Tzoulis wrote: ↑3 years ago
That list is more or less the list I've settled for Miracles, only I'm playing a couple of 5 mana Teferis and 24 lands. New Teferi is strong and unique, but nowhere near broken.
I could see that. Unsure I would need the 5 mana Tefs, but I have been very blown away by the utility
Teferi, Master of Time has provided. It allows me to dig for cards I need, at instant speed, twice a turn cycle, it lets me dump Miracle cards to be topped by a Sanctuary, it tempos creatures without worrying about another ETB trigger (Jace, T3f, and T5f all bounce and can be recast), and is scary enough to often draw multiple incorrect attacks there, instead of at my life total. I have found him all-around fantastic. The only thing he doesn't do is win the game on his own, but neither does T3feri (who is indispensable most of the time).
That does look fun. I have pretty much everything to make this. Will probably give it a go at some point. Though, I don't have high expectations whatsoever. :laugh:
I mean, sure Bant is strong, but 2020 Jund would lose to 2015 (Khans) GR Ramp, Khans GW Devotion etc. Ramp will always be a problem against Jund. So are most Ux Midrange decks.
I get this too. Still funny to watch a Standard deck handily make work out of what are arguably good, fast, reliable starts from Jund. Like, neither game is even remotely close.
Greeksis wrote: ↑3 years ago
cfusionpm wrote: ↑3 years ago
Dredge and Phoenix were at least as prevalent and successful as Snow decks are now (if not much more so), and they lived on for a year and a half untouched, until a different deck caused Looting to be banned. Why should Astrolabe be any different?
First and foremost, your timeline about Phoenix is wrong, as, you said they were both lived for 18 months untouched, which is untrue. I am going to prove it.
- Guilds of Ravnica was printed at October 5, 2018. The set contained:
Creeping Chill,
Arclight Phoenix. Now, I am going to focus on Phoenix, because the Phoenix deck did not even exist without Phoenix, but also Dredge was not that good with no Chill and with GGT banned. It needed Chill to be better.
- UR Phoenix was first invented during November(where the transition from Std into Modern were made), and where Ross Meriam played multiple Crackling Drake and Chart A Course in the mainboard.
- It did top 8 a GP before KCI was banned, but with KCI legal, it was <5%, which make it not even Tier 1, because it was an awful metagame consideration, because the KCI matchup was horrendous. That's hardly dominating.
- 21 January 2019, KCI is banned, and UR Phoenix starts dominating Modern. August 26, 2019, Faithless Looting is banned.
January-August is 8 months of domination, not 1 year and a half. Even if you add up another 3 months that the card was legal, it does not add up to 1 year and a half.
Then, if we agree on those numbers and on the fact you are consistently presenting inflated numbers(you have said the 1 year and a half at least a dozen of times, which either seems reckless on your part, if you didn't look it up, or biased if you have a reason for doing so), we can move on discussing about other things as domination, etc.
1) Which is why I said Dredge and Phoenix. KCI was secretly hiding how good Dredge was, and was quelled a bit by people super loading up on GY hate. Looting decks didn't just suddenly materialize with the printing of Arclight Phoenix.
2) Phoenix's competitive domination was demonstrably above previously-banned decks. And was only slowed when surpassed by multiple other broken cards printed in back to back to back sets. Several of which led to multiple additional bannings (like Opal and Lattice).
Maybe Looting would be fine today without Hogaak? Maybe not. But the parallels to Astrolabe are abundantly clear. Like Looting, Astrolabe enables multiple different strategies and archetypes. Like Looting, it offers card draw and smoothing ability to cast things. Like Looting, it enables abuse of various mechanics and/or zones. And does all that for the low low price of 1 mana.
So forgive me if it's hard to take your stances seriously on either Astrolabe or Looting because they are (or at least were) diametrically opposed to each other. It's really hard to take anyone seriously who said repeatedly, with a straight face, for months, that neither Phoenix nor Looting were a problem. Then watch that same person repeatedly call for Astrolabe to be banned. It's just silly.
Edit:
I wonder if they will prove me wrong, and ban Astrolabe, despite enabling a "variety of diverse decks" none of which that seem to have problematic win rates (which is the only metric they seem to care about these days).
The other formats are pretty cut and dry dumpster fires. So it's clear what they could (and should) do there. But us? Maybe they just unban something to shut us up for another 6 months?