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Welcome to 2017! Hopefully you've recovered enough to actually face the new year, because we have a new set and a banlist announcement on the way. It's time once again for wild speculation and unrealistic expectations to flood the internet. Brace yourselves. We at Modern Nexus will do what we can to temper this and provide more grounded opinions and analysis.
I am not willing to speculate on what changes will be made on the 16th. I still think that Wizards is too unpredictable and unknowable for that to be worthwhile. However, I have been contemplating the banlist. Specifically I have been trying to parse why certain cards have remained banned while other, arguably more powerful, versions remain legal. I do understand why they're not banned. A card needs to be proven problematic before Wizards will take action, and that hasn't happened yet. That's not the problem I'm having. The problem is that there are some legal cards that are better than banned cards. Specifically, I question why Ancient Stirrings is still legal while Preordain is banned. If the former is fine, the latter should be as well.
You could argue that this logic applies to Ponder as well. I don't think it does, but you could argue it. Ponder is much more powerful than Preordain and I will be discussing why in a little bit. Given Wizards's design philosophy and fear of Storm, I don't think we can ever expect to both removed. I also don't think that we actually want both in Modern. UR Delver is a very scary deck when it has the opportunity, and while Treasure Cruise is gone, a critical mass of cantrips do a similar job. Let's focus on the safer option for now. For more on why Preordain is the acceptable choice, go read Jordan's article from Friday. His reasoning is in line with mine and he makes a good argument that I will be expanding on in this article.
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Examining Preordain
When Serum Visions was first released, everyone was a bit mystified. You drew a random card and then scryed. It looked weird and seemed counterintuitive. Why are we drawing first? It makes far more sense to draw a card we'd already scryed for. The thing was that Scry 2 (and in Fifth Dawn it was all Scry 2) always went below all the other card text. I recall at the time Mark Rosewater said that it was intended to be a new form of cantrip, but I can't 
find the article to confirm it. It saw a little bit of play at the time, but was largely ignored except by Storm decks that needed additional cantrips. This was before Legacy really took off and we clued into the real power of cantrips outside of combo decks.
Fast-forward a few years and Wizards eventually came around to the players' way of thinking. For M11 they "fixed" the templating and created Preordain. And it was much more powerful. It turned out that looking for a card to draw was really, really good. Especially when you do it in Caw Blade. However, the card was absolutely ubiquitous during its Standard run and saw considerable play in Extended as well. Blue decks everywhere played this card and prospered from the increased consistency and ability to dig for spells. To this day it's a mainstay in both Vintage and Legacy.
Recent History
Despite this pedigree, Preordain hasn't had much of an impact for many years. It was banned immediately following Modern's debut at Pro Tour Philadelphia along with Ponder. The problem was that alongside fast mana, combo decks were too fast and consistent in early Modern. Without Force of Will and Counterspell, combo was too consistent to be acceptable. The fast mana was clearly bad but the cantrips were equally guilty. The mana and time 
advantages were too much on combo's side to allow them access to powerful cantrips. Splinter Twin was very good for a very long time; can you imagine how much better it would have been with additional consistency? With most of the really powerful combos gone, Jordan and I think that Preordain might be acceptable again.
Meanwhile, Preordain doesn't see much play in Legacy in fair decks. Not because it's bad per se, but because Ponder and Brainstorm are that much better. It's only played in decks that want three different cantrips like Storm or Sneak and Show. This is the main reason that Ponder is not a serious unban option.
Examining Ancient Stirrings
Ancient Stirrings is a card that I suspect Wizards regrets with hindsight. When it was printed it was unremarkable and for most of its Modern life it was indisputably acceptable, but recent printings have brought that into question. When it was printed it was very limited target-wise. Now it's the best card in a number of decks.
Stirrings was intended to help find and cast the Eldrazi titans from Rise of the Eldrazi. Very few non-artifact colorless spells existed, just a small number of inferior Eldrazi and All Is Dust. Even in Legacy it could only find lands, artifacts, and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (because why play Kozilek or Ulamog?). Thus it never saw any play. There were better ways to find Emrakul like Polymorph, actual land search existed, and artifact decks never wanted to waste time playing green spells. They were either Affinity, combo decks, or Stax. It just wasn't good enough and would have been forgotten had Wizards not gotten inexplicably bitten by the colorless bug.
