[Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 07/13/2020)

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Post by Lord Seth » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Side note: in addition to essentially shoving out many of the jaded Modern players on the fence about whether or not to stay in the format, WOTC have also basically confirmed they will never reprint fetchlands in a Standard set for the forseeable future.

Given that Khans fetches are banned, and they likely won't want to reprint new cards that immediately and preemptively become banned, the only other option (if they ever see another reprint) is through expensive supplemental products. So I guess those $50-90 fetchlands stay that way indefinitely.
I'm not sure what their aversion to printing fetchlands in Standard is. Well, okay, I do know... it's because they made the massive goofup of including fetchlands in Standard with fetchable dual lands while having no hate. But before they did that, the fetchlands were fine. People didn't complain about them. "Shuffling time" wasn't even a big deal, as decks wouldn't run that many copies. Then they threw in the battlelands and people played about twice as many fetchlands. Don't include fetchable dual lands in Standard... and guess what, fetchlands are fine, as they were for one and a half years before they threw in the battlelands.

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Post by drmarkb » 4 years ago

I think they said something about new players not being able to shuffle in an article on the mothership- possibly a Maro article. Not a valid reason in my book, considering they print shuffle effects still today.

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Post by CalebLost » 4 years ago

drmarkb wrote:
4 years ago
I think they said something about new players not being able to shuffle in an article on the mothership- possibly a Maro article. Not a valid reason in my book, considering they print shuffle effects still today.
The main reasons Maro says on his blog is not "not being able to shuffle" but a combination of "fetch+dual type creates a 4+ color manabase too easy to assemble" and "shuffling is tedious to do and to watch, having a few shuffle effect in a deck is not a problem, having 6+ fetch and do that each turn for the first turn for both player is bad" (not exact quotes, but the idea is that)
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Post by tronix » 4 years ago

been away from playing modern/mtg for a good minute, but i got wind of the pioneer format announcement. i gotta say i was surprised.

personally im excited and tentatively hopeful. pioneer certainly holds some promise, which stands out in contrast to horizons on arena. the card pool seems expanse enough to make imagining the shape of the format at this stage nearly impossible, which is a good thing.

i can also respect preemptively banning the fetches, as it addresses a lot of potential problems at the root. lets be real, the fetchlands are a major feature of the game, but are and have been endemic to a lot of issues regarding gameplay and balance. so much so that they could easily be considered the biggest land 'mistakes' in the history of the game. but i digress, and the topic has little merit examining.

the modern doomsayers seem to be out in force. its a rather ridiculous assertion, but i can understand the underlying concern over where modern may fit into a world with pioneer. looking at it rationally its worth acknowledging that pioneer WILL be competing with modern, but that hardly amounts to a contest of survival. pioneer is just an additional option, or in other words an alternative that will draw player attention or interest like any other mode of play. it would no more be killing modern than pauper, which notably became a sanctioned format recently. sure there will be modern players who switch over, or players with a choice between the two choose pioneer; however there will also be players that previously had no option but now do, those who play both modern and pioneer, and many others will undoubtedly choose to play modern exclusively.

the point is that formats are unique and distinct in what they offer. as the lifespan of the game lengthens and its playerbase becomes more diverse in age and level of input/investment; this becomes increasingly important. also, to put it frankly, if modern did any sort of 'dying' it would be because it lacked the qualities or merit to draw its own following. modern is like 8 years old now, meaning there is ample history to draw from. certain cards or strategies have become iconic, or engendered strong attachment. similarly certain cards, interactions, and strategies do and will continue to only show up in modern. these will keep players around and attract others, all while players leave the format or game entirely as always.

i thought the intent and reasoning was rather straightforward in the announcement article. the game has grown and changed, and there was an ever increasing gap between standard and any other comp constructed format. modern was failing as an outlet for standard cards and or as a stepping stone from standard to other facets of the game. new players presumably start with standard, even moreso now with arena as the gateway. standard can be lacking, and dealing with rotation can be a difficult hurdle to overcome. wotc wants to garner long term brand loyalty, and pioneer is one more way to help in that regard.

