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On March 30 2015 21:57 mr_tolkien wrote: Unbanning blue cards in Modern is a stupid idea, and I played Blue decks for a year.
What won the last PT ? A blue deck. The last GP ? A blue deck. Blue is in a fine state.
Meanwhile, I'll be casting some Life from the Loam as I like drawing 3 cards a turn a bit too much...
You think Twin being the best deck in the format means blue is in a fine state? Modern needs more fair decks, not decks that just kill you out of nowhere if you ever tap out.
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I agree, combo needs to be harder in Modern. The real problem is that 2/3 of the sideboards of most decks are just hedges against the various combo decks in the format. Ban out Scapeshift, Kiki, and Twin, then unban BBE, Ancestral Visions, Dig Through Time, and maaaybe Cloudpost.
That means you have clunky creature "combo" decks like Infect and Boggles still, but fair decks like Abzan and Jund are playable as are Jeskai and U/B Control.
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On March 30 2015 01:23 DEN1ED wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2015 08:54 Judicator wrote:On March 27 2015 05:26 Whole wrote: I dont think Ancestral Visions would be too bad. Nope, no way, that card is stupidly good. Turn 1 Visions is pretty strong and very mana efficient. So a card that IF played turn 1 is "pretty strong and very mana efficient" is too good for modern? That's the definition of pretty much every 1-drop played in the format. Many games will just be over before it becomes unsuspended. That or you will be far behind since you spent your first turn and a card doing nothing. The cards eventually drawn MIGHT be able to get you back in the game but it is definitely a risk. It's a good card but not ban-worthy compared to the other insane cards in modern. Preordain and Ponder on the other hand definitely ban-worthy as they make combo decks insanely consistent, and they are already consistent enough.
I thought it was an interaction problem?
Turn one goblin guide that hits for four turns is > than ancestral visions, but you can't bolt an ancestral visions.
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
Unbanning Cloud Post is probably not somewhere you want to be lol
That being said I think the fundamental disagreement here is about the overall direction of the format. While unbanning something like Ponder would be nice, the main beneficiaries would be Blue combo decks like Storm or All-in Twin. As much as I would love to play lots of cantrip cards in non-combo Blue decks, I can understand why WotC would be nervous about this. (1)
I'm sympathetic to the argument around Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time in that they were much better at encouraging the existence of .non-combo Blue decks than just combo decks. While the ban announcement mentioned combo decks, it seemed to primarily single out UR tempo decks (which I interpret as being Delver and Swiftspear decks). That brief period was also nice in that you could have your hand shredded by discard such as Thoughtseize and Duress effects and not feel ridiculously miserable since you could still find ways to rebuild your hand either in raw card count or through good card selection. And it's an interaction that happens in Standard anyway since those cards I just named are all Standard legal, but the supporting cast of cards backing up the discard and card draw/selection are more powerful which is kind of what you'd expect to happen in Modern. (2) As I mentioned in my last post the bannings just seemed so knee-jerk given how soon they were. Especially given that GBx decks have been the boogeyman in the format from nearly the very beginning, were given several very powerful cards in the latest set, are basically hovering at or near the same meta % that Wizards said was the problem level used for justifying bans, but just was left alone. (3) (4)
Straight out banning Twin and Storm are very heavy-handed tactics that seem to be a last resort and should be avoided where necessary at this point. I don't really feel like going in depth about the ban of Birthing Pod. I understand the rationale of the ban since the issue was the power of tutoring and it's similar to the reasoning for bans on Green Sun's Zenith and Stoneforge Mystic. (5) I disagree with it. Still, I'm going to see it as a last resort sort of thing. And a lot of Pod cards have found new homes in other interesting decks in various ways. (6) So I don't think just banning "problem" decks is really a solution. I mean where do you even draw the line? Sure Infect has more ways to disrupt it than, say Storm. But it also just has random god hands. Or what about more fringe decks like Goryo Griselbrand? (7) It's too easy to argue for bans as a cudgel against decks that are just inconvenient to have existing. (8)
I don't think it's all doom and gloom for Modern. One of the main goals of the format is for people to be able to pick up one of their favourite archetypes, deck style, or cards and build something reasonably decent and have fun with their deck. And in that I think it's doing alright. (9) You have boogeymen decks like Abzan/Junk, Twin, Burn, Affinity, etc. But you can also pay the sideboard tax and build your decks to have a decent fight against whoever you want by packing your sideboard with silver bullets to fight the monster you hate the most. (10) Sure, even if your deck is only ever 40/60 against the field you're not exactly playing the next big success and you'll lose more often than you win. But it's a decent enough score where variance can take over and let you still have some fun games where you do beat those Tier 1 decks. 40/60 is obviously bad when you're playing competitively though. Also, having a lot of variance in your format is probably not great from a strictly competitive standpoint like if you just grind down into top-deck wars. (11) But from a wider audience perspective, it's a format where people can also feel comfortable playing casual brews. And maybe they'll eek out a few wins with their favourite deck and having fun. In which case Modern is doing one of its jobs right.
