Well put.

Thanks :)

Great article. It really helps us to think about our oppinions and our actions as players.

Food for thought. I really needed this

I agree with about 99% of what you have here. My only problem comes from a mindset on display in your "Colour and Strategy Bias" section.

The goal of competitive magic is not "reduce your opponent's life from 20 to 0 in the most effective way" or "about getting from point A (opponent at 20 life) to point B (opponent at 0 life) as quickly as possible". This is the goal of aggro and to a lesser extent midrange. Combo and control usually will forgo the fastest and most effective ways for more consistent ways under circumstances they strive to create. I think that "reducing your opponents life or library to 0 while stopping them from doing the same to you" would be a more encompassing statement of the point of competitive magic.

Other than that one small disagreement great article. It is nice for people to be reminded that overall format health is more important than personal fun. I especially like your explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I see it displayed everywhere but too few people are aware of the effect. If I may take it one step farther to meta-meta-knowledge; ignorance of how ignorance affects one's assessment of their own skill is rather annoying.

Gidgetimer: I think the first statement holds true because "most effective way" includes any method that has a high degree of consistency. My second statement that specifically mentions how fast this occurs is incorrect for the reasons you have specified.

I just wanted to offer some criticism on wording for you to think about. This is one of the best articles I have seen in awhile, and that is why I thought I'd offer some small stylistic input. Most of the time I don't bother because the quality is more that of a rant than an article.

I would not have said anything if you had simply included the phrase about most effective, but since I was mentioning the "fastest" one I thought I'd put it in there. In the larger community of MTG there are many decks that forgo "effective" for "consistent". Words of War is not a very effective way to deal damage. But if you are holed up behind a wall of 3 enchantress effects and a Solitary Confinement it is rather consistent. The Rack also isn't very effective, but if you are forcing discard and can deal with threats committed to the board, it becomes consistent.

Again just offering my two cents. Don't really want to distract from the conversation this article should spur by belaboring minor differences in thought process evident by how we would describe win conditions in slower decks.

No you have a valid point, for sure. I needed to be slightly more careful about some of my wordings.

I really liked/agreed with this article. It is also definitely correct that people reacted to the unfortunate Twin ban with 'Hey, I hate that deck. So annoying.' They really missed the point there. Good Stuff!

Were people really so happy about the Twin ban and less salty about Eldrazi? I mean, it may just be me, but almost every well versed Modern player I've talked to agrees that Twin probably shouldn't have been banned and that Eldrazi is mad broken. Still, great article as always :)

The only reason, personally, that I liked the twin ban was because of the same reasons why they banned Primeval Titan in EDH.

If you were in red/blue, be it Grixis, Temur, Izzet, etc, you could just add ~10 cards and hey look, it's more competitive!

Normally I'm very anti ban because bans promote this mentality I've been seeing lately of "I don't like this deck, it's hard for me to beat, so I'm just going to complain about it and not change cards in my deck to deal with it. It will get banned eventually, even sooner if I complain hard enough."

Granted, there are exceptions but for the majority of the last few bans this has been the case.

I agree with the article overall though, people are being too emotional when discussing bans. A healthy format CANNOT be governed by knee jerk reactions so I applaud Aaron Forcythe's crew on their restraint regarding modern.

Ohthenoises - Yeah exactly that. So it could be argued that looking at Modern overall there was nothing better to do with Izzet than play Twin. Many people would say Twin was problematic because it utterly defined and dominated two colours. Regardless of whether you agree with the decicision or not (that doesn't matter) the fact stands that the Twin combo was extremely accessible and powerful.

I definitely agree that a lot of the recent bans have been somewhat questionable. But in other ways I also think sometimes Wizards are too slow to react. When it comes to knee-jerking specifically my question is whether enough data has been collected over a long enough period of time to assess the situation. It's that simple. If we heavily suspect the answer is yes then something should be done. If not then we should probably hold back. Sometimes it could be argued that the meta has seen enough in 4 weeks. Sometimes it might take 8 weeks. Sometimes months. I really think that depends on the situation and there's no right or wrong answer. Each case is different.

I think that overall restraint is key but decisive and fair action should also be a hallmark. One of the things that spurred me to write this is that in many ways Affinity is very similar to Twin and receives a lot less attention and complaints. It puts up similar results from a numerical point of view. It often goes from relatively sparsely played in day 1s to over represented in day 2s. Its probably the best thing you can do in colorless. Well..... it was until recently haha. I was interested as well as to why we had this discussion with one deck and relatively few people turned around and said, "hang on a second - this other deck has very similar qualities in terms of what it does to the meta and the numbers it puts up, so is this fair?"

It's just interesting. Never any correct answers - we just have to look at the bigger picture and see whether we're doing things like for like and make a "best guess".

Glad to see less salt than we thought. Well done. Would enjoy more "state of the format" posts from you in the future.

