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

True-Name Nemesis
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Post by True-Name Nemesis » 3 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
I asked politely numerous times. I said that because I am sick and tired of you droning on endlessly about how much vast experience you have, yet you refuse to even show the slightest bit of information about that experience. Lists? Matchups? Win rates? Recorded matches? Nothing. So why should anyone believe anything you have to say? Because it *feels* true?
I don't have any strong opinion for or against Twin but I agree with this.

Any so-called testing information that can't be provided because they're afraid it'll be scrutinized might as well be worthless.

None of you would take an insurance agent trying to peddle you an investment plan seriously if all they have to go by is 'Just trust me, I ran the numbers and know how it works, but I won't show you how I arrived at those numbers'.

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Post by blkdemonight » 3 years ago

True-Name Nemesis wrote:
3 years ago
cfusionpm wrote:
3 years ago
I asked politely numerous times. I said that because I am sick and tired of you droning on endlessly about how much vast experience you have, yet you refuse to even show the slightest bit of information about that experience. Lists? Matchups? Win rates? Recorded matches? Nothing. So why should anyone believe anything you have to say? Because it *feels* true?
I second this notion as someone who doesn't thinks Splinter Twin is the best thing to unban now.

I don't have any strong opinion for or against Twin but I agree with this.

Any so-called testing information that can't be provided because they're afraid it'll be scrutinized might as well be worthless.

None of you would take an insurance agent trying to peddle you an investment plan seriously if all they have to go by is 'Just trust me, I ran the numbers and know how it works, but I won't show you how I arrived at those numbers'.

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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

True-Name Nemesis wrote:
3 years ago
I don't have any strong opinion for or against Twin but I agree with this.

Any so-called testing information that can't be provided because they're afraid it'll be scrutinized might as well be worthless.

None of you would take an insurance agent trying to peddle you an investment plan seriously if all they have to go by is 'Just trust me, I ran the numbers and know how it works, but I won't show you how I arrived at those numbers'.
It's nothing malicious, people are just making cases for decks they like. Like I said before though, and this applies to any unban. Tests where you throw the card in a list are not valid. Peoples starting points take decks that look like they did when the card was last played (or played in Standard if it was never in Modern), and make lists that look like that using more recent cards.

The problem is, this tends to be week 1 decks to borrow a Standard term, and they're not tuned well. Additionally, it failed to account for any sort of real meta shifts that may or may not happen to deal with the deck, as well as a sideboard built for the gauntlet in question. It simply doesn't result in an accurate test of a card and any feedback collected is extremely questionable.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 3 years ago

Greeksis wrote:
3 years ago
The main problem is, for me, that there is a person pushing for a twin agenda that his arguments were successfully disputed and instead of him admitting his arguments were not good enough, he is telling other people to shut up, and ignores the 70% of their arguments.
The problem is that he is also bringing this up mostly all of the time and the discussion is being warped, in the same way twin warped modern back in its day.
Veil is an obnoxious upgrade for twin and saying its veils problem is not a real argument. Its legal and its not going away and it would help twin the same way guttural response was a KCI thing, because veil wasnt legal back then. If you cant understand this, you need to listen to other people's opinions and think of it better.
Also, if he has the time to make 1.000.000 posts about twin and not actually play it to convince us, its a paradox. Instead of you posting endlessly about it, play 30 games and write 200 less posts. We know you are going to post more than 500 posts about it. There is the time.
While I admit that it's not the most productive to try to convince others of something, like @True-Name Nemesis mentioned, the testing itself would be useless for anyone but the actual testers (and even then not so much). Firstly, nobody is going to believe or trust it; rightfully so. Secondly, there are too many variables. Even when FPawlusz and Evaros did their Twin vs. Pod videos, there were a lot of variables. They used the GB Yawgmoth version of Pod, not the Corridor Monitor Pod that people here talk about. The Twin list was pretty good for a UR list, but they didn't try with Veil. Not to mention, there were some play errors that affected the outcomes and not enough matches to get a better feel of the matchup overall.

