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

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Tzoulis
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Post by Tzoulis » 3 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
Edit: Even just looking back over those cards listed.... Torpor Orb and Suppression Field sound like they would be NUTS today. With so many ETBs and activated abilities, why does no one play em? Or does the shift away from symmetrical effects mean people would rather have things like WAR walkers that shut off opponents without hurting your own stuff?
No relevant artifact deck exists to consistently find it post SB (or even main deck), so a random one-off when almost all decks play ETB's, yours included, will never be relevant enough to justify a side board slot.

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Post by Wraithpk » 3 years ago

I was pretty disappointed with the conclusions on Evaros and Fpawlusz's videos. Twin lost 4 out of the 6 matches they played. In particular, Bant and GDS both slapped Twin around, which I think most of us ex-Twin players would have expected. I think this shows that there are very real anti-Twin decks in the meta already. Think back to 2015. The only top tier deck that was good against Twin was Jund, and as we've discussed over the years, it was probably only 50-55% in Jund's favor. That was why Twin was the best deck back then. The case would be very different today. Jund itself is stronger than it was in 2015, GDS is another Jund-style deck with an even faster clock, and blue control is MILES stronger today than it was in 2015. Twin would have several bad matchups at the top of the format. That is why I believe it would be fine.

As for the talk about Veil, remember that they already ran Dispel. If you're worried about Veil stopping your interaction when they go to combo, Dispel already did that, and if they're killing you that turn it doesn't really matter if Veil cantrips. Now, you have the upside of it hitting discard spells, which is very nice, but also the downside of it not doing anything against Path, Bolt, and Nature's Claim. Veil is probably a little better overall, but let's not pretend the deck is going from nothing to Veil. You're going from Dispel to Veil, trading off becoming weaker against some things to become stronger against other things.
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Post by drmarkb » 3 years ago

Maybe we will have to see the next year but given the historically high levels of bans and FIRE, it would be foolish to expect things to settle down now.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Wraithpk wrote:
3 years ago
Twin lost 4 out of the 6 matches they played. In particular, Bant and GDS both slapped Twin around, which I think most of us ex-Twin players would have expected. I think this shows that there are very real anti-Twin decks in the meta already. Think back to 2015. The only top tier deck that was good against Twin was Jund, and as we've discussed over the years, it was probably only 50-55% in Jund's favor. That was why Twin was the best deck back then. The case would be very different today. Jund itself is stronger than it was in 2015, GDS is another Jund-style deck with an even faster clock, and blue control is MILES stronger today than it was in 2015. Twin would have several bad matchups at the top of the format. That is why I believe it would be fine.
It's almost like several of us have been saying exactly that for literally years. :hmm:

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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
It's almost like several of us have been saying exactly that for literally years. :hmm:
Not really interested in discussing Twin specifically, but the problem I always have with these videos showing banned cards is that there simply aren't enough reps with the decks to really tune them for new cards with different metas. Not just to adjust there, but to get the sideboards right as well as the mainboards. They almost always tend to revolve solely around what players last knew. Any deck from then that's still around is going to look considerably different for an optimal strategy. Despite the new cards in Twin for example, it still looks like it's trying to beat Affinity, Pod, and Infect. The Pod list looks like something out of the overextended days.

You can make any banned card look awful when using such untuned decks.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

You can also make any card seem way too good by drumming up a bunch of unfounded and unsupported fears, backed up by magical Christmas land hands that are in no way a reflection of reality, but here we are. Twin is not doing anything fundamentally stronger than a multitude of strategies over the past few years, and would get torn to shreds by fast disruptive decks (like GDS and Jund). It's continued ban is comical given the dumpster fire of broken garbage that is allowed to terrorize this format for months or years.

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Post by Wraithpk » 3 years ago

The Twin list they played wasn't bad. I disagree with a few choices, but it's probably not too far from what Izzet Twin would look like today. The Pod list looked pretty bad, though, which is funny because it went 4-2 anyway. They both thought Twin was better than Pod, but their Pod list wasn't great and still did better than Twin. Besides that, Pod was always better than Twin while they both existed alongside each other.
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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

Wraithpk wrote:
3 years ago
The Twin list they played wasn't bad. I disagree with a few choices, but it's probably not too far from what Izzet Twin would look like today. The Pod list looked pretty bad, though, which is funny because it went 4-2 anyway. They both thought Twin was better than Pod, but their Pod list wasn't great and still did better than Twin. Besides that, Pod was always better than Twin while they both existed alongside each other.
I don't think that was a good Pod list, I just think those Yawgmoth decks are pretty good. I'm not really convinced they belong in the same deck.

