I would also wait for the new modern product announcement. If they, god forbid, decide to print cards directly into the format they could, intentionally or (more likely) unintentionally, nuke the metagame completely and then all of this becomes irrelevant.
Short of Burn, Affinity and Tron, which the OP had already mentioned, Dredge and Storm are poised to be permanently good. Just how good is anyone's guess because WotC is determined to keep them in check and maybe the banhammer will at some point descend and crush them to smithereens, but we're certainly not at that point yet.
Grixis Death's Shadow is the last deck I'd say is destined to stay on top for a while, although it may shift around over time. The good thing is is that it's mostly modern staples so even if it depreciates in power, it will still remain 4/5 of the parts of whatever deck rises to replace it.
If you buy into any of those decks you won't have to worry over the situation that I'm having now, where I bought what I could afford (and liked), aka Mono U Tron (I traded in a ton of my junk for it through Pucatrade - even got 2 chalices that way :D), but WotC stubbornly refuses to print anything within the design space that would make the deck better (blue answers), or slow the format down overall and make midrange and control stronger so I'm constantly fighting the general power creep and always ending up short.
If I was in your shoes I would probably buy Death's Shadow. The other decks are either too uninteractive or too linear to play to remain interesting in the long run. Then again, you played burn so maybe you don't have a problem with that
In the top 50 most played spells in modern there are 10 blue cards. 4 are cantrips (so, essentially ways to create non-cards and increase deck consistency) and the rest are counterspells, most of which are fringe sideboard inclusions.
I think there is space there they just aren't using.
Doesn't this contradict your point, thought? There are 5 colors in Magic and blue takes up exactly 1/5th of the top spells? And 60% of those cards are more than just cantrips?
Of that 60% practically all are narrow sideboard counterspells, or cards with a very specific fit to a particular deck: Ceremonious, Spell Pierce, Dispel. Disdainful Stroke and Stubborn Denial. The only really 'good' card and an interesting design to boot is Cryptic Command and that is always going to of limited use due to its mana cost (nothing wrong with that, it's strong and there's a good reason for it's mana cost).
In terms of raw power (taking into account CMC) and flexibility (in terms of how many decks you can jam them in, or how many things they hit), they're all far behind Bolt, Thoughtsieze, Fatal Push and others top modern cards. Low CMC + wide range of targets/uses = power.
Anyway, I didn't say blue was underrepresented, I said the design space for the cards they're printing is unexplored. First, counterspells are supposed to be narrow now, because of the power of interacting on the stack. So they take a hit - let's say that's fine. BUt on top of this, free counterspell hate has become available. In the decks where it's played Caverns is a no drawback card. Aether Vial is not, but it still makes counterspells all but dead in the part of the game where it's relevant. All these cards come online before meaningful interaction with them is available.
So you're strictly worse off trying to fight on the stack in many (but not all) situations. Okay. But bounce is generally worse than it was as well. Many creatures have value just by being cast, sometimes to the point that bounce is a disaster for the player using it. Tuck is very expensive on the few cards it appears - completely overcosted for Modern playability. Case in point, not a single bounce or tuck spell is among the blue cards played in modern.
If you can't reliably deal with things on the stack and you can't deal with resolved permanents, that suggests to me that there is a gap. Don't get me wrong, no card deals with all things, all the time - otherwise we'd all be playing it. But to say that Thougthsieze and any of the one mana counterspells I listed are in the same league is just wrong.
The war on blue is a myth. See Teferi, Search, Opt, and Nexus. The war on control is a myth too. See Settle, Teferi, Search, and others. But the war on data? That is a very real platform that Wizards continues to push to this day, and I feel it receives far less attention than all the other unproven allegations.
I wouldn't say there is a war, but there is a design gap in blue spells that hasn't been filled (in modern) since counterspell was powered down and bounce indirectly weakened by the printing of creatures with ETB spells attached on them. Other than cantriping, blue spells just don't do interesting things anymore. Even draw is dubious because multiple mechanics allow you to draw (in some shape or form) a hell of a lot of cards without committing to blue at all - dredge, cycle, looting.
In the top 50 most played spells in modern there are 10 blue cards. 4 are cantrips (so, essentially ways to create non-cards and increase deck consistency) and the rest are counterspells, most of which are fringe sideboard inclusions.
I think there is space there they just aren't using.
