Lately people have expressed interest in talking about "problems" with modern, mostly because a lot of pros have written articles on it. Whether or not modern has problems in its format is up for debate, but what is clear is people want to talk about modern as a format, and not just ban list, or the SCG meta game.
As such, the Mods and I have talked it over, and we are opening this thread as a trial. If it is successful we will modify the rules as needed and open a new thread in one week. Banlist, reprints, meta shares, recent preformance, anything that has to do with the MODERN FORMAT is allowed here.
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I'll start this thread off, hopefully we can point this thread into a healthy direction.
I honestly feel there is one glaring problem with modern, and thats it. There arent enough main deck powerful answer cards. Most of the ones that exist, exist in jund, which is why we have a "police man" midrange deck, and thats it. I feel there should be more than just these few cards like abrupt decay. Commands were a great step in the right direction.
I think that is moderns problem. Not that blue is weak (since its not.) but a control deck doesnt really exist because it's card pool doesnt allow it to deal with enough threats. I don't want control to have the tools to beat everything, but leveraging it into a place where it can be made to have a 45-50% matchup against most of the field, 70% plus against combo, and 30% against aggro, seems perfectly doable to me, if it had the right carefully printed tools.
But this would mean it would need those tools from wizards giving them through standard.
Awesome that this thread is here! Figure id kick it off with my 2 cents
Modern is in a great place right now, and heavily rewards people for flexible sidebosrd plans and expertising in 1-2 decks. you can reasonably pilot any strategy to reasonable success with skill and a little luck, granted some strategies will be a but more successful but this is always true for every format
However, a few minor problems are apparent, the first of all being the recent weakness in the "fair" decks. Sure, BGx is still fine, but the URx/UWx have been falling off. Something should be done here, but something small. URx can still be successful, giving it a sledgehammer right now would allow it to smash the format to pieces.
More of a minor note, i feel modern has reached a critical mass of "draw sideboard hate, be able to race me, or lose" decks. Between tron, valakut, bogles, affinity, living end, lantern, and now dredge, theres quite a few decks that fall under this category. Most of them dont take up enough of the meta to make a real impact, so it bsrely influences the feel of modern as a whole, and most games are still winnable on either side pre board, but this critical mass seems to grow each new set and something will have to be done here as well eventually
Edit: one final note, if wizards does not announce that they will begin funneling new cards into modern via mm17, i will lose all faith that they even care about fixing the format and we are stuck with ehat we got
If you enjoy linear or aggro then obviously you are going to enjoy Modern but others meant not. Right now there's not much incentive to play fair when you don't have too.
@bfrie: Adding much needed cards through a limited print run set such as MM17 will not help the problem.
If you enjoy linear or aggro then obviously you are going to enjoy Modern but others meant not. Right now there's not much incentive to play fair when you don't have too.
@bfrie: Adding much needed cards through a limited print run set such as MM17 will not help the problem.
how so? how would adding stuff like innocent blood into modern not help the problem?
I think Ari Lax summed up my thoughts best when he 5-0'd a modern league with 8-rack of all things (whilst not dropping a single game).
A control deck performs well in Modern when it predicts the meta properly. You can't carbon-copy a control deck off mtgtop8 and expect to win a lot of matches. Tell me how Shouta Yasooka can walk up to a tournament of the best players in the world with a 75-card list that nobody has registered before, and regularly make the top 8? How does Guillaume Wafo-Tapa 5-0 several Modern leagues in a 2-week span with Esper? How does Tom Ross top 8 a Modern open after switching from Dredge to 8-rack, in a tournament where only 2 Dredge decks made top 32?
Notice a trend among the best players: they attack the format. The format doesn't lack answers, it lacks imaginative applications of the correct answers.
Besides, control is oppressive when its tools are too powerful. How many years of power creep did it take the non-blue colors of Magic to seriously catch up to blue in Legacy?
