makes sense. I just wanted to dispel any hype-fueled notions people had that cheerios would dominate modern when in reality it still seems unplayable.

That pretty much sums up what I would have said. Bans are a part of a Modern and some cards are more at risk than others. Bans are infrequent but when they do happen they have a huge impact on the financials of cards surrounding the ban as well as the banned card itself. We can look at the most recent ban list which banned Golgari-Grave Troll and caused a spike in the price of Golgari Thug. Trolls weren’t that expensive and the dredge deck exists so the net loss for someone building the deck is pretty low. If Mox Opal gets banned it could drop to $20 or less. That’s a pretty significant amount compared to the $40 or so for a playset of Golgari Grave Trolls.

I have said previous to this that Mox Opal skirts the line of what is acceptable in Modern. It is very expensive to buy and extremely powerful. I believe if I did not bring to light the risk of it getting banned then I would be doing a disservice to people who are expecting to get the best financial advice from my articles.

Retract looks worse here, certainly, but Mox Opal is a problem that displays many symptoms. Much like Gitaxian Probe. Infect or Become Immense aren’t as big of problems when you remove the safety and traction you gain with Gitaxian Probe.

I’m not suggesting that Mox Opal would be banned because of this deck specifically but like Gitaxian Probe (which was recently banned) it is played in many decks that tend to skirt what is acceptable speed for Modern. Banning would only serve to remove the symptom but not solve the problem. Mox Opal is arguably better than Chrome Mox which remains on the ban list and I could see a time where it’s finally time to put the nail into that coffin.

True, but just bear in mind that this is a financial deck tech, as in a way to try to build a modern deck for a player who may have a budget that only allows a few cards to be bought a month. With that said, it makes a lot of sense to note ban-worthy cards, as that risk is part of the investment.

Still, Jim I am loving the series. Thank you.

In the finance community, after asking what the upside is on an investment (the potential gains), the next question we always ask is about the risk. In other words, the downside. What happens if we’re wrong about some of our beliefs? How much farther can it go down from the buy-in price? What is the likelihood of this happening?

Asking these questions means we have to address the question of bans. It doesn’t mean we think the deck WILL get banned, it just means we have to consider the possibility. In the case of something like Jund or Jeskai, these concerns are likely to be of less importance than reprint risk. In the case of a degenerate combo like Cheeri0s, we have to wonder if our investment might be working on borrowed time.

Perhaps Jim would be interested in going over the basics of risk management in a later article. For now, hopefully this explains why he brings up the dreaded b-word in the article.

fair enough, though I disagree that the deck is consistent, my own goldfishing shows the deck dies to itself at least 25% of the time, and one piece of interaction usually spells doom. the recent results seem to support this, scg regionals had no copies in the top 8 out of any of the tournaments. I know that decks that consistently violate the turn four rule are usually ban worthy, though this deck can’t usually do that through interaction and lacks the aforementioned consistency. In the end, I think this deck is way over hyped and highly encourage anyone considering investing in it to reconsider. if you like this type of strategy, try storm, it’s way more consistent and still fast enough to kill aggro decks.

I agree; I was just responding because the author brought up theories of what would be targeted should that be the case. Whenever there’s a deck that can win on T2/T3 with any degree of consistency the immediate reaction from the community is often one of “probably going to be banned soon.”

It does seem like a deck where, should that “missing piece” get printed, something we weren’t expecting that adds some level of redundancy or resilience the deck didn’t have before, it would draw the ire of the Modern police.

I most certainly agree with you. Retract is the big offender here, not Mox Opal.

The deck hasn’t exploded yet in paper to suggest a ban will be coming. Then again, it took a while for dredge to take off beyond mtgo as well.

Retract is the card that really opens things up. While it’s true you can run Hurkyl’s Recall in its place, the difference in mana cost makes it far more likely to fizzle since you can’t just go off on a single Opal. Additionally, Recall is a Spell Snare target which is becoming more common in the format.