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[ElyrionX]

Finished 2nd and 3/4, losing both times to the Sultai deck. Also RUGTwin in 5-8. Made up a quarter of Day 2.

If you're not playing Twin or a deck with a positive matchup against it, you're doing it wrong right now.

Didn't Abzan show up in greater numbers in day two? Twin winning the past two major events was just a fluke. The data sample is too small to be making any sort of conclusion now.

I do agree that Twin is format warping in that all decks that want to be viable need to have some kind of plan against it but it's still a turn four win that is vulnerable to disruption. And it's one of the very few decks now that can have a control backup plan.

The problem is not Twin. The problem is that Twin's hardest matchup is control and that entire archetype is dead in Modern right now because of all the powerful midrange cards that Wizards have been printing. UWR control was a thing only because Bolt was extremely relevant but Siege Rhino and Tasigur have changed that completely. The moment they shore up control (either JTMS or Counterspell will do) is the moment that Twin stops being as prevalent as it is right now.

 

[kirblar]

No. Control has jack to do with this. Control is generally bad in any eternal format because the number of threats it can answer is too great and because "Drop cheap threat, then disrupt" is generally a better straegy than "disrupt, then drop fat threat" Tempo decks are normally the control decks in these formats, policing the bad guys. (There's a reason tempo was called "aggro-control" for so long.)

Twin is also not a real Turn 4 kill. If you are on the draw, it robs you of your third turn because they're still getting to play half of their Vault/Key combo. If you tap out into them, there's a good chance that you're actually just dead. And you can't even tap 1 mana if you have a 2-cc kill spell. It's virtual T3 kill because of the way the deck functions.

The infinite combo also has very bad effects on cards like Kitchen Finks in the metagame. They're pushed out because while normally the lifegain would be relevant, you instead have a deck that literally does not care about your life total. This leads to decks like Burn gaining position in the format in a way that just makes things real shitty in general.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Isn't Bogles even worse than it was when Cruise was legal now that Liliana is back as a big force?

Yes, it's really poor against Junk. But it's good against all the non-BG decks. I think twin is even since the combo is annoying and neither deck is good at interacting profitably, but otherwise the deck is still fine.

The fact is, it's the only modern deck I have and my awareness level with it is a lot higher than it would be with other decks. I don't enjoy modern enough to want to tier up and I'm still having enough success with my variant that I don't feel pressured to swap. Most Modern decks are extremely linear and plan for specific matchups and doing something slightly off center like the 5c splash increases my chances of winning games by a ton.

 

[ElyrionX]

Control is bad in eternal formats? Then what about Miracles in Legacy? If the threats in Modern are too diverse then why do narrow answers like Spell Snare still get played so frequently in the main board? Shouldn't the obvious response to a format of diverse threats be to print more flexible answers? Despite its difficult casting cost, Cryptic Command still gets played for that very reason.

And dismissing an entire classic archetype of the game as being bad in a format and not worth having is just ridiculous. Control decks should be the police of every format if not everything just devolves into a race to resolve the strongest threat at the earliest possible time which is exactly what Twin is.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Control is bad in eternal formats? Then what about Miracles in Legacy?

Read this part:

generally bad in any eternal format because the number of threats it can answer is too great

And note that counter-top is one of the most general answers to threats ever printed, backed by 1-mana wraths.

Also, Spell Snare isn't exactly what I'd call narrow.

 

[Crocodile]

The fact that official spoilers start in 12 hours instead of 1 hour is the fucking WORST

BTW, did we ever talk about the new Narset image that showed up on the main site earlier in the week? It's a modified version of her art in the KTK trailer.

We should learn if she did end up a PW soon I suppose.

 

[kirblar]

I would put money on: She PW'd instead of dying at the end of the KTK story, avoids the time-wipe, and comes back to the altered plane as the sole surviving UWR Jeskai clan member.

Also, Spell Snare is not narrow, lol. Narrow is Negate, because it misses entire classes of cards. Snare/Leak aren't narrow- it's why they're so good - they're rarely dead cards.

Cryptic Command gets played despites the triple-blue because it's a busted card.