I found that the Twin ban was much less celebrated than what you made it out to be. There was a consensus that Twin was the most viable U/R deck, but there is almost always a best deck for a strategy or color combination. Jund is the best GBR deck, although Lantern Control is another GBR deck that is competitive. People will tend to play the best deck. Twin was the best UR deck and best combo/control deck. No deck has been able to fill it's role as an archetype or a color combination, leading us to believe that they just can't survive a competitive metagame without some assistance, such as the Twin combo.

Anyways, overall a good article. I hope to see more in the future

I think the two "a deck should be banned if..." comments in the last section can also be joined by "a deck should be banned if it's too consistent to disrupt". A deck that can naturally draw into the same game almost every single time without even trying has the most potential to become oppressive and format-breaking. Not just because it's super easy to set up the win condition state, but also because of how easy it is to draw back into it if your opponent has somehow managed to stall you or started turning the game around. Major offenders in past formats that gave decks way too much consistency include Land Tax, Necropotence, Birthing Pod, Stoneforge Mystic, Bloodbraid Elf, Ponder+Preordain, etc.

Now the Eldrazi decks aren't chock full of tutors and strong card filtering, but are extremely redundant. 8 lands that make 2+ mana (Eldrazi Temple, Eye of Ugin), 8 big cheap beaters that mess with your opponent's hand (Thought-Knot Seer, Reality Smasher), 5-8 more creatures that can basically pretend to be extra copies of all the others for the purposes of beating down (Eldrazi Mimic, Endless One), and then whatever else you want to add based on the colors you chose. Spoiler alert: many of those other cards will be big cheap beaters with value abilities. Is this too consistent? I suppose we'll find out what the DCI thinks once April rolls around.

I feel like the biggest problem with modern is something that a well respected person on this site said: "I'm not going to bother changing my sideboard or deck to give me a better matchup against eldrazi because it's just going to be banned in April."

I feel like this is the exact reason why you see a lot of complaining about the deck and VERY little change in decklists. It's a self perpetuating cycle that just means that any new deck that shows up on the scene will hate itself out of the format.

RhadamanthusEldrazi is getting banned, something from the lands in particular.

Ohthenoises

I think the eldrazi deck should be held in a different light than other new-coming decks to modern, and we shouldn't use the failure to adapt to it as an indication of a lazy playerbase. This is because the Angle taken by the Eldrazi deck has always been banned in all of moderns history. Fast mana decks have always been "not in the spirit" of modern and have been banned. Furthermore the land destruction and hate in modern has been deliberately sparse and weak because it is a fundamentally "un-fun" thing to be unable to play because your lands are all gone. This is why all of the modern Mana-bases are rather terrible, I mean the best dual-color lands in the format Shock you if you want to use them that turn, and the best "ramping" lands were the Tron lands which require sets of three to work. The Eldrazi mana base is far more efficient than any of this. But I feel like overall the most important thing to consider is that the Eldrazi deck plays like MUD. MUD is a deck in legacy and Vintage. MUD distinctly has not been a deck in modern, and several of the cards in many MUD lists are on the Modern banlist... for enabling decks like MUD. In short, the Eldrazi deck abuses something in modern that the format just isn't built to handle: fast mana. I would also point out that Collected Company is a new Tier 1 deck that came out recently and doesn't look to be banned anytime soon, and it's not alone, Lantern Control, and Abzan are also both relatively new decks in the meta (Though Abzan is certainly the spawn of Jund). If we were talking about Delver I would agree that meta laziness might have been to blame, but Eldrazi is not the best deck to be making this argument about since it fundamentally is designed to use and abuse the "Turn Four Rule" and said rules odd less explained compatriots.

Harashiohorn: Abzan is a very old deck actually.

Ohthenoises - I agree with you. The apathy has been absolutely disgusting to some extent. We can't gather results if we don't fight the good fight and make the best of it. Part of data collection revolves around people actually bothering to make changes, to test, and to get out there and innovate.

In this specific example I really don't think anything could be done against Eldrazi. The problem has got bigger and bigger over time, not smaller and smaller. There hasn't been a single idea that has stuck and suddenly changed the matchup from unfavourable to favourable. We havent seen any decklists consistently making a difference, and you can't honestly say that no-one has tried.

Despite that, in a general sense; you are absolutely 100% correct. Respected players ought to be going on data collection and proper research methods instead of falling to stagnation and subjective shrugging and apathy.

Though I think Eldrazi is the exception here. To me; nothing could be done. But if we go back in time, I think the apathy and stagnation that surrounded Delver was equally poor. If you look at the numbers a lot of decks DID start adapting and changing to meet the new meta. So yes - adaptation is key and something that perhaps Wizards should give the meta more time to do before coming down with a ban. Numbers change over time.

Harashiohorn - Also my article explicitly says that we need to be discounting things like "not in the spirit of" and "fun" and all these other subjective concepts. Who's to say what is and what isn't in the spirit of modern? Who's to say what's definitely fun?

The only definitive evidence we have to suggest that Eldrazi is problematic is its huge and consistent meta share. And that's enough. That's all we need. No more, no less.

