I am reading/youtubing it up right now on the Format..I just dont know if I want to live in a world without Bolt. I dont play Standard, because a Format without bolt is...questionable.
I think you are also taking a bit of a shallow view on balance. There are cards that work in Modern that do not in Standard, and cards that worked in Standard that were completely busted in Modern (and Legacy). Yeah the bolt test matters in Modern (or did, does it still?) but its going to be the Push test soon enough.
Edit: Building up a deck, no shocks? What are we savages?? lol
Edit the second: Of the online retailers I look up and it looks like things that are not modern staples are being speculated on already...
I am reading/youtubing it up right now on the Format..I just dont know if I want to live in a world without Bolt. I dont play Standard, because a Format without bolt is...questionable.
I think you are also taking a bit of a shallow view on balance. There are cards that work in Modern that do not in Standard, and cards that worked in Standard that were completely busted in Modern (and Legacy). Yeah the bolt test matters in Modern (or did, does it still?) but its going to be the Push test soon enough.
Edit: Building up a deck, no shocks? What are we savages?? lol
Edit the second: Of the online retailers I look up and it looks like things that are not modern staples are being speculated on already...
It's not really that shallow as Magic in it's original form was based around balancing the power of the colors primary abilities against one another. The issue is how to rebalance a game later on if you find the numerics of the old standby just don't quite work as well anymore due to how the game evolved. The original game was based on the power of 3 being the basis of all colors in the format, with Lightning Bolt, Ancestral Recall, Giant Growth, Dark Ritual, and whatever forgettable spell white had at the time for prevent 3 damage.
As you can see from that list, the only things that made it into modern day have been bolt, Giant Growth, and that forgettable white spell. Ancestral Recall didn't even make it out of legacy before it was deemed too power and replaced with less powerful effects, Dark Ritual survived it's time in legacy, but never got reprinted in modern for the same reasons that many mana accelerant cards also didn't stick around in modern. Moving forward in time with modern legal sets WoTC designers also started noticing problems with Lightning bolt and Giant Growth, so they started trying to make fixed versions for ages, with Shock being a historic one that was a tad too weak and Lava Spike, which basically was... okay except it didn't really fill the same roles. When all of that failed they started working on the other end where they rebalance both the spell itself and the creatures it's supposed to target, and they've been trying to do this for the last couple of sets. Kahns block and M15 are really the legacy sets of frontier as they still stick to older designs, and there are throwback cards in BFZ, though not really done intentionally. Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet was probably not intended to be as powerful as it really is, but they overestimated the magic number of 4 toughness in modern thanks to the bolt test. The reality is the game kind of got hampered in numeric balancing because of the fact it uses a non-multiplied value for simplicity. Games like YuGiOh learned from this and used a multiplier so they could balance the numbers more easily. Unfortunately they went strait power creep anyway thus wasting that good idea.
This is just talking about balancing the toughness / power / damage values of the game. We aren't even getting into the mechanics of things like Energy, Phyrexian mana, Dredge (which was also a horrible idea), and maybe affinity (possibly the first mistake of the modern border era).
So the reason frontier is appealing at least to myself, is that it has more of the new balance design in it than Modern does, which still has seriously bad cards in the format for the direction they want to go that render so much of modern unplayable.
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've always been wondering why they don't "combine" bolt and shock, a spell for R:
choose one:
- Deal 2 damage to target creature
- Deal 3 damage to target player
But back to frontier: my friends just find the cardpool too boring. I can't convince them that it's fun. - The most popular decks between them is (still) splinter twin, birthing pod decks, or full out combo decks. Are there example decks that I can show to show above playstyles?