 

[ElyrionX]

My point is that, control can and should exist in eternal formats as it does in Legacy. So far, it's been dead in Modern for a pretty long time. Even UWR control wasn't doing that well despite the fact that it won WMC (tiny meta) and PT BNG (carried by draft results).

And Counter-Top enabling Miracles in Legacy is exactly my point about printing a flexible answer in Modern. Control in Modern desperately needs something like that right now. DTT would probably have been what it needed but that got banned. So now what?

Once you have a strong control deck in the meta, people will stop bitching about Twin simply because they will see less of it.

 

[kirblar]

You will never see a top-tier control deck emerge in a format like Legacy/Modern and make up a large % of the meta. If you do, something very wrong is likely happening.

A 4c Control deck (Jeskai splashing black for Souls flashback) just T8ed. But even it lost to twin because the tools it traditionally uses to blow out tempo decks simply weren't working post-board when the opponent just just sit on their ass and sculpt a combo kill.

The inherent problem with control decks is that they take too damn long to kill their opponent. A good draw out of a tempo deck denies the opponent time to get back on their feet. A good draw from a control deck can usually be disrupted.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Bogles is kind of a control deck :3

Instead of countering spells I make sure they don't do shit to begin with ^_^

Except Abrupt Decay

 

[charlequin]

The fact that official spoilers start in 12 hours instead of 1 hour is the fucking WORST

Isn't it irritating? I feel like they're sticking to this new update time out of pure stubbornness, since I really seriously doubt there's any actual benefit to it on their side.

 

[kirblar]

Isn't it irritating? I feel like they're sticking to this new update time out of pure stubbornness, since I really seriously doubt there's any actual benefit to it on their side.

Ease of updating because they're not in the office at 9PM PST on a Sunday. They needed to move it backward, to update Sun->Thurs nights, not forward.

 

[ElyrionX]

Anyway, I'm not sure what kind of message WoTC would be sending if they do ban Twin. I haven't been playing for a long time but my impression has always been that Pod and Twin were the defining decks of the format. The fact that people are now calling for bans on everything at every damn tournament shows just how unconstructive the conversation has become.

People are paying a lot of money for these cards. I, myself, was about 2/3s through building a Pod deck when it was banned. Not letting people play their cards in the format they bought them for is not the way to treat your customer base. They should adopt a positive approach (unbanning and printing new stuff) instead of a negative one (banning).

Twin was dealt a huge blow when Abrupt Decay was printed and Anger of the Gods also set Pod back a step. This is what WoTC should be doing and not laying down the banhammer whenever a new dominant deck emerges.

 

["God's Beard!"]

shows just how unconstructive the conversation has become.

unconstructive

 

[OnPoint]

Anyway, I'm not sure what kind of message WoTC would be sending if they do ban Twin. I haven't been playing for a long time but my impression has always been that Pod and Twin were the defining decks of the format. The fact that people are now calling for bans on everything at every damn tournament shows just how unconstructive the conversation has become.

People are paying a lot of money for these cards. I, myself, was about 2/3s through building a Pod deck when it was banned. Not letting people play their cards in the format they bought them for is not the way to treat your customer base. They should adopt a positive approach (unbanning and printing new stuff) instead of a negative one (banning).

Twin was dealt a huge blow when Abrupt Decay was printed and Anger of the Gods also set Pod back a step. This is what WoTC should be doing and not laying down the banhammer whenever a new dominant deck emerges.

Agreed. I don't know how you do it. Traps?

Anti-Twin Trap (2)(W)

Instant

Prevent all combat damage to you
this turn.

If two or more creatures entered the
battlefield this turn, you may play this
without paying its casting cost.

I mean, they do it for graveyard strategies, they could certainly do it and protect against combo decks.

 

[ElyrionX]

Agreed. I don't know how you do it. Traps?

I mean, they do it for graveyard strategies, they could certainly do it and protect against combo decks.

Well I honestly have not thought of it. But i think the banlist is a low hanging fruit worth looking at.

Oh and as a blue player, I'd love to see Counterspell or a 3-mana counter that does more than counter and scry 1.

 

["God's Beard!"]

3-mana counter that does more than counter and scry 1.

Countertroll 1UU
Counter target spell. If you do, return that spell and Countertroll to their owner's hands.