Sure, you haven't fixed a lot of the issues I mentioned earlier about competitive play yet. But there's still unexplored room in Modern. Fabiano's Sultai (BUG) control deck, or the 4C UWRb Control deck from the SCG Modern Open last month are pretty cool. Maybe after the recent debacle with Tarkir WotC will put some more effort into thinking about the impact their cards have on Eternal formats. Maybe they've found a way to spice up the metagame with something from Magic Origins and Battle for Zendikar? (12)
Like last time I don't have a nice conclusion this post either. But I mean I guess the TLDR is Modern as a format isn't totally screwed. And it's still possible to have fun with brews, and there's enough variance that even non-Tier 1 decks can do well (just not necessarily consistently).
Footnotes
- I mean, WotC's scale of brokenness is called the Storm Scale lol
- I recognise I am oversimplifying things a lot here though. But permit me this liberty if you may, since I really don't feel like writing a huge diatribe about the Standard metagame...
- The inconsistency about the issue is really what irks me the most though. I'm not bothered by the existence of Abzan/Junk as a deck itself since it's quite a nice deck and skill-testing in its own way. But being the centralising deck skews the format heavily towards linear deck building like I mentioned before which doesn't seem great. And I think it's this face rather than specifically being a generically good deck that's the problem.
- Random thought experiment: WotC has said before that one of the biggest problems of GBx is that it's resistant to bans because it's a generic pile of good and efficient cards. Has this influenced ban decisions in that decks with a key card are more convenient to deal with because they're easy to target? Alternatively, what does it take to overcome the generic goodstuff.dek? I leave this as an exercise for the reader.
- As an aside, I am not terribly convinced about the SFM ban since I doubt WotC will ever print Equipment as good as Jitte and Batterskull again so a world of SFM and no living equipment seems ok? But this is more me trying to justify SFM to myself than anything else haha
- I make no claims that the Ghostway, Wilt-Leaf Liege, and other various brews that have been going around are on the same Tier 1 level that Pod was, or ever will be however. So while there's more diversity per say, I can't say it's Tier 1 competitive diversity.
- While WotC uses the 4-Turn rule, personally I dislike it because it doesn't really make any distinction between decks on things like how easy it is to disrupt, consistency, and just how miserable it feels to play against. Ok I mean it sort of came up as an argument used for the Eggs ban when they talked about time considerations the way the 4 Horsemen is banned in Legacy. But still the issue of being miserable to play against is implied, no?
- Except if you're Storm. WotC just hates you.
- I mean, sure some decks will just never be competitively viable. But you also have stuff like this random Allies Tribal deck going 3-1 in a Modern Daily. And just after the release of Return to Ravnica someone with what was literally a Standard Zoo deck managed to top a Modern Premier Event or something. Probably joined the wrong queue and just decided to wing it. Which by the way is hilarious!
- The issue of whether or how Modern relies on a lot of silver bullet style cards to deal with bad matchups, and the reliance on sideboard tax rather generic answer cards is a big topic that I don't feel like getting in to.
- Ok you can make smart choices in deck building but it only shaves some %. It's not a cure.
- ... Am I just being nihilistically optimistic here?
