Magic the Gathering

Well, I think that it was a reasonable ban, because, if you look around Modern before this banning, the only good blue decks were Twin combo decks. Regular control decks don't tend to hold a candle to having a combo. You were basically forced into having to make room for 10-ish cards to fit the combo in.

This said, blue control decks, in general, don't really hold up. It's why I always advocate against banning Snapcaster, because it's the only thing that keeps blue control playable at all, unless they unban certain powerful blue cards. It may be slightly overpowered, but it keeps afloat an otherwise underpowered deck, since blue control decks don't have the late game potential they should have.
The Grixis decks may still stay alive, since the Delve creatures are excellent finishers usually, and still are worthwhile earlier, but other control decks may now need to rely on Kiki-Jiki, which, while still quite viable, is more of a stretch (I'm probably gonna play Jeskai Kiki Control now, as my backup to my still favorite deck: Jeskai Ascendancy combo)

My boss actually had an idea that might have been a better choice: Deceiver Exarch. What made Twin so annoying to play against is that the best combo creature also was well-protected against the removal people tended to play, namely Lightning Bolt. By removing that, players would have to play much more vulnerable creatures, like Pestermite and Bounding Krasis.
I, personally, thought that isn't really a solution, though. There were roughly the same amount of Path to Exiles, which stopped any combo creature, first of all. Secondly, There's still not enough motivation to move off of Twin. Having an emergency combo in your control deck was still simply better. There were still enough combo creatures to go around.

Also, this might just mean the return of Blue Moon. Modern is still full of greedy three-color decks, and if Tron is on the rise, any maindeck Blood Moon deck gets even better. I used to love Skred Red and Blue Moon, and now, I think it's time to come back to it.

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There are also a wild and crazy idea that is worth considering for WOTC to help blue control: put Force of Will into Modern.

A huge issue in Modern for the blue control decks is that they are forced into being very passive, despite the need to gain tempo, since all of their non-situational countermagic costs two mana. When you're forced to tap low in order to deal with something or put out a threat, you run a high risk of getting blown out by your opponent's big plays.

If you have Force of Wills in your deck, however, you now get to tap low and still have some security. They now can't just play around your one Remand/Mana Leak/Deprive by running out multiple threats, you could also have one or two Forces which can deal with their big plays.

It would in no way break Modern anymore, too. I thought having Force of Will in Modern would actually be a very interesting and good way to make blue decks better, but it would make Splinter Twin decks genuinely broken. Now that Splinter Twin is out of the picture, Force of Will would shake up the format in a good way. Blue gets to have a failsafe option.
Blue's (fair) finishers in Modern are not backbreaking enough to make having a free counter absolutely break them. In fact, Force of Will I've found to be more of a necessary evil, not a good card. When I play Legacy, I board out all my Force of Wills against fair decks, because it's card disadvantage. You two-for-one yourself when you cast it for no mana. That's actually not that great of a deal a lot of the time. It's better when your opponent has some kind of game-ending threat that must be dealt with no matter the cost. Then, being free is awesome, since otherwise, you'd have to hold up mana all the time, while they can build up resources to protect it.
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EDIT: While we're on the topic...

NO MORE STUPID AMULET DECKS!

I still think they were easily beatable. One Blood Moon and they literally can't cast a spell, and I played a bunch maindeck, plus Twin was good against them anyways, but it's so annoying playing against them. They had an absurd God Draw, and their turns take forever, in a way that's not interesting. At least Storm players and Ascendancy players are constantly making things happen.

Bloom Titan decks were just getting out of hand. Also, the main reason for banning splinter twin was the hold it had on the meta. Modern players can now create homebrews that will be viable in the format.

Enough about bannings. It's making my heart hurt every time I hear the word now.

How was everyone's pre-release? I went 3-1 on the first day and 2-1 in 2HG. Second day I went 3-1 again and 0-1 for 2HG since there were not a lot of people for 2HG. Fun times.

Sounds like you put in work good job. Now I would like to ask anyone with knowledge of MTG to explain to me which commander decks I should buy. See I bought last years starter decks for the Fate Reforged pack and to buy every commander deck out right now would cost me about 134 bones. I can afford this however I would only want to buy if necessary the one commander deck that would compliment this starter deck. I guess what I am asking is if anyone know what the title deck would be called so I can purchase only that one and not squander any of my money on useless packs?

Also, yes I am still abit of newbie but I have read the rules and guidelines of what is what is not allowed in MTG.

My personal opinion on which new commander deck you should buy would be to find the original printings of the commander decks. They are 3 colors to help start you out. If not, the '14 ones should also do the job.

Ok, much appreciated. :)

I meant the 2013 ones. Those are the ones that are also 3 colors. My bad. My memory thought the '14 ones were the 3 colored ones and the '13 ones are the Mono-Colored ones.

