Magic: The Gathering C/D

So...

Announcement Date: January 9, 2017

Effective Date: January 20, 2017

Magic Online Effective Date: January 11, 2017

Standard:

Emrakul, the Promised End is banned.

Smuggler's Copter is banned.

Reflector Mage is banned.

Modern:

Gitaxian Probe is banned.

Golgari Grave-Troll is banned.

Definitely have mixed feelings about these. Emrakul was a pain to play against, and I'm glad I sold every copy I opened. Still think Marvel would have made more sense to ban instead. I'm bummed about Copter as I've played a bunch of different decks since Kaladesh and all of them had Copter. Of course, that's probably exactly why it got banned. Don't really know why they banned Mage, except there may be some new combo that they are preemptively stopping. Not really sure that banning Gitaxian Probe will make a huge difference. I get Golgari Grave-Troll, Dredge is pretty ridiculous right now.

ok so I have like 6 Copters on MTGO and don't play constructed...should I sell ASAP while they're still legal for a bit or are they worth somehow holding on to? sucks that the one money rare (non-mythic) got nerfed.

They're already pretty much worthless since it goes into effect in 2 days on mtgo, take your ticket each or whatever if you can get it

Probably a lot of ink spilled over this already, all I'll say is that historically standard bannings only happen when there's a significant downturn in tournament attendance at the local level. It's not just about power level of cards, it's about optics and getting people reinterested in a format they didn't want to play

it seems like they've really been clutching at straws regarding Standard FNM attendance. First the change to rotation, then Saturday Showdown, and now this. Hopefully it's working. Standard attendance in Austin has improved over the Origins - Oath period, but it still could be better. I'm seeing Modern pull in more people than Standard at some shops, and now a bunch of Frontier events are popping up.

i still think a good standard season and/or good modern season might just kill all momentum that frontier has, it feels like such a reactionary format

also i suspect if it ever became official they'd start it at origins rather than m15 since having yet another format's accessibility bottlenecked by fetchlands is not ideal

it's true that it may not last or that wizards may support something similar but slightly different. For now though, I'm sleeving up a frontier deck to run on Wednesday night and it has Smuggler's Copter and Reflector Mage!

I like the Probe ban, it's similar to the Mental Misstep ban. It's a card that gets chucked into too many decks, and a small reason why Modern can feel repetitive. It's not busted but I think overall Modern will be more fun without it

I'm pretty shocked at the Standard bans though. Like y'all said, attendance must have been way down - this is practically a brand new Standard format now

Wonder if this means the 3/5 crew 1 dude with occasional lifelink is gonna get played. Seems nearly as good!

it's pretty different, more of a midrange card, but should get played

renegade rallier is interesting in modern zoo with the cheap landfall guys

t1 steppe lynx / t2 fetch, geopede / t3 fetch, rallier is lethal. you even have an extra mana on t3 to path or bolt a blocker

starting to think printing fetches was not exactly a great decision

got a favorable impression of this set from the prerelease, though my pool was absolute garbage and i only won matches because i was playing vs new players. feels almost oldschool to have actual good removal at common at this point.

black and/or red felt like the strongest colors to me, blue is bad but in a more fun way than usual

some idle comments on colors

white - dawnfeather eagle is an unusually good finisher for a common, feels like it got a lot of white's power budget which is awkward since you can't play many
blue - blue only has 1 decent on-curve creature at common (the drake) and a ton of nonsense. you're relying a lot on cheap artifact dudes and will probably have to play off-color automatons in blue decks. good blue decks are going to look like total piles just like the bad ones and it'll take some nuance to figure out which is which.
black - we've had a bunch of crummy -x/-x commons lately but i think cruel finality does enough here to elevate it to a higher pick than things like die young or throttle were
red - red commons are just all really good for the format. shock is better here than 4 mana 4 damage which is better than aether chaser and sweatworks brawler, but all 4 of those look better than any blue common and also probably any white common that isn't the pacifism
green - none of the beaters are efficient enough to be higher picks than the mana guy, and they're interchangeable enough that prey upon probably comes in 2nd as well. peema outrider and thriving rhino outsize AER creatures really hard so green drafters get rewarded nicely in pack 3
artifacts - renegade map is the card that makes revolt a strong mechanic rather than a marginal one, while also working well with improvise. this kind of makes it the equivalent of both prophetic prism and renegade freighter at the same time in this set and i wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a consensus high pick common

so frontier seems to be really picking up in Austin, TX. A bunch of stores are running events, some doing 2 a week. I took down the Wednesday night frontier event at my LGS two weeks in a row with a pretty sweet Jeskai Spirits deck. The crowd that's showing up on Wednesday nights is bigger than they've been getting for FNM, although maybe that will slow down once Aether Revolt is released. Everyone seems very enthusiastic, in part because the general quality of decks and level of play seems to be higher than with standard. Another local store is running a frontier 1K in a couple weeks, should be fun.

My only concern is going to be deciding how I split up my time going forward. I would like to continue with frontier and standard and maybe draft here and there. Also working on building Naya Burn for Modern. Don't know how I'm going to find the time to play all these formats though.

