While Boom//Bust may be an answer, you have to work a little to make it happen, plus keep their board semi clear, AND THEN keep them on a 3-4 turn clock or plan another cascade into Boom//Bust.
Also, there is no guarantee, with both Jund and Naya builds, that you are going to hit Boom//Bust because you have Goyfs, Pridemages, Putrid Leech, all of your burn, et cetra ad nauseam...Basically, you have a marginal probability of cascading into it. You may be able to adjust the curve somehow, but these decks aren't going to drop Goyf for example.
One funny thing I have been seeing in 12-Post mirror Matches is Plow Under. While this is funny for the mirror, I am sure that it is not viable for any other deck.
I am going to play Hive Mind for now because it is funny. I think Restore Balance decks could just pwn 12-Post, the ones with out countermagic...Restore Balance loses to Remand, but I think that is a decent risk to take...
Also I remember all the Affinity lists in Pauper with 4 Raze MD...and everything with 4 Raze in the SB.
I think in MTGO where it's all strategy and no dexterity, it has the potential to be really cool, but could also suck really badly too. The whole bit where your opponent can transform your dudes back will wind up being un-fun, even if strategically interesting. The thing is, nobody likes playing with the weaker version of a card. If you can keep your dudes transformed 75%+ of the time, then I think people will be ok with it. If it's a 50/50 tossup (or worse) I think it will just get frustrating.
Also, IRL, when you start dealing with counters (and as we've seen this set has +1/+1 counters) and auras and equips, and taking the cards in and out of sleeves, it's going to be a nightmare. I hate this more because I think it will drive players away than because I don't want to play with it. I play more on MTGO anyway.
And I'm already thinking that Moonmist + Mirror Entity (or Xenograft or similar effect) will be combolicious in Modern. I'm curious to see how Transform winds up fitting into the layer system exactly.
Hey, man. Good Article. I can see you really worked hard on making it flow better this time. I think it was easier to follow.
I got your PM last night, but I fell asleep. I lost the first round in a draft because my game got bugged (tried relogging like 6 times) and then I was on tilt until I went to sleep. I promise that I wasn't ignoring you.
I am going to play in the Modern PE this evening, it happens at 10PM PST (I live on the West Coast in the US).
Thanks for the comment. To be honest, I knew that this needed to get posted quickly, since it was already outdated by the time it went up, so I didn't do as much editing as I would have liked. Also, there really is only the introduction + two sentences talking about how this was going to go long. I don't feel like that is really a problem.
As for opinions on DFCs, sure you can hate them. In MTGO they are obviously awesome, and I don't deny all the problems that they could definitely cause. As for myself, I think they sound cool, and I'm willing to leave the jury out on their functionality. With that said, I hate hate hate the Kamigawa flips, so hopefully this is a dramatic improvement on that.
I also 100% agree that these are going to be format warping, as I said, but I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say that is a great thing, and that I think this will be one of the best limited formats ever.
First off, if you spent fewer words talking about how long your article was going to be, you might have been able to talk about the things you wanted to talk about. Less reflection, more dissection.
Anyway, wearing my paper player hat that drafts at FNM, I hate DFCs because they're clunky and I think other players will hate them and will reduce draft turnout. It's already difficult getting enough people to draft. Wearing my MTGO hat, there's no clunkiness problems, but the whole casting/not casting spells thing seems bad. I haven't played with it, but it sounds bad.
That said, given how there's going to be one DFC in each pack, learning how to value them and play them is going to be CRAZY. Imagine SOM block, but where you were guaranteed that every pack had 1 infect creature in place of a common card. It's going to happen that people will get a decent rare and a rare DFC and will have to pass one. With 24 DFCs being opened per draft, you figure that someone in each draft will have 6 or 7 of them, and in some cases 10+. It will be tedious as heck for that guy flipping his cards over IRL, but it means that you will have to learn how to play with and against these guys. In some cases you might have to hold back spells to prevent them from flipping or to un-flip them on future turns.
So I think they're going to warp the limited format like nothing we've ever seen before, and I don't particularly think that's a good thing, but time will tell.
Hiya! If I remembered correctly it picked Taste of Blood. I mentally blocked out the missed pick as it was mediocre and focused on pick 2. Past experience put to good use as I was disconnected for almost the whole of second pack before.
