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

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

Albegas wrote:
4 years ago
I also agree that we at least need Preordain back, if not both it and Ponder. Just about every deck that can run them is T2 or worse, including Storm
Okay but is Modern actually made better with Storm being T1? If so please explain how.

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Post by Mikefon » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
We don't have enough free cards to make xerox a thing do we? It was (as I was right at the time) looting that fueled Phoenix.
I found this definition of Xerox deck.
Xerox decks wrote:A Xerox deck is one that uses cheap cantrips to their fullest potential, including shaving lands by making the cantrips into pseudo lands. They allow you to hit your land drops nonetheless while also allowing you to find cards you want later on.
We don't need free spells for xerox deck: just good selective cantrip. Delver for example, could be a real deck with preordain.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

Ed06288 wrote:
4 years ago
i'm starting to come around to the idea of getting storm out of the format. some turns take too long to navigate. does anyone have a lot of experience playing against it online? they maybe could have banned manamorphose back when arclight phoenix was top tier.
Ed06288 wrote:
4 years ago
wouldn't be surprised to see eldrazi temple go. i think eldrazi tron is showing itself to be the real deal, regular tron seems fine, its 3 different lands plus the payoff card in order to work.
This is a classic example of ban mania that we need to push back against. For reference, "ban mania" is not just talking about bans, which is acceptable and even necessary in some contexts. Ban mania is when someone frames an issue in banning terms when there is no data or even strong qualitative argument to back up that framing. Grinding ban axes at Storm and E Tron, especially E Tron that just got hit with a ban, feels like personal bias more than data-driven argument. It's particularly bad at this phase of metagame evolution where we are just coming off a ban cycle and the metagame is still taking shape. There are a few excellent ban targets we should be discussing with significant underlying support: see Veil or OUaT. See even the more qualitative idea of nerf-bans to fringe sideboard cards. But the notion of hitting core pieces of Storm and E Tron with their current metagame performance is totally unsupportable.

Re: Unban targets
One thing this discussion has put into sharp light for me is how individual unban targets distract from the overall unban experiment. In particular, I see a lot of posts saying "Card X is too broken" or something to that effect. I want to emphasize that in the Pioneer experiment, Wizards kept cards unbanned that were almost certainly going to end up banned as the experiment continued. Or, if not a specific card getting banned (e.g. Leyline or Oath), a card from a breakout deck eating a ban (e.g. Devotion). Knowing these likely outcomes, Wizards still let the metagame take shape and then banned the obviously broken cards people "knew" would be banned all along. Modern could easily see the same scenario play out over our own experiment. There are many cards on my list of potential unban targets that would almost certainly be rebanned. We need to understand that this is a feature of the experiment, not a bug in selecting its initial unban pool. The idea is to challenge old assumptions and either confirm them in a contemporary context or dismiss them with new information. Unbanning cards that will be rebanned is okay in this context.

The real question of the unbans is something Tomatotime (and probably others I'm not remembering now) posed: is a period of 2-3 months of instability (I said 1-2 or 1-3 in the past but realistically, it's 2-3) worth the end result? That's a more philosophical question than us getting in the weeds about why Pod or Twin or P&P are broken, and I'm not sure there's a clear answer.

Last piece of this for now: I think it's important that we remember the central idea of a Great Unban Experiment is not to unban Card A, B, or C. It's to unban a bunch of cards simultaneously and then see how the metagame evolves around them. It's a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, you have the nuclear format reboot where you unban every card on the banlist. This is the extreme end where you have the most unbans and the longest period of instability. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the surgical unban trial period where you unban 3-5 cards. This leads to the shortest trial period of instability. The article idea is not necessarily advocating for any particular selection of cards, although I'll probably throw out a few menus. The idea is the mass unban experiment itself. Wizards and the community can ultimately decide which end of the spectrum they want to fall on. This distinction needs to be clear in the article so people don't get too hung up on the (non)viability individual unban targets.
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Post by Albegas » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
Albegas wrote:
4 years ago
I also agree that we at least need Preordain back, if not both it and Ponder. Just about every deck that can run them is T2 or worse, including Storm
Okay but is Modern actually made better with Storm being T1? If so please explain how.
It adds another effective style of play to Modern that beats up on Tron while being soft to Jund, Burn and Humans. Not that I particularly care if improving Storm's consistency boosts it to tier 1, but if it would end up being a byproduct of improving the consistency of Blue control decks to match the current selection tools of other decks, power to them.

