The Problem with Modern

[Dsx Cherno]

Jace, the Sentient

0- Jace, the Sentient gains Autonomy (This card gains free will and movement, and is able to legally petition for rights as a sentient being), conjures a deck comprised of Banned cards, and enters the game as an additional player. Jace, the Sentient starts with 40 life, searches his library for 10 lands of any kind, puts them into play, searches his library for 7 cards and puts them into his hand, and then puts the remainder of his library in any order. His turn begins after yours, and he remains in this place in the turn rotation.




I give it 3 core sets before we see this card.

[Agrus Kos, Enforcer of Truth]

Jace, the Sentient

0- Jace, the Sentient gains Autonomy (This card gains free will and movement, and is able to legally petition for rights as a sentient being), conjures a deck comprised of Banned cards, and enters the game as an additional player. Jace, the Sentient starts with 40 life, searches his library for 10 lands of any kind, puts them into play, searches his library for 7 cards and puts them into his hand, and then puts the remainder of his library in any order. His turn begins after yours, and he remains in this place in the turn rotation.




I give it 3 core sets before we see this card.

Dude there is only one more Core Set, so I will bet anything you are wrong.

[Dsx Cherno]

Dude there is only one more Core Set, so I will bet anything you are wrong.

Thank you, Argus, that was a big part of the joke.

[Agrus Kos, Enforcer of Truth]

Dude there is only one more Core Set, so I will bet anything you are wrong.

Thank you, Argus, that was a big part of the joke.

When you seriously say stuff like Skullclamp is a fair card for modern, it's hard to know when you are joking.

[Dsx Cherno]

I said I love it I didn't say it was fair

[Mr_Fahrenheit]

The reason jace (and any card for that matter) gets banned is because you get too much out of it for too little investment (which is, in short, unfair) and it goes against what wizards wants for the format in question. Sonetimes this can seem quite arbitrary, and that is wotc's prerogative. Whether it is format warping or not is not the only consideration. I believe people need to suck it up and deal with it, or play a different format. Sure, have your say. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But there is no need (and nothing to be gained by) continuously harping on about it.

[Agrus Kos, Enforcer of Truth]

The reason jace (and any card for that matter) gets banned is because you get too much out of it for too little investment (which is, in short, unfair) and it goes against what wizards wants for the format in question. Sonetimes this can seem quite arbitrary, and that is wotc's prerogative. Whether it is format warping or not is not the only consideration. I believe people need to suck it up and deal with it, or play a different format. Sure, have your say. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But there is no need (and nothing to be gained by) continuously harping on about it.

Except Jace was a pre-format ban which have been overturned because they were wrong ({Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle} and {Bitterblossom}) and Wizards does listen to the community when thinking about bans. You don't have to engage in the discussion, but you shouldn't discourage it. Bans are not absolute, we just had {Golgari Grave-Troll} come off.

[Mr_Fahrenheit]

Im not discouraging discussion. I just feel a lot of it is superfluous. We need to remember that wizards feels strongly about jace. He was banned from his own standard dont forget. While i wouldn't mind brewing with jace in modern i am happy enough that he is banned. Do i think he will ever get unbanned in modern? No. Would it bother me if it was? No. Im quite neutral in this argument.

[NovusOrbis]

There was a deck on Tapped out that used all of the cards banned in modern and it was really quite good. There was no real synergy, but the deck won anyway. There's a reason why those cards were banned.

But about the fairness thing, pretty much all formats grow stagnant eventually until a new set comes out.

[Beechlander]

I know this discussion is stale, but I have two suggestions for fixing "unfair" decks:
1) Have ban lists include combinations of cards.  Example: You can play card A, B, and/or C, but A cannot be in a deck with B nor C.
2) Triggered abilities from cannot be added to the stack when they're already on the stack unless the source of the trigger is different.  Example: {Boros Reckoner} can be given Indestructible and Lifelink then can damaged by you to redirecting the damage to itself giving you life.  Then, it can redirect the damage to another creature or player, but not itself.

I like #2 because I really hate losing to ad nauseam combos that require very little effort/luck.  Another advantage to #2 is that it stops combos that you try to stop but your opponent just perpetuates the combo on top of your counter when priority passes back to him/her.  I mean, putting {Aura of Dominion} on {King Macar, the Gold-Cursed} results in an ad nauseam combo that doesn't require multi-stacking triggered abilities, but combos like that could be addressed by idea #1.

[LinkCelestrial]

They're not going to ban combinations of cards. That's overly complicated and kinda silly.

"You can use bounce lands but not with {Summer Bloom}."

Why not just ban {Summer Bloom}? I mean what is it being used in that warrants it not being banned outright? Nothing justifies over complicating the rules.

2) isn't worded to produce the outcome that you have in your example. Things not being trigger able unless they're not on the stack doesn't really change anything...either way they're not going to change the rules of the game to stop combo decks when combo decks are already a thing that they're more than fine with.

They are interesting ideas and they really could work. They're just not going to happen because they're adding a level of complication to remove an element of the game that Wizards is fine with.

[Ekann1]

They can't just change the rules and way things work man. You can't add things like.. "You can run Fastbond as long as you don't do more than 3 lands a turn with it" magic isn't a game of politeness and other grey areas, its black and white and definitive rules. Hahaha

I don't know, their playgroup, their rules seems like the point of a game is to have fun, however you decide to do so. I guess you could think of it like playing a made up game that's similar to magic plus a few rules if you like...

[LinkCelestrial]

My playgroup allows any Planeswalker as a commander for EDH. However {Sorin Markov} sets life totals to 20. There's no {Karn Liberated} here (thankfully) so it's been pretty tame so far.

All this to say I like house rules.