What do you think of Dig Through Time in general? Should there be a pre-banned list in this format? Should DTT be in it?
It's so early at the moment in the formats life time that there's really no way of knowing. I'm almost 99% certain that if the format takes off in it's current state four color good stuff decks will dominate thanks to fetch lands and kahns being in the format, as that set is basically Frontier's version of Mirrodin. People may like the fetches but they will break the game eventually, just not right now. The same could be said for Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise.
However, I'm pretty confident that if something like that happened a ban will happen by whatever council ends up in charge of the format. They may say there's no bans right now, but that will definitely change if the format starts going south.
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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!
I find M15 a trivial choice to start a new format. Just because it saw the introduction of the new frame isn't an argument in itself, M15 doesn't represent anything special. It was just yet another core set.
I'd rather start Frontier with Magic Origins, which itself started something completely new in the block structure, story etc.
This has been my position since this thread began, and it hasn't changed: if cost is the issue, turning to a new non-rotating format is not the answer. A reworked version of Extended that meets power level concerns would have fewer price issues. It would be less confining than standard, while more so than modern. This is, of course, assuming that price issues are the core justification because a slow rotation would free a given format from modern's expensive staples issue to an extent. If other aspects of the format bring in more appeal, the advantages of rotation are reduced to those associated with upheaval, which many fans of modern avoid and fans of standard embrace.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above.
I find it amusing I see all these posts from people excited about the size of the card pool and how *this* or *that* isn't in the pool to muck things up, but happy that *this* or *that* favorite gets another chance to shine. It sounds Extended is the perfect solution to these people's wishes. Card pool sizes are comparable, and no group of cards will dominate forever like in Modern.
I have seen posts where people are concerned that Magic cannot support too many formats. There is a valid concern here, but to me Extended seems the right fit. If you have {Vintage, Modern, Frontier, Standard}, then there's three eternal formats of different sizes (with no guarantee people won't tire of Frontier and split the card pool yet again) and one rotating format. If you have {Vintage, Modern, Extended, Standard} you have two eternal and two rotating formats, each of significantly different size. Seems a more balanced way to split the pool of prospective players.
Bykr the people interested in Frontier aren't just going for the price. The really big reason to be going for this format is the move to the newer card design and away from most of the cards from bygone years that have proven to be too powerful and a detriment to diversity. It's also good since it breaths life into cards that otherwise would never have gotten to see the light of day thanks to all the unique combinations that didn't exist when the card was standard legal and that are too weak to be useful in modern.
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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!
Modern's problem isn't that the cards are too strong, it's problem is that the answers, outside of incredibly narrow cards, are too weak.
The format has such powerful hose cards and such sharp match ups that the entire format is paper rock scissors. Except that paper rock scissors is almost completely determined before the game ever starts. Saying the answers are too weak is just the flip side of the exact same statement I made in my own post.
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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!
Since they decided to annex extended for modern there is no going back, they are fixing legacy format prices which is good.
Modern, people constantly ***** and moan about how "unfair" it is. Its because people netdeck 24/7 and never learn how to play their decks rather then trying to do anything new to combat meta. My homebrew deck atm has gone x-0 at the last 6 tournys of 30+ players. I have two other homebrews that do extremly well vs meta just not my style of playing.
Frontier: is completly stupid and mental format
Top 5 decks, you will either play these or lose end of story.
Rally
Acendency
Jeskai black
Aggro.deck
Jund
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Standard
BUG SuperFriends
Modern RWGKiki's CastleRWG UB Turns UB GRBU HulkBreach GRBU
If people want to play frontier, then let them. I will be playing frontier and looking to enjoy myself while doing it, are you going to come over and say I can't enjoy my magic experience? No, and you saying it's mental won't stop anyone who's interested from playing. If and when it takes, I for one will be happily brewing decks for years to come. If it means Torrential Gearhulk into Dig Through time, with baby jace and access to crackling doom in the same deck? You bet your tush I'm a be playing something like that!
Also, I will not shell out 1800 bucks for a jund deck, no, I'd rather invest in a format that is young enough for me to buy multiple decks. IN modern? I'd be on the same deck for 6 months before being able to change to burn or infect. That alone would be over 3000 dollars, that's ridiculous.
