I love how reprints are listed as an "easy" thing to do. Modern exists for several years now, we had two modern masters products and you are telling me the prices for cards like tarmogoyf and inquisition of kozilek are even remotely acceptable? What I love even more is that one of standards goals isn't even to offer the easiest (read: affordable) way to enter and play a constructed format. At least they're honest about that.
I'm SO SICK of the "too strong for Standard" argument. It's the new "Dies to removal". We can have a two mana 4/4 with a zillion abilities, but we can't just have Accumulated Knowledge. Makes sense.
Splinter deck was too powerful of a deck for modern, if you don't understand that, then there's no point in reading anything anyone other then people with the same viewpoint as you has to say.
Lets real talk here. Modern is an absolutely garbage format. The format consists entirely of agro and combo decks, and always has. People try to bring up the old WUR (jeskai) control deck from multiple years ago, but that deck was garbage and lost to birthing pod/splinter twin/affinity on such a regular basis that the deck might be able to make top 8... but never gained any headway in top 8's. It's like trying to say 8 rack is a good deck, yeah it could make top 8, and it played okay at times, but no one is going to honestly say it's a good deck. That kiki-resto jeskai control deck was just a loser to pod/splinter twin/affinity as well.
The lands in modern are too good, the creatures are too undercosted, the removal costs are only increasing, counterspells continue to be a non-factor, and land destruction continues to have such high stipulations their useless before opponent can cast ridiculous stuff like... Karn Liberated. Until Wizards decides to fix the color balance, allow control to be a deck type, and change their view of the game we will continue to have a crap format.
I couldn't disagree with you more.
brewing-friendly way I can play the cards in my collection, bar none. It has a stable, friendly metagame (barring a couple of extenuating exceptions which prove the rule) and it has a huge variety of ways you can approach the format, encompassing all the traditional deck-types (and that's true, contrary to what you asserted).
for instance, in my local meta right now, Soul Sisters would be tier 0. we are currently overrun with burn and zoo decks (which makes for an interesting change), and any other strategies are usually represented by one die-hard fan (such as "the merfolk guy"). those GP statistics and SCG Tourneys be damned, because where I live, they don't mean a thing.
Did you even think before you wrote that, you completely just validated everything I said. 'Burn and Zoo overrun our meta"..... You mean Agro and Agro... surprise surprise. If soul sisters would be tier 0... then why isn't it? People not wanting to invest in it? Oddly enough it's about the same cost as the other decks, so not much of a reason. You completely ignored the fact that I stated the format is a crap format because only certain types of decks win (agro & combo) and then go on to state agro is destroying your store. Not only tht, you throw in merfolk like it's a control deck, when its much closer to agro then control.
Legacy oddly enough, lets you play with even more of your old cards, so that statement is horrible. Stable does not equate to good. Strategies being represented by... one person... does not mean a strategy is fairly represented, especially when youre talking about a huge realm on 'control' decks. Yes, anyone can go to a 8 or 16 person FNM, that doesnt mean that the particular 8-16 person fnm is a good indicator of the format, especially in larger cities where you can easily get 30-60 people.
look carefully back at what I said... "currently overrun with burn and zoo (which makes for an interesting change)".... the bit at the end should be clue enough that this isn't the norm. what specific decks people play is always in flux, as you'd expect. The point I was making about a stable metagame was that regardless of the flavour of the week, whatever deck you decide to take along will be just as viable as ever (so yes, to address your point, stable DOES equate to good). there isn't some warped "aggro-only" meta where I live, far from it. people are just naturally trying new things on a regular basis.
so no, I wasn't validating anything you said. your comment was all exaggeration and hyperbole. mine related to experience and was far more considerate.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
I love how reprints are listed as an "easy" thing to do. Modern exists for several years now, we had two modern masters products and you are telling me the prices for cards like tarmogoyf and inquisition of kozilek are even remotely acceptable? What I love even more is that one of standards goals isn't even to offer the easiest (read: affordable) way to enter and play a constructed format. At least they're honest about that.
Let's not forget that a 2/2 1 drop will probably jump to $50+ if not reprinted in Eternal Masters...
Super lame. I awasn't going to have the time to go to the PT but it being there was a big reason for me to build a Lantern deck, tweak it and go from there. WHat burns me more is that the unspoken reason they want Standard around is that it seels packs to build decks with. I'd buy packs...of EMA, of MMA, etc. but they are printed so seldom I just end up getting singles of the stuff I need.
Boo to you Wizards, hopefully we get a Modern PT in the future again.
