Matchup roulette is a part of any format ever though. Not sure what you're getting at with this post. You made it to top 4 and lost from a judge call, don't see how that is the fault of matchups. And winning 3 PPTQs in 3 seasons could've just been a good streak, now followed by a not so good one in this season. After all, I'm sure there are other players nearly or more prepared than you are in attendance also. You can't all win first place.
My point is that it is amplified in Modern. No, nobody can always win first place, but there are players who win a PPTQ every season. Many probably play in more GPs and try to stay on the train. I'm probably not good enough to do that, but I still have super high expectations for myself. I'll be more specific then. Players who have beaten me at the PPTQs are players that I have beaten at least a little bit in the past. Don't get me wrong. They've practiced a bunch too and have probably improved their play skill much more than I have in that time, but I still feel that I have the skill advantage quite often. Yet, it doesn't matter quite as much in Modern.
My point mainly is that people are quick to dismiss what sisicat is saying. Nothing is Black and White. There is a lot of truth to what he's getting at. Now, I don't think that something drastic or dramatic should happen. But I do think letting consistency tools back into the format like Preordain and Green Sun's Zenith can alleviate a little bit of it without shaking the boat much.
But you are at least making a reasonable argument of a spikey nature. sisicat literally said he wants a pay to win option in modern, and that's worth a bit of laughter.
no he doesn't. That's strawmanning and you know it.
He wants games to have less matchup variance like legacy has, minus the blue dominance. Which is possible with a plethora of positives this format could use.
no he doesn't. That's strawmanning and you know it.
He wants games to have less matchup variance like legacy has, minus the blue dominance. Which is possible with a plethora of positives this format could use.
His desire for Modern to have more consistency and less variance is reasonable, and why I'd like cards like Ponder and Preordain banned.
HOWEVER, sisicat has expressly stated that if he has spent more money on a Magic deck, he deserves to have a higher win percentage with that deck than a cheaper deck because he bought "a premium product". He has literally said that he wants a pay-to-win option in Modern. That isn't strawmanning, that's something he said in the past three pages of the thread.
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.
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Well, I can saw a woman in two, but you won't wanna look in the box when I'm through.
Matchup roulette is a part of any format ever though. Not sure what you're getting at with this post. You made it to top 4 and lost from a judge call, don't see how that is the fault of matchups. And winning 3 PPTQs in 3 seasons could've just been a good streak, now followed by a not so good one in this season. After all, I'm sure there are other players nearly or more prepared than you are in attendance also. You can't all win first place.
My point is that it is amplified in Modern. No, nobody can always win first place, but there are players who win a PPTQ every season. Many probably play in more GPs and try to stay on the train. I'm probably not good enough to do that, but I still have super high expectations for myself. I'll be more specific then. Players who have beaten me at the PPTQs are players that I have beaten at least a little bit in the past. Don't get me wrong. They've practiced a bunch too and have probably improved their play skill much more than I have in that time, but I still feel that I have the skill advantage quite often. Yet, it doesn't matter quite as much in Modern.
My point mainly is that people are quick to dismiss what sisicat is saying. Nothing is Black and White. There is a lot of truth to what he's getting at. Now, I don't think that something drastic or dramatic should happen. But I do think letting consistency tools back into the format like Preordain and Green Sun's Zenith can alleviate a little bit of it without shaking the boat much.
I agree here and even to an extent with sisicat but the point I am trying to make is that there is randomness in every card game and is a product of the deck building and drawing aspect of card games. The variation is literally why people play them over a more structured game like Chess. The rest is just semantics between where at on that spectrum does a format/game sit.
Legacy has more consistency with the blue tools that makes it less match up dependent than modern. Standard is less match up independent because the lower level of each strategy is lower. There are only so many shades of that spectrum between Chess and War that a game can be. You can argue the format maybe should be less matchup dependent but there will always be some randomness that makes it more likely that the "better" player loses to the worse player. If the goal is to maximize profit then it's pretty clear this is not the most efficient game or format for doing that, but that could be said about Magic in general. The format is clearly skill intensive and rewards in depth knowledge of the format, good foresight into metagaming, and tight game play and decision making in the game while simultaneously offering a varied and unrepetitive way to play.
Talking about modern specifically but also magic in general, you give up some of the skill to add a lot of variation to an experience. The closer you get to a good thing the more damaging failures are and the less beneficial successes. These parameters of games are asymptotic and the majority of the player base as well as the development team is happy with this current configuration. That's not to say it is wrong to want it to change, just that it is unlikely for it to change by much and other games offer those ratios of variation/skill/competitiveness that I think Sisicat would like to see of modern. Games like Chess and Poker lend themselves far more to the kind of attitude he has displayed here.
