I hope Pioneer overtakes Modern so Fetchland prices go down.
It needs to since Modern is way too fast of a format right now due to the consistency of Fetchlands creating expensive mana bases that no one's able to afford. With Pioneer slowing down overall gameplay it helps decks that tend to normally struggle against decks that win on turn 3 or 4 at the earliest. Why Wizards of the Coast doesn't feel the need to officially discontinue Modern in favor of Pioneer is anyone's guess.
It would give them a good reason to give us Pioneer Masters since we could use some more reprints that won't become Standard legal like in Modern Horizons. Modern Horizons wasn't necessarily a Masters set in the traditional sense as there were more new cards than actual reprints. The biggest problem with Masters sets was that it hurt LGS's that were trying to make money off of them even though it was a boon for casual and EDH players.
Better get your Shocklands now before they spike thanks to Pioneer.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
If I'm not mistaken Thoughtseize will be the only tier 1 non-creature spell from Modern and Legacy that's legal in this format.
Actually, I'll go over the colors real quick looking for what they lost and kept compared to Modern and Legacy.
Red has lost probably the top 3-5 spells (Bolt, Looting, Chain Lightning, Forked Bolt, etc). We're literally talking Shock / Incinerate level now.
Blue has lost all existing cantrips as well as Jace, Delver and Snapcaster.
Green has lost its top 3-4 mana dorks and its top 3 tutors (GSZ, NO, Chord), only leaving Company behind. They also lost Goyf.
White has lost Path and Swords as well as SFM, which is already all the cards that ever made this color playable in eternal formats.
Yeah, I think I'd start brewing with black first... I think WotC will end up regretting reprinting TSeize in Theros. It's on paper the best spell in the format by a mile.
And that's the saddest part of Pioneer. Once all the cancer that needs to ban will be gone BGx deck will probably become the dominant deck in the meta and will end up like pre up Jund modern just less powerful. Although I guess some ppl will rejoice at that.
I also hope people don't get their hopes up for this being an inexpensive format. It won't be. I would guess costs of decks will fall between Modern and Standard decks.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
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I also hope people don't get their hopes up for this being an inexpensive format. It won't be. I would guess costs of decks will fall between Modern and Standard decks.
Remember when everyone thought Pauper would be an inexpensive format once Wizards of the Coast officially sanctioned it?
Never really turned out that way did it...
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Break out your Treasure Cruises folks and use 'em while they're still legal. The benefit is that all those janky rares from those legal blocks will suddenly become hot again. Hello $50 Teferi again?
Return to Ravnica is an interesting arbitrary point to start. I was thinking maybe at the start of the decade for something more easily measurable.
Heh this is like the new Extended for Modern almost if you think about it.
'buster
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
I don't see Modern, Legacy, and Vintage going anywhere, ever! The reason Legacy and Vintage are having trouble with hosted events has absolutely nothing to do with lack of support. The support is lacking because the patrons of those formats are declining and new blood is not really replacing them. It's getting harder and harder to justify regular and frequent large events because the turn out is dwindling. It's not hard to understand, these formats are rediculasly expensive! Modern is the new legacy only in that it is an expensive format with a high amount of long time players. Modern decks today are comparable in price now to roughly what legacy decks were when Modern was a new format that was never going catch on. (ABUR lands were about $50-$100 and a lot of the important Staples were $50-$200). Pioneer is a stepping stone for new players (last 6 years) looking to go beyond standard but not quite ready for Modern. Much like Modern is a great stepping stone for players looking to go beyond where Pioneer is now but not quite ready for Legacy. I don't see this as a conspiracy sized excuse for a "cash grab" or pandering to those of us on a budget. I also don't see it as a way to avoid reprinting to demand either. Cards like Tarmogyfe were reprinted into oblivion in the Masters series and the only thing that really put a dent in it's price tag was simply WOTC printing better threats. Tarmogyfe is a lot cheaper now because it's just not clearly the best creature anymore, simple as that. Will they be making another non rotating format 10 years from now? Possibly, probably. Will this format succeed? With the support they plan on putting into it, you bet ya! It's just another format where different cards get a chance to shine.
There are definitely some take aways I took from the announcement that I found interesting though!
- Fetch lands will NOT be returning to standard any time soon. By banning the allied ones it would seem silly to print the enemy ones I'm standard without also banning them as well. "No fetch lands" appear to be a defining feature of pioneer.
