Magic: The Gathering - Page 600

On April 02 2015 04:15 deth2munkies wrote:
The fact that a bunch of relatively narrow sideboard hate for a deck exists doesn't mean that it isn't broken. You had Sowing Salt, Fulminator Mage, Blood Moon, etc. for Cloudpost, Rule of Law, Thalia, Thorn of Amethyst, Mindbreak Trap, etc. for Storm, Stony Silence, Rule of Law, Thalia, Eidolon of Rhetoric for Eggs.

All of the above are still banned.

I know you're not making that argument, but apparently it bears repeating.

On April 02 2015 03:51 MoonBear wrote:

Delver has not been Tier 1 since the banning of Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. In fact its recent strong showings in tournaments and stuff has basically been recent. And by recent I mean the last week recent. It's been non-existent at the last few Pro-Tours and Grand Prix.

On April 02 2015 03:51 MoonBear wrote:

Rending Volley, Combust, Illness in the Ranks, Rakdos Charm, Celestial Purge, Slaughter Games, Runed Halo, Suppression Field, Torpor Orb, Linvala Keeper of Secret, Ensnaring Bridge, Choke, Sudden Death, Spellskite, Counterflux, Flashfreeze, Phyrexian Revoker, Dismember, I haven't even started on all the Enchantment hate like Nature's Claim yet.

The Modern card pool is pretty big.

On April 02 2015 04:53 Uranium wrote:

The banning was less than 3 months ago. There's only been 1 Modern PTQ and GP each since then. Although I agree that the banning of those cards hurts the deck a lot, I'd say it's too early to make any statements about Modern tiers since there are so few major events per year.

Also, just looking at the PTFRF decklists, Twin managed to win the tournament against a top 8 with 3 junk decks stacked with Thoughtseize, Path, and Abrupt Decay. In fact it looks like it's been putting up multiple top 8s per tournament.


There are hate cards for every combo deck. Due to the speed and protection of Twin, players are forced to play very specific sideboard hate cards to beat Twin. Rending Volley is an interesting new addition that I would consider to be the most viable. I don't care for the permanent-based solutions as they are very easy for Twin to handle at instant speed and then go off.

My argument is that Twin is the most powerful, resilient combo deck in the format. This is due to the following factors:
Two card combo - easy to assemble, more deck space for protection and dig
Deck is primarily instants - they can switch from interactive to proactive at any time
Best combo colors / stable mana base - access to the best maindeck interactive and sideboard cards

There is no other deck in the format that has this combination of factors going for it. Bloom Titan has been seeing more success recently, but it's mostly because the combo power of the deck is in its lands, and most decks aren't set up to interact with land right now. Tutoring free spells (Pacts) is also strong, but I believe that people will figure out how to deal with Bloom Titan sooner rather than later, whereas Twin has been AT WORST T1.5 for years, due to the inherent power of the deck.

On April 02 2015 03:51 MoonBear wrote:

Uh, Twin is a pretty simple but effective combo? It's nothing on the level of 40-land-nothing-below-3-mana-cost Seismic Swans or Turn 2 Goryo Griselbrand. Jank is not a word I would use to describe it lol

Are you just hopping on the Twin hate train because you personally don't like it? Banning should be a last resort, not because you just personally dislike something. It's not a game breaking combo. That sort of stuff belongs to cards like Tolarian Academy.

On April 02 2015 08:42 Judicator wrote:
That would make it Extended...you're just going to play the rehashed slightly more powerful versions of the deck you saw in Standard.

It's still not a good combo, I still don't see how a 4 mana non Storm sorcery is back breaking in any regards. I have a feeling more people lose their shit over the creature when they should be interacting when ST goes for the enchantment...alot of people think that the combo is the deck when....it really isn't.

On April 02 2015 09:50 deth2munkies wrote:


If you aren't going to read, don't bother talking.

On April 02 2015 10:41 Judicator wrote:


If you aren't going to address the fact that the combo requires 4 mana to start for them, then don't bother whining which is all you have done here. Other people have addressed your and other people's points regarding the supposed strengths of Splinter Twin while all you and others literally have said is THE COMBO IS ALWAYS THERE AND THEY MIGHT HAVE COUNTER MAGIC!!!111!!!111. You guys still maintain that the combo is overpowered, but have yet to address my point is that if the combo is allegedly this good at 4 mana sorcery, then why haven't every single Twin player jammed 4 Pacts into their deck to give them another fuck you spell to consistently let themselves win on turn 4?

