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

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The Fluff
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

mhm.. since people are talking about it. First thing I'm gonna do on a twin unban is to sell all spellskites for quick cash. To get funds for other cards that I need. hm hmm :3

well, I was just daydreaming. Never gonna happen. Twin is gone for good.
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want to play a uw control deck in modern, but don't have Jace or snapcaster? please come visit us at the Emeria thread

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Post by iTaLenTZ » 4 years ago

What Modern needs are good blue tempo decks and punishing hatebear/prison strategies to keep the degenerated stuff in check.

Stifle+Daze+Preordain: Resurrect URx Delver decks
Destructive Flow+Gerrard's Verdict+Vindicate: Now BGx can finally put pressure on big mana decks
Circular Logic+Careful Study+Basking Rootwalla: Resurrect UGx Madness
Rishadan Port+Tangle Wire: Enables prison/hatebear decks to beat big mana decks and punish decks with low landcount.
Standstill+Pernicous Deed: Resurrect landstill control decks

Modern is also in desperate need of a card like Dustbowl.

What Legacy has thought us is that a meta were URx Delver decks are tier 1, is a healthy meta. All the cards to solve Moderns problems already exist. Its time for Modern to transition into Legacy Lite.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

CurdBros wrote:
4 years ago
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.
To your second point: Twin was also banned at a time where Electrolyze was considered not only playable, but good. What does that say about the relative power differences between 2015 and 2019+?

To your first: that didn't stop a number of people claiming each of those cards would ruin Modern by making blue interactive decks too powerful and dominant and oppressive. Which is pretty laughable given what actually happened. (Hey, remember when AV was $50? And stayed $50 for two years??). People are absolutely terrible at evaluating cards. They will see the worst possible scenario and conflate that to epic proportions. Add in the myths and legends of the mighty TWIN legacy, and you have people who have never even played with the card spreading campfire stories about it.

To go with a more apt example: remember how when Bloodbraid Elf came back and everyone freaked out about how that was going to revitalize Jund? And how, for a long period of time, Jund actually dropped the red all together because it wasn't good enough? And how even today with Wrenn & freaking Six pushing people back into red, Jund still struggles to stay relevant?

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

Thanks for those that provided feedback and @ comments. I think I've addressed almost all of it via edits, either by changing something or sharing my thought on a point you brought up. The big things I haven't addressed are noted below:

[mention]Aazadan[/mention] and [mention]Yawgmoth[/mention] re: data issues
I'm still trying to address some of the gaps in "The 2019 Modern Decline" section, but I'm also wondering just how important you think that section is. Honestly, it could probably be its own article and its adding 2k words to the whole piece. I think it's important to discuss some of these points from a high-level, but I might be too in the weeds with my current approach. What do you (and @anyone else) think about significantly cutting that section and just presenting some high-level data takeaways in a bulleted list? This would move us through the crisis section and into the solutions quicker.
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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

On twin vs jace (and other cards brought up, like stoneforge): the difference is that twin is a win-con, jace is a control piece.

On twin unbanning: I don't think now is the right moment. We have problems to solve, unbanning twin has a slight chance of being wrong. It's not a matter of who's right or wrong about twin. It's just a bad time to be potentially wrong about something; creating new problems is not the way forward right now.

On which cards should be banned or unbanned and the criterion: there are multiple synergistic factors at play: threshold on the number of playset (for example: number of cantrips, njmber of bolt-like burn spells, etc), consistency, and enablers. For example it's not strictly about if ponder and preordain are too good. We could have preordain by cutting both opt and serum vision. So it's not about banned card X is similar in power level to legal card Y. Another example on the other side of the fence (according to me and others) is the current threshold on land fixing in tron. With scrying, OuaT, expedition map, ancient stirring, london mulligan, etc, tron is too consistent right now.

On spirit guide and opal: I agree they're enablers of turn-4 violation. I already stated in the past that certain category of cards should be pre-emptively kept in check. It's related to my previous point: too many redundant similar effects and how they interact with other cards. In this case, it's all about being faster by one turn. People have moaned about affinity getting killed: I'd rather they print cards matching affinity goal instead of have affinity be playable due to the presence of opal.

