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

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

MashedPotato wrote:
4 years ago
Pioneer looks good, but I can't buy into another non-rotating format yet (I just bought into GDS before pioneer was annoucned)
That's not a bad place to be. And definitely not a bad place to spend money on. Been building it up off and on myself over the last two or three years.

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Post by MashedPotato » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
-KCI ban in January 2019.
-Overwhelming Izzet Phoenix share in Spring 2019.
-WAR brings us T3feri, Narset, and Karn, which proceed to hurt or break formats.
-MH1 slaps Legacy with W6 and ruins Modern with Hogaak.
-Wizards decides to fix the Hogaak problem and bans.... Bridge!
-Hogaak REALLY ruins Modern. Karn simultaneously breaks Vintage
-Hogaak and Karn banned/restricted in respective formats in August 2019. Also, byebye Looting.
-Field breaks Standard. Field gets banned.
-Oko/Goose/Nissa/OUT break Standard. Ban incoming.
-Insert Historic mismanagement throughout this timeline leading into the Pioneer announcement.
I read that timeline and i actually forgot how bad the first half of the year was (although I loved Izzet Phoenix, still promising in Pioneer from what I see online)
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Add in the endless content cycle from all formats, personalities, and venues, and never before has Magic as a whole, let alone Modern, felt so exhausting.
Agree with the content cycle, to many products in the one year is exhausting.
cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
That's not a bad place to be. And definitely not a bad place to spend money on. Been building it up off and on myself over the last two or three years.
I love how good that deck looks laid out like that, Scions and Shock lands are fantastic!
There is always a greater power

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Post by True-Name Nemesis » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Arena has been great
The Arena platform has been great. WoTC's management of it in recent months has been just as bad. Outside of visual satisfaction, Arena has been meh. Bots are hilariously bad at drafting. Not to mention their gaffs with brawl and historic.

Brawl is a format that arena players want but can play just one day a week and with the current horrendous state of standard and bot drafts, it's almost like they actively want to drive people away from arena too.

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
-KCI ban in January 2019.
-Overwhelming Izzet Phoenix share in Spring 2019.
-WAR brings us T3feri, Narset, and Karn, which proceed to hurt or break formats.
-MH1 slaps Legacy with W6 and ruins Modern with Hogaak.
-Wizards decides to fix the Hogaak problem and bans.... Bridge!
-Hogaak REALLY ruins Modern. Karn simultaneously breaks Vintage
-Hogaak and Karn banned/restricted in respective formats in August 2019. Also, byebye Looting.
-Field breaks Standard. Field gets banned.
-Oko/Goose/Nissa/OUT break Standard. Ban incoming.
-Insert Historic mismanagement throughout this timeline leading into the Pioneer announcement.
whoa, I did not know Field is also now banned. Looks like it's "hammer time" for wotc even in standard. :grin:

Well, guess I should be thankful to the good friend Hogaak. His rampage resulted to a chain of events that became the freedom of sfm into modern.

T3feri is starting to get annoying though.. hurts the instants in my esper draw go. :sweat:
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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

True-Name Nemesis wrote:
4 years ago
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Arena has been great
The Arena platform has been great. WoTC's management of it in recent months has been just as bad. Outside of visual satisfaction, Arena has been meh. Bots are hilariously bad at drafting. Not to mention their gaffs with brawl and historic.

Brawl is a format that arena players want but can play just one day a week and with the current horrendous state of standard and bot drafts, it's almost like they actively want to drive people away from arena too.
I would clarify the last statement. We all know Wizards isn't actively trying to drive people away from Arena. But it's very clear they are actively trying to drive people towards Standard. Unfortunately, when Standard sucks (MTG Goldfish had a decent article about this recently), that means Arena sucks as a result. Doubly so if draft bots suck and you can't even play Limited.

This is particularly odd because Wizards has made this big push in 2019 to allow players to "play Magic how you want," doubling down on Commander, Modern, and casual products on top of adding Brawl and Pioneer. I think this boils down to conflicting goals. Wizards has a broad strategic aim to allow players to play Magic however they want. But they also have a financial goal of maximizing profit, especially within the Arena team. In practice, this means prioritizing Standard and Limited to ensure players churn out money for new products, most of which will necessarily feed into Standard and Limited. Wizards has yet to figure out how to reconcile these potentially conflicting goals. Their design/format management issues have made the conflict even worse.
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Post by Simto » 4 years ago

I wonder if it's worth getting the 4 Karn Liberated and 2 Ugin, The Spirit Dragon I still need for my Tron deck :(