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On March 31 2015 00:35 DEN1ED wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2015 21:57 mr_tolkien wrote: Unbanning blue cards in Modern is a stupid idea, and I played Blue decks for a year.
What won the last PT ? A blue deck. The last GP ? A blue deck. Blue is in a fine state.
Meanwhile, I'll be casting some Life from the Loam as I like drawing 3 cards a turn a bit too much... You think Twin being the best deck in the format means blue is in a fine state? Modern needs more fair decks, not decks that just kill you out of nowhere if you ever tap out. Twin is a fair deck. The fact that it kills you in 1 turn instead of 2 like UW miracles does in Legacy with entreat doesn't make it a fundamentally unfair deck. It wins at least one game out of two through bolts, snaps, and cliques. The other tier 1 decks are GBx and Burn, which are by any means 100% fair.
Your argument seems to be based on a poor understanding of the format. I mean look at that : http://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/modern#online . Out of the 12 most popular decks, maybe 2 could be labeled "unfair" decks. And 9 out of those 12 play blue cards.
Modern is in a fine state right now, even though I loved playing Cruise Delver and Dig Scapeshift, those decks needed to go.
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
Just as a follow up, the SCG Modern IQ had a number of Blue decks that placed well so it's not the case that Twin is the only viable Blue deck. Which kinda supports my point earlier about room for people to try out things and see where it goes. TL doesn't like links with square brackets in them so just copy-paste the following:
+ Show Spoiler +http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=28&start_date=03/29/2015&end_date=03/29/2015&start_num=25&start_num=0&limit=26
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On March 31 2015 21:06 mr_tolkien wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2015 00:35 DEN1ED wrote:On March 30 2015 21:57 mr_tolkien wrote: Unbanning blue cards in Modern is a stupid idea, and I played Blue decks for a year.
What won the last PT ? A blue deck. The last GP ? A blue deck. Blue is in a fine state.
Meanwhile, I'll be casting some Life from the Loam as I like drawing 3 cards a turn a bit too much... You think Twin being the best deck in the format means blue is in a fine state? Modern needs more fair decks, not decks that just kill you out of nowhere if you ever tap out. Twin is a fair deck. The fact that it kills you in 1 turn instead of 2 like UW miracles does in Legacy with entreat doesn't make it a fundamentally unfair deck. It wins at least one game out of two through bolts, snaps, and cliques. The other tier 1 decks are GBx and Burn, which are by any means 100% fair. Your argument seems to be based on a poor understanding of the format. I mean look at that : http://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/modern#online . Out of the 12 most popular decks, maybe 2 could be labeled "unfair" decks. And 9 out of those 12 play blue cards. Modern is in a fine state right now, even though I loved playing Cruise Delver and Dig Scapeshift, those decks needed to go. The reason why Twin is bullshit is that it can win on T4 a significant amount of the time and can win through interaction a turn or 2 later an even greater amount. U/W miracles is nowhere near as good because it's a much slower deck than most of the other combo decks and the interaction that Force of Will brings cuts both ways. Not to mention it runs counter-top, which is a soft lock.
Twin runs light permission, but the deck itself is a soft lock: T3 and later, you have to leave up a removal spell or counterspell or you just die. This means that they effectively lock down 2-3 of your lands for the rest of the game just by the threat of the combo, slowing down any fair deck to the point of uselessness. In my experience watching and playing the matchup a ton, they "have it" about 2/3 of the time, so it's never worth the risk to tap out for a 3 drop and get EoT Exarch/mite into Twin unless that 3 drop is Fulminator Mage (or Molten Rain I guess).
Twin is in no way fair, it keeps the fair decks (Abzan, Zoo, Jund, Grixis/UB/UW/Jeskai control) from being anywhere near good enough almost by itself. It really needs to go. Stuff like Melira combo w/o Pod is about where combo decks need to be: multiple pieces for each piece, but you need all 3 pieces and the diverse mana to cast them and still have to worry about creature removal or counterspells.
