The Arclight decks are still pretty unrefined, if the Pro Tour is anytime soon I'm curious to see if it's refined and changed drastically. I also wonder if Arclight is really just another chase deck. There already seems to be articles stating that humans is fading fast.
As for what it is GBx needs, it's definitely not more answers. We received Grim Flayer but unfortunately it's too unreliable in activating delirium, and in Jund Shadow he's maybe a 1 of?
well at least grim flayer is insulated a little bit. i mean its still a 2/2 trample beater that lets you filter the top of your deck.
faithless lootings is really showing its teeth. i can agree on that. these arclight decks are doing some pretty crazy stuff blurrings the lines between aggro and combo even more. letting someone untap with a steamkin is like letting a storm player untap with a baral/electomancer except there isnt some specific payoff other than getting a bunch of power on board or burn spells.
i saw this guy going off and he ended up with what i believe was a 9 power swiftspear he put into play that turn after casting the the back end of risk factor AND playing chandra ToD AND 3 arclight phoenixes came into play. on turn 3
meanwhile im just sitting there trying to remember if i got rid of my kor firewalkers when i sold my D&T deck (i did).
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
i saw this guy going off and he ended up with what i believe was a 9 power swiftspear he put into play that turn after casting the the back end of risk factor AND playing chandra ToD AND 3 arclight phoenixes came into play. on turn 3
Wow, that's amazing. The term "hyper aggro" really fit the phoenix decks.
I stand by my original idea that this may be the perfect environment for Skred Red. Hell I'm on burn, the fairest turn 4 deck, and even I'm sitting around not wanting to play. Granted, that's also because I am competitive AF.
I stand by my original idea that this may be the perfect environment for Skred Red. Hell I'm on burn, the fairest turn 4 deck, and even I'm sitting around not wanting to play. Granted, that's also because I am competitive AF.
Skred Red is a "gotch ya" deck most of the time. The reason for this is simply because the power level of the cards they play just are overall lower in general than most higher tier decks. I think there can be times where certain metas are better for certain lower tier decks, like now with a slight rise of Martyr Proc for example, but I dont think a deck like those ever really have a shot of becoming tier 1 or even high tier 2 until another card is printed to push them
Punishing Fire would help midrange. With two of the best decks being Humans and Spirits, it would be a nice card to have injected into the metagame.
Will it make all creature decks obsolete? I don't think so. Certainly a gravitation towards 3 toughness creatures though.
You can also unban Stoneforge at the same time, as it makes for a great answer to her. This is similar to how Bloodbraid Elf was released alongside Jace to keep him in check.
Stoneforge and Fire twin unbanning would also present us with some interesting new deckbuilding decisions to consider: Abzan Midrange or Jund Midrange? Or do you play all 3 in some sort of Naya list?
In the current metagame, PF seems reasonable. The only issue would be in the case it helps a deck become broken. Besides Jund, what deck would abuse the card ?
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Pioneer - A bunch of stuff Modern - Humans Legacy - Grixis Phoenix / Death & Taxes
It's a little light on info and I expect we'll get more tonight, hopefully about Modern's relationship with this update. As I and others predicted earlier, looks like Arena will be a huge part of the upcoming PT/tournament scene next year. This will certainly impact Modern in some way, but we need to wait for the full update to know exactly how.
They will introduce a new non-rotating format next year when the cards from Ixalan rotate out from Standard so people can keep playing their cards on Arena.
This future format will take some share from Modern because it's playable on Arena and Modern isn't.
"Punishing Fire
Punishing Fire, when combined with Grove of the Burnwillows, gives a repeatable 2 damage for 3 mana. This pair of cards is commonly used, and is devastating to creature decks relying on creatures with less than 2 toughness. It also is a very slow and reliable win condition, netting 1 life for 3 mana. Tribal decks relying on 2 toughness "lords" see very little play, and this is a major barrier to their success." - December 2011
In the current format, we have viable tribal decks : Humans, Spirits, Elves, Merfolk, Affinity. In that regard, PF would help some decks interact with them, possibly pushing them out of the metagame. But for this to happen, PF needs to see major play, so it needs a home in an already good deck in the metagame.