ChiefBell

I really loved this article and hope people will follow what it suggests when thinking about bans so that useful discussion will be sparked.

However, I disagree when you say that most people are prejudied against control/tempo. For every salty control hater, there is a salty aggro hater and a salty combo hater. WOTC has always been more ready with the hammer to combo deck than with control or aggro decks. Wizards also continually mentions 'fun' in their articles and ban explanations, so their idea of the 'spirit of the format' and 'fun' does come into play, which is unfortunate.

Anyway, great article.

The thing is, Eldrazi has warped the meta so much that Modern has basically become 1) play Eldrazi or 2) play a deck that has a very good matchup vs Eldrazi, mostly combo decks. Just from the last two weeks in MTG Top 8, Melira Podless is up to Twin numbers and LE and Storm combine for 10%, more than Jund, Junk, Zoo, RDW, and Tron put together. That's pretty insane, as far as meta disparities go. Now sometimes, bans are not clear-cut and require a lot of foresight, but 35% of the meta all by one deck is easily enough justification to ban its core cards.

Not like you haven't heard it already, but great article. Very informative, educated, level-headed, and honest.

Well put. Your thoughts on the colour and strategy bias were spot on. And I think there is something to be said for this sense of entitlement as well.

I know that I myself can fall into those traps at times, largely bitter about a lack of Control decks in Modern for some time now.

However, I'm left wondering: is this a result of players, or is this a result because of how WotC treats players?

FAMOUSWATERMELON - Yep and thats the way it goes sometimes. We've got the facts. We've collected the data. Now we're in a good position to act on it. This was done correctly. Perhaps a tad too slow, but still - dont in the right way overall.

ToolmasterOfBrainerd - Thank you!

CanadianShinobi - What do you think could be a result of players or wizards? Bitterness? Or the lack of certain archetypes?

Oh sorry, I wasn't very clear there. I was referring to player attitudes regarding entitlement and bias towards strategies. Are these feelings simply an organic part of the game, or have the become exacerbated by WotC's handling of the Modern format.

Though one could also pose the question: is WotC responsible for not encouraging certain archetypes within Modern?

Entitlement and bias are entirely player led phenomena. It's organic. The evidence I have for that is that similar feelings evolve in casual magic playgroups that have no knowledge of wizards stance on anything. If the phenomena emerges without wizards opinions being known then we must conclude it is not their fault.

Having said this I think that Wizards do give subjective opinion some heed and can pay attention to it. They feed and act off our biases but don't create them.

pumpkinwavy - The word fun is mentioned a total of 0 times in the last two ban announcements. I'm sure in their articles it's an important factor but I maintain it is absolutely and completely not important with ban decisions.

A lack of fun that emerges from objectively quantifiable problems such as the meta being 40% eldrazi is one thing because we have a solid basis for that. Fun being taken on its own subjective basis without any numbers to support any decision is useless.

Just to add my own thought, which is that (and this is pure speculation), I wonder how many grand prix's the eldrazi will have to dominate before Eye of Ugin gets banned. And I think that in that instance, it would only be the eye, as it is the reason they can get six power out on turn one. With that thought out of the way, on to response to the article.

I appreciated this article a great deal. The concept of metaknowledge is a really neat idea, and illustrates something that is true across disciplines. If you talk to an amateur musician, he thinks he's all that. You talk to a professional, and they can tell you all the points where something went wrong, where the casual listener couldn't have told you anything was wrong to begin with.

I appreciate the idea of ban lists not playing favorites between archetypes. The example of the one guy hating on the counterspells disrupting his aggro, and the other hating on the aggro disrupting his long game is perfect. Modern is at its best when there is viable aggro, midrange, control, and combo that can be found throughout the tiers of decks. All bans should be an attempt to rebalance the field. In the case of Twin, seemed reasonable, if only for the reason mentioned above which is that any deck playing red and blue just had to add ten cards and it was modern viable. That's too powerful, if only because it skews people's perceptions of what is competitive (and reasonably so due to the past performance record) in those two colours.

Thank you for writing this.

As an aside to those calling for bans: I feel like mimic is a better, more intelligent, choice for a ban.

nyctophasm You mention "...it would only be the eye, as it is the reason they can get six power out on turn one."

If the ban was the mimic this would also prevent the deck from being as explosive no? Eldrazi would still have endless ones but it would be far less consistent. It would also prevent the T2 beater from turning the board into a potential 12+ damage swing.

I feel like this type of thinking is what ChiefBell is talking about, and what I've been saying right along. Emotionless judgement.

Yes, something needs to be done but I still maintain that banning Eye or Temple is the wrong move because those lands are what makes the deck even competitive to begin with. Take them away and the deck become T2.5 material if not worse. Hell, look at Amulet titan after the ban. (Or Eggs for that matter.)