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twin is 90% control deck and 10% combo. I talked a lot about this to the arguably best twin player on the world (Patrick Dickmann) and he explained to me that the deck is mostly playing a control game (if its RUG, tarmogoyf is included obv.) and the combo itself is not that strong or the goal of the deck.. ofc the fact that it is always threatning is good for the deck.
I like the state of modern. There are many decks and the fairest deck (in junk) is also competetive and tier 1. I like it a lot
Blue is definitely strong enough even without cruise and dig.
And imo the ban of pod was good because with pod being around the chance of any other "creature based" deck other then pod being around was very slim. (and affinity/infect are not creature decks .. they are combo decks basically)
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On March 31 2015 21:44 MaGic~PhiL wrote: twin is 90% control deck and 10% combo. I talked a lot about this to the arguably best twin player on the world (Patrick Dickmann) and he explained to me that the deck is mostly playing a control game (if its RUG, tarmogoyf is included obv.) and the combo itself is not that strong or the goal of the deck.. ofc the fact that it is always threatning is good for the deck.
I like the state of modern. There are many decks and the fairest deck (in junk) is also competetive and tier 1. I like it a lot
Blue is definitely strong enough even without cruise and dig.
And imo the ban of pod was good because with pod being around the chance of any other "creature based" deck other then pod being around was very slim. (and affinity/infect are not creature decks .. they are combo decks basically)
That's exactly my point: the reason why the combo is so good is that it FORCES decks to play reactive against the control deck. It's the only combo deck in modern powerful enough to do that.
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On March 31 2015 21:52 deth2munkies wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2015 21:44 MaGic~PhiL wrote: twin is 90% control deck and 10% combo. I talked a lot about this to the arguably best twin player on the world (Patrick Dickmann) and he explained to me that the deck is mostly playing a control game (if its RUG, tarmogoyf is included obv.) and the combo itself is not that strong or the goal of the deck.. ofc the fact that it is always threatning is good for the deck.
I like the state of modern. There are many decks and the fairest deck (in junk) is also competetive and tier 1. I like it a lot
Blue is definitely strong enough even without cruise and dig.
And imo the ban of pod was good because with pod being around the chance of any other "creature based" deck other then pod being around was very slim. (and affinity/infect are not creature decks .. they are combo decks basically) That's exactly my point: the reason why the combo is so good is that it FORCES decks to play reactive against the control deck. It's the only combo deck in modern powerful enough to do that. Well yeah, the actual combo decks in modern don't give a fuck about your interaction. Bloom Titan will have a turn 2 titan on the play if you didn't have a T1 discard spells/spell snare usually, Infect will fucking kill you if you're screwing around, I mean Twin is pretty mild compared to that, thank god it has interaction to make up for it, because the combo is pathetic.
If you ever played Twin, you'd know Splinter Twin is by far the worst card in your deck and you hate having it in your hand. If you're shitting your pants against Twin, good for you, but that's not how you play the match-up. That's like saying playing a bird turn 1 against bloom titan is too dangerous. They will sometimes punish you for it, but that doesn't mean it's not the good play.
Having the turn 4 combo is very rare, and if you can't play around it if they have it, DON'T FUCKING PLAY AROUND IT AND FURTHER YOUR OWN STRATEGY. Also, you can force them to interact with you or leave them dead. That works very well for decks like Burn. Game 1 is heavily in the burn's player favor, even though he has absolutely 0 way to interact with the combo.
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On March 31 2015 21:52 deth2munkies wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2015 21:44 MaGic~PhiL wrote: twin is 90% control deck and 10% combo. I talked a lot about this to the arguably best twin player on the world (Patrick Dickmann) and he explained to me that the deck is mostly playing a control game (if its RUG, tarmogoyf is included obv.) and the combo itself is not that strong or the goal of the deck.. ofc the fact that it is always threatning is good for the deck.
I like the state of modern. There are many decks and the fairest deck (in junk) is also competetive and tier 1. I like it a lot
Blue is definitely strong enough even without cruise and dig.
And imo the ban of pod was good because with pod being around the chance of any other "creature based" deck other then pod being around was very slim. (and affinity/infect are not creature decks .. they are combo decks basically) That's exactly my point: the reason why the combo is so good is that it FORCES decks to play reactive against the control deck. It's the only combo deck in modern powerful enough to do that.
