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

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

I never owned GDS, but could say from experience that it is a very good and consistent deck. After my friend's merfolk deck got stolen, he switched over to GDS and we played lots. Those shadows can grow huge all of a sudden. Also when using bgx, I sided out all abrupt decays, because those only killed shadows and snapcaster.. most games that I lost, it's the angler that cannot be hit with decay that got me. :grin:
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Post by BloodyRabbit » 4 years ago

GDS is the opposite of 'a consistent deck', but it's a 'powerful one' for sure. It doesn't play the same, but it's somewhat similar to the old Canadian Thresh.

Sb Decay our vs GDS is wrong, cause they hit walkers too (Scions, both Lily).

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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure cfusionpm was talking about UR TiTi decks and not GDS when he said the deck was awful.

If I'm correct, it's kinda ironic to read everyone dumping on him while complaining about how people have awful mentalities, wouldn't it?

PS: and GDS is pretty consistent, and made even more consistent with scion. It's not clockwork, but it's not " the opposite of consistent".

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Post by True-Name Nemesis » 4 years ago

The guy said Royal Scions makes peezy aka young pyromancer a 4/1. Unless GDS has started adopting young pyromancer in the past day or 2, he's definitely talking about TiTi/Blue Moon something. Way to take offense at nothing or are yall just too hasty to take the chance prove someone wrong.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

BloodyRabbit wrote:
4 years ago
GDS is strong right now, not "awful". I don't get why we should always exaggerate.
Never said GDS was awful. Quite the opposite. I'm purposely playing it because I no longer want to play awful decks, like the Blue Moon/TiTi deck I was referencing.

I don't like all the mechanics and design philosophies of GDS, but I like much of it (especially post board), and it's a powerful deck that doesn't require me to play green or spend several hundred dollars on potentially bannable cards like Urza, Opal, and Oko.

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Post by pierreb » 4 years ago

People are hyped about Pioneer because its ban list is not set. Once it is, 49% will be pissed off by cards they like and deemed OK getting banned. The other 49% will be pissed by cards they failed to ban and deemed busted. Then people will moan about how deck X is obviously degenerate.

IOW, I fail to see why people who don't like modern and how modern is managed will be pleased with how Pioneer gets managed.

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Post by True-Name Nemesis » 4 years ago

Been consuming a lot of Pioneer content on various twitch streams and I have to say I am not that impressed so far. Given my disillusionment/indifference towards Modern for a majority of 2019, I can't see how Pioneer is an improvement over Modern in terms of gameplay experience.

That power level and variety of threats far outweigh the answers. I'm cautiously optimistic that the banlist announcement later on today can change that.

2 Things going for Pioneer so far.
1) Accessibility
2) Still a brewer's paradise if there are bannings coming through

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
BloodyRabbit wrote:
4 years ago
GDS is strong right now, not "awful". I don't get why we should always exaggerate.
Never said GDS was awful. Quite the opposite. I'm purposely playing it because I no longer want to play awful decks, like the Blue Moon/TiTi deck I was referencing.

I don't like all the mechanics and design philosophies of GDS, but I like much of it (especially post board), and it's a powerful deck that doesn't require me to play green or spend several hundred dollars on potentially bannable cards like Urza, Opal, and Oko.
I'm glad you replied with this because I also thought you were talking about Grixis Shadow, which is definitely a very strong deck and most likely in the top 5 right now.

I have an opponent that I've played at FNM who plays Death's Shadow and seems to not be happy with some of his draws against me. Then I asked him if he knew in our last 4 matches (I should have told him that it spanned 12 games), he drew 2 Death's Shadow and Temur Battle Rage in all of them except 1 (out of 12). Meanwhile, I am playing the junk decks - Elves, Outcome, 5 color Niv, and Crab Vine, decks that absolutely cannot beat a single Temur Battle Rage. I've heard about threat light hands with the deck. Heck, I've experienced them before. But nobody is telling me that Grixis Shadow is not a solid contender. To be more specific, it is 1 of probably 5 decks that I could see winning a GP, although the nod goes slightly to Jund Shadow (even though I really prefer Grixis Shadow personally).
Standard - Will pick up what's good when paper starts
Pre Modern - Do not own anymore
Pioneer - DEAD
Modern - Jund Sacrifice, Amulet, Elementals, Trollementals, BR Asmo/Goryo's, Yawmoth Chord
Legacy - No more cards, will rebuy Sneak Show when I can
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Post by iTaLenTZ » 4 years ago

