Definitely some cool cards, though I'm mostly considering the implications for modern decks I make. Fiend Hunter is basically an auto-include for my Bant deck, especially since I can use it to permanently exile cards with Momentary Blink. Also, the Wall and Nail list I posted above is terrible, I need to revise it heavily. Starting with 4x Beast Within maindeck. In testing so far it just dies to control and combo. In short: lots of ways to anti-meta against all the Aggro (and even 12post) but without a good combo matchup a deck just won't cut it. I do, however, feel good about playing my Bant Pod deck on Modern Monday this, well, Monday. I made some minor adjustments - brought the curve down (Frosty at 6 is the highest), moved 3 PTE to maindeck, stuck 4 Wall of Omens in the board for those dreadful aggro matchups. Should shore it up. It already had fine game against most archetypes, but the explosive aggro decks were murdering it.
well, a bunch of sweet shit with morbid, the enemy duals, birds of paradise, maybe some viridian emissary's, and whatever other utility cards come out of the next set.
Waiting to see what comes out, but morbid mechanic and enemy duals make pod my immediate choice for post rotation.
The art for Innistrad is just amazing. http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/159 norbert88
^^Totally agreed. I want to find a way to play a proper Control deck in modern. There must be something out there capable of dismantling all those U/R combos without getting crushed by 12post (most people figure that 12post hated control out of the meta for PT Philly, thus allowing fragile combo decks to dominate).
I hear ya Chz. I'm still clinging to U/W control. Hurray for maindeck Spreading Seas, lol. I think they're gonna change some stuff, next Banned/Restricted list update is on the 20th, I think.
The tricky thing is, what is bannable/unbannable? Banning cards out of the top decks just because they were successful is a bad idea. There was no deck degenerately better than every other deck in the field. In fact if you look at the top ~20 Modern decks by points/finishes (remember that PT Philly Top 8 placement includes draft records), the meta is a bit more diverse than it lets on. That being said, I still think the following cards need to go: 1) Pact of Negation. Not a huge card in terms of volume by use, but a very unfair card in the hands of combo decks. "I'm winning this turn, so I'm going to force my combo down your throat, for free. No matter what my base colors are." 2) Some part of the Spellstutter Sprite / Kiki Jiki / Deceiver Exarch / Splinter Twin redundancy. I actually think they will do this too. I know R&D is very disappointed with themselves for missing the Twin/Exarch interaction in Standard; the fact that it just added redundancy to the best combo deck in Modern makes it even harder on them. Most likely candidate is Twin, because it is ONLY used to make infinite insant kill combos, whereas the other cards have a variety of other legitimate uses (and are just creatures). Also, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is a bit of a conundrum. The card was given a converted mana cost of 15, yet it is seen entering play as early as turns 1-3 via cheating it in and turn 4 hardcasted. What the heck are they supposed to do about it? It's the most prohibitively costed card ever, and arguably the most powerful in-play threat ever, yet it is seen entering play in the early game turns when other decks are playing fledgling Knight of the Reliquaries. Banning the card makes almost no sense from a few perspectives (it's a creature, it costs 15 fucking mana), and yet, without banning it you may find that there are too many other ways to get it into play unfairly early. And Wizards would usually prefer to ban 1 problem card than 4 related cards.
i dont see why blossom/stoneforge/jace are banned when there are much worse things being done on turn 2.
Whatever, it's a Faerie-ite. The thing is, unbanning clearly busted cards like Jace and SFM would just make an arms race and warp the format to the point where, like nearly every other that JTMS and SFM have touched, *everybody* has to either play them or play cards that beat them. Bitterblossom would be fair at this point, I think. I feel like they got a bit too scared about Faeries. Anyways, I feel like my brain is melted right now. I played against a Pyromancer's Ascension deck in the last round of Modern tonight (only went 2-2 ). Both games, I just sit there and watch for 10 minutes as he digs through half his deck, plays ten spells, and kills me on turn 3. It was boring, non-interactive... fuck.
What do you guys think of the changes to the ratings system? http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/159b norbert88
I imagine Patrick will be happy not to have to sit on his rating once he gets it high enough for qualifying for shit. I personally don't care either way. It's not like I'll ever been in the competitive echelon of players, no matter how much or well I play.
I like it a lot actually. The issue is that it kind of stops being a measure of ability if you don't take points away for sucking. But who cares about that anyways?
It seems pretty cool, I think I like it overall. A lot of changes to consider though. I do primarily play at FNM so the bonuses it gives there is pretty awesome. Fuck yeah FNM championships.
