MTGNexus

I think this is solid. they are resetting the format ( heck nearly all formats) for post-pandemic play which kinda makes me hyped to play again. Solid strategy wizards I see you.

I think this is probably the best possible decision they've made in a long time. Again, my only issue is that it should have been done long ago. They used a pandemic and lack of paper tournaments to basically leave Modern out to rot for nearly a year.

ALL of these are great bans.

Field is powerful, not just because of its inevitability, but of its difficulty to interact with and resilience to removal (W6, Loam, etc). It wasn't necessarily fun playing with or against the card. Even resolving a turn 5 Hour of Promise and pumping out dozens of zombies isn't satisfying. Just felt like another "one-card-combo." And seeing it on the other side meant I either needed to win without the combat phase, or by making sure to fly. Which felt weird against durdley slow control and ramp decks.

Mystic is a card that should have never been printed. As someone who's been casting Snapcaster Mage for as long as I've been in Modern, the fact that this doesn't exile after casting it is absurd. The "Cryptic lock" isn't even that good most of the time, but simply having 2-4 copies and a couple fetchlands and casting a big important spell 3-5 times is usually enough to warrant a concession (especially when that card is Time Warp). Good riddance.

SSG should have been banned years ago. If they're not going to allow fast mana in other forms, there's no way this is OK. Bye Felicia.

Trickery, I'm glad they nipped this in the bud immediately. No good will ever come from this card and its ability to target one's own spells. They COULD have errata'd the text to say "target spell you don't control" but that introduces mechanical problems with no real upside (kind of like errata Oko's elk ability to be a -1). I get the cute nod to Chaos Warp, but nobody was playing this card fairly.

Uro should have been banned in January. Or October. Or September. Or literally at any point last year.

The big takeaway is that most of the 2019/2020 design failures have finally been dealt with. The only ones left are... what? T3feri? Veil? Maybe Dryad?

For the first time in a long time, I am genuinely hopeful about Modern.

Same. I think this will be a very solid rest for all decks in the format.

Really good changes. I'm just sad that Sanctuary going means that CB Miracles probably won't be playable. We still need to get rid of T3feri and Veil, though...

Also, I think I glossed over this first glance through, but they also openly admit to not banning things in a timely manner.

"Throughout the past year, with pandemic conditions resulting in fewer high-level tabletop tournaments, we correspondingly slowed the pace of banned and restricted list changes in nonrotating formats. Recent community discussion has made it clear that many fans of those formats are interested in seeing shakeups to those metagames. Today's changes represent us taking a close look at each of Historic, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage and responding to both play data and community feedback."

Also also, this line in the end of the Vintage announcement is extremely interesting:

"A key aspect of the spirit of Vintage is that we'd like as much of Magic's card library to be available as possible. So, we're running the experiment of unbanning Lurrus of the Dream-Den. We'll be keeping our eye on what this does to the metagame and are willing to revert the change if needed, but we believe that Lurrus should be given another chance to prove itself under the new companion rule."

Very interesting to see where things go now. Tron and Amulet/Titan decks going to be the big baddies now?

Simto wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Very interesting to see where things go now. Tron and Amulet/Titan decks going to be the big baddies now?

With Field and Sanctuary gone, land hate will be low. Tron will likely be back with force. Titan will still do Titan things, and with Dryad, they still have their cheating "0-mountain Valakut" deck. So who knows. I know I'm sleeving up some awful builds of UW Control and UR Kiki Moon. Metaphorically sleeving up.... on MTGO.....

I might come back to Modern because of today's announcement. I find it surprising Veil keeps dodging the bullet.

Yeah, I think the only thing I'm sad about is that the bans aren't implemented fast enough. In the article, it says it's supposed to be implemented 2/15 (today), but I still see people playing both Field and Sanctuary in the practice rooms. Will sit and chill until the ban actually goes into effect, but very excited for what happens after.

I know I plan on still running land hate in my sideboard, as there will be tron and amulet. I still can't stand dryad enabling teh mountain valakut but I guess that deck lost field

I might sleeve up GDS in paper again. This is more motivation to buy into modern online too

glad I never bought any Mystic Sanctuary.

surprised they killed the ape.

this feels like a huge reset, like what they did in Pioneer last year.

