Depending on where you play, you will experience Modern differently. Similarly, depending on where you look at results, you can support almost any view of Modern health/unhealth that you hold. Want Modern to look diverse or interactive? Cite the GP Toronto T8 or the Strasbourg MCQ. Want it to look bad? Cite the GP LA T8 or a recent MTGO Challenge. Most people Will probably end up citing the picture closest to their personal experience, so if your MTGO or LGS experience is negative/positive with respect to Modern gameplay, you can find large events to support your Modern perspective.
Of course, the "true" Modern picture is somewhere in the middle. It's not as interactive as it has been in the past, and a few top decks (particularly less interactive ones) are better than many other so-called "viable" decks. But it's also nowhere close to Eldrazi Winter, interactive decks are demonstrably more viable than some critics suggest, and those hated linear decks are more vulnerable than we like to claim.
All of this is to say that Modern is probably just fine, with the potential small exception that Izzet Phoenix, for reasons I and others have explained, is probably the best deck by a margin that may approach (emphasis on May) KCI levels. That might be okay because it doesn't create the secondary KCI issues, but it is a reality to consider.
Check out Logan Nettles' 21st place Jund list. 0 Copies of Assassin's Trophy. That's fascinating to see given the amount of hype that card got.
I wouldn't read too much into this. The two T8 Rock decks at Toronto had 3 and 4 Trophies respectively. The 3 Rock decks in the MCQ T8 at Strasbourg had 2-3 MD copies each.
In general, I wouldn't draw a lot of conclusions from this one event. There are too many other proximate events that complicate the picture. The only hard conclusion I would draw is that Izzet Phoenix is resoundingly Tier 1 and is an easy contender for current best Modern deck. See my previous post for the reasons why we will continue to see this deck make big appearances. Other than that, all the other conclusions/fears I've seen don't really make sense when we zoom out past this single event.
It's unsurprising that Izzet Phoenix is a top deck or that it sees so much play. It's the kind of low-floor, high-ceiling cantrip-heavy deck that lots of spikes favor. It's proactive enough to succeed and get free wins but has enough reactive elements that better players can leverage decision-making for small edges. It's also fairly resilient to GY hate if that hate doesn't have a clock behind it; Thing doesn't care about GY hate, Drake is still massive, and Phoenix is still a 3/2 haster in a pinch. It's just a very good deck with lots of consistency and flexibility.
Day 2 numbers are relatively meaningless without Day 1 numbers. Top 32 numbers, however, are very meaningful when compared alongside Day 2 numbers. Hopefully we'll get those soon and get a better snapshot of Modern at this event.
I'll also remind everyone that GP Toronto, literally less than a month ago, had an overall healthy outcome. Decrying any element of Modern health based on this one GP without contrasting it with GP Toronto is a disingenuous approach. This is doubly true when we don't even have the GP LA T8/T32. Even if that GP LA picture isn't great, it needs to be considered alongside recent results, not instead of those other results. My biggest concern would be lots of Izzet Phoenix decks, both because the deck is strong, and because better players may gravitate towards it.
Too often the Magic community bases speculation on one or more layers of other speculation. There's something to be said for taking an observation to a logical conclusion, but only if you realize that multiple logical conclusions may exist and you acknowledge them.
Is this really our fault, given the lengths and choices they continually make with regards to concealing information, making purposely-vague statements, and generally giving players no meaningful consistency with which to make predictions for future actions?
Too often the Magic community bases speculation on one or more layers of other speculation. There's something to be said for taking an observation to a logical conclusion, but only if you realize that multiple logical conclusions may exist and you acknowledge them.
Is this really our fault, given the lengths and choices they continually make with regards to concealing information, making purposely-vague statements, and generally giving players no meaningful consistency with which to make predictions for future actions?
When the baseless speculation is so often wrong, yes.
Note that's not aimed at you individually. It's aimed at the community as a whole.
I agree with RCW, but out of curiosity, can anyone name some relatively recent conspiracy theories/speculation that panned out? I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm simply struggling to think of examples myself.
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.
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.
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.
Do we really think the goal of Standard + or Arena Modern will not be to kill current Modern?
Yes a Modern mythic pro tour is good but I have doubts about Modern being save in the long term. Especially given Maro's vocal dislike of Fetchlands. Though we are supposedly getting an announcment this month that will make us Modern Fans happy. On the other hand WOTC changes their mind all the time.
