A Modern product, something similar as Battlebond as far as I have understood it.
Greetings,
Kathal
Not to mention the fact that they said (iirc) that this was something never tried before, right? I definitely took their statements as a product, not just an event.
Well, the new Mulligan rule has never been tried before, and it is something that dates back about 2 years since it was first mentioned in the design team as we are given to understand. So it combines the modern announcement with something new.
A Modern product, something similar as Battlebond as far as I have understood it.
Greetings,
Kathal
Not to mention the fact that they said (iirc) that this was something never tried before, right? I definitely took their statements as a product, not just an event.
Well, the new Mulligan rule has never been tried before, and it is something that dates back about 2 years since it was first mentioned in the design team as we are given to understand. So it combines the modern announcement with something new.
Yea, definitely true. Could be. I guess we wait and see and hope that it's something cool. In regards to the mulligans though, I personally like the idea and I'm excited to see what changes.
This was attempting to do something similar to the scry mulligan we used at Pro Tour Magic Origins, but in a way that was more powerful. Basically, each time you mulligan you draw up to seven, but get rid of cards that you can't use (down to the appropriate smaller hand size per mulligan), thereby increasing the chances that you will have a reasonable hand.
What we liked: This seemed pretty close to right power level for Limited, but had some problems. You generally ended up shuffling your most expensive card back, but if it wasn't obvious, then the decision on which to shuffle back was pretty hard—and made this take a lot longer than a regular mulligan.
What we didn't like: This mulligan was way too strong in Constructed, and encouraged big changes in deck building. Perhaps the most notable thing was in Modern and Eternal formats, where sideboard hate got a lot stronger since you could shuffle extra copies back into your decks. Similarly, combo decks got a huge advantage since they could mulligan away possibly useless cards. In one of our biggest rules violations for changing the mulligan rule, it clearly changed the parameters for deck building, and would have a profound impact on how older formats played out.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Current Decks:
Modern
Modern Warp / UR Control / UR Storm / Naya Breachshift / ElectroBalance
Legacy
Solidarity / Lands / Sneak and Show / Grixis Delver / Reanimator / Belcher / Storm / Dredge
It looks like the new mulligan rule will improve the odds, increasing the chance of seeing 3 specific cards, down to a mull 4, from 9.6% odds to 17.5%.
My stance is that I love the idea of it helping ME find my cards, because I generally play mostly fair/interactive decks. However it also disproportionately helps degenerate combo find THEIR stuff too. I expect a sharp rise in stuff like Grishoalbrand or Ad Nauseam.
I'm pretty late to comment on the new mulligan rules but I don't think I like the rules they'll be trying. I can see it being good for combo decks to sculpt a good hand. Although I guess it still punishes going too far down into mulligans still
It deliberates about the winners, losers, and net-neutrals of the new rule, depending on how bad they need a given card or combination and how hatable they are. Colorless Eldrazi Stompy looks like a big winner here.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
Every deck will like it imo. I feels like a better way to ensure less mulls to oblivion. People worry way too much about mulligans to certain cards, and I still feel like any decent players are going to keep keep able hands.
People will still keep good hands but consider the value of a system like this for Tron versus Jund. Tron can keep a specific 4 card hand and win fairly easily. Jund however is still going to need more of everything, it is a value deck and wins by using 1 for 1 interaction while using cards that create value.
On the opposite side is that it makes it easier to find hate and in a silver bullet format that is a big deal. This type of system just makes things even more lopsided with g1 going to combo decks more often with SB games going to their opponent more or just who wins the die roll.
I would be less concerned if WOTC didn't seem to flip flop all the darn time these days. So its hard to trust anything they say today cause its like they forget the next day.
But you guys have made good points that Modern is still strong.
As for just porting Modern into Arena, I don't think the actual cards would be the issue since apparently they have a scan system that does all the work. I would say the issue is more adding all the bells and whistles that cards with higher rarity currently get in the Modern System. Plus dialogue for all the Walkers and stuff like that. Granted I suppose every walker from the same characters can just use the same lines.
I don't think they'll bother porting Modern to Arena. They'll do a Hearthstone style format with all the cards that have rotated out.