Old frames are legit, and the best foils. They just pop
I agree. There may be less space for the art on the old frames, and they can dominate some pictures, and the frames don't look equally good in foil (IMO black, blue, artifacts, lands are better than white, red, green and multicolor) but as foils they were the best looking ones and the best quality.
No modern card looks half as good as this does in hand.
In the hypothetical situation the 'new' prison deck turns into a menace, what would be most likely card to eat a ban down the line?
My guess is, in order of likelihood: Ancient Stirrings, Ensnaring Bridge, Mox Opal or mayb Whir of Invention (if this deck was to be surgically targeted).
I doubt that this will ever come to pass, I'm merely posing the question for fun.
Regarding homogenization of art style (rather than how men and/or women are portrayed), I think that's largely the result of modern reliance on computer techniques in minor, and desire for sky-high realism (well, as realistic as a world of sorcery can be compared to our sorcery-less world) in major. In a word, immersion. It's a concern I have with how computer games are marketed, at least by word-of-mouth, that immersion is a major selling factor. I do worry that people are often looking to utterly forget the physical world for a time. Yet I fear that that way lies addiction.
As for fantasy aesthetics "properly" being that which proliferated in the 1980s...At least one problem. Namely, the very subjectivity of the term "fantasy". Cleaving to the 1980s variant usually means sticking to a fantasy that was mostly defined by young white males, whom I wouldn't be surprised to learn defined their "ideal" men and women to comport to their peers (q.v. the toxic variety of masculinity being in large part performative--towards other men). Which largely precludes females and non-whites already. And then there's the matter of how extra-voluptuous might not be an omnipresent desire. (I know I'll take "lithe" over "voluptuous" any day...) It's arguably a form of...ageism?...in that it says that the older aesthetic ought to be catered to just because it's been around longer. That essentially denies the validity of younger fantasies. By that logic, one could say that 1920s/1930s fantasies should receive priority over 1980s fantasies (and I doubt too many people in this day and age would like relentless Conan-cover art, Vallejo fans aside--and possibly even with them. Note, by the way, that Robert Howard was kind of notorious for his racism even back then, so at least his precepts weren't omnipresent then.).
I definitely agree that aesthetics change (and have to change), and not everything in the 70s and 80s fantasy was good (much of it wasn't), but as with every genre and art form, it has a period in which it peaks and I think that era was it. I don't see newer MtG art adding anything to it, other than technical proficiency. If anything, the ideas seem in short supply and many fantasy worlds that are supposedly new in fact feel extremely familiar and well trodden. The moment you see two or three pictures from Amonkhet or Kaladesh you immediately know what the rest is going to look like without even needing to engage your imagination. A counterpoint to this was perhaps Mirrodin, which, while having a lot of poor art was an indisputably original, MtG defined setting.
It's not so much that Magic needs to slavishly copy 80s art forever, but that it should emulate it's pioneering spirit (which it has shown from time to time) and resist the urge to serve up prepackaged products that the accountants know will sell.
The supposed Viking expansion is the prototype of this for me - I'm bored of it, and I don't know if it will ever see the light of day. But I know what it will look like, because that look is set in stone already in pop culture and I will eat my slipper if an MtG set of that sort would diverge significantly from popular imagination - should it be printed.
Blue doesn't need Ponder/Preordain, it needs an early and powerful counterspell or a counterspell like card that allows you to stop key early plays. There is currently no good way to stop early plays in blue, not even remotely the like of Thoughtsieze, Inqusition, Bolt, Fatal Push, Path etc. Most of the latter cards aren't universal answers, but due to the nature of the format they're effective against most things most of the time so they become near universal.
You can't stop things resolving most of the time, and once they're resolved the traditional weakness of blue in permanently dealing with problems is even more magnified. Without a chance, and by chance I mean having a playset or two of good things to depend upon, not 7 permutations of Bolt (Counterspell) to slap a deck together and call it a day, stalling opponents becomes an uphill struggle.
Bounce has become weaker over time with the proliferation of ETB effects, Tuck effects are rare and overcosted, reworded counterspells that help circumvent Caverns are also expensive and rare, Mill is junk and steal effects cost too much and aren't viable. On the other hand the problems are more varied than ever.
It's telling that of the 9 most played blue cards in Modern, four are cantrips, two creatures, although Snapcaster is as much a consistency tool as a creature, two narrow sideboard cards (Ceremonious, Dispel) and Cryptic. More cantrips is the least of things blue needs. In fact it's helping all the other colors more than blue.