Oh man, thanks for lettin me know. Knowing me. If I hadn't logged back on today I would have definitely bought the wrong ones. Thanks!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t%5BC1%5D=28&start_date=2/202016&end_date=02/21/2016&start=1&finish=32&event_ID=47&city=Louisville&state=KY&country=US&limit=50

20 out of the top 32 decks in this SCG event were Eldrazi decks. UW Eldrazi looks good too.

How likely do you think something in Eldrazi gets emergency banned? We might be getting to that point, if a way to effectively hate it out doesn't surface, fast.

It's only a theory, but the guys at my LGS thought an effective strategy might be Blood Moon Merfolk. By nature, Merfolk is a pretty good mana disruption deck, and the addition of Blood Moon, to add to the clock of all their creatures, might be able to handle the Eldrazi. We haven't tested it out at all, though, so we could be very wrong.

Our reasoning for this was that, although Blood Moon-based decks seem like they can be effective against Eldrazi, the Eldrazi's good draw puts out too many threats for just a Blood Moon to halt. Even if they have a slower start, Blue Moon and Skred Red give Eldrazi too much time to simply naturally build up mana and cast their threats, anyways. Thus, if there was a Blood Moon deck that could race effectively, and had even more ways to disrupt their mana, it could be a good way to actually defeat the Eldrazi menace.

I'll be frank, I do like the Eldrazi deck. It's super sweet and plays awesome new creatures (a HUGE portion of the deck comes from Standard sets), but it just may be too powerful due to the lands. At least one might need to go, since even if something can beat it, the meta would just be Eldrazi decks and decks that theoretically beat Eldrazi decks.

In the meantime, I'm still just gonna tune my Ascendancy combo-control. No matter what happens, this is my love.

Your thoughts on the matter?

I personally, hate Eldrazi decks, but that's more cause of the salt that still is Twin. Other than that, I can agree with you with that if people don't find anything real soon to deal with Eldrazi in Modern, it'll get the emergency banning.

It's really not any of the Eldrazi's fault, and more on the fault that WotC doesn't really test sets outside of Standard. For example, Thought-Knot Seer is a perfect card for Standard. Not too hard to cast, but hard enough, especially with the one colorless mana you need, to cast it. So with that in mind, a 4/4 body seems fair with both the mana cost and restrictions to cast Thought-Knot.

On the other hand, Modern and to some extent, Legacy have lands that make him cast on turn 2. When Modern's premium removal spell, Lighting Bolt, does not effectively remove Thought-Knot and, the next best thing, Path to Exile, gives more card advantage to the Eldrazi player than to the opposing player, Thought-Knot becomes more of a problem over antyhing. The ETB effect is also pretty back-breaking especially on Turn 2, where even V.Clique can't be cast at that speed in decks that he is played in.

You could argue that Twin, in it's hay-day, did the same thing in Modern, and I wouldn't doubt you in saying that, but Twin has been around the Modern format ever since it's inception. Twin was the deck to beat in Modern. Either your deck can beat Twin, or it wasn't good enough to be played in Modern. So banning Twin is the correct choice here, even with multiple ways of beating the deck out.

But, as it stands right now, Eldrazi is in the same spotlight right now and in my opinion, a lot worse than the Twin problem. The Modern format as it stands right now, consists of either having such an aggressive hand to kill your opponent fast enough before they can create a board-state, or you lose to bunch of big, fatty Eldrazi. Not of a whole lot of interaction when it comes to this type of mentality.

As a long time Twin player, I've won more games without the combo and winning more with playing Tempo, Snap-Beats, and threatening the combo, which I felt like a more interactive game of Magic more than what we are having now.

Eldrazi is also evolving as a deck in an alarming rate. Where Twin was changing colors from UR to RUG or Grixis through an extended period of time, Eldrazi decks are coming up with new ways to play almost every week, from BW to UR, to RG, and now UW.

WotC forgets that they printed cards like Eldrazi Temple or Eye of Ugin, and make more of the eternal format more skewed more than anything. Again, cards that seem fine within Standard, sometimes have HUGE effects on eternal formats (e.g. Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time).

Modern and Legacy are my favorite formats for MtG. They are fun and you can keep decks and you don't have to update them due to them having no rotation, but if a format becomes skewed such as right now, and with no clear way to fix it, then a banning must happen. The only reason the will not ban any Eldrazi cards, is to create a whole bunch of cards to hate out Eldrazis in the new set, but I really doubt that'll happen.

Other than that, I'll be playing Cheerios Storm until the dust settles. After that, I'll actually think of a good deck to play in Modern.

My sweet Eternal Masters Box pulls!