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This thread is to discuss Pro Tour Philadelphia, which begins Friday at 9 a.m. ET. This Pro Tour features the debut of the Modern format in premier-event play, so there should be lots of deck archetype developments all weekend.

The webcast begins in Philly at 10:45 a.m. Sunday with the Modern Top 8. Use this handy guide to find the start time in your area!

• Los Angeles: 7:45 a.m.
• Chicago: 9:45 a.m.
• New York: 10:45 a.m.
• Rio de Janeiro: 11:45 a.m.
• London: 3:45 p.m.
• Paris: 4:45 p.m.
• Berlin: 4:45 p.m.
• Rome: 4:45 p.m.
• Moscow: 6:45 p.m.
• Tokyo: 11:45 p.m.
• Sydney: 12:45 a.m. Monday

Poor coverage again. When will you start covering the entire event live? It is funny GPs are covered much better than PTs.

Why are SCG Opens covered better than PTs? I really don't get this at all.

It's the Pro Tour, but the "amateur" coverage of SCG Open & GPs by ggslive once again makes the official coverage pale in comparison.

Shame on you WOTC!

Just sad. Looking at the page with only round 1 results. no game info, no interviews.  Serioulsy wizards,  you are way behind.

So, I turn on my computer, happy because I get to see an awsome pro tour in a new format, start looking for the coverage and... How is it even possible???

So scg events have good video coverage, grand prix too thanks to ggs live, and pro tour get NOTHING???? It's the PRO TOUR... It's supposed to be the one tournament with all the best players in the world, they prepare hard for this and we can't see it? Get a grip wiz, that's ridiculous...

I agree completely.  This is absolutely ridiculous that Wizards, with all their funding, can't have some video streaming of the Pro Tour!  Star City Games has it, Grand Prix has it, and even my local store is starting to do it for their own larger events. 

Even having a live podcast streaming would have been way better than these ultra delayed feature match articles.

Come on Wizards, time to get your act together.

I just spent 10 minutes looking for the dumb coverage. Do I want podcasts? No. Do I want twitter? Hell no. What am I going to do with layers and layers of text. Oh, okay, I can watch the deck tech and pretend I'm getting quality information when I'm actually not.

Jumping on Magic Online and watching some modern matches has been more entertaining than suffering to find the damn link to any video coverage.

I thought you had hired Rushad and may have GGs-live there, Wizzos. What the hell?

(Not asking for the bull SCG feeds, just some cards tapping and notifications on board position.) >:|

Wizards!!, get some live coverage...i would have loved to see the match of Finkel/Watanabe even though by the written commentary it sounded bad.

really...i had come home from work this morning and hoped to relax with some live coverage of "the Pro Tour"..!

HAHAHA Wizards poor excuse for banning everything thats ever been good has totally backfired on them!!!

Not only is there turn 3 kills all over the place but there is also turn 2 kills and even turn 1 kills!!!!!! HAHAHAHA

Maybe now wizards should think about unbanning EVERYTHING and let people play with the cards they want to play with!

There will always be the "popular decks" banning cards for this format only angers players that cant play with the
cards they paid for and want to play with. It just forces them to shift to the next best set of cards!!!

Whats the next step wizards ban all the key cards in these decks as well??? Its a slippery slope your dealing with here.

Control is certainly dead so I guess Combo is next... maybe they will be happy when 8 aggro decks make top 8 who knows?  

As an additional note the non existant PRO TOUR coverage is pathetic... GET A GRIP WIZARDS!!!!

Take a hint and give the people what they want...

Control is not dead.

It's just that control requires a defined meta in order to work.
And there's no defined meta in Modern because, surprise, it's its first PT ever!

In any case, it would be much better to unban Sensei's Divining Top than Mental Misstep. Mental Misstep would just destroy the format the same way Force of Will has ruined Vintage and Legacy.

Sep 3, 2011 -- 5:30PM, DrJones wrote:

Force of Will has ruined Vintage and Legacy.

Force of Will is the glue that holds Vintage and Legacy together. Were it not present, Belcher would win pretty much everything.