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Standard Arena: Eh? Gruul or Die
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now: G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record) C Eldrazi Tron (9-5) UG Infect RW Burn
If people want to play frontier, then let them. I will be playing frontier and looking to enjoy myself while doing it, are you going to come over and say I can't enjoy my magic experience? No, and you saying it's mental won't stop anyone who's interested from playing. If and when it takes, I for one will be happily brewing decks for years to come. If it means Torrential Gearhulk into Dig Through time, with baby jace and access to crackling doom in the same deck? You bet your tush I'm a be playing something like that!
Also, I will not shell out 1800 bucks for a jund deck, no, I'd rather invest in a format that is young enough for me to buy multiple decks. IN modern? I'd be on the same deck for 6 months before being able to change to burn or infect. That alone would be over 3000 dollars, that's ridiculous.
Thanks for posting this. Modern is basically inaccessible for a lot of players due to the pay wall on the secondary market. I just think people who like frontier will not see eye to eye with Modern players and vice versa.
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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!
yeah bro no worries, some people forget that there is a very high cost of buying into tier 1 or even tier 2 modern decks. Some forget that interactivity is low in modern to begin with, and dislike gold fishing until their thing wins. From what I'm seeing in frontier, there's a myriad of viable deck options. Control is a real thing in this format and you know what? So are Goblins At the end of the day, fun to me may not be what fun is to someone else, and that's fine. However, no one gets to dictate what's fun to anyone else; that right is reserved for me myself and the new format.
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Standard Arena: Eh? Gruul or Die
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now: G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record) C Eldrazi Tron (9-5) UG Infect RW Burn
As a note from a player who was around when Type 1.5 was announced, Frontier (Post Modern) appears more of the same type of format borne from card prices and looking to include a demographic that will play it. The motivation for new formats is usually card availability and price. I find this especially true of Frontier in that it is driven by vendors instead of the owning company.
This is an opinion. Nothing based in fact but of experience and observation.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above.
I find it amusing I see all these posts from people excited about the size of the card pool and how *this* or *that* isn't in the pool to muck things up, but happy that *this* or *that* favorite gets another chance to shine. It sounds Extended is the perfect solution to these people's wishes. Card pool sizes are comparable, and no group of cards will dominate forever like in Modern.
I have seen posts where people are concerned that Magic cannot support too many formats. There is a valid concern here, but to me Extended seems the right fit. If you have {Vintage, Modern, Frontier, Standard}, then there's three eternal formats of different sizes (with no guarantee people won't tire of Frontier and split the card pool yet again) and one rotating format. If you have {Vintage, Modern, Extended, Standard} you have two eternal and two rotating formats, each of significantly different size. Seems a more balanced way to split the pool of prospective players.
Exactly spot on about extended and rotations. The excitement for "frontier" is laughable when there is a better alternative that's healthier for the player base in extended. Right now the vendors have got a legion of duped magic players doing their dirty work in promoting fro.... not even gonna say the name. I see too many reasons for this format existing being only about the money. If this thing is ever going to be a success, or if any new format is going to be a success it has to be based on more than dollar bills. There is no new card frame either, just a piece of foil on the bottom of rares. Vendors and investors dumping overprinted product (we all know WotC increased printing quantities) is all that this is about. These are not the players of the game, we should all be supporting something that's actually from the community. Stop supporting something a store made up, a store has an agenda - sell cards. Please support ideas from fellow players. This is not a format promoting a healthy meta for the players of the future. It's only lining the pockets of people preying on players of the game and boy they're sure rubbing their hands together seeing so many of us doing their work for them.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above.
I find it amusing I see all these posts from people excited about the size of the card pool and how *this* or *that* isn't in the pool to muck things up, but happy that *this* or *that* favorite gets another chance to shine. It sounds Extended is the perfect solution to these people's wishes. Card pool sizes are comparable, and no group of cards will dominate forever like in Modern.
