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

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idSurge
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
So you want Teferi banned but admit it's not even good? I suppose on some level I can relate, I have lobbied in the past for annoying stuff to get banned regardless of Meta share so I guess I can't fault you for that.
No, I think its extremely good, at what it does. I believe that if a time ever comes that UW Control is seen as oppressive, it will hinge completely on T3feri.

I'll have to articulate myself better later when I have a moment. :)
UR Control UR

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Post by iTaLenTZ » 4 years ago

I do agree with a lot of things but I will keep saying this: Modern needs a reboot. Everything said by Forsyth in 2016 feels like a relic from the past and doesn't grasp today's Modern at all. Modern won't go away. The gap between Legacy and Pioneer is HUGE so there is more than enough space for Modern, its just needs to be redefined. Modern should be about the gap between Legacy (Reserved List) and Pioneer thus the starting point of Modern must become Mercadian Masques to introduce a ton of unique cards that would add net value to Modern because most don't see play anymore in Legacy and perhaps solve fundamental balance issues of current Modern. Reboot the format and manage it the same way Pioneer is getting managed. Set free all cards and lets see what will proven broken and what not to end all discussion in that regard. It would re-spike a lot of interest if people would be forced back to the drawing table to come up with new decks.

I would add criticism towards Modern Horizons. I strongly believe the set has been an utter failure.
- It failed to introduce the answers to threats Modern needed
- Instead it added more broken threats
- MH was a catalyst for powercreep. I feel like we got propelled 2 years worth of sets deeper into the powercreep funnel which seriously undermined Modern's long term health and design space. Also its clear the cards weren't properly tested and too many cards were directed at Commander causing a lot of players to call the set Commander Horizons.

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Post by Amalgam » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Teferi won't be banned in Pioneer, because it is an aggro based format and Teferi does not cut it vs aggro. It's literally a 1 mana bounce a random creature so many times. And that's for the greater good you know.

Magic is a game that's supposed to have creature based aggro strategies. It's a flaw of Modern that those kind of strategies (I am not talking about reach burn decks or prowess synergistic decks here, although the latter is such up to a degree) have gone dead.

It feels so refreshing playing against those decks. Once Upon A time, Modern had Wild Nacatl banned, because a 1 cmc 3/3 was oppressive.
The issue is Pioneer is literally only Aggro decks. Aggro vs aggro matches every round have got to be one of the most boring ways to play magic. Basically like playing solitaire. I'm all for creature combat but the level of depth in pioneer is very low

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

My last Modern cards, are enough of my UR to put Twin back together without $1000 invested. If we dont get Twin and 3+ bans on Monday, then those are all gone too.

Thats just all there is to it, and I can play Pioneer casually.
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Post by Amalgam » 4 years ago

Because different archetypes can exist and are needed in eternal formats, removing one such as tron/ramp completely isn't healthy and makes other archetypes too strong. I can understand wanting to weaken it slightly to let mid range be more prevalent but it needs to exist

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Post by metalmusic_4 » 4 years ago

iTaLenTZ wrote:
4 years ago
Modern should be about the gap between Legacy (Reserved List) and Pioneer thus the starting point of Modern must become Mercadian Masques to introduce a ton of unique cards that would add net value to Modern because most don't see play anymore in Legacy and perhaps solve fundamental balance issues of current Modern.

Reboot the format and manage it the same way Pioneer is getting managed. Set free all cards and lets see what will proven broken and what not to end all discussion in that regard. It would re-spike a lot of interest if people would be forced back to the drawing table to come up with new decks.

I would add criticism towards Modern Horizons. I strongly believe the set has been an utter failure.
I am responding to these three paragraphs separately.
First, changing the starting point for modern would be fun and introduce lots of new stuff but I don't expect they would ever do that. People have complained about 8th and 9th edition for a long time and they haven't changed it yet so I don't think they ever will.

