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

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Post by Guardman » 3 years ago

robertleva wrote:
3 years ago
I know this isnt technically part of the topic but why would you knowingly sell 4x Uros at a 75% loss? Aren't they worth more in play value as staples of another format? I get that you don't play pioneer, but why not save them in case you change your mind? I don't play legacy, but I never get rid of cards that get banned from my primary format on the off chance I might want them for a diff one later.
Based on their announcement (see below), Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath will be banned in Modern, Pioneer, Historic and there is a decent chance Legacy as well. That leaves on Vintage and Commander as formats where it is legal. If you don't play those formats (or play Commander where you only need one copy), then you are better off cutting your losses and taking what you can get before it goes rock bottom.
Wizards of the Coast wrote:(Note: We are planning an upcoming B&R announcement. In that announcement, we plan to ban Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath in Pioneer, Modern, and Historic. Additionally, we are continuing discussions about doing the same in Legacy. While we are still working internally on the larger B&R announcement for that week, we wanted to share this information ahead of this sale.)
On the bright side, the Kaldheim Part 1 is five dollars cheaper for those who care probably because of it.

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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

I see, I guess Uro nearly universally banned then. Still I wouldn't dump them at such a loss, maybe a diff format in the future will use them. I get it now though.

FWIW Pioneer without Uro will be even better, and it's actually quite good even with Uro right now. Personally I wouldn't have banned it from Pioneer, but I will take what I can get I suppose.
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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

I only now realized that this eliminate Uro from Pioneer as well. That makes it even better.
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Guardman wrote:
3 years ago
robertleva wrote:
3 years ago
I know this isnt technically part of the topic but why would you knowingly sell 4x Uros at a 75% loss? Aren't they worth more in play value as staples of another format? I get that you don't play pioneer, but why not save them in case you change your mind? I don't play legacy, but I never get rid of cards that get banned from my primary format on the off chance I might want them for a diff one later.
Based on their announcement (see below), Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath will be banned in Modern, Pioneer, Historic and there is a decent chance Legacy as well. That leaves on Vintage and Commander as formats where it is legal. If you don't play those formats (or play Commander where you only need one copy), then you are better off cutting your losses and taking what you can get before it goes rock bottom.
Yeah, being legal in ONLY Commander (and maybe, but probably not even Legacy?) is effectively a death sentence in terms of value. Buybot prices (who will even touch Uro) have already cut in half from when I sold at $15 tix, and big places like MTGOTraders still aren't buying at all (but selling at $10 tix).

Also why I just chucked the Uros and kept everything else. The Omnath/T3feri/Field/Titan shell is still pretty nuts even without Uro.

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Post by Albegas » 3 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
think that's what bothers me the most. This wasn't a B&R announcement, this wasn't a Monday "we're going to make a B&R announcement next Monday" announcement, this was a footnote in a totally unrelated article that openly and explicitly named Uro. Which means there was no period of speculation or "maybe" as people could choose to sell or hold based on individual interpretations. It was straight-up "We are banning Uro. And we're telling you at a random, unconventional time, in a random, unconventional manner. Enjoy your financial loss."
There may be a better quote to bring this up, but you're only looking at this from a perspective of a Modern player, not the perspective of a consumer of Secret Lair products. This would have been an absolute disaster had they sold a Secret Lair containing Uro only to ban it from nearly every format 2 days later. It wasn't a choice to announce its ban, it was necessity.

I also doubt that the Secret Lair alone drove this decision. Unless Secret Lairs are developed and finished in a matter of weeks, the decision to make a Secret Lair including Uro likely predates the decision to ban it by at least a month, if not more. I doubt the team in charge of Play and Design has a huge amount of overlap with a team designed to take a marketing theme, find cards to match it, choose artists and commission the art, and create a marketing blurb to sell premium product.

Lastly, we've known for a while that WotC wasn't going to make announcements of announcements for a while now. I'd have to dig up the Standard B&R announcement, but they explicitly said that the spike in online statistics made the lame duck period between announcing a future ban and a ban announcement pointless. Since COVID19, they've done 1 pre-ban announcement, and if I recall, that was met pretty poorly after having instantaneous announcements for Standard.