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The "Crazy One", playing casual magic and occasionally dipping his toes into regular play since 1994.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
So right after the standard rotation is made faster and, therefore, standard is made more expensive, WOTC starts to pull back from supporting anything other than standard in it's big tournament scene?
I see no connection here at all. /s
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-Chandra Nalaar
Wizards is unwilling to print a LOT of the heavily desired cards from modern, not only back into standard but also in supplemental sets because of bull***** reasons like "they constrain design space" or "It's not fun for players". In case they forgot, we had a standard format with Snapcaster Mage, Lightning Bolt, Mana Leak, and Liliana of the Veil plus all the ravnica shocklands. And it was ostensibly one of the best standard formats since RAV/TSP. It was incredibly wide-open, where the same deck rarely won back-to-back weeks, and all five flavors of deckbuilding archetypes (Aggro, Tempo, Combo, Midrange, Control) were incredibly viable.
Lightning Bolt was never legal in Standard with Snapcaster or Liliana, and Mana Leak was never legal in standard with the shocklands. M11, the last set with Lightning Bolt, rotated out when Innistrad was released. M12, the last set with Mana Leak, rotated out when RTR was released. So, depending on which overlap you are actually referring to, you are potentially talking about three different standard formats: ZEN-Scars, Scars-INN, or INN-RTR.
Now, the only one of those that could be called wide-open was INN-RTR standard, which means that yes, Standard improved considerably when Mana Leak and Ponder left the format.
Okay, it's been three or four years, I've slept since then. My point is, we had an incredibly powerful standard environment (for argument let's go with INN-RTR), and it was STILL FUN. We had all of these bomb-tastic haymakers like thragtusk and resto and snapcaster and lili and olivia and sphinx's revelation. They were all competitive in their own decks, and they weren't even that expensive!
Liliana was a surefire eternal staple and was $42 TCGP Mid when she rotated out. Snapcaster was $22. Thragtusk, the supposed boogeyman of the format, peaked at $24 and hasn't been more than 5.50 since rotating out. Voice of Resurgence was $18 when it cycled out in spite of being a modern darling. Shocklands weren't more than $20 at any point during their reprint life. Building a standard deck was fun, it was competitive, and it was CHEAP to get in to. Compare to present day, where Lily and Tiago are nearly triple the price they were when they left standard because wizards says they "can't safely reprint" them. It's complete and utter bull***** and wizards is seeing that people more and more are just refusing to pay these prices - but instead of reprinting those cards from the format made EXPLICITLY SO THEY CAN REPRINT POWER CARDS, they just decided to abandon the format entirely.
I don't want to be a fearmonger, but this bodes very VERY poorly for wizards. There has been a need for a market correction for a long time now, and it looks more and more like WotC's plan in the face of that correction is to just shrink everything and try to ignore it. This is how games die.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
This seems like a bad solution to fairly simple "problems" that are mostly due to WotC mismanagement. I personally don't think Modern ever needed the clumsy, heavy-handed bannings that WotC benamel so fond of. And coverage? I'd argue it's not drastically better on the Standard side. It's overdue for an overhaul across the board.
The solutions aren't even that hard, really.
1. Fix the coverage team/procedure for all WotC-run GPs/PTs. The specifics here have been discussed to death in other threads.
2. Print better, more powerful sets that have a better chance of cracking into Modern organically (and without feeling forced or overly dominant).
3. Stop using the ban hammer as an artificial reset/refresh button. Additionally, start unbanning more cards en masse. (Visions and Natacl, for example, were each safe picks that everyone agrees came off far later than they should've).
4. Start reprinting more stuff, more often. Make a self-imposed minimum reprint policy for sets, in fact. Stop making excuses and caring so much about the secondary and tertiary markets, especially since you're ostensibly not supposed to.
Charm, I think you're making some great points about the current reprint policy and design philosophy. In general, I agree. WotC has been power-seeping Standard for too long now and lazily throwing together each new set. The current thinking seems to be "wonky draft sets with a small group of chase cards". And the fact that they're almost abandoning the possibility of big reprints outside of "Masters" sets is only exacerbating the problem.
This seems like a bad solution to fairly simple "problems" that are mostly due to WotC mismanagement. I personally don't think Modern ever needed the clumsy, heavy-handed bannings that WotC benamel so fond of. And coverage? I'd argue it's not drastically better on the Standard side. It's overdue for an overhaul across the board.
The solutions aren't even that hard, really.
1. Fix the coverage team/procedure for all WotC-run GPs/PTs. The specifics here have been discussed to death in other threads.