For speculation, I will post it on classifieds first and search for bot prices. From the price offered by bots I evaluate if it is worth selling it or selling myself. If the price offered by the bot hits the price I have in mind I will just dump it, say 50% profit. I do not have spare tix to spend on speculation and for my budget I will gladly take the 50% profit margin. Buy and hold within your means would be advisable.
Thanks for the tips char49d. I would not disagree after running a few matches with it, Green is AMAZING.... We didn't even mention Ondu Giant or Kozilek's Predator!
Completely COMPLETELY disagree. Sol Ring is not an auto-include in this deck. This is my baby and we actually cut sol ring FOR crypt. If you really wanted to run ring, you would cut crypt. Sol Ring gives you nothing except an early S&T or an early firespout/Beast Within.
I'm not familiar with oath, but rd 3 game 1 what prevents you from tapping your orchard during the upkeep to get an oath trigger? do you have to have less when the ability goes on the stack?
Just FYI, ROE is kind of a weird format, and domestication is usually not a first pick, it is not mind control, especially due to the "battlecruiser magic" aspect. That pack had Induce Despair and Vendetta, the two best removal spells in the format.
Your second draft, Gigantomancer is a splashable bomb. It is a format in which you want to be playing green anyway, since it is often a race to 8 mana due to the set's design, but that card completely takes over games. Heat Ray is also splashable removal, always better than Bala-Ghed Scorpion, and Dread Drone is often better, although it depends on the deck.
Bala-Ghed Scorpion is awesome if you can pick off an Overgrown Battlement or Enclave Cryptologist, but otherwise it is very mediocre. A 2-3 body is almost completely irrelevant in this format, so if you can't use it as removal, it is bad. A lot of the time it just picks off an eldrazi spawn that may or may not be relevant.
Pelakka Wurm was the best uncommon in the entire set. Green was so busted and deep in the format, it was unbelievable.
I am with Dangerlinto, if your deck isn't running very specific cards, you should auto-include Sol Ring, it makes almost every deck better. Obviously if you are a Null-Rod deck, or have some very specific difficult color requirements it is worse, but that's the exception that makes the rule. Basically if you have more than 1 or 2 spells with 2 colorless or more in the, I can't see not running the ring.
I would think a deck with channel would prefer Sol Ring to Mana Crypt, but that may be a metagame dependent question.
Cascading into bust will absolutely beat 12-post, and a lot of decks, if it resolves. The problem is, that's more of a cross your fingers and hope approach. Even if running 4 Bloodbraid and 4 Boom//Bust, your chances of doing it consistently can't be very good, and a single Remand/Flashfreeze should be enough to beat it.
Thanks to GSZ they are running 8 Titans to your 4 Bloodbraids. They can tutor their Cloudposts and play 8 of them, so hard drawing a few Boom/Bust isn't really that awesome since the effect is symmetrical, but they ramp really well.
I think Boom/Bust Naya (That's the version I've seen, there are probably Jund and other versions) is going to be favored vs 12-post, although how favored I don't know. The problem is, that's a very specific strategy that can't be sideboarded into or played in 99 percent of decks. Boom/Bust aggro has been around since 7 year extended and has always been solid since it gets some good free wins, but it isn't a real metagame answer to 12 post.
Also, Sowing Salt is not a good answer vs 12-post. Not only is it 4cc and 2RR, but if they have a Vesuva and Cloudpost out, it barely does anything. How many conditional land destruction can you play in your sideboard, and can you reasonably want to put in your deck without slowing yourself down to the point where it is useless?
This situation reminds me of Frantic Storm decks in Pauper, before the ban. People were playing between 3-7 MAINDECK LD spells to fight frantic storm, and it was still far and away the best deck in the format. Once frantic search was banned, pauper has been fairly wide open, although I'm not a fan of the format due to how annoying the poison decks are, that's a whole different story.
Channel is fantastic in the deck in the right circumstances - even with creatures, getting a turn 2 channel is crazy good - remember that if you Channel out Emrakul, you get a free turn - so even if they have a creature or two out - they are going to be hard pressed to keep most of them on the board - Annihilator 6 will do that.
However, it would be better utilized with Mana Drain to take the edge off of paying 15 life for Emrakul. I'm not sure this deck can run drain as it's spending a lot of time on 1cc, but with Drain, you at least have the advantage of dancing around Mental Misstep.
Having an exrta two mana every turn is incredibly awesome - especially when 1/4 of all decks in the format seek to make you pay more and more mana for each and every spell you play.