I am not worried about Modern's future unless Wizards explicitly states they won't code and release all the old Modern sets on Arena. I don't know why they wouldn't release those cards; the rules engine is supposedly very robust and this would only increase player engagement and platform sales. I also don't know why they would deliberately hamstring/torpedo their most popular format. That said, I've seen Wizards make odd decisions in the past, so I wouldn't put it past them to just start a totally new non-rotating format using Arena as the foundation. If they do that, Modern will at best go the way of Legacy with more niche support. At worst, it will die entirely.
Given their continued support of Modern even into 2019, I am still optimistic about Modern's future.
Very pleased they are just trying it out, even if it doesn't work. I'd rather Wizards test out new ideas and find them to be bad then just assume ideas are bad and never try anything new.
Also, great news that Modern will be the second Mythic Champ format of 2019. That's a good endorsement of the format on Wizards' end. I also expect it will influence the B&R timing in a big way, so we should see potential changes in the B&R update after that event.
I have been saying Looting needs to go for Months. Turns out having to discard is not a negative its a positive. Although I say the main issue is unless they exile your graveyard you get to enjoy 8 of them.
I believe I'm counting 19 Faithless Looting decks as well. I really hope modern doesn't swing further and further towards this card like it has been of recent
We get GP Toronto results and the MCQ results that show an extremely diverse and healthy Modern and there's little talk in this thread about that health. Then we get an MTGO event with different, more negative results and it's back to concern about Looting. There is no current justification for these concerns. Just as Stirrings produces multiple diverse and distinct decks, so too does Looting, and we already know that this is precisely why Stirrings is not in the ban crosshairs. See the 01/21/2019 banlist update:
" In the current state of the metagame, the build-around nature of Ancient Stirrings supports decks that look very different from a simple collection of the strongest rate cards, and that otherwise may not exist. "
Looting has distinct deckbuilding requirements, which is why we don't see it in every red deck or every deck that could splash red. We see it in decks which are capable of leveraging the build-around nature of Looting, and it produces a varied format (as a whole; not just in that awful MTGO event). As long as that remains the case, and as long as we see events like GP Toronto that look awesome, cards like Looting, Stirrings, Opal, and the other usual banlist speculation candidates should be off the table. If future 2019 results change this, we can revisit it. Right now, it's at best unjustified speculation and at worst hyperbolic ban mania.
interesting top 8. I'm assuming the copies of settle the wreckage in the main of UW over supreme verdict is a nod to dredge and izzet phoenix?
Plus it's asymmetrical and misses Thing. I'm not sure if Settle/Thing is better than JTMS/Terminus overall, but I like the exploration space in UW.
Toronto and these MCQ results are a promising springboard into the March GP run. My biggest worry from a format health perspective would be an abundance of Izzet Phoenix decks. It's the kind of low floor, high ceiling, heavy cantrip proactive deck that pros/spikes/grinders seem to favor, and it has a high baseline MWP to backup that choice. With admittedly limited data, it would be my frontrunner for current "best" Modern deck, but still not quite in the KCI category. Other than that, Modern appears open to any deck (unsurprisingly) and a variety of archetypes (promising, especially with all the interactive deck successes).
PS: Twitter is a strong tool! Just 3 or 4 of us can ask for anything, and gentle people like Corbin do deliver! I kindly ask from you to regularly tweet Wizards to publish all Day 2 decklists from now on!
Here is the tweet as well: https://twitter.com/Chosler88/status/1094890812633161728
This is truly awesome. One could derive some valuable and very comprehensive MWP data from this data dump. I'm not going to do so myself due to lack of time and the likelihood that someone else does it; there's no reason to duplicate work that should have an identical end product. That said, I might compare final deck records to number of byes, which is a project I imagine other people won't gravitate towards.
Izzet Phoenix continues to cement itself as the reigning Modern deck, with GDS as a close second. Both of these decks are proactive, play a crap ton of cantrips and consistency effects, and have a rare and welcoming combination of a relatively low skill floor and a very high skill ceiling. I expect many pros and grinders will gravitate towards these decks, especially Phoenix which has an even lower floor than GDS (if for no other reason than it's less punishing if you misuse your resources, i.e. life). These are the kinds of high consistency decks that both Modern regulars and Modern occasionals will love.
im not seeing how anything in that top8 is random. none of the decks are jank, and they all align with the perceived 'winners meta'.
Yeah, take the 20 or 30 or so "good" decks in Modern, throw them into a hat and pull out 8. Ta da! You're now metagaming for Modern!
