I actually think that this set has one of the highest concentration of bomb-rares in recent history. This becomes painfully apparent if you check Huey's Pick one, pack one, where he picks the rare about 90% of the time and 5% of the time he doesn't he probably should have but it would be too embarrassing to just pick the rare every single time.
I think they saw it as, "If we ban cruise and dig then we MUST ban pod." I'm okay with that. Pod was becoming oppressive and dominating top 8's. Cruise and pod were warping the metagame and they both had to go.
I'll cry no tears over pod but I will sniffle a little over Treasure Cruise.
Sure. But non Pod players won prizes at the same time plus they get to keep their cards at full value. I had to spend those winnings to keep up with cards for the deck. Now a lot of the winnings are gone as well.
All I ask for is that they start giving the bans a month in advance.
There's hundreds of arguments against doing that, I know.
I don't care. Stealth Rotation in a format with very expensive cards is destructive.
Just my opinion and it will not change for a long time.
OK I wasn't sure about your intent because you clearly came out of the gate arguing for pod being banned as a sensible move. And I think the fact is the only thing sensible about it is that WOTC decided in their allegedly superior wisdom that it was too ubiquitous (Really? But Splinter Twin was not? Nor Scapeshift? etc...) and that as you said they didn't want everyone playing the same deck or the rock to the scissors without any paper. But how that happens in a format is to print cards that create the 3rd (or more) deck that keeps the format in balance.
I suspect that for some reason (horse to water), the cards they printed despite best intentions didn't lead to that and instead skewed things in the opposite direction (too narrow a field) so to fix it they banned pod, cruise and dig. Cruise and Dig, being new, make tons of sense to ban since their impact is obvious. I am a little surprised they didn't get the ax in Block too since that's usually the first format broken by new cards.
I don't think pod will stay banned for the life of the format. But I think this is a trend that will continue until there is a huge banned list similar to the one in Legacy. While Legacy's banned list seems rather haphazard, Modern's will only make sense if you know the history of the format and then only if you understand it thoroughly.
I would definitely still be worried by an active Pod even if I had a Torpor Orb out. The value of being able to upgrade any creature you play, and sometimes for value in the case of Kitchen Finks or Voice of Resurgence, can easily be overwhelming. I don't think that is a Doomsday scenario but actually a fairly likely one and one I have experienced. My point is that Pod hate cards are not always effectual because the deck functions on different levels and attacking one element doesn't necessarily deal with the others. Also, as a toolbox deck it is built to have answers to questions it expects.
I did not want Birthing Pod to be banned and I did not expect it to be banned. Hopefully I made that clear from my comments in my article. I think Pod was a fair deck in the sense that it was vulnerable to removal and interaction. It certainly wasn't broken by any stretch of the imagination and I don't think that Birthing Pod was a must ban card - which is clear from the fact it has been legal for 3.5 years.
I agree that the decision ultimately came down to how WOTC wanted to shape the format. In this case, I think they were worried about everyone hopping off UR Delver and picking up Birthing Pod which would probably lead to a worse situation than the current prevalence of UR Delver. As such the Pod ban was pre-emptive to prevent that from happening. Well that's my take on the situation anyway.
I am a lot less worried about "them" pulling out finks/rhinos with a torpor orb out. And as for Thune/Feeder, have some removal. With removal everything changes. Same as them having abrupt decay. Why can't you also have removal in hand?
I mean we can make up scenarios all night long that end in doomsdays because of the card we want to have banned. The fact is: Pod was fair. It was fair for 3.5 years. Suddenly it was unfair because people started building decks to beat treasure cruise? I am not buying it. Mainly as I said in another comment, WOTC is forming an artificial sandbox out of Modern and because it is artificial they have to do awkward things like banning pod.
In the same sense because they wanted to give something back (this isn't about hurting the players duh) they gave us back grave troll so we can have THAT fair card to play with instead.
Power Conduit was to convert the verse counters into +1/+1 when Yisan has too many for what you fetch. Although with tinkering around with Yisan last night, by the time he was able to make an impact, I was already winning or badly losing.
I think I would rather have Sudden Reclamation instead of Yisan. And maybe Hex Parasite instead of conduit to interact with opposing planeswalkers.
I know. I don't want to wait. I already sold out of a lot of cards to get into legacy, and every time I draw one of the two ghost quarters in my deck as placeholders, I get so annoyed.
I ran elves a few times. They also fall to electricery which is a very popular sideboard card and if you don't get out your spidersilk armor first, you pretty much get your board wiped.
Also, as someone who has played plenty of U-Delver, although the deck does run Cloud of Faeries, I wouldn't consider it a Cloud of Faeries based deck.
