Magic The Gathering Thread XXIII: Modern is Dead, Long Live Modern

[Gaius Hermicus]

Can we please discuss the actual game, not the incredibly vague and dumb colour philosophies?

Any cards people are excited to get from MH1? I know a few people after Urza and Ayula.

I actually do want to have a place to discuss color philosophy, so I am going to make a separate thread for that.

Here is the link: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...1#post23955811

[LansXero]

What is the worst creature card?

There is no objectively worst card as there is no objectively best card. Because both of those require parameters, and card valuation is very context-dependant and subjective. You cant take 2 cards at random and label one 'better' than the other without context.

[Manticoran]

There is no objectively worst card as there is no objectively best card. Because both of those require parameters, and card valuation is very context-dependant and subjective. You cant take 2 cards at random and label one 'better' than the other without context.

...What? Sure you can. If I have a 3/2 Beast for 1G, and a 2/2 Beast for 1G, I can tell you the 3/2 Beast for 1G is objectively a better card. Even if you care about things other than pure gameplay, if it's also better art, in a better set, and the other card is related to a horrifying worldwide catastrophe that scars the minds of people everywhere just to remember, and yet is swept under the carpet by the Illuminati(Note: Not an actual argument, just a snowball point to make the case that it's TOTALLY possible for things to be objectively better than other things)... Extrapolation from there says we can very clearly say that some cards are better than others.

On top of that, the person in question was pretty clearly talking about just from a rules perspective. At which point, yeah, VERY easy to say certain cards are just worse than others. It can be hard to identify WHICH cards are the absolute worst and absolute best. Absolute best probably being somewhat harder than absolute worst, as there's a lot more ways to be good than there are to be bad, since after a certain point all creatures that are sufficiently bad become "You actually just won't/can't play this card." Contextually of course, this means something like Haakon might be the worst card in the game in a lot of situations(Assuming you didn't build your deck around it), just due to the fact it'll actually be a card in your hand you can never play for any gain under most circumstances.

But likely the question is actually "What cards have the worst rules such that it is the hardest to find value in them when attempting to do so," which is again an easier question and fairly straightforward to answer. I personally like Wood Elemental for the reasons outlined above. Very rarely are forests in your graveyard a positive effect, and even if they were there are far better benefits you can get for losing all of your lands than getting an X/X elemental for them.

[Fable Wright]

There ya go: https://aetherhub.com/Deck/Public/119716

That is the single greediest manabase I've ever seen.

Its existence is a testament to the mitigating impact of Blood Moon in Modern.

Basic lands: 1 forest.

[Silfir]

...What? Sure you can. If I have a 3/2 Beast for 1G, and a 2/2 Beast for 1G, I can tell you the 3/2 Beast for 1G is objectively a better card. Even if you care about things other than pure gameplay, if it's also better art, in a better set, and the other card is related to a horrifying worldwide catastrophe that scars the minds of people everywhere just to remember, and yet is swept under the carpet by the Illuminati(Note: Not an actual argument, just a snowball point to make the case that it's TOTALLY possible for things to be objectively better than other things)... Extrapolation from there says we can very clearly say that some cards are better than others.

On top of that, the person in question was pretty clearly talking about just from a rules perspective. At which point, yeah, VERY easy to say certain cards are just worse than others. It can be hard to identify WHICH cards are the absolute worst and absolute best. Absolute best probably being somewhat harder than absolute worst, as there's a lot more ways to be good than there are to be bad, since after a certain point all creatures that are sufficiently bad become "You actually just won't/can't play this card." Contextually of course, this means something like Haakon might be the worst card in the game in a lot of situations(Assuming you didn't build your deck around it), just due to the fact it'll actually be a card in your hand you can never play for any gain under most circumstances.

But likely the question is actually "What cards have the worst rules such that it is the hardest to find value in them when attempting to do so," which is again an easier question and fairly straightforward to answer. I personally like Wood Elemental for the reasons outlined above. Very rarely are forests in your graveyard a positive effect, and even if they were there are far better benefits you can get for losing all of your lands than getting an X/X elemental for them.

Well said.

Scornful Egotist barely even belongs in the conversation, because it's a perfectly functional 2/2 for 3 generic with a technical upside, which is better than Scathe Zombies, which in turn is better than Mindless Null. (The upside isn't just theoretical - Scornful Egotist's set had some "big CMC matters" cards that it could exploit in Limited.)