Would more broken decks like Dredge, Hollow One, Vengevine maindeck such a card ?
I think the right move in the next B+R is to unban some comination of stoneforge mystic and green sun's zenith to help midrange.
GSZ helps Elves, but I don't quite see how it helps midrange. Can you elaborate ?
Out of curiosity... why would Modern need to be "replaced"?
I am not saying it does just that based on what we know they didn't code in cards nearly far enough back to do Modern. Which has created some speculation about a Fetch-less Post Modern Arena mode so as cards rotate out of standard people have something to do with their cards.
"Punishing Fire
Punishing Fire, when combined with Grove of the Burnwillows, gives a repeatable 2 damage for 3 mana. This pair of cards is commonly used, and is devastating to creature decks relying on creatures with less than 2 toughness. It also is a very slow and reliable win condition, netting 1 life for 3 mana. Tribal decks relying on 2 toughness "lords" see very little play, and this is a major barrier to their success." - December 2011
In the current format, we have viable tribal decks : Humans, Spirits, Elves, Merfolk, Affinity. In that regard, PF would help some decks interact with them, possibly pushing them out of the metagame. But for this to happen, PF needs to see major play, so it needs a home in an already good deck in the metagame.
Would more broken decks like Dredge, Hollow One, Vengevine maindeck such a card ?
I think the right move in the next B+R is to unban some comination of stoneforge mystic and green sun's zenith to help midrange.
GSZ helps Elves, but I don't quite see how it helps midrange. Can you elaborate ?
PF seems like a very improbable ban. You have two top-tier creature-based decks that don't need any more regulation and that would really struggle against PF: Bant Spirits and Humans. Plus you have all the lower-tier creature decks that are able to flourish without the card. All of these decks are jeopardized with an unbanning. In exchange, you maaaaybe help a few GRx fair decks that have way more problems than being able to beat creature strategies. But you know what benefits from that more? All the unfair decks that are already beating the GRx fair decks. They don't even care about PF to begin with: see KCI, Tron, Dredge, and other strategies that I know many players loathe. There's just no reason to unban a card that regulates two non-issue decks in a misguided attempt to aid fair strategies that aren't even losing to the cards PF helps, AND are losing to the cards that PF largely ignores. That's just not the kind of unban scenario I see Wizards entertaining.
It's a little light on info and I expect we'll get more tonight, hopefully about Modern's relationship with this update. As I and others predicted earlier, looks like Arena will be a huge part of the upcoming PT/tournament scene next year. This will certainly impact Modern in some way, but we need to wait for the full update to know exactly how.
If they pull back Modern from being a PT format I'm hoping they will undo the damage they did when they brought the PT about. Namely, I'd like to see them take off the shackles on the bans that were done "for diversity" because I doubt they actually achieved what they think they achieved. Jund didn't even start coming back after many years until they printed Fatal Push and Assassin's Trophy. The hypocrisy of this companies own banning decisions for the sake of attempting to steer a format they themselves said they don't test very well is a comedy, and while I am totally behind banning Golgari Grave Troll to weaken a deck like dredge, I'm not behind banning things like Splinter Twin, which did nothing but made things less interactive for a pretty good amount of time. I don't even care if unbanning it kills phoenix decks because a phoenix deck is just another fast linear kill deck that attacks from a slightly different angle.
The other thing I want them to do is undo the withholding of information that was imposed. Lets not forget this...
I'm sure some people wont agree with me on the unbans, but when I originally wanted to play modern, Jund was actually a flag post of the fact that games could be interactive in modern. We're literally just crawling back to that state after 2-3 years. That and the pro-tour caused a conflict between player interests and the company interests with making profits.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
damn that is some pretty crazy stuff. guess ill just wait for the confirmation before speculating. i just hope wizards isnt biting off more than they can chew.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
I had a big long post replying to this, and reiterating how it is singlehandedly more important in shaping the chaos and false diversity of Modern than any ban, unban, or new card, but it came off as ranty and antagonistic. Trying to tone things down a bit, but still wanting to remind people of some key elements for use in discussion about meta health.