The problem with Pioneer are the 3 mana planewalkers. Oko, Teferi, Jace, Shaeeli all need to go. Jace maybe isn't overpowered now but he is omnipresent and if you start banning, thus lowering the powerceiling of the format, he does become OP.

I have been starting to play Oko in Modern and its ridiculous. If I cast him turn 2 against any deck reliant on creatures or artifacts or even control its game over. Yes, the game will still take 10 turns or more but its such a uphill battle for them its impossible to lose if they leave Oko unchecked for several turns and he happens to protect himself very well, too well.....

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

BloodyRabbit wrote:
4 years ago
GDS is the opposite of 'a consistent deck', but it's a 'powerful one' for sure. It doesn't play the same, but it's somewhat similar to the old Canadian Thresh.

Sb Decay our vs GDS is wrong, cause they hit walkers too (Scions, both Lily).
too many games against that deck I killed all their creatures, except for gurmag angler and I'm dead with unusable abrupt decays in hand. The version I often played against only has one LotV as it's walker. Against other iterations of GDS, decay might be right.. but against the GDS over here it's not that good..

edit: and also the GDS I often played against years ago was one of the earlier versions that still used Tasigur. Another threat that cannot be target by decay.
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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Decay got bad once people started pounding out stuff that had a technical CMC of more than 3, but often were cheated out with some form of acceleration. Ramp spells, cheap/free mana rocks, Tron lands, Delve, etc. Abrupt Decay ain't what it used to be, and with Assassin's Trophy being printed, I have a hard time thinking why anyone would ever want to play Decay in a world where Splinter Twin doesn't exist.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

pierreb wrote:
4 years ago
People are hyped about Pioneer because its ban list is not set. Once it is, 49% will be pissed off by cards they like and deemed OK getting banned. The other 49% will be pissed by cards they failed to ban and deemed busted. Then people will moan about how deck X is obviously degenerate.

IOW, I fail to see why people who don't like modern and how modern is managed will be pleased with how Pioneer gets managed.
True-Name Nemesis wrote:
4 years ago
Been consuming a lot of Pioneer content on various twitch streams and I have to say I am not that impressed so far. Given my disillusionment/indifference towards Modern for a majority of 2019, I can't see how Pioneer is an improvement over Modern in terms of gameplay experience.

That power level and variety of threats far outweigh the answers. I'm cautiously optimistic that the banlist announcement later on today can change that.

2 Things going for Pioneer so far.
1) Accessibility
2) Still a brewer's paradise if there are bannings coming through
I largely agree with this. Pioneer hype is overblown and misplaced. Currently, people seem mostly excited because it's a brewer's paradise, it has no established metagame (or at least, a minimal one compared to more venerable formats), because it's cheap, and because the perceived power level is lower than Modern. Most of these observations will prove unfounded. Its price tag and brew-friendliness will quickly expire as more people jump into the format, especially the price tag. Pioneer does not address the fundamental reprint problems Magic and other formats are facing. Cheap Pioneer rares/mythics today will be expensive in the proverbial tomorrow as more people buy in and Wizards handles reprints with the same hands-off, secondary-market-doesn't-exist mentality they've treated Modern and other formats. Expect prices to be slightly less than Modern, just because the product is newer, but still much more than Standard and what they are now.