Second, I and I'm sure many others would like to see a complete reset on the ban list like you descibed and the pioneer ban list handling would be a great example of how do it right. But I strongly doubt they would ever do that either. It would be an admittion of wrong doing on their part and a shocking upheaval to the meta and format identity.

Finally, modern horizons had problems undoubtedly but it did achieve its main goal with flying colors. That main goal was TO MAKE MONEY FOR WOTC. I bought 2 boxes and most of my friends did too. Financially it was a huge success. It was geared toward a higher power level and that came with risk of some cards being too good, which happened. The power level was part of the draw for people to buy the set. I expect the corrective action for the next set in this style will be to dramaticly down power it.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
No, I think its extremely good, at what it does. I believe that if a time ever comes that UW Control is seen as oppressive, it will hinge completely on T3feri.

I'll have to articulate myself better later when I have a moment.
I won't argue too much on this point, but in my opinion, if UW Control ever becomes oppresive I would assume the biggest problem card would be JTMS more than anything, brainstorming every turn is wild.
Amalgam wrote:
4 years ago
Because different archetypes can exist and are needed in eternal formats, removing one such as tron/ramp completely isn't healthy and makes other archetypes too strong. I can understand wanting to weaken it slightly to let mid range be more prevalent but it needs to exist
I agree its okay for different archetypes to exist, but Tron is not an archetype, it is 1 deck, and it is 1 deck which takes a main stage role in the suppression of Mid Range and Control archetypes, If Tron were gone tommorow, ramp would still exist in the format, but other entire archetypes would also have more room to flourish in.

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Post by Aazadan » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
I agree its okay for different archetypes to exist, but Tron is not an archetype, it is 1 deck, and it is 1 deck which takes a main stage role in the suppression of Mid Range and Control archetypes, If Tron were gone tommorow, ramp would still exist in the format, but other entire archetypes would also have more room to flourish in.
I have to disagree with this. Tron is definitely an archetype. Now, it does fit into a larger archetype of big mana, but Tron has so many variants that it can be called an archetype on it's own. Green, Red/Green, Black/Green, Blue, Eldrazi, Colorless, and I think I'm missing one or two... and these decks all have very different strategies to win the game (outside of assembling Tron) and use different threats.

There's enough different Tron decks out there that I think it's totally fair to call it an archetype. Now, what that means for bans I don't want to get into.

That said, I'm putting a little more thought into my idea earlier as a response to [mention]ktkenshinx[/mention]'s draft post where I mentioned that Pioneer's ban list has been quite a success. Nothing has really been banned without deserving it. I think that that may very well be what Modern needs. There is so much discontent in the format because of people seeing things banned that they want, or unbanned that they want. Additionally, the constraints of the format and it's power level have shifted significantly over time (which was to be expected). Assumptions made for bans 5+ years ago may not be relevant any longer, and with a needed shift in the format identity as it's clearly no longer a place for old Standard decks to go... maybe what the format truly needs is to unban everything, and then rapidly iterate on a ban list every week or two for the next several months.

That would solve the ban speculation issues, confirm that assumptions about what is/isn't healthy in the format are accurate, give Wizards the freedom to act quickly to solve any new problems that come up, and probably spark a lot of interest in a new and developing meta. In addition to the benefits to the format, it would give Wizards some seriously invaluable data as to what sorts of cards are and aren't ok to print. After 2019 it is clear that the assumptions they're making about the various formats are wrong. They banned the wrong cards on multiple occasions, hit a long strong of poorly chosen cards to print, and so on. Maybe this can be an opportunity for them to get some good data on what would and wouldn't be ok in a high powered format. Also, large formats are often a battle of sideboards, but if Wizards can't really identify problem cards and strong decks, they can't print appropriate sideboard hate.