This could just be from my personal experience, but it feels like there is just more threats than answers and playing catch up with a control deck is just an uphill battle. Sure, you can create inevitability if you slow the clock down enough, but I digress. Mana Leak is a great counter, but all the major threats are super fast and can easily get out of range mid-game and late. I don't know how to give control more viable tools and NOT make it overpowered because I'm assuming Wizards hates cards that are catch all answers like counter spell, force of will, and daze, but I would like control decks to be more appealing and have a stronger demographic.
You also have tier 1 Abzan, tier 2 Jeskai, the company and chord decks and Ad Nauseam.
Sure, they aren't mono-white, but fish aside, no colour is really represented in a mono- or two-colour deck.
And white even is, in Death'n Taxes, which is a super varied strategy in itself, between WB, W, WG, WBC, etc.
So.. what glaring issues do you see there, or rather, what would want for White?
WhiteWeenie tier 1?
(Not saying White doesn't need help, it kinda is "Path and 1W sideboard enchantments".colour ^^ )
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Modern is largely fine, or at least a hell of a lot better than you could be led to believe from some articles written by major sites.
That said I would like the format to have a couple more policing decks to help balance out the format a little more. We already have the shells of a lot of these kinds decks but many of the have fail to reach the big times for extended periods, decks like Mardu Midrange/Control, Bant CoCo, UR Delver (excluding the TC period), Grixis Control, Esper Control, Grixis Delver, Knightfall and RUG Delver all have the capacity to step up as the next interactive deck outside of the BGx shell but they are all missing something to put them over. For some it is a threat, others an answer, and some just need more exposure.
I'm honestly not sure how the format would go about fixing this with the knowledge we already have. The banlist is close to tapped out at this point, and while there are reprints that might help the format (Pyrokinesis, Prohibit, Innocent Blood) WotC is shackled hugely by the standard design space, which I think is going to become an increasing big issue for the format. Another option moving forward is to make older cards modern legal through the masters series, and possibly even new cards designed for Modern by first printing them in a set like Conspiracy.
On the white needing help matter: White's problems go way deeper than just meta-percentage, it lacks a real identify outside of just being a support colour. There is only one card on the banlist which could come off and there isn't even much you could reprint to help it out.
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In play: Jund Death Shadow, Grixis Control, Eldrazi Stompy, Ponza
In the yard: RUG Delver, Kiki-Chord, Grixis Twin, Mardu Control, Smallpox, Jeskai Control, Jeskai Delver, Assault Loam, Elves, Deathcloud, Eggs, Storm
I'll start this thread off, hopefully we can point this thread into a healthy direction.
I honestly feel there is one glaring problem with modern, and thats it. There arent enough main deck powerful answer cards. Most of the ones that exist, exist in jund, which is why we have a "police man" midrange deck, and thats it. I feel there should be more than just these few cards like abrupt decay. Commands were a great step in the right direction.
I think that is moderns problem. Not that blue is weak (since its not.) but a control deck doesnt really exist because it's card pool doesnt allow it to deal with enough threats. I don't want control to have the tools to beat everything, but leveraging it into a place where it can be made to have a 45-50% matchup against most of the field, 70% plus against combo, and 30% against aggro, seems perfectly doable to me, if it had the right carefully printed tools.
But this would mean it would need those tools from wizards giving them through standard.
I believe what you are explaining is the functional problems of Modern within every match on the microscale, personally I feel there is a large Macro problem with Wizards, and not just Modern.
I've posted about this before, the PR/Communications are horrible, their handling of the Modern format has been horrible, and their philosophy of the Modern format changes every 6 months. We only have clues to piece together any information whatsoever, and have to draw conclusions based on data from secondary websites instead of their official distorted source. It's difficult not to get mad at this company at every possible opportunity. Regarding the Modern banned list specifically just excruciatingly shows my points above;
Why is Blazing Shoal banned, and Become Immense not?
Why are all the fair cards on the Modern banned list, when 4+ decks exist in the format that can kill you before the fair cards are relevant?
Why are some cantrips banned, while others aren't? (I know they have "half-answered" this, but it still begs the question as to what they accept for power level)
Then, you have the entire Reprint/Affordability issue;
Why does Wizards consistently not push Modern playable cards in Standard formats?