If they could post-humously modify Jace to get rid of one ability (either the Brainstorm ability or the Boomerang ability), it would actually be a fair card. As it is, he provides you too many options to simply shut down your opponent. He can persist on the plus ability by denying you every good card you'd draw. And I am OK with banning Emrakul. However, it felt really fucking good yesterday when my opponent played Through the Breach -> Emrakul, I blocked it with my Vendilion Clique, sacrificed my lands and mana dorks, then swung for lethal next turn with my Frost Titan and Phantasmal Image (which had been copying the Titan). GG. I 2-0'd the guy because my deck owns 12post.
Man, there's a $1K Modern tournament at Channel Fireball this Saturday with Goyfs and other such goodies in the prizepool, but I have to miss. I'm helping a friend move. Normally I'd be like "well that sucks" but the other reason I can't go is because of a concert so I'd probably get crushed anyways. I still haven't completed a deck that can beat both combo AND aggro, especially with all the different fronts combos in this format can kill you on. Enchantments, creatures, storm-copied stuff... ugh.
It's so awesome. Been testing a Legacy deck with it and Divining Witch and Paradigm Shift. I hope it can see some play in Standard though. Won the Modern tourney tonight with Caw-Blade. Managed to dodge my buddy playing 12post. Hell yeah motherfucker.
Some results from that $1K yesterday. This is the local meta I have to contend with or at least be prepared for, roughly: Metagame Breakdown: Catfish: 6 (2 T8) (this means that Zoo deck that splashes blue) (a guy playing this took 1st) Splinter Twin: 5 (1 T8) Blazing Shoal Infect: 3 Junk: 2 (2 T8) (including Doran) Pyromancer Acension: 2 (1 T8) All-In Red: 2 Living End: 1 (1 T8) Esper Control: 1 Mono-Green Elves: 1 12-Post: 1 White Weenie: 1 RG Aggro: 1
wanna know what's fucked? since I just got my rating in feb, which is tehcnically the first time I've played competitively considering I quit playing at first when I was like 13-14, my rating went from like top 10 in jax to not even close, due to me not playing as much as everyone else since I just got my rating. I'm level 31 with 1k lifetime points, which isn't good enough for anything really, and kind of annoying. But now I can just run my head into drafts and fnms and not give a shit about losing to the runbads. SPEAKING OF THE RUNBADS, my weekend in atlanta was fill of car trouble, spending 600 bucks more than I planned, and a heartbreaking loss at 3-0 to jund that made me realize just how upset I was and how drained I was from lack of sleep. Good shit.
4 Hinterland Harbor 4 Darkslick Shores 9 Forest 3 Swamp 2 Island Lands: 22 4 Birds of Paradise 1 Llanowar Elves 1 Drops: 5 3 Viridian Emissary 1 Spellskite 1 Phantasmal Image 1 Perilous Myr 2 Drops: 6 3 Phyrexian Rager 1 Sylvok Replica 1 Glissa, the Traitor 1 Skaab Ruinator 3 Drops: 6 1 Solemn Simulacrum 1 Entomber Exarch 1 Peace Strider 1 Skinrender 1 Phyrexian Metamorph 4 drops: 5 3 Acidic Slime 1 Morkrut Banshee 5 drops: 4 1 Frost Titan 1 Reaper of the Abyss 1 Grave Titan 6 drops: 3 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One 7 drops: 1 4 Ponder 4 Birthing Pod Definite SB inclusions: -some sort of counterspell -beast within/dismember
Basically not doing a ton of pre-rotation playing. Gonna throw together bant pod to grind out the last few FNMS since I have everything for it anyway, but once rotation hits I'm gonna drop the 40-50 bucks I need to get the rest of the cards for this list and start tweaking.
Hell yeah. Rock that BUG pod and tell me how it goes. The Innistrad rotation (and the fact that I'm buying a box) will make it harder for me to resist playing standard (I didn't buy into any of the major Zendikar block cards that are rotating).
pretty excited about the limited format. the constructed playability of a lot of stuff seems underwhelming, though.
Blazing Shoal, Cloudpost, Green Sun's Zenith, Ponder, Preordain and Rite of Flame banned in Modern. Mental Misstep banned in legacy.
holy fuck I really did not think they'd go in this direction. Also WHY NO UNBANNINGS? Jesus. whatever, I'm OK with this overall. except for GSZ. seriously? eh. saves me on buying the playset I was going to. also why both Ponder AND Preordain? One would've been enough. It was the insane redundancy that was making the combo decks so efficient. edit: the more I think about the last point, the more it gets under my skin. without ponder, preordain, OR ancestral vision, what the hell is a blue player supposed to play turn one?