Collected Company, Eldritch Evolution, and Evolutionary Leap are the closest things there are to Birthing Pod. Combo Elves is fun and what I actually play along with my dragon bro's deck and that uses Panharmonicon to double the fun. With Paradox Engine coming to the format combo looks like it's coming to Standard and frontier. Especially with some of the synergies I'm seeing with the overlooked stuff from Kaladesh such as the modules. Again, the format is so new that there aren't a lot of deck lists. People have to work on their own decks using the card pool, which means if they don't have the energy or time and depend on the internet to give stats on what is supposed to be good or not, it's going to be hard to get into. That's why I like Kitchen Table: You don't care about anything and just build.
Keep in mind the format is creature heavy at the moment and runs a bit like standard. Aether Revolt adds more needed removal and a lot of good cards for keeping up tempo, but we wont have the control walker we need until Amonket most likely. Also, here's a good resource for looking at what some people are brewing up right now.
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!
Combo elves is just a synergistic deck. What people around me want are infinite combos, synergy they feel is "for standard". They wish to have fun interactions that "suddenly" go boom:infinte.
Not a grindy pace where you just get a lot of value due to interactions.
Yeah all the going infinite stuff is still in Kaladesh and Aether Revolt. The decks are there, but we're talking about standard where people are all focusing on aggro, delirium, and UW flash, so you'll have to go to Strictly Better MTG on youtube for some of the combo deck techs out there. You can go infinite quite easy, it's just if people are looking for super fast combo WoTC has been trying to get those kinds of decks balanced for the future non-rotating format along with control. Where Kahns block was an alpha / beta of three color splash implementation and multi-modal cards, kaladesh and aether revolt is the third attempt at a balanced artifacts matters set as they kind of overdid it with both Mirrodin blocks. I also feel they are trying really hard to find a way to make mid-range and aggro viable in a world with combo and control, but they keep tilting the scales too much one direction or the other.
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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!
Well for all we complain about modern; you see (saw) combo, aggro midrange and control all near top decks. Splinter twin was a combo deck, infect is the epitome of aggro creatures, tharmogoyf/jund is (due to other factors) is a midrange deck. And then there's some impression of control in tron. - It's just that the "simple" cards like lightning bolt and tharmogoyf are running the show so much that there's little room for new cards.
The power level isn't that much of a problem: they could've just made "lightning bolt" the baseline and provide all kind of upgrades to lightning bolt. However there's only so much you can upgrade from "1 mana", going half a mana they only did during 1 set, maybe they should reintroduce that instead of reducing powerlevels?
So indeed maybe we should wait till kaladesh has rotated out: then we can truly see if the format shapes itself into a meta different from "standards combined", where strategies emerge that weren't even possible in standard.
That and my own opinion after playing it and seeing how diverse the opinions are in the US on the format is that the other countries need to expand or add cards to it to let in the kind of decks people want to play. If someone has a favorite pet card they want to try they should let it in to try it out. The ultimate thing that people seem to have never tried doing in Magic is "build" a format. Not just declare one, but cultivate one that fits the community playing magic. It's what the game needs right now more than anything else and WoTC along with Hareyuya are ill suited to meet those demands. When people take command of a format and control the cards being played, it creates a meta-game that is far more dynamic and interesting than just putting everything into a blender and hoping what you get out is what you really want. There really is a format out there that can handle Birthing Pod, Splinter Twin, GOOD control, and even some aggro and mid-range. The community just needs to come together to actually work on building it.
Private Mod Note
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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!
That would require far too much micro managing of the banlist/cardpool.
After thinking on it and playing around in MTGO I'm warming to the concept, I just dont think I would put money into it until Wizards endorsed it. I dont play standard so this isnt something that hits my personal collection, my collection is just Modern.
I like the idea of a new format, but I don't think this is it. I personally think that M10 and on would be a better concept. The beginning of the return cycles with Scars of Mirrodin would not be a bad starting point either. I mean it's the set that modern starts with. Honestly, I feel like the only people really rallying for this format are newer players (1-2 years) who want their recently rotated cards to be playable again. I'm sure that's not everyone,but M15 and Khans is a not a good point to start from in my opinion. I'm not going to stop anyone else from playing it, but you won't see me sleeving up for it.