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

I find it interesting how people are so much more positive about bannings in Pioneer compared to Modern. I remember how back a couple years ago when the conversation mainly happened on MTGSalvation, when people would bring up the subject of banning out right degenerate decks or cards like tron, ensnaring bridge, blood moon, goryo's etc. They were shouted down by people who shouted from the roof tops that "Hey don't worry WoTC will simply print answer cards we don't have to ban anything" fast forward a few years and Modern has devolved into a somehow ever more brutal hellscape with no hope in sight. Compared with the approach to Pioneer, the playerbase seems to clearly know that the overwhelming majority of the time, bans have an indesputably postive impact on the formats and now WoTC seem to be very hands on with the format which is promising, I love the idea of an eternal format where I don't have to act like Tron or Lantern Control are legitmate decks that add fun to the format, they aren't, we all know they aren't, its time to drop the act.

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
I find it interesting how people are so much more positive about bannings in Pioneer compared to Modern. I remember how back a couple years ago when the conversation mainly happened on MTGSalvation, when people would bring up the subject of banning out right degenerate decks or cards like tron, ensnaring bridge, blood moon, goryo's etc. They were shouted down by people who shouted from the roof tops that "Hey don't worry WoTC will simply print answer cards we don't have to ban anything" fast forward a few years and Modern has devolved into a somehow ever more brutal hellscape with no hope in sight. Compared with the approach to Pioneer, the playerbase seems to clearly know that the overwhelming majority of the time, bans have an indesputably postive impact on the formats and now WoTC seem to be very hands on with the format which is promising, I love the idea of an eternal format where I don't have to act like Tron or Lantern Control are legitmate decks that add fun to the format, they aren't, we all know they aren't, its time to drop the act.
The inherent problem with the Modern banned list isn't that cards are banned or get banned. It's the utter incompetence and inconsistency with which cards got banned or stayed banned.

As a side note, I overheard an interesting conversation between rounds of a particularly dreary Modern FNM: "WOTC doesn't want to make you interact." Unpacking that claim over the remaining minutes of the round, the discussion flowed around how Copycat was banned out of the format, when the issue generally agreed upon was that T3feri was the problem. Much like Splinter Twin, there are a number of super easy ways to interact with it, stop it, and otherwise deal with it. Never mind that Pioneer has access to Fry and Abrupt Decay FFS.... T3feri just allows the combo to go off unhindered. And Wizards deems you players too stupid or too incapable of trying to interact with what the opponent is doing, rather than admitting that T3feri is the problem.

The conversation then jumped distinctly to "WOTC doesn't want you to have to interact with your opponent." And that there is virtually no drawback to not interacting with your opponent, outside of possibly losing to a faster deck. The punishment used to be that you got Twinned or something. Well, now that that's gone, every Modern cycle has been focused around a brief period where people jam a bunch of bad interactive decks, the transition period when they realize that the new tools these decks may have gotten are not nearly as good as the "ignore you and kill you" decks, and then those take all the top slots. Something gets banned, and the cycle repeats. This continues until all interactive decks devolve into various prison locks and all other decks are some form of linear racing. People can make and jam other stuff, but will never sit at the top tables with these two without some heavy variance help.

For some relevant context, I played GDS last night, I had 7 free Creeping Chills thrown at me over the span of 2 games. and lost to runner, runner Titans after Thoughtseizing two of them and aggressively Thought-Scouring/Snap-Scouring three Valakuts and two Pacts. This game is stupid.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

Simto wrote:
4 years ago
I wonder if it's worth getting the 4 Karn Liberated and 2 Ugin, The Spirit Dragon I still need for my Tron deck :(
Depends how you define "worth." If you are worried about bans, I wouldn't be. There is zero evidence to point to a Gx Tron ban at this time. This is a deck that dodged bans after getting 4 T8 slots at a single GP last year, and having the second most GP T8s overall. It's an mainstay, omnipresent Modern deck and it isn't going anywhere even if there is a vocal (likely) minority of (predominantly online) critics. If you are worried about Pioneer compromising Modern's share, that's a slightly more legitimate fear. I would only remind you that Pioneer is very young and we don't know how the format will look next year. If Pioneer is unpopular after the metagame settles, Modern and Tron investments will be more attractive. Remember: Pioneer may not be a healthy metagame even after bans. Answer quality is a lot worse than in Modern, and even though threats aren't quite as strong, this will still probably favor proactive strategies that may be even more unpleasant than those in Modern.

