Perhaps with all the similar sentiments being voice you might actually write a more balanced article next time instead of sensationalism and poorly thought out solutions.

You also might get buy-in to your articles if you don’t offend your readers and acknowledge the issue at hand. Anyone can have a unique point of view – but for God’s sakes back it up with something or become irrelevant – which most ppl seem to think you are becoming.

Do with that what you will.

Preston,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, and I apologize to you for the acid in my prior post. It’s easy to get caught in the hate speech when so many refuse to stop and think, or write, responsibly. I see your point, and I understand your reasoning, but I do still strongly disagree with your position. I may be idealistic in having faith in the format’s ability to adapt, but I think we will all need to wait for more data. We have several GPs coming up. I think those tournaments will confirm or dispel the question of Eldrazi Winter.

I like Ensnaring Bridge as a general answer, but I’m not sure I would play it in Affinity. Affinity is probably the deck best suited to fight Eldrazi, they are faster to the board and Eldrazi would really like to Chalice of the Void for two, giving Affinity some time to sneak spells onto the board.

Moving past Affinity, Path to Exile and Ghost Quarter are both great options, most of the Eldrazi lists are only running a couple basics. One drawn naturally means a second Ghost Quarter/Path is often “no downside”.

Removal backed up with card advantage is what I’m focused on, I really like the Mardu list I posted. Lingering Souls and all that removal is a nightmare for a deck focused on building a board and pushing damage.

I agree with all of your points. The worst part about Eldrazi is that is has all its bases covered. You’ve got the explosive draws, the built-in card advantage present in Matter Reshaper, Thought Knot Seer, and Reality Smasher, and that can make it almost impossible to fight it on every axis, especially when the fast mana is busting the barrier of what’s “fair” in Modern down completely.

Thought-Knot Seer is the worst, taking sweepers out of the hand while developing a board, an actual Thoughtseize on a creature. Maybe, just maybe, Modern could handle Eldrazi if this guy wasn’t printed, but he was.

I’m not going to call for a ban until Wizards puts it in writing. If the rest of the community is all saying the same thing, I do my readers a disservice by joining in the groupthink and not looking for a unique perspective. But things definitely don’t look good.

I’ll respond to Michael and Anonymous specifically, but this applies to many who have echoed similar sentiments.

Michael – When compared with the rest of the format, the power level of Eldrazi Temple/Eye of Ugin in combination with the new Eldrazi creatures is clearly “overpowered”. The closest comparison I can make to a strategy that pushes the limits of what we consider “fair” would be Affinity, and perhaps followed closely by Infect. Affinity takes advantage of free creatures and enablers and backs them up with 12 “payoff” cards in a way that looks similar to a lot of what makes Eldrazi powerful. Mox Opal on Turn 1 is just as powerful as Eldrazi Temple, but having 8 copies of the effect instead of 4 definitely tips the scales. Affinity is also kept in check by the fact that most of their deck is junk without those payoff cards, whereas Eldrazi is still playing great creatures, albeit a bit slower.

The biggest difference (aside from the obvious fast mana issue everyone keeps talking about) between Affinity and Eldrazi is that we’ve already found easy, natural foils to Affinity; Stony Silence, Ancient Grudge and the like. The “right” foil to Eldrazi has yet to be found, though I believe it is out there. This is why I took the position I took in my article, not to, as Anonymous cleverly said, “be brash and arrogant about jamming irrelevant deck ideas down our throat while backhanding us ‘with get over yourself” but rather to take a dissenting opinion to bring something unique to the table and promote discussion.

It has always been my hope that the truly awesome readers of my articles would understand that my primary goal as a content producer for this site is not to “be right”, or “seem smart” or “get it first”. I have been, and always will be, focused on attempting to generate interesting conversation and a unique point of view. Because I have the opinion that I think a discussion about whether or not Eldrazi can be beat should happen first before talking about banning does not warrant comments calling me a “modern imposter”, relating my articles to “garbage”, calling me an FNM scrub, or, my favorite one:

Trevor needs to straight up fuck off – he’s a laughably bad writer and just plain shit in regards to understanding modern – how’s that jank ass grixis bullshit going Trevor?