For the record, I know a lot of people are bothered by the quantity of non-midrange and control decks, but that's never been a problem to me. Even if there's only 1 or 2 viable midrange/control decks in the face of 10-15 aggro/ramp/combo decks, so long as they're good enough for someone to comfortably walk into any major tournament and win, that's fine with me because it means that there is at least something for everyone.

Needless to say, that hasn't really been the case for a while, at least not for control. However, rather than slowly grinding down the top decks until Control is on par with them, I'd rather see improved answers and selection tools for control decks injected into the card pool so that new decks of any archetype can be safely reigned in without bans. KTK said it better, but I'm really tired of seeing ban after ban because WotC is so afraid of answers and consistency when history continues to show that pushed threats without pushed answers just leads to a linear, uninteractive arms race resulting in bans.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

Albegas wrote:
4 years ago
For the record, I know a lot of people are bothered by the quantity of non-midrange and control decks, but that's never been a problem to me. Even if there's only 1 or 2 viable midrange/control decks in the face of 10-15 aggro/ramp/combo decks, so long as they're good enough for someone to comfortably walk into any major tournament and win, that's fine with me because it means that there is at least something for everyone.
Okay the issue with this is that in this very scenario, mid range players have only 1 or 2 options of decks to pick from whereas aggro/combo players have 10-15 to pick from, do you actually think this is even a good condition for the meta to be in? What if you want more variety in mid range deck choice that aggro players get to have?

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Grinding ban axes at Storm and E Tron, especially E Tron that just got hit with a ban, feels like personal bias more than data-driven argument.
Firstly we don't need data driven arguments for bans anymore, there is no need to keep repeating this going forward. Secondly, the data we get is curated by Wotc by and large which means we are not seeing the full picture anyways even if you wanted to use data driven decisions.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
There are a few excellent ban targets we should be discussing with significant underlying support: see Veil or OUaT. See even the more qualitative idea of nerf-bans to fringe sideboard cards. But the notion of hitting core pieces of Storm and E Tron with their current metagame performance is totally unsupportable.
Okay so your ban suggestions are valid but other people's are not? Answer me this then, how many decks or archetypes is OUaT crowding out the format? Now compare this with Tron or a Titanshift piece. I don't care if OUaT is reaching prior Goyf levels of play, Goyf wasn't banned either because of what the card itself actually does, the same argument applies to Lightning Bolt. If we are just going to look at the amount of play any card sees that isn't on an already pre-approved list of "staples" or "pillars" which give them some kind of immunity, to what end do we ban cards which upset the apple cart? This reeks of the Treasure Cruise ban, which was spurned on by folks like Channel Fireball who wanted it gone because they argued the card undermined Dark Confidant and Liliana of the Veil, if you actually want to be this arbitrary then say so.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
One thing this discussion has put into sharp light for me is how individual unban targets distract from the overall unban experiment
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
The idea is to challenge old assumptions and either confirm them in a contemporary context or dismiss them with new information.
K but why though? Seriously, you have yet to actually answer this, why is it worth the format disruption and adding potentially dangerous cards to the format for what gain exactly? Will fair decks be in a better position after Twin/JTMS/Veil/Ponder becomes a deck? What about with Pod which now has a turn 3 goldfish? What about Emry now boosted by Artifact lands in your scenario?

