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

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Post by Necrofish » 4 years ago

True-Name Nemesis wrote:
4 years ago
People who've been straight up wrong about Modern's ability to adapt to this level of graveyard degeneracy really need to get off their ridiculous high anti-ban rhetoric horse and stop acting like they know %$#%.
Reading through all the various opinions in this thread, at the very least half of the people here are wrong.
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

Until Hogaak and other looting based decks are out of poularity folks need to be running 3-4 GY hate card at a minimum.
@robertleva

responding to your post at "How much graveyard removal in the main" thread. Looting decks won't be going down in popularity anytime soon. Wotc even reprinted leyline of the void. It could be a sign that they're willing to let looting romp around in modern for a long time.
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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Those posts are so painfully wrong in my eyes. Why is that? Because looting is simply not the problem. Again, it is not the strongest card enabling hogaak. Stitchers supplier is. And again, this deck does not need looting and it can easily warp the metagame without it.
If you go down the ban the enablers road, ban supplier, ban looting and limit their design space as to not print another supplier or neonate effect again. Then, they use neonate, so thats questionable also. Ban that and they move to other solutions, while phoenix, mardu mancer, hollow one, dredge, meaning decks with 45-50% win rates die and diversity goes down the drain. Then, stirrings needs to go for sure. Ban it. Wizards said they like the current status quo though, so all of this is never going to happen.
Listen, the problem is a nearly free 8/8 mana trampler. Thats it.

That all said, i am sure wizards will come to the conclusion that hogaak himself will be banned during the next announcement, if something needs to be banned.
I agree Wizards will go after Hogaak if anything needs banning in late August. They may go after cards later, but not in 30 days. Even if other decks are offending behind the Hogaak menace, it's hard to determine that with so many players running Hogaak. For instance, there's some Izzet Phoenix hate in this thread but it's simply not supported by the data out of this weekend. Per the recent MWP and matchup MWP analysis heyzeto posted on Reddit:



