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

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Post by TheBoulderer » 3 years ago

Simto wrote:
3 years ago
Anybody got a link to the new Grixis Delver deck?? Sounds %$#% sick
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/2937861#online

pretty sure its this one, but don't quote me ;)

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Post by idSurge » 3 years ago

The companion mechanic is such a comically bad design that if Wizards is stubborn and won't ban them, the game is going to shift so much toward repetitive play patterns your heads will spin.

Sad to see design methods which kept a game healthy and vibrant for 25 years ignored for the sake of a quick buck.
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Is it by design that "non-rotating" formats are being destroyed by pushed, broken new cards? Or just a happy accident? I love seeing the continued obsolescence of tiered decks, and having them replaced by things with constant clouds of "BANNED" fear looming above them. Nothing says "buy into an expensive eternal format" quite like the constant fear of losing everything.

Also Preordain being banned seems pretty silly, all things considered. Not that I'm advocating its release (which would do nothing), just how silly it is compared to consistency granted by Companions and the London Mulligan.

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Post by Cyanu » 3 years ago

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 likes, t2 kills from Infect, t1 kills from neobrand, an unboltable DRS (with the crippling deckbuilding cost of playing snowlands-tell me how companion deckbuilding restrictions are too low!), TC/DTT with fetchlands/scour/bauble, Urza with Oko and Opal and the likes

and after all that %$#% in a format that's all too happy to cheat mana and abuse gy, or exile target opponents with Ulamogs and Karns you're seriously complaining about companions?

is Lurrus broken? yes, so what? after Hogaak, Urza, AA,Oko,VoS, OuaT and all that %$#% that entered modern the last couple of years he might not even be THAT bad

is Zyraga stupid? in std/pioneer probably, that's about it i'm afraid, modern and legacy have way more powerful stuff going on than 6 mana combos

Foxy <3 is problematic in legacy too but what's the broken card there? training grounds on feet or the ridiculous artifacts they designed 15+ years ago?

Yorion seems solid but we don't know how good it is yet and on what shell and that's about it, who even cares if Infect gets a bit elk most of the times he can't even cast eh? is it an upgrade? probably due to low cost, but it's pretty minor, in most games it won't even matter- if he revitalizes creatures toolbox Yurion is a major victory for the design team, if he just makes AA+coatl+Uro better he's a failure...

one of the reason this format is BS (most of the time at least, i know the last few months it has been decent), is because no matter what gets printed it slots directly into decks that are already top tier, therefore the gap between t1 and the now mostly unplayable t2 in modern only growsl larger

Companions are an attemp to do just that: create powerful cards that you can greatly benefit lower tiered decks without slotting straight into t1 ones (hopefully) and that's why it's worth trying to explore the design space they open

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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Cyanu wrote:
3 years ago
is Lurrus broken? yes, so what? after Hogaak, Urza, AA,Oko,VoS, OuaT and all that %$#% that entered modern the last couple of years he might not even be THAT bad

is Zyraga stupid? in std/pioneer probably, that's about it i'm afraid, modern and legacy have way more powerful stuff going on than 6 mana combos

Foxy <3 is problematic in legacy too but what's the broken card there? training grounds on feet or the ridiculous artifacts they designed 15+ years ago?
If this is the kind of mindset we're supposed to have, then WOTC needs to give me back Splinter Twin right f**king now.

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Post by TheBoulderer » 3 years ago

I haven't, weirdly, ever said this on any mtg forum, but I am seriously thinking about quitting Modern, and since that's the only format that interests me, mtg as a whole.

The last time modern was great was after the BBE/JtmS unban. But now, it's been a YEAR since everything has gone to hell. There's such a huge volume of recently banned cards as well as new cards that are either borderline powerful or obviously should be banned, and the format has shifted repeatedly so many times that it's all a blur and tbh, I can't be bothered anymore.

Adapting to meta shifts is part of the game, but I'm just not interested in rebuilding my entire 75 every other month. I'm not a pro, I don't want to spend 5x more time brewing/adapting/metagaming than actually playing the game, and this is supposed to be an eternal format, not "throw-away-your-money-even-faster"-Standard.

And I'm fed up with being %$#% by obvious mistakes on WotC's part, like having a BR announcement to ban Oko then immediatly releasing Uro or having another ban announcement and leaving Veil of Summer legal.