Long story short, I think people often forget that the "percent" numbers we have today in no way reflect the same thing as "percentages" from before the artificial diversity data. And that wildly popular decks are greatly underrepresented and random brews are greatly overrepresented. A "5% deck" could be 12%+ or less than 2%. And nobody knows for sure but Wizards!
Modern is a format where you can play anything, because 50+ "viable decks," people have no idea what to feasibly plan for. So you throw some darts at a board, and hope to dodge your random bad matchups. That way, we get events that are kind of all over the place and we celebrate "format diversity." I think whether players feel this is a good or bad direction for Modern depends on if they play a deck which doesn't care what they're facing (linear, aggro, combo, etc), or ones that try to tune their deck with answers to deal with the meta (reactive, control, midrange). Having given up on playing the latter kinds of decks, Modern feels great. But I'm also killing people on turn 3.
Long story short, I think people often forget that the "percent" numbers we have today in no way reflect the same thing as "percentages" from before the artificial diversity data. And that wildly popular decks are greatly underrepresented and random brews are greatly overrepresented. A "5% deck" could be 12%+ or less than 2%. And nobody knows for sure but Wizards!
yeah its reflected that way in the liminted data dumps skewing those arbitrary numbers on sites like mtgogoldfish. however i would say that to an extent its the exact opposite. when people dont have reliable data to work with the meta becomes an extension of player perception instead of reality. some times they might be the same thing, but not always; and especially so for mtgo where deck switching easily is possible.. so some amount of time the format is cycling, causing decks to shuffle around, because of this illusory 'meta' that isnt even there. this results in an environment that is driven by what people think is good rather than what is actually good.
i mean its intended, and i understand why wizards did it. people are sheep. the data, even when it was free flowing, was often subject to inaccurate analysis, misrepresentation, and misinterpretation. yet players took it as gospel, making some deck choice because some graph or spreadsheet told them to. however the situation we are at now isnt much better there are still cases of something/someone telling people what to do, but its less likely to be grounded in reality. pros tell you to play linear garbage because its the only thing that can compete, and people show up with linear garbage; its self fullfilling. just jumping from one hype train to the next.
so wizards loses either way. might as well hide information because its self serving. more fluctuations means more cards changing hands. also if anything does end up being something they need to address they dont have the public breathing down their necks. they know they cant design perfectly, WE know they cant design perfectly (and just are unwilling to admit it) and if people are basically crowd sourcing the 'solution' it shortens the longevity of the experience.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
On the one hand, the data embargo is bad and hurts formats/players. Full stop. I don't want anything I say to be interpreted as defending it.
On the other hand, this notion that Modern is diverse because of that ban, and/or that the diversity is false or otherwise falsely supported by bad data, is probably untrue. Modern has gone unsolved since July 2017 when the data embargo began in earnest. This is despite numerous claims that it was solved in that period. Claims included, but not limited to, Humans, UW Control, Gx Tron, KCI, H1, and many other options. Despite those claims, the format has always shifted from one strategy to another and no deck has remained on top for any sustained period of time. Pros, who have every incentive to stick to the best deck and ride it to victory, aren't able to settle on such a deck because such a deck probably doesn't exist. The closest is definitely KCI, but even KCI has weaknesses as we saw in its lackluster finishes in the past few months. If the format was solvable, I am fully confident it would have been solved by now. There is too much MTGO iteration and incentive for the format to regress to a different outcome if the diversity was false. By contrast, Standard was solved even after the data embargo, and no amount of data restriction prevented hands-down best decks from emerging until the last few months.