You guys lose your shit over a creature based combo when the many times I have seen the deck and played the deck in testing, nobody actually gave a shit about the Exarch and Pestermite on EOT turn 3. Nor has any of us testing agreed that Splinter Twin is an actually good card to have unless you have perfect information and the pieces. You have also failed to address why Twin players wanted to play a Goyf and have looked for ways to make their mana worse so they can fit Goyfs.

You guys still maintain that its the herpderp super deck but 2 out of top 16 decks were Twin at the modern PT...and only 8 Twin decks posted a record of 6-4 and better...yet in the last 2 months Twin's performance is on par with "fair" decks...so again why do you still maintain the fact the deck is somehow unfair?

The threat of the combo means you aren't reading the game at all...or rather you caught up on the threat rather than your own options...or you are so stuck in the mentality that they might have it that you refuse to give them an "opening"...rather than what people have said earlier that hey, maybe I shouldn't be so deathly afraid of a pretty risky combo and work to end the game 2 or 3 turns from now rather than sit in a standstill against a CONTROL player accumulating more resources...you know how you beat every control deck ever in modern Magic...but its cool, play like the Twin player always got it and hold those cards close and lands untapped.

Also people love to misinterpret the power of Twin to the combo...except it isn't...UWR was T1.5 for so long too guess what it has in common with Twin? U and R are just full of good cards period it has nothing to do with Splinter Twin or Exarch/Pestermite.

On April 02 2015 08:42 Judicator wrote:
That would make it Extended...you're just going to play the rehashed slightly more powerful versions of the deck you saw in Standard.

It's still not a good combo, I still don't see how a 4 mana non Storm sorcery is back breaking in any regards. I have a feeling more people lose their shit over the creature when they should be interacting when ST goes for the enchantment...alot of people think that the combo is the deck when....it really isn't.

On April 02 2015 16:45 sc4k wrote:


Well ideally, like I said, it would be a chance to relive the classic, strong archetypes from each standard, beefed up, with the threat of tribes (gobbos, elves, zombies, faeries :D), artifacts/enchantments, red deck wins etc, various varieties of control, hate and milling and other cards which have nice synergy (but aren't just doing something 'retarded'). I just don't believe something that creates infinity tokens on turn 4 seems right. Just seems like an unfortunate interaction. There may be stronger cards (and there have recently been, and they have been banned, and for good reason!) and I don't believe they should stop their banning before Splinter Twin or indeed before a good few others.

It wouldn't be extended because it has a much larger range and isn't rotating (at least, as far as I know) – two very large differences wouldn't you agree?

On April 02 2015 11:15 deth2munkies wrote:


Look, I've gone over this shit 5 or 6 times now, but you're being willfully blind and talking right past me instead of addressing anything I have to say. The problem with Twin is that they can win in entirely one turn from an empty board. I don't give a fuck that twin itself is a 4 mana sorcery, it doesn't matter if you tapped out on your turn and they EoT'd a creature. That means you either leave up a removal/counter spell or you die. If you play like they don't have it, you may kill them before they assemble the combo, but that's highly unlikely because they're still a control deck, and those excel at not dying.

You can read the game all you want, but unless you see their hand every couple of turns, it's literally impossible to know if they're holding up countermagic or just have the combo to kill you.

Control decks are fair because in order to win, they have to establish a boardstate where they have a lot more resources than the opponent and the ability to acquire more consistently. What they finish with then is arbitrary. Twin is a control deck that can do that, or it can just randomly kill you at any point past turn 3. That's why it's broken.

On April 02 2015 22:19 Judicator wrote:


Control decks are the same way.....just because you haven't actually lost the game doesn't mean you haven't lost already, its like saying JaceTMS hasn't killed me yet by +2-ing. You aren't paying attention to the important things on what actually makes Twin a good deck, and completely missing the opportunity cost (I suspect is because you haven't done extensive deck building/tuning, just speculating of course no insult intended). This is important, because for a control player (that's still what Twin is) it often does boil down to a turn in non-attrition based match ups.