 

[charlequin]

Ease of updating because they're not in the office at 9PM PST on a Sunday.

It's automatic scheduled updates! I mean, I know WotC is incompetent with anything technological, but...

 

[red13th]

You print anti Twin tech that somehow doesn't kill other less ridiculous archetypes and it becomes another spell on already tight sideboards (PVDDR's article) plus gl drawing it before Twins instawins, or counters it, or taps your splashed mana source, or blood moons you etc. If you make it maindeckable it's probably pushed like Abrupt Decay and would go against R&D's more modern policy of avoiding versatile cheap answers. Printing an answer could be more impactful to the format than a ban IMO, and if they do print a busted answer someday they can unban Twin (lol I know right, 4 years after it's safe or more).

 

[G.ZZZ]

Just reprint wastelands and u fix the format. A deck like D&T would rek Twin hard.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Anti twin tech? You mean, like Torpor Orb or Ghostly Prison or Rakdos Charm or Spellskite?

And the 4C control deck lost because it was a) ridiculously poorly positioned against Blood Moon and b) didn't present any proactive threat. You aren't going to out-control Twin after board - you need to pressure their life total with something. Pure control is actually quite bad against Twin. The Jund/Junk/Sultai gameplan is the most effective weapon in that situation. Scapeshift also gets there quite regularly too.

I hear a lot of arguments saying that it pushes other decks out of the format. My response is:
"So what?" You're describing how tiers work. Top tier decks push other decks (and sometimes entire strategies) outside of the top tier. I don't actually care that Kitchen Finks is bad even though Burn is good, or that Twin is hard to interact with, or any of this business. The format is super fresh right now, and a lot of players had their decks wiped by the last banning. We've had three events in a row, and we've seen a lot of copycatting. Modern had always rewarded the brewers, who are able to take their knowledge of the metagame and build something to attack it. And guess what? That's what just happened at the open.

Twin is over represented because it's a known a quantity. We know how it works, we know its good and bad matchups, we might already have the cards, etc. Let the format settle.

Or, screw it, just ban whatever wins. Whatever.

 

[WanderingWind]

Anti twin tech? You mean, like Torpor Orb or Ghostly Prison or Rakdos Charm or Spellskite?

And the 4C control deck lost because it was a) ridiculously poorly positioned against Blood Moon and b) didn't present any proactive threat. You aren't going to out-control Twin after board - you need to pressure their life total with something. Pure control is actually quite bad against Twin. The Jund/Junk/Sultai gameplan is the most effective weapon in that situation. Scapeshift also gets there quite regularly too.

I hear a lot of arguments saying that it pushes other decks out of the format. My response is:
"So what?" You're describing how tiers work. Top tier decks push other decks (and sometimes entire strategies) outside of the top tier. I don't actually care that Kitchen Finks is bad even though Burn is good, or that Twin is hard to interact with, or any of this business. The format is super fresh right now, and a lot of players had their decks wiped by the last banning. We've had three events in a row, and we've seen a lot of copycatting. Modern had always rewarded the brewers, who are able to take their knowledge of the metagame and build something to attack it. And guess what? That's what just happened at the open.

Twin is over represented because it's a known a quantity. We know how it works, we know its good and bad matchups, we might already have the cards, etc. Let the format settle.

Or, screw it, just ban whatever wins. Whatever.

Preach, it brother Zorro.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Don't forget Suppression Field! And Abrupt Decay! And Thoughtseize! And Path to Exile!


Speaking of Modern, I've identified two cards that could potentially be good as a one-of in my flex slot for bogles:

Having a fifth Rancor would be really nice, and Unstable Mutation is just the highest power-to-cost ratio available outside of Ethereal Armor. Even after three attacks it doubles the performance of an umbra.

They're probably still worse than Flamespeaker's Will, but I could be wrong. FW is really strong against Affinity, and also gets lucky against sideboard cards all the time like an early Engineered Explosives they can't crack yet. I could tap into my third Madcap or Boros Charm for one of these which might not be terrible...

Definitely worth testing, I think.

 

[ElyrionX]

Anti twin tech? You mean, like Torpor Orb or Ghostly Prison or Rakdos Charm or Spellskite?