really i think the crux of the concern has to do with large tournament support, and how wizards or other organizations (like SCG) intend to balance which are featured and how often. i get it, seeing your format or deck at the peak of competitive play creates a sense of solidarity and validates your choice of gameplay. not much to be done about it if we expect the game to expand beyond standard/modern

despite all the word vomit above i will say wotc has done a number on modern, specifically in this last year. the level of upheaval and, what id consider, displeasing developments boggles my mind. its like the intent and reasons for improvements and changes are all there, but the implementation is really misguided. at this point id posit that its stemming from their archaic design/project management methodology haunting them.
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re: reprints

makes sense to conclude fetches likely wont appear in a standard set, at least not for many years at the least. the incentives just arent there in general. the downside that stands out to me is just the shuffling. its just sorta stupid. we accept it as a matter of habit, and yeah im sure a select few find pleasure or enjoyment from it; however shuffling is time consuming and annoying operation to carry out multiple times or frequently within a game. its also prone to being done improperly, and even open to exploitation. it disrupts the flow of games, and can and frequently cause subsequent errors (such as confusing game actions, or game state). watching it is even worse. im cool if it never appears in standard unless some mechanic REALLY adds some appeal or interesting play (no, not just landfall)

as for reprints in general. honestly i think wotc has no clue how they are going to handle them (still). i believe they thought it would be simple transitioning to a system without reprint sets (masters), but cant decide a better solution; which translates to anything visible on our end to months or maybe even years out. i just shook my head when i saw that thing about the 'mystery boosters' like 2 weeks ago lol. also store owners received a survey asking what they thought about 'special/premium' boosters with a chance to contain cards from old sets, where the card isnt standard legal. wtf?

a deluxe/mythic product with pretty enemy fetches next year with the zendikar seems like shooting fish in a barrel.
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
Will Modern continue to exist? Yes.
Will Modern take a hit because some people move on from Modern? Perhaps.
that's just natural, people would be curious to try something new.

I'll be staying here though. Not in the mood to try another format.
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Post by Simto » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
Simto wrote:
4 years ago
idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
Are there tron lands in Pioneer? HHHHHHELL no. :p
Which is exactly why I'll still be playing modern :)
And that's fine. Nothing can appeal to everyone. Never playing Tron or ETron again is for me, how most seem to feel about Twin, or Storm, or KCI.
Yeah, there should be enough cards and formats so everyone who likes playing Magic has something they can enjoy playing without having to face stuff they hate and still have fun cards in their own decks.
I think Pioneer is going to be good for a lot of people.

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

Arkmer wrote:
4 years ago
Some of the things they throw at Pioneer will likely fill roles for Modern along the way.
this is what I'm hoping will happen.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

I doubt anything will be designed for Pioneer. What will be designed for is the (still misguided) desire for Bo1 to be a 'thing' because of Arena. Its already been commented on by Maro and Forsythe. Those highly pushed Bo1 cards for Standard, is where we need to be looking for answers.
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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

They don't need pioneer to make an affordable eternal format.

They just need to be true to the fact that modern has no restricted list and reprint without:
  • Upping uncommons to rares and rares to mythics.
  • Making premium products that cost too much per booster.
  • Making limited-run products that have little effect on supply.
  • Aim to increase the player base instead of trying to make a buck and please collectors.
Given their track record, Pioneer will have a few outstanding decks, those decks' cards will go up in price and Wizards will avoid rocking the boat by avoiding reprinting them to keep the price sane. That's what they've done with modern, I see no reason why they would do otherwise with Pioneer. And *if* they do otherwise with pioneers, it will be a spit in the face of modern players (and would-be) waiting for the format to be less of a money sink.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

Thats exactly what happened to Frontier, and will happen to Pioneer. Its inevitable as supply/demand and unregulated (you all see the insider trading going on??) systems will have price gouging.