On electrolyze: I think it's an evidence of what twin did. It's a card-neutral tempo play that used to kill early drops. Elves, boggle, infect and snapcaster among a slew of early plays that could get killed by electrolyze) are less relevant now. There is not a real UR top-tier deck now (bye bye phoenix). Those are the reasons why electrolyze is does not see play.

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Post by iTaLenTZ » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
To go with a more apt example: remember how when Bloodbraid Elf came back and everyone freaked out about how that was going to revitalize Jund? And how, for a long period of time, Jund actually dropped the red all together because it wasn't good enough? And how even today with Wrenn & freaking Six pushing people back into red, Jund still struggles to stay relevant?
Its because Jund aims at attrition to win games. Exchanging resources with cheap and strong individual cards until exhausting the opponent and taking over the game. That entire strategy simply isn't viable any more.

- Resources: The amount of resources other decks have to use to play powerful cards has drastically gone down.
- Attrition becomes effective over time, however a lot of Modern decks aim to win by turn 3
- The best decks in Modern are those who can cheat resources or have resource manipulation making Jund's primary objective to fail like Dredge, Mox Opal
- Synergy decks have taken over Modern so trading 1 for 1 doesn't hold any more. Individually Jund's cards are better but when paired with eachother they don't stack like Urza does. With synergy decks it means you have too many targets to remove so they out attrition you by value.
- Too many cards have build-in cardadvantage like PW's, creatures with EtB triggers, cast triggers etc.
- Big mana decks don't care about attrition. They just need to drop a bomb Jund can't deal with and its GG.
- Jund preys on midrange decks but there aren't any left. Urza might qualify but it outvalues Jund by a lot.
- BBE and W6 don't improve any of Jund's bad matchups not solve any problems Jund was having, they just improve the already good matchups therefore these cards are overkill.
- Jund is a very consistent deck but other decks caught up on this. Tron etc are incredibly consistent now
- Jund is a net loser of the London Mulligan Rule

Individually the cards are still extremely strong and because you don't rely on synergies it makes the deck consistent in what it does so you always have a chance at winning, but the deck isn't rewarding to play because of the opponent's deck is doing what its supposed to be doing you are a sitting duck.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

pierreb wrote:
4 years ago
On electrolyze: I think it's an evidence of what twin did. It's a card-neutral tempo play that used to kill early drops. Elves, boggle, infect and snapcaster among a slew of early plays that could get killed by electrolyze) are less relevant now. There is not a real UR top-tier deck now (bye bye phoenix). Those are the reasons why electrolyze is does not see play.
Elecrolyze doesn't see play because spending 3 mana for 2 damage and a card is simply unacceptable compared to the power level of today's format. That was more the point I was trying to make.

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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

Jund is not a top deck only because the power of modern is too high currently. It's not a complete dog. If Wizards took action like ktkenshinx suggests, then jund would come back. Not the top deck of the format, but a reasonable choice if you like that kind of deck.

That's why I disagree both with "jund is too weak" and "twin is fine". Both are true only if you hold that the current power level of the format is fine. I think the current level should be lowered.

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Post by Ed06288 » 4 years ago

We should all leave this forum and just jump over to good gamery lmao

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Goodness, the point I was trying to make seems completely lost, so let's put them in bullet points:
  • People are terrible at evaluating cards on the banned list.
  • People use niche best case scenarios to create fear around a deck or card
  • People use performances from irrelevant formats as justification for their stances (irrelevant by means of being completely different formats, or by a format view being separated by so much time that the same it is unrecognizably different).
  • Jace, AV, and SFM did pretty much nothing. If they saw any play, it was on the backs of huge hype and other cards.
  • BBE did not make Jund better when it was unbanned, and red was dropped entirely by many players until W6 was printed.