Matchup roulette is a part of any format ever though. Not sure what you're getting at with this post. You made it to top 4 and lost from a judge call, don't see how that is the fault of matchups. And winning 3 PPTQs in 3 seasons could've just been a good streak, now followed by a not so good one in this season. After all, I'm sure there are other players nearly or more prepared than you are in attendance also. You can't all win first place.
My point is that it is amplified in Modern. No, nobody can always win first place, but there are players who win a PPTQ every season. Many probably play in more GPs and try to stay on the train. I'm probably not good enough to do that, but I still have super high expectations for myself. I'll be more specific then. Players who have beaten me at the PPTQs are players that I have beaten at least a little bit in the past. Don't get me wrong. They've practiced a bunch too and have probably improved their play skill much more than I have in that time, but I still feel that I have the skill advantage quite often. Yet, it doesn't matter quite as much in Modern.
My point mainly is that people are quick to dismiss what sisicat is saying. Nothing is Black and White. There is a lot of truth to what he's getting at. Now, I don't think that something drastic or dramatic should happen. But I do think letting consistency tools back into the format like Preordain and Green Sun's Zenith can alleviate a little bit of it without shaking the boat much.
But you are at least making a reasonable argument of a spikey nature. sisicat literally said he wants a pay to win option in modern, and that's worth a bit of laughter.
no he doesn't. That's strawmanning and you know it.
He wants games to have less matchup variance like legacy has, minus the blue dominance. Which is possible with a plethora of positives this format could use.
That doesn't sound very positive to me. We already have one Legacy. Why do we need another?
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WoTC, thank you for finally announcing the Modern format, an eternal format where everyone can participate.
Well here's an economic fact I'd like to throw out there before this train of thought goes totally off the rails and develops into a fiery crash that only Denzel Washington can stop:
Deck prices are not a result of deck viability. Those two things are only tangentially related. Cards may be more expensive as a result of being better in a competitive deck, but this is not a perfect correlation. For instance, Jund midrange is expensive because it is a generic goodstuff deck. Most of its cards see play in a variety of decks in modern, some see play in legacy and even standard as is the case of Fatal Push and was for Kolaghan's Command. This means that there are way more people trying to buy Tarmogoyf or Verdant Catacombs or Fatal Push than trying to buy a card with a similar print run but a more narrow focus. Affinity is much cheaper because while the deck is good, there is less demand for the individual cards due to most of them only being playable in modern affinity decks. Hell if it wasn't such a pain to make a set heavy on artifacts it would probably be cheaper, but things like Ravager and Mox are just a bit tougher to fit into a masters set (which makes masterpiece prints pretty helpful).
Supply and demand, people. Before I start uploading charts I just wanted to terminate sisicat's "pay to win/premium product" argument quickly.
Matchup roulette is a part of any format ever though. Not sure what you're getting at with this post. You made it to top 4 and lost from a judge call, don't see how that is the fault of matchups. And winning 3 PPTQs in 3 seasons could've just been a good streak, now followed by a not so good one in this season. After all, I'm sure there are other players nearly or more prepared than you are in attendance also. You can't all win first place.
My point is that it is amplified in Modern. No, nobody can always win first place, but there are players who win a PPTQ every season. Many probably play in more GPs and try to stay on the train. I'm probably not good enough to do that, but I still have super high expectations for myself. I'll be more specific then. Players who have beaten me at the PPTQs are players that I have beaten at least a little bit in the past. Don't get me wrong. They've practiced a bunch too and have probably improved their play skill much more than I have in that time, but I still feel that I have the skill advantage quite often. Yet, it doesn't matter quite as much in Modern.
My point mainly is that people are quick to dismiss what sisicat is saying. Nothing is Black and White. There is a lot of truth to what he's getting at. Now, I don't think that something drastic or dramatic should happen. But I do think letting consistency tools back into the format like Preordain and Green Sun's Zenith can alleviate a little bit of it without shaking the boat much.
But you are at least making a reasonable argument of a spikey nature. sisicat literally said he wants a pay to win option in modern, and that's worth a bit of laughter.
no he doesn't. That's strawmanning and you know it.
He wants games to have less matchup variance like legacy has, minus the blue dominance. Which is possible with a plethora of positives this format could use.
That doesn't sound very positive to me. We already have one Legacy. Why do we need another?
Legacy is prohibitively expensive and has little to no support in paper for events at just about every level of competition, from FNMs to GPs. Which is a shame, because the quality and enjoyment of actually playing (or even just watching people play) is so much higher than Modern.
Matchup roulette is a part of any format ever though. Not sure what you're getting at with this post. You made it to top 4 and lost from a judge call, don't see how that is the fault of matchups. And winning 3 PPTQs in 3 seasons could've just been a good streak, now followed by a not so good one in this season. After all, I'm sure there are other players nearly or more prepared than you are in attendance also. You can't all win first place.