What are you going to Ponder into in Modern that's blue? Negate?
No, it's going to be non-blue answers or combo pieces, things that are already too good, even with current 'junky' cantrips. Opt, whom everyone thought was a pale shadow of the old cantrips demonstrated how busted it is to have "4 cards less" in your deck in modern and that players will play any such card no matter how "weak" it is relative to the old ones.
The only problem with the artwork nowadays is how drably homogeneous the direction has become. At a rough estimate 75% is some sort of fantasy realism that to me screams of kitsch, but more the truly bad rather than the charming variety. Like the subtly or not so subtly injected political issues, (enforced diversity, gender politics), aggressive attempts to be epic and a spectacle at all times, attempts to replicate the whole Marvel superhero experience with the Planeswalkers, and to push them as an intentional product - a lot of things about Magic have become more artificial than magical.
The game is still good, but the charm has worn thin.
These were all part of a free promo Portal deck I got with a magazine that introduced me to Magic. Devoted Hero Skeletal Snake Goblin Bully Minotaur Warrior Hulking Goblin
How quaint it seems nowadays, yet infinitely more self-assured. You can really tell that these cards were made in a liberal (you have an idea? let's do it!) kind of environment, and the only box that needed ticking was the satisfaction of the guys making it. Even if the artwork is inferior in technique to the hyper competitive art market of today (and it was, short of a few star artists like Brom), no amount of technique can substitute for heart.
The visual identity of this game gets more and more diluted by the day... These look a bit like proxies from Deviantart or something - in your face, oppressively colorful etc.
I hope that they will eventually saturate this specific market and stop flooding us with quasi "collector's" pieces. If collector's pieces are cranked out several times per year, it deflates their uniqueness and just feels like pointless bling.
It's just politics, and everyone knows the best way to solve perceived but unproven and dubious problems, while virtue signalling, is to go full reverse on whatever the "problem" is.
I grew up looking at semi naked, or just plain naked women on Frazetta's art and never saw (and will never see) the problem. In fantasy all the warriors are impossibly muscled, the rogues impossibly dexterous and the women impossibly beautiful. Conan and Red Sonya are two sides of the same coin. It is literally the way the genre works and it neither pretends to have nor has any bearing on reality. Or even intent to affect it.
However, the people who are imposing this discussion on everyone do and the rest of us have to suffer through their ideological militancy, and all the absurdity it comes with.
People are also still playing slow, durdly midrange decks like traditional Jund. I've spent the last few months on straight Jund Shadow and it feels as powerful in this metagame as Jund did in 2015.
Almost anything can win online and in a local store. Just a look at MTGGoldfish daily results shows that the power and randomness are at a level that is sufficient for any decent deck to ride it out to the finish line. Obviously not all things are equal, and some win much more than others, but it's not like people's pet deck xyz is utterly worthless in the online environment or in the average store.
I mean, my U Tron is still good after all these years, albeit with some updates.
That's the beauty of the format. Legacy is inaccessible and too small and Standard is a waste of money, and in a sense, even more pay to win than any other format because you have to keep on paying in order to even play.
I am of the opinion that the aggro of today is not as easy to disrupt as it once was. This is why many are/were mistakenly calling the format faster (myself included); the cards that once acted as real speed bumps are no longer as effective, so while aggro is still ending the game on T5ish, there is less stopping them.
I really should have clarified. It's about perceptions. When you're fighting an aggro deck, until the end you often have at least the illusion that you can win, and a lot of decks pack some form of interaction that is good for aggro matchups. When you're playing things like Ad Nauseam or Storm, you just don't know. More inexperienced players feel cheated when the house comes crashing down in their end step seemingly out of nowhere.
The fact is that both decks probably beat you in the same time frame and whether you went from 20 to 0 in five turns or one makes for no real difference, but the psychology of the majority of the player base is that a 'good game' has to have some sort of board development, a bit of give and take, a few dead creatures on each side which means that the preferred way to play has become Aggro or Midrange.
And WotC has more or less explicitly said that this is the design goal and as they're in the pleasing-people business and not the achieving-ultimate-archetype-balance business, Control had to be marginalized and Combo could only exist in a specific niche as viable but not on top (for extensive periods of time).
