Well modern officially died on September 20^th 2011, he had grand dreams and such a promising future. As a format modern is survived by his older brother legacy and his younger sibling standard. While it may seem to you dear reader I am exaggerating that is simply not the case. Control and combo decks have been severely weakened by this recent ban list announcement leaving aggro decks clearly in a favorable place. Listen Wizards I get it, combo winter and Urza’s block so many years ago kind of drove massive amounts of people from the game and almost ruined Magic but combo has been weakened to such a point it barely exists, the modern resurgence of combo decks was a breath of fresh air, unfortunately Wizards only wants players smashing creatures into each other all day so the recent ban list has severely hurt combo decks. With the list already filled with some of the best control cards it looks like aggressive decks are going to be the best. Now I know dear readers I am being sensationalist and combo and control to a smaller extent will play a role in modern, I am just saying the sky is falling and these bans are horrible for the format and laughable. Without further ado onto the modern bans.

 

Blazing Shoal

All right so a niche card played in one deck along with janky infect cards. Joking aside the deck could win as early as the third turn making it a legitimate threat, however with the plethora of removal including Dismember and Path to Exile not to mention discard effects there is so many ways to handle this deck I don’t feel this card should have been banned, it demolishes a new exciting archetype before it had a larger chance to shine poor form Wizards.

 

Cloudpost

 

    

 

Hurray twelve post is dead, the problem with Cloudpost is it can fuel back breaking Eldrazi spells and allow the player to just sit back on massive amounts of mana and drop an Emrakul making for pretty one sided games. Big mana engines are still available using the traditional Urzatron and Vesuva but cloudpost was so degenerate and almost less interactive than combo decks I am in favor of this banning to diversify the format even more.

 

Green Sun’s Zenith

 

Oh laugh out loud, this card is only good in specialized decks, you need to run green limiting the decks that can run it effectively and you need to construct your deck to take maximum advantage of this card. On the other end it basically acts at copies 4-8 of every green creature and Dryad Arbor in your deck adding redundancy and power and combined with previous entry Cloudpost it gets degenerate. However having to run a plethora of green creatures and building your deck around this card makes me think it did not deserve the ban hammer and is one of the laughable bannings that limits the power of green decks.

 

Ponder

 

      

 

This banning had me in stitches a standard legal card that can help set up your draws and shuffle away chaff with fetches. This is a lynchpin of combo decks so banning it does hurt combo which is the obvious intent. Ponder really has done nothing to hurt anyone and combo decks need cards like this to exist and put aggressive decks on a reasonable clock. This is the worst ban I have ever seen in my entire life, uncalled for and childish this severely hurts the format and is a huge mistake. Oh well at least we have Preordain…

 

Preordain

 

    

 

WHAT?! Another standard legal card, Preordain helps all blue decks most notably combo decks but this puts another nail in the coffin of control decks and this is just adding insult to injury with the previous banning of Ponder. There are more effective ways to combat combo decks such as unbanning Mental Misstep which could serve to counter Ponder and Preordain and stop ridiculous one drops such as Wild Nacatl sadly it is not to be. Another crazy banning that will hurt the format more then it helps.

 

Rite of Flame

Blah we hate combo blah blah we hate storm decks. A fast mana card that can get degenerate fast at least this card could warrant a ban in comparison to the previous entries this is public enemy number one! But if you already banned the combo enablers why would you need to ban Rite of Flame as well? Just to kill off storm? Either ban this or Preordain and Ponder not both another horrible ban.

 

Overall Wizards wants us to crash creatures into one another and players hate combo and control so Wizards caters to this demographic and this ban list just reinforces it. Instead of having a versatile metagame aggressive decks have not suffered a blow and control and combo decks get the shaft, this is madness! Have fun playing a dead format and way to kill a format before it takes off Wizard’s. Rest in Peace modern format.

 

Feel free to disagree with me send all hate mail and love letters to PlatinumFUBU5@hotmail.com and all challenges to EnderWiggan1337 on Magic Online.