As a player currently in a No Banlist Modern league I can say a few things on the matter. One is this: Eldrazi isn’t that good at interacting. This means that the deck, while a powerful deck, has little to no gane against the best combo decks like Blazing Shoal Infect and Hypergenesis. A better affinity also destroys the Eldrazi menace. Secondly, fair magic so far has shown to rule the meta. I’ve yet to lose a match so far on Twin while Miracles, Stoneblade, Elves, and Tezzeret Control all have seen a decent amount of success. The big mana deck in the format is none other than 2011’s PT Philly monster cloudpost. Turns out amulet bloom is a solid little package in the hyper ramp deck and a turn 3 emrakul is nothing short of normal for a deck boasting Through the Breaches and Prime Times. In fact after weeks of testing I almost played a Gruul Post deck featuring Inkmoth Kessig Wolf-Run. Combo still crushes this deck as a turn one Hypergenesis or a turn two Blazing Shoal can punish a deck like Post that does take a turn or two to set up. Finally, the metagame has balanced itself. Some cards have proven themselves way too good (see Mental Misstep) while others seem too slow (yes Jace, I mean you), however; the format as a whole has been quite fun to play and the meta remains quite diverse. Wish me luck as I continue and may we all brave Eldrazi Winter together!

He is still producing weekly content in the form of a podcast with Patrick Chapin, the toplevelpodcast, and it is the single most valuable and insightful piece of MTG content that exists (with full respect to the fine writers on this site) They did a wonderful and complete analysis of why Eldrazi is so busted in the episode “Reality Smasher Solutions”. http://www.toplevelpodcast.com/reality-smasher/
To summarise, Eldrazi gets not only an unfair mana advantage from Sol lands, but a card advantage too. 2 mana costs 2 cards under normal rules. Further, the utility lands mean they don’t truly flood out in most cases. Chapin says something like “Eye is secretly an Ancestral Recall that draws you a black lotus every time”.
This low level analysis of the situation explains why even the wild varieties of the deck now are still just as busted as the more pure ones – the cards don’t actually matter.

My point is, colorless mana used to be a drawback, but it clearly isnt when you introduce Colorless as a color. So, Wizards could have done whatever they wanted with how the old lands operate, but chose to have them fuel these ridiculous creatures and spells. Where is my UUU artifact like Grim Monolith? Or UU land like City of Traitors?

That is the mechanic that broke Modern and will storm into Legacy. You can give any color 2 mana lands and they would also be fantastic, obviously, even the new ‘color’ Colorless. Artifacts have had this advantage for years, but there is plenty of artifact hate. However, even with that hate, Shops is busted in Vintage.

If you look at what the Tinker deck was trying to do rather than the tools it uses then Eldrazi is clearly fits. Tinker wants to play large, impressive spells much faster than they “should” be. To do this it historically used cheat cards and acceleration. Edrazi is playing impressive and large creatures much sooner than it should be, using acceleration provided by lands. As I said this bypasses the traditional Tinker vulnerability to bad draws and counters, which is why it doesn’t look like a Tinker deck “should” look and why it is so powerful.

“Whoever decided that every instance of old lands should produce colorless mana instead of generic mana is a dumb dumb”

Um, they’ve produced colorless mana for years. There’s no such thing as producing “generic mana.” “Generic” only refers to costs, not to mana.

This is already how the rules worked long prior to OGW. Literally nothing changed.

This

I wish I could have explained it as well as you have here, but this is why I have been adamant about the deck being broken. Once you play against and with the deck for a while, these things become obvious. I’m glad Nexus is breaking down eldrazi like this now: research based, rigorous and not forcing me to accept Eldrazi as just another fair deck in the modern format. This kind of article, that really breaks down eldrazi to show where it derives its power, without silly and trite urges to calm down and just get better at magic nonsense.

Also, clearly why the correct ban is eye not temple. Been saying this from the beginning as well, glad you are seeing the same thing.

Lastly, eldrazi is far from broken in legacy. Been playing the deck for 4-5 hours daily for the last few days. It just goes to show how much generic answers can slow down this archetype. Curiously, I did not do any research at all for eldrazi except watching Andrea mengucci video on channel fireball. I tinkered with the deck and came up with a lost that very closely matches 5-0 lists i looked at after the fact.

It just really interests me that deck ideas can converge so much after testing. i thought I found niche cards to answer problem matchups and they were the same as in other lists (Karakas for show and tell, new kozilek for grindy matchups for example). Also, even crazier that this is the first time I’ve actually played legacy, and still got to the same choices (though to be fair I have been watching and reading a lot about legacy recently because I’ve been dying to get into it). Legacy is actually super cheap on mtgo if you are already heavily invested in modern.

As far as I know, Ancestral Recall costs one blue mana.

http://www.blackborder.com/bbcart/images/smallpix/A/14.jpg

The power of the deck comes from that it simply plays on a different axis. From a Legacy perspective, all their lands give you 2, so you have to look at their creatures as just absurdly under-costed. Mimic is a 1 CMC, TKS is a 2 CMC, and Smasher/End Bringer are 3 CMC. Once you take a step back and realize a card like Thought Knot Seer is a 2 CMC creature, you get blown away at how too good it is. Every deck would play TKS for 2, if they could.

