[MtG] Banned & Restricted List - January 19th 2015

[Flame Dragon]

Man, MTG has gotten the fuckin staff for a while now. While it definitely has more of a designer staff than Yu-Gi-Oh, the actual quality of the cards are kind of stuck in a lull. It's nice to have controlled power, but the age of fun card design is pretty much over. These choices just further show me that WotC is still terrified of making too many mistakes rather than learning from them and using them as a basis for exciting new things.

No, just ban it. God forbid we have to design in relation to slightly dangerous cards. This all not being said about Pod, which is actually a great move. Just way too late and sadly making Goyf mandatory to run Green in Modern.

 
 
That really isn't the case. Maro has said many times that they will push cards and that they are willing to make mistakes because the game is worse if they don't take those risks.

Goyf isn't mandatory to run green. Goyf is mandatory to run every other color. Green is unhelpful for the growing of Goyf. 
 
Treasure Cruise was a good call. Dig Through Time, maybe a lesser value, was still a good call as well. It isn't mistake. These cards are played and are meant for Standard. Eternal formats aren't tested. All this says is that Siege Rhino is really strong. 
 
These choices really don't do anything other than the fact that they don't know what they really want to do with Modern as a whole, and how to approach it. That is fine. Modern is valued by most of the members because of it. It is more than a half-assed format, and Wizards does care about it to see it grow, but they don't know how to do it and testing wouldn't really help with that, either.

Part of the problem is they don't really have as much time to test things in Modern. All things considered WotC's design/development staff isn't super huge and design doesn't do a lot of testing for formats outside of limited to begin with. Also, again to quote Maro, he has said that a card potentially being busted in older formats won't keep them from making a card that is fair in standard.

[.Leo]

The only thing that I am curious about coming out of this list is whether the Jeskai Ascendancy Combo Deck we saw at the World Championships (Modern Version) will be able to function without the massive amount of 1-2 mana card draw/selection.

 

Otherwise, I like where Modern is going.

[Flame Dragon]

What will happen to the Ascendancy deck is one of the bigger questions at the moment. It might end up being better, but for now I think it will be on a similar ground to the other combo decks in the format. We'll see soon enough I suppose.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

The only thing that I am curious about coming out of this list is whether the Jeskai Ascendancy Combo Deck we saw at the World Championships (Modern Version) will be able to function without the massive amount of 1-2 mana card draw/selection.
 
Otherwise, I like where Modern is going.

I mean, it still has 7 copies of ascendency, but without cruise and ddt i can't see it destroying like it did before. Still viable, I expect.

[Simping For Hina]

I mean, it still has 7 copies of ascendency, but without cruise and ddt i can't see it destroying like it did before. Still viable, I expect.

Wrong version. 

 

It won't be able to go off as fast and the deck has a higher rate of fizzling. The control version of it just becomes weaker, as well. These cards stabilized the deck, and now it is less potent and consistent. Still viable, but weaker by a strong measure.