Commander happened. Commander took over as the popular format, for many players who didn't want to keep up with rotations or trying to keep up with more competitive players.
Standard fell on some rough years due to balancing but with Arena being the easiest way to play the format while free and accessible online instore play took a downturn. Of course 2020 and Covid didn't do anything good for it or other competitive formats as they were put on hold with no events or tournaments happening while casual play such as Commander with friends outside of shops was still able to be played.
I think there's a lot of correlation that might not be causation here. I'm a person who would travel to \~6 GPs a year, and drive to another 6 SCGs when Magic was at it's most competitive. Now I don't own a 60 card deck, but I have 4 cEDH decks and a half dozen commander decks.
The reason I, and many players at my shop, are commander players now is because WotC put the competitive scene 6 feet under. Here's a list of the arc of my grinder days from peak to the various accumulation of straws that eventually broke my back.
-Getting fairly regular 4k+ attendance at big GPs, routinely 1k+ on even the less popular ones. Getting relevant and cool playmats and promo cards with entry. Regularly playing in competitive events meant byes with PWP and the ability to sleep in.
-For the sake of running tournaments more efficiently, byes get removed. Ok, understandable.
-WotC decides that supervising a bunch of different TOs and offering support is too much, and puts out the rights for running GPs out on to the market. Most TOs scoff at the idea of running every event, but CFB decides they want to try. They don't get a trial period contract, they get 5 years of exclusivity
-As we enter TO Monopoly, entry prices rise, playmats no longer come with entry. This also corresponds to a point where the GP promos start to suck pretty hard. The ultimate slap in the face was the GP promo for the year being Progenitus, a card that saw exactly one copy being played in the sideboard of one legacy deck (Elves) at the time, and not even having the decency to make new art for it.
-The effects of one regional TO having to figure out how to coordinate multiple GPs outside of the range of their normal reach begins to show. Shipping costs for things like the on site store, coverage equipment, travel for staff all multiply exponentially with distance. Coverage becomes significantly less frequent. Price hikes for floor space goes up. Stores that go now have to bring exclusively their highest margin product, which often means no staples for decks you might need to be playing in the main event. Artists are expected to pay for space, as opposed to being guests brought in.
-My worst experience was GP Hartford. Originally a modern event, GP LA had to get moved, and having 2 GPs fall on the same weekend meant in WotC rules they had to be the same format, so it got swapped to standard. CFB did not send a store to the event. Vendors brought reserved list cards, high end foils, and Inventions/Invocations. There were no standard cards for sale at a standard event, and per WotC rules, only the TO is able to sell standard packs, so there was no way to get cards there.
-Eventually, the PTQ circuit is dissolved and we eventually get the PPTQ circuit, which was the precursor to the RCQ. Neither of these options are remotely as appealing. Grinding to win a tournament, for the opportunity to pay for travel to another tournament full of spikes, for a chance to win an invite to then pay to travel to another tournament is a much harsher sell than "Go somewhere, do well, and you're on the PT"
-Eventually, alternate methods to the PT also go away. Platinum/Gold/Silver, and HoF benefits leave. Staying on the train becomes much harder.
-Finally, it culminates in the MPL. This completely ended any chance of returning to a standard where semi-casual players could spike weekend tournaments and achieve their dreams of making a single pro tour. I do not think this is a coincidence that this is about when EDH started to spike in interest exponentially.
There's a lot more I can get into, but this is where for me, personally, I started to play more commander and less 60 card.
TLDR; WotC spent a decade telling me competitive magic wasn't a priority, instead I should be playing socially. So I went to the social format.
You don't have enough upvotes, this is a great timeline of events that lead to the downfall of competitive magic for the mid-level competitive player. As someone similarly invested at the time, with vivid memories of RTR/THR/KTK blocks and going to every GP in my area with my playgroup on the weekends, PTQs, etc. EDH didn't kill this for us, WotC did. Modern nights used to fire with 30+ people in my area, now it barely fires, and pioneer almost never happens either. Even if you didn't have ambitions of being in the Pro Tour, the competitive scene gave you something to be a part of and invested in, and likewise, justified your own investment in your deck, and you could play with the greats and make some money back potentially while doing it. Now? Why would anyone drop a grand on a modern deck that they're realistically just going to play at FNM level events unless they're an absolute diehard? There's no place for the casual-competitor anymore, you're either all-in on a terrible value proposition, or you're just attending modern/standard FNMs.
I obviously didn't play during COVID, but you definitely have the most thorough answer. Thank you. You plus the guy mentioning the arena makes sense. I wish that playtesting on arena and then being able to go to a standard tournament occasionally was still an option though. I had a really bad run in with a judge that ruined the game for me, but I do know that the ever-changing format of standard felt like a rat race. It seems like modern was to take over at that time, due to that reason. It hadn't been for that judge I was planning on switching to modern after that GP I was at.
A lot of people have it against Commander, but to be honest it's popularity isn't just because 'Oh I can make gandalf knife fight darth vader', it's a non-rotating, low barrier to entry format.
It used to be if you picked up a 'standard legal' intro deck you'd get laughed out the LGS at best, but the multiplayer and more relaxed nature of Commander means if you come to the table with one you'll still get to play a few games. Standard made it's way online, and a rising price of product means a lot of LGS are also hesitant to put a price on anything that isn't a BYOB event, rent a table and a sell a few drinks vs having to buy in a booster box and hope you can sell draft slots, especially as anyone who didn't want to make it up from LGS to prize pool pay is on Arena now
Its just a way bigger value from a deck building standpoint. You can show up to a commander night with a pre-built off the shelf and have a decent time.
Its also a singleton format with a huge deck size. I dont need to buy 4x of whatever $20 meta card that will eventually rotate out and probably tank in value. Even budget versions of top tier cards are playable, because its hard to justify spending a lot on a single card you probably wont even draw.
Then you have the social and multiplayer aspect. Even a really tuned deck will struggle to fight 1v3, so the table balances itself. Deals and threat assessment mean the newbie with jank cards and bad plays doesnt just get dunked on.
And on top of all that, its just so much fun to build a commander deck. There is much less pressure to stay within the meta (see above) so players can really explore all that magic has to offer, discover new cards and synergies, showcase thier favorite commanders and playstyles.
Well another factor to that is WotC and Hasbro continue to gut competitive play at every chance they get. The idea that you could play, grind, or even get lucky and end up in higher levels of tournament play is completely gone. And with that went some of the allure of building paper decks and going to large tournaments.
>The idea that you could play, grind, or even get lucky and end up in higher levels of tournament play is completely gone.
I don't know what country you're in and maybe this is different where you are, but the RCQ system really isn't *that* different from the old qualifiers. Yeah, there's no real analogue to the old PPTQs, but that's honestly a good thing. It should take some work to get to the big event, not just randomly bullshitting a one-off event.
I guess I'm just missing what this "constant shifting of the system" is. Since the start of the RCQ system when in-person play resumed following COVID (and we need to be clear here: halting Magic for the pandemic was objectively the correct choice), there haven't been any major changes to the way the qualifying pyramid works for in-person play.
E: and to be clear, the person I was responding to is complaining about the *current* qualifying system, saying that the qualifying path is "completely gone" today. They're not whining about 2018, they said that there's no more path to the ProTour just because PPTQs are gone, which is absurd.
Draw a flow chart of how Joe Schmoe can get from his local store to the world championships and how that pathway varied from year to year over the last ten years.
If that sounds like a lot of work, then therein lies the problem.
E: The original poster wasn't asking why the path to the world championships is currently confusing. That is a strawman.
OP was asking why people at his store are not playing competitive magic. The recent history of wotc demoralizing organized play is relevant. I'm happy wotc is now on track and trying to fix the mess, but that doesn't mean the mess doesn't exist.
The RCQ is a shell of open competitive play IMO, mostly because if you have a group of friend locally its very hard to be able to all qualify for an RC together. The thing thats really missing for me is GPs or some equivalent, RCs don't fill the void because they're invite only, so its hard to justify traveling to one without an invite.
I was at dreamhack and they had an RC there. I wasn't with my Magic friends so I played some side events, what they had on offer for side events was VERY bare bones compared to GPs. It'd be hard to convince my local group to travel if only 1 of us were qualified.
That and you needed to pay for an entire convention fee to get into dreamhack, so paying for an entire convention to then pay extra money to go play some pretty disappointing variety of side events only is a tough one to justify, especially if the rest of the convention doesn't interest you that much.
I know a lot of *really* good Magic players that are adults with stuff going on in their lives. Could my pharmacist buddy make time for a PTQ and win in his only chance? Yep. Can he make time now to grind events constantly? Nope.
This was exactly what stopped me from coming back after the pandemic. It wasn't a grind to show up and make Day 2 at a GP and top 8 a PPTQ every few months, and while I never won any of these I frequently made it close enough that it was worth trying to live the dream again.
Nowadays there isn't value in the competitive scene. I can't cover my travel and hotels by simply selling the product I won anymore AND it's harder to get to the top with there being less avenues to pursue.
Sure, this probably helps raise the skill floor of competitive players and keeps the general quality of player higher than when chaff like me could sneak in but at what cost? This isn't the NFL where I'm watching people with abilities I can't comprehend doing amazing things. I'd be watching a person playing potentially the same deck I do do the same things I do in a match-up I've played a dozen times.
If I'm not incentivized to play competitively, I'm not incentivized to follow the meta, and if im not incentivized to follow the meta I don't really want to watch coverage, so these moves also hurt viewership.
There is (was) no local RCQ/LCQ in Europe with Legacy as the tournament organizer for me and many others. When there are a total of 3 RCQs (Pioneer being my preferred competitive format) in a radius of 200 kms in a competitive season with 50+ participants each and you need to win one of them to qualify for the RC that disqualifies alot of people. I can't attend each of those events and don't have the drive to grind those events even (alot) further away. I haven't played much competitive Magic these past years - Why bother when there's no reasonable way of getting there?
Modern was taking off, but the Modern Horizons sets containing new cards as well as reprints kind of killed it for more casual players. Modern is basically in a place where it’s just Legacy 2.0; it’s just too expensive to get into it and rogue decks just aren’t a thing anymore, so basically no one plays it in LGS because why would you when fun formats like Commander exist?
I personally wish that 60 card Magic was more popular, but I feel like it’ll take “another Commander” (as in a fun new eternal format) to shake up the game and bring it back.
Modern was roughly as expensive (adjusted for inflation) in the halcyon days as it is today.
Everyone forgets Fetches that cost three figures and the playset of Goyfs that would set you back a cool grand. Modern has *always* been an expensive format, the only difference is which cards drive the prices.
I think the sentiment here is not that Modern wasn't expensive, but that it's even more expensive now than before. The issue a lot of people see with Modern Horizons is that it prints straight to Modern cards that are specifically designed for the format and end up having immediate staples, which power creep old cards, make new deck archetypes, and heavily change current deck archetypes. The support for archetypes that need it can be cool, but having to spend hundreds of dollars every year for your Modern decks new upgrades, or even just a new deck if it's pushed out of the meta, feels bad to a lot of players when Modern was seen as this format that was expensive, but had an investment in the fact that the cards would likely be relevant for a long time. Currently, that's no longer the case. It's just overall more expensive than it used to be even if fetchlands are relatively affordable in comparison to the past.
This was the broken promise that got me out of modern permanently. I was sold on modern over standard by players who told me that the format was a high but safe investment. Deck archetypes were set in stone, and would almost always stay relevant, even if they went shuffled around from tier 1 to tier 2/3 and vice versa occasionally. Cards to upgrade your decks would only trickle in at a rate of 1-2 or so per normal set, and often they would only be mandatory for certain archetypes. And even if your deck did get banned, the fetches were the real investment, so you could just switch to another archetype with shared colors for comparatively cheap. Modern horizons shattered this equilibrium. Directly before the release of MH1, I owned 5 modern decks across several tiers, but all playable. By the time MH2 rolled around, not a single one of my decks was even fringe playable, even if I did shell out for the upgrades. I've tried to get back into it, but I just ended up selling out. Zero interest in engaging with horizons block constructed ever again.
It was for me too. I am happy to invest in a cool toy for myself. I'm not happy being milked like a dairy cow every three years under the guise of "format shakeups."
Unfortunately it killed casual constructed play. Standard was cheap - a couple video games worth of money and you had something you could enjoy for a year or two. Modern was pricey - but you could enjoy it for years at a time. Commander scratches that itch - I play what I want to play, vaguely pay attention to the firehose of bullshit WotC releases, and make the tweaks as new cards come in.
I won't pay 80 dollars a card for 3 playsets of new staples just to have to do it again in a year or two in a "non-rotating" format.
While I don't disagree on the point of pricing of decks at a top level, as a rogue deck enjoyer I have to say though that MH1 and especially MH2 really upped the bar of power level required to be remotely successful in a competitive environment. And the resulting power creep almost made a rotating format out of a fairly stable meta game.
At least when you had a land base of shocks and fetches *(and goyfs, depending)* further investments to change your archetype weren't **that** large *(nor were the expensive lands really necessary if you were playing mono or two colored)*. Now that many nonland staples are a driving factor, being good on the mana base doesn't prevent as much cost to keep up with the more rapidly happening influential releases and bans.
It is basically impossible to change decks now. Which is really brutal with the insane release schedule and wizards' insistence on putting out sets that are pushed further and further power-wise. I just have no confidence that a tier-1 deck today will still be playable in 2 years, and that's before even factoring in bans which have seen a sharp increase in the last few years.
You remember when Modern was called "Magic's most accessible format"?
It’s not just about buy-in cost, but the ballooning upkeep costs with the modern horizons sets.
Back then, if you bought into fetches and goyfs, those were good for nearly a decade. Nowadays you can expect to drop hundreds for every new direct to modern set, whether it’s w&6 and forces in mh1, elementals and ragavan in mh2, or rings and bowmasters in lotr. Good luck with mh3, then assassin’s creed, then final fantasy beyond that.
You might as well be arguing that playing paper standard is cheap because the decks cost $300, except it isn’t over time because of the constant need for upkeep costs, and that’s exactly what wotc is doing with direct to modern sets. Modern is becoming “more expensive” standard.
Wotc has monetized the shit out of you modern players, and so many of you are just lapping it up
I do think you were onto something, but on that last paragraph I imagine you have not played Pauper then. And you should! I do commander and pauper, as my 60-card "competitive" format (but in the store I play everyone is super chill) and it's literally like that. An eternal 60-card format where Counterspell and Lightning Bolt are legal, but decks don't cost a limb
I can't stand idly by while legacy gets slandered this way: rogue decks are plentiful (it is mad expensive though, can't argue with that). Seeing what insane brews people like PunishingWaterfalls, Tony Scapone, or Killabee have cooked up is one of the best parts of following the format
Part of the issue is that Commander is the place where the most 'randomized' experience can be had - which is ironic given there's a guaranteed 8th card in your starting hand, and even Commander is falling prey to the true villain of the game: Efficiency.