Isn't that mostly a feeling thing and not a balance thing? Like old draw go decks always felt like they had a counter when really they barely got by--but all their opponents hated it anyway.
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On April 01 2015 00:00 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2015 21:52 deth2munkies wrote:On March 31 2015 21:44 MaGic~PhiL wrote: twin is 90% control deck and 10% combo. I talked a lot about this to the arguably best twin player on the world (Patrick Dickmann) and he explained to me that the deck is mostly playing a control game (if its RUG, tarmogoyf is included obv.) and the combo itself is not that strong or the goal of the deck.. ofc the fact that it is always threatning is good for the deck.
I like the state of modern. There are many decks and the fairest deck (in junk) is also competetive and tier 1. I like it a lot
Blue is definitely strong enough even without cruise and dig.
And imo the ban of pod was good because with pod being around the chance of any other "creature based" deck other then pod being around was very slim. (and affinity/infect are not creature decks .. they are combo decks basically) That's exactly my point: the reason why the combo is so good is that it FORCES decks to play reactive against the control deck. It's the only combo deck in modern powerful enough to do that. Isn't that mostly a feeling thing and not a balance thing? Like old draw go decks always felt like they had a counter when really they barely got by--but all their opponents hated it anyway.
Unlike every other combo deck in Modern, they can kill you without having anything in play during their turn. Amulet/Bloom requires an amulet plus at least 3 specific cards in hand (Titan, Bloom, Bounceland), Infect requires an infect creature or a Nexus, Scapeshift requires 8 lands, Storm pretty much requires a Pyromancer's Ascension or Electromancer to actually go off. All of these you can have sorcery speed answers to, but not Twin.
Sure, you can play like they don't have it, and you'll win ~33% of the time, and for most decks, that's their only option pre-sideboard.
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On April 01 2015 00:34 deth2munkies wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2015 00:00 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 31 2015 21:52 deth2munkies wrote:On March 31 2015 21:44 MaGic~PhiL wrote: twin is 90% control deck and 10% combo. I talked a lot about this to the arguably best twin player on the world (Patrick Dickmann) and he explained to me that the deck is mostly playing a control game (if its RUG, tarmogoyf is included obv.) and the combo itself is not that strong or the goal of the deck.. ofc the fact that it is always threatning is good for the deck.
I like the state of modern. There are many decks and the fairest deck (in junk) is also competetive and tier 1. I like it a lot
Blue is definitely strong enough even without cruise and dig.
And imo the ban of pod was good because with pod being around the chance of any other "creature based" deck other then pod being around was very slim. (and affinity/infect are not creature decks .. they are combo decks basically) That's exactly my point: the reason why the combo is so good is that it FORCES decks to play reactive against the control deck. It's the only combo deck in modern powerful enough to do that. Isn't that mostly a feeling thing and not a balance thing? Like old draw go decks always felt like they had a counter when really they barely got by--but all their opponents hated it anyway. Unlike every other combo deck in Modern, they can kill you without having anything in play during their turn. Amulet/Bloom requires an amulet plus at least 3 specific cards in hand (Titan, Bloom, Bounceland), Infect requires an infect creature or a Nexus, Scapeshift requires 8 lands, Storm pretty much requires a Pyromancer's Ascension or Electromancer to actually go off. All of these you can have sorcery speed answers to, but not Twin. Sure, you can play like they don't have it, and you'll win ~33% of the time, and for most decks, that's their only option pre-sideboard.
So your concern is that Twin can't be stopped at sorcery speed?
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On April 01 2015 01:00 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2015 00:34 deth2munkies wrote:On April 01 2015 00:00 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 31 2015 21:52 deth2munkies wrote:On March 31 2015 21:44 MaGic~PhiL wrote: twin is 90% control deck and 10% combo. I talked a lot about this to the arguably best twin player on the world (Patrick Dickmann) and he explained to me that the deck is mostly playing a control game (if its RUG, tarmogoyf is included obv.) and the combo itself is not that strong or the goal of the deck.. ofc the fact that it is always threatning is good for the deck.