I have seen posts where people are concerned that Magic cannot support too many formats. There is a valid concern here, but to me Extended seems the right fit. If you have {Vintage, Modern, Frontier, Standard}, then there's three eternal formats of different sizes (with no guarantee people won't tire of Frontier and split the card pool yet again) and one rotating format. If you have {Vintage, Modern, Extended, Standard} you have two eternal and two rotating formats, each of significantly different size. Seems a more balanced way to split the pool of prospective players.
Exactly spot on about extended and rotations. The excitement for "frontier" is laughable when there is a better alternative that's healthier for the player base in extended. Right now the vendors have got a legion of duped magic players doing their dirty work in promoting fro.... not even gonna say the name. I see too many reasons for this format existing being only about the money. If this thing is ever going to be a success, or if any new format is going to be a success it has to be based on more than dollar bills. There is no new card frame either, just a piece of foil on the bottom of rares. Vendors and investors dumping overprinted product (we all know WotC increased printing quantities) is all that this is about. These are not the players of the game, we should all be supporting something that's actually from the community. Stop supporting something a store made up, a store has an agenda - sell cards. Please support ideas from fellow players. This is not a format promoting a healthy meta for the players of the future. It's only lining the pockets of people preying on players of the game and boy they're sure rubbing their hands together seeing so many of us doing their work for them.
The rich only get richer schtick doesn't really apply here. People are gravitating to the format because the nature of a collectible has created barriers to entry for every eternal format. The nature of competition has created barriers to entry for standard (I'm looking at you Chandra pre order price). Price is a plenty viable way to judge a format. You can argue legacy is fun until you're blue in the face, if I can't afford to build the deck I want to play and neither can my friends - the format doesn't serve me as a consumer.
Frontier offers players a springing board into playing in a slightly more tuned environment than standard, but they can build off of their standard deck right now. That's hugely so peaking. I personally think the card pool is kind of shallow right now, but the format is diverse and has lots of fun decks with low barrier to entry and good levels of decision points for playing the game. The last two decks to break into modern were eldrazi (which shortly catapaulted in price and broke the format for a few months) and I've seen some small success out of bant spirits (which requires quite the investment of mana and dorks to run smoothly). The bar for modern is incredibly hard to hit outside of singles running through standard. Go ahead and try an energy combo kill in modern and I'll show you an infect deck that beats you by 2 turns almost every time.
If I was a large business like SCG I wouldn't be promoting this format, a huge percentage of their inventory and worth is tied to the modern format. Why advertise a format that tanks my modern playable inventory while people buy my bulk rares at .50 instead of .25 a piece? It doesn't make sense and I think your angst is ill placed. Heck Mark Nestico literally just had an article this week on SCG saying frontier looks promising but after the tiny leaders burn he's very leery of it. Basically saying it's way to infant to make a move in on right now. Doesn't sound like a big retailer hype training to drive prices to me...
Doesn't sound like a big retailer hype training to drive prices to me...
Nice red herring there!
I'm talking about people making money from this who have their finger on the pulse of MTG right now and those are vendors and LGS's. Don't misconstrue this as being the agenda of walmart or target please. Powell's books doesn't have bulk singles laying around being printed into oblivion that they want to dump.
What do you think of Dig Through Time in general? Should there be a pre-banned list in this format? Should DTT be in it?
It's so early at the moment in the formats life time that there's really no way of knowing. I'm almost 99% certain that if the format takes off in it's current state four color good stuff decks will dominate thanks to fetch lands and kahns being in the format, as that set is basically Frontier's version of Mirrodin. People may like the fetches but they will break the game eventually, just not right now. The same could be said for Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise.
However, I'm pretty confident that if something like that happened a ban will happen by whatever council ends up in charge of the format. They may say there's no bans right now, but that will definitely change if the format starts going south.
The difference is that dig through time & treasure cruise are solitary cards: they can "easily" be banned once they become offensive. Similar to how modern banned pod and others. Fetches are -once started and not banned directly- very integrated into so many decks that there won't be "one offensive deck" - rather they will all be "offensive" compared to a non-fetch (+ fetchable) land base. Thus banning would hit "all decks at once", and that is not something wotc has shown to like.
Frontier isn't actually controlled by wizards of the coast, so anything is possible in the long run.