Why does Wizards print so many pro-active cards, and nothing ever reactive to help control?
On this entire perspective, Wizards needs to understand they are being analyzed by a higher group of intellectuals who are emotionally motivated. They have sucked in the past 8 years from their digital products to their creation and endorsed vision of the Modern format. Without any answers or the very few they provide, this community boils longer and longer. People are leaving the game, definitely not in droves, but it shows in their desperation of the endless swarm of products where Wizards is simply saying "More" instead of "Better"
@Lantern I find it really interesting that you refer to Jund as a "polieman" deck. Twin was thought of as such a deck, and wasn't that one of the reasons Wizards cited for it being banned? I just find it odd that we constantly define a deck as what's keeping the format fair.
My two cents on the mass of fast-kill, not-quite-combo (like Infect and Death's Shadow) and then the non-interactive combo (such as Ad Nauseum and Grishoalbrand) is that they are fine where they are. If the format was truly unhealthy, there would be players building decks specifically aimed at beating them. The biggest problem with my own logic is two of the decks mentioned are creature-based combo and the others are spell-based. How one would answer both with the same deck isn't clear to me yet, but none of these decks are dominating the metagame. I feel we need to accept their presence in Modern and accept that some decks just won't beat them, just like how every other deck has good and bad matchups.
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This could just be from my personal experience, but it feels like there is just more threats than answers and playing catch up with a control deck is just an uphill battle. Sure, you can create inevitability if you slow the clock down enough, but I digress. Mana Leak is a great counter, but all the major threats are super fast and can easily get out of range mid-game and late. I don't know how to give control more viable tools and NOT make it overpowered because I'm assuming Wizards hates cards that are catch all answers like counter spell, force of will, and daze, but I would like control decks to be more appealing and have a stronger demographic.
Apologies for the double post, but I missed this post somehow. We know Modern has what it takes for control to exist, but many are thinking in the traditional, almost Miracles sense of control -- counter everything. Modern has several viable control decks, but more non-traditional. Jeskai Nahiri is probably the only real tier 1 archetype (which probably shoots down my whole argument), but there are tons of tier 2/3 control decks that do very well. Mono U-Tron, UW Gifts Tron, UW Control, Skred Red, Grixis Control, Esper Control, Lantern Control. Those are all incredibly viable. We need to expand our scope of the definition of control and see what fits the bill.
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I'll start this thread off, hopefully we can point this thread into a healthy direction.
I honestly feel there is one glaring problem with modern, and thats it. There arent enough main deck powerful answer cards. Most of the ones that exist, exist in jund, which is why we have a "police man" midrange deck, and thats it. I feel there should be more than just these few cards like abrupt decay. Commands were a great step in the right direction.
I think that is moderns problem. Not that blue is weak (since its not.) but a control deck doesnt really exist because it's card pool doesnt allow it to deal with enough threats. I don't want control to have the tools to beat everything, but leveraging it into a place where it can be made to have a 45-50% matchup against most of the field, 70% plus against combo, and 30% against aggro, seems perfectly doable to me, if it had the right carefully printed tools.
But this would mean it would need those tools from wizards giving them through standard.
But...control was given Nahiri. Nahiri is probably the most important single card to be added to modern in many sets. Nahiri allows for multiple control decks to have a reliable finisher, you don't even need blue. Just look at the results for the south dakota finals. Its a small tourney yeah but still proves my point. Multiple control deck approaches is amazing for modern because we haven't traditionally had too much diversity in the control genre.
A control deck performs well in Modern when it predicts the meta properly. You can't carbon-copy a control deck off mtgtop8 and expect to win a lot of matches. Tell me how Shouta Yasooka can walk up to a tournament of the best players in the world with a 75-card list that nobody has registered before, and regularly make the top 8? How does Guillaume Wafo-Tapa 5-0 several Modern leagues in a 2-week span with Esper? How does Tom Ross top 8 a Modern open after switching from Dredge to 8-rack, in a tournament where only 2 Dredge decks made top 32?