And the 4C control deck lost because it was a) ridiculously poorly positioned against Blood Moon and b) didn't present any proactive threat. You aren't going to out-control Twin after board - you need to pressure their life total with something. Pure control is actually quite bad against Twin. The Jund/Junk/Sultai gameplan is the most effective weapon in that situation. Scapeshift also gets there quite regularly too.

I hear a lot of arguments saying that it pushes other decks out of the format. My response is:
"So what?" You're describing how tiers work. Top tier decks push other decks (and sometimes entire strategies) outside of the top tier. I don't actually care that Kitchen Finks is bad even though Burn is good, or that Twin is hard to interact with, or any of this business. The format is super fresh right now, and a lot of players had their decks wiped by the last banning. We've had three events in a row, and we've seen a lot of copycatting. Modern had always rewarded the brewers, who are able to take their knowledge of the metagame and build something to attack it. And guess what? That's what just happened at the open.

Twin is over represented because it's a known a quantity. We know how it works, we know its good and bad matchups, we might already have the cards, etc. Let the format settle.

Or, screw it, just ban whatever wins. Whatever.

Lol, well said.

Aren't you the guy who wrote the old Twin primer on MTGS?

 

[Firemind]

I used to play Splinter Twin before it was cool and hated on. I brought it from the sideboard in Extended Pyromancer's Ascension after they boarded out all their creature removal. :lol

I think it was a mistake to print Deceiver Exarch. With just Pestermite, it's not as reliable to combo out and would have been fine. There's the Bell-Ringer, but that requires playing three colours, which makes it more susceptible to Blood Moon and land destruction in general.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Lol, well said.

Aren't you the guy who wrote the old Twin primer on MTGS?

Yep, that's me. Unfortunately, it became clear to me that I couldn't play constructed competitively on MTGO because my life just doesn't allow for playing 4+ hour events glued to my computer on a schedule I don't get to control (I basically decided that it was more important to me to go back to school at get a master's degree than play Modern). So I sold my stuff on MTGO about a year ago at this point, and I've been trying to hand over the MTGS primer for basically that long. I finally had a volunteer just a couple of weeks ago. I literally didn't update it at all during the Treasure Cruise/Dig Through Time era. I figured that leaving it so egregiously out of date would have prompted some sort of action, but I guess people are just really lazy.

 

[Firemind]

I'm surprised people still use mtgsalvation for constructive discussion purposes. The moderation there is fucked up last time I've went there. The only saving grace is Rumor Mill.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

I'm surprised people still use mtgsalvation for constructive discussion purposes. The moderation there is fucked up last time I've went there. The only saving grace is Rumor Mill.

At the time I was active there, the Modern forum was actually pretty good (with the exception of the Banned List discussion thread, which was basically the garbage pit that the moderators kinda let go so people would contain their bitching to one place).

 

[WanderingWind]

Speaking of wanting things to not suck that suck in real life, does anybody else wish for a deck to be good that isn't? Like, if a counter burn deck with kiln fiends, dragonauts and Nivix Cyclops could be even tier 2, I'd be so happy.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Speaking of wanting things to not suck that suck in real life, does anybody else wish for a deck to be good that isn't? Like, if a counter burn deck with kiln fiends, dragonauts and Nivix Cyclops could be even tier 2, I'd be so happy.

You can do that with Pyromancer's Ascension if you want, but I don't think you can make Kiln Fiend a thing.

 

[WanderingWind]

You can do that with Pyromancer's Ascension if you want, but I don't think you can make Kiln Fiend a thing.

Oh, I know. Maybe one day they'll make a kiln fiend type card that makes the deck type viable.

 

[ElyrionX]

I'm surprised people still use mtgsalvation for constructive discussion purposes. The moderation there is fucked up last time I've went there. The only saving grace is Rumor Mill.

It's still a useful repository of information because all discussions on specific decks are contained in their respective threads.

 

[Firemind]

Oh, I know. Maybe one day they'll make a kiln fiend type card that makes the deck type viable.

That deck already existed. Travis Woo made a Kiln Fiend deck by I believe giving it Infect with Tainted Strike.

It's still a useful repository of information because all discussions on specific decks are contained in their respective threads.

The information gets outdated quickly though, especially Standard.