My point is that it is amplified in Modern. No, nobody can always win first place, but there are players who win a PPTQ every season. Many probably play in more GPs and try to stay on the train. I'm probably not good enough to do that, but I still have super high expectations for myself. I'll be more specific then. Players who have beaten me at the PPTQs are players that I have beaten at least a little bit in the past. Don't get me wrong. They've practiced a bunch too and have probably improved their play skill much more than I have in that time, but I still feel that I have the skill advantage quite often. Yet, it doesn't matter quite as much in Modern.
My point mainly is that people are quick to dismiss what sisicat is saying. Nothing is Black and White. There is a lot of truth to what he's getting at. Now, I don't think that something drastic or dramatic should happen. But I do think letting consistency tools back into the format like Preordain and Green Sun's Zenith can alleviate a little bit of it without shaking the boat much.
But you are at least making a reasonable argument of a spikey nature. sisicat literally said he wants a pay to win option in modern, and that's worth a bit of laughter.
no he doesn't. That's strawmanning and you know it.
He wants games to have less matchup variance like legacy has, minus the blue dominance. Which is possible with a plethora of positives this format could use.
That doesn't sound very positive to me. We already have one Legacy. Why do we need another?
if you don't think modern needs any better hate, answers, and unbans to improve it further, than why even comment on my post.
My point is that it is amplified in Modern. No, nobody can always win first place, but there are players who win a PPTQ every season. Many probably play in more GPs and try to stay on the train. I'm probably not good enough to do that, but I still have super high expectations for myself. I'll be more specific then. Players who have beaten me at the PPTQs are players that I have beaten at least a little bit in the past. Don't get me wrong. They've practiced a bunch too and have probably improved their play skill much more than I have in that time, but I still feel that I have the skill advantage quite often. Yet, it doesn't matter quite as much in Modern.
My point mainly is that people are quick to dismiss what sisicat is saying. Nothing is Black and White. There is a lot of truth to what he's getting at. Now, I don't think that something drastic or dramatic should happen. But I do think letting consistency tools back into the format like Preordain and Green Sun's Zenith can alleviate a little bit of it without shaking the boat much.
But you are at least making a reasonable argument of a spikey nature. sisicat literally said he wants a pay to win option in modern, and that's worth a bit of laughter.
no he doesn't. That's strawmanning and you know it.
He wants games to have less matchup variance like legacy has, minus the blue dominance. Which is possible with a plethora of positives this format could use.
That doesn't sound very positive to me. We already have one Legacy. Why do we need another?
if you don't think modern needs any better hate, answers, and unbans to improve it further, than why even comment on my post. Your clearly just trolling here
The Legacy fetishization is really annoying. Sure, I too enjoy Legacy and love that it tests traditional MTG skills in an environment with low variance matchups. Many people here enjoy that element too. But I don't at all like Legacy's metagame and dependence on blue. There's very little room for brewing and deck improvement; you can technically use more cards than in Modern, but good luck being competitive with anything but a few top strategies, many of which are blue. This means many players, myself included, must conform their playstyle to the very narrow band of top Legacy decks. In Modern, you really can play anything and find anything to fit your playstyle while not sacrificing competitiveness.
Legacy has advantages over Modern and Modern has advantages over Legacy. The categorical "Legacy is best" talk, however, needs to stop because it just doesn't accurately represent the format. Blue mages will certainly prefer Legacy because they can both play what they want and be rewarded heavily for that choice. Everyone else will generally be displeased with Legacy's relative dearth of options. And don't talk to me about how Lands and D&T and Nic Fit are counterexamples to Legacy's blue dominance. Those are small metagame slivers in a format overwhelmingly defined and dominated by FoW and BS. Modern has no such hegemony.
The Legacy fetishization is really annoying. Sure, I too enjoy Legacy and love that it tests traditional MTG skills in an environment with low variance matchups. Many people here enjoy that element too. But I don't at all like Legacy's metagame and dependence on blue. There's very little room for brewing and deck improvement; you can technically use more cards than in Modern, but good luck being competitive with anything but a few top strategies, many of which are blue. This means many players, myself included, must conform their playstyle to the very narrow band of top Legacy decks. In Modern, you really can play anything and find anything to fit your playstyle while not sacrificing competitiveness.
Legacy has advantages over Modern and Modern has advantages over Legacy. The categorical "Legacy is best" talk, however, needs to stop because it just doesn't accurately represent the format. Blue mages will certainly prefer Legacy because they can both play what they want and be rewarded heavily for that choice. Everyone else will generally be displeased with Legacy's relative dearth of options. And don't talk to me about how Lands and D&T and Nic Fit are counterexamples to Legacy's blue dominance. Those are small metagame slivers in a format overwhelmingly defined and dominated by FoW and BS. Modern has no such hegemony.