Twin I think would end up looking considerably different if there were an unban. In the end, I'm not sure how it would end up looking but you really can't convince me that it wouldn't look different. Most of the cards that were being played were just updated versions of using the same strategy, but decks evolve over time. For example, look at how Jund has evolved throughout the years where it focuses on different things, burn, kill spells, GY, no GY, discard, etc...

If Twin were good, not only would it look different, but other decks would adjust to it, which would in turn cause other Twin changes too. What you see here is a level zero deck, and it would no doubt evolve. You've got 4 viable choices here in 2 color, white, green, or black, and all of those offer significant metagame choices at the moment. Veil, Teferi, etc.. even just being able to go Twin into Veil or Flusterstorm is huge.

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Post by Wraithpk » 3 years ago

You've got 4 viable choices here in 2 color, white, green, or black, and all of those offer significant metagame choices at the moment. Veil, Teferi, etc.. even just being able to go Twin into Veil or Flusterstorm is huge.
They could already go Twin into Dispel, so the additions of Veil and Flusterstorm aren't HUGE changes to Twin's power. As for the color combinations, Izzet was always the best version of Twin because it was the one that was best at comboing, had the best manabase, and was the best Blood Moon deck post-board. It will always be the best in more aggressive metas. In an interactive meta, it might be that a 3-color build is better. I'm really not convinced it would be Jeskai with T3feri, people don't realize how bad Jeskai Twin was back in the day. I don't think T3feri alone is enough to make Jeskai a better build than what you get for splashing green or black. Green or black let you play Uro or Kroxa as solid secondary plans, and you get a lot of good interaction in black or good beatsticks like Goyf and Bounding Krasis in green.
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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

Wraithpk wrote:
3 years ago
You've got 4 viable choices here in 2 color, white, green, or black, and all of those offer significant metagame choices at the moment. Veil, Teferi, etc.. even just being able to go Twin into Veil or Flusterstorm is huge.
They could already go Twin into Dispel, so the additions of Veil and Flusterstorm aren't HUGE changes to Twin's power. As for the color combinations, Izzet was always the best version of Twin because it was the one that was best at comboing, had the best manabase, and was the best Blood Moon deck post-board. It will always be the best in more aggressive metas. In an interactive meta, it might be that a 3-color build is better. I'm really not convinced it would be Jeskai with T3feri, people don't realize how bad Jeskai Twin was back in the day. I don't think T3feri alone is enough to make Jeskai a better build than what you get for splashing green or black. Green or black let you play Uro or Kroxa as solid secondary plans, and you get a lot of good interaction in black or good beatsticks like Goyf and Bounding Krasis in green.
Right, I'm just throwing out points honestly, which is to say the deck is built like you would build a deck in 2015 using cards in 2020. Not necessarily the way you would build a deck in 2020. Which is why I find only very, very limited value in evaluating banned cards in this type of comparison. People do the same thing in Standard when popular reprints come back, they build something analogous to the decks the card used to go in.

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Post by Wraithpk » 3 years ago

Yeah I hear you. Modern was more linear and aggressive in 2015. That said, Twin is weaker against interactive decks, which there are several of atop the meta today. Sure, they can adjust to a 3 color build to improve those matchups, but they're still not going to be good matchups.
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Post by th33l3x » 3 years ago

I just got off watching Sultai Snow take down the modern Challenge in Nassif's hands, then 5-0 the next day in Reid's.

Now I'm heatedly arguing on the Sultai Control discord about how busted Astrolabe is.

But seriously, the thing that stood out to me was them always slamming everything on curve without taking more than 3-4 damage from their mana per game, despite their deck beeing full of 1UUU, UUGG, UUU, BG, UG etc, running 4 Field of Ruin and always having Sanctuary online.

UGx Snow is seriously ridiculous. And no, I don't mind a "fair" deck, whatever that is, being at the top of modern.

I do mind color requirements being irrelevant.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 3 years ago

Haven't crunched all the numbers yet but Astrolabe does appear to be increasingly problematic to an extent it did not reach in the past. It was previously hovering in the 25% range before companions, and then in the 15%-20% range afterwards. Despite lots of internet outcry, this really didn't represent a problem: most of Modern's best removal spells saw more play. AA decks as a macro-archetype weren't seeing significantly more play than just ramp decks, and they appeared to be empowering decks that weren't otherwise viable. But then companions got fixed and now AA decks appear to be trending way up to the 40%-50% range. Those are new prevalence levels we haven't seen in the past. In fact, they are double what we were seeing even at AA's old height.

