Magic the Gathering XX: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANS!!!

[Lord Seth]

After spending the weekend thinking about Modern and the consequences of the recent bannings. I'm wondering what modern would look like if Birthing Pod, Treasure Cruise, DTT, Ancestral Visions, and BBE were unbanned? I honestly feel all of those are relatively safe unbannings that although completely undoing the trend would lead to a nice, more fair and faster pace modern. Tier 1 deck wise I feel it would hurt Affinity and Abzan Midrange, but abzan players would go back to their pods and Jund, Combo would take the biggest hit but Twin and Scapeshift would greatly appreciate DTT, but the new up and comer Bloom Titan would take a serious hit and Infect would also not be having fun. Beyond that I think control would love the addition of Ancestral Visions. As to what would get hit aggro is not getting any toys here (Zoo maybe with BBE) so burn and affinity would be down, but their ability to sideboard check decks would still mean they would see play.

Well, that's not going to happen, first, but I suppose we can speak hypothetically. I do think you worded your suggestion oddly; instead of saying "what Modern would look like if this list of cards was unbanned," it would've been better to say "what Modern would look like if instead of banning things this last announcement, they unbanned Ancestral Vision and Bloodbraid Elf."

Now, I've been campaigning for an Ancestral Vision unban for a long time now; I'm fully convinced it was safe to begin with, and its banning even initially was a mistake. Bloodbraid Elf would diversify BGx, which right now is just Junk. Funnily enough, it's the same problem we had with Jund before when Bloodbraid Elf was legal: There was no reason to play Junk or Rock, because you got so much with Bloodbraid Elf. Now Bloodbraid Elf would actually diversify because there's a strong alternative, Siege Rhino. Bloodbraid Elf also bears the nice distinction of being a strong creature that's unplayable in Birthing Pod decks.

I don't think Ancestral Vision would necessarily help control that much, though. I think we'd have to ban Treasure Cruise because the fact is, one of the reasons control became so bad was because why play control when you could get better card advantage in a tempo deck? Treasure Cruise draws you cards way quicker. Even tossing out Ancestral Vision doesn't seem like it'd get the job done, as Treasure Cruise is still better.

As to riskier bans, I'd like to see Sword of the Meek and the Artifact Lands to come off, I still think Control needs something to help stabilize and the artifact lands would give affinity a necessary boost in a more powerful modern.

Affinity really does not need a boost from the artifact lands. I would be in favor of a Sword of the Meek unban, as the card is simply not as quick at winning as other combos in the format.

It was not. With siege rhino in the format, it's reasonable and it should be unbanned.

Before the bans, it was reasonable. Now... I'm not so sure.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a major dissonance to have Bloodbraid Elf banned but Siege Rhino be legal. The problem is that Junk is so huge right now that I'm not sure enabling Jund is a good idea. The ideal situation would be that some of the Junk players would switch over to Jund. This wouldn't lower the number of BGx decks, but it would diversify them. Unfortunately, what has a high chance of happening is that non-Junk players will hop over to Jund, increasing the number of BGx decks further, which is problematic when one considers how dominant BGx (well, Junk, but it's a BGx deck) is right now. How nice that, to fix the problem of us having two distinct dominant decks... they decided to make Modern have one dominant deck. Nice one, Wizards.

I think the real goof was the Dig Through Time ban. Banning something based on speculation is a horrible idea. Maybe if they hadn't banned it, we could've had a Pro Tour that wasn't utterly dominated by Junk. Of course, unbanning a card that might do something would be nice as well. Could've at least given us Ancestral Vision... still can't believe that card is somehow banned.