If WotC is guilty of anything, it's giving false hope by letting Uro run around in so many formats since the shut down since we know they get enough online data to make faster snap decisions. However, the decision to announce it now is better than later for both consumers and WotC, and MTGO grinders have known for months that Uro was already the best deck and an equivalent amount of time to weigh the risk and reward of its possible ban.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Albegas wrote:
3 years ago
I also doubt that the Secret Lair alone drove this decision.
While the Secret Lair may not have dictated WHETHER it should be banned, I believe 100% that the Secret Lair that drove this decision to happen when it did. Because it sure isn't meta share or tournament performance. If either of those were the case, it would have (and should have) been banned months ago. The catalyst for making them take action is 100% the Secret Lair. Just like Twin was banned 100% because of the timing of the PT.
If WotC is guilty of anything, it's giving false hope by letting Uro run around in so many formats since the shut down since we know they get enough online data to make faster snap decisions.
Yes, they are absolutely guilty of this. I SPECIFICALLY bought into it because it had survived numerous B&R announcements where it absolutely could have (and should have) been banned. But it wasn't. Week after week, month after month, for A YEAR, Uro effectively dominated Modern. And WOTC was silent the entire time. Me, personally, I was waiting for the "We're having a B&R update next week" to immediately dump them and move on. But no, I literally saw the article at 8:06am PST, and by the time I could successfully log in and attempt to trade my copies at around 8:15am, bots had already stopped buying them, and the ones that hadn't had dropped to $15 (from $60).

However, the decision to announce it now is better than later for both consumers and WotC, and MTGO grinders have known for months that Uro was already the best deck and an equivalent amount of time to weigh the risk and reward of its possible ban.
Is it better than letting people buy it and then ban it? Yes. But it is SO MUCH WORSE than banning it ANY OTHER WAY, including in a normal announcement MONTHS AGO.

Like I said, even when they do the right thing, they find a way to f**k it up. If it's bannable now, it was bannable when KHM released. And likely when ZNR released. But no. They sat, and waited, and let people continue to buy copies.

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Post by Albegas » 3 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
Yes, they are absolutely guilty of this. I SPECIFICALLY bought into it because it had survived numerous B&R announcements where it absolutely could have (and should have) been banned. But it wasn't. Week after week, month after month, for A YEAR, Uro effectively dominated Modern. And WOTC was silent the entire time. Me, personally, I was waiting for the "We're having a B&R update next week" to immediately dump them and move on. But no, I literally saw the article at 8:06am PST, and by the time I could successfully log in and attempt to trade my copies at around 8:15am, bots had already stopped buying them, and the ones that hadn't had dropped to $15 (from $60).
I think we actually agree on a lot of points so I don't want to drag this out much further, but I think it needs mentioning that if you're waiting for "We're having a B&R update next week" announcements, you're going to be burned:
In the past, we've given a one-week advanced notice for updates to the banned and restricted list. Because of the increased focus on digital play environments during this time period, we're choosing to forgo that advanced notice and roll out these changes as soon as possible. This isn't necessarily indicative of how we'll announce and implement in the future, and we're continuing to look at how we balance giving players advance notice versus staying agile with respect to changing metagames.
They announced that they intend to stop doing those months ago, and the announcement doesn't imply that they would only do that for Standard. My best advise: sell on meta highs, and don't wait for WotC to sell cards anymore.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

And that would make sense if they A) Banned Uro months ago, when it should have been. Or B) Actually announced the ban in a Ban announcement on a Monday morning. Not a random, unrelated article on a Wednesday.

But again, nothing has fundamentally changed in nearly 6 months of Uro. And there have been THREE B&R updates in that time, since the printing of Omnath. THREE B&R updates where WOTC could have done something and didn't. Their inaction (and lack of even mentioning Modern) said to us that "Uro is ok in the current Modern environment". Two of those three announcements even specifically banned Uro or Omnath in one or more formats.