Anyway:

Somebody please get Hagon off of coverage. He's a total idiot, and is about as bad as Mike Lopez. He reads off all of the cards (the people who don't know the cards can just pause and look them up), assumes everyone knows approximately three cards and learned to play two days ago, and has no knowledge of the game (that he presents, at any rate) to back it up. At least with Buehler we got actual analysis of the match and amusing jokes, and didn't piss off the playerbase. Hagon makes the webcasts unwatchable.

Repeating a lie doesn't make it true, it just makes you believe it.

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:04PM, DrJones wrote:

Repeating a lie doesn't make it true, it just makes you believe it.

If you think I'm wrong, hold a legacy and/or vintage tournament with Force of Will banned. See what decks do well.

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:08PM, Mage24365 wrote:

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:04PM, DrJones wrote:

Repeating a lie doesn't make it true, it just makes you believe it.

If you think I'm wrong, hold a legacy and/or vintage tournament with Force of Will banned. See what decks do well.

Challenge accepted. Please, WotC, ban Force of Will now so that I can hold a tournament with it banned! 

It looks like you have never tried to play storm combo/charbelcher in a format with mental misstep. Even the extended lie about Charbelcher breaking havoc can't be used anymore.

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:12PM, DrJones wrote:

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:08PM, Mage24365 wrote:

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:04PM, DrJones wrote:

Repeating a lie doesn't make it true, it just makes you believe it.

If you think I'm wrong, hold a legacy and/or vintage tournament with Force of Will banned. See what decks do well.

Challenge accepted. Please, WotC, ban Force of Will now so that I can hold a tournament with it banned! 

It looks like you have never tried to play storm combo/charbelcher in a format with mental misstep. Even the extended lie about Charbelcher breaking havoc can't be used anymore.

You do realize the Misstep is the issue, not Force, right?

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:16PM, Mage24365 wrote:

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:12PM, DrJones wrote:

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:08PM, Mage24365 wrote:

Sep 3, 2011 -- 6:04PM, DrJones wrote:

Repeating a lie doesn't make it true, it just makes you believe it.

If you think I'm wrong, hold a legacy and/or vintage tournament with Force of Will banned. See what decks do well.

Challenge accepted. Please, WotC, ban Force of Will now so that I can hold a tournament with it banned! 

It looks like you have never tried to play storm combo/charbelcher in a format with mental misstep. Even the extended lie about Charbelcher breaking havoc can't be used anymore.

You do realize the Misstep is the issue, not Force, right?

Nope, it's the other way around.

The format has received plenty of critcism from the players this weekend. Pros seem to agree on control being unplayable currently... which is not all that surprising since people were saying it as soon as they saw the banlist.

Mental Misstep, Ancestral Visions need to come off of it (personally I'd unban Top too), many even have suggested Jace TMS should be unbanned and that certainly is a possibilty.

I don't think any combo cards need to be necessarily banned, stronger control decks (Misstep in particular) would make the format a lot healthier.

Even with some serious flaws Modern is still more fun than Extended (which sucks horribly tbh), after some moves are made to make control viable it'll look real promising.

---

As for the coverage... yes, it's horrible as usual. I can't understand how GPs and freaking SCG Open can have coverage so much better than the Big Show.

There are no excuses, WOTC should have improved their laggy coverage years ago. Not having live video coverage from the swiss rounds doesn't make any sense these days. I'm happy to see how the SCG circuit and GP coverage by ggslive has exposed the ineptitude of Wizards, and people have started to demand better coverage... but how much longer will it take before WOTC wakes up?

To the guy that said that control is not good before the meta needs to learn to play control first. The ban list is the most horrible thing I've ever seen. It is like WotC hasn't been dealing with cards for almost 20 years. You should ban things when they become a problem rather than peemtively banning stuff like that in such numbers. The problem is even a single ban can change the value of all the rest of the cards. Nobody can ever predict what happens when banning 20 cards together.... or actually you can, it will be a mess. Like having a tournament where there are 0 control decks in the top 16, 3 aggro decks, and 13 combo decks. LoL, that is an awesome!

