Modern Snapshot: Impact of Recent Ban List Changes

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CanadianShinobi

18 April 2016

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Hello TappedOut! As you all know by now Modern underwent a drastic shift on April 4th with the banning of Eye of Ugin and the unbanning of Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek. Today I would like to examine the impact the Modern Ban List has had upon the format in recent history, as well as discuss the future implications of the most recent update. I won’t be examining the entire history of the ban list, instead I would like to focus on the past three updates. That means I will be starting with January 2015, moving to January 2016 and finishing with the most recent update. The purpose of this is twofold: first and foremost being a look at recency, notably that Modern has been defined by the more recent bans than say the banning of Deathrite Shaman in 2014; and the second being that these bans are the most informative to us of WotC’s policy towards Modern. If there is interest I would be more than willing to return to this subject at a later date.

January 2015

Dig Through Time, Treasure Cruise and Birthing Pod are banned. Golgari Grave-Troll is unbanned.

Hoo boy. Here is a ban that got people talking. This is a ban that outright killed a Tier 1 deck, something that was unprecedented in Modern. With the banning of Birthing Pod, there was a great deal of anger and uncertainty introduced into the Modern format. Birthing Pod decks aimed to utilized its namesake card to muscle out a win through sheer advantage, or to combo with either infinite life in a couple ways, or lethal damage by sacrificing Murderous Redcap to Viscera Seer while Melira, Sylvok Outcast was in play. However, with the introduction of Siege Rhino, Pod decks became a dominant force in the metagame and WotC felt that Pod limited design space. As such, where former bans aimed to tone down dominating decks, this ban removed Pod as a deck outright. The result of banning Birthing Pod ultimately led to a wider range of decks being played. Indeed the long term effects of the ban led to one of the most diverse formats in Modern history. And while the banning of Birthing Pod may have upset and disenfranchised several players, it was perhaps not as controversial as the banning of Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise.

Out of the two cards Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise, it was Treasure Cruise that was the greatest offender. With Treasure Cruise, decks were able to splash Blue with reckless abandon with zero consequence because of Modern being able to support flexible mana bases through Shock-Lands and Fetches. This became even more true with the introduction of the Onslaught Fetches to Modern when they were reprinted in Khans of Tarkir. Treasure Cruise was most dominant in U/R Delver. U/R Delver was an aggressive tempo deck that sought to capitalize on disrupting an opponent through a number of cheap, effective instants and sorceries. If Delver could not close the game out quickly, or should the deck become too disrupted it would crumple, because it would have expended all resources from the hand, because the only card draw in the deck were based around cantrips. By adding Treasure Cruise to the deck, Delver players circumvented this problem since they could easily refill their hand. Sometimes multiple times a game. At its height U/R Delver had nearly a 20% share of the metagame. By banning Treasure Cruise WotC opened up the format to a wider range of aggressive strategies, or at least made those strategies susceptible to former disruption since they could not longer efficiently draw cards with Treasure Cruise.

Yet, the controversy of January 2015 did not cease with the banning of Birthing Pod. Indeed, for some players it was the banning of Dig Through Time that was seen as the biggest controversy. You see, the reason for the banning of Dig Through Time was purely speculative. As the announcement stated: “In Modern, these cards are easy replacements for one another—while a Delver deck might use Treasure Cruise over Dig Through Time, banning one but not the other would do little to change the deck.” The assumption from WotC was that Dig Through Time would replace Treasure Cruise. However, this assumption is dangerous ground to base a ban on, since Cruise overshadowed DDT for its time in Modern. While Dig Through Time found a home in some combo decks, the dominance of Pod and Delver decks made it hard to factually judge the impact Dig Through Time would have upon the format. As such, it is a card that I would very much like to see unbanned in the future, even if unbanning it proves to be a mistake. It is best to know for sure rather than speculate needlessly.

As for the unbannings, there is little to be said here. Golgari Grave-Troll produced some brewing. However, it shortly fell into disuse and sees no current play in Modern. The intention of invigorating graveyard strategies in Modern was not recognized. Likewise, Bitterblossom also encouraged brewing and a renewal of Faerie decks. Dissimilarly, however, this card continues to see some fringe play. One of the big reasons that neither of these cards see much greater play in Modern is a lack of support. Golgari Grave-Troll suffers particularly from this problem since the pieces that make Dredge a deck in Legacy simply don’t exist in Modern. Bitterblossom is more of a support card, itself, and has yet to find a cohesive home. It also suffers from being easily disrupted by Abrupt Decay which sees widespread play in a variety of G/B/X midrange decks.

January 2016

Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom are banned.

