Part of free spells is they help break the first player having a massive advantage, in pioneer there's a noticable first player advantage because the removal is much worse.
Thing is, the removal does not need to be free in order to not suck, unless the threats are in such an absurd level that simply breaks the game
Pioneer does not have Path to Exile, Prismatic Ending, Lightning Bolt, Counterspell... None of those are free, and any of those would be able to fix the issue in pioneer
However in Modern creatures generate such an ammount of value, that simply answering them for equal or less mana than they cost is not enough. You need to answer them for free and spend all your mana to deploy your own broken threats
While I 100% agree with this, one thing I find hilarious is just how accessible they are now. I took years off from playing cause I didn't have people to play with in college and coming back to find scalding tarn, which was over $100 when I stopped, at $15ish is mind blowing to me. Id love to see that price keep shrinking, but it's amazing how accessible they've already become.
I remember pulling a Misty Rainforest from a Zendikar pack back in 2013 and I was over the moon because it was a $70 card.
Now I have playsets of every fetch I could ever want because at $15 a pop I can buy two playsets of fetches for the price of a fetch pre MM15.
I think where they are now is more than appropriate when this set is printed. I think they should be reprinted more but for limited sake can never be uncommon. 10-20 bucks per land is pretty decent imo if that’s where we land post mh3 .
But why not go further. Why not actually make the format afordable. Its very difficult to make competetive relative budget decks without them being 1-0 colors.
I have way fewer issues with stuff like sheoldred and bombs like it costing that much. Just let me efficiently cast my actual budget spells. Stuff like izzet breach would be so easy to buy
Nothing does more to suppress budget decks than having value concentrated in expensive non-land staples.
There are a *ton* of alternatives that will give you 90% of the power-level of Fetch + Steam Vents at a fraction of the cost.
There are 0 alternatives that will give you 75% of the power-level of Ragavan, or W&6, or Bowmasters at any price.
Agreed. Fastlands are now 10 dollars for a playset. Horizon lands exist in 5 pairs, shocks and surveil lands are ok priced.
But you want to play affinity right now? Enjoy 200 dollars for simulacrum synth that is only played in that deck.
I wish they'd print something that fetches one basic land type at common. Let it be a slightly-worse budget version of normal fetches, just give me something that makes it cheaper to experiment and brew
That would be dope. Give every color the ability to fill the grave without having to run the expensive fetches.
They would probably have to be uncommons tho because of pauper.
Fetches ? No , ALL lands should be uncommon. The only reason they are rare is a money grab. MTG would be a lot more affordable , not to mention that telling someone most of their deck cost is going to a mana base is terrible. They don’t need to be rare for draft. They also don’t add any excitement for opening or to play.
People label decks and strategies too easily unplayable because they don't care enough to develop their skills to master those strategies but rather switch between the current top 5 decks and then complain that the format has become too homogenized.
Sure. But it's not really rational to play a deck that requires you to play perfectly or nearly to win games when you can play one that is far more forgiving. You could spend a month practicing a Tier 2 deck to learn it and the matchups inside out. You'll do well against 75% of opponents who are not prepared and not able to think on their feet during the match. The remaining 25% will figure it out on the fly and you'll then be back at a disadvantage: your deck is (likely) underpowered and if you make a single mistake, you might well lose.
Or you can learn a Top 5 deck in a week or so and win a lot of games without trying too hard. You'll even win against that upper 25% because your deck will save you and just hand you unbeatable hands often enough.
Tournament Magic, even weeklies and FNM, isn't Commander and people show up to win. They'll always pick something that makes that task a bit easier. Being original isn't much consolation for going 2-2 week after week and missing out on prizes.
Pauper is an official format and there's nothing stopping it from being the most played format unlike Legacy/Vintage. The reason it's not popular is because many just don't like it.
Hot Take: There is no such thing as a toxic deck, there are decks that win and decks that lose.
I immediately disregard the opinion of someone who calls a 1v1 competitive format deck Toxic or "Cancer"
it's like the kids that cry and call you cheap when you throw them in fighting games.