Sep 3, 2011 -- 8:54PM, av.313 wrote:

The format has received plenty of critcism from the players this weekend. Pros seem to agree on control being unplayable currently... which is not all that surprising since people were saying it as soon as they saw the banlist.

Mental Misstep, Ancestral Visions need to come off of it (personally I'd unban Top too), many even have suggested Jace TMS should be unbanned and that certainly is a possibilty.

I don't think any combo cards need to be necessarily banned, stronger control decks (Misstep in particular) would make the format a lot healthier.

Even with some serious flaws Modern is still more fun than Extended (which sucks horribly tbh), after some moves are made to make control viable it'll look real promising.

---

As for the coverage... yes, it's horrible as usual. I can't understand how GPs and freaking SCG Open can have coverage so much better than the Big Show.

There are no excuses, WOTC should have improved their laggy coverage years ago. Not having live video coverage from the swiss rounds doesn't make any sense these days. I'm happy to see how the SCG circuit and GP coverage by ggslive has exposed the ineptitude of Wizards, and people have started to demand better coverage... but how much longer will it take before WOTC wakes up?

I think this format is already healthier than legacy and vintage combined.

Control players can whine less, and start building good control decks. If they can't win without horribly broken cards, it's not because the format is bad. It's that they are bad, and need broken cards to compensate for their lack of ability.

If this were a combo format, Zoo wouldn't be able to compete, and 12post wouldn't be the most played deck.

Here's something I've never understood as far as tournament rules go, why allow infinite activation loops? A player should be rewarded for the interaction that infinitely looping activations create, but they shouldn't be allowed to use an arbitrary value, so why not 2? Double value for using the combo, but it makes them fair.

That aside, I like the diversity of the decks in the top8, and even though I like to play active-control, with little to no regard for metagaming, many of the decklists look rather fun to get paired against (yes, even the deck that has a god-hand of Emerakul on t2). To be honest, I see this as a sign of success in the larger-than-usual banlist because it means the "Control is King" troupe took a massive kick in the pants. Hopefully as the format gets more comfortable with itself and slows down the balance will be restored (since obviously a Rock went 5-0 on day 1, which means the format isn't oppressively fast)

It's hard, no impossible actually to take seriously someone who thinks FoW is bad for Legacy and Vintage.  Doubt you find any player of these formats, Pro or otherwise who'd agree with you.

Sep 4, 2011 -- 6:17AM, av.313 wrote:

It's hard, no impossible actually to take seriously someone who thinks FoW is bad for Legacy and Vintage.  Doubt you find any player of these formats, Pro or otherwise who'd agree with you.

Well to be fair, FoW was a "bad card" once upon a time (mind you, it was compared to Mana Drain ), because it was hand disadvantage, until the game matured and by 2005 ("Type 1.5" aka Legacy is born) most people thought that the entire game was based on hand-advantage to make powerful combo finishes (to be fair though, the atrocious post-Scourge Onslaught standard, Mirrodin standard and Kamigawa standard didn't lend much against this.) But as far as SCG and GP/PT Legacy goes, FoW or GTFO tends to be the rule of thumb Will Modern be fine without FoW? Certainly.

Sep 4, 2011 -- 6:28AM, Wynzerman wrote:

Sep 4, 2011 -- 6:17AM, av.313 wrote:

It's hard, no impossible actually to take seriously someone who thinks FoW is bad for Legacy and Vintage.  Doubt you find any player of these formats, Pro or otherwise who'd agree with you.

Well to be fair, FoW was a "bad card" once upon a time (mind you, it was compared to Mana Drain ), because it was hand disadvantage, until the game matured and by 2005 ("Type 1.5" aka Legacy is born) most people thought that the entire game was based on hand-advantage to make powerful combo finishes (to be fair though, the atrocious post-Scourge Onslaught standard, Mirrodin standard and Kamigawa standard didn't lend much against this.) But as far as SCG and GP/PT Legacy goes, FoW or GTFO tends to be the rule of thumb Will Modern be fine without FoW? Certainly.

FoW was never a bad card. Decks just didn't have the card drawing ability back then to recover from loosing a couple of cards unless it really meant you were going to loose, and combo wasn't really all over the place back then.