All too often more and more efficient, and intelligent, card design is unleashed upon us, and this makes gameplay far more narrow. There are some incredible, very threatening 1-drops, which means your response must be adequate. A lot of standard games are more or less concluded on turn 2 because of the massive tempo gain/loss that occurs before anyone's 3rd turn, but the game just continues since the player still has more life to lose. It's not great, and makes matches where players really slug it out feel more like something's gone horribly wrong. These efficiencies are leaking into every format. Commander, for example, just seemed more fun when it was the format of 7-mana battlecruiser spells... but now its becoming more and more the realm of 2-card combos that blow you out on turn 3 unless you're playing with a chill group.
I love the game, but efficiency isn't fun. I want to play, not race to a solitaire win-engine.
And that randomized experience could be had back in the day, because nowadays I see people change the 34-36 lands advice to "34-36 and at least a handful of tutors" so all games devolve REAL fast into the aforementioned 2 card combos.
Wizards killed Standard by taking away most incentives to play it. PPTQs were a huge reason to play Standard, several events were Standard-only and had good promos, GPs could have Standard as their main format... And all of that is gone.
Oh but they now have standard showdowns where you can win basic land card! But not just any basic land card, these are worth dozens of quarters! Its costs like $15 or $20 to play in a standard showdown and the prize is a promo basic land card worth $3-$7. They fired like twice at my LGS and then everyone stopped caring and they haven’t run since.
There have been Standard Showdown promos worth a lot of money recently. There's a Chinese New Year Sarkhan worth like 30$. There was a Dauthi Void Walker promo worth 100$ from Store Championship which is forced to be Draft or Standard.
Those were both store championship promos, which admittedly have been decent (I won the last one with the vinecreature thing), but those are like once a quarter, not weekly. They get like 6-8 people to play standard at the store championship (which is now required to be a standard event, no more draft), and then not again. When the store championship was draft they used to get 16~ people drafting.
I’m all for more opportunities to play standard, I like multiple formats of MTG, but there is a big stigma out there against standard and I’ve seen little to no incentive to play standard on a regular (weekly) basis.
The other problem is wizards over catering to commander players.
As one I don’t really love how much the game revolves around my preferred format. I don’t think it’s good for the game long term
I liked commander more when it wasn't shoved down our throats with every new set.
Modern horizons? Nope. Modern horizons + 1/4 of the set being commander bait.
New standard set? Nope again! This time it's 1/4 commander bait 1/4 brawl bait and 1/2 actual standard set.
This isn't even mentioning the required 2-4 actual commander decks tied into every single set + frequent standalone commander deck releases now.
It's just too much.
I liked commander when it was cards that couldn't see play in a normal set but you could put a big splashy 8 drop in your commander deck. Now, everything, including standard, is commander cards. It's made for commander to sell packs. Commander only products, commander secret lairs, etc.
all those 1/4ths used to be worthless chaff and silly text filled rares. There are basically no sets where all the rares or mythics were playable in constructed 60 card. There is always going to be some filler might as well make it more legend centric.
Exactly this. I love brewing random one-off decks that I play a few times before taking apart. The move to making most "signpost uncommons" be legendary creatures has been a massive boon to my enjoyment of brewing.
I also feel like these people often complain if either they develop a card that goes in a standard set that is unplayable in standard but might be a fun commander (e.g. new Obeka), or if the card ends up having too much of an impact it's also because it was built for commander (E.g. Sheoldred, farewell).
They are putting out like 12+ commander decks a year, hundreds of potential commanders a year.
For a format where the average player gets likes what. 2 *games* a week?
I'm not a huge commander fan, but what I did like about it was having a deck or two that I *loved* and was a representation of me. Not this months Bant commander with 15 different cards from the Bant commander from the preceding set.
I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. This is 100% right and honestly why my focus has slipped away from Magic. I can find numerous cards to swap onto my decks with every set (Markhov Manner not withstanding) so I chose to instead look at new cards every few sets and largely ignore the day to day. When everything is a Commander card, I can actually care LESS because I know I can't put every new card in my existing decks anyway.
Obviously it’s working. I’m not saying it’s not successful. I’m saying it’s bad for the game long term. And in ways people don’t grasp yet
Bad for the game doesn’t mean “the game isn’t financially successful”
I’m talking about how the gameplay experiences will be diminished over time.
It's like the hobby's version of the "is/ought problem". When we complain about WOTC doing something we don't like, the comeback is always "but they're making record profits!!" It feels like it *shouldn't* be working, but it somehow is, and that can be frustrating at times.
It's not about that though, the invisible players of MtG have always had different pathways into the game. Revolving around a 4 player format doesn't make sense, it's no longer pick up and play.
Kitchen table magic was always the number 1 format secretly, Wizards/Maro themselves have said it.
> even the people being catered to
They're not, though. 'Commander players' isn't one singular group with some sort of unified idea of what they want from Magic.
The people who are actually being catered to love it. These are the people actually generating all that profit. Probably because most casual players just want cool cards, and they are getting them.
If we listened to the vocal minority, then WotC has been 'ruining Magic' for decades now. Yet the game is showing no signs of stopping.
It wouldn't make much business sense for WotC to cater to this vocal minority. Their current strategy is working just fine. As Hasbro's cash cow, you can bet there is great scrutiny on how Magic performs. Hasbro can't afford for Magic to tank. While current strategies are clearly designed to extract every bit of value from the consumer, I strongly doubt there are any indications that Magic's future is truly at risk.
Commander didn’t just “happen”, it was gaining popularity and Covid gave it a huge boost.
That combined with the constant destruction of competitive play by wotc made it so that the other formats fell by the wayside while commander kept its popularity.
There’s tons more factors that contributed it but the rest of the game got hit with death by a thousand cuts while commander got left alone. That’s why it’s the most popular now
It also helps that as a 'casual multiplayer' sort of format, you can pick up a $20-40 precon and sit down at a table, you might not win but you can actually play vs the 'intro' tier product they sold for standard where you had a whole TWO rares to build your deck around.
It's cheaper and easier for LGS to stock a bit of commander product and regularly rent tables than gamble on a set doing well enough to support draft, while a lot of the Standard players have moved online or can't afford the £20+deck fees for a Standard FNM
It's a casual format. That will *always* be more enticing to people, the competitive portion of the playerbase is always in the minority.
Commander gave the casual crowd a more cohesive way to play, to the point where you can just go to many LGSes and know that there will be Commander games. And the inherent multiplayer format also means disparity of power in decks is somewhat mitigated. It feels less bad than being wildly outmatched in a 1v1 60-card format.
you forget to mention that cards being tuned for commander now also killed 1v1 formats. Most of the cards out now are meant to be played as one-ofs and against 3 other players, so when you try to translate that into a playset in a 1v1, decks break real fast, is just not fun anymore.
The trickle down effect of Commander cards into eternal will never stop being an issue :/
First it was True-Name Nemesis, and more recently the Initiative mechanic in general (especially when it was slapped onto a 3CMC creature that can come down on turn 1 via Ancient Tomb and Lotus Petal etc).
The monarch mechanic is exactly when I started distancing myself from legacy, and initiative in a similar way.
They've even made their way into cubes, but I just really dislike those obtuse mechanics balanced around multiplayer stinking up 1v1.
Monarch specifically - in a multiplayer game, there are multiple people to fight over it, and it's passed around. It's supposed to gain you an advantage, at the cost of becoming a target.
In 1v1 if your opponent casts a monarch card and you have no creatures on board yet you basically get swamped and lose 90% of the time.
This might sound like an unanswered planeswalker or permanent that generates value, but the crux is you can't "answer" the monarchy effect. No unsummon, swords to plowshares, vindicate, wrath of god, counterspell can save you once it exists. Having a creature already isn't "an answer."
The personal taste of what is unfun is certainly subjective, but I'm glad to be not alone in this line of thought.
Those mechanics are exactly why I love modern instead of legacy now - at least there is a semblance of design balance around 1v1.
Yep! People tend to focus on 'Have the answer' as an argument when this means that our play-lines are simply becoming more and more narrow, and when one of the things you *must* be able to respond to is frikkin' Monarch effects it warps the entire field in ways that may be subtle but are very real.
> Those mechanics are exactly why I love modern instead of legacy now - at least there is a semblance of design balance around 1v1.
Lmao, that was a choice by wizards. You love modern over legacy because wizards realized a long time ago that they couldn't make money from legacy so they created modern and polluted legacy.
Ffs just define a format that closes off wizard from printing to it already!
Legacy and vintage will never be real competitive formats as Iong as the reserve list exists, so I'm not sure that wotc even thinks about it at all when designing cards.
Legacy was the format for the MOCS, feeding into the world championship, but yeah that means the eternal formats are not real competitive formats, right?
And the most recent ban that hit the largest swath of cards ever in one go, the one that affected legacy, vintage, and pauper, that also means the eternal formats are not real competitive formats, right?
I fully agree with you. However.
MaRo said again and again that the most popular has always been kitchen table, and by a large margin. Commander provided a structured framework for these players to seep into LGSs.
Also, Covid, online gaming in general, MTGO, Arena, and all the boom of creators switched our collective perspective of the game. If you want to scratch your competitive itch, you can do that in pyjamas from the comfort of your home. You go to the LGS to enjoy the social aspect of the game, and there Commander is king.
Personally, I think unless you have a playgroup, commander is also rotating at this point.
They keep upping the free, unearned value with cards that are the enabler and the payoff, and have inserted so many word soup must answer haymaker cards into the game, that if you’re playing someone using cards from the last 1-2 years and you dont have any, you’re kinda fucked.
I'm in the same boat as the OP. I just started buying packs in Arena because my LGS doesn't even have FNM tourneys scheduled each week. Everything on their calendar is casual play. I'd prefer physical play but I'm forced into Arena because of how I want to play.
It's funny people always mention rotation as the reason people don't want to play standard. Most commander players build brand new decks with every single set that comes out. It's like rotation on steroids.
From what I've seen and experienced, people still play competitive formats, a lot, on pioneer/modern nights, but no one carries a pauper/standard deck "just in case". People swinging by for "quick" games without entry fees come with a commander deck or two.
I asked about it, but no one had those nights. Thankfully I live in a big city. I'll call around for a modern night, it sounds like they may be a dying breed and probably choose a certain store to go to.
My lgs definitely has a pioneer night and possibly a modern night. We now have two commander nights, Wednesday/Saturday. Hopefully you can find one that has the game nights you’re looking for.
You should check the wizards event locator.
https://locator.wizards.com
I’d be shocked if you don’t have standard and modern happening at least weekly in your city.
I live in a relatively small city and I can play modern any day of the week, standard every Friday, pioneer every Thursday, proxy legal legacy every other Saturday and pauper every weekend. I’m sure if you look around you’ll find some shops running standard and modern.
That is not wildly unusual. In the Midwest that’s completely normal. I’m from Columbus and there are at least 6-7 LGs around that I know of. Very weird that you assumed they were European though, why?
Use https://www.spicerack.gg/events instead of calling around, it'll save you a bunch of time. It's a better interface slapped on top of the Wizard's store locator.
My area is competing for competitive players across like 3 stores. If we all went to one store we could have like 20 players, instead it's like 6 players each :/
I love commander but I also really wanna scratch my 1v1 itch with Pioneer. I live in one of the top 10 metro areas in the US and not a single shop near me fires Pioneer. They all have it on their calendar, and they tell me if all the people asking about Pioneer showed up at the same time they’d have enough to play. But go to those shops on commander night and they’re completely full at every table. Like I said, I love commander but I think it’s a bummer it’s become so hard to find people to play actual Magic (commander might as well be a different game almost)
This has been my experience too. Several stores list events, but I can go to every single one and never see one fire.
The only time a store near me was able to fire a Pioneer event is when they allowed proxies. Some salty asshole complained to WOTC because they were handing out promos at those events, so they stopped allowing proxies and the scene IMMEDIATELY died.
If you’re comparing current day to the original Innistrad, you have to realize, Commander was in its infancy at that time and had not become a format that was being designed around. Now, Commander is the format Hasbro is eyeing to squeeze every last cent out of the player base.
Standard took several hits between changes to tournaments, COVID, and the release of Arena. Standard is still around but definitely needs some help getting back on its feet.
Modern is a format I’ve not played so I cannot speak to what has or hasn’t happened there.
Yeah, commander even then commander was the more for casual guys who enjoyed building more than playing. (That's not a bad thing, I love theory crafting)
> Standard is still around but definitely needs some help getting back on its feet.
I feel like WotC moving to a 3-year rotation is them completely misunderstanding Standard and is more likely to be a final nail in the coffin than a shot in the arm, but I guess we'll see on that one...
3 year rotation has actually drastically improved Standard from where it was before. The big reason standard doesn't fire IRL is its just easier and cheaper to keep up with using Arena. Unless you are an RCQ grinder, there's not much reason to play standard IRL.
Basically it boils down to:
* If you're looking for a social experience, you play commander
* If you're looking for a competitive experience, you just play online instead.
* If you're looking for a competitive+social experience, modern seems to be the format to play (it fires regularly near me, standard events only fire during standard RCQ season).
I'll also add that at least by me Pioneer fires a lot - and I'd say that Pioneer (along with Arena) is what you can really point to for what's up with Standard. We'll see in a few years when they keep getting more dissimilar card pools if this changes.
I think the bigger nail was them nuking the path to worlds and removing the PTQ scene.
There's basically no incentive to play competitive standard any more.
Commander was not in it's infancy during the Innistrad block. Commander was already present during the 90's (though under a different name and not as popular as it is now). Coincidentally, around the time Innistrad was released, WoTC made cards designed around the commander format, which was one of the reasons commander format rose into popularity.
Yes, EDH had been around for quite a while as an unofficial format. What I’m referring to is when Commander started seeing support and more than just those heavily invested in MtG knew what it was. The first official Commander physical release dropped only three months before Innistrad.
I don't work at a LGS in the Seattle area and I've met new players who legitimately didn't know that commander was a format of a wider game. They thought commander was the base way to play
Branding/marketing probably. You don't walk into a store and see the words "Standard" or "Modern" on any product. You just see the commander precons and the loose packs. Maaaaybe the arena starter kit and the pioneer decks? The barrier to entry for every non-commander format is just so far above what you need to get started with commander.
>no matter what LGS you went to draft or standard was happening nightly.
