Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Oath of the Gatewatch is finally here! With prereleases starting up later today, we've released our ever-popular price guide. Everything listed in them is $1 or more. Nothing unlisted is worth anything (except the Expeditions, obviously). OGW is shaping up to be a much more interesting set than BFZ. I'm excited to see playable colorless and devoid cards. We'll see if wacky brews like Pat Chapin's see any success.
Oath of the Gatewatch Spoiler (Alphabetically sorted)
Oath of the Gatewatch Spoiler (Price sorted)
If you're an Insider, I've got a special little treat. I did a recap of the gainers and losers of BFZ. If you want to see what you should have picked up (and what you would have lost big on), check out our recap article here. Also strictly for Insiders, Ryan Overturf has a great article this morning on the best cards to get from OGW (and what to dump).
[/tippy] 
inspires a similar brand of terror across the table. So does turn three Conduit of Ruin into turn four Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, and all we need to make that dream a reality is a hand full of Sol lands and a single Conduit. I've even pulled it off after casting Dismember and Chalice of the Void.
reality, Tron is a worse Eldrazi deck. When Ghost Quarter hits a Tron land, the deck has to find that specific land all over again before it can make a reasonable amount of mana. Additional Quarters (or Paths) significantly hinder Tron, as the deck plays a single basic Forest. Conversely, we'll happily - err, resignedly search up basic Swamps to replace our destroyed Eldrazi Temples, or just play another legendary Eye of Ugin or Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth after one bites the dust. Unlike Urza's Tower, the rest of our Sol lands don’t suddenly become [tippy title="Wastes" width="330" height="330"]
[/tippy] when we lose one. We don’t need to spend time and mana digging for “other” Sol lands, instead casting our spells off the ones we have.
pretty hard, but at the cost of their cards. By contrast, Affinity repeats the attack, or improves it, every turn after. The deck's speed and power are well-known among Modern players, and impactful hosers like Creeping Corrosion, Hurkyl's Recall, and Stony Silence keep the Robots in check. The only hoser I've found to damage the Eldrazi decks is Blood Moon, which exists in a single color and forces deckbuilders to craft conservative manabases if they want to play it at all. In other words, Eldrazi Stompy is shaping up to be harder to stop than Robots. Perhaps ironically, but not unfittingly, Affinity is our worst matchup.
Gemstone Caverns: Allows us to take the initiative on the draw, 
[/tippy] also requires another card to shine - a card, in fact, per turn.
[/tippy]
[/tippy]
Sower's ability discourages opponents from responding with Remand, and he does ramp us most of the time, Relic or no. Eye and Urborg eventually turn those humble Windswept Heaths into Ulamogs. But the real reason to play Sower is his size - 5/8 doesn't die to anything! 4/5 Goyf and a Lightning Bolt? Nope. Roast into Pyroclasm? Try again. Gurmag Angler plus Kolaghan's Command? LOL!
legal, I don't think this argument holds much ground. 
I've tried for years to squeeze Chalice into my Modern decks, but to no avail. Most recently, I flirted with a 
[/tippy]!). Incidentally, all of them struggle to win through Chalice.
That said, I don't exile every hand containing Serum Powder. My favorite way to analyze a hand with Powder is to picture it without Powder. If the rest is keepable, I settle. There are plenty of superb four-card hands in this deck (i.e. Temple, Eye, Thought-Knot, Urborg), so even hands with multiple copies of Serum Powder can be keepable.
Dismember doesn't charge life with an Urborg out, interacts at instant speed for a single mana of any (or no) color, dodges Chalice of the Void, and kills nearly everything in the format. Paying life ostensibly hurts against aggro decks, but Dismember's potency there more than justifies its inclusion for these matchups. The biggest strike against Dismember in Modern is a given strategy's weakness to a specific kind of aggro deck: the one with Lava Spikes. Fortunately, Chalice of the Void and our fat Eldrazi ground squad make Burn the easiest of our aggro matchups.
![cardart_BFZ_Painful_Truths[1]](https://quietspeculation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/cardart_BFZ_Painful_Truths1-e1452746214511.jpg)
Brian’s list is as stock as they come, but with Jund that’s often more than enough. Jund functions as an exercise in value; most of its cards are included because they either react favorably with the current metagame in an irreplaceable way or are simply just the best option at that spot on the curve. Lightning Bolt, Tarmogoyf, Terminate, Dark Confidant and friends are for the most part ubiquitous, and it's rare to see any deviation from the standard formula. There's just not much to be gained by wildly deviating from the norm. I’m surprised to see Jund continually performing well in Charlotte specifically, though. The old “local metagame” theory of years past is all but disproven at this point, but I know for a fact Charlotte is packed with R/G Tron players as far as the eye can see. Take it from a local: the “local metagame” doesn’t exist (and probably hasn’t for a while). Five years ago, maybe, but we live in the digital age. Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram rule the land, and everyone knows everything (except how to keep selfies and duck-faces to themselves) and prepares accordingly.