I could go on, but that’s not moving the discussion forward. Which, again, is what I’m focused on, not on “being right”. This community (the Nexus community and the Magic community) is better and smarter than attacking an individual based purely on the way he writes and the opinions he has. Yes, Eldrazi is clearly, based on the PT results, doing more powerful things better than anything else in the format, helped immensely by the combination of Eldrazi Temple/Eye of Ugin. If we had a ban announcement tomorrow, if we decided on bans based on individual events, ABSOLUTELY Eldrazi should get nerfed. Let the rest of the Internet say that. I’m focused on saying something different. Not different for the sake of being different, but different in the hopes of moving the discussion forward and providing something unique and entertaining for Nexus’ readers. I welcome disagreements, but I hope we can have an actual discussion without some of the language that we saw this week.

Thanks,
Trevor

Forked Bolt does sound awesome for stopping the powerful Mimic draws, which are really the core of everything the deck does that’s considered “broken”. Great suggestion, definitely something I’ll be trying to fit into the sideboard of that Mardu Control list!

Have you watched the videos of these eldrazi decks. Saying things like “they have to blow up relic” makes me think you don’t know what you are talking about.

Newsflash, you can’t have been playing the new eldrazi decks for a month. You are talking about the old processor decks. So last month.

Also, suggesting painter’s servant just proves you are not good at magic. Anyone running painter’s servant to answer ONLY eldrazi is playing magic wrong and probably has a lot to learn about the game.

Oh and hornet’s nest? Sounds like a great card. Can’t believe all those green decks haven’t been running it since it came out. Oh wait, near is a bad card and shows a lack of understanding of what makes a good deck in modern.

Exactly this.

This is probably the best comment on the matter I’ve read and sums up exactly the problem we’re facing.

Thank you

Bile Blight is good in any deck using against multiple copies of creatures, trust me…. There’s a lot of them. Surgical Extraction is amazing. No longer does my Tron lose to an unwinnable situation like Goryo’s Veangeance, Scapeshift about to go ham, any so many other bad situations. Obstinate Baloth and Loxodon Smiter is played in an environment with Liliana of the Veil and similar cards anyway. Painter’s Servant is hilarious in Affinity and Merfolk. Make’s Master of the Waves unblockable. Weaken’s Tron and Eldrazi. Sweepers have always been good, especially in an aggro heavy environment. Decks playing red has always played burn spells that were useful, Forked Bolt is still amazing as it can turn 1 kill two Mimics, kill elves, kill fish, kill a lot of Affinity creatures… I don’t see how this is weakening yourself against other decks.

Loxodon Smiters and Obstinate Baloths have been used often enough before. Kitchen Finks ends up in many decks running green or white anyways… Hushwing Gryff is no stranger in an environment with CiP abilities. Hell, it’s played in Legacy.

And the nastiest Eldrazi are all CiP abilities. Mimic, Thought Knot, and much much more…. Against the bigger threats with the when cast are late game threats most of the time. If you buy time using Wall of Omens into Kitchen Finks into Resto Angel into Kikki Jikki you pretty much win. Especially with Path to Exiles…. UWR Control’s been doing this for ages and anyone with access to UW has used Detention Spheres before. And just like Elves, RDW, etc… They pack very little in the way of cantrips and have a very bad mid to late game. Just like against any all in strategy Eldrazi will just lose in a situation where their early creatures are removed and no follow up is possible. My Evolutionary Elves deck is more bonkers than Eldrazi, Eldrazi can’t cast Emrakul on turn 3 and take infinite turns, my Elf deck can. But one sweeper my elf deck is pretty much dead in the water. Same goes for Eldrazi. Bile Blight is good against both decks. Bile Blight is good against Affinity. Bile Blight is good against creatures period as it even kills Wild Nacatl..

The point I’m making, the strategies I place before you are there. They have always been there. And they will always be there. Sadly, Chalice for 1 bricks most decks… Engineered Explosives for 0, Remand, Ancient Grudge, and many other cards will buy you time to get around that too.

People keep thinking if I do A then I’m weaker against B. Except… This is nothing like Bloom, Twin, DRS, Pod, and others. People at the PT was geared towards stopping Tron, and it didn’t even make a top 32 spot… And Cascade into Living End and Balace is still wonderful. You have a field, they don’t. You have ways to draw cards, they don’t. You win, they lose. After all, most of these decks will never win if they don’t give it a try.