It's just stupid from every angle.

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Post by Ed06288 » 3 years ago

If they hadn't pre-emptively banned uro, people would instead be complaining that they ordered secret lair in bad faith. Wizards can't win either way.

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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

cfusion you are missing one key point in your argument: They resected the folks who wanted to play with Uro for as long as they could. Perhaps they waited a long time intentionally because of the shut down. They knew Uro was a popular card and a lot of people would be upset with it going away so they dragged their heels for a long time. Then secret lair crops up with a fancy new Uro and they realized they couldnt wait any longer.

So while you and I may not AGREE with their decision, it wasn't a total loss either. They simply prioritized things a little different than we would.
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Post by EonAon » 3 years ago

Here is something I'm wondering. Lets say they announced the B/R list changes first and not after the secret lair drop. Wouldn't you still lose the same amount of money anyway? I mean you invested in Uro regardless. While you do say that they had months to come to a decision before this peek, they also had months to see how the meta is shaping and warping from said Uro to decide if they are going to ban him in the formats its being a issue in. They also had months to see if some smart soul could find a way to fix the issue so as to keep him in the format. That didn't happen and so the only option left is ban.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

EonAon wrote:
3 years ago
Here is something I'm wondering. Lets say they announced the B/R list changes first and not after the secret lair drop. Wouldn't you still lose the same amount of money anyway?
I've had MTGO open and ready to dump every Monday 8am since buying in.

Again, I'm not mad it's banned, I'm mad it was a random unrelated Wednesday Secret Lair article.

To flip things around, I'll ask broadly to everyone: what has changed in Uro decks since September? Since October? Since January? What fundamentally broke Uro decks since January to move Uro from "OK" to "BAN"? And why wasn't it banned in September, October, or January?

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Post by motleyslayer » 3 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
EonAon wrote:
3 years ago
Here is something I'm wondering. Lets say they announced the B/R list changes first and not after the secret lair drop. Wouldn't you still lose the same amount of money anyway?
I've had MTGO open and ready to dump every Monday 8am since buying in.

Again, I'm not mad it's banned, I'm mad it was a random unrelated Wednesday Secret Lair article.

To flip things around, I'll ask broadly to everyone: what has changed in Uro decks since September? Since October? Since January? What fundamentally broke Uro decks since January to move Uro from "OK" to "BAN"? And why wasn't it banned in September, October, or January?
I think the main reason why they put it in the secret lair reveal was because they didn't want people to buy a few copies of the lair to get fancy Uros, only to have people upset when they banned it (an undisclosed amount of time) later. I can understand them not wanting to get people upset, the part I don't like is they didn't give a time frame when they'd be doing this whole ban. Will it be next week or in a month?

This kinda just leaves multiple formats in limbo because we know a pillar of the format is getting banned, just not when. To answer your question of what has changed in Uro decks in the past few months, I'd probably say nothing really (that can probably be true for every format where it's good in). It's just Uro has been so good for so long and it snowballs games so much, that it's not fun

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Post by Albegas » 3 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
I've had MTGO open and ready to dump every Monday 8am since buying in.
As I mentioned before, this was already a mistake. You were expecting a pre-ban announcement when there were was never going to be one, something they decided on last August. If you didn't sell out on the 8th, you probably weren't going to sell out this Monday, and you would have been burned all the same.
cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
To flip things around, I'll ask broadly to everyone: what has changed in Uro decks since September? Since October? Since January? What fundamentally broke Uro decks since January to move Uro from "OK" to "BAN"? And why wasn't it banned in September, October, or January?
I'm actually pretty sure Uro decks saw a spike in meta percentages after the the Kaladheim release according to MTGGoldfish despite getting almost nothing from the set. This is on top of a gradual increase in top 8/16/32 placements in the past 2 or so months. I wish I had a monthly report of the meta numbers and a quick display of non-league data over the months since Omnath's release, but because of how MTGGoldfish displays and archives data, it's hard to quickly gather data to showcase the spike. We'll probably know more on Monday, but if I had to wager a guess, Uro was on the verge of being banned right before Kaladheim, and WotC were waiting to see if Kaladheim would see a decline in Uro numbers. If that's the case, Uro not seeing a loss in numbers is likely what killed it, not anything of note it's done since Kaladheim.