Having Sol Ring is the difference between a single Lodestone Golem and Sphere or Resistance beat you to a pulp in 4 turns and you actually getting to play Show and Tell.
Having a Sol Ring out for turn 3 is the difference between playing Demonic Tutor and Show and Tell on the same turn and waiting for your opponent to draw two cards from Dark Confidant and brainstorming down 3 more to find the Force of Will he needs to counter it.
There is simply no reason to not run Sol Ring in the deck - especially sine it's also running Mana Crypt.
I'm not an expert on the format, but I wonder why you think Sol Ring needs to go into the deck? I think there are a lot of players who think Sol Ring should go in every deck because it's that good, but I'm not one of them. Maybe you're not one of those people either, and you have a good reason for suggesting it. The only use I can see for it here is to play a quick Show and Tell. Given that the deck potentially needs access to four colours and there's nothing besides Show and Tell to ramp into (and I'd rather cast Duress before it if given the choice) I honestly just don't see the point in Sol Ring here.
... to fight 12post, there's also Sowing Salt. While it's better in the sense that you only need one card, it still seems too slow and too red (2RR), and I'm not sure what happens when you target a Vesuva that's copying a Cloudpost. Other options to try at least seem to be things that stop or hamper searching like Leonin Arbiter or Aven Mindcensor. Another idea might be to combine Ghost Quarter and the things that stop/slow library searching (though the Arbiter becomes much less useful once they gain the ability to simply pay 2 in the later game).
At lease Chalice of the Void set at zero slows down Hive Mind and forces them to find an answer before they can go off. It can also slow down Melira when set to 1 (to stop the scry/sac enabler) but with Birthing Pools lots of builds can just tutor up something to destroy it first (and I've also played against a deck with Rise from the Grave that gets around a Chalice set to 1 to get back their Viscera Seer).
Leyline of the Void is also nice against Melira, but again you need to deal with them just tutoring up an answer. I also quite like Wheel of Sun and Moon as besides Melira combo (including a weird version I saw with Through the Breach and Protean Hulk instead of Birthing Pods) it's also good if it comes down (and resolves) early against Pyromancer Ascension, Reveillark (haven't played it) and Living End (if you can handle the 3--5 dudes they've already cycled). It's also OK at making Rite of Flame and Goyf a bit weaker.
Channel doesn't seem good in a heavy creature meta. Combined with your own fetch lands and "pay 2 life" tutors, it doesn't take long to get down to 15 life. In 7 games here, you didn't cast it once. The one time you could have, it was nullified by Ethersworn Canonist.
Hive mind is NOT the same as Cloud Post, because Hive Mind is a deck that has to spend resources to cast its spell, not just play lands. It also has hate cards that can beat it. It also can't win if you resolve Memoricide.
While killing the enchantment is useless since you can pact instantly, cards like Angel's Grace and regular disruption like Thoughtseize work just fine. You can't Thoughtseize lands, and thoughtseizing their endless tutors is useless, the deck is full of redundant cards. Effectively 8 Titans, 8 Cloudpost and countless ways to search them up.
Ghost Quarter is useless unless you get it before the second Cloudpost/Vesuva comes out AND also extirpate their Cloudpost/Vesuva. Tectonic Edge is worse than useless. All versions run green which means if people start playing real land hate, they can just get Life from the Loam. They also play basics so Ghost Quarter is as weak as it can possibly be.
The cards that are good against this type of deck, Hymn, Sinkhole, Wasteland, Vindicate, etc etc are all Legacy only. I think it just a matter of time until a piece of it is banned because the format simply can't fight it properly, unlike traditional combo or aggro.
A couple of interesting counters like Dissipate/Rewind would be great. They don't have to necessarily be better than Cancel if they have recompense in other ways.
As much as I like game design, I can't really pontificate on how they remedy these things with new cards, as they need to continue to strike a balance between "good enough for eternal formats" and "too broken for standard".
If there is one thing that is certain, it is that control decks need a shot in the arm in this format.
How do they remedy the situation? If they reprint Counterspell in an upcoming block or Magic 2013 don't they screw up their plans for standard, which has had Cancel as the hard counter for years now.
While Boom//Bust may be an answer, you have to work a little to make it happen, plus keep their board semi clear, AND THEN keep them on a 3-4 turn clock or plan another cascade into Boom//Bust.