We know it is extremely likely they will do one or the other.
Wizards needs some kind of non-rotating format on Arena to preserve card value and long-term interest. It's just a question of what format, and the choices are realistically:
1. Modern
2. Arena-non-rotating that slowly phases into Modern as more sets are added
3. Arena non-rotating with no new sets added beyond a certain point
Given the apparent success of Arena, it seems unlikely that Wizards wouldn't want to maximize the platform as a one stop shop for all of its Magic experience. Phasing in Modern does just that over the long term.
It's already the most popular format by most metrics we have available, and it seems foolish to reinvent the wheel. They failed to do a similar reinvention literally last year with Brawl as an offshoot of Commander and Standard. Brawl seems to have failed so spectacularly they pulled basically all event support. If that is any indicator, the safer bet for Wizards would just be going with the proven non-rotating format of Modern. Then again, Wizards decided to try Brawl in the first place when the community instantly spotted it was a bad idea, so I wouldn't entirely put it past Wizards to make a similar decision/mistake again. Given the Modern upside and the continued 2019 Modern support, however, I'd still lean towards Modern being the final product.
Is it it really likely that they will add the Modern cardpool to Arena?
It must be a hell of a lot of work to do so: what is the cost/benefit-analysis of such an undertaking, particularly when you factor in that whatever new booster products they put on the market will compete with their current standard offering?
How long is this going to take? There are 62 sets in Modern. 10 sets a year is 6 years before you have all of Modern? Would they be willing to run this weird "arena-modern" for so long?
How are people going to switch decks? If you have Jund, and whant to swap to Izzet Phoenix, with no trading and no bots, that's going to be a lot of wildcards.
Now, I could see them building a "Sub-modern" perhaps, where they release a few Masters Editions like products to get the Modern Staples out there, but not every unique card in Modern. I'm not sure how many unique cards it would take, to for example get 90% of the cards for 90% of the most played decks in the format, but perhaps that's something they could do. That would allow people to play "Modern", but not to brew modern.
I think it much more likely that they create a new non-rotating format based on the sets already on Arena.
I would be less concerned if WOTC didn't seem to flip flop all the darn time these days. So its hard to trust anything they say today cause its like they forget the next day.
But you guys have made good points that Modern is still strong.
As for just porting Modern into Arena, I don't think the actual cards would be the issue since apparently they have a scan system that does all the work. I would say the issue is more adding all the bells and whistles that cards with higher rarity currently get in the Modern System. Plus dialogue for all the Walkers and stuff like that. Granted I suppose every walker from the same characters can just use the same lines.
I don't think they'll bother porting Modern to Arena. They'll do a Hearthstone style format with all the cards that have rotated out.
We know it is extremely likely they will do one or the other.
Wizards needs some kind of non-rotating format on Arena to preserve card value and long-term interest. It's just a question of what format, and the choices are realistically:
1. Modern
2. Arena-non-rotating that slowly phases into Modern as more sets are added
3. Arena non-rotating with no new sets added beyond a certain point
Given the apparent success of Arena, it seems unlikely that Wizards wouldn't want to maximize the platform as a one stop shop for all of its Magic experience. Phasing in Modern does just that over the long term.
It's already the most popular format by most metrics we have available, and it seems foolish to reinvent the wheel. They failed to do a similar reinvention literally last year with Brawl as an offshoot of Commander and Standard. Brawl seems to have failed so spectacularly they pulled basically all event support. If that is any indicator, the safer bet for Wizards would just be going with the proven non-rotating format of Modern. Then again, Wizards decided to try Brawl in the first place when the community instantly spotted it was a bad idea, so I wouldn't entirely put it past Wizards to make a similar decision/mistake again. Given the Modern upside and the continued 2019 Modern support, however, I'd still lean towards Modern being the final product.
Is it it really likely that they will add the Modern cardpool to Arena?
It must be a hell of a lot of work to do so: what is the cost/benefit-analysis of such an undertaking, particularly when you factor in that whatever new booster products they put on the market will compete with their current standard offering?