2. Print better, more powerful sets that have a better chance of cracking into Modern organically (and without feeling forced or overly dominant).
3. Stop using the ban hammer as an artificial reset/refresh button. Additionally, start uncannily more cards en masse. (Visions and Natacl, for example, were each safe picks that everyone agrees came off far later than they should've).
4. Start reprinting more stuff, more often. Make a self-imposed minimum reprint policy for sets, in fact. Stop making excuses and caring so much about the secondary and tertiary markets, especially since you're ostensibly not supposed to.
Charm, I think you're making some great points about the current reprint policy and design philosophy. In general, I agree. WotC has been power-seeping Standard for too long now and lazily throwing together each new set. The current thinking seems to be "wonky draft sets with a small group of chase cards". And the fact that they're almost abandoning the possibility of big reprints outside of "Masters" sets is only exacerbating the problem.
How in satan's name this has anything to do with the coverage?
- The pro-tour is a publicity tool, it's supposed to help them sell their products, having the pro tour be about cards that are no longer for sell by them makes little to no sense at all.
- Printing "more powerful" sets leads to power creep, set's power is fine as it is.
- The ban hammer has been used to regulate the format because they need the format to be new and interesting when the pro tour comes around, if they didn't, you would just get the pros to "solve" the format faster, we are talking about huge teams of the best players in the world trying to crack a format here, that certainly accelerates the format into a stale metagame.
- They will reprint stuff if it makes sense, period, setting quotas for reprints is a stupid notion. MTG is an expensive hobby, deal with it, it's a collectible card game, it's the nature of the beast, reprinting cards that are format wrapping just to make them "more accessible" is a recipe for disaster, see thoughtseize as example, the card made a mess in standard, it wasn't mirrodin's level of a mess but a mess to be sure, we want them to make new mistakes (and yes, cards that are able to compete with lightning bolt in power level are mistakes, have no doubt about it), not the same ones they already did.
We at Wizards of the Coast have no idea what we're actually doing. We made some promises, we hired a cookie man with a lisp and developed several philosophies, none of which were good for the player base at large. We thought that after a train wreck of several years, we would announce to you more bad news probably based on poor sales. Of course, this is all your fault for not purchasing our overpriced piles of cartons that are underpowered and irrelevant to any other format than standard. Hopefully, you will forget about it next week after we announce more cards you will buy blindly. But don't worry, none of the cards we will print will be in demand and will continue to be weaker versions of previous iterations to avoid the power creep. Remember, the power creep is bad, but please keep buying bad products!
Our first bad news is that we will no longer hold modern PTs because of how badly we handled the last one. We fired the one responsible and now we had to make cuts so nobody else is dealing with this. Our second bad news is that we will make more cuts to pro players, whom have been a net benefit for our community and general advertisement campaign for the last decade or so.
Yours truly,
AF"
That's pretty much how I read it. Guess I'll start shoveling my money towards another company that knows what they are doing...
I dislike how many players here seem to think they would know they're doing, but WotC doesn't. Because...'I disagree with their decisions' and 'there are problems with X, Y, Z which must have been the result of their poor decision making'.
Take a step back and stop thinking you could do better. Your decisions on these matters haven't been put the test. Ever.
Just because there are still problems doesn't mean any of WotC's recent decisions are wrong. Maybe they were the wrong decisions, but for F sake stop being so damn confident about it
I also hate this same attitude of as soon as there's some change which is in some way disadvantageous to a format, there's always, ALWAYS, people saying it's because they are going to kill the format. It's a slippery-slope fallacy and it's dumb. Stopping the modern pro tour doesn't mean they don't care about modern. That's an outrageous assumption and almost certainly false.
I halfway expect WotC to use this as a way to let Modern fade. It makes sense that they would cycle current Modern into Legacy and move to a Neo-Modern, starting with M15 going forward (making the new border the marker) or with BfZ going forward, making Neo-Modern start with the first of the new 2-set blocks (and eliminating Dig/Cruise/Fetches).
I halfway expect WotC to use this as a way to let Modern fade. It makes sense that they would cycle current Modern into Legacy and move to a Neo-Modern, starting with M15 going forward (making the new border the marker) or with BfZ going forward, making Neo-Modern start with the first of the new 2-set blocks (and eliminating Dig/Cruise/Fetches).
Well, if they do that they can say goodbye to any more of my money (and I'm sure many other players would feel the same way).