Here is my fundamental issue with your experiment, all the cards you listed for your ideal unbans either fall into two camps:

1. Combo fuel
2. Cards which have the potential to suppress fair decks

So again, what is the actual upside to doing this? Are we talking attendance numbers? MTG Finance activity? I just would like to have a specific answer here. What about the people at local levels who just want Wotc to enforce improved gameplay standards?

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

Albegas wrote:
4 years ago
I'm not even sure Urza wants the artifact lands. They can't be fetched, they can't pay for Astrolabe,
would have to agree with artifact lands not able to pay for astrolabe. If a deck has astrolabe, it's important that the lands would be able to cast them. I'm currently building Bant Snow, the astrolabes sometimes go bad if the snow lands are not the right number.
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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
Firstly we don't need data driven arguments for bans anymore, there is no need to keep repeating this going forward. Secondly, the data we get is curated by Wotc by and large which means we are not seeing the full picture anyways even if you wanted to use data driven decisions.
Every Modern ban decision in the last year was made with explicit data citations, EXCEPT Lattice. We have more than enough GP, Challenge, PTQ, Premier, and other data to make informed ban cases, even if Wizards curates Leagues. We can also make ban suggestions like Lattice as long as the underlying rationale makes sense. Neither that Storm nor E Tron ban suggestion was in either category.
Okay so your ban suggestions are valid but other people's are not? Answer me this then, how many decks or archetypes is OUaT crowding out the format? Now compare this with Tron or a Titanshift piece. I don't care if OUaT is reaching prior Goyf levels of play, Goyf wasn't banned either because of what the card itself actually does, the same argument applies to Lightning Bolt. If we are just going to look at the amount of play any card sees that isn't on an already pre-approved list of "staples" or "pillars" which give them some kind of immunity, to what end do we ban cards which upset the apple cart? This reeks of the Treasure Cruise ban, which was spurned on by folks like Channel Fireball who wanted it gone because they argued the card undermined Dark Confidant and Liliana of the Veil, if you actually want to be this arbitrary then say so.
I'm really not sure why this post and a few others you have made are so sharp and accusatory. Just tone it down a bit. We're having a friendly discussion about a shared format. No need to start with this sarcastic, rhetorical question jab and end with another sarcastic accusation.

Regarding the content of this quote, if not the tone, I've already explained this. OUaT is a cantrips, not a threat like Goyf or an answer like Bolt. Enabling cantrips are treated differently. See P&P or Looting, or Stirrings on a 2019 watchlist. If OUaT is appropriate for Modern, Wizards should give P&P (or one of the Ps) a shot too. If Wizards doesn't think those high consistency cantrips are okay, OUaT should also not be okay. I'm also not clear about why TC is cited in your post, a widely well-regarded ban that you seem to be suggesting was an illegitimate CFB issue. TC was a highly justified ban on metagame dominance alone, never mind power level and format "fun factor" reasons.
K but why though? Seriously, you have yet to actually answer this, why is it worth the format disruption and adding potentially dangerous cards to the format for what gain exactly? Will fair decks be in a better position after Twin/JTMS/Veil/Ponder becomes a deck? What about with Pod which now has a turn 3 goldfish? What about Emry now boosted by Artifact lands in your scenario?

Here is my fundamental issue with your experiment, all the cards you listed for your ideal unbans either fall into two camps:

1. Combo fuel
2. Cards which have the potential to suppress fair decks

So again, what is the actual upside to doing this? Are we talking attendance numbers? MTG Finance activity? I just would like to have a specific answer here. What about the people at local levels who just want Wotc to enforce improved gameplay standards?
I also think I have answered this, but in case I am misremembering, here are the potential upsides.