Phoenix only had a 50% MWP across the format with a sizable N=320 matches. There's a good chance this reflects all the GY hate across the event bringing down Phoenix's win rate, which is particularly scary if true because sustaining 50% MWP in the face of hate is impressive. Unfortunately, we simply don't know because this event is so warped around Hogaak. There are too many other factors hidden in that theory even if it sounds clean and accurate. Phoenix might be lurking behind Hogaak as another menace, but we don't have that information at this time.
iTaLenTZ wrote:
4 years ago
Dredge and Phoenix are not fine, they are by far the best deck for over 6 months now to a point people started maindecking Surgicals and Leylines before Hogaak was printed but people seem to have forgotten. Their winrate has tanked due to Hogaak entering the format. Hogaak does almost the same thing as dredge but is simply better at it so people jumped on the maindeck Surgical and Leyline hypetrain and Phoenix is just collateral damage. Even with so many people maindecking 4-6 hatecards the decks still have 50-56% winrates. The trend to spot is easy. Whichever deck is the best at abusing Faithless Loothing is the best deck in Modern and that has been the case now for almost a year.
Two things here. First, I know you personally think Dredge is not fine, but how do you interpret Wizards stating Dredge at the MC2 is an acceptable graveyard deck (see Bridge ban announcement)? This is a pretty clear signal about how they perceive the deck's power level. Do you believe Wizards is simply wrong and needs to revisit that statement? Second, I'm not sure if we're seeing maindecked 4-6 hate cards as a norm. I interpret this as graveyard hate cards in your context, but I'm not seeing it. We are definitely seeing maindecked hate cards, but 4-6 does not seem correct based on my read of Karsten's "every card at MC4" spreadsheet. Where are you getting this number?
I don't agree that you lessen format diversity if you ban FL and Stirrings. Tuning down the powercreep also opens the metagame for tons of new decks to emerge, decks that right now simply don't stand a chance. The real problem is that Modern Horizons was their chance to accomplish this goal without having to ban anything but they failed miserably because they focused too much on appealing the Commander player to sell more packs. Its painfully clear MH was poorly tested for Modern. It only made the existing problematic degenerate decks stronger like dregde and Phoenix instead of giving us answers to those problems. So now we are left with no other choice than to ban stuff because waiting another 6 months for something to get printed which may or not may not be the answer we need is simply not acceptable.
I agree that Wizards failed to test MH1 appropriate and print the necessary cards to break up some top decks. I'm also tabling the Looting issue because I have some outstanding questions above. But I'm not sure where Ancient Stirrings suddenly comes into this. Is that just a preemptive ban suggestion because you think those decks would take over if Looting got banned? Stirrings decks have been doing very poorly these past few months and I'm not seeing the results to support a Stirrings ban conclusion. Part of this may be those Stirrings decks having poor GY deck matchups, but that can't be the full picture. Tron even has a positive Izzet Phoenix matchup across recent events. So why is Stirrings lumped in with Looting here?
True-Name Nemesis wrote:
4 years ago
People who've been straight up wrong about Modern's ability to adapt to this level of graveyard degeneracy really need to get off their ridiculous high anti-ban rhetoric horse and stop acting like they know %$#%.
Necrofish wrote:
4 years ago
Reading through all the various opinions in this thread, at the very least half of the people here are wrong.
These are the kind of one-liner dismissals I really want us to avoid here, even ignoring the rule-breaking aspects of the top post. We don't get anywhere in our discussion if any number of users are making arguments and other users point to those arguments and just say they are wrong with a single sentence, offering no counterpoint or explanation. It's just not productive.
The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
Until Hogaak and other looting based decks are out of poularity folks need to be running 3-4 GY hate card at a minimum.
responding to your post at "How much graveyard removal in the main" thread. Looting decks won't be going down in popularity anytime soon. Wotc even reprinted leyline of the void. It could be a sign that they're willing to let looting romp around in modern for a long time.
I am curious about why people believe it is so unhealthy to play maindecked graveyard hate in Modern. I'm not saying it's healthy; I'm just wondering what the rationale is behind this argument. Is it because the graveyard is a resource we aren't supposed to use? Is it because graveyard decks are much harder to beat unless you have the hate piece? Is it because graveyard decks are unusually resilient to all other forms of interaction, invalidating cards you need for other matchups? Is it because Wizards has signaled this in the past (e.g. GGT ban language) and now isn't following through? Other reasons / some combination of the above? I'm just curious about what reasoning is behind this position which has become increasingly common online.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
These are the kind of one-liner dismissals I really want us to avoid here, even ignoring the rule-breaking aspects of the top post. We don't get anywhere in our discussion if any number of users are making arguments and other users point to those arguments and just say they are wrong with a single sentence, offering no counterpoint or explanation. It's just not productive.

I think this should also apply to statements like "Because looting is simply not the problem."

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
These are the kind of one-liner dismissals I really want us to avoid here, even ignoring the rule-breaking aspects of the top post. We don't get anywhere in our discussion if any number of users are making arguments and other users point to those arguments and just say they are wrong with a single sentence, offering no counterpoint or explanation. It's just not productive.

I think this should also apply to statements like "Because looting is simply not the problem."
I completely agree with that. Anyone who is reducing complicate issues like Looting to one-liners needs to up their game and provide some evidence. Please point this out to me if I am ever doing it and I am happy to provide additional support. It's one thing to dismiss truly outrageous ban arguments (e.g. "ban Slippery Bogle) to a 2-3 sentence response about that suggestion being out of touch with Modern reality. But it's another entirely to minimize legitimate, open Modern issues that have been going on for months.

That said, if users are faced with one-liners on either side of a debate, the correct response is never to just fire your own one-liner back. It's always to just draw out the argument and present issues for discussion. That's the key advantage of a long-form forum like ours over the soundbite formats of Twitter or Reddit, and we need to take advantage of that.
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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

The problem with looting is because it can put 12+ power on the table (some of it with haste thanks to vengevine) on the field off the 7 mana it generates off three lands, which lets it go off if you don't kill their turn-2 baral, and given the hard maths and moving +1/+1 counters and their ability to grow a huge ravager or ballista, can kill you out of nowhere and generates infinite mana due to the druid combo.

Clearly merfolks need to be banned.

...and that's why we don't need to address every single post calling out deck X or card Y.