There's this periodical 2-months waiting period between set releases/bans, hoping that when the next change happens, they will finally have learned. But they keep doing straight dumb %$#% set after set after set.

And we on here are squabbling with each other about this card and that card, to pass the time till the next change honestly, when everybody actually knows that things are screwed up and likely only getting worse. If they do in fact release Modern Horizons 2, and it's as busted as MH1, the format is done for good.

I'm sick of it. I might linger on this thread for a while, maybe wait to the next BR announcement, but that's the last straw for me. If design and management of modern don't shift drastically (though I dont see why they should), I'm done.

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Post by ktkenshinx » 3 years ago

Cyanu wrote:
3 years ago
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 likes, t2 kills from Infect, t1 kills from neobrand, an unboltable DRS (with the crippling deckbuilding cost of playing snowlands-tell me how companion deckbuilding restrictions are too low!), TC/DTT with fetchlands/scour/bauble, Urza with Oko and Opal and the likes
I don't think many people would have a problem with companion or any of the other new Modern cards over the last year if Wizards was rigorously testing them or even pretended to test them in nonrotating formats. But they don't seem to be doing even that in Standard and Limited, let alone Modern. Instead, we've had outrageously pushed design in 2019 and 2020 that led to more multi-format bans in a single year than basically any previous year we've seen in over two decades. Even if you count inaugural format bans ala 2011, that year saw 37 cards banned/restricted across formats (most in the new Modern format). 2019? ALSO 37 BANS!! That's just bananas and speaks to a completely cavalier design philosophy that appears to be putting bomb pack sellers before format balance. Companion is just the next entrant in this 1-2 year trudge of hyper-pushed format reshapers which aren't even acceptable in Standard.
Companions are an attemp to do just that: create powerful cards that you can greatly benefit lower tiered decks without slotting straight into t1 ones (hopefully) and that's why it's worth trying to explore the design space they open
I sincerely doubt Wizards considered Modern when they made any of these cards. If we were very lucky, it might have warranted a footnote in their design file. I'm sure General Kudro got some Modern consideration in his design notes, but I'm sadly confident the Modern talk stopped there. We already know Wizards barely tests for Standard and Limited, let alone Modern, and we already know Play Design has consistently failed to perform even their primary mandate of protecting those major formats from complete breakage. They missed Oko so badly that they even hid the Oko design notes from the public in their ELD M Files article. Even after Oko got approved, they then appeared to have spent much more time on Kroxa than Uro in their internal testing in a theoretical format where Oko would have been legal!

I get it. Play Design has a hard job. But there must be some competing pressures which are driving them to keep printing pushed, overtuned, overpowered bombs into circulation. And this is what gets us back to companion. Again, it's not that companion is "too powerful" for Modern. It's that Wizards appears to have stopped caring about balanced design and is just pushing outrageous designs to prop up Limited archetypes and sell products.
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Post by ktkenshinx » 3 years ago

gkourou wrote:
3 years ago
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 never literally rotate sets. Full stop. I can't think of a surer way to hasten the format's death than arbitrarily ban sets, especially a recent set less than a year old, because some people don't think they are fun. I'm all for identifying legitimate Modern issues. But these offhanded suggestions for radical, unprecedented changes are simply unhelpful. Wizards should also stop artificially pushing new strategies by printing new nonsense every set, but just because Wizards needs to address that problem, doesn't mean we need to fully embrace rotation as an accepted part of Magic's most popular nonrotating format.
Pioneer is in a much better shape and it's the future for Arena, which is a great platform to play. MODO sucks. They just banned a new companion because of a bug for a week. And also since the future of the game is digital, this another reason to try Pioneer. You should really try it. Wizards will also take care of it from now on. The games are also three times more interactive, fair, with no silly turn 0 kills, or effective turn 2-3 kills at all. The gap between Tier 2 and Tier 1 is also not that big. I have seen people doing good with grixis dragons, really. You can play anything and you won't do so bad.
A cursory check of Pioneer attendance on MTGO suggests this format sees SIGNIFICANTLY less play than Modern online. Since April started, Modern Prelims have averaged 33 players in the 3-2 or better pool with three events over 50 players in that bracket. For Pioneer prelims, the average is 21 with only two events even cracking 30 players at 3-2. Both pools also see Modern with more unique players than Pioneer: 287 vs. 170. On MTGO right now, there's a Modern League that ends on 06/24 and a Pioneer League that ends on the same date. The Modern League has 242 players with 1+ trophy. The Pioneer League has 79. If these numbers have even a slight correlation with Pioneer's overall MTGO popularity, I'm going to assume no one is seriously playing this format in any major capacity.