If those numbers hold steady or get worse, even if they normalize into the high 30% or low 40% range, that's still problematic and returns us to the OUaT ban precedent (just under 40% of decks when banned). This again puts us in that weird question of whether or not we are comfortable with AA being a kind of exception for Modern as Brainstorm is in Legacy (i.e. a card that is wildly overrepresented but dodges bans due to format identity considerations). I suspect AA does not meet that definition because it's much newer than Brainstorm and conflicts with one of Modern's chief identities: if most/all top decks are just 3c+ AA piles, that doesn't fulfill Modern's promise of diversity. This will be a fairly easy problem to track from week to week. Unlike the companion issue, where Lurrus was the obvious problem but all the other companions collectively were just as problematic, Astrolabe itself might just be an acute issue. If it sustains these new, inappropriate shares, it should be banned.

Also, friendly daily reminder that all formats continue to suffer under the crushing weight of Wizards' bad decisions and worse communication. I haven't seen this as much recently but still want us to remember that Modern is not in any kind of unique trouble. All formats are in trouble. Our thread focus is clearly Modern, but every other competitive format has significant issues. Formats that appear healthier are almost certainly just "healthier" because they see less competitive focus. Even formats that aren't seeing a ton of high level play right now (Pauper, Pioneer, Legacy, etc.) continue to crumble under Wizards' ongoing failures, to say nothing of the laughable imbalances in formats with more play like Standard. This means even as we keep focusing on Modern issues we can never lose sight of the bigger picture. There are sweeping issues hurting every format, not to mention the game as a whole.
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
3 years ago
I suspect AA does not meet that definition because it's much newer than Brainstorm and conflicts with one of Modern's chief identities: if most/all top decks are just 3c+ AA piles, that doesn't fulfill Modern's promise of diversity
I think the biggest issue here is that WOTC can, at any time, arbitrarily decide whether or not AA is ok. While "a bunch of 3c+ piles" is absolutely not diverse from our perspective, WOTC has repeatedly considered similar archetypal lists with different card names as "diverse." They seem to only actually begin to care if any one of the lists becomes a "problem" in any way they happen to choose to define. Faithless Looting is a perfect example of this. It was a borderline/legitimate problem for a year and a half, but didn't get banned until Hogaak.

With that in mind, Astrolabe will continue to live in Schrödinger's Banlist. Probably should be banned, might be banned, but also could totally justifiably not be banned. It all depends on which secret, selective reasoning WOTC chooses to use, if it chooses to do anything at all.

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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
3 years ago
Haven't crunched all the numbers yet but Astrolabe does appear to be increasingly problematic to an extent it did not reach in the past. It was previously hovering in the 25% range before companions, and then in the 15%-20% range afterwards. Despite lots of internet outcry, this really didn't represent a problem: most of Modern's best removal spells saw more play. AA decks as a macro-archetype weren't seeing significantly more play than just ramp decks, and they appeared to be empowering decks that weren't otherwise viable. But then companions got fixed and now AA decks appear to be trending way up to the 40%-50% range. Those are new prevalence levels we haven't seen in the past. In fact, they are double what we were seeing even at AA's old height.
Is it AA that's the problem, or is it the other things it enabled? Initially I was thinking about what an AA ban would mean for Uro, and it making the snake significantly worse is a large consideration in what makes that deck run (something I had been previously undervaluing). Based on the ability for Jund to play the RB titan though, I don't think the color fixing would actually break up that decks mana.

I can fully admit that I have a bias here, because I initially felt AA should be banned, and Mox Opal ate it instead... and I think that if AA were taken out we would still have Opal. So I feel like banning AA now simply leaves Opal in unnecessary limbo where the wrong card got banned, and will almost certainly stay banned forever (especially with Mox Amber now being very, very near critical mass).

So, I might be a little blind right now to AA requiring further action. I can certainly agree that the statistics don't lie though, and going by mtgtop8, 22% of decks playing it as a 4 of is alarming. It's the most played non land 4 of in the format, with Monastery Swiftspear being in second place at 19% of decks. Though I will point out that Mishra's Bauble is currently well above AA at 35%, and 3.9 copies per deck. Though this could be pre companion change.