And instead, Modern has an exaggerated matchup lottery, where outcomes are often decided by opening hands and whether or not someone draws a hate card. It leads to wildly swingy games that many could perceive as not fun or enjoyable. But the flip side is that you have a higher liklihood of winning against a better-skilled player due to forces outside of either players' control, so overall it can be more "enjoyable" for more people who like that aspect.
If we some complain about Legacy being dominated by blue, we can say Modern is dominated by fast linear strategies that are difficult to interact with. One creates a dynamic back and forth, in which players are trading resources and carefully navigating around each other. The other is like watching a freight train trying to smash through a blockade (or two trains smashing into each other). That's not to say watching trains crash into each other is objectively bad, but it's not what I personally wanted out of the format when I bought in for thousands of dollars building and hundreds of hours playing. I'm saddened to see what the format has turned into, and I think most of the blame lies in the existence of "low-cost" Eldrazi (among other issues).
It's a straight up fact. There are fewer types of decks and fewer decks, and fewer actually playable cards despite the larger card pool. A stunning 60-70% of the meta consists of 4 forces, 4 brainstorms and 4 ponders + whatever cards we want to try to use to win the game / stop you from winning the game.
Half of the legacy format is playing with 40 card decks and the other half is playing with 60 card decks. It's pretty awful for my tastes. If you want to talk about sideboard dominance, people neglect to grasp that in legacy you will find your 1-of pretty much every other game if you're playing blue and looking for it. Enjoy your dread of night D&T players
While in general I am not a fan of discard as a policing strategy (due to the amount information it gives) I will take modern's 15% thoughtseize decks vs. legacy's 60% brainstorm decks any day of the week.
Lol, I've heard a lot of bad arguments about legacy and modern but I think "no, actually Legacy is less diverse" is the worst.
It IS less diverse. There is zero tournament data to suggest otherwise. The overwhelming majority of top decks are blue FoW and BS strategies.
Re: "Modern too linear"
This allegation is not supported by recent tournament results either. Grixis DS, Jeskai Control, and BGx are just a few top-tier decks that are highly interactive. Play them. This thread remains a place where a few disenfranchised players, seemingly all blue players, continue to harp on the same alleged Modern issues with zero data. The data does not support their arguments and hasn't for months, but the same tired arguments continue month after month.
It's a straight up fact. There are fewer types of decks and fewer decks, and fewer actually playable cards despite the larger card pool. A stunning 60-70% of the meta consists of 4 forces, 4 brainstorms and 4 ponders + whatever cards we want to try to use to win the game / stop you from winning the game.
Half of the legacy format is playing with 40 card decks and the other half is playing with 60 card decks. It's pretty awful for my tastes. If you want to talk about sideboard dominance, people neglect to grasp that in legacy you will find your 1-of pretty much every other game if you're playing blue and looking for it. Enjoy your dread of night D&T players
While in general I am not a fan of discard as a policing strategy (due to the amount information it gives) I will take modern's 15% thoughtseize decks vs. legacy's 60% brainstorm decks any day of the week.
Decks like Storm, Delver, Leovold, Stoneblade, and Topless Miracles are all vastly different in gameplan and construction. I think it's extremely disingenuous to lump them together just because they play Force and Brainstorm.
I would much rather have a format defined by the meaningful gameplay choices and interaction facilitated by cards like Force and Brainstorm. If color diversity is such a huge problem for someone (despite massive deck archetype diversity), then how about Wizards print cards to help facilitate better gameplay in other colors too? That way we don't see one-sided things get banned all the time, like we do with blue cards in Modern.
Uw, Death's Shadow, and storm all run Serum Visions and relic! Same deck you guys.
This forum has like 49 threads for established legacy decks and 20 for modern.
This not being the legacy thread I'll not get too far down that rabbit hole but the blue midrange/control spectrum gets quite samey for my tastes. I know other people appreciate the deep nuances between pondering for a leovold and pondering for a true-name and pondering for a stoneforge but I am not one of them Storm is its own thing obviously (since it doesn't play force, for one), and topless miracles (arguments about viability aside) to some extent.
I think the issue is that the power level required for cards to compete in legacy with brainstorm is almost comical. It would be difficult to keep such cards from just finding their way into blue decks unless they were hyper specialized (like recruiter of the guard, which is actually a really good try at this that slightly missed the mark by its crappy statline).
In general I think that it's probably fine that modern be a format defined more by what deck you choose than intricate lines of play; not that there aren't complex lines, there're just in general fewer major decisions to make in the game. Maybe it's just not for everybody.