This approach would get us a better format now, and an improvement in design going into the future.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

Aazadan wrote:
4 years ago
That would solve the ban speculation issues, confirm that assumptions about what is/isn't healthy in the format are accurate, give Wizards the freedom to act quickly to solve any new problems that come up, and probably spark a lot of interest in a new and developing meta. In addition to the benefits to the format, it would give Wizards some seriously invaluable data as to what sorts of cards are and aren't ok to print.
For me, thats just too optimistic, Wotc already has the data, they have more data than we do since they curate the data that is even released to us in the first place. They probably know exactly what the general win rates are of certain decks against others. We do not need to unban everything in order for Wotc to start doing it's job, it simply does not make sense for this to be the requirement to spur Wotc to action. Also Wotc already knows what cards it shouldn't be printing, Maro himself gave Delve an 8 on the storm scale that it would essentially never be printed again, and then they printed Hogaak because reasons. To conclude, I just think that unbanning everything would just be an enormous strain on the playerbase to act in good faith and participate in an even wilder Modern environment when people don't even want to do it now, they are sick of it, and by unbanning everything, you basically negate all of the sacrifices that the playerbase had to endure just to get the current cards banned. Eye of Ugin cost the playerbase and tournament organizers, so did KCI, so did Hogaak, Wotc should respect these facts and let these cards, among others burn in hell forever.

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Post by Yawgmoth » 4 years ago

[mention]ktkenshinx[/mention]

First, let me say that I like what you have here and I generally agree with your sentiment throughout. Particularly your central thesis which is the need for a mission statement from WotC regarding Modern moving forward.

Now, a few notes:

1. On punctuation/font, I would avoid the multiple uses of "all caps" found in the introduction. Maybe bold or underlining would be better? Capitalization starts the article off on a ranty note which I do not think I'd what you want. Maybe an additional space between each bullet point would help visualize things better.

2. I like that you are using data and figures but I think you could be using better comparisons to support your claim. For one, you keep comparing to similar times in 2018 to show that things are different. However, it is not obvious to me that 2018 wasn't the outlier (higher than usual). It would be better if you compared current values with a range of past values. For example, you could show the average December attendance/reddit traffic for the past 3 years and showed that this year was outside the standard error of the mean for the past 3 years. (This is similar to the claims that people make regarding sea level to say that climate change is not real because it has not gone up substantially year to year when it has century to century). Without a sense of the variance we cannot know how abnormal the current state is.

3. I'm not sure why you use a box plot. I am more familiar with probabilistic stats which use t-tests and ANOVAs so a bar/scatter plot with mean and SEM is more informative to me. Showing medians and quartiles can be useful if your data are not normally distributed but there is no reason to make that assumption here. If you assume normal distributions then you could actually statistically support the claim that December is different from other months using a 1-way RM ANOVA and post hoc comparisons.

4. "It's also tempting to explain away any one or even all of these issues as isolated or statistically irrelevant events. Maybe major content sites always see a natural downtick in Modern content during the off-season and are just waiting for big 2020 events to restart." If you looked at multiple years and did the right statistical tests you could confidently conclude the former and rule out the later.

5. Regarding the quality of your metrics. Are GP attendance and Reddit traffic positively correlated? From a metrics perspective, if you believe that they are both indicators of the same underlying construct (format health) then they should be correlated you have the data to test that directly without much additional work. This would allow you to make more strong claims under "Collective Signs of Crisis"

6. "I would be thrilled if all of these measures are proven to be irrelevant anecdotes a few months down the road." I don't think you mean this. I think you mean to say that you hope that 2019 is a low point within the range of normal variance and not an indicator of a significant change in the format. If the measures are irrelevant then this article is irrelevant.

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Post by metalmusic_4 » 4 years ago

Hey, I'm watching for price spikes on the possible cards to be unbanned and I'm not seeing any so far. There is always some mix of speculation and insider trading around unbans but I am not seeing it yet. I use Mtggoldfish and it is a bit slow, does any one else see spikes on any other sites?