But I think that the biggest obstacle is that if someone tests and realizes that Twin is indeed too good, that would hurt too much. While I personally don't think it is, I could definitely be wrong here. You would need people of the tiniest biases of all, like @ktkenshinx and a few others. I have seen the biases of many people here, who although they have great arguments, biases show through. I have extreme biases myself, not so much when it comes to Twin (I don't think), but I definitely do. We can't have those in testing or else it's going to lean the testing in a certain way. Very little can be learned or gained from that.
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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

There's nothing wrong with biases as long as you're willing to recognize and correct for them. I can freely admit I've got a bias in one direction or the other on every single card on the ban list, I'm not sure how you can't if you hold an opinion on them. The same is true for cards that aren't banned, particularly controversial ones. Veil of Summer I think is fine for example, Teferi is unfun but I don't think the format is better with it gone. But, a large part of my biases stem from the fact that while I can easily see that people love playing mostly spell decks, permanents tend to lead to better gameplay as they are easier to answer. And I think that an extension of that argument means that things like WAR walkers are ultimately healthier for the game than seeing those same effects on artifacts and enchantments. The downside of course being that it forces creatures rather than spells to be in every list in order to answer them.

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Ed06288
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Post by Ed06288 » 3 years ago

I am doing paper play on a weekly basis. 3 round tournaments. Lots of budget/brew decks mixed in with some top tier stuff. I'll probably play abzan myself. The crowd is friendly and likes EDH and trading.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Ed06288 wrote:
3 years ago
I am doing paper play on a weekly basis. 3 round tournaments. Lots of budget/brew decks mixed in with some top tier stuff. I'll probably play abzan myself. The crowd is friendly and likes EDH and trading.
Definitely jealous. You must not be anywhere near the US. :laugh: :crazy: :sweat:

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Post by Ed06288 » 3 years ago

Apparently wizards took down the DCI thingy so the tournaments aren't official. You can't get planeswalker points. Not that it mattered much anyways since bye rounds were eliminated at grand prixs. In hindsight, eliminating byes was a good idea since its impossible to grind for them now lol.

Okay so a question for the forum, If sword of light and shadow fails to find a creature in the graveyard, do you still gain the 3 life? When I solitaire the deck on Forge I'm not getting the life gain. I'm wondering if the card works like cryptic command, where if one mode fails the whole thing fails.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 3 years ago

Ed06288 wrote:
3 years ago
Apparently wizards took down the DCI thingy so the tournaments aren't official. You can't get planeswalker points. Not that it mattered much anyways since bye rounds were eliminated at grand prixs. In hindsight, eliminating byes was a good idea since its impossible to grind for them now lol.

Okay so a question for the forum, If sword of light and shadow fails to find a creature in the graveyard, do you still gain the 3 life? When I solitaire the deck on Forge I'm not getting the life gain. I'm wondering if the card works like cryptic command, where if one mode fails the whole thing fails.
Yes, you should gain the 3 life. They are not dependent on the other one resolving.

EDIT> Also it says, "you MAY bring back up to 1 creature back." Up to essentially means 0 or 1.
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
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Post by Ed06288 » 3 years ago

Thanks for that foodchaingoblins. I might be misclicking somewhere.

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Post by True-Name Nemesis » 3 years ago

Greeksis wrote:
3 years ago
The main problem is, for me, that there is a person pushing for a twin agenda that his arguments were successfully disputed and instead of him admitting his arguments were not good enough, he is telling other people to shut up, and ignores the 70% of their arguments.
You think you were successful in disputing anything when you refuse or are unable to provide any sort of validation for your claims? lol. As far as this thread is concerned both of you have zero credibility on any Twin claims.

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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

Ed06288 wrote:
3 years ago
Apparently wizards took down the DCI thingy so the tournaments aren't official. You can't get planeswalker points. Not that it mattered much anyways since bye rounds were eliminated at grand prixs. In hindsight, eliminating byes was a good idea since its impossible to grind for them now lol.

Okay so a question for the forum, If sword of light and shadow fails to find a creature in the graveyard, do you still gain the 3 life? When I solitaire the deck on Forge I'm not getting the life gain. I'm wondering if the card works like cryptic command, where if one mode fails the whole thing fails.
That's not what happens with Cryptic Command. What happens when it fails, is that if a spell targets, and it has no legal targets, it will fail. So Counter+Draw has 1 target, so if that spell is removed, the whole thing fails as it no longer has targets. But, if you were to do say tap all creatures and draw, as there's no targets it won't fail. Or if you did counter+bounce, with 2 targets it would still do as much as you could, bouncing something if the spell it was countering were remanded.