1. We don't know the impact of unbans with certainty. The experiment allows us to test reasonable cards to confirm or overturn standing banlist assumptions.
2. The end result could improve fair decks through introducing better tools (e.g. PF, Preordain), forcing interaction (e.g. Twin), or improving engines (e.g. artifact lands).
3. Testing a range of unbans will bring closure to many veteran players with lingering beliefs about old bans. This can heal divisions and help vets move forward.
4. Unbans are exciting and increase format engagement. There is obviously some degree of diminishing returns on this increase, but an unban experiment would likely be very exciting to lots of players.
5. Mass unbans and a subsequent trial period keeps Modern at the forefront of discussion for months. This short-term gain helps Modern regain footing after a bad 2019.

I am sure you or anyone else can argue against every one of these points, because ultimately they are all qualitative, subjective takes. I can't emphasize enough that 4 of these upsides happen even if every single experimental unban gets rebanned. The specific cards are less important than the experiment as a whole, because if cards are combo fuel or linear disasters, they can just get rebanned. The experiment still helps on the other 4 accounts. Of course, the murkiest question is if the period of instability is harmful and not worth any related gains, which is still an open issue.
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Post by Ed06288 » 4 years ago

well this thread moves too fast to reply to everything. overall i want at least half the format to be fair decks, and the rest linear decks. ideally we don't have too many tempo decks either, which is why i want preordain to stay banned.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Every Modern ban decision in the last year was made with explicit data citations, EXCEPT Lattice.
Which is no longer relevant as data driven input is no longer required for cards to be banned.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
We have more than enough GP, Challenge, PTQ, Premier, and other data to make informed ban cases, even if Wizards curates Leagues.
Agree to disagree, I assume there are more Modern matches being played in a day on MTGO than there are in a month of high level competition, I simply think that Wotc has the data to a much larger and more accurate extent than we ever can.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
I'm really not sure why this post and a few others you have made are so sharp and accusatory. Just tone it down a bit. We're having a friendly discussion about a shared format. No need to start with this sarcastic, rhetorical question jab and end with another sarcastic accusation.
Ya my bad, just having a bad day today because of some other stuff.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Regarding the content of this quote, if not the tone, I've already explained this. OUaT is a cantrips, not a threat like Goyf or an answer like Bolt. Enabling cantrips are treated differently. See P&P or Looting, or Stirrings on a 2019 watchlist. If OUaT is appropriate for Modern, Wizards should give P&P (or one of the Ps) a shot too. If Wizards doesn't think those high consistency cantrips are okay, OUaT should also not be okay.
I understand the general tenure of this statement, but you need to understand, OUaT and P&P are simply different kinds of cards, they aren't just cantrips. In my opinion, the defining quality of OUaT is it's mulligan protection effect, mixed with the ability to find specifically lands or creatures which are most of the time required to actually play a game of magic. P&P on the other hand tend to be viewed with some amount of suspicion since they are used for combo decks on the basis they can take any card type. Again let me say, I don't mind P&P becoming ubanned myself, but we shouldn't act like the two sets of cards are apples to apples.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
The specific cards are less important than the experiment as a whole, because if cards are combo fuel or linear disasters, they can just get rebanned.
I guess my opinion on this is how many events are we as a community willing to sacrifice on the alter of experimentation to complete this venture? We should not discount the factor of time, what we need to understand is that this game is a hobby, one of the most expensive hobbies in existence, if we casually make initiatives which don't respect people's time than how much longevity does this even have?
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
I am sure you or anyone else can argue against every one of these points, because ultimately they are all qualitative, subjective takes. I can't emphasize enough that 4 of these upsides happen even if every single experimental unban gets rebanned.
I suppose the way I see it is simply that after this past year, it just looks to me like more actual excitement and interest is generated by bans compared to unbans. Lets look at SFM, people were clamoring to get this card unbanned for years, there was a lot of buzz for it at one point, but when it was finally unbanned, people just didn't care, they had been put through the hogaak wringer for so long that their spirits were broken. Conversely, after the recent Urza related bans came in, you saw a lot of social media buzz with Modern in terms of pros and others trying out creative brews for a time. Obviously those brewing days don't last when you have certain format pillars which stomp entire archetypes out of existence.