Notice a trend among the best players: they attack the format. The format doesn't lack answers, it lacks imaginative applications of the correct answers.
So all it requires to make control work in modern is to be one of the best players in the world and to have access to a wide variety of decks that fall under the "control" umbrella?
Ross could take a pile of KLD draft chaff and somehow still top8 an open, Wafo Tapa has played control for years and is in the hall of fame for a reason. If it takes a player of this level to make control make, that's probably a good indicator that control could need some help.
8rack and Esper Control overlap very little in cards outside of a number of swamps. Having access to all (playable) cards in Modern to play control seems like a highly restrictive limitation. Minor adjustments should be par for the course, but changing from one suite of 75 to wholly different 75 for the next week is not possible for most players.
And don't forget that at the last GP Wafo-Tapa played he had an abysmal 6-5 overall record with the esper control list he had been using to get all those 5-0 dailies. Since then he has switched to a heavy draw go Jeskai control list.
Modern is largely fine, or at least a hell of a lot better than you could be led to believe from some articles written by major sites.
That said I would like the format to have a couple more policing decks to help balance out the format a little more. We already have the shells of a lot of these kinds decks but many of the have fail to reach the big times for extended periods, decks like Mardu Midrange/Control, Bant CoCo, UR Delver (excluding the TC period), Grixis Control, Esper Control, Grixis Delver, Knightfall and RUG Delver all have the capacity to step up as the next interactive deck outside of the BGx shell but they are all missing something to put them over. For some it is a threat, others an answer, and some just need more exposure.
I'm honestly not sure how the format would go about fixing this with the knowledge we already have. The banlist is close to tapped out at this point, and while there are reprints that might help the format (Pyrokinesis, Prohibit, Innocent Blood) WotC is shackled hugely by the standard design space, which I think is going to become an increasing big issue for the format. Another option moving forward is to make older cards modern legal through the masters series, and possibly even new cards designed for Modern by first printing them in a set like Conspiracy.
On the white needing help matter: White's problems go way deeper than just meta-percentage, it lacks a real identify outside of just being a support colour. There is only one card on the banlist which could come off and there isn't even much you could reprint to help it out.
White's issue is that Wizards decided to ban white's Tarmogoyf (Stoneforge Mystic) away at the beginning of the format's life so white doesn't have a good threat without splashing. Think about it like this: what mono white creature is actually playable in modern? The only ones I can think of that is playable outside of a taxes/hatebears list is Restoration angel and kitchen finks which aren't early threats. (not trying to turn this into an argument of why mystic needs to be unbanned but just proving a point)
This could just be from my personal experience, but it feels like there is just more threats than answers and playing catch up with a control deck is just an uphill battle. Sure, you can create inevitability if you slow the clock down enough, but I digress. Mana Leak is a great counter, but all the major threats are super fast and can easily get out of range mid-game and late. I don't know how to give control more viable tools and NOT make it overpowered because I'm assuming Wizards hates cards that are catch all answers like counter spell, force of will, and daze, but I would like control decks to be more appealing and have a stronger demographic.
Apologies for the double post, but I missed this post somehow. We know Modern has what it takes for control to exist, but many are thinking in the traditional, almost Miracles sense of control -- counter everything. Modern has several viable control decks, but more non-traditional. Jeskai Nahiri is probably the only real tier 1 archetype (which probably shoots down my whole argument), but there are tons of tier 2/3 control decks that do very well. Mono U-Tron, UW Gifts Tron, UW Control, Skred Red, Grixis Control, Esper Control, Lantern Control. Those are all incredibly viable. We need to expand our scope of the definition of control and see what fits the bill.
Control is okay in modern. The issue is that you have to REALLY know how to metagame the deck to do well consistently. And by that I mean you have to know what cards to change in your 75 each week to tool it better against what you are expecting from the meta that you are going to fight. The reason why I honestly think that jeskai/grixis/uw/esper aren't "tier 1" is because you have to change a lot of the 75 out on a week to week basis to do consistently well. Many people aren't extremely practiced with the decks to know how to do that. Wafo proves this whenever he plays a draw go version of one of these decks.