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Post by drmarkb » 3 years ago

: Uro did need to go from Modern but I think it is fine in Legacy.
I don't think it was that bad in Pioneer, from what I could see from the outside, largely.

I do think that mtg needs to rebalance with humility type cards to stop these things going nuts in future.
3 cc humility for 3cc and above critters, that sort of thing.
The problem is, as ever, commander players get upset, and thus 60 card formats are perpetually at risk of broken dudes.
Same for walkers, where one for one removal is always at a disadvantage. Here it is marketing that gets in the way, rather than 100 card casual.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Albegas wrote:
3 years ago
cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
I've had MTGO open and ready to dump every Monday 8am since buying in.
As I mentioned before, this was already a mistake. You were expecting a pre-ban announcement when there were was never going to be one, something they decided on last August. If you didn't sell out on the 8th, you probably weren't going to sell out this Monday, and you would have been burned all the same.
I think you misread my comment. I didn't expect a pre-ban announcement (though they were cheeky on Twitter for the multiple other bans AFTER August), I was ready to speed dump them upon unannounced B&R update. Those updates, for almost the entirety of the format, come at (or slightly before) 8am PST on Mondays. Literally in the time between seeing the article and launching/updating/logging in to MTGO, the ship to dump them had already sailed on that Wednesday morning.
cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
To flip things around, I'll ask broadly to everyone: what has changed in Uro decks since September? Since October? Since January? What fundamentally broke Uro decks since January to move Uro from "OK" to "BAN"? And why wasn't it banned in September, October, or January?
I'm actually pretty sure Uro decks saw a spike in meta percentages after the the Kaladheim release according to MTGGoldfish despite getting almost nothing from the set. This is on top of a gradual increase in top 8/16/32 placements in the past 2 or so months. I wish I had a monthly report of the meta numbers and a quick display of non-league data over the months since Omnath's release, but because of how MTGGoldfish displays and archives data, it's hard to quickly gather data to showcase the spike. We'll probably know more on Monday, but if I had to wager a guess, Uro was on the verge of being banned right before Kaladheim, and WotC were waiting to see if Kaladheim would see a decline in Uro numbers. If that's the case, Uro not seeing a loss in numbers is likely what killed it, not anything of note it's done since Kaladheim.
I don't buy that for a second. They have access to numerous MTGO analytics, including detailed matchup numbers, and was likely bannable for months. Uro was just as bannable in Modern as it was in the formats it was already banned in. But they likely wanted to take a back seat to Modern because there was no catalyst for them to act. No reason. No bloodthirsty cries from the community.

WOTC does not act on Modern unless they feel they ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. And without any meaningful paper tournaments and zero high level tournament play (No, MTGO Challenges do not count), I was not expecting much from them at all unless Uro was getting to Oko levels of play (which it was not), we see the equivalent of a PT or large GP in Modern, or we finally get to play in paper again.

The catalyst for ban was "Hey we're trying to sell you this. We know it should have been banned already, so we're just gonna ban it now so you don't buy THESE copies. Those other copies you bought in the meantime? The ones we said were OK by our months of inaction? Well, go f**k yourself and have a great day."

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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

Ok so I guess just ignore the part about them wanting to let people have fun with Uro max amount of time. And if I am not mistaken, you were one of the ppl playing Uro right up until pretty much the end so shouldnt you actually be glad they kept it legal as long as they did?

