Burn, not blood moon, is what is holding too greedy mana down.

Grixis twin is not completely destroying straight ur thanks to its inferrior burn matchup, not its vulnerability to moon. And its the same with many other 3+ c strategies.

If bloom makes it to the PT unbanned and into Modern Season, you will see the price off all those cards go crazy and the deck will push 12-13% of the meta if not worst. The only solid defense against it is Blood moon, which ironically, is on a lot of short lists for bans itself.

Personally, I would be happy if they just banned hive mind and then we can see where it is at. You can plan a defense against 4 titans, but having to defend against 2-3 titans in the first 5 turns, establish a clock, and then if you do manage that… you still have to win the game before hive mind shows up and you insta-lose.

It’s too much, either it has to be slowed down, ban amulet or bloom, or take the alt win con in hive mind.

Sorry about the autocorrect: diversiteit=diversity, bring=losing, permissies=permission, entiteiten=entire.

It has the same issues as Birthing Pod: Tutors that also allow to bypass mana costs are extremely overpowered.

Don’t see the point of unbanning it and having to ban it later. “But K-Command kills it and the t3 Batterskull”. Well, besides the fact that a lot of decks don’t play K-Command, we don’t know what future equipment will be printed.

You can hit it while goryo”s vengeance is in the stack, no?

The decks I enjoy playing (Jund and Tron) have terrible matchups against Amulet. I’d personally like nothing more than to never see it at another tournament. I paid a lotof money to play these decks only to lose to some scrub that isn’t nearly as skilled as me. Magic is a test of skill, right? How is this in anyway fair? —– I’d probably say something like this if I was a troll, but they’re very real thoughts and negative feelings in the post-game salt. It’s no surprise this carries over.

Currently, I see decks like Amulet, Grishoalbrand, etc enter into tournaments in hopes of winning “rock, paper, scissors” all day. A more pragmatic way of describing this is with a “safety valve” metaphor. Jund was getting very popular June, so Tron came in and won a couple tournaments. Twin’s numbers were falling, so affinity creeped in. If Tron is over-represented then Infect, Scapeshift, Amulet, and Grishoalbrand will be out in force. Is everyone playing Twin? Time to sleeve up Burn and Jund! The format is too wide for one deck to cover all the bases (read: there’s almost always a safety valve), so meta calls become a very real and very threatening thing.

Maybe “too wide” is a bit ambitious. Amulet and Grishoalbrand struggle against decks with efficient countermagic. The same can be said for a lot of decks, which has given rise to Grixis Control. Twin decks pack efficient countermagic, Blood Moon, and an “oops, I win” combo, giving it a LOT of game against a huge portion of the field. Now, combine this with the fear of buying into Amulet and Grishoalbrand that others have mentioned. What we have now are metagames where busted combo decks are unrepresented and the “safety valves” are over-represented. Why not? Most would consider these decks safe. That is, until they’re represented so highly that they get banned for “stifling” the metagame.

tl;dr: I think it’s more likely that a deck like Twin gets nerfed before Amulet since it’s considered a “safe” choice against linear combo decks, which may lead to its over-representation in the metagame.

This has been my conspiracy theory of the day!

Grishoalbrand would like to have a word with you.

They have to have griselbrand in the graveyard for surgical extraction to hit it. This isn’t cranial extraction.

Instead of Karn or Amulet that only fits into their own decks, Stoneforge Mystic can be splashed into a lot of decks. Batterskull doesn’t need haste because it will enter the field during opponent’s end phase. Cheating a turn 3 Batterskull so easily (with mana open to counter) and something that fits into any deck will just make the format unhealthy.

I also hate this argument because both Tron and Amulet Bloom do much worse things than tutor up a 4/4 Lifelink Vigilance creature without haste that is susceptible to almost every piece of removal in the format (whether it be Bolts to deal with SFM, or KolCom’s to deal with the equipment)

I see what Rosewater is saying in that she tutors and cheats big equipment into play like Batterskull. With the Prevalence of Kolaghan’s command due to Grixis Twin, and Jund you figure that be enough policing to at least make people hesistant to overcommit to the stoneforge.

That said, we don’t see the field dominance that would necessitate this banning yet and there are a number of decks in circulation that keep it in check. Part of me still thinks, should a ban be made in January, Hive Mind would be one of the smarter ones if not for format health, for perceived format health.

Still, we’re looking at a much healthier modern than we ever have been. We’re at a point where the focus needs to be on possible deregulation, not regulation.

Probably not because Mark Rosewater answered a question why Stoneforge was banned in modern.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/modern-mailbag-2015-05-18

” @maro254 if you could change the design of Stoneforge Mystic to mean she wasn’t banned, what would you change?

The key is to not let her both tutor for Equipment and circumvent their mana cost. Pick one or the other and she’d be much more fair.”

Maybe if they exchange it with Batterskull, but I really doubt it. Aaron Forsythe has said several times that he badly underestimated SFM with Batterskull and Wizards prefers to ban enablers rather than “fair” cards. It’s fine in Legacy thanks to Wasteland, Daze and Force of Will but in Modern? Bolt is probably not enough to keep Stoneblade from taking over.

No. It’s a very fair card. Doesn’t lead to busted combos. But the power level is considered too high. I think given time a lot of cards will slowly come off the ban list as the power of the format creeps higher and they realize that they can’t maintain the format through a bloated ban list.