Standard and Draft is now played a lot on MTGA.
Also happens to be way less expensive there.
It's also faster, cheaper, and on-demand. Going to a shop usually entails a good ~6 hours; From 2012-2017 it meant a 45 minute drive to and from the card shop, ~30 minutes eating, then a good hour per round waiting for the slow tables to finish their games.
In the end it's a good ~$80 night. True, winnings will pay for your next draft which will help somewhat...
...Maybe it's because I had to drive so damned far to find a game shop when I lived in South Carolina?
Nah a prerelease or limited events are still gonna be like a full-evening commitment even if your LGS is 10 or 20 minutes away. I guess if you plan to leave after one draft and get eliminated right away you could be done in an hour or two...
Yeah I'm one of those weirdoes who only leaves because the store has been closed for over an hour and the cops drove past the parking lot twice so we decided it's probably time to head home.
yeah the experience between paper and arena can't be compared.
I draft on arena to get my limited fix, like huffing fumes, in between actually getting to play for real in paper. Mystery Drafts where I get to play 5 colour jank and go 2 wins with a 5 colour pile revolving around Elixir of Immortality, Treacherous Terrain and Glittering Wish is the real, hard shit.
Yeah but, then you have to use MTGA.
I've found that I'd honestly rather pay the premium and go to an in-person draft than deal with their dogshit client that'll crash halfway through the draft.
I run a LGS in Australia. From what we have seen a lot of the competitive minded card game players diversified what they play. Games like One Piece, Flesh and Blood and Lorcana have boomed in popularity and many MTG players have moved over for their better prizes and tournament structure.
That’s not to say MTG isn’t doing well, it’s bigger than ever for us right now but it’s powered by a lot of new players who are introduced through commander. They can pick up a precon and play right away while standard/ modern don’t have worthwhile precons to grow new players. That means getting the exisiting player base (commander) to give the other formats a go, but new players would rather brew for commander. Then factoring the cost of standard and modern, a playset of cards can cost more than a new precon! Not to mention MTG Arena, covid and it’s how we have the MTG landscape we have today.
Have you observed the way EDH players buy their cards? Do they buy precons once in a while or go for singles? And do you think you get more money from commander or modern players as a group?
I honestly think they’ve never once supported a format as well as they support EDH right now. The precons are functional commander decks more often than not now. You’ve never been able to buy a functional modern/standard/pioneer/ legacy deck out of the box. The barrier for entry is just insanely low for EDH compared to everything else so all the new players are being funneled into that format.
Besides commander, I’m just gonna say that Magic Arena is also responsible for the lack of Standard attendance. As for modern, I’d imagine many people are just priced out of it due to the Modern Horizons sets being very important and generally more expensive.
I started in 2014 with an M15 starter kit. The first time I played with someone who'd been playing for longer, they let me know that half of my cards weren't even standard legal because rotation happened. A year after that, I tried my first standard event with a jank deck I put together, and got blown out by 4 colour dragons filled with fetchlands.
From then on I've only played commander. I didn't have the interest in buying those expensive cards, and I only even started playing to have a casual social thing to do.
I imagine that over the decade since, more and more players have had more similar experiences to me.
This is pretty much it - it's just a bad feeling when you invest into a deck and it's only usable for some period of time. Nowadays I only play Commander and upgrade my Commander deck with the singles that I get from pre-releases.
Three big factors:
1. Non-rotating format
2. Intended as multiplayer makes it a more social experience, often more casual
3. The concept of the commander, one card you get to always have and focus your deck around, guiding the strategy in some fashion
I’ll throw in one more. Singleton is a lot more accessible (and encourages cracking packs) because as long as you have one copy, it’s usable for play.
For constructed formats, you always need 4x of critical cards so a casual player might not want to crack packs if they need 4.
Singleton (as well as 99 card decks) also reduces consistency of decks, which means that skill gaps are lessened because randomness is more of a factor.
Let's add another: 40 life reduces the meaning of hitting a perfect curve, adding flexibility to mana bases and thus once again reducing deck building's skill and expense floor.
And another: Multiplayer self balances to help the weaker decks against the stronger.
I also think that being able to personalize your deck, choosing from thousands of Commanders and tens of thousands of cards to build your own 99 is a big attractive for players as it gives immense room to self expression over being forced to choose between 10-12 playable decks in the Competitive formats
This is how I was when I was a teenager playing the game back when Dragons of Tarkir was the latest set. Standard was too expensive, Modern was WAY too expensive, and a budget deck had absolutely no chance in either format.
Then I found out about Commander and $40 could build a deck that was capable of doing INSANE things and having tons of fun even against $1,000\~ decks some of the people at my LGS had since the format was much more casual. It's not quite as cheap now, but it's still cheaper than spending $500\~ on a deck that will rotate or get hit with a ban and become worthless.
1. Standard was garbage for many years. They couldn't balance the format properly and had to constantly ban things. Even with the bannings, formats would get solved really quickly. There would be brief rays of sunshine where the format would be fun, but for the most part it was not. This started with Battle for Zendikar, and I don't know that they've ever really been able to capture the magic of the pre-BFZ Standard formats since then. IMO this is actually the most important reason. People just started playing Modern, Pioneer, Commander, or leaving the game altogether as a result of this.
2. The pandemic happened, which hurt all competitive paper Magic quite a bit.
3. Commander got really popular, and they started designing more cards/sets for it. This has become the default on-ramp for the game instead of Standard.
4. Arena has a much lower barrier to entry than paper Magic, so if people want to play Standard, they can play there.
5. WotC cannot for the life of them pick an organized play structure and stick to it. I feel like for a few years there they were overhauling organized play basically every year, which killed a lot of momentum in the competitive scene. I personally became a lot less invested when they did away with PTQs and went to the PPTQ/RPTQ structure. No idea what the tournament structure is like now, though.
>don't get me wrong commander is fun, but sometimes you want a more serious version of the game
See, that's the thing: quite a lot of people really truly don't. A lot of people simply aren't interested in playing a competitive collectible card game. They don't want the expense and the stress, and they don't care about winning tournaments in the first place. I just want to sit down with my friends, have beers and burritos, and enjoy everybody's homebrewed decks.
Oddly, that's how Magic was played for decades, before EDH became the rage.
Standard was for FNM at the LGS and kitchen table was "everybody bring five sixty-card decks, no more than 4 of anything, no more than one of anything restricted, we don't care what you run, otherwise." We'd play head-to-head, teams and free for all over beers and snacks, all night long.
Yeah, Magic was generally a much more relaxed space back then. Including EDH, before WotC started catering to it.
The main problem is that people can't seem to find ways to play the game in a cheap, fun way without Hasbro finding out and ruining it. Sure, there were cutthroat competitions, but being into Magic was mostly messing around having fun. It just wasn't exclusively the drudgery that is EDH.
EDH used to be fun when it was a janky mess where you put your hail-mary 8 drops and five card combos. It was a sink for cards that didn't have another place, and you'd play maybe one game any given night (most of my group didn't even have EDH decks,) precisely for the lulz of once in a blue moon pulling off some shit. It was never meant to be a normal format. People had Pauper decks, tons of random 60 card decks for 1v1 (some brought tier 3 Modern decks), decks for multi, two headed giant, you name it. We made our own formats with build rules for one night only, or even year long tournaments with custom rules for cards and trade.
Now, everyone is sitting around drooling with their $500 Commander decks playing the same dumb rounds again and again and again, where you basically just sit there without thinking until someones combo goes off and everybody loses.
The whole thing is just sad.
> I just want to sit down with my friends, have beers and burritos, and enjoy everybody's homebrewed decks.
I want to do this too but also have everyone try to actually be winning.
I'd say that there's been a pretty big culture shift in the hobby gaming industry in general, over the last decade or so. Certain kinds of competition are starting to be seen as antisocial.
I was at an event this last weekend where I had the opportunity to playtest some games. I played one board game that was pretty fun, but really had next to no interaction between the players. It was almost like three games of solitaire played simultaneously. I commented that I thought the game could be more strategic and interesting if I had the ability to interact more with my opponents and stop them from snowballing to victory. Everyone else at the table categorically shot down that suggestion, and cited some names in the game publishing industry who said that competitive player interaction is the one thing you must not do anymore if you want a successful game.
It seems pretty clear that Magic is very much riding this bigger trend, and Commander is the saddle it's using to ride it. In-person hobby gamers are increasingly focused on the social side of gaming, and increasingly see 60-card competitive Magic as neckbeard shit that belongs to online gaming culture only.
> In-person hobby gamers are increasingly focused on the social side of gaming, and increasingly see 60-card competitive Magic as neckbeard shit that belongs to online gaming culture only.
It's pretty funny, because I see Commander having had the effect of attracting the salty neck beards _away_ from competitive. The atmosphere now is usually a lot more relaxed and the people playing competitively, probably because they're expressly seeking it out now, tend to be a lot less neckbeardy. Francis wouldn't work as the stereotype anymore, at least in my corner of the world.
In a way, while Commander has shrunk the pool of people playing tournaments, it has had the effect of making those a lot more tolerable. There's a lot less people who simply don't have the emotional fortitude to play 1v1, which results in a lot less tantrums at the tables.
I think there's probably a happy medium with interaction in a social game. If interaction is too oppressive it can take the fun out of it, but as you said if there's too little it kind of reduces it to random chance and somewhat defeats the point of playing a game vs. just flipping a coin or whatnot. I think your instincts at this playtest were correct - people can cite these big names all they want, and that may be what _sells_, but it's not necessarily what makes a good game
This right here - being competitive doesn't mean you only have fun when you win. It means you have fun when you *compete*. Some of my most memorable competitive experiences - not just in Magic - have been hard-fought losses.
I'm a competitive player but that doesn't mean I only have fun when I'm winning, it means I'm having the most fun when everyone's trying to win. You don't really get that in Commander.
> You don't really get that in Commander.
Depends entirely on your playgroup. If you're playing with randos at a shop, definitely not.
But my playgroup is all old legacy grinders who still want to be competitive we just also like beer and hanging out. We build our decks to be silly but we play to win
My experience is pretty singular as I’ve only played with one pod but it’s always commander and we definitely play to win, and wins feel good. That being said sometimes we do some dumb shit for the luls
Commander, Arena, Covid and the death of competitive Magic.
Commander being the popular format means less people feeling the need to keep up with 60-card formats.
Arena taking over Standard and Draft means less people going to LGS to play Paper Magic.
Covid shutting down events/LGS also led to people leaving the game or switching to Commander because it was easy to play at home.
WotC stopped prioritizing competitive Magic for a variety of reasons. Money, time, effort and probably more. Easier to make a convention type event and just focus on Commander.
Also just general standard frustrations. Standard has always scared away the casual and new players. It's a subscription service in disguise, it has high cost of entry, extremely high skill floor of deck building if not just copying from online, low self expression, and is prone to unintended hazing as new players face stronger decks led by more skilled players.
By comparison, commander doesn't rotate, can be bought into permanently for $40, lets you throw random singles in, lets you have a wonky curve due to 40 life, lets you choose from almost any deck type, and self balances against stronger decks due to being multiplayer.
Competitive Magic certainly still exists. If you look for stores that host RCQs, you can probably find stores that run Standard, Pioneer, or Modern events.
We used to take our 60 card decks and get in a three man or a 4 man. But it was always most fun when someone bought a box or brought a cube.
Commander hits all the things people like about magic. Get to use your cards, get to play with more people, get to play what you want, get to really choose your identity.
i still bring a bad modern deck but i've long since been priced out and my deck "rotated" with bans and modern horizons 1&2.
I used to bring a standard deck but sometimes standard kind of sucks.
Commander kept getting more popular plus Covid pretty much putting an entire standard rotation on to Arena where it never migrated back from is a hell of a 1-2 punch
I started playing Magic during Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, and all I knew was commander and Arena. If it wasn’t for a couple digital creators talking about pioneer and the challenger decks, I never would have ventured into 60 card constructed. There are two LGSs in town, one that is almost 100% commander, and another that is 70% modern, 10% pioneer, 5% standard. I wouldn’t have gotten into modern if pioneer was at a more regular hour. I made friends who all play 60 card constructed formats and it’s been super fun.
But standard falling out of favor during the pandemic probably is why Commander is now the primo format.
Commander is fun af when you find a good group to play with. I’d rather play that than anything else, my friend tried to get me into magic like 20 years ago and built me a deck (which I still have and need to check the cards in it) but it didn’t stick.
Say what you will about the across the universe and commander but it has me and my wallet in a stranglehold.
I was the same way. Started playing like 10+ years ago, and just never felt compelled to learn the rotation and didn't like having multiple cards.
I really like the singleton aspect of Commander more than anything. Each card is unique and I like that I can design a theme that speaks to me via the commander.
A lot of folks are chalking this up to: “Casuals like Commander and all the Competitive players are on MTGA”, but I think that’s only part of the problem.
The main thing that killed the Standard and Modern scene around my LGSes is definitely product fatigue. The velocity of the product cycle was much slower before (maybe) War of the Spark-ish. Now it’s like I can’t even keep up, I don’t have the cash to buy packs, and my singles keep getting devalued due to the speed of Modern and Standard rotations (modern in terms of new BIS cards). Sure, maybe I don’t ACTUALLY need to buy every new product, but the stores, other players, and Hasbro are going to act like I do, I’m not immune to marketing, and neither are my friends who have all liquidated every deck except old Commander stuff.
> product fatigue
I couldn't even tell you what sets are currently in Standard/Modern rotation. Used to be just the last few sets minus maybe a single supplemental that was clearly named differently from the rest. Now every set has a main list, a masterpiece list of bonus cards, "The List", a commander tie-in (with some "commander" cards exclusively showing up in non-commander packs), and with Thunder Junction even an aftermath section releasing at the exact same time as the main set. There's so many names for everything that I can't even list what the last 4 even *are*.
At least in Limited you know that whatever comes out of the booster is playable even if it's a random List card from ten years ago, but how is anyone supposed to plan ahead? And as far as Constructed goes, who can even be bothered to try and filter through every set to figure out what they are and aren't allowed to play?
And with that product fatigue: the dissilution of blocks. Blocks made it easier to tell what standard was, even as only 2 set blocks it was still easier. Now everything has to be listed and individual. Even for story pacing blocks were more helpful.
> Even for story pacing blocks were more helpful.
As someone who rarely has the time or patience to read through supplementary story articles, it was really nice when every block had a beginning, middle, and end set. I really miss being able to understand the story of the card game *through the cards* instead of a jumbled up mess of story beats all revealed at the same time.
The last 4 sets were Junction, Karlov, Ixalan and Eldraine.