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Post by Aazadan » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Thanks for those that provided feedback and @ comments. I think I've addressed almost all of it via edits, either by changing something or sharing my thought on a point you brought up. The big things I haven't addressed are noted below:

Aazadan and Yawgmoth re: data issues
I'm still trying to address some of the gaps in "The 2019 Modern Decline" section, but I'm also wondering just how important you think that section is. Honestly, it could probably be its own article and its adding 2k words to the whole piece. I think it's important to discuss some of these points from a high-level, but I might be too in the weeds with my current approach. What do you (and @anyone else) think about significantly cutting that section and just presenting some high-level data takeaways in a bulleted list? This would move us through the crisis section and into the solutions quicker.
It could perhaps be abbreviated but I think it's still an important point to make to show that Modern isn't just seeing a decline from peoples attention mostly being on Pioneer right now, but that there's some deep and significant problems in the format besides that.

I think the main part of the argument is that any points for Modern being in trouble right now need to draw parallels in order to prevent readers from simply dismissing it as Pioneer being new and people only having so much time to play.

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Post by Aazadan » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Goodness, the point I was trying to make seems completely lost, so let's put them in bullet points:
  • People are terrible at evaluating cards on the banned list.
  • People use niche best case scenarios to create fear around a deck or card
  • People use performances from irrelevant formats as justification for their stances (irrelevant by means of being completely different formats, or by a format view being separated by so much time that the same it is unrecognizably different).
  • Jace, AV, and SFM did pretty much nothing. If they saw any play, it was on the backs of huge hype and other cards.
  • BBE did not make Jund better when it was unbanned, and red was dropped entirely by many players until W6 was printed.
This is why I think the format needs a facelift. And I think a new mission statement is the perfect time to do it. The format now has more cards in it than Legacy had when Modern released and many of the assumptions made when the format started, and given the way Wizards has managed the format lately, I would argue many of the assumptions now are simply no longer valid. As such, with a new format mission statement, and new format goals (Modern is no longer the place for old Standard decks for example), I think it makes a lot of sense to rework the entire ban list (again, minus maybe very few exceptions), and let cards prove their merits the way it was done for Pioneer.

Such an undertaking would probably be a 6 month task with a rapidly iterating ban list, and the format would be better for both the players and WotC. The pro community has frequently been wrong on bans/unbans, as has the general community, as has WotC... it's obvious that no one is operating with enough information to make accurate format decisions from a power level point of view.

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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Goodness, people have differrent opinions than me, so let's put them in bullet points:
  • People who disagree about cards on the banned list are wrong.
  • I choose to ignore scenarios that don't fit my opinion
  • People talk about the last time a ban card was legal.
  • Jace and SFM are played in some deck, but it's not relevant because reasons.
  • BBE does get played in jund, but so what?
Reworded for clarity. You're allowed to have your opinions, just don't frame them as thinly veiled "other people are wrong". Realize that your last two bullet points come down as "unbanned cards get played, but it doesn't prove anything." Sure, unbanned cards that are not banned again proves that they are not over-powered. It doesn't follow that any card that could get unbanned would be fine. They could. Or they couldn't.

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Post by Mtgthewary » 4 years ago

I disagree. Where the mayority of pros and community was wrong? Don't remember lot of people saying bbe, Jace or stoneforge are busted and shouldn't be unbanned. It was wotc who did this. But I see a lot of people frightened more about pod or twin, even nowedays people adapted allready for busted cards and don't frighten much anymore twin and pod after hoogak, oko and urza. Seems this is normal now in modern and it's maybe only strong like them, but they are allready to strong. Don't need another experience

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
I disagree. Where the mayority of pros and community was wrong? Don't remember lot of people saying bbe, Jace or stoneforge are busted and shouldn't be unbanned. It was wotc who did this. But I see a lot of people frightened more about pod or twin, even nowedays people adapted allready for busted cards and don't frighten much anymore twin and pod after hoogak, oko and urza. Seems this is normal now in modern and it's maybe only strong like them, but they are allready to strong. Don't need another experience
Apologies if I misunderstand you, but yes. TONS of Pro's and the general community 100% thought Jace alone would break Modern in half. 100%.