- Obviously bannings will happen when apparent need arises. They seem to have learned their lesson when they created Modern. They want to make sure only problematic are removed.
- They didn't put any restrictions yet on what will define the format. Modern was billed as a turn 4 format and WOTC has been dancing that devil ever since! This statement has made quite a few headaches for them over the years. Hopefully they will be leaving this criteria up to the players. We have proven to be a quiet a vocal constiuancy!
- They have also not set any expectations of reprints as well. By billing Modern as a "reprint friendly" format it has given the modern player base a unrealistic expectation of card availability ever since it's inception. Often times we forget Magic is a rare card game that has been able to develop a SUCCESSFUL secondary market mostly because WOTC learned vary early on conservative reprint policies are healthy on some level.
- Hopefully these previous 2 statements remain unchanged. Like it or not both of those policies have hampered modern in general as a format!
All in all, this news is really exciting to me. I have been holding on to my standard staples for a while as they were perfectly reasonable cards with nowhere to be relevant. Hopefully many will find a home I'm this exciting new format!
[quote from="Shadow345 »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/814748-the-pioneer-format?comment=55"]Why Wizards of the Coast doesn't feel the need to officially discontinue Modern in favor of Pioneer is anyone's guess.
For the same reason they did not discontinue Vintage when Legacy came about, or discontinue Legacy & Vintage when Modern came about. You do not need to discontinue formats.
MTG is at a point now where Wizards of the Coast really needs to start downsizing the number of formats it has in order to help lower demand for popular cards in the Secondary Market. If they don't then the barrier level of entry is only going to continue to get worse for those who want to play MTG but can't afford it especially for EDH / Commander players who want to take advantage of purchasing cards rotating out of Standard but now can't due to inflation.
Pioneer needs to replace Modern where as EDH / Commander has already effectively replaced Legacy and Vintage. The only people who continue to play Legacy and Vintage are those who bought into the vast majority of Reserve List cards 20 years ago before they spiked astronomically. Brawl is failing because card rotations in a 60 card Singleton format is too tedious and time consuming.
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
They could choose a different business model and print 5 high value cards each standard set until they run out of cards over $40.
Or they could change their business model toward a viable alternative from the pay-to-win lootboxes scam that they and their competitors have been selling to their consumers for over 20 years. Maybe find a way to reward Single sellers / buyers more without having to rely on the booster box lottery as much. The problem lies in the amount of print runs that these companies are able to distribute to where there's enough product to circulate throughout the Secondary Market without going up in value over time.
Consumers are so sick and tired of these crappy monetization schemes by these gaming companies to the point where we're only getting the bare minimum as this happens not just in MTG but in other discontinued Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games where it's treated as nothing more than a short-term investment with no long-term commitment into keeping these games thriving. Why? Because the Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game Market is WAY too crowded to stand any sort of chance against the big three (MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokémon).
I think this also speaks to the current state of gaming culture today which is the biggest issue with new Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games where the companies behind them don't have the opportunity to make mistakes like Wizards of the Coast did with MTG. Wizards of the Coast got to survive it's growing pains with MTG because it was the first and was a unique product. Nowadays If a company makes too many mistakes most players would drop the game on the spot. Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! got away with it at the time because enough people gave these games a second chance.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Isn't Fabled Passage gonna see heavy play? And that's sorta a fetchland. I was hoping the format wouldn't have heavy shuffling effects. Now it feels like a way to rotate out khans fetchlands or something, i don't know.
Do we even have enough players for this format? It's hard enough to fire modern sometimes.
Maybe that's because Modern is the most expensive format in the game right now as opposed to EDH / Commander where the atmosphere is more inviting due to being casual instead of competitive. Standard and Modern have created this negative stigma of players cheating on a constant basis to the point that players only care more about winning instead of having fun. Who wants to sit around and lose on turn 4 against netdecks when it's more fun to pilot a 100 card Singleton deck that doesn't go off the exact same way 50% of the time? There's some EDH decks that play the exact same way every time however those are usually pretty rare.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Well with Delve+DRS+Shocks(and the fear of good stuff 4+ colors) i think it is easy to say we will not get fetchlands (originals) in return to return to zendikar, otherwise people must be ready to move their Treasure Cruise+Dig Through Time+DRS...
If I'm not mistaken Thoughtseize will be the only tier 1 non-creature spell from Modern and Legacy that's legal in this format.
