Saying that xyz tech might not be good is fine. I’m just sick and tired of people whining “stop talking about Eldrazi/Twin ban/etc”. If the article is about something that doesn’t interest you, don’t read it. Debate about the merits of the actual proposition is fine, so long as it’s respectful.

The numbers indicate that Eldrazi’s continued presence in Modern is actually keeping players from using those “good cards.”

Lol

Lets not forget how this format felt pre-Oath, post-Twin. Everyone was playing one drop zoo, merfolk, affinity, and infect. Boy oh boy, i cant wait to get back to that aggro fest, after the current aggro fest is banned…

Criticism is good of it’s not offensive. For example regarding this article, I believe that pointing out that maybe the MU evaluation is too much optimistic is totally acceptable. I don’t think that beacuse something is free it should not be criticized.

Maybe I should have specified. Star doesn’t do anything on its own. An all-air cantrip that forces you to have a second mana available to use it, with no card selection. So on paper, it’s a horrible card for GRx Moon, which has no color issues and is generally very tight on both mana and decklist slots. But in this build, it’s a necessary evil to support Crack the Earth.

Honestly, there isn’t much else in Modern to talk about; it’s ALL going to involve Eldrazi because Eldrazi is defining the format. It definitely doesn’t need to be about beating Eldrazi, banning Eldrazi, or the metagame in terms of its Eldrazi population, but it’s going to talk about Eldrazi in some way. To do anything else, although maybe interesting to some readers, is disingenuous about the state of the format.

10*, dumb phone.

I have actually been working on this deck for over a year. You can follow its progression and different builds by clicking on the links in the article.

Glad to hear it 🙂 And you’re not mistaken, see the Jund plan above. Desperate always comes out before Simian since it’s basically a strictly worse version.

Tier 8? This will wreck legacy and vintage in no time, because first turn or second turn blood moon is just a great way of playing magic,

I have to say, your transformational sideboards in delver (boarding into huntmaster) and now this deck have helped me brew a lot better. I have a playset of tarmo in my prowess brew because it is so good to have extra hard to deal with threats against those grindy midrange matchups.

When your deck is synergistic and trying to pull something off, Jund and UWx can really make it hard for your individual pieces to do anything. Having those big, good-on-their-own threats is huge when you inevitably get to the later part of the game when you are top decking and have plenty of lands in play. Apart from all the cantrips and rituals, this is also another reason why high cmc finishers can actually work in decks with low land counts: the game will go long enough for you to get that many lands in play in the matchups you bring it in for (barring the burn example here for the reasons you outlined).

Am I mistaken, or do you usually cut some rituals in these grinder matchups? I usually shave acceleration and combo pieces in these kinds of marchups

Thanks for your response.

I am thinking that what people meant is less that the metagame was unhealthy, and more that a deck is doing some crazier things. I mean, for Jund, a deck that some people board blood moon in for, to be using it against a deck because they are willing to take the mana hit if it means they can stop something they are having a hard time stopping with their usual bag of versatile tricks, then something out there in the meta game is doing something crazy.

But you are right, I don’t think blood moon is the best example of a canary card. There are way better examples and many decks just run it because of how good it is against the files in general

I like SBD because it beats up on fair decks that can stabilize past us. Jeskai flavors, Hatebears/D&T, and CoCo all have a really hard time removing it, and it closes games out in the air, where they can rarely block. It comes in against Burn because it’s better than the other options we have for that matchup. The reason we’re so under-“carded” for Burn is that we crush them anyway, so it’s not a problem IMO.

As for Living End, seeing a deck “around” doesn’t really cut it for me. Sheridan’s most recent metagame update has that deck at 1.2%. I think even if the matchup is horrible, it’s not even worth testing at that representation level.

Exactly. The Eldrazi decks are so fast we need Simian Spirit Guide and Crack the Earth to interact with them before they can generate a huge board.