If it were true (not saying it is) it would be a loss in customer faith in the product orders of magnitude greater than the shake up bans, etc. The message being received here from customers is that WotC has no idea what they are doing with Modern, it isn't stable to put money into and that there will never be such a thing as a true eternal format for those who don't want to keep up with standard. This in turn hurts LGS' and the player base as I'm going to make a confident guess that many people who play modern as their favorite format also play standard or draft but wouldn't play either if modern weren't a thing.
Only time will tell, but I'm tempted to sell off most of my modern staples besides a deck or two if things keep down this path. I'm also one of those players that has zero interest in standard.
I also hate this same attitude of as soon as there's some change which is in some way disadvantageous to a format, there's always, ALWAYS, people saying it's because they are going to kill the format. It's a slippery-slope fallacy and it's dumb. Stopping the modern pro tour doesn't mean they don't care about modern. That's an outrageous assumption and almost certainly false.
You have a point there. If Wizards was trying to kill Modern, they'd be more explicit about it, like what happened to extended and block constructed. Wizards has a vested interest in moving players towards standard and other profitable formats, but there's no point in proactively killing an undesired format slowly. I mean, Wizards absolutely should support formats other than standard in some way, but a dearth of reprints isn't the same as executives wishing a given format would cease existing. They have to be aware that many players play eternal formats precisely because they don't want to keep up with standard.
I also hate this same attitude of as soon as there's some change which is in some way disadvantageous to a format, there's always, ALWAYS, people saying it's because they are going to kill the format. It's a slippery-slope fallacy and it's dumb. Stopping the modern pro tour doesn't mean they don't care about modern. That's an outrageous assumption and almost certainly false.
You have a point there. If Wizards was trying to kill Modern, they'd be more explicit about it, like what happened to extended and block constructed. Wizards has a vested interest in moving players towards standard and other profitable formats, but there's no point in proactively killing an undesired format slowly. I mean, Wizards absolutely should support formats other than standard in some way, but a dearth of reprints isn't the same as executives wishing a given format would cease existing. They have to be aware that many players play eternal formats precisely because they don't want to keep up with standard.
This is very well said, and per my post above (which is admittedly far too doom and gloom and was my reaction to worst case scenario) they would be very dumb to eliminate modern completely. Other formats will draw people in to standard and draft as well that might not otherwise play them. They would be losing business and have no reason to completely kill modern. It doesn't cost them much to support, they can sell a supplemental product a couple times a year to keep fresh prints coming in thus making money, and create a short term draft environment as well on an annual basis with modern masters. Eliminate it and they leave players and revenue not he table.
Modern is an objectively bad format and not suitable for competitive play, which is why it was axed. Modern isn't dead because of this because its still popular. But being popular doesn't mean its any good. The optimal strategy is to be as fast and as linear as possible because the format is too broad to be truly reactive, and people refuse to put away bad decks because they like them (See Soul Sisters, Tooth and Nail, RW AngelMoonFog). All of a sudden the only skills are weather you can quickly recognize which of the 108 archetypes your opponent is playing, mulligan decisions, and goldfishing. There's no skill in that. There's no metagaming because you are forced to have the fastest deck and the broadest answers because you have to beat the the affinity players and the random guy on something stupid like Duskmantle/Mindcrank combo, and to top it all off, half the games you get locked out by Lanturn or run over by some random fast aggro deck and feel like crap all day, and spoiler season is boring because you go in know that the majority of the cards aren't for you and you end up being unexcited and disappointed. Its really just a mildly competitive sixty card casual format and has no business being a high level competitive format.
Modern is an objectively bad format and not suitable for competitive play, which is why it was axed. Modern isn't dead because of this because its still popular. But being popular doesn't mean its any good. The optimal strategy is to be as fast and as linear as possible because the format is too broad to be truly reactive, and people refuse to put away bad decks because they like them (See Soul Sisters, Tooth and Nail, RW AngelMoonFog). All of a sudden the only skills are weather you can quickly recognize which of the 108 archetypes your opponent is playing, mulligan decisions, and goldfishing. There's no skill in that. There's no metagaming because you are forced to have the fastest deck and the broadest answers because you have to beat the the affinity players and the random guy on something stupid like Duskmantle/Mindcrank combo, and to top it all off, half the games you get locked out by Lanturn or run over by some random fast aggro deck and feel like crap all day, and spoiler season is boring because you go in know that the majority of the cards aren't for you and you end up being unexcited and disappointed. Its really just a mildly competitive sixty card casual format and has no business being a high level competitive format.
Lol, did someone have a bad modern experience? As for linear, there are lots of options, compare a top 32 event list between modern and standard and I think you'll see there is plenty of variety and archetypes.
