by a 10+ power creature. That's brutal. lol

hopefully, they don't get to start like that too often.
probably several tools in the deck to help find the hammer or sigarda's aid. Have not taken a look at the decklist, as I have to leave for work. Will check it out when I get back.

[FoodChainGoblins]

assuming they went first, being attacked on turn 2 by a 10+ power creature. That's brutal. lol

hopefully, they don't get to start like that too often.
probably several tools in the deck to help find the hammer or sigarda's aid. Have not taken a look at the decklist, as I have to leave for work. Will check it out when I get back.

Tom Ross, the grinder that previously played for SCG before they released him was one of the main players of this deck online a bit ago. You could probably find it on twitchtv on Tom's channel. (I forgot his screen name, as I haven't been on much recently.)

I think his screen name is sunny_d

[The Fluff]

@cfusionpm

took a look at the list now. Wow, that list in the link looks amazing. Good equipment support creatures like Puresteel and Sfm.. then it even has cranial plating as backup to the hammer. 4 sfm and 4 shaper's gift.. it will almost never run dry on equipments.

one question to rules experts.. does Stony Silence stop Sigarda's Aid?

_____________

@FoodChainGoblins

thanks for the info. Might check out his Twitch if I would build the deck.

[FoodChainGoblins]

@cfusionpm

took a look at the list now. Wow, that list in the link looks amazing. Good equipment support creatures like Puresteel and Sfm.. then it even has cranial plating as backup to the hammer. 4 sfm and 4 shaper's gift.. it will almost never run dry on equipments.

one question to rules experts.. does Stony Silence stop Sigarda's Aid?

_____________

@FoodChainGoblins

thanks for the info. Might check out his Twitch if I would build the deck.

As far as I know, it doesn't stop Sigarda's Aid. It would stop the activation cost, but Aid just allows you to place it on. It's the same with the 1R instant that equips at instant speed (I forgot the name).

[cfusionpm]

It's surprisingly resilient... 🤔

Though, if they don't have the Trample equipment, you can always chump block for days, but they're also usually pressuring lethal by turns 2-4.

[The Fluff]

nice, so sigarda's aid can dodge stony, a card that has been a problem for Affinity for years, If Hammer Time is using Cranial Plating.. then there's a large enough density of artifacts in the deck. Glad we have a new artifact deck that is competitive.

a little sad the deck is not in pioneer, many important cards.. sfm, puresteel, shaper gift are all not legal there..

[motleyslayer]

there was a guy -playing a pretty budget version of hammer time pre-covid (No SFM for sure) and even that could be pretty explosives with the right draws. I'm not surprised it actually caught on kinda well when built and played reasonably

[The Fluff]

oh, so even the budget version can be competitive.

if mox opal was legal. I think it would fit right into Hammer Time. Accelerates mana and artifact count for cranial. Would probably allow for a little less lands too. Maybe wotc return opal someday..

[Bearscape]

Modern really is in such an odd place, looking at the numbers the metagame is really nicely balanced, but it also probably is the least fair it has ever been. Looking at mtggoldfish, all of the decks aim to either play as little magic as possible, or play Uro.

[cfusionpm]

I think it's a strange state of affairs when Uro decks are considered "fair." Like I said months ago, if I had any confidence that, once under the scrutiny of large paper events Uro wouldn't be banned, I would absolutely invest and buy into it. It's the only series of decks I find remotely interesting because, as you mention, pretty much everything else is linear combo, linear ramp, or linear aggro. None of which I find interesting or enjoyable to play.

Oh well, at least there's Commander.

[Ed06288]

Someone on reddit data-mined mtgo to figure out the popularity of each deck, as well as their win rates.

Metagame is fairly balanced, with Uro-omnath and Rakdos Death's Shadow being the most popular decks. Most decks are very close in winrates.

[Bearscape]

I think it's a strange state of affairs when Uro decks are considered "fair." Like I said months ago, if I had any confidence that, once under the scrutiny of large paper events Uro wouldn't be banned, I would absolutely invest and buy into it. It's the only series of decks I find remotely interesting because, as you mention, pretty much everything else is linear combo, linear ramp, or linear aggro. None of which I find interesting or enjoyable to play.

Oh well, at least there's Commander.