Of course, the final consideration is pricing. Modern prices are lower now than usual, both because the Modern season is on a downswing now and many people are focused on Pioneer. If you see those Gx Tron pieces start to lower, I'd buy.
Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
I find it interesting how people are so much more positive about bannings in Pioneer compared to Modern. I remember how back a couple years ago when the conversation mainly happened on MTGSalvation, when people would bring up the subject of banning out right degenerate decks or cards like tron, ensnaring bridge, blood moon, goryo's etc. They were shouted down by people who shouted from the roof tops that "Hey don't worry WoTC will simply print answer cards we don't have to ban anything" fast forward a few years and Modern has devolved into a somehow ever more brutal hellscape with no hope in sight. Compared with the approach to Pioneer, the playerbase seems to clearly know that the overwhelming majority of the time, bans have an indesputably postive impact on the formats and now WoTC seem to be very hands on with the format which is promising, I love the idea of an eternal format where I don't have to act like Tron or Lantern Control are legitmate decks that add fun to the format, they aren't, we all know they aren't, its time to drop the act.
For me, the big difference is Pioneer is starting with only fetchlands being banned. All subsequent bans will be made based on results. No one seriously believes Pioneer will be a banless format beyond fetchlands. It includes a number of Standard sets that saw more Standard bans than any other period of Standard since 2004. In fact, Standard has had more bans since 2017 than Modern!

Standard bans: 11
Copter, Emrakul, Reflector, Felidar, Marvel, Attune, Refiner, Ruins, Ferocidon, Nexus (Arena Standard), Field of the Dead

Modern bans: 6
Probe, GGT, KCI, Bridge, Hogaak, Looting

We're all resigned to some number of cards being banned in any format. At least with Pioneer, it will happen early in the format based on MTGO results, not based on community cup nonsense or not after months/years of people investing in those cards.

As for decks like Tron and Lantern Control, I don't know why you think Pioneer will ban so-called "unfun" decks like those. By all measures, Pioneer so far appears to just be building off Modern ban lessons (Felidar and Twin, Oath and Ponder/Preordain, Leyline and free things/rituals). There's no indication Wizards will ban cards because people don't find them fun. Their ban justifications in Pioneer, as with all other ban justifications this year, have been based on win rates and metagame shares. The notion that a certain style of deck, e.g. ramp or prison, is unfun and should be banned is a bad one. This mentality has no place in nonrotating formats. If one does not like these more obscure and powerful strategies, Standard and Limited are alternate formats where these won't be present. Modern, Legacy, and Vintage are allowed to have these kinds of decks, and there is no statement from Wizards that should make us believe Pioneer will be handled otherwise.
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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
I find it interesting how people are so much more positive about bannings in Pioneer compared to Modern. I remember how back a couple years ago when the conversation mainly happened on MTGSalvation, when people would bring up the subject of banning out right degenerate decks or cards like tron, ensnaring bridge, blood moon, goryo's etc. They were shouted down by people who shouted from the roof tops that "Hey don't worry WoTC will simply print answer cards we don't have to ban anything" fast forward a few years and Modern has devolved into a somehow ever more brutal hellscape with no hope in sight. Compared with the approach to Pioneer, the playerbase seems to clearly know that the overwhelming majority of the time, bans have an indesputably postive impact on the formats and now WoTC seem to be very hands on with the format which is promising, I love the idea of an eternal format where I don't have to act like Tron or Lantern Control are legitmate decks that add fun to the format, they aren't, we all know they aren't, its time to drop the act.
The inherent problem with the Modern banned list isn't that cards are banned or get banned. It's the utter incompetence and inconsistency with which cards got banned or stayed banned.

As a side note, I overheard an interesting conversation between rounds of a particularly dreary Modern FNM: "WOTC doesn't want to make you interact." Unpacking that claim over the remaining minutes of the round, the discussion flowed around how Copycat was banned out of the format, when the issue generally agreed upon was that T3feri was the problem. Much like Splinter Twin, there are a number of super easy ways to interact with it, stop it, and otherwise deal with it. Never mind that Pioneer has access to Fry and Abrupt Decay FFS.... T3feri just allows the combo to go off unhindered. And Wizards deems you players too stupid or too incapable of trying to interact with what the opponent is doing, rather than admitting that T3feri is the problem.

The conversation then jumped distinctly to "WOTC doesn't want you to have to interact with your opponent." And that there is virtually no drawback to not interacting with your opponent, outside of possibly losing to a faster deck. The punishment used to be that you got Twinned or something. Well, now that that's gone, every Modern cycle has been focused around a brief period where people jam a bunch of bad interactive decks, the transition period when they realize that the new tools these decks may have gotten are not nearly as good as the "ignore you and kill you" decks, and then those take all the top slots. Something gets banned, and the cycle repeats. This continues until all interactive decks devolve into various prison locks and all other decks are some form of linear racing. People can make and jam other stuff, but will never sit at the top tables with these two without some heavy variance help.