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On mtgsalvation people don't want to discuss ideas, so I give people something else to discuss: my controversial opinions.
I think that part of people's struggle with control is that many players want a control deck that wins on power level, not outplay. That's a problem because if the control deck is substantitively more powerful, it's too good. Decks like Miracles are fair because the control shell has a strong factor of outplay on both sides, each player makes decisions each turn that matter. "Ideal" Miracles play might be oppressive, but isn't functionally attainable.
What modern control players need to accept is the inclusion of high skill-cap cards that they can abuse their familiarity with over opponents. Decks like Lantern Control are prime examples of this: the lantern control player is leveraging a knowledge of each deck, and often needs to take educated risks, or bluff out opponents.
I am fully confident that cards like Trinisphere, and Gifts Ungiven, or decks like Enchantress Prison or Ascendancy Control/combo have a lot of viable design space, but that the tendency to pick up a netdeck, and succeed without several weeks of trial and tweaking to fit personal style and local metagame hurts their percieved viability.
Modern is in a pretty good spot right now. Linear decks (combo, aggro) with high skill floors make the format semi-easy to get into (game-play wise). I'm not saying the decks are simple to play - they have a lot of nuance. However, even a new pilot can figure out to do the most direct proactive plan with these decks, and the optimal lines are only marginally better than the obvious ones in most cases.
Midrange and control decks in the format are much tougher to play. These decks are better in the hands of skilled pilots and format connoisseurs. Being able to adjust your deck to the metagame is the first test with these decks - much more important to accurately identify the field than with combo or aggro. The skill floor is relatively low - there are plenty of mistakes to be made when reacting to opposing strategies in the midrange/control v aggro/combo matchups. New players will have a hard time identifying key turns and spells, and lose more games that were technically winnable as a result. However, the ceiling of skill is still about as high as aggro/combo (specific deck depending of course).
I think it's nice that we have a set of decks that are fairly easy to pick up and pilot reasonably. I also think it's nice to have more skill intensive options that reward players for their format expertise.
One part of the disparity in which decks see play is certainly player preference. At least personally, my experience has been that players will play the archtypes they like. I would submit that the reason aggro sees so much more play is that it is simply the preferred playstyle by a significant enough section of the playerbase to cause most of the warping we see in the meta towards aggro.
In short, the format is more aggro based because that's what players want. Those who want to play other decks do so, although they are usually harder to learn to pilot at a similar level.
We could always use more cards to build this or that strategy up an extra few % points. That is not going to change - perfect balance is a limit that we can never actually reach.
TL;DR: Modern is fun and people play what they want (for the most part). No significant issues, just minor deficiencies at worst.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
I think Shmanka hit the nail on the head with a lot of things.
I don't really find Modern all that healthy or enjoyable at the moment. I feel Modern peaked in 2015 and the Eldrazi Winter/Pro Tour fiasco left a scar the
player base that will never fully heal.
Now a devote more of my free time in other hobbies and activities knowing my cards will still be here if I decide to comeback.
People are leaving the game, definitely not in droves, but it shows in their desperation of the endless swarm of products where Wizards is simply saying "More" instead of "Better"
Do you have a source for people leaving? Or are we just talking about anecdotal "my buddy said he doesn't like Modern anymore so he quit" kinda stories?
People leave and join all the time. I'm assuming that Shmanka means that there is some larger exodus of Modern players, which is why I'd like to see a source.
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Modern URW Control WBG Abzan GRW Burn
EDH GR Rosheen Meanderer
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As such, the Mods and I have talked it over, and we are opening this thread as a trial. If it is successful we will modify the rules as needed and open a new thread in one week. Banlist, reprints, meta shares, recent preformance, anything that has to do with the MODERN FORMAT is allowed here.
However, we will strictly mod these few rules:
1. No flaming, or trolling. You MUST keep the conversation on the cards not the users.
2. No spamming or baiting. Your post must actually have reasons to back out your post, and quality content. You must also not post things that will irritate users.