Regardless, we all have our opinions and your description sounds nothing like my experience with the format, or anything like what the format really is for most of us who do play it as our primary format.
Just like my opinion that Standard is a bad format with weak spells, pushed creatures and overall terrible cards with slight twists on mechanics and flavor each block doesn't mean everyone sees it the same way. Standard felt much more forgiving and slow paced, where the ideal way to win involves turning creatures sideways and using spells to kill your opponents creatures without much interaction on the stack or sequencing by comparison. Standard feels simple and lacks complexity to me, it has fewer lines of play and options. I'm happy standard players can play their format and keep throwing boatloads of money at WotC for bad cards so that I can enjoy modern and legacy.
Modern is an objectively bad format and not suitable for competitive play, which is why it was axed. Modern isn't dead because of this because its still popular. But being popular doesn't mean its any good.
You obviously have no idea what the word "objectively" means. Being popular is actually, by itself, an indication that it`s good. Or would you also argue that Tarmogoyf isn`t worth $150 just because people are willing to pay that price for it? Kind of the same princible there.
Like fghtffyrdmns two posts above me, I have a wildly different experience with the format. It`s my primary format and I love playing it, I`m always looking forward to modern events and I always have a load of fun. You are entitled to a different opinion, but please don`t throw phrases like "objectively bad format" around just to convince other people that your opinion is more valid than theirs. Just play a format you like and stop complaining about an extremely popular format that you happen to have a particular dislike for.
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
I don't know why WotC kept wanting modern to change when it came to the pro tour every year. I am not sure what people mean by a "stale" format when it comes to modern. I know what it means for standard you really feel a stale standard format but with modern there is a wide enough pool that people can pull out decks to surprise people with them.
So there is none of the new cards in the constructed rounds... so? why is that the priority? That's not why I am watching the pro tour, to see what new cards to buy? that is crazy,plus you have to buy those weeks before the pro tour or you are going to be massively out of pocket. I mean I had a tournament two weeks ago for standard I had to get my cards already.
The whole thing is so far behind the thinking of Esports, they seem to be trying to get on board with their shorts about the testing houses of the teams. We have to be cheering for individual players for there to be interest in the sport. Modern add another layer, where you can cheer for your deck, or you get to see the favourite player playing your favourite deck. Its really hard to get attached to a standard deck (although Esper dragons <3) because they are so fleeting. But modern you worked for that modern deck, its yours. You are attached to it.
Beyond that the modern pro tour allowed people who worked hard on the modern format to succeed on the big stage... they succeed with thier deck and playing exactly their prefered style. The GP level just isn't the same and certainly not the same coverage level (unless covered by SCG), you don't know where the best players are in the pack you don't have any idea of the kinds of decks that are floating around you have a gainy camera and poor lighting conditions.
I don't know why WotC kept wanting modern to change when it came to the pro tour every year. I am not sure what people mean by a "stale" format when it comes to modern. I know what it means for standard you really feel a stale standard format but with modern there is a wide enough pool that people can pull out decks to surprise people with them.
So there is none of the new cards in the constructed rounds... so? why is that the priority? That's not why I am watching the pro tour, to see what new cards to buy?
It's a big reason why the pro tour exists though- getting people interested in buying new sets. Which is fair enough, WotC couldn't be expected to support these things in the way they do unless they get enough in return for it to be a good idea for them, and advertising the sets is a way to do that without taking anyone's money. The decision to introduce modern earlier was perhaps related to the idea of using it to sell Modern Masters products, but they've undone that presumably because the data on that wasn't good enough. I don't see why it's a big deal for anyone except people who play at pro tours, it'll have some other effect, but nothing much.
Both decisions are incredibly bad in my opinion. (Nô Modern Pro Tour and Platinum Pro fees réduction):
1) Modern is vital for the game because it represents cards'value retention. No Modern Pro Tour means the format will slowly die and card value will be affected greatly, and a bubble should appear. Magic is too expensive if cards lose their value so fast.
Why do you assume the PT has so much influence that modern will 'die' just because it will no longer occasionally get featured in it? That sounds like a hell of a stretch to me.
According to some people I've heard who do play Modern, they like this change because it means modern doesn't need to be monitored in the same way for the constraints of making good pro tours. I mean, look to LSV.
So acting like this will be a pure downside for modern, even without considering possible changes to play elsewhere, is poorly considered. It may just prove harmful to modern, but, it would be because of a net negative and not a pure one.