They really surpassed my expectations with these bans, I'm incredibly excited. As I said my biggest worry was there only being an Uro ban, which would do very little to stop the dominance of FotD UGx decks. I'm a little sad to lose Mystic Sanctuary, but it's very understandable it had to go. I'm also excited I get to put more interesting lands back in my manabases again now I don't have to constantly hit that highest possible island count. Celestial Colonnade is back!

I'm also very positively surprised they already changed the Cascade rules and banned Tibalt's Trickery. I think a cascade change was inevitable and although the Trickery deck is obnoxious, it didn't strike me as too good considering how easy it is to stop. But both created obnoxious gameplay that I'm glad to see go. Same for SSG; I feel bad for the Ad Nauseam players but SSG was just always an enabler for dumb stuff. Killing SSG also nerfs Oops and will force Neoform to rebuild into something slower, which I also think are good changes. Honestly the more I think about it, the more annoying things this SSG ban inadvertedly nerfs.

Curious to see what Modern will look like in a month from now. I expect the Death Shadow decks to be very powerful, and am curious to see what control deck will come up on top. Honestly I'm expecting some kind of Wilderness Reclamation deck to become the new beast, but I always have fingers crossed it'll be Jeskai or Stoneblade. At the very least, playing Lightning Bolt no longer feels embarassing with Uro banned.

I'm interested in how the pile of aggro decks that used to (attempt) to prey on Uro will fare.

Prowess, Hammer, RB Shadow are all the sorts of aggro that are actually a bit more vulnerable to removal. On the other hand, they'll prey on Tron just as hard so maybe they'll still be quite good?

Bearscape wrote: ↑

3 years ago

They really surpassed my expectations with these bans, I'm incredibly excited. As I said my biggest worry was there only being an Uro ban, which would do very little to stop the dominance of FotD UGx decks. I'm a little sad to lose Mystic Sanctuary, but it's very understandable it had to go. I'm also excited I get to put more interesting lands back in my manabases again now I don't have to constantly hit that highest possible island count. Celestial Colonnade is back!

I'm also very positively surprised they already changed the Cascade rules and banned Tibalt's Trickery. I think a cascade change was inevitable and although the Trickery deck is obnoxious, it didn't strike me as too good considering how easy it is to stop. But both created obnoxious gameplay that I'm glad to see go. Same for SSG; I feel bad for the Ad Nauseam players but SSG was just always an enabler for dumb stuff. Killing SSG also nerfs Oops and will force Neoform to rebuild into something slower, which I also think are good changes. Honestly the more I think about it, the more annoying things this SSG ban inadvertedly nerfs.

Curious to see what Modern will look like in a month from now. I expect the Death Shadow decks to be very powerful, and am curious to see what control deck will come up on top. Honestly I'm expecting some kind of Wilderness Reclamation deck to become the new beast, but I always have fingers crossed it'll be Jeskai or Stoneblade. At the very least, playing Lightning Bolt no longer feels embarassing with Uro banned.

In one way SSG was surprising, but in another I think it's a card that Vegas wouldn't even give odds on getting banned within 10 years. It was inevitable, as the cards only purpose was to enable the decks the don't want in Modern. Once they were willing to nuke Affinity in order to stop Mox Opal combo decks, it was obvious what would eventually happen to decks like Ad Naseaum (a safe/"fair" combo deck) when it came time to stop something absurd.

I'm mad about simian spirit guide. Ad nauseam and mono red prison decks were fine in the format.

Uro and mystic sanctuary are bans i like.

I'm indifferent to field of the dead.

Just to be clear, I won't miss the oops-all-spells decks using simian spirit guide. Ad nauseam I really liked because it was easier to interact with.

Ed06288 wrote: ↑

3 years ago

I'm mad about simian spirit guide. Ad nauseam and mono red prison decks were fine in the format.

Uro and mystic sanctuary are bans i like.

I'm indifferent to field of the dead.

I'm in a similar boat. I like the Uro, Mystic Sanctuary, and Field of the Dead bans.

But I am somewhat mad about Simian Spirit Guide as well. Personally I don't think that Ad Nauseam, nor Mono Red Prison were the factors. I believe Neobrand and any deck that would arise because of new broken %$#% are the reasons for SSG to be canned. This way, between banning the new cards, the new deck presumably would be a "little less busted" than it would have been if the Monkey were legal. So in that way, I don't mind as much.