I feel like this type of rationale needed to be applied a bit more when Treasure Cruise was banned as well. For those who weren't playing modern at the time TC was Ancestral Recall from turn 3+ (sometimes T2). This NEEDED a ban. However, just because it was a spell with Delve and it drew cards WotC saw fit to ban Dig Through Time. DTT only saw play in 2 competitive decks IIRC and one was T1 only because of DTT (Looking at you Scapeshift). To me, it felt like collateral damage.

To be fair, Ohthenoises, I feel like not banning Eye will just push the deck in a different direction, but it's not like it'll prevent the main issue of the fact that the land is capable of essentially producing two mana multiple times a turn with no real drawback other than being legendary. Now, if they'd like to solve this with a lesser banning, say Eldrazi Mimic, and unban various cards to increase the power level across the format, I'm totally for that. If not, we're still dealing with turn 2 Reality Smashers, which is still oppressive to the format. The fact of the matter is that it's same issue as Splinter Twin, which was as long as you have a tempo shell, you can toss it into the shell, ur, rug, grixis, jeskai, whatever, and make the deck 100% better. In this case, you take the colorless aggro or control shell and add xyz "colors" to it, as long as you have Eye of Ugin, you're good. Now, keep the same shell and remove Eye and you're looking at a much more honest deck, even if you can drop a Mimic on turn one, you're not dropping three and a smasher before decks can remove them. In this case, Mimic may play the part of Dig Through Time and be collateral damage, but Eye of Ugin is definitely Treasure Cruise here. At least WotC seem committed to keeping the deck "playable," so we'll see, but don't hold your breath.

The alternative is far worse, and that is banning out multiple Eldrazi that are just draft superstars without Eye.

Ohthenoises, was it me who said that? I think it was. Can't remember.

My general idea (if I did say that) was that deck construction is restricted to focusing an entire deck to beat that Eldrazi. You either had to jam in a bunch of fast mana or focus on negating their damage entirely or using their damage against them. Against any other deck I've been able to utilize skill and knowledge of my own deck to beat them, without having to rely anymore than 3 sideboard slots.

Eldrazi requires far too much of the deck to be tuned against it, and that's not what deck design should be about. You shouldn't be forced to build the majority of your deck against something just to beat it. You should be allowed the freedom and creativity to build what you want and use your skills as a magic player to win you the game. As it is now, no manner of skill will be able to win you the game if your deck isn't tuned in every aspect against the Eldrazi. For every other deck during the time I played in Modern (think post Deathrite Shaman) I've had no problems with and built decks happily. I just can't do that with Eldrazi.

Even if you don't agree with me in that aspect, deck building that is incredibly restrictive removes the entire reason I play Modern: to have freedom in deck building. I don't have fun having to deck build under such restrictions and so I won't and will just wait.

Very happy to hear these words in a thought out article. A lot was said. I did like when you said, "is this entire archetype being held back?" Referring to one's own theme of a deck.

I can relate. I create this kick-ass deck and then the win percentage dwindles to a losing score. Make a couple adjustments. Still nothin. Either I continue losing or ditch the archetype.

I think it's a mixed bag of people's reactions to a recent banning and what they say needs to be banned. Speaking of myself it comes as a shock to the system when one archetype suddenly overruns a meta.

Being a player from the 90's playing Beta cards with chaps at the local card shop I felt Magic was about creativity and competition. I can't help but get lulz every time I look at the new "top 8" (top 2-4 in reality) after a banning.

As a primarily control deck player, Modern has felt stagnated in the past a lot. With Rise of the Eldrazi this winter and the best decks being Eldrazi, Burn and Affinity, blue-based control decks have been even more marginalized. What to do?

1. Join them - not really an option I like.

2. Change my approach - much better.

I dusted off my old Jund Dredgevine and added 4 Smallpox to the side with 3 Lightning Axe in the main, eschewing aggressiveness for control elements all around, going for tempo instead of balls-to-the-wall aggression.

It worked wonders against all but the nuttest eldrazi draws and had a fair amount of game vs Affinity and extra Gnaw to the Bone in the side and 1 main to cushion for burn.

It felt a lot more rewarding to start from an impasse and end up in a favorable situation in those matches.

Just to give an example to support the excellent points in this article.

Fantastic article. 10/10 would read again.

Amazing article- All points were clearly communicated and and the analogies were effective in demonstrating stereotypical responses.

As a "new" player I fell into the line of thinking you outlined in the article very quickly, however, after reading into the competitive articles, and looking at sites such as mtgtop8 etc, I feel I've developed a more level headed approach. Still, I find it saddening that control, an archetype I've grown to love, has been shunned so much. Just looking at the statistics right now, 60% of decks are aggro (mostly due to Eldrazi albeit, but I don't have data from before the Eldrazi Winter), with only 15% being Control.