How long is this going to take? There are 62 sets in Modern. 10 sets a year is 6 years before you have all of Modern? Would they be willing to run this weird "arena-modern" for so long?
How are people going to switch decks? If you have Jund, and whant to swap to Izzet Phoenix, with no trading and no bots, that's going to be a lot of wildcards.
Now, I could see them building a "Sub-modern" perhaps, where they release a few Masters Editions like products to get the Modern Staples out there, but not every unique card in Modern. I'm not sure how many unique cards it would take, to for example get 90% of the cards for 90% of the most played decks in the format, but perhaps that's something they could do. That would allow people to play "Modern", but not to brew modern.
I think it much more likely that they create a new non-rotating format based on the sets already on Arena.
Most of those barriers shouldn't matter. The Arena rules framework is supposedly quite robust, so adding old cards wouldn't be too hard. The only coding barrier there would be custom animations, which aren't required for a set rollout. High wild card cost doesn't matter either, because that probably encourages people to spend more money and/or time on the product, which helps the Hasbro bottom line.
The only real potential barrier you mention is the notion that Modern might compete with Standard in a way that makes Standard and/or Arena as a whole less profitable. Wizards may or may not believe that, and may or may not have metrics to support that theory. That said, I doubt that effect is real or relevant. We know that Arena will have some kind of non-rotating format. The Arena team already said so in multiple published sources. It's just a question of which format. If true Modern competes with Standard, so too would Arena Modern for similar reasons (no rotation, deck variety, etc.). The only way Arena Modern wouldn't compete with Standard under that paradigm is if Wizards made a deliberately worse format, which requires us to believe in a level of conspiracy theorizing we simply can't prove. It's much more likely that Wizards would want their Arena Modern format to be successful both digitally and in paper: bad Brawl formats don't sell anything because they die out fast. Modern is already successful, so it feels more sensible to go for the proven success than to gamble on something new that directly competes with the proven success.
The likeliest product will be an Arena Modern with all legal sets, and then a gradual rollout of older sets over time. This would mean a changing Arena Modern landscape until all the old stuff got added, but would keep players buying in as more exciting product got released. Can you imagine all the draft events as those older sets got released? People would put a lot of money and time into that.
The Arena rules framework is supposedly quite robust, so adding old cards wouldn't be too hard.
Do you have a source for this, particularly when pertaining to older sets? I have heard several people describing that it would actually be very hard, particularly for certain "weird" old cards.
The only real potential barrier you mention is the notion that Modern might compete with Standard
I didn't just mean that the format would compete with standard, but also that boosters on sale will comparecompete with standard boosters on sale. If they do the slow rollout, then in a year or whatever you will have the 2020 fall set competing with Mirrodin-Darksteel as an example. If they just keep the existing card-pool, this won't be an issue. I guess, when I think about it, it doesn't really have to be an issue. Due to the whole wildcards-economy, there isn't an issue of having to have a certain amount of boosters opened to have sufficient card supply.
I guess I hope you are right, for the good of Modern, even though I dislike Arena somewhat myself (it is flashy, fast paced, and has animations).
I don't see how having non-rotating formats in Arena whether they be Modern, Legacy or some sort of new beast would be bad for arena? There's players around that simply won't touch standard no matter how good it is for whatever reasons. I know for sure that I wouldn't be playing Magic if standard and limited were the only formats available to play.
Having Modern in Arena would give certain groups of people reason to spend money on Arena as opposed to none at all. It's a segment that's there to be captured. With regards to taking away players from standard, the ball is in the design team's court, to ensure that the standard format is good enough like it is currently to keep players interested in it. Because if it isn't, they're going to be losing players anyway.
The only reason I can think of right now for not having Modern on arena would be that WOTC thinks the profit from capturing this segment isn't worth the effort/cost. Maybe the segment isn't large enough to matter, or if its a drain on resources for more profitable ventures etc.
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
I think the real barrier to ever having Modern in Arena is: how do you GET the cards? Without the ability to trade or buy cards, the only options are to OPEN hundreds of packs in search of that Snapcaster playset, or use dedicated wildcards such that 99% of the cards coded will never be crafted or used. One is an expensive waste of time for players, the other is an expensive waste of time for devs. Seems like a lose-lose all around.