I completely agree with you, and would even dare to say Modern is so noninteractive because of Uro; if you're not casting Uro you are not outgrinding them so the best course of action is to just go all in on something that wins before turn 4. I also sold my playset of Uro and Field of the Dead when Omnath became established as the better Uro deck because I wasn't gonna invest in a playset of W6 and I'm fairly certain Uro will eventually get banned. But numbers wise, Modern seems fairly fine and it seems counterintuitive to ban the one remaining "fair" deck right now; the lack of event data makes any call for bans even more shaky.

Have you tried the Jeskai Wildfire lists? Although my modern playing has drastically decreased, I've had a lot of fun boltsnapbolting people again even though it clearly isn't optimal. I even went back to Nahiri the Harbinger because I dislike the transformative sideboard they often run.

[Ed06288]

I wouldn't sell anything when it's likely they only ban Mystic Sanctuary.
And Jeskai Fires is cool, a guy at locals was playing it.

[Albegas]

I would argue that the issue is less with Uro and more the fact that, as a format, Modern has very limited ways for players to play a more fair midrange or control game. Control and Midrange simply don't have access to the more synergistic strategies that Ramp, Combo, and Aggro decks have, and instead have to rely on the quality of individual cards. Card synergy can result in unexpected results that allow deck A to roughly match deck B despite having similar attack plans. Going back in time, this is how Affinity and Burn could coexist for so long despite both decks basically just wanting to drop an opponent from 20 to 0 in 3-4 turns: Affinity's synergy was roughly equivalent to Burn's card quality. You just don't have that with Midrange and Control. They're just both good stuff piles with little to no synergy to the point where one pile will be objectively better than the other pile. Until WotC experiments with synergistic Midrange and Control cards, there will always only be 1 dominant fair Midrange deck and 1 dominant fair Control deck. Synergistic Midrange/Control can certainly be done. Khans was a step in the right direction, for example. But, for whatever reason, WotC seems terrified to explore the idea of synergistic Midrange and Control strategies and instead favor...well whatever you want to call the last catastrophic year(s?) that has been Standard.

[drmarkb]

Wizards simply make the cards the commander players want, and shy away from what they do not want, or at least what they think they do not want. In order to have many functioning control decks you need (a) good selection and (b) broad or excellent answers.

In short, without going into too much detail, Mr Bigmonster commander player esquire thinks that a 1 for 1 counterspell is either less "fair" or simply more annoying than a 1 for 1 removal spell on the same creature, even if the creature has no ETB abilities, and he, and it is always a "he", thinks that "it did not even hit the battlefield" and that his fun is spoilt by the counter. The same mentiality is applied to him having a 9 mana monster and someone casting stone rain on his land, or perish the thought, Armageddon. Result- frustration- and a broken standard with Field of the Dead. The same mentiality (and the very existence of commanders) prevents Nevermore being upgraded too. You can't easily take out key cards out of strategies. Imagine commander with Humility 2.0. Not happening. Necromentia might nerf a legacy A plus B deck, but that is as good as it gets for killer counter punches. Modern decks don't often have A plus B combo decks that are that vulnerable- decks that do nuts things with, say Scapeshift and Valakut also run Titans. So killer punches from control decks just don't happen, save the odd board card such as Stony Silence in the old days vs old Affinity.

Threats are allowed to evolve and power creep, and sometimes are answers themseleves (think Oko recently, or Karn). Card selection, however, is generally bad in the modern format, becuase it leads to combo, which upsets not only Mr Bigmonster but also other players if it is too good- too much combo and players quit. This has been in the format from the start, as they paired back on rituals and card selection from relatively early on. So 1cc blue cantrips are largely neutered via the ban list and have not been replaced for a very long time now, whilst tutors are relatively underpowered c.f. older formats. The net result is we have a very large pool of cards enabling you to build most strategies with many of the cards doing the same thing, so you don't need to Tutor to get consistency. E.g. there are loads of good ramp spells that are similar- if you want to ramp you don't need to wait for a specific card, ditto burn. The problem is this is not true of answer cards. Answer cards can be made modal to make them flexible enough to be main decked, but they cannot synergise with each other to start to get some kind of rolling advantage in the way an Uro or a walker can take over a game. This would not be a problem if there was selection, so that you could filter out the "wrong answers" and deal with stuff cleanly, but you can't, which means you will get maybe one "optimal" answer deck in established metas which matches the meta as best it can (and has great difficulty if the meta it is played in is different for the one it is designed for). They won't build much synergy into answers because they never want Bigmonster to feel that everything he does on the casual tables has an answer - they want him to win- and because they know that synergistic answer cards can lead to hard or soft Prisons, a huge no no for them. If one person in a control deck sets up a situation where they draw a few extra cards over a few turns and control the board at the same time, keeping a full hand and cashing in on 2 for 1s, it is really just GG most of the time, unless the player on the otherside has some nutty uncounterable play. That is, to some players at least, no different to plopping down 3sphere and smokestack in Legacy or Commander whilst smashing enemy land to pulp. In both cases one player has no real propsect of winning, and they try to avoid that by neutering those deck types and making cards the control decks have to play- permanents that can snowball very quickly and end the game so that Bigmonster (middle name Never scoops) does not get too upset. If standard burns they don't care now, because (a) it is digital and (b) it is about casual sales.