As for Pioneer's brewability and power level, these are also just byproducts of a young format. Remember ELD Standard in the week before Oko proved totally busted? Or Modern right after SFM was freed? These unestablished metagames are naturally brewer friendly because good players haven't iterated on good decks. The decks also feel like they allow more counterplay not because the format is interactive, but because the decks are bad. There simply isn't enough time to make well-tuned machines. Once more time elapses and bigger events incentivize more iteration, this format will crystalize just like Standard or Modern or any other format. We'll have best decks and established metagames which will set the format pace.

Personally, I am excited about Pioneer but won't bother investing until the banlist is more settled. I'm relatively format agnostic when it comes to nonrotating formats, and will mostly focus on whatever receives the most Wizards support. Legacy lost that battle a long time ago. Modern and Pioneer appear to be competing for that slot now, so we'll see how the cards fall.

Re: Pioneer bans
In case you missed them - https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... nouncement
This affirms some of our existing ban theories and shouldn't have been too surprising. Wizards doesn't like decks with high win rates. They don't like top-tier A+B win combos (this in particular bodes poorly for Twin in Modern). They don't like variance reducers (RIP Ponder/Preordain). Free spells are always good targets if a deck needs a ban. Pioneer obviously has some big differences relative to Modern, but as these themes also happen in Modern bans, expect them to keep coming up in the future.
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Post by Yawgmoth » 4 years ago

I have seen a lot of people identify a "problem" with Modern and that is the extremely negative views that many players have towards virtually all aspects of the format.

In contrast, I have seen it said that Legacy players are by and large a much happier group of players.

I wonder if Modern is undergoing a natural period of change in its maturation as a non rotating format. Is it possible that many of the "perpetually unhappy" modern players will soon quit playing the format and move on to something else? This would leave only leave the players that like the current state of the format.

This leads me to a simple question. Did Legacy ever undergo a (similar) period where a large portion of the player base was unhappy with the state of affairs? To an outsider, it seems like Legacy has a number of potentially unlikable features: a relatively limited # of viable archetypes, potentially very quick "blow-out" matches that end on turn one, and an extremely high price tag.

At the same time, Modern is starting to look this way too but I don't have a problem with it. I enjoy playing Modern but I can see why some people might not. However, I don't think the solution is to change the format. I have zero sympathy for people who complain endlessly about a game that they freely choose to spend their time and money on.

I said it before but I think some players find it "uncool" to like the game and think that "being a hater" = "having an intelligent critique." I can't wait for these players to either chill out or move on. This is not directed at anyone here per se but rather the general negativity that I get from a lot of Modern players. I can't wait till Modern is like Legacy; a bunch of heady old mages talking about the good times and a card pool incomprehensible to the new kids.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

Yawgmoth wrote:
4 years ago
I have seen a lot of people identify a "problem" with Modern and that is the extremely negative views that many players have towards virtually all aspects of the format.

In contrast, I have seen it said that Legacy players are by and large a much happier group of players.

I wonder if Modern is undergoing a natural period of change in its maturation as a non rotating format. Is it possible that many of the "perpetually unhappy" modern players will soon quit playing the format and move on to something else? This would leave only leave the players that like the current state of the format.

This leads me to a simple question. Did Legacy ever undergo a (similar) period where a large portion of the player base was unhappy with the state of affairs? To an outsider, it seems like Legacy has a number of potentially unlikable features: a relatively limited # of viable archetypes, potentially very quick "blow-out" matches that end on turn one, and an extremely high price tag.

At the same time, Modern is starting to look this way too but I don't have a problem with it. I enjoy playing Modern but I can see why some people might not. However, I don't think the solution is to change the format. I have zero sympathy for people who complain endlessly about a game that they freely choose to spend their time and money on.