Edit: On a completely different note, people who are thinking that fetches are going to make decks expensive are looking at the wrong cards at the moment. The ones that are making me worried are the Origins flip walkers. WoTC has stated before that they have difficulties with doing reprints of double sided cards due to the set up and given how underopened that set was flip walkers might as well be on the reserved list. The merge cards are in the same kind of boat as they probably have to use the same process there as with the flip cards. I actually made the difficult decision of buying up a playset of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy because of the situation surrounding the card more than just a desire to play it. I'm also aiming to get a set of all the other flip walkers from that set as well, since it's fairly likely we could see reprints of the other non-flip mythics later.
But yeah, the greatest danger to super inflation in deck prices are going to be from cards that can't get reprinted easily and are from an underopened set. I'm thinking that Aether Revolt might be going in a similar direction of being under opened as well. Kaladesh is going to be pennies for a long time due to how much it got opened even though it didn't quite get opened as much as BFZ did.
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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!
With masterpieces I honestly doubt fetches will EVER be in a set again - rather just like zendikar they will be in masterpieces where it makes sense. Why else would they (even for non expensive ones) not reprint ANY of the older rares now? And keep making new ones for standard... The current rare cycle doesn't feel any more kaladesh than the painlands, or the bounce lands or others in that category - having to buy new lands each standard cycle which are thrown away afterwards is not "fun", and I rather spend that money on actual improvements for decks. Similarly: why did the perfect reprint situation for cavern of souls get passed along like nothing happens?
Really as much as I wish to see a reprint of the "legendary" lands that are awesome for eternal formats, I just can't see it happening: With the new world order wizard has explicitly shown they do not wish to reprint better/expensive cards in the main sets. - So why do you even "count" on it, even if wizards would ever condone a new eternal format?
There's a lot going on with Wizards R&D and they only want to release what will be good for the current standard. A lot of cards like Cavern of Souls are just too powerful as the new direction is to avoid lands without a downside that can mana fix. Caverns is probably slated to get a reprint in the next modern masters coming out around march, along with Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil. The enemy fetches will probably get printed in the next few standard sets so those will get into Frontier soonish as well.
As for reprints for the allied fetches: They will reprint them. It may be years later after Kahns block is almost forgotten, but they will reprint them.
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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!
As for reprints for the allied fetches: They will reprint them. It may be years later after Kahns block is almost forgotten, but they will reprint them.
Sure and if you reach the end of the rainbow you'll find a pot of gold. - Oh and if you die you can go to heaven.
Really there is no reason at all to believe in those things, other than you want them! - Why would they otherwise not have reprinted ANY of the lands in standard so far in NWO? Unless you are a wotc employee and have internal information - which would then require you to cite sources. - we have to live by postulation of what happened in the recent past.
And since in the recent past no reprint of rare lands was ever done -and the khans fetches were reprinted "to bring allied fetches into modern"- there is no way one can "expect" this to change (Unless you can find a wotc source stating they will reprint them). Believing they will is like believing in a religion: baseless assumptions that should have no value in a debate. - Believe what you wish, you can pray for fetches all you want.
But do NOT consider reprints in a discussion about future sets (other than a what-if scenario). If you do come with a reputable quote to back up the claims.
The one case where they did reprint lands was Return to Ravnica, so really I'm not too sure where you are getting off saying they aren't going to reprint a past land cycle in a new set. The one thing I don't think they are doing is reprinting any land cycle they view as a problematic design, and given the new BFZ lands they definitely are considering shock lands a bad design at this time. Again, you are coming off as sounding like you have some kind of stake in all of this land reprinting stuff. Do you own Scalding tarn and are afraid it's value is going to tank to the ground?
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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!
There's a lot going on with Wizards R&D and they only want to release what will be good for the current standard. A lot of cards like Cavern of Souls are just too powerful as the new direction is to avoid lands without a downside that can mana fix. Caverns is probably slated to get a reprint in the next modern masters coming out around march, along with Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil. The enemy fetches will probably get printed in the next few standard sets so those will get into Frontier soonish as well.
As for reprints for the allied fetches: They will reprint them. It may be years later after Kahns block is almost forgotten, but they will reprint them.
