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As part of a partnership with Empeopled.com, we're cross-posting this today, and I think it's something those of you who enjoy Modern may be interested in.
We've heard a lot about banning Treasure Cruise. Some of it, admittedly, has even come from me. The ability to draw three cards for one mana is just so powerful and easily achieved with the card it's hard to conceive a world in which it is fair.
And it's not. Don't forget that.
But that doesn't mean it can't be held in check.
You can read the full article here.
(disclaimer- i don’t play competitive Modern so banning or not banning TC doesn’t affect me).
From the start, my take on the TC situation has been this- people complain when a format gets stale, but then they complain when a new card(s) come along and shake it up. Used to be that Jund was the boogeyman. This time a year ago Pod was public enemy #1. Several months ago people were moaning about how Splinter Twin was too dominant in Modern. 3 months ago Jeskai Ascendancy was ruining the format. Now TC has the masses breaking out the pitchforks. Etc etc etc.
You made a couple of good points that are worth reiterating:
1- there is always gonna be 1-2 decks that are slightly better than the field.
2- Modern has come a long way in a short time and may no longer feel like a wide-open format… but that’s to be expected of ANY format when there is a surge in popularity coupled with more high-profile, high-stakes events. Two years ago Modern was the quirky new thing that people tinkered with. Now it’s The Boss Eternal format that can draw 4,000 players. It’s the format that everyone too young to have boxes of Legacy staples available wants to crush. By default, that is gonna force people away from brewing quirky, novel decks and drive them towards playing the established powerhouse decks.
Yes, Modern has been warped and forced in a new direction due to TC. But is that really a bad thing? Do people really want the format to be locked in stasis where it was pre-Khans? Should Legacy players never have to adapt to new cards and be able to keep playing the same 75 for another decade?
It seems to me that a healthy format is one that evolves over time. some KTK cards have forced that next stage of evolution- now do we ban those cards and revert to the pre-KTK metagame, or do we wait and see what the format can do from here?
Whenever I read these treasure cruise articles it reminds me of when delver was in standard, and how people cried that it should be banned, and ponder should be banned, and vapor snag should be banned, when in all actuality the cards were there to beat it, people just got lazy(Kibler naya, U/W midrange, Pod, infect started to gain some momentum before rotation), and didn’t explore these options till the DCI FORCED, I repeat, FORCED(by not banning anything), people to look for answers. Hey, why not in that article you just replace treasure cruise with lightning bolt, lets talk about how that thing warps the format.
The ‘Pro Tour’ has single handedly screwed up modern……Free the Cards…stop the bannings…enough is enough…
Na, thats to much. Look I believe that there should be bannings of cards deemed worthy of it. One more time, deemed worthy. I understand that the article is an analysis of what the meta looks like, but it doesnt mean that a card deserves a banning because its not the meta you want. Id understand if you give treasure cruise some time and see how things shake out. Maybe decks start coming over prepared for cruise and something pops up thats cruiseless and punches them in the face cuz they dedicated to much to cruise instead of shoring up a weakness thats exploited. Is cruise a strong card? Currently, currently, currently, yes it is, but give the format some friggen time to deal with it properly. What you are seeing now is the first attempt at dealing with it. Let it shake out. Whats annoying is having cards on the banned list that have no data backing it up. Or cards that were put on there and then take off to be no where in sight. Cough wild nacatle cough. What happened there? Seemed like poeple just excepted as zoo to be the best deck and got lazy. Dci banned and forced, forced, forced people to brew. It comes off the list, and wow, what a PoS that deck is.