Frontier reminds me of when Modern was first announced and they threw it up on MTGO before any major events and people were playing all sorts of wild & diverse decks, and then once PTs and GPs started up it turned out most of those decks weren't actually good. I think if Frontier ever comes under any scrutiny as a competitive format they'll have to ban Treasure Cruise/Dig Through Time since I'm certain those cards are still overpowered even in a smaller/newer format than Modern. Possibly Collected Company as well.

the format is nowhere near solved and throwing in Aether Revolt will bring some pretty big changes. I can see wizards supporting a similar format with some tweaks as you mentioned. I can say that Torrential Gearhulk into Dig is pretty disgusting. The Ensoul Artifact deck is pretty popular right now and will get more powerful with the new set. That all said, no one seems to have a credible plan against the deck I've been running, but I'm sure that will change eventually.

yeah i'm just saying i find it funny that people are touting the diversity of the format as a draw when it hasn't been stress tested by the best players/deckbuilders yet. i was excited about the Rage Forger deck that was doing decently in MTGO events when Modern first started, and then it turned out the format was more about hardcasting Emrakul on turn 4

in the near term, the format is going to see some consolidation as people figure out what's good and what isn't. In the longer term, it will certainly get more diverse as more cards enter the pool.

Right now I think people are overvaluing the Khans block cards and strategies and not using enough powerful cards from more recent sets. A deck like Abzan just feels painfully slow to me.

http://i.imgur.com/OuhiIVs.jpg

Finally got to live the dream before KLD draft season is over

Hadn't considered before what having all three modules out did but it is pretty lol when you get it going

it's basically just 1 mana for a 2/2 and an energy right?

so how likely is it that Saheeli or Guardian will be banned following the PT? Are we now living in a world in which every new set will bring about an overpowered deck that dominates for a few weeks and then faces a ban? I'm looking forward to wild swings between playing in an un-fun environment and seeing massive destruction of card value. Surely that will bring more people to Standard!

no one knows yet. week 1 events are not indicative of where the format will end up. standard bans are very rare and i don't expect them to happen more often going forward just because they're increasing the cadence of the announcement. historically they've happened about once every 5 years.

that is all true, but I still need to keep the possibility of a banning in the back of my mind as I move forward. The Saheeli combo fits neatly into the U/W decks that I've been playing. Despite Saheeli's elevated cost, I wouldn't normally consider it completely unreasonable to go in that direction. But faced with the prospect of losing $100+ in card value in the near future, it becomes much less attractive.

In his article last week, Sam of R&D said that they are aware of the Saheeli combo and aren't worried because there are a lot of ways in Standard to handle it. Whereas they admit that Copter really didn't have a lot of answers (hence the banning). I'm gonna take him at his word and assume they won't need to ban, but the PT will be a good test. Everyone is aware of the combo, so the top decks should be able to handle it if the tools are there and the combo doesn't overpower everything else

i flicked on the scg today for a couple minutes and one guy had boarded in authority of the consuls as an answer. i guess slightly more resilient than thalia 2 and being a blank otherwise is ok if you just have to stop the combo. 3 saheeli decks in the top 8 but looks like there was tons of them in the field in general and none made top 4.

AER draft leagues are up

here's trophy #1: http://i.imgur.com/CjwJvJ5.png

just got to live the dream with Consolate Dreadnought + Siege Modification, I love this format already

yeah that seems like the invisible stalker/butchers cleaver of this format

with the caveat that it's a lot easier to deal with. seems like the result a lot of times is gonna be block with Servo, blow up the artifact on your turn.

not sure what to think of Dreadnought as a whole. the thing that made those Crew 4-5 vehicles unplayable in KLD was that they ate up a spot in your curve where you really wanted to be playing a Riperian Tiger or some big flying body. Dreadnought can come out Turn 1 and at least help with Improvise spells in the meantime. I've gone from thinking this card was not very playable to thinking it may actually be an early pick.

i don't think it's an early pick, it's pretty niche to turbo-improvise decks

even if it doesn't impact your curve you're still a card down if you can't ever do anything with it.

true

I guess its difficult to know how it'll play since the vehicles in KLD had a pretty linear ratio of mana cost/crew cost/power level

whether or not this is playable is gonna have a lot to do with how much a 1 drop artifact benefits your deck otherwise

Another thing is, it comes online faster than you think. The issue with the big Crew KLD vehicles is that the creatures with high enough power to crew them were often in the same mana cost slot. Dreadnought comes out early and can be crewed by your 4 or 5 drop. The dynamic just seems different when you don't really have to pay mana to drop it.

just found out that Key to the City is way way better with all this Improvise stuff around

It was already a high pick for me

thinking it might be good sideboard tech for my Esper Aggro deck running 4-of Metallic Rebuke, especially if I need to punch through some Ishkanahs

so I'm going to the scg balt team event and need to decide on a modern deck. because it's a team event (and I'm going w/ strong players) I want to be extra-spikey about it.

what do you guys think is a good meta-call right now? could probably acquire anything for the tournament. I have a lot of experience w/ dredge, grixis delver, decent amount w/ infect, affinity. would want to practice a bit w/ anything else.

anyone have any experience w/ lantern?

have no clue what the metagame looks like after the bans + fatal push. would guess that valakut is good rn especially the through the breach builds.

to elaborate on that, it's a fast deck that didn't use probe and blanks fatal push

the Sram Modern deck is pretty hilarious

is it just sram/puresteel paladin and all the 0 cost equips and retract? that seems powerful but fragile

yeah somebody was running it at the event I went to last night, he was getting wrecked by a pox deck

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=14527&d=287116&f=MO

that's pretty much it, yeah

kinda laughing at the idea of a Puresteel getting to 6/27 or whatever on turn 2

seems like the sort of deck that wins one event and promptly dies