*I'll repeat this part to make myself clear. (Despite Matt Nass and LSV talking about Ad Nauseam possibly being too good once bans went into effect.) Ad Nauseam and Mono Red Prison were completely fine decks. They caused no problems in Modern at any time. Yes, it sucked to have someone get you on turn 4 with Lightning Storm or turn 1 Chalice of the Void on 1. But the decks never had many wins or top 8s in any known tournament. I do not think that these decks were considered when the Monkey ban happened.

SSG is fine in a vacuum but in practice it ends up helping the most degenerate of strategies do things faster than they should be doing. Eventually it would have needed to go, I think we all know this.

Reminds me of Mardu Pyromancer getting hit by collateral damage from the banning of Faithless Looting. That deck was cool.

Whether or not SSG was a problem, no good came from its existence in the format. The fact that it was instant speed, uncounterable mana only makes the fact that it almost exclusively powered awful and unfair things look even worse. Good riddance.

Simto wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Reminds me of Mardu Pyromancer getting hit by collateral damage from the banning of Faithless Looting. That deck was cool.

Same thing when Grixis Delver (that ran Peezy as a primary non-delver threat) when Gitaxian Probe was banned. Was a super fair deck abusing a dumb card that got inadvertently hurt.

Simian Spirit Guide was banned to hit the Tibalt's Trickery deck. But wait, Tibalt's Trickery was already banned at the same time. Yes, SSG is an extra mana for exactly 1 turn. What's the cost? You use a card for that temporary mana. If someone casts Chalice of the Void on turn 1 with the assistance of SSG, they need exactly 2 spells not to be cast for parity. Anything over that and they can get card advantage.

But there's the other issue with SSG, if you draw your deck you can get 4 Red mana. SSG helps speed up the quickest combo kills. I do see it (and have seen it ever since my friend proved to me around the time of Twin/Pod/Affinity that Mox Opal and SSG do not conform to a "turn 3 format.").

But I wouldn't compare it to Faithless Looting. That card was essentially a draw 4 or better in the decks that used it. The card that is the best comparison to SSG (other than Mox Opal) is Bridge from Below. It is not a card that has broken anything in Modern, but there's just no reason for WotC to risk anything. What this means is when there's a new printing, SSG will bust that printing even more so, accelerating the ban hammer for the new card. WotC wants to see how the new busted card fares without the Monkey assistance. This is literally the only reason SSG was banned now.

And I realize that, just like Bridge from Below, nobody cares. So I will try to keep the talk at a minimum.

Classic Modern decks getting caught in the crossfire is nothing new. Mox Opal and Faithless Looting bans also hit decks I dearly miss (especially classic affinity).

Autumn Burchett tweeted about how some decks become part of a format's identity to the point it might be better banning around them rather than kill the deck. Biggest example would be Mishra's Workshop in Vintage almost doubling the length of the restricted list on its own, because restricting workshop itself would be devastating to the format. It's interesting to think about whether that should be the case for Modern as well; is it worth it to keep on hitting random new cards just to keep cards like Faithless Looting and Mox Opal legal?

Bearscape wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Classic Modern decks getting caught in the crossfire is nothing new. Mox Opal and Faithless Looting bans also hit decks I dearly miss (especially classic affinity).

Autumn Burchett tweeted about how some decks become part of a format's identity to the point it might be better banning around them rather than kill the deck. Biggest example would be Mishra's Workshop in Vintage almost doubling the length of the restricted list on its own, because restricting workshop itself would be devastating to the format. It's interesting to think about whether that should be the case for Modern as well; is it worth it to keep on hitting random new cards just to keep cards like Faithless Looting and Mox Opal legal?

No it's not worth keeping those types of cards legal. This does however open up a discussion of what decks are supposed to give modern it's format identity. Tron I guess? /gag

Up until this point moderns identity has been to simply pick up whatever degenerate pile that gets augmented by the newest broken cards. They seem to be taking a Pioneer approach now though.

To be clear, I do think Mox Opal and SSG being banned is a good thing, but it also makes me think about Modern's identity. Modern has seen much more change than Legacy and Vintage and it's honestly hard to come up with pillars of the format that are unanimously agreed on. Vintage has Bazaar of Baghdad and Mishra's Workshop, Legacy has Delver and Brainstorm, but Modern? You could maybe mention cards like Tarmogoyf and Lightning Bolt, but not everyone will agree and those cards are still legal, but just not really that well positioned.

It's honestly kind of crazy that when talking about the history of Modern, people mostly mention pre and post Splinter Twin, which was five years ago; Modern has just been in flux so long

Modern's identity is "Ban the best deck(s) every year, +/- 6mo."