I just came back after a couple of decades away from MTG and was investing in getting some Modern Decks, just for casual play.
Is this bringing card prices down even further after they rotate out of Standard?
What about people who play Modern? Are they going to stop and move to standard?
I won't be playing standard so...should I be concerned about other people not wanting to play anymore? Maybe it's a silly question, but I've been out of it for quite a while...
No. The only reason it ever had a pro tour was to make it popular to start with. It doesn't need the help anymore.
It will still have the second most constructed GPs and a PPTQ/RPTQ season, as well as being a format for the WMC and WMCQs.
Next year maybe but the impact on shaving the Pro Tour on attendance at these GPS/PPTQ/RPTQs should lead into third party tournament organizers refusing to support the format and ask for more popular standard and limited events.
The Pro Tour is very important to keep a format alive and popular.
It's true it will be featured on WMC this time but I doubt the impact will be the same.
Formats always need the help of the Pro Tour.
Some of the largest GPs have been Modern. GP Richmond and GP Charlotte in particular. The more standard and limited GPs there are the less popular they become for folks. Modern GPs are scarce enough that it creates a large hype that TOs often can't even prepare for, like GP Detroit and GP Pittsburgh this year.
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One of these day I have to get myself organizized.
from what I read, the problem they have with modern is that people tend to stick to a few decks, thus not changing much (and not buying many new cards). With people buying less cards, WotC doesn't make much money.
With all PTs being standard, they'll be showing off new cards (even if it will be more boring IMO due to all being standard)
How on earth are standard pro tours boring when they happen just after a new set lands that (hopefully) shakes up the metagame? That doesn't make sense. THere are new decks too that no one has seen yet either.
As for whether WotC wants to kill modern or not, I doubt it short term. Long term anything is possible.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
I honestly don't think this is going to affect modern much. Standard is a format for people with more expendable income, namely younger folks. The thing about being young is that it doesn't last. They get older, more responsibilities, less money to throw at the money pit that is standard or limited and they have these cards left over. Well there are roughly three things they can do: sell out and get 35% or whatever a store will give, give it up entirely and give the cards away or burn them or whatever or they can play a more eternal style format. Modern is the entry level eternal format so that's where they will likely fall first.
You see, every pro tour is like a giant advertisement for the WotC brand. Just like any pro football game is a giant advertisement for the NFL or any pro sport for that matter. In the end it's all about separating you from your money. Since standard and limited are the best at that, that is what WotC wants to push the most. If your serious about the game though, you'll stick around for the less pushed things.
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
They're definitely not making it a priority, that's for sure. I wouldn't say the format is dying, but I think Wizards is going to stay relatively hands off and let the players handle Modern.
from what I read, the problem they have with modern is that people tend to stick to a few decks, thus not changing much (and not buying many new cards). With people buying less cards, WotC doesn't make much money.
With all PTs being standard, they'll be showing off new cards (even if it will be more boring IMO due to all being standard)
That is the modern power, you do not need to change your deck.
that's one thing most people like about modern, if you find a deck you like you can keep playing it unless it gets banned
They have been trying unintentionally for a while. I mean, banning a top deck every 6 months or so and people still buy into modern?
That is the best reason why there should not be a Modern Pro Tour. Wizards used bannings to change the metagame just to make Pro Tour more exiting. Without Pro Tour there's no need for that, which should be good for players.
Or they could... shock... NOT BAN BECAUSE OF A PRO_TOUR!
If they merely ban on balance and modern format standards (turn 4 rule) reasons, then the only thing the pro-tour has to do with it is a slight acceleration of the time it takes to reveal and develop the metagame to the players at large, due to published tournament results. It's not an argument against the pro-tour unless they are using the pro-tour as an excuse to mishandle the ban list in order to promote the pro-tour. If they are handling modern properly, they shouldn't need to mis-handle the ban list in order to promote the pro-tour.
1: Barrier to Entry. The top decks are rapidly approaching Legacy deck prices. Which is a problem when combined with
2: Ban processes. Hard to tell if your deck will be entirely banned out of the format. Especially if you play a combo deck. If you don't play a combo deck, you're looking at hyper-aggro, which isn't everyones cup of tea, mid-range and the corresponding astronomical prices, control and the prices plus the lack of control answers in a format built around threats.
3: Hard to put cards into the Modern pool. A lot of cards that would be good for Modern cannot reach it because they are too powerful for Standard. Thoughtseize was an experiment that made standard players miserable. With the power level so different between the two formats, printing cards that can help in Modern, that don't make certain Modern decks too good, that don't warp standard is a tricky proposition at best.