I'm not sure what this means or how it is a relevant response to tronix. He appears to be talking about a perceived "winners meta," which you quote. The Tornoto T8 has significant overlap with recent other GP T8s, which aligns with his comment about an observed winners meta:
GP Toronto T8 and GP Overlap
BG Rock (1 in GP Portland T8)
Tezzerator
Dredge
Jund
GDS (1 in GP Portland T8)
UR Phoenix (1 Oakland T8, 2 Portland T8)
UR Drakes (See above)
Titanshift (1 in GP Oakland T8)
Dredge is an MTGO mainstay with significant metagame presence, and I think we can all agree that it's a highly prevalent deck. Jund is more of an outlier, but even that was a T8 deck at GP HK. That said, I happily concede that a Tezzeret Prison deck is definitely the biggest outlier and is a clear "play what you want" Modern choice. But overall, 5 of the GP Toronto T8 decks were GP T8 repeaters from the last few months, plus Dredge which has remained a frequently played deck for months. That makes 6 more or less expected decks with established competitive pedigrees plus two outliers; hardly a throw-in-a-hat picture like you claim.
Replying to @TolarianCollege
Something I’ve said on my blog - this product is this year’s innovation product and was created through our very first Hackathon. If you guys don’t love it, I’d be floored. #WotCStaff
This could be the long-desired set that allows cards to enter Modern while bypassing Standard. Or it could just be desired reprints to lower prices. Either way, this should be a net gain for Modern players, and we should see it announced this month.
The war on blue is a myth. See Teferi, Search, Opt, and Nexus. The war on control is a myth too. See Settle, Teferi, Search, and others. But the war on data? That is a very real platform that Wizards continues to push to this day, and I feel it receives far less attention than all the other unproven allegations.
Although I don't believe data restriction was a primary motive (that honor almost certainly goes to budget and staffing), it is very likely that a further data embargo was at the least a welcome byproduct if not an intentional contributing factor. It's just another way to limit our access to meaningful numbers to allegedly limit ability to solve a format.
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Of course, the "true" Modern picture is somewhere in the middle. It's not as interactive as it has been in the past, and a few top decks (particularly less interactive ones) are better than many other so-called "viable" decks. But it's also nowhere close to Eldrazi Winter, interactive decks are demonstrably more viable than some critics suggest, and those hated linear decks are more vulnerable than we like to claim.
All of this is to say that Modern is probably just fine, with the potential small exception that Izzet Phoenix, for reasons I and others have explained, is probably the best deck by a margin that may approach (emphasis on May) KCI levels. That might be okay because it doesn't create the secondary KCI issues, but it is a reality to consider.
I wouldn't read too much into this. The two T8 Rock decks at Toronto had 3 and 4 Trophies respectively. The 3 Rock decks in the MCQ T8 at Strasbourg had 2-3 MD copies each.
In general, I wouldn't draw a lot of conclusions from this one event. There are too many other proximate events that complicate the picture. The only hard conclusion I would draw is that Izzet Phoenix is resoundingly Tier 1 and is an easy contender for current best Modern deck. See my previous post for the reasons why we will continue to see this deck make big appearances. Other than that, all the other conclusions/fears I've seen don't really make sense when we zoom out past this single event.
Day 2 numbers are relatively meaningless without Day 1 numbers. Top 32 numbers, however, are very meaningful when compared alongside Day 2 numbers. Hopefully we'll get those soon and get a better snapshot of Modern at this event.
I'll also remind everyone that GP Toronto, literally less than a month ago, had an overall healthy outcome. Decrying any element of Modern health based on this one GP without contrasting it with GP Toronto is a disingenuous approach. This is doubly true when we don't even have the GP LA T8/T32. Even if that GP LA picture isn't great, it needs to be considered alongside recent results, not instead of those other results. My biggest concern would be lots of Izzet Phoenix decks, both because the deck is strong, and because better players may gravitate towards it.
PS. Unban SFM.
I agree with RCW, but out of curiosity, can anyone name some relatively recent conspiracy theories/speculation that panned out? I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm simply struggling to think of examples myself.
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.
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.
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.
I am not worried about Modern's future unless Wizards explicitly states they won't code and release all the old Modern sets on Arena. I don't know why they wouldn't release those cards; the rules engine is supposedly very robust and this would only increase player engagement and platform sales. I also don't know why they would deliberately hamstring/torpedo their most popular format. That said, I've seen Wizards make odd decisions in the past, so I wouldn't put it past them to just start a totally new non-rotating format using Arena as the foundation. If they do that, Modern will at best go the way of Legacy with more niche support. At worst, it will die entirely.
Given their continued support of Modern even into 2019, I am still optimistic about Modern's future.