From various articles I've read/watched, the general consensus seems to be that, at least in Modern, Blue isn't really Blue at the moment. In Legacy, Blue has Counterspell and Force of Will as it's iconic counterspells. In Modern, we have Remand and Cryptic Command. Blue finds it difficult to establish control, but far easier to be a combo finder, with the likes of Serum Visions the aforementioned Remand, and in some cases Thought Scour. MTG Degree did a more comprehensive video on the wonkiness of the Modern Color Pie, and I believe someone at TCGPlayer (Craig Wescoe I think) did an article about this, while talking about what might get banned.

Thank you all for the kind words. I really appreciate it.

Remember the point of this discussion isn't to say what should be banned and why it's look at the way in which we support of refute the need for a ban. The evidence and language that we use.

Guftders: Blue has a bit of a problem in modern fulfilling its controlling role to its fullest potential. The counterspells it has access to in the early game such as Spell Pierce, Mana Leak and Remand become very bad in the late game. The only "hard" counterspell worth running is Cryptic Command and this is only effective in the late game. It has been argued by some that Blue just needs an early game boost to cover those periods where no Cryptic Command is available. I have heard the requests for Counterspell and do not think them unreasonable but I have not spent much time weighing it up myself because I'm not a Blue player.

I especially enjoyed the 'entitlement' section, because I honestly believe that condition is the plague of the millennial generation. Ranting aside, I really enjoyed this article. I found it to be thought-provoking and well-organized.

ChiefBell: I love the input and the way you have the audience look at the banning in question from a neutral position. I will admit, I was one of the people excited for the Twin banning, and happy to see a new deck tearing up the Modern meta (Eldrazi) But as I really took a step back and put it into perspective, it wasn't the Splinter Twin deck I disliked, I simply disliked the fact that the decks I prefer to play struggle against this particular combo.I feel it's a good practice to check yourself every once in awhile and this article helped me do just that.

Thank you and I look forward to more of your articles!

I get people in high-level tournaments are't out there to have fun but maybe they should. Why play a game for a living if you don't enjoy it? It is meant to be a fun game not office work. I think on some level fun should be at least considered but then again I play the game for fun not money.

We play it for fun MsSysbit. Our fun comes from winning games and outplaying our opponents through skill and tactics. It just so happens that winning gives us money.

Femme_Fatale that is contradictory. This post says that fun should not matter in considering bans; I strongly disagreed with that. Yet you try to support both... it is one or the other. Again they can make it however they want and I will continue to abstain from it but they should at least consider if the meta is playable, which if overcentralized is hard to claim.

Competitive magic players derive fun from a balanced meta. It is not one or the other - this is a gross misunderstanding of us competitive folk. You can be competitive and play for money but still have enormous amounts of fun.

However -

When we talk about bans we remain neutral - that isn't a time for fun. My fun comes after the discussion has ended and the format is back in great shape with lots of diverse decks. My fun does not factor into the process of ban decisions.

We can never seriously claim to be fair and honest magic players if we continue to support or argue against bans on the basis of how 'fun' a deck is. Fun is subjective ad everyone's definition is different. It gets us nowhere to consider such things. I might want a deck banned because it's not fun. You might not want it banned because you think it's fun. You get nowhere and it becomes a reductive and unsustainable argument.

Instead competitive folk look at the whole format instead of a subset of it. My fun comes from the health of the format. It's a far more abstract sense of happiness than most people get from magic.

You're misinterpreting what "fun" is being defined as. Fun on a personal level cannot be what constitutes a ban because on a personal level, fun varries between Person to person but on a numerical level, such as now where people are actively refusing to play the game at all because of an archetype then that matters.

"Fun" is quantified by numbers here, not by personal feelings or opinions.

VampireArmy+ChiefBell: again you are contradicting yourselves. If the goal of a ban is to make it playable again ie the format was formerly not ie not fun then it is factoring in. There is no objective measure of fun. I could say watching paint dry is the best time ever and you wouldn't disprove that by saying well 99.99% of people think it isn't fun. People act like statistics objectify opinions; they never can. Even if nigh unanimous agreement or heck devil's advocate: unanimous agreement on an opinion in the whole entire world STILL fails to make it factual. It could change the next day and it would still be a transient opinion. I get what you are trying to say: that you are attempting to remove whimsies of preference which is commendable. However it is delusion to think it is absolutely removed. It never is. Using your logic if a deck was broken and winning was all that mattered then you would just leave cheese in the meta and everyone would use it. No one would have fun as people play these games for variety and an over-centralized meta is no fun for anyone. So the whole concept of balancing the meta is antithesis to your idea. Why fix it if it just isn't fun? You said you want to see archetypes succeed but what truly is less subjective about saying every archetype should be able to succeed in the meta versus every deck concept? Maybe metas exist where counterspells are deplorably bad so control is lacking or vice versa and aggro is castrated; what difference does it make? people can win, people can run strategies and the goal of a ban is simply to restore balance ie variety ie fun. Tl; Dr Fun is in the decision making process by virtue of design as the goal is to restore that fun.

What I was getting from Bell was separating the idea of fun when playing Magic as opposed to making a cut-and-dry decision about bannings.