I like the state of modern. There are many decks and the fairest deck (in junk) is also competetive and tier 1. I like it a lot
Blue is definitely strong enough even without cruise and dig.
And imo the ban of pod was good because with pod being around the chance of any other "creature based" deck other then pod being around was very slim. (and affinity/infect are not creature decks .. they are combo decks basically) That's exactly my point: the reason why the combo is so good is that it FORCES decks to play reactive against the control deck. It's the only combo deck in modern powerful enough to do that. Isn't that mostly a feeling thing and not a balance thing? Like old draw go decks always felt like they had a counter when really they barely got by--but all their opponents hated it anyway. Unlike every other combo deck in Modern, they can kill you without having anything in play during their turn. Amulet/Bloom requires an amulet plus at least 3 specific cards in hand (Titan, Bloom, Bounceland), Infect requires an infect creature or a Nexus, Scapeshift requires 8 lands, Storm pretty much requires a Pyromancer's Ascension or Electromancer to actually go off. All of these you can have sorcery speed answers to, but not Twin. Sure, you can play like they don't have it, and you'll win ~33% of the time, and for most decks, that's their only option pre-sideboard. So your concern is that Twin can't be stopped at sorcery speed? It's one of the main ones, that combined with the control shell means that you are forced to play reactive by holding up mana on their turn unless you want to die to the combo, or you can try to ignore the combo and flat out lose the game a significant amount of the time.
Neither one of those choices is appealing.
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
I think you're letting a personal dislike of Twin get in your way. There's a lot of decks where you need Instant speed answers and have to hold up mana and never really want to tap out against. Like Infect for example, and their Inkmoth Nexus. And just as there are some narrow cards that do really well against Infect like Ghost Quarter the same can be said of Twin like Rending Volley or Illness in the Ranks. So you can always pay the sideboard tax if you really hate a matchup.
Also, the latest set of Moden Daily results looks pretty neat. A lot of Delver decks roaring back and some interesting brews.
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On April 01 2015 02:58 MoonBear wrote:I think you're letting a personal dislike of Twin get in your way. There's a lot of decks where you need Instant speed answers and have to hold up mana and never really want to tap out against. Like Infect for example, and their Inkmoth Nexus. And just as there are some narrow cards that do really well against Infect like Ghost Quarter the same can be said of Twin like Rending Volley or Illness in the Ranks. So you can always pay the sideboard tax if you really hate a matchup. Also, the latest set of Moden Daily results looks pretty neat. A lot of Delver decks roaring back and some interesting brews.
GQ, Tec edge is a bit worse since they don't always hit 4 lands, Molten Rain, Beast Within, Fulminator Mage, and any flying blocker can deal with Inkmoth Nexus, AND you get a turn that it's in play to come up with a plan to deal with it. You don't get any chance with Twin, you just have to either make a choice to act like 3 open mana is an EoT Exarch/Mite into twin or that it isn't based on pretty much nothing.
It's really not just my personal revulsion of Splinter Twin, but of decks that don't ever use the board. I think all decks should be required to use it in some respect, even if they don't focus on it. For example: I like UB control in Standard because it uses removal, counters, and card draw to support bigass creatures/walkers that finish the game like Pearl Lake Ancient, Ugin, and Simulgar.
That's fine. They play mostly from their hand, but they win on the board and actually care about the stuff you play onto it. Twin, Storm, and other, similar decks do virtually nothing on the board then immediately kill you from your hand. That severely limits the amount of things that you can proactively do to stop them, or reactively do to break up the combo short of killing them in G1s. Post-board, it just comes down to whether or not you draw your hate cards then kill them before they draw the answers to your hate cards (in this case, it's usually Echoing Truth).
The major issue is that Magic is all about making the best decisions with what information you have. When a deck is not required to reveal any information whatsoever, that means the decisions you make are less meaningful and less fun because they're more of a shot in the dark and a "do they or do they not have it" percentage calculation.