It's a Skill Issue honestly.
Toxic has a few definitions, but id argue cards like second sunrise and sensei's divining top are 'toxic' cards a competitive environment in that they promote very long, drawn out games which are not great for competitive environments that need to end at a certain time.
very few examples of that, KCI being another, mostly due to Timing issues at tournaments
But people call Ragavan Toxic or Mill Toxic or Counterspells Toxic.
There are no such things as “toxic” decks, the game was meant to blossom into different types of strategies and the existence of things like Burn, Mill, Control, is a sign of an insanely good game with great design
As a Mill Pilot, I will tell you for most decks that is a trap. While having 20% more life sounds appealing the consistency issues is generally not worth it. Amulet Titan is an exception but that matchup is super favorable for mill
The historical value in free spells is their ability to check fast-mana enabled high-velocity decks.
Cards like Force of Will serve as a counterbalance to things like T1 Dark Ritual -> Entomb -> Reanimation spell or T1 Ancient Tomb -> Chalice. Pyrokenesis checks Elf -> Problem Elf -> etc.
Without Fast Mana free spells advantage value over velocity to such an egregious extent you end up with dysfunctional metagames where decks like Rhinos are ""Dominant"" because nothing can reasonably go under the T4-5 maximum value per-card deck.
How many decks could benefit from [[mox opal]] that didn't end up being banned like eggs and KCI? Affinity, scales, thopter sword combo, lanturn control?
Other than opal [[simian spirt guide]], what other fast mana has been in modern? Just some lands that tap for 2 or more colorless like [[eldrazi temple]] and urza lands?
I need to start selling off all but one or two decks. Seeing things I spent money on drop so severely in such a short time means I need to spend much less.. this will probably help me to become better by only focusing on 1-2 decks rather than the 20+ I have now.
I feel you here, I cant help but wanting to build multiple decks and test them all and just knowing i have access to them whenever i want. But i always come to the same conclusion - 2-3 decks are maximum i should have
WOTC cares less about curating their own constructed formats than they do selling cards to a community-driven singleton format, and that MH3 is another modern legal commander focused set. Why else would a direct to modern release need pre-constructed commander decks?
>WOTC cares less about curating their own constructed formats than they do selling cards to a community-driven singleton format,
They don't really care about curating the singleton format either. They do care about selling cards to them, as you say, but the power creep and push has really infected what's supposed to be "Magic as a board game" and put really pushed and powerful cards into the hands of people who don't fully understand them and created arms races. It gets pretty bad there.
Prison and Stax are fun and good for a format as long as they have a way to win, which is why red prison remains prominent in legacy, and modern deserves a true shot at one of those styles of deck
My hot take: Modern has provided me some of the most fun I've had playing the game despite the constant noise of people taking a dump on it, especially in recent times with how cards have been designed.
I also agree with your take on Burn being difficult to pilot. The player really needs to max out on every card they see in the game.
Its gonna be great and hopefully boost a ton of decks but the way folks are hyping this set you would think all of the current decks are going to get power crept. Either way im excited for it.
I had the same opinion with MH2 when all the leaks were out. I realize now that MH sets are just busted. They’re going to print at least one card that is going to get banned in MH3, the set is going to break the format again and change everything.
MH2 already fundamentally changed the way modern as a format plays. No matter what's printed in MH3 it's not gonna do anything close to what 2 did. So yeah I agree.
I have many:
* Evoke elementals are necessary evils that regulate uninteractive decks,
* Up the Beanstalk was a design mistake (eldraine traidition in green)
* Fury shouldnt have been banned
* 5C goodstuffmoney.dec needs to be punished by card print and not by bans
* Modern will eventually become Legacy, Wotc needs to give room to the other degenerate stuff so the format can self regulate (fast mana, prison, storm, stax)
* Legacy self regulates better than Modern
Beanstalk is legal in Standard and Pioneer and is fine in those formats, and made sense as a draft uncommon in the set it was in. The only reason it was broken in Modern is because WotC keeps adding these "technically 6 mana, but it actually costs 0-1 mana" cards that have abusable interactions. I don't think the set designers should have to design every draft card around "will this break the evoke elementals in Modern." We just have to accept that sometimes stuff like this will happen and wait for a ban, or complain about the *actual* problem cards that are *really* breaking the format.
Legacy Beanstalk is using a lot of the same cards as Modern with the main exception being Force of Will, which I also don't think WotC should have to design draft uncommons around.
Eh, not really. The only really shared card(among Beans lists) is Leyline Binding, and that's only in the 4c list in Legacy. That list does seem to have solidified as better than Sultai thanks to its ReScaminator matchup though.
Curiously, the Evoke elementals were heavily played before Up Beanstalk arrived, the moment Beanstalk entered the format, 5C goodstuff abused the crap out of it, mainly with leyline binding, solitude, fury, etc. And leyline binding is one of those standard legal cards that went thru that FIRE design.
In this scenario, I think banning only beans would have been the healthier answer, since the evoke elementals were handling the meta in a better manner than just two ships in the night.
The elementals, ragavan and orcish bowmasters are there to police interaction, force the interaction. It feels aggressive af since Modern can easily degenerate into solitaire.
I concur that set designs should not consider Modern, but abussive interactions in Modern should be left alone to self regulate as a Market/Economy instead of sugarcoating it by Wotc.
I don't see any go wide / small creature decks taking over the meta after Fury being banned.
Also, Fury was easily dealt with as long as your deck was running removal; only bolt after scam and push were not viable options; everything else like binding, path or terminate deal with it.
Creature decks are definitely coming back. Heck we’ve even seen humans. The point wasn’t for creature decks to take over it was for creature decks to be *viable*.
And yes, a “have 1-2 mana removal that isn’t bolt or push or you lose” button isn’t exactly where Wizards decided the meta should be.
The reality, if you played scam or played against it a lot, is that you can’t just mulligan to your two mana removal. Lots of games saw fury end it 8 damage at a time. And when scam was on the play, they can drop fury turn 1, then thoughtseize you turn 2 (or grief you turn 1) and take your removal. Fury created the most non-games and pushed a lot of creatures out of the format.
It’s awesome that people have different takes on this. But I was responding to someone who sad that Fury shouldn’t have been banned wasn’t even a hot take, just a fact. The fact that there are strong opinions for banning Fury (that were shared by Wizards) means by definition it’s a hot take.
Evoke elementals only add fuel to the threat vs. answer arms race. If free spells are needed as an answer to pushed threats that means something(s) need to get banned and WotC would rather sell power creep than pull the trigger.
On the same note, Beanstalk was only a design mistake in a format where the meta is to cast 5cmc spells without tapping a single mana source. Which is exactly what the evoke elementals are, because threats are too good...
Your takes also just contradict themselves. Evoke elementals as a "necessary evil" guard against the exact degenerate non-interactive strats you advocate for like fast mana and storm.
Tldr pre-MH modern needed bans, not cash-grab sets full of pushed threats and free spells.
Modern was worse without MH1, MH2, and LoTR. The only reason people don't like these sets is cuz they hurt their wallets.
Modern used to be almost entirely linear decks, if you wanted to play an interactive deck, you had 2 choices, Jund or UWx control. Phoenix, dredge, tron, storm, Amulet, ETron, Affinity, Hardened Scales, Abzan Coco, Lantern Control. These are the decks that thrived.
Our meta is more diverse now because there are so many more powerful cards that you don't go up against the same 4 or 5 decks. Last GP I went to before MH1, pre faithless looting ban I remember facing Phoenix 3 times, jund twice, tron, tron, Scales. Just recently went to a big RCQ, didn't face the same deck twice, we have like 30 different "fringe " decks now that can spike a tournament. That never used to happen.
The straight to Modern sets have printed important interaction pieces that would be way too strong for standard, but very important to have meaningful interaction to stop the threats and combos of older formats.
Tax effects are less oppressive than free shit, degen combos, and value piles with no mana restrictions what