4: Modern Masters 1 and 2 were terrible. The first one got it mostly right, with a strong suite of commons, uncommons, and some rares, but crapped the bed on the mythics. The second one reversed entirely, giving players entirely worthless commons, uncommons, and rares while banking on the mythic lottery.
With all four issues, fixing Modern is not going to be easy.
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You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
As long as Modern lives at an FNM level I think that will be OK. I think the players who want to keep it alive will. Local stores will always run what is profitable. If locals want Modern, FNM will be modern. A few large tournaments a year should be fine. Remember, the player base created and propelled EDH into popularity so I would think if modern is popular they can keep it alive. If it dies it will be a symptom of its degeneracy and not Wizards lack of support. They're not exactly "supporting" it right now. A draftable set every 2 years is not support, yet modern lives. If they say it's no longer a FNM format then it will be dead. Pro's and grinders will always play whatever is available.
They should have just stuck with old Extended. A large, rotating format would solve its own problems without resorting to stupid bans. They made a stupid move shortening Extended to make room for Modern, which ended up killing a good format in order to make room for a bad one and a mediocre one. They wanted a nonrotating format that they could reprint staples for, but didn't bother to actually look into what made legacy and vintage good. That, and they created it immediately following a string of standard seasons dominated by a single deck that got on everyone's nerves (Faeries, Jund, Caw Blade), so they started off by banning a ton of good cards and some Extended combo pieces because without rotation there was no other way to get rid of them and they were afraid of selling a format full of decks players were tired of. Any non rotating format without FoW is doomed to fail eventually, as its card pool increases and as players figure out the best decks eventually decks will get too consistent without cheap permission to police them, and modern doesn't even have counterspell. Control suffers further from the need to ban cheap blue cantrips that typically allow permission to function because the weakness of the permission means they do more to enable combo than permission.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
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Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Any non rotating format without FoW is doomed to fail eventually, as its card pool increases and as players figure out the best decks eventually decks will get too consistent without cheap permission to police them, and modern doesn't even have counterspell. Control suffers further from the need to ban cheap blue cantrips that typically allow permission to function because the weakness of the permission means they do more to enable combo than permission.
QFT. A certain amount of quality permission and other "unfun" spells are necessary to keep a non-rotating format healthy in the long run. That's what the "fun police" who hates these types of cards don't get. All their efforts in the last few years to make fun-cards-only sets have failed to produce a fun, healthy format in the long run. I suppose that they think banning cards every six months is fun. When they should be making proper circuit breaker cards so that powerful cards don't easily break the format.
Any non rotating format without FoW is doomed to fail eventually, as its card pool increases and as players figure out the best decks eventually decks will get too consistent without cheap permission to police them, and modern doesn't even have counterspell. Control suffers further from the need to ban cheap blue cantrips that typically allow permission to function because the weakness of the permission means they do more to enable combo than permission.
QFT. A certain amount of quality permission and other "unfun" spells are necessary to keep a non-rotating format healthy in the long run. That's what the "fun police" who hates these types of cards don't get. All their efforts in the last few years to make fun-cards-only sets have failed to produce a fun, healthy format in the long run. I suppose that they think banning cards every six months is fun. When they should be making proper circuit breaker cards so that powerful cards don't easily break the format.
The problem with the universal answer being counterspells is that it creates a situation where Blue is required. Brainstorm and Force have created that in Legacy, and it continues to be a different problem for them. Instead of having problems with strong threats, they have a problem where 80% of the decks run Brainstorm and 40% run Force of Will.
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"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
I don't think FOW should be necessary as a 'circuit breaker' for Modern. At least as long as they stick to the turn 4 rule, they shouldn't actually need a 'free' counter to reign things in.
Counterspell itself however may be necessary. Cancel and other 3 cmc just comes too late to counter earlier things that need to get reigned in on to slow down opposing decks for the control deck to even survive long enough for their game plan to matter if the control deck is on the draw, rather than on the play, and control decks in the long run really can't afford cards that become worse in the late game like Remand and Mana Leak to be their primary main-board permission methods, and those are more of tempo cards to begin with.
Thoughtseize and IoK discard certainly don't do the trick, since they can't do anything about top-decks. It's why we wound up with decks like lantern control developing, and those two cards generally stick to midrange or weirder combo or aggro decks rather than control.
Any non rotating format without FoW is doomed to fail eventually, as its card pool increases and as players figure out the best decks eventually decks will get too consistent without cheap permission to police them, and modern doesn't even have counterspell. Control suffers further from the need to ban cheap blue cantrips that typically allow permission to function because the weakness of the permission means they do more to enable combo than permission.
