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

th33l3x
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Post by th33l3x » 3 years ago

the one thing that makes Uro an acceptable card is that it's easy enough to interact with. Counterspells, bounce-effects and gy hate are all fairly effective because its quite resource-intensive to cast.

Thank God Aether Gust is a card.

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Post by th33l3x » 3 years ago

Greeksis wrote:
3 years ago
If I did not already address it in my initial post, I agree. I think that the only card that needs monitoring (and long term banning) is Astrolabe and nothing else.
Veil of Summer is still the dumbest card ever and should be banned.

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Post by blkdemonight » 3 years ago

th33l3x wrote:
3 years ago
the one thing that makes Uro an acceptable card is that it's easy enough to interact with. Counterspells, bounce-effects and gy hate are all fairly effective because its quite resource-intensive to cast.

Thank God Aether Gust is a card.
I forgot aetgervgust exists. Might have to look for it it now.

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Post by blkdemonight » 3 years ago

Guardman wrote:
3 years ago
The Fluff wrote:
3 years ago
FoodChainGoblins wrote:
3 years ago
Why are they printing stuff like Azusa and Ugin instead of those cards? If any type of ramp is viable, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is going to be a pain in the ass. You think we needed better answers to planeswalkers before? No, now we literally need, 0: destroy target planeswalker, draw a card.
Angelic Ascension feels like one answer they printed to remove Ugin.
The problem, at least my problem, with Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is that he does 90% of his damage as soon as he enters the battlefield. He comes down and is like "Nice board you got there. Seems like you invested a lot of cards and mana into... and their gone." He is the type of planeswalker you need to answer before he even touches the battlefield.
Honestly when will planeswalkers lose priority for activating abilities when they hit the board?

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cfusionpm
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

I love that thanks to Astrolabe, we consider a deck capable of casting Fatal Push, Bitterblossom, Kaya's Guile, and Abrupt Decay and Nihil Spellbomb as "Bant."

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 3 years ago

Greeksis wrote:
3 years ago
What's the most interesting part here? I tagged Ian Duke and he liked both posts(of course the only Twitter reaction is the love button, so that does not mean a whole lot). But! The last time I tagged him and he liked it, was back when I asked a Lattice and a Neoform ban(it was shortly after the London Mulligan introduction). They banned the one and not the other shortly after.

That does not necessarily mean they are banning Astrolabe or any of the other suggestions(tbf: I think an Uro ban would be wrong and hilarious and about Mystic Sanctuary, it's a wrong print but I also think it's a little bit stretched and wrong imo), but this absolutely means he is aware of those issues and he is monitoring this situation. Astrolabe is being at least monitored from Wizards.

Also, Bant Snow Control seems to be the de facto best deck going forward, but obv we need more data.

This post was brought to you by as much zero amount of hyperbole as possible.
Is that a Modern Challenge that you won? What's really impressive is that you won 16 of the last 17 games that you played in that Challenge, no matter what deck you were on. That's some streak!

I've watched your streams a bit. They seem pretty fun.
cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
I love that thanks to Astrolabe, we consider a deck capable of casting Fatal Push, Bitterblossom, Kaya's Guile, and Abrupt Decay and Nihil Spellbomb as "Bant."
Yeah, nowadays if a deck is listed as some color combination, sometimes it literally can mean anything. :P
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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cfusionpm
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Quintessential advice from the winning pilot:


th33l3x
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Post by th33l3x » 3 years ago

Btw I am so not looking foward to a meta dominated by Bant Uro and Temur Urza again.

Just straight 60 Card Snow Control and Temur Urza are about to ruin my day.