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Post by drmarkb » 3 years ago

Have people ever considered that one reason Brainstorm is not banned is that there are a bunch of replacements. Sure, not instant, not as good,but Prordain and Ponder etc. That is not true for labe. If it goes it changes a lot in both formats.

I am hopinglabe goes in Legacy, and eventually it has to. In Modern I feel it is a OUAT type ban, when it goes people will suddenly all say, 'yeah,of course'. I suspect when it goes it will be in the same announcement, with similar reasons.

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Post by True-Name Nemesis » 3 years ago

Aazadan wrote:
3 years ago
So, I might be a little blind right now to AA requiring further action. I can certainly agree that the statistics don't lie though, and going by mtgtop8, 22% of decks playing it as a 4 of is alarming. It's the most played non land 4 of in the format, with Monastery Swiftspear being in second place at 19% of decks. Though I will point out that Mishra's Bauble is currently well above AA at 35%, and 3.9 copies per deck. Though this could be pre companion change.
You'll find a drastically different picture if you filter it by past 2 weeks (which is closest filtering option that does not account for pre-companion).
The UGx snow shell is ridiculously dominant. 9 of the top 10.

Lightning Bolt 29.2 % 3.9
Arcum's Astrolabe 25.0 % 4.0
Cryptic Command 25.0 % 2.7
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath 25.0 % 3.1
Force of Negation 23.6 % 2.9
Archmage's Charm 22.2 % 2.4
Ice-Fang Coatl 20.8 % 3.9
Path to Exile 20.8 % 3.8
Snapcaster Mage 20.8 % 2.0
Jace, the Mind Sculptor 18.1 % 2.4
Mana Leak 16.7 % 2.1
Aether Vial 15.3 % 3.9
Fatal Push 13.9 % 4.0
Klothys, God of Destiny 13.9 % 2.8
Remand 13.9 % 3.5
Seasoned Pyromancer 13.9 % 3.8
Teferi, Time Raveler 13.9 % 2.2
Utopia Sprawl 13.9 % 4.0
Wrenn and Six 13.9 % 2.4
Arbor Elf 12.5 % 4.0

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Post by th33l3x » 3 years ago

True-Name Nemesis wrote:
3 years ago
Aazadan wrote:
3 years ago
So, I might be a little blind right now to AA requiring further action. I can certainly agree that the statistics don't lie though, and going by mtgtop8, 22% of decks playing it as a 4 of is alarming. It's the most played non land 4 of in the format, with Monastery Swiftspear being in second place at 19% of decks. Though I will point out that Mishra's Bauble is currently well above AA at 35%, and 3.9 copies per deck. Though this could be pre companion change.
You'll find a drastically different picture if you filter it by past 2 weeks (which is closest filtering option that does not account for pre-companion).
The UGx snow shell is ridiculously dominant. 9 of the top 10.

Lightning Bolt 29.2 % 3.9
Arcum's Astrolabe 25.0 % 4.0
Cryptic Command 25.0 % 2.7
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath 25.0 % 3.1
Force of Negation 23.6 % 2.9
Archmage's Charm 22.2 % 2.4
Ice-Fang Coatl 20.8 % 3.9
Path to Exile 20.8 % 3.8
Snapcaster Mage 20.8 % 2.0
Jace, the Mind Sculptor 18.1 % 2.4
Mana Leak 16.7 % 2.1
Aether Vial 15.3 % 3.9
Fatal Push 13.9 % 4.0
Klothys, God of Destiny 13.9 % 2.8
Remand 13.9 % 3.5
Seasoned Pyromancer 13.9 % 3.8
Teferi, Time Raveler 13.9 % 2.2
Utopia Sprawl 13.9 % 4.0
Wrenn and Six 13.9 % 2.4
Arbor Elf 12.5 % 4.0
Didn't even see that in the stats, was only looking at Astrolabe. Holy Jeezus. Bolt is at the top, and the next 10 cards are all out of UGx Snow Control. That's insane.

To be completely fair, a lot of those cards are both in UGx Snow Control and Temur Urza. But at the same time, those decks also have a lot of overlap strategically. Just another UGx Snow deck at the end of the day.

We'll have to see where the trend goes in the coming weeks, but if by, say the end of July, Astrolabe decks are as dominant as they are now, the card is bannable imo.