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Post by Albegas » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
Albegas wrote:
4 years ago
For the record, I know a lot of people are bothered by the quantity of non-midrange and control decks, but that's never been a problem to me. Even if there's only 1 or 2 viable midrange/control decks in the face of 10-15 aggro/ramp/combo decks, so long as they're good enough for someone to comfortably walk into any major tournament and win, that's fine with me because it means that there is at least something for everyone.
Okay the issue with this is that in this very scenario, mid range players have only 1 or 2 options of decks to pick from whereas aggro/combo players have 10-15 to pick from, do you actually think this is even a good condition for the meta to be in? What if you want more variety in mid range deck choice that aggro players get to have?
That's a perfectly fine view. I'm not saying there needs to be only 1-2 midrange options and only 1-2 control options for every 10-15 aggro/combo decks. What I'm saying is that so long as those 2-4 options are roughly as good as the other 10-15, I'm satisfied. Would I like to see more options for Midrange/Control in such a scenario? Absolutely, the more the merrier. Using my own scenario another way, just because there's 1 dish at a food court I enjoy that I'm willing to eat 7 days a week doesn't mean that I'm against new, similar food items being added to the menu that I would enjoy. At the same time, I don't really mind if there's 10 different food dishes that I don't like to eat so long as there's at least 1 dish I enjoy.

However, I don't expect there to ever be even a remotely close split between Midrange, Control, and all of the other archetypes. Midrange and Control in the context of Modern have been pretty heavily tied to the quality of the individual cards, not their overall synergy. There are some exceptions like W6 + utility lands and (briefly) Teferi + Azcanta, but they're just that, exceptions. Meanwhile, combo and aggro are built on synergies resulting from a growing pool of cards and maybe one or two pushed cards. Unless WotC really starts playing with the design space of synergistic midrange and control strategies, combo and aggro are always going to outnumber midrange and control decks in Modern by more than a 2-2 ratio. So if they aren't going to play with those synergies, I'd at least settle for improving the quality of the cards run in those decks (especially control) so that those 2-4 decks can stand up to the 10-15 other decks.

As a side note, I do wish they'd play around with designing synergistic Control/Midrange strategies. I really did like Esper Dragon control during Theros/Khans standard. The potential to create stronger Midrange/Control strategies without introducing standalone over-pushed answers seems like a win-win for us and WotC.

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Post by ModernDefector » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Once Upon A Time moves in the two aspects the Modern format should be focusing on and the same two mtg is traditionally focusing on: Creatures and Lands.
Citation needed.

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Post by Yawgmoth » 4 years ago

Yawgmoth wrote:
4 years ago
In theory, they could run Modern 2.0 beta leagues and/or side events at major tournaments using pools of pro players and stores with large groups of regular Modern players. In this context they could initially unban lots of things and then actively monitor the situation and re-ban as needed. If this new version is fun/interesting then these players/bloggers etc will be excited and write/talk about it and then other players/stores might start trying it. If it turns out to be a dumpster fire after 1yr (or whatever time) then they could end the experiment without tanking the format. This would protect average Joe Modern players from economic instability/ buying into a deck only to have it banned soon after.
At the risk of reposting myself. Does anyone have any thoughts about my suggestion of a Modern 2.0 beta test? I think it could answer a lot of the questions/problems that people have brought up without the risk of ruining Modern forever.

Is this just completely stupid/unworkable?

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

Yawgmoth wrote:
4 years ago
At the risk of reposting myself. Does anyone have any thoughts about my suggestion of a Modern 2.0 beta test? I think it could answer a lot of the questions/problems that people have brought up without the risk of ruining Modern forever.

Is this just completely stupid/unworkable?
I think if Wotc ran tournaments even just on MTGO with good prize support with variable banlists it could be interesting. Mind you wotc would probably need to give enough time for the players to prepare and the prize support would need to be good enough to actually attract the relevant attention, mind you the prize support doesn't necessarily need to be money, it could include intangible benefits like invites to major paper tournaments or "byes" at said tournaments.