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Post by Tzoulis » 3 years ago

blkdemonight wrote:
3 years ago
Honestly when will planeswalkers lose priority for activating abilities when they hit the board?
Never because of how priority exchange works and secondly it'd be extremely dumb.
Greeksis wrote:
3 years ago
Also, Bant Snow Control seems to be the de facto best deck going forward, but obv we need more data.
I see no reason why we should ban anything other than Veil (and maybe T3feri, %$#% that card) at the moment. The moment that Discard and Counterspells are relevant again, Modern can breathe again.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 3 years ago

Tzoulis wrote:
3 years ago
I see no reason why we should ban anything other than Veil (and maybe T3feri, %$#% that card) at the moment. The moment that Discard and Counterspells are relevant again, Modern can breathe again.
Most people that I've seen calling for bans is calling for Arcum's Astrolabe and nothing else. :thinking:
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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Amalgam
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Post by Amalgam » 3 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
3 years ago
Tzoulis wrote:
3 years ago
I see no reason why we should ban anything other than Veil (and maybe T3feri, %$#% that card) at the moment. The moment that Discard and Counterspells are relevant again, Modern can breathe again.
Most people that I've seen calling for bans is calling for Arcum's Astrolabe and nothing else. :thinking:
I feel the meta would be in an even worse place with an Astrolabe ban unfortunately

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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
Quintessential advice from the winning pilot:
Believe it or not, this is actually the most consistent deck building strategy. From my time when I was running my simulator to make decks fight against each other, by far the most surprising result I had, as well as likely the most useful result had to do with the value of 1 of's and it's something that I think people get horribly wrong these days. Simply having the chance to hit a useful card massively helps your win rates on average.

There's reasons to not do it too of course (combo decks have a harder time getting the slots), but the two biggest mistakes people often make in deck building are shorting their lands, and getting numbers wrong.

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Post by Bearscape » 3 years ago

Amalgam wrote:
3 years ago
FoodChainGoblins wrote:
3 years ago
Tzoulis wrote:
3 years ago
I see no reason why we should ban anything other than Veil (and maybe T3feri, %$#% that card) at the moment. The moment that Discard and Counterspells are relevant again, Modern can breathe again.
Most people that I've seen calling for bans is calling for Arcum's Astrolabe and nothing else. :thinking:
I feel the meta would be in an even worse place with an Astrolabe ban unfortunately
I think so too. It might be frustrating to see Astrolabe manabases splash a fourth color because there's no downside, but at least the decks are slow and interactive. The deck to beat is now something you try to go under, which makes many more strategies viable than when trying to stop some kind of asinine combo kill.

Tef3 and Veil can still go though.

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Post by metalmusic_4 » 3 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
3 years ago
Tzoulis wrote:
3 years ago
I see no reason why we should ban anything other than Veil (and maybe T3feri, %$#% that card) at the moment. The moment that Discard and Counterspells are relevant again, Modern can breathe again.
Most people that I've seen calling for bans is calling for Arcum's Astrolabe and nothing else. :thinking:
I am in the Ban astrolabe camp. I had pushed for a lurrus ban too, but now that they changed the companion rules I can give it a bit more time for reevaluation.
Astrolabe just does too much imo, similar to but not as well as DRS. It fixes your mana for the rest of the game and draws cards when it enters and blinks. Blood moon has kept greedy mana bases in check from moderns creation and is not doing that well enough now. Blinking it with Yorion is compounding its power alot too. Snow decks running astrolabe are near the top of legacy right now too. That deck is again pretty similar to the modern one but it also runs uro and veil so it is possible that the real problem is one of those cards instead.

All 3 of these cards should be looked at and discussed in regards to modern, and I know many people have called for a veil ban for a while, but at this time I am only ready to ban astrolabe.

I don't normally push for any bans at all, I accepted several other bans but I believe I only vocally called for bans on hogaak, lurrus and astrolabe in the last several years. I was even willing to give git probe, the hogaak/bridge/alter deck and eye of ugin a bit more time before the bans took place, so I feel my push for a ban should carry some weight due to my conservative ban policy.

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AvalonAurora
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Post by AvalonAurora » 3 years ago

Are we getting an M21 in Modern thread?

