Pay no attention to this now defunct thread.

I'd actually prefer if we try it with no bans to start with, and figure things out as we go along. But I'm not 100% sold on that idea. Of the cards listed, the only ones I'm worried by are Dark Depths, Ghost Quarter, Laboratory Maniac, and Thoughtseize.

I voted Channex, Ghost Quarter, and the 1-discard trio. Channex is just too game-warping - forcing people to play land.dec or account for extra mana until it wins and gets banned is no fun. Ghost Quarter is Strip Mine here, and in a world without ABU artifact mana that's even more bonkers that it is in full range xCM. And the discard trio is too easy and versatile disruption in this format (though in 4CM Blackmail does become amusing - unlike 3CM, I can protect one card from you!). I think Despise/Duress should be the best 1-cost discard in this format.

I don't think Depths and Maniac and Shelldock are *that* bad in the Modern world (no Lotus no Led no Moxes no Petal no Ritual...). The fast mana that makes these so first-turn-decisive isn't here.

And on that note, I do have one off-the-board suggestion that would be my sixth choice of consideration for initial ban... Simian Spirit Guide. For the most part, in the Modern cardpool all that fast nonmodern mana mentioned above is unavailable - what's in modern is generally slower or somehow gimped. The exception being SSG. I think Island-SSG-SSG-Lab Maniac is a problem deck, but I think it's the SSG, and not the Maniac, that makes it a first turn drop and thus a problem. I don't think Maniac shouldn't be a deck, I think Maniac shouldn't be a T1 drop. SSG into Manamorphose similarly makes mana happen in any color too fast.

(actually, Chancellor of the Tangle probably has a similar concern...)

As you said in the OP: "Because mana in Modern, as compared to Vintage, is rough." - that is really the most fundamental difference here, and if the defining characteristic is intended to be "mana is rough", why let the first few rounds have those fast mana options at all?

The thing there is that I'm much more interested in what people can do with double Chancellor or double SSG than I am in what they can do with Lab Maniac. Those open up possibilities, probably not even great ones, whereas Lab just shuts them down. I've seen a suggestion before where your deck starts out with 60 lands each that has all basic land types. If we wanted to use a rule like that, I'd cut this down to 3CM again and a lot of things wouldn't need to be banned. I forgot such a thing existed until now.

This is a wonderful idea.

I voted for the same as mark, but I actually think Blackmail would be interesting in 4cm, since you can protect the card you need.

on fast mana, I think everyone knows where I stand on that and I don't feel like having the same argument over again, but suffice it to say I want Guide and Changle legal.

I'm not militant about it, I just thought it bore discussion - if a fundamental drive of the format is to get away from the easy fast mana that makes 3CM so speed-dominated, it bears consideration whether we want to have what little easy fast mana the format would allow to exist (and possibly become as format-defining as any cards ever did in 3CM), or whether we want to pre-emptively get rid of all the things that walk like a duck while we're getting rid of all the ducks.

If we have weekly bannings, it won't be long before they prune themselves from the field anyway, unless people in charge of ban decisions keep on banning the cards the speedy mana enables in a persistent effort to keep speedy mana dominating a format that seems to exist to get away from it.

I think fast mana is a lot different in a slower format anyway. the best you can do with SSG is a turn-1 3-drop. Maniac aside, there's no 3-drops that can close the game particularly fast. while it's certainly worth discussing whether we'd rather have Guide/Changle or Maniac, I think without one the other will absolutely be fair, and I think Maniac is the less interesting one. as Rush says, Maniac does one thing, whereas SSG enables lots of things, and I doubt it'll be particularly format-warping.

Slowing it down isn't necessarily a goal of the format; more a byproduct. I'm only going with 4CM because it allows for a wider array of mana options.

I might also extend the deadline for this round since it's a new format to research. We'll see how many submissions come in.

We've had enough time to discuss this. Not a ton of votes for any one thing. So, we're gonna start without a ban list and work our way up.

Also, to bring it back up, I'd like to hear opinions on the "starting with a deck of 60 basic lands" idea. It kills the overpoweredness of almost every card that was up for banning consideration. If we used this system, we'd move back to 3CM. We aren't gonna use it for round 1, but I might try it out in later rounds if there's interest.

Also also, I haven't planned for alternate formats yet. Wait until things start to stagnate around here.

Also, I've locked my deck in.

5 decks in. More wanted. Rawr.

Round 1 ends in 7 hours. Feel free to poke people that haven't submitted yet. (Current entries: atog, mark, raz, door, shrimp, Jim, and me.)

now can we banned ghost quarter and channex?

Trying to figure out me vs CJ.

Me: Chancellor of the Annex, Ghost Quarter, Aether Vial, Calciform Pools
CJ: Chancellor of the Annex, Ghost Quarter, Inkmoth Nexus, Inkmoth Nexus

I think it doesn't matter who plays first, as long as I play my Calciform Pools before my Ghost Quarter.

- If he plays Ghost Quarter and sacs it to wipe out my Calciform Pools before I play my own GQ, I can never cast anything but I'll be able to Quarter one of his Inkmoths and the other one would never be able to hit me, 1-1.
- If he does anything else that allows me to play GQ alongside my Pools, I'll be able to push out my Aether Vial on T2 through the Channex tax. The Vial will let me drop my Chancellor in time to be able to block an Inkmoth before it kills me... but I won't be able to swing because I'd lose the race to poison before I'd win the race by damage. So also 1-1.

So I see this as 2-2, but I feel I might be overlooking something.

I came to the same conclusion.

I view Shelldock without Lion's Eye Diamond as a slow and fragile enough threat to be disregarded, but I could see it eventually becoming a problem ... I'm OK with the pre-emptive ban, but (now that it's banned and so this discussion won't spoil anyone's tech) I would like to know if I'm misreading its threat level.

Without the lovely two-in-one of mana source and discard engine in Lion's Eye Diamond, 4cm Modern Shelldock is, what, Shelldock Isle, Multicolor mana-land of choice, Eldrazi or other shuffle-from-grave-to-library fatty of choice, Discard-engine 1-drop permanent of choice? Meaning T1 mana-land and 1-drop, T2 pitch Eldrazi after draw step then Shelldock it, T3 cast Eldrazi? So even on the play, it's weak to removal, discard, land destruction, graveyard-hate.

Or is there a faster / more resilient version of the deck in 4CM modern I'm not foreseeing?

I suppose one could switch the discard permanent to a discard spell like Funeral Charm or One with Nothing, but that's still pretty fragile.

It's moreso that last round made clear that this shouldn't just be a limited form of Vintage 3CM. The Shelldock deck is a known commodity, and as you just showed, it doesn't take a lot to make it work. Watery Grave + Necrogen Spellbomb gets there readily without risking much in the process. We can come back to it later if the format seems like it can deal with it.