I look at banning ideas like a business decision. The corporate big wigs aren't looking to have fun when making a tough decision. It's looking out for the best interest in the sphere of business itself. Including people and profits. Or in this case - the game of Magic, it's players, and the all-around enjoyment of the game.

But some people do enjoy making those decisions. In fact, I'd like those to help make the final choice. As they bring a different perspective to the table.

However, much like a hardened CEO I would want that person the weigh all things and wise and prudent judgement call.

You aren't entirely understanding here MsSysbit. Bannings shouldn't be on the level of entertainment but on a level of balance. No choice you make will satisfy everyone, so you either have to satisfy the large majority, or strike a balance. WotC has been doing both in banning cards in pairs that each one has been complaining about. Pod complaining about TC and TC complaining about Pod. Bloom complaining about Twin and Twin complaining about Bloom. It also is going with the large majority in that WotC's large majority that continues to make them money is the lowest common denominator of players. The newest of players.

A lot of people right now think the format right now is fun. They loved the Twin ban. They love the Eldrazi. But that is only a select group of players. It is completely disenfranchising everyone else above that, and from WotC's perspective, that is not good. Because regardless if the lowest common denominator of players makes them the most money, they have still lost a very large portion of player base by not considering everyone else. Mainly, these are the people who advertise MtG through tournaments, podcasts, merchandise, community events, youtube videos, articles and more. Not balancing both parties in some way hurts WotC, and they know this. While the new players make them the most money, it is the experienced players who create a fair portion of advertisement to bring more new players in.

We as competitive players don't think WotC has been doing a proper job with the bans because we think from a balanced perspective only. WotC has a lot more to deal with than that, as such they make a decisions we don't feel is correct as a format from our perspective. WotC has been doing bans and design choices based on how fun the game is. Removing combo and unconditional control because the large majority of players that purchase MtG product don't find them fun. We as competitive players don't agree with this, because when we look at a meta, we view that it should be balanced for everyone, regardless of how loud your voice is.

Hmm ... went off to much there.

Basically, a balanced format where everyone can play something equally regardless of how fun any deck is, is what a competitive player wants. WotC can't follow that model because they are ultimately a business. So they balance the format with heavy preference to the loudest voice, and to the one that makes them the most money. We as competitive players strive to have a balanced format, so articles like this one are designed to try and "educate and train" those that WotC prefers so that we become the majority.

Control still exists. It's just not "traditional" control. They just haven't printed a modern worthy blue spell in years. The ones that did get banned were aimed at making sure combo isn't a part of mtg. They've had an extremely strict stance on combo decks for years. It's probably one of the main reasons we're having this discussion.

And from WotC perspective, that is perfectly fine and will remain like that for a long time most likely. No manner of competitive player's complaints will change that I do believe.

Which is why, I think that either changing or making a new format is best when you don't like they way the current format you are playing is being handled. For me it is Current and a few others that I've recently thought about, Duel Decks only and Supplementary Products only.

You guys have really objective thoughts on these things. I enjoy reading them.

The great thing about Magic is there's so many cards. Some Joe-Bobs can get together and start their own format. But it's nice when you got a lot Joe-Bobs. If not your stuck with what Wotc craps out.

I absolutely despise control myself. Literally strips the enjoyment out of Magic immediately. Like a balloon deflating. But without solid control and combo archetypes midrange-tempo deck take over.

I say we go to Wotc headquarters and start picketing. Maybe chuck some bricks through their windows.

VampireArmy

My friends up the river in Delve Town have the Time, and want to Cruise over and have a word with you about that particular topic.

Fair enough, they either print something playable only in Standard or something so broken it's restricted in Vintage.

Better? :)

I mean, it's not so much the lack of Control in Modern that I mind more than the lack of powerful blue stuff. Every other color has a bunch of format-defining spells, and Blue only has Snappy, which is currently pretty weak, and Delver. And maybe Titi. If it finds a home. Every instant-speed interaction Blue has is a level below what RWGB have. And that's what defines Blue, it should be the best in that category.

Mortem

"The ones that did get banned were aimed at making sure combo isn't a part of mtg"

There's more than just one sentence there.

Every other color has a bunch of format-defining spells, and Blue only has Snappy [...] Every instant-speed interaction Blue has is a level below what RWGB have. And that's what defines Blue, it should be the best in that category.

It's exactly that.
I couldn't phrase it any better. It feels like Blue might just be the weakest colour in Modern at the moment. The reasonable interaction that Blue has is either god damned conditional or too expensive.

So I was looking to build a deck, and I enjoy playing Control. I'll be honest, I do. Now I've been building around and around and the results were extremely disappointing. Every iteration, until I eventually removed blue - and suddenly, the deck became worthy of playing. I'm far from making it such that I can beat Tier 1 decks at a reasonable rate but now I feel like I'm onto something.

But guys, how can blue be the weakest color when all of the eldrazi decks are using Drowner of Hope and Eldrazi Skyspawner!?

