Now would be a great time to see if WOTC is motivated to take action without any paper events to draw from. Because in any normal situation, Lurrus would be long gone. Those are Oko numbers. They banned OUaT off of almost exclusively MTGO numbers. It just took them about 2 months to do it. That mig...

Mini metagame update as we head into the SQ/Challenge/premier events of the weekend. We're at 14 unique events including Prelims for a total of 347 decks. Our Tier 1 cutoff would be at around 4.5% and Tier 2 would be everything over 2%. Here's our metagame snapshot before we get the next big group o...

Week 1 metagame update is live on ModernMetrics: https://mtgmodernmetrics.wordpress.com/2020/04/27/metagame-update-post-iko-week-1/ And on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/g91s6j/article_metagame_update_postiko_week_1_modern/ In summary, the format is still strategically diverse...

Interestingly, the problems with Lurrus are sounding more and more like Hogaak. It's too reliable/consistent and it utilizes the graveyard as a resource in a way that other magic decks are not capable of doing. The big difference is that Hogaak only went in one deck and that was the best deck at th...

it's true that so far pioneer has been mostly a paper format and the covid timing upon the introduction of a new format was unfortunate but still it won't matter in the longterm I don't think as many people are actively pushing against Pioneer as you are suggesting throughout this post. A triple co...

We don't really have enough data for a Challenge/SQ/Premier breakdown like we had pre-IKO, but we can throw in non-curated Preliminary results to increase N and start some summaries. As a reminder, here was the Tier 1 and Tier 2metagame on the eve of IKO in a N=352 deck sample: PRE-IKO MODERN: MARCH...

Lots of interesting discussion here, especially around the overall issue of card design. I want to redirect our attention towards these macro issues and how they affect Modern among other formats. Specifically, there is some fascinating and extremely worrisome information in today's Ikoria M Files a...

Most of us do play other formats. There are very few paper Modern players left, because there are very few people who enjoy pissing money away, which is what Modern is. It is like a boat, gives you the best two days of your life, the day you buy it and the day you sell the sod. Modern is the Mtg eq...

I honestly think some of the biggest problems with companion are totally external to the mechanic and the formats where companions do well. These are multi-tiered community problems that go from online communities all the way up to Wizards. Here's a quick and dirty breakdown of these issues and thei...

gkourou : at the point where you are suggesting I am a "fanboy", I am done with this discussion. It is clear you are either fundamentally misunderstanding an argument I have now rephrased in 3 different ways, or just deliberately misrepresenting it for ulterior reasons. You have also fail...

I know it feels a little bit unfair to compare a format that was a ban-mess for over a year(kci into looting into bridge into hogaak into opal, lattice, oko into OuaT) and just going out of a major ban(OuaT), where this is the natural period to thrive/see it's numbers increase, with any other forma...

Modern draws more people right now simply because its the format people have invested for years and because it was supposed to be having its PTs at the moment, and because a ban just happened. We don't know the full set of reasons that explain the difference. You say it's these things. I say it's b...

FYI, I don't think Modern should rotate sets. I am speaking purely hypothetical. I don't want this to happen, sorry if it came off this way. I just said that if Modern didn't have those sets, more people like me, would play this otherwise horrendous format. MH is still making more harm than good fo...

Honestly, Modern needs a rotation. Old sets are awful and will keep breaking it over and over. WOTC also doesn't help. Maybe if MH, 8th and 9th edition and Veil of summer were banned, Modern would be better, but the format is really in a hopeless state. It's the beginning of the end. Modern should ...

why all those hysterics about the companions really? especially by modern players of all people? you guys have survived a format with: Storm, Dredge (for quite some time with Looting), Tron,Veil of Summer, Amulet Titan, Hogaak, Eldrazi, 8th-9th GODLIKE designs like bloom/bridge/boil <3 and the like...

If you're still looking for some more written Modern/IKO content, I just published my set review to Modern Metrics with writeup on Reddit. I really wanted to get this out a little earlier but real life got in the way so I'm sneaking this in just before we get the big MTGO event releases this weekend...

Metagame stats below for SQs, Challenges, and the combined metagame. I've separated them out to assess if they are actually different (spoilers: they are, but in surprising ways), and then pooled them at the end. MODERN MTGO SQ METAGAME Here's our SQ metagame, now updated to include 6 events and 192...

do we think / are there any sources on whether they will make another b/r announcement anytime soon? They should be getting swamped with useful data from MTGO. Or does the COVID19 chrisis mean any steps in that direction are lacking data/real events and they'll wait until paper events are taken up ...

ktkenshinx again, for some reason, you are completely ignoring thie indisputable fact that Uro, which is the main reason Bant Snow is good vs aggro, will stay a modern staple with or without Astrolabe. And yes, maybe it would then bee too greedy to want to curve Uro into Verdict into escape Uro. Bu...

I'm not saying its wrong, but can somebody specifically explain why all control decks will auto-fold to big mana if Astrolabe is banned? On the last few pages, this has become a knee-jerk argument for people against an Astrolabe ban. "If Astrolabe is banned, modern will be taken over by big ma...

I'll preface this saying I'm not responding to every individual quote because I think responses to your main points will address other ones. Also, we fully agree on Veil: %$#% that card. It's horrendous for the format and should be banned yesterday. A) The same reason DRS was banned. I know you prev...

Just ban astrolabe and veil and move on. Let's temporarily table the question about whether or not we should ban Astrolabe. Here are two questions I want all the Astrolabe critics to answer: 1. What are you trying to accomplish by banning Astrolabe? 2. What is your response to the risk that banning...

How is RG midrange being a good meta call a sign of format health? that just means big mana is dominating and aggro is bad. If anything its a sign of imbalance. There are some relevant criticisms we can make of the current Modern metagame, but the observations at the end of this quote simply don't ...

Lots of good discussion these last pages, and I just want to jump in on one point. Why do people even want Wizards to test cards for Modern? Their testing process isn't preventing problems in either Standard or Limited, the two formats they allegedly focus on. One of Play Design's main mandates, per...

Yeesh. Lurrus and Jegantha are just not well-designed cards when it comes to nonrotating formats. Honestly, they're probably bad designs period. Both of them create virtual 2-for-1s that proactive decks can use at any time to get an on-board advantage with no card investment. Meanwhile, a reactive o...