This means we have no clue what the "true" Pioneer metagame looks like. Until we get back major paper events or until Pioneer gets much more popular with greater iteration and incentives to play the best deck, we can't draw any strong conclusions about metagame health. As such, I'm going to continue to stick with tried and tested Modern until Wizards either makes major changes to fix ongoing format issues, or completes the Pioneer Arena transition.
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Post by Albegas » 3 years ago

A few pages back, I'm pretty sure we had Sam Black stating that the Play & Design team works under an assumption that any card that's broken will be banned, therefore they don't need to test to see if those cards are broken. If I'm actually remembering that right, never mind Modern, Standard will be forever miserable and eat about as many bans as Yu-Gi-Oh, which doesn't even have a non-rotating format. It's basically inevitable that if they don't want to prevent broken cards from leaking into Standard, larger card pools like Modern are going to suffer. I can suggest Modern bans, but even if we ban cards today, WotC will inevitably break Modern again if they don't even care if Standard is broken. Ktk's been saying this for a while now, but it merits saying again: WotC needs to fix their design philosophies before they "fix" anything else.

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Post by idSurge » 3 years ago

This isn't design space worth exploring, I mean when the game has been built under basic principles of design for decades, changing the rules breaks %$#%.

Let's just keep pulling failed mechanics from inferior games, sounds good.
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Post by ktkenshinx » 3 years ago

gkourou wrote:
3 years ago
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 for Modern.
We have no idea how many people would leave Modern either due to losing cards or even more uncertainty. This is an uncertain prospect at best, a disaster at worst, and either way probably not worth discussing when we have so many other topics to debate.
Saying "no one is seriously playing Pioneer in any major capacity" is absolutely hyperbolic and untrue. Modern is supposed to be on it's full season, that would explain the numbers. People are supposed to be testing for GP's/PT's when covid ends. Plus, we are coming off of an ouat ban period. The metagame is almost solved and we know what's going to happen next.
If it's "absolutely hyperbolic and untrue," then show me numbers that suggest otherwise. Because from what I'm seeing and cited on the last page, Pioneer probably has somewhere around 33% - 50% fewer players than Modern. I doubt anyone is testing for any GPs/PTs or any other paper events at this point when the world is shut down. The next scheduled Modern GP is in late May, just 2 weeks before a Pioneer GP, and the May Modern PT are cancelled. By all measures I am seeing, the format is simply less popular by a large degree.
Why is Pioneer the future? Because it doesn't break so easily, because it will get Arena support and all the support from WOTC also. I highly expect more Pioneer than Modern GP's next year, for example.
We both agree that Pioneer is currently on track to be the future, but it has nothing to do with breakage and everything to do with Arena. Unless there's a major change or some statement that Modern too is coming to Arena, the format is likely a goner. I'm cautiously optimistic, however, because Wizards has added a few non-Pioneer cards to Arena so far; they could add more depending on demand.
Albegas wrote:
3 years ago
Ktk's been saying this for a while now, but it merits saying again: WotC needs to fix their design philosophies before they "fix" anything else.
We still agree on this. All formats, including Pioneer and Modern, will continue to suffer from significant and recurring issues until Wizards changes its design philosophy.
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Post by Amalgam » 3 years ago

gkourou wrote:
3 years ago
I left Modern for the same reason. And the gap between Tier 1 and Tier 2.

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.

Pioneer is in a much better shape and it's the future for Arena, which is a great platform to play. MODO sucks. They just banned a new companion because of a bug for a week. And also since the future of the game is digital, this another reason to try Pioneer. You should really try it. Wizards will also take care of it from now on. The games are also three times more interactive, fair, with no silly turn 0 kills, or effective turn 2-3 kills at all. The gap between Tier 2 and Tier 1 is also not that big. I have seen people doing good with grixis dragons, really. You can play anything and you won't do so bad.
See I'm skeptical if the future of the game is digital as well. Digital card games(All of them including magic) have been on a massive decline for years, this shows the opposite trend of it being the future of the game. Not to mention no commander or real access to play that casual players like on arena makes me believe it has a more limited future than people think.

Pioneer is years away on arena to the point it isn't even worth mentioning and they can't exactly take care of pioneer if no one is going to be playing paper anytime soon. If MTGO results are showing Pioneer simply isn't popular and it isn't playable on Arena or paper, who exactly is playing this format? You can't tell me that Pioneer(maybe) being on arena in 5 years is going to make is a successful format.

Pioneer had uptick at the start as it was something new but with nothing on the line at the moment nobody really cares about the format at all. What you will find over the next 18 months or so is massive decline in magic overall, this means less popular formats might cease to exist

Wizards has a ton of work to do over the next couple of years both digitally and in paper for every format. Until arena actually supports more casual play with commander etc and doesn't just push standard endlessly I just can't see it ever taking off outside a niche audience.

Also worth a note but the companions have already started to see play in modern and should hopefully lead to some more interesting decks. I hope it doesnt just lead to windmill slamming a companion on x turn every game though
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Post by ktkenshinx » 3 years ago

gkourou wrote:
3 years ago
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 because people just don't really buy into the format right now. We're at an impasse in that regard until we have more information. But I know with confidence that a) there's a SIZABLE attendance difference from what I'm seeing on MTGO, and b) big attendance differences suggest less developed, less competitive, less iterated metagames. We've known this for years in Modern. Why would it be any different in Pioneer? If Pioneer's metagame remains healthy and diverse after it has a major attendance and event uptick, then your previous points will stand. Until then, I am totally unconvinced by the quality of our Pioneer data. I'm not going to bother revisiting this until attendance improves, data shows attendance is better than I'm seeing now, or we get bigger events.
And if you really expect Wizards to add 15,000 cards into Arena, at the time its taking them a whole year to add 3,000, thats not optimistic, but its also oneiric. Wizards also does not want modern to be the future because pioneer gets affected more than modern from the new cards.
I don't even think that last line is true anymore. Basically every new set in 2019 and 2020 have introduced major new players to Modern. Moreover, Wizards does need Modern in its competitive ecosystem. Pioneer needs to be the format where Standard cards graduate. Modern needs to be the nonrotating "replacement" for Legacy on Wizards' menu. Maybe 10 years from now we'll see Modern go away and Pioneer become the new Modern with some random new format becoming the new Pioneer, but that's so far away that it's not worth speculating on.
About modern's preference, its funny to compare a format thats full or frustrating moments and turn 1/2/3 kills with pioneer. Modern wasnt and isn't fair for many years. Pioneer is a fairer format by all metrics.
You are assuming that all players, myself included, define a "good format" solely in its fairness. I don't want to play a strictly fair format. If I wanted to do that, I'd play exclusively Limited and just hope my opponent didn't open the set's proverbial Dream Trawler or Kiora Bests the Sea God. There's nothing more traditionally skill-testing and fair than a quality Limited matchup. But I, and probably many others, want to play powerful and efficient effects. I'd play Legacy to fulfill all of that but Legacy has virtually zero official support at this point. This leaves Modern.
Pioneer will have arena support, and some more GPs. All it takes is this for wizards favourite format, or another series of bannings in modern, or MH2. Thats why modern is certain to be a goner. But not until they make their last quick bucks for MH2.
Again, we agree Pioneer is likely the way of the future. I'm pretty sure I've been saying just that since the hour Wizards announced Pioneer last year. I am just much less certain about that future than you are. Any number of announcements could bring Modern back into the spotlight, chief among them a commitment to bring Modern to Arena. If Wizards totally removed that from the table, then sure, Modern's guaranteed dead. But they haven't said that and until they do, I'm going to fight for what I view as the better format. Maybe not at any discrete moment in time, but the format with the better potential, card pool, and existing playerbase from all known measures I have seen.
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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

idSurge wrote:
3 years ago
This isn't design space worth exploring, I mean when the game has been built under basic principles of design for decades, changing the rules breaks %$#%.

Let's just keep pulling failed mechanics from inferior games, sounds good.
I'm not so sure. Wizards and even the Commander RC have said that they believe Commander is an unsustainable format and that it needs significant changes. We've seen Brawl fail as well as some other attempts.

I think they were hoping this could get people into a new Commander over time.

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Post by idSurge » 3 years ago

Aazadan wrote:
3 years ago
I'm not so sure. Wizards and even the Commander RC have said that they believe Commander is an unsustainable format and that it needs significant changes. We've seen Brawl fail as well as some other attempts.