Lookin forward to the new meta though. Affinity was the only top deck that didn't get banned. Zoo will persevere though, obviously.
Heh. Still, I'd like something proactive instead of reactive. Also, this kills a fun little U/G interaction I wanted to use (Ponder into Coiling Oracle) Q_Q To be fair, I'm looking forward to the new meta as well. My decks were basically untouched except for the Wall and Nail I was building - I'll just go back to having some other generic T1 accelerant instead of GSZ. Now that I don't have to think about fighting off both post AND combo, I can tune up my aggro matchups and actually control games a little bit
Interesting that Grove of the Burnwillows went under the radar. I mean, they had no reason to look at it, based on the results, but in a slower format it seems like it'll be a lot more oppressive. Could lead to a ban next time.
I still think the most recent update should've been: Rite of Flame Emrakul Splinter Twin Inkmoth Nexus With an unbanning of Ancestral Visions Think about it. Seriously, with banning Ponder and Preordain, the major combo decks will just substitute in Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand, or something. Not quite as potent, but Splinter Twin is still alive and is still potentially a turn 3 kill (depending on the build; you'd need an accelerator), still and infinite instant-death combo, etc... if R&D hated it so much they should've just banned it.
shouldve unbanned some stuff. they just want aggro to be good. i'm gonna build bant control in the format though.
lost in a 100 person prerelease event in top 4 to pro tour champion charles gindy. i was drunk off cheesecake vodka and it was 7:30 am. good tiimemessss
Ahh, I played Gindy in the top 4 of an Onslaught block team-sealed GPT many years ago. He was a complete asshole.
Well, it was what....one event 7 or 8 years ago? He's probably a better person now. He sure wasn't shy about pointing out every mistake he thought I made and talking about how bad my team was at the time though.
I was gonna do a bunch of Innistrad stuff today but I have too many other errands to run Q_Q But, here's a deck to make my post more worthwhile. Brewing Naya Petroglyphs Aggro in Modern lol: // Lands 2 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest 1 [GP] Stomping Ground 2 [ZEN] Marsh Flats 2 [UNH] Plains 2 [UNH] Forest 4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa 4 [RAV] Temple Garden 4 [RAV] Sacred Foundry 1 [UNH] Mountain // Creatures (in parentheses, what they look like with 1 Petroglyphs out) 1 [MBS] Hero of Bladehold 4 [M12] Elite Vanguard (4/3 for 1) 4 [ALA] Woolly Thoctar (7/6 for 3) 4 [WWK] Leatherback Baloth (6/7 for 3) 3 [CHK] Isamaru, Hound of Konda (4/4 for 1) 4 [RAV] Watchwolf (5/5 for 2) 4 [FUT] Blade of the Sixth Pride (5/3 for 2) 4 [M12] Birds of Paradise // Spells 2 [M11] Overwhelming Stampede (giving trample negates Petroglyphs bonuses, but this card makes up for it by giving WAY more power than Overrun, typically) 4 [FUT] Muraganda Petroglyphs (almost nobody in this format is running vanilla creatures, except for occasional tokens) 4 [RAV] Lightning Helix // Sideboard SB: 4 [ARB] Qasali Pridemage SB: 4 [M12] Timely Reinforcements SB: 2 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant SB: 2 [LRW] Garruk Wildspeaker SB: 1 [MBS] Hero of Oxid Ridge SB: 2 [CFX] Path to Exile Pretty straight-forward. Beat down with bigger guys than other aggro decks. Sideboard is pretty self-explanatory too.
Definitely contemplating Memnite. It would probably go in place of one of the other 1-toughness guys (the Pride or the Vanguard). The thing is, I need to find a way for this deck to not run out of gas. Zoo decks have Knight of the Reliquary. Affinity decks often have Thoughtcast or Thirst for Knowledge. Since this deck doesn't have the blistering fast power to kill like an all-in aggro deck, I have to be careful devoting entire card slots to 1/1 creatures like Memnite. It's not trading with Wild Nacatl until turn 3 at the earliest (if I play first or second turn Birds into Petroglyphs). edit: in case you guys noticed, I don't make traditional decks lol. the closest I've come to an archetype was Bant Pod, but nobody would play my Bant Pod in Modern. On principle I like to avoid non-interactive 1-turn kill combos, as well as ridiculously broken cards in general - I'd rather beat Tarmogoyf than run a playset. No creature should cost $100, jesus.