I'm not concerned about it, as its just a fact of Magic in Paper.
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Post by Wraithpk » 4 years ago

I don't think Modern players need to be concerned by Pioneer at all, it's the Legacy community that should be. This is probably going to be the end of Legacy support at the competitive level. Modern will become the new high powered competitive format, with Pioneer taking the place Modern used to fill.
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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

I've seen a few decide to sell out of Legacy over it.
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Post by AvalonAurora » 4 years ago

I hope we get some good changes to printing and card design in Standard policies thanks to Pioneer, but ultimately, I think it will have the same problem Modern does, in that the longer it goes on, the less viable random Standard cards rotating out will be in it. Wizards seems to want to make a non-rotating format for people's cards from Standard, because that is what players want to trust buying into Standard, but the non-rotating part makes that basically impossible.

The best idea I can come up with is some kind of 'block constructed' variant, where players can play only decks that were Standard legal at some point from a starting point against other Standard legal setups, with some kind of special 'counter-strategies and sideboards' list of cards that are legal regardless of what Standard they were originally from so that you can fight against some weirder strategies that there was no counter-options to in some specific Standard environment. Such a thing, at least, wouldn't have decks continually growing in power as weaker areas get patched and synergies improved due to the steadily growing card pool slowly eliminating otherwise Standard-viable cards, but I think it would ultimately be too hard to moderate outside of an online format because of how complicated checking the legality of a deck would be.

This doesn't mean I don't think Pioneer has potential. It cuts out a lot of crazier stuff from Modern and due to the game's growth around the time of RTR, it likely will be and remain for some time, relatively cheaper to get into than Modern.

I particularly appreciate:

That it cuts out some older cards that do serious mono-color hate like Boil, Boiling Seas, Choke, and Flashfires that stood as theoretical threats to mono-color decks in some colors getting too prevalent in the metagame, which isn't the kind of sideboard play I feel is appropriate, partly due to how much harder it would hit random budget decks and lower end cheap brews than more serious decks due to issues surrounding land prices.

That it lacks things like the Tron lands and thus might give green more metagame space for ramp.

That it is post a lot of color-pie weirdness from eras like black leaking into everything New Phyrexia or original Innistrad block, and some of the hybrid stuff from Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, and tends towards more modern interpretations of the color pie, or how Gifts Ungiven tends to get used more like a black effect due to some weirder usage of it's wording and they seem to have been more careful about stuff like that in most of the sets included.

That it leaves behind some of the stronger cards that warp the way certain colors are played in modern compared to what their color is supposed to be good at, like Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile as creature removal in Red and White causing them to Rival black in that area (and exceed it prior to Fatal Push).

That it starts post-infect, because I hate infect.

That it starts long after 'white border' cards.

That it is around the time after they started somewhat understanding how planeswalkers actually work balance wise (even if they've continued to make mistakes... they seem to have a clearer idea of where mana costs should go and what kind of effects should go on what mana costs and loyalty costs more of the time) and solidly within the time frame of when they started printing non-planeswalker cards with planeswalkers in mind, like removal that specifies planeswalkers in cards like Dreadbore.

---

Overall, I have high hopes for the format, as well as what it might help Wizards understand about Modern and Standard from watching it's metagame evolve, and might influence their printing and card design policies in some good ways due to some of the ways they might try to support it in ways that could potentially help other formats, and could see it ending up a fun format itself.

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Post by iTaLenTZ » 4 years ago

Wraithpk wrote:
4 years ago
I don't think Modern players need to be concerned by Pioneer at all, it's the Legacy community that should be. This is probably going to be the end of Legacy support at the competitive level. Modern will become the new high powered competitive format, with Pioneer taking the place Modern used to fill.
This is exactly what most people are expecting. Also there isn't any Legacy GP scheduled. Maybe they will do 2 a year at most.