Uw, Death's Shadow, and storm all run Serum Visions and relic! Same deck you guys.
This forum has like 49 threads for established legacy decks and 20 for modern.
Go look at how many of those threads have had a post in the last month please, and then at how many of them have top 32'd an event recently. Legacy has been around like what, 10 years longer or more? And most of the "established" decks are completely dead. Even really solid tier 2-ish decks like Aluren and Food Chain get a post like once a month. Because serious legacy players play one of the 8 or so best decks and that is it.
You're making my point for me actually; blue based decks running serum visions make up like 20-25% of the modern meta. Because serum visions is the best proactive blue 1-drop in the format. In the same way Thoughtseize decks make up 15-25% of the meta because it's the best proactive black 1-drop.
In legacy the best blue 1-drops are in 60%+ of the decks, because blue is insanely overpowered.
In legacy the best blue 1-drops are in 60%+ of the decks, because blue is insanely overpowered.
And yet, those exact kinds of tools (filtering and protection) play extremely important roles. They prevent the linear ridiculousness from taking over the format (without the need for endless bans) and they allow for much more engaging and decision-based gameplay between players. If the problem is simply color (and not their function) then Wizards should print some kind of analogous tools in other for Modern. Black has some amazing things, green has some amazing things, white has some amazing things, red is fairly lackluster, and everything in blue is banned. I don't understand the animosity in the color specifics for a format that allows for a vastly-diverse, skill-testing, and powerful metagame to exist in relative harmony, without the need for ban after ban after ban. Never mind the fact that Legacy gets flooded with supplemental cards every year as well (something that could greatly benefit Modern as well, given the bland, powered-down nature of cards forced to enter through Standard).
In legacy the best blue 1-drops are in 60%+ of the decks, because blue is insanely overpowered.
And yet, those exact kinds of tools (filtering and protection) play extremely important roles. They prevent the linear ridiculousness from taking over the format (without the need for endless bans) and they allow for much more engaging and decision-based gameplay between players. If the problem is simply color (and not their function) then Wizards should print some kind of analogous tools in other for Modern. Black has some amazing things, green has some amazing things, white has some amazing things, red is fairly lackluster, and everything in blue is banned. I don't understand the animosity in the color specifics for a format that allows for a vastly-diverse, skill-testing, and powerful metagame to exist in relative harmony, without the need for ban after ban after ban. Never mind the fact that Legacy gets flooded with supplemental cards every year as well (something that could greatly benefit Modern as well, given the bland, powered-down nature of cards forced to enter through Standard).
If Legacy were a supported format like Modern, I guarantee almost all the things blue mages love about that format would get banned. Similarly, the format would be even more warped towards a few strategies, once pros dedicated time to solving it like they do for other formats like Modern and Standard.
I don't think anyone here disagrees that Modern would benefit from more generic answers. But that doesn't justify the claim that Modern is a non-interactive format. There are plenty of top-tier interactive decks, and interactive blue decks, including one that appeared so broken we talked about banning elements of it for most of May and June. Want to be interactive? Play that deck. Or Jeskai. Or BGx. You have options.
It's a straight up fact. There are fewer types of decks and fewer decks, and fewer actually playable cards despite the larger card pool. A stunning 60-70% of the meta consists of 4 forces, 4 brainstorms and 4 ponders + whatever cards we want to try to use to win the game / stop you from winning the game.
Half of the legacy format is playing with 40 card decks and the other half is playing with 60 card decks. It's pretty awful for my tastes. If you want to talk about sideboard dominance, people neglect to grasp that in legacy you will find your 1-of pretty much every other game if you're playing blue and looking for it. Enjoy your dread of night D&T players
While in general I am not a fan of discard as a policing strategy (due to the amount information it gives) I will take modern's 15% thoughtseize decks vs. legacy's 60% brainstorm decks any day of the week.
Decks like Storm, Delver, Leovold, Stoneblade, and Topless Miracles are all vastly different in gameplan and construction. I think it's extremely disingenuous to lump them together just because they play Force and Brainstorm.
I would much rather have a format defined by the meaningful gameplay choices and interaction facilitated by cards like Force and Brainstorm. If color diversity is such a huge problem for someone (despite massive deck archetype diversity), then how about Wizards print cards to help facilitate better gameplay in other colors too? That way we don't see one-sided things get banned all the time, like we do with blue cards in Modern.
IIRC you were one of the people who said it was okay to lump Eldrazi, Gx Tron, and Valakut together under big mana because they all used lands. How is that different than saying decks that abuse Blue cantrips and FoW are the same.
IIRC you were one of the people who said it was okay to lump Eldrazi, Gx Tron, and Valakut together under big mana because they all used lands. How is that different than saying decks that abuse Blue cantrips and FoW are the same.