For some relevant context, I played GDS last night, I had 7 free Creeping Chills thrown at me over the span of 2 games. and lost to runner, runner Titans after Thoughtseizing two of them and aggressively Thought-Scouring/Snap-Scouring three Valakuts and two Pacts. This game is stupid.
Well powercreep in formats in general is a given, no getting around that. But ultimately WoTC has been utterly useless in terms of banning problem cards for years prior to Teferi getting printed, imagine how much better Modern could have been for all these years if say back in 2017 or so, WoTC just banned Ensnaring bridge, Blood Moon, Tron, Lantern, maybe some other crap? All of a sudden people might actually be able to have a sideboard that actually cover all the bases, we could have games go longer than like...4 turns or so, But back then, people acted like banning cards was some kind of taboo, that if we did this on a widespread basis then Magic was no better than Yugioh, well I think after all this time I can call BS on that, there simply is no excusing the fact that WoTC was derelict in it's duties to maintain something resembling reasonable gameplay standards within the format, and now after all these YEARS of peoples concerns and frustrations going unheaded, WoTC has given them a way out in the form of Pioneer and people are running for the exit, really this should not come as a shock to anyone. What Modern needed years ago was a scortched earth ban frenzy to clean up this crap, instead we got ignored (and some Modern players liked that) and now we reap the consequences.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
As for decks like Tron and Lantern Control, I don't know why you think Pioneer will ban so-called "unfun" decks like those. By all measures, Pioneer so far appears to just be building off Modern ban lessons (Felidar and Twin, Oath and Ponder/Preordain, Leyline and free things/rituals). There's no indication Wizards will ban cards because people don't find them fun. Their ban justifications in Pioneer, as with all other ban justifications this year, have been based on win rates and metagame shares. The notion that a certain style of deck, e.g. ramp or prison, is unfun and should be banned is a bad one. This mentality has no place in nonrotating formats. If one does not like these more obscure and powerful strategies, Standard and Limited are alternate formats where these won't be present. Modern, Legacy, and Vintage are allowed to have these kinds of decks, and there is no statement from Wizards that should make us believe Pioneer will be handled otherwise.
This is certainly a fair opinion to hold, but I think you are overlooking a fundamental aspect of the game, in that it is a game. You talk about banning exclusively based off of results, thats fine but people aren't machines, a good number of the players who make events fire show up to have fun, and people who do not show up and result in less events firing also do so, in some amount, on the basis of fun. If you think I am overstating this point, by all means, go look through the reddit comments of the original Pioneer threads, from both the people praising it's potential and denouncing it, the opinions tend to be based on people's idea of fun. There are absolutely people who are going into Pioneer right now because they have been putting up with decks like Tron at their LGS for years and are tired of it. There are also people who do not like the idea of Pioneer because they don't like the idea of a format with both Teferi's legal as well as supreme verdict/sphinx's rev.dec, etc.

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Post by Simto » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Simto wrote:
4 years ago
I wonder if it's worth getting the 4 Karn Liberated and 2 Ugin, The Spirit Dragon I still need for my Tron deck :(
Depends how you define "worth." If you are worried about bans, I wouldn't be. There is zero evidence to point to a Gx Tron ban at this time. This is a deck that dodged bans after getting 4 T8 slots at a single GP last year, and having the second most GP T8s overall. It's an mainstay, omnipresent Modern deck and it isn't going anywhere even if there is a vocal (likely) minority of (predominantly online) critics. If you are worried about Pioneer compromising Modern's share, that's a slightly more legitimate fear. I would only remind you that Pioneer is very young and we don't know how the format will look next year. If Pioneer is unpopular after the metagame settles, Modern and Tron investments will be more attractive. Remember: Pioneer may not be a healthy metagame even after bans. Answer quality is a lot worse than in Modern, and even though threats aren't quite as strong, this will still probably favor proactive strategies that may be even more unpleasant than those in Modern.

Of course, the final consideration is pricing. Modern prices are lower now than usual, both because the Modern season is on a downswing now and many people are focused on Pioneer. If you see those Gx Tron pieces start to lower, I'd buy.
Worth it for me is not so much the cost of the cards (I can see both have taken a slight dip, but I think those two cards are such powerful and important cards that they don't really take big dips in value)
It's more the worry that the Modern doomsday sayers are right and it'll die down after having spent so much money on it. Just don't want it to be a waste because I'm having a ton of fun playing modern hehe.

