Wolffman wrote: ↑4 years ago
I agree with almost every card on this list, but there are 2 that I'd prefer not to see:
Wild Growth - This is adding copies 5-8 of what is arguably the best 1 mana ramp spell available. Usually leads to turn 2 blood moons which makes a lot of non-games, let's leave this one out.
Crystalline Sliver - I don't think this card makes slivers into a monster, but I just don't like cards that shut-off interaction completely. Cards like this that have no counter play take the fun out of the game real quick for me.
You might be right about Wild Growth, I forget about Blood Moon partly because I despise it so much and try not to dwell on it. Probably doesn't help that BR can't deal with enchantments which makes this ramp hard to deal with, but then again, BR are noticeably among the colors that get land destruction, so it might not be that bad. I don't really want
Trinisphere Blood Moon land destruction decks to get this though, so yeah, it should probably be avoided in the current format, especially just after we got
Pillage.
I actually like things like hexproof and shroud, to some degree, and I don't think it's going to make Slivers into a monster either, it's more that modern slivers doesn't have that kind of effect yet and it wouldn't be broken. I'd be just fine with some variant on it as well, like making it a UG mana cost with hexproof as a 1/1 (making it more vulnerable to some sweepers before the slivers pump up stats as much). It isn't like a tribal deck like slivers is one you'll want to be focusing on lots of single-target removal on anyway (you want sweepers), and the format finally has
Diabolic Edict (and Liliana's often better variation) to act as an additional safety valve against untargetable things (although
Innocent Blood is on my list for a reason as well). It isn't like spirits doesn't already have
Drogskol Captain, proving that adding this sort of thing to a strong tribe doesn't push them over into ban territory. I can understand you not liking/wanting it personally though.
Thenarus wrote: ↑4 years ago
Great list. Containment Priest in particular would be healthy for the format.
Of these, Lobotomy feels like a worse version of many of the Extraction effects, and Propaganda probably breaks some current color pie rules, but they would still be interesting to see in Modern. Terravore, Psychatog, and Vindicate would be great on this list as well.
I put up Lobotomy more because I was surprised when I couldn't find a similar effect in that it checks the hand and lets you pick from there when I made an older list, and never saw reason to take it off the list. It probably wouldn't even see play, it's likely more viable to play a mix of targeted discard and surgical for getting a similar result.
I did take Terravore off the list deliberately, because it's honestly just a high stat beater with trample at 3 cmc under good conditions, and such a thing has proven unreliable, even Tarmogoyf has been falling in play, and it's not for the lack of trample. Terravore might have done something in an earlier era of Modern, but I think it's just not good enough to matter at this point, the bar for a 3 cmc creature has gone up in terms of how easy it is to either get out and quickly do something (ETB effect, haste, flash, etc.), or be resistant to removal (hexproof, self-revival from graveyard, etc.). Additionally, the use of fetchlands has actually gone down in some decks, and graveyard hate has gone up significantly, making me doubt the value of it. Something like it might still be good, but it would need some extras, and thus belong in a card design thread, rather than a reprint thread).
Psychatog was dropped for similar reasons, on one level it's just a tough beater, not even trample going for it like Terravore, when it is set up, on another level, it's a discard and self-exile from your graveyard outlet, but I think the CMC is too high there for it to matter in the current Modern. Something similar would need a re-design to work with the current Modern metagame, and thus not belong in this thread.
Vindicate almost made it on the list, especially given they though Pillage was printable, and how much of a downturn midrange has seen. I don't really feel like it's quite balanced in Modern terms, it's really close to what I would think a perfectly fair card would be, but I think it needs some small extra burden to limit the decks that play it before I'd feel it was fine, even if that is just going 3 color rather than 2 or something, but again, that would be a different kind of thread.
I don't agree with the idea of Propaganda being out of the color pie for blue, it feels pretty blue to me, and while I know some at Wizards feel differently, or perhaps they just wanted to take some things away from blue which they thought had too much in it's wheelhouse, they bend the pie in far more serious ways regularly enough for me to think it deserves reprinting into Modern anyway.
