Episode 87: The Karnies Disagree on the Modern Bans 

I would have loved to hear the opinion of the cast on "we changed Nadu cause of Commander" which was in my, and many peoples minds, the controversial part of the article. Since Nadu was a total failure in all senses, the original version looked completely fine and inoffensive, but they were worried flash was a problem for Commander. So they at the last second, just remade the card, its completely unrecognizable to the original card aside from something vaguely about targeting it. The card is broken in modern we know this, but the card is also super broken in Commander so this method of card design is really not working. Atleast, in my estimation.

28:28 Thats precisely what I think is the biggest issue with the Ring, or perhaps more with the extremely efficient Wrath of the Skies control decks have access now - you feel like you cannot be fast enough to get under a 2 mana Wrath anyway and since combat damage isn´t happening either you feel pressured into running Ring yourself to refill your hand and not just waste a turn. Control and Aggro decks running the same card to fuel their gameplan is one of the biggest signs something is wrong with a card, that its just too good at what it does.

Grief has always been a miserable play experience, and not to mention another free spell with no drawbacks. The force cycle is the perfect example of a balanced free spell in modern. They put you down a card after all is said and done, but the tradeoff is that you get to play a spell for no mana. (Force of Vigor could be argued to be too strong as well, because its 2-2 at best for 0 mana.) And here's what a scammed Grief entails: - Getting 2x Thoughtseized on Turn 0, while also presenting a 4/3 Menace. - "Hoops" to jump through: 1x Grief, 1x Undying Effect, 1x ANY Black card. (~2.1 card combo) - 0 Card disadvantage for playing a free spell. Grief player trades one undying card and any black card in exchange for the two best cards in Opponents hand. And is also left with a 4/3 which opponent MUST topdeck an answer for because their hand has already been destroyed. On turn 0. - Next to no counterplay if you are on the draw. - Scamming a grief should be a high-risk, high reward play. Maybe if regular removal could have disrupted the grief player and put them down CA if they themselves are on the draw it would probably be fine. But we can stack the triggers to thoughtseize first and also hold up the undying effect, it narrows down counterplay options to very specific SB cards. (Again, assuming you win the die roll) IMO, free spells in modern should ALWAYS come with a drawback. Evoke is nowhere near enough of a drawback with the cardpool we have access to.

The One Ring is disgusting. The Value and Math of The One Ring is crazy. 3 Turn Cycle if you're drawing with it every turn since casted : T1. 4 mana cost > get prot and draw 1 card T2. Lose 1 life > Draw 2 cards T3. Lose 2 life > Draw 3 cards So, basically you get 5 cards for 3 life points with a high chance of drawing another ring in a 4 rings deck. In the meantime, 2 mana wraths, high life-gain with Solitude and Phlage.... I'm amazed that the pro players are saying that the one ring is 'medium' and can't do anything against most decks. It's not the ring itself, its the prot+excess card advantage not the card itself.

Commander has always solved its own problems, build cards for constructed play, commander players will use them if they are interesting or good, like how it used to be, this was the design philosophy for a long time wish they woukd return to it

I think Javier's statement that something can come and make Grief too powerful and its a good reason to ban it is an argument that can be used for literally any card ever. Something can always be printed to break another card. I think Grief was a bad ban in Modern because it was "unfun." Fun is subjective

Evoke should’ve been an exile effect. That errata would’ve fixed alot

"The possible problems it may be causing for Modern just aren't as clear as Nadu and Grief" Yeah because banning a card not because it's too powerful or is dominant in the format but banning it because it's "not fun" is SUPPPPERRR clear

I really like argument of "fun" but they don't ban one ring which is arguably less "fun" than greif or just as bad. I would rather get scammed turn one than just buried by a ring into second ring.

Making Doomsday piles in vintage is really quick. It takes about 20 seconds to have the pile.

I think that Javier made a point here: Grief is not good right now, but is literally just one card away from beeing broken. Yesterday we tried Scam with "Fear of missing out" from Duskmourn, just for fun. Scamming your opponent turn 1, and hasting a FOMO turn 2 with an Arena of Glory is brutal. Double Thoughtseize + 10 DMG Turn 2. Thats just ridiculous. By the way, I am a Grief lover, but that's just to much. :D

WOTC didn't want to deal with people complaining that Grief was banned in legacy but not modern, IMO

32:12 "I think a lot of the oppression The One Ring can be doing to the format is actually Phlage" (Javier) 33:52 "...there's much less counterplay to it, like you have cards like Surgical, but the Phlage player can play around it" (Anthony) This makes so much sense. Boros playing The One Ring sets off our alarms, but Phlage has been a value-engine for both aggro and control decks ever since it was printed. As a Dimir Murktide player, I've grown to hate The One Ring, but in practice I'm actually comfortable against every Ring deck besides Jeskai. Would love to hear advice on winning that matchup

My point is that the ring nullifies having to manage resources. You can just dump all your hand, get a turn of immunity, and then fill back your hand. Managing Card advantage is meaningless in a Ring match

If the One Ring is fine, why are Uro, Glimpse of Nature, Faithless Looting, Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise on the banlist? They're all way worse at generating card advantage and harder to build around.

Though modern still seems to be the king of 60 card constructed formats, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the current standard format sometime (if standard interests you at all). I like somewhat casually coming up with deck ideas after a set rotation, but the perspective of a non-casual player focused on winning as much as possible is always appreciated (so I better know what my deck brews will be up against). I'll always prefer deeper comentary from a pro like you than just browsing MTG top 8.