Actually, I'll go over the colors real quick looking for what they lost and kept compared to Modern and Legacy.
Red has lost probably the top 3-5 spells (Bolt, Looting, Chain Lightning, Forked Bolt, etc). We're literally talking Shock / Incinerate level now.
Blue has lost all existing cantrips as well as Jace, Delver and Snapcaster.
Green has lost its top 3-4 mana dorks and its top 3 tutors (GSZ, NO, Chord), only leaving Company behind. They also lost Goyf.
White has lost Path and Swords as well as SFM, which is already all the cards that ever made this color playable in eternal formats.
Yeah, I think I'd start brewing with black first... I think WotC will end up regretting reprinting TSeize in Theros. It's on paper the best spell in the format by a mile.
this will be there formats flagship card. it will also help keep a lot of stupid stuff in check. or maybe I'm wrong and it'll be one of the first cards banned. imo rest in peace will be the second most important card in the format.
This is most probably what will happen a few months from now:
"Pioneer Horizons"
Crappy reprints with a few poorly tested new cards and even less chase cards at mythic all for triple or quadruple the price of regular boosters and half the card quality coming in early-mid 2020!
If we are "lucky" they will also add a collector's version that costs 10 times the regular price and is still choke full of draft garbage, but will have cards with a slightly different border or with art that is actually original.
Isn't Fabled Passage gonna see heavy play? And that's sorta a fetchland. I was hoping the format wouldn't have heavy shuffling effects. Now it feels like a way to rotate out khans fetchlands or something, i don't know.
Do we even have enough players for this format? It's hard enough to fire modern sometimes.
No there aren't enough players. That's the thing that wizards doesn't get. Attendance is going down. A lot of people have moved on to cheaper hobbies.
Do you seriously think WotC knows less about attendance numbers than you, a random person on the internet? Because, no. Maybe attendance numbers will be a problem- I don't know, I haven't looked at the data- but if they do, it won't be because WotC is making this decision in ignorance of attendance numbers.
It's possible they announced pioneer to move more product/singles and overlooked attendance in the midwest. West coast/East coast should be fine but I think there are some dead spots in the US.
No there aren't enough players. That's the thing that wizards doesn't get. Attendance is going down. A lot of people have moved on to cheaper hobbies.
Do you seriously think WotC knows less about attendance numbers than you, a random person on the internet? Because, no. Maybe attendance numbers will be a problem- I don't know, I haven't looked at the data- but if they do, it won't be because WotC is making this decision in ignorance of attendance numbers.
Yes I do know more about attendance numbers than Wizards of the Coast. I know more about Magic The Gathering than employees at Wizards. There are huge areas of low attendance around me. I've seen the player base decline for years. Return to Ravnica was the player pool height and it's been dropping since then. That's why they printed Ravnica 3 and are going to print Zendikar 3. Again, yes, I do know more about magic than Wizards does.
And what is your source for your data? Because WotC has all the resources of a major business at their disposal to do mass data collection and number crunching on a regular basis. They may not be the most trustworthy party to tell us about the subject, but they've certainly got the data to track it on their end.
Personally, what I think we ultimately need is some sort of "extended+" rotating format that holds a full 10 years worth of cards.
The creation of modern 10 years into MTG, followed by Pioneer 10 years later, kind of shows that we run into accessibility issues (at least with Wizards' current business model) at about the 10 year mark. Giving cards a 10 year shelf-life wouldn't make cards a horrible investment for players who actively play, would give investors a decent window to speculate on cards, and gives Wizards more time to print out reprints (such as shock-lands or premium kill spells) if they want to keep cards in the format.
While Modern plays an admirable role as "eternal format without reserved list", pioneer can't be expected to act as the "huge but accessible format where newly rotated cards can still be played" in the long term unless all unbalanced cards that slip past Play Design eventually trickle out to keep people brewing.
Rotating formats are a hard sell outside of standard honestly. A lot of players make it to there first set rotation and then they are like "so I can't play with my cards anymore? That sucks!". For a while they had Legacy turn to. Then they Modern. Now they will have Pioneer. Regardless, whichever format they make will incur a secondary market for that format and drive card values up. It creates supply and demand. If they had made Pioneer a rotating format people would have the exact same complaints anyway!
