No Banned List Modern
Modern Deck Help forum
Posted on Jan. 29, 2018, 3:49 a.m. by awesomeragle
With the SCG Con coming up and the promise of no banned list modern, can anyone help point me to a resource that could help me better understand this format? Caleb Durward's series focused primarily on the effects of single card unbannings, and I am looking for a broader picture than that. This is the deck I am working on (included is a primer) and I need to know if I am approaching this format with a level head with the right idea of what is going on or if I am way off on my evaluations of things.
So I expect no banned list modern to have a t1 that looks like this in no particular order:
Miracles, Infect, U/W Eldrazi, Turbo Depths, Storm, Hypergenesis, Elves(?), Twin(?)
With a t2 to look like this:
12 Post (or other tron variant), Affinity, Delver/Death's Shadow (hereafter referred to as simply "Delver"), Bloom Titan, Punishing Jund, Pod, Dredge, Elves(?), Twin(?)
Elves and Twin are the wild cards, I am not sure if they are good enough for t1 or not. If I had to guess, I would say Elves is likely t1 and Twin t2, but I am not as confident about that as most of my other predictions. Bloom Titan, while powerful, gets pushed to t2 because of the existence of Mental Misstep against the decks most important card, Amulet of Vigor and the fact that its not faster than any of the other t1 decks. In a format with Mental Misstep, one would expect Affinity to do well, however it is just too slow to beat most of the t1 decks as they are trying to win the game turn 2-3 and Affinity is a consistent turn 4 deck that has no interaction.
well its very hard to tell how a the format without the banlist would look like.
Id like to evaluate the format by looking at different decks and see how many cards they get from the bann list. and eliminating decks that would likely be to slow to beat the fastest decks.
Storm:Well there is no discussion about it I think, storm will get a ton of cards, and its already a good deck, so it is very likely to be t1. This is also the deck that will in my opinion make a lot of combo decks to slow for the format (Amulet Blood and Birthing Pod for example)
Dredge: gets Golgari Grave-Troll and Dread Return should be a good deck in this format.
Elves, Goblins and other Tribal-creature what ever decks:Skullclamp is one of the most broken cards ever and will help those decks. Elves should be by far the best, it has the most combo potential and also gets to play with Deathrite Shaman. I dont think that they are good against Storm that might be a problem
Big Mana:Eldrazi will be more consistent. 12 Post is another Tron like big mana deck. The problem is that they have no chance against Storm so I dont think that they will be too good in this format.
Midrange:Same is true for Rock, Jund etc type of decks, they get awesome cards but are not good against Storm so i dont know if they would be big contenders.
Counter Top:Of course this will be a deck, but again its not that good against Storm.
Hypergenesis:Sure thats a deck. I have acutally no idea how it works so i cant actually say anithing about it. Might be one of the best Decks in the Format.
Affinity:I stronlgy dissagree with Boza they do get cards. The artifact lands will make metalcraft more consistent (dispatch! talking about interaction) they get a non legendary mox they get skullclamp. Thats acutally pretty scary i think, but again affinity wont have a good storm matchup thats what pushed the deck outside of T1 i think.
Im sure i forgot a hole lot of decks that could emerge (didnt mention Splinter Twin for example) but i really think storm will be the deck to beat. Storm is currently one of the best decks in modern and it will get the most cards from the banlist. There are rerely bad matchups for the decks and most of the new decks also dont have good matchups against it.Of course I could be completely wrong with that assumption. Taking into consideration that everyone knows that Storm will be one of the best decks its likely that most players have 4+ hatecards for it in their Sb which would result in Storm doesnt seeing a lot of success.
January 29, 2018 4:53 p.m.
I strongly disagree with lukas96 - Affinity does not get anything from unbans. There is no space in the deck for artifact lands - not only does the deck not play anything with metalcraft, making art lands useless, between the 8 manlands, 4 glimmervoid, this leaves only 4 spaces for lands, usually reserved for darksteel citadel.
The non-legendary mox is not useful as it taxes the resource you have the least of - cards in hand.
Skullclamp is a decent card, but works with memnite and creature lands only, so I would pass on it.
Additionally, I think Dredge is the scariest for a UW control deck. Your main lock piece of CounterTop does nothing as Dredge is not casting anything. Storm is quite beatable for you specifically, but game 1 will be tough.
Even stronger than countertop, Chalice of the Void at 0 or 1 will do a lot of work vs the field. i know space in the main is at a premium, but still, it is very useful.
January 30, 2018 3:02 a.m.
Why would anyone play darksteel citadel when they could vet colored mana from an artifact land, why would anyone play glimervoid when they could get colored mana from an arzifactland?
Galvanic blast, dispatch, mox opal, those use metal craft and afe very playable. Thoughtcast also gets more effective.Scullclamp kills memnite, signal pest, arcboubd ravager and vault skirge. Of course this would be brutal in affinity. Also skullcrack works if your xreature doesnt die imediately because you can sac it to revager or if it gets removed.
You could be right about the mox but affinity could easily play skullclamp and thoughtcast to minimize the card disadvantage
January 30, 2018 4 a.m.
| Darksteel Citadel is terrible
| Metalcraft is a gozu mechanic to build your deck around in a format with Mental Misstep and Chalice of the Void
Choose one.
Anywho, Elves is a strong choice because of Glimpse of Nature combined with Green Sun's Zenith and Skullclamp. Storm built around Pyromancer's Swath is also powerful.
Delver, Death and Taxes, and Miracles are more metagame calls, but can put up results. Delver lists with Skullclamp and Young Pyromancer can get nuts, though.