I'd really love a format that is very very active with bans. Like banning 1/4th of magic cards in the set, and banning/unbanning like half of those each year. - Just to keep shaking up the meta, yet keep a fairly large pool of cards.
Standard for me has too few cards (so no truly amazing combos you can search for, the synergy often feels forced by wotc). Yet the eternal formats in the way they are now are too stale in their meta, with real new ground to discover.
I disagree. They didnt need to ban Twin to have Eldrazi winter, they had to ban cards out of Khan's block as they shifted the meta as well. There is no need to ban vast swathes of cards, and one would have to be independently wealthy to shrug it off when the cost of replacing a deck is in the hundreds to thousands.
A format with vastly shifting card pools every year due to cards being cut...is just a larger standard.
People like Eternal formats for a reason, their cards dont just go away and rot in a box.
I like the idea of a new format, but I don't think this is it. I personally think that M10 and on would be a better concept. The beginning of the return cycles with Scars of Mirrodin would not be a bad starting point either. I mean it's the set that modern starts with. Honestly, I feel like the only people really rallying for this format are newer players (1-2 years) who want their recently rotated cards to be playable again. I'm sure that's not everyone,but M15 and Khans is a not a good point to start from in my opinion. I'm not going to stop anyone else from playing it, but you won't see me sleeving up for it.
idSurge the point I'm making is that regardless of the situation, both frontier and modern are doomed to inevitable heat death. There is no way to create a dumping ground non-rotating format that isn't going to eventually become a static set of x y z cards where the supply on the oldest and/or most powerful cards coupled with demand will not render the format too expensive to play. The point is to enjoy the format you like playing while it is still around and get in on new ones that you find fun when they become available.
Also, right now Magic the gathering has gone through a complete sundering on so many different levels that I'm not sure the game will ever be what it was. Modern and standard got hosed and way more people are now playing commander or kitchen table due to the horrible promos at FNM, dominating deck archetypes, over printed VPN products that don't interest anyone anyway, etc. FNM is not what it once was when I was younger, where WoTC cared about the players more. Despite all my playing of magic, it's mostly been on XMage now because the last two FNMs I've managed to attend, one had Promo Crumbling Vestige and the other one I don't even know what they had because the store ran out of the dozen promo cards they were sent thanks to having more than twelve people attend, of which only five were playing standard with the rest just doing conspiracy drafts. There's been some good weekend nights, but those are not official events.
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!
Does anyone here gets that any non-rotating format will carry the same problems as modern?
New world order toning the power level and complexity down is achieved by banning the broken stuff in modern.
The good cards in any non-rotating format will go up in price as they become more popular, its simple supply and demand.
Legacy and modern will get more broken as time passes because of power creep and because wizards only design for standard. And frontier, as any non-rotating format, will suffer the same destiny.
This hype=the hype of modern when it was new. When wizards launch a new-new world order or wathever, new players will demand a new frontier and so and so... You know what that's called? A ROTATING FORMAT.
Mayyyybe a long rate rotating format would satisfy this demand of a new format and fix SOME of the problems of the others, maybe a 4 year format rotating each 2 years or something like that, I don't know, but at least that wouldn't be repeating the mistakes from modern (or extended or standard etc). People need to understand that supply-demand exists and wizards need to make money SO there can't be a perfect format, just many formats that have different problems and benefits.
But frontier is just a rotated modern and people are blinded by hype.
I asked this in the Modern forum, but what in your opinion is 'hosed' in modern? Attendance is fine, the format is quite linear but that could be fixed with some (2 or 3) ban's/unban's and other than cost (which was your key complaint over a year ago I might add) what exactly is wrong with Modern?
You are correct though, any non-rotating format if not backed by a sufficient reprint policy (Eternal/Modern Masters) will fall into what you seem to define as failure, aka: Rising cost of staples.
Thats your definition though, I dont feel expensive staples equals failure. A complete lack of supply...I can see that, but cost is a minor factor.