 

[ElyrionX]

Speaking of wanting things to not suck that suck in real life, does anybody else wish for a deck to be good that isn't? Like, if a counter burn deck with kiln fiends, dragonauts and Nivix Cyclops could be even tier 2, I'd be so happy.

Pure control in Modern. Or something that resembles the Sphinx-Verdict-Dsphere shell that rotated last year. I miss playing that deck so much.

 

[ultron87]

I really wanted to make Duskmantle Seer work. Tried some Blue/Black Delver thing with it, but it didn't seem to work out.

 

[Firemind]

Pure control in Modern. Or something that resembles the Sphinx-Verdict-Dsphere shell that rotated last year. I miss playing that deck so much.

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/pantheon-deck-tech-uw-control/

 

[WanderingWind]

Pure control in Modern. Or something that resembles the Sphinx-Verdict-Dsphere shell that rotated last year. I miss playing that deck so much.

That was my favorite control deck of all time, even if I did favor the Esper variant toward the end there.

 

[f0rk]

Pure control in Modern. Or something that resembles the Sphinx-Verdict-Dsphere shell that rotated last year. I miss playing that deck so much.

You can make UW work, it just doesn't build itself like the deck you so fondly remember lol

 

[divisionbyzorro]

That was my favorite control deck of all time, even if I did favor the Esper variant toward the end there.

Any deck that was playing 4x Nephalia Drownyard as its only win conditions was the best. That was the era of control that I loved watching. Drownyard was such a great card; a win condition that didn't take up a spell slot and let you spend the mana during your opponent's turn. Or just mill yourself to get more Snapcaster/Think Twice value! It was so much cleaner than Colonnade in Modern.

 

[WanderingWind]

Any deck that was playing 4x Nephalia Drownyard as its only win conditions was the best. That was the era of control that I loved watching. Drownyard was such a great card; a win condition that didn't take up a spell slot and let you spend the mana during your opponent's turn. Or just mill yourself to get more Snapcaster/Think Twice value! It was so much cleaner than Colonnade in Modern.

I was too into aggro variants at the time to love Drownyard controls. I wasn't ready to accept control back then

 

[kirblar]

Any deck that was playing 4x Nephalia Drownyard as its only win conditions was the best. That was the era of control that I loved watching. Drownyard was such a great card; a win condition that didn't take up a spell slot and let you spend the mana during your opponent's turn. Or just mill yourself to get more Snapcaster/Think Twice value! It was so much cleaner than Colonnade in Modern.

Drownyard was great. The thing that made those decks monstrous was having access to Elixir of Immortality for mirrors, where it just made the games nightmarish and a game of "who gets theirs milled first?"

This is also why I still believe that Elixir was the real menace in the do-nothing Revelation decks that emerged 2 years later.

 

[Firemind]

Any deck that was playing 4x Nephalia Drownyard as its only win conditions was the best. That was the era of control that I loved watching. Drownyard was such a great card; a win condition that didn't take up a spell slot and let you spend the mana during your opponent's turn. Or just mill yourself to get more Snapcaster/Think Twice value! It was so much cleaner than Colonnade in Modern.

Yah, I loved playing against that deck with U/R Delver at the time. Mana Barbs get rekd.

Comon guys, Cruel Ultimatum?

 

[Angry Grimace]

My favorite new thing Wizards does is put the articles up early but you can't actually read them.

But at the least I can tell the mechanic names are:

Bolster
Rebound
Exploit
Dash
Formidable
Megamorph

...yes, its apparently really called Megamorph.

(Wasn't rebound in ROE?)

 

[kirblar]

It most definitely was.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

It most definitely was.

And it's a perfect pair with Prowess. That's a really good choice.

 

[Angry Grimace]

It most definitely was.

Mechanics:

 

[Angry Grimace]

I lost the bet. New Mythic Silumar.

Maro's card:

Dragonlord Mythic:

 

[sibarraz]

today WOTC will release the spoilers of DOTK?

 

[divisionbyzorro]

So Exploit is just a non-modular Devour? With different flavor? Okay, sure. I was expecting something to do with death (I predicted Morbid), so it's not particularly surprising. But kinda boring.

 

[red13th]

new Elder Dragons!