Since 2010, Wizards has continuously printed more and more aggressively costed colorless spells, and as a result Stirrings has gotten increasingly powerful. It started with Karn Liberated in New Phyrexia and culminated in Battle for Zendikar block. It can now find any card type thanks to devoid. Stirrings first started seeing play in Tron, where it was still fairly weak since at the time the only real bombs were Wurmcoil Engine and Karn. However, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and World Breaker have been added into the mix, as well as the new decks Lantern Control and Bant Eldrazi. Suddenly Stirrings is seeing widespread play.
Why Do I Care?
At this point the card is ridiculous. I'm only slightly exaggerating when I claim that it says, "G: Look at the top five cards of your library. Reveal one and put it into your hand." The closest comparison is Impulse, which cost a mana more and looked at a card less. No, instant speed doesn't really make up the difference. And Wizards considers Impulse powerful enough that they nerfed it into Anticipate.
This gives colorless decks an extraordinary advantage over colored decks. It is no accident that the Salt Lake City RPTQ sent 16 copies of Ancient Stirrings to the Pro Tour. Cantrips are powerful because they reduce variance. Every card you draw makes it more likely that you will see another given card in your deck. The more cards you draw the more chances you have to draw what you need. Cantrips like Ponder let you look at additional cards and pick what you want to draw, which is better than just drawing them in many cases. This reduces the randomness of your draw phase and therefore the variance of the game.
Serum Visions lets you draw a random card and look at two new cards. You cannot draw a card that you saw before it was in your hand. Now, compare Ancient Stirrings to the banned Ponder. Stirrings lets you choose the best card out of five. Ponder lets you arrange the top three cards of you deck and draw one, or shuffle away three bad ones and draw a random card, for up to four "looks." Stirrings may not set up multiple draws, but it gets you further into your deck than Ponder, which is what you often actually care about. You have to find the cards that you need right now. With Stirrings you see five cards and then your next draw is six cards deep. Smoothing out additional draws with Ponder is more like gravy.
Compare that to Preordain, which lets you look at two cards and draw one of them, or a random card, for three looks at most. Stirrings provides far more opportunities to find what you need. I ask again, why is Stirrings acceptable when Preordain is not?
Why It Matters
The problem I have is that there are a narrow band of decks that get an extremely powerful consistency tool while the rest have to settle for Serum Visions. This is giving them an unfair advantage in terms of reducing their variance relative to the rest of the format and as a result an edge over their competition. As Jordan noted, the relative consistency of most decks in Modern comes via redundancy—that is, playing many cards that do a similar thing. Think Inquisition of Kozilek plus Thoughtseize. I've also heard this referred to as "breaking the rule of four," and it's the standard method available in Modern. Certain decks are able to reduce their variance with cantrips, most notably Death's Shadow and Ad Nauseam, or through "drawing" lots of extra cards with the dredge mechanic.
I'm not saying that consistency tools are inherently bad. Legacy is built around consistency tools and works pretty well for the most part. When everyone has access to these tools then things are relatively balanced. Vintage decks are inherently broken beyond belief, but so is every deck they play against so it isn't that noticeable. The same is true in Legacy. Brainstorm and Ponder are so ubiquitous that the actual advantage they give to deck is muted by symmetry. As long as that is the case, then having powerful cantrips is not a problem. It's when only some decks can play that game that things get ugly.
Which is why it's a problem that Ancient Stirrings is a card. There is no comparable tool for other decks to match the effect. Therefore the effect of such a tool is more pronounced, and the decks with that effect have an inherent advantage over their opponents. This can shift the reality of matchups away from how they appear in theory. Tron and Eldrazi took a banning this year and have hate pointed at them—yet they still put up great numbers, in no small part by being more consistent than everyone else. At some point this needs to be addressed. Either the colorless decks need to play with the same variance as the rest of us, or the rest of the format should be raised up to meet them. This status quo cannot last.