Also, great news that Modern will be the second Mythic Champ format of 2019. That's a good endorsement of the format on Wizards' end. I also expect it will influence the B&R timing in a big way, so we should see potential changes in the B&R update after that event.
We get GP Toronto results and the MCQ results that show an extremely diverse and healthy Modern and there's little talk in this thread about that health. Then we get an MTGO event with different, more negative results and it's back to concern about Looting. There is no current justification for these concerns. Just as Stirrings produces multiple diverse and distinct decks, so too does Looting, and we already know that this is precisely why Stirrings is not in the ban crosshairs. See the 01/21/2019 banlist update:
" In the current state of the metagame, the build-around nature of Ancient Stirrings supports decks that look very different from a simple collection of the strongest rate cards, and that otherwise may not exist. "
Looting has distinct deckbuilding requirements, which is why we don't see it in every red deck or every deck that could splash red. We see it in decks which are capable of leveraging the build-around nature of Looting, and it produces a varied format (as a whole; not just in that awful MTGO event). As long as that remains the case, and as long as we see events like GP Toronto that look awesome, cards like Looting, Stirrings, Opal, and the other usual banlist speculation candidates should be off the table. If future 2019 results change this, we can revisit it. Right now, it's at best unjustified speculation and at worst hyperbolic ban mania.
Plus it's asymmetrical and misses Thing. I'm not sure if Settle/Thing is better than JTMS/Terminus overall, but I like the exploration space in UW.
Toronto and these MCQ results are a promising springboard into the March GP run. My biggest worry from a format health perspective would be an abundance of Izzet Phoenix decks. It's the kind of low floor, high ceiling, heavy cantrip proactive deck that pros/spikes/grinders seem to favor, and it has a high baseline MWP to backup that choice. With admittedly limited data, it would be my frontrunner for current "best" Modern deck, but still not quite in the KCI category. Other than that, Modern appears open to any deck (unsurprisingly) and a variety of archetypes (promising, especially with all the interactive deck successes).
This is truly awesome. One could derive some valuable and very comprehensive MWP data from this data dump. I'm not going to do so myself due to lack of time and the likelihood that someone else does it; there's no reason to duplicate work that should have an identical end product. That said, I might compare final deck records to number of byes, which is a project I imagine other people won't gravitate towards.
Izzet Phoenix continues to cement itself as the reigning Modern deck, with GDS as a close second. Both of these decks are proactive, play a crap ton of cantrips and consistency effects, and have a rare and welcoming combination of a relatively low skill floor and a very high skill ceiling. I expect many pros and grinders will gravitate towards these decks, especially Phoenix which has an even lower floor than GDS (if for no other reason than it's less punishing if you misuse your resources, i.e. life). These are the kinds of high consistency decks that both Modern regulars and Modern occasionals will love.
I'm not sure what this means or how it is a relevant response to tronix. He appears to be talking about a perceived "winners meta," which you quote. The Tornoto T8 has significant overlap with recent other GP T8s, which aligns with his comment about an observed winners meta:
GP Toronto T8 and GP Overlap
BG Rock (1 in GP Portland T8)
Tezzerator
Dredge
Jund
GDS (1 in GP Portland T8)
UR Phoenix (1 Oakland T8, 2 Portland T8)
UR Drakes (See above)
Titanshift (1 in GP Oakland T8)
Dredge is an MTGO mainstay with significant metagame presence, and I think we can all agree that it's a highly prevalent deck. Jund is more of an outlier, but even that was a T8 deck at GP HK. That said, I happily concede that a Tezzeret Prison deck is definitely the biggest outlier and is a clear "play what you want" Modern choice. But overall, 5 of the GP Toronto T8 decks were GP T8 repeaters from the last few months, plus Dredge which has remained a frequently played deck for months. That makes 6 more or less expected decks with established competitive pedigrees plus two outliers; hardly a throw-in-a-hat picture like you claim.
PS: Unban SFM.
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/amsxee/new_modern_product_announcement_coming_this_month/
https://mobile.twitter.com/maro254/status/1092137659101675520
This could be the long-desired set that allows cards to enter Modern while bypassing Standard. Or it could just be desired reprints to lower prices. Either way, this should be a net gain for Modern players, and we should see it announced this month.
Here's the latest nonsense in Wizard's war on data:
https://mobile.twitter.com/magicprotour/status/1089361097860120576
Although I don't believe data restriction was a primary motive (that honor almost certainly goes to budget and staffing), it is very likely that a further data embargo was at the least a welcome byproduct if not an intentional contributing factor. It's just another way to limit our access to meaningful numbers to allegedly limit ability to solve a format.