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Post by CurdBros » 4 years ago

I really hope we see a strong mission statement about modern's future in combination with multiple bans to give modern a shot in the arm. Hopefully some combination of Oko, veil, mox opal, astrolabe, and simian spirit guide). I think any less than 3 bans would not be enough to show they are truly invested in modern. From what I have been hearing from multiple streamers and modern players is that most people do expect some serious action including multiple bans. I am extremely excited to see what happens.

As for unbans I don't think any are needed right now. If there are multiple bans I think we would need time to see what the meta looks like and then reassess if the modern player base thinks additional action is needed. If I had to pick I would say that when things calm down a bit that preordain would be the first card I would consider followed by Birthing Pod. While I don't like the twin topic, I know it's a hot one. I think David Ernenwein's article on Modern Nexus about splinter twin's possible place in modern in 2019 and 2020 from a data driven perspective is a good read. While his article does not take this exact style; what I took from the article was a basic question for myself- would what we gain from unbanning twin outweigh the possible problems involved with unbanning twin? I personally believe it would not at this point. That doesn't mean I think twin is to powerful for modern or that someone else would come to the same conclusion as myself and Mr.Ernenwein, I just don't think unbanning it right now would offer more positives than possible negatives based on the data he showed.

In the end I personally beleive the most important thing WOTC can do on Monday is show the player base that they are truly commited to having modern in magic's future. Best case scenario they literally say something to that affect and include a statement of support in addition to multiple bans. I would also be happy with multiple bans and a detailed discussion as to how they came to their decision including talking about modern's future. If they just ban oko and/or veil with a small discussion about how they were mistakes I would continue to worry that they basically washed their hands of modern and said, now that we have pioneer, the modern players can figure out modern on their own for the most part.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

CurdBros wrote:
4 years ago
would what we gain from unbanning twin outweigh the possible problems involved with unbanning twin?
What problems?

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Post by CurdBros » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
CurdBros wrote:
4 years ago
would what we gain from unbanning twin outweigh the possible problems involved with unbanning twin?
What problems?
The most obvious problem would be a possible re-ban in the future if it regains a 15%+ meta game share and starts to win most tournaments again. Basically, if the deck causes similar issues to why it was originally banned. Again, I'm not arguing that splinter twin would cause any problems if unbanned. I just don't know if the benefits from unbanning twin would outweigh the possibility of having to re-ban the card in the future. Per David's article the benefits of the deck that were often argued (policing the format, interactivity, etc) don't necessarily show up in the statistics/data. Again,this is all an unknown and even David himself says the data is far from 100 % definitive in any direction (for or against the argument). If the amount of data he collected showed a definitive correlation between twin causing a decline in linear strategies and if the top meta currently was full of super linear strategies I would say the benefits of unbanning twin would outweigh the possible problem of losing format diversity, having a possible tier 0 deck, and having to re-ban in the future (all of which are possible but not necessarily likely). However, the data doesn't show this and the meta in modern according to MTGTOP8, while not healthy by any means due to the abundance of oko, veil, and opal, currently includes Titan decks (both combined), Burn, E-tron, Whirza, Jund, Grixis Death Shadow, Tron, Humans, Infect, Dredge, UW Control, and Bant Control. That list definitely includes some linear decks, but also includes very interactive decks like jund, bant control,and UW control and also decks that some would consider interactive like Grixis Death Shadow, Urza Variants, and Humans.

I particularly liked David's few paragraphs on how we define "interaction". I think that is the nexus of where most people's opinions on twin differ. Because there is no definition of exactly what interaction is, it's hard to argue that splinter twin makes modern more or less interactive if we differ on the actual definition. I am by no means a twin hater or am against it being unbanned in the future. I am a UR delver player myself so I totally understand the want to have a great UR deck in modern and the want for more "interaction". However, I just wanted to say from a data perspective and meta perspective my personal opinion is that an unban of splinter twin on Monday would be a mistake. This would be especially true to me if they ban multiple cards which already throws the meta into a new place. In the end I would not be happy or mad if splinter twin was unbanned on Monday. I also don't think it would all the sudden start dominating again or that it is too powerful for 2020 modern. I just don't see the pros outweighing the cons at this moment. But that is just one man's opinion.