The Long-Term Effect
Over the long term, decks that put up consistent results are the ones that linger in a format. You see individual decks spike tournaments but if they require immense amounts of skill to play or don't respond well to targeting they fade away. This is why Jund consistently sits in Tier 1 but Ad Nauseam and Grixis rise and fall with the season. When a deck possesses both the redundancy to stand up to targeting and has the tools to smooth out its variance, we have something to worry about. Bant Eldrazi's stock has steadily risen thanks to its powerful clock and Ancient Stirrings finding what it needs when it needs it. This does have a chilling effect and it isn't great for deck diversity.
Back when Eye of Ugin was banned, I said that there was finally a reason to play Mono-U Tron instead of GR Tron. This turned out to be wrong because GR hits Tron so much more consistently than Mono-U. The difference is that Ancient Stirrings and Sylvan Scrying are much better than Serum Visions. As things stand, if you want to play a (mostly) fair creature deck it is really hard to argue against choosing Bant Eldrazi, because it is so powerful and can be consistently powerful thanks to Stirrings. I cannot foresee this working out well over the long term, nor do I think it healthy for a prison deck like Lantern to have such a robust digging tool at its disposal.
So my stance is that, for the long-term health of Modern, Stirrings needs to go. Unbanning Preordain would help correct the imbalance, but I'm unconvinced that it would do enough when Stirrings is so much more powerful.
couldn’t disagree more. none of the ancient stirrings decks are oppressive and each one has answer that are widely played through out the format. while i am not against unbanning one of these cards (preordain being the most likely), you fail to mention in your article why the cards were banned in the first place. they were banned not because they made control too consistent, but because they made storm too oppressive. if both of these cards are unbanned the same thing will happen again. plenty of card draw exists in modern and it’s not what is holding back control. a lack of quality low cost answers is draw-go control’s biggest issue. wizards seems to want to remedy this with the incoming fatal push (http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/fatal-push/). all that needs to be done now is for a mana leak upgrade and draw-go control can be a thing.
I just have to say… fatal push isn’t that important for draw go. They can safely use path, bolt, and heavier handed cards
It’s more for decks that require lean and rapid interaction. And to enable other color combinations.
For instance I have a very competitive sultai midrange deck. It’s biggest flaw was all it’s removal is 2 mana, creating really awkward spots against decks like delver and burn. Or infect.
Sultai now seems more of a valid choice. UB control. Monoblack, straight bg midrange.
But as far as esper goes it doesn’t matter allll that much really since all you’re doing is removal, your rent trying to drop threats between them
artfranc007,
First of all, this article only discusses unbanning preordain. It is clearly explained that Ponder is very good and should really stay on the banned list. Second, storm is a garbage deck right now, and the idea that a single unbanning (as opposed to two like you falsely described) will vault a deck from rogue deck to dominant force has never happened. Third, WOTC doesn’t test cards for modern. They may go “oh this would be good in modern too I bet,” but there isn’t any focus on it except for the overlap of standard testing where the power level is generally lower.
If true combo decks are improved upon a little bit, to where they goldfish a half turn faster than the aggro decks, control and midrange actually benefit because combo decks are more vulnerable to disruption in the form of discard and counters.
No offense, but this is basically just an opinion piece. Yes, Stirrings is really good, and yes, other decks should have access to better consistency tools (I’m 100% on board with unbanning Preordain, it was my vote for your testing over JTMS), but the fact is that Stirrings does not actually meet any of the criteria that Wizards has used in the past to ban cards. It might need to go some day, but based on that logic, we could ban half the good cards in the format because they have the potential to eventually be too strong. The fact that it “worries” you and that you don’t like its effect on the format are irrelevant when it comes to what might actually happen. I wish Stony Silence would get banned because it completely invalidates my deck, but that doesn’t mean it will or even should happen.
The point I’m trying to make is, I don’t understand how you can lead your article with: “I do understand why they’re not banned. A card needs to be proven problematic before Wizards will take action, and that hasn’t happened yet”, and then conclude it by suggesting we ban a card that hasn’t crossed any of the historical thresholds for cards that get banned in Modern.
That’s not accurate to what he is saying. He is saying ancient stirrings is even better than ponder in the decks it’s good with. Because of this in a consistency sort of way either preordained (which is weaker than stirrings or ponder) should be unbanned or stirrings should be banned.
Either raise the ability of other decks to compete on a consistency level or take away the dramatic gap by removing the one that’s making a pedestal. But leaning towards preordain being unbanned instead.
The cards would then police each other.
As they do in legacy.
