Aazadan wrote: ↑3 years ago
FoodChainGoblins wrote: ↑3 years ago
Some believe Arcum's Astrolabe and/or Veil of Summer should eat a ban - there is room for discussion there.
I was pretty early on the Astrolabe ban train. I'm off it now, with Mox Opal gone, I think Astrolabe is fine for the moment. The card overshot it's power level but I think it's ok. A card like that is very, very, very hard to get perfect, there's just too few development knobs to turn. Most 1 drops have this issue actually.
Veil I have no opinion on either way. The card is hated but I also think it's fine in the format. I equate green getting a strong card in Modern with blue getting a strong card in Legacy. It's annoying but not necessarily broken.
On unbans, I felt OuaT was fine but have to admit the meta improved with it gone (as much as we can tell at least), so with that in mind I'm pretty much off my old thinking that GSZ would be ok to unban. I could probably accept Punishing Fire, and I think the artifact lands are fine because they're not exploitable in combo decks the same way Opal was, while they would enable bringing back Affinity, a proven good/safe deck.
That said, I'm against any unbans at the moment. We need a more stable meta first, and that means a Companion change, then some potential bannings, then time to examine the format before considering an unban.
I know it's not a popular belief, but I think that the meta AFTER OUaT was banned was much worse. Everything became snow decks with every card saying, "draw a card" on it. The OUaT meta had Amulet, which was too good, and I realize that I'm biased here. But it had Druid Combo, GB Chord, Infect was stronger, and basically Green decks had access to a card that was aeon's better than any cantrip ever legal in Modern. Maybe that was too good, especially in combination with Veil of Summer?
After it's ban, people just moved on to Arcum's Astrolabe. At least before OUaT was banned, not everyone ran AA. I know I got to a point where I was thinking if some other random deck runs AA just because it's too good not to run, I'm gonna tear it up right in front of my opponent.
I don't know what's worse - someone always finding the land or creature they need for free or casting Supreme Verdict off triple Field of Ruin, Island, and 2 AAs.
Veil is teetering very close to being ban worthy. I mean, it's an atrocity to be able to do the things it does for just G, but put that aside. It is becoming super prevalent in SBs, much more so than previous SB staples like Rest in Peace or Stony Silence. But those are defensive cards, whereas Veil is used for protection from interaction. There's a big difference in the uses of RIP and Stony.
Honestly I feel that there could be a lot of unbans. I know some players were all right with Lurrus, but think other cards should remain banned. I'm definitely NOT in that camp and it's very hard for me to see that viewpoint from the side of format health.
*We got players that believe that
Preordain makes decks too consistent and makes decks into Xerox decks. Even before Companions, that is exactly what AA, Uro.dec did - it filled itself up with cantrips until all of their games look the same from their side. And even with Yorion, they were able to find all the "draw a card" cards so that if you don't kill them quickly, all games look the same. I watch Gabriel Nassif nearly deck himself due to
Yorion, Sky Nomad and
Soulherder going off. He was searching for the 2nd Path to Exile and despite drawing nearly 20 cards in 2 turns, he didn't find it. He was pretty upset about that. Do you know how bad it feels to watch someone draw their deck and not find some card that they were what, 75% to see? I play Neobrand and there's bad stuff that happens, but that was just terrible. One more chance, blink E Witness, Snake, draw a card, another Snake, draw a card, AA, draw a card, Uro, draw a card, don't find %$#% and scoop. These games are interesting for people maybe the first 20 times - it gets stale quickly.