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Post by Wraithpk » 3 years ago

Honestly, if something from Bant needs to go (and that's my deck), it's probably Uro. Astrolabe is a great card, but Uro is the card that wins more games for that deck than anything else. The only problem there is can we justify banning Uro and leaving Kroxa, with how similar they are?
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Post by Albegas » 3 years ago

With Bant piles, I'm on the side that cares less about what the most "broken" and more on the side of "what does the meta look like with/without the card?". It seems reasonable established that Bant's 3 most broken cards are AA, Veil and Uro. Of the three, you could probably ban AA and knock out every Bant pile in the meta, but what are we left with? Control/Stoneblade piles go back to being UW, which is has been OK, but generally underwhelming compared to most of the winner's meta prior to AA, and it really wasn't that broken even after AA allowed them to splash a 3rd color and still run Field of Ruin. Given the general lack of high powered answers that Legacy has, Control really needs a 3rd color to improve the card quality suite. Not only that, you risk losing Urza decks, which are basically the last artifact oriented deck left in Modern after losing Opal. Some Simic ones might pop up, but I'm not convinced they'd even be on the same level as UW Control. On the other hand, Uro doesn't really support any decks on its own. In fact, I'd argue that it does too good of a job of stabilizing Bant pile decks. They need to be weak to something, and as others have mentioned, Uro helps stabilize against almost every archetype in the spectrum as early as turn 3. In a similar vein as Uro, Veil does not act as the back bone of any deck. It just acts as an absurdly good counter to a bunch of fair decks in the meta. Ux doesn't need Veil to be reigned in and there's any number of other ways to deal with Thoughtseize decks.

So while it might seem wasteful or counter-intuitive to want to ban 2 cards instead of one, I think the resulting meta looks much better with a Veil & Uro ban than an AA ban, and if an AA deck ever dominates after banning those two, at least we can say for certain that AA needs to be nuked at that point.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 3 years ago

Small sample evidence incoming...

I have been testing the Gabriel Nassif 10-0 Sultai Pile deck and this deck is freaking insane.

https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=26103&d=397107&f=MO

I feel like this deck is as close to a 50% deck as we can get. I haven't found the tough matchups quite yet, but every matchup has so much intensive thinking in it, that it gives you AND your opponent too many chances to change the outcomes. The first game, I played, I made around 10 play mistakes and I consider myself pretty good at figuring out a new deck. There were a few games that I won with 1-3 cards left in the library, using Mystic Sanctuary loops to not deck myself. Uro's draw ability is not a "may" and sometimes you need him to close games. There were a few decisions that literally ended the game as a loss due to the mistake (they may have resulted in a loss later on, but who knows). If anyone wants to play a Control deck where many decisions matter, this is it in my opinion.

I put together the deck because my friend wants to use it for next week's Super FNM, where 1st gets a box of Secret Lair; Fetchlands. I don't know if he realizes how decision intensive this deck is. Remember, this is a deck where Gabriel Nassif himself made many mistakes on route to his 10-0 run. Obviously he made so many plays that nobody else can make, but I watched the stream and he realized a few mistakes along the way. This guy is so freaking good!

*As for a Uro/Veil ban, WotC will never do that over Astrolabe. After playing Modern for so long and seeing the way WotC thinks, I can tell that WotC thinks that Veil of Summer is just a card like Stony Silence during Affinity and other artifact decks or Rest in Peace during graveyard metagames. It's just a SB staple that is played in any deck that can produce Green (well, most; oddly enough, Amulet doesn't run it).
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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

drmarkb wrote:
3 years ago
Have people ever considered that one reason Brainstorm is not banned is that there are a bunch of replacements. Sure, not instant, not as good,but Prordain and Ponder etc. That is not true for labe. If it goes it changes a lot in both formats.

I am hopinglabe goes in Legacy, and eventually it has to. In Modern I feel it is a OUAT type ban, when it goes people will suddenly all say, 'yeah,of course'. I suspect when it goes it will be in the same announcement, with similar reasons.
The reason Brainstorm isn't banned is that it keeps about 100 other cards off the ban list. As long as the format doesn't get too competitive (nothing above a rare GP and the SCG circuit), Brainstorm holds it together. That's in addition to the fact that players honestly just find it fun. It's a type of game that can't be played in other formats.

Those are the reasons why Brainstorm isn't banned. It's about 70% that players find it incredibly fun, and banning it would kill the formats identity, and the remaining 30% is that it would result in far too many other cards being banned, and having no where to be played if it were gone.

