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

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Simto
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Post by Simto » 1 year ago

Interesting both of your stores have so much Pioneer attendance. Maybe it really has begun to draw modern and standard players away.

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Post by metalmusic_4 » 1 year ago

I'm putting blame on:

1) the pandemic shuffled everything so large pieces of the community had to reevaluate and change.
2) similar to legacy, modern is expensive for new people, and MH2 made it more expensive for existing players as we have to buy new staples.
3) Possibly, for this same expense reason people moved away from standard due to rotation.
4) inflation sucks. If you can't buy groceries or gas, then you aren't buying 600-1200 mondern decks.

Pioneer has expensive cards but is still cheaper and doesn't rotate.
I think, just like legacy and vintage, modern's price has become prohibitive and that is the real issue here. MH2 making all the new staples removed alot of certainty about the format and without certainty about your investment fewer people are willing to invest in it

We talk about it being all financial decisions at WOTC, and it is, but it is also on the part of the consumer. Maybe just more reprints instead of new cards would help?

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Post by Avacyn Believer » 1 year ago

iTaLenTZ wrote:
1 year ago
they aren't complete fools at Wizards. They have the data. They know how the format is performing. If Modern was really underperforming consistently for months now they would have done something already.
I am not a modern player but wanted to pitch in that I agree with the line I heard somewhere that Wizards apparently works two years ahead with their sets, so it takes roughly that much time to see a difference if they do notice something. Maybe modern will have a come back this year or the next?
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Post by Ulka » 1 year ago

I will agree that Modern is now suffering what Legacy was suffering when modern came out, there is a cheaper non rotating format that is easier to get into and given that no matter what happens people that have decks in the older nonrotating format leave and that rate doesn't always get replaced given where the meta might be. I also think modern is having an identity crisis compared to other formats. At the time of its creation it was to play with the new "hot cards" while also playing with a decent history of cards. Now that modern is about as old as legacy was when modern was created I think its lost its new hot format effect as pioneer has taken that but it lacks the distinction that legacy has where its a "free for all" and now atleast for me modern feels like legacy lite which if I was to pick one of these formats to spend money into I'd go legacy as it has more stability and if i'm paying for a deck at these prices why not play the more mechanically complex format.

Idk i just rambled there for a bit but ya that where my thoughts are.
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Post by Simto » 1 year ago

I agree. The main problem for me is I just can't afford it, but Pioneer, a format I really want to like because it has cards I like and the format is a bit slower, it just doesn't do it for me. My friends and I just proxy the cards we don't have or if we want to play something totally different just to try it out and see if it's something we want to get down the line, but it's all about just having fun for us.
We started playing pauper too because that's kinda like legacy light, but not too overpowered. We're having a lot of fun with it, but modern is still my favourite.

It's just pretty clear Wizards have no interest in changing anything about modern, but honestly, is it even possible? I kinda doubt it.

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Post by metalmusic_4 » 1 year ago

Thought experiment:
We all know the main reasons WOTC use to ban cards, but if we added a new concept of financial accessibility what could those bans entail?

1) Fetch lands (this will never happen in modern)
2 Ragavan? (A contender for a ban on its own, 4 of in 34% of decks)
3) W&6? (A contender for a ban on its own)
4) Idk what else might apply here.

Maybe printing cheaper land hate would bring manabase costs down?

IMO Ragavan just has to go ASAP. If I don't buy the monkey then I can't compete, but if I do buy the monkey it has a high chance of getting banned and i lose $300. So I either risk $300, don't be competitive, or I leave the format until it's determined to be safe or ban worthy which could take an unknown amount of time. Say what you will about the card, but I think it's inserting a lot of price and risk into the format if you want to be fairly competitive. Uncertainty is a bad thing when considering finacial decisions.

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Post by Simto » 1 year ago

Could modern work with a sort of "restricted card" list? like you can only have one of X card in the 75? I'm sure it would be a different bag of %$#% to deal with, but it could be an interesting solution to cards that would otherwise get a ban.
And even if Ragavan gets banned, something else pops up and it turns into a never ending cycle. But yeah, the reasoning behind "the meta is diverse" doesn't make sense when the same cards are used in so many of the "diverse meta" decks.
It's just a really %$#% situation right now.

And fetch lands can't leave modern. They kept them out of pioneer to really define the difference between the two formats. It would be like removing lightning bolt or something like that.

