Ponder has also a mode that reads: "Draw a card but it takes a looong time". That might also be a point for it to stay banned, for tournament intergrity reasons.
The time impact on Ponders resolving in a game is much less than a single resolved Sensei's Divining Top, on average. At least assuming that the deck playing Ponder isn't a Yorion deck, but what deck gains much in Modern with Yorion anyway?
I’m no longer convinced that the whole “takes a while” argument has any validity in mtg whatsoever. If that’s the case, why not just ban fetchlands? Hell, ban anything that takes a moment to resolve or consider. Speaking of which, ban “Consider” cuz, you know, decisions! The whole “don’t print or unban cards that take time for players to operate” is, I’m sorry that I’m not sorry, a stupid argument, Magic is inherently a game that requires contemplation and heavy thinking; if we’re just gonna ban (or refuse to unban) certain cards due to their effects taking time to set up or resolve, then a whole laundry list of cards should be “banned”; though really they shouldn’t be. I think it’s stupid to exclude cards from a format due to their setup nature taking time. And to anyone who says “it’s boring to watch”, fucking watch some Telitubbies then or get the fuck over it.
I like the argument that standard cards are pushed because they dont test for older formats but when they even break standard with the same cards that break modern, legacy, vintage etc you're doing something wrong. Remember without bans standard would have Oko and uro right now that is definitely fucked
Simic decks in standard could have had Oko, Uro, Veil of summer and Once upon a time in the same deck, along with Nissa and Hydroid Krasis that already were tough to deal with... Rnd looking at butterflies like "Is this balance?"
I remember the git probe ban, they wrote an article about the ban being used to nerf Deaths shadow. Following the ban Deaths shadow became the most popular deck in the format for like 11 months.
Control player here, let me inform: Ponder and Preordain are strong. Stronger than Serum Visions and Opt. Look at it this way: Opt and Serum Visions are NOT played in Legacy because they're not as good. Un-banned in modern would elevate T3FERI into a whole different level.
@@a_fuckin_spacemarine7514 I mean, no, they were originally banned because of cawblade / Jace blade. But now that jaceblade is super low tier I think we can unban the Cantrips.
i mean opt gets a lot weaker in legacy because holding up mana is less important when you have free counterspells so opt being an instant is less valuable
It made sense. Burn decks big problem was running out of steam on turn 4. Treasure Cruise solved that problem. One of my favourite decks I've played in modern.
Imo the biggest reason to keep those cantrips banned is so your games can have more variance so that you don't draw the best cards in your deck every single game. Opportunity cost be Damned I would rather not see my opponent always draw the sideboard cards that hose me every single game two I play
Ponder is godly for topdeck manipulation... several combos value that knowledge a lot... And hey, if everything is junk, throw it away and get a new topdeck...
Pauper kinda needs brainstorm, ponder and preordain to function without fetchlands though, ponder is broken with fetchlands and jace:tms. Unban preordain, keep ponder banned imo.
@@codyhumble7855 Me too dude, me too. But you just get to see waaay too many cards and fixing the deck. Storm would break and ALL blue decks would play 4 without a doubt.
The Banned Blue Card Postulate states that if Burn is splashing blue in order to play a card, the offending card will be banned on the next B&R announcement
I’d personally swap the placement of Cruise/Dig and Oko/Uro. Not many things are better than Oko but Ancestral Recall definitely is. Also you are underrating Preordain and especially Ponder; to the point where you could raise them two whole tiers. Those cards are such a massive jump in power from Opt and Serum Visions and are some of the best reasons to play Blue in Legacy and Vintage.
It isn't Ancestral Recall tho. It still need 7 cards in the bin! That's a lot and need preparation as well as using up those ressources for other cards (Uro, Kroxa, Snappy, Goyf etc) And blue cantrip could be stronger by now. Would love to play Delver again in Modern. There is more stuff against combo now and Control will take beating on Monday.
@@444Basketball treasure cruise and dig through time aren't getting unbanned any time soon; probably ever. In formats with fetch lands and low cmc spells these blue delve cantrips are too good.
The fact that decks still need 5+ cards in the yard to make casting one of them worthwhile is the caveat. Not all decks can pull that off by turn 3 with mana left over, and even then not all decks have room to splash blue for. Sure, with self-mill they're fantastic but the fact that decks have to run either those types of cards or mounds of 1-drop spells in order to consistently "break" them in the first place is a big deal. I'd say they wouldn't shake the meta nearly as hard as Uro did, granted Dig would be pretty nuts for at least one combo list out there. If they break Grixis or something else like Dredge or control that'd be a shocker to me actually.
Uro was talked about at my lgs tonight with friends. It's much better than it's counterpart, kroxa. Kroxa is relatively fair since they discard a nonland card or if they can't, take 3. Uro on the other hand is draw, gain 3 AND play a land. We discussed how if Uro said gain 3 OR play a land it would be more fair since they choose to ramp or live a bit longer.
I assume they thought that Uro costing one more mana would put both of them on the same level. They were so wrong. Moreover, the fact that every simic card they print is borderline busted makes Uro even more of an issue
Mystic Sanctuary - honorary blue card, just good enough for a ban. You have Snapcaster already, control players, you don't need a cryptic from every fetch land too!
Derric Drigalla Dude, no way. It invalidates X/1s and makes playing 4 or 5 color decks trivial, all while providing consistent card advantage. If anything, I think Uro died for Wrenn and Six’s sins. The card is bonkers.