Because those decks want to do similar things using similar tools (ramp, cast big spells ahead of curve, use lands that are difficult to interact with). Lumping the FOW/BS decks together (like pointed out already) is like lumping the completely-different Storm, Death's Shadow, and UW control together, simply because they all play Serum Visions (despite having vastly different game plans).
I don't think anyone here disagrees that Modern would benefit from more generic answers. But that doesn't justify the claim that Modern is a non-interactive format. There are plenty of top-tier interactive decks, and interactive blue decks, including one that appeared so broken we talked about banning elements of it for most of May and June. Want to be interactive? Play that deck. Or Jeskai. Or BGx. You have options.
I don't remember saying the format was non-interactive. I believe I said something along the lines that it was far too heavily influenced by matchup lotteries and "who draws the hate card first"-style of games. This aspect has always been a part of Modern, but has become more and more exaggerated, especially in the past few years. It's not getting any better because new and old broken threats and narrow axes of attack are vastly outpacing answers and reactive spells. I do not believe this makes a format better or promotes good gameplay.
It may be worth pointing out that arguments for less variance means reducing the number of viable decks. That's reality. While WOTC may pretend the secondary market doesn't exist, any attempt to streamline the format so that some players feel like it is no longer so "matchup dependent" means invalidating the time, money and effort of a sizable chunk of the playerbase. I mean...guys...quad sleeved taking turns!
It may be worth pointing out that arguments for less variance means reducing the number of viable decks. That's reality. While WOTC may pretend the secondary market doesn't exist, any attempt to streamline the format so that some players feel like it is no longer so "matchup dependent" means invalidating the time, money and effort of a sizable chunk of the playerbase. I mean...guys...quad sleeved taking turns!
They have no issue invalidating strategies people have spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours investing in. In the past two years, Modern has lost nearly all of the "faces" and "pillars" of the format. Some through bannings, some through evolving irrelevance. Either way, WOTC has no problem with this happening.
Uw, Death's Shadow, and storm all run Serum Visions and relic! Same deck you guys.
This forum has like 49 threads for established legacy decks and 20 for modern.
Go look at how many of those threads have had a post in the last month please, and then at how many of them have top 32'd an event recently. Legacy has been around like what, 10 years longer or more? And most of the "established" decks are completely dead. Even really solid tier 2-ish decks like Aluren and Food Chain get a post like once a month. Because serious legacy players play one of the 8 or so best decks and that is it.
Isn't this the same for modern? Serious players don't play their two decks, and only casuals play their pet "established" deck and serious players only play whatever the best deck dejoure is and then to back to limited or standard or whatever.
You're making my point for me actually; blue based decks running serum visions make up like 20-25% of the modern meta. Because serum visions is the best proactive blue 1-drop in the format. In the same way Thoughtseize decks make up 15-25% of the meta because it's the best proactive black 1-drop.
In legacy the best blue 1-drops are in 60%+ of the decks, because blue is insanely overpowered.
Or its because of self fulfilling prophecies. No one wants to be blown out by a combo deck so they pack the best get out of jail free card they can find. It's blue, so they pair it with the best consistency engine they can find which is in the same color. Then they literally can do anything else in the game.
It may be worth pointing out that arguments for less variance means reducing the number of viable decks. That's reality. While WOTC may pretend the secondary market doesn't exist, any attempt to streamline the format so that some players feel like it is no longer so "matchup dependent" means invalidating the time, money and effort of a sizable chunk of the playerbase. I mean...guys...quad sleeved taking turns!
They have no issue invalidating strategies people have spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours investing in. In the past two years, Modern has lost nearly all of the "faces" and "pillars" of the format. Some through bannings, some through evolving irrelevance. Either way, WOTC has no problem with this happening.
Bans are worth discussion, but metagame shifts due to new cards I think are not. I keep saying it: EVERY single deck runs the risk of being made irrelevant with the next set. Let the buyer beware. In fact, I think that applies to bans as well. I'm talking specifically about people here favoring the reduction of viable modern decks from the twenty or so we have now to...six or whatever number that is probably less than half of what we have now.
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He wants games to have less matchup variance like legacy has, minus the blue dominance. Which is possible with a plethora of positives this format could use.
decks playing:
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His desire for Modern to have more consistency and less variance is reasonable, and why I'd like cards like Ponder and Preordain banned.
HOWEVER, sisicat has expressly stated that if he has spent more money on a Magic deck, he deserves to have a higher win percentage with that deck than a cheaper deck because he bought "a premium product". He has literally said that he wants a pay-to-win option in Modern. That isn't strawmanning, that's something he said in the past three pages of the thread.