QFT. A certain amount of quality permission and other "unfun" spells are necessary to keep a non-rotating format healthy in the long run. That's what the "fun police" who hates these types of cards don't get. All their efforts in the last few years to make fun-cards-only sets have failed to produce a fun, healthy format in the long run. I suppose that they think banning cards every six months is fun. When they should be making proper circuit breaker cards so that powerful cards don't easily break the format.
The problem with the universal answer being counterspells is that it creates a situation where Blue is required. Brainstorm and Force have created that in Legacy, and it continues to be a different problem for them. Instead of having problems with strong threats, they have a problem where 80% of the decks run Brainstorm and 40% run Force of Will.
Tbh, I don't think FoW or Counterspell is the only thing that could make a "fun police". Stuff like Wasteland and Rishadan Port would probably be fine as well. Ofc, I'm a big fan of Legacy Death and Taxes, so I might be biased
They have been trying unintentionally for a while. I mean, banning a top deck every 6 months or so and people still buy into modern?
That is the best reason why there should not be a Modern Pro Tour. Wizards used bannings to change the metagame just to make Pro Tour more exiting. Without Pro Tour there's no need for that, which should be good for players.
Or they could... shock... NOT BAN BECAUSE OF A PRO_TOUR!
If they merely ban on balance and modern format standards (turn 4 rule) reasons, then the only thing the pro-tour has to do with it is a slight acceleration of the time it takes to reveal and develop the metagame to the players at large, due to published tournament results. It's not an argument against the pro-tour unless they are using the pro-tour as an excuse to mishandle the ban list in order to promote the pro-tour. If they are handling modern properly, they shouldn't need to mis-handle the ban list in order to promote the pro-tour.
While the timings of the bans certainly was due to the Pro Tour, the bans of splinter twin and birthing pod were very logic. Pod was too powerful, and the degenerated versions Wee have now (CoCo and kiki-chord) are still decent and more interesting. With twin, the issue was different, more about gameplay and format diversity than power level. I personally think that being able to tap out on turn 3 is better for modern and the 25% of the field playing twins implied too many deckbuilding restrictions to compete.
The format needs some bans to be healthy and diverse, the issue is the secondary market implications of bans, not bans in my opinion.
More on topic, without the Pro Tour coverage, Modern will slowly die in my opinion, because most of the new players won't be attracted by this format and most of the grinder-type players will focus and invest more and more on standard. Modern should end up an old afficionados format like legacy, and like legacy be played less and less. It's sad for us because lots of the decks of the format were exciting and having several competitive format is good. It's possible wotc ends up creating "Modern 2" with sets from the 2-block a year change onwards to manage balance on the format more accurately, but it would feel like just a worse modern.
I'm not saying they were banning 'only' because of the pro-tour (I also agree with the bans in question), but they were allowing the perception that they were, or perhaps thought they were, and were also possibly delaying needed bans that could have happened at other times, like other set releases, to happen just before the pro-tour instead in order to shake it up, rather than managing the format consistently irregardless of the pro-tour schedule, which makes some player perception worse, or perhaps only testing bans and unbans and checking options and looking at statistics for such as heavily just before the pro-tour, less so than other scheduled banned and restricted list updates, so the pro-tour was more likely to see changes to the lists, that perhaps were undesired by a certain portion of the players, while others might have desired it but still seen it as linked to the pro-tour, rather than for actual balance reasons, even if they liked the changes, it would reduce their opinion of how WotC handles the lists, and make them fear the changes essentially semi-random and _potentially_ bad in the future.
If they simply stopped following policies and made it clear they don't follow policies of focusing the bans around the pro-tour, their arguments against the pro-tour having Modern start to fall apart.
Maybe they could make this up to us by scheduling Modern-only events a month and a half after every major Standard set-release tournament? Ones roughly intended to be similar size and scale to such Standard events as appropriate to Modern?
As it is, it sounds like they blame ban list changes on people playing the game at high level in tournaments, and thus 'figuring out' modern's current metagame, as if this is a bad thing for people to play the game in a non-casual way, and they want Modern to be a casual kitchen-table-only format.
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Long story short, there is not going to be any more modern pro tours. Because they want to give more atention to standrard.
Are we seeing the slow death of modern?
Is this bringing card prices down even further after they rotate out of Standard?
What about people who play Modern? Are they going to stop and move to standard?
I won't be playing standard so...should I be concerned about other people not wanting to play anymore? Maybe it's a silly question, but I've been out of it for quite a while...
With all PTs being standard, they'll be showing off new cards (even if it will be more boring IMO due to all being standard)
As for whether WotC wants to kill modern or not, I doubt it short term. Long term anything is possible.