Even Chimney Imp is not godawful. You squint at it after drinking a couple of beers, and it's a flying body to stick its set's various Equipment on, with what is kind of like a cantrip attached to it. If you drop its CMC by just one, it's almost kind of decent. I imagine it gets its reputation from the goofy art. I'd certainly rather play a Chimney Imp than, say, Aven Trooper or Viashino Skeleton or even Boggart Hoodlums.

Wood Elemental just boggles the mind every time you compare it to literally any other Green creature card just for the hoops you have to jump through. Suppose you had ten forests - you'd get a 6/6, which is a respectable beatstick, but you also just spent ten mana and are left with only four forests. You can't splash for it (despite it being 3G) because your deck needs to be mostly forests to make use of it at all. You can't sacrifice "all your lands" to it because it has to be untapped forests, so even in situations in which you're fine with sacrificing all your lands to get one big creature, you can't even do that. You just get a medium-sized creature and four lands left over.

One metric for badness might be: How much would you need to knock off the casting cost to make it playable or good? Chimney Imp, as mentioned, is 1 CMC off from being almost kind of okay, and at 2B it could be a more splashable, more evasive alternative to Chittering Rats, which sees Pauper play.

Another is: does the card fill a niche that could potentially make it good, even if it isn't right now? Scornful Egotist is a self-contained way to have an 8 CMC creature for only four mana. Maybe there's a playing environment in which you want to use it with Neoform, Eldritch Evolution or Birthing Pod.

Even with those allowances, Wood Elemental boggles the mind. If you reduced its CMC to zero it'd still be a bad creature - a monogreen Endless One that eats your lands and can't use mana from nonland (nonforest) sources, basically. But at least at 0 CMC it could be a free spell combo piece for decks that combo off of creatures hitting the graveyard, just in case Hangerback Walker or Walking Ballista, Chamber Sentry, Ugin's Conjurant or Endless One all get banned in the same format. Any deck that wants to sacrifice lands from the battlefield for value is not going to a) spend 3G on a creature that does it when cheaper permanents do it for more value and b) not even get all the lands.

[Ninjaman]

Is it Scornful Egotist? Him having a very high CMC only allows for some very narrow applications.

Scornful Egotist is a 2/2 for 3, so it's definitely not him.

Is it chimney imp? Similar scenario, very high CMC for what little it does.

It's not chimney imp. If it had cost 3 it would have been good for some decks. At 4 it would have been limited playable. At 5 it's bad, but definitely not the worst creature ever.

Is it Wood Elemental? It's probably Wood Elemental.

I think it probably is.


You also have stuff like Cephalid Snitch, which is just useless.
Zephyr Spirit is also absurdly horrible.
Elvish Pathcutter is so bad at what it does that no elf deck would ever play it.
Aven Trooper also deserves a mention.

[Spore]

That is the single greediest manabase I've ever seen.

Its existence is a testament to the mitigating impact of Blood Moon in Modern.

Basic lands: 1 forest.

Yes, I agree. However their face when I drop a Interplanar Beacon followed by Nicol with four black/green mana sources on board is priceless.

[Gauntlet]

The Dreadhorde deck's mana base isn't even that bad to be honest.

17 green lands is plenty to start casting all your creatures.
17 black sources is easily enough to cast Dreadhorde (13 lands, 4 Paradise Druid)

All the non-BG cards are castable off Interplanar Beacon. The list has 11+4 blue sources, 8+4 white sources, and 6+4 red sources, which is slightly low on a few counters, but it's not like you have a ton of cards that require any of these colours, and a full set of explore creatures helps you to get whatever colour of mana you need pretty easily.

I've played greedier mana bases in Legacy.

[enderlord99]

Abyssal Persecutor seems worthless to me, but I'm sure there are uses for it, somehow.

Wood Elemental? Not so much.

In other words, I agree with the consensus.

[Silfir]

There is nothing mysterious about Abyssal Persecutor - use it to knock your opponents into negatives, and then sacrifice it. It's got a 4.2 star rating on the Gatherer website - easily one of the best Black beatsticks ever printed.