Also, for over the dozenth time, friendly reminder that the matchup lottery is not a real phenomenon in Modern OR it simply doesn't affect top player MWP. There is no difference in the floor/ceiling/variance of pro MWP between Modern and other formats. True, there are some pros that are better at Modern than other formats (e.g. Duke is better at Modern than Standard from an MWP benchmark). But the good Modern players tend to be just as good with the same tournament variance in Modern as the good Standard players are in Standard.
no more pro tours, world cups or the like. mythic championships or invitationals are being held on both arena and paper down to the usual 4 instead of the previously planned change to 6. grand prixs, now called magicfests, are still around and i guess another third party has to step up (or exists and hasnt announced) to host their equivalent on arena. looks like it all centers around the MPL (mythic pro league). everyone competing to be among the 32 who get exclusive contract support. no details on how you work up to challenge them though. if im reading it correctly there will be 'mythic level' events that matter.
zero mention of formats not supported on arena, but the tone of the post leads me to believe that if it isnt on arena it wont matter to the MPL. they want to mix and match arena with tabletop, which is hard enough without having paper tournaments being a completely different format a portion of the audience wont even understand. just speculation though.
so yeah modern support is now solely at the discretion of channelfireball since they run the magicfests. not sure where the MOCS fits into things. at best it is an insulated tournament series that is unrelated to everything else and the final in-person event is 'mythic', at worst it was scraped all together.
ill admit i was wrong. i read them as taking the conservative line but they jumped in head first. arena needs to be ready to support a 1 million dollar invitational at PAX near the end of march. keep in mind the game doesnt even have a working ranking system let alone spectator support which requires community features (ie interacting with other player accounts).
im just imagining the pro who was in 33rd place (i dont know who it is) and it coming down to like 1 pro point he missed out on for some inane reason (pro points are going away). GG NO RE
The inaugural year of the MPL comprises 32 of Magic's top-ranked players from around the world who are each offered player and streamer contracts with a combined worth of $75,000.
Thats pretty descent honestly, as I'm sure the Streaming would also be a source of income (plus articles, other events, etc).
Was that Code to redeem supposed to do something? lol
In addition to the Mythic Invitational and Mythic Championships, we also have a significant prize pool set aside to partner with independent organizers who want to host MTG Arena esports and tabletop competitive gaming events. The tabletop Grand Prix circuit held at MagicFests run by ChannelFireball Events alone offers a $2.5 million prize pool and dozens of events around the world in 2019. We look forward to announcing more partner events, especially esports events featuring MTG Arena.
This will be important, for anything not Standard.
The problem is Sideboards shift to counter the best deck thus nothing can hold on to the top for long if it wins too much decks shift to stifle it.
This should be the ideal. A format that is self regulating, self controlling, and cyclical.
Pretty much. Most best decks are fast and degenerate, but most fast and degenerate things can be beat if you tune for that specific flavor of fast and degenerate. If a reactive deck guesses right, and faces the correct decks, it feels unbeatable. If they guess wrong, it feels like playing 60 forests against a well-oiled machine. That's mostly what I'm getting at when I say matchup lottery. It favors people who "guess correctly" and pros are able to do that more often, usually with better accuracy, and often able to make those card/deck switches with little or no setbacks. Not the case for many regular folks who buy and build their own decks, aren't sponsored, or aren't part of a team that can share resources.
From the standpoint of "a lot of decks could possibly T8 or win any Modern event," yes, what we have now is "healthy." I think there is more to format health than just that, but if you can't beat 'em, join'em.
As for what it is GBx needs, it's definitely not more answers. We received Grim Flayer but unfortunately it's too unreliable in activating delirium, and in Jund Shadow he's maybe a 1 of?
faithless lootings is really showing its teeth. i can agree on that. these arclight decks are doing some pretty crazy stuff blurrings the lines between aggro and combo even more. letting someone untap with a steamkin is like letting a storm player untap with a baral/electomancer except there isnt some specific payoff other than getting a bunch of power on board or burn spells.
i saw this guy going off and he ended up with what i believe was a 9 power swiftspear he put into play that turn after casting the the back end of risk factor AND playing chandra ToD AND 3 arclight phoenixes came into play. on turn 3
meanwhile im just sitting there trying to remember if i got rid of my kor firewalkers when i sold my D&T deck (i did).