2) Right now Wotc earns half its profit (not revenue, profit) through mtgo and both decision should impact greatly these platforms. No more Modern Pro Tour should reduce greatly the amount of Modern play online, without increasing play elsewhere.
If you are correct and the pro tour will decrease modern play significantly, then WotC and others would have a significant incentive to then increase the prevalence of modern support in other areas to prevent that. The existence of the Modern Masters products, and the simple fact that it's one of their more popular formats, should tell you that WotC definitely wants to support modern.
Given this, and the fact that despite what some people seem to think WotC knows what they are doing pretty well (evidenced by the success of the game, for one, and the fact that the people whose job it is to do something tend to be quite good at it), I think you should be immediately very skeptical of the conclusion that their decisions with regards to it will do more than minor harm.
Less Pro fees should result on less players being full-time pros and aspiring pros, which would significantly reduce traffic on modo (clearly not a casual platform, bad interface and so on...). I do not know the precise numbers but I doubt this would not result in more losses than the $500K or so given to platinum and gold pros that were reinvesting most of it in the game anyway...
They did increase the prize pool for the world championship though. I have absolutely no experience to say what's a good decision here though.
with I and most players focusing in their now "casual" modern decks
Because the pro tour is the only form of competitive magic. Yeah, no.
One closed pro event doesnt support modern, yet the open large events every weekend continue to support modern, and you think the format is dead.
Clueless people.
Just noticed you replied to me with this. I never once said that Modern was dead, that's a straw man. What I did say, however is that WOTC is pulling back their higher level support for the only non-standard format they really supported with any sort of regularity in favor of giving standard more of a spotlight than it already has. Which is almost exactly what was stated in the article. One of the bug reasons they're pulling back on Modern PT events is for standard. I said and implied nothing else other than that 1. WOTC is pulling back from Modern PTs in favor of standard and 2. This is happening just after we have had a faster standard rotation introduced, making it quite obvious why standard is getting more stage time.
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See what I did there : )
look carefully back at what I said... "currently overrun with burn and zoo (which makes for an interesting change)".... the bit at the end should be clue enough that this isn't the norm. what specific decks people play is always in flux, as you'd expect. The point I was making about a stable metagame was that regardless of the flavour of the week, whatever deck you decide to take along will be just as viable as ever (so yes, to address your point, stable DOES equate to good). there isn't some warped "aggro-only" meta where I live, far from it. people are just naturally trying new things on a regular basis.
so no, I wasn't validating anything you said. your comment was all exaggeration and hyperbole. mine related to experience and was far more considerate.
Let's not forget that a 2/2 1 drop will probably jump to $50+ if not reprinted in Eternal Masters...
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Boo to you Wizards, hopefully we get a Modern PT in the future again.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
I see no connection here at all. /s
-Chandra Nalaar
Okay, it's been three or four years, I've slept since then. My point is, we had an incredibly powerful standard environment (for argument let's go with INN-RTR), and it was STILL FUN. We had all of these bomb-tastic haymakers like thragtusk and resto and snapcaster and lili and olivia and sphinx's revelation. They were all competitive in their own decks, and they weren't even that expensive!
Liliana was a surefire eternal staple and was $42 TCGP Mid when she rotated out. Snapcaster was $22. Thragtusk, the supposed boogeyman of the format, peaked at $24 and hasn't been more than 5.50 since rotating out. Voice of Resurgence was $18 when it cycled out in spite of being a modern darling. Shocklands weren't more than $20 at any point during their reprint life. Building a standard deck was fun, it was competitive, and it was CHEAP to get in to. Compare to present day, where Lily and Tiago are nearly triple the price they were when they left standard because wizards says they "can't safely reprint" them. It's complete and utter bull***** and wizards is seeing that people more and more are just refusing to pay these prices - but instead of reprinting those cards from the format made EXPLICITLY SO THEY CAN REPRINT POWER CARDS, they just decided to abandon the format entirely.
I don't want to be a fearmonger, but this bodes very VERY poorly for wizards. There has been a need for a market correction for a long time now, and it looks more and more like WotC's plan in the face of that correction is to just shrink everything and try to ignore it. This is how games die.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
The solutions aren't even that hard, really.
1. Fix the coverage team/procedure for all WotC-run GPs/PTs. The specifics here have been discussed to death in other threads.
2. Print better, more powerful sets that have a better chance of cracking into Modern organically (and without feeling forced or overly dominant).
3. Stop using the ban hammer as an artificial reset/refresh button. Additionally, start unbanning more cards en masse. (Visions and Natacl, for example, were each safe picks that everyone agrees came off far later than they should've).