Grixis Death's Shadow is the last deck I'd say is destined to stay on top for a while, although it may shift around over time. The good thing is is that it's mostly modern staples so even if it depreciates in power, it will still remain 4/5 of the parts of whatever deck rises to replace it.
If you buy into any of those decks you won't have to worry over the situation that I'm having now, where I bought what I could afford (and liked), aka Mono U Tron (I traded in a ton of my junk for it through Pucatrade - even got 2 chalices that way :D), but WotC stubbornly refuses to print anything within the design space that would make the deck better (blue answers), or slow the format down overall and make midrange and control stronger so I'm constantly fighting the general power creep and always ending up short.
If I was in your shoes I would probably buy Death's Shadow. The other decks are either too uninteractive or too linear to play to remain interesting in the long run. Then again, you played burn so maybe you don't have a problem with that
Of that 60% practically all are narrow sideboard counterspells, or cards with a very specific fit to a particular deck: Ceremonious, Spell Pierce, Dispel. Disdainful Stroke and Stubborn Denial. The only really 'good' card and an interesting design to boot is Cryptic Command and that is always going to of limited use due to its mana cost (nothing wrong with that, it's strong and there's a good reason for it's mana cost).
In terms of raw power (taking into account CMC) and flexibility (in terms of how many decks you can jam them in, or how many things they hit), they're all far behind Bolt, Thoughtsieze, Fatal Push and others top modern cards. Low CMC + wide range of targets/uses = power.
Anyway, I didn't say blue was underrepresented, I said the design space for the cards they're printing is unexplored. First, counterspells are supposed to be narrow now, because of the power of interacting on the stack. So they take a hit - let's say that's fine. BUt on top of this, free counterspell hate has become available. In the decks where it's played Caverns is a no drawback card. Aether Vial is not, but it still makes counterspells all but dead in the part of the game where it's relevant. All these cards come online before meaningful interaction with them is available.
So you're strictly worse off trying to fight on the stack in many (but not all) situations. Okay. But bounce is generally worse than it was as well. Many creatures have value just by being cast, sometimes to the point that bounce is a disaster for the player using it. Tuck is very expensive on the few cards it appears - completely overcosted for Modern playability. Case in point, not a single bounce or tuck spell is among the blue cards played in modern.
If you can't reliably deal with things on the stack and you can't deal with resolved permanents, that suggests to me that there is a gap. Don't get me wrong, no card deals with all things, all the time - otherwise we'd all be playing it. But to say that Thougthsieze and any of the one mana counterspells I listed are in the same league is just wrong.
I wouldn't say there is a war, but there is a design gap in blue spells that hasn't been filled (in modern) since counterspell was powered down and bounce indirectly weakened by the printing of creatures with ETB spells attached on them. Other than cantriping, blue spells just don't do interesting things anymore. Even draw is dubious because multiple mechanics allow you to draw (in some shape or form) a hell of a lot of cards without committing to blue at all - dredge, cycle, looting.
In the top 50 most played spells in modern there are 10 blue cards. 4 are cantrips (so, essentially ways to create non-cards and increase deck consistency) and the rest are counterspells, most of which are fringe sideboard inclusions.
I think there is space there they just aren't using.
I agree. There may be less space for the art on the old frames, and they can dominate some pictures, and the frames don't look equally good in foil (IMO black, blue, artifacts, lands are better than white, red, green and multicolor) but as foils they were the best looking ones and the best quality.
No modern card looks half as good as this does in hand.
My guess is, in order of likelihood: Ancient Stirrings, Ensnaring Bridge, Mox Opal or mayb Whir of Invention (if this deck was to be surgically targeted).
I doubt that this will ever come to pass, I'm merely posing the question for fun.
I definitely agree that aesthetics change (and have to change), and not everything in the 70s and 80s fantasy was good (much of it wasn't), but as with every genre and art form, it has a period in which it peaks and I think that era was it. I don't see newer MtG art adding anything to it, other than technical proficiency. If anything, the ideas seem in short supply and many fantasy worlds that are supposedly new in fact feel extremely familiar and well trodden. The moment you see two or three pictures from Amonkhet or Kaladesh you immediately know what the rest is going to look like without even needing to engage your imagination. A counterpoint to this was perhaps Mirrodin, which, while having a lot of poor art was an indisputably original, MtG defined setting.
It's not so much that Magic needs to slavishly copy 80s art forever, but that it should emulate it's pioneering spirit (which it has shown from time to time) and resist the urge to serve up prepackaged products that the accountants know will sell.