[Techwarrior]

Persecutor is at the very least a good blocker, and is good at enabling ninjutsu. It's not really constructed playable, but the card does do things well, even if those things aren't particularly good.

At it's worst, it's a 4 Mana 6/6 flampler with downside. I'll not say it's a great card, but it's pretty far off of being the worst.

[Silfir]

I'm not sure I can agree with that. Dude's friggin' brilliant at knocking opponents into a negative life total. So what if they don't die from it right away?

What's your Standard for "Constructed playable" anyway? This guy was played plenty in constructed formats in the past. He's just not degenerate enough to compete with what the hell is going on in the formats he's legal in nowadays. If he was reprinted into Standard, chances are Black decks would at least experiment with him, if he doesn't become an outright staple.

[Ninjaman]

Abyssal Persecutor seems worthless to me, but I'm sure there are uses for it, somehow.

Persecutor is at the very least a good blocker, and is good at enabling ninjutsu. It's not really constructed playable, but the card does do things well, even if those things aren't particularly good.

Abyssal Persecutor saw a bit of play in legacy, and also saw a bit of play when he was legal in standard.
I'm not sure if you realize, but he still deals damage, and he can still bring your opponents to negative life, and when you do you win the moment he leaves the board. He is black, so you should have plenty ways of removing him.

Bringing him up in this discussion is just extremely wrong.

His best home was in some mono black legacy decks that played him instead of Dark Stalker, because he plays better with Dark Confidant.

[Techwarrior]

I'm not sure if my post came across correctly. I'm not saying the card is bad at all. I meant that it isn't currently very playable in the formats it's legal in. I was referring to the U/B extended deck that played it with ninjutsu cards. I'm quite aware that persecutor hits like a bag of bricks.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Cards that work well with Abyssal Persecutor:

Cabal Therapy
Liliana of the Veil
Diabolic Edict
Smallpox
Literally any sacrifice outlet.

Is Abyssal Persecutor currently outclassed? Yeah, pretty much. Any deck that would run Persecutor would probably rather run Phyrexian Obliterator instead, these days, but it's still a good creature.

[Eurus]

Man modern is a messed-up format right now. I honestly can't believe that Karn and Griselbrand haven't eaten an emergency ban. Is anyone actually enjoying playing this mess?

[Shadow of the Sun]

Man modern is a messed-up format right now. I honestly can't believe that Karn and Griselbrand haven't eaten an emergency ban. Is anyone actually enjoying playing this mess?

Quite a lot, actually. Admittedly, I'm playing a Karn the Great Creator deck.

The meta is a lot better than it looks - Humans and UW Control are currently the top two decks.

[Ninjaman]

Is Abyssal Persecutor currently outclassed? Yeah, pretty much. Any deck that would run Persecutor would probably rather run Phyrexian Obliterator instead, these days, but it's still a good creature.

Isn't Obliterator much harder to play with Wastelands and Mishra's Factories though?

Man modern is a messed-up format right now. I honestly can't believe that Karn and Griselbrand haven't eaten an emergency ban. Is anyone actually enjoying playing this mess?

The fact that they didn't need to hit those cards with emergency bans actually goes to show the health of the format I think.

[tgva8889]

My favorite use for Abyssal Persecutor is giving it to your opponent. Is it a good strategy? Probably not, but when it works it's quite hilarious.

You know Wood Elemental is bad when the fixed version of it is still basically unplayable.

[Gauntlet]

The problem Persecutor has right now is the same thing that plagues most big dumb beaters in non-Standard formats.

It doesn't generate card advantage and gets popped by a single removal spell, so it's not great against control decks.

It costs 4 mana and takes multiple turns to win the game, so it's too slow to be good against the combo or aggro decks

That leaves the midrange matchups. Big beaters are at their best there, but it still is a tempo loss if it eats removal, and generally you can't afford to run cards which are only good against one archetype unless they absolutely obliterate that matchup on their own, which Persecutor doesn't do.

[Tvtyrant]

My favorite use for Abyssal Persecutor is giving it to your opponent. Is it a good strategy? Probably not, but when it works it's quite hilarious.

You know Wood Elemental is bad when the fixed version of it is still basically unplayable.

I have won multiplayer games where my opponents were all in on tribal and I just donated them persecutors. I akso really like Persecutor in Pestilence decks, their butts are big enough to keep the board clear and you can kill it for lethal very easily.