Agree. David, for all the quoting of my article, why didn’t you mention the 5 criteria Wizards has given us for banning cards from Modern? Stirrings fits into zero of them.
My focus was on the apparent inconsistency in policy and the power differential between the banned Preordain and Ponder and the legal Ancient Stirrings. I only mentioned that Stirrings could be banned as a long term consequence, not something that will happen anytime soon. As I note at the top, there is no proven harm and that is the key criteria for a ban. I simply think that as time goes on this disparity will become more apparent and harmful.
Actually, thinking about it, there is a way that we could see a ban on Stirrings. Second Sunrise was played in a deck that was very boring to play against and watch on camera. Lantern Control is similar to Eggs in that regard. Wizards may decide that is unacceptable and weaken the deck. I cannot see a mill rock taking a hit nor Lantern itself, and banning Ensnaring Bridge would kill the deck, leaving Stirrings. It seems unlikely since Lantern doesn’t show up in GP coverage that often, but it isn’t impossible.
Sunrise was banned because it went to time too long. This is a purely logistical reason. As of yet, Wizards has not banned a card from Modern because it’s “unfun” or “boring.” The company seems to realize that these are highly subjective terms that are difficult to apply logically to such a decision.
Stirrings has a better effect than Visions or Preordain in the decks it’s played in, but its deckbuilding requirements (run a lot of colorless cards) are much more strict than a blue cantrip’s (splash blue). That’s why we’re not seeing an oppressive number of Stirrings decks and why Visions is alwatys played much more in the format than Stirrings. Even right now, with blue decks posting some of the worst numbers in their Modern history, Visions has a full 6% on Stirrings (mtggoldfish – Modern staples).
Stirrings still violates 0 out of their 5 listed criteria for banning cards, so I honestly don’t think you (or anyone) can make a convincing case for banning it.
David you have all my support here.
Sorry but i dont think Stirrings dont fit in the 5 criteria Wizards has given us for banning cards from Modern.
Put preordain in homogenizing deck construction via consistency, and not stirrings because only apply to noncolored permanent is not fair. Eye of ugin its banned for consistency and have deckbuilding requirements. noncolored power has chane too much since eldrazi winter, and each noncolored card make stirring more strong, its time to cut his consistency, modern can be better IMO.
Sorry for my english, and ty David and Jordan for your articles 🙂
I think the primary reason for the Eye ban was actually metagame share, not consistency—when the card was legal, it created the only Tier 0 deck in Modern’s history.
I like the foresight here. Eldrazi and tron both are not banworthy at the moment but eldrazi is continuing to creep forward. Relentlessly.
And tron is incredibly frustrating because they hit turn 3 tron almost every single game. Te variance is close to zero
Exactly. The lack of variance in colorless decks is my concern and Stirrings is the keystone for all of them.
This logic seems kind of weak. There is no requirement for all decks and colours to have the same effects – stirrings is a payoff for playing colourless spells just like cranial plating is a payoff in affinity or valakut in scapeshift or lord of atlantis in merfolk. Unless we demonstrate that those actual colourless decks themselves are oppressively dominant there is really nothing to see here.
Its also kind of disingenious to not draw out the fact the blue cards hit anything and thus impose pretty much no deckbuilding constraint whatsoever. You cant just put stirrings in any green deck but you can pretty legitimately put preordain in any blue deck.
Which is why I note that Stirrings is limited to a few decks. It began seeing play in only one and now is a key card in three. The way Wizards has printed colorless cards and their tendency to try to revisit and “fix” mistakes suggests that more colorless spells will be printed in the future, which may allow more decks to use Stirrings. There is no evidence that a ban is needed now. But if the trend of Eldrazi gaining ground continues this is where I start to look for an explanation and solution.
It’s actually a total of 4 archetypes that use ancient stirrings.
tron, eldrazi, lantern and “amulet”
newest amulet deck looks like this:
http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=21374&iddeck=163799
IMO, Stirrings make noncolored cards too dangerous, and dont understand preordain ban vs stirrings legality. OK, need a specific deck construction but now colorless cards are enough powerfull to take the format (Eldrazi winter) and we have a lot cards that require a specific deckbuildng and are in ban list.
I dont see why let stirrings stay in the format and not unban preordain.