--
As to Standard, I cannot speak to it, but I understand the last year has been hard on Standard.
How does that equal modern? There would be no scapeshift, no blood moon, no breach, no cryptic command, no remand, no affinity, no ad nauseum, no tarmogoyf, no tron, no ensnaring bridge, no dark confidant, Burn and Zoo would both lose alot. Almost every deck would need to adapt and adopt cards that probably wouldn't have been playable before. The only truely big problems I could see right off the bat would be having both thoughtseize and inquisition. Really though I don't care about price of entry, I just want a new format to brew in. There are a ton of fun cards and strategies that will never see play simply because something strictly better exists.
I would be into frontier if it included just a little more. It at least needs RTR for a 4 mana sweeper among other things. I don't think M15 is enough and as people have said before more recent years have come to favor creatures and tokens just ramming against each other.
How does that equal modern? There would be no scapeshift, no blood moon, no breach, no cryptic command, no remand, no affinity, no ad nauseum, no tarmogoyf, no tron, no ensnaring bridge, no dark confidant, Burn and Zoo would both lose alot. Almost every deck would need to adapt and adopt cards that probably wouldn't have been playable before. The only truely big problems I could see right off the bat would be having both thoughtseize and inquisition. Really though I don't care about price of entry, I just want a new format to brew in. There are a ton of fun cards and strategies that will never see play simply because something strictly better exists.
I would be into frontier if it included just a little more. It at least needs RTR for a 4 mana sweeper among other things. I don't think M15 is enough and as people have said before more recent years have come to favor creatures and tokens just ramming against each other.
I guess I didn't say what I meant correctly. All of those cards are staples of both Modern and Legacy (well, the ones that aren't banned). If Frontier were to include those sets, they'd be staples of it, too. Getting rid of them helps give the format its own character. Additionally, fetch-shock manabases would be too similar to Modern IMO. The more awkward fetch-tango manabases help slow down the format and make things like 5 mana wraths more viable.
Also, on a more personal note, I really dislike Thoughtseize and cards that let you cheaply look at the opponent's hand in general. In order to cut Thoughtseize out of the format, M15 is the earliest you can go.
Does anyone here gets that any non-rotating format will carry the same problems as modern?
New world order toning the power level and complexity down is achieved by banning the broken stuff in modern.
The good cards in any non-rotating format will go up in price as they become more popular, its simple supply and demand.
Legacy and modern will get more broken as time passes because of power creep and because wizards only design for standard. And frontier, as any non-rotating format, will suffer the same destiny.
This hype=the hype of modern when it was new. When wizards launch a new-new world order or wathever, new players will demand a new frontier and so and so... You know what that's called? A ROTATING FORMAT.
Mayyyybe a long rate rotating format would satisfy this demand of a new format and fix SOME of the problems of the others, maybe a 4 year format rotating each 2 years or something like that, I don't know, but at least that wouldn't be repeating the mistakes from modern (or extended or standard etc). People need to understand that supply-demand exists and wizards need to make money SO there can't be a perfect format, just many formats that have different problems and benefits.
But frontier is just a rotated modern and people are blinded by hype.
Sry4myGram... did you even read my post? I addressed this point literally one post up from your own.
Private Mod Note
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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!
You still havent answered me how Modern is busted though Colt.
I've been play testing Frontier lists all day, and man, the mana base SUCKS without shocks. :/
The problem with modern gets illustrated with the banning of Splinter twin, and it's not the bannings that are the problem but what happened afterwards. I actually kind of get what WoTC might have been hoping would happen, which is more varieties of fair decks would start showing up instead of combo copies of Splinter Twin and fast cheap decks like Amulet Bloom. The issue is that it made the existing decks stronger and led to a much more linear format than before, as mid-range has a really hard time surviving thanks to how quick many decks can close a game. In addition, Eldrazi winter happened and created an entirely new T1 deck that was at one point T0, the modern segment of the Pro Tour was cancelled, and WoTC haven't really done much since to address concerns about the linearity or the decks people still don't like to play against like Ad Nauseum.