[The Fluff]

I feel if corona did not come.. Uro would have been eventually banned like Oko. The card feels really strong. Would have purchased a copy or two already, if I was not fearing the ban.

[Ed06288]

I disagree. I think the modern meta is good. Not perfect but good.

[cfusionpm]

I disagree. I think the modern meta is good. Not perfect but good.

I think the meta is fine. It just has a massive asterisk that "any and all Uro decks could be banned at any moment for any reason." Which does not inspire confidence.

[The Fluff]

to improve diversity is one reason they banned Oko. That reason could probably be also used if they would ban Uro someday.

[Albegas]

Uro's impact on Modern isn't close to Oko's. Oko decks made up about 40% of the meta decks before being banned (per the article explaining Oko's ban in Modern). Meanwhile Uro decks make up less than 10% of the meta according to MTGGoldfish. And, on top of that, based on the Modern Challenges, while Uro piles are probably the best deck in Modern, just about any archetype has something that can go into a Challenge and beat a Uro pile. Uro decks would need a pretty long streak of dominance in challenges to be banned in the immediate future, and while there are certainly a number of challenges where it did extremely well, as far as I can tell, there are an equal number of (if not more) challenges where it did no better than the other meta decks. If Oko (or something else in the piles) is going to be banned, it will be because of a subsequent set, not because of what's currently available.

[cfusionpm]

If there is an obvious best deck, it's going to get banned. And if we had large paper tournaments to show this, I have no doubts Uro would be long gone. We only have the perspective we do because of curated MTGO data from Goldfish, and a meta that is neither scrutinized, nor in the spotlight of competition.

If something new comes out to draw heat away from Uro by the time we can actually play in paper again, Modern's tied-for-best Titan may live to see another day. But if not, I don't foresee our UG friend lasting much longer.

Either way, the state of the format is almost irrelevant, and will stay that way until the scrutiny of "real" competition returns. There are definitely obvious "tiered" decks, but where each of them actually fall isn't necessarily clear.

All I know is at ~$80 tix a pop, I may just sell off my Uros. Since speccing a new gaming PC and playing a bunch of AAA titles at max settings like a drooling fool the last month and a half, I have a hard time justifying keeping more than what I spent on my computer locked up in cards for a game I rarely even play anymore. Will likely liquidate my MTGO collection, and just hop onto a rental service whenever I want to play again. Just feel super removed from the game right now... And not at all motivated to play.

[FoodChainGoblins]

If there is an obvious best deck, it's going to get banned. And if we had large paper tournaments to show this, I have no doubts Uro would be long gone. We only have the perspective we do because of curated MTGO data from Goldfish, and a meta that is neither scrutinized, nor in the spotlight of competition.

If something new comes out to draw heat away from Uro by the time we can actually play in paper again, Modern's tied-for-best Titan may live to see another day. But if not, I don't foresee our UG friend lasting much longer.

Either way, the state of the format is almost irrelevant, and will stay that way until the scrutiny of "real" competition returns. There are definitely obvious "tiered" decks, but where each of them actually fall isn't necessarily clear.

All I know is at ~$80 tix a pop, I may just sell off my Uros. Since speccing a new gaming PC and playing a bunch of AAA titles at max settings like a drooling fool the last month and a half, I have a hard time justifying keeping more than what I spent on my computer locked up in cards for a game I rarely even play anymore. Will likely liquidate my MTGO collection, and just hop onto a rental service whenever I want to play again. Just feel super removed from the game right now... And not at all motivated to play.

In the bold is me right now. The only "Magic" I get now is people on my chats constantly talking about Commander cards. Some of it is a bit interesting, but since I don't play the cards, it's hard for me to evaluate them.