I think the real barrier to ever having Modern in Arena is: how do you GET the cards? Without the ability to trade or buy cards, the only options are to OPEN hundreds of packs in search of that Snapcaster playset, or use dedicated wildcards such that 99% of the cards coded will never be crafted or used. One is an expensive waste of time for players, the other is an expensive waste of time for devs. Seems like a lose-lose all around.
Buying enough boosters to have enough wildcards for multiple modern decks doesn't really sound like a lose situation for Wizards to me. On the contrary, you are not handing out free booster packs of whatever the modern product will be so really,while people can play F2P Standard, it will be almost impossible to play F2P modern.
I think the real barrier to ever having Modern in Arena is: how do you GET the cards? Without the ability to trade or buy cards, the only options are to OPEN hundreds of packs in search of that Snapcaster playset, or use dedicated wildcards such that 99% of the cards coded will never be crafted or used. One is an expensive waste of time for players, the other is an expensive waste of time for devs. Seems like a lose-lose all around.
Buying enough boosters to have enough wildcards for multiple modern decks doesn't really sound like a lose situation for Wizards to me. On the contrary, you are not handing out free booster packs of whatever the modern product will be so really,while people can play F2P Standard, it will be almost impossible to play F2P modern.
What I mean is that both situations have someone losing. And both losses are fairly bad for that side. There's no good way to implement this without a complete overhaul of their economy or someone drastically being screwed over.
I mean this is wizards we are talking about, they change their mind every three months at the flick of a hat. Whatever they decide to do modern wise for arena will probably be something completely different 6 months later
I think the real barrier to ever having Modern in Arena is: how do you GET the cards? Without the ability to trade or buy cards, the only options are to OPEN hundreds of packs in search of that Snapcaster playset, or use dedicated wildcards such that 99% of the cards coded will never be crafted or used. One is an expensive waste of time for players, the other is an expensive waste of time for devs. Seems like a lose-lose all around.
I think we might also consider that Wizards might not want to clutter the store page with 16+ years of old products. They clearly want Arena to push standard, so there might be a fear that focus could be taken away.
I think the real barrier to ever having Modern in Arena is: how do you GET the cards? Without the ability to trade or buy cards, the only options are to OPEN hundreds of packs in search of that Snapcaster playset, or use dedicated wildcards such that 99% of the cards coded will never be crafted or used. One is an expensive waste of time for players, the other is an expensive waste of time for devs. Seems like a lose-lose all around.
I think we might also consider that Wizards might not want to clutter the store page with 16+ years of old products. They clearly want Arena to push standard, so there might be a fear that focus could be taken away.
This is why I think that a "sub-Modern" is an avenue they might pursue, where Modern on Arena are only built up of cards found in a few Masters sets. Due to the way Arena works, there is no issue with "EV" of the packs, as no-ones expensive cards (real or virtual) will lose value.
I haven't looked into how many cards this would be though. Anyone done an estimate on how many cards are "really" in Modern? As an example, how many unique cards showed up in top64s at all GPS and SCG events in 2018?
I think though it wouldn't be as hard as you'd think to get this into arena. Assuming the coding/ruling system is as robust as WOTC has claimed it is really all that would be needed is a set akin to Masters Edition used to reprint vintage/legacy staples into MTGO.
The real question is, depending on what the new product is for Modern that they were supposed to announce. If this was a modern reprint set with some new cards, they could just port this over to arena. Honestly, if you thought you weren't going to have to buy your way into modern again with arena, then I don't know what you are expecting.
If they do a non-rotating format in Arena, they'll still have new players who enter the format with no access to sets that have rotated. In less than a year we will be losing Ixalan through Core 19. What will new players do to acquire those sets/cards and how is that different than full blown Modern?
Eventually the post-Modern Arena format will also balloon up and have to be addressed. Having a system in place now would build consumer confidence in the proposed format. Without the ability to go back in a couple years to get something like Teferi, how does anyone expect new players to get into the format? If a system is devised to support acquiring older cards, then why is Modern off the table for anything other than inputting some 12,000+ cards?