3. No format bashing. If you don't like modern, thats fine, but explain why and be optimistic.
The mod team will enforce these few rules. Please make this a place where people are unafraid to post their thoughts. Use the report button should you think someone is breaking these rules.
I honestly feel there is one glaring problem with modern, and thats it. There arent enough main deck powerful answer cards. Most of the ones that exist, exist in jund, which is why we have a "police man" midrange deck, and thats it. I feel there should be more than just these few cards like abrupt decay. Commands were a great step in the right direction.
I think that is moderns problem. Not that blue is weak (since its not.) but a control deck doesnt really exist because it's card pool doesnt allow it to deal with enough threats. I don't want control to have the tools to beat everything, but leveraging it into a place where it can be made to have a 45-50% matchup against most of the field, 70% plus against combo, and 30% against aggro, seems perfectly doable to me, if it had the right carefully printed tools.
But this would mean it would need those tools from wizards giving them through standard.
Modern is in a great place right now, and heavily rewards people for flexible sidebosrd plans and expertising in 1-2 decks. you can reasonably pilot any strategy to reasonable success with skill and a little luck, granted some strategies will be a but more successful but this is always true for every format
However, a few minor problems are apparent, the first of all being the recent weakness in the "fair" decks. Sure, BGx is still fine, but the URx/UWx have been falling off. Something should be done here, but something small. URx can still be successful, giving it a sledgehammer right now would allow it to smash the format to pieces.
More of a minor note, i feel modern has reached a critical mass of "draw sideboard hate, be able to race me, or lose" decks. Between tron, valakut, bogles, affinity, living end, lantern, and now dredge, theres quite a few decks that fall under this category. Most of them dont take up enough of the meta to make a real impact, so it bsrely influences the feel of modern as a whole, and most games are still winnable on either side pre board, but this critical mass seems to grow each new set and something will have to be done here as well eventually
Edit: one final note, if wizards does not announce that they will begin funneling new cards into modern via mm17, i will lose all faith that they even care about fixing the format and we are stuck with ehat we got
UWRjeskai nahiri UWR
UBRgrixis titi UBR
UBRgrixis delverUBR
UR ur kikimite UR
EDH
RUG Riku of Two Reflections RUG
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose UBR
UBRGYidris, Maelstrom Wielder UBRG
UBRJeleva, Nephalia's ScourgeUBR
RGTron
UGInfect
URStorm
WUBRAd Nauseam
BRGrishoalbrand
URGScapeshift
WBGAbzan Company
WUBRGAmulet Titan
BRGLiving End
WGBogles
What if archetypes other than Aggro were viable?
If you enjoy linear or aggro then obviously you are going to enjoy Modern but others meant not. Right now there's not much incentive to play fair when you don't have too.
@bfrie: Adding much needed cards through a limited print run set such as MM17 will not help the problem.
how so? how would adding stuff like innocent blood into modern not help the problem?
UWRjeskai nahiri UWR
UBRgrixis titi UBR
UBRgrixis delverUBR
UR ur kikimite UR
EDH
RUG Riku of Two Reflections RUG
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose UBR
UBRGYidris, Maelstrom Wielder UBRG
UBRJeleva, Nephalia's ScourgeUBR
Im sorry, i meant reprints not new prints. There are more than enougb innocent bloods to satisfy demand
UWRjeskai nahiri UWR
UBRgrixis titi UBR
UBRgrixis delverUBR
UR ur kikimite UR
EDH
RUG Riku of Two Reflections RUG
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose UBR
UBRGYidris, Maelstrom Wielder UBRG
UBRJeleva, Nephalia's ScourgeUBR
A control deck performs well in Modern when it predicts the meta properly. You can't carbon-copy a control deck off mtgtop8 and expect to win a lot of matches. Tell me how Shouta Yasooka can walk up to a tournament of the best players in the world with a 75-card list that nobody has registered before, and regularly make the top 8? How does Guillaume Wafo-Tapa 5-0 several Modern leagues in a 2-week span with Esper? How does Tom Ross top 8 a Modern open after switching from Dredge to 8-rack, in a tournament where only 2 Dredge decks made top 32?