I like the match coverage from ggslive, but the commentary is bad and completely unprofessional, and often downright aweful.

It's only decent when someone like Kiblar gets up there between rounds and explains what the heck is going on in the tournament.

I would like to see wizards use the heck out of thier youtube channel to provide match coverage though.

For the record, I like Richard Hagon.

Edit: I will be upset if they only have cameras on one table.

Sooo... Sjöblom starts 12-0, is #1 on the standings for the whole day 2, only gets one feature match and doesn't get shown AT ALL in the top 8 webcast.

Does the coverage team have any idea what they are doing?

Ugh, having an hour long break 1hr15mins after you start is pretty ridiculous.  Just have the lunch before you start broadcasting.  You knew this format wasn't going to have 3hr long quarterfinals.

Sep 4, 2011 -- 9:03AM, Lunari_ wrote:

Sooo... Sjöblom starts 12-0, is #1 on the standings for the whole day 2, only gets one feature match and doesn't get shown AT ALL in the top 8 webcast.

Does the coverage team have any idea what they are doing?

Showing the US players was more important to them. I don't like it either, but I wasn't expecting anything else.

Anyone else not getting sound from the feed?

No sound no picture guys

SOUND IS TOTALLY MESSED UP IN LIVE FEED!!

Audio has gone out totally, with only odd noises coming through.

Audio has gone out totally, with only odd noises coming through.

Yeah I hear whispering.

Now it's paper shuffling and Rich Hagon whispering... But it sounds like its working at least.

Very nice video and sound quality compared to the competition.

Just gotta say again.  Sick coverage!! I only wish there was more of this calibre for the rest of the PT.  Maybe with guest commentary and only two camera's instead of what looks like 6.

Creepy Sam Black shuffle.

Coverage way better than GGS Live, which is often scattered, not very partial, and grainy.... Great coverage.... But darnit if combo wins this tourney Modern is gonna suck. I HATE COMBO DECKS.... Give me Zoo or Affinity, or any other winner.

Gotta say I love the way Nakajima shuffles. Just a random thought...

not sure i heard right but it sounded like Sam told Josh that he misplayed round 1...was he offering an excuse for losing overall?, or suggesting that josh misplayed..wish the audio on players was a tad louder

Sep 4, 2011 -- 11:58AM, insanos wrote:

not sure i heard right but it sounded like Sam told Josh that he misplayed round 1...was he offering an excuse for losing overall?, or suggesting that josh misplayed..wish the audio on players was a tad louder

I do believe he asked if Josh misplayed.

Why did Sam (repeatedly) go second? He gets a turn two kill if he's got the right hand, after all.

the camera angles in this are awful. the constant switching to irrelevant objects are making us miss plays. who ever is responsible should be punished.

Sep 4, 2011 -- 11:58AM, insanos wrote:

not sure i heard right but it sounded like Sam told Josh that he misplayed round 1...was he offering an excuse for losing overall?, or suggesting that josh misplayed..wish the audio on players was a tad louder

Yes, Josh misplayed. He could have burned the infect guy on his turn when Sam couldn't have done anything about it, but instead he waited until Sam's turn, where Sam was able to counter the spell.

For like the last 8+ PT's I've been complaining in these threads how they keep showing face closeups and other useless stuff instead of the game  (and based on twitter comments etc I'm certainly not the only one). Yet it's still constantly happening.

Nice going showing us Josh' face DURING THE WHOLE FINAL COUNTERWAR that decided game 2 of the final.

i looked away for a second and missed Samuele's response to the 2 flashfreezes against his Splintertwin. im sad they didnt recap that last turn again.

Sep 4, 2011 -- 1:03PM, raul wrote:

For like the last 8+ PT's I've been complaining in these threads how they keep showing face closeups and other useless stuff instead of the game  (and based on twitter comments etc I'm certainly not the only one). Yet it's still constantly happening.

Nice going showing us Josh' face DURING THE WHOLE FINAL COUNTERWAR that decided game 2 of the final.

You're not the only one who's been complaining about that. Whoever the director is -- he/she is horrible and should have been replaced a long time ago.