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Post by pzbw7z » 1 year ago

There once was a Restricted list in Type 2 - as Standard was called then - as well as Type 1 - Vintage. Cards on either restricted list or either ban list were banned in type 1.5 - Legacy.

There doesn't seem to be much reason there couldn't be a restricted list, except it's a nuisance and given that there is no longer a Restricted List in formats other than Vintage, WotC must not like restricting cards. There are obvious reasons why there's a Restricted List in Vintage - can you imagine what a Black Lotus would cost if they weren't restricted! and can you imagine the uproar if the Power Nine were banned? - but there are Reserved List cards in Modern, aren't there? Maybe someday there will need to be a reserved list.

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Post by iTaLenTZ » 1 year ago

metalmusic_4 wrote:
1 year ago
IMO Ragavan just has to go ASAP. If I don't buy the monkey then I can't compete, but if I do buy the monkey it has a high chance of getting banned and i lose $300. So I either risk $300, don't be competitive, or I leave the format until it's determined to be safe or ban worthy which could take an unknown amount of time.
This is exactly what me and my friends did. None of use is going to spend money on either Urza's Saga, W6, Ragavan or Elemantal deck because everyone feels a ban is in the air, besides the recession we are in. However, 1,5 year has passed and Wizard hasn't done anything. In the meantime we simply lost interest and moved on to other formats/hobbies.

About the future of Modern: I believe Modern has been milked out. People who love the Horizons sets will continue to play it, but the rest has abandoned the format to play Pioneer. This means Modern's best days are behind us. The format wil slowly fade away like Legacy did before it.

Like already said before by Ulka: Modern being as old as Legacy was, since its been created it also a reason. It has lost its hotness and appeal. Imagine most players who started with Modern since its creation are between 35-40 years old by now. This people have moved on, have families, mortgage etc. At the same time the average MTG player has a higher income than regular people. I know from experience over the years some gradually moved to Legacy and Commander. Commander has seen a huge increase in player base the past 10 years. This has also helped to close the gap between Lgeacy and Modern. Once you own a couple of Duals and other high end cards for your Commander deck, the additional entry cost for Legacy becomes lower. If I had to define Modern by today's meta I would call it 'a rotating format dictated by expensive broken Horizons cards, which don't see a lot of play outside the format'.

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Post by AvalonAurora » 1 year ago

I think Modern was slowly dying without something like Horizons, because only certain kinds of Modern power level cards were being printed in Standard, and it was slowly warping the format and killing typical archetypes in a way that was making Modern less fun over time.

Something like Horizons was badly needed... the problem was that Wizards has shown they don't really understand Modern appropriate power levels and too much of the stuff in Horizons was much too strong and should be banned (except too much stuff needs banning and Modern's ban-list has potential to get ridiculous and turn off players) or much too weak (and won't really see competitive play or help the decks and archetypes that really needed it). The amount of stuff that was 'just right' in Modern Horizons was much smaller than Modern needed to re-stabilize to a good format.

Additionally, Modern Horizons was made too expensive, as has been the Modern Masters type sets, and there hasn't been enough properly targeted and correct rarity reprints to keep Modern prices reasonable, especially combined with broken stuff in Modern Horizons not eating the bans they deserve.

They are essentially killing Modern faster with the things that would have been needed to save it from problems caused by cards only entering it through Standard, because they clearly don't understand Modern's balance needs.

Printing lots of overpowered stuff recently also makes a lot of otherwise fair stuff no longer playable due to the competition, which restricts the playable card pool and concentrates prices in the overpowered stuff.

I believe Pioneer will eventually have much the same problems that pre-Horizons Modern was having, and they'll either make a Pioneer Horizons and ruin it if they haven't figured out balance by then, or not and cause it to slowly die, possibly to be replaced by the next 'non-rotating' format with a somewhat newer starting date than what is allowed in Pioneer.

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Post by Simto » 1 year ago

I just think it's clear Wizards don't care about modern and that's the worst part for me.

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Post by The Fluff » 1 year ago

Simto wrote:
1 year ago
The Fluff wrote:
1 year ago
Interested to see. What does the Minor Misstep do? The card link does not work.
1 mana counterspell that counters something with mana value 1 or less. So it's a non-free mental misstep, but for the one mana you also get to counter 0 cost spells.
I mean modern has "free" spells like force of negation and other powerful stuff, but I'm sure this card will see play somewhere in the 75 of a couple of decks. It's at least worth trying out.
nice, looks like they fixed Mental Misstep. Being essentially free is what made it broken.

and I saw some Ragavan talk on the previous page. Yeah, I agree that it has to go.. but most monkey owners would probably enraged if it got banned = that thing is super expensive to get.
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Post by metalmusic_4 » 1 year ago

They banned mox opal. They banned both W&6 and Ragavan in legacy.