More important to me than any unbans are the statement of modern's future for player confidence and the multiple bans needed to give players confidence in WOTC's curation of the format as well as giving the modern meta a shakeup so there is more player interest in the modern format.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

I would say that there definitely needs to be some action in Modern come Monday.

Right now I am going to say what I hear outside of this mtgnexus website. Among players who don't currently play Modern or play it very sparingly, there seems to be more of them clamoring for a Twin unban than any other single card. This may have even been so prior to the Stoneforge Mystic unbanning, but it's close. Players don't understand the hypocrisy of Modern, where cards like Preordain (they usually bring up the stronger Ponder), Splinter Twin, and Birthing Pod are banned, while cards like Oko, Urza, and too many other cards to name (including somewhat innocuous cards like Simian Spirit Guide and Mox Opal) are legal. Simian Spirit Guide and Mox Opal do NOT lend to the rules of a "Turn 4 format." Sorry, I don't care how you cut it. I personally Looooove playing Simian Spirit Guide and would absolutely CRY to see it go, but even I can admit that the card is doesn't conform to a turn 4 format.

Like I said, the card I see brought up the most is Splinter Twin. Many Standard and Legacy players that I know would play Modern more if it were legal. They cannot see why some other 10+ cards are legal, but this is not.

*I'm saying this from a perspective of only mildly agreeing with them. I went from horribly disagreeing with the Splinter Twin banning to being happy to be able to play some strategies that I normally couldn't try. I felt that for a while, it was best for Twin to be gone. But the power level of the format has gone up. Splinter Twin is an old relic that absolutely would not be as powerful as many think. Annoying, yes. I'll give you that. But annoying is the prerequisite for playing Modern. "Play annoying or GTFO!" Splinter Twin would probably be in the top 10 of cards played. Top 5? I don't think so.

But yes, there's no way to prove it. WotC has allowed Hogaak to go too long, Urza to go too long, and let some 20 cards go into print that are unacceptable in Modern, while Preordain, Green Sun's Zenith, Splinter Twin, and Birthing Pod are still banned. That … is a slap in the face. In what world is any of these cards more powerful than Oko, Thief of Crowns? Please tell me because I am still a bit outraged that WotC finally printed a planeswalker stronger than my favorite - Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

I am going to restate this for absolute clarity - the feelings about Twin are something I hear outside of this forum. I see it in comments in CFB and SCG articles (yes, many of those comments are absolute trash, but this is what I see) and from players that I know close to me.

RANT
SPOILER
Show
Hide
- to rant even further, imagine 5 cards in Modern.
1. Lightning Explosion - 5 damage to any target
2. Lightning Eruption - 4 damage to any target
3. Lightning Bolt - 3 damage to any target
4. Shock - 2 damage to any target.

The first 3 are all Modern legal and Shock is banned. You cannot expect everyone to be okay with that. Sure, there are many people who will still play. I'll still play. But not everyone can accept that.
Last edited by FoodChainGoblins 4 years ago, edited 3 times in total.
Standard - Will pick up what's good when paper starts
Pre Modern - Do not own anymore
Pioneer - DEAD
Modern - Jund Sacrifice, Amulet, Elementals, Trollementals, BR Asmo/Goryo's, Yawmoth Chord
Legacy - No more cards, will rebuy Sneak Show when I can
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

It sounds a lot like the kinds of arguments people made against unbanning Jace, Stoneforge, and even Ancestral Vision. I really don't feel like deep diving into this one again, other than to say that the unfounded fears generated by this deck have grown to unparalleled legendary proportions.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
What problems?
Well this is probably a hornet's nest all on it's own, and theres no need to derail the entire thread for something like this but I guess I'll bit. Twin does have negatives to the format, it did when it was legal, not everyone was sad to see Twin go when it was banned, there were plenty of people who enjoyed the Twinless format (at least until Eldrazi winter came).