4. Start reprinting more stuff, more often. Make a self-imposed minimum reprint policy for sets, in fact. Stop making excuses and caring so much about the secondary and tertiary markets, especially since you're ostensibly not supposed to.
Charm, I think you're making some great points about the current reprint policy and design philosophy. In general, I agree. WotC has been power-seeping Standard for too long now and lazily throwing together each new set. The current thinking seems to be "wonky draft sets with a small group of chase cards". And the fact that they're almost abandoning the possibility of big reprints outside of "Masters" sets is only exacerbating the problem.
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
How in satan's name this has anything to do with the coverage?
- The pro-tour is a publicity tool, it's supposed to help them sell their products, having the pro tour be about cards that are no longer for sell by them makes little to no sense at all.
- Printing "more powerful" sets leads to power creep, set's power is fine as it is.
- The ban hammer has been used to regulate the format because they need the format to be new and interesting when the pro tour comes around, if they didn't, you would just get the pros to "solve" the format faster, we are talking about huge teams of the best players in the world trying to crack a format here, that certainly accelerates the format into a stale metagame.
- They will reprint stuff if it makes sense, period, setting quotas for reprints is a stupid notion. MTG is an expensive hobby, deal with it, it's a collectible card game, it's the nature of the beast, reprinting cards that are format wrapping just to make them "more accessible" is a recipe for disaster, see thoughtseize as example, the card made a mess in standard, it wasn't mirrodin's level of a mess but a mess to be sure, we want them to make new mistakes (and yes, cards that are able to compete with lightning bolt in power level are mistakes, have no doubt about it), not the same ones they already did.
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
We at Wizards of the Coast have no idea what we're actually doing. We made some promises, we hired a cookie man with a lisp and developed several philosophies, none of which were good for the player base at large. We thought that after a train wreck of several years, we would announce to you more bad news probably based on poor sales. Of course, this is all your fault for not purchasing our overpriced piles of cartons that are underpowered and irrelevant to any other format than standard. Hopefully, you will forget about it next week after we announce more cards you will buy blindly. But don't worry, none of the cards we will print will be in demand and will continue to be weaker versions of previous iterations to avoid the power creep. Remember, the power creep is bad, but please keep buying bad products!
Our first bad news is that we will no longer hold modern PTs because of how badly we handled the last one. We fired the one responsible and now we had to make cuts so nobody else is dealing with this. Our second bad news is that we will make more cuts to pro players, whom have been a net benefit for our community and general advertisement campaign for the last decade or so.
Yours truly,
AF"
That's pretty much how I read it. Guess I'll start shoveling my money towards another company that knows what they are doing...
RETIRED - GAME SUCKS
Modern:
UUUMerfolksUUU
RGoblinsR
Ad Nauseam
BR 8 Racks RB
WUB Mill BUW
Legacy:
XOps! All splels! X
What I think of MaRo
Take a step back and stop thinking you could do better. Your decisions on these matters haven't been put the test. Ever.
Just because there are still problems doesn't mean any of WotC's recent decisions are wrong. Maybe they were the wrong decisions, but for F sake stop being so damn confident about it
I also hate this same attitude of as soon as there's some change which is in some way disadvantageous to a format, there's always, ALWAYS, people saying it's because they are going to kill the format. It's a slippery-slope fallacy and it's dumb. Stopping the modern pro tour doesn't mean they don't care about modern. That's an outrageous assumption and almost certainly false.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Well, if they do that they can say goodbye to any more of my money (and I'm sure many other players would feel the same way).
If it were true (not saying it is) it would be a loss in customer faith in the product orders of magnitude greater than the shake up bans, etc. The message being received here from customers is that WotC has no idea what they are doing with Modern, it isn't stable to put money into and that there will never be such a thing as a true eternal format for those who don't want to keep up with standard. This in turn hurts LGS' and the player base as I'm going to make a confident guess that many people who play modern as their favorite format also play standard or draft but wouldn't play either if modern weren't a thing.
Only time will tell, but I'm tempted to sell off most of my modern staples besides a deck or two if things keep down this path. I'm also one of those players that has zero interest in standard.
You have a point there. If Wizards was trying to kill Modern, they'd be more explicit about it, like what happened to extended and block constructed. Wizards has a vested interest in moving players towards standard and other profitable formats, but there's no point in proactively killing an undesired format slowly. I mean, Wizards absolutely should support formats other than standard in some way, but a dearth of reprints isn't the same as executives wishing a given format would cease existing. They have to be aware that many players play eternal formats precisely because they don't want to keep up with standard.