But you're probably right, now is a good time to buy into modern cards due to the eyes being on other formats for a while.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
The inherent problem with the Modern banned list isn't that cards are banned or get banned. It's the utter incompetence and inconsistency with which cards got banned or stayed banned.
On the one hand, Wizards gets a bad rap for Modern banlist management. For the most part, they have been relatively effective at identifying problems and responding when data is convincing. 2019 has some glaring exceptions to this, and 2016 had Twin, but otherwise they have mostly been fine. I know there's a vocal contingent of players who want a scorched earth ban policy of alleged "inconsistencies" like fast mana, broken lands, fast kills, etc., but these aren't truly policy inconsistencies if one is really looking at what gets cards banned. Wizards has also done an excellent job of doing "No changes" updates even when vocal online subgroups are constantly calling for bans. Most recent Modern problems haven't been due to failed bans. They have been due to horrendous design decisions that create problematic cards that aren't strictly bannable by known criteria. R&D can't be responsible for banning a format out of %$#% Play Design and design/development decisions.

On the other hand, Wizards has done a terrible job at managing unbans. Many unbans could have happened years earlier and I'm sure there are still cards on the list that would be totally fine.
The conversation then jumped distinctly to "WOTC doesn't want you to have to interact with your opponent." And that there is virtually no drawback to not interacting with your opponent, outside of possibly losing to a faster deck. The punishment used to be that you got Twinned or something. Well, now that that's gone, every Modern cycle has been focused around a brief period where people jam a bunch of bad interactive decks, the transition period when they realize that the new tools these decks may have gotten are not nearly as good as the "ignore you and kill you" decks, and then those take all the top slots. Something gets banned, and the cycle repeats. This continues until all interactive decks devolve into various prison locks and all other decks are some form of linear racing. People can make and jam other stuff, but will never sit at the top tables with these two without some heavy variance help.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with this, but I think there's a suggestion (explicit or implicit) that this is a Modern problem. It's not. As you also suggest, this is really just a Magic problem in general. Legacy avoids this because it has all the old cards that were designed before this big shift in Magic. I suspect this is because player surveys consistently show many more casual players don't like their expensive gameplans getting removed/countered/sinkholed/etc. by cheap, generic answers. Unfortunately, when those nerfed tools get introduced to competitive environments, questions always become better than answers.

Just look at the arc of Standard and current Pioneer so far. These are largely formats where people pose strong proactive gameplans and try to race their opponent to establishing it. In Modern it just happens faster because the proactive plans are better and more efficient, but it's the same problem we see in Standard and Pioneer. All the truly strong answers that prevent this are long gone from Magic. This is why Wizards prints Force of Negation instead of Force of Will and why Wizards wants blue mages to have to decide between different counterspells, not audibiling to Counterspell as the catch-all. Again, this is the same misguided philosophy that culminated in a horrible battlecruiser Magic era of Standard, but let's not pretend this is just a Modern problem.

One might ask why it matters whether this is a Modern vs. Standard vs. Pioneer problem instead of a distinctly Modern problem. This matters because if we are deciding between Pioneer/Standard and Modern, we need to understand the fundamental issues of Modern are still fundamentally problematic in those other formats. Unlike in Modern, however, you might not realize the proactive board state is GG until many turns later. T3 Karn is pretty definitive. T2 Oko, or T3 Nissa, is less definitive but no less unanswerable. The problem is not the format or the proactive card pool. It's that the reactive spells and interactive tools are bad. This gets back to what you were saying about Wizards deprioritizing interaction; I just want us to acknowledge this as a game problem, not a Modern problem.
Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
Well powercreep in formats in general is a given, no getting around that. But ultimately WoTC has been utterly useless in terms of banning problem cards for years prior to Teferi getting printed, imagine how much better Modern could have been for all these years if say back in 2017 or so, WoTC just banned Ensnaring bridge, Blood Moon, Tron, Lantern, maybe some other crap? All of a sudden people might actually be able to have a sideboard that actually cover all the bases, we could have games go longer than like...4 turns or so,
These are all widely debunked myths about Modern. The average length of a game in Modern was the same in 2017-2018 as in 2015 during Modern's alleged "golden" age of Jund/Twin policing other decks. Wizards cannot just ban cards because a subset of players views them as unfun. Banning proactive strategies is ineffective and just leads to a race to the bottom of one strong thing dying out for another. The solution is to print better answer and strong interaction. Again, as I said above, this is NOT a Modern problem. It is a contemporary Magic problem. We are seeing it in Standard (11 bans since 2017!!) and we are seeing it in Pioneer's early weeks. We will continue to see it until Wizards realizes their misguided philosophy about answers vs. threats is a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Magic great.