For me personally, I had experience playing against a local veteran who ran RUG Twin, the issues I had playing against the deck were that it had:

Good Counterspells (Cryptics, Leaks)
Tempo Plays (Remands, Pestermites, Exarchs)
Agro Potential (Goyf into Bolt Snap Bolt)
Legitimate Control Potential (Cryptics + Snaps)
And of course, game ending threats (Twin or Blood Moon)

Really the deck had A LOT going for it, it really enjoyed an ease of play that other decks simply didn't. Back then I played various meta and non meta decks against it, everything from Affinity to BW Tokens to GW Hatebears (remember voice of resurgence lol), and the thing I hated most personally was simply knowing that I wasn't allowed to play magic, I couldn't tap out to play my relevant cards and the Twin player didn't have to since they had access to Goyf, which back then was a top tier threat. Even doing typically things like Pathing a Goyf felt awful since I knew it would simply speed up their combo.

Mind you some things have fundamentally changed since that time, for one thing, Gitaxian Probe is no longer here, and that was a very relevant card that Twin could and would lean on. Removal has gotten marginally better, push and trophy are welcome additions though they aren't always better than Path, but at least I assume we wouldn't have to play garbage like Slaughter Pact like we did back then which felt awful as well.

Honestly I'm not sure how I really feel about Twin if it were to be brought back into the format, my gut reaction is simply that we would be making another giant paint bubble (spongebob meme) which wouldn't fundamentally help things, and I don't know what the appetite is for the playerbase in terms of adding more A + B combos at this point. At least with Pod, it required 3 creatures, all of which were soft to bolt to combo someone.

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Post by Aazadan » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
For me, thats just too optimistic, Wotc already has the data, they have more data than we do since they curate the data that is even released to us in the first place. They probably know exactly what the general win rates are of certain decks against others. We do not need to unban everything in order for Wotc to start doing it's job, it simply does not make sense for this to be the requirement to spur Wotc to action. Also Wotc already knows what cards it shouldn't be printing, Maro himself gave Delve an 8 on the storm scale that it would essentially never be printed again, and then they printed Hogaak because reasons. To conclude, I just think that unbanning everything would just be an enormous strain on the playerbase to act in good faith and participate in an even wilder Modern environment when people don't even want to do it now, they are sick of it, and by unbanning everything, you basically negate all of the sacrifices that the playerbase had to endure just to get the current cards banned. Eye of Ugin cost the playerbase and tournament organizers, so did KCI, so did Hogaak, Wotc should respect these facts and let these cards, among others burn in hell forever.
Given the questionable designs in 2018, the unmitigated disaster that was 2019, and several signals that have already been sent that 2020 also has serious issues coming up, I really don't think they do.

As far as the storm scale goes, that only applies to standard legal sets and isn't really a relevant argument. It also applies much more so to design, where as the design in 2019 was fine rather it was a complete and total failure on the side of development and playtesting.

I'm pretty sure that KCI, Hogaak, and Eye of Ugin wouldn't last long. I do think putting KCI and some other cards that proved to provide inaccurate online results compared to paper tournaments due to complex non deterministic loops would be a reasonable addition to the initial ban list though, if for no other reason than the fact that MTGO cannot provide good feedback for them.

But, I will argue that in it's favor, Modern's ban list does not have a whole lot of trust in it from players. Almost everyone thinks that one card or another is unfairly banned (not to be confused with a safe unban), while the same is not true of Pioneer or Legacy, the other non rotating formats where cards get banned. And that would also suggest that perhaps it's time to reconstruct the entire thing.