Here is a ban that the Magic Community is still adapting to. Mostly due to the Eldrazi Winter, but also because there is still debate on whether or not Splinter Twin should have been banned. This ban impacted Modern in a way that even the ban of Birthing Pod did not. It also did further damage to the faith that players have in WotC. The major problem with banning Splinter Twin lays within the reasoning provided by WotC. Within their statement they claimed: “We also look for decks that hold a large enough percentage of the competitive field to reduce the diversity of the format.”. The problem with this line of reasoning was that the empirical evidence simply did not match up. According to several sources, U/R Twin decks made up anywhere between 9-11% of the Modern metagame at the time of its ban, with a similar portion going to Affinity. Other decks such as Infect, Tron and a myriad of others held 4-5% of the metagame. Overall, at the time of the Twin ban, Modern was healthy. If we compare that to U/R Delver and Pod decks, which at the time of their bans made up nearly 40% of the metagame combined, then it must be acknowledged that WotC did not have sufficient reason to ban Twin purely on this line of reasoning. They did produce another line of reasoning, noting that Twin had a tendency to make Top 8s at major events frequently, but this too suffers from some scrutiny because a selection of Grand Prixs also demonstrated a diverse Top 8.

With regard to the recent unban of Ancestral Vision it has been speculated that the ban was made because WotC was planning on unbanning Ancestral Vision anyway. Therefore, with Ancestral Vision in the format, Twin decks would become overly dominant. The problem I have with this theory is: If that were the case, why would WotC not unban Ancestral Vision during the January update, and thus mitigate some of the backlash of the Splinter Twin ban?

Moving onward to Summer Bloom, there really isn’t much to say. The ban was expected as Bloom decks had the ability to, with some marginal consistency, win on Turn 3. Such wins are against WotC policy toward Modern. As such, the card was banned and was expected to be banned, especially since Titan Bloom decks began to Top 8 relatively frequently. However, I also do not wholly agree with the ban, since it removed another combo deck from the format and the deck was not dominant in the same way previous decks were.

April 2016

Eye of Ugin is banned. Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek are unbanned.

April 4th. A few short weeks ago, Modern was turned on its head and players are still attempting to catch up. From a drab, frustrating winter dominated by an Eldrazi metagame to a spring with renewed hope in the format and perhaps a sign of things to come. I won’t be spending time talking about Eye of Ugin, except that Oath of the Gate Watch turned it into a broken, broken card. The T/O Community has discussed the topic at length and there is little need to further beat the dead horse. Instead, it’s time to talk about two very key unbannings

Sword of the Meek is the less surprising of the two unbannings. This was a card that many feel should have been removed from the ban list a long time ago. It has a strong, but not overwhelming combo with Thopter Foundry and artifact based decks, particularly Tezzerator decks which are a pet favourite of mine. However, utilizing Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek to full potential will undoubtedly take a long time since the combo is easily accessible to a wide range of colour combinations. It was also a much needed unban since it provides a more interactive combo deck for Modern, something WotC has been striving for. While Twin decks did force interaction, it was an interaction that often frustrated players since Splinter Twin was built into a very efficient Control shell. Hopefully, in the coming months we will see a deck emerge around Sword of the Meek and that it won’t suffer the same fate as Golgari Grave-Troll.

Now, Ancestral Vision is the real superstar of the unban duo, in my opinion. It was a card desperately needed for Blue decks and it is a card that has already seen some mild success in Baltimore this past weekend However, like Sword of the Meek I am not up to passing judgement quite yet. In the next few months I hope that Ancestral Vision will bring about a resurgence of Control decks in Modern and that these decks will not simply be a fad. There current consensus for Ancestral Vision seems to be that Grixis is its most potent home. I am in agreement with this, since Grixis has a wide range of tools to help it out against Aggro decks. However, I am also partial to Esper, since White provides a great deal of flexibility and better lifegain options, which may be relevant. The other thing to consider is how many Ancestral Vision to put into a deck. I personally think three is a safe bet, but playing a full four, does confer the advantage of being more likely to draw it early. Because, while drawing three is a powerful effect, if Ancestral Vision is drawn after turn three it is a terrible top deck, since it is Suspended for so long. The concern here is that Ancestral Vision is perhaps too slow, since Modern has changed to be a much more creature centric and aggressive format these past few years. Perhaps unbanning Ancestral Vision is only a partial answer to the troubles faced by Control decks in the format. Time will tell.

With all this said, the unbanning of Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek do offer players some insight into the fact that the original ban list is not as sacred as we may have once considered it to be. Not long ago, many thought Ancestral Vision would never be unbanned because it was too similar to Treasure Cruise. Perhaps time will prove these thoughts right, but something tells me this won’t be the case. Furthermore, with these last two unbannings we may be seeing some more leniency with regard to the original ban list. Who knows, perhaps Jace, the Mind Sculptor will be unbanned next, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Well TappedOut, that’s all I have for now. As always, I encourage discussion and any feedback that you have is more than welcome.