Starting just sound salty tbh...
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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

@cfusionpm

the money was lost. Just forgive wotc and move on.
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
3 years ago
@cfusionpm

the money was lost. Just forgive wotc and move on.
It's not just money lost. It's the continued, repeated, terrible management and design choices over the past two years. Failure after failure, yet they continue to make more money than ever. Meaning there is absolutely no recourse for their endless f**k-ups.
robertleva wrote:
3 years ago

Starting just sound salty tbh...
Probably because I've had to continually repeat myself, due to the people here ignoring or misunderstanding my point over and over. :thinking:

But if you'd like to give your masterful insight as to why Uro is bannable now, but wasn't in January or October or September, I'm all ears. WOTC "letting us play with our toys" does not align with any decision they have ever made in the history of B&R announcements. Either they are "collecting more data to make a decision" or they "determine this is fine until further data shows otherwise." It's naive you would even think to credit WOTC's B&R team with considering "letting people play with broken things" in terms of fun, and not mitigating negative PR and financial loss, while scrambling to figure out what to do. See: Faithless Looting: "Regardless of Hogaak's recent impact, Faithless Looting would be a likely eventual addition to the banned list in the near future. In order to ensure the metagame doesn't again revert to a Faithless Looting graveyard deck being dominant, we believe now is the correct time to make this change."

Looting should have been banned much earlier, but wasn't. Hogaak was the catalyst to finally act.
Uro should have been banned much earlier, but wasn't. Secret Lair was the catalyst to finally act.

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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

Cfusion you are not carefully reading what I am typing to you. I AGREE with you buddy! If it was me making the decisions I would have done things differently. Now please listen carefully: there is value in letting people play with their toys for a long time. WOTC has prioritized this hard to quantify value over a more timely ban that you or I would have.

Also please do not put uro in any kind of comparisons to Looting and Hogaak, not even the same league of offense... Those are disgusting degenerate cards, Uro can possibly be replaced by Growth Spiral, come on now let's get serious. Take a breath, Uro is gone, you will find a new deck my friend.
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

robertleva wrote:
3 years ago
Cfusion you are not carefully reading what I am typing to you. I AGREE with you buddy! If it was me making the decisions I would have done things differently. Now please listen carefully: there is value in letting people play with their toys for a long time.
You and I may believe this. What makes you think WOTC (currently under the thumb of Papa Hasbro) thinks this?
WOTC has prioritized this hard to quantify value over a more timely ban that you or I would have.
No they have not. They have put off action they should have taken until the last possible moment they absolutely had to. This aligns with nearly every one of their B&R decisions since Twin. They are not doing it to help save us precious play time. They're doing it to avoid another "Twin" situation where they 'get it wrong' to massive community backlash.

Until there is a catalyst, there is no action. In the past, those catalysts have been back-back-to-back destroyed GPs, embarrassingly dominant PTs, a meta share that would put Pod to shame, and unrelenting, universal public outcry.

There was zero reason NOT to ban Uro in Modern at the January update. Or the October update. Or the September update. Nothing has fundamentally changed. They just didn't have a catalyst yet; until they tried to sell you a special copy of the card.

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Post by Simto » 3 years ago

The new artwork on the Secret Lair Uro looks cool too. Not like a weird giant hairy green butt hole floating in the air.

Let's see today what else they have in store for the ban announcement though. They hinted at something more than just Uro.

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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

@cfusionpm You won't hear me defending WOTC poor leadership or design dept or play testing dept. They are spiraling like crazy right now. Paper is dying / dead and they must realize that Hearthstone has already claimed a gigantic digital footprint on the market.

So they are desperately trying to make Arena the new hearthstone...and it's not. Arena is a weird kitchen table variant of real MTG that some people enjoy. It has a really nice card interface as well. That's it. They would be much better served investing in their actual digital product MTGO but I digress...
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

I see they're taking a "salt the earth" policy today. Took a them long enough.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... cement?xkl

Notably for us:

Modern:

Field of the Dead is banned.

Mystic Sanctuary is banned.

Simian Spirit Guide is banned.

Tibalt's Trickery is banned.

Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is banned.

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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

Field ban is huge, in my opinion way more impactful that Uro. I am sad to see T3feri gone from Pioneer but that['s a diff thread I guess. Overall I am happy with this ban change.
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