Notice a trend among the best players: they attack the format. The format doesn't lack answers, it lacks imaginative applications of the correct answers.
Besides, control is oppressive when its tools are too powerful. How many years of power creep did it take the non-blue colors of Magic to seriously catch up to blue in Legacy?
Sure, they aren't mono-white, but fish aside, no colour is really represented in a mono- or two-colour deck.
And white even is, in Death'n Taxes, which is a super varied strategy in itself, between WB, W, WG, WBC, etc.
So.. what glaring issues do you see there, or rather, what would want for White?
WhiteWeenie tier 1?
(Not saying White doesn't need help, it kinda is "Path and 1W sideboard enchantments".colour ^^ )
Standard infinite combos giving you a headache and the opponent always has Force of Will?
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That said I would like the format to have a couple more policing decks to help balance out the format a little more. We already have the shells of a lot of these kinds decks but many of the have fail to reach the big times for extended periods, decks like Mardu Midrange/Control, Bant CoCo, UR Delver (excluding the TC period), Grixis Control, Esper Control, Grixis Delver, Knightfall and RUG Delver all have the capacity to step up as the next interactive deck outside of the BGx shell but they are all missing something to put them over. For some it is a threat, others an answer, and some just need more exposure.
I'm honestly not sure how the format would go about fixing this with the knowledge we already have. The banlist is close to tapped out at this point, and while there are reprints that might help the format (Pyrokinesis, Prohibit, Innocent Blood) WotC is shackled hugely by the standard design space, which I think is going to become an increasing big issue for the format. Another option moving forward is to make older cards modern legal through the masters series, and possibly even new cards designed for Modern by first printing them in a set like Conspiracy.
On the white needing help matter: White's problems go way deeper than just meta-percentage, it lacks a real identify outside of just being a support colour. There is only one card on the banlist which could come off and there isn't even much you could reprint to help it out.
In the yard: RUG Delver, Kiki-Chord, Grixis Twin, Mardu Control, Smallpox, Jeskai Control, Jeskai Delver, Assault Loam, Elves, Deathcloud, Eggs, Storm
I believe what you are explaining is the functional problems of Modern within every match on the microscale, personally I feel there is a large Macro problem with Wizards, and not just Modern.
I've posted about this before, the PR/Communications are horrible, their handling of the Modern format has been horrible, and their philosophy of the Modern format changes every 6 months. We only have clues to piece together any information whatsoever, and have to draw conclusions based on data from secondary websites instead of their official distorted source. It's difficult not to get mad at this company at every possible opportunity. Regarding the Modern banned list specifically just excruciatingly shows my points above;
Why is Blazing Shoal banned, and Become Immense not?
Why are all the fair cards on the Modern banned list, when 4+ decks exist in the format that can kill you before the fair cards are relevant?
Why are some cantrips banned, while others aren't? (I know they have "half-answered" this, but it still begs the question as to what they accept for power level)
Then, you have the entire Reprint/Affordability issue;
Why does Wizards consistently not push Modern playable cards in Standard formats?
Why does Wizards print so many pro-active cards, and nothing ever reactive to help control?