The supposed Viking expansion is the prototype of this for me - I'm bored of it, and I don't know if it will ever see the light of day. But I know what it will look like, because that look is set in stone already in pop culture and I will eat my slipper if an MtG set of that sort would diverge significantly from popular imagination - should it be printed.
You can't stop things resolving most of the time, and once they're resolved the traditional weakness of blue in permanently dealing with problems is even more magnified. Without a chance, and by chance I mean having a playset or two of good things to depend upon, not 7 permutations of Bolt (Counterspell) to slap a deck together and call it a day, stalling opponents becomes an uphill struggle.
Bounce has become weaker over time with the proliferation of ETB effects, Tuck effects are rare and overcosted, reworded counterspells that help circumvent Caverns are also expensive and rare, Mill is junk and steal effects cost too much and aren't viable. On the other hand the problems are more varied than ever.
It's telling that of the 9 most played blue cards in Modern, four are cantrips, two creatures, although Snapcaster is as much a consistency tool as a creature, two narrow sideboard cards (Ceremonious, Dispel) and Cryptic. More cantrips is the least of things blue needs. In fact it's helping all the other colors more than blue.
What are you going to Ponder into in Modern that's blue? Negate?
No, it's going to be non-blue answers or combo pieces, things that are already too good, even with current 'junky' cantrips. Opt, whom everyone thought was a pale shadow of the old cantrips demonstrated how busted it is to have "4 cards less" in your deck in modern and that players will play any such card no matter how "weak" it is relative to the old ones.
The game is still good, but the charm has worn thin.
These were all part of a free promo Portal deck I got with a magazine that introduced me to Magic.
Devoted Hero
Skeletal Snake
Goblin Bully
Minotaur Warrior
Hulking Goblin
How quaint it seems nowadays, yet infinitely more self-assured. You can really tell that these cards were made in a liberal (you have an idea? let's do it!) kind of environment, and the only box that needed ticking was the satisfaction of the guys making it. Even if the artwork is inferior in technique to the hyper competitive art market of today (and it was, short of a few star artists like Brom), no amount of technique can substitute for heart.
I hope that they will eventually saturate this specific market and stop flooding us with quasi "collector's" pieces. If collector's pieces are cranked out several times per year, it deflates their uniqueness and just feels like pointless bling.
That's a really nice post. What's your opinion on U Tron competitiveness for MTG Online and below major event level of play?
I grew up looking at semi naked, or just plain naked women on Frazetta's art and never saw (and will never see) the problem. In fantasy all the warriors are impossibly muscled, the rogues impossibly dexterous and the women impossibly beautiful. Conan and Red Sonya are two sides of the same coin. It is literally the way the genre works and it neither pretends to have nor has any bearing on reality. Or even intent to affect it.
However, the people who are imposing this discussion on everyone do and the rest of us have to suffer through their ideological militancy, and all the absurdity it comes with.
Almost anything can win online and in a local store. Just a look at MTGGoldfish daily results shows that the power and randomness are at a level that is sufficient for any decent deck to ride it out to the finish line. Obviously not all things are equal, and some win much more than others, but it's not like people's pet deck xyz is utterly worthless in the online environment or in the average store.
I mean, my U Tron is still good after all these years, albeit with some updates.
That's the beauty of the format. Legacy is inaccessible and too small and Standard is a waste of money, and in a sense, even more pay to win than any other format because you have to keep on paying in order to even play.
I really should have clarified. It's about perceptions. When you're fighting an aggro deck, until the end you often have at least the illusion that you can win, and a lot of decks pack some form of interaction that is good for aggro matchups. When you're playing things like Ad Nauseam or Storm, you just don't know. More inexperienced players feel cheated when the house comes crashing down in their end step seemingly out of nowhere.
The fact is that both decks probably beat you in the same time frame and whether you went from 20 to 0 in five turns or one makes for no real difference, but the psychology of the majority of the player base is that a 'good game' has to have some sort of board development, a bit of give and take, a few dead creatures on each side which means that the preferred way to play has become Aggro or Midrange.
And WotC has more or less explicitly said that this is the design goal and as they're in the pleasing-people business and not the achieving-ultimate-archetype-balance business, Control had to be marginalized and Combo could only exist in a specific niche as viable but not on top (for extensive periods of time).