This is very well said, and per my post above (which is admittedly far too doom and gloom and was my reaction to worst case scenario) they would be very dumb to eliminate modern completely. Other formats will draw people in to standard and draft as well that might not otherwise play them. They would be losing business and have no reason to completely kill modern. It doesn't cost them much to support, they can sell a supplemental product a couple times a year to keep fresh prints coming in thus making money, and create a short term draft environment as well on an annual basis with modern masters. Eliminate it and they leave players and revenue not he table.
Lol, did someone have a bad modern experience? As for linear, there are lots of options, compare a top 32 event list between modern and standard and I think you'll see there is plenty of variety and archetypes.
Regardless, we all have our opinions and your description sounds nothing like my experience with the format, or anything like what the format really is for most of us who do play it as our primary format.
Just like my opinion that Standard is a bad format with weak spells, pushed creatures and overall terrible cards with slight twists on mechanics and flavor each block doesn't mean everyone sees it the same way. Standard felt much more forgiving and slow paced, where the ideal way to win involves turning creatures sideways and using spells to kill your opponents creatures without much interaction on the stack or sequencing by comparison. Standard feels simple and lacks complexity to me, it has fewer lines of play and options. I'm happy standard players can play their format and keep throwing boatloads of money at WotC for bad cards so that I can enjoy modern and legacy.
Clueless people.
My wife was on MTV with this video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUutIZg2EpU
Like fghtffyrdmns two posts above me, I have a wildly different experience with the format. It`s my primary format and I love playing it, I`m always looking forward to modern events and I always have a load of fun. You are entitled to a different opinion, but please don`t throw phrases like "objectively bad format" around just to convince other people that your opinion is more valid than theirs. Just play a format you like and stop complaining about an extremely popular format that you happen to have a particular dislike for.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
So there is none of the new cards in the constructed rounds... so? why is that the priority? That's not why I am watching the pro tour, to see what new cards to buy? that is crazy,plus you have to buy those weeks before the pro tour or you are going to be massively out of pocket. I mean I had a tournament two weeks ago for standard I had to get my cards already.
The whole thing is so far behind the thinking of Esports, they seem to be trying to get on board with their shorts about the testing houses of the teams. We have to be cheering for individual players for there to be interest in the sport. Modern add another layer, where you can cheer for your deck, or you get to see the favourite player playing your favourite deck. Its really hard to get attached to a standard deck (although Esper dragons <3) because they are so fleeting. But modern you worked for that modern deck, its yours. You are attached to it.
Beyond that the modern pro tour allowed people who worked hard on the modern format to succeed on the big stage... they succeed with thier deck and playing exactly their prefered style. The GP level just isn't the same and certainly not the same coverage level (unless covered by SCG), you don't know where the best players are in the pack you don't have any idea of the kinds of decks that are floating around you have a gainy camera and poor lighting conditions.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
It's a big reason why the pro tour exists though- getting people interested in buying new sets. Which is fair enough, WotC couldn't be expected to support these things in the way they do unless they get enough in return for it to be a good idea for them, and advertising the sets is a way to do that without taking anyone's money. The decision to introduce modern earlier was perhaps related to the idea of using it to sell Modern Masters products, but they've undone that presumably because the data on that wasn't good enough. I don't see why it's a big deal for anyone except people who play at pro tours, it'll have some other effect, but nothing much.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Why do you assume the PT has so much influence that modern will 'die' just because it will no longer occasionally get featured in it? That sounds like a hell of a stretch to me.
According to some people I've heard who do play Modern, they like this change because it means modern doesn't need to be monitored in the same way for the constraints of making good pro tours.
I mean, look to LSV.
So acting like this will be a pure downside for modern, even without considering possible changes to play elsewhere, is poorly considered. It may just prove harmful to modern, but, it would be because of a net negative and not a pure one.
If you are correct and the pro tour will decrease modern play significantly, then WotC and others would have a significant incentive to then increase the prevalence of modern support in other areas to prevent that. The existence of the Modern Masters products, and the simple fact that it's one of their more popular formats, should tell you that WotC definitely wants to support modern.
Given this, and the fact that despite what some people seem to think WotC knows what they are doing pretty well (evidenced by the success of the game, for one, and the fact that the people whose job it is to do something tend to be quite good at it), I think you should be immediately very skeptical of the conclusion that their decisions with regards to it will do more than minor harm.
They did increase the prize pool for the world championship though. I have absolutely no experience to say what's a good decision here though.
Because the pro tour is the only form of competitive magic. Yeah, no.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
-Chandra Nalaar