MTGNexus

Yawgmoth wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Discussing bans is pointless in light of the existential threat that modern is facing.

Fair...but what are we ever going to do about that anyway?

I will be honest, if Modern dies, I would not be upset compared to Legacy.
If one has to go, let it be the one people more of its players dislike and complain about, the one with the card pool where the controlling elements are the weaker, leading to imbalance.

Can both exist? I don't think so. Legacy offers some price protection due to the RL. The lack.of support has not killed it yet, and the RL stops wotc worrying about it competing with Pioneer.

Can't speak of other places, but here at least... locally, no one is complaining about Legacy.. because it's dead as a doornail. Easier to find someone who plays Pauper than someone who plays legacy. The last time I saw a legacy player was 4 or 5 years ago. Not joking at all.

Have two modern decks and two pioneer decks, and will continue having fun with them because there are people to play with. Unlike Legacy where I have to go to timbuktu -just kidding- to get any chance of play.

Pioneer fires twice a week as does Modern, Legacy is once a month and it fires. I guess everywhere is different, I will say that all three non-rotating formats have largely the same player base.

On the earlier topic of how many cards enter Modern from each set, Eldritch Moon was a particularly enriching set, but even it only added 15 or 16 cards. That isn't to say that one day a card might have a place, something like Burning Inquiry or Goblin Lore for example just need a Hollow One (and Faithless Looting) to make them viable. I recently found myself playing Board the Weatherlight in a deck, so anything is possible...

Posted the article to Reddit with a few changes:

I'm hopeful this article, and other pieces like it that community members can generate, will shift the conversation away from bans. Format health is an important topic right now. Bans alone are not the solution. Players need to be demanding much more sweeping action on Wizards' part to address Modern's warning signs. If we don't, and if Wizards doesn't follow-through on those demands for Modern action, bans/unbans won't matter. We'll be playing in a goldfishing ghost town in 2021 at the current trajectory.

Hey Sheridan is there a reason you posted your article onto the Modern subreddit when your piece itself states how little traffic the subreddit is even getting right now anyways? Is it not able to survive on the main sub?

Tomatotime wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Hey Sheridan is there a reason you posted your article onto the Modern subreddit when your piece itself states how little traffic the subreddit is even getting right now anyways? Is it not able to survive on the main sub?

I've found that Modern articles do way better on the Modern subreddit than the main sub, where they get lost in the noise. On the Modern sub, you can get a ton of visibility with just a few 100 upvotes. On the main, you're drowned with those #s. I've also historically just posted to the Modern sub, so it's also habit and commitment to that community.

fair enough.

It's sounds like everyone has different local scenes. For me, there are three stores within ~40min drive that all fire weekly Legacy, Modern, and Pioneer each.

At my LGS, Legacy is Wednesday and always fires (the attendance isn't massive but it is stable). Modern is Friday and attendance varies wildly week to week. There is essentially no overlap in Legacy and Modern play groups although most of the Modern players also play Pioneer. I finally switched to Legacy for good after the general unhappiness of Modern players really became apparent. My free time is valuable and sitting around with a group of people complaining about the game they are currently playing is not super fun. I think even the LGS is feeling the hurt as they are debating moving Pioneer to Friday.

Hey Sheridan, just saw that Aaron Forsythe replied and acknowledged your reddit thread, good job! I hope it leads to improvements and optimism going forward.

For what it is worth my LGS has...
no modern. Not one event planned all year. Legacy, yes, Pioneer, yes and plenty, Pauper, Standard and much of that too, plus commander.
My less than local fan runs Modern on Thursday, having dropped it from Friday. Legacy is still an FNM format there, once a month for double figure attendance. Everywhere is different, but Legacy has no legs to cut off, they went long ago and the format survived. Modern has legs and if it loses them it will be in trouble. Wotc did the cash grab with modern, but there is a max of mh2 round the corner. It will flop unless they do something special with box toppers or similar, people got burnt by those cards, and they have long memories....

gkourou wrote: ↑

4 years ago

For me, Legacy is dead. I can not find a single FNM in my whole country where events fire. You can't kill what's dead. That's why I believe Wizards made a great movement in cutting all Legacy GP's and SCG's are being cut also, as I can see. I would be even happier if they try to mess around with it somehow(ban Ponder for example), but legacy being nearly dead is fine by me.