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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

Yall just need a separate Twin Unban talk here thread. I mean unless you want to just rename this thread.
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Post by Ed06288 » 3 years ago

In hindsight, I think banning twin was alright. But with the powerlevel of the game having gone up since modern horizons, I think it's worth discussing unbanning twin now. Does Twin compete with strong new cards to make unbanning safe? Or does the twin shell absorb these new cards and become an auto-include in deck building?

Personally, I want artifact lands, hypergenesis, and glimpse of nature unbanned.

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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

my interest in the unbanning of twin has waned with time. If by some twist of fate it goes unbanned, would be selling my playest of twin + spellskite into our fb group to take advantage of the hype. Did the same thing during sfm unban. :)

anyway, my opinion is still the same.. wotc would never unban this thing. The immediate banning of Saheeli Cat in pioneer is a hint that they don't like this kind of gameplay.
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Post by Simto » 3 years ago

Anybody seen this? Pretty cool deck
Love him or hate him (I think he's the best Magic dude on youtube), can't deny he builds some fun, interesting and usually strong decks.
I think it's awesome seeing decks like this packing a punch. I think no Astrolabe will make the meta really good :)


I played some modern with my playgroup yesterday after almost only playing Commander for a long time and it was awesome. I missed playing modern, so I'm mega hype for it these days :) I just wish I had more money hehe.

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
3 years ago
anyway, my opinion is still the same.. wotc would never unban this thing. The immediate banning of Saheeli Cat in pioneer is a hint that they don't like this kind of gameplay.
Given their recent lack of action in Pioneer, notably leaving Inverter, Heliod, and Lotus Breach untouched, do you think they have reversed their stance? Especially given their levels of dominance? Seems to me that this is in direct opposition to their belief of disliking 2-card combos and powerful Storm decks.

Do you think they just selectively enforce or ignore whatever they feel like? Do you think their views have genuinely changed on acceptance of that kind of deck? Or do you think that they simply don't care about Pioneer or the consistency of their banned lists?

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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

@cfusionpm

even if we ponder as deep as possible what's the true meaning.. or possible injustice.. of why they banned... splinter twin and the seemingly related ban of saheeli cat in pioneer. -- won't change a thing. Twin would stay banned. I'm wondering if there is actually a point of thinking hard on this? Perhaps it's better to stop grind axe and move on.

/exits twin discussion
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
3 years ago
@cfusionpm

even if we ponder as deep as possible what's the true meaning.. or possible injustice.. of why they banned... splinter twin and the seemingly related ban of saheeli cat in pioneer. -- won't change a thing. Twin would stay banned. I'm wondering if there is actually a point of thinking hard on this? Perhaps it's better to stop grind axe and move on.

/exits twin discussion
Re-read that post for what is actually written instead of interjecting Twin.
Greeksis wrote:
3 years ago
Wizards mostly bans based on win rate those days.
A win rate against a meta that no longer exists. Making it wholly irrelevant. Decks do not exist in a vacuum, which is why win rate alone is generally a terrible metric for banning decisions.

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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

@cfusionpm

oh, I see. Apologies then. Well, my post that you quoted was talking about wotc never unbanning twin .. so I assumed it's the stance you're asking about.

wotc stance? uh.. oh... I would have to pass. They changed it or not, I don't care at this point. What matters is our playgroup has decks we can enjoy and play with. The only problem we have over here is the worsening situation with corona.
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Post by stille_nacht » 3 years ago

So... what do we think the meta is going to shake out as going forward? Looks like right now we're in the normal period where blitz//etron//aggro overperform, but what new opportunities exist in this meta?

I'm interested in how Uro decks look going forward; it seemed like the most busted 3 drop in the meta, but maybe it isn't as warping as I suspected?

GR seems poised to surge whenever people figure out (or perhaps dont) how to deal with blitz again.

I remember Grixis urza was doing well pre-IKO, and its still intact from that period.

Any thoughts?

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

stille_nacht wrote:
3 years ago
So... what do we think the meta is going to shake out as going forward? Looks like right now we're in the normal period where blitz//etron//aggro overperform, but what new opportunities exist in this meta?

I'm interested in how Uro decks look going forward; it seemed like the most busted 3 drop in the meta, but maybe it isn't as warping as I suspected?

GR seems poised to surge whenever people figure out (or perhaps dont) how to deal with blitz again.