Those of us who actually played Blue Reactive decks at the time knew that was comically incorrect. I remember very clearly a certain famous 'modern grinder' saying Jace would break modern, and the immediate deck would be 4 x Jace + 4 Disrupting Shoal and they would fate seal people out of the game. :laugh:

There are many many many people who have/had a very poor grasp on how Modern actually works out, and yes they thought Jace would take over. Hell, we had multiple MTGS people cry out 'I'm done with this game Jace is too OP!!!' for him to do literally NOTHING.

Big Teferi is a better card than Jace. In Modern, without T3feri, and FoN, Jace is literally nothing.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Aazadan wrote:
4 years ago
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Thanks for those that provided feedback and @ comments. I think I've addressed almost all of it via edits, either by changing something or sharing my thought on a point you brought up. The big things I haven't addressed are noted below:

Aazadan and Yawgmoth re: data issues
I'm still trying to address some of the gaps in "The 2019 Modern Decline" section, but I'm also wondering just how important you think that section is. Honestly, it could probably be its own article and its adding 2k words to the whole piece. I think it's important to discuss some of these points from a high-level, but I might be too in the weeds with my current approach. What do you (and @anyone else) think about significantly cutting that section and just presenting some high-level data takeaways in a bulleted list? This would move us through the crisis section and into the solutions quicker.
It could perhaps be abbreviated but I think it's still an important point to make to show that Modern isn't just seeing a decline from peoples attention mostly being on Pioneer right now, but that there's some deep and significant problems in the format besides that.

I think the main part of the argument is that any points for Modern being in trouble right now need to draw parallels in order to prevent readers from simply dismissing it as Pioneer being new and people only having so much time to play.
Agreed with this. Just clarity around the decline in GP attendance would be shocking enough. Just the raw data.
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Post by Mtgthewary » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
I disagree. Where the mayority of pros and community was wrong? Don't remember lot of people saying bbe, Jace or stoneforge are busted and shouldn't be unbanned. It was wotc who did this. But I see a lot of people frightened more about pod or twin, even nowedays people adapted allready for busted cards and don't frighten much anymore twin and pod after hoogak, oko and urza. Seems this is normal now in modern and it's maybe only strong like them, but they are allready to strong. Don't need another experience
Apologies if I misunderstand you, but yes. TONS of Pro's and the general community 100% thought Jace alone would break Modern in half. 100%.

Those of us who actually played Blue Reactive decks at the time knew that was comically incorrect. I remember very clearly a certain famous 'modern grinder' saying Jace would break modern, and the immediate deck would be 4 x Jace + 4 Disrupting Shoal and they would fate seal people out of the game. :laugh:

There are many many many people who have/had a very poor grasp on how Modern actually works out, and yes they thought Jace would take over. Hell, we had multiple MTGS people cry out 'I'm done with this game Jace is too OP!!!' for him to do literally NOTHING.

Big Teferi is a better card than Jace. In Modern, without T3feri, and FoN, Jace is literally nothing.
No, most people don't say Jace, bbe or stoneforge brake anything. This is wrong. There where some, esspecially because Jace, but it was still minority. By the way, all this cards wasn't tested in modern... But twin and pod we all knew and for me, I didn't forget my feelings against this archetyp

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
No, most people don't say Jace, bbe or stoneforge brake anything. This is wrong. There where some, esspecially because Jace, but it was still minority. By the way, all this cards wasn't tested in modern... But twin and pod we all knew and for me, I didn't forget my feelings against this archetyp
I'm going to assume we follow a different segment of the community. The majority of SCG/GP types which I follow, did not think Jace would be fine.
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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
I'm going to assume we follow a different segment of the community. The majority of SCG/GP types which I follow, did not think Jace would be fine.
That may be the case, but Jace is literally just one card in a wide range of ban/unban requests that pros and the community have made over the years. We can't simply use Jace as an example of the pros and community not having a decent grasp on what should not shouldn't be done to the format in it's best interests.

Also Jace is, at it's core, a control tool/finisher, and control isn't even a relevant archetype in Modern anyways at this point so it hardly matters to try and debate it's relative power level. Plus comparing Jace to Twin in Modern is always going to be a lost cause, Jace was an unknown quantity in Modern, Twin was not.