Modern is a fast format with multiple decks doing crazy things requiring answers. It's not new. De-powering a deck just improves all other decks. (One less angle to answer.) I didn't think Aaron Forsythe tweet was insulting when it merely stated the reality. You need to have asnwers or be faster. You can't beat every matchup. There will be luck, there will be rock-paper-scissors. I see currently no deck that has no available answer in the card pool.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

pierreb wrote:
4 years ago
I didn't think Aaron Forsythe tweet was insulting when it merely stated the reality. You need to have asnwers or be faster. You can't beat every matchup. There will be luck, there will be rock-paper-scissors. I see currently no deck that has no available answer in the card pool.
How do you feel about Forsythe saying that "comparing opening hands" is a necessary evil? That seems terrifyingly absurd to consider that remotely good or healthy.



Edit:
For reference, my stance is that Looting is absolutely the problem. While Hogaak is the biggest problem with Hogaak, once removed, all the Hogaak players just go back to playing Creeping Dredge, and the Phoenix players get to continue their competitive dominance numbers with even less GY hate. It's a domino effect that has Looting at the center of absolutely everything. If random, bad Tier 3 decks get swept up in a Looting ban, so be it. It didn't stop them hitting Probe, it shouldn't stop them hitting Looting.

Edit2: Found this interesting as perspective:


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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
No word for Phoenix also, so probably they did not need to address the issue. Let us speak with numbers/data instead of personal opinions!
Phoenix has been the single most competitively dominant deck in the last year by a considerable margin, and just maintained a +50% win rate in the face of 800 Leylines.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

The tweet by Aaron that is insulting is actually this one.



It absolutely makes a mockery of Modern as a format of 'diversity' downplay's the completely warped state the 'winners meta' is in, and ignores the fact Modern is not 1 single PT level event, but a format that is popular not because you can spike it and then 'answer' that spike deck, but because of the illusion of being able to play your pet deck and still compete.

There is also this gem for your 'pithy post of the day' quota.



In the end here we have to ask ourselves a few questions.

What is the objective of Modern? To me its at least 3 fold.

1. Be a fun experience for the most people possible.
2. Allow rotated cards printed since 8th (+ MH) to see play.
3. Support a diverse number of competitive decks which are generally balanced against eachother.

So lets look at a few of these.

1. "Be fun..."

Fun, is different for everyone. There are people who with a straight face will tell us that Eldrazi Winter was a fine period for Modern. There are people who believe Tron is fun. Who believe Storm is fun. Who believe Neoform is fun. Who believe Soul Sisters, is fun.

As long as the format is not warped, this objective is not really hard to meet, because of the large card pool.

2. "Allow rotated cards..."

Check. For the most part. What this one also should include is that the rules managing the format, must be clearly enforced, and with an objective perspective towards those cards. In no way, shape, or form, should Stoneforge Mystic be banned. There is no logical reason or argument that would stand under scrutiny from an objective balance perspective which I have seen.

3. "Diverse...competitive..."

Here we begin to get to the muddy waters, even from an objective perspective and not the subjective one which is 'what is fun.'

Modern is, today, and easily for the last 6-8 Months, a Graveyard Format. People pushed against me saying that before, but it is. If you do not run multiple GY cards, or a Turn 2/3 Combo deck, you will not make it through a large event without being punished unless you run comically lucky and avoid.

Hogaak
Dredge
Phoenix
Hollow One

I'm trying to find the tweet, but something like 80% of the Day 2 yesterday was GY leaning.

Is that an offender of diversity? When 20% of the field is made up of a deck that goes then 56%-60% against the field WITH MAIN DECK Leylines to try and cut off the primary path to victory, is that a 'competitive' offender?



We have top decks then being Hogaak, Hogaak Dredge, Urza, and Hardened Scales. I have a suspicion that Scales and Urza would have capitalized on the fact Hogaak warped the format, but...well when a 'warped' format still provides you with 56.2% win rate (Hogaak) or 60% (Hogaak Dredge!) well just how strong is that deck really?

It comes back to the same thing I said when they where going to ban KCI, but now its even worse.

You ban Hogaak itself to kill yet another Modern deck. What happens?