Working on a new MTG Modern deck from Modern Horizons. I really like the new rhino, trying out a phoenix shell for it.

Spoiler

Show

3 As Foretold
4 Electrodominance

4 Ancestral Vision
4 Faithless Looting
4 Manamorphose
3 Gut Shot

4 Crashing Footfalls
4 Dreadhorde Arcanist
4 Arclight Phoenix

2 Lightning Axe

4 Fiery Islet
2 island
2 mountain
4 Serum Visions
4 Shivan Reef
4 scalding tarn
4 steam vents

https://deckstats.net/deck-19352620-...7c88b8442.html

Electrodominance can put 8 power on the field t2 at instant speed using rhino, which can also be flashed back with Arcanist or it plays like a traditional phoenix deck looting birds and then bringing them back.

[Carl]

Crated a new non-contest related general design your own cards thread. Thought i'd just pop in to post a link.

[JBPuffin]

Hey guys, random person here with a madman's offering. I'm working on a conversion method of sorts which would allow one to build decks with Magic and YuGiOh cards simultaneously. Most people would think of just making one person play a YuGiOh deck and the other a Magic deck, but I've played too many tabletop RPGs to be content with that level of restriction...or at least, that's the excuse I'm going with .

Here's a link to a place y'all can comment and whatnot, I'm not expecting to post this anywhere else here and won't be coming back much to reply in this thread, but I figure there might be some interest and don't want to leave people out where I can avoid it. Cheers!

[Emmerlaus]

Hey guys, random person here with a madman's offering. I'm working on a conversion method of sorts which would allow one to build decks with Magic and YuGiOh cards simultaneously. Most people would think of just making one person play a YuGiOh deck and the other a Magic deck, but I've played too many tabletop RPGs to be content with that level of restriction...or at least, that's the excuse I'm going with

Well good luck with that! I will not touch Yugioh again, too much upgrades since I played and its far too complicated far me now. And the cards are still too small, nobody to play it with and ... Nothing will beat the Beastcraft planes for me. They jumped the shark after that for me lol!

EDIT: I dont know why but MTG seem to be aware of the decks I have. A new druid for my druid deck who is awesome, That Sky's Sword angel who will go in my Esperia deck and a few others I wont bother to list here lol!

What is the card of Core 2020 you are more excited about? Is there one to begin with?

[LaZodiac]

Well good luck with that! I will not touch Yugioh again, too much upgrades since I played and its far too complicated far me now. And the cards are still too small, nobody to play it with and ... Nothing will beat the Beastcraft planes for me. They jumped the shark after that for me lol!

EDIT: I dont know why but MTG seem to be aware of the decks I have. A new druid for my druid deck who is awesome, That Sky's Sword angel who will go in my Esperia deck and a few others I wont bother to list here lol!

What is the card of Core 2020 you are more excited about? Is there one to begin with?

I extremely like all the good Chandra's, but overall this isn't as exciting as the last couple sets. Which is fine by me.

I like the new Kaalia. That's cool. She has been tall, so now she will be wide.

[Carl]

Bit of an exotic rules question. If i exile a card from an opponent's graveyard underneath a permanent i control who owns it for the purpose of effects that card about ownership?

[Ninjaman]

Bit of an exotic rules question. If i exile a card from an opponent's graveyard underneath a permanent i control who owns it for the purpose of effects that card about ownership?

The owner of a card is always the person whose deck it is in.

[Carl]

The owner of a card is always the person whose deck it is in.

Thats what i thought but i wanted to be sure, doing some homebrewing and that question suddenly got really important.

[Techwarrior]

The distinction between owner and controller is a fine line to walk. Technically their card is just in exile, noted to have been there by the effect of your card. It's not actually technically 'under' your o-ring or similar, we just do that as a shorthand for the effect. They still both own and control the card under that style of effect normally, unless your card's ability explicitly says otherwise.

[Douglas]

I don't think the concept of "control" of something even applies to anything that isn't on the battlefield or stack. A card exiled by Ixalan's Binding or similar is just in exile, not controlled by anyone.

The definition of ownership in the game is the same as it is outside the game. The owner of the card is the person who brought it to the game and will take it home (or sell it, or throw it in the trash, etc.) afterward.