Meh. He is decently powered for sure, but i feel W6 is Jund's Mystic Sanctuary, both don't need it but both make their gameplay better in different aspects. Jund had problems stabilizing a consistent mana base where W6 fixes that ENTIRELY. Mystic Sanctuary helps Blue make the midgame more consistent of preventing a bomb after bomb play as without mystic sanctuary you get blown out by letting one of their bombs resolve too early. W6 has zero downside and Mystic has a huge downside as it comes into play tapped if you don't control three other islands which happens a lot more than anyone thinks unless they play the deck. Mystic Sanctuary doesn't need a ban yet as if you're cryptic locking without a win con on board you're basically losing the game. Playing field of ruin and force the Mystic sanctuary player to shuffle their library and the end of their upkeep; they can't counter that unless they run tale's end or have a cantrip, either way they're using mana on their turn to help you resolve a threat on yours. There's so many different ways of preventing your opponent from mystic locking. Get good and have a nice day( this line isn't for you specifically, but for the people who bitch about sanctuary.)
"Mental Misstep your mental misstep targeting my mental misstep targeting your mental misstep targeting my mental misstep targeting your Gitaxian Probe."
I feel Like OKO was a green creature, bc with golden goose, it was turn 2 and the goose would make food tokens and oko would constantly turn it into creatures, leading to super high loyalty endless army starting at only turn 2. which is craxzy
I just never got the WotC balancing logic for Delve. It reminds me of the first "cycle" where WotC was balancing Ancestral Recall v. Bolt v. Healing Salve, Giant Growth, and Raise Dead. TS was fine. Maybe a bit underpowered, but Tombstalker was a balanced card that saw plenty of play. Then they basically printed two better tombstalkers and Ancestral Recall at common and better double anticipate at rare.
The fact that Wizards no longer tests for modern and Legacy for card creation is like a medical company coming out with a new drug line saying that they never tested it past the controlled environment stage. It is insane, you NEED to test for the older formats because they will help you see all of the glaring flaws in their design. The fact of the matter is that the decision to stop testing for older formats is LITERALLY hurting magic. I would go as far as say that modern and legacy are the reason that magic is as good as it was, because it forced the designers to improve and grow. Also ponder should be unbanned, why does black get a 20/20 for 1 B while U can't get a cantrip. What are we doing here wizards?
IMO, even if you take out the "Look at your opponent's hand" text from Probe, it's still a very good card. It could be played in anything, and essentially allowed you to play a 56 card deck since it replaced itself at the cost of a Shock Land.
@@obese_duck5954 Eh, not exactly. Cycling is not the same thing as casting a spell. There are way more things that trigger off of a spell being cast (e.g. Young Pyromancer, prowess cards) than a card being cycled.
I think ponder and preordain should remain banned for a few reasons, but the number 1 reason to me is Dreadhorde Arcanist. If DA gets to untap, a single ponder let's you dig as many as 8 cards deep. That specific play has been crushing legacy lately, so I have a feeling it would quickly dominate the metagame in modern if we had access to powerful cantrips.
Uro is the type of card that is really good in any deck that can play it, I'm personally very happy about the ban of uro because I like to play midrange lol
LOL I feel so called out by your Gitaxian Probe discussion, "it took too long for the community to admit that looking at your opponents hand was good". That was me in legacy RUG delver. Then I actually tried Probe and I was just like "holy shit this is actually busted"
I do agree. I played with ponder and brainstorm in the early days and they were not abusive cards untill the storm mechanics arrived. Cantrips are only banned because of storm.
I remember Jeff Hoogland argued that dig through time can be unbanned for modern. Surprising considering Jeff isn’t exactly a fan of blue decks (he once boasted that he never played islands in legacy)
Also: Just a reminder that WotC appearently tested Oko, Uro and Omnath together in their future-future league and thought that this was okay in the same Standard as Veil of Summer.
Love these types of videos. Two thoughts: 1) unban ponder and 2) glad you gave Sam Black credit for identifying Oko’s power, he definitely called it early on.
I think a big part of Ponder and Preordain being too good for the format comes from being able to easily assemble A+B combos. In meta with Twin banned though, the best kind of those combos are probably things like Ad Nauseum + Angel’s Grace or Emrakul + Through the Breach. Also, the Storm archetype moving from Pyromancer’s Ascension to Gifts Ungiven packages likely reduces the power of those cantrips as well. I’d rather see Twin unbanned, but short of that I think Ponder and Preordain are totally safe for Modern.
Ponder is in a different league than preordain tbh, it's almost brainstorm level considering it let's you shuffle, and also being restricted in vintage shows how powerful it is - more so if you know that a lot of the spells played in legacy and vintage are modern legal. Btw, F for my playset of Uros, I felt delusional thinking that Wotc printed that to replace the emptiness of my heart after Oko left in 4C control :(
At first I wondered why Oko wasn't banned in Commander, then he mentioned having Multiple Okos and it made so much more sense lol. Love me a good singleton format
I dont play so much paper anymore but Fusion was my preferred online vendor when I did. Id put in order in and it would be shipped 20 minutes later no joke. I live on the literal other side of the country and always went to these guys first. 10/10 cant recommend enough.
Jund has so many clean answers to oko, oko being legal would be great for jund. Abrupt decay all day! Oko, the most overrated card of all time. Answer him, or get beat to death by a 3/3 elk every other turn. So broken.....
@@a_fuckin_spacemarine7514 Idk, jund using abrupt decay on oko instead of a creature makes a major difference in the end. Turning vial into 3/3 elk is straight gas. If they can't remove oko right now, it's pretty much gg. If they can remove oko, we didn't really lose much. Oko gets out of control really quick and was a wincon by himself against Jund. Oko overpowers all their planewalkers.
Half of that cards are phyrexian mana or cards with delve. It says something :-) I think Ponder is too good, because you can control your top too easy with fetch lands and we didnt even have miracles in modern before ponder ban. Preordain.. i dont know. Sure you control one more draw than opt, but in sorcery speed, They should try unban it
I've already explained Uro in a previous video, but I'm sure people missed it as it was months and months ago. If you look at the original strategy producers, The Dojo, they said a turn in magic is basically 4 factors. Untapping, drawing, playing a land, attacking. So you effectively get more than a half turn by playing Uro. By the time you play it and then Escape it you effectively have taken an extra turn.... And have a 6/6 that threatens to take a half a turn if it gets to attack... And gain 6 life. That is pretty busted.
I feel like you are underestimating the power of ponder. The ability to shuffle away and have a fresh slate is very strong. Still plays well with fetch lands. The card selection it provides is on another level for 1 mana in modern.
As for the cantrips, I too think they're unbannable. The thing here is their relevance as utility is very generic (digging 3 cards deep) but just on the high-end of the spectrum (better than serum visions so to say). Having theses cards with the rest of the cantrip in modern at most gives blue-colored tempo/control/combo decks some boost. Not only they aren't a 'win' card, but also their redundancy in a deck has diminishing value like spending 1 mana just to draw another cantrip or see another cantrip on those top of the decks, is not the best strategical thing you can have at redundant 1 mana cantrip (I would even say that Thought Scour beats thems all at the angle of "full/optimal utility" in the modern format as Thought Scour is the best cantrip made for the ever efficient GDS shells for its 3 delving mana equivalent). Good to see you also want these cards unbanned.
pfft I was beating splinter twin decks that played dig through time. Idk what people were complaining about.. Treasure cruise in the red deck wins list was kinda nutty tho.
Git probe was broken because it let you play a 56 card deck. No mana draw 1 was a huge part of the card. The looking at the hand thing was just sort of a perk.
The fact that ponder/preordain are sorcery is enough for me to say they are unban worthy. If a blue deck is tapping mana on THEIR turn, I'm generally happy about it as the opponent.
The reason the cantrip cards got banned wasn't due to just storm. Every blue deck and combo deck was playing them cause they're the best ways to basically guarantee your draws and help find what you need for way too cheap. The draw after looking is the big thing and digging three cards down makes them basically like Ancestral in that way. The format is healthier with them banned as unbanning either of them would just give a lot of decks more consistency especially in the early game. Being able to hold something like a one-land hand with one or two ponder/preordains in hand was a thing since you could easily smooth out your mana base with just those spells while also choosing your later draws which is bad for the game.
I definitely consider Oko more of a green card than a blue card. The food mechanic is very heavily green and black. There is only one mono blue card that creates a food token (Turn into a Pumpkin), and that one is only conditionally (it's also unplayable). And the +1 is just Beast Within, which is a green card. The -5 is blue, but the things that make Oko broken are mostly green.
Two things, I wish I was playing magic when Uro was legal. I wanted to play that card but I didn't play much on MTGO and I didn't have the money or ability to play the deck when it was legal. Any deck that plays a shit ton of land is immediately interesting to me. I really like it. I also want ponder/preordain to get unbanned. I love cantrips. Good cantrips make the game fun for me. I'm very excited for Consider to come out. I'm going to be quoting Bil Nye literally every fucking time I cast that card.
I think Ponder is a little too powerful for Modern, personally. Having played with the card back in the day, the huge advantage it offered blue is a little much. But I AM in the ban Ancient Stirrings camps, and I'll freely admit Ponder wouldn't ruin modern. I share your opinion about preordain.
I think ponder actually has a cost because of the RNG element that if you find two lands or garbage on top, you shuffle for random. You could see lands and it’s suddenly not that great then shuffle and draw a land anyway. Preordain I actually consider better than ponder for the simple sake it can scry garbage to the bottom and only keep the goodies. I think it’s better than ponder for that reason. It also still goes three deep technically if you scry both to the bottom and take your chance on the random third card down.
Meanwhile in White - Lurrus, Teferis (Time Raveler and Hero), Path to Exile + Plow, Heliod, Wrath of God, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Meddling Mage, Skyclave Apparition, Timely Reinforcements.... White has a lot of good stuff. The fact that it is considered the "weakest" of the colours is cause, yeah, one colour had to be. But there's a card that undermines any argument against white - Sun Titan is no Prime Time, but it is pretty good actually. Humans and control are fundamentally white decks most of the time, and there's a reason they run those white cards - White has good engines, great removal, good combo pieces, lots of good cards all throughout the curve. Largely the problem boils down to Commander, but outside of Commander products I can see why they don't playtest cards for those formats, and TBH I'd rather they stopped pushing cards for Commander too, even knowing full well they won't. It's fair if your advantages as a colour don't lend themselves to every format too. White is, in my estimation, the best support colour.
@@joshdavis6830 the problem is white as of late has gotten overshadowed by the other colours, not it’s past staple cards. Heliod is only good cuz of walking ballista and apparition is like the only good white card in a long while.
@@joshdavis6830 The thing is that, for me, saying that white is the best support color (I agree with that, I think RIP is probably the best SB card of the game) is the same thing as saying that white is the worst color, because it implies that is not good enough to be played by itself or be the primary color of a deck (at least if you want to win).
I missed okos potential, I got 2 copys in my prerelease sealed pool but everyone was playing super agro go wide so making a 3/3 every other turn was too slow and elking their creatures was bad because it made them bigger.
I personally don’t like ponder and preordain being unbanned because it lets blue tempo decks and control decks a lot more consistent because you can keep extremely aggressive low land hands. You can do that with opt and serum visions now, but it’s really not that good because serum visions is kind of slow and opt doesn’t dig through as many cards. I view them as pretty similar to once upon a time, they make risky hands much less risky and allow for control decks to aggressively mulligan into answers.
I would argue unbanning Ponder is a better move than unbanning Preordain or both. Not because Preordain is better or stronger, but because it would make Serum Visions completely unplayable in every main format. If they want to put Serum Visions into Pioneer, that'd be dope, and Preordain would be fantastic for the Modern format.
Hey the reason why wotc banned treasure cruise because in modern majority using fetch land and make easy to cast it even people using mono red deck, they splashing with blue mana with shockland to cast it.
I basically agree with your entire list, except for cruise, which I think is completely broken. Now I have a question, let`s assume that force of negation was banned on monday, where would you put it in the tier list. I know that you are a big proponent of the card, but I`d still like to know.
Oh i miss Gitaxian Probe a lot, good old times i had turn 2 kiln Fiend into clean turn 3 kill because being able to see if i was in the clear. Couldnt even enjoy the deck for more than 2 months that it got banned, now what got me very angry is that probe got banned and surgical extraction got from 5 brazilian bucks to over 150 in the next week, everyone using it, and the card is still not banned :/
I'm one of those Opt and Preordain folks. I love preordain but I save it for Pauper. Modern I go with Opt. I miss when Oko was legal though. It wasn't fair, but it was hilarious.
On cantrips: delver decks don’t exist because they don’t have good topdeck manipulation. Ponder and preordain would reinvigorate an entire archetype that people love and that likely won’t be broken at all. I would definitely say unban preordain first and see what happens, if only to provide a separation from modern and legacy by keeping ponder banned... but honestly ponder being banned is still a joke imo.
Also yes I know storm would get a boost from better cantrips but, having played plenty of storm myself, I can say that the format is much better at dealing with storm nowadays so if storm is ever an issue it will just get gated out. It’s a slow combo deck and definitely can have a place in modern.
Subscribe to my channel or Uro is getting unbanned.
I don't play modern, so no pain off my back if Uro gets unbanned
When people see a uro deck: no, you can't just put all the best card in a deck
When people see jund: haha jund go brrrrr
#MakeJundGreatAgain
#makejundgreatagain
It's okay because it doesn't have blue in it.
hey man i take offense to that, true but its offensive
To be fair, its hard to compare Goyf to Uro lol.
And if we're honest, Jund is just "fair" high value.
Ponder has also a mode that reads: "Draw a card but it takes a looong time". That might also be a point for it to stay banned, for tournament intergrity reasons.
The time impact on Ponders resolving in a game is much less than a single resolved Sensei's Divining Top, on average. At least assuming that the deck playing Ponder isn't a Yorion deck, but what deck gains much in Modern with Yorion anyway?
I’m no longer convinced that the whole “takes a while” argument has any validity in mtg whatsoever. If that’s the case, why not just ban fetchlands? Hell, ban anything that takes a moment to resolve or consider. Speaking of which, ban “Consider” cuz, you know, decisions! The whole “don’t print or unban cards that take time for players to operate” is, I’m sorry that I’m not sorry, a stupid argument, Magic is inherently a game that requires contemplation and heavy thinking; if we’re just gonna ban (or refuse to unban) certain cards due to their effects taking time to set up or resolve, then a whole laundry list of cards should be “banned”; though really they shouldn’t be. I think it’s stupid to exclude cards from a format due to their setup nature taking time. And to anyone who says “it’s boring to watch”, fucking watch some Telitubbies then or get the fuck over it.
Anything with delve on this, s tier
Anything with delve is S tier
“If you’re good enough, you should already know what’s in your opponent’s hand! You should be able to read their soul!” 😂
I like the argument that standard cards are pushed because they dont test for older formats but when they even break standard with the same cards that break modern, legacy, vintage etc you're doing something wrong.
Remember without bans standard would have Oko and uro right now that is definitely fucked
RnD has no idea what they’re doing. Fire philosophy has ruined standard
Simic decks in standard could have had Oko, Uro, Veil of summer and Once upon a time in the same deck, along with Nissa and Hydroid Krasis that already were tough to deal with... Rnd looking at butterflies like "Is this balance?"
@@TheMattmatic don`t forget reclamation and t3feri, which were played in simic+red/white decks
Oko, Uro, 4 color Omnath, Fires of Invention. Need I say more? A 4 color good stuff deck would just dominate Standard
@@NarutoGeek411 Not just dominate, it would be 100% of the meta.
I remember the git probe ban, they wrote an article about the ban being used to nerf Deaths shadow. Following the ban Deaths shadow became the most popular deck in the format for like 11 months.
Control player here, let me inform: Ponder and Preordain are strong. Stronger than Serum Visions and Opt. Look at it this way: Opt and Serum Visions are NOT played in Legacy because they're not as good. Un-banned in modern would elevate T3FERI into a whole different level.
No. They were banned because if storm. Cantrips are never broken outside of combo decks.
@@a_fuckin_spacemarine7514 I mean, no, they were originally banned because of cawblade / Jace blade. But now that jaceblade is super low tier I think we can unban the Cantrips.
@@varasatoshi3961 umm the fuck are you talking about? They were specifically banned in an attempt to reign in storm. Dolt.
i mean opt gets a lot weaker in legacy because holding up mana is less important when you have free counterspells so opt being an instant is less valuable
Preordain sees no play in legacy anymore because Expressive Iteration (legal in modern) is so much better.
I'm so early that Uro is still not banned in modern
"This card is garbage, why does every set suck now?"
[Intermission]
"This card is broken, why hasn't WotC banned it yet?"
- A one act play :P
I laughed when I heard burn was splashing blue for treasure cruise that’s is absolutely hilarious
It made sense. Burn decks big problem was running out of steam on turn 4. Treasure Cruise solved that problem. One of my favourite decks I've played in modern.
Imo the biggest reason to keep those cantrips banned is so your games can have more variance so that you don't draw the best cards in your deck every single game. Opportunity cost be Damned I would rather not see my opponent always draw the sideboard cards that hose me every single game two I play
Ponder is godly for topdeck manipulation... several combos value that knowledge a lot... And hey, if everything is junk, throw it away and get a new topdeck...
As someone who plays Pauper, Modern is weak for not playing Preordain and Ponder
Pauper kinda needs brainstorm, ponder and preordain to function without fetchlands though, ponder is broken with fetchlands and jace:tms. Unban preordain, keep ponder banned imo.
@@HopefulAgnostic man I wish so much that ponder would be unbanned, but you are probably right.
@@codyhumble7855 Me too dude, me too. But you just get to see waaay too many cards and fixing the deck. Storm would break and ALL blue decks would play 4 without a doubt.
Pauper is the most deckbuilding-skill based constructed format imo, cuz making a good deck with only commons is difficult
@@God-ch8lq Equally hard with more cards.
Remember when even Burn splashed for Oko?
Friend: Ok Ok, so tell me, how did do you get a fu***** million subscribers in 10 hours !?
Me: 17:19
The Infect thing also had to do with Become Inmense being harder to pull off
*Sees thumbnail* "how this a tier list?" "Its just 8 cards at the broken tier"
Same
The Banned Blue Card Postulate states that if Burn is splashing blue in order to play a card, the offending card will be banned on the next B&R announcement
I’d personally swap the placement of Cruise/Dig and Oko/Uro. Not many things are better than Oko but Ancestral Recall definitely is. Also you are underrating Preordain and especially Ponder; to the point where you could raise them two whole tiers. Those cards are such a massive jump in power from Opt and Serum Visions and are some of the best reasons to play Blue in Legacy and Vintage.
It isn't Ancestral Recall tho. It still need 7 cards in the bin! That's a lot and need preparation as well as using up those ressources for other cards (Uro, Kroxa, Snappy, Goyf etc)
And blue cantrip could be stronger by now. Would love to play Delver again in Modern. There is more stuff against combo now and Control will take beating on Monday.
@@444Basketball treasure cruise and dig through time aren't getting unbanned any time soon; probably ever. In formats with fetch lands and low cmc spells these blue delve cantrips are too good.
@@DotHacker99 I didn't want to advocate for their unbanning. I just wanted to say that the cards from the gy aren't free
The fact that decks still need 5+ cards in the yard to make casting one of them worthwhile is the caveat. Not all decks can pull that off by turn 3 with mana left over, and even then not all decks have room to splash blue for. Sure, with self-mill they're fantastic but the fact that decks have to run either those types of cards or mounds of 1-drop spells in order to consistently "break" them in the first place is a big deal. I'd say they wouldn't shake the meta nearly as hard as Uro did, granted Dig would be pretty nuts for at least one combo list out there.
If they break Grixis or something else like Dredge or control that'd be a shocker to me actually.
Uro was talked about at my lgs tonight with friends. It's much better than it's counterpart, kroxa. Kroxa is relatively fair since they discard a nonland card or if they can't, take 3. Uro on the other hand is draw, gain 3 AND play a land. We discussed how if Uro said gain 3 OR play a land it would be more fair since they choose to ramp or live a bit longer.
I assume they thought that Uro costing one more mana would put both of them on the same level. They were so wrong.
Moreover, the fact that every simic card they print is borderline busted makes Uro even more of an issue
Mystic Sanctuary - honorary blue card, just good enough for a ban. You have Snapcaster already, control players, you don't need a cryptic from every fetch land too!
If they ban Mystic Sanctuary field of the dead AND W6 need to go too.
@@Radric33 w6 is fine are you kidding?!😂
Derric Drigalla Dude, no way. It invalidates X/1s and makes playing 4 or 5 color decks trivial, all while providing consistent card advantage. If anything, I think Uro died for Wrenn and Six’s sins. The card is bonkers.
Not to mention snappy's cousin Mission Briefing
Meh. He is decently powered for sure, but i feel W6 is Jund's Mystic Sanctuary, both don't need it but both make their gameplay better in different aspects. Jund had problems stabilizing a consistent mana base where W6 fixes that ENTIRELY. Mystic Sanctuary helps Blue make the midgame more consistent of preventing a bomb after bomb play as without mystic sanctuary you get blown out by letting one of their bombs resolve too early.
W6 has zero downside and Mystic has a huge downside as it comes into play tapped if you don't control three other islands which happens a lot more than anyone thinks unless they play the deck. Mystic Sanctuary doesn't need a ban yet as if you're cryptic locking without a win con on board you're basically losing the game.
Playing field of ruin and force the Mystic sanctuary player to shuffle their library and the end of their upkeep; they can't counter that unless they run tale's end or have a cantrip, either way they're using mana on their turn to help you resolve a threat on yours. There's so many different ways of preventing your opponent from mystic locking. Get good and have a nice day( this line isn't for you specifically, but for the people who bitch about sanctuary.)
"Mental Misstep your mental misstep targeting my mental misstep targeting your mental misstep targeting my mental misstep targeting your Gitaxian Probe."
I love these banned tier lists!!!
I feel Like OKO was a green creature, bc with golden goose, it was turn 2 and the goose would make food tokens and oko would constantly turn it into creatures, leading to super high loyalty endless army starting at only turn 2. which is craxzy
I just never got the WotC balancing logic for Delve. It reminds me of the first "cycle" where WotC was balancing Ancestral Recall v. Bolt v. Healing Salve, Giant Growth, and Raise Dead. TS was fine. Maybe a bit underpowered, but Tombstalker was a balanced card that saw plenty of play. Then they basically printed two better tombstalkers and Ancestral Recall at common and better double anticipate at rare.
Dark ritual was the black boon, not raise dead
The fact that Wizards no longer tests for modern and Legacy for card creation is like a medical company coming out with a new drug line saying that they never tested it past the controlled environment stage. It is insane, you NEED to test for the older formats because they will help you see all of the glaring flaws in their design. The fact of the matter is that the decision to stop testing for older formats is LITERALLY hurting magic.
I would go as far as say that modern and legacy are the reason that magic is as good as it was, because it forced the designers to improve and grow.
Also ponder should be unbanned, why does black get a 20/20 for 1 B while U can't get a cantrip. What are we doing here wizards?
Some of your best videos, great stuff Nikachu 🤝
Glad you like them!
IMO, even if you take out the "Look at your opponent's hand" text from Probe, it's still a very good card. It could be played in anything, and essentially allowed you to play a 56 card deck since it replaced itself at the cost of a Shock Land.
thats just street wraith
@@obese_duck5954 Eh, not exactly. Cycling is not the same thing as casting a spell. There are way more things that trigger off of a spell being cast (e.g. Young Pyromancer, prowess cards) than a card being cycled.
I think ponder and preordain should remain banned for a few reasons, but the number 1 reason to me is Dreadhorde Arcanist. If DA gets to untap, a single ponder let's you dig as many as 8 cards deep. That specific play has been crushing legacy lately, so I have a feeling it would quickly dominate the metagame in modern if we had access to powerful cantrips.
Loved that menacing outro.
I see you getting the blue addressed before the next emergency ban lol. Thank you for that!
I Am subscribed, but that threatening at the end literally gave me chills
Uro is the type of card that is really good in any deck that can play it, I'm personally very happy about the ban of uro because I like to play midrange lol
"banned blue cards" 90% of banned mtg cards
LOL I feel so called out by your Gitaxian Probe discussion, "it took too long for the community to admit that looking at your opponents hand was good". That was me in legacy RUG delver. Then I actually tried Probe and I was just like "holy shit this is actually busted"
Great video dude. Unrelated note, I absolutely love the Lorwyn art on Ponder. So great
I do agree. I played with ponder and brainstorm in the early days and they were not abusive cards untill the storm mechanics arrived. Cantrips are only banned because of storm.
I remember Jeff Hoogland argued that dig through time can be unbanned for modern. Surprising considering Jeff isn’t exactly a fan of blue decks (he once boasted that he never played islands in legacy)
Ponder is perfect for combo decks, Preordain is 7/10, Serum Visions/Opt/Sleight of Hand is 5/10 or less.
Also: Just a reminder that WotC appearently tested Oko, Uro and Omnath together in their future-future league and thought that this was okay in the same Standard as Veil of Summer.
Hi Nikachu, do you or does anyone else have a link to the article where WotC openly said that they're no longer playtesting modern?
Oh I have no idea. That was like 7 years ago.
I didn't even know Ponder was banned, and when I saw it on the thumbnail I was sosososososososo surprised. It really doesn't seem very strong.
Love these by the way!
Agreed on 1 mana cantrips. The reason it's so good in Legacy is because of free counterspells - Daze, FoW, FoN.
Good point on one-mana cantrips; there’s a reason, for example, grixis death shadow dropped Serum Visions in favor of Mishra’s Baubles long ago.
Love these types of videos. Two thoughts: 1) unban ponder and 2) glad you gave Sam Black credit for identifying Oko’s power, he definitely called it early on.
Isn’t gitaxian probe colourless?
No, it's phyrexian blue
@@StephaunBaker r/whoosh
Has anyone ever payed “U” for gitaxian probe OR mental misstep?
I think a big part of Ponder and Preordain being too good for the format comes from being able to easily assemble A+B combos. In meta with Twin banned though, the best kind of those combos are probably things like Ad Nauseum + Angel’s Grace or Emrakul + Through the Breach. Also, the Storm archetype moving from Pyromancer’s Ascension to Gifts Ungiven packages likely reduces the power of those cantrips as well. I’d rather see Twin unbanned, but short of that I think Ponder and Preordain are totally safe for Modern.
14:20 Was that some kind of Freudian Slip?
Ponder is in a different league than preordain tbh, it's almost brainstorm level considering it let's you shuffle, and also being restricted in vintage shows how powerful it is - more so if you know that a lot of the spells played in legacy and vintage are modern legal. Btw, F for my playset of Uros, I felt delusional thinking that Wotc printed that to replace the emptiness of my heart after Oko left in 4C control :(
Hell yeah, been waiting for this one!
Semen Visions 14:21
At first I wondered why Oko wasn't banned in Commander, then he mentioned having Multiple Okos and it made so much more sense lol. Love me a good singleton format
I dont play so much paper anymore but Fusion was my preferred online vendor when I did. Id put in order in and it would be shipped 20 minutes later no joke. I live on the literal other side of the country and always went to these guys first. 10/10 cant recommend enough.
"You should be able to read their soul!" Has me dying.
LOVED the matrix analogy, Oko was my favorite card in Merfolk. Felt so good to bully jund.
Jund has so many clean answers to oko, oko being legal would be great for jund. Abrupt decay all day! Oko, the most overrated card of all time. Answer him, or get beat to death by a 3/3 elk every other turn. So broken.....