I agree price could be an issue, but I think they'll pull the trigger if they determin the card is that out of control, by whatever criteria they use. He is out of print, so they aren't making money off of him right now anyway.

Also, I've seen much bigger push back against much cheaper cards than those I listed above. ***cough free twin cough*** I'm not sure price is the main factor contributing to outcry, I think surprise the bigger factor. IMO a monkey ban would not be surprising to most people.

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Post by motleyslayer » 1 year ago

The Fluff wrote:
1 year ago
Simto wrote:
1 year ago
The Fluff wrote:
1 year ago
Interested to see. What does the Minor Misstep do? The card link does not work.
1 mana counterspell that counters something with mana value 1 or less. So it's a non-free mental misstep, but for the one mana you also get to counter 0 cost spells.
I mean modern has "free" spells like force of negation and other powerful stuff, but I'm sure this card will see play somewhere in the 75 of a couple of decks. It's at least worth trying out.
nice, looks like they fixed Mental Misstep. Being essentially free is what made it broken.

and I saw some Ragavan talk on the previous page. Yeah, I agree that it has to go.. but most monkey owners would probably enraged if it got banned = that thing is super expensive to get.
tbh the part I'm looking forward to seeing about the new misstep is that its not free, so you can't just shoe it in

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Post by Ed06288 » 1 year ago

On the brightside, at least they finally reprinted blackcleave cliffs.

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Post by The Fluff » 1 year ago

yeah, really nice they made more of that thing.

price should go down now.
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Post by pierreb » 1 year ago

I agree Ragavan, W&^ and preferably Urza's Sage should be gone. Or, as oythers have said, if we are to tolerate these powerful cards, give us back *our* toys: birthing pod, Deathrite Shaman , Splinter Twin ...

I'd take out something from elementals too, but I'm not sure which piece.

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Post by motleyslayer » 1 year ago

didn't get to post on the weekend, but top 4'd a 17 person RCQ the Saturday that just passed, played RB scam. Found there was a lot of burn (3 copies) and 2-3 copies of rhinos and 2 Murktide

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Post by Simto » 1 year ago

Top 4! Well done!

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Post by motleyslayer » 1 year ago

thanks, Still feels weird I've been doing well, especially since I felt I was pretty stagnant before I switched off murktide. I also never played in an RPTQ under the PPTQ system, but I've qualified for 2 RC's less than a year into this system

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Post by Ed06288 » 1 year ago

Commonly Played Cards Overall in Modern
Top Cards Overall

Lightning Bolt 51%
Engineered Explosives 40%
Fury 36%
Spell Pierce 35%
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer 34%
Blood Moon 31%
Flusterstorm 30%
Endurance 25%
Mishra's Bauble 24%
Expressive Iteration 24%

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Post by The Fluff » 1 year ago

why is Flusterstorm played a lot? Plenty of storm decks active right now?

what deck is using Mishra's Bauble?
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Post by EonAon » 1 year ago

Bauble is in the new style of affinity still. Since players dont check or update their decks as much as they should.

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Post by iTaLenTZ » 1 year ago

"As with the last update, Modern continues to be in a healthy spot, with plenty of different viable archetypes and a relatively flat spread among the top decks' metagame shares. Izzet Murktide is currently the most popular archetype in competitive play, but not by a large margin, and the deck isn't showing a concerning win rate. As of now, things are looking good, but as always, we'll keep our eyes on the Modern metagame as more high-level competitive play unfolds in the future."

Absolutely shambolic and completely deluded. Modern hasn't fired at my LGS in months, however Pioneer is really thriving. I have been playing it and enjoying it a lot lately. It really reminds me of how Modern was in the old days. There is 0 hope they will ban their money cards from Horizons. Instead of staying mad and frustrated over the format's current state I have decided to sell out of Modern completely after this statement. I am converting my remaining Modern stapels into Pioneer. I bid you all farewell since I won't be posting here any more. It has been a pleasure with all of you over the years discussion our favorite format.

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Post by Simto » 1 year ago

It is pretty clear Wizards want modern to die.

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