Modern is a Non-Rotating format, not an Eternal format. The difference is inclusiveness. Eternal formats include all suplementary products. Pauper and Legacy are Eternal formats because things like Conspiracy and yearly Commander Deck Series are legal in those formats
Personally, what I think we ultimately need is some sort of "extended+" rotating format that holds a full 10 years worth of cards.
The creation of modern 10 years into MTG, followed by Pioneer 10 years later, kind of shows that we run into accessibility issues (at least with Wizards' current business model) at about the 10 year mark. Giving cards a 10 year shelf-life wouldn't make cards a horrible investment for players who actively play, would give investors a decent window to speculate on cards, and gives Wizards more time to print out reprints (such as shock-lands or premium kill spells) if they want to keep cards in the format.
While Modern plays an admirable role as "eternal format without reserved list", pioneer can't be expected to act as the "huge but accessible format where newly rotated cards can still be played" in the long term unless all unbalanced cards that slip past Play Design eventually trickle out to keep people brewing.
Modern did not come about 10 years into MTG's life, it came in nearly 18 years into Magic's life (although the set WotC chose to lead Modern off with (8th Edition) was released 10 years into Magic's life).
I do not think the accessibility issue with Modern is due to the age of the sets because some of the most expensive cards are from Innistrad (the block that came out before RtR (which is the block that starts Pioneer)). The accessibility issue really has everything to do with WotC's refusal to meaningfully reprint modern staples.
Extended+ is a quality answer to the problem but it would never take hold because people *hate* rotating formats.
If I'm not mistaken Thoughtseize will be the only tier 1 non-creature spell from Modern and Legacy that's legal in this format.
Actually, I'll go over the colors real quick looking for what they lost and kept compared to Modern and Legacy.
Red has lost probably the top 3-5 spells (Bolt, Looting, Chain Lightning, Forked Bolt, etc). We're literally talking Shock / Incinerate level now.
Blue has lost all existing cantrips as well as Jace, Delver and Snapcaster.
Green has lost its top 3-4 mana dorks and its top 3 tutors (GSZ, NO, Chord), only leaving Company behind. They also lost Goyf.
White has lost Path and Swords as well as SFM, which is already all the cards that ever made this color playable in eternal formats.
Yeah, I think I'd start brewing with black first... I think WotC will end up regretting reprinting TSeize in Theros. It's on paper the best spell in the format by a mile.
Black also has Fatal Push. I ******* love Fatal Push Have a feeling it's going to be very good in Pioneer.
I have played Magic off and on since 1994, and it was Dragon's Maze that made me go "God, this is the worst, least fun set I've ever played. I'm out". I'm curious how it will be now in this new format, though. Definitely going to upset some pricing.
It would give them a good reason to give us Pioneer Masters since we could use some more reprints that won't become Standard legal like in Modern Horizons. Modern Horizons wasn't necessarily a Masters set in the traditional sense as there were more new cards than actual reprints. The biggest problem with Masters sets was that it hurt LGS's that were trying to make money off of them even though it was a boon for casual and EDH players.
Better get your Shocklands now before they spike thanks to Pioneer.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
And that's the saddest part of Pioneer. Once all the cancer that needs to ban will be gone BGx deck will probably become the dominant deck in the meta and will end up like pre up Jund modern just less powerful. Although I guess some ppl will rejoice at that.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Never really turned out that way did it...
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Return to Ravnica is an interesting arbitrary point to start. I was thinking maybe at the start of the decade for something more easily measurable.
Heh this is like the new Extended for Modern almost if you think about it.
'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Chord of Calling will be legal in this format via its M15 reprint.
There are definitely some take aways I took from the announcement that I found interesting though!
- Fetch lands will NOT be returning to standard any time soon. By banning the allied ones it would seem silly to print the enemy ones I'm standard without also banning them as well. "No fetch lands" appear to be a defining feature of pioneer.
- Obviously bannings will happen when apparent need arises. They seem to have learned their lesson when they created Modern. They want to make sure only problematic are removed.
- They didn't put any restrictions yet on what will define the format. Modern was billed as a turn 4 format and WOTC has been dancing that devil ever since! This statement has made quite a few headaches for them over the years. Hopefully they will be leaving this criteria up to the players. We have proven to be a quiet a vocal constiuancy!
- They have also not set any expectations of reprints as well. By billing Modern as a "reprint friendly" format it has given the modern player base a unrealistic expectation of card availability ever since it's inception. Often times we forget Magic is a rare card game that has been able to develop a SUCCESSFUL secondary market mostly because WOTC learned vary early on conservative reprint policies are healthy on some level.