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Post by Aazadan » 4 years ago

Re: Unban targets
One thing this discussion has put into sharp light for me is how individual unban targets distract from the overall unban experiment. In particular, I see a lot of posts saying "Card X is too broken" or something to that effect. I want to emphasize that in the Pioneer experiment, Wizards kept cards unbanned that were almost certainly going to end up banned as the experiment continued. Or, if not a specific card getting banned (e.g. Leyline or Oath), a card from a breakout deck eating a ban (e.g. Devotion). Knowing these likely outcomes, Wizards still let the metagame take shape and then banned the obviously broken cards people "knew" would be banned all along. Modern could easily see the same scenario play out over our own experiment. There are many cards on my list of potential unban targets that would almost certainly be rebanned. We need to understand that this is a feature of the experiment, not a bug in selecting its initial unban pool. The idea is to challenge old assumptions and either confirm them in a contemporary context or dismiss them with new information. Unbanning cards that will be rebanned is okay in this context.
[mention]ktkenshinx[/mention]
This is why when I suggested it before, I felt that every card should be released. Besides the fact that I think it's the only clear way to rule out any inaccurate biases of what various cards will do, I also think it's the only way to avoid getting bogged down in any sort of minutia of individual ban arguments. Yes, such an approach adds what would likely be 2 to 3 weeks of additional degeneracy to the front end of the experiment while the most egregious cars are iterated on and removed... but it also significantly clears up the community response. Every card can prove itself to or not to need a ban.

For example, I would disagree with several cards on your list (both cards and premise). Last night I typed up such a disagreement actually, but then I thought better of it. Such an experiment shouldn't begin from a place of "what cards are so broken they can't prove themselves ban worthy again?" but rather from a place of "what should the guidelines of the format be?" and then act on what breaks those guidelines once released.

This is why I also think such an approach should be paired with an update of the vision for Modern, and some sort of guidelines as to what is acceptable for the format. Because if Moderns old rules are no longer a sufficient point to view the format from (such as being a place for old Standard decks to live on), then the rules should be updated so that inaccurate perceptions don't taint the view of what cards should be able to do here.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Mikefon wrote:
4 years ago
We don't need free spells for xerox deck: just good selective cantrip. Delver for example, could be a real deck with preordain.
I'm not positive that is sufficient in Modern, because if you spend your mana to dig, you do not have any mana to do anything with whatever you have found, on the turn you absolutely need it.

I look a Legacy, with UR Delver, Sultai Delver, and Grixis Control, and I just see a lot of Free Stuff, that Modern cannot leverage. This is why Phoenix with looting worked. You cantrip not just to find cards, but because the best 'cantrip' in the format also shoved stuff into the GY or because your 'Plan B' didnt need you to do anything BUT cantrip (Thing).

Cantrips that are not free, are overrated in Modern because of this. Storm is already deterministic, no cantrip is going to make it 'more' deterministic.
UR Control UR

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
On my way out, I will say, those are the things I would like to see for Modern to be more popular again.

Ban Expedition Map
Ban Veil of Summer
Ban Stinkweed Imp

Unban Splinter Twin
Unban Green Sun's Zenith
Unban Birthing Pod
Unban all artifact lands, but the blue one
Two pages ago, you made an amazing post. You asked people to stop talking about bans so much and concentrate on unbans. I agree with this completely, but didn't comment on it because I still personally have something against Veil of Summer and Once Upon a Time (which I don't mind because I play it, but it shouldn't be legal). But now you are suggesting 3 bans to make Modern popular again. I will agree that many players would love to see Tron and Dredge knocked down a HUGE notch, but do we honestly need this? The unbans are definitely fine with me and I actively want to see all of those. The artifact lands are most likely fine with KCI and Mox Opal both banned.

But I think many people are avoiding idSurge's comments about the London Mulligan. Tron and Dredge are the 2 decks helped the most by the London mulligan. Tron and Dredge were fine before it and should be fine without it. Dredge did get Ox of Agonas and there is a chance that it pushed it more. I'm not sure yet. MTGO user and PTQ winner Sodek knows more on this subject.

I feel that people are avoiding idSurge's comments about the mulligan because they think that Wizards will never change it. I personally think that the mulligan rule is great for Limited and that's it. If the London Mulligan is a reason to ban something from Tron or Dredge, WoTC could have just banned something anyway, even before the new mulligan rule. Maybe I'm seeing it all wrong? New cards and new rules are there to push out old stuff (Bridge from Below, Mox Opal). I am going to try to see it from that point of view. But I enjoy the cards that were in Modern and new ones added to that. I don't like new ones to push out old strategies and cards that were fine for 5+ years.
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 idSurge » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
People who play midrange and control, have massively left Modern. This is what I am arguing.
I'm not sure this is true. Jund players will never leave, and Control players are always waiting. If anything, the killing of decks via banning, has soured people on the format, and there is now simply a legit alternative, even if it is Aggro heavy.

The biggest issue facing Modern is: What is it supposed to be?
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
I feel that people are avoiding idSurge's comments about the mulligan because they think that Wizards will never change it.
the scry mulligan used before it lasted for some time. I expect the london mulligan to last just as long, until wotc finds something better to replace it with.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Better, is the Vancouver Mulligan we came from. I believe it was Vancouver that is.

The London Mulligan is absolute worse for the game, but better for the casual majority, which is the problem.
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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
But I think many people are avoiding idSurge's comments about the London Mulligan.
Not to interject, but I'm pretty sure I debated that topic pretty thoroughly with idSurge, I think we both said basically everything that needed to be said on that matter.
FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
Tron and Dredge were fine before it and should be fine without it.
Uhhh, ya thats debatable, Tron has been a powerhouse ever since it got Ugin in my opinion, and it has gotten quite a few more threats since that point in time. And Dredge faced a banning well before the London Mulligan was ever introduced.

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Post by Yawgmoth » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
Yawgmoth wrote:
4 years ago
At the risk of reposting myself. Does anyone have any thoughts about my suggestion of a Modern 2.0 beta test? I think it could answer a lot of the questions/problems that people have brought up without the risk of ruining Modern forever.

Is this just completely stupid/unworkable?
I think if Wotc ran tournaments even just on MTGO with good prize support with variable banlists it could be interesting. Mind you wotc would probably need to give enough time for the players to prepare and the prize support would need to be good enough to actually attract the relevant attention, mind you the prize support doesn't necessarily need to be money, it could include intangible benefits like invites to major paper tournaments or "byes" at said tournaments.
This is sort of what I was imagining. The content producers (streamers and bloggers) would potentially be interested because it gives them access to something exclusive which makes for good stories. This would also provide a really obvious metric of success/failure which is how much demand there is from people outside the beta to take part. You won't have hype/interest if the format is no fun. Over time stores will want to run non-sanctioned events if enough players are calling for it etc.

I think the incentives that you suggest are probably sufficient to get enough participants to generate the data that would be needed. They could even give MTGO players digital copies of the unbanned cards which can only be used in the beta (or even not tournament legal paper proxies for paper players too). That way no one loses money if they decide to terminate the experiment.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
This means no bans and massive unbans and massive Daze like printings in the next MH.
Honestly there's so much space to print old cards in MH2. I remember when we were all spit balling what we wanted to see or what we thought we'd see - stuff like Leovold, Emissary of Trest, Innocent Blood, Containment Priest, Counterspell, and the list goes on and on. I hope we see a lot more of that type of stuff in the next one. By the way, when is MH2 supposed to hit?
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 The Fluff » 4 years ago

Hopefully, more snow cards and support for snow in MH2.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
Hopefully, more snow cards and support for snow in MH2.
Dude snow is very pushed as it is right now lol.
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