Cards like Cavern of Souls can be reprinted, as long as there isn't a huge tribal focus. Wouldn't be the first time they've reprinted cards that served no other purpose past just being reprinted like Darksteel Forge and Daybreak Coronet. And with control cards only getting worse with each coming year the "can't be countered" won't matter in the least anyways.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Cavern ended up as mythic in MM3. It shouldn't be mythic, but it's always good to think the worst of the two outcomes will happen. Wouldn't be the first time they've put a card at mythic just because of the price it commands.
There's a lot going on with Wizards R&D and they only want to release what will be good for the current standard. A lot of cards like Cavern of Souls are just too powerful as the new direction is to avoid lands without a downside that can mana fix. Caverns is probably slated to get a reprint in the next modern masters coming out around march, along with Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil. The enemy fetches will probably get printed in the next few standard sets so those will get into Frontier soonish as well.
As for reprints for the allied fetches: They will reprint them. It may be years later after Kahns block is almost forgotten, but they will reprint them.
Cards like Cavern of Souls can be reprinted, as long as there isn't a huge tribal focus. Wouldn't be the first time they've reprinted cards that served no other purpose past just being reprinted like Darksteel Forge and Daybreak Coronet. And with control cards only getting worse with each coming year the "can't be countered" won't matter in the least anyways.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Cavern ended up as mythic in MM3. It shouldn't be mythic, but it's always good to think the worst of the two outcomes will happen. Wouldn't be the first time they've put a card at mythic just because of the price it commands.
Yeah, and to be frank I'm not even sure if Cavern of Souls would even be a problem in Frontier. It's just that it seems like over the years the design team at Wizards has been gravitating towards a new balance on the land cycles to try and prevent people from eschewing basic lands entirely. Modern right now has that problem and the only thing keeping people from going all the way into the ocean with avoiding basic lands is Blood Moon and maybe the land destruction cards. Over all it seems like from looking at the secondary market costs that strategy backfired spectacularly as it locked up sideboard slots in many deck listings for dedicated land hate. So by making lands more dependant on basics to come into play untapped they make those land hate cards a lot less of a clear sideboard staple. They also are gravitating towards stricter conditions on "comes into play tapped" as well. There is a reason they are reprinting fast lands: They unconditionally come into play tapped after turn 3 most games and are not fetchable at all.
That aside, I think wizards needs to start rarity fixing to get a price balance going on the secondary market for the mtg color wheel. Blue is just a very popular color to play and even though many of the cards in blue are not back breaking, the utility the color provides is almost universal. Unfortunately, this causes sellers to jack up prices on anything blue, let alone U/R thanks to people loving to play that color combination. I'm also investigating Frontier formats ability to counter graveyard resource utilization. In modern there are just so many hoses for graveyards the design space never got explored, but in Frontier we have a perfect storm of Delve and Delirium. Thankfully the format doesn't have the dredge mechanic in full or we'd all be jumping ship out of Frontier.
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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!
Yeah, and to be frank I'm not even sure if Cavern of Souls would even be a problem in Frontier. It's just that it seems like over the years the design team at Wizards has been gravitating towards a new balance on the land cycles to try and prevent people from eschewing basic lands entirely. Modern right now has that problem and the only thing keeping people from going all the way into the ocean with avoiding basic lands is Blood Moon and maybe the land destruction cards. Over all it seems like from looking at the secondary market costs that strategy backfired spectacularly as it locked up sideboard slots in many deck listings for dedicated land hate. So by making lands more dependant on basics to come into play untapped they make those land hate cards a lot less of a clear sideboard staple. They also are gravitating towards stricter conditions on "comes into play tapped" as well. There is a reason they are reprinting fast lands: They unconditionally come into play tapped after turn 3 most games and are not fetchable at all.
That aside, I think wizards needs to start rarity fixing to get a price balance going on the secondary market for the mtg color wheel. Blue is just a very popular color to play and even though many of the cards in blue are not back breaking, the utility the color provides is almost universal. Unfortunately, this causes sellers to jack up prices on anything blue, let alone U/R thanks to people loving to play that color combination. I'm also investigating Frontier formats ability to counter graveyard resource utilization. In modern there are just so many hoses for graveyards the design space never got explored, but in Frontier we have a perfect storm of Delve and Delirium. Thankfully the format doesn't have the dredge mechanic in full or we'd all be jumping ship out of Frontier.