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Post by CurdBros » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
It sounds a lot like the kinds of arguments people made against unbanning Jace, Stoneforge, and even Ancestral Vision. I really don't feel like deep diving into this one again, other than to say that the unfounded fears generated by this deck have grown to unparalleled legendary proportions.

The major difference between Jace, Stoneforge Mystic, and Ancestral Visions when compared to Twin is that those of us who have played modern long enough played with Splinter Twin in the modern format and it was banned after being in the format . SFM, Jace, and Visions were never in the format to see actual play. They were banned before the format began due to their standard sins. Therefore, the argument against unbanning those cards in the past could be classified as "fear" since we had no actual data or experience with the card in the modern format. Those are two different things in my opinion, but I can see how the argument can be similar since we haven't seen Twin in today's modern meta or in a couple of years.

Unbanning twin would definitely cause a lot of hype for modern again and would be a benefit on that level for sure as FoodChain mentioned. When compared to other cards in a vacuum it is strange to have cards like mox opal in the format and not a 4 CMC enchantment so I definitely can understand the arguments for unbanning the card. I don't want to upset anyone who wants to see splinter twin back in modern and I have no horse in the race. I have no "unfounded fear" of the deck and have played against the deck many many times. I actually love having twin in modern as a Delver player. I was just providing my personal opinion on what I would like to see happen for modern come Monday. I even thought about not discussing unbans in my post about Monday's announcement because I didn't want to bring up twin so I won't spend anymore time talking about twin. I think much more important than potential unbans are the mission statement and possibility of multiple bans.

[mention]Aazadan[/mention] - You may and others may be onto something by suggesting a "soft reset" of sorts of the ban list. Maybe do a trial period or something for certain cards. It would be a lot to tackle, but would definitely help player confidence.

[mention]FoodChainGoblins[/mention] - That rant was classic. I totally understand what you are saying and I too would be upset if my beloved delver were banned while I stare at a board of 3/3 elk everywhere that a turn two oko made.

[mention]ktkenshinx[/mention] inx- I read through your first draft and I have to say I am super impressed. I do not have near the writing acumen or talent you or others on the forums have and can't really add any further constructive help. Very well done.
Last edited by CurdBros 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

Aazadan wrote:
4 years ago
Given the questionable designs in 2018, the unmitigated disaster that was 2019, and several signals that have already been sent that 2020 also has serious issues coming up, I really don't think they do.

As far as the storm scale goes, that only applies to standard legal sets and isn't really a relevant argument. It also applies much more so to design, where as the design in 2019 was fine rather it was a complete and total failure on the side of development and playtesting.
Oh I fully agree there are some complete dunces working at Wotc, especially in the Play Design team who have completely dropped the ball. But what I meant and probably should have clarified, is that Wotc is good at eventually coming out with correct and apt lessons learned, whether it is Aaron's 9 rules for Modern, or Maro's drive to work series, or Wotc's admission that threats went too far ahead of answers. The big issue for Wotc is that they keep learning lessons, and than either forget them or perhaps even willfully not apply them, which makes all the pain of learning the lessons ultimately meaningless. Also in terms of the storm scale being purely for standard, I simply don't think this is true, when you look at over half a decade of accumulated Commander products as well as other supplemental products, clearly the storm scale has some impact, there are certain keywords they simply do not print, at least thats my assessment.
Aazadan wrote:
4 years ago
I'm pretty sure that KCI, Hogaak, and Eye of Ugin wouldn't last long. I do think putting KCI and some other cards that proved to provide inaccurate online results compared to paper tournaments due to complex non deterministic loops would be a reasonable addition to the initial ban list though, if for no other reason than the fact that MTGO cannot provide good feedback for them.