I said it before but I think some players find it "uncool" to like the game and think that "being a hater" = "having an intelligent critique." I can't wait for these players to either chill out or move on. This is not directed at anyone here per se but rather the general negativity that I get from a lot of Modern players. I can't wait till Modern is like Legacy; a bunch of heady old mages talking about the good times and a card pool incomprehensible to the new kids.
Cards like Brainstorm as just 1 example of many will be the reason that Legacy games being decided by play skill seem more common than in Modern. Cards that decrease variance do just that - decrease variance (Ponder, Preordain, etc.) and often feel better for certain players.
Standard - Will pick up what's good when paper starts
Pre Modern - Do not own anymore
Pioneer - DEAD
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Legacy - No more cards, will rebuy Sneak Show when I can
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Aaron just tweeted this:
"Listening to @PioneerDLs podcast... claim was made that Devotion and Cat "weren't the two best decks in the format." They really were. Devotion trophied 40 times this weekend (10x more than most other decks), 60.5% non-mirror win% (and was 62% vs Cat). Cat trophied 16x, 54.9%."
Twin bullsh*t nonsense aside, what infuriates me more than anything else is the fact that they have a wealth of data that they knowingly keep secret. Not for any reason other than to artificially slow people from being able to tune and predict a meta for events and keep things higher variance than they would otherwise be. They do not care about health, they care about randomness and the perception that "any deck can win."

MTG Goldfish already wrote several thousand words on the topic, with much better detail, reasoning, and critique than I honestly care to apply to this company anymore: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/wi ... a-insanity

The ultimate irony is this article is 2 and a half years old and was written BEFORE the change to fake diversity dumps, and simply when random data was cut in half.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
Cards like Brainstorm as just 1 example of many will be the reason that Legacy games being decided by play skill seem more common than in Modern. Cards that decrease variance do just that - decrease variance (Ponder, Preordain, etc.) and often feel better for certain players.
Friendly reminder that in 2018, there was zero statistical difference between the MWPs of top players between formats and no difference between those ceilings. I have yet to see a convincing, data-driven case that Legacy/Standard/Modern is any more "skill"-intensive than other formats. At least, not in a way that matters to top players and performance.
cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
Aaron just tweeted this:
"Listening to @PioneerDLs podcast... claim was made that Devotion and Cat "weren't the two best decks in the format." They really were. Devotion trophied 40 times this weekend (10x more than most other decks), 60.5% non-mirror win% (and was 62% vs Cat). Cat trophied 16x, 54.9%."
Twin bullsh*t nonsense aside, what infuriates me more than anything else is the fact that they have a wealth of data that they knowingly keep secret. Not for any reason other than to artificially slow people from being able to tune and predict a meta for events and keep things higher variance than they would otherwise be. They do not care about health, they care about randomness and the perception that "any deck can win."

MTG Goldfish already wrote several thousand words on the topic, with much better detail, reasoning, and critique than I honestly care to apply to this company anymore: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/wi ... a-insanity

The ultimate irony is this article is 2 and a half years old and was written BEFORE the change to fake diversity dumps, and simply when random data was cut in half.
It is utterly insane that Wizards deliberately hides this data because they are worried about formats being solved when the formats are literally solved in mere weeks anyway. The perception that any deck can win isn't even real anymore to anyone who does even a modicum of research. If formats are open, they will be open at major events with or without the data. If formats are closed and solved, major events will reflect that. If Wizards made the data available, at least players would know how to fight these decks. As we've talked about before, hiding data is a poor and ineffective solution to hiding bad design and unhealthy formats. Fix format management and card design. Don't try to obscure mistakes with minimal data, because the mistakes come out anyway.

I suspect this will get solved in the ~5 year timeline after the old guard move on and some new talent enters the ranks. But for now, we need to live with this ridiculous policy and all its consequences.
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Post by Mikefon » 4 years ago

The formats are indeed solved very fast, but the perception is really what wizards wants. Talking with FNM players they still thinks many homebrew decks can be good both in modern and even more in pioneer. Navigated players can understand when there's a issue in non rotating format. Newer players (or brewers) have a lot different perception and I think that it is due to the data dump. I see many players thinking that a 5-0 deck can be the next broken thing. At lower levels that data refinement achieved its goal!