As far as pushing Standard, I think it's easy to incentivize the regular participation in standard. It's a digital economy, they can control everything except demand. They'll find a way to keep Standard a priority even if they bring Modern to the platform.
Interesting interpretation of the new Mulligan rule from Patrick Sullivan, which only really makes sense if he believes Modern will never make it to Arena:
The more troubling element of this is that it seems so dubious for older formats that one could only be confident in this path if you didn't really care about that impact. With Arena occupying an ever-growing share of the way Magic gets played, it makes some sense to reorganize around that philosophy. The Mythic Championship will be illuminating. But there is an ever-growing signal from Wizards of the Coast that formats that aren't available on Arena will be a lower and lower priority as time goes on, and this proposed mulligan change is some of the loudest signal sent so far.
Interesting interpretation of the new Mulligan rule from Patrick Sullivan, which only really makes sense if he believes Modern will never make it to Arena:
The more troubling element of this is that it seems so dubious for older formats that one could only be confident in this path if you didn't really care about that impact. With Arena occupying an ever-growing share of the way Magic gets played, it makes some sense to reorganize around that philosophy. The Mythic Championship will be illuminating. But there is an ever-growing signal from Wizards of the Coast that formats that aren't available on Arena will be a lower and lower priority as time goes on, and this proposed mulligan change is some of the loudest signal sent so far.
I suppose this is one interpretation, but it's a few levels of speculation and conspiracies ahead of the a tangible, concrete counterpoint: they are literally trying the rule at a Modern MC. I would be much more concerned if they hand't even announced a Modern MC yet, or were trying the rule on Arena, in Standard, or in a non-Modern venue. But they chose to try it at a Modern version of their biggest event, and they chose to make that event Modern in the first place. The second MC ever (new terminology, not the old PTs) will be Modern, and the first live pilot of the rule will also be Modern. Those are immediate signs of Modern health and long-term support, and I think that outweighs the speculative stretch it takes to believe Sullivan's interpretation.
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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
Yea, definitely true. Could be. I guess we wait and see and hope that it's something cool. In regards to the mulligans though, I personally like the idea and I'm excited to see what changes.
Modern Warp / UR Control / UR Storm / Naya Breachshift / ElectroBalance
Solidarity / Lands / Sneak and Show / Grixis Delver / Reanimator / Belcher / Storm / Dredge
https://i.redd.it/64afoskm14i21.png
It looks like the new mulligan rule will improve the odds, increasing the chance of seeing 3 specific cards, down to a mull 4, from 9.6% odds to 17.5%.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
It deliberates about the winners, losers, and net-neutrals of the new rule, depending on how bad they need a given card or combination and how hatable they are. Colorless Eldrazi Stompy looks like a big winner here.
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
Combo decks would probably like it.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
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On the opposite side is that it makes it easier to find hate and in a silver bullet format that is a big deal. This type of system just makes things even more lopsided with g1 going to combo decks more often with SB games going to their opponent more or just who wins the die roll.
Is it it really likely that they will add the Modern cardpool to Arena?
Now, I could see them building a "Sub-modern" perhaps, where they release a few Masters Editions like products to get the Modern Staples out there, but not every unique card in Modern. I'm not sure how many unique cards it would take, to for example get 90% of the cards for 90% of the most played decks in the format, but perhaps that's something they could do. That would allow people to play "Modern", but not to brew modern.
I think it much more likely that they create a new non-rotating format based on the sets already on Arena.
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
Most of those barriers shouldn't matter. The Arena rules framework is supposedly quite robust, so adding old cards wouldn't be too hard. The only coding barrier there would be custom animations, which aren't required for a set rollout. High wild card cost doesn't matter either, because that probably encourages people to spend more money and/or time on the product, which helps the Hasbro bottom line.