That is one problem with Frontier at the moment, and that is the lack of answers. 4 color good stuff decks are easily possible and there isn't much of a way to stop them from having access to the slew of good cards available. The only way to stop that would be to start Frontier at Origins, although that just means that Frontier would take another couple years to really get started, but would that be worth it so we don't have decks having such ease with fixing now? Only time will tell of course.
I think Frontier is a bit better than Modern. With how Standard is almost every decent card in Modern is now considered "too good" to print which means far less reprints that we desperately need, and the Masters product line just isn't cutting it, although here is to hoping MM3 can be that shot in the arm Modern needs for more people to get access to it at all. If MM3 doesn't deliver like the last three attempts then I am not going to say that is the last nail in the coffin for the format as a whole.
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It's so early at the moment in the formats life time that there's really no way of knowing. I'm almost 99% certain that if the format takes off in it's current state four color good stuff decks will dominate thanks to fetch lands and kahns being in the format, as that set is basically Frontier's version of Mirrodin. People may like the fetches but they will break the game eventually, just not right now. The same could be said for Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise.
However, I'm pretty confident that if something like that happened a ban will happen by whatever council ends up in charge of the format. They may say there's no bans right now, but that will definitely change if the format starts going south.
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!
I'd rather start Frontier with Magic Origins, which itself started something completely new in the block structure, story etc.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above.
I find it amusing I see all these posts from people excited about the size of the card pool and how *this* or *that* isn't in the pool to muck things up, but happy that *this* or *that* favorite gets another chance to shine. It sounds Extended is the perfect solution to these people's wishes. Card pool sizes are comparable, and no group of cards will dominate forever like in Modern.
I have seen posts where people are concerned that Magic cannot support too many formats. There is a valid concern here, but to me Extended seems the right fit. If you have {Vintage, Modern, Frontier, Standard}, then there's three eternal formats of different sizes (with no guarantee people won't tire of Frontier and split the card pool yet again) and one rotating format. If you have {Vintage, Modern, Extended, Standard} you have two eternal and two rotating formats, each of significantly different size. Seems a more balanced way to split the pool of prospective players.
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!
The format has such powerful hose cards and such sharp match ups that the entire format is paper rock scissors. Except that paper rock scissors is almost completely determined before the game ever starts. Saying the answers are too weak is just the flip side of the exact same statement I made in my own post.
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!
Since they decided to annex extended for modern there is no going back, they are fixing legacy format prices which is good.
Modern, people constantly ***** and moan about how "unfair" it is. Its because people netdeck 24/7 and never learn how to play their decks rather then trying to do anything new to combat meta. My homebrew deck atm has gone x-0 at the last 6 tournys of 30+ players. I have two other homebrews that do extremly well vs meta just not my style of playing.
Frontier: is completly stupid and mental format
Top 5 decks, you will either play these or lose end of story.
Rally
Acendency
Jeskai black
Aggro.deck
Jund
Standard
BUG SuperFriends
Modern
RWGKiki's CastleRWG
UB Turns UB
GRBU HulkBreach GRBU
Legacy
GRWBNic-ShiftGRWB
Also, I will not shell out 1800 bucks for a jund deck, no, I'd rather invest in a format that is young enough for me to buy multiple decks. IN modern? I'd be on the same deck for 6 months before being able to change to burn or infect. That alone would be over 3000 dollars, that's ridiculous.
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now:
G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record)
C Eldrazi Tron (9-5)
UG Infect
RW Burn
Thanks for posting this. Modern is basically inaccessible for a lot of players due to the pay wall on the secondary market. I just think people who like frontier will not see eye to eye with Modern players and vice versa.
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!
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now:
G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record)
C Eldrazi Tron (9-5)
UG Infect
RW Burn
This is an opinion. Nothing based in fact but of experience and observation.