You split your hate now between Phoenix/Dredge, and Urza/Scales, but now you also have E Tron/G Tron, and Humans/Jund and the UW Purists.

Maybe thats ok? Maybe it works out for the best? Regardless, the format is clearly dealing with another issue, and we almost never seem to NOT be dealing with an issue.

Long story short, if you think removal of Hogaak is going to spare us from being at risk from the yard, you are completely wrong. If you cut your RIP/Surgical/Ravenous Trap package you will get obliterated by Phoenix/Dredge again.
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Post by tronix » 4 years ago

lootings being the object of ban discussions thanks to GY vommit aggro/combo shennanigans for close to a year. then a new GY aggro deck with lootings shows up scary enough it might get hit twice with bans and both times it could get passed over for the 'obvious' choice to curb its power. hard to miss the irony.
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Post by metalmusic_4 » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Edit:
For reference, my stance is that Looting is absolutely the problem. While Hogaak is the biggest problem with Hogaak, once removed, all the Hogaak players just go back to playing Creeping Dredge, and the Phoenix players get to continue their competitive dominance numbers with even less GY hate. It's a domino effect that has Looting at the center of absolutely everything. If random, bad Tier 3 decks get swept up in a Looting ban, so be it. It didn't stop them hitting Probe, it shouldn't stop them hitting Looting.
These are fair points against FL, and if it did get banned it would be hard to argue against. I think WOTC made it clear last announcement the currently feel dredge, pheonix and other GY decks are acceptable. That is the strongest point by far IMO against a FL ban. it appears they just do not want to damage all GY decks that badly. IF you start from this point I think you are left with only a hogaak ban as the option.
I personally have 5-6 modern FL decks of varying competitiveness levels, hogaak (previously bridgevine), mono-red phenoix, dredge, my own storm brew, goryo's vengance, jeskia ascendancy and probably another one some where. I'm lucky enough to have several decks I can play, but not all are. Some one out there doesn't have the money to update their old storm list, or they can't swap from the goryo's vengance deck to the newer neoform version.

****I can't say I think it is better to damage ALL those decks rather than just hitting hogaak.****

Also, are you guys watching the SCG event today? The announcers and players are openly discussing which card should be banned and will it be an emergency ban or wait until the next regular announcement. Todd Anderson is LOUDLY AND DIRECTLY calling for an emergency ban of the hogaak card itself.

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Post by BloodyRabbit » 4 years ago

It feels so stupid talking about this matter every two days, but whatever.

I grow tired of Phoenix. I play approximately ten different archetypes in Modern. Yet, I can't do anything but defend it from the garbage people is throwing at the deck.

a) Izzet Phoenix doesn't care about Leyline, and Hoogak in the metagame is GOOD for Phoenix, cause it's one of its best matchups.
b) Izzet Phoenix wouldn't be in a good spot without Hoogak, given the fact it has difficult matchups against Tron, EldraTron, UW Control, Grixis Urza, Burn/MRPhoenix (toh, most of them are actually Tiers).
c) Faithless Looting is the last of the problems in the metagame, and you should just read at Hogaak's other cards to notice that.

Can we move on, please?

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
There is also this gem for your 'pithy post of the day' quota.

This is a high quality %$#% post and it might go in my article this week. Thank you for sharing.
3. "Diverse...competitive..."

Here we begin to get to the muddy waters, even from an objective perspective and not the subjective one which is 'what is fun.'

Modern is, today, and easily for the last 6-8 Months, a Graveyard Format. People pushed against me saying that before, but it is. If you do not run multiple GY cards, or a Turn 2/3 Combo deck, you will not make it through a large event without being punished unless you run comically lucky and avoid.
Interestingly, even other top decks are GY decks to varying extents. Even fair UW Control and Jund are on board, first with old school Snapcaster, now with new school W6 for Jund. Hardened Scales is secretly a kind of GY deck in that it operates off modular death triggers. Grixis Urza's is definitely GY-based. The only true non-GY top-tier decks are Humans, E-Tron, and G-Tron, along with some old standbys like Infect, Burn, Amulet Titan, Titanshift, etc. But Modern is definitely pushed towards being a GY format at many of the biggest events.
Maybe thats ok? Maybe it works out for the best? Regardless, the format is clearly dealing with another issue, and we almost never seem to NOT be dealing with an issue.
I am also not sure if it's okay or not that Modern has a lot of GY-dependent strategies. It's really just part of the game at this point. This becomes a problem, however, if the only counterplay to those strategies are GY cards that you lose without. I don't have the numbers to show deck win percentages against GY strategies when they do vs. don't draw their hate, but I suspect it's warped around those cards.