I think they were hoping this could get people into a new Commander over time.
You give them too much credit.

They wanted to capitalize on Pokemon. Thats all this is. They wanted pokemon in the game. "I choose you Lurrus!"

Well, how can you ALWAYS be sure you have your pokemon card? Stick it in your sideboard, and let it be cast out of the board. No pesky discard, and we all know they have crapped on counters forever.

The fact the mechanic was already apparently present in Hearthstone (and banned!) is just hilarous.

They sold out. They dont care. They are willing to sacrifice the integrity of one of the worlds great games, for some cheap gimmick.
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Post by Ym1r » 3 years ago

idSurge wrote:
3 years ago


They wanted to capitalize on Pokemon. Thats all this is. They wanted pokemon in the game. "I choose you Lurrus!"

Well, how can you ALWAYS be sure you have your pokemon card? Stick it in your sideboard, and let it be cast out of the board. No pesky discard, and we all know they have crapped on counters forever.

The fact the mechanic was already apparently present in Hearthstone (and banned!) is just hilarous.

They sold out. They dont care. They are willing to sacrifice the integrity of one of the worlds great games, for some cheap gimmick.
These are all SUCH weak takes.

1) There is absolutely no reason to connect the concept of Pokemon with the Companion mechanic. Pokemon does nothing like this as a card game, and the companion cards see no such promotion (e.g. being the "faces" of the set). On the contrary, the cards that are enjoying the most lucrative treatments are the ones getting the (amazing imho) alternative art/names. I don't see where this "pokemon" idea is coming from.

2) The mechanic was not "apparently present". There was a concept of such a mechanic which allowed you to run a specific card that, if you met its deck-building restrictions you would get an "upgraded" version of your hero power (which, I shouldn't have to explain, does not exist in MTG). One of these 2 cards of that set, namely Baku, became hyper oppressive, not because the decks were not much weaker due to the restrictions but mainly because the upgraded hero powers were too strong. However, they could not change the upgraded hero powers because it is a crucial aspect of the game. As such, while indeed the mechanic is kinda similar (i.e. deck restriction to get access to something), the implementation/reward for that restriction is different.

Now, is the companion mechanic broken? I would say potentially, it's literally been out for a couple of days. It could be but let's just give it at least a couple of weeks before we conclude. Does it mean that because a similar mechanic was broken in a different card game it should not be tried in MTG? NO. This makes no sense, they are different games and they play different. Heck, Hearthstone has completely stopped using its concept of haste, because being able to hit face the turn the creature gets in is TOO broken in that game. Does that mean that MTG should stop using haste?

So please, lets drop sweeping statements ESPECIALLY if one is unaware of what they are talking about (e.g. a different game).
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Post by Bearscape » 3 years ago

You keep saying "you can't win with tier 2 decks in Modern", what does that even actually mean? Obviously, tier 1 decks will have a higher winrate than tier 2 decks regardless of format. And obviously, some amount of the time a tier 2 deck will spike a big win because of variance regardless of format. Setting aside that the cutoff between tiers is pretty arbitrary to begin with, what is your threshold for tier 2 performance that Standard, Pioneer and Legacy pass but Modern doesn't? I think you're trying to pass off something very subjective as objective.

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Post by Amalgam » 3 years ago

Considering we are in the middle of a global pandemic and the world has practically stopped what makes you believe arena will have Pioneer in a year? I honestly have zero faith they could even manage it in 5 years with their current track record on arena. It took them a year to add a friends list and their still is no mobile client which should have been worked on to release at the same time as pc. Wizards announcing pioneer on arena is nothing but lip service following how they went with historic.
The fact they havent really started adding older sets outside a couple of cards for historic in the last 6 months alone should show this

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Post by Ed06288 » 3 years ago

why is commander unsustainable?

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Post by Aazadan » 3 years ago

Ed06288 wrote:
3 years ago
why is commander unsustainable?
Because as it turns out, reprinting cards doesn't seem to work in paper. Additionally, Wizards has realized that without some big changes to the format, they have insufficient future design space.

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Post by Ym1r » 3 years ago

Aazadan wrote:
3 years ago
Ed06288 wrote:
3 years ago
why is commander unsustainable?
Because as it turns out, reprinting cards doesn't seem to work in paper. Additionally, Wizards has realized that without some big changes to the format, they have insufficient future design space.
Do you have any statements by Wizards that any of the two claims are true? Because they seem to be doing quite ok with both printing new cards specifically for the format as well as being in contact with the community regarding the banlist/rules.
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Post by idSurge » 3 years ago

Any competitive printed Companion will be a must include on the basis of dodging interaction (discard) and starting the game on 8 cards.

Wizards knows this is bad design. Just like they knew the London Mulligan would be a negative for non-limited.

We have no reason to believe they test.
We have no reason to believe they will ban quickly.
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Post by cfusionpm » 3 years ago

Good thing I didn't buy into Bant Snow in paper. I figured it would be banned or supplanted before FNMs would fire again, but I surely didn't expect it to happen by the next set release....

Now just to ponder how much it's worth building any of these companion lists, knowing full well the massive likelihood of getting banned themselves... :thinking:

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Post by ktkenshinx » 3 years ago

gkourou wrote:
3 years ago
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 format. This is point #1. Modern was really good after Hogaak was banned, and 2 months after that, it was a hot mess. Modern was really good after the SFM unban, for a month, and then went into hot garbage(sorry for the vocabulary). Modern was great, after KCI was banned. And then it was a graveyard horror show for some months.
This is the period where modern is relatively unsolved(snow is moving into being the secret-no so secret best deck, as you wrote in your excellent metagame breakdown article), so this is the period where modern is going to see most of it's success, before falling into the dark side again, and people get bored of it and attendance drops.
Modern attendance may fall away again. It tends to do that every year and that's fine. But that has nothing to do with what I'm arguing. I'm simply saying Pioneer has significantly worse attendance (33%-50% less by the three different MTGO sources I'm seeing) at this moment. I'm also saying, in turn, this means the metagame will have much less iteration and competition, and on average worse/less committed players playing in it. Finally, I'm saying this means we can't trust the current data because of the lack of relative competition/iteration. This is not a particularly radical take. You and I have literally said the same thing about Modern before when major events and high attendance isn't sharpening the format. There is no reason I can think of to assume Pioneer's metagame is representative of the "real" format right now given the lower attendance and lower iteration as a result of that attendance.
Point #3
The numbers are not that far off as you make it to be, and I understand people jumping into Modern to play the format while it's unsolved, before they jump into another format again. Saying "no one is seriously playing Pioneer in any major capacity", without you saying that this is pseudo-happening right now, or without you knowing the difference is really not that big, or without you knowing we have seen such numbers change overnight, is hyperbolic. It's not 2000 vs 3500. Let's relax on this. Pioneer will be in the spotlight when it's next PT's happen during 2021, and I hope the Arena support will be a fact then. Those two reasons combined will make Pioneer the defacto non rotating format.
It's not hyperbolic. I'm literally looking at the numbers showing a 33%-50% attendance difference between the two formats. The League numbers are particularly alarming because it suggests there are almost 3 times as many players in the Modern League as the Pioneer League, which suggests 3 times less iteration and total matches. Until that changes, neither you nor anyone else should have any confidence in Pioneer metagame statistics. Pioneer could be a totally solved 1-2 deck format and we wouldn't know it now because it sees significantly less play.

I think you are just defensive of the format you enjoy (Pioneer) and that is interfering with your ability to understand my argument. I'm not saying Pioneer sucks or don't play Pioneer or Pioneer is going to fail. In some cases, I'm literally saying the opposite of those things and have been for months now. All I'm saying is that RIGHT NOW we see Pioneer have measurably worse attendance than Modern by a significant degree, which means the metagame is way less mature and the MTGO stats are way less representative of what Pioneer would probably look like at the GP/PT level. When Pioneer is back in the spotlight and has those major events, we can revisit the metagame and see if the alleged diversity remains or if it does not.
90% of the players who can see in here, mtgs and other fora scream about "Modern being unfair, a garbage fire with turn 3 kills" etc all the time. Just look most people here. You can't degine a good format, where you (as I can recall) were a cheerios player and would be to face a neobrand player or an infect one and rly hoping you draw your turn 2 kill before he does. If you really enjoy this, well, you can understand that's a little bit more weird than me enjoying a Pioneer UW control vs Niv game I played some days ago and it was a skilltesting game where even the tiniest of error was super important. How could this happen if I was playing Neobrand vs almost anything? Or one of the unfair decks. All of this is based on decks you used to like. I remember you were on cheerios, tron, ad nauseam(I have a good memory as you can see and am quite adept at looking up for information, hehe).
Speaking of hyperbole... Please cite a source that "90% of the players who can see in here, mtgs, and other fora scream about "Modern being unfair, a garbage fire with turn 3 kills" etc all the time." Unless you can find a source that actually shows 9 in 10 community members believe this, I'm calling complete BS on this statement. Your memory is also highly selective in this case because I vocally discussed UW Control and published a large amount of test data on the deck after playing it on MTGO. This is also a weak, almost shady argument that assumes I have a biased interpretation of Modern because of a few decks I vocalized playing in the past. It's vaguely insulting to suggest I have some hidden agenda towards less interactive, less fair decks that is totally out of alignment with the thousands of words I have written on the format in the past. Again, I think this is because you are feeling defensive of Pioneer and it is affecting your ability to have a reasonable debate.

