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

metalmusic_4
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Post by metalmusic_4 » 4 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
ah, my mistake then.. forgot about what happened with Splinter Twin... that thing took some players by a complete surprise.

I guess just one of the few things that still protect Opal from a ban is it is a very expensive card, and wotc would be wary in banning such a thing.
Wait....really.......do we need a refresher on what happened with splinter twin? All the hogaak talk made us forget about twin? I think we could talk about twin a while if that would be beneficial to anyone.

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Post by Arkmer » 4 years ago

"That's gonna be a no from me, dawg." :laugh:

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Post by Albegas » 4 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
ah, my mistake then.. forgot about what happened with Splinter Twin... that thing took some players by a complete surprise.

I guess just one of the few things that still protect Opal from a ban is it is a very expensive card, and wotc would be wary in banning such a thing.
I disagree that price is a factor nor should it be a factor in banning cards. That kind of logic would mean that if they wanted to ban Opal, they would have to flood the market with new copies to drive the price down before doing so, which would lead as much if not even more backlash than banning Opal while it's at its current price.

Like I said before, the only thing protecting Opal is the same thing protecting any high power card in any deck: a lack of high profile results or data that indicates that action needs to be taken. It's likely safe for now because there haven't been any major tourneys other than the team one, but if they have to choose between axing Opal and axing another piece from Urza decks, Opal does what Wizards hates: provides free mana acceleration that can potentially lead to early kills and puts more stress on the opponent to find hate quickly.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

metalmusic_4 wrote:
4 years ago
The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
ah, my mistake then.. forgot about what happened with Splinter Twin... that thing took some players by a complete surprise.

I guess just one of the few things that still protect Opal from a ban is it is a very expensive card, and wotc would be wary in banning such a thing.
Wait....really.......do we need a refresher on what happened with splinter twin? All the hogaak talk made us forget about twin? I think we could talk about twin a while if that would be beneficial to anyone.
Not that anyone really needs to hear it, but people definitely have short memories and often misremember or misconstrue things from exaggerated myths and stories. For some context, reprinting a card that then gets banned creates not only the awfullest of feelbads, it sucks financially too.

For the relevant bits, MM15 saw reprints of at least 6 staples for the Twin deck, including the namesake enchantment, and encouraged people to buy and build the deck just months before its ban. The prices for the cards swung WILDLY and really screwed anyone left holding onto them. All the notable, big-ticket, expensive cards tanked hard. People left holding the pieces had a bunch of previously-expensive, but mostly competitively bad cards. Those cards not only tanked an additional 30-40% in value after the reprint value drop, but weren't competitively strong in anything meaningful for years to come. It's a hard pill to swallow for those who spent up to $1,000 or more buying into the deck just to see it evaporate and its leftover pieces flatline across the board. I'd imagine they would not want to repeat that process intentionally.

Reprinting Opal when it is so brazenly on the watch list for being banned is probably a terrible idea. While a reprint would help its ludicrous price tag, it would also be encouraging people to buy into a deck that I personally feel is not long for this format (and had been a part of multiple decks that were/are borderline bannable, or did receive a ban of a different card).

Honestly, it's a tricky spot to be put in, and the decision to reprint or not is almost entirely dependent on how likely it is to see a ban. It's kind of a no-win scenario for players either way. The only way it'd be a success is to reprint it, not ban it, and hopefully it's never a problem, which is hard to imagine staying the case for free, fast mana of any color.

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

[*]Reprinting Opal when it is so brazenly on the watch list for being banned is probably a terrible idea. While a reprint would help its ludicrous price tag, it would also be encouraging people to buy into a deck that I personally feel is not long for this format (and had been a part of multiple decks that were/are borderline bannable, or did receive a ban of a different card).
hehe. Sorry, was just theory crafting in opal being unbannable due to the huge price it currently has... because if it does happen - Opal would be the first super expensive card that was active for so many years in modern to be banned, I think it was here since the beginning of the format? Let's just see where this goes.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
[*]Reprinting Opal when it is so brazenly on the watch list for being banned is probably a terrible idea. While a reprint would help its ludicrous price tag, it would also be encouraging people to buy into a deck that I personally feel is not long for this format (and had been a part of multiple decks that were/are borderline bannable, or did receive a ban of a different card).
hehe. Sorry, was just theory crafting in opal being unbannable due to the huge price it currently has... because if it does happen - Opal would be the first super expensive card that was active for so many years in modern to be banned, I think it was here since the beginning of the format? Let's just see where this goes.
I'm confident that were it not for the combination backlash over the Twin ban and Eldrazi Winter, Affinity would have been hit and the target would have been Opal. Remember that Affinity in 2015 had nearly identical competitive success to Twin, and spent a nonzero amount of time more popular than it. Affinity was also one of the few non-Eldrazi decks seeing success during early 2016. Opal has been at the heart of a lot of degenerate artifact decks, which is exactly why I have had a hard time ever even thinking of buying them.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Affinity would have been hit and the target would have been Opal.
Absolutely true. All one needs do is look at the Modern history of Top 8's, and apply some critical thinking. Its actually hilarious that Opal has continued to dodge the bullet, for half a decade.
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Post by SpeedGrapher » 4 years ago