Bob’s back from the grave(yard) with his signature Goryo's Vengeance list. You know, the one that he and Zach Jesse (RIP) took Charlotte by Flusterstorm with last June at GP Charlotte. This time, Huang made it all the way to finals, and I’m hoping this strong finish will sponsor a comeback of sorts for the flash-in-the-pan combo deck.
Anyways, here we see some Gideon, Ally of Zendikar goodness alongside Sorin, Solemn Visitor. I took a lot of heat when I cut Sorin, Solemn Visitor from the deck in favor of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar in my B/W Video Series a while back, but here Cho is favoring the 2-1 Gideon split. I’m going to default to my normal stance (pilot knows best) and say that I think he’s on to something. In the abstract, Gideon seems like the individually more powerful card, but you can’t deny the impact Sorin, Solemn Visitor can have when we have literally any board presence.
This deck is Birthing Pod reincarnated, and naturally is just plain sweet. Where the Abzan Company lists look to play sub-par cards like Viscera Seer and hope to get there with Thoughtseize after board, Kiki Chord instead just looks to grind with solid value creatures and gain advantage the fair way (if you consider Restoration Angel blinking Pia and Kiran Nalaar actually fair). The Lightning Helix board plan against Burn and Zoo is solid, but we’re built to beat up on those decks anyway. The Twin matchup seems fine, but it can’t be great. A playset of Path to Exile helps, but with the limited experience I have with this deck I’d hesitate to call it even.
Let's start with the ban side. By all accounts, Amulet Bloom is 
Taking 
cards that make this deck unique." Amulet of Vigor is an irreplaceable and "unique" effect that is a staple of the deck. If Amulet is banned, "Amulet Bloom" loses its core identity much in the same way that a Grapeshot ban would have gutted UR Storm. By contrast, Summer Bloom is a Song-esque ritual with ample, albeit worse, replacements in Explore/Journey of Discovery/extra Azusa, Lost but Seeking/etc. Wizards ended their 2013 banlist update by stating "While there are other options for fast mana, none appear as efficient and reliable on turn three as Seething Song." First, replace "Seething Song" with "Summer Bloom". Next, compare all the Explore effects that stay unbanned with the Pyretic Ritual spells left in the wake of the Song ban. This kind of logic leads us directly to the more conservative Bloom ban and not the Amulet of Vigor cut.
Modern's top-tier. Alternately, depending on how you view the strategy, it has been completely monopolized in URx Twin (Note: this says nothing about Twin being overpowered (it hasn't exceeded 12%-13% since the summer), and everything about how bad other reactive blue strategies are). Meanwhile, we've seen huge metagame shares for aggro decks like Affinity, Burn, Burn Zoo, Gruul Zoo, Naya Company, and the countless Wild Nacatl/Lightning Bolt permutations throughout Modern. These conditions aren't exactly unhealthy, but they also probably aren't as diverse as Wizards wants for the format. Unbanning Sword of the Meek addresses both.
From a historical perspective, every single unban has targeted a low-tier deck. Again, this doesn't mean all subsequent unbans will follow that trend, but it does suggest a pattern we are safer betting on. Valakut's unbanning resurrected the nonexistent Scapeshift combo. Nacatl was aimed at the vanished Zoo species, as Bitterblossom targeted the <.5% Faeries. This was also true of Golgari Grave-Troll, which fit into Dredgevine strategies that had only enjoyed marginal Tier 3 and lower success for years. This conservative unban style does not favor blue-based control cards like Ancestral Vision, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, or Preordain, all of which could have sweeping ramifications. But it does point squarely at Sword.
The Sword of the Meek/Thopter Foundry combo slots into UBx and UWx decks, none of which are tearing through top tables these days. Grixis and Jeskai Twin are certainly prominent, but I've tested the Twin Sword (Sword of the Twin? Thopter Twin?) deck and it's a mess. Grixis and Jeskai Twin gain much more from splashing into discard, removal, manlands, etc. than they gain from jamming eight combo pieces that don't do anything with the rest of the deck. This angles Thopter Sword into Jeskai Control, Esper Teachings, UW Control, and other similarly fringe strategies, not into Tier 1 pillars. We might also see Grixis Control and Midrange strategies adopt the combo, but again, those decks are hardly top-tier. Non-Twin Grixis strategies haven't exceeded 3% of the metagame for months, and I predict the relative benefits of adding the combo to non-Grixis blue decks would more than make up for any possible edge given to Grixis.