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Wow, that's amazing. The term "hyper aggro" really fit the phoenix decks.
Nexus MTG News // Nexus - Magic Art Gallery // MTG Dual Land Color Ratios Analyzer // MTG Card Drawing Odds Calculator
Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
Skred Red is a "gotch ya" deck most of the time. The reason for this is simply because the power level of the cards they play just are overall lower in general than most higher tier decks. I think there can be times where certain metas are better for certain lower tier decks, like now with a slight rise of Martyr Proc for example, but I dont think a deck like those ever really have a shot of becoming tier 1 or even high tier 2 until another card is printed to push them
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Will it make all creature decks obsolete? I don't think so. Certainly a gravitation towards 3 toughness creatures though.
You can also unban Stoneforge at the same time, as it makes for a great answer to her. This is similar to how Bloodbraid Elf was released alongside Jace to keep him in check.
Stoneforge and Fire twin unbanning would also present us with some interesting new deckbuilding decisions to consider: Abzan Midrange or Jund Midrange? Or do you play all 3 in some sort of Naya list?
GWUBRDraft my Old Border Nostalgia Cube! and/or The Little Pauper Cube That Could!RBUWG
Modern:WDeath & TaxesW | RUGRUG DelverRUG
Looks like someone ****ed up and published that too early. It's since been taken down, but the friendly sleuths at Hipsters got the article screenshotted and summarized: https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2018/12/wizards-announces-10-million-mythic-championships-and-magic-pro-league-for-2019/ plus https://imgur.com/a/NgKbiI0
It's a little light on info and I expect we'll get more tonight, hopefully about Modern's relationship with this update. As I and others predicted earlier, looks like Arena will be a huge part of the upcoming PT/tournament scene next year. This will certainly impact Modern in some way, but we need to wait for the full update to know exactly how.
Nexus MTG News // Nexus - Magic Art Gallery // MTG Dual Land Color Ratios Analyzer // MTG Card Drawing Odds Calculator
Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
This future format will take some share from Modern because it's playable on Arena and Modern isn't.
Legacy: UWR Miracles [https://deckstats.net/decks/44442/1092831-uwr-miracles-2]
"Punishing Fire
Punishing Fire, when combined with Grove of the Burnwillows, gives a repeatable 2 damage for 3 mana. This pair of cards is commonly used, and is devastating to creature decks relying on creatures with less than 2 toughness. It also is a very slow and reliable win condition, netting 1 life for 3 mana. Tribal decks relying on 2 toughness "lords" see very little play, and this is a major barrier to their success." - December 2011
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/explanation-december-2011-br-changes-2011-12-20
Here are some decks to beat in November 2011, with PF in Zoo and Twin :
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2255&f=MO
In the current format, we have viable tribal decks : Humans, Spirits, Elves, Merfolk, Affinity. In that regard, PF would help some decks interact with them, possibly pushing them out of the metagame. But for this to happen, PF needs to see major play, so it needs a home in an already good deck in the metagame.
Would more broken decks like Dredge, Hollow One, Vengevine maindeck such a card ?
GSZ helps Elves, but I don't quite see how it helps midrange. Can you elaborate ?
I am not saying it does just that based on what we know they didn't code in cards nearly far enough back to do Modern. Which has created some speculation about a Fetch-less Post Modern Arena mode so as cards rotate out of standard people have something to do with their cards.