Scorched earth ban frenzies do not fix this problem. They are just temporary solutions until Wizards prints the next broken thing. Bans alienate players, waste money, and create instability. They detract from the conversation about gameplay and strategy. Wizards needs to do a 180 in their strategy and switch to printing better answers and interaction, not just stronger threats that players continually want banned.
Tomatotime wrote:
4 years ago
There are absolutely people who are going into Pioneer right now because they have been putting up with decks like Tron at their LGS for years and are tired of it. There are also people who do not like the idea of Pioneer because they don't like the idea of a format with both Teferi's legal as well as supreme verdict/sphinx's rev.dec, etc.
There is no legitimate method of weighing the relative merit of the "I hate Deck X" crowd against the "I love Deck X" crowd. Or the "I'm neutral on Deck X" crowd. Wizards can't ban cards because one group loudly posts in Reddit threads about it. We need to remember that the vocal online commentary community is just a tiny portion of the Magic playing world. Even of the Modern playing world. This is why Wizards needs to defer to more objective measures like win rates and metagame shares when banning cards.

I can't emphasize this point enough. Wizards CANNOT ban their way out of this problem. Standard has seen ELEVEN BANS in 2 years and is on track for another 1-2. This is a card design problem. This is the problem that happens when Wizards makes %$#% answers and threats keep getting bigger and better. You can ban all the Moons and Bridges and Teferis and Towers you want, but you will need to keep banning cards every year until the answers improve.
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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
For some relevant context, I played GDS last night, I had 7 free Creeping Chills thrown at me over the span of 2 games. and lost to runner, runner Titans after Thoughtseizing two of them and aggressively Thought-Scouring/Snap-Scouring three Valakuts and two Pacts. This game is stupid.
People will tell you that those situations are so rare that they are not worth being upset over. I believe this a little bit if someone has the time to play 1,000s of matches per week, then yes, they will happen a small percentage of the time. But when someone sees these situations, it hurts.

I lost 5 games due to not drawing a single land yesterday. I missed on 4 Once Upon a Time not getting a single land. Some will say that "that's what I deserve; I was playing Neoform," but I literally don't know a single deck outside of Bogles that I can win a match without drawing 1 single land (yes, I said the same thing twice - 1 and single). This was a deck where my win percentage was nearly 80%, but I'm starting to feel the variance a lot more. There are literally 2 cards that beat that deck - Force of Negation and Grafdigger's Cage, but the deck sometimes loses to itself.
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
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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Post by cfusionpm » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
All the truly strong answers that prevent this are long gone from Magic. This is why Wizards prints Force of Negation instead of Force of Will and why Wizards wants blue mages to have to decide between different counterspells, not audibiling to Counterspell as the catch-all.
Doesn't this line of reasoning fall to pieces when they print things like Assassin's Trophy? Veil of Summer? Once Upon A Time? Catch-all answers, nearly catch-all answers, and super consistency digging are apparently totally fine, as long as you play forests. I mean FFS, Veil of Summer is effectively Cryptic Command for 1 mana the vast, vast majority of the time (counter/draw).
FoodChainGoblins wrote:
4 years ago
cfusionpm wrote:
4 years ago
For some relevant context, I played GDS last night, I had 7 free Creeping Chills thrown at me over the span of 2 games. and lost to runner, runner Titans after Thoughtseizing two of them and aggressively Thought-Scouring/Snap-Scouring three Valakuts and two Pacts. This game is stupid.
People will tell you that those situations are so rare that they are not worth being upset over. I believe this a little bit if someone has the time to play 1,000s of matches per week, then yes, they will happen a small percentage of the time. But when someone sees these situations, it hurts.
After the 4 Chills game 1, Game 2 I was literally attacking for lethal with a Shadow and an Angler, after getting rid of his only blocker when he was at 3 life (I was at 7 life myself). At instant speed, he cycled the red cycle land to dredge and hit Narcomiba, Chill, Stinkweed Imp. Cycled his second land, hit two more Chills to kill me, during combat, as I was attacking for lethal, and holding Stubborn Denial in hand.

In the Titanshift match, he was also dead on board, but apparently I missed that his "flood" land drops were all fetches, so in response to my Collective Brutality to gain/drain for lethal after attacking him to 2, he fetch, fetch, fetch, deal 9 to me and kill me (from 8). Honestly, after scouring him, he may not have even had the 3 mountains to get anyway, but I was so over it that I did not care and just conceded on the spot as it is.

Just reminds me that the more I play in paper, the more I hate this game. Because these losses don't just sting, they waste my time. I have no financial need to sell all my paper cards and just play online, but my motivation to do so for the sake of my sanity grows every time I have the %$#% show experiences like this in paper.