Could you guys get off of the ban talk for mox opal ? You just had three cards banned in modern. Hogaak which was way too powerful. Unnecessary bans of Bridge from below and faithless looting There is no reason to ban mox opal. Affinity is no longer a tier 1 deck. All of it's creatures are easy to kill. Even scales affinity is easy to disrupt with some artifact hate. If you aren't playing some basic creature removal in your decks then you need to redo your deck.

I just checked a few top 8's and zero of them have affinity. If this is about Urza, Lord High Artificer performing well you can change up your deck a little bit.
You canThoughtseize , counter spells they play. If you want to play main deck hate you can. The state of modern is fine. There are no issues at this time. There are plenty of alternate strategies and way to disrupt Urza's game plan. Nothing is hogaak level oppressive.

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Post by Albegas » 4 years ago

I can't speak for everyone, but for what it's worth, I was speaking hypothetically. I don't believe it will eat a ban anytime soon, but the fact is that Urza decks were one of the best decks in the Hogaak meta and if it were to eat a ban (huge emphasis on "if") the $450-$600 investment is likely what burns. For anyone playing the deck or interested in investing in the deck, the Urza decks' likelyhood of being banned will always be a hot topic for discussion so long as it's a T1 deck

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Post by Arkmer » 4 years ago

SpeedGrapher wrote:
4 years ago
Could you guys get off of the ban talk for mox opal?
"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

The format is good, we're preparing for when it's not good. That's what the state of Modern is and thus the derived purpose of this thread. You can look back through the dozens of past threads on Salvation and see that there was always ban talk, not 100% of the time, but you don't have to look very hard to find it. I think most of us agree that Opal is fine anyway, that's a characteristic of a good format, "nothing to ban"; however, we're looking toward the horizon and trying to anticipate what will happen in the future. Accurate? No. But a solid human tradition for as long as we could paint on cave walls and probably longer.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Albegas wrote:
4 years ago
I can't speak for everyone, but for what it's worth, I was speaking hypothetically. I don't believe it will eat a ban anytime soon, but the fact is that Urza decks were one of the best decks in the Hogaak meta and if it were to eat a ban (huge emphasis on "if") the $450-$600 investment is likely what burns. For anyone playing the deck or interested in investing in the deck, the Urza decks' likelyhood of being banned will always be a hot topic for discussion so long as it's a T1 deck
Same, in that while I can't speak for everyone else, I personally would absolutely be playing some Urza/Opal midrange combo deck right now if I felt comfortable and confident in buying into it. I don't at all, and I don't think that fear is unjustified. Will Opal get banned any time soon? Probably not. Will it get banned at some point? I would bet my bottom dollar on yes.
Arkmer wrote:
4 years ago
"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

The format is good, we're preparing for when it's not good. That's what the state of Modern is and thus the derived purpose of this thread. You can look back through the dozens of past threads on Salvation and see that there was always ban talk, not 100% of the time, but you don't have to look very hard to find it. I think most of us agree that Opal is fine anyway, that's a characteristic of a good format, "nothing to ban"; however, we're looking toward the horizon and trying to anticipate what will happen in the future. Accurate? No. But a solid human tradition for as long as we could paint on cave walls and probably longer.
I agree with this as well, this is the best Modern has been in a really, really, really long time. I have been having an absolute blast playing terrible, janky Esper decks and loving every minute of it. Even threw together an awful Rotting Regisaur Unearth list that has been incredible fun.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

SpeedGrapher wrote:
4 years ago
Could you guys get off of the ban talk for mox opal ? You just had three cards banned in modern. Hogaak which was way too powerful. Unnecessary bans of Bridge from below and faithless looting There is no reason to ban mox opal. Affinity is no longer a tier 1 deck. All of it's creatures are easy to kill. Even scales affinity is easy to disrupt with some artifact hate. If you aren't playing some basic creature removal in your decks then you need to redo your deck. .
Looting being banned is why Modern is good for the first time in over a year.
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Post by Bearscape » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago

Looting being banned is why Modern is good for the first time in over a year.
Honestly yeah can we talk about that for a bit

I am just reveling in current modern, there's just so much cool stuff going on now. Even though I haven't seen a SFM list that I actually really like, all these different takes people have on it are very interesting and produce decks that make for good magic. The rebuilding of Dredge is interesting to see, I never mind burn being high tier as metagaming against it is very straightforward, tron does tron things but now I actually have sideboard space to stop it, Jund is back and is always my favourite archenemy... the one troublesome thing is Urza looming over the horizon but the high entry fee and skill floor is at least temporarily keeping that in check. In a few weeks I'm going to play a whole bunch of side event Modern at Magicfest Utrecht and there's honestly just 5 different decks that I want to play there and I'm trying to force myself to limit it to 3.

There was a looming fear for my campaigning for a Looting ban for a year to turn out to be a monkey's paw but honestly it has been the greatest shakeup in the 8 years that I play Modern

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
Looting being banned is why Modern is good for the first time in over a year.
there would always be a loot deck waiting it's turn to go bananas as long as looting is here. They "replaced" looting with Sfm, which is slow and much easier to deal with than phoenix and gaak. Good riddance to the loot.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Yeah, Stoneforge is predictably and rightly irrelevant, but losing Looting has been a godsend and beacon of hope for the format.

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Post by Amalek0 » 4 years ago

I'm actually not a fan of the looting ban, for several reasons.

First, I don't think it specifically was justified. The biggest offenders were decks abusing mechanics that cheated on mana in other ways, and we saw it used incredibly powerfully in other shells. I think the things it enabled may have been problematic, but my opinion in the matter was mostly that we should raise the powerlevel of the cards combating those linear decks, and I think modern horizons brought a huge shakeup to the format that was never allowed to settle out after a hogaak banning--the same mistake I think they made in modern with the dual banning of treasure cruise and dig through time.

The second reason I'm not a fan of the looting ban is that it took away one of the few remaining consistency tools in the format. The only other big ones with a reliable pedigree that remain are ancient stirrings, opt, serum visions, whir of invention/goblin engineer, and ironically eladamri's call/chord of calling.

We're seeing the top decks in the format continue to always coalesce around whatever deck gives the most consistent performance across many rounds of play in a relatively wide format, and I'm not a fan of picking winners and losers in a nonrotating format by banning consistency tools; I'd rather see more of those (and more broadly powerful ones, like ponder and preordain, even careful study. I don't put great stock in a format being color-diverse, so if you're one of those people that thinks modern is great because it's not "blue-centric", you're going to fundamentally disagree with me. Until WOTC gets off the "consistency is bad except in narrow cases" train, the format is always going to do one of three things: Suffer under a busted archetype (pre-bridge ban hogaak), "jund" towards whatever deck can sideboard and thread the needle on the other consistent linear decks while presenting fast threats, or suffer under a shifting winner's metagame of the 2-3 most consistent archetypes and the 2-3 archetypes most able to get under them or irreparably disrupt them.

The first option is miserable and expensive for everyone, the second option leads to majority unsatisfying gameplay between fast linear archetypes and sideboard whack-a-mole, and the third option leads to incredibly stale metagames (like the twin/pod/affinity/burn/tron mashup that held for several years).

The goal is a cyclical metagame where macro-archetypes rise and fall, like is more common in good standard formats or in legacy, with representation of all macro archetypes at all times but with a self policing and cyclical metagame, in which macro archetypes can adapt to the meta, not just be great or unplayable.

The third reason I think the looting ban was bad is that it hit a large swath of archetypes with very different playstyles and left the owners of each with almost no recourse. Most bans targeted single decks and had very little collateral damage against decks not-named storm. Banning looting hit a lot of different archetypes and left people without viable alternatives or realistically playable forms of the deck; at least the twin players could pivot to UWr control and the KCI players could pivot to hardened scales. The mardu pyromancer players? Grishoalbrand players? Izzet Phoenix players? They don't have a lot of pivot options, because the shells don't have a realistic competitively viable way to pivot from this banning. Only the hogaak players do, and it was back towards dredge which is, has been, and likely always will be a problematic archetype and mechanic when it's good and mostly irrelevant when it's bad.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

The Faithless Looting ban may have been a bit preemptive because we will never know how Stoneforge Mystic will do in a metagame with Faithless Looting decks. We can guess that the Mystic wouldn't be that good since it's just a bit above average right now, but we will never know. They have never been legal together in Modern and Legacy has too many other "boogeymen" to even begin to compare them.

