The Rise and Fall of Modern (Magic: the Gathering's Biggest Competitive Format)

This video discusses the decisions made by Wizards around the Modern format.

#MTG #MTGO #HarryMTG

[HarryMTG]

WARNING: In this video I share my opinion.

[letsmakeit]

There's no new player pipeline anymore. Used to be if you wanted to get into magic without a collection, you'd drop $10-15 at a time on drafts, then use the cards you drafted to play standard, then use your standard collections to play eternal formats. Now the standard cards dont interact with eternal so you either draft forever, drop $500 at once, or proxy everything.

[FDXHOMEDEL]

Just reinforces the old adage: “the best thing wizards ever did for <format> is forget it existed”

[Lucretzia]

The last point you made is so right. We need to organize more and be a community of players.

[josa]

MH1 did some damage. MH2 stepped up, and said "hold my beer". But the real culprit is the shift in philosophy by Hasbro. It's no longer about the game, it's only about "how can we make the most money, with the smallest amount of effort". This reminds me of mtggoldfish' reprint problem article from a couple of years. Seth thought there would be diminishing returns on reprinting fetches etc, but never did he anticipate what would actually happen (5-6 versions of the same card). Now that Hasbro has hit the ceiling with magic, d&d is their next target and boy are they in for a bad day.

[Knittely]

Power creep was present in magic before as well, but it was like over 5 years you can see a power increase, now you can see one with every new set. Nothing makes me more sad in games than insane power creep. A minor power creep is fine, but not what's currently happening

[QWERTY-duhc]

The modern sets should have been staple reprints that already existed within the format. That way newer players could get their hands on the cards they wanted while the prices dipped, and the format wouldn't become soo warped.

[polsenOO]

Good take. A take a lot of the Magic community doesn't want to admit.

Cards that were once considered fair in the format were suddenly axed because they didn't mesh well with the newer ones have driven a lot of players away.

I am also one of those players.

[KainiusTheGreat]

I love that Gavin Verhey helped create Modern and the helped drive a stake in its heart. Good Job, Wizards/Hasbro!

[dm]

I think you're looking at the "golden years" of modern through rose-tinted spectacles - it wasn't all that much different in terms of price really. Wizards has been hawking heinously expensive piles of cardboard for a lot longer than Modern has been a thing. The only difference is that in the old days of modern, a lot of the high prices and overcentralizing cards were accidents. When they printed Tarmogoyf for example I genuinely think they had no idea it was going to be a $200 card. The egregious thing about current Modern prices is that the prices have stayed this high despite multiple reprint and supplementary sets nominally intended to make the format more accessible. Why? Because they've done every trick in the book to undermine that accessibility in the name of profit: increasingly expensive packs, rarity upshifts, "draft focused" premium masters sets that consequently are full of chaff cards, strategic staggering of important reprints across multiple sets, banning old cards for the sins of new powercrept cards, and now with Modern Horizons just straight up obsoleting half of the format to drive demand for the shiny new mythics only available in premium-priced packs. MH1 and especially MH2 were calculated attacks designed up milk players for as much as possible.

The best trick of all though is how WOTC, intentionally or by accident, exploited the elitism of its playerbase to defend it at every turn. Every time I criticised WOTC business practices on reddit or youtube, there were legions of nerds coming out of the woodwork to tell me that magic is plenty affordable if only you treat it as a stock market and not a game. It seemed to be lost on them that if they got to play "for free" through risky speculation on thousands of dollars worth of cardboard (an activity that not everyone can afford even if they don't find such a requirement nauseating), it was only through being subsidized by their less-established and less-obsessed fellow players. Not only was there no solidarity between Magic players in the face of WOTC, but many people took conspicuous pride in exploiting newer and less experienced players for profit in the form of hoarding and inflating the value of cards.


Basically, we've arrived in this place today because of the complacency of players who already bought in, and their contempt for players who had not yet bought in. I hope at least some of these guys have, in the last few years of WOTC's most money-grubbing stunts yet, learnt their lesson somewhat about the ways companies will stab you in the back if you actively help them shoot down pro-consumer voices.

[alexlenneman]

2019 pre War of the Spark was one of my favorite times in Modern. Phoenix was dominant, but there was still a healthy metagame around it. Tron, Lantern, Shadow, Burn, Dreadge, UW Conrol, Humans, and GB Rock were all solid, had play against each other, and consistently shared top 8 spots at GPs and SCG events.

[bland]

It really is unfortunate how F.I.R.E design effectively introduced cards and ideas that made Modern a rotating format. I remember back when I started playing in 2016 that Liliana of the Veil was the scariest card to see your opponent drop on turn 3 and a Tarmogoyf becoming a 4/5 commanded being Path to Exiled. Cryptic Command was an insane tempo play and if Burn had a good game they could finish you off on Turn 4, Turn 3 if they drew the absolute nuts. It was UNHEARD of to have a deck see more than 10% of the meta share.

Nowadays if you connect with a Ragavan on turn 2 you've effectively won the game on the spot against most decks and an 11/11 Hammer Wielder can be headed your way on the same turn. Liliana of the Veil? Try Wrenn and Six on for size. Remember the last time you played a Tarmogoyf?

Just looking at MtGGoldfish you can see that even with all of these different "decks, " we can see some odd similarities: almost all of the non-land cards are from Modern Horizons. EIGHT out of the TOP TEN most played creatures were released in MODERN HORIZONS ALONE, 7 of them in MH2! It doesn't help that Ledger Shredder is also amongst the top ten and is another product of F.I.R.E. design. The last basion in the top 10 is Magus of the Moon for Pete's sake!