"Fun" aside, I think the main problem with Grief is that it has a similar issue to when Jace the Mind Sculptor was first printed, i.e. you could play a long interactive game after Grief resolves and they rip your two best cards and drop a huge body on turn one. Just like you could play a long game after Jace resolved. But your likelihood of winning from that point is so low, and it warps the game so much. So regardless of how miserable it might feel, I think the insidious thing is that you think you can still win even though your percentage chance went down so much just because of one card, or in the case of Grief, two cards (Grief plus a way to bring it back).

I am just sad that living end is dead now

Grief ban reminds me of how other tcg's use bans as a substitute instead of rotating formats.

Do you think Humans can make a come back? Meddling Mage would be a pretty decent card to fight against ring, there's been a lot of humans printed perhaps there is a new list that could be pretty good?

There is a lot of over-reaction to the one ring in my experience. I am not sure what it is to be honest. There are answers to it, if it's such a big deal and it upsets people so badly, they should play those answers, but in my experience they are not and I don't know why. You can easily turn it into a 4 mana fog if you have instant removal held up for it and respond to the first activation. Or you can counter it, or thoughtseize it, or whatever else. In modern if you allow 4 mana cards to resolve, and you don't deal with them for more than 1 or 2 turns you should expect to lose the game, and the one ring is no different. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ddbRmgfhI-s.html I have literally had this situation where my opponent salted off about the one ring, after I won a game with Jeskai casting wrath of the skies as a 6 for 1 against boros energy. I tried to discuss with him, but he refused to hear it, all he had in his mind was that I had cast a one ring that game so I must have won because of that. It couldn't be that he over-committed to a board when I had wrath of the skies since my opening hand, it had to be the one ring in his mind.

That's cool you don't think it's problematic, it's played in half the winning decks though.

You know what is more unfun to play against than Grief? Lantern control and The One Ring.

Love the podcast as always. On the subject of fun, I think it has become a much more reasonable axis to consider for bans simply because the tcg space has become so much more competitive. If you sit down to play with a 1k price modern deck at fnm, get scammed out a match you just sit around and look at people playing one piece, fab, lorcana all having a great time. Meanwhile you and the yugioh players question why you don't just sell out and buy into one of those. 😅

On the topic of grief, I think unfortunately the “unfunness” of her was seriously overstated by a vocal minority of players. It seems like the voices of youtube comments and reddit posts reach further than the opinions of actual, entrenched modern players. The idea that grief scam was so unfun that it kept people out of modern only speaks to the toxicity of the EDH/spectator wing of MTG.

One Ring getting banned would be lame. I don't even play anymore and this stuff still gets to me lol. I get the Grief ban, though I wish there was better ways to combat it than to just straight ban it. Bans are just not a good time and are why I quit a couple years ago.

Can we gave fury back now, it's legit not even that good, but a good card for the sideboard

Javi, do you have a post nadu ban Jeskai list? Im playing in an RCQ saturday and would love to jam it. I played your Pro Tour MH3 list at an RCQ 2 weeks ago and top 8ed.

I completely agree with Javier on his points on Grief.

Based on the comments one would assume that the Grief opening happens in over 80% of the games 😂

Completely agree with mengu

Banning a card based on the fact that it could develop into a problem later is kind of silly to me. Grief benefited so heavily from a very specific kind of card (one that is scammable) that is unlikely to reappear anytime soon. As for why it is powerful in Legacy and not Modern, Legacy simply contains cards that will never see the light of day in modern that uniquely strengthen Grief (like Reanimate).

Using fun as an argument for banning grief is weird because people also often hate to see the ring train just as much

Maybe the fact that grief was only playable in combo decks was enough reason to be banned, but overall the format had mostly adapted to it. People also had a horrible habit of scooping too early to grief scam

Ring should be banned. Over 40% of modern is playing 3+ rings. Even mardu and boros energy are slotting in rings. Its cutting out deckbuilding options, every deck is getting closer and closer to 56+4rings. It definitely deserved it more than grief.

Wasnt eggs banned for the same reason? Fun?

I love thoughtsieze I have four in my deck but yes I agree grief had to go

I hate the one ring, really hoped it got banned

1. The comment about not knowing how many times wizards has stopped a Nadu holds no weight to me. That is the expectation. You don't order food and have the wrong thing delivered and go " gee but how about all the orders they got right" 2. Grief: make up your mind should it have been banned instead of fury or not banned at all? One of you contradicts yourselves on this topic. 3. The one ring: don't use formats that no longer exist to claim your stance on the card today. That's silly.

I might just be done with magic tbh. I heard Flesh & Blood is a pretty good TCG

The ban on grief made me finally quit modern. Fury should have never been banned, back then it should have been grief. Scam has seen two bans now, LE and Rhinos have seen two bans too. All along the One Ring is choking all the fun out of the format.

Grief does nothing but create miserable play patterns. I'm glad it's gone. It was horrible for the game.

Agree with most of what was said in this podcast, and I enjoyed it. Sadly I feel like I must take a break from Magic due to the WotC staff response to "the Nadu situation" as MaRo called it on his blog post today. The blog posts miss the mark imo, and smack of damage control rather than actual transparency. Which is only to be expected from PR posts. Maybe I'm just cynical, but it's really diminished my trust in WotC to balance their game for 1v1 players.

Wow… some of you guys sound a little tone deaf of the community. The One Ring is very frustrating and egregious to play against - that fact should be acknowledged.

Commander has always solved its own problems, build cards for constructed play, commander players will use them if they are interesting or good, like how it used to be, this was the design philosophy for a long time wish they woukd return to it