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Post by Amalgam » 4 years ago

Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
Mtgthewary wrote:
4 years ago
I disagree. Where the mayority of pros and community was wrong? Don't remember lot of people saying bbe, Jace or stoneforge are busted and shouldn't be unbanned. It was wotc who did this. But I see a lot of people frightened more about pod or twin, even nowedays people adapted allready for busted cards and don't frighten much anymore twin and pod after hoogak, oko and urza. Seems this is normal now in modern and it's maybe only strong like them, but they are allready to strong. Don't need another experience
Apologies if I misunderstand you, but yes. TONS of Pro's and the general community 100% thought Jace alone would break Modern in half. 100%.

Those of us who actually played Blue Reactive decks at the time knew that was comically incorrect. I remember very clearly a certain famous 'modern grinder' saying Jace would break modern, and the immediate deck would be 4 x Jace + 4 Disrupting Shoal and they would fate seal people out of the game. :laugh:

There are many many many people who have/had a very poor grasp on how Modern actually works out, and yes they thought Jace would take over. Hell, we had multiple MTGS people cry out 'I'm done with this game Jace is too OP!!!' for him to do literally NOTHING.

Big Teferi is a better card than Jace. In Modern, without T3feri, and FoN, Jace is literally nothing.
No, most people don't say Jace, bbe or stoneforge brake anything. This is wrong. There where some, esspecially because Jace, but it was still minority. By the way, all this cards wasn't tested in modern... But twin and pod we all knew and for me, I didn't forget my feelings against this archetyp
Maybe now but prior to unbanning plenty of pros were trumpeting how much of a mistake they would be to unban and how it would destory modern(especially jace). Heck when jace was unbanned there was more pros shouting from the rooftops that the end was here than not.
It just shows how wrong even pros can evaluate cards especially in different metas. Look at Wreen & Six for example which is completely broken in Legacy but is a very fair and reasonable card in modern. This is mainly due to wasteland but also most threats in legacy are */1 making the ping very strong as well.

Also I can't see any unbans happening right now or even in the foreseeable future, especially not Pod or Twin because as you said they are known archetypes and proven to be issues in the past regards if they would be fine now or not. Modern has way to many issues to introduce known problem cards back into the format right now
Last edited by Amalgam 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
I'm going to assume we follow a different segment of the community. The majority of SCG/GP types which I follow, did not think Jace would be fine.
That may be the case, but Jace is literally just one card in a wide range of ban/unban requests that pros and the community have made over the years. We can't simply use Jace as an example of the pros and community not having a decent grasp on what should not shouldn't be done to the format in it's best interests.

Also Jace is, at it's core, a control tool/finisher, and control isn't even a relevant archetype in Modern anyways at this point so it hardly matters to try and debate it's relative power level. Plus comparing Jace to Twin in Modern is always going to be a lost cause, Jace was an unknown quantity in Modern, Twin was not.
Yes we can.

People thought AV and ThopterSword was too strong to come off.
People thought GGT was too Strong. It took like 6 new cards to break dredge.
People though Jace would break Modern.
People CONTINUED to argue SFM was too Strong.

Your opinion on the 'wisdom' of the community is far higher than mine.
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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
es we can.

People thought AV and ThopterSword was too strong to come off.
People thought GGT was too Strong. It took like 6 new cards to break dredge.
People though Jace would break Modern.
People CONTINUED to argue SFM was too Strong.

Your opinion on the 'wisdom' of the community is far higher than mine.
This largely depends on where each of us is actually getting our information. I don't recall AV being viewed as a threat since control has usually operated on relatively shaky ground in Modern, and with Sword, the only person of note I recall not wanting to unban it was Aaron Forsythe himself. GGT was unbanned because dredge as a deck largely didn't even exist in Modern before it was unbanned. And if we are talking about Jace and SFM, we can't have this argument in an accurate manner, as they are control and mid range tools respectively, and those archetypes do not exist in Modern at this point, if a time ever comes when these archetypes do rise to prominence, then we will be able to better gauge both of these cards' relative strength.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
And if we are talking about Jace and SFM, we can't have this argument in an accurate manner, as they are control and mid range tools respectively, and those archetypes do not exist in Modern at this point, if a time ever comes when these archetypes do rise to prominence, then we will be able to better gauge both of these cards' relative strength.
Thats exactly my point.