And I also wouldn't really have as much of a problem with it if it weren't such a good strategy to be using. If these strategies exist, they need to have significant weaknesses, and this one doesn't. The fact it's had multiple copies in the top 8 of every single modern pro tour since modern was invented (and won at least 2 of them) testifies to that.
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GRAND OLD AMERICA16375 Posts
On April 01 2015 03:30 deth2munkies wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2015 02:58 MoonBear wrote:I think you're letting a personal dislike of Twin get in your way. There's a lot of decks where you need Instant speed answers and have to hold up mana and never really want to tap out against. Like Infect for example, and their Inkmoth Nexus. And just as there are some narrow cards that do really well against Infect like Ghost Quarter the same can be said of Twin like Rending Volley or Illness in the Ranks. So you can always pay the sideboard tax if you really hate a matchup. Also, the latest set of Moden Daily results looks pretty neat. A lot of Delver decks roaring back and some interesting brews. GQ, Tec edge is a bit worse since they don't always hit 4 lands, Molten Rain, Beast Within, Fulminator Mage, and any flying blocker can deal with Inkmoth Nexus, AND you get a turn that it's in play to come up with a plan to deal with it. You don't get any chance with Twin, you just have to either make a choice to act like 3 open mana is an EoT Exarch/Mite into twin or that it isn't based on pretty much nothing. It's really not just my personal revulsion of Splinter Twin, but of decks that don't ever use the board. I think all decks should be required to use it in some respect, even if they don't focus on it. For example: I like UB control in Standard because it uses removal, counters, and card draw to support bigass creatures/walkers that finish the game like Pearl Lake Ancient, Ugin, and Simulgar. That's fine. They play mostly from their hand, but they win on the board and actually care about the stuff you play onto it. Twin, Storm, and other, similar decks do virtually nothing on the board then immediately kill you from your hand. That severely limits the amount of things that you can proactively do to stop them, or reactively do to break up the combo short of killing them in G1s. Post-board, it just comes down to whether or not you draw your hate cards then kill them before they draw the answers to your hate cards (in this case, it's usually Echoing Truth). The major issue is that Magic is all about making the best decisions with what information you have. When a deck is not required to reveal any information whatsoever, that means the decisions you make are less meaningful and less fun because they're more of a shot in the dark and a "do they or do they not have it" percentage calculation. And I also wouldn't really have as much of a problem with it if it weren't such a good strategy to be using. If these strategies exist, they need to have significant weaknesses, and this one doesn't. The fact it's had multiple copies in the top 8 of every single modern pro tour since modern was invented (and won at least 2 of them) testifies to that.
I pray that you never touch legacy then.
Edit: I'll expand on that. Your current ideology of magic actually fits 100% in line with wizards' current game design (especially for standard) where the board is heavily used and enforced. Now, it's perfectly fine for you to just play standard and limited and be ok with that (my disgust for this thinking is for another post). But if you want to play the older formats, which IMO is more fun, then you're going to have to accept that there are decks that can 4 turn you in modern or 0 turn you in legacy. And thats the beauty of the older formats. I'll talk about legacy since I was quite familar with that format when i quit; In legacy, you had pure board decks like zoo or zombies (Sam black is a genius for making that deck a viable t1.5). Then you get decks like Jund (my favorite deck ever played), RUG, G/W, etc where the win conditions is usually done by the board (Jund's attacking with goyfs) but there's some possibility to burn people out (Jund has the Groves tech for constant pinging). then we move to the heavier control decks (Blade decks, Counterbalance), where the win condition is a combo but it's not a combo deck. But finally, there's the true combo decks (ANT, storm, belcher, etc) that's purely combo. Do note that the beauty of magic is the constant metagame shifts. Say aggro becomes popular, then tempo and combo decks come into play. Tempo decks gain popularity so people try to attack them with control. Control becomes popular so we're back to the rise of aggro decks. if you analyze the metagame for legacy or modern, you'll start to see this pattern. And let's not forget the people who are trying to attack the metagame shifts by out meta'ing the playing field (Oh, looks like BUG/blade decks are popular this 2 weeks, i'll bring my jund deck to get the natural 6-4 advantage).