Sep 4, 2011 -- 12:07PM, Thalatta wrote:

Why did Sam (repeatedly) go second? He gets a turn two kill if he's got the right hand, after all.

Because in the matchup he was the control, it's pretty much that simple. Counter-Cat and Affinity were the only non-combo decks. While he would have been able to win by just smacking with the Nexus, his opponent was more opt to win by chipping at him, thus being on the draw got him closer to the combo (think of the "you go first" as it's own cantrip)

You need to fix the camera angles. 
I would like to see some better commentators.  Get Osyp in there.  Holy cow that would be amazing.

Get Buehler and Flores back in the booth. There were no moments of facepalming, there was actual analysis,  there was no being treated like a 2-year-old. Hagon is the single worst thing to ever happen to pro tour coverage. I think everyone agrees. The next worst thing is the person who likes to show the person's face during the action and the board when nothing's going on. Get rid of him too. The third thing that needs to change is the lack of coverage of the swiss, and we could use better streaming hardware and software. GPs get covered better than PTs, and that's just silly.

I'm pretty sure they don't even read the forums any longer... at least when it's negative.   God forbid WOTC ever mess up.... banned list much?

Sep 4, 2011 -- 6:17PM, georgekennedy wrote:

I'm pretty sure they don't even read the forums any longer... at least when it's negative.   God forbid WOTC ever mess up.... banned list much?

Failpoint is fail, the larger banlist prevented the PT from being a boring mix of Extended control decks and Zoo, and instead brought quite a few interesting combo decks, a new breed of Zoo and set a fairly interesting stage for the new format to develop. That aside, I'm pretty sure they read the criticism more in depth than anything, but I'm pretty sure they're also good at filtering crap people post because they think it's cool to complain.

About Rich Hagon... I don't hate the guy, but wouldn't mind seeing Buehler take his place, simply because Randy Buehler doesn't have to get stuck on the irrelevant things. Yes it's cheeky and cute that BDM and Rich Hagon play the "odd pair" joke like the two old men in the balcony in every episode of The Muppets, but it would be much more effective if Rich Hagon were as respectible as BDM in terms of bringing up points of interesting, not hyping miniscule details. The guy obviously knows how to play the game, but so do we, and we could be perfectly happy to not be lectured, and hear more in line of insight. 

The ban list was very successful at creating a distinct format, one that doesn't look like echoes of Standard, Legacy, or even Extended days past.  It was ... less successful ... at creating an evironment that's fun and encouraging to rogue decks.

In Rich Hagon's defense, he comes across as very genuine.  When he asks "Bloodbraid Elf, now what does that do?" I get the sense that he actually might not know!

But yeah the cameramen/directors have consistently horrible for years that I'm convinced they don't know it's a cardgame.  It really does seem they're going out of their way to avoid showing anything relevant during play.  Fingers crossed the 2012 re-imagining brings 1000% improvement in quantity and quality of video coverage.

Here's a concept that bothers me though (this coming from someone who likes to build "out-there" decks). "Rogue-decks" as a concept are pretty dumb unless they involve Cloak and Dagger . Being different doesn't ensure success, just like netdecking doesn't either. There were about 6 archetypal decks among the people who made it to day 2, and since everyone was comparing notes, that's a pretty good bit of diversity. A "rogue" deck as people describe it, is often a janky deck which only answers the format if it's successful, Sam Black's "rogue deck" worked quite well, but not because it was different, but because 13 unblockable poison in one swing is just GG bro. Honestly, you can't expect a PT to be as diverse as a local meta or even an SCG open for that matter. Whether the Pro-meta "ecourages Rogue-decks" or not is irrelevant given how unfamiliar and interesting the new format is, and it's wholly likely that the next Modern event is going to show a different metagame, given that even though t2 combos exist, they aren't consistent enough to stop control, midrange and heavier forms of aggro than Zoo.

yah i really dont care to see the players grimacing or tripping while they shuffle..lol..i just think sheesh i hope im not making crazy faces while shuffling or something. although it does happen when playing guitar

and i truly cant stand the mad hand shuffle, like what is another card gonna magically appear or are they just trying to be annoying. i usually sort my hand land.creature, spell, by cost and leave it.

yah a better top down angle as they asked Chikara to move his cards in closer as the Torpor orb was out of cam frame, at least im guessing they wanted it moved in camera.

other than that im happy to have watched it.