- Hopefully these previous 2 statements remain unchanged. Like it or not both of those policies have hampered modern in general as a format!
All in all, this news is really exciting to me. I have been holding on to my standard staples for a while as they were perfectly reasonable cards with nowhere to be relevant. Hopefully many will find a home I'm this exciting new format!
For the same reason they did not discontinue Vintage when Legacy came about, or discontinue Legacy & Vintage when Modern came about. You do not need to discontinue formats.
Pioneer needs to replace Modern where as EDH / Commander has already effectively replaced Legacy and Vintage. The only people who continue to play Legacy and Vintage are those who bought into the vast majority of Reserve List cards 20 years ago before they spiked astronomically. Brawl is failing because card rotations in a 60 card Singleton format is too tedious and time consuming.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Consumers are so sick and tired of these crappy monetization schemes by these gaming companies to the point where we're only getting the bare minimum as this happens not just in MTG but in other discontinued Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games where it's treated as nothing more than a short-term investment with no long-term commitment into keeping these games thriving. Why? Because the Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game Market is WAY too crowded to stand any sort of chance against the big three (MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokémon).
I think this also speaks to the current state of gaming culture today which is the biggest issue with new Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games where the companies behind them don't have the opportunity to make mistakes like Wizards of the Coast did with MTG. Wizards of the Coast got to survive it's growing pains with MTG because it was the first and was a unique product. Nowadays If a company makes too many mistakes most players would drop the game on the spot. Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! got away with it at the time because enough people gave these games a second chance.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Do we even have enough players for this format? It's hard enough to fire modern sometimes.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
this will be there formats flagship card. it will also help keep a lot of stupid stuff in check. or maybe I'm wrong and it'll be one of the first cards banned. imo rest in peace will be the second most important card in the format.
"Pioneer Horizons"
Crappy reprints with a few poorly tested new cards and even less chase cards at mythic all for triple or quadruple the price of regular boosters and half the card quality coming in early-mid 2020!
If we are "lucky" they will also add a collector's version that costs 10 times the regular price and is still choke full of draft garbage, but will have cards with a slightly different border or with art that is actually original.
Do you seriously think WotC knows less about attendance numbers than you, a random person on the internet? Because, no. Maybe attendance numbers will be a problem- I don't know, I haven't looked at the data- but if they do, it won't be because WotC is making this decision in ignorance of attendance numbers.
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
And what is your source for your data? Because WotC has all the resources of a major business at their disposal to do mass data collection and number crunching on a regular basis. They may not be the most trustworthy party to tell us about the subject, but they've certainly got the data to track it on their end.
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
The creation of modern 10 years into MTG, followed by Pioneer 10 years later, kind of shows that we run into accessibility issues (at least with Wizards' current business model) at about the 10 year mark. Giving cards a 10 year shelf-life wouldn't make cards a horrible investment for players who actively play, would give investors a decent window to speculate on cards, and gives Wizards more time to print out reprints (such as shock-lands or premium kill spells) if they want to keep cards in the format.
While Modern plays an admirable role as "eternal format without reserved list", pioneer can't be expected to act as the "huge but accessible format where newly rotated cards can still be played" in the long term unless all unbalanced cards that slip past Play Design eventually trickle out to keep people brewing.
Modern is a Non-Rotating format, not an Eternal format. The difference is inclusiveness. Eternal formats include all suplementary products. Pauper and Legacy are Eternal formats because things like Conspiracy and yearly Commander Deck Series are legal in those formats
Modern did not come about 10 years into MTG's life, it came in nearly 18 years into Magic's life (although the set WotC chose to lead Modern off with (8th Edition) was released 10 years into Magic's life).
I do not think the accessibility issue with Modern is due to the age of the sets because some of the most expensive cards are from Innistrad (the block that came out before RtR (which is the block that starts Pioneer)). The accessibility issue really has everything to do with WotC's refusal to meaningfully reprint modern staples.
Extended+ is a quality answer to the problem but it would never take hold because people *hate* rotating formats.
Black also has Fatal Push. I ******* love Fatal Push Have a feeling it's going to be very good in Pioneer.
I have played Magic off and on since 1994, and it was Dragon's Maze that made me go "God, this is the worst, least fun set I've ever played. I'm out". I'm curious how it will be now in this new format, though. Definitely going to upset some pricing.