I agree here and even to an extent with sisicat but the point I am trying to make is that there is randomness in every card game and is a product of the deck building and drawing aspect of card games. The variation is literally why people play them over a more structured game like Chess. The rest is just semantics between where at on that spectrum does a format/game sit.
Legacy has more consistency with the blue tools that makes it less match up dependent than modern. Standard is less match up independent because the lower level of each strategy is lower. There are only so many shades of that spectrum between Chess and War that a game can be. You can argue the format maybe should be less matchup dependent but there will always be some randomness that makes it more likely that the "better" player loses to the worse player. If the goal is to maximize profit then it's pretty clear this is not the most efficient game or format for doing that, but that could be said about Magic in general. The format is clearly skill intensive and rewards in depth knowledge of the format, good foresight into metagaming, and tight game play and decision making in the game while simultaneously offering a varied and unrepetitive way to play.
Talking about modern specifically but also magic in general, you give up some of the skill to add a lot of variation to an experience. The closer you get to a good thing the more damaging failures are and the less beneficial successes. These parameters of games are asymptotic and the majority of the player base as well as the development team is happy with this current configuration. That's not to say it is wrong to want it to change, just that it is unlikely for it to change by much and other games offer those ratios of variation/skill/competitiveness that I think Sisicat would like to see of modern. Games like Chess and Poker lend themselves far more to the kind of attitude he has displayed here.
That doesn't sound very positive to me. We already have one Legacy. Why do we need another?
Deck prices are not a result of deck viability. Those two things are only tangentially related. Cards may be more expensive as a result of being better in a competitive deck, but this is not a perfect correlation. For instance, Jund midrange is expensive because it is a generic goodstuff deck. Most of its cards see play in a variety of decks in modern, some see play in legacy and even standard as is the case of Fatal Push and was for Kolaghan's Command. This means that there are way more people trying to buy Tarmogoyf or Verdant Catacombs or Fatal Push than trying to buy a card with a similar print run but a more narrow focus. Affinity is much cheaper because while the deck is good, there is less demand for the individual cards due to most of them only being playable in modern affinity decks. Hell if it wasn't such a pain to make a set heavy on artifacts it would probably be cheaper, but things like Ravager and Mox are just a bit tougher to fit into a masters set (which makes masterpiece prints pretty helpful).
Supply and demand, people. Before I start uploading charts I just wanted to terminate sisicat's "pay to win/premium product" argument quickly.
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Legacy has advantages over Modern and Modern has advantages over Legacy. The categorical "Legacy is best" talk, however, needs to stop because it just doesn't accurately represent the format. Blue mages will certainly prefer Legacy because they can both play what they want and be rewarded heavily for that choice. Everyone else will generally be displeased with Legacy's relative dearth of options. And don't talk to me about how Lands and D&T and Nic Fit are counterexamples to Legacy's blue dominance. Those are small metagame slivers in a format overwhelmingly defined and dominated by FoW and BS. Modern has no such hegemony.
And instead, Modern has an exaggerated matchup lottery, where outcomes are often decided by opening hands and whether or not someone draws a hate card. It leads to wildly swingy games that many could perceive as not fun or enjoyable. But the flip side is that you have a higher liklihood of winning against a better-skilled player due to forces outside of either players' control, so overall it can be more "enjoyable" for more people who like that aspect.
If we some complain about Legacy being dominated by blue, we can say Modern is dominated by fast linear strategies that are difficult to interact with. One creates a dynamic back and forth, in which players are trading resources and carefully navigating around each other. The other is like watching a freight train trying to smash through a blockade (or two trains smashing into each other). That's not to say watching trains crash into each other is objectively bad, but it's not what I personally wanted out of the format when I bought in for thousands of dollars building and hundreds of hours playing. I'm saddened to see what the format has turned into, and I think most of the blame lies in the existence of "low-cost" Eldrazi (among other issues).
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Half of the legacy format is playing with 40 card decks and the other half is playing with 60 card decks. It's pretty awful for my tastes. If you want to talk about sideboard dominance, people neglect to grasp that in legacy you will find your 1-of pretty much every other game if you're playing blue and looking for it. Enjoy your dread of night D&T players
While in general I am not a fan of discard as a policing strategy (due to the amount information it gives) I will take modern's 15% thoughtseize decks vs. legacy's 60% brainstorm decks any day of the week.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
It IS less diverse. There is zero tournament data to suggest otherwise. The overwhelming majority of top decks are blue FoW and BS strategies.
Re: "Modern too linear"
This allegation is not supported by recent tournament results either. Grixis DS, Jeskai Control, and BGx are just a few top-tier decks that are highly interactive. Play them. This thread remains a place where a few disenfranchised players, seemingly all blue players, continue to harp on the same alleged Modern issues with zero data. The data does not support their arguments and hasn't for months, but the same tired arguments continue month after month.
