‘Ello ladles and jellyspoons! By now you have all seen the big news: Oko, Opal, and Lattice are gone in Modern. We all saw the Oko banning coming from a mile away but Opal and Lattice may have come as a shock to some of us. Real quick I wanted to look at what these bans mean moving forward.
[scryimg] oko, thief of crowns [/scryimg]
The card had to go. It’s meta % shares and things like “moist Jund”. You know a card is busted or format warping (like Burn playing Leyline of the Void in the sideboard just to beat Hogaak before he was banned) when Jund is splashing blue for Oko. Most importantly it breaks the up three way triangle of meta game diversity oppression formed by E-Tron, Oko decks, and Death’s Shadow decks. With Oko gone UW Control gets to enjoy Batterskull again, Ensnaring Bridge goes back to crushing aggro player’s dreams, and Chalice of the Void can continue collecting the tears of all those who it leaves crying in it’s wake.
[scryimg] mycosynth lattice [/scryimg]
I was a little surprised by this ban. I feel like they may have anticipated it getting out of hand in the future and just decided to use this time now to ban it before it could? But what we do know is the combo lock feels bad. Opposite of good. Not fun. And Wizards has banned cards in the past on those grounds alone (and partially because it draws the game out for too long and that’s bad for tournament coverage).
[scryimg] Mox Opal [/scryimg]
The most important card on today’s list. The ban was aimed to nerf Urza but the decision hurt several other decks in the process. Hardened Scales implemented Opal and the deck will definitely miss it but certainly doesn’t rely on it at it’s core. Lantern Control (not that anyone plays the deck any more) was allowed to play Sultai colors smoothly. *Personally, anything to help reduce the chance of ever sitting across the table from that wrenched deck ever again the better!* Now the deck impacted hardest is classic Affinity. Affinity isn’t dead the way Ad Nauseam would be if Wizards straight up banned Ad Nauseam but Affinity as a tier 1 deck is effectively dead. Here is the deal. Affinity relies on Opal to provide it the speed necessary to dump it’s hand and win game 1 a high % of the time. That is one of the unspoken but inherent characteristics of the deck that makes it so good is that it’s almost unbeatable game 1. However, games 2 and 3 the gnarliest artifact hate cards come in and it’s significantly more difficult for Affinity to seal the deal. The point is, Affinity didn’t just lose a card but it lost one of it’s main components to it’s bigger game plan (every deck wants to win game 1 but classic Affinity counts on winning game 1 because it know how difficult games 2 and 3 will be). The deck won’t be unplayable, far from it, but it won’t be tier 1 any more and why would any one play it at that point when there are better options to play? Hence why I say classic Affinity is “effectively dead”.
Lastly, I want to address the precedent this sets by Wizards towards cards and banning them. Whenever we’d approach a B&R announcement countless discussions would come up surrounding when Mox Opal and/or Ancient Stirrings would go under the axe. This has been going on for ages. Well, it finally happened. A deck emerged that pushed Opal over the edge and got it banned. Urza was that deck. We knew and they knew how critical the card was to several different decks and how by banning it the splash damage would impact them but instead of just surgically banning Urza, they banned Opal anyways…
Dear Ancient Stirrings,
You’re on thin ice.
Thanks for tuning in today’s brief article. Agree? Disagree? Bummed and need someone to talk to? Hit me with your thoughts in the comment section.
And as always, if you’re in the market for some snazzy new sleeves be sure to cruise on over to the shop and use my discount code MADMAGIC for 15% off on your next purchase.