As for aggressive strategies, Thopter Sword directly fights against those decks while (more importantly) not pushing them out of the format. My main evidence for this is the improved cardpool since Thopter Foundry 
openings and wins, is built to do purely degenerate things, and isn't integral to the deck's identity. The big-mana, over-the-top Bloom style of play with Primeval Titan, Hornet Queen, Dragonlord Dromoka, and others isn't nearly as problematic as the Hive Mind kills. They are also much easier to race against and interact with. Following from this and in a slight reinterpretation of the Seething Song ban, Wizards might nix this win condition to preserve the deck's core identity while also jailing its most offensive component. This would be a good ban if Wizards has data suggesting Hive Mind disproportionately participates in the turn three kill, which suggests banning the enchantment would prevent Amulet Bloom from violating the turn four rule. You can beat the Titan opening with good removal. Hive Mind is much more resilient.
Alternately, Wizards could assault Amulet Bloom from a much more punitive angle and slash Amulet of Vigor itself from the format. This would remove the deck's most iconic and unique element, although (perhaps counter-intuitively) it might not be as destructive as a Summer Bloom ban. Bloom still allows the Amulet player to drop lots of bouncelands on turn two and then open turn three with a Titan or Hive Mind. Amulet of Vigor is only as good as the lands following it, although its synergy with Primeval Titan enter-the-battlefield triggers is also nasty. Ultimately, I think both the Amulet or the Bloom ban would be about equally destructive to the deck, but I can see Wizards blasting the artifact instead just to make a statement.
From a more concrete metagame standpoint, I think Mystic is way safer than many allege. Modern is a fairly powerful format and an incredibly hostile one to creatures. They don't call this the Lightning Bolt format for nothing. That said, Deathrite Shaman is totally fine in Legacy but was an unqualified disaster in Modern, so being a creature alone is no guarantee of safety. I still think Mystic is a plausible unban, if not a likely one, just based on the current metagam climate in Modern. For one, white is terrible in Modern. We haven't had a primarily white-based Tier 1 deck for all of 2015. Abzan was the closest, but by all accounts the deck has an ebbing and flowing relationship with fellow BGx staple Jund. Mainstay white strategies are few and far between. Mystic is the exact kind of unban Wizards could use to revitalize interest in white, even if it's potentially a risky one.
More importantly, I think Mystic is less problematic to aggressive decks than many believe. She was totally fine in the 
Splinter Twin/Deceiver Exarch
Become Immense
Bloodbraid Elf
![[MTGO] 1 Year, 100 Tix – 365 Days Later](https://www.quietspeculation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/admin-ajax.png)
40 positions were in Standard---28% of the 141 positions. Standard can sometimes yield great results but is unfortunately far less predictable. Magic Origins (ORI) clearly hasn't paid off here but should improve this coming Spring.
We're going to start with the loudest and most obvious evidence in favor of an Amulet Bloom ban: the overwhelming player, author, and pro outcry against Bloom decks. To be clear, I don't think Wizards listens to the masses alone. If they did, Bloom and even Goryo's Vengeance would have been banned in the July announcement. Maybe even the March update, in the case of Amulet after Justin Cohen's explosive finish at Pro Tour Fate Reforged. That said, we know Wizards is aware of banlist buzz, and we've heard ample anecdotal evidence to suggest they at least consider it when making decisions. This means we should account for such qualitative evidence too, even if only as a single datapoint in a larger picture.
deck was unhealthy for the format, largely as a function of its speed. Seth Manfield 
The first two of our three decks came out of Pro Tour Philadelphia: Shoal Infect and UR Storm. Blazing Shoal and Rite of Flame both got 
dearth with significantly more T8 and T16 finishes. I added a pair of columns for the SCG Opens and Invitationals (it's unclear how Wizards weighs them but they surely take note), where Bloom also distinguishes itself as a major player.
the decks' height of success. For Bloom, this meant starting the sample later in the year, after the deck was a known entity and when people were better at beating it and preparing for it. This resulted in a sample of about 30 games each for both Song Storm and Amulet Bloom, comprising roughly 15 matches at the Grand Prix, Pro Tour, and SCG Open/Invitational level. To account for a lower N, I bootstrapped each of the samples in 10,000 resamples, giving us both an average over the resamplings and a margin of error around that average. This lets us estimate pre-turn four win-rates for both Storm and Bloom in the same kinds of games Wizards likely considers in its own decision making. As a few important notes, the samples do not include matches by 
