Could Fetchlands be banned?
Modern forum
Posted on April 16, 2022, 6:27 p.m. by Icbrgr
I had a Crazy thought the other day in rearguards to Fetchlands after watching The Professors Video about them... Because of Shocks and Triomes I think its pretty fair to say that having a deck being able to function consistently with reliance of 3+ colors is pretty easy these days. With the introduction of sets being printed straight into Modern there is now very powerful cards that are being printed that are also very efficient to cast and likely power creep will eventually happen to even these powerful cards.
TL;DR
Is it possible that Fetchlands could be banned in the Future of Modern?
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Fetchlands enable for nearly perfect mana base with hardly any drawback (except maybe your budget).
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Modern Horizons/future sets of powerful cards pushing the power level of Modern.
Nah, it ain't happening. They belong in modern, but WOTC has been clear that's the cutoff, they aren't going to be a thing in standard or any new non eternal formats.
April 16, 2022 6:43 p.m.
Also while Fetch+Shock+Triome access makes color access very easy, you are still having to make tradeoffs between playing on-curve and taking damage. Especially with Ragavan and Dragon's Rage Channeler meaning there are even more potent threats on turn 1 to start hitting, taking 9 damage from your manabase alone can be dicey. Burn players have always been appreciative of the fact that many opponents in Modern start at 17 life or less.
April 16, 2022 7:40 p.m.
I don't think that they would see a ban, but seriously, they are in a really weird spot as far as printings go. While I understand that wizards doesn't want people who spent a lot on fetchlands to be let down if the price goes down, that's the same line of thought that creates a pseudo-reserve list, and that's irking to think of. Fetches, Urza, Ragavan, they exist in a limbo where wizards doesn't want to reprint them in a way that will tank their price, but also want to reprint them just often enough to sell something-or-others. But does it mean they have to be banned? I have no idea : )
Honestly, I just don't like fetches from a deckbuilding standpoint. They make 3-4-5 color decks so easy to run and I think that does just further boil down formats. It lessens one of the major constraints in the core of magic's mechanics which is, colors do different things. Now your deck can just do all of them, or more specifically, it can cherry pick the best and do all of those. I would have thought that making color combinations more playable would diversify the playing field, but it really, really didn't.
April 16, 2022 8:33 p.m.
xtechnetia says... #6
We've known how broken fetches are for a long time. DRS is a great example of a card that's, technically speaking, been banned for the sins of fetches. And yes, they will likely only get stronger with time, as triomes prove.
Fetches are part of Modern's identity, though. It doesn't really matter how broken they are in theory - banning them is equivalent to destroying Modern and creating a new format. Modern will sooner ban a thousand "DRS" type cards than it would ban fetches, because the question isn't "are fetches the real problem?" (they are), but rather "given that fetches will be legal, what then is problematic as a result?"
It's the exact same story as, for example, Brainstorm in Legacy. Every metric under the sun says it should be banned, and it will also never, ever be banned, because doing so would be to destroy Legacy and create a new format.
April 16, 2022 8:46 p.m.
wallisface says... #8
Fetches aren’t ever getting banned. If wizards become weary of the 4-colour-piles decks taking up too large a piece of the meta, they're likely just going to print more things that incentivise playing less colours - potentially with more blood-moon effects, and cards that become a lot stronger in mono-colour, like devotion.
The incarnations of mh2 were already a nod towards wanting to reward playing a lot of the same colour in a deck (i.e to give you better odds of being able to pitch), though in isolation their presence isn’t enough to curb the 4-colour-piles decks (and interestingly, many of those cards are now in those decks) - however the ethos remains that if wotc want to incentivise against running 3+ colours, they have the means to
shadow63 says... #2
I seriously doubt they are getting banned. Especially because they are a major reason to buy mh2 packs.
April 16, 2022 6:41 p.m.