Last month people were screaming and crying over Twin and Summer Bloom being banned, but they were quick to hit that ban Eye and all these other cards because we are too lazy to do something about it ourselves hurdy hur hur… All this will accomplish is make the modern environment so volatile that people will quit. It’s been less than a month since they banned Twin and Bloom. Aggro and Combo has always done really dumb things. Control can beat both decks… Eldrazi is worse than Twin and Bloom, as it depents on creatures attacking to win. And yet again I point at sweepers to neuter these decks. But TNS can take X card and I lose… Hmmm… My elves splashes black with Overgrown Tombs, splashes white with Temple Gardens. One way I have Linvalla, the other I hae Thoughtsieze. A thoughtsieze can take your sweeper away just as much so too. I side in Thoughtsieze for the moments I’m playing against decks with sweepers.People playing black has always played Thoughtsieze and it turn 1 kills Thought Knot Seer.

Great comment man, very well put!

I think you overestimate the unique new design space available from “starting over from ground zero”, and underestimate just how hard truly progressive innovation is in this space, especially when the bar you’re trying to beat is Eldrazi. In an open system like this with thousands upon thousands of independent agents, the collective intelligence of the group as a whole is huge. Powerful things gain traction and spread very quickly, and many, many people are trying to find them, and have been with all of the available cards for years. Realistically, there three angles, in which the total possible archetypes have been explored to varying degrees, with varying room for innovation likely available.

Aggro – card choices are pretty clear here, I think this has the least room for innovation and is least likely to have powerful new decks waiting to be found from “ground zero”. Cards have aggressive stats or they don’t, and the bar is already quite high here with several archetypes hitting on similar axis: Burn – direct damage to life total; Affinity and Merfolk – go wide very rapidly and pump team for big early beats – these are decks that seem promising vs Eldrazi, but are well-explored and probably not highly ripe for innovation; Infect/Death’s Shadow/Bogles – all-in on a single creature to get through for lethal, with all the best ways of boosting the guys well-explored. Where’s the room for innovation or “ground zero” rebuilding in those? Is there a card with more aggressively costed stats out there, a 4/4 for 1 that nobody has noticed?? Not likely, and this is the area with the least room for innovation.

Control – a bit more room for moderate innovation here (see the new Mardu archetype, for example, or Lantern control which just came to be last year). There are lots of creative ways to try to lock out your opponent, but you do have to be able to survive the initial onslaught. Chalice for 1 and Cavern of Souls put some serious restrictions on what can work here, but there *may* be some room for moderate to high innovation in this area.

Combo – also have to survive the early turns, maybe have some room for innovation in this space as well, as multi-piece combos can be tough to spot (see Grishoalbrand, and the several-year incubation of the completely busted Amulet Bloom). So there may well be some space for innovation here as well, but again, it’s easier said than done to just set out to invent a new combo better than everything currently out there, that the hive mind comprised of the collective thousands of players has yet to spot.

Midrange – good luck, you’re outclassed both early and late by their threats. They’re faster out the gate. And grow bigger in the lategame as well. This seems very poor vs the Eldrazi.

Vague notions of “innovating” to fix things sound great, but given the environment of distributed intelligence that has created all the current decks in existence, it’s much less likely there are a ton of as-yet undiscovered powerhouses just waiting to be discovered. I don’t think the format is by any means “solved”, but if something sweeps in and beats all the current best decks, the chances that there are multiple other, even better decks just waiting to be discovered seems idealistic.

1. Fast mana has a history of doing unfair things in any form–Only rarely has something like dark ritual into a hypnotic specter been the “worst” thing happening with accelerants. The only categorical cards on the modern ban list with more than one entry are artifact lands (effectively 2 mana lands), rituals (fast mana), and card selection cantrips (ponder and preordain). There are 34 cards on the modern B&R list. Of them, most are banned in whole or in part for the ways in which they cheat on mana; these twelve are banned basically because they allow you to get WAAAY ahead on effective mana usage with minimal to zero deck construction cost; I haven’t included things like dread return or bloodbraid elf, or even stoneforge mystic. Even though a large part of the power of those cards is their ability to cheat on mana, the list below is much more apparently based in pure mana efficiency increases without serious cost.
5 artifact lands
2 rituals
Deathrite shaman
chrome mox
cloudpost
Hypergenesis
Treasure Cruise

So right off the bat, we have a pedigree for fast mana being format warping, just in modern. Most of the rest of the banned list in one way or another involves cheating on mana or obscene mana efficiency; only dark depths, (arguably dig through time), glimpse of nature, green sun’s zenith, jace the mind sculptor, the cantrips, top, splinter twin, sword of the meek, and jitte don’t explicitly cheat on mana (and some of these still cheat on mana in some way or another, but these are the least egregious in that category). That’s 11/34 cards. Of these, the cantrips and dig through time have been deemed too efficient for modern, and several of the remaining cards number among R&D’s worst design mistakes ever, period. Very few cards in any format are ban-worthy without some aspect of extreme mana efficiency, and as you can see in the modern format history, only the most POTENTIALLY format warping cards get banned without it (jitte, clamp, jace, green sun’s zenith, sensei’s divining top, splinter twin, sword of the meek).

2. 2-mana lands have the most ban-worthy pedigree of any other mana accelerant because they come at a minimal cost to deck construction. The difference between legacy and vintage mostly comes in the form of the fast mana and tutoring that is available. Most vintage decks play as many or more sources of mana than most legacy decks, but they can generate it all in a much shorter time frame. Ever play vintage Steel City Vault against legacy miracles? Or maybe against legacy shardless bug? How about legacy RUG delver? Give you a hint–the legacy player is bringing a butterknife to a gunfight, and that vintage deck is basically a pile of fast mana and magic’s most broken card interactions, no serious synergy combo at all, just raw power. Some of the Pro’s on the eldrazi deck made the comment that it was like their opponents brought a knife to a missile fight, and the comparison is apt. SOL lands take up land slots in your deck, and in the case of the eldrazi deck they also enable the deck to run fewer mana sources in order to pack the nut draw potential even harder. At least pyromancer ascension storm has to run rituals AND lands, and the collected company decks have to play mana dorks with their lands. Eldrazi decks have to play neither.

3. The eldrazi deck (and other fast mana decks) are totally beatable. I’ve beaten vintage shops with a modern legal mono-green deck. Not even kidding. Curve started at nature’s claim and ran up through acidic slime, every card in the deck either a basic forest or a thing that killed artifacts. Here’s a link to the mothership where Frank Karsten breaks down an old-extended metagame from MTGO: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/fk28b

In it, he breaks down stock affinity, and the next best deck in the format. The next best deck in the format played like 16 cards that were direct affinity hate. Yeah, that’s more than a sideboard’s worth of hate for ONE deck. It wasn’t too long after that article (6 months? I forget if it was a summer ban or a spring ban) aether vial and disciple of the vault got the axe in extended to kill the deck. I played extended in that time period, fairly heavily. It was actually the first competitive format I got involved with heavily. It was play affinity, play a maindeck full of affinity hate, or don’t expect to have a hope of making top 8. Eldrazi is similar–we can beat it. I personally have a 20-16 match record with the stock colorless list using draw-go esper control. How did I get that record? By playing a list with 8 slot removal spells, 6 wrath effects, a pile of card draw, and a bunch of planeswalkers. Sound like a standard deck? It pretty much is. Think it could actually work in an open metagame? Nope. Can’t beat infect or burn to save my life with that list. Have trouble beating midrange decks like jund. Can’t deal with zoo at all. Interact with a combo deck? not in game one. Affinity? Have you read what arcbound ravager does? Abzan coco? Do you know what the persist mechanic does?

The problem isn’t that we can’t beat eldrazi. It’s totally doable. The problem is that we can’t do it using decks that are otherwise at all reasonable against the rest of the field. The reports I hear “from the trenches” of various archetype specialists in the modern format, both in person and in various online communities, is a consensus “we can beat eldrazi, but it costs too much everywhere else”. And when enough archetypes find that out, we’ll see dominance levels at the winners metagame (top 8/top 16) that very clearly indicates a lack of diversity in the metagame, and the deck will eat a ban.