Now, what you're saying is that there's a problem with combo-esque decks, or at least in your particular case, twins. The key thing to remember is that no one deck can be the best deck against everything (caw blade was close ot that in standard, but that was a result of the best players picking it and out skilling others more than anything else). You can pick a deck to roll with that may have a fantastic matchup against twins and beat twins 80% of the time, but then you'll suck against other decks. Now, why is twins a good deck? Twins itself originally came about as a pure combo deck, but even twins has been evolving to be a control deck with a combo ender possibility, adapting to the metagame shifts. Hell, all decks do that. New combo deck out? pack different hate in sideboard (which is the point of the fucking sideboard!), and you're on your merry way. If you look at all the Pro tour winners, half of their wins were attributed to their playing skills and half were attributed to their deck of choice for the event with everyone all trying to gain an edge in the metagame of the event.
Long story short, what I'm trying to say is that your rants about twins is a result of you being annoyed that you have a losing matchup against it and you're not doing anything real about it. You got 2 options. Option 1: you pack more hate for it, actually play the matchup from the twin's perspective to gain a better understanding of the deck, and practice, practice practice. And to further expand on this, think to yourself "Why is twins having a strong showing in recent weeks? What's happening to the other decks that are allowing for twins to do well? How can I attack it?". When i played with Caleb Durwald a couple of times at locals, we have had interesting dicussions about this (especially since Caleb is one of the rare players that will tinker decks towards the popular meta to attack this) where we would talk about these shifts and what our current decks can do to play against it. Or, you got option 2: drop your current deck because of your whims of one matchup and pick a deck that has a good twins matchup, which in turn will make you have other bad matchups and we'll get more rants in the thread. It's ok to have a good tier1-1.5 deck with 1 bad matchup. And thats the beauty of magic as decks come and go based on what's happening now.
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First off, I never have and never will give a fuck about legacy, I'm priced out of the format. Modern is not supposed to be legacy, it was made specifically to be a more affordable, more standard-like eternal format than legacy, and IMO has succeeded with a couple of caveats, Twin being one of them.
Answer me this: The Modern meta has shifted numerous times in the 3-4 years it's actually been a format, yet Twin has consistently been top 3 decks in the format every single time. Why?
It's survived every banning, it's flourished even at its worst times when people were gunning for it by simply tuning the deck differently, but at its core, the Splinter Twin combo is always there and always a threat. Isn't this the DEFINITION of a combo that's overpowered? Regardless of the metagame, it's always a good deck.
As I stated earlier: it's not the fact that it's a fast combo deck that makes it bad, it's the fact that it's a combo control deck than can kill you at instant speed if you ever tap out. Even if you don't tap out, it has the ability to force through the combo on your end step with counterspells. That forces decks to either play reactive, or just take the % chance that they randomly lose games against Twin. A deck not designed to play reactive will lose against one that is, and Twin is. Therefore Twin has the advantage in nearly every matchup G1 (burn nonwithstanding).
You guys keep insisting that it's my deck choice, but I've played decks that are 10/90 against Twin (Living End), 50/50 (Merfolk), and 60/40 (Doran). Even when have an advantaged deck I still feel awful playing against Twin because no matter how well I play, I still just have to decide based on no information whether or not he's "got it" or not (I can't Thoughtseize every turn...). While that's a common choice in games, usually it's over board control or one play, not over immediately losing the game at any time with no possible recourse. So you either play with 2/3 Spheres of Resistance in play after T3, or you just yolo and pray.
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On April 01 2015 07:18 deth2munkies wrote: etc.etc.etc.
That's because you have no idea how to play the match up because of your personal biases. You ignoring many things that matter. If you go into the match up expecting to get combo-ed out turn 4 and play as such every time (which seems to be true given your original responses), then I don't see the point in your argument. I don't see the point of you arguing that the Twin combo plays at instant speed, when control decks play at the same speed utilize very little of the board.
As for Modern being a standard-like eternal format...I don't think anyone wants that. We had that. It was called extended and it was the reason we have Modern.
Edit:
Also saying that the combo is always there is like saying control players always have the cryptic, so not sure what you are trying to say there.
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