The bottom line is that there are players who enjoy the higher power style of Modern and those that will enjoy the lower power, more midrangey style of Pioneer. If you want to make an argument that Pioneer is more skill-testing than Modern, build your case and don't just cite cherrypicked anecdotes about Neobrand. I think we can both agree that Legacy is probably the most skill-testing Constructed format on the competitive menu, and no one would cherrypick a Gyruda vs. Dredge match there to argue the format is actually a skillless mess.
I am looking that the other way. Any number of announcements will bring Pioneer back into the spotlight of being the #1 non-rotating format. Modern won't receive Arena support, and I will pm you when Wizards goes live saying this(if it was to have it, they would probably said so, just like they said it for Pioneer). Modern is certain to not take any Arena support. You can live in your bauble and believe it, but it won't happen.
How am I living in a bubble? I feel like your normally sharp arguments are a lot less polished this time. I've been saying for literal months that Arena and Pioneer are probably going to kill Modern. I called Pioneer a significant threat to Modern about 10-15 minutes after the format got announced in October 2019. I posted my major 2020 article in direct response to mission drift into Pioneer identifying major long-term and even short-term threats to Modern's health. I've said more times than I can count on this forum that Pioneer is a major threat to Modern, that Arena is a major threat to Modern, and that barring some major changes to Wizards policy, Modern is DOA by 2021. Stop suggesting or outright saying that I'm living int his "bubble" where I blisfully believe Modern is fine and we're all going to be okay because Wizards is going to change course. I am acutely aware of the threat to Modern and have been aware of it since 10-15 minutes after they announced Pioneer. I'm just choosing to fight back against those pressures as much as I can. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THAT. You can leave Modern and play Pioneer. But don't say I'm living in a bubble because I'm trying to improve Modern.
You viewing Modern as a better format, at the time I can no longer play a tier 2 strategy, because all tier 1 decks are that well tuned and can't be beat, while in Arena, I can 5-0 with grixis dragons or possibility storm is very dubious and I am almost certain that :
Again, you can't trust the Pioneer data right now. Attendance is worse, there's little incentive to spike the metagame with secret, not-so-secret best decks, and those decks are probably unknown or underappreciated because of the lower attendance and lack of major events and well-attended MTGO events. When these change, we can revisit whether or not Pioneer is diverse.
Over-Extended/Modern Since 2010

TheBoulderer
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Post by TheBoulderer » 3 years ago

As a side note, I don't think Lurrus is long for this world. It was played in absurd quantity in the last modern challenge, which it won. I think Lurrus may be an attempt to swing back the pendulum from UG towards black and white, though it's obvious that this has to backfire since Astrolabe you can cast Lurrus on time in every color combination you bloody well want.

Yea maybe I'm wrong, but I think Lurrus may pull the next BR announcement closer, and my hope is that one or more other cards will be adressed as well: maybe Uro, maybe Astrolabe, but especially Veil of summer.

I have seen no evidence that the other companions are anything other than mediocre.

I said some weeks ago that modern was Veil and astrolabe away from being a fantastic format. Well, now it's Lurrus, Uro, Veil and Astrolabe away. But non the less, I do believe that we're juust off by these few cards. Sure they may well print more stupid stuff down the line, but that's a problem for another day, literally.

I am willing to give them one more BR announcement to make significant progress and signal a willingness to actively make bans in a timely manner. I should think that since standard is their cash cow anyway, they might as well make play-experience-based decisions rather than sales-motivated ones for eternal formats.

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