The only real potential barrier you mention is the notion that Modern might compete with Standard in a way that makes Standard and/or Arena as a whole less profitable. Wizards may or may not believe that, and may or may not have metrics to support that theory. That said, I doubt that effect is real or relevant. We know that Arena will have some kind of non-rotating format. The Arena team already said so in multiple published sources. It's just a question of which format. If true Modern competes with Standard, so too would Arena Modern for similar reasons (no rotation, deck variety, etc.). The only way Arena Modern wouldn't compete with Standard under that paradigm is if Wizards made a deliberately worse format, which requires us to believe in a level of conspiracy theorizing we simply can't prove. It's much more likely that Wizards would want their Arena Modern format to be successful both digitally and in paper: bad Brawl formats don't sell anything because they die out fast. Modern is already successful, so it feels more sensible to go for the proven success than to gamble on something new that directly competes with the proven success.
The likeliest product will be an Arena Modern with all legal sets, and then a gradual rollout of older sets over time. This would mean a changing Arena Modern landscape until all the old stuff got added, but would keep players buying in as more exciting product got released. Can you imagine all the draft events as those older sets got released? People would put a lot of money and time into that.
Do you have a source for this, particularly when pertaining to older sets? I have heard several people describing that it would actually be very hard, particularly for certain "weird" old cards.
I didn't just mean that the format would compete with standard, but also that boosters on sale will
comparecompete with standard boosters on sale. If they do the slow rollout, then in a year or whatever you will have the 2020 fall set competing with Mirrodin-Darksteel as an example. If they just keep the existing card-pool, this won't be an issue. I guess, when I think about it, it doesn't really have to be an issue. Due to the whole wildcards-economy, there isn't an issue of having to have a certain amount of boosters opened to have sufficient card supply.I guess I hope you are right, for the good of Modern, even though I dislike Arena somewhat myself (it is flashy, fast paced, and has animations).
Edit: Mistake
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
Having Modern in Arena would give certain groups of people reason to spend money on Arena as opposed to none at all. It's a segment that's there to be captured. With regards to taking away players from standard, the ball is in the design team's court, to ensure that the standard format is good enough like it is currently to keep players interested in it. Because if it isn't, they're going to be losing players anyway.
The only reason I can think of right now for not having Modern on arena would be that WOTC thinks the profit from capturing this segment isn't worth the effort/cost. Maybe the segment isn't large enough to matter, or if its a drain on resources for more profitable ventures etc.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
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
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I think we might also consider that Wizards might not want to clutter the store page with 16+ years of old products. They clearly want Arena to push standard, so there might be a fear that focus could be taken away.
This is why I think that a "sub-Modern" is an avenue they might pursue, where Modern on Arena are only built up of cards found in a few Masters sets. Due to the way Arena works, there is no issue with "EV" of the packs, as no-ones expensive cards (real or virtual) will lose value.
I haven't looked into how many cards this would be though. Anyone done an estimate on how many cards are "really" in Modern? As an example, how many unique cards showed up in top64s at all GPS and SCG events in 2018?
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
The real question is, depending on what the new product is for Modern that they were supposed to announce. If this was a modern reprint set with some new cards, they could just port this over to arena. Honestly, if you thought you weren't going to have to buy your way into modern again with arena, then I don't know what you are expecting.
Eventually the post-Modern Arena format will also balloon up and have to be addressed. Having a system in place now would build consumer confidence in the proposed format. Without the ability to go back in a couple years to get something like Teferi, how does anyone expect new players to get into the format? If a system is devised to support acquiring older cards, then why is Modern off the table for anything other than inputting some 12,000+ cards?
As far as pushing Standard, I think it's easy to incentivize the regular participation in standard. It's a digital economy, they can control everything except demand. They'll find a way to keep Standard a priority even if they bring Modern to the platform.
"Reveal a Dragon"
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
I suppose this is one interpretation, but it's a few levels of speculation and conspiracies ahead of the a tangible, concrete counterpoint: they are literally trying the rule at a Modern MC. I would be much more concerned if they hand't even announced a Modern MC yet, or were trying the rule on Arena, in Standard, or in a non-Modern venue. But they chose to try it at a Modern version of their biggest event, and they chose to make that event Modern in the first place. The second MC ever (new terminology, not the old PTs) will be Modern, and the first live pilot of the rule will also be Modern. Those are immediate signs of Modern health and long-term support, and I think that outweighs the speculative stretch it takes to believe Sullivan's interpretation.