My fear is that this takes a while to come about, and that we have to suffer until next January with the eldrazi deck intact.

Here’s the problem. Your argument still doesn’t say anything to respond to the actual point. My comment is build. new. decks. Not look for magic one shot answers. MWP puts up solid results in testing against the field. We are well aware of Abzan Company’s results. MWP turn 2 Sunscours off of a Squadron Hawk. And cantrips. Is it eldrazi? No. Can it stop the deck? Yes. Does it have equivalent power? Yes. Has anyone thought to try it in a shell that can support it before now? No. Why? Because there hasn’t been a need. So my point stands. The card pool is deep. There is unexplored deck design space, and it will take actual willigness to build new decks rather than look for easy answers to find the solutions. Artifact prison is a shell that also exists in Modern that hasn’t been played before. The eldrazi may very well be better than what the current decks are configured to beat. Doesn’t mean those decks cannot change, and does not mean those answers are not already there. The problem with every analysis that cries about the dominance of eldrazi is that those players utterly lack the capability to start over from ground zero.

Pretty much this. Only Sheridan writes with any humility in his statements. Guess what, everyone writing here and reading here are just FNM scrubs. We could all stand to write with more decency and less “know it all”-ness.

1. Overstep the confidence level warranted by any unproven ideas. Things like “might”, “may”, “we’ll need to try these things and see how things pan out”, go a long way towards demonstrating a more fair-minded and open attitude towards things, however they shake out.
2. Come across as condescending.

Lol Roland you came through big time. As someone with Merfolk built thanks so much for your post and the follow-up decklist and match breakdown. Anonymous internet commentator is extremely rude and disrespectful, and obviously unwilling to accept a fair counterpoint when one is made.

Anon: “Yeah, well what deck is doing well?”
Roland: “This one. Here’s a decklist and match breakdown.”
Anon: “Yeah well where’s the video proof?! Pics or it didn’t happen!”
Roland could now provide videos and Anon would just bitch about sample size and reps, demanding 20 more videos and statistical analysis demonstrating the winnable matchup…

That said, I do think the deck is busted and will *likely* need a ban after the next couple of months play out, but it’s encouraging to know Merfolk stands a chance. Thanks for your posts!

Yes, it is. Control means its game plan is to answer opposing threats. Looking at Ben Stark’s list, for example, 27 of the 37 cards are control cards (removal, discard, tappers, edicts). This isn’t counting Abbot of Keral Keep, because while he can and most likely will find removal with his effect, he beats down reasonably well. Even Dark Confidant, 10 of the remaining “non-control” slots, is not aggressive (2/1 for 2 is not an aggressive beater) but card advantage. I’m also counting bolts and helixes as control rather than aggro cards, because in this shell you are most likely using them as spot removal, at least in the first part of the game, rather than aiming them at your opponent’s face.

My guess would be that it does in fact lose to Eldrazi, because I think just about everything loses to Eldrazi (80% win rate will do that), but as “control” is used to describe a style of deck, you are mistaken.

It is important to note that Wizards R&D have stated pretty specifically that they do not have the time/means to test for Modern. The Future Future League would not have been tasked with catching the error.

This is made more obvious by the Eldrazi in that the original “cheap” Eldrazi in RotE did not have Devoid, and so Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple both mentioning “colorless Eldrazi” specifically was an important distinction. Devoid, and having a more appropriate curve for the Eldrazi in BFZ block (and using the colorless mana symbol to allow for more power at a lower CMC) is fantastic for Standard and Limited, where a lack of mana dorks and Lotus Cobra makes top-end spells more difficult to cast. In Modern, however, we’ve seen it ruin the distinction that Eye and Temple’s reliance on the word “colorless” created back in RotE.

I feel like this sort of thing happens occasionally with older cards such as Painter’s Servant (2008) interacting so well with Grindstone (1997), but far less frequently in Modern.

As to the matter at hand: Trevor, you’re just absolutely wrong here. There is a problem. The lands in question are perfectly balanced when everything with an Eldrazi creature type costs 7 or more mana. They’re completely broken when those same creatures cost 2-5 CMC. Something WILL be banned in April. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to figure out how to keep Modern fun and interesting in the interim.