Whoever decided that every instance of old lands should produce colorless mana instead of generic mana is a dumb dumb, and that is the real problem. They even changed it all visually online, which looks ridiculous. Not only did Wizards create a 6th color out of their asses, they gave it the best mana available. Its not like blue has access to a UU 2 damage land like Tomb. There used to be Academy, but that was deemed too good. Just mind boggling.

Snapcaster doesn’t interact with Ancestral Recall at all. It has no casting cost, which is different than a 0 casting cost.

It’s true that Ancestral Visios might even be a bit slow, but I think Ancestral Recall would perhaps be too much for modern 😛 I feel it works too well with Snapcaster.

– The comments already look much better! Excited about this change 😀
– “Finding the Tinker Deck” is one of my favorites, and I loved seeing it applied to Modern

Some actual content contributions, since I’ve thought about applying the Flores piece to tempo decks quite a bit:

Sometimes, the Flores archetypes can overlap, especially when it comes to the Enigma. I agree that Cruise Delver was a Necro deck, but it was also Counter-Sliver and Necro. The name for this particular brand of Enigma deck, to use terms from Flores’ era, is “Super-Grow.”

Counter-Sliver decks that move away from creatures (and far away from creature synergies) in favor of a few, stand-alone power threats and more stack interaction are called Grow decks. Super-Grow is a Grow deck that “breaks” because of the introduction of a hyper-efficient card advantage engine. We’ve seen it happen to other Grow decks, and they also historically have a precedent set for bannings. In the past, Super Grow decks in Extended and Vintage have been neutered with the removal/restriction of Gush. For any Vintage players out there, you probably remember what the format looked like when Cruise reigned supreme: UR Delver decks with 3-4 Cruise and 3-4 Gush sat happily at the top of the metagame, riding a Necro-level card advantage engine to Enigma-level status in a Grow-aligned Counter-Sliver shell.

Great article!

Kind of. I think of Enigma as a power level more than an archetype, but the article does imply that your assessment is correct and that if everything is Enigma then there is no Enigma. Regardless, having multiple Enigma level decks would be healthier than just the one, though that’s not optimal for Modern and against what Wizards (and I think most players) want for the format.

Not exactly. The classic Necro deck was black aggro with Necropotence to keep its hand full and the answers flowing (archetypical deck here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/necro-17-02-13-1/). The only deck that really matched this recently was Treasure Cruise Delver. The lack of card advantage and tendency to play early threats and protect them would put Grixis in Counter-Sliver (compare to the Skies deck in the article) though many of them lean heavily towards Weissman. Current Delver lists embody the spirit though not the actuality of Necro due to a lack of card advantage, though Ancestral Visions might change that.

Fair assessment! I suppose that my point was that, out of the cards eligible for the Modern format without bans, Eldrazi is a local maximum and they can either push the power levels around with bans or print new cards. Enigma is only Enigma when it doesn’t have any competition for that Enigma title, right?

I love having the types of discussions that these things bring up because we get to see what people think a healthy format looks like and we can discuss how we might get there. 😀

In fairness MUD was already a deck and the Eldrazi are simply better MUD creatures so it was inevitable that they’d find their way into Legacy, where they will be better contained thanks to Wasteland and Force.

Since Wizards only tests Modern decks they already know about and they design sets years in advance I don’t think they knew about the Eldrazi deck in any form until we did, which means that the Masters decision was likely a case of “Oh, here are some cards that play well with a new set, lets make them more available.” Foolish perhaps, but understandable given their time and resource constraints.

It would consist of Eldrazi, Twin, Pod, Bloom and Delver with Affinity lurking around the edges, and if the no-banlist tournaments I’ve seen are any indication then Pod would be fighting for the top slot with Eldrazi. The amount of Enigma level power would be so great (if it weren’t for the powerful hate Affinity would be Enigma) that you’d play a now-banned deck or lose. It might be *better* than it is right now, but I still wouldn’t call it healthy.

I disagree that Weissman doesn’t exist in Modern, but it has taken a different form than we’re used to. Like I said in the article, Twin was never a *true* Weissman deck, nor is Jund, but they both have the ability to play like one sometimes. The fact that they switch roles depending on the matchup puts them between Counter-Sliver and Weissman. They may not be the best at either role, but their flexibility frequently made up for these deficiencies. Jeskai Control, on the other hand, IS Weissman and would be viable were it not for the colorless menace. Overloads on answers? Check. Few win conditions? Check. Card advantage? For the versions that run Sphinx’s Revelation at least, check. Prior to Eldrazi I was seeing this deck in paper with increasing frequency and it had success, particularly in an Infect, Burn, and Affinity heavy meta where its answers lined up well. It could be viable again once Eldrazi are gone. Where Weissman decks of the past could sit on countermagic and wraths, Jeskai takes some pages from Necro’s book and runs efficient proactive 1 for 1 ones and separate card advantage (cantrip answers and Rev) to keep them flowing. If, as Forsythe has suggested, Ancestral Recall is being considered for unbanning then we may see Jeskai take a more traditional Weissman role.

The GPs will be the true test of whether the deck is too potent for Modern, but even I’m now willing to admit that it doesn’t look good. The occasional Affinity/Abzan Company/Infect/Merfolk deck can crack through and make a showing, but by and large it’s a wave of Eldrazi right now, and the archetypes seem to be innovating solutions to every potential problem we throw at them. I’m going to keep trying my best, but it’s hard to deny that they’re dominating the format (and even starting to carve out a niche for themselves in Legacy as well).