I remember Grixis urza was doing well pre-IKO, and its still intact from that period.

Any thoughts?
The biggest thing is: it doesn't matter. Data we have is spotty and incomplete, influenced heavily by a meta that is not competitively focused due to 100% lack of GPs and PTs (no online event will come close to the significance of these).

So it's a whirlwind of random people playing whatever they want, with no clear picture of the format. Which is exactly what Wizards wants.

Uro is still just as strong, GR is abysmal to play against, Rx Prowess/Burn are amazing, and you can certainly still play Urza decks if you want, especially if with Uro!
The Fluff wrote:
3 years ago
@cfusionpm

oh, I see. Apologies then. Well, my post that you quoted was talking about wotc never unbanning twin .. so I assumed it's the stance you're asking about.

wotc stance? uh.. oh... I would have to pass. They changed it or not, I don't care at this point. What matters is our playgroup has decks we can enjoy and play with. The only problem we have over here is the worsening situation with corona.
It had more to do with their "why." If their stance was they didn't want that kind of deck, they just told us in the last B&R that the very same kind of deck (namely Inverter) was A-OK. So the disconnect is jarring, not even just from Twin, but looking to Saheeli. It's baffling the blatant contradictions of decisions made 8 months apart. I know it feels like an eternity, but Felidar Guardian was banned just last November...

That's definitely nice you have a playgroup to jam with. There are pockets here, but most competitive Modern players (the ones I prefer to play with) have moved on to other things. Partially due to the state of the game, but mostly because lack of sanctioned matches absolutely kills desire to play. If we just play locally/internet video, it's exclusively Commander or some other casual format. The many of us agree that the gameplay patterns by most of the top decks in Modern is frequently fairly bad and uninteresting to actually just play it for fun.

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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

@cfusionpm

"playgroup" are mostly my cousins, our houses are close, so it's sort of easy to play test decks. Although the corona situation makes this not practical to do at the moment.

as for enjoyment. I'm having fun playing mono-red prowess with bedlam reveler, the deck is so aggressive. You just have to find a deck that you are comfortable using.
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
3 years ago
@cfusionpm

"playgroup" are mostly my cousins, our houses are close, so it's sort of easy to play test decks. Although the corona situation makes this not practical to do at the moment.

as for enjoyment. I'm having fun playing mono-red prowess with bedlam reveler, the deck is so aggressive. You just have to find a deck that you are comfortable using.
I'm having more fun than I have in years with this goofy BW Aristocrats Lurrus list I've been playing online. I don't think it's good by any means, and flat out loses to specific decks with remotely competent draws. But it has a cool play pattern and ability to do massive damage out of nowhere, with lots of instant speed sacrifice trickery. Grinds really well against fair decks too.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 3 years ago

stille_nacht wrote:
3 years ago
So... what do we think the meta is going to shake out as going forward? Looks like right now we're in the normal period where blitz//etron//aggro overperform, but what new opportunities exist in this meta?

I'm interested in how Uro decks look going forward; it seemed like the most busted 3 drop in the meta, but maybe it isn't as warping as I suspected?

GR seems poised to surge whenever people figure out (or perhaps dont) how to deal with blitz again.

I remember Grixis urza was doing well pre-IKO, and its still intact from that period.

Any thoughts?
Uro decks are still very fine. From what I've heard, Bant Snow players on discord were very prepared for the ban and moved on from it quickly. From what I've seen, JanisAB, a streamer, already has some trophies with Bant Snow w/o AA. I've also watched Temur Turns and Temur Scapeshift do completely fine without AA, casting Uro at the same exact rate. They just have to be a tad more careful when fetching, occasionally having to go for the fetch/shock rather than the easy basic each turn into Mystic Sanctuary from the AA times. Just yesterday, I was asking a BUG Pile player how he is still doing BUG Pile, as I know the mana base was very tough and his answer was "Triomes."

GR is a good deck. I have had to come to terms with this myself, being pretty biased against it. But I've watched enough streams and played it a tiny bit myself to realize that it is a solid deck and has good matchups. Also there are few matchups that are unwinnable, at least currently in the meta.

Grixis Urza probably can also still do well. I am interested in Uroza and possibly Emry, Lurker of the Loch, which is still an amazing card. I think people are just slow to move to these, as AA was a key cog in the decks. But some day, someone will realize that they actually haven't lost much. :smirk:
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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