Also, there is no guarantee, with both Jund and Naya builds, that you are going to hit Boom//Bust because you have Goyfs, Pridemages, Putrid Leech, all of your burn, et cetra ad nauseam...Basically, you have a marginal probability of cascading into it. You may be able to adjust the curve somehow, but these decks aren't going to drop Goyf for example.
One funny thing I have been seeing in 12-Post mirror Matches is Plow Under. While this is funny for the mirror, I am sure that it is not viable for any other deck.
I am going to play Hive Mind for now because it is funny. I think Restore Balance decks could just pwn 12-Post, the ones with out countermagic...Restore Balance loses to Remand, but I think that is a decent risk to take...
Also I remember all the Affinity lists in Pauper with 4 Raze MD...and everything with 4 Raze in the SB.
I think in MTGO where it's all strategy and no dexterity, it has the potential to be really cool, but could also suck really badly too. The whole bit where your opponent can transform your dudes back will wind up being un-fun, even if strategically interesting. The thing is, nobody likes playing with the weaker version of a card. If you can keep your dudes transformed 75%+ of the time, then I think people will be ok with it. If it's a 50/50 tossup (or worse) I think it will just get frustrating.
Also, IRL, when you start dealing with counters (and as we've seen this set has +1/+1 counters) and auras and equips, and taking the cards in and out of sleeves, it's going to be a nightmare. I hate this more because I think it will drive players away than because I don't want to play with it. I play more on MTGO anyway.
And I'm already thinking that Moonmist + Mirror Entity (or Xenograft or similar effect) will be combolicious in Modern. I'm curious to see how Transform winds up fitting into the layer system exactly.
Hey, man. Good Article. I can see you really worked hard on making it flow better this time. I think it was easier to follow.
I got your PM last night, but I fell asleep. I lost the first round in a draft because my game got bugged (tried relogging like 6 times) and then I was on tilt until I went to sleep. I promise that I wasn't ignoring you.
I am going to play in the Modern PE this evening, it happens at 10PM PST (I live on the West Coast in the US).
We should test, man.
Keep grinding.
Thanks for the comment. To be honest, I knew that this needed to get posted quickly, since it was already outdated by the time it went up, so I didn't do as much editing as I would have liked. Also, there really is only the introduction + two sentences talking about how this was going to go long. I don't feel like that is really a problem.
As for opinions on DFCs, sure you can hate them. In MTGO they are obviously awesome, and I don't deny all the problems that they could definitely cause. As for myself, I think they sound cool, and I'm willing to leave the jury out on their functionality. With that said, I hate hate hate the Kamigawa flips, so hopefully this is a dramatic improvement on that.
I also 100% agree that these are going to be format warping, as I said, but I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say that is a great thing, and that I think this will be one of the best limited formats ever.
First off, if you spent fewer words talking about how long your article was going to be, you might have been able to talk about the things you wanted to talk about. Less reflection, more dissection.
Anyway, wearing my paper player hat that drafts at FNM, I hate DFCs because they're clunky and I think other players will hate them and will reduce draft turnout. It's already difficult getting enough people to draft. Wearing my MTGO hat, there's no clunkiness problems, but the whole casting/not casting spells thing seems bad. I haven't played with it, but it sounds bad.
That said, given how there's going to be one DFC in each pack, learning how to value them and play them is going to be CRAZY. Imagine SOM block, but where you were guaranteed that every pack had 1 infect creature in place of a common card. It's going to happen that people will get a decent rare and a rare DFC and will have to pass one. With 24 DFCs being opened per draft, you figure that someone in each draft will have 6 or 7 of them, and in some cases 10+. It will be tedious as heck for that guy flipping his cards over IRL, but it means that you will have to learn how to play with and against these guys. In some cases you might have to hold back spells to prevent them from flipping or to un-flip them on future turns.
So I think they're going to warp the limited format like nothing we've ever seen before, and I don't particularly think that's a good thing, but time will tell.
Hiya! If I remembered correctly it picked Taste of Blood. I mentally blocked out the missed pick as it was mediocre and focused on pick 2. Past experience put to good use as I was disconnected for almost the whole of second pack before.
For speculation, I will post it on classifieds first and search for bot prices. From the price offered by bots I evaluate if it is worth selling it or selling myself. If the price offered by the bot hits the price I have in mind I will just dump it, say 50% profit. I do not have spare tix to spend on speculation and for my budget I will gladly take the 50% profit margin. Buy and hold within your means would be advisable.