I would much rather have a format defined by the meaningful gameplay choices and interaction facilitated by cards like Force and Brainstorm. If color diversity is such a huge problem for someone (despite massive deck archetype diversity), then how about Wizards print cards to help facilitate better gameplay in other colors too? That way we don't see one-sided things get banned all the time, like we do with blue cards in Modern.
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This forum has like 49 threads for established legacy decks and 20 for modern.
I think the issue is that the power level required for cards to compete in legacy with brainstorm is almost comical. It would be difficult to keep such cards from just finding their way into blue decks unless they were hyper specialized (like recruiter of the guard, which is actually a really good try at this that slightly missed the mark by its crappy statline).
In general I think that it's probably fine that modern be a format defined more by what deck you choose than intricate lines of play; not that there aren't complex lines, there're just in general fewer major decisions to make in the game. Maybe it's just not for everybody.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Go look at how many of those threads have had a post in the last month please, and then at how many of them have top 32'd an event recently. Legacy has been around like what, 10 years longer or more? And most of the "established" decks are completely dead. Even really solid tier 2-ish decks like Aluren and Food Chain get a post like once a month. Because serious legacy players play one of the 8 or so best decks and that is it.
You're making my point for me actually; blue based decks running serum visions make up like 20-25% of the modern meta. Because serum visions is the best proactive blue 1-drop in the format. In the same way Thoughtseize decks make up 15-25% of the meta because it's the best proactive black 1-drop.
In legacy the best blue 1-drops are in 60%+ of the decks, because blue is insanely overpowered.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
And yet, those exact kinds of tools (filtering and protection) play extremely important roles. They prevent the linear ridiculousness from taking over the format (without the need for endless bans) and they allow for much more engaging and decision-based gameplay between players. If the problem is simply color (and not their function) then Wizards should print some kind of analogous tools in other for Modern. Black has some amazing things, green has some amazing things, white has some amazing things, red is fairly lackluster, and everything in blue is banned. I don't understand the animosity in the color specifics for a format that allows for a vastly-diverse, skill-testing, and powerful metagame to exist in relative harmony, without the need for ban after ban after ban. Never mind the fact that Legacy gets flooded with supplemental cards every year as well (something that could greatly benefit Modern as well, given the bland, powered-down nature of cards forced to enter through Standard).
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If Legacy were a supported format like Modern, I guarantee almost all the things blue mages love about that format would get banned. Similarly, the format would be even more warped towards a few strategies, once pros dedicated time to solving it like they do for other formats like Modern and Standard.
I don't think anyone here disagrees that Modern would benefit from more generic answers. But that doesn't justify the claim that Modern is a non-interactive format. There are plenty of top-tier interactive decks, and interactive blue decks, including one that appeared so broken we talked about banning elements of it for most of May and June. Want to be interactive? Play that deck. Or Jeskai. Or BGx. You have options.
IIRC you were one of the people who said it was okay to lump Eldrazi, Gx Tron, and Valakut together under big mana because they all used lands. How is that different than saying decks that abuse Blue cantrips and FoW are the same.
Because those decks want to do similar things using similar tools (ramp, cast big spells ahead of curve, use lands that are difficult to interact with). Lumping the FOW/BS decks together (like pointed out already) is like lumping the completely-different Storm, Death's Shadow, and UW control together, simply because they all play Serum Visions (despite having vastly different game plans).
I don't remember saying the format was non-interactive. I believe I said something along the lines that it was far too heavily influenced by matchup lotteries and "who draws the hate card first"-style of games. This aspect has always been a part of Modern, but has become more and more exaggerated, especially in the past few years. It's not getting any better because new and old broken threats and narrow axes of attack are vastly outpacing answers and reactive spells. I do not believe this makes a format better or promotes good gameplay.
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They have no issue invalidating strategies people have spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours investing in. In the past two years, Modern has lost nearly all of the "faces" and "pillars" of the format. Some through bannings, some through evolving irrelevance. Either way, WOTC has no problem with this happening.
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Or its because of self fulfilling prophecies. No one wants to be blown out by a combo deck so they pack the best get out of jail free card they can find. It's blue, so they pair it with the best consistency engine they can find which is in the same color. Then they literally can do anything else in the game.
Bans are worth discussion, but metagame shifts due to new cards I think are not. I keep saying it: EVERY single deck runs the risk of being made irrelevant with the next set. Let the buyer beware. In fact, I think that applies to bans as well. I'm talking specifically about people here favoring the reduction of viable modern decks from the twenty or so we have now to...six or whatever number that is probably less than half of what we have now.