You cannot cast your gaze back to when Jace was unbanned, look at the meta, and say 'hell no, Jace is too good!'
Just as we cannot look to the future and say 'well in this future SFM is too good, and must remain banned.'

Now if you want to say Wizards can do that, as they DO have future knowledge, I would argue there is some potential there, but...that would also mean I have would have to respect the view's of people who printed Oko, and created both Eldrazi and Hogaak.

That's a bridge too far for me. :p

So instead we must say 'Is X at an appropriate level today?' if the answer is yes, unban it.
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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
Thats exactly my point.

You cannot cast your gaze back to when Jace was unbanned, look at the meta, and say 'hell no, Jace is too good!'
Just as we cannot look to the future and say 'well in this future SFM is too good, and must remain banned.'
The difference is that Jace and SFM were never legal in Modern before being unbanned, Twin was, and the accumulated data, as well as other banning criteria were applied to change that. We are talking about apples and oranges.
idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
Now if you want to say Wizards can do that, as they DO have future knowledge, I would argue there is some potential there, but...that would also mean I have would have to respect the view's of people who printed Oko, and created both Eldrazi and Hogaak.
To be clear, I don't think Wotc has the ability to do much of anything in a genuinely competent manner.
idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
So instead we must say 'Is X at an appropriate level today?' if the answer is yes, unban it.
This statement demands that we accept the premise that the current power level of the format today is actually acceptable, we cannot do that. There are plenty of reasonable voices who say that Modern is currently too powerful as it is and should be powered down, and because of this, unbanning talk would necessarily be muffled until the dust settles.

Now if you are saying that we should accept the current power level of Modern, or perhaps increase it further, than please make this known and we can debate that point further.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

[mention]drmarkb[/mention] - Splinter Twin was banned before, so you believe that it should not be given a second chance. But this is the same thinking that would have left Wild Nacatl and Bloodbraid Elf all banned. It is this kind of thinking that would have Bridge from Below remain banned no matter what. I don't subscribe to this type of ideology. We should have as few cards banned as we can.

I really hate to be a "defender" of Splinter Twin because outside of Infect, it is singlehandedly the deck that beat me the most in my Modern career, which started in early 2012. Most of this is because I played decks that naturally don't do too well vs. Splinter Twin, but when I wanted to beat Splinter Twin (deck building or choosing wise), I did. But the power level of Modern has moved up. Do people still believe that Splinter Twin would actually present the best deck? Or do people just think we're better off without it? I'm really curious here because I know that I personally would have a lot more players to play with if it were legal.

This is the history of the Banned list in Modern.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2015-02-03

It is very telling. Look at Green Sun's Zenith, a card that I felt was only banned because it found Wild Nacatl at the time. Wild Nacatl was then banned. Yes, Green Sun's Zenith does SO much more. We all know that. But it is Modern power appropriate right now and STILL is BANNED.

*There absolutely was a lot more dissent on the legality of Jace, the Mind Sculptor than Splinter Twin. Players thought the best Planeswalker of all time (at the time, relax Oko) would break Modern in half or at least win all games over 4 turns. I had a player at my LGS say that he would eat a Jace, the Mind Sculptor if it were unbanned. The catch? He is not going to be the one buying it (after it's banned and skyrocketed no less), so no one will take him up on the offer. I had something like 15 Jaces and I wouldn't even come close to considering it myself. Why did people stick to the belief against these cards? It is because WotC started with them on the ban list for a reason and some people blindly trust WotC in every decision they do. To this day, 1-8-2020, if Stoneforge Mystic was not unbanned already, at least 30% of the mtg population would think it shouldn't be. They would literally say that it's too powerful and homogenizes White decks. L M F A O But all of this is irrelevant and not really worth arguing over - which card or cards were most people scared of.
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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