On this entire perspective, Wizards needs to understand they are being analyzed by a higher group of intellectuals who are emotionally motivated. They have sucked in the past 8 years from their digital products to their creation and endorsed vision of the Modern format. Without any answers or the very few they provide, this community boils longer and longer. People are leaving the game, definitely not in droves, but it shows in their desperation of the endless swarm of products where Wizards is simply saying "More" instead of "Better"
My two cents on the mass of fast-kill, not-quite-combo (like Infect and Death's Shadow) and then the non-interactive combo (such as Ad Nauseum and Grishoalbrand) is that they are fine where they are. If the format was truly unhealthy, there would be players building decks specifically aimed at beating them. The biggest problem with my own logic is two of the decks mentioned are creature-based combo and the others are spell-based. How one would answer both with the same deck isn't clear to me yet, but none of these decks are dominating the metagame. I feel we need to accept their presence in Modern and accept that some decks just won't beat them, just like how every other deck has good and bad matchups.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
White's issue is that Wizards decided to ban white's Tarmogoyf (Stoneforge Mystic) away at the beginning of the format's life so white doesn't have a good threat without splashing. Think about it like this: what mono white creature is actually playable in modern? The only ones I can think of that is playable outside of a taxes/hatebears list is Restoration angel and kitchen finks which aren't early threats. (not trying to turn this into an argument of why mystic needs to be unbanned but just proving a point)
Decks I'm playing in Modern right now:
URB Grixis Reveler (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-grixis-reveler/)
UB Faeries (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/ub-fae-2/)
UW Azorious Control (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-ojutai-control-2/)
Control is okay in modern. The issue is that you have to REALLY know how to metagame the deck to do well consistently. And by that I mean you have to know what cards to change in your 75 each week to tool it better against what you are expecting from the meta that you are going to fight. The reason why I honestly think that jeskai/grixis/uw/esper aren't "tier 1" is because you have to change a lot of the 75 out on a week to week basis to do consistently well. Many people aren't extremely practiced with the decks to know how to do that. Wafo proves this whenever he plays a draw go version of one of these decks.
Decks I'm playing in Modern right now:
URB Grixis Reveler (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-grixis-reveler/)
UB Faeries (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/ub-fae-2/)
UW Azorious Control (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-ojutai-control-2/)
What modern control players need to accept is the inclusion of high skill-cap cards that they can abuse their familiarity with over opponents. Decks like Lantern Control are prime examples of this: the lantern control player is leveraging a knowledge of each deck, and often needs to take educated risks, or bluff out opponents.
I am fully confident that cards like Trinisphere, and Gifts Ungiven, or decks like Enchantress Prison or Ascendancy Control/combo have a lot of viable design space, but that the tendency to pick up a netdeck, and succeed without several weeks of trial and tweaking to fit personal style and local metagame hurts their percieved viability.
Modern is in a pretty good spot right now. Linear decks (combo, aggro) with high skill floors make the format semi-easy to get into (game-play wise). I'm not saying the decks are simple to play - they have a lot of nuance. However, even a new pilot can figure out to do the most direct proactive plan with these decks, and the optimal lines are only marginally better than the obvious ones in most cases.
Midrange and control decks in the format are much tougher to play. These decks are better in the hands of skilled pilots and format connoisseurs. Being able to adjust your deck to the metagame is the first test with these decks - much more important to accurately identify the field than with combo or aggro. The skill floor is relatively low - there are plenty of mistakes to be made when reacting to opposing strategies in the midrange/control v aggro/combo matchups. New players will have a hard time identifying key turns and spells, and lose more games that were technically winnable as a result. However, the ceiling of skill is still about as high as aggro/combo (specific deck depending of course).
I think it's nice that we have a set of decks that are fairly easy to pick up and pilot reasonably. I also think it's nice to have more skill intensive options that reward players for their format expertise.
One part of the disparity in which decks see play is certainly player preference. At least personally, my experience has been that players will play the archtypes they like. I would submit that the reason aggro sees so much more play is that it is simply the preferred playstyle by a significant enough section of the playerbase to cause most of the warping we see in the meta towards aggro.
In short, the format is more aggro based because that's what players want. Those who want to play other decks do so, although they are usually harder to learn to pilot at a similar level.
We could always use more cards to build this or that strategy up an extra few % points. That is not going to change - perfect balance is a limit that we can never actually reach.
TL;DR: Modern is fun and people play what they want (for the most part). No significant issues, just minor deficiencies at worst.
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
I don't really find Modern all that healthy or enjoyable at the moment. I feel Modern peaked in 2015 and the Eldrazi Winter/Pro Tour fiasco left a scar the
player base that will never fully heal.
Now a devote more of my free time in other hobbies and activities knowing my cards will still be here if I decide to comeback.
Do you have a source for people leaving? Or are we just talking about anecdotal "my buddy said he doesn't like Modern anymore so he quit" kinda stories?
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer