Well. I 110% opposed banning swords and batterskull, I would have preferred to leave SFM banned if it were that big a problem. But I guess people can play her with janky scrub equipment now, I'm sure everyone will enjoy that.
edit: OK, that's a little harsh, but I'm leaving it as typed. The fact is, there are a lot of mediocre tribes out there that are seriously improved by access to legitimately good equipment, by which I mean equipment good in most matchups and not merely as part of some gimmick. I enjoy playing with powerful and interactive cards, and that's what SOFAI was. There were plenty of ways to interact with it, it cost a bunch of mana to get active and could be blown out with one removal spell, but once you got it going it was sweet. It was better in Pure where the optimal 1-mana removal spells were banned, so if it was really a problem I would have banned it there, but they hardly need to be banned anywhere else. This just lowers the power of the format in a way that impacts minor tribes more than anything else.
I still can't believe the Chromanticore deck is actually a thing. I guess the community doesn't entirely trust it either, because Chromanticore is still a 1-tix Mythic so far.
Care to elaborate, BoB? You liked what we had before but the only thing I essentially changed is that now the Underdog list is clearer and gives access to a handful of tribes more? And Pure has its own identity again, and is back to its roots. What was so fascinating before?
And yeah, do your worst with Scout. For some reason, I doubt you'll play Scout every single month from now on. If Scouts were so strong in a, "Oh thank God Scouts aren't in Underdog, they would crush it!" way, why have they been played by more or less nobody so far? (6 times in 3 years, and I'm one of those.) Chances are they will be played by you once, AJ once, then essentially nobody again. Big deal. But if we get more options, it can only be better.
Again, Underdog is not "the week where we play with bad, weak, stupid tribes". It's "the week where we play with the tribes we don't play in other weeks". And we don't play Scout in other weeks, that's a fact.
Ahmet, as possibly the most committed Sword player in the meta, I took your opinion as the last straw that pushed me to abandon any reservation and ban the Swords for good (also: a new batch of answers to the poll were ALL in favor of a total ban!)
Paul, you know I don't like bans. In fact, I actually unbanned more than I banned. Bring back Artificer and Horror by banning Illusionist, Quest, and dredge enablers means: 4 cards out, 173 cards in, +169 cards in the pool.
Unfortunately, originality can't be prescribed. 1-tix incentives don't do much (and we don't have resources to give more than that). Do you think that a player with 4 Wastelands really care to win 1 tix? They don't. They want to play their Wastelands and win tribal matches with them. Because they can, and it's their rights to do it.
Plus, philosophical question: as a host, I need to care more about originality or more about happiness? If the majority of players are happy playing their Goblin or Soldier decks, do I have the right to be unhappy? (And for all the constant talk about power and money cards, it's the $0.08 cards the ones that define this meta).
This round of changes wasn't even about "artistic" or general improvement, it was about cleaning the house and restoring and salvaging what it was lost over time. To serve this principle: EVERY TRIBE MUST HAVE AN OUTLET. And that was definitely false before (Scout didn't have one, Giant didn't have one, etc.), it's a bit more true now.
A reason why I agree bans don't work in general (exceptions aside): I have my dorky mono-green Elemental deck. It's a fair deck, all things considered. But I can't play it if not in Regular events. And in Regular events it's even worse, because it faces all the Big Bads at once, all the nasty tribes that have been forbidden elsewhere and now clog up Regular events (to the point where it's become impossible to assign Underdog prizes there, since nobody even thinks to play Underdogs in Regular events anymore).
Originality, you say. Well, say I want to do an original Goblin build. A deck with all the expensive Goblins and none of the usual ones. Well, guess what, I couldn't play it. The event all but forbade me to play it and pushed me to play aggro Goblins instead. That's bad.
Pure was envisioned not as much as an incentive to play different tribes (that's Underdog), but to play tribes differently, because at the very least you're forced to avoid off-tribe support and all those cards that you're used to put in the deck as first choices.
I think they are hoping to settle into the 5-round Qualifer for Qualifer plan, which I suppose worked for the Theros Championship and MOCS. I actually like playing in them because I feel prizes are decent if you can go 3-2.
Cumulative answers and NEW AND FINAL DECISIONS, also in the light of what half the council expressed privately to me.
longtimegone: I was going to announce the changes last week (we can thank WotC for that one, but in last week's article there was a mention of it and even the link to the new Underdog list). And if you read this column in the past years, you know I never do changes at the last moment.
However, once the new Pure was in place, it needed to be implemented asap as re-designed (with the 4 rotating tribes – Sliver was going to be banned only for one week, you got that, right?), otherwise it would only create more confusion with people asking, "Hey, I thought it changed! Why it isn't?" and the filter going back and forth two weeks in a row.
This said, I had feedback that made me review some of these changes, this way:
1. The Council idea is retired, the Singleton challenge is still in place.
2. Pure won't have additional tribes banned except for Human and the last winner, which this time is Berserker (this will avoid winning streaks). Sliver and Merfolk and whatever else is playable tomorrow.
3. The Swords of X and Y and Batterskull are banned, effective immediately. Stoneforge Mystic is back (she's still not playable tomorrow due to the nature of Pure events not allowing off-tribe creatures).
Swords of X & Y are very powerful and I agree about their power comparison with Jitte. As currently, Sword of Fire & Ice has replaced Jitte in the Legacy decks.
I think this is a very good example to show us that Swords are not something that can be underestimated in the matter of power. They are only a little slower than Jitte and most of them are doing the same level crazy things.
It is no secret that I'm a great fan of equipments. But even that, I'm %100 supporting this full banning package for Swords to open doors to new possibilities.
Sure, my complaint isn't that the format is changing so that I can't use a deck any more, it's that it's changing before I ever get a chance to play it at all after I've been working on it since the last pure event.
With challenges in particular, it can take some time and planning to assemble a deck for an event. One method that seems reasonable to me would be to simply make sure there is one unchanged event after any announced change before the change goes in to effect.
This would allow anyone who is already planning and building for a specific event to get to play the deck they are building, while still allowing changes to be made in a timely manner.
I agree. These changes need some kind of threshold after the announcement before they go into effect. Not that pleas about how someone built a particular deck should hold sway but it should be a matter of giving good notice. We don't want to imitate WOTC.
Why are slivers suddenly banned from pure? I've been working on a fun slivers combo deck to try and claim an achievement for the past month waiting for the next pure event. Are you saying that the tribe is now banned out of nowhere and I've wasted my time trying to play in this event?
Isn't part of the point of a pre-announced rotating schedule to give people time to build decks and get ready for alternate format events? It seems that if a change is going to happen that will invalidate decks people have been working on, it shouldn't be announced 2 days before the next event.
I dislike the whole "ban this" concept. I don't think discouraging people from homogenous builds by banning parts is the way to go. Instead as AJ said last time, incentivize the originality you want to see.
Black is EQUIPPED for evilness. It's not inherently evil, though. It's the great thing about the color wheel, nothing has an inherent moral connotation. All those who devour other people's hearts are selfish and unruly, but not all those who are selfish and unruly devour other people's hearts. Whereas you can respect order and law even when the law says you're the supreme race and the others are infidels and must die (we have cards that testify that in MTG racism is white). (Okay, no pun intended!)
Yeah, considering doing some mad scout action myself, Melira and her combos, (Safehold Elite is on-tribe) Saffi and hers, Goblin guide to lead the way...
If you settle for something lower, I think you can do an excellent theme deck for A Song of Ice and Fire (probably The Lords of the Rings too, but that's just too obvious).
Evil BoB states for the record that he disagrees with just about every premise/rationalization/conclusion in the article (which at least is a backwards compliment since I liked what you had very much). I will comply with what you guys choose, however.
P.S. I already have 3 very vastly-more-powerful-than-the-average-Underdog Scout decks.
Demon of Death's Gate has been totally forgotten. His price range is the same of Sphinx Ambassador, which is the embodiment of a bad Mythic.
I might even try one copy in a mono-black devotion deck I'm brewing.
I decided to try a mono-colored deck per color. My mono-green midrange stompy has been quite successful lately, I have a big red one with Koth and Braid of Fire, and a mono-blue with Grand Architect and Vedalken Shackles.
White and black are trickier. White because it's bad at exploiting Nykthos (I sketched a deck that resorted to use Opal Guardian! Which is not a bad card, but still. I wish Dawn Elemental was Modern-legal). And black, I don't want to just do the Gary.dek everyone does, so I want to make it flashier, with Phyrexian Obliterators and Divinity of Pride. And I have Bloodghast and the Gatekeeper and lots of creatures for Nykthos and Gary's sake (also Royal Assassin! Why people don't play Royal Assassin anymore?), so the Demon might fit.
Well. I 110% opposed banning swords and batterskull, I would have preferred to leave SFM banned if it were that big a problem. But I guess people can play her with janky scrub equipment now, I'm sure everyone will enjoy that.
edit: OK, that's a little harsh, but I'm leaving it as typed. The fact is, there are a lot of mediocre tribes out there that are seriously improved by access to legitimately good equipment, by which I mean equipment good in most matchups and not merely as part of some gimmick. I enjoy playing with powerful and interactive cards, and that's what SOFAI was. There were plenty of ways to interact with it, it cost a bunch of mana to get active and could be blown out with one removal spell, but once you got it going it was sweet. It was better in Pure where the optimal 1-mana removal spells were banned, so if it was really a problem I would have banned it there, but they hardly need to be banned anywhere else. This just lowers the power of the format in a way that impacts minor tribes more than anything else.
GoodStuff.dek can do things imo.
I still can't believe the Chromanticore deck is actually a thing. I guess the community doesn't entirely trust it either, because Chromanticore is still a 1-tix Mythic so far.
Care to elaborate, BoB? You liked what we had before but the only thing I essentially changed is that now the Underdog list is clearer and gives access to a handful of tribes more? And Pure has its own identity again, and is back to its roots. What was so fascinating before?
And yeah, do your worst with Scout. For some reason, I doubt you'll play Scout every single month from now on. If Scouts were so strong in a, "Oh thank God Scouts aren't in Underdog, they would crush it!" way, why have they been played by more or less nobody so far? (6 times in 3 years, and I'm one of those.) Chances are they will be played by you once, AJ once, then essentially nobody again. Big deal. But if we get more options, it can only be better.
Again, Underdog is not "the week where we play with bad, weak, stupid tribes". It's "the week where we play with the tribes we don't play in other weeks". And we don't play Scout in other weeks, that's a fact.
As Kuma noted below, The ban has been rescinded. Go do something amazing with them. :D
Technically, Kor or Artificer could still field her, but they could anyway. :)
Ahmet, as possibly the most committed Sword player in the meta, I took your opinion as the last straw that pushed me to abandon any reservation and ban the Swords for good (also: a new batch of answers to the poll were ALL in favor of a total ban!)
Paul, you know I don't like bans. In fact, I actually unbanned more than I banned. Bring back Artificer and Horror by banning Illusionist, Quest, and dredge enablers means: 4 cards out, 173 cards in, +169 cards in the pool.
Unfortunately, originality can't be prescribed. 1-tix incentives don't do much (and we don't have resources to give more than that). Do you think that a player with 4 Wastelands really care to win 1 tix? They don't. They want to play their Wastelands and win tribal matches with them. Because they can, and it's their rights to do it.
Plus, philosophical question: as a host, I need to care more about originality or more about happiness? If the majority of players are happy playing their Goblin or Soldier decks, do I have the right to be unhappy? (And for all the constant talk about power and money cards, it's the $0.08 cards the ones that define this meta).
This round of changes wasn't even about "artistic" or general improvement, it was about cleaning the house and restoring and salvaging what it was lost over time. To serve this principle: EVERY TRIBE MUST HAVE AN OUTLET. And that was definitely false before (Scout didn't have one, Giant didn't have one, etc.), it's a bit more true now.
A reason why I agree bans don't work in general (exceptions aside): I have my dorky mono-green Elemental deck. It's a fair deck, all things considered. But I can't play it if not in Regular events. And in Regular events it's even worse, because it faces all the Big Bads at once, all the nasty tribes that have been forbidden elsewhere and now clog up Regular events (to the point where it's become impossible to assign Underdog prizes there, since nobody even thinks to play Underdogs in Regular events anymore).
Originality, you say. Well, say I want to do an original Goblin build. A deck with all the expensive Goblins and none of the usual ones. Well, guess what, I couldn't play it. The event all but forbade me to play it and pushed me to play aggro Goblins instead. That's bad.
Pure was envisioned not as much as an incentive to play different tribes (that's Underdog), but to play tribes differently, because at the very least you're forced to avoid off-tribe support and all those cards that you're used to put in the deck as first choices.
I think they are hoping to settle into the 5-round Qualifer for Qualifer plan, which I suppose worked for the Theros Championship and MOCS. I actually like playing in them because I feel prizes are decent if you can go 3-2.
Cumulative answers and NEW AND FINAL DECISIONS, also in the light of what half the council expressed privately to me.
longtimegone: I was going to announce the changes last week (we can thank WotC for that one, but in last week's article there was a mention of it and even the link to the new Underdog list). And if you read this column in the past years, you know I never do changes at the last moment.
However, once the new Pure was in place, it needed to be implemented asap as re-designed (with the 4 rotating tribes – Sliver was going to be banned only for one week, you got that, right?), otherwise it would only create more confusion with people asking, "Hey, I thought it changed! Why it isn't?" and the filter going back and forth two weeks in a row.
This said, I had feedback that made me review some of these changes, this way:
1. The Council idea is retired, the Singleton challenge is still in place.
2. Pure won't have additional tribes banned except for Human and the last winner, which this time is Berserker (this will avoid winning streaks). Sliver and Merfolk and whatever else is playable tomorrow.
3. The Swords of X and Y and Batterskull are banned, effective immediately. Stoneforge Mystic is back (she's still not playable tomorrow due to the nature of Pure events not allowing off-tribe creatures).
This should do. Thanks all for the feedback!
Swords of X & Y are very powerful and I agree about their power comparison with Jitte. As currently, Sword of Fire & Ice has replaced Jitte in the Legacy decks.
I think this is a very good example to show us that Swords are not something that can be underestimated in the matter of power. They are only a little slower than Jitte and most of them are doing the same level crazy things.
It is no secret that I'm a great fan of equipments. But even that, I'm %100 supporting this full banning package for Swords to open doors to new possibilities.
Mono colored deck per color sounds really cool. I'm looking forward to see your deck lists. As you always have a unique perspective for brewing.
I will also continue to review Mono colored decks here, at least my next three week schedule is dedicated to them.
White devotion deck is indeed trickier as you need to find a correct shell & concept to it.
Sure, my complaint isn't that the format is changing so that I can't use a deck any more, it's that it's changing before I ever get a chance to play it at all after I've been working on it since the last pure event.
With challenges in particular, it can take some time and planning to assemble a deck for an event. One method that seems reasonable to me would be to simply make sure there is one unchanged event after any announced change before the change goes in to effect.
This would allow anyone who is already planning and building for a specific event to get to play the deck they are building, while still allowing changes to be made in a timely manner.
I agree. These changes need some kind of threshold after the announcement before they go into effect. Not that pleas about how someone built a particular deck should hold sway but it should be a matter of giving good notice. We don't want to imitate WOTC.
Wait, what?
Why are slivers suddenly banned from pure? I've been working on a fun slivers combo deck to try and claim an achievement for the past month waiting for the next pure event. Are you saying that the tribe is now banned out of nowhere and I've wasted my time trying to play in this event?
Isn't part of the point of a pre-announced rotating schedule to give people time to build decks and get ready for alternate format events? It seems that if a change is going to happen that will invalidate decks people have been working on, it shouldn't be announced 2 days before the next event.
Isn't Fallen Empires where White shows it propensity for evil in the guise of order?
I dislike the whole "ban this" concept. I don't think discouraging people from homogenous builds by banning parts is the way to go. Instead as AJ said last time, incentivize the originality you want to see.
Black is EQUIPPED for evilness. It's not inherently evil, though. It's the great thing about the color wheel, nothing has an inherent moral connotation. All those who devour other people's hearts are selfish and unruly, but not all those who are selfish and unruly devour other people's hearts. Whereas you can respect order and law even when the law says you're the supreme race and the others are infidels and must die (we have cards that testify that in MTG racism is white). (Okay, no pun intended!)
Yeah, considering doing some mad scout action myself, Melira and her combos, (Safehold Elite is on-tribe) Saffi and hers, Goblin guide to lead the way...
If you settle for something lower, I think you can do an excellent theme deck for A Song of Ice and Fire (probably The Lords of the Rings too, but that's just too obvious).
Works for me, it's just the post-apocalyptic time slot I couldn't do.
Depending on the contract, yes. :) Sometimes it's relevant.
Do you include that earthquake simulation your CV? :)
Evil BoB states for the record that he disagrees with just about every premise/rationalization/conclusion in the article (which at least is a backwards compliment since I liked what you had very much). I will comply with what you guys choose, however.
P.S. I already have 3 very vastly-more-powerful-than-the-average-Underdog Scout decks.
Demon of Death's Gate has been totally forgotten. His price range is the same of Sphinx Ambassador, which is the embodiment of a bad Mythic.
I might even try one copy in a mono-black devotion deck I'm brewing.
I decided to try a mono-colored deck per color. My mono-green midrange stompy has been quite successful lately, I have a big red one with Koth and Braid of Fire, and a mono-blue with Grand Architect and Vedalken Shackles.
White and black are trickier. White because it's bad at exploiting Nykthos (I sketched a deck that resorted to use Opal Guardian! Which is not a bad card, but still. I wish Dawn Elemental was Modern-legal). And black, I don't want to just do the Gary.dek everyone does, so I want to make it flashier, with Phyrexian Obliterators and Divinity of Pride. And I have Bloodghast and the Gatekeeper and lots of creatures for Nykthos and Gary's sake (also Royal Assassin! Why people don't play Royal Assassin anymore?), so the Demon might fit.