Do let me know if you have other queries. =)
Thanks for the tips char49d. I would not disagree after running a few matches with it, Green is AMAZING.... We didn't even mention Ondu Giant or Kozilek's Predator!
Thanks for coming by!
Completely COMPLETELY disagree. Sol Ring is not an auto-include in this deck. This is my baby and we actually cut sol ring FOR crypt. If you really wanted to run ring, you would cut crypt. Sol Ring gives you nothing except an early S&T or an early firespout/Beast Within.
In regards to the beast within, wth Georgie??? :P
Hmm... that sounds like a pretty good argument. I hadn't considered how useful it could be against the prison decks.
I'm not familiar with oath, but rd 3 game 1 what prevents you from tapping your orchard during the upkeep to get an oath trigger? do you have to have less when the ability goes on the stack?
Just FYI, ROE is kind of a weird format, and domestication is usually not a first pick, it is not mind control, especially due to the "battlecruiser magic" aspect. That pack had Induce Despair and Vendetta, the two best removal spells in the format.
Your second draft, Gigantomancer is a splashable bomb. It is a format in which you want to be playing green anyway, since it is often a race to 8 mana due to the set's design, but that card completely takes over games. Heat Ray is also splashable removal, always better than Bala-Ghed Scorpion, and Dread Drone is often better, although it depends on the deck.
Bala-Ghed Scorpion is awesome if you can pick off an Overgrown Battlement or Enclave Cryptologist, but otherwise it is very mediocre. A 2-3 body is almost completely irrelevant in this format, so if you can't use it as removal, it is bad. A lot of the time it just picks off an eldrazi spawn that may or may not be relevant.
Pelakka Wurm was the best uncommon in the entire set. Green was so busted and deep in the format, it was unbelievable.
What did the auto pick take for you when you missed the pack?
When you speculate, do you just sell back to bots, or do you take the time to list the cards in the wanted section?
I am with Dangerlinto, if your deck isn't running very specific cards, you should auto-include Sol Ring, it makes almost every deck better. Obviously if you are a Null-Rod deck, or have some very specific difficult color requirements it is worse, but that's the exception that makes the rule. Basically if you have more than 1 or 2 spells with 2 colorless or more in the, I can't see not running the ring.
I would think a deck with channel would prefer Sol Ring to Mana Crypt, but that may be a metagame dependent question.
Cascading into bust will absolutely beat 12-post, and a lot of decks, if it resolves. The problem is, that's more of a cross your fingers and hope approach. Even if running 4 Bloodbraid and 4 Boom//Bust, your chances of doing it consistently can't be very good, and a single Remand/Flashfreeze should be enough to beat it.
Thanks to GSZ they are running 8 Titans to your 4 Bloodbraids. They can tutor their Cloudposts and play 8 of them, so hard drawing a few Boom/Bust isn't really that awesome since the effect is symmetrical, but they ramp really well.
I think Boom/Bust Naya (That's the version I've seen, there are probably Jund and other versions) is going to be favored vs 12-post, although how favored I don't know. The problem is, that's a very specific strategy that can't be sideboarded into or played in 99 percent of decks. Boom/Bust aggro has been around since 7 year extended and has always been solid since it gets some good free wins, but it isn't a real metagame answer to 12 post.
Also, Sowing Salt is not a good answer vs 12-post. Not only is it 4cc and 2RR, but if they have a Vesuva and Cloudpost out, it barely does anything. How many conditional land destruction can you play in your sideboard, and can you reasonably want to put in your deck without slowing yourself down to the point where it is useless?
This situation reminds me of Frantic Storm decks in Pauper, before the ban. People were playing between 3-7 MAINDECK LD spells to fight frantic storm, and it was still far and away the best deck in the format. Once frantic search was banned, pauper has been fairly wide open, although I'm not a fan of the format due to how annoying the poison decks are, that's a whole different story.
How about cascading into Bust after killing the titan?
I mean you have to establish a board, but killing all of their lands is a good angle, yeah?
Channel is fantastic in the deck in the right circumstances - even with creatures, getting a turn 2 channel is crazy good - remember that if you Channel out Emrakul, you get a free turn - so even if they have a creature or two out - they are going to be hard pressed to keep most of them on the board - Annihilator 6 will do that.
However, it would be better utilized with Mana Drain to take the edge off of paying 15 life for Emrakul. I'm not sure this deck can run drain as it's spending a lot of time on 1cc, but with Drain, you at least have the advantage of dancing around Mental Misstep.