On the plus side, I got in two awesome games of Commander after dropping Modern; and those were tons of fun. Looks like there is no end in sight for the circus that is this format though. Will probably still jam Modern online once in a while, and try to get in Commander games when I can, but there's just zero motivation to play this format anymore. Which is truly a shame.

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Post by Tomatotime » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
On the other hand, Wizards has done a terrible job at managing unbans. Many unbans could have happened years earlier and I'm sure there are still cards on the list that would be totally fine.
Well okay, what do you think Wotc could unban that would actually make Modern less of a gold fish combo based format?
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
These are all widely debunked myths about Modern. The average length of a game in Modern was the same in 2017-2018 as in 2015 during Modern's alleged "golden" age of Jund/Twin policing other decks.
I never said Jund/Twin was a golden age of anything, I also never said that the format is currently faster than it was in 2015, but it is certainly more actively hostile to fair decks than it was in 2015.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Wizards cannot just ban cards because a subset of players views them as unfun.
And yet WotC can choose to not ban cards that are fun even if the data tells them it should absolutely be banned (brainstorm in legacy), this is done because of community input and WotC conceded the point and legacy players like that.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Banning proactive strategies is ineffective and just leads to a race to the bottom of one strong thing dying out for another.
I think there is a fundamental difference between a format where a deck like Whirza or Tron are the boogymen of the format compared to a format where Jund and Merfolk were top tier, I'm not trying to make a strawman but there does reach a point where people would stop clamoring for bans, either once enough boogiemen decks have been killed for sideboards to catch up and take a breather or when the standard of play reaches a point where the community is happy.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
The solution is to print better answer and strong interaction.
You have been saying this for years back on MTGSalvation, what has this actually achieved at this point? WoTC doesn't print answers nearly at a good enough pace to keep up with their threats, even after they said they learned their lesson and gave us fatal push and put lightning strike back into standard (lol). So if WotC printing answers isn't a realistic expectation (not sure how many more years of evidence you need before you concede this) then the only meaningful way to curate the standard of play with Modern is with bans.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Scorched earth ban frenzies do not fix this problem. They are just temporary solutions until Wizards prints the next broken thing.
I would take a temporary solution over a completely non-existent one.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Bans alienate players, waste money, and create instability.
So did Eldrazi winter and Hogaak summer, to say nothing of the major commercial investments (3rd party tournaments and events) that these metagames threatened.
ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
Wizards can't ban cards because one group loudly posts in Reddit threads about it. We need to remember that the vocal online commentary community is just a tiny portion of the Magic playing world.
Fine, but WotC's lack of comprehensive data/feedback collection from larger groups to satisfy you is WotC's fault, not the players, the players shouldn't have to live with a compromised format because WotC doesn't do technology.

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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

That's pretty insane! Some of the insane plays that happen in Modern are so random, mostly because consistency tools like Green Sun's Zenith, Preordain, and Ponder are banned in Modern. Tron, Burn, and Titanshift are probably the most consistent decks. Blue is not close to these and I guess that's okay.

I have friends that are really feeling the same way. It is a waste of their time and with Pioneer becoming more popular and pushed locally, the jump is not going to be hard. I just played my first 4 sanctioned matches of Pioneer today, with my 3rd deck choice UR Phoenix, and went 4-0 in Trios while my teammates went 0-4. We dropped out at a pretty humiliating 0-4 because of Standard and Modern. Small sample size, but it seems indicative of how things are going (I've also been 2-2, 3-1, 0-3, 1-3, 3-1, 1-3 and 2-2 in my last bunch of Modern matches). I hope I still have Modern players to play with because the memories of it were very good, making money off cards, playing against Pod, Twin, and Summer Bloom. Fun times...

*Lastly I want to point out the same thing I've said at least 100 times here on this thread - I literally enjoyed every meta of Modern except Eye of Ugin Eldrazi and Hogaak Winter/Summer?. I did notice a drop in attendance during Pod/Cruise, so that's probably not acceptable as well, but everything until now was pretty enjoyable.
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
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

ktkenshinx wrote:
4 years ago
-KCI ban in January 2019.
-Overwhelming Izzet Phoenix share in Spring 2019.
-WAR brings us T3feri, Narset, and Karn, which proceed to hurt or break formats.
-MH1 slaps Legacy with W6 and ruins Modern with Hogaak.
-Wizards decides to fix the Hogaak problem and bans.... Bridge!
-Hogaak REALLY ruins Modern. Karn simultaneously breaks Vintage
-Hogaak and Karn banned/restricted in respective formats in August 2019. Also, byebye Looting.
-Field breaks Standard. Field gets banned.
-Oko/Goose/Nissa/OUT break Standard. Ban incoming.
-Insert Historic mismanagement throughout this timeline leading into the Pioneer announcement.
Should also be noted that Phoenix was far earlier than 'Spring 2019'. The harsh reality is that Modern was bad not just for the entiery of 2019, but nearly half of 2018.