Hypergenesis and Infect (with Blazing Shoal) seem like obvious choices, but from what I understand, they get hated out too easily and are more fragile than Storm or Elves. Hypergenesis is probably the most broken deck in the format, but you and everyone else realizes this and then everyone has sideboard tech for it.
Dredge, Dark Depths, and Eldrazi are also strong contenders, but no one seems to have solved those decks, so you're probably on your own trying to build one.
Lastly, don't forget the traditional Modern decks that have dominated in the past. Splinter Twin and Birthing Pod shouldn't be overlooked or ruled out. Splinter Twin is particularly vorpal with Remand ("lol @ your cascading spells, phyrexian mana, and so-called free spells"), Mental Misstep, and Dig Through Time. Jund gets Deathrite Shaman and Bloodbraid Elf with Punishing Fire. These aren't going to be like the other degenerate decks in the format. But: you just have so many answers to everything broken while your opponents can't answer your 5/6 Tarmogoyfs and other value cards.
January 31, 2018 10:01 a.m.
I think affinity gains a lot with Skullclamp and the artifact lands. Disciple of the Vault in conjunction with Skullclamp will be just gross and I think strong enough. I think you can cut the creature lands and just play the artifact lands and have a fine amount of threats.
Elves will be debateably the best deck. I think this will be the deck to beat.
A card to consider coming back is Chrome Mox. This card is going to give headway to some decks to accelerate.
Infect will be huge there is no doubt that Blazing Shoal pitch Progenitus or some other good red card will be strong too.
Pyromancer/Mentor/Delver - I mean you get Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. Hard to say what numbers. There will be a bunch of brews with misstep and probe and the ability to cast a ton of "free spells" in one turn. Maybe Chrome Mox has a home here.
Hypergenesis something like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
I think decks like dredge are to slow. Dread Return is powerful and I'm sure it can be broken. I think Eldrazi and decks like Jund/Abzan are just to slow too. Pod will be to slow. Possibly a blue control deck like Miracles could be good. You get Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Counterbalance, Sensei's Divining Top. Those are very powerful cards; however I think it will miss enough for combo to knock them out personally. Mental Misstep is a great card though.
February 3, 2018 9:58 p.m.
awesomeragle says... #8
Take a look at my edit, this is what I expect from no banned list modern, which is what many of you reflected. I believe lukas96 and sirkehn are over evaluating the effect of artifact lands on affinity. Even with artifact lands it doesn't speed up the clock, and in fact lowers the consistency of it if you remove man lands or even worse try to put something like Disciple of the Vault in the deck. The "interaction" of Dispatch and Galvanic Blast is simply not enough to slow down anyone. I also saw someone mention Chrome Mox as a card affinity can play? The "exile a nonartifact, nonland card from your hand" clause on that card makes it difficult to include in affinity ;). Not to mention if you want to get any use out of Skullclamp, you have to find room for it. I envision affinity looking basically how it does now, except with a completely different sideboard given the different meta and instead of Galvanic Blast or Thoughtcast, just playing 4 Skullclamp. Which, in my evaluation, is simply not fast enough for Tier 1
Boza, I would be interested to see a dredge deck for modern that uses Dread Return, because I can't tell what it would look like. Otherwise I was planning on a version of dredge and had a specific side board strategy for it with two Rest in Peace obviously paired with Terminus to clean up whatever got through before I resolved the enchantment. In fact everything you've listed is what I have been counting on, I believe I can interrupt elves very easily for example. The only thing I think we don't see eye to eye on is how important Chalice of the Void is specifically for this deck against the field. Literally this deck is trying to abuse Counterbalance as a 1 sided, variable Chalice of the Void. I even put one in the side board for Match ups where I really want to chalice on 0 as early as possible. I have 21 1 drops and 22 lands, meaning Counterbalance blindly played on turn 2 is very likely to be as good as chalice on 0 or 1, then I get to manipulate it as soon as I get a Sensei's Divining Top in play. I understand you know how the deck works, but I think you just didn't seem to connect how comparable the two cards really are.
February 5, 2018 12:15 a.m.
I never said affinity would be tier 1 i said its wrong that they dont get anything. If affinity would be the same deck without the banlist they would have unbanned the artifact lands long before thats simply not true. What is true that they wont have a chance against elves and storm but i think every other deck would have a hard time to beat it.
Chrome Mox in affinity is not a good idea your completely right.
February 5, 2018 5:09 a.m.
Affinity of course would put out man lands they have glimmervoids, spires of industry and even darksteel citadel when they need more colored mana.
Fitting skullclamp in the deck?No.problem there will be space for the most broken card magic has seen in the last 15 years
Boza says... #2
Well, this is not a format that exists, so it is hard to point out resources. Card Kingdom and randy buehler did a NBL Modern Gautlet a while back. Spoiler - Skullclamp is a good card.
You should play at least 1 Entreat in your deck and 4 chalice for sure in the side.
I think you are severely underestmating elves (Skullclamp and DRS are very good against everything) and dredge (Dread Return) and overestimating affinity, which gains literally nothing, and Bloom Titan and Depths which too slow and too uninteractive and too easily disrupted. Eldrazi is a question mark, since it gains something from unbans, but all other ecks gain a lot more and I feel eldrazi was only good because other decks were worse.
Overall, for me, this is a format that is legacy for people who dislike good formats. Mental Misstep is overly powerful and no deck should be without 4 copies of it (except hypergenesis) and the format lacks Wasteland and Force of Will to moderate the brokenness.
January 29, 2018 8:04 a.m.