:)

Sorry, couldn't help myself. As far as U base control decks there are only really two that are worth mentioning and one is more of a combo deck but it runs enough control to be considered here: U Tron and Scapeshift.

U Tron has always been just out of competitive and I'm not really qualified to speak about scapeshift. GlistenerAgent knows better than me on the deck.

For the sake of being devil's advocate, I would like to point out that UW control got 10th place in GP Detroit and 23rd in GP Melbourne, which also saw a jeski control list squeak into the top 32. For a GP, those are pretty decent results for a 'dead' or 'nonexistent' archtype. Perhaps the sheeple have just been following everyone else's opinions on the playability of control in Modern, and the lack of players playing the archtype lead to disappointing numbers/finishes?

Neither are top 8s and these are notable for their rarity.

And like 2 mentions of a deck means it is pretty dead haha.

Yep >.> And part of this is probably the rise of Eldrazi, against which Control can largely no nothing apart from hope that they hit a wipe before they get killed. Maybe when the menace is gone, we'll see more combo-control or control Top 8. But that's only part of the problem, which can be resumed to the hit-all spells for each color:

W - Path to Exile hits absolutely any creature for 1 mana.

R - Lightning Bolt defines how playable creatures are in the meta and is the epitome of efficiency.

BG - Abrupt Decay gets maybe 90% of the non-land permanents played in Modern and can't be countered.

U - Cryptic Command is as close as U has to a hit-all. And while it's powerful, it's also four mana. Which nowadays is getting way too slow.

Basically, this would be solved should they reprint Counterspell. Two mana hit-all, putting Blue at least closer to other colors in terms of versatility. But Wizards won't do it, or give Blue something similar, and as long as they don't, the problem isn't going to be fixed.

GeminiSpartanX Just to point out Top 8 GP Detroit consisted of: 6 Eldrazi Decks, 1 Storm and 1 Abzan CoCo deck... In fact between the two GPs you listed, each one only had 3 control decks (and the 3 in Detroit are debatable at best). In fact it's not just those GPs- overall, the format at present has 60% aggro (a total of 618 decks, of which 235 are Eldrazi based), and 15% control (a total of approx. 154 decks).

Yup Control is certainly doing well for itself. As for why, I'd point to the sheer simplicity and linearity of aggro/combo decks in Modern playing a major role. It's easier to learn a deck, when the strategy lacks any sort of interaction with the opponent, and has defining cards that tell you how to kill the opponent (eg Glistener Elf/Blighted Agent in Infect, Grapeshot in Storm etc). It's not so clear with control, as usually, there are one, maybe two different big creatures, but it's not always clear at face value how you win.

So newer players are more easily drawn to aggro. Just think, what's more "fun"- playing a game of solitaire, or watching someone else play solitaire?

I also believe that a lack of actual control spells in Modern also plays a role in this sheer lack of numbers. It's hard to counter spells, when all of your counter spells are either super narrow (think Essence Scatter, Spell Snare etc), or just do not reliably hard counter (Remand and Spell Pierce).

Having said all of that, 44% of Duel Commander decks in Top 8s are Control (compared to 24% Aggro. Source: [http://mtgtop8.com/format?f=EDH] ) ...So what's the difference? Player base and Card Pool attribute to this difference, but also the game mechanics of EDH itself. Having 40 life instead of 20, 100 cards instead of 60 etc all force games to go on longer (usually).

UW Control is a good deck. I've tested it myself a number of times, but it's undeniable that they're only good because of the Eldrazi Menace. They're mainly built for beating Eldrazi, as such, have a good matchup against these and, as such, currently put out soild results. I don't think they're great when Abzan, Jund, Burn and others are the Meta.

For some reason I can't seem to edit my post, excuse my Doublepost.

I find reprinting Counterspell very intriguing. I assume Blue-Based Control and Delver would immediately rush to be two of the format-defining decks, but so be it. We've seen Wizards is "willing" to completely warp Modern's Meta, be it intentionally trying Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time or unintentionally with the Eldrazi deck. The main concern everyone had with Counterspell was that it'd make Twin nigh unbeatable, which currently isn't a problem anymore. I'd appreciate the attempt to bring Counterspell into Modern, just to see what it'd do.

Another idea that we (we, as in my playgroup) find very interesting, even though it would probably never happen just because it'd warp Modern completely without any question would be removing the Banlist entirely. I am, as I'm typing this, watching The Gauntlet of Greatness by Randy Buehler which plays exactly that, No-Ban Modern. I'm excited to see how this works out.

VampireArmy

Dig and Cruise weren't just banned to keep combo down. They were banned because Ancestral Recall and cards like it are too powerful for modern.

Jeskai ascendancy was a major problem. Scapeshift might have been but we'll never know.

MsSysbit - You are mistaking correlation for cause. And you have done it repeatedly now.