@@a_fuckin_spacemarine7514 Idk, jund using abrupt decay on oko instead of a creature makes a major difference in the end. Turning vial into 3/3 elk is straight gas. If they can't remove oko right now, it's pretty much gg. If they can remove oko, we didn't really lose much. Oko gets out of control really quick and was a wincon by himself against Jund. Oko overpowers all their planewalkers.
I was overpowering every fair mid-range and control decks with Oko, I member.
Half of that cards are phyrexian mana or cards with delve. It says something :-)
I think Ponder is too good, because you can control your top too easy with fetch lands and we didnt even have miracles in modern before ponder ban.
Preordain.. i dont know. Sure you control one more draw than opt, but in sorcery speed, They should try unban it
i think it was Maro that said phyrexian mana was a mistake. It has a high score on the storm scale
Your sass is by far my favorite thing on TH-cam
I don't think Gitaxian Probe is too good because it lets you look at your opponent's hand for 0. The problem is it also draws a card.
LOVING these videos Nikachu Sensei!
I've already explained Uro in a previous video, but I'm sure people missed it as it was months and months ago.
If you look at the original strategy producers, The Dojo, they said a turn in magic is basically 4 factors. Untapping, drawing, playing a land, attacking. So you effectively get more than a half turn by playing Uro. By the time you play it and then Escape it you effectively have taken an extra turn.... And have a 6/6 that threatens to take a half a turn if it gets to attack... And gain 6 life. That is pretty busted.
The Dojo, that takes me back
@@NikachuMTG yes indeed my guy. They were so far ahead of their time it's unreal.
You omitted Wild Nacatl from you Mental Misstep list. How MtG has changed
Remember when a 1 mana 3/3 was good? haha
Probe and Misstep I think are both broken cards and I love them so much
If I remember right, at the time of ponder's banning delver of secrets was extremely popular.
I went to a draft with some of my friends. Never played before. Oko was my first card ever. Now I play almost every day and I miss oko
I feel like you are underestimating the power of ponder. The ability to shuffle away and have a fresh slate is very strong. Still plays well with fetch lands. The card selection it provides is on another level for 1 mana in modern.
As for the cantrips, I too think they're unbannable. The thing here is their relevance as utility is very generic (digging 3 cards deep) but just on the high-end of the spectrum (better than serum visions so to say). Having theses cards with the rest of the cantrip in modern at most gives blue-colored tempo/control/combo decks some boost. Not only they aren't a 'win' card, but also their redundancy in a deck has diminishing value like spending 1 mana just to draw another cantrip or see another cantrip on those top of the decks, is not the best strategical thing you can have at redundant 1 mana cantrip (I would even say that Thought Scour beats thems all at the angle of "full/optimal utility" in the modern format as Thought Scour is the best cantrip made for the ever efficient GDS shells for its 3 delving mana equivalent).
Good to see you also want these cards unbanned.
pfft I was beating splinter twin decks that played dig through time. Idk what people were complaining about.. Treasure cruise in the red deck wins list was kinda nutty tho.
"King of being a bitch!" God that was amazing! Almost spit my coffee out while watching this video. Great stuff as always!
Git probe was broken because it let you play a 56 card deck. No mana draw 1 was a huge part of the card. The looking at the hand thing was just sort of a perk.
Spot on in my opinion (even if I'm a much worse player). One of the cantrips should come back on a trial basis.
The fact that ponder/preordain are sorcery is enough for me to say they are unban worthy. If a blue deck is tapping mana on THEIR turn, I'm generally happy about it as the opponent.
God tier outros, keep it up Nikachu!
The reason the cantrip cards got banned wasn't due to just storm. Every blue deck and combo deck was playing them cause they're the best ways to basically guarantee your draws and help find what you need for way too cheap. The draw after looking is the big thing and digging three cards down makes them basically like Ancestral in that way. The format is healthier with them banned as unbanning either of them would just give a lot of decks more consistency especially in the early game. Being able to hold something like a one-land hand with one or two ponder/preordains in hand was a thing since you could easily smooth out your mana base with just those spells while also choosing your later draws which is bad for the game.
Great video! Would be interesting for all colours
I definitely consider Oko more of a green card than a blue card. The food mechanic is very heavily green and black. There is only one mono blue card that creates a food token (Turn into a Pumpkin), and that one is only conditionally (it's also unplayable). And the +1 is just Beast Within, which is a green card. The -5 is blue, but the things that make Oko broken are mostly green.
Two things,
I wish I was playing magic when Uro was legal. I wanted to play that card but I didn't play much on MTGO and I didn't have the money or ability to play the deck when it was legal. Any deck that plays a shit ton of land is immediately interesting to me. I really like it.
I also want ponder/preordain to get unbanned. I love cantrips. Good cantrips make the game fun for me. I'm very excited for Consider to come out. I'm going to be quoting Bil Nye literally every fucking time I cast that card.
I think Ponder is a little too powerful for Modern, personally. Having played with the card back in the day, the huge advantage it offered blue is a little much. But I AM in the ban Ancient Stirrings camps, and I'll freely admit Ponder wouldn't ruin modern. I share your opinion about preordain.
I think Uro was fine, but I'm obviously in the minority, and even I'm breathing a sigh of relief to know it is going to be banned.
I feel like Preordain really should come off the list
I think ponder actually has a cost because of the RNG element that if you find two lands or garbage on top, you shuffle for random. You could see lands and it’s suddenly not that great then shuffle and draw a land anyway. Preordain I actually consider better than ponder for the simple sake it can scry garbage to the bottom and only keep the goodies. I think it’s better than ponder for that reason. It also still goes three deep technically if you scry both to the bottom and take your chance on the random third card down.