I agree Modern always seems to be dealing with issues, but I think a big part of that is the playerbase and community. This community, here, on Reddit, on Twitter, in articles, etc. (DEFINITELY on Twitch, but that's not surprising) has really rallied around the concept that Modern has a bunch of fundamental problems that can only be solved through sweeping changes. We can't often agree on those problems, but we can all agree we should be upset. A big part of this is just a human problem (see most discussions about "real" issues like climate change, immigration, etc.), and another part of this is a Magic problem (see the MTG Arena forums and discussion around Standard). But some of this has to be a Modern-specific problem, and I'm not sure where we go to get out of this endless cycle of warranted and unwarranted complaining.

I think you and I both agree on the solution: more generic, modal answers that many decks can play. But with MH1 in the books and Wizards deciding FoN and FoV are about as far as they will go, I don't see these kinds of cards happening in the near future. This forces us to confront the fact that maybe Wizards is just fine with the 2018 status quo (a year with no bans outside of the 2019 hyper-targeted KCI issue) and we just need to live with that. Or we need to switch gears towards a different policing strategy, e.g. a proactive nuke like Twin that forces decks to interact or just lose on T4.

Finally, I'll note this current perception of a crisis is always more acute after big events like the MC. This too will pass and we'll see where we are after more events are in the books and more time has gone by. That said, it's hard to feel like Modern isn't always in crisis state with the online discourse being what it is.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

It's especially funny when we understand that these numbers that are 'fine' are in both a warped meta, and if looking at top 8 (why?) Tainted by Limited!

Hogaak 56%
Phoenix 50%
Dredge 45%
R Phoenix 52%
HOGAAK DREDGE 60%
Hollow One 50%
Mardu Pyro 50%

Now remind me folks, when does wizards start commenting on Win %?

'50% against the field.'

What was the most played card at this event?

Leyline of the Void

Hmm...gives us something to think about when all those decks are hurt by the most popular card, and they nearly all hit that 50+% Match Rate.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

metalmusic_4 wrote:
4 years ago
cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Edit:
For reference, my stance is that Looting is absolutely the problem. While Hogaak is the biggest problem with Hogaak, once removed, all the Hogaak players just go back to playing Creeping Dredge, and the Phoenix players get to continue their competitive dominance numbers with even less GY hate. It's a domino effect that has Looting at the center of absolutely everything. If random, bad Tier 3 decks get swept up in a Looting ban, so be it. It didn't stop them hitting Probe, it shouldn't stop them hitting Looting.
These are fair points against FL, and if it did get banned it would be hard to argue against. I think WOTC made it clear last announcement the currently feel dredge, pheonix and other GY decks are acceptable. That is the strongest point by far IMO against a FL ban. it appears they just do not want to damage all GY decks that badly.
I believe these statements were made under the assumption that WAR/MH1 was going to sufficiently shake up the Modern meta in a direction that did not include degenerate graveyard decks remaining the absolute and unparalleled best decks in the format. Also, it's hard to know what Dredge has been up to the past few months because nearly everyone playing it has migrated to Hogaak strategies (which would dilute those overall numbers).
IF you start from this point I think you are left with only a hogaak ban as the option.
I agree that Hogaak is the problem with Hogaak. Imagine if Death's Shadow had no life loss clause and had Trample. That's Hogaak. That being said, Bloodghast, Vengevine, Gravecrawler, and of course Looting itself also each individually contribute to both speed and resilience. All of these cards are repeatable, half of them are free, and two of them help enable the other two. Hogaak is just the cherry on top of the graveyard abuse sundae, which itself is slathered in Looting sauce.
I personally have 5-6 modern FL decks of varying competitiveness levels
I have some too! Including having four foil signed copies. I wish to never be able to play them in this format again. I have also lived in constant fear of ever buying into the more egregious decks (like Dredge and now Hogaak) because any sane management would have dealt with this problem and banned it long ago.
FoilFaithless.jpg
This is all again completely ignoring the utter competitive dominance of Phoenix, which has put up Birthing Pod-like levels competitive domination for nearly a year, and just got half a dozen powerful new tools, including several overall improvements and key mirror-breakers: (Lava Dart, Magmatic Sinkhole, Aria of Flame, Force of Negation, Fiery Islet, Narset, Parter of Veils, Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, and Finale of Promise). With these upgrades, one high-level event already showed us a field of people main decking Leylines is no big deal. Just imagine what the next GPs will look like, Hogaak or not.

Anyone thinking this isn't a problem is simply choosing to ignore what is right in front of them. Hogaak is stealing the spotlight, but Faithless Looting, and the decks it enables as a whole, are the real culprit.

Edit:
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
I am also not sure if it's okay or not that Modern has a lot of GY-dependent strategies. It's really just part of the game at this point. This becomes a problem, however, if the only counterplay to those strategies are GY cards that you lose without. I don't have the numbers to show deck win percentages against GY strategies when they do vs. don't draw their hate, but I suspect it's warped around those cards.
This is my main concern too. One of the defining reasons why I spent 3.5 years defending Twin is that it was a deck that was easily interacted with using multiple main-deckable answers, such as discard spells, counterspells, and general creature removal. The move toward GY strategies mean that ALLLLL of those answers are essentially worthless. Putting things into the graveyard by any of those means isn't just NOT a downside, it can be viewed as a net positive, due to the multitude of free effects that bring them back, or the fact they can be used as resources to power out other threats. Hogaak, Phoenix, Dredge, and decks which horrendously abuse the graveyard fundamentally shift interaction to the point of needing exile effects or you just lose.

People have spent years saying "Twin warped the metagame" and other such nonsense, and many of those same people are totally fine with the level of GY decks absolutely warping the format so hard that people are maindecking Leyline of the Void. Frankly it's insulting to hear that this is fine.

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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
How do you feel about Forsythe saying that "comparing opening hands" is a necessary evil? That seems terrifyingly absurd to consider that remotely good or healthy.
Modern is a fast format. Most decks have turn-1 plays that either setup their plan (hardened scales, expedition map, stitcher's supplier, ...) or try to disrupt the opponent (thoughtseize, leyline). The first three turns establish a lot of what is going to happen. His tweet was not subtle but it reflects what is going on.

If your deck does nothing on turn 0, 1 or 2, you're at a big disadvantage. What is new here?

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

pierreb wrote:
4 years ago
If your deck does nothing on turn 0, 1 or 2, you're at a big disadvantage. What is new here?
Tron literally just won the MC and "does nothing" turn 0, 1, or 2. LOL.

But the idea of "comparing opening hands" to determine who wins used to be a meme to describe how awful Modern was during the peak of the Infect/DSZ garbage fire in the back end of 2016. The fact that Aaron "I know nothing about Modern" Forsythe says this is a "necessary evil" is downright terrifying. His ignorance is causing misery for everyone and his management of Modern is appalling.

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Post by Necrofish » 4 years ago

Being able to use your graveyard as a resource changes the tempo of GY strategies enorm, as they're way faster at producing those resources than comparable resoures (Mana, Card Advantage), To add to that, threats are now way more resilient. Turning a Fatal Push into an Unsummon is just brutal. GY decks always had that advantage, but the prevalence in the current meta is shifting the metagame around the answers a lot.

Efficient answers were what everyone was looking towards. There's a reason Fatal Push is a staple and not cards like Murder. Now we not only have to look at efficient, but also effective answers. Which often means tucking or exiling.
Effective cards usually aren't as efficient as efficient cards aren't as effective. Even Path to Exile has a drawback, but it's one of if not the currently best card answering both problems of effectiveness and efficiency.
Giving us removal that's efficient as well as effective will just result in powercreep. Not in threats, but in answers. Imagine everyone running around with a Swords to Plowshares in their deck.
Rest in Peace and Leyline of the Void are probably the best proactive answers we have right now. Stopping them from creating their resources before they can use it.

The strategy of turning your graveyard in a resource has been prevalent for a long time now. Snapcaster, Tasigur and the delve and flashback mechanics are popular. It just has reached a point where we don't really have a lot of answers that are fast enough to affect the game before the enemy already pummeled us to death. And even with Leyline of the Void, a major problem is that it's way too specific. That's why we only see it now in maindecks, where almost every deck seems to be a graveyard deck.
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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Tron literally just won the MC and "does nothing" turn 0, 1, or 2. LOL.

But the idea of "comparing opening hands" to determine who wins used to be a meme to describe how awful Modern was during the peak of the Infect/DSZ garbage fire in the back end of 2016. The fact that Aaron "I know nothing about Modern" Forsythe says this is a "necessary evil" is downright terrifying. His ignorance is causing misery for everyone and his management of Modern is appalling.
First, tron plays (MB, post SB they may have leylines): Chalice on 0 on turn 1 (against deck with free spell). Map on turn 1. Chalice on 1, Warping wail, inversion or sylvan scrying on turn 2. Since its goal is to assemble tron on turn 3, that's the "being fast" side of the equation.

Second, you choose to read what fits your narrative into what Forsythe and others (i.e. most people here) say. That you claim that everyone is feeling misery is your opinion, projected onto everyone else. Stop wording your opinion as a consensus. (You are not alone who does it.)

I try to either tlak about fact (like what tron plays on turn 0, 1 or 2) or try to word things I say as an opinion without claiming everyone agrees with me. It would help if others would do the same.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

pierreb wrote:
4 years ago
Modern is a fast format. Most decks have turn-1 plays that either setup their plan (hardened scales, expedition map, stitcher's supplier, ...) or try to disrupt the opponent (thoughtseize, leyline). The first three turns establish a lot of what is going to happen. His tweet was not subtle but it reflects what is going on.

If your deck does nothing on turn 0, 1 or 2, you're at a big disadvantage. What is new here?
There is a massive, difference between these 2 statements.

"I need this specific card in my opener, to remain viable in this game."

AND

"I plan to durdle for 3 turns."

Nobody, literally nobody, should expect to just do nothing but pass turn for 3 turns and expect success.

We should not NEED to play 'free' cards in the form of Surgical Extraction AND/OR Ravenous Trap AND/OR Leyline of the Void, resulting in what is essentially binary game play.

'Do you have it?'
'Do you have the counter hate?'

If thats what passes for 'good format' Modern these days, you can have it. Combine that 'deep and insightful' gameplay with London Mull AND Open Decklists?

In what fathomable world is that good game design?

I mean just again, for the people who missed it last time.

Other than Dredge, in a meta that was WILDLY hateful towards GY decks, no GY deck was below 50% match win rate.

EDIT: SCG is going on with a Modern Open as well btw.

Day 2
(Winners Meta)
Hogaak – 13
Eldrazi Tron – 10
Humans – 7
Jund – 6
Mono-Red Phoenix – 5
Izzet Phoenix – 4
Amulet Titan – 3
Mono-Green Tron – 3
Burn – 2
Grixis Urza – 2

(Modern Diversity)
Gruul Phoenix – 1
Selesnya Tron – 1
Counters Company – 1
Azorius Control – 1
Zoo – 1
Azorius Taxes -1
Bant Spirits – 1
Infect – 1
Bant Infect – 1
BreachShift – 1
Hardened+Scales – 1
Rakdos Midrange – 1
Four-Color Vannifar – 1

And Top 8 from what I can see

Hogaak
GTron
GTron
Hogaak
UR Phoenix
Urza
Hogaak
Hogaak

(Rofl)
Last edited by idSurge 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Simto » 4 years ago

I thought it was a good coverage of different styles of decks for once and I enjoyed watching the top 8 games a lot. The only thing missing from the top 8 was a control deck, but there was a nice variety for sure.

Also, my two favourite decks in the final :)

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Also, people wording their opinions as a consensus.
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Because looting is simply not the problem.
:thinking: :thinking: :thinking:
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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
There is a massive, difference between these 2 statements.