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Post by drmarkb » 4 years ago

Legacy has a way of attacking every resource easily, meaning you have to think carefully about land dropping and especially fetching basics- and has things that enable consistency, meaning you find your answers more easily. You can't argue that the tools exist, and to be frank it often feels like a more skillful format- the person who gets wastelanded and mana screwed as a consequence probably has themselves to blame. People jamming A plus B combos who "just go for it" normally lose. You also have to play around insta win and force/daze on your opponents' side.

Another point is if a Legacy game finishes on turn 3 it often has involved as many descisions as a later game in other formats- you get to do a lot in a turn.
Many of the mismatches have tools in the sideboard to even it up.

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Post by Simto » 4 years ago

If anybody here was playing around the time Modern was announced. Do you remember how people reacted to that announcement and their predictions back then? Was it roughly the same reactions as we now have with Pioneer?
How was it compared to when Frontier was announced? As far as I can tell, Frontier was a pretty big failure, but was it because of the card pool? or was modern meta and card prices just more beginner friendly?
It's still early days, but it doesn't sound like Pioneer is going down the same route in terms of popularity from the players and event support from Wizards.
Is it just because of Modern being in a different spot from when Frontier was announced? (both money and meta wise)
I didn't play from roughly 1998 to 2016 so my knowledge of stuff between that gap is very limited hehe.

Also, in terms of reprints and the value of cards that are good in Pioneer going up. If Pioneer takes off, it'll just do the same as Modern and Wizards will eventually (if they still exist) make a new format again down the line. It's just the natural course and then we'll be having the same conversation again.

Also, I think both formats are great and lots of fun :)

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Post by Arkmer » 4 years ago

I think it's fairly inevitable and almost necessary that another format is announced down the line. Nothing differentiates Pioneer from Modern apart from card pool. Maybe (and that's a stiff maybe) they use a different philosophy with Pioneer than they did with Modern as far as shaping the format is concerned. How you want to measure that is entirely up to the individual, but I have hopes for that philosophy and their first ban of Cat Combo and hurting Green Devotion aligns reasonably well with my hopes.

All we can do is wait, watch, and participate.

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Re: Pioneer bans
In case you missed them - https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... nouncement
This affirms some of our existing ban theories and shouldn't have been too surprising. Wizards doesn't like decks with high win rates. They don't like top-tier A+B win combos (this in particular bodes poorly for Twin in Modern). They don't like variance reducers (RIP Ponder/Preordain). Free spells are always good targets if a deck needs a ban. Pioneer obviously has some big differences relative to Modern, but as these themes also happen in Modern bans, expect them to keep coming up in the future.
looks like WoTC really does not like Splinter Twin style combos. They did the right thing this time, ban it right from the start... so people won't invest money on it, and become furious when a ban happens.
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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

Mikefon wrote:
4 years ago
The formats are indeed solved very fast, but the perception is really what wizards wants. Talking with FNM players they still thinks many homebrew decks can be good both in modern and even more in pioneer. Navigated players can understand when there's a issue in non rotating format. Newer players (or brewers) have a lot different perception and I think that it is due to the data dump. I see many players thinking that a 5-0 deck can be the next broken thing. At lower levels that data refinement achieved its goal!
I believe FNM-level players don't pay as much attention to the "realities" of the data, but I also don't have any evidence to suggest this level of player solves formats slower than they used to. Did these players believe the formats were less open back when there was more data? Were decklists reflecting this? I know there are many current FNM scenes that both reflect wide open metagames and many more that just look like the top 5 most-played decks on MTG Goldfish, so I suspect this evidence is anecdotal at best. Certainly, at the level where we can see results (e.g. GP T8s/Day 2s, SCG events, larger regional events, etc.), I hypothesize the diversity today is basically the same that it used to be. Formats do or don't get solved based on available cards and deck power levels, not because Wizards is concealing data. This horribly misguided policy will eventually get overturned as we see new leadership in relevant departments, but until that happens, we'll just need to live with it.
drmarkb wrote:
4 years ago
Legacy has a way of attacking every resource easily, meaning you have to think carefully about land dropping and especially fetching basics- and has things that enable consistency, meaning you find your answers more easily. You can't argue that the tools exist, and to be frank it often feels like a more skillful format- the person who gets wastelanded and mana screwed as a consequence probably has themselves to blame. People jamming A plus B combos who "just go for it" normally lose. You also have to play around insta win and force/daze on your opponents' side.