Modern's been bad since people realized that the Jace/BBE unban's meant about as much in a vacuum as the SFM unban.

I see no scenario outside Pioneer tanking hard after a few 'real' events, that Modern stands the test of time.
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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
I see no scenario outside Pioneer tanking hard after a few 'real' events, that Modern stands the test of time.
which is already a concern. WotC is going to do ban announcements every single Monday for the next 2 months? Lulz. Some people were already not happy that there were bans SO early in the format. For the online meta, there needed to be those bans, but people who play paper had barely set their feet down in Pioneer. I finally played my first 4 matches of Pioneer just today. I had so many plans for playing Mono Green Devotion and Copy Cat for at least a solid month. I mean, I was allowed to do so with much more degenerate decks in Modern in Eye of Ugin Eldrazi and Hogaak, each of which I played for over a month. But I guess WotC is going to be super quick on the trigger in this format. I foresee a LOT of fluctuation in prices of cards because of this.

Two things I noticed recently that seemed a bit odd - one was that on a price website, the price of Oath of the Gatewatch Nissa, Voice of Zendikar was slightly more in non foil than foil ($14.87 vs. $12.98). Price aberrations are nothing new though. My local LGS refunded my money for a very small purchase that I did from them at $35.65. I had previously done so many online transactions through them, especially for underpriced foil cards and they had only once refunded it. Now I'm super wary of this.
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
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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Post by robertleva » 4 years ago

Pioneer is an eternal format without tron. That alone is a draw to large percentage of moderns player base (essentially all non tron players). Yes we are sick of your deck. No its not ban worthy or anything like that. We are just sick to death of how it polarizes inevitability; it's friggin annoying to play against. As someone else mentioned. people aren't machines and formats should be fun first and fair second.
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Post by FoodChainGoblins » 4 years ago

Tron is probably 1 reason out of 25 at best of why this format is not fun (in my opinion of course).
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
Limited - Will start when paper starts
Commander - Nope

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

Hmm, what's wrong with Tron? One of my friends has the deck, and it's fun to play against. It's like racing against a time bomb, try to kill him before the bomb go off. What I mean about the "bomb" is when he starts dropping Newlamog, and other nasty things. Only my subjective opinion of course. Well, his deck is a little weaker now since he sold his 3 chalice of the void. But it's still game over once he start dropping the big guys from the tron mana.
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Post by Yawgmoth » 4 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
Hmm, what's wrong with Tron? One of my friends has the deck, and it's fun to play against. It's like racing against a time bomb, try to kill him before the bomb go off. What I mean about the "bomb" is when he starts dropping Newlamog, and other nasty things. Only my subjective opinion of course. Well, his deck is a little weaker now since he sold his 3 chalice of the void. But it's still game over once he start dropping the big guys from the tron mana.
Exactly!!!

My wife plays Eldrazi Tron so I inevitably play a lot of matches against it and I love the games. It's a match that punishes any misplays and that forces me to play a better game. ETron is totally beatable but not if I'm not on my game.

I currently play Mardu DS because I like all of the interaction and decision trees that Thoughtseize/Inquisition/Push and tutors like Ranger Captain allow for. At the same time this deck punishes me for misplaying. I could play a more linear deck and win more but that's less fun to me.

People seem to complain about too many linear decks/not enough interaction but yet seem to play non-interactive linear decks anyway.

Interesting question, what is the mtgnexus modern meta like? I wonder if people's deck choice is related to their current satisfaction with the format... off to start a new thread.

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Post by idSurge » 4 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
Hmm, what's wrong with Tron?
Would you like a 200 word answer, or a dissertation? Tron, and ETron, are fine to have around, but if they are ever 'Tier 1' in either power, or presence, the format is just rancid. Has been this way for literal years.
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

idSurge wrote:
4 years ago
The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
Hmm, what's wrong with Tron?
Would you like a 200 word answer, or a dissertation? Tron, and ETron, are fine to have around, but if they are ever 'Tier 1' in either power, or presence, the format is just rancid. Has been this way for literal years.
sorry I'll have to pass. I remember that eldrazi is something you have an allergy to. just kidding

actually, it's two friends of mine who has tron. The first one is eldrazi and the other one normal tron. Maybe I got desensitized on tron due to playing with it so many times, Btw, the two tron versions require a different approach. I find the eldrazi version easier to deal with because it has no karn. The normal tron is harder because of the wurmcoils, big karn, and it's more consistent in assembling the lands.
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