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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

True-Name Nemesis wrote:
3 years ago
You'll find a drastically different picture if you filter it by past 2 weeks (which is closest filtering option that does not account for pre-companion).
The UGx snow shell is ridiculously dominant. 9 of the top 10.

Lightning Bolt 29.2 % 3.9
Arcum's Astrolabe 25.0 % 4.0
Figured that was the case, I forgot I could change the filtering while I was writing my post. Typically the warning on a non removal spell is about 1.3 copies per deck across the format. Astrolabe is very, very close but it's not quite overboard yet if those numbers are accurate.

To cite some data I pulled months ago during the Oko dicussions
http://nxs.wf/np56873
http://nxs.wf/np55871

Granted, these numbers are looking at threats rather than enablers but it's still a decent point of reference. Somewhere in my post history is a better breakdown but that's good enough. At peak Oko, Astrolabe was in 34.6% of decks at 3.9 copies. Tarmogoyfs peak for reference was in 2011 at 28.3% with 4.0 copies.

This is also why I was on the ban Astrolabe train back then. The numbers since appear to have fallen, it's still a good conversation to have... but like I said if Astrolabe does need to go, I'm a bit annoyed at Mox Opal having died for Astrolabes sins since it seems that in hindsight I was right about the cards effect on the format.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 3 years ago

Aazadan wrote:
3 years ago
This is also why I was on the ban Astrolabe train back then. The numbers since appear to have fallen, it's still a good conversation to have... but like I said if Astrolabe does need to go, I'm a bit annoyed at Mox Opal having died for Astrolabes sins since it seems that in hindsight I was right about the cards effect on the format.
I don't think it came down to Arcum's Astrolabe vs. Mox Opal - it was Urza, Lord High Artificer vs. Mox Opal. The Urza Sword deck was too strong after Hogaak AND Looting got banned. They cut Mox Opal to slow the Urza deck. It did and by the time people started realizing it was nearly just as good with Talisman of Dominance, there were too many other broken cards introduced into Modern and people didn't care much about UB Urza anymore.

Sometimes I imagine how crappier Modern would have been if they banned Mox Opal over doing the Companion change rule or if they banned Arcum's Astrolabe over Oko, Thief of Crowns. Cards like Oko and Lurrus at the original Companion rule have no reason to exist in a format like Modern. They probably don't have a right to exist at that in Legacy, but that's a whole other topic, lol.
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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Ym1r
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Post by Ym1r » 3 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
3 years ago
I feel like this deck is as close to a 50% deck as we can get. I haven't found the tough matchups quite yet,
This post by @FoodChainGoblins is actually really good so I want to break it down a bit to discuss the deck itself and try to see if it's actually problematic or not. Firstly, is this a deck that is as close to a 50% deck as we can get? Maybe, but the trick here is the "as close". This deck has some very lopsided MUs like dredge. Dredge pretty much rolls over Sultai G1 with, I would argue although I have no evidence to back it up besides streams/personal experience, 80%+ WR. G2-3 Sultai would have to configure its sideboard heavily dedicating at least 6 spots to GY if it wish to have a chance, and even then it only barely becomes 60-40 in favor of Dredge. Tron can still be hard and Bant has a better MU against Tron than Sultai, PtE being relevant here in cases like Wurmcoil.
FoodChainGoblins wrote:
3 years ago
every matchup has so much intensive thinking in it, that it gives you AND your opponent too many chances to change the outcomes.
This is also key. The deck, either in it's bant and even more so in the Sultai version is INSANELY difficult to play and extremely pilot dependent. A wrong fetch/keep and you basically conceded the game. Yeah you might get some free passes against aggro here and there because you get to go AA into Snake into Uro into Uro from GY, but this is both not super common, and heavily draw dependent. I was piloting UW Stoneblade for MONTHS and the first time I picked up Bant Stoneblade I just screwed everything up. I thought it would be pretty much the same thing but it really is not. Now, difficulty to pilot is not necessarily a claim in the defense of a deck (e.g. KCI), but take it for whatever it is worth, I just wanted it out there.
FoodChainGoblins wrote:
3 years ago
this is a deck where Gabriel Nassif himself made many mistakes on route to his 10-0 run.
I've watched several of the matses from that run and as he said himslef but is also clear if you watch carefully he made a ton of mistakes. His mistakes are at a much higher level, however, so opponents were not always at the ready to punish them, because they were not always the better players, but that doesn't change the fact that to pilot this deck properly you need to put in the reps and be GOOD.
Counter, draw a card.

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