idSurge wrote: ↑4 years ago
Prior to Eldrazi, Pod was hit. It was seen as too good, and the excuse at the time was that it limited design space.
The interesting thing is how many 'not pod' cards they have printed.
If you looked at Modern at that time, with a long enough lens, you would see that they hit the 'best deck' before the pro tour.
Sometimes it killed decks, sometimes it didn't.
Ban Mania was not like it is now.
The Birthing Pod decks were played by the best Pro Players and minds in the game during those times. In my opinion, Pod decks didn't do better than Twin, Affinity, or BGx decks during several years prior to the printing of Siege Rhino. There may have been small periods when Pod did better, but most of that was due to the pilots, including LSV, Jacob Wilson, Seth Manfield, and Josh McClain.
What pushed Pod over the edge was the printing of
Siege Rhino. The card made Pod too consistent in getting essentially turn 4 wins, while being able to still tutor up the silver bullets that they needed to slow the opponent. The metagame at the time was basically UR Treasure Cruise Delver and the Abzan Pod deck beat it. It had the tools to beat a deck with Treasure Cruise, which all of us knew was on borrowed time. The Pod deck itself was never super strong against Ramp decks or Combo decks. I have long time friends who play Tron who rarely had a problem with Pod or even BGx with Deathrite Shaman. They literally don't see why those decks should have eaten bans, except one of them admits that DRS became too prevalent in almost every deck. I feel that WotC figured if they're going to ban Treasure Cruise, they have to ban Dig Through Time as well since it is a super similar card in power level (probably is better, although it's tougher for someone like myself to believe that). Then they had to ban the deck that was
beating Treasure Cruise Delver or else, it was probably going to beat the whole remaining meta at the time. What Pod did was slaughter Burn, small Aggro decks, and anything else Midrange. Those decks were not viable at Tier 1 at the time, although I personally think that Affinity was still viable.
I enjoyed playing against Pod players. I played the deck a little bit, mostly the Kiki Pod version or the Abzan version when it had Deathrite Shaman as a mana dork. But it was always awesome to see how Pod players would react to the stuff I was trying to do. I was the beatdown with most of my decks because they were quicker combo decks. Rarely did I have to worry about Pod comboing. But with Chord of Calling remaining, Eldritch Evolution and Collected Company seeing print, and to a lesser extent, Finale of Devastation being printed and Eladamri's Call being in MH, I feel like these are still a viable strategy, just not quite Tier 1.