PF seems like a very improbable ban. You have two top-tier creature-based decks that don't need any more regulation and that would really struggle against PF: Bant Spirits and Humans. Plus you have all the lower-tier creature decks that are able to flourish without the card. All of these decks are jeopardized with an unbanning. In exchange, you maaaaybe help a few GRx fair decks that have way more problems than being able to beat creature strategies. But you know what benefits from that more? All the unfair decks that are already beating the GRx fair decks. They don't even care about PF to begin with: see KCI, Tron, Dredge, and other strategies that I know many players loathe. There's just no reason to unban a card that regulates two non-issue decks in a misguided attempt to aid fair strategies that aren't even losing to the cards PF helps, AND are losing to the cards that PF largely ignores. That's just not the kind of unban scenario I see Wizards entertaining.
If they pull back Modern from being a PT format I'm hoping they will undo the damage they did when they brought the PT about. Namely, I'd like to see them take off the shackles on the bans that were done "for diversity" because I doubt they actually achieved what they think they achieved. Jund didn't even start coming back after many years until they printed Fatal Push and Assassin's Trophy. The hypocrisy of this companies own banning decisions for the sake of attempting to steer a format they themselves said they don't test very well is a comedy, and while I am totally behind banning Golgari Grave Troll to weaken a deck like dredge, I'm not behind banning things like Splinter Twin, which did nothing but made things less interactive for a pretty good amount of time. I don't even care if unbanning it kills phoenix decks because a phoenix deck is just another fast linear kill deck that attacks from a slightly different angle.
The other thing I want them to do is undo the withholding of information that was imposed. Lets not forget this...
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/wizards-data-insanity
I'm sure some people wont agree with me on the unbans, but when I originally wanted to play modern, Jund was actually a flag post of the fact that games could be interactive in modern. We're literally just crawling back to that state after 2-3 years. That and the pro-tour caused a conflict between player interests and the company interests with making profits.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I had a big long post replying to this, and reiterating how it is singlehandedly more important in shaping the chaos and false diversity of Modern than any ban, unban, or new card, but it came off as ranty and antagonistic. Trying to tone things down a bit, but still wanting to remind people of some key elements for use in discussion about meta health.
Long story short, I think people often forget that the "percent" numbers we have today in no way reflect the same thing as "percentages" from before the artificial diversity data. And that wildly popular decks are greatly underrepresented and random brews are greatly overrepresented. A "5% deck" could be 12%+ or less than 2%. And nobody knows for sure but Wizards!
Modern is a format where you can play anything, because 50+ "viable decks," people have no idea what to feasibly plan for. So you throw some darts at a board, and hope to dodge your random bad matchups. That way, we get events that are kind of all over the place and we celebrate "format diversity." I think whether players feel this is a good or bad direction for Modern depends on if they play a deck which doesn't care what they're facing (linear, aggro, combo, etc), or ones that try to tune their deck with answers to deal with the meta (reactive, control, midrange). Having given up on playing the latter kinds of decks, Modern feels great. But I'm also killing people on turn 3.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
yeah its reflected that way in the liminted data dumps skewing those arbitrary numbers on sites like mtgogoldfish. however i would say that to an extent its the exact opposite. when people dont have reliable data to work with the meta becomes an extension of player perception instead of reality. some times they might be the same thing, but not always; and especially so for mtgo where deck switching easily is possible.. so some amount of time the format is cycling, causing decks to shuffle around, because of this illusory 'meta' that isnt even there. this results in an environment that is driven by what people think is good rather than what is actually good.
i mean its intended, and i understand why wizards did it. people are sheep. the data, even when it was free flowing, was often subject to inaccurate analysis, misrepresentation, and misinterpretation. yet players took it as gospel, making some deck choice because some graph or spreadsheet told them to. however the situation we are at now isnt much better there are still cases of something/someone telling people what to do, but its less likely to be grounded in reality. pros tell you to play linear garbage because its the only thing that can compete, and people show up with linear garbage; its self fullfilling. just jumping from one hype train to the next.
