I also think that a lot of people are forgetting that there is now an additional mid-season ban and we will be getting a B&R on March 13th, 5 weeks after the PT. Amonkhet releases on 4/28, so there will be 5 weeks after the PT, then an announcement, then about 6 weeks of the new meta before the new set arrives. SCG Regionals and an Open in Indy are the more relevant Modern events for me, but there are a decent number of major Modern events before the announcement comes. Wizards will be able to see how the bannings have tweaked things as well as the addition of things like the Expertise spells and Fatal Push to the environment.

I think that the new 8 B&R a year will really help keep us from having protracted stale formats and maybe we will see more ban list testing over the course of this next year.

Also, Twin isn’t coming back. Give it up people. There is starting to be some pretty good variety in blue decks and if the format is slowing down a notch w/the changes and new set, we will see more variety yet as slower options become more feasible. Esper Transcendent has been putting up some numbers recently and it definitely seems like that is an archetype that can only go up w/the recent changes.

Remember, the turn four rule is not just about how likely it looks, it’s about pulling it off. In the banning announcement Wizards very explicitly called out Probe’s information-giving ability. And I think the upshot is we will definitely see those decks slow down (yes, including Infect).

Same. Hence this article in support of it. 😉

I think the key difference here is what type of deck you want to reduce the turn 3 kills against.

If you wanted to reduce turn 3 kills against all decks then ban mutagenic growth, but Tron gains too much from this, you need infect and other mutagenic growth decks to be fast enough to keep tron in check. I see nothing wrong with infect having turn 3 kills against a deck like tron when tron plays almost no interaction.

What Wizards is trying to do is reduce the number of turn 3 kills against fair midrange and control decks, for these decks a single path, terminate, or fatal push can kill a creature no matter how many mutagenic growths are poured on it. These decks lose to a turn 3 kill when the mutagenic growth deck can peek at your hand and know if they have enough protection to dodge all the removal spells and go all in for the kill.

This is how I feel, too. Glad Wizards is taking risks and paying close attention to the format.

Wizards has been kind of all over the place with a lot of their huge decisions this past year and it makes me worrisome about whatever they see for the future of Modern. This is compounded by their (intentionally?) vague or thin explanations. Internally, they could see this as “Unbanning Troll was a mistake” and then not unban anything else. I hope that doesn’t happen, but with Wizards’ slash and burn actions with no accompanying unbans (and extremely brief reasoning), it certainly paints that picture. I agree though; if we can interpret this as a green light to aggressively unban things, then that’s awesome. We just didn’t get any of those unbans, so it feels extremely unfulfilling and unsettling.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the ban targets, I’m just really surprised by the lack of unbans and what that means for Modern going forward. If the precedent is now set to reban cards and they’re going to continue to let Uxx decks be terrible*, they owe us at least a release of Twin.

*The good matchups are only marginally in their favor and the bad matchups are unbelievably bad.

Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek have been very safe, though, as has Wild Nacatl. So in terms of unbans, WOTC has a pretty good record of not being proven wrong. Again, Grave Troll is key to the recent rise of dredge, but that deck was irrelevant until Prized Amalgam and Insolent Neonate came along. It was a silly shell that relied on Vengevine and Gravecrawler to try to do anything of substance. Dredge players get their toys, with a little less speed now.

And hey, you are talking to a guy who had just bought into UR Prowess in order to have a fun tier 2 budget deck (because screw Scalding Tarn). I’m aggravated, but I just took a deep breath, remembered how often I have died to infect and other all in decks, and finally bit the proverbial bullet: I bought snapcaster mages and will play grixis delver when I get bored of U Tron

CONTROL FOREVER!

I’m not sure I understand your comment. I could either interpret this as you saying you wish they unbanned more things because they have decided they can ban them again if they’re a problem or you’re saying down the road you don’t want them to do that and that this is bad precedent. On the point of the former, I like waiting on an unban with big shakeups already happening here. If your point is the latter, I don’t see that as anything other but a slippery slope argument.

Cant* unban more things. Typing on phone.

This is the same thing a lot of Tron players felt when the Eye of Ugin was banned. I understand that probe is much more a part of a game plan for the decks you listed than Eye was to Tron, but It shows that WotC does not focus on the collateral damage as much as fixing the problem. They could have banned the Temple which would still have slowed the Eldrazi Decks down but they just went in for the kill with the Eye.

Great Article Ryan!

This simply can’t be the logic that the people making these decisions rely on. It’s certainly a factor as you don’t want to alienate your player base, but you have to ban the right cards. I’m sure there are wonky and fun Golgari Grave-Troll decks, too. When Preordain and Ponder were banned, it definitely hurt Delver strategies, but I accept that they aren’t healthy for the format.

Thoughts?