Cost is another issue and while the climb has stopped recently due to the cooler reception modern has been getting lately, if it picked up in popularity again it would basically skyrocket in price once more as WoTC just isn't doing the right things to price control the cards.
Also, yes the mana base is a bit off balance at the moment. We need one more good allied land cycle in the format as the enemy lands have more good options.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 I'm really frustrated with the mana, the power level isnt horrible, but the mana makes me pull my hair out.
I see what you are saying (but I'm a twin ex-pat so maybe I'm biased) as I do think the Twin ban did major damage to the format. I guess I just think its easier to fix than you and others may.
Unban Twin and SFM.
Ban a piece from Dredge.
The format will, with Push, fix itself overnight.
Modern Masters needs to then be FAR more aggressive in its reprints of staples, and we would enter a golden age of Magic.
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UW Spirits
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I think you are also taking a bit of a shallow view on balance. There are cards that work in Modern that do not in Standard, and cards that worked in Standard that were completely busted in Modern (and Legacy). Yeah the bolt test matters in Modern (or did, does it still?) but its going to be the Push test soon enough.
Edit: Building up a deck, no shocks? What are we savages?? lol
Edit the second: Of the online retailers I look up and it looks like things that are not modern staples are being speculated on already...
Spirits
It's not really that shallow as Magic in it's original form was based around balancing the power of the colors primary abilities against one another. The issue is how to rebalance a game later on if you find the numerics of the old standby just don't quite work as well anymore due to how the game evolved. The original game was based on the power of 3 being the basis of all colors in the format, with Lightning Bolt, Ancestral Recall, Giant Growth, Dark Ritual, and whatever forgettable spell white had at the time for prevent 3 damage.
As you can see from that list, the only things that made it into modern day have been bolt, Giant Growth, and that forgettable white spell. Ancestral Recall didn't even make it out of legacy before it was deemed too power and replaced with less powerful effects, Dark Ritual survived it's time in legacy, but never got reprinted in modern for the same reasons that many mana accelerant cards also didn't stick around in modern. Moving forward in time with modern legal sets WoTC designers also started noticing problems with Lightning bolt and Giant Growth, so they started trying to make fixed versions for ages, with Shock being a historic one that was a tad too weak and Lava Spike, which basically was... okay except it didn't really fill the same roles. When all of that failed they started working on the other end where they rebalance both the spell itself and the creatures it's supposed to target, and they've been trying to do this for the last couple of sets. Kahns block and M15 are really the legacy sets of frontier as they still stick to older designs, and there are throwback cards in BFZ, though not really done intentionally. Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet was probably not intended to be as powerful as it really is, but they overestimated the magic number of 4 toughness in modern thanks to the bolt test. The reality is the game kind of got hampered in numeric balancing because of the fact it uses a non-multiplied value for simplicity. Games like YuGiOh learned from this and used a multiplier so they could balance the numbers more easily. Unfortunately they went strait power creep anyway thus wasting that good idea.
This is just talking about balancing the toughness / power / damage values of the game. We aren't even getting into the mechanics of things like Energy, Phyrexian mana, Dredge (which was also a horrible idea), and maybe affinity (possibly the first mistake of the modern border era).
So the reason frontier is appealing at least to myself, is that it has more of the new balance design in it than Modern does, which still has seriously bad cards in the format for the direction they want to go that render so much of modern unplayable.
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!
Collected Company, Eldritch Evolution, and Evolutionary Leap are the closest things there are to Birthing Pod. Combo Elves is fun and what I actually play along with my dragon bro's deck and that uses Panharmonicon to double the fun. With Paradox Engine coming to the format combo looks like it's coming to Standard and frontier. Especially with some of the synergies I'm seeing with the overlooked stuff from Kaladesh such as the modules. Again, the format is so new that there aren't a lot of deck lists. People have to work on their own decks using the card pool, which means if they don't have the energy or time and depend on the internet to give stats on what is supposed to be good or not, it's going to be hard to get into. That's why I like Kitchen Table: You don't care about anything and just build.
Combo Elves deck tech that was done a bit ago...
Combo Elves
Keep in mind the format is creature heavy at the moment and runs a bit like standard. Aether Revolt adds more needed removal and a lot of good cards for keeping up tempo, but we wont have the control walker we need until Amonket most likely. Also, here's a good resource for looking at what some people are brewing up right now.
Deck Builder Frontier format
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 all the going infinite stuff is still in Kaladesh and Aether Revolt. The decks are there, but we're talking about standard where people are all focusing on aggro, delirium, and UW flash, so you'll have to go to Strictly Better MTG on youtube for some of the combo deck techs out there. You can go infinite quite easy, it's just if people are looking for super fast combo WoTC has been trying to get those kinds of decks balanced for the future non-rotating format along with control. Where Kahns block was an alpha / beta of three color splash implementation and multi-modal cards, kaladesh and aether revolt is the third attempt at a balanced artifacts matters set as they kind of overdid it with both Mirrodin blocks. I also feel they are trying really hard to find a way to make mid-range and aggro viable in a world with combo and control, but they keep tilting the scales too much one direction or the other.
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 and my own opinion after playing it and seeing how diverse the opinions are in the US on the format is that the other countries need to expand or add cards to it to let in the kind of decks people want to play. If someone has a favorite pet card they want to try they should let it in to try it out. The ultimate thing that people seem to have never tried doing in Magic is "build" a format. Not just declare one, but cultivate one that fits the community playing magic. It's what the game needs right now more than anything else and WoTC along with Hareyuya are ill suited to meet those demands. When people take command of a format and control the cards being played, it creates a meta-game that is far more dynamic and interesting than just putting everything into a blender and hoping what you get out is what you really want. There really is a format out there that can handle Birthing Pod, Splinter Twin, GOOD control, and even some aggro and mid-range. The community just needs to come together to actually work on building it.
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!
After thinking on it and playing around in MTGO I'm warming to the concept, I just dont think I would put money into it until Wizards endorsed it. I dont play standard so this isnt something that hits my personal collection, my collection is just Modern.
Spirits
I disagree. They didnt need to ban Twin to have Eldrazi winter, they had to ban cards out of Khan's block as they shifted the meta as well. There is no need to ban vast swathes of cards, and one would have to be independently wealthy to shrug it off when the cost of replacing a deck is in the hundreds to thousands.
A format with vastly shifting card pools every year due to cards being cut...is just a larger standard.
People like Eternal formats for a reason, their cards dont just go away and rot in a box.
Spirits
Spirits
Starting with M10 would put Lightning Bolt, Ponder, Preordain, Thoughtseize, Liliana of the Veil, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Delver, Shocks, all fetches, Swords, Batterskull, Stoneforge Mystic, etc. Personally I'd prefer a non-rotating format that isn't just Modern--.
Spirits
Also, right now Magic the gathering has gone through a complete sundering on so many different levels that I'm not sure the game will ever be what it was. Modern and standard got hosed and way more people are now playing commander or kitchen table due to the horrible promos at FNM, dominating deck archetypes, over printed VPN products that don't interest anyone anyway, etc. FNM is not what it once was when I was younger, where WoTC cared about the players more. Despite all my playing of magic, it's mostly been on XMage now because the last two FNMs I've managed to attend, one had Promo Crumbling Vestige and the other one I don't even know what they had because the store ran out of the dozen promo cards they were sent thanks to having more than twelve people attend, of which only five were playing standard with the rest just doing conspiracy drafts. There's been some good weekend nights, but those are not official events.
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!
New world order toning the power level and complexity down is achieved by banning the broken stuff in modern.
The good cards in any non-rotating format will go up in price as they become more popular, its simple supply and demand.
Legacy and modern will get more broken as time passes because of power creep and because wizards only design for standard. And frontier, as any non-rotating format, will suffer the same destiny.
This hype=the hype of modern when it was new. When wizards launch a new-new world order or wathever, new players will demand a new frontier and so and so... You know what that's called? A ROTATING FORMAT.
Mayyyybe a long rate rotating format would satisfy this demand of a new format and fix SOME of the problems of the others, maybe a 4 year format rotating each 2 years or something like that, I don't know, but at least that wouldn't be repeating the mistakes from modern (or extended or standard etc). People need to understand that supply-demand exists and wizards need to make money SO there can't be a perfect format, just many formats that have different problems and benefits.
But frontier is just a rotated modern and people are blinded by hype.
You are correct though, any non-rotating format if not backed by a sufficient reprint policy (Eternal/Modern Masters) will fall into what you seem to define as failure, aka: Rising cost of staples.
Thats your definition though, I dont feel expensive staples equals failure. A complete lack of supply...I can see that, but cost is a minor factor.
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As to Standard, I cannot speak to it, but I understand the last year has been hard on Standard.
Spirits
How does that equal modern? There would be no scapeshift, no blood moon, no breach, no cryptic command, no remand, no affinity, no ad nauseum, no tarmogoyf, no tron, no ensnaring bridge, no dark confidant, Burn and Zoo would both lose alot. Almost every deck would need to adapt and adopt cards that probably wouldn't have been playable before. The only truely big problems I could see right off the bat would be having both thoughtseize and inquisition. Really though I don't care about price of entry, I just want a new format to brew in. There are a ton of fun cards and strategies that will never see play simply because something strictly better exists.
I would be into frontier if it included just a little more. It at least needs RTR for a 4 mana sweeper among other things. I don't think M15 is enough and as people have said before more recent years have come to favor creatures and tokens just ramming against each other.
I guess I didn't say what I meant correctly. All of those cards are staples of both Modern and Legacy (well, the ones that aren't banned). If Frontier were to include those sets, they'd be staples of it, too. Getting rid of them helps give the format its own character. Additionally, fetch-shock manabases would be too similar to Modern IMO. The more awkward fetch-tango manabases help slow down the format and make things like 5 mana wraths more viable.
Also, on a more personal note, I really dislike Thoughtseize and cards that let you cheaply look at the opponent's hand in general. In order to cut Thoughtseize out of the format, M15 is the earliest you can go.
Sry4myGram... did you even read my post? I addressed this point literally one post up from your own.
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've been play testing Frontier lists all day, and man, the mana base SUCKS without shocks. :/
Spirits
The problem with modern gets illustrated with the banning of Splinter twin, and it's not the bannings that are the problem but what happened afterwards. I actually kind of get what WoTC might have been hoping would happen, which is more varieties of fair decks would start showing up instead of combo copies of Splinter Twin and fast cheap decks like Amulet Bloom. The issue is that it made the existing decks stronger and led to a much more linear format than before, as mid-range has a really hard time surviving thanks to how quick many decks can close a game. In addition, Eldrazi winter happened and created an entirely new T1 deck that was at one point T0, the modern segment of the Pro Tour was cancelled, and WoTC haven't really done much since to address concerns about the linearity or the decks people still don't like to play against like Ad Nauseum.
Cost is another issue and while the climb has stopped recently due to the cooler reception modern has been getting lately, if it picked up in popularity again it would basically skyrocket in price once more as WoTC just isn't doing the right things to price control the cards.
Also, yes the mana base is a bit off balance at the moment. We need one more good allied land cycle in the format as the enemy lands have more good options.
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 see what you are saying (but I'm a twin ex-pat so maybe I'm biased) as I do think the Twin ban did major damage to the format. I guess I just think its easier to fix than you and others may.
Unban Twin and SFM.
Ban a piece from Dredge.
The format will, with Push, fix itself overnight.
Modern Masters needs to then be FAR more aggressive in its reprints of staples, and we would enter a golden age of Magic.
Spirits