Not with fetch lands
Wotc reduced playtesting by alot ? Huh i didnt even notice Kappa
A video of the white banned cards would be funny. There are only 2 white cards in the banlist and one of them is already unbanned.
Blue: gets more conditional ancestral and 0 mana counterspells.
Meanwhile in white: sEcONd SunRIse
Ikr. If they are so concerned with the clock then make each round an hour rather than 50 minutes.
Meanwhile in White - Lurrus, Teferis (Time Raveler and Hero), Path to Exile + Plow, Heliod, Wrath of God, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Meddling Mage, Skyclave Apparition, Timely Reinforcements.... White has a lot of good stuff. The fact that it is considered the "weakest" of the colours is cause, yeah, one colour had to be. But there's a card that undermines any argument against white - Sun Titan is no Prime Time, but it is pretty good actually. Humans and control are fundamentally white decks most of the time, and there's a reason they run those white cards - White has good engines, great removal, good combo pieces, lots of good cards all throughout the curve. Largely the problem boils down to Commander, but outside of Commander products I can see why they don't playtest cards for those formats, and TBH I'd rather they stopped pushing cards for Commander too, even knowing full well they won't. It's fair if your advantages as a colour don't lend themselves to every format too. White is, in my estimation, the best support colour.
@@joshdavis6830 the problem is white as of late has gotten overshadowed by the other colours, not it’s past staple cards. Heliod is only good cuz of walking ballista and apparition is like the only good white card in a long while.
@@joshdavis6830 I would argue a few of those are only part white though, mono white overall has not been nearly as strong.
@@joshdavis6830 The thing is that, for me, saying that white is the best support color (I agree with that, I think RIP is probably the best SB card of the game) is the same thing as saying that white is the worst color, because it implies that is not good enough to be played by itself or be the primary color of a deck (at least if you want to win).
I missed okos potential, I got 2 copys in my prerelease sealed pool but everyone was playing super agro go wide so making a 3/3 every other turn was too slow and elking their creatures was bad because it made them bigger.
pod and twin... what a great time for modern!
I personally don’t like ponder and preordain being unbanned because it lets blue tempo decks and control decks a lot more consistent because you can keep extremely aggressive low land hands. You can do that with opt and serum visions now, but it’s really not that good because serum visions is kind of slow and opt doesn’t dig through as many cards. I view them as pretty similar to once upon a time, they make risky hands much less risky and allow for control decks to aggressively mulligan into answers.
Best MTG channel ever.
I would argue unbanning Ponder is a better move than unbanning Preordain or both. Not because Preordain is better or stronger, but because it would make Serum Visions completely unplayable in every main format. If they want to put Serum Visions into Pioneer, that'd be dope, and Preordain would be fantastic for the Modern format.
10:24 it get really wrong when BURN deck use it.
I just disagre with 2 cards +-, i would put treasure cruise in the broken part and gutaxian probe as "just good enought for a ban"
You gotta love that common ancestral recall
So proud of myself for buying 4x uro the moment I could, so I could replace Oko in my BG Urza deck
The Elk-ify ability of Oko should've been a -1 instead of +1. Too good... Too good
have it start at 3 elk -1 and food +1
funnily enought that would still be the strongest planeswalker in modern
Hey the reason why wotc banned treasure cruise because in modern majority using fetch land and make easy to cast it even people using mono red deck, they splashing with blue mana with shockland to cast it.
Would Gitaxian Probe be more fair if it were 2 blue phyrexian mana?
Maybe. Or it would be more broken in Shadow. Two Probes, fetch shock, turn 1 4/4 Shadow
Oh yea. Ban shadow if they'll unban probe since they still have skyclaves hahaha
Seems like a very poor fix.
I remember playing treasure cruise and dig through time in standard esper control and it was B R O K E N in all caps.
I basically agree with your entire list, except for cruise, which I think is completely broken.
Now I have a question, let`s assume that force of negation was banned on monday, where would you put it in the tier list.
I know that you are a big proponent of the card, but I`d still like to know.
Probably Easy Ban if it was worth being banned at all.
@@NikachuMTG fair enought
Oh i miss Gitaxian Probe a lot, good old times i had turn 2 kiln Fiend into clean turn 3 kill because being able to see if i was in the clear. Couldnt even enjoy the deck for more than 2 months that it got banned, now what got me very angry is that probe got banned and surgical extraction got from 5 brazilian bucks to over 150 in the next week, everyone using it, and the card is still not banned :/
I'm one of those Opt and Preordain folks. I love preordain but I save it for Pauper. Modern I go with Opt.
I miss when Oko was legal though. It wasn't fair, but it was hilarious.
It's all Elk?
Always has been.
On cantrips: delver decks don’t exist because they don’t have good topdeck manipulation. Ponder and preordain would reinvigorate an entire archetype that people love and that likely won’t be broken at all. I would definitely say unban preordain first and see what happens, if only to provide a separation from modern and legacy by keeping ponder banned... but honestly ponder being banned is still a joke imo.
Also yes I know storm would get a boost from better cantrips but, having played plenty of storm myself, I can say that the format is much better at dealing with storm nowadays so if storm is ever an issue it will just get gated out. It’s a slow combo deck and definitely can have a place in modern.
I scrolled through the comments and didn't see it, so Ima say it. Magic Aids called Oko correctly. He calls a lot of stuff that other people miss.
He called it after he played with it. And so did everyone else after they played with it.
@@NikachuMTG I mean, he called it before the set was even released, while others still shit on it so... Not really?