Exactly spot on about extended and rotations. The excitement for "frontier" is laughable when there is a better alternative that's healthier for the player base in extended. Right now the vendors have got a legion of duped magic players doing their dirty work in promoting fro.... not even gonna say the name. I see too many reasons for this format existing being only about the money. If this thing is ever going to be a success, or if any new format is going to be a success it has to be based on more than dollar bills. There is no new card frame either, just a piece of foil on the bottom of rares. Vendors and investors dumping overprinted product (we all know WotC increased printing quantities) is all that this is about. These are not the players of the game, we should all be supporting something that's actually from the community. Stop supporting something a store made up, a store has an agenda - sell cards. Please support ideas from fellow players. This is not a format promoting a healthy meta for the players of the future. It's only lining the pockets of people preying on players of the game and boy they're sure rubbing their hands together seeing so many of us doing their work for them.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/334931-what-is-the-most-pimp-card-deck-youve-seen-or?comment=5361
Commander
RGOmnath, Locus of Rage Grenades! EDHGR
UWSygg's Defense, EDH - Voltron & ControlWU
BUGMimeoplasm EDH ft. Ifnir Cycling-discard comboBUG
WBTeysa, Connoisseur of CullingBW
BWSelenia & Recruiter of the Guard suicice combo EDHWB
UBRWGO-Kagachi - 5 Color Enchantments - EDHUBRWG
The rich only get richer schtick doesn't really apply here. People are gravitating to the format because the nature of a collectible has created barriers to entry for every eternal format. The nature of competition has created barriers to entry for standard (I'm looking at you Chandra pre order price). Price is a plenty viable way to judge a format. You can argue legacy is fun until you're blue in the face, if I can't afford to build the deck I want to play and neither can my friends - the format doesn't serve me as a consumer.
Frontier offers players a springing board into playing in a slightly more tuned environment than standard, but they can build off of their standard deck right now. That's hugely so peaking. I personally think the card pool is kind of shallow right now, but the format is diverse and has lots of fun decks with low barrier to entry and good levels of decision points for playing the game. The last two decks to break into modern were eldrazi (which shortly catapaulted in price and broke the format for a few months) and I've seen some small success out of bant spirits (which requires quite the investment of mana and dorks to run smoothly). The bar for modern is incredibly hard to hit outside of singles running through standard. Go ahead and try an energy combo kill in modern and I'll show you an infect deck that beats you by 2 turns almost every time.
If I was a large business like SCG I wouldn't be promoting this format, a huge percentage of their inventory and worth is tied to the modern format. Why advertise a format that tanks my modern playable inventory while people buy my bulk rares at .50 instead of .25 a piece? It doesn't make sense and I think your angst is ill placed. Heck Mark Nestico literally just had an article this week on SCG saying frontier looks promising but after the tiny leaders burn he's very leery of it. Basically saying it's way to infant to make a move in on right now. Doesn't sound like a big retailer hype training to drive prices to me...
Nice red herring there!
I'm talking about people making money from this who have their finger on the pulse of MTG right now and those are vendors and LGS's. Don't misconstrue this as being the agenda of walmart or target please. Powell's books doesn't have bulk singles laying around being printed into oblivion that they want to dump.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/334931-what-is-the-most-pimp-card-deck-youve-seen-or?comment=5361
Commander
RGOmnath, Locus of Rage Grenades! EDHGR
UWSygg's Defense, EDH - Voltron & ControlWU
BUGMimeoplasm EDH ft. Ifnir Cycling-discard comboBUG
WBTeysa, Connoisseur of CullingBW
BWSelenia & Recruiter of the Guard suicice combo EDHWB
UBRWGO-Kagachi - 5 Color Enchantments - EDHUBRWG
Frontier isn't actually controlled by wizards of the coast, so anything is possible in the long run.
Edit: On a completely different note, people who are thinking that fetches are going to make decks expensive are looking at the wrong cards at the moment. The ones that are making me worried are the Origins flip walkers. WoTC has stated before that they have difficulties with doing reprints of double sided cards due to the set up and given how underopened that set was flip walkers might as well be on the reserved list. The merge cards are in the same kind of boat as they probably have to use the same process there as with the flip cards. I actually made the difficult decision of buying up a playset of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy because of the situation surrounding the card more than just a desire to play it. I'm also aiming to get a set of all the other flip walkers from that set as well, since it's fairly likely we could see reprints of the other non-flip mythics later.
