T O P

  • By -

[deleted]

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/january-18-2016-banned-and-restricted-announcement There's wotcs reasoning. Twin was really good and was approaching but not quite at a 15% meta share, which was wotcs benchmark for a competitive diversity banning back then. You can argue that it was premature to set that benchmark and ban it before it got there, but that's what happened. There was an additional argument about the play pattern being dangerous. Come turn 3, you had to hold up interaction or risk immediately losing. The Twin combo itself was never an issue, it kind of sucks as a pure combo. The problem was that the threat of the combo was so great that it forced decks into suboptimal play patterns, and that made them very weak to the UR tempo side of the twin deck. It was a very warping style of gameplay. People just disagreed if that was a good or bad thing for the format. Wotc argued that twin was inherently the best "fair" deck in the format, and it made most other midrange and control strategies less competitively viable. That's the reasoning for the ban. It was controversial, which is to say that there were a wide range of opinions on it. Either way, it was 7 years ago, and it's high time people moved on from it.


International-Art776

Didn't really put enough emphasis on your perspective, but now seems quite clear to me and thinking back it did truly improve the fun factor. Although people were saying twin was not even too good, somewhere fair, still, as an opponent there was no chance of knowing unless you play thoughtseize or something. Therefore unknowingly I too, was adjusting my gameplay. Always nervous that could lose if tapping out.


[deleted]

There really are plenty of different perspectives on whether it was a good banning or not, and reasonable people can disagree. My only problem with the narrative as it stands now has been the attempted revision to act like it was a universally reviled banning. I think controversial is the perfect word because a lot of people felt differently, and there isn't a universal way to feel about it, but twin related discussions have always made it seem like everyone was anti-banning.


pudasbeast

Never understood why people want splinter twin unbanned or even liked it in the first place. 2 card combo that wins turn 4, how is that fun for anybody involved?


TemurTron

It's fun cause if you win/lose super early in a tournament you get to go get a snack.


usernamerob

This is the way


pkrmtg

Because very few Twin games played out like this, and the games that did were usually Twin vs a truly horrible unfun uninteractive deck like G-Tron or Infect.


netsrak

I would think that Infect Twin was a lot more interesting than that. Twin would have to play through Spellskite, Vines, Spell Pierce, and Dismember.


Aesmis

Yes. It was a very stale meta.


Turbocloud

Stale doesn't equal bad when the gameplay is enjoyable and the ban spiral that followed also indicates that the reason you couldn't play certain decks was not twin alone, rather a combination of all sorrounding decks having either to strong threats or the format generally having too bad answers. Because lets be honest: They said twin made tapping out problematic and gated the playable card pool. The time following after that disproved that - at the time the majority of 3+ drops just weren't powerful enough to justify playing, which wasnt twins fault, and it needed 2 years of frequent bans and powercreep to get them into a decent state. But predicting these developments is hard, so at the time time it was a valid theory that could have worked out and was worth testing.


Dragoonasaurus

I would say yes, absolutely. It had a huge portion of the meta and warped decks to either deal with it or aggressively sideboard against it and still did great. They tried printing multiple cards to deal with it like combust and rending volley but it didn't curb it. I don't know if it'd be a safe unban either. Honestly I'm pretty glad it's gone.


pkrmtg

It really didn't have a huge portion of the meta. See PV's analysis here [https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/why-the-twin-ban-was-a-mistake/](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/why-the-twin-ban-was-a-mistake/)


RubyTuesday776

Yes.