I already know many Legacy players that made the jump into Modern(Pioneer can not express them as it's too aggro/creature dominated) and this makes me happy.

Wizards makes money off of Modern, they won't abandon the format.

Excerpts from some comments I saw from different people on ktkenshinx's post in the Modern subreddit

The Opal ban caused me to divest nearly all of my Modern collection (save for lands) to play Legacy

I'd much rather go buy RL and play Legacy then continue to throw away money on whatever new card I need for modern.

I love modern I really do but wotc doesn't really have a direction anymore which is why most of us switch to legacy

[mention]ktkenshinx[/mention] really happy with how the article turned out and the attention from Forsyth. Great job!

Reading the Reddit comments is funny. About half of the people see the bigger picture which is that we need a vision for the future of Modern because the current trajectory is unsustainable. The other half think that "stabilizing" the format means banning just about everything until we are playing Pioneer.

Sometimes the conversations here can seem circular at times but I believe that we have actually reached a pretty strong consensus and understanding of the real threats to Modern long term.

Thanks again for the article and to everyone who has engaged in this discussion. I think we can all agree that we want Modern to be better and this kind of community effort is what we need to achieve it. It's worth noting that the more community driven mtg formats are looking healthier than ever (Commander & Legacy) and the Modern community can take a lesson from them. This is a step in the right direction.

Trazaeth wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Are we ever going to get a reset on this thread at some point? I would like it to be archived for ease of use.

I'm not opposed to it, but it's not great for our site discussion SEO. What's the big advantage you see of starting over? I think one is definitely ease of searching, but I'm not sure if there are others. Thoughts?

Tomatotime wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Hey Sheridan, just saw that Aaron Forsythe replied and acknowledged your reddit thread, good job! I hope it leads to improvements and optimism going forward.

gkourou wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Sheridan, the article is great! Keep up the good work! Super happy for the Aaron answer!

Waiting for that article of theirs.

Yawgmoth wrote: ↑

4 years ago

ktkenshinx really happy with how the article turned out and the attention from Forsyth. Great job!

Thanks, all! And thanks to those in the thread that gave feedback earlier, and for the general conversation. I want us to remember this time as an instance where a small group of community members on a relatively niche forum worked together to get a response from a major Wizards player. And, hopefully, some action down the road. Sincere respect to Forsythe for reading and then replying, and big props to all of you for keeping this thread going and making it a place where Modern diehards can test/refine ideas and content. Conversations here made that article possible.

Reading the Reddit comments is funny. About half of the people see the bigger picture which is that we need a vision for the future of Modern because the current trajectory is unsustainable. The other half think that "stabilizing" the format means banning just about everything until we are playing Pioneer.

Sometimes the conversations here can seem circular at times but I believe that we have actually reached a pretty strong consensus and understanding of the real threats to Modern long term.

Thanks again for the article and to everyone who has engaged in this discussion. I think we can all agree that we want Modern to be better and this kind of community effort is what we need to achieve it. It's worth noting that the more community driven mtg formats are looking healthier than ever (Commander & Legacy) and the Modern community can take a lesson from them. This is a step in the right direction.

I hope projects like this can help unite the community around the real issues and push out some of the noise we normally face. I'm also struck by how our thread generally does agree on Modern's biggest threats, but the overall community seems to be swimming around in the weeds. Hopefully we'll see more projects like this push Wizards in the right direction, and shoutout to them and Forsythe in particular for listening.

i just finished playing mardu pyromancer on forge and then i'll read comments on here about how the looting ban killed the deck. just pick a deck you like and go play modern somewhere. modern is doing fine.

[mention]ktkenshinx[/mention] Congratulations on getting the reply from Aaron Forsythe, and so quickly too! Talk about being the change you want to see, very well done

[mention]ktkenshinx[/mention]

congrats on getting the reply.

ModernDefector wrote: ↑

4 years ago

gkourou wrote: ↑

4 years ago

For me, Legacy is dead. I can not find a single FNM in my whole country where events fire. You can't kill what's dead. That's why I believe Wizards made a great movement in cutting all Legacy GP's and SCG's are being cut also, as I can see. I would be even happier if they try to mess around with it somehow(ban Ponder for example), but legacy being nearly dead is fine by me.

I already know many Legacy players that made the jump into Modern(Pioneer can not express them as it's too aggro/creature dominated) and this makes me happy.

Wizards makes money off of Modern, they won't abandon the format.

Excerpts from some comments I saw from different people on ktkenshinx's post in the Modern subreddit

The Opal ban caused me to divest nearly all of my Modern collection (save for lands) to play Legacy

I'd much rather go buy RL and play Legacy then continue to throw away money on whatever new card I need for modern.

I love modern I really do but wotc doesn't really have a direction anymore which is why most of us switch to legacy

That was a pretty thoughtless post considering how he claims he would be happy if WoTC screws up Legacy.

That aside, players hardly ever "downgrade" formats outside of accessibility reasons such as price or not having a local legacy/modern scene or some such.

I've honestly never heard of anyone who - purely for gameplay/enjoyability reasons, actively chose to quit Modern to pick up Standard, likewise for Legacy to Modern.

Have a Modern deck lying around to jam FNMs with as a side format? Yes.
To leave Legacy completely for Modern? No.

Which is very telling about what a terrible state 2019 Modern was in where plenty of players were ready to "downgrade" from Modern to Pioneer, especially considering the lack of depth in Pioneer's gameplay and card pool.

I'd wager good money that if Modern was in a healthy state, switching to Pioneer would have been a laughable thought to enfranchised Modern players.

Aside from loss of a local scene people quit Legacy for financial reasons only. Once you have the cards they don't lose huge value, and many format staples are cheap, bar the biggies.

Veil of Summer needs to go. I still haven't attended a FNM because of it.

Better answers are needed is an understatement. I am not talking about catch-all cards but more flexible cards like Kaya's Guile. The powerlevel has gone up substantially. Threats have become more efficient and decks more consistent and streamlined. For instance, the drawback of Path to Exile and Assassin's Trophy is bigger than a few years ago because tempo has become more important since the manacost of threats has come down. Decks nowadays operate on less mana thus giving them an extra land in the early game is a huge drawback. Right now I consider both cards unplayable and I know Reid Duke has the same feeling about Assassin's Trophy in Jund. There just isn't great removal right now. Abrupt Decay and Fatal Push don't work against half the field. It is time for Swords to Plowshares reprint for Modern and Pioneer because Pioneer is suffering from the same issue.

a plowshares reprint into modern would be so nice. I would rather have Burn decks gain extra life, than get an extra land,

Maybe included in modern horizons 2?

Stupid cards like Swords to Plowshares deserve stupid threats like True-Name Nemesis and Ancient Tomb+Chalice.
Good luck playing any fair creature deck with STP in the format.

Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic have become reasonable ban targets in Pioneer which is ludicrous on its own Magic got to this level of degeneracy. Turn 2 Oko doesn't stand on its own. Every set more powerful undercosted cards are printed hence mana accelerators like the elves or Birds of Paradise have become too strong for Standard and perhaps Pioneer. This is the analogy why PtE is trash nowadays.

Ed06288 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

i just finished playing mardu pyromancer on forge and then i'll read comments on here about how the looting ban killed the deck. just pick a deck you like and go play modern somewhere. modern is doing fine.

Do you have a list you could share? I tried a few different replacements for Looting but never really was very happy. The conversation in the deck primer thread dried up too. If there are Mardu Pyro lists posting good results I'd love to check them out.

Edit: Mardu Stoneblade does not count as Mardu Pyromancer. While I'm not opposed to trying it, I would have to buy the entire Stoneblade package and I'm concerned it won't be the play style that I like. This is what happened when I tried playing Mardu DS after the ban. It's a Mardu colored deck but it doesn't play anything like Pyromancer and I got bored of playing with it pretty quickly. I like decks with room for development and DS seems to be pretty much solved by the community. Pyromancer had/has a pretty large design space which gave lots of options for meta gaming. Mardu Unearth was my pet project over the summer, so much room to grow before the ban.

I have to share my quick distaste for more powerful removal such as Swords to Plowshares existing in Modern. Death's Shadow is a really unique deck in the format, losing two of them to the same singular spell is just beyond ridiculous.