Mortem - Only as powerful as the payoff. Which is the interesting thing here because how busted card draw is is proportional to how broken the cards are you're drawing. The payoff in the case of delver is a lot lower than the payoff in the case of Twin. One's going to use it play a 1/2 hasty creature. The other is going to use it to win the game on the spot. It's just interesting because Ancestral Recall doesn't HAVE to be broken. It's broken purely by context.

So what I'm hearing, is that UWx control is only good thanks to the Eldrazi overlords? I don't know about you guys, but getting into the top 32 of a GP seems like a dang good accomplishment for a deck. I didn't see any Infect, Burn, Zoo, BW Tokens, or many other archtypes in the top 32 of any of the 3 GPs. The fact that multiple control strategies got there when those other tier 1-2 decks didn't should say something to us, right? Looking JUST at the top 8 of a large event seems like you're discounting information that could lead to a larger picture of what is possible in Modern atm.

I know that the lack of other aggressive archtypes is mainly due to the Eldrazi stomping everything, but none of the other traditional aggressive styles were represented at all in the top 32 of any of those GPs, other than the 2nd most busted version of agro (Affinity) thanks to Eldrazi. I know they count Eldrazi as agro when comparing the major archtypes in the meta, and I'm not saying that the deck should stick around or anything, but from what I've been reading UWx control has a better shot against them than against some of the other meta decks from pre-Eldrazi .

So in some sort of warped way, Eldrazi has helped make UWx control playable again lol.

Kind of because the meta used to be about more than hitting people in the face. Now that almost all the decks want to play a creature and hit you in the face with it control decks can do somewhat well because they're specifically designed to deal with that problem. Control decks don't do well when you see people playing things like 8Rack and other weird and wonderful setups.

Excellent ChiefBell.

I think another key point regarding when we should and should not consider asking for Wizards' banhammer is not just archetype stifling and real world % meta share, but what the defined goals are for that format. Wizards has a loose rule that they prefer legacy, modern and standard as turn 3, 4 and 5 formats, respectively, which for those unfamiliar they are ok with decks having opponents lose the game OR effectively lose the game by that turn consistently.

A meta could be considered "balanced" and still not fit the goals of the format: the most recent example is the Amulet Bloom deck, where not only did the opponent lose the game (or effectively lose the game) before turn 4, but it was extremely hard to interact with the Amulet Bloom opponent from doing so. This is as opposed to a deck like infect, a deck capable of killing on turn 2 occasionally, but it's far easier to interact with. I would argue the Amulet Bloom case for bannings were justified based on this condition, without regarding the "feel bad" effect that most players brought up.

I'm not saying UW control is good only because of the Eldrazi, it's just a, maybe even the only, deck that actually profits from the Eldrazi menace. These decks just look a lot worse when RDW and similar are more relevant.

Good stuff.

The Reason UW control seems good is because control is at its best when it only has to stop one thing. Control will always thrive in modern if it only has to beat one other archetype, and typically suffers because it can't handle the incredible diverse routes to victory you usually see in modern.

great article

I'm not really a Modern player, but I say that this is a well written article!

The bit about entitlement is interesting and good food for thought. I'm currently waiting for April and the inevitable Eldrazi bans. But I play vampire tempo competitively. In the past I've realized quickly that I have a lot to contend with from tier 1 decks. Instead of whining about my favorite tribe's shortcomings, I found a few simple answers: run cards to disrupt opponents, and more importantly, learn to sideboard. I cannot stress enough how important siding is in a 2/3 game format. And knowing your meta is of the utmost importance.

i get what you're saying about fun being subjective and how one person's fun isn't necessarily another's; fine and good. However, from a financial perspective, it is not in Wizards' best interest to have one type of deck be the only one that is played; every other card that isn't in that deck would tank in price due to demand going to near 0. It's not healthy in a game where there are literally millions of different decks that could be played, for only 3 decks to actually be played in a particular format. If nothing else, it just stagnates.
For real though, that turn 2 reality smasher is pretty damn hard to recover from.

But the issue you've described is one of numbers. It's measurable and provable and objective. Eldrazi is objectively problematic. You don't need to factor fun in.

Bannings are scheduled for April, right? Eldrazi are a serious problem, case closed. Everyone agrees on this, even the people who play them. Modern has pretty much been turned into yugioh for a few months. The banlist exists for the express purpose of balancing the game, according to Wizards themselves. Long story short: it's a huge problem, time to do something about it.

My biggest worry is that if they hit the obvious choices and go after Temple and Eye, Tron suffers as a result.

Honestly, Oath was just a terrible idea. Look at khans, an arguably more broken set. That set gave something to almost literally every deck and playstyle, so everyone was happy. Who in Dracula's unholy name is happy with the mess we're in right now, save for some extremely sadistic players with cash to burn?

I think many people view magic as a game where the goal is to get your opponent's life total from 20 to 0 as fast as possible. Frankly I find this stupid. The goal is to get your opponent's life total from 20 to 0 at least 2 times within 50 minutes. ChiefBell - You put it nicely saying "in the most effective way". Effectiveness is truly the key here no matter what anybody's preferred style of play is.

Nice article!