Another point is if a Legacy game finishes on turn 3 it often has involved as many descisions as a later game in other formats- you get to do a lot in a turn.
Many of the mismatches have tools in the sideboard to even it up.
I do think the notion of "counting" decision trees would be a good way to differentiate between format skill levels. For instance, on a certain Legacy T1, you might have be presented with the following options: fetch for 1 of 3 lands (3 decisions), play Delver (1 decision), play Brainstorm (1 decision), decide which cards are going on the top (8 possible options), do nothing (even more decisions), etc. But a Tron deck might just have the decision of which of 2-3 lands to play and whether to Sphere or Map. Obviously, this is a really simplistic comparison, but I think it illustrates the idea of counting relevant decision points. I think we can mostly agree that the format with the most decision points would probably be the most skill-intensive (that itself might be an open question, however), so this could be an interesting way to assess that question.
gkourou wrote:
4 years ago
I know several people say Pioneer has nothing to do with Modern, but for me, it's literally the opposite. I feel like Pioneer is literally cannibalizing Modern, indeed. But that's just based on my own experiences, and I get that it may not be generally what's about.
Pioneer will almost necessarily cannibalize Modern players. I certainly don't want to set aside disposable income for two nonrotating formats, and I definitely don't want to set aside mental bandwidth. It's exhausting keeping up with all the hot Modern takes, metagame developments, new strategies, articles, etc., and that's as a relatively casual player these days. Most of us don't have the resources to keep up with both Modern and Pioneer at a competitive level, to say nothing of Arena and Standard sapping most of our time because, let's face it, most of us probably play that too.

This is yet another misguided Wizards policy in a terrible year of decisions. Wizards has talked at length about how players should be able to play Magic how they want. That's all well and good when your Magic-playing options are distinct, but becomes very problematic when they overlap heavily. Or when Wizards misidentifies the thing people like about a format. I suspect most people don't give a crap whether they are playing Legacy or Modern or Pioneer because they don't actually care too much about the cards in those formats. They care significantly more about having a supported, nonrotating format where they can play 1-2 decks for years to come. These players will play whatever format is going to have the most ongoing support and opportunities for play. More nonrotating competitors just reduces the overall number of players in any given format and increases wallet and mental fatigue. Wizards wrongly assumes its players have infinite patience and capacity to put up with changes, mistakes, and Magic pulling us in too many directions. That's wrong and will lead to long-term, even short-term, losses.
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Post by metalmusic_4 » 4 years ago

People are excited by a new format. I'm building a pioneer deck and so are some of my friends. However none of us are selling out of modern. Many people play more than one format. There is certainly more focus on pioneer at this time from WOTC and the community, no doubt about it, but give it a few months and we will see how this fares.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Wizards wrongly assumes its players have infinite patience and capacity to put up with changes, mistakes, and Magic pulling us in too many directions. That's wrong and will lead to long-term, even short-term, losses.
They likely know that it is costly, difficult, time consuming, and demoralizing to sell out of collections. Many people not in dire financial stress will just sit on their cards and hope things get better. I mean, I feel like that's a good chunk of Modern players, especially these past few years.

Until they start losing players en masse, they really don't seem to care what happens to the game, or any individual format.

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

changed my mind a bit about pioneer. The entry cost is easy enough, so I'm building a pioneer deck too. Just one though. And no, not selling out of modern. Modern is still fun. Years ago, the reason I sold out of legacy to permanently migrate into modern is because of the reserved list.. and also running out of people to play legacy with. Modern has no reserved list, and I still got some people to play with over here.
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AnimEVO 2020 - EFZ Tournament (english commentary) // Clearing 4 domain with Qiqi
want to play a uw control deck in modern, but don't have Jace or snapcaster? please come visit us at the Emeria thread

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