Twin as iterated by so many players is a control deck under the auspice of a combo deck why? Because the combo itself is bad. You all decry a turn 4 kill when in fact no decent Twin player would ever attempt to go off on turn 4 unless perfect knowledge, perfect hand, and opposing deck plays no interaction. So get that idea out of your heads.

You all are ignoring that Twin players play a tax of playing 3 to 4 useless Splinter Twins which is god awful. 3 to 4 card slots in eternal formats is hugeeeeeeeee.

The questions you are asking as a player is all wrong because you are playing scared rather than logically, respect the combo but don't fear it. You have willfully ignored the simple fact someone said earlier that if you can't interact, find a way to further your deck's goals.

On April 02 2015 19:55 annedeman wrote:

all of these decks barring elves and control would need literally hundreds of bans(not including red deck wins, burn already exist and is one of the best decks in the format unfortunately and why would you ever play a creature heavy version over zoo), mostly due to semi-recent power creep, the main problem is that cards like spell stutter sprite are not better then cards like snapcaster mage or goyf when you have a faerie, but galaxies apart in power level if you synergies are broken up, its also not feasible to ban every combish deck in the history of modern, and if they want most of these decks have much closer to 50/50 winrates vs twin then vs other combish decks like Tron,Amulet bloom,infect,storm,affinity,burn,living end, scapeshift with much less:Do you have narrow hate cards,if you do not you lose type of games, you can play real games with most fair decks vs splinter twin, if you are on the slower side without disruption you might be in a bad shape, but slow decks that are disruption light are rarely good in magic(and generally need to have extremely good, grindy and fast deck mu's), and the larger the format the more often this is true, mill is also a fundamentally uninteresting deck, its just burn in another colour with slightly downgraded burn cards, and no creatures sources of direct damage, its either bad or frustrating and uninteractive, and these decks are already much worse vs the 40% linear combo share of the meta .

In general i do think there is to much linear decks, but twin existing is currently lowering their optimum "nash equilibrium"meta share percentage creating more room for decks that lose to them even though having a somewhat unfavorable mu vs twin.

Also the turn 4 win is a myth vs most non linear decks, it happens very rarely(unless you play no interaction at all)

On April 02 2015 22:58 deth2munkies wrote:


Jace, this card that is allegedly good, is just a 4 mana sorcery. See what I did there?

If your opponent is completely tapped out on T3 (or even tapped down to 1 because you can tap their last land and force them to use whatever it is then), why would you NOT go for it unless you know for a fact they're playing and have exactly Slaughter Pact?

Here's the point: you cannot kill Twin just by playing creatures out and beating their face in unless they get extremely unlucky. They can buy turns by bolting your creatures, tapping them down, or just walling with Deceiver Exarchs. If they're RUG they've got Goyfs and if they're UWR they've got Colonnades and/or Resto Angels to boot. That's not even considering that they play some number of remands and mana leaks.

Look, the only possible way to know whether or not they have the combo is to look at their hand. Then you have to determine whether or not they're likely to take part of the combo off of a Sleight of Hand or leave it on top with a Serum Visions. That's pretty much all you can do if they're leaving up at least 3 mana on your turn. The fact that they can even bluff the combo and just leave 3 mana up to force you to leave up a removal spell is insane for a control deck that operates largely at instant speed against most decks that don't. Sure, you can call their bluff and sometimes you may be right, but the times you aren't you lose the game immediately with no hope of recovery. That's the part that is insane to me and that no other deck in the format can do because, as mentioned before, all of them have to have something in play on their turn before they can combo off and kill you.

On April 03 2015 00:07 annedeman wrote:

the combination of twin on the play, a combo hand, and an opponent with no 1 mana interaction is uncommon and not representative of how most games go, if you track winrates of twin through large tournaments its usually really not that sick(and at the PT it preformed outright bad).

On April 03 2015 00:19 deth2munkies wrote:


His argument was that you never go for it on T3, my argument was that there is a fairly common situation in which you would, especially if they don't know you're Twin.

If you want to talk about winrates, actually put up some evidence. My evidence is that it's won at least 2 modern pro tours and been represented in the top 8 in every single Modern pro tour. It should have won another, but there was a series of goddraws by a Melira pod player and the Twin player bricked ~6 turns in a row in another game.