But as it stands, without a Faithless Looting ban, we're looking at Dredge and Mono Red Phoenix at the top of the metagame with UR Phoenix closely behind. There literally isn't a reason to play another deck for competitive reasons. I have Grishoalbrand fully foiled and have had it that was for years now. I lost a deck that had Faithless Looting (even if I still have non foil Neobrand)! That hurt. But I know it's the best option. I just didn't know if Wizards had the guts to do it.

*It is without consequences. Not every part of the Looting ban was positive. People did not expect it to be banned. People lost Unearth shenanigans, which arguably are pretty disgusting in themselves. Grishoalbrand lost a card. Many decks, outside of Phoenix and Dredge lost an enabler that didn't break the decks. But the problem IS exactly those decks. I know I myself was planning on running Dredge once Hogaak got banned and trying out Forgotten Cave for the first time ever. :grin:
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Amalek0 wrote:
4 years ago
The first option is miserable and expensive for everyone, the second option leads to majority unsatisfying gameplay between fast linear archetypes and sideboard whack-a-mole, and the third option leads to incredibly stale metagames (like the twin/pod/affinity/burn/tron mashup that held for several years).

The goal is a cyclical metagame where macro-archetypes rise and fall, like is more common in good standard formats or in legacy, with representation of all macro archetypes at all times but with a self policing and cyclical metagame, in which macro archetypes can adapt to the meta, not just be great or unplayable.
If Twin/Pod/Affinity/Burn/Tron/Jund/Grixis/Junk is 'stale' then I dont want fresh.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
The Faithless Looting ban may have been a bit preemptive because we will never know how Stoneforge Mystic will do in a metagame with Faithless Looting decks. We can guess that the Mystic wouldn't be that good since it's just a bit above average right now, but we will never know. They have never been legal together in Modern and Legacy has too many other "boogeymen" to even begin to compare them.
If Stoneforge isn't doing anything of meaningful consequence now, I can only imagine it would be even worse with stuff like Phoenix and Dredge running at full power.
*It is without consequences. Not every part of the Looting ban was positive. People did not expect it to be banned. People lost Unearth shenanigans, which arguably are pretty disgusting in themselves. Grishoalbrand lost a card. Many decks, outside of Phoenix and Dredge lost an enabler that didn't break the decks.
Here's the thing though, Looting was absolutely a predictable ban, and one that many people had been calling for for months. As for Unearth strategies, I have been playing and enjoying exactly that kind of strategy after the looting ban, because trying to play an Unearth strat in the face of multiple main deck Surgicals and 4-6 additional sideboard GY hate cards was absolutely miserable. Middling Tier 2+ decks that casually used the graveyard, instead of bustedly-abusing it probably offset the loss of Looting by the gain of lack of GY hate. It's not like Mardu Pyromancer was doing anything of significance with Looting anyway.

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Post by Zorakkiller » 4 years ago

I'm amazed that there are still people defending faithless looting. I get it sucks to have your deck banned but its not like the ban came out of no where. you would think modern players would be used to format defining cards being banned by now. given the recent tournament results post b&r update the format is the best it's been in years. I also think its greatly over exaggerated how many decks were casualties of the looting ban. I'm sorry but the non Phoenix, non dredge looting decks were bad with looting and are in a similar position without it

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
*It is without consequences. Not every part of the Looting ban was positive. People did not expect it to be banned. People lost Unearth shenanigans, which arguably are pretty disgusting in themselves. Grishoalbrand lost a card. Many decks, outside of Phoenix and Dredge lost an enabler that didn't break the decks.
Here's the thing though, Looting was absolutely a predictable ban, and one that many people had been calling for for months. As for Unearth strategies, I have been playing and enjoying exactly that kind of strategy after the looting ban, because trying to play an Unearth strat in the face of multiple main deck Surgicals and 4-6 additional sideboard GY hate cards was absolutely miserable. Middling Tier 2+ decks that casually used the graveyard, instead of bustedly-abusing it probably offset the loss of Looting by the gain of lack of GY hate. It's not like Mardu Pyromancer was doing anything of significance with Looting anyway.
I meant to say, "without consequences." It is not without consequences.