Currently Playing:
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You see, every pro tour is like a giant advertisement for the WotC brand. Just like any pro football game is a giant advertisement for the NFL or any pro sport for that matter. In the end it's all about separating you from your money. Since standard and limited are the best at that, that is what WotC wants to push the most. If your serious about the game though, you'll stick around for the less pushed things.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
that's one thing most people like about modern, if you find a deck you like you can keep playing it unless it gets banned
Or they could... shock... NOT BAN BECAUSE OF A PRO_TOUR!
If they merely ban on balance and modern format standards (turn 4 rule) reasons, then the only thing the pro-tour has to do with it is a slight acceleration of the time it takes to reveal and develop the metagame to the players at large, due to published tournament results. It's not an argument against the pro-tour unless they are using the pro-tour as an excuse to mishandle the ban list in order to promote the pro-tour. If they are handling modern properly, they shouldn't need to mis-handle the ban list in order to promote the pro-tour.
1: Barrier to Entry. The top decks are rapidly approaching Legacy deck prices. Which is a problem when combined with
2: Ban processes. Hard to tell if your deck will be entirely banned out of the format. Especially if you play a combo deck. If you don't play a combo deck, you're looking at hyper-aggro, which isn't everyones cup of tea, mid-range and the corresponding astronomical prices, control and the prices plus the lack of control answers in a format built around threats.
3: Hard to put cards into the Modern pool. A lot of cards that would be good for Modern cannot reach it because they are too powerful for Standard. Thoughtseize was an experiment that made standard players miserable. With the power level so different between the two formats, printing cards that can help in Modern, that don't make certain Modern decks too good, that don't warp standard is a tricky proposition at best.
4: Modern Masters 1 and 2 were terrible. The first one got it mostly right, with a strong suite of commons, uncommons, and some rares, but crapped the bed on the mythics. The second one reversed entirely, giving players entirely worthless commons, uncommons, and rares while banking on the mythic lottery.
With all four issues, fixing Modern is not going to be easy.
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
QFT. A certain amount of quality permission and other "unfun" spells are necessary to keep a non-rotating format healthy in the long run. That's what the "fun police" who hates these types of cards don't get. All their efforts in the last few years to make fun-cards-only sets have failed to produce a fun, healthy format in the long run. I suppose that they think banning cards every six months is fun. When they should be making proper circuit breaker cards so that powerful cards don't easily break the format.
........................
The problem with the universal answer being counterspells is that it creates a situation where Blue is required. Brainstorm and Force have created that in Legacy, and it continues to be a different problem for them. Instead of having problems with strong threats, they have a problem where 80% of the decks run Brainstorm and 40% run Force of Will.
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
Counterspell itself however may be necessary. Cancel and other 3 cmc just comes too late to counter earlier things that need to get reigned in on to slow down opposing decks for the control deck to even survive long enough for their game plan to matter if the control deck is on the draw, rather than on the play, and control decks in the long run really can't afford cards that become worse in the late game like Remand and Mana Leak to be their primary main-board permission methods, and those are more of tempo cards to begin with.
Thoughtseize and IoK discard certainly don't do the trick, since they can't do anything about top-decks. It's why we wound up with decks like lantern control developing, and those two cards generally stick to midrange or weirder combo or aggro decks rather than control.
I'm not saying they were banning 'only' because of the pro-tour (I also agree with the bans in question), but they were allowing the perception that they were, or perhaps thought they were, and were also possibly delaying needed bans that could have happened at other times, like other set releases, to happen just before the pro-tour instead in order to shake it up, rather than managing the format consistently irregardless of the pro-tour schedule, which makes some player perception worse, or perhaps only testing bans and unbans and checking options and looking at statistics for such as heavily just before the pro-tour, less so than other scheduled banned and restricted list updates, so the pro-tour was more likely to see changes to the lists, that perhaps were undesired by a certain portion of the players, while others might have desired it but still seen it as linked to the pro-tour, rather than for actual balance reasons, even if they liked the changes, it would reduce their opinion of how WotC handles the lists, and make them fear the changes essentially semi-random and _potentially_ bad in the future.
If they simply stopped following policies and made it clear they don't follow policies of focusing the bans around the pro-tour, their arguments against the pro-tour having Modern start to fall apart.
Maybe they could make this up to us by scheduling Modern-only events a month and a half after every major Standard set-release tournament? Ones roughly intended to be similar size and scale to such Standard events as appropriate to Modern?
As it is, it sounds like they blame ban list changes on people playing the game at high level in tournaments, and thus 'figuring out' modern's current metagame, as if this is a bad thing for people to play the game in a non-casual way, and they want Modern to be a casual kitchen-table-only format.