Happy to be back and I’ll keep the data-driven articles coming!

I think people are seriously overestimating ramp’s ability to beat even a depowered Infect, DSZ, and Burn (the latter of which was unaffected by bans). Those aggressive decks should be more than enough to regulate ramp.

Even if they weren’t, the solution is not bans. The solution is the same today as it was 2 years ago and as it will be in 2 more years: print some powerful answers that decks can use to internally regulate the format. Ban wack-a-mole doesn’t work and just undermines format confidence and longevity.

Missed all you Moderners too!

For one, the lack of answers just caused a bunch of Standard bannings, so maybe this is slated to change. More importantly, they just printed Push! That’s a GREAT answer and is exactly what Modern needed. We really just need 1-2 more cards like that and we’ll be in great shape. Push alone keeps me hopeful for Modern’s future: it’s no coincidence I’m writing after Push’s release.

I think it is fair to say WOTC doesn’t want to print answers. The current trend in standard formats is based around creatures and planeswalkers, artifacts where the block is designed around them, that give the image of big cool things doing cool stuff. The WOTC team, and I’m sure there is a section of the playerbase that agrees, doesn’t want to print some seemingly badass planeswalker that sees no play because of a card like vindicate.

And until WOTC decides, if they ever do, to print cards that will enter modern but not standard as is already the case with legacy, I don’t see it changing. The economics of the game are currently such that a modern event deck would be very difficult to do, but that’s the only way I could see it happening.

I assumed that is what you meant, Sheridan. My conclusion was based on extrapolating out from the numbers, yours was looking at the numbers by themselves.

Thanks! Great to be back.

I think there’s some way to merge the Push Index, the Bolt Index, and an as-of-yet unwritten Path Index into one common metric. You’d score it similarly to how this article score the Push Index, but you’d probably have three different measures being scored simultaneously to decide which spells were better relative to others. Metagame weightings would certainly be at play there. Interesting project for another time!

I will definitely write an article on that issue at some point. It will also likely be part of the Fixing Modern series I did in 2016. This was a danger (that I acknowledged in the article) of tackling the ban issue at the end of an article actually about Fatal Push, but it was an acceptable danger given the immediacy of the issue.

Phyrexian Mana is itself broken, but formats like Legacy are able to incorporate those broken cards into a fairer and more self-regulating metagame. Modern also has its fair share of broken cards that are otherwise okay. The common thread here is internal answers (Legacy has FoW, Wasteland, and others), and it’s something I’ll continue to argue that Modern needs. Incidentally, this was also a major problem with Standard; threats are overpacing answers and the bans, particularly Copter, are a result of that trend.

As for the rules, I don’t want hard cutoffs that prohibit flexibility. It would be bad if Wizards said “T4 violators are decks that win on T1-T3 in 19%+ of games.” I just want them to more clearly communicate with a common language and common definitions. This would also include more check-ins about the state of the format and its direction. Last year’s April article was an awesome addition to the format literature, but it’s been 9+ months since we had a similar update. That’s an unacceptable timeframe.

As a novice when it comes to statistics, is there a mathematical way to evaluate the mardu three in comparison with one another in ways that account for all of the strengths and weaknesses of push, path, and bolt? Bolt hits the fewest creatures but can go to the face cf push that hits creatures in the middle cf paths exile and unconditional removal in the context of probably ramping the opponent? Perhaps a future piece from you?

“As a whole, this is a clear issue of addressing the symptom of a disease, not its cause. The cause is a lack of generic answers and policing cards/strategies in Modern. The symptom is fast, top-tier linear decks which fair decks can’t restrain. As such, the Probe ban will go down as yet another victim of Wizards’ inability to print viable Modern answers and interaction.”

First, this isn’t a clear issue. You need an entire article backing up such an assertion and instead you gave us 3 sentences with no substantiation whatsoever. I don’t get paid for this though so you don’t get an entire article defending my side 🙂

In my view, it’s crazy to think that the problem is Wizard’s inability to print cards that can police mechanics that are broken in the first place. I get that it’s subjective, but numerous pros (including professional game designers like Patrick Chapin) are on the record saying Phyrexian mana is broken. I don’t see why Wizards should try to print work around cards for a mechanic that shouldn’t exist in the first place when they could just ban it from the format. What am I missing here? Isn’t removal power creep a dangerous bandaid?

Side note, your insistence that Wizard state “rules” for the modern format and only ban cards to stop decks that break those stated rules is essentially promoting over-legislation. If you don’t trust Wizards to be good stewards of the game they create and curate then don’t play the game. I realize that their decisions have financial impacts on players but if we can’t give them the authority to edit the game as they see fit then they probably don’t deserve our money in the first place.

Glad you’re back!

Hopefully many more will follow, even if not necessarily weekly or regularly!

I’m much more comfortable with an SFM unban if it allows all of those aggro decks to just exist free of bans. It’s the kind of strong (maybe too strong?) answer that many decks can play and that roundly stops fast decks. Modern needs answers like that, not just threat after threat after proactive threat that reactive decks can’t keep pace with. We’ll see what Wizards thinks, but I really believe the power level of the format is more than high enough to handle a turn 3-4 BSkull.

I also happen to agree Preordain would be nice to have back; Blue-based combo decks are pretty non-existent, and I don’t see them taking over the format by one card’s removal from the ban-list. As you say, it could really help the limping-along blue-based control/midrange decks to improve their consistency.

As for SFM, while I also thought David’s raw data showed an unban as not-necessarily format-warping, I also happen to agree with him on the conclusion he drew that it’d be too dangerous to unban. The reason for that is the suggestion is that turn-3/4 batterskull just hates out a lot of the non-infect aggro decks, or forces them to play lots of hate cards for skull. Coupled with that, he was probably playing with a less-than-optimal build (ie. he just put SFM + batterskull into a pre-existing deck), as I suspect over a few months dedicated people would likely find a better, more broken deck configuration to abuse the SFM/Batterskull combo. SFM unban also prevents Jace TMS from ever being unbanned (I’ve played against both of them in the same Modern deck just to test it out, and it’s scary good), which may be a safer unban than SFM, imo.

Personally, I’d rather see a pseudo reprint of SFM, one that can only pull out equipment of CMC 3 or less, and maybe make the tap ability sorcery speed. I think that’d still be playable while not risking warping the format around t 3/4 uncounterable batterskulls.

Anyway, thanks again!

A Prohibit Revolt would have been a great addition from AER. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Thinking about midrange diversity, I expect it to open up a range of black-based options (straight BG and Esper, notably), reduce Jund’s share a bit, and increase Abzan’s plus Grixis’. This will have a net impact of increasing midrange’s share in the format, even if most will be black-based. Thing is, that’s already true and this just gives the black-based decks more of a shot. Bant Eldrazi will also stick around, although it will be worse than some of the black decks in certain metagames.

That needed more context. I actually draw a different conclusion from David’s tests. I would have stopped at this paragraph in his article:
“So what does all this mean? If my results accurately model real Modern, then it is fair to say that Stoneforge Mystic would not have an absolutely warping effect on the metagame. It is a powerful card but not truly degenerate, and it ultimately advantages fair midrange decks against aggressive decks.”

I think the numbers show the deck isn’t as nuts as people thought and is probably a reasonable risk to take in Modern.

Just me responsible for this one, although Jordan had a similar section in breaking down the creatures by cost. I’m hoping it proves to be useful in later metagames as the format evolves this year!

But he closes the article by saying:

“Based on the results of my testing Stoneforge Mystic in Junk Abzan I recommend against unbanning.”