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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

AvalonAurora wrote:
3 years ago
Are we getting an M21 in Modern thread?
Hopefully, so far I really like what I'm seeing. Seems like a great set. I imagine future sight goblin should be good.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Re: Ban Astrolabe - As much as I want to agree with this ideal (as well as the homogenization of 4-color good-stuff-piles), it's also the first time in a VERY VERY VERY long time that a Cryptic Command deck wasn't laughably terrible in Modern. If they're not going to give us back Twin, or give other great finishers (Uro is up there, but exceedingly hard to cast w/o 'Labe, Urza is up there too, but is stupid broken himself), I'm not sure how else to support interactive/reactive decks.

Because if the strong linear decks are going to continue to be punishingly fast, resilient, powerful, and reliable, what else is there to keep up with it? What other motivation is there to play anything reactive, instead of just joining the rat-race that was nearly every "season" of Modern since January 2016?

Astrolabe creates problems, sure, but the actual problems plaguing Modern go much, much, much deeper than an innocuous cantripping artifact.

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Post by Amalgam » 3 years ago

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... E2ajdo6X-o

Well since we can now ban for the above I guess we now have a new form of ban criteria we can add.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Amalgam wrote:
3 years ago
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... E2ajdo6X-o

Well since we can now ban for the above I guess we now have a new form of ban criteria we can add.
It's long since been established that they can ban anything they want, at any time, and for any reason. It does not need to be consistent with past bannings, nor can any particular ban be used as precedent for future bannings. It's literally the defining feature of our format (and Magic as a whole the past two years). Instead of "Does anything need to be banned?" it's: "What will be banned next?" It's a whack-a-mole game that can be mostly-predicted, but only when problems are painfully obvious, and so devastatingly glaring that they can't be ignored.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Greeksis wrote:
3 years ago
That would be true if we hadn't predicted exactly every banning in Modern, besides Splinter Twin and Gitaxian Probe.
Because they don't act until.....
problems are painfully obvious, and so devastatingly glaring that they can't be ignored.
Let's not forget they let Faithless Looting rot the format for a year and a half. And Hogaak literally single handedly destroyed 3 GPs it didn't need to, after the first incorrect banning was a total failure.

Looking only at the picture of "this got banned, we said it should, we were right" doesn't take into account dozens of times the community predicted that things should be banned and aren't (or are WAAYYYY late in acting).

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Post by Albegas » 3 years ago

This new wave of bans should not be in any way used as a form of argument about how Wizards actually deals with bans in the context of meta games. The cards hit were basically unused, and discussion of the new bans touches on multiple sensitive topics that go well beyond the scope of this thread. Just because we have one, and exactly one, isolated incident where bans occurred with zero precedent for the ban and zero competitive reasoning for the bans does not suddenly make all past and future bans completely random.

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Post by Amalgam » 3 years ago

"We are starting a review of every card we have printed. This first pass isn't meant to be an exhaustive catalogue of every problematic card in Magic's history, and we will continue to take actions on similar cards in the future. "

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Post by Tomatotime » 3 years ago

So basically this new ban mania could get potentially tournament staples banned due to unfortunate art that Wotc themselves directed in the first place? Because of a twitter and reddit mob? lol, what a joke this all must be.

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Post by idSurge » 3 years ago

I mean, I guess, potentially.

However it would seem incredibly unlikely. That card that provoked all this would never ever see print like that again, even if it was not on the reserve list, with the art it had.
UR Control UR

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Post by Albegas » 3 years ago

Amalgam wrote:
3 years ago
"We are starting a review of every card we have printed. This first pass isn't meant to be an exhaustive catalogue of every problematic card in Magic's history, and we will continue to take actions on similar cards in the future. "
I had missed that part of the announcement, but I still stand by that this set of bans, while an interesting subject unto itself, should not be used as any sort of argument about the methodology of when and why WotC bans cards in the context of meta games. The methodology of these new bans are independent of anything going on in competitive play, and I sincerely doubt that they would use this logic as some sort of hidden agenda to ban a card from competitive play that wasn't distorting the meta.

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