Having an exrta two mana every turn is incredibly awesome - especially when 1/4 of all decks in the format seek to make you pay more and more mana for each and every spell you play.
Having Sol Ring is the difference between a single Lodestone Golem and Sphere or Resistance beat you to a pulp in 4 turns and you actually getting to play Show and Tell.
Having a Sol Ring out for turn 3 is the difference between playing Demonic Tutor and Show and Tell on the same turn and waiting for your opponent to draw two cards from Dark Confidant and brainstorming down 3 more to find the Force of Will he needs to counter it.
There is simply no reason to not run Sol Ring in the deck - especially sine it's also running Mana Crypt.
I'm not an expert on the format, but I wonder why you think Sol Ring needs to go into the deck? I think there are a lot of players who think Sol Ring should go in every deck because it's that good, but I'm not one of them. Maybe you're not one of those people either, and you have a good reason for suggesting it. The only use I can see for it here is to play a quick Show and Tell. Given that the deck potentially needs access to four colours and there's nothing besides Show and Tell to ramp into (and I'd rather cast Duress before it if given the choice) I honestly just don't see the point in Sol Ring here.
... to fight 12post, there's also Sowing Salt. While it's better in the sense that you only need one card, it still seems too slow and too red (2RR), and I'm not sure what happens when you target a Vesuva that's copying a Cloudpost. Other options to try at least seem to be things that stop or hamper searching like Leonin Arbiter or Aven Mindcensor. Another idea might be to combine Ghost Quarter and the things that stop/slow library searching (though the Arbiter becomes much less useful once they gain the ability to simply pay 2 in the later game).
At lease Chalice of the Void set at zero slows down Hive Mind and forces them to find an answer before they can go off. It can also slow down Melira when set to 1 (to stop the scry/sac enabler) but with Birthing Pools lots of builds can just tutor up something to destroy it first (and I've also played against a deck with Rise from the Grave that gets around a Chalice set to 1 to get back their Viscera Seer).
Leyline of the Void is also nice against Melira, but again you need to deal with them just tutoring up an answer. I also quite like Wheel of Sun and Moon as besides Melira combo (including a weird version I saw with Through the Breach and Protean Hulk instead of Birthing Pods) it's also good if it comes down (and resolves) early against Pyromancer Ascension, Reveillark (haven't played it) and Living End (if you can handle the 3--5 dudes they've already cycled). It's also OK at making Rite of Flame and Goyf a bit weaker.
Channel doesn't seem good in a heavy creature meta. Combined with your own fetch lands and "pay 2 life" tutors, it doesn't take long to get down to 15 life. In 7 games here, you didn't cast it once. The one time you could have, it was nullified by Ethersworn Canonist.
Hive mind is NOT the same as Cloud Post, because Hive Mind is a deck that has to spend resources to cast its spell, not just play lands. It also has hate cards that can beat it. It also can't win if you resolve Memoricide.
While killing the enchantment is useless since you can pact instantly, cards like Angel's Grace and regular disruption like Thoughtseize work just fine. You can't Thoughtseize lands, and thoughtseizing their endless tutors is useless, the deck is full of redundant cards. Effectively 8 Titans, 8 Cloudpost and countless ways to search them up.
Ghost Quarter is useless unless you get it before the second Cloudpost/Vesuva comes out AND also extirpate their Cloudpost/Vesuva. Tectonic Edge is worse than useless. All versions run green which means if people start playing real land hate, they can just get Life from the Loam. They also play basics so Ghost Quarter is as weak as it can possibly be.
The cards that are good against this type of deck, Hymn, Sinkhole, Wasteland, Vindicate, etc etc are all Legacy only. I think it just a matter of time until a piece of it is banned because the format simply can't fight it properly, unlike traditional combo or aggro.
A couple of interesting counters like Dissipate/Rewind would be great. They don't have to necessarily be better than Cancel if they have recompense in other ways.
funny thing is they also have pact of negation. a zero cc hard counter. it not only counters your counter but also kills you.
As much as I like game design, I can't really pontificate on how they remedy these things with new cards, as they need to continue to strike a balance between "good enough for eternal formats" and "too broken for standard".
If there is one thing that is certain, it is that control decks need a shot in the arm in this format.
How do they remedy the situation? If they reprint Counterspell in an upcoming block or Magic 2013 don't they screw up their plans for standard, which has had Cancel as the hard counter for years now.