Give me your list for an Unearth strategy. I have been wanting to try Lightning Skelemental and to go deeper of the deep end, Ball Lightning and Groundbreaker to make a "ball" deck. I guess just getting the Ball to the yard is enough to Unearth it later, especially since the format is not blazingly fast (so you actually can make it to turn 4, lol).
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
*It is without consequences. Not every part of the Looting ban was positive. People did not expect it to be banned. People lost Unearth shenanigans, which arguably are pretty disgusting in themselves. Grishoalbrand lost a card. Many decks, outside of Phoenix and Dredge lost an enabler that didn't break the decks.
Here's the thing though, Looting was absolutely a predictable ban, and one that many people had been calling for for months. As for Unearth strategies, I have been playing and enjoying exactly that kind of strategy after the looting ban, because trying to play an Unearth strat in the face of multiple main deck Surgicals and 4-6 additional sideboard GY hate cards was absolutely miserable. Middling Tier 2+ decks that casually used the graveyard, instead of bustedly-abusing it probably offset the loss of Looting by the gain of lack of GY hate. It's not like Mardu Pyromancer was doing anything of significance with Looting anyway.
I meant to say, "without consequences." It is not without consequences.

Give me your list for an Unearth strategy. I have been wanting to try Lightning Skelemental and to go deeper of the deep end, Ball Lightning and Groundbreaker to make a "ball" deck. I guess just getting the Ball to the yard is enough to Unearth it later, especially since the format is not blazingly fast (so you actually can make it to turn 4, lol).
It's more midrangey. Lots of discard, Liliana of the Veil, Scour/Opt, Path/Push, Snap/JVP, and Mentor/Rotting Regisaur as most common Unearth targets. It's not super powerful, but it's been ludicrous fun.

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Post by colossaldeadmaw » 4 years ago

Long time (well, only for two months or so) lurker, first time poster.
I had just bought a Hogaak bridgevine deck prior to the bannings, and had traded a sick Memnarch (edh) deck for Mardu pyro. A day after I got the Gaak list, bridge was banned. It was unfortunate, but I modified it to be playable. Then Gaak and looting got banned, and both of those decks became either unplayable or garbage. However; I do believe that these were good ban decisions (with the exception of bridge, which I hope makes a come back). My reasoning is that if modern is supposed to have a cantrip like looting, that can shape multiple resources (hand and gy) simultaneously for very cheap, then why would ponder and preordain be banned? Modern is currently flourishing now that looting is gone, it was an absolute must have that defined an entire meta. One of the things that makes modern beautiful is the diversity of decks and styles (IMO), and having the top 8 consistently clouded with looting decks wasn't an exciting thing to see. If I'm looking for a metagame that features powerful cantrips, extremely tight gameplay, and a lot of inflexibility (again, imo) for deck building, then you'll find me playing legacy. I don't believe that anything else needs a banhammer in modern currently, especially since the dust is nowhere near to being settled from the latest B&R. Stirrings is a strong cantrip for sure, but it needs to be in very specific decks (I.E. you couldn't just shove it anything that runs green, and have it optimize your list, as was pretty much the case with looting, or running preordain in blue). Opal is also an extremely strong card, but it isn't sol ring or mana crypt, or chrome mox. Opal is fast mana for artifact strategies, which means that artifact hate (of which there is a lot for cheapsies) can be sideboarded in and probably be useful against almost everything in a deck running opals. Not to mention (but totally mentioning) the new ELD card (deafening silence) which could cheaply mitigate some of the more problematic opal strategies. TL;DR I agree with lootings and gaak ban, maybe not bridge, but think that WOTC should leave the format alone for a good while.
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Post by LeoTzu » 4 years ago

I think Emry has all of the makings of a card that has the potential to be busted in Modern.

• Cost reducer? Check.
• Card selection enabler? Check.
• Puts cards in graveyard? Check.
• Interacts with graveyard? Check.
• Part of a game-winning combo? Check.

Does that mean she WILL be busted? Nah. She might be totally fine in Modern. Only time will tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if she leads to something completely bananas in the next few months.

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Post by Tzoulis » 4 years ago

By the way the phrase "can win out of nowhere" is overused and deeply wrong. Twin won "out of nowhere", infect still does.

If any version of an Urza deck has Urza on the battlefied, it doesn't win out of nowhere, the most broken card in the deck is right there.
If the PO deck casts a PO for 3 or more it didn't win out of nowhere, the cards are there to support the game winning spells.

As for Emry, I see her being more relevant (and broken) in the PO deck rather than the Whir list.

As I've said a few times already in this thread, both Urza decks have more or less the same strengths and weaknesses. Namely, aggro decks (Burn/Prowess %$#% on PO Urza) and big mana and whatever you'd classify GDS these days. Midrange is better against Whir, but probably has a worse matchup with the PO List.

To be honest I can see Emry being a step too far for the PO lists since it's another way of going infinite with Paradox Engine and a 0 mana artifact (or more if you have mana rocks).

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