"I need this specific card in my opener, to remain viable in this game."

AND

"I plan to durdle for 3 turns."

Nobody, literally nobody, should expect to just do nothing but pass turn for 3 turns and expect success.

We should not NEED to play 'free' cards in the form of Surgical Extraction AND/OR Ravenous Trap AND/OR Leyline of the Void, resulting in what is essentially binary game play.

'Do you have it?'
'Do you have the counter hate?'

If thats what passes for 'good format' Modern these days, you can have it. Combine that 'deep and insightful' gameplay with London Mull AND Open Decklists?
I actually don't think this is a problem abstractly. Even Legacy has plenty of viable decks that could be in this category (ANT, Reanimator, Dredge, and Sneak and Show come to mind). Modern too, even ignoring the GY (Tron, Infect, Affinity, etc.). But the reason it's fine with these decks is that the answers and interaction that stops those "do you have it?" openers are not too specialized. Legacy is likely slower than Modern because it plays a slew of answers and efficient cantrips to find those answers. "Do you have it?" is often answered with "Yes" in Legacy, which is why super meme decks like Belcher and Spanish Inquisition aren't good and other combo-style decks fall behind the fairer ones. That's because their answer quality is very high, so the answer to "Do you have it?" decks is the same as answers to fair decks, which is in turn the answer to different variants of "Do you have it?" decks. Answers prevail! This is also true in Modern if you are using Bolts, Thoughtseizes, Inquisitions, Pushes, etc. to disrupt an opponent's game plan, as these cards have wide applicability.

The problem here is that the answer to "Do you have it?" for graveyard decks is a very specific "yes" that might not be relevant in other matchups. Force of Negation sort of addresses this issue, but it has some notable misses in top decks whereas something like Force of Will is basically always live in G1. Add in worse cantrip quality and you can't even consistently find your answer when you need it, which adds an element of variance to a matchup already polarized around narrow cards. That feels really bad to players losing those games.

The number one solution to this is Wizards printing some dang answers, but they are just so conservative with answers while the threat arms race keeps slipping through their testing cracks. I think that's because it's easy at them to quibble about FoN's power level in various iterations, but harder for them to catch every broken interaction between some new threat and existing engines/decks. Whatever the reason, it results in answers not keeping pace with threats. I was willing to wait for Wizards to address this up until MH1, but if FoN/FoV/K-Guile/etc. is all they can do, we might need to look elsewhere.

The other option is to give fair decks decisive tools that require interaction or you just lose. This mops up the non-interactive nonsense that can't overcome a brief interactive spell followed by a decisive game-ending spell, encouraging decks to interact. Twin is sort of the poster child of this style of deck, but I don't see Wizards unbanning that either, and its effect is a little uncertain and unprecedented. Overall, I don't really have solutions right now. Only questions and thoughts.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

In the abstract, I can agree. The problem to me, is we should have a variety of questions, and an even higher variety of answers.

There's only so much power to creep though, and eventually an answer is so powerful it warps decks towards it until you have.

Hogaak → have the void?

I mean it's frustrating because it really doesn't have to be this way, yet here we are and some will defend it when there are really 5 of my 75 I would be an idiot to change for the foreseeable future.

At least 5 if Surgical, Void, or Trap, or Rip if you want to risk being too slow on the nuts.

Turn 2 could be too slow, and this is OK to some.
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Post by metalmusic_4 » 4 years ago

Just to clarify my position. I am a hogaak player, so I don't WANT a ban, I believe a ban is what should happen to protect the format. I want to protect the size od rhe ban list though, it should be as small as possible. Now that a ban is needed you have to pick the card. I firmly vote on banning hogaak. If FL gets the ban I will take out red and use blue and put hedron crab in. That gives me hedron crab, stichers supplier, satyr wayfinder to get cards from my library to the grave and to get them out of my hand I may use lotleth troll and rotting regisaure, maybe dark blast for some dredge too alongside all the other regulars.

This deck will keep evolving to power out hogaak very early until hogaak is removed from the game. I don't think we should just play whack a mole with this for the next year adding 2-3-4 more cards to the ban list. The better option is to ban the hogaak and be done with it.

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