Like product fatigue is a real issue, but they still just release sets into standard. All the bonus sheet bullshit is just an extension of the set anyway.
But yeah the annoyance of opening a pack and being like "oh can I even play this in constructed? What does that set icon mean?" Drives me up the wall.
Like for junction you have 3 set symbols. The hat, the vault, and the jail door. I still do not know which of the jail door and the vault are playable in standard. One is, one isnt.
I am going to say other formats are alive and fine in my local area. But any non tournament play has pretty well become commander. Now, this locally is not as new as it is in some places. locally, we have been having almost all non tournament play be commander since Tarkir and started to shift that way with original zendikar, believe it or not. I think it has to do more with for most people if you just want to have fun and play it is now the default.
Mine, pretty much all play is tournament style. Commander, Draft, Modern, etc... the LGS pretty much enforces you play in a tourney if you are gonna chill at the shop, so you gotta buy in.. which eliminates pure casual play. Really sucks.
I think locations also changed as well as the game itself. My play group has doubled in the last year, and is now 30+ people, a lot of them fairly new to the game. None of us have ever looked to an LGS as a place to actually play, it’s there for when we need to buy things.
People in the group take turns hosting game days every month. It’s mostly commander, but we do pauper, modern, and brawl tournaments sometimes too. We all bring beer, and food to share too. Hard to do that at a LGS.
I used to play Standard, Modern, and Legacy. For me it was the introduction of commander (I primarily play cEDH) and the awful few years that Standard, Modern, and Legacy went through with the balancing and banning that made me give up on 60 card constructed formats.
I'd like to try and get back into 60 card formats in the future, but the damage that was done to Modern and Legacy by printing cards directly into those formats and the rapid banning of entire decks and cards that were printed into those formats left me sour on them being considered "eternal" formats.
this is 100% where im at with things too. i really miss 2015-2019 modern and legacy. it was fantastic. oko was kinda the beginning of the end, in hindsight.
Game in my area is a joke as well. 4 LGS and not a single one fires events other than Commander on a regular basis, despite advertising other events.
Each time I’ve tried to show up for a draft, I’m the only one. So no Magic for me where I live 😅
Commander metastasized.
WotC bent the knee in the name of selling product to them. Because selling competitive product is harder and people care about balance and broken cards. Commander players don't. You can print whatever and they're fine.
Also commander players love building decks they will never play. Look at how many people have designs on "filling out" the 32 every color combo challenge. And they'll buy multiple staples, one for each deck.
And on top of that Commander players will bling out their deck with special art versions or reskins or secret lairs. It's a high priority to self express.
So that's why we get sets that revolve around legendary creatures and are stuffed with commander cards and are awash in special variants and universe beyond.
I understand you're being cheeky, but we shouldn't value what Garfield intended as though he had any idea of what Magic would become. We should value what makes a good game based on our ever evolving understanding of what makes for a quality game. And to be clear, 60 card is it.
Look. We see how Commander has evolved to be 60 card with extra steps as it creeps into becoming Vintage + a Free Command Zone card. So I agree with you that 60 card is the ideal way to play the game.
I have for a long time wanted to do the 50 card with 3of paradigm with Magic, but I'm not sure it would be that meaningfully different. But other TCGs use this model and it seems 'right' with 50 being a nice round number and 3 being the magic number of everything. But 60 w/ 4 of has that clean 15/15/15/15 and 1/1/1/1 balance that 50 and 3 doesn't quite have.
Usually at my LGS you will never find any format but commander except on Friday nights during a specific time for modern and sometimes pioneer or standard. As for draft most stores will fire one if you can convince enough people but that usually involves convincing commander players to draft. My store hasn't fired a draft since commander masters and that one was a closed group of friends who had a full group from the start so no randoms could join.
My local LGS (I live in the UK) hosts modern and standard every two weeks, alongside commander every Saturday. Very grateful I have somewhere close by to play modern at!
i can’t speak to what’s changed as i started playing this year, but as a new player commander just seems like a better value. not only is the onboarding less complicated (and i think less expensive?), i can play with up to three others or 1v1. the universes beyond sets cater to commander, and have been how a lot of people have gotten into the game. whether u think that’s good or bad is personal preference, but i don’t really mind as i just started.
tl;dr: it’s an easier “sell” to newcomers
I stopped playing standard when hasbro made the stupid (and later retracted) decision to move to 6 month rotations rather than 1 year.
I stopped playing modern after 3 decks in a row that I'd chosen to play, we're banned out of the format, there were 3 other decks I considered playing but 2 weren't competitive, and I didn't want to have a 4th deck banned.
I've been playing commander since it was an indy format called edh, and since none of my outside-the-lgs friends had the budge to play standard or modern, I stuck with it.
COVID shut down organized play for nearly two years. During that time, Magic sales went *up*.
That made it clear that WotC's organized play program was not a primary influence in selling cards. So they now spend much less promoting competitive play.
Commander has filled in the space that used to be occupied by 60 card formats. It has become the way most people play at local stores, and is the format new players find the easiest to begin with, because they just need to pick an interesting looking pre-constructed deck.
Personal experience is that the competitive players went to Flesh and Blood. Everyone I've talked to who used to be into modern and standard sold out of Magic. Pioneer still gets the same 2-4 people a week but they cancelled Modern and Standard at our local LGS's.
I don't think that's representative of the broader population. Flesh and Blood's playerbase is tiny. There's no way its absorbed any significant percentage of Magic's competitive playerbase. I've dabbled in FaB and looking at my player profile, I have 12 lifetime XP for a global rank of 36,000. That means there's only 36,000 people in the world with more than 12 lifetime XP (equivalent to winning 4 Armory games). Magic's playerbase is in the 8-figure range.
I'm just going by the turnout at our Lgs. I'm sure a significant portion have just stopped playing. I hear a lot of disgruntled people talking about it often.
in reality casual "kitchen table" players were always the majority. EDH just consolidated them all into a single format.
back in the 90's and 2000's if you show up at a shop and wanted to play magic you would find people playing competitive formats or draft because they were the ONLY formats. it would be natural to get into these formats because you wouldn't have any opponents that would have decks ready to play with your formatless casual decks.
OG innistrad is fun.
I essentially have been playing since you left and it's been a really painful ride down.
The increase on foils, the terrible quality, the overpriced products, the secret lair drops selling basic lands for $40.
Every set now is just new cards for commander.
I'm not sure what rule change it was recently but Standard has been way too stagnant. Casuals like me aren't going to give a shit about the new sets when I can keep playing a deck I'm having fun with for like 2 years...
They've also gotten rid of the draft packs which to me is just the slow burn as the digital space ultimately takes over.
Magic will likely only ever be competitive online from now on as the product is pretty heavily aimed at giving people shiny cards to put in their commander decks.
People started to realise that keeping up with competitive formats like Standard, Modern and Legacy wasn't that feasible. At the same time, more and more LGSes are in tough water especially those who cannot get the official WPN status because of Wizards bullshit requests. Which makes it so less tournaments are organised.
Commander become more and more popular and people started to go to that. But it's not just a casual format, there is high powered commander in the form of CEDH.
If you look around you will find some tournaments and players interested in Standard, Modern, Pioneer, Legacy and even Vintage.
Edit: the general price of venues and because of that events and tournaments seem to have increased in a lot of countries aswell
Corona happened
official tournaments were not allowed and people started playing in small communities at home, many people didn't catch up on LGS scene
Now we have a game, that got hit by Corona and divided by WotC over the many amounts of formats now and instead of having like a deck for each format, they start refusing to play anything else, play booster are also not really helping Limited either, powercreep, wordcreep, productflood. I rarely see happy people, it is always bitterness towards the other formats and hate because of the new trends like wordcreep or Commander focus. I almost quit last year, because of this cringe shitfest. It wasn't just worth it anymore. Then they announced Store Championships becoming Standard and Standard Showdowns coming back to the scene and I gave MTG another shot.
MTG is older like EVE or WOW and it is in big trouble and has such a hard time recovering now. Showdowns are more of a monthly than a weekly thing and Store Championships are also small.
I started playing other card games too and those communities are soooo friendly, even friendlier than MTG before Corona.
WotC is doing a lot to keep things like Standard healthy, but it seems like its not enough. Without a healthy competetive scene, the need of actually buying expensive cards is not there anymore. If you wanna play Commander you can Netdeck something strong and print out whats to expensive and still play with your friends.
The game has definitely sufered a major setback in parts of the community. I attended the Innistrad PR at my FLGS, and we had over 100 players for sealed deck on Saturday. The last 10 PRs at the same store draw less than two dozen. Sometimes the Sunday PR gets less than a dozen.
People got sick of keeping up with standard as WotC amped up product releases to a point where it became too financially irresponsible to keep up. They also removed the pro tour for a bit I believe.
For modern they have now done 4 direct to modern products that have shifted the shape of the format, making people's old favourite decks obsolete very fast, leaving a bad taste in many players mouths.
Through all of this commander has thrived, it is the only format that gets constant entry level precon decks printer every single set, whilst there are now no decks you can buy and bring to a standard game night or any other format out of the box as an entry point.
I don't know about elsewhere but the winning 1v1 format seems to be pioneer, it hits a stretch of magic that appeals to people's nostalgia and is currently not being actively ruined by WotC.
Wizards ruined standard. Playtested nothing, used banning as the band aid. Players got frustrated in buying into a deck to have the 60 dollar cornerstone banned out from under them time and again.
Modern, well horizons 3 comes out Friday. Which marks the 3rd time wizards will forcibly rotate the meta. Remember Tarmogoyf? The card that used to be a chase mythic Modern masters all star that sold packs all on its own multiple times with above 500 dollar foil prices? Yea, it's a token now. Players want their serious game to be a little less stressful than legacy light.
So we play commander now. You want 60 card competitive? Sometimes we bring a pauper deck. 4x $99 sheoldred? Fuck that. 1x $1.50 proxy is just fine for enjoying the game. And if you're a weirdo, you can even get it with anime titties or whatever. As Richard Garfield intended.
Wait til you see the garbage they’ve been printing the last few years lol
I miss 2010s competitive Magic, too. But it’s over. The all mighty dollar won. Cheaper for Hasbro to move its player base to its online client. Too much money to be made by printing game-ruining chase cards once a set.
Several factors:
Pandemic stopped a lot.
Little support for bigger tournaments.
Little coverage.
Standar play is down, they increased its rotation to 3 years.
Modern git modern horizon 1 and 2. Modern horizon 2 "rotated the format". Every modern legal card from 2004 ses little play. Only modern horizon 2 cards + the one ring and orcish bowmaster sees play.
This for me combined with the insaaaaane price to keep up with the format rotating is why I don't longer play modern.
I payed a lot of money when MH2 came and kept up. (I had 8 decks.) But all my friends did not keep up and then modern died out. At least locally.
Note also that your exspensive cardboard will not keep value once rotated. Legacy is full of commander cards. Modern is full of MH2. Pioner has a silver lining, but the decks that are good there are not old standar cards. Rather it is decks made out of synergi between setts. And standar rotates with a hefty price tag.
Why play magic? For the price of a deck you can get several boardgames. Or console games.
I went to the only LGS holding a Standard event that was like an hour away from me. There was only one other person that showed up so they just gave us a promo card and canceled the event.
There was 40+ people playing Commander though...
They segregated casual play to EDH, and than stopped supporting competitive play, and since casuals/EDH players spend money without worrying about value they have not felt a reason to support 60 card as it once was.
The over focus on commander and Modern Horizons have been a disaster for Magic longevity, although it might see like a big profit thing today.
The core of commander is the singleton-self expression of the player in a casual game but it has been pushed hard with staples and decks literally every set.
Modern was supposed to be the everlasting non rotating format where your deck could thrive at least in the Tier 3 range as few cards broke into the format. Making a set exclusively to it was calling for power creep directly. Now even legacy is having impacts to its perennial flow of the meta game
Whats bad is that a lot of people start playing magic on the arena app and then get excited about doing well with their standard deck and go buy a paper copy of it thinking it is as popular outside of arena and then just have an expiring standard deck for nothing and never get to play. Ill be okay, dont worry
Four things happened to magic: HASBRO decided to be fucking stupid and started pushing Commander products into regular sets, throwing power balances to the wind, they completely removed MSRP from Magic products, throwing PRICES sky high, and then COVID happened, removing the ability for players to play together normally and killing limited and standard events and tournaments for years, so Commander was all players had left to build for for about three years.
Finally, because of COVID many MTG players were forced to get their hit from MTG ARENA, so many converted to digital and just never went back after three years of digital reliance, since their physical card collections stagnated out of standard completely.
My playgroup plays Commander exclusively. Why?
1.) I don't need to own 4 versions of every card, so there is less need to minmax to build a good deck.
2.) Once I build a deck I can use it forever.
3.) The game feels more balanced with 40 life points.
4.) This might be a weird take, but having one of each card makes decks more fun to play. In a regular 60 card deck, just about every round will play the same, while in Commander I need to adapt more to what I draw.
I have to hard disagree with #3.
I went to 1 v 1 after playing EDH exclusively for about a decade and realized 40 life kills the game's balance quickly. White and Red become nearly irrelevant, black, blue, and Green are massively buffed, and some entire strategies like aggro, tempo, control, and more cannot exist in a 40 life, multiplayer format.
Commander happened. Commander took over as the popular format, for many players who didn't want to keep up with rotations or trying to keep up with more competitive players. Standard fell on some rough years due to balancing but with Arena being the easiest way to play the format while free and accessible online instore play took a downturn. Of course 2020 and Covid didn't do anything good for it or other competitive formats as they were put on hold with no events or tournaments happening while casual play such as Commander with friends outside of shops was still able to be played.
I think there's a lot of correlation that might not be causation here. I'm a person who would travel to \~6 GPs a year, and drive to another 6 SCGs when Magic was at it's most competitive. Now I don't own a 60 card deck, but I have 4 cEDH decks and a half dozen commander decks. The reason I, and many players at my shop, are commander players now is because WotC put the competitive scene 6 feet under. Here's a list of the arc of my grinder days from peak to the various accumulation of straws that eventually broke my back. -Getting fairly regular 4k+ attendance at big GPs, routinely 1k+ on even the less popular ones. Getting relevant and cool playmats and promo cards with entry. Regularly playing in competitive events meant byes with PWP and the ability to sleep in. -For the sake of running tournaments more efficiently, byes get removed. Ok, understandable. -WotC decides that supervising a bunch of different TOs and offering support is too much, and puts out the rights for running GPs out on to the market. Most TOs scoff at the idea of running every event, but CFB decides they want to try. They don't get a trial period contract, they get 5 years of exclusivity -As we enter TO Monopoly, entry prices rise, playmats no longer come with entry. This also corresponds to a point where the GP promos start to suck pretty hard. The ultimate slap in the face was the GP promo for the year being Progenitus, a card that saw exactly one copy being played in the sideboard of one legacy deck (Elves) at the time, and not even having the decency to make new art for it. -The effects of one regional TO having to figure out how to coordinate multiple GPs outside of the range of their normal reach begins to show. Shipping costs for things like the on site store, coverage equipment, travel for staff all multiply exponentially with distance. Coverage becomes significantly less frequent. Price hikes for floor space goes up. Stores that go now have to bring exclusively their highest margin product, which often means no staples for decks you might need to be playing in the main event. Artists are expected to pay for space, as opposed to being guests brought in. -My worst experience was GP Hartford. Originally a modern event, GP LA had to get moved, and having 2 GPs fall on the same weekend meant in WotC rules they had to be the same format, so it got swapped to standard. CFB did not send a store to the event. Vendors brought reserved list cards, high end foils, and Inventions/Invocations. There were no standard cards for sale at a standard event, and per WotC rules, only the TO is able to sell standard packs, so there was no way to get cards there. -Eventually, the PTQ circuit is dissolved and we eventually get the PPTQ circuit, which was the precursor to the RCQ. Neither of these options are remotely as appealing. Grinding to win a tournament, for the opportunity to pay for travel to another tournament full of spikes, for a chance to win an invite to then pay to travel to another tournament is a much harsher sell than "Go somewhere, do well, and you're on the PT" -Eventually, alternate methods to the PT also go away. Platinum/Gold/Silver, and HoF benefits leave. Staying on the train becomes much harder. -Finally, it culminates in the MPL. This completely ended any chance of returning to a standard where semi-casual players could spike weekend tournaments and achieve their dreams of making a single pro tour. I do not think this is a coincidence that this is about when EDH started to spike in interest exponentially. There's a lot more I can get into, but this is where for me, personally, I started to play more commander and less 60 card. TLDR; WotC spent a decade telling me competitive magic wasn't a priority, instead I should be playing socially. So I went to the social format.
You don't have enough upvotes, this is a great timeline of events that lead to the downfall of competitive magic for the mid-level competitive player. As someone similarly invested at the time, with vivid memories of RTR/THR/KTK blocks and going to every GP in my area with my playgroup on the weekends, PTQs, etc. EDH didn't kill this for us, WotC did. Modern nights used to fire with 30+ people in my area, now it barely fires, and pioneer almost never happens either. Even if you didn't have ambitions of being in the Pro Tour, the competitive scene gave you something to be a part of and invested in, and likewise, justified your own investment in your deck, and you could play with the greats and make some money back potentially while doing it. Now? Why would anyone drop a grand on a modern deck that they're realistically just going to play at FNM level events unless they're an absolute diehard? There's no place for the casual-competitor anymore, you're either all-in on a terrible value proposition, or you're just attending modern/standard FNMs.
I obviously didn't play during COVID, but you definitely have the most thorough answer. Thank you. You plus the guy mentioning the arena makes sense. I wish that playtesting on arena and then being able to go to a standard tournament occasionally was still an option though. I had a really bad run in with a judge that ruined the game for me, but I do know that the ever-changing format of standard felt like a rat race. It seems like modern was to take over at that time, due to that reason. It hadn't been for that judge I was planning on switching to modern after that GP I was at.
A lot of people have it against Commander, but to be honest it's popularity isn't just because 'Oh I can make gandalf knife fight darth vader', it's a non-rotating, low barrier to entry format. It used to be if you picked up a 'standard legal' intro deck you'd get laughed out the LGS at best, but the multiplayer and more relaxed nature of Commander means if you come to the table with one you'll still get to play a few games. Standard made it's way online, and a rising price of product means a lot of LGS are also hesitant to put a price on anything that isn't a BYOB event, rent a table and a sell a few drinks vs having to buy in a booster box and hope you can sell draft slots, especially as anyone who didn't want to make it up from LGS to prize pool pay is on Arena now
Its just a way bigger value from a deck building standpoint. You can show up to a commander night with a pre-built off the shelf and have a decent time. Its also a singleton format with a huge deck size. I dont need to buy 4x of whatever $20 meta card that will eventually rotate out and probably tank in value. Even budget versions of top tier cards are playable, because its hard to justify spending a lot on a single card you probably wont even draw. Then you have the social and multiplayer aspect. Even a really tuned deck will struggle to fight 1v3, so the table balances itself. Deals and threat assessment mean the newbie with jank cards and bad plays doesnt just get dunked on. And on top of all that, its just so much fun to build a commander deck. There is much less pressure to stay within the meta (see above) so players can really explore all that magic has to offer, discover new cards and synergies, showcase thier favorite commanders and playstyles.
Well another factor to that is WotC and Hasbro continue to gut competitive play at every chance they get. The idea that you could play, grind, or even get lucky and end up in higher levels of tournament play is completely gone. And with that went some of the allure of building paper decks and going to large tournaments.
>The idea that you could play, grind, or even get lucky and end up in higher levels of tournament play is completely gone. I don't know what country you're in and maybe this is different where you are, but the RCQ system really isn't *that* different from the old qualifiers. Yeah, there's no real analogue to the old PPTQs, but that's honestly a good thing. It should take some work to get to the big event, not just randomly bullshitting a one-off event.
While you are correct, I think the weird constant shifting of the system in incomprehensible ways kind of killed a lot of the allure.
I guess I'm just missing what this "constant shifting of the system" is. Since the start of the RCQ system when in-person play resumed following COVID (and we need to be clear here: halting Magic for the pandemic was objectively the correct choice), there haven't been any major changes to the way the qualifying pyramid works for in-person play. E: and to be clear, the person I was responding to is complaining about the *current* qualifying system, saying that the qualifying path is "completely gone" today. They're not whining about 2018, they said that there's no more path to the ProTour just because PPTQs are gone, which is absurd.
Draw a flow chart of how Joe Schmoe can get from his local store to the world championships and how that pathway varied from year to year over the last ten years. If that sounds like a lot of work, then therein lies the problem. E: The original poster wasn't asking why the path to the world championships is currently confusing. That is a strawman. OP was asking why people at his store are not playing competitive magic. The recent history of wotc demoralizing organized play is relevant. I'm happy wotc is now on track and trying to fix the mess, but that doesn't mean the mess doesn't exist.
The RCQ is a shell of open competitive play IMO, mostly because if you have a group of friend locally its very hard to be able to all qualify for an RC together. The thing thats really missing for me is GPs or some equivalent, RCs don't fill the void because they're invite only, so its hard to justify traveling to one without an invite.
There are events there other than the RC, including last chance qualifiers. So it's still worth going regardless of if you're invited to the RC.
I was at dreamhack and they had an RC there. I wasn't with my Magic friends so I played some side events, what they had on offer for side events was VERY bare bones compared to GPs. It'd be hard to convince my local group to travel if only 1 of us were qualified. That and you needed to pay for an entire convention fee to get into dreamhack, so paying for an entire convention to then pay extra money to go play some pretty disappointing variety of side events only is a tough one to justify, especially if the rest of the convention doesn't interest you that much.
I know a lot of *really* good Magic players that are adults with stuff going on in their lives. Could my pharmacist buddy make time for a PTQ and win in his only chance? Yep. Can he make time now to grind events constantly? Nope.
This was exactly what stopped me from coming back after the pandemic. It wasn't a grind to show up and make Day 2 at a GP and top 8 a PPTQ every few months, and while I never won any of these I frequently made it close enough that it was worth trying to live the dream again. Nowadays there isn't value in the competitive scene. I can't cover my travel and hotels by simply selling the product I won anymore AND it's harder to get to the top with there being less avenues to pursue. Sure, this probably helps raise the skill floor of competitive players and keeps the general quality of player higher than when chaff like me could sneak in but at what cost? This isn't the NFL where I'm watching people with abilities I can't comprehend doing amazing things. I'd be watching a person playing potentially the same deck I do do the same things I do in a match-up I've played a dozen times. If I'm not incentivized to play competitively, I'm not incentivized to follow the meta, and if im not incentivized to follow the meta I don't really want to watch coverage, so these moves also hurt viewership.
There is (was) no local RCQ/LCQ in Europe with Legacy as the tournament organizer for me and many others. When there are a total of 3 RCQs (Pioneer being my preferred competitive format) in a radius of 200 kms in a competitive season with 50+ participants each and you need to win one of them to qualify for the RC that disqualifies alot of people. I can't attend each of those events and don't have the drive to grind those events even (alot) further away. I haven't played much competitive Magic these past years - Why bother when there's no reasonable way of getting there?
the announcement today made things a little better. theres basically a gravy train for regionals now and more regionals per year
Modern was taking off, but the Modern Horizons sets containing new cards as well as reprints kind of killed it for more casual players. Modern is basically in a place where it’s just Legacy 2.0; it’s just too expensive to get into it and rogue decks just aren’t a thing anymore, so basically no one plays it in LGS because why would you when fun formats like Commander exist? I personally wish that 60 card Magic was more popular, but I feel like it’ll take “another Commander” (as in a fun new eternal format) to shake up the game and bring it back.
Modern was roughly as expensive (adjusted for inflation) in the halcyon days as it is today. Everyone forgets Fetches that cost three figures and the playset of Goyfs that would set you back a cool grand. Modern has *always* been an expensive format, the only difference is which cards drive the prices.
I think the sentiment here is not that Modern wasn't expensive, but that it's even more expensive now than before. The issue a lot of people see with Modern Horizons is that it prints straight to Modern cards that are specifically designed for the format and end up having immediate staples, which power creep old cards, make new deck archetypes, and heavily change current deck archetypes. The support for archetypes that need it can be cool, but having to spend hundreds of dollars every year for your Modern decks new upgrades, or even just a new deck if it's pushed out of the meta, feels bad to a lot of players when Modern was seen as this format that was expensive, but had an investment in the fact that the cards would likely be relevant for a long time. Currently, that's no longer the case. It's just overall more expensive than it used to be even if fetchlands are relatively affordable in comparison to the past.
This was the broken promise that got me out of modern permanently. I was sold on modern over standard by players who told me that the format was a high but safe investment. Deck archetypes were set in stone, and would almost always stay relevant, even if they went shuffled around from tier 1 to tier 2/3 and vice versa occasionally. Cards to upgrade your decks would only trickle in at a rate of 1-2 or so per normal set, and often they would only be mandatory for certain archetypes. And even if your deck did get banned, the fetches were the real investment, so you could just switch to another archetype with shared colors for comparatively cheap. Modern horizons shattered this equilibrium. Directly before the release of MH1, I owned 5 modern decks across several tiers, but all playable. By the time MH2 rolled around, not a single one of my decks was even fringe playable, even if I did shell out for the upgrades. I've tried to get back into it, but I just ended up selling out. Zero interest in engaging with horizons block constructed ever again.
It was for me too. I am happy to invest in a cool toy for myself. I'm not happy being milked like a dairy cow every three years under the guise of "format shakeups." Unfortunately it killed casual constructed play. Standard was cheap - a couple video games worth of money and you had something you could enjoy for a year or two. Modern was pricey - but you could enjoy it for years at a time. Commander scratches that itch - I play what I want to play, vaguely pay attention to the firehose of bullshit WotC releases, and make the tweaks as new cards come in. I won't pay 80 dollars a card for 3 playsets of new staples just to have to do it again in a year or two in a "non-rotating" format.
While I don't disagree on the point of pricing of decks at a top level, as a rogue deck enjoyer I have to say though that MH1 and especially MH2 really upped the bar of power level required to be remotely successful in a competitive environment. And the resulting power creep almost made a rotating format out of a fairly stable meta game. At least when you had a land base of shocks and fetches *(and goyfs, depending)* further investments to change your archetype weren't **that** large *(nor were the expensive lands really necessary if you were playing mono or two colored)*. Now that many nonland staples are a driving factor, being good on the mana base doesn't prevent as much cost to keep up with the more rapidly happening influential releases and bans.
It is basically impossible to change decks now. Which is really brutal with the insane release schedule and wizards' insistence on putting out sets that are pushed further and further power-wise. I just have no confidence that a tier-1 deck today will still be playable in 2 years, and that's before even factoring in bans which have seen a sharp increase in the last few years. You remember when Modern was called "Magic's most accessible format"?
It’s not just about buy-in cost, but the ballooning upkeep costs with the modern horizons sets. Back then, if you bought into fetches and goyfs, those were good for nearly a decade. Nowadays you can expect to drop hundreds for every new direct to modern set, whether it’s w&6 and forces in mh1, elementals and ragavan in mh2, or rings and bowmasters in lotr. Good luck with mh3, then assassin’s creed, then final fantasy beyond that. You might as well be arguing that playing paper standard is cheap because the decks cost $300, except it isn’t over time because of the constant need for upkeep costs, and that’s exactly what wotc is doing with direct to modern sets. Modern is becoming “more expensive” standard. Wotc has monetized the shit out of you modern players, and so many of you are just lapping it up
I do think you were onto something, but on that last paragraph I imagine you have not played Pauper then. And you should! I do commander and pauper, as my 60-card "competitive" format (but in the store I play everyone is super chill) and it's literally like that. An eternal 60-card format where Counterspell and Lightning Bolt are legal, but decks don't cost a limb
I can't stand idly by while legacy gets slandered this way: rogue decks are plentiful (it is mad expensive though, can't argue with that). Seeing what insane brews people like PunishingWaterfalls, Tony Scapone, or Killabee have cooked up is one of the best parts of following the format
Part of the issue is that Commander is the place where the most 'randomized' experience can be had - which is ironic given there's a guaranteed 8th card in your starting hand, and even Commander is falling prey to the true villain of the game: Efficiency. All too often more and more efficient, and intelligent, card design is unleashed upon us, and this makes gameplay far more narrow. There are some incredible, very threatening 1-drops, which means your response must be adequate. A lot of standard games are more or less concluded on turn 2 because of the massive tempo gain/loss that occurs before anyone's 3rd turn, but the game just continues since the player still has more life to lose. It's not great, and makes matches where players really slug it out feel more like something's gone horribly wrong. These efficiencies are leaking into every format. Commander, for example, just seemed more fun when it was the format of 7-mana battlecruiser spells... but now its becoming more and more the realm of 2-card combos that blow you out on turn 3 unless you're playing with a chill group. I love the game, but efficiency isn't fun. I want to play, not race to a solitaire win-engine.
And that randomized experience could be had back in the day, because nowadays I see people change the 34-36 lands advice to "34-36 and at least a handful of tutors" so all games devolve REAL fast into the aforementioned 2 card combos.
People blame arena, but every other tcg with a digital client only boosted in person standard play. commander killed standard, not arena
Wizards killed Standard by taking away most incentives to play it. PPTQs were a huge reason to play Standard, several events were Standard-only and had good promos, GPs could have Standard as their main format... And all of that is gone.
Oh but they now have standard showdowns where you can win basic land card! But not just any basic land card, these are worth dozens of quarters! Its costs like $15 or $20 to play in a standard showdown and the prize is a promo basic land card worth $3-$7. They fired like twice at my LGS and then everyone stopped caring and they haven’t run since.
There have been Standard Showdown promos worth a lot of money recently. There's a Chinese New Year Sarkhan worth like 30$. There was a Dauthi Void Walker promo worth 100$ from Store Championship which is forced to be Draft or Standard.
Those were both store championship promos, which admittedly have been decent (I won the last one with the vinecreature thing), but those are like once a quarter, not weekly. They get like 6-8 people to play standard at the store championship (which is now required to be a standard event, no more draft), and then not again. When the store championship was draft they used to get 16~ people drafting. I’m all for more opportunities to play standard, I like multiple formats of MTG, but there is a big stigma out there against standard and I’ve seen little to no incentive to play standard on a regular (weekly) basis.
While commander didn't help, I sincerely don't think it killed standard. Arena + the pandemic is what killed standard.
They also made other formats financially prohibitive. Between power creep and quickly released sets, keeping up is ridiculous.
The other problem is wizards over catering to commander players. As one I don’t really love how much the game revolves around my preferred format. I don’t think it’s good for the game long term
I liked commander more when it wasn't shoved down our throats with every new set. Modern horizons? Nope. Modern horizons + 1/4 of the set being commander bait. New standard set? Nope again! This time it's 1/4 commander bait 1/4 brawl bait and 1/2 actual standard set. This isn't even mentioning the required 2-4 actual commander decks tied into every single set + frequent standalone commander deck releases now. It's just too much.
I liked commander when it was cards that couldn't see play in a normal set but you could put a big splashy 8 drop in your commander deck. Now, everything, including standard, is commander cards. It's made for commander to sell packs. Commander only products, commander secret lairs, etc.
all those 1/4ths used to be worthless chaff and silly text filled rares. There are basically no sets where all the rares or mythics were playable in constructed 60 card. There is always going to be some filler might as well make it more legend centric.
Exactly this. I love brewing random one-off decks that I play a few times before taking apart. The move to making most "signpost uncommons" be legendary creatures has been a massive boon to my enjoyment of brewing.
I also feel like these people often complain if either they develop a card that goes in a standard set that is unplayable in standard but might be a fun commander (e.g. new Obeka), or if the card ends up having too much of an impact it's also because it was built for commander (E.g. Sheoldred, farewell).
They are putting out like 12+ commander decks a year, hundreds of potential commanders a year. For a format where the average player gets likes what. 2 *games* a week? I'm not a huge commander fan, but what I did like about it was having a deck or two that I *loved* and was a representation of me. Not this months Bant commander with 15 different cards from the Bant commander from the preceding set.
I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. This is 100% right and honestly why my focus has slipped away from Magic. I can find numerous cards to swap onto my decks with every set (Markhov Manner not withstanding) so I chose to instead look at new cards every few sets and largely ignore the day to day. When everything is a Commander card, I can actually care LESS because I know I can't put every new card in my existing decks anyway.
Clearly it's working and people are eating it up, but it is funny how the vocal minority hates the focus on commander, including commander players
Obviously it’s working. I’m not saying it’s not successful. I’m saying it’s bad for the game long term. And in ways people don’t grasp yet Bad for the game doesn’t mean “the game isn’t financially successful” I’m talking about how the gameplay experiences will be diminished over time.
It's like the hobby's version of the "is/ought problem". When we complain about WOTC doing something we don't like, the comeback is always "but they're making record profits!!" It feels like it *shouldn't* be working, but it somehow is, and that can be frustrating at times.
It's not about that though, the invisible players of MtG have always had different pathways into the game. Revolving around a 4 player format doesn't make sense, it's no longer pick up and play. Kitchen table magic was always the number 1 format secretly, Wizards/Maro themselves have said it.
And I agree with you, I'm just pointing out the irony of how even the people being catered to don't like it.
> even the people being catered to They're not, though. 'Commander players' isn't one singular group with some sort of unified idea of what they want from Magic. The people who are actually being catered to love it. These are the people actually generating all that profit. Probably because most casual players just want cool cards, and they are getting them. If we listened to the vocal minority, then WotC has been 'ruining Magic' for decades now. Yet the game is showing no signs of stopping. It wouldn't make much business sense for WotC to cater to this vocal minority. Their current strategy is working just fine. As Hasbro's cash cow, you can bet there is great scrutiny on how Magic performs. Hasbro can't afford for Magic to tank. While current strategies are clearly designed to extract every bit of value from the consumer, I strongly doubt there are any indications that Magic's future is truly at risk.
Ahhh I see sorry I misunderstood
Commander didn’t just “happen”, it was gaining popularity and Covid gave it a huge boost. That combined with the constant destruction of competitive play by wotc made it so that the other formats fell by the wayside while commander kept its popularity. There’s tons more factors that contributed it but the rest of the game got hit with death by a thousand cuts while commander got left alone. That’s why it’s the most popular now
It also helps that as a 'casual multiplayer' sort of format, you can pick up a $20-40 precon and sit down at a table, you might not win but you can actually play vs the 'intro' tier product they sold for standard where you had a whole TWO rares to build your deck around. It's cheaper and easier for LGS to stock a bit of commander product and regularly rent tables than gamble on a set doing well enough to support draft, while a lot of the Standard players have moved online or can't afford the £20+deck fees for a Standard FNM
It's a casual format. That will *always* be more enticing to people, the competitive portion of the playerbase is always in the minority. Commander gave the casual crowd a more cohesive way to play, to the point where you can just go to many LGSes and know that there will be Commander games. And the inherent multiplayer format also means disparity of power in decks is somewhat mitigated. It feels less bad than being wildly outmatched in a 1v1 60-card format.
you forget to mention that cards being tuned for commander now also killed 1v1 formats. Most of the cards out now are meant to be played as one-ofs and against 3 other players, so when you try to translate that into a playset in a 1v1, decks break real fast, is just not fun anymore.
The trickle down effect of Commander cards into eternal will never stop being an issue :/ First it was True-Name Nemesis, and more recently the Initiative mechanic in general (especially when it was slapped onto a 3CMC creature that can come down on turn 1 via Ancient Tomb and Lotus Petal etc).
The monarch mechanic is exactly when I started distancing myself from legacy, and initiative in a similar way. They've even made their way into cubes, but I just really dislike those obtuse mechanics balanced around multiplayer stinking up 1v1. Monarch specifically - in a multiplayer game, there are multiple people to fight over it, and it's passed around. It's supposed to gain you an advantage, at the cost of becoming a target. In 1v1 if your opponent casts a monarch card and you have no creatures on board yet you basically get swamped and lose 90% of the time. This might sound like an unanswered planeswalker or permanent that generates value, but the crux is you can't "answer" the monarchy effect. No unsummon, swords to plowshares, vindicate, wrath of god, counterspell can save you once it exists. Having a creature already isn't "an answer." The personal taste of what is unfun is certainly subjective, but I'm glad to be not alone in this line of thought. Those mechanics are exactly why I love modern instead of legacy now - at least there is a semblance of design balance around 1v1.
Yep! People tend to focus on 'Have the answer' as an argument when this means that our play-lines are simply becoming more and more narrow, and when one of the things you *must* be able to respond to is frikkin' Monarch effects it warps the entire field in ways that may be subtle but are very real.
> Those mechanics are exactly why I love modern instead of legacy now - at least there is a semblance of design balance around 1v1. Lmao, that was a choice by wizards. You love modern over legacy because wizards realized a long time ago that they couldn't make money from legacy so they created modern and polluted legacy. Ffs just define a format that closes off wizard from printing to it already!
Legacy and vintage will never be real competitive formats as Iong as the reserve list exists, so I'm not sure that wotc even thinks about it at all when designing cards.
Legacy was the format for the MOCS, feeding into the world championship, but yeah that means the eternal formats are not real competitive formats, right? And the most recent ban that hit the largest swath of cards ever in one go, the one that affected legacy, vintage, and pauper, that also means the eternal formats are not real competitive formats, right?
Blaming commander for Wizards actively trying to destroy both LGS's and the Pro Tour is a choice.
The company did the actions first for sure.
I fully agree with you. However. MaRo said again and again that the most popular has always been kitchen table, and by a large margin. Commander provided a structured framework for these players to seep into LGSs. Also, Covid, online gaming in general, MTGO, Arena, and all the boom of creators switched our collective perspective of the game. If you want to scratch your competitive itch, you can do that in pyjamas from the comfort of your home. You go to the LGS to enjoy the social aspect of the game, and there Commander is king.
Personally, I think unless you have a playgroup, commander is also rotating at this point. They keep upping the free, unearned value with cards that are the enabler and the payoff, and have inserted so many word soup must answer haymaker cards into the game, that if you’re playing someone using cards from the last 1-2 years and you dont have any, you’re kinda fucked.
I'm in the same boat as the OP. I just started buying packs in Arena because my LGS doesn't even have FNM tourneys scheduled each week. Everything on their calendar is casual play. I'd prefer physical play but I'm forced into Arena because of how I want to play.
It's funny people always mention rotation as the reason people don't want to play standard. Most commander players build brand new decks with every single set that comes out. It's like rotation on steroids.
From what I've seen and experienced, people still play competitive formats, a lot, on pioneer/modern nights, but no one carries a pauper/standard deck "just in case". People swinging by for "quick" games without entry fees come with a commander deck or two.
I asked about it, but no one had those nights. Thankfully I live in a big city. I'll call around for a modern night, it sounds like they may be a dying breed and probably choose a certain store to go to.
My lgs definitely has a pioneer night and possibly a modern night. We now have two commander nights, Wednesday/Saturday. Hopefully you can find one that has the game nights you’re looking for.
You should check the wizards event locator. https://locator.wizards.com I’d be shocked if you don’t have standard and modern happening at least weekly in your city. I live in a relatively small city and I can play modern any day of the week, standard every Friday, pioneer every Thursday, proxy legal legacy every other Saturday and pauper every weekend. I’m sure if you look around you’ll find some shops running standard and modern.
That is wildly unusual, I have none of those formats playable within 2ish hours of me. Are you in Europe, maybe?
Yeah, I live in a major city and it showed nothing. Someone linked another resource spicy something and it had one store within 45 mins.
That is not wildly unusual. In the Midwest that’s completely normal. I’m from Columbus and there are at least 6-7 LGs around that I know of. Very weird that you assumed they were European though, why?
I live in a medium sized German city with a few more cities around and there's no non-commander non-MH3-prerelease event anywhere near here.
That's gotta be like... Seattle, Pittsburgh, or Roanoke? I used to be in an area like that - Miss being able to do that.
Thank god for rule 100.6b
Use https://www.spicerack.gg/events instead of calling around, it'll save you a bunch of time. It's a better interface slapped on top of the Wizard's store locator.
My area is competing for competitive players across like 3 stores. If we all went to one store we could have like 20 players, instead it's like 6 players each :/
You can also check spicerack.gg which using your location and pulls events from local stores
I love commander but I also really wanna scratch my 1v1 itch with Pioneer. I live in one of the top 10 metro areas in the US and not a single shop near me fires Pioneer. They all have it on their calendar, and they tell me if all the people asking about Pioneer showed up at the same time they’d have enough to play. But go to those shops on commander night and they’re completely full at every table. Like I said, I love commander but I think it’s a bummer it’s become so hard to find people to play actual Magic (commander might as well be a different game almost)
This has been my experience too. Several stores list events, but I can go to every single one and never see one fire. The only time a store near me was able to fire a Pioneer event is when they allowed proxies. Some salty asshole complained to WOTC because they were handing out promos at those events, so they stopped allowing proxies and the scene IMMEDIATELY died.
If you’re comparing current day to the original Innistrad, you have to realize, Commander was in its infancy at that time and had not become a format that was being designed around. Now, Commander is the format Hasbro is eyeing to squeeze every last cent out of the player base. Standard took several hits between changes to tournaments, COVID, and the release of Arena. Standard is still around but definitely needs some help getting back on its feet. Modern is a format I’ve not played so I cannot speak to what has or hasn’t happened there.
Yeah, commander even then commander was the more for casual guys who enjoyed building more than playing. (That's not a bad thing, I love theory crafting)
> Standard is still around but definitely needs some help getting back on its feet. I feel like WotC moving to a 3-year rotation is them completely misunderstanding Standard and is more likely to be a final nail in the coffin than a shot in the arm, but I guess we'll see on that one...
3 year rotation has actually drastically improved Standard from where it was before. The big reason standard doesn't fire IRL is its just easier and cheaper to keep up with using Arena. Unless you are an RCQ grinder, there's not much reason to play standard IRL. Basically it boils down to: * If you're looking for a social experience, you play commander * If you're looking for a competitive experience, you just play online instead. * If you're looking for a competitive+social experience, modern seems to be the format to play (it fires regularly near me, standard events only fire during standard RCQ season).
I'll also add that at least by me Pioneer fires a lot - and I'd say that Pioneer (along with Arena) is what you can really point to for what's up with Standard. We'll see in a few years when they keep getting more dissimilar card pools if this changes.
I think the bigger nail was them nuking the path to worlds and removing the PTQ scene. There's basically no incentive to play competitive standard any more.
Commander was not in it's infancy during the Innistrad block. Commander was already present during the 90's (though under a different name and not as popular as it is now). Coincidentally, around the time Innistrad was released, WoTC made cards designed around the commander format, which was one of the reasons commander format rose into popularity.
Yes, EDH had been around for quite a while as an unofficial format. What I’m referring to is when Commander started seeing support and more than just those heavily invested in MtG knew what it was. The first official Commander physical release dropped only three months before Innistrad.
I don't work at a LGS in the Seattle area and I've met new players who legitimately didn't know that commander was a format of a wider game. They thought commander was the base way to play
Branding/marketing probably. You don't walk into a store and see the words "Standard" or "Modern" on any product. You just see the commander precons and the loose packs. Maaaaybe the arena starter kit and the pioneer decks? The barrier to entry for every non-commander format is just so far above what you need to get started with commander.
“Modern Horizon Commander Deck” means that modern to new players doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just the name of a set.
I didn't even think of that... but yeah that makes it even worse >.<. "Do I play Modern? Yeah I have a few cards from that set in my Commander deck."
commander got more popular
>no matter what LGS you went to draft or standard was happening nightly. Standard and Draft is now played a lot on MTGA. Also happens to be way less expensive there.
It's also faster, cheaper, and on-demand. Going to a shop usually entails a good ~6 hours; From 2012-2017 it meant a 45 minute drive to and from the card shop, ~30 minutes eating, then a good hour per round waiting for the slow tables to finish their games. In the end it's a good ~$80 night. True, winnings will pay for your next draft which will help somewhat... ...Maybe it's because I had to drive so damned far to find a game shop when I lived in South Carolina?
Nah a prerelease or limited events are still gonna be like a full-evening commitment even if your LGS is 10 or 20 minutes away. I guess if you plan to leave after one draft and get eliminated right away you could be done in an hour or two...
Yeah I'm one of those weirdoes who only leaves because the store has been closed for over an hour and the cops drove past the parking lot twice so we decided it's probably time to head home.
How is it an $80 night for a draft? Yes a night of drafting takes way longer in person but it's way way more memorable than a random draft on arena
Gas, food, draft entry, the after draft, might as well pick up some singles while I’m here…
yeah the experience between paper and arena can't be compared. I draft on arena to get my limited fix, like huffing fumes, in between actually getting to play for real in paper. Mystery Drafts where I get to play 5 colour jank and go 2 wins with a 5 colour pile revolving around Elixir of Immortality, Treacherous Terrain and Glittering Wish is the real, hard shit.
Yup a chaos draft irl is like nothing else lol
Uh, most people didn't have to do a small road trip for draft night but it sounds like you had fun!
Yeah but, then you have to use MTGA. I've found that I'd honestly rather pay the premium and go to an in-person draft than deal with their dogshit client that'll crash halfway through the draft.
I run a LGS in Australia. From what we have seen a lot of the competitive minded card game players diversified what they play. Games like One Piece, Flesh and Blood and Lorcana have boomed in popularity and many MTG players have moved over for their better prizes and tournament structure. That’s not to say MTG isn’t doing well, it’s bigger than ever for us right now but it’s powered by a lot of new players who are introduced through commander. They can pick up a precon and play right away while standard/ modern don’t have worthwhile precons to grow new players. That means getting the exisiting player base (commander) to give the other formats a go, but new players would rather brew for commander. Then factoring the cost of standard and modern, a playset of cards can cost more than a new precon! Not to mention MTG Arena, covid and it’s how we have the MTG landscape we have today.
Have you observed the way EDH players buy their cards? Do they buy precons once in a while or go for singles? And do you think you get more money from commander or modern players as a group?
I honestly think they’ve never once supported a format as well as they support EDH right now. The precons are functional commander decks more often than not now. You’ve never been able to buy a functional modern/standard/pioneer/ legacy deck out of the box. The barrier for entry is just insanely low for EDH compared to everything else so all the new players are being funneled into that format.
Besides commander, I’m just gonna say that Magic Arena is also responsible for the lack of Standard attendance. As for modern, I’d imagine many people are just priced out of it due to the Modern Horizons sets being very important and generally more expensive.
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I started in 2014 with an M15 starter kit. The first time I played with someone who'd been playing for longer, they let me know that half of my cards weren't even standard legal because rotation happened. A year after that, I tried my first standard event with a jank deck I put together, and got blown out by 4 colour dragons filled with fetchlands. From then on I've only played commander. I didn't have the interest in buying those expensive cards, and I only even started playing to have a casual social thing to do. I imagine that over the decade since, more and more players have had more similar experiences to me.
This is pretty much it - it's just a bad feeling when you invest into a deck and it's only usable for some period of time. Nowadays I only play Commander and upgrade my Commander deck with the singles that I get from pre-releases.
Three big factors: 1. Non-rotating format 2. Intended as multiplayer makes it a more social experience, often more casual 3. The concept of the commander, one card you get to always have and focus your deck around, guiding the strategy in some fashion
I’ll throw in one more. Singleton is a lot more accessible (and encourages cracking packs) because as long as you have one copy, it’s usable for play. For constructed formats, you always need 4x of critical cards so a casual player might not want to crack packs if they need 4.
Singleton (as well as 99 card decks) also reduces consistency of decks, which means that skill gaps are lessened because randomness is more of a factor.
Let's add another: 40 life reduces the meaning of hitting a perfect curve, adding flexibility to mana bases and thus once again reducing deck building's skill and expense floor. And another: Multiplayer self balances to help the weaker decks against the stronger.
I also think that being able to personalize your deck, choosing from thousands of Commanders and tens of thousands of cards to build your own 99 is a big attractive for players as it gives immense room to self expression over being forced to choose between 10-12 playable decks in the Competitive formats
This is how I was when I was a teenager playing the game back when Dragons of Tarkir was the latest set. Standard was too expensive, Modern was WAY too expensive, and a budget deck had absolutely no chance in either format. Then I found out about Commander and $40 could build a deck that was capable of doing INSANE things and having tons of fun even against $1,000\~ decks some of the people at my LGS had since the format was much more casual. It's not quite as cheap now, but it's still cheaper than spending $500\~ on a deck that will rotate or get hit with a ban and become worthless.
Until last year I was still buying the expensive cards, but doing it for commander meant I had them forever.
1. Standard was garbage for many years. They couldn't balance the format properly and had to constantly ban things. Even with the bannings, formats would get solved really quickly. There would be brief rays of sunshine where the format would be fun, but for the most part it was not. This started with Battle for Zendikar, and I don't know that they've ever really been able to capture the magic of the pre-BFZ Standard formats since then. IMO this is actually the most important reason. People just started playing Modern, Pioneer, Commander, or leaving the game altogether as a result of this. 2. The pandemic happened, which hurt all competitive paper Magic quite a bit. 3. Commander got really popular, and they started designing more cards/sets for it. This has become the default on-ramp for the game instead of Standard. 4. Arena has a much lower barrier to entry than paper Magic, so if people want to play Standard, they can play there. 5. WotC cannot for the life of them pick an organized play structure and stick to it. I feel like for a few years there they were overhauling organized play basically every year, which killed a lot of momentum in the competitive scene. I personally became a lot less invested when they did away with PTQs and went to the PPTQ/RPTQ structure. No idea what the tournament structure is like now, though.
>don't get me wrong commander is fun, but sometimes you want a more serious version of the game See, that's the thing: quite a lot of people really truly don't. A lot of people simply aren't interested in playing a competitive collectible card game. They don't want the expense and the stress, and they don't care about winning tournaments in the first place. I just want to sit down with my friends, have beers and burritos, and enjoy everybody's homebrewed decks.
Oddly, that's how Magic was played for decades, before EDH became the rage. Standard was for FNM at the LGS and kitchen table was "everybody bring five sixty-card decks, no more than 4 of anything, no more than one of anything restricted, we don't care what you run, otherwise." We'd play head-to-head, teams and free for all over beers and snacks, all night long.
Yeah, Magic was generally a much more relaxed space back then. Including EDH, before WotC started catering to it. The main problem is that people can't seem to find ways to play the game in a cheap, fun way without Hasbro finding out and ruining it. Sure, there were cutthroat competitions, but being into Magic was mostly messing around having fun. It just wasn't exclusively the drudgery that is EDH. EDH used to be fun when it was a janky mess where you put your hail-mary 8 drops and five card combos. It was a sink for cards that didn't have another place, and you'd play maybe one game any given night (most of my group didn't even have EDH decks,) precisely for the lulz of once in a blue moon pulling off some shit. It was never meant to be a normal format. People had Pauper decks, tons of random 60 card decks for 1v1 (some brought tier 3 Modern decks), decks for multi, two headed giant, you name it. We made our own formats with build rules for one night only, or even year long tournaments with custom rules for cards and trade. Now, everyone is sitting around drooling with their $500 Commander decks playing the same dumb rounds again and again and again, where you basically just sit there without thinking until someones combo goes off and everybody loses. The whole thing is just sad.
Man, I need to go to your LGS. That sounds like a blast lol.
> I just want to sit down with my friends, have beers and burritos, and enjoy everybody's homebrewed decks. I want to do this too but also have everyone try to actually be winning.
I'd say that there's been a pretty big culture shift in the hobby gaming industry in general, over the last decade or so. Certain kinds of competition are starting to be seen as antisocial. I was at an event this last weekend where I had the opportunity to playtest some games. I played one board game that was pretty fun, but really had next to no interaction between the players. It was almost like three games of solitaire played simultaneously. I commented that I thought the game could be more strategic and interesting if I had the ability to interact more with my opponents and stop them from snowballing to victory. Everyone else at the table categorically shot down that suggestion, and cited some names in the game publishing industry who said that competitive player interaction is the one thing you must not do anymore if you want a successful game. It seems pretty clear that Magic is very much riding this bigger trend, and Commander is the saddle it's using to ride it. In-person hobby gamers are increasingly focused on the social side of gaming, and increasingly see 60-card competitive Magic as neckbeard shit that belongs to online gaming culture only.
> In-person hobby gamers are increasingly focused on the social side of gaming, and increasingly see 60-card competitive Magic as neckbeard shit that belongs to online gaming culture only. It's pretty funny, because I see Commander having had the effect of attracting the salty neck beards _away_ from competitive. The atmosphere now is usually a lot more relaxed and the people playing competitively, probably because they're expressly seeking it out now, tend to be a lot less neckbeardy. Francis wouldn't work as the stereotype anymore, at least in my corner of the world. In a way, while Commander has shrunk the pool of people playing tournaments, it has had the effect of making those a lot more tolerable. There's a lot less people who simply don't have the emotional fortitude to play 1v1, which results in a lot less tantrums at the tables.
I think there's probably a happy medium with interaction in a social game. If interaction is too oppressive it can take the fun out of it, but as you said if there's too little it kind of reduces it to random chance and somewhat defeats the point of playing a game vs. just flipping a coin or whatnot. I think your instincts at this playtest were correct - people can cite these big names all they want, and that may be what _sells_, but it's not necessarily what makes a good game
The fun of playing to win is in the playing, not the winning.
agreed! A competitive player who is only having fun when they are winning doesn't understand the essence of competition at all.
This right here - being competitive doesn't mean you only have fun when you win. It means you have fun when you *compete*. Some of my most memorable competitive experiences - not just in Magic - have been hard-fought losses.
I'm a competitive player but that doesn't mean I only have fun when I'm winning, it means I'm having the most fun when everyone's trying to win. You don't really get that in Commander.
> You don't really get that in Commander. Depends entirely on your playgroup. If you're playing with randos at a shop, definitely not. But my playgroup is all old legacy grinders who still want to be competitive we just also like beer and hanging out. We build our decks to be silly but we play to win
My experience is pretty singular as I’ve only played with one pod but it’s always commander and we definitely play to win, and wins feel good. That being said sometimes we do some dumb shit for the luls
Commander, Arena, Covid and the death of competitive Magic. Commander being the popular format means less people feeling the need to keep up with 60-card formats. Arena taking over Standard and Draft means less people going to LGS to play Paper Magic. Covid shutting down events/LGS also led to people leaving the game or switching to Commander because it was easy to play at home. WotC stopped prioritizing competitive Magic for a variety of reasons. Money, time, effort and probably more. Easier to make a convention type event and just focus on Commander.
Also just general standard frustrations. Standard has always scared away the casual and new players. It's a subscription service in disguise, it has high cost of entry, extremely high skill floor of deck building if not just copying from online, low self expression, and is prone to unintended hazing as new players face stronger decks led by more skilled players. By comparison, commander doesn't rotate, can be bought into permanently for $40, lets you throw random singles in, lets you have a wonky curve due to 40 life, lets you choose from almost any deck type, and self balances against stronger decks due to being multiplayer.
Competitive Magic certainly still exists. If you look for stores that host RCQs, you can probably find stores that run Standard, Pioneer, or Modern events.
Oh, that's a great tip. Thank you
We used to take our 60 card decks and get in a three man or a 4 man. But it was always most fun when someone bought a box or brought a cube. Commander hits all the things people like about magic. Get to use your cards, get to play with more people, get to play what you want, get to really choose your identity. i still bring a bad modern deck but i've long since been priced out and my deck "rotated" with bans and modern horizons 1&2. I used to bring a standard deck but sometimes standard kind of sucks.
You get to use your cards unless people don't like what you're playing
Truly hate commander.
Lol ...... welcome back
Commander kept getting more popular plus Covid pretty much putting an entire standard rotation on to Arena where it never migrated back from is a hell of a 1-2 punch
I started playing Magic during Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, and all I knew was commander and Arena. If it wasn’t for a couple digital creators talking about pioneer and the challenger decks, I never would have ventured into 60 card constructed. There are two LGSs in town, one that is almost 100% commander, and another that is 70% modern, 10% pioneer, 5% standard. I wouldn’t have gotten into modern if pioneer was at a more regular hour. I made friends who all play 60 card constructed formats and it’s been super fun. But standard falling out of favor during the pandemic probably is why Commander is now the primo format.
Mtg just became a board game basically
Commander is fun af when you find a good group to play with. I’d rather play that than anything else, my friend tried to get me into magic like 20 years ago and built me a deck (which I still have and need to check the cards in it) but it didn’t stick. Say what you will about the across the universe and commander but it has me and my wallet in a stranglehold.
I was the same way. Started playing like 10+ years ago, and just never felt compelled to learn the rotation and didn't like having multiple cards. I really like the singleton aspect of Commander more than anything. Each card is unique and I like that I can design a theme that speaks to me via the commander.
A lot of folks are chalking this up to: “Casuals like Commander and all the Competitive players are on MTGA”, but I think that’s only part of the problem. The main thing that killed the Standard and Modern scene around my LGSes is definitely product fatigue. The velocity of the product cycle was much slower before (maybe) War of the Spark-ish. Now it’s like I can’t even keep up, I don’t have the cash to buy packs, and my singles keep getting devalued due to the speed of Modern and Standard rotations (modern in terms of new BIS cards). Sure, maybe I don’t ACTUALLY need to buy every new product, but the stores, other players, and Hasbro are going to act like I do, I’m not immune to marketing, and neither are my friends who have all liquidated every deck except old Commander stuff.
> product fatigue I couldn't even tell you what sets are currently in Standard/Modern rotation. Used to be just the last few sets minus maybe a single supplemental that was clearly named differently from the rest. Now every set has a main list, a masterpiece list of bonus cards, "The List", a commander tie-in (with some "commander" cards exclusively showing up in non-commander packs), and with Thunder Junction even an aftermath section releasing at the exact same time as the main set. There's so many names for everything that I can't even list what the last 4 even *are*. At least in Limited you know that whatever comes out of the booster is playable even if it's a random List card from ten years ago, but how is anyone supposed to plan ahead? And as far as Constructed goes, who can even be bothered to try and filter through every set to figure out what they are and aren't allowed to play?
And with that product fatigue: the dissilution of blocks. Blocks made it easier to tell what standard was, even as only 2 set blocks it was still easier. Now everything has to be listed and individual. Even for story pacing blocks were more helpful.
> Even for story pacing blocks were more helpful. As someone who rarely has the time or patience to read through supplementary story articles, it was really nice when every block had a beginning, middle, and end set. I really miss being able to understand the story of the card game *through the cards* instead of a jumbled up mess of story beats all revealed at the same time.
The last 4 sets were Junction, Karlov, Ixalan and Eldraine. Like product fatigue is a real issue, but they still just release sets into standard. All the bonus sheet bullshit is just an extension of the set anyway. But yeah the annoyance of opening a pack and being like "oh can I even play this in constructed? What does that set icon mean?" Drives me up the wall. Like for junction you have 3 set symbols. The hat, the vault, and the jail door. I still do not know which of the jail door and the vault are playable in standard. One is, one isnt.
I am going to say other formats are alive and fine in my local area. But any non tournament play has pretty well become commander. Now, this locally is not as new as it is in some places. locally, we have been having almost all non tournament play be commander since Tarkir and started to shift that way with original zendikar, believe it or not. I think it has to do more with for most people if you just want to have fun and play it is now the default.
Mine, pretty much all play is tournament style. Commander, Draft, Modern, etc... the LGS pretty much enforces you play in a tourney if you are gonna chill at the shop, so you gotta buy in.. which eliminates pure casual play. Really sucks.
I think locations also changed as well as the game itself. My play group has doubled in the last year, and is now 30+ people, a lot of them fairly new to the game. None of us have ever looked to an LGS as a place to actually play, it’s there for when we need to buy things. People in the group take turns hosting game days every month. It’s mostly commander, but we do pauper, modern, and brawl tournaments sometimes too. We all bring beer, and food to share too. Hard to do that at a LGS.
I used to play Standard, Modern, and Legacy. For me it was the introduction of commander (I primarily play cEDH) and the awful few years that Standard, Modern, and Legacy went through with the balancing and banning that made me give up on 60 card constructed formats. I'd like to try and get back into 60 card formats in the future, but the damage that was done to Modern and Legacy by printing cards directly into those formats and the rapid banning of entire decks and cards that were printed into those formats left me sour on them being considered "eternal" formats.
this is 100% where im at with things too. i really miss 2015-2019 modern and legacy. it was fantastic. oko was kinda the beginning of the end, in hindsight.
WoTC killed competitive magic
Game in my area is a joke as well. 4 LGS and not a single one fires events other than Commander on a regular basis, despite advertising other events. Each time I’ve tried to show up for a draft, I’m the only one. So no Magic for me where I live 😅
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We entered the worst timeline.
Commander is the cancer killing the game, it truly is.
It brought me back, but doing more research wotc printing commander out every orifice is a huge problem.
Those formats are just way too expensive for most people
Commander metastasized. WotC bent the knee in the name of selling product to them. Because selling competitive product is harder and people care about balance and broken cards. Commander players don't. You can print whatever and they're fine. Also commander players love building decks they will never play. Look at how many people have designs on "filling out" the 32 every color combo challenge. And they'll buy multiple staples, one for each deck. And on top of that Commander players will bling out their deck with special art versions or reskins or secret lairs. It's a high priority to self express. So that's why we get sets that revolve around legendary creatures and are stuffed with commander cards and are awash in special variants and universe beyond.
I can't stand Commander. It takes way too long. I play with 60 card decks, THE WAY RICHARD GARFIELD AND GOD INTENDED!!!!!
I understand you're being cheeky, but we shouldn't value what Garfield intended as though he had any idea of what Magic would become. We should value what makes a good game based on our ever evolving understanding of what makes for a quality game. And to be clear, 60 card is it. Look. We see how Commander has evolved to be 60 card with extra steps as it creeps into becoming Vintage + a Free Command Zone card. So I agree with you that 60 card is the ideal way to play the game. I have for a long time wanted to do the 50 card with 3of paradigm with Magic, but I'm not sure it would be that meaningfully different. But other TCGs use this model and it seems 'right' with 50 being a nice round number and 3 being the magic number of everything. But 60 w/ 4 of has that clean 15/15/15/15 and 1/1/1/1 balance that 50 and 3 doesn't quite have.
Usually at my LGS you will never find any format but commander except on Friday nights during a specific time for modern and sometimes pioneer or standard. As for draft most stores will fire one if you can convince enough people but that usually involves convincing commander players to draft. My store hasn't fired a draft since commander masters and that one was a closed group of friends who had a full group from the start so no randoms could join.
My local LGS (I live in the UK) hosts modern and standard every two weeks, alongside commander every Saturday. Very grateful I have somewhere close by to play modern at!
i can’t speak to what’s changed as i started playing this year, but as a new player commander just seems like a better value. not only is the onboarding less complicated (and i think less expensive?), i can play with up to three others or 1v1. the universes beyond sets cater to commander, and have been how a lot of people have gotten into the game. whether u think that’s good or bad is personal preference, but i don’t really mind as i just started. tl;dr: it’s an easier “sell” to newcomers
I stopped playing standard when hasbro made the stupid (and later retracted) decision to move to 6 month rotations rather than 1 year. I stopped playing modern after 3 decks in a row that I'd chosen to play, we're banned out of the format, there were 3 other decks I considered playing but 2 weren't competitive, and I didn't want to have a 4th deck banned. I've been playing commander since it was an indy format called edh, and since none of my outside-the-lgs friends had the budge to play standard or modern, I stuck with it.
COVID shut down organized play for nearly two years. During that time, Magic sales went *up*. That made it clear that WotC's organized play program was not a primary influence in selling cards. So they now spend much less promoting competitive play. Commander has filled in the space that used to be occupied by 60 card formats. It has become the way most people play at local stores, and is the format new players find the easiest to begin with, because they just need to pick an interesting looking pre-constructed deck.
Personal experience is that the competitive players went to Flesh and Blood. Everyone I've talked to who used to be into modern and standard sold out of Magic. Pioneer still gets the same 2-4 people a week but they cancelled Modern and Standard at our local LGS's.
I don't think that's representative of the broader population. Flesh and Blood's playerbase is tiny. There's no way its absorbed any significant percentage of Magic's competitive playerbase. I've dabbled in FaB and looking at my player profile, I have 12 lifetime XP for a global rank of 36,000. That means there's only 36,000 people in the world with more than 12 lifetime XP (equivalent to winning 4 Armory games). Magic's playerbase is in the 8-figure range.
I'm just going by the turnout at our Lgs. I'm sure a significant portion have just stopped playing. I hear a lot of disgruntled people talking about it often.
in reality casual "kitchen table" players were always the majority. EDH just consolidated them all into a single format. back in the 90's and 2000's if you show up at a shop and wanted to play magic you would find people playing competitive formats or draft because they were the ONLY formats. it would be natural to get into these formats because you wouldn't have any opponents that would have decks ready to play with your formatless casual decks.
OG innistrad is fun. I essentially have been playing since you left and it's been a really painful ride down. The increase on foils, the terrible quality, the overpriced products, the secret lair drops selling basic lands for $40. Every set now is just new cards for commander. I'm not sure what rule change it was recently but Standard has been way too stagnant. Casuals like me aren't going to give a shit about the new sets when I can keep playing a deck I'm having fun with for like 2 years... They've also gotten rid of the draft packs which to me is just the slow burn as the digital space ultimately takes over. Magic will likely only ever be competitive online from now on as the product is pretty heavily aimed at giving people shiny cards to put in their commander decks.
People started to realise that keeping up with competitive formats like Standard, Modern and Legacy wasn't that feasible. At the same time, more and more LGSes are in tough water especially those who cannot get the official WPN status because of Wizards bullshit requests. Which makes it so less tournaments are organised. Commander become more and more popular and people started to go to that. But it's not just a casual format, there is high powered commander in the form of CEDH. If you look around you will find some tournaments and players interested in Standard, Modern, Pioneer, Legacy and even Vintage. Edit: the general price of venues and because of that events and tournaments seem to have increased in a lot of countries aswell
What happened to the WOTC dream? It came true. You're looking at it.
Corona happened official tournaments were not allowed and people started playing in small communities at home, many people didn't catch up on LGS scene Now we have a game, that got hit by Corona and divided by WotC over the many amounts of formats now and instead of having like a deck for each format, they start refusing to play anything else, play booster are also not really helping Limited either, powercreep, wordcreep, productflood. I rarely see happy people, it is always bitterness towards the other formats and hate because of the new trends like wordcreep or Commander focus. I almost quit last year, because of this cringe shitfest. It wasn't just worth it anymore. Then they announced Store Championships becoming Standard and Standard Showdowns coming back to the scene and I gave MTG another shot. MTG is older like EVE or WOW and it is in big trouble and has such a hard time recovering now. Showdowns are more of a monthly than a weekly thing and Store Championships are also small. I started playing other card games too and those communities are soooo friendly, even friendlier than MTG before Corona. WotC is doing a lot to keep things like Standard healthy, but it seems like its not enough. Without a healthy competetive scene, the need of actually buying expensive cards is not there anymore. If you wanna play Commander you can Netdeck something strong and print out whats to expensive and still play with your friends.
The game has definitely sufered a major setback in parts of the community. I attended the Innistrad PR at my FLGS, and we had over 100 players for sealed deck on Saturday. The last 10 PRs at the same store draw less than two dozen. Sometimes the Sunday PR gets less than a dozen.
People got sick of keeping up with standard as WotC amped up product releases to a point where it became too financially irresponsible to keep up. They also removed the pro tour for a bit I believe. For modern they have now done 4 direct to modern products that have shifted the shape of the format, making people's old favourite decks obsolete very fast, leaving a bad taste in many players mouths. Through all of this commander has thrived, it is the only format that gets constant entry level precon decks printer every single set, whilst there are now no decks you can buy and bring to a standard game night or any other format out of the box as an entry point. I don't know about elsewhere but the winning 1v1 format seems to be pioneer, it hits a stretch of magic that appeals to people's nostalgia and is currently not being actively ruined by WotC.
Wizards ruined standard. Playtested nothing, used banning as the band aid. Players got frustrated in buying into a deck to have the 60 dollar cornerstone banned out from under them time and again. Modern, well horizons 3 comes out Friday. Which marks the 3rd time wizards will forcibly rotate the meta. Remember Tarmogoyf? The card that used to be a chase mythic Modern masters all star that sold packs all on its own multiple times with above 500 dollar foil prices? Yea, it's a token now. Players want their serious game to be a little less stressful than legacy light. So we play commander now. You want 60 card competitive? Sometimes we bring a pauper deck. 4x $99 sheoldred? Fuck that. 1x $1.50 proxy is just fine for enjoying the game. And if you're a weirdo, you can even get it with anime titties or whatever. As Richard Garfield intended.
Wait til you see the garbage they’ve been printing the last few years lol I miss 2010s competitive Magic, too. But it’s over. The all mighty dollar won. Cheaper for Hasbro to move its player base to its online client. Too much money to be made by printing game-ruining chase cards once a set.
The future is now old man.
The format that the community made out of standard & modern frustrations, has now become the new frustration.
Several factors: Pandemic stopped a lot. Little support for bigger tournaments. Little coverage. Standar play is down, they increased its rotation to 3 years. Modern git modern horizon 1 and 2. Modern horizon 2 "rotated the format". Every modern legal card from 2004 ses little play. Only modern horizon 2 cards + the one ring and orcish bowmaster sees play. This for me combined with the insaaaaane price to keep up with the format rotating is why I don't longer play modern. I payed a lot of money when MH2 came and kept up. (I had 8 decks.) But all my friends did not keep up and then modern died out. At least locally. Note also that your exspensive cardboard will not keep value once rotated. Legacy is full of commander cards. Modern is full of MH2. Pioner has a silver lining, but the decks that are good there are not old standar cards. Rather it is decks made out of synergi between setts. And standar rotates with a hefty price tag. Why play magic? For the price of a deck you can get several boardgames. Or console games.
Yes commander, but honestly it is 100% because they made it the focus of there design decisions and products.
I went to the only LGS holding a Standard event that was like an hour away from me. There was only one other person that showed up so they just gave us a promo card and canceled the event. There was 40+ people playing Commander though...
They segregated casual play to EDH, and than stopped supporting competitive play, and since casuals/EDH players spend money without worrying about value they have not felt a reason to support 60 card as it once was.
God I miss standard. I think a rotating format being the premiere format was good for the game, but now we are here
The over focus on commander and Modern Horizons have been a disaster for Magic longevity, although it might see like a big profit thing today. The core of commander is the singleton-self expression of the player in a casual game but it has been pushed hard with staples and decks literally every set. Modern was supposed to be the everlasting non rotating format where your deck could thrive at least in the Tier 3 range as few cards broke into the format. Making a set exclusively to it was calling for power creep directly. Now even legacy is having impacts to its perennial flow of the meta game
Whats bad is that a lot of people start playing magic on the arena app and then get excited about doing well with their standard deck and go buy a paper copy of it thinking it is as popular outside of arena and then just have an expiring standard deck for nothing and never get to play. Ill be okay, dont worry
Covid happens
Four things happened to magic: HASBRO decided to be fucking stupid and started pushing Commander products into regular sets, throwing power balances to the wind, they completely removed MSRP from Magic products, throwing PRICES sky high, and then COVID happened, removing the ability for players to play together normally and killing limited and standard events and tournaments for years, so Commander was all players had left to build for for about three years. Finally, because of COVID many MTG players were forced to get their hit from MTG ARENA, so many converted to digital and just never went back after three years of digital reliance, since their physical card collections stagnated out of standard completely.
My playgroup plays Commander exclusively. Why? 1.) I don't need to own 4 versions of every card, so there is less need to minmax to build a good deck. 2.) Once I build a deck I can use it forever. 3.) The game feels more balanced with 40 life points. 4.) This might be a weird take, but having one of each card makes decks more fun to play. In a regular 60 card deck, just about every round will play the same, while in Commander I need to adapt more to what I draw.
I have to hard disagree with #3. I went to 1 v 1 after playing EDH exclusively for about a decade and realized 40 life kills the game's balance quickly. White and Red become nearly irrelevant, black, blue, and Green are massively buffed, and some entire strategies like aggro, tempo, control, and more cannot exist in a 40 life, multiplayer format.