So yeah, I'd rather not have an MH3.

[themugofthenorth]

Not only the money and the cost of MH1, but also the 2 MH sets forced an artificial rotation to a format built on the appeal of non rotation.

[alexbowman]

As a former modern player back until mh1 came out. I swapped to pionner since they announced it and didnt look back, i do miss the golden years of post eldrazi winter modern. And i live in constant fear of a pioneer horizons, as i feel the format is great and cam grow organically over the next year.

[Rafikki_]

First of all, I'd like to add context to my comment by telling a bit of my history with Magic. I started playing back in 2009 but was 100% kitchen table enjoyer until 2014 when I started playing EDH and finished High School. I slowly creeped up my decks power levels searching for more competitive experience with EDH, never actually reaching CEDH because it wasn't really a known thing until 2020.

I have however followed Modern and Legacy tournaments and metagate from 2015, focusing more on Modern because of it's cheaper price tag and arguably longer games since the format didn't have as explosive and polarizing matchups as Legacy. Two years ago a friend of mine convinced me to come to our local FNM and one borrow of his decks. I instantly fell in love. I played couple of FNM's that Winter and Spring before finally acquiring a Modern deck in late Summer of 2021. I have played in every FNM we had in our city after that, traveled for bigger tournaments in Finland (country I live in) which we had 6 or 7 after Summer of 2021 I think. I enjoyed the power of the format compared to Pioneer, which I play as well, but I also loved the "downgrade", at least in terms of power level, from Legacy, which I also started playing last Spring.

Now, we've had multiple discussions, within our FNM group, about the Modern format during last 6 months as the uproar of the Modern community against current metagame and MH-sets feel became stronger and players wanting the good old days back. Most of the people I've spoken to agree that the current metagame is the best in Modern's history and most balanced and most enjoyable. And yes, most of the people playing in our LGS have been playing Modern before MH-sets.

However, as Harry stated in the video, current policy of WOTC seems to battle against Moderns original meaning and reason why it was created in the first place. While I agree that overpriced mythics with insufficient reprints are a huge problem for the health of the game in general and, at the moment, mostly for Modern and EDH, I bring myself to disagree with people that seem to justify the criticism towards Modern with the price tag it has. Yes decks are less affordable, but shouldn't the criticism then be towarded against WOTC's reprint policy instead of the formant and most importantly players of the format. I've seen incredible amount of hate towards people who play 4cc/4c elementals, Scam, any deck with Ragavan or W6 in them just in general, just because they play the best cards (or how I believe the most expensive ones). I've not heard that such hate have occurred towards Tarmo-players when it was 150€+. Also I'm not seeing such hate against for example Hammer even tho it has been arguably the best Modern deck for a while, at least in Modo.

So this bring to my main point. Every format is rotating format. Power creep is inevitable. People make mistakes, were they cards that slipped thru playtest (Oko) or greed (Hasbro), which accelerates power creep. But will it justify the hate? No. Will it justify constructive criticism towards Wizards, not players? Yes. All one can do is adapting the metagame and finding new ways to have fun. Find new deck archetypes, explore other formats, create custom events for your local players, for example Modern as it was 2015. If you just sit still and only cherish the old instead of cherishing both the new and the old you just find yourself being bitter.

Sorry for the long comment. There's so much more I'd like to say and compare different viewpoints, find and tell arguments for and against current and past Modern, tell my own experiences and analyze the overall metagame, community, decks, power creep etc before and now, it won't fit in a Youtube comment in any sensible way. Also this comment in most likely being read by 6 people till the end and 4 of them disagree with me and of those 2 tell me they did stuff with my mother so I find discouraging to use any more energy for this.

Anyways I am open for discussion in replies if someone wants to. Always glad to exchange opinions and find new opportunities to discuss about the game (and format) that I love with people who, I hope, share the same passion as me.

[maple_ceres]

I got into Modern shorty after I started playing Magic in 2015 where I turned my standard Esper Dragons list into a Modern deck. I was still in highschool at the time, so it took me a while to get the manabase for it. After the release of SOI I changed the win-con from Dragons to the Unburial Rites/Gifts Ungiven package. I always loved attending FNM those days since there was an LGS within walking distance to my house and my highschool friends would all attend too. One of them ran UB Faeries, another did U-Tron, and another Tooth-and-Nail.

After the release of Modern Horizons we fell out of the competitive scene due to costs and swapped to EDH. I still attended every once in a while, but the banning of Opal caused my favorite deck at the time, Lantern Control, to be nigh-unplayable and I fell out of the scene. To this day I still think that while the card was almost banworthy, it died because of Urza's release in MH1.

I recently got back into the format, but I can't help but feel jaded every time I see Ragavan or Omnath. It just reminds me of how Modern used to be, and how it will probably never be that way again.

[Andrew-hryr]

I used to adore modern. Now i just play pauper (a format I hope to God wizards doesn't find a way to monetize), cube, and play 2018-era modern decks with friends. With the exception of my pauper decks, everything I run is proxied. Wizards can kick rocks as far as I'm concerned—MH1 and 2 shattered any trust I had in them, as well as any hope for their ability to maintain magic healthily in the longterm. And all for a quick buck :(

Hope it was worth it, Hasbro!

[maubleah]

the issue is that they actually tried to grow the player base, but didnt manage to do so, and their advisory group just threw the option of extracting value before the inminent death of the game so they took it.

[Kodalith]

The Opal Ban is what killed it for me. Dropped the format and never looked back. Luckily they started focusing on Commander, and now they're killing that as well lol.

[Thomaszhh]

@HarryMTG good to see you got your account back mate. Was afraid we lost you permanently.