But, I will argue that in it's favor, Modern's ban list does not have a whole lot of trust in it from players. Almost everyone thinks that one card or another is unfairly banned (not to be confused with a safe unban), while the same is not true of Pioneer or Legacy, the other non rotating formats where cards get banned. And that would also suggest that perhaps it's time to reconstruct the entire thing.
I think if Wotc were to make such am ambitious project of completely resetting the banlist and treating it from scratch it would most likely need some extra catch to go along with it, like it they were moving the starting point for Modern back to Merc Masques or something like that, which would actually create a practical reason in favor of resetting the banlist, short of that, I think that there are simply a boat load of controversial cards that aren't going to re-introduce people to the format in a helpful way. What relevant testing can we have in a format with Hypergenesis, Shoal Infect, and Hoogak Dredge legal in it? I think the main reason this strategy worked in Pioneer is because fundamentally, Pioneer isn't broken, it simply can't be when its starting with RTR, mind you I'm sure Pioneer still has plenty of problems, but the problems can't be 8th edition levels of bad.

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Ed06288
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Post by Ed06288 » 4 years ago

Not exactly stoked about a twin or pod unban. I guess I still have my spellskites so I shouldn't care either way. I'll probably play anyways for the nostalgia of seeing twin again.

Hypergenesis shouldn't be in the same sentence as hogaak or blazing shoal, that deck is way too inconsistent.

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Post by Ed06288 » 4 years ago

I guess if Jitte is banned they should also ban t3feri and the like

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Post by drmarkb » 4 years ago

I will never play Modern again if they unban twin or pod, once they are gone, they are gone for my money. I don't want to play a format where stuff gets banned and comes back. Same with Divining Top in Legacy, love the card, felt they hit the wrong ban, but once it has gone, it should stay gone. If it has never had the chance, fine, but if it has been banned, let it go.

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Post by metalmusic_4 » 4 years ago

Ed06288 wrote:
4 years ago
Not exactly stoked about a twin or pod unban. I guess I still have my spellskites so I shouldn't care either way. I'll probably play anyways for the nostalgia of seeing twin again.

Hypergenesis shouldn't be in the same sentence as hogaak or blazing shoal, that deck is way too inconsistent.
Hypergenesis would be another living end style deck. It would win big or fall on its face after getting hit by thoughtsieze or just one counter Spell. It also wouldn't have the back up plan of hard casting creatures like living end does and it doesn't draw as many cards due to not having all the cycling cards. It's scary looking, but if you aren't afraid of living end you shouldn't be afraid of hypergenesis.

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Post by DarthDrac » 4 years ago

I've enjoyed playing Pioneer more than Modern recently. I haven't really enjoyed Modern since the Faithless Looting ban and the loss of the ability to play Hollow One or Izzet Phoenix. Rather than the Looting decks I've been playing CrabVine, which is ok, but just doesn't have the same feel, or Green Tron, but I hate having to run little Karn, just to answer an opposing little Karn + Lattice.

In Pioneer I can play Izzet Phoenix, Soulflayer or Ilharg sneak attack and the decks are viable, since Pioneer is actually what Modern is meant to be, a turn four format. There are no decks which can consistently win before turn four in Pioneer and if something threatens that sort of play pattern it's banned. Pioneers identity is as the non-rotating format without fetch lands or tron lands that actually holds to the turn four "rule".

Maybe Modern should be a turn three format? Certainly if Birthing Pod, Bridge From Below, Faithless Looting, Green Sun's Zenith, Mental Misstep, Preordain, Punishing Fire and Splinter Twin were unbanned it would lean towards that direction and those are the safer side of unbans... Whatever Modern is to become it needs to be managed in a similar way to Pioneer and WoTC need to be consistent in how they support the format. You can't ban too much out of Modern, Ensnaring Bridge or Blood Moon might be woeful to play against, but they help set the format apart from Pioneer as does Tron, like it or loathe it.

I'm hoping Latice, Oko and Urza get hit with the ban hammer, as for an unban, at the moment, probably just Preordain. It won't do much to bring people back to the format, but it might help a little...

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