I'm OK with Hagon for now, but Buehler of course was a lot better.

If they're planning to switch commentators (BDM should stay) for the next year when we (supposedly) get better coverage, I'd certainly ask Adrian Sullivan if he was available. He has impressed me when doing commentary for SCG Open.

Sep 5, 2011 -- 6:46AM, Wynzerman wrote:

A "rogue" deck as people describe it, is often a janky deck which only answers the format if it's successful, Sam Black's "rogue deck" worked quite well, but not because it was different, but because 13 unblockable poison in one swing is just GG bro.

Well let me contextualize.  Legacy has often been described as rogue-friendly because the format has enough flexibility and room that you can imagine other things being possible.  Hive Mind for example was not on a lot of people's radar before it won the GP, despite Legacy being a well-established format.  Jace + Stoneforge actually surprised people at first that it could compete in Legacy, before in fact being proven as hella good.

That's why Legacy has been, in my words, "encouraging to rogue decks".  Not that anything can win, but because you can sense that not everything's been seen already.

Modern doesn't give that same feeling.  Any competitive deck needs to win on turn 3, have two pinpoint discard spells in your first two turns, and/or lock out both creature-based and creatureless combos with two mana from your main deck.  That doesn't leave much hope for undiscovered country.  Most people I know who were initially excited about Modern aren't anymore because their best hope is "maybe they won't see my turn-2 combo coming!" and that's not fun or encouraging.

Sep 5, 2011 -- 5:24PM, Amarsir wrote:

Sep 5, 2011 -- 6:46AM, Wynzerman wrote:

A "rogue" deck as people describe it, is often a janky deck which only answers the format if it's successful, Sam Black's "rogue deck" worked quite well, but not because it was different, but because 13 unblockable poison in one swing is just GG bro.

Well let me contextualize.  Legacy has often been described as rogue-friendly because the format has enough flexibility and room that you can imagine other things being possible.  Hive Mind for example was not on a lot of people's radar before it won the GP, despite Legacy being a well-established format.  Jace + Stoneforge actually surprised people at first that it could compete in Legacy, before in fact being proven as hella good.

That's why Legacy has been, in my words, "encouraging to rogue decks".  Not that anything can win, but because you can sense that not everything's been seen already.

Modern doesn't give that same feeling.  Any competitive deck needs to win on turn 3, have two pinpoint discard spells in your first two turns, and/or lock out both creature-based and creatureless combos with two mana from your main deck.  That doesn't leave much hope for undiscovered country.  Most people I know who were initially excited about Modern aren't anymore because their best hope is "maybe they won't see my turn-2 combo coming!" and that's not fun or encouraging.

What you keep missing is that Combo decks only made 6/8 top 8 because it was a new format,  and above all else, they were created by PROS SHARING NOTES. 2/6 of these combo decks WERE THE SAME DECK. And the rest were individuals. But all-in-all the Modern format was a success because 1/4th of the top 8, and 1/2 of the top4 were made up of "win fair" decks, and the final match was between a combo deck and an aggro deck, meaning that the format's fastest clock WAS NOT ENOUGH to stop non-combo decks. The significance of this is that aggro, midrange and control decks which start on t4 actually have a fair shake at the format now, because the fear of "t2 combo" is alleviated when it doesn't happen as easily as it would in Legacy. Certainly, there are specfic pieces that should be removed, and pieces which should be added to the banlist, but all-in-all, there was a Rock which went 5-0 on day 1 and the top4 were SplinterTwin Kikkimite, "Counter-Cat" Zoo, Poison-shoal, and Red Affinity, which makes me pretty optimistic about what may come to Modern's future.

To keep it in context, even Legacy is nowhere near as self-soluable as Modern is shaking out to be, just like OverExtended was. Yes, combo decks are ruling the roost at the moment, but this was to be expected, just like Zoo was expected to see the top8.