But yeah, the greatest danger to super inflation in deck prices are going to be from cards that can't get reprinted easily and are from an underopened set. I'm thinking that Aether Revolt might be going in a similar direction of being under opened as well. Kaladesh is going to be pennies for a long time due to how much it got opened even though it didn't quite get opened as much as BFZ did.
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!
There's a lot going on with Wizards R&D and they only want to release what will be good for the current standard. A lot of cards like Cavern of Souls are just too powerful as the new direction is to avoid lands without a downside that can mana fix. Caverns is probably slated to get a reprint in the next modern masters coming out around march, along with Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil. The enemy fetches will probably get printed in the next few standard sets so those will get into Frontier soonish as well.
As for reprints for the allied fetches: They will reprint them. It may be years later after Kahns block is almost forgotten, but they will reprint them.
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!
The one case where they did reprint lands was Return to Ravnica, so really I'm not too sure where you are getting off saying they aren't going to reprint a past land cycle in a new set. The one thing I don't think they are doing is reprinting any land cycle they view as a problematic design, and given the new BFZ lands they definitely are considering shock lands a bad design at this time. Again, you are coming off as sounding like you have some kind of stake in all of this land reprinting stuff. Do you own Scalding tarn and are afraid it's value is going to tank to the ground?
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!
Cards like Cavern of Souls can be reprinted, as long as there isn't a huge tribal focus. Wouldn't be the first time they've reprinted cards that served no other purpose past just being reprinted like Darksteel Forge and Daybreak Coronet. And with control cards only getting worse with each coming year the "can't be countered" won't matter in the least anyways.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Cavern ended up as mythic in MM3. It shouldn't be mythic, but it's always good to think the worst of the two outcomes will happen. Wouldn't be the first time they've put a card at mythic just because of the price it commands.
Yeah, and to be frank I'm not even sure if Cavern of Souls would even be a problem in Frontier. It's just that it seems like over the years the design team at Wizards has been gravitating towards a new balance on the land cycles to try and prevent people from eschewing basic lands entirely. Modern right now has that problem and the only thing keeping people from going all the way into the ocean with avoiding basic lands is Blood Moon and maybe the land destruction cards. Over all it seems like from looking at the secondary market costs that strategy backfired spectacularly as it locked up sideboard slots in many deck listings for dedicated land hate. So by making lands more dependant on basics to come into play untapped they make those land hate cards a lot less of a clear sideboard staple. They also are gravitating towards stricter conditions on "comes into play tapped" as well. There is a reason they are reprinting fast lands: They unconditionally come into play tapped after turn 3 most games and are not fetchable at all.
That aside, I think wizards needs to start rarity fixing to get a price balance going on the secondary market for the mtg color wheel. Blue is just a very popular color to play and even though many of the cards in blue are not back breaking, the utility the color provides is almost universal. Unfortunately, this causes sellers to jack up prices on anything blue, let alone U/R thanks to people loving to play that color combination. I'm also investigating Frontier formats ability to counter graveyard resource utilization. In modern there are just so many hoses for graveyards the design space never got explored, but in Frontier we have a perfect storm of Delve and Delirium. Thankfully the format doesn't have the dredge mechanic in full or we'd all be jumping ship out of Frontier.
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!
That is one problem with Frontier at the moment, and that is the lack of answers. 4 color good stuff decks are easily possible and there isn't much of a way to stop them from having access to the slew of good cards available. The only way to stop that would be to start Frontier at Origins, although that just means that Frontier would take another couple years to really get started, but would that be worth it so we don't have decks having such ease with fixing now? Only time will tell of course.
I think Frontier is a bit better than Modern. With how Standard is almost every decent card in Modern is now considered "too good" to print which means far less reprints that we desperately need, and the Masters product line just isn't cutting it, although here is to hoping MM3 can be that shot in the arm Modern needs for more people to get access to it at all. If MM3 doesn't deliver like the last three attempts then I am not going to say that is the last nail in the coffin for the format as a whole.