so wizards loses either way. might as well hide information because its self serving. more fluctuations means more cards changing hands. also if anything does end up being something they need to address they dont have the public breathing down their necks. they know they cant design perfectly, WE know they cant design perfectly (and just are unwilling to admit it) and if people are basically crowd sourcing the 'solution' it shortens the longevity of the experience.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)On the other hand, this notion that Modern is diverse because of that ban, and/or that the diversity is false or otherwise falsely supported by bad data, is probably untrue. Modern has gone unsolved since July 2017 when the data embargo began in earnest. This is despite numerous claims that it was solved in that period. Claims included, but not limited to, Humans, UW Control, Gx Tron, KCI, H1, and many other options. Despite those claims, the format has always shifted from one strategy to another and no deck has remained on top for any sustained period of time. Pros, who have every incentive to stick to the best deck and ride it to victory, aren't able to settle on such a deck because such a deck probably doesn't exist. The closest is definitely KCI, but even KCI has weaknesses as we saw in its lackluster finishes in the past few months. If the format was solvable, I am fully confident it would have been solved by now. There is too much MTGO iteration and incentive for the format to regress to a different outcome if the diversity was false. By contrast, Standard was solved even after the data embargo, and no amount of data restriction prevented hands-down best decks from emerging until the last few months.
Also, for over the dozenth time, friendly reminder that the matchup lottery is not a real phenomenon in Modern OR it simply doesn't affect top player MWP. There is no difference in the floor/ceiling/variance of pro MWP between Modern and other formats. True, there are some pros that are better at Modern than other formats (e.g. Duke is better at Modern than Standard from an MWP benchmark). But the good Modern players tend to be just as good with the same tournament variance in Modern as the good Standard players are in Standard.
This should be the ideal. A format that is self regulating, self controlling, and cyclical.
Spirits
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/next-chapter-magic-esports-2018-12-06
no more pro tours, world cups or the like. mythic championships or invitationals are being held on both arena and paper down to the usual 4 instead of the previously planned change to 6. grand prixs, now called magicfests, are still around and i guess another third party has to step up (or exists and hasnt announced) to host their equivalent on arena. looks like it all centers around the MPL (mythic pro league). everyone competing to be among the 32 who get exclusive contract support. no details on how you work up to challenge them though. if im reading it correctly there will be 'mythic level' events that matter.
zero mention of formats not supported on arena, but the tone of the post leads me to believe that if it isnt on arena it wont matter to the MPL. they want to mix and match arena with tabletop, which is hard enough without having paper tournaments being a completely different format a portion of the audience wont even understand. just speculation though.
so yeah modern support is now solely at the discretion of channelfireball since they run the magicfests. not sure where the MOCS fits into things. at best it is an insulated tournament series that is unrelated to everything else and the final in-person event is 'mythic', at worst it was scraped all together.
ill admit i was wrong. i read them as taking the conservative line but they jumped in head first. arena needs to be ready to support a 1 million dollar invitational at PAX near the end of march. keep in mind the game doesnt even have a working ranking system let alone spectator support which requires community features (ie interacting with other player accounts).
im just imagining the pro who was in 33rd place (i dont know who it is) and it coming down to like 1 pro point he missed out on for some inane reason (pro points are going away). GG NO RE
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Thats pretty descent honestly, as I'm sure the Streaming would also be a source of income (plus articles, other events, etc).
Was that Code to redeem supposed to do something? lol
This will be important, for anything not Standard.
Spirits
Pretty much. Most best decks are fast and degenerate, but most fast and degenerate things can be beat if you tune for that specific flavor of fast and degenerate. If a reactive deck guesses right, and faces the correct decks, it feels unbeatable. If they guess wrong, it feels like playing 60 forests against a well-oiled machine. That's mostly what I'm getting at when I say matchup lottery. It favors people who "guess correctly" and pros are able to do that more often, usually with better accuracy, and often able to make those card/deck switches with little or no setbacks. Not the case for many regular folks who buy and build their own decks, aren't sponsored, or aren't part of a team that can share resources.
From the standpoint of "a lot of decks could possibly T8 or win any Modern event," yes, what we have now is "healthy." I think there is more to format health than just that, but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate