Quote from MikeageddonI'm all for banning broken cards, but it's starting to look like cards are going to be banned that aren't broken or format warping themselves, but just good in a deck that's doing too consistently well. That's fine for now, but how many decks are there in the format that are one good card away from being too good? I'd say there's at least a few of them.
One of the draws to a non-rotating format is the thought of being able to play that deck/card you love playing for as long as you want. F
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Exactly.
The eternals are emergent formats, Standard is a calculated format and Modern is quickly turning into a bonsai of a format rather than a crafted one. That's the problem.
Mind you: things like eggs? not so much a thing with a true control deck. Ditto for the ultra-large mana... and the control decks still wouldn't be able to counter everything, etc. Heck, as things go they don't get a real hard counter on 2. You think aggro decks that hope to coinflip Eggs for a g1 win will give those decks a lot of time?
You can keep pruning the format towards what you "want" and killing what sticks up, but that's unhealthy.
Reprinting certain tools (Innocent Blood) and allowing certian other traditional role-players would allow the format to need less direct steering and would give us hope that more steering wouldn't continue to happen.
So, sure, maybe AV and BB scare Wizards. Faeries didn't have a run on Old Extended and those decks were better without BB than with it (although, granted, mostly due to Laboratory Shenanigans). You need a deck like Fae to keep the "charge up mah lazer" decks honest.
And, sure, I'd support any ban that has to happen. If eggs does turn out to be a deck that's hits on t3 consistantly enough and/or turns out to be impossible to interact with by t4, then go for reshape or something.
But... remember: you kill bonsai's by pushing them too hard. And we're already stuck with a bonsai... that Wizards told us was an Evergreen format they could actually support. I don't like saying "but I like that branch", and I don't like having to worry that Modern, which's entire point to me is not being standard/being the magic I remember, will be scrubbed out deck by deck.
I mean, we've got a format where you *can* run eggs. Where else can you run that? It's not like you'd be able to run BB or the like in Legacy. This can be Superextended not be in any danger of being legacy.
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If that's their reason, then they're being idiots. Fetchlands were not a problem either in price or shuffling... until some numbskull decided to put the battle lands in the same Standard format. That's when they became a problem in price and shuffling.
Before that, people ran fetchlands, but not that many. Decks would usually run 3-4 in total, with a few decks running more if they really wanted to fuel Delve. For example, let's look at how many fetchlands the Top 8 decks at Grand Prix London ran. Most ran 4, with a few running 3. That's not many fetchlands. You'll maybe crack a fetchland once or twice a game; that's not a problem. And their prices were around the $10 mark; more expensive than your typical dual land, but not all that unreasonable.
Then the battlelands came. Contrast this Top 8. Not counting the mono-Green deck, every deck is running a minimum of 10 fetchlands, with the majority running 12 (and one deck running 4x Evolving Wilds in addition to their 12 fetchlands). We're seeing about 3 times as many fetchlands being run. By the way I'd like to point out that this is more fetchlands than your typical Modern deck runs, and I expect part of the reason for that is that Wizards of the Coast somehow thought it was a good idea to put this crazy synergy into Standard without any card to hate on it. Next time people complain about Blood Moon in Modern, point them to this Standard format to show what happens when you don't bother with hate cards like that.
At any rate, the fetchlands+battlelands was when there was a lot more shuffling and more problematically, really high prices. Because not only were you running more fetchlands, they were more expensive due to being in higher demand and in an older set. If they wanted to combine fetchlands with fetchable duals, you'd think they would've done it in the opposite order, the battle lands first and then the fetchlands second, as there'd be a more continual supply of fetchlands. Not only would it cause fewer monetary problems, it would also make there be more demand for the newer set than it got before because the extremely in-demand fetchlands would be in the current set rather than an older one. But that would require some mild level of intelligence, which Wizards of the Coast clearly weren't using when they made this move.
All they have to do is not do something mind-numbingly stupid like combining fetchlands with shocklands (which might have still been okay if they had printed even one decent hate card for the combination--next time someone says Modern would be better without Blood Moon, point them to this Standard environment) for the combination and the fetchlands will be fine in Standard.
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Trinisphere and Lodestone Golem are restricted in Vintage but are barely a blip on the radar in Legacy. Something being too good in a more powerful format doesn't mean much if the elements that made it so powerful in that format do not exist in a less powerful format. For example, Dig Through Time was totally fine in Standard (much weaker than Legacy). Heck, in Standard, Sphinx's Revelation was probably more powerful than Dig Through Time. How much play does Sphinx's Revelation see in Modern or Legacy?
Or, let's take a more direct Modern to Legacy comparison. Delver of Secrets is the third-most-played creature in Legacy and is an all-star. In Modern? It's not even in the top 50 creatures.
Someone once took a Standard deck to a Legacy tournament at my store (which I should mention is quite competitive) and went 4-0. Sometimes, you can just get a bit lucky with a much weaker deck and also benefit from how some decks in Modern or Legacy are heavily metagame'd against their own format but not others.
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Eldrazi? Death & Taxes? Loam? Lands? Elves? There are non-Blue color combinations that are viable.
Now, I won't dispute the fact that Legacy is too Blue heavy and have been an advocate for a ban on Brainstorm for a while, but it's incorrect to claim that nothing is viable unless you're running a Blue deck. However, the idea that you must be running Blue to be competitive is pretty clearly false.
You'll certainly have more luck running a non-Blue strategy in Legacy than you will running a reactive Blue deck in Modern.
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They took it better than the Twin crowd because (1) Birthing Pod occupied about twice as much of a metagame share as Twin did and thus a ban was significantly more warranted, and (2) they printed Collected Company a few months later.
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The problem is those counterspells aren't tremendously efficient. All of them are situational (not just Stubborn Denial). Dispel will only counter one spell type, Spell Snare only hits one CMC, Spell Pierce and Mana Leak became pretty bad as the game goes on (and Spell Pierce can't hit creatures), and Remand only works particularly well in a combo/tempo strategy.
If those are supposed to be the "tremendously efficient Countermagic" then that just shows how hard up Blue is.
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I assume you mean "post ban Eldrazi" because otherwise it makes no sense. But here's a key difference: None of those decks managed to get to the 25% of the format that Birthing Pod was at when it got banned, though.
There have been some arguments that Pod's really high metagame share was in part due to Treasure Cruise, as (allegedly) many of the decks that could have beaten Pod couldn't compete because Treasure Cruise Delver (which had nearly the same level of proliferation as Pod) wrecked them.
Though I do wonder if unbanning Pod, Treasure Cruise, and Dig Through Time would make the format more interesting. It'd certainly make it a whole lot more interactive. For whatever complaints you could make about the time period Treasure Cruise was legal, the format being uninteractive and linear really wasn't one of them.
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So.
Um.
This is awkward.
See, I actually started writing up a post where I tried to go through every single point I made and provide some data. Then, because I'm an idiot, I navigated into another tab and later closed the window, forgetting this was still open. Whoops. So you're going to unfortunately get an abbreviated version. Sorry.
In regards to Hearthstone and Magic, it's tricky to compare revenue because a lot of that information isn't really publicly given. I was able to find something good for Hearthstone here which indicates Hearthstone was at $24 million/month (or $288/year), though that was from a while ago and it's likely increased since then. Magic is much harder to find hard data for, but I saw some estimates at $300 million per year from mid-2016. So it looks like Hearthstone might be a little behind Magic (though I wouldn't be surprised if it's caught up in the interim)... but when one considers the length the two have been around, it's rather striking the fact such a new game has managed to rival the revenue of something that's been around for more than 2 decades.
Hearthstone certainly seems to have a lot more attention paid to it; it's regularly in the top 5 on Twitch, whereas Magic is often not even in the top 30.