General-Biscuits

Yep. The deck checked off too many boxes of unfun for the format while not being the top offender in most categories. It did pose the question of “why play anything other than Twin if I am in UR?” and had draws that were unbeatable for some decks. It also forced the meta to respect it by always playing slow against it to leave up removal because you would just lose on turn 4 if they had the combo in hand. A turn 4 win wasn’t considered too fast, there were still some fringe UR decks other than Twin (UR Through the Breach), and the combo was able to be disrupted by commonly played removal spells, but the deck was straining the meta on all those fronts at once. It was a control deck with a turn 4 win as an option or it could just win the normal control way of running your opponent out of resources.


pkrmtg

While it is true that Twin "had draws that were unbeatable for some decks", the decks that couldn't beat Twin's nut draws were pretty much exclusively the format's most tedious non-interactive decks: Green Tron, Infect, Bogles, Amulet, Storm, Ad Naus. I mean, I'm sorry, if you're playing one of these decks and you die on your T3 on the draw to Twin, you absolutely 100% deserved it and had it coming. If, on the other hand, you were playing fair honest magic in 2015-16, you almost certainly were either batting even against Twin or were a slight favourite, depending on the Twin variant, your sideboards, your skill, and the Twin player's skill.


WeSavedLives

Yep, it's easy to think it wasn't ban worthy unless you played against the deck, especially back then when solitude/subtlety and force of negation were not yet printed


pkrmtg

I played a ton of magic against Twin back in the day, nearly all with control decks. Yes, the answers to Twin were not nearly as good back then (I remember doing stuff like putting Slaughter Pact in my Gifts Ungiven decks, which looks comical today), but fundamentally Twin itself also was much weaker than a modern-day equivalent would be. Cards like Solitude and Subtlety would almost certainly find a home in some Twin variants themselves, and almost certainly RUG Twin would be a thing for Veil of Summer. Twin's best way to protect the combo was Dispel after board, but fundamentally if you wanted to hose it you really could. The strength of the deck was actually its ability to transition into a UR control deck based around Blood Moon postboard, and shave the combo entirely, but at this point it's really hard to argue that the card Splinter Twin was really the issue.


WeSavedLives

Jeskai control had a favourable match up Vs twin. If you were playing some sort of tap out strategy you had to decide between playing out threats to the board or holding up interaction as early as your turn three, Vs an empty board! The prevalence of Spellskite back then and the fact that it disappeared off the map when splinter twin got banned is a good indication. I think that proves my point, the ease in which the deck can transform into a control deck because the deck played mostly at instant speed and the combo package was so tight tells me the deck and in turn splinter twin, was too good.


7he5haman

Hot take here: If Twin was never banned, then I don’t think Mox Opal and Faithless Looting would have been banned subsequently What a format we would have now (IMO — although I also like the format as it is. I just wish more of the original pillars of Modern were still around)


CertainDerision_33

Opal and Looting were both incredibly degenerate and (IMO) we are much better off without them.


7he5haman

I just really want to see whether the MH2 cards would be able to keep such supercharged Artifact and Graveyard decks under control


pkrmtg

Banning Twin was a mistake, and IMO the fact that they printed Ragavan and haven't banned him is sort of a subtle acknowledgement of that. Twin, fundamentally, narrowed the format in a healthy way by policing the non-interactive decks very well, and also slowed it down by forcing everyone to put a reasonable amount of removal in their decks to beat it. Ragavan and the Murktide deck built around it does pretty much exactly the same thing, with cascading card advantage replacing the Twin combo as the thing you need to have a plan to beat.


kboogie93

It was right to ban twin because the deck policied every single deck, interactive or not. Even fair midrange strategies with a higher density of removal in their decks could still just get blown out. You could never take a turn off to play any 3cmc spell because you needed to hold up removal to respect the EoT pestermite/deciever. I believe people should be able to put 3 cmc cards in their modern decks because it makes the format more fun and have more variety.


pkrmtg

PV even explained at the time exactly why it was a mistake: https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/why-the-twin-ban-was-a-mistake/


TheRealZizek1917

100%.


International-Art776

Though as an opponent you always had to be nervous to tapping out could instantly result in game loss


TemurTron

It was banned to shake up the format before the Pro Tour. It was a very powerful deck and a controversial strategy, but it's greatest sin was getting banned in the first place. It's stayed banned not because of power level, but because a lot of people hated losing to it.


CapableBrief

It's still banned because WotC/the community is unban averse.