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Post by drmarkb » 4 years ago

Wraithpk wrote:
4 years ago
I don't think Modern players need to be concerned by Pioneer at all, it's the Legacy community that should be. This is probably going to be the end of Legacy support at the competitive level. Modern will become the new high powered competitive format, with Pioneer taking the place Modern used to fill.
Legacy has two things going for it over Modern.
In gameplay terms, it is held in higher esteem by its player base than Modern. Look at Legacy specific sites - they are full of praise for the format. There is no equivalent endless %$#% about Twin. People argue over Brainstorm, but there is no polarised mass debate about Drs, Top etc. A few grumbles over new cards, but never do you hear "I am done with Legacy" as you so often do about Modern.
I am not saying Legacy is better than Modern, but that its player base is happier with the format. Trafitionally the player base is older players with jobs who play their favourite decks, and play less often. Support from big events is less important to Legacyvplayers worldwide. A few SCG circuit players might sell, but here in Europe Legacy is niche but will go nowhere.

The other thing is finance. The RL makes duals a better bet than fetches. They just won't go down much, and Legacy players already own them, they are not buying in, they have them and know the price will remain roughly constant. They already own Tabernacles, and their value is not going to crash any time soon. The old printings they own have inherent value for being old. Mishra's factory costs 75 pence to a pound in the UK, but winter printing is one hundred to one fifty pounds. So an average Legacy player with Cradles, Duals etc. has an asset worth a lot that they can be sure won't go down in price, even if player levels decrease, except for small corrections. The other expensive cards that are non RL have a risk, but they are all largely Modern staples- Jtms, Snappy etc.
Modern players have no such luxury, their collections contain expensive that are in danger of crashing, and no solid gold standard finanxe cards like duals.
I am not preducting the death of anything, indeed Pioneer may find it difficult to attract Modern players, but with support it will get there.
I am saying that outside of the US Legacy will continue as is, and Modern may take a small hit.

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Post by Wraithpk » 4 years ago

People who like Legacy will still play it, of course, but I'm talking about WotC's support of the formats. The Reserved List is a real problem for the Legacy format that has no solution. WotC would probably rather it fade into being more of a niche or online format like Vintage is, and have Modern be the premier high-powered non-rotating format for competitive play. I think that's what's going to happen from here on out. We'll probably see very few, if any at all, Legacy GPs, and I would expect that SCG will follow suit. People grumble about Modern, but it's still the most popular format. It consistently draws the most players to tournaments. Modern's not going anywhere. Legacy is going to be the format that loses its spot in the competitive landscape to Pioneer.
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Post by drmarkb » 4 years ago

Yes, you are right in that support will drop to near zero- perhaps in team events once in a blue moon, but there is so little Legacy support that losing it won't make much difference. Modern/Limited will also have to lose some too to make way, just pulling Legacy won't provide enough for the nascent format, it will need to suck oxygen from somewhere and Legacy does not have enough to satisfy it.
When they did Legacy/Std GP here they put Legacy on Thursday and Friday, which meant those with jobs had more difficulty. In my case I simply could not go. We are used to Legacy being like an old relative, visited once in a while for old time's sake, forgotten the rest of the time except by a few. We are used to it being an online dominated format in terms of numbers of events, with major events few and far be between, but also with a thriving smaller scene of enthusiasts in paper, even if few get reported.
The differences with Vintage will stop it going the same way. Vintage needs power to compete, but Legacy has cheap and competitive decks- witness burn (with 20 mountains, iirc) in the top 8 of the last GP for a couple of hundred dollars, if you are lucky. D n T is obvious, but Goblins, Humans, Merfolk, some Steel Stompy are all RL free, as are some Eldrazi decks that eschew City of Traitors, and decks like Manaless Dredge and Burn exist for peanuts. The price of the cheaper duals is less than Scalding Tarn, meaning decks like Maverick, some Depths builds and RB reanimator will cost less than many top Modern decks.

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Post by True-Name Nemesis » 4 years ago

I feel like people selling out of Legacy are making a mistake. Besides, Legacy offers a gameplay experience that Modern or Pioneer can't come close to replicating.

Yeah sure it might get less official support from WoTC but Legacy has been a grassroots format propped up by players and aficionado communities for years already. Something like this happening has been at the back of every Legacy player's mind since forever.

What I'm hoping actually happens is the creation of Pioneer-Modern-Legacy team events on the SCG circuit. Now that would be a blast to watch.

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Post by robertleva » 4 years ago

I agree Touney support for legacy gets eaten up by Pioneer BUT I think the PLAYER BASE of Modern is what will populate Pioneer.

Less players. No real love for the format of Modern by it's player base the way Legacy has.

#timesup for Modern for anyone interested in the long term picture.
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Post by Wraithpk » 4 years ago

I'm not so sure. I think a lot of people will play both Modern and Pioneer, but I know a lot of people who don't play Modern because they can't afford it, and those people are more likely to be interested in Pioneer.
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Post by rcwraspy » 4 years ago

I'm interested in Pioneer simply because I like Magic, have regularly had one or more decks for every constructed format (though I haven't played Standard in about 2 years), and can easily fold Pioneer into my collection and deck building. Not because I have any issues with where Modern or Legacy or Vintage are or have been.

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Post by ModernDefector » 4 years ago

I know the joke about Modern actually being a rotating format but I didn't realize they meant that the format itself would rotate out.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

robertleva wrote:
4 years ago
Less players. No real love for the format of Modern by it's player base the way Legacy has.
If I had to guess, the majority of people who love the 'diversity' of Modern, are those who have played only since (or most heavily played) since RTR, and they found something within that range of time, which they have clung to.

The top of the Modern format has not been for YEARS, what most people think of when they think of Modern.

Remember when Dom/Guilds Standard was great? When it had tempo, control, midrange? People loved it. Remember when Modern had these things? When Jace/BBE were unbanned and people played these things? When SFM was unbanned and people played these things?

It wasnt because they are or were the best things to do, its because people want to play those things, and rarely does Standard support a VARIETY of those things.

The hope I feel with Pioneer, is that it supports those things, while also not having Tron, or Infect, or (real) Dredge, or Storm.

My hypothesis would be, the majority of players are casual, and the majority of them want a deck that is not competitive in Modern, but COULD BE (as we dont know yet) in Pioneer, while avoiding the stale nature of a Standard format that rarely supports more than 3 decks.

Being able to dodge things like Tron, is just a bonus.

TLDR: I dont believe most people who even play Modern love it. Its simply been the lesser evil for a long long time.
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Post by Tzoulis » 4 years ago

If people think Pioneer will not have any degenerate crap and that they'll enjoy Midrange vs Midrange/Control decks, they're wholly mistaken. I'm not talking the wild west style at the moment, I'm talking after the ban list is settled, the best decks will include degeneracy.

1. There will be a big mana deck, be it Golos or just ramp-into-fatties (Atarka/Ugin/Ulamog) a la Theros/Khans and Khans/Zendikar.
2. The danger of an Emry/Kethis Ascendancy combo deck is VERY real.
3. Infinite Nexus loops anyone?
4. Burn will be very strong.
5. The Colossus Hammer deck is almost all Pioneer legal.
6. Hell, a PO-Aetherflux deck is possible.

And that's not to say that as time goes by, more degeneracy will come to existence, just as it happens in Modern and in Legacy, but there aren't the same safety valves in the formats (at least not yet).

So, either WotC will have to be more heavy handed with the banlist or print powerful answers soon™, but also keep the threats up to par, so as to not go overboard to the other end of the spectrum.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Pioneer = Modern level threats with Standard level answers. Going to be interesting for sure. Terrified to legitimately buy into, knowing that this "test period" will inevitably show what should and will be banned.

As for Modern, having gone back to Grixis Shadow, it reminds me why "be proactive and kill as fast as possible" is the best way to even consider being successful.

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