Joe Fiorini, your solution works. I am just worried that you will be sad when the price tanks by the end of 2015, especially if you have 4 of them. Don't forget the fate of Force of Will and Lion's Eye Diamond.
For me, I am going to draft the hell out of the next Flashback Draft (hopefully it will be TE TE TE and not the full block). Mike Turin will hopefully launch a triple Tempest draft rather than a full block draft, just like he is doing now with the triple Odyssey draft. Remember that Wasteland is an uncommon! It is bound to show up all the time! I will be there to swoop when it does.
With treasure cruise banned, I need another deck to fall back on. I am almost done building )Delver, I just need two more wastelands.
I doubt flashback drafts are enough to drive down the price anyway. they didn't go down much last time.
I gutted my paper collection (which I'm very sad about actually) for trade-in credit at cape fear games/mtgotraders. that should help me get one and a half wastes.
If they were going to ban pod, doing so a long time ago would have made for less bad feelings.
The deck was so entrenched in the modern metagame, most people thought that it wouldn't be banned ever.
This is different that say, banning a card like Dark Depths, that existed a long time, then a broken interaction was created. Pod was a known quantity, and had an entire deck around it.
I like the idea of this deck. I'm not sure that Chord of Calling isn't just better than Yisan in general but I suppose he's the closest thing to a repeatable tutor that is available - he's just so slow though.
Power Conduit is an interesting card but not as cool as I initially thought as it isn't capable of putting Verse Counters on Yisan, just removing them in exchange for a +1/+1 counter, which is a neat combat trick and a way to tick down Yisan but not all that exciting. I feel like Proliferate is actually the mechanic we would like but there aren't a lot of cheap ways to use it - Contagion Clasp is decent but if you are paying 4 to Proliferate then you aren't activating your Yisan in the same turn. Alternatively, you could play some copies of Tezzeret's Gambit as draw and a one-off Proliferate effect - which is perhaps more tempting.
Well there was always Pithing Needle but the problem is as you described. Yes you can use it to turn off all their Pods but if they never draw Pod then it's irrelevant and you've wasted a card - also shutting off Pod itself is no guarantee that you'll win the game because their creatures are so efficient and powerful.
I don't think printing hate cards against Pod would have worked as CalmLittleBuddy suggested. I mean there already is Leonin Arbiter, Aven Mindcensor, Pithing Needle, Phyrexian Revoker and a ton of ways to blow it up but none are actually reliably good enough. Also, blowing up Pod is generally inefficient as they will usually have got one activation off it already, which is enough value for the investment.
Banning cards around Pod is foolish because there will always be new creatures being printed that will be good with Pod. Banning Pod is the move that makes sense but I absolutely understand why people are unhappy with it.
I'm not sure if a Pod specific hate card exists. The deck functions just fine without it so if you draw your hate card and they don't draw the Pod then you've taken a virtual mulligan. Furthermore, what more hate would someone want other than a Shatter variant?
The problem with Birthing Pod imo is that it only gets better as time goes on. Every set will have some really cool/awesome creature that you could put in a Pod deck and eventually you have a deck with the best creatures and 4 ways to tutor them up. That's an incredibly powerful deck to have. Birthing Pod might not needed to be banned now, but eventually it will need to be banned or otherwise R&D is constrained on how good they can make a creature.
@Joe Fiorini. Wasteland will tank. It's just a matter of time before Vintage Masters II, Tempest Flashback Drafts and perhaps a MOCS promo. Can you stomach the wait until it tanks? For me, I am going to wait. I refuse to pay over $100 for a card, particularly a card that you need 4 of.
I actually think that this set has one of the highest concentration of bomb-rares in recent history. This becomes painfully apparent if you check Huey's Pick one, pack one, where he picks the rare about 90% of the time and 5% of the time he doesn't he probably should have but it would be too embarrassing to just pick the rare every single time.
Not sure I have the same confidence in the mythics and rares of this set as you do! :) Great work. Thanks for the write up!
I think they saw it as, "If we ban cruise and dig then we MUST ban pod." I'm okay with that. Pod was becoming oppressive and dominating top 8's. Cruise and pod were warping the metagame and they both had to go.
I'll cry no tears over pod but I will sniffle a little over Treasure Cruise.
Sure. But non Pod players won prizes at the same time plus they get to keep their cards at full value. I had to spend those winnings to keep up with cards for the deck. Now a lot of the winnings are gone as well.
All I ask for is that they start giving the bans a month in advance.
There's hundreds of arguments against doing that, I know.
I don't care. Stealth Rotation in a format with very expensive cards is destructive.
Just my opinion and it will not change for a long time.
This card is really good if you have no healer in your Deck. - Review Solution
OK I wasn't sure about your intent because you clearly came out of the gate arguing for pod being banned as a sensible move. And I think the fact is the only thing sensible about it is that WOTC decided in their allegedly superior wisdom that it was too ubiquitous (Really? But Splinter Twin was not? Nor Scapeshift? etc...) and that as you said they didn't want everyone playing the same deck or the rock to the scissors without any paper. But how that happens in a format is to print cards that create the 3rd (or more) deck that keeps the format in balance.
I suspect that for some reason (horse to water), the cards they printed despite best intentions didn't lead to that and instead skewed things in the opposite direction (too narrow a field) so to fix it they banned pod, cruise and dig. Cruise and Dig, being new, make tons of sense to ban since their impact is obvious. I am a little surprised they didn't get the ax in Block too since that's usually the first format broken by new cards.
I don't think pod will stay banned for the life of the format. But I think this is a trend that will continue until there is a huge banned list similar to the one in Legacy. While Legacy's banned list seems rather haphazard, Modern's will only make sense if you know the history of the format and then only if you understand it thoroughly.
Well that's my 2.0cents.
I would definitely still be worried by an active Pod even if I had a Torpor Orb out. The value of being able to upgrade any creature you play, and sometimes for value in the case of Kitchen Finks or Voice of Resurgence, can easily be overwhelming. I don't think that is a Doomsday scenario but actually a fairly likely one and one I have experienced. My point is that Pod hate cards are not always effectual because the deck functions on different levels and attacking one element doesn't necessarily deal with the others. Also, as a toolbox deck it is built to have answers to questions it expects.
I did not want Birthing Pod to be banned and I did not expect it to be banned. Hopefully I made that clear from my comments in my article. I think Pod was a fair deck in the sense that it was vulnerable to removal and interaction. It certainly wasn't broken by any stretch of the imagination and I don't think that Birthing Pod was a must ban card - which is clear from the fact it has been legal for 3.5 years.
I agree that the decision ultimately came down to how WOTC wanted to shape the format. In this case, I think they were worried about everyone hopping off UR Delver and picking up Birthing Pod which would probably lead to a worse situation than the current prevalence of UR Delver. As such the Pod ban was pre-emptive to prevent that from happening. Well that's my take on the situation anyway.
I am a lot less worried about "them" pulling out finks/rhinos with a torpor orb out. And as for Thune/Feeder, have some removal. With removal everything changes. Same as them having abrupt decay. Why can't you also have removal in hand?
I mean we can make up scenarios all night long that end in doomsdays because of the card we want to have banned. The fact is: Pod was fair. It was fair for 3.5 years. Suddenly it was unfair because people started building decks to beat treasure cruise? I am not buying it. Mainly as I said in another comment, WOTC is forming an artificial sandbox out of Modern and because it is artificial they have to do awkward things like banning pod.
In the same sense because they wanted to give something back (this isn't about hurting the players duh) they gave us back grave troll so we can have THAT fair card to play with instead.
Same problem with Damping Matrix and Stony Silence
Power Conduit was to convert the verse counters into +1/+1 when Yisan has too many for what you fetch. Although with tinkering around with Yisan last night, by the time he was able to make an impact, I was already winning or badly losing.
I think I would rather have Sudden Reclamation instead of Yisan. And maybe Hex Parasite instead of conduit to interact with opposing planeswalkers.
I know. I don't want to wait. I already sold out of a lot of cards to get into legacy, and every time I draw one of the two ghost quarters in my deck as placeholders, I get so annoyed.
I ran elves a few times. They also fall to electricery which is a very popular sideboard card and if you don't get out your spidersilk armor first, you pretty much get your board wiped.
Also, as someone who has played plenty of U-Delver, although the deck does run Cloud of Faeries, I wouldn't consider it a Cloud of Faeries based deck.
Yeah, Torpor Orb is another potential answer. However, then Archangel of Thune was printed and so they can still combo you out past it.
Additionally, it does nothing to stop them turning a Kitchen Finks into two Siege Rhinos and just beating you down.
The other problem with Needle and Torpor Orb is that they can be hit with Abrupt Decay so they are fairly easy to answer if they feel it necessary.
Joe Fiorini, your solution works. I am just worried that you will be sad when the price tanks by the end of 2015, especially if you have 4 of them. Don't forget the fate of Force of Will and Lion's Eye Diamond.
For me, I am going to draft the hell out of the next Flashback Draft (hopefully it will be TE TE TE and not the full block). Mike Turin will hopefully launch a triple Tempest draft rather than a full block draft, just like he is doing now with the triple Odyssey draft. Remember that Wasteland is an uncommon! It is bound to show up all the time! I will be there to swoop when it does.
With treasure cruise banned, I need another deck to fall back on. I am almost done building )Delver, I just need two more wastelands.
I doubt flashback drafts are enough to drive down the price anyway. they didn't go down much last time.
I gutted my paper collection (which I'm very sad about actually) for trade-in credit at cape fear games/mtgotraders. that should help me get one and a half wastes.
Power Conduit won't work with Yisan, but instead Chord of Calling and few copies of Hibernation's End seems as a good start to support Yisan.
In the end, Yisan was never a creature version of Pod, but exactly Hibernation's End. So, why not playing with both.
The deck tops out at CMC 4 so likely would be taking counters off of Yisan.
Torpor Orb was the answer I was familiar with as most creatures sought by pod were value creatures with etb effects.
If they were going to ban pod, doing so a long time ago would have made for less bad feelings.
The deck was so entrenched in the modern metagame, most people thought that it wouldn't be banned ever.
This is different that say, banning a card like Dark Depths, that existed a long time, then a broken interaction was created. Pod was a known quantity, and had an entire deck around it.
I like the idea of this deck. I'm not sure that Chord of Calling isn't just better than Yisan in general but I suppose he's the closest thing to a repeatable tutor that is available - he's just so slow though.
Power Conduit is an interesting card but not as cool as I initially thought as it isn't capable of putting Verse Counters on Yisan, just removing them in exchange for a +1/+1 counter, which is a neat combat trick and a way to tick down Yisan but not all that exciting. I feel like Proliferate is actually the mechanic we would like but there aren't a lot of cheap ways to use it - Contagion Clasp is decent but if you are paying 4 to Proliferate then you aren't activating your Yisan in the same turn. Alternatively, you could play some copies of Tezzeret's Gambit as draw and a one-off Proliferate effect - which is perhaps more tempting.
Well there was always Pithing Needle but the problem is as you described. Yes you can use it to turn off all their Pods but if they never draw Pod then it's irrelevant and you've wasted a card - also shutting off Pod itself is no guarantee that you'll win the game because their creatures are so efficient and powerful.
I don't think printing hate cards against Pod would have worked as CalmLittleBuddy suggested. I mean there already is Leonin Arbiter, Aven Mindcensor, Pithing Needle, Phyrexian Revoker and a ton of ways to blow it up but none are actually reliably good enough. Also, blowing up Pod is generally inefficient as they will usually have got one activation off it already, which is enough value for the investment.
Banning cards around Pod is foolish because there will always be new creatures being printed that will be good with Pod. Banning Pod is the move that makes sense but I absolutely understand why people are unhappy with it.
I just wanted to know his opinion and as an example I posted mine. I didn't want him to reinforce my position.
Why don't we build it?
LANDS
4 Windswept Heath
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Forest
3 Razorverge Thicket
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Gavony Township
1 Godless Shrine
1 Marsh Flats
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Temple Garden
CREATURES
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Noble Hierarch
2 Wall of Roots
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Dark Confidant
4 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
2 Anafenza, the Foremost
1 Eternal Witness
1 Orzhov Pontiff
3 Siege Rhino
1 Restoration Angel
INSTANTS and SORCERIES
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Thoughtseize
ARTIFACTS
4 Power Conduit
SIDEBOARD
2 Thoughtseize
2 Memoricide
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Dismember
1 Choke
2 Chalice of the Void
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Putrefy
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Murderous Cut
1 Kataki, War's Wage
I'm not sure if a Pod specific hate card exists. The deck functions just fine without it so if you draw your hate card and they don't draw the Pod then you've taken a virtual mulligan. Furthermore, what more hate would someone want other than a Shatter variant?
The problem with Birthing Pod imo is that it only gets better as time goes on. Every set will have some really cool/awesome creature that you could put in a Pod deck and eventually you have a deck with the best creatures and 4 ways to tutor them up. That's an incredibly powerful deck to have. Birthing Pod might not needed to be banned now, but eventually it will need to be banned or otherwise R&D is constrained on how good they can make a creature.
Thank you for this excellent article.
@Joe Fiorini. Wasteland will tank. It's just a matter of time before Vintage Masters II, Tempest Flashback Drafts and perhaps a MOCS promo. Can you stomach the wait until it tanks? For me, I am going to wait. I refuse to pay over $100 for a card, particularly a card that you need 4 of.