In regards to Magic's growth declining, one can notice that the percentages for growth you see in the shareholder reports are groups of all of the franchises. If you look here, it's true it doesn't say anything for Magic other than saying it increased (it is worth pointing out that growth by itself doesn't tell us much; if your growth isn't over 2%, though, you're actually decreasing revenue because the inflation rate is slightly over 2%). But we can see this: "The Games category was up 9%, led by PIE-FACE and the 8th straight year of growth in MAGIC: THE GATHERING." The grouping together is suspicious. If Magic, one of their most prominent brands (certainly more so than PIE-FACE) were still posting double-digit growth, as it had in the past, one would expect they would take the opportunity to brag about it.
What "fairly popular card games" are you referring to? What, in the last 10 years, has even touched ANY of the big three (Magic, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh)? And the other two have outlasted any of those games you refer to. I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.
And as I noted, if you're on top in something like TCGs, it's easy to stay on top even if you goof up a lot of things. If you want to play a TCG, you have to play one other people are playing, creating a self-perpetuating cycle where the top is able to stay the top.
Which is why Hearthstone's revenue (at a minimum) approaching Magic's is so noticeable. Hearthstone only has online. Magic, online and in paper, isn't much ahead... if it even is ahead.
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And that growth is because of one thing primarily: Duels of the Planeswalkers. A game that Wizards of the Coast didn't even make (as shown by the fact people liked it). But perhaps someone wants to say it was smart of them to give the license to someone so they should get credit. Okay... but that was 8 years ago.
Magic's growth has mostly come from them coasting on the fumes of a smart decision they made 8 years ago and the fact that due to being at the top of the heap, Magic has managed to keep itself self-perpetuating despite their many missteps, as it's what people gravitate to simply because it's easiest to find people to play with. But we've definitely started seeing their poor decisions starting to bite them back; you mention it posting growth, but that growth has slowed down compared to where it used to be. You can't just coast on those fumes forever.
Like I said, their R&D department is perhaps the one thing in the company that isn't incompetent (although it does still have issues). That manages to keep things afloat. But their decisions in practically everything else are pretty poor and have prevented the game's growth from being as successful as it could have been.
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I disagree with this. I don't think Force of Will is the reason Blue is so popular; it's just run a ton because Blue is so popular. If you look several years back, you'll see that while Blue was still the most popular color, it wasn't as dominant in the format as it is now. And all those "turn 1 kill" decks existed back then also. They didn't stop decks like Maverick or Goblins from being Tier 1 in their day.
The real reason for Blue's dominance in Legacy is all the other crazy good cards in Blue, most notably Brainstorm. Sure, Brainstorm was always around but then they keep printing cards that go great into decks with Brainstorm. Meanwhile, the creature power creep has overwhelmingly favored non-aggro creatures, so previously competitive decks like Zoo fell by the wayside.
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This is playing semantics. Claiming it's not the only reason is ignoring the fact you made the silly claim of saying it was the number one reason when it's not even close to that. A deck that is 3-5% of the metagame is not the number one reason why any particular deck type is unviable.
That seems a weak reason to claim it's a problem or shouldn't exist. If the deck were at something like 8-10% I could understand, but it's not. It's a fairly small part of the metagame.
You're aware 7th Edition isn't in Modern, right? You keep saying "7th/8th Edition" which is odd as 7th Edition is not legal in the format.
Beyond that, I still argue that if the starting point were better thought out, the starting point would be earlier.
Tying back to your repeated yet unsubstantiated claim that Fact or Fiction goes in all the Blue decks and would benefit combo, I took a look back at decks that ran it in Extended. It was overwhelmingly control decks that ran it. There is little evidence to support the assertion combo decks would be particularly interested.
In fact, looking back at those Extended decks gives further credence to the idea that control would be better if the starting point were moved back. There were some good control decks in that format, Psychatog being one, but all of their critical cards predate Modern. If Modern started with Invasion (or Masques) then the pieces to such decks would be legal. Would it necessarily be that great of a deck in the current Modern format? It's unclear, but something like Psychatog was able to hold its own in a format with a lot of crazy things going on, so I'd expect it'd be viable in some form.