ModernStandard

Banlists and Decklists

Woooo! A new set has come out! More cards! More spells to cast! More brewing! More everything!!!

I’m excited, are you excited? You should be! Why? Because it’s looking like Fate Reforged will bring about plenty of change to both Standard and Modern, and some of the cards in it might even make it to the eternal formats (Ugin, Monastery Mentor, Reality Shift). In this article, I’ll go over some of the impact I expect, but first, let’s start with the elephant in the room: Sandsteppe Mastodon the Modern banlist.

With Fate Reforged comes a Modern Pro Tour, and the first banned/restricted-list announcement since the release of [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] upon the format. Wizards has already mentioned they were keeping a close eye on the format, after everybody freaked out over an Ascendancy combo shortly after Khans of Tarkir’s release.

So, what happened? Has Ascendancy combo taken over the format? Not exactly. Was it UR Delver, then? Surely they are the best deck at casting [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] as if it were [card]Ancestral Recall[/card], and there’s a reason that it’s banned in everything but Vintage. Well, Delver has definitely been a top deck, but for a large part, Delver being cheap (compared to other decks) and very good, created a specific metagame where Pod is probably the best deck right now. It has won multiple Grand Prix since the release of Khans, and it was by far the largest portion of day two decks in the most recent GP in Omaha.

Now, as far as I am concerned, Pod has been the best deck for a while now, even before Khans of Tarkir. It is hard to play, but due to the nature of the best card in the deck ([card]Birthing Pod[/card]), the deck is almost infinitely customizable to beat any expected metagame. And with a very popular tier 1 deck to prey upon, now is probably the best time to be playing Pod.

When we’re talking about the state of Modern, and discussing what to ban, we shouldn’t only look at “what’s the best deck”, though. There will always be a best deck, with the ideal situation being that it rotates based on who had the upper hand the week before. We are not seeing Ravager Affinity or CawBlade type dominance in Modern (thank god), so we’re largely looking to other factors to provide arguments as factors for bans as well.

One good argument that a few pros mentioned on Twitter (Patrick Chapin, among others) was that while we saw a large deck diversity in the top 8, seven out of eight decks were playing either [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], or [card]Chalice of the Void[/card] to fight [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] decks ([card]Treasure Cruise[/card] wants you to play a ton of cheap spells to fuel the Cruise, and Chalice is very good against cheap spells). On top of that, the top 32 was filled with Pod, Delver and other decks with Chalice. The only thing left were a few [card]Dig Through Time[/card] decks, and a few aggro decks.

Is that healthy? We’re basically looking at a bunch of decks doing well because they can integrate a very specific hate card in [card]Chalice of the Void[/card], just so they can keep up with the chunk of the format that uses [card]Treasure Cruise[/card]. One could make an argument that it is similar in Legacy, with [card]Force of Will[/card] being the card that holds a big chunk of the format in check. Do we want [card]Chalice of the Void[/card] being our [card]Force of Will[/card] in Modern? Or more importantly, does Wizards? I sincerely doubt it. Thus, it seems likely that we’ll see the following:

BANNED IN MODERN: TREASURE CRUISE

Other cards that are often named in the same breath as [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] are its eight mana cousin [card]Dig Through Time[/card], and “broken” combo piece [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card]. [card]Dig Through Time[/card] so far seems less of a problem, mostly finding a home in [card]Scapeshift[/card], Twin, and the [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card] combo (as opposed to the 4 Color Ascendancy combo, which plays more Treasure cruises). So far, it seems fine, but we have to keep in mind that if we ban [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], UR Delver gets worse, and Pod gets a little worse because its prey gets worse, and that might propel the Dig decks to the top (which isn’t necessarily a problem, depending on who you ask). It’s also possible all the [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] decks now just play [card]Dig Through Time[/card] instead and we only really hurt decks that splashed for [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], like Burn.

Jeskai Ascendancy poses another interesting kind of problem. Clearly, the deck hasn’t posted the results everyone was afraid of. It has not dominated the format, early versions were pretty poor against Delver, and while later versions have done a little better online, the deck has definitely not been considered dominant or even one of the top decks. However, a number of pros have come out and said that the deck is hard to play, but very good, and it might not be a risk Wizards is willing to take. Imagine banning just [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], and we get to sit through a Pro Tour Top 8 where Josh Utter-Leyton is taking a ten minute turn while Sam Pardee asks the judge if he can F6 in real life and take a bathroom break (F6 being the button that passes priority until the turn ends in MTGO). It happened before (different players, then with the infamous “Eggs” deck), and I’m not sure Wizards is willing to let it happen again.

Does that mean we have to ban [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card]? Maybe not. Some people have come out and said that we should be looking at other cards. [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card] is an intriguing card, that’s a lot of fun with tokens and cards like [card]Stoke the Flames[/card], and I would hate to see such potential be wasted. Perhaps we ban [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] and/or [card]Manamorphose[/card] instead. Banning [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] slows the Ascendancy deck down, and it hurts Delver, while also weakening [card]Dig Through Time[/card] if we want to leave that around. Banning [card]Manamorphose[/card] hurts the 4Color version of the deck, which I think is the more problematic version. It’s faster than Wizards likes while also taking a ton of time to win, whereas the Jeskai “control” version *can* win super quickly, but is more likely to let the other person play for a few turns. The 4 Color version also runs hexproof creatures, which lead to even more “unfun” complaints. Of course, banning both [card]Manamorphose[/card] and [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] probably kills Storm dead, but I think Wizards is fine with that deck dying (sorry, Finkel-you already knew they were out to get you).

The last potential ban that I see thrown around a lot is [card]Birthing Pod[/card]. Pod is admittedly probably the best deck, and it has been (one of) the best deck(s) for a while now. Is that a reason to ban it? Once again, not necessarily. [card]Birthing Pod[/card] is not an extremely fast deck, nor is it much better than the opposition. It is a deck that’s easy to interact with, and the combat step plays a large role in the deck’s game plan. It seems like a great deck to have as far as “best decks” go. However, over time, magic players seem to gravitate towards best decks more and more, and Pod has already gotten to the point where it was by far the most represented day two deck at the last GP. How much longer until the [card]Birthing Pod[/card] mirrors become obnoxious? Pod is also easily customizable to fight hate, either specific cards or larger strategies. If you end up having to ban it eventually, then why not do it right before a Pro Tour, to ensure people have to try new things, which is great for coverage?

Overall, I’m not sure what the best bans are aside from [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], if any. I think the most likely candidates for bans are [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] and Ascendancy, with [card]Dig Through Time[/card] and [card]Birthing Pod[/card] following in that order. Somewhere though, I kind of hope they ban [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] and [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] and leave [card]Dig Through Time[/card] and Ascendancy alone for a while. I love playing [card]Birthing Pod[/card], but I don’t really mind if they ban it, as it opens the door for an interesting unbanning: [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card].

Now, to be very clear, if we leave [card]Dig Through Time[/card] in the format, and we unban [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card], you’d better be damn sure [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] gets banned. We don’t need [card]Scapeshift[/card] or the [card]Through the Breach[/card] deck (Pacific Rim?) to instantly become the best deck in the format. Aside from that, [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card] might make a deck like Elves possible, and it might spawn a different kind of [card]Birthing Pod[/card] deck, or just be used in a Ramp deck to find [card]Sakura-Tribe Elder[/card]s and [card]Primeval Titan[/card]s, or a one-of [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card] or [card]Obstinate Baloth[/card]. Of course, there’s no need to unban the Zenith if we keep [card]Birthing Pod[/card] around.

In general, most unbannings depend on what gets banned. For example, if we ban [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] and [card]Manamorphose[/card], it becomes relatively easy to take something like [card]Seething Song[/card] off the ban list. It won’t make Storm that much better than it is now, and it might spawn an All-In Red type deck, or maybe even [card]Dragonstorm[/card] or something like that. However, if we just ban the three Khans of Tarkir cards, [card]Seething Song[/card] is probably not okay, or at least risky.

The same goes for probably the most popular potential unbanning: [card]Ancestral Vision[/card]s. Visions is probably less powerful than [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], which is why most people seem to think unbanning it is fine. However, [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] is not fine, so a “weaker” [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] is not automatically fine. It could be, but it’s good to remember that Visions generally supports other archetypes better than [card]Treasure Cruise[/card]. It’s more for slower decks than for combo decks and aggressive decks with tons of cheap spells. With [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], you are often drawing into more cheap spells, with Visions, you will probably be drawing into more powerful spells more often. Now, we haven’t really had good control decks in Modern in a while, so it is looking very likely that we’ll see this:

UNBANNED IN MODERN: ANCESTRAL VISIONS

The other popular unbanning I can be very short about: [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] was a scapegoat that in my opinion never had to be banned ([card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] was the problem), and we already have a bigger 4 drop that cascades into a [card]Lightning Helix[/card] for aggressive decks ([card]Siege Rhino[/card]), so we might as well give Jund a toy back to play with. Heck, we might even see some cool [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] plus [card]Ancestral Vision[/card]s deck. I’m all for:

UNBANNED IN MODERN: BLOODBRAID ELF

Now, other than that, there are some cards that a lot of people consider fair game to unban. However, the only argument that one can really make for them other than “fair game” is what? Wizards has had the opportunity to unban cards like [card]Sword of the Meek[/card] and [card]Golgari Grave-Troll[/card], but they haven’t. It’s possible Wizards unbans them because they want to shake up the format a bit, but I see them as unlikely to be released with the next announcement, especially because we are very likely to already see the format get shaken up a bit.

To summarize, I believe we’ll see [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] banned, and [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card], [card]Dig Through Time[/card] and [card]Birthing Pod[/card] are also likely candidates. The “interesting” option would be banning [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] and [card]Manamorphose[/card] instead of Dig and Ascendancy (unbanning [card]Seething Song[/card]), but I expect Wizards to play it safe. I expect to see [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] and [card]Ancestral Vision[/card]s back in the format, and maybe [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card] if Pod gets banned (and if we do, I expect [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] to get banned).

For standard, I expect the following:

BANNED IN STANDARD: SIEGE RHINO

I’m just kidding, they’re not going to ban anything in Standard. I actually found a deck that loves to beat up on [card]Siege Rhino[/card] and his friends with their slow removal, and I pretty sure decks like it will become only better with the release of Fate Reforged, while [card]Siege Rhino[/card] doesn’t gain what it so desperately needs against these decks: cheap removal.

I’ve been playing Sam Pardee’s RW Aggro deck from GP Denver, with only some minor adjustments. This is what I used to win a Pre-PTQ last weekend:

RW Aggro by Jay Lansdaal

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Battlefield Forge
1 Evolving Wilds
10 Mountain
5 Plains
4 Temple of Triumph
[/Lands]
[Spells]
4 Chained to the Rocks
2 Chandra Pyromaster
1 God’s Willing
2 Hordeling Outburst
4 Lightning Strike
4 Stoke the Flames
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
1 Ashcloud Phoenix
3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Heliod’s Pilgrim
1 Hushwing Gryff
4 Seeker of the Way
4 Stormbreath Dragon
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
3 Erase
3 Glare of Heresy
2 Scouring Sands
1 Arc Lightning
1 Banishing Light
2 Hushwing Gryff
1 Ashcloud Phoenix
2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I still wasn’t very high on [card]Hordeling Outburst[/card] with everybody being ready for them on account of Jeskai Tokens and the amount of [card]Bile Blight[/card]s floating around, so I replaced those with [card]Heliod’s Pilgrim[/card], as a four mana [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card] with value. They were very good against certain decks (Abzan variants, other green decks), but mediocre against control, so I probably should have split them between the main and the sideboard, moving the second [card]Ashcloud Phoenix[/card] to the main. I also added a God’s Willing over a [card]Magma Jet[/card], because I had extra removal with the Pilgrims, and I wanted to try one as another cheap way to waste people’s turns.

You see, this deck is good because it uses its turns a lot more efficiently than other decks in the format. It gets to play two spells in one turn quite often, and not many decks do that. This deck will play a small threat, and the opponent will play a Courser, or a [card]Siege Rhino[/card], or something big that gets in the way. You untap, move it out of the way, and add another threat to the board. This is made particularly easy thanks to Brimaz and [card]Goblin Rabblemaster[/card], which, if they live, make you plenty of threats. If your opponent wants to destroy them, they often spend their whole turn. Then, you get to play another threat, which they often have to untap for in order to be able to deal with. In the meantime, stupid tokens are getting in for damage. If you have a God’s Willing, you don’t even need another threat: the one they tried to destroy is still alive.

With Fate Reforged out, one card in particular could be very good in a deck like this: Monastery Monk. I’m not quite sure if you want it over Rabblemaster, or over Brimaz for mana considerations, or maybe over something else entirely, but it’s another army in a can that works well with the plan of removing blockers while adding threats.

I could also see it work very well in a Mardu deck, letting you add a Brimaz-like card without having to warp the manabase.

Fate Reforged Mardu by Jay Lansdaal

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Battlefield Forge
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Caves of Koilos
1 Evolving Wilds
5 Mountain
4 Nomad Outpost
1 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Temple of Silence
2 Temple of Triumph
[/Lands]
[Spells]
4 Chained to the Rocks
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
4 Crackling Doom
2 Lightning Strike
2 Stoke the Flames
2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
2 Thoughtseize
2 Valerous Stance
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Butcher of the Horde
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Monastery Mentor
3 Seeker of the Way
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Dark Betrayal
2 Erase
3 Glare of Heresy
2 Scouring Sands
3 Hushwing Gryff
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1 Utter End
2 Doomwake Giant
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Something like this might take better advantage of the monks the Mentor brings along. You can play more awesome removal spells, you have Butcher to eat any monks that are no longer fit for duty, and you get [card]Thoughtseize[/card] to protect your Mentor. Here, I also included Valerous Stance, a card I imagine will see quite some play as a way to protect the Mentor or kill a [card]Siege Rhino[/card] or Courser or what have you.

I think in general, it might be best to start of aggressive at the start of the format, because people will be trying all their new toys, and decks playing cards like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon or untuned or outdated [card]Siege Rhino[/card] decks are great to eat up with Rabblemasters and Monastery Mentors.

Good luck finding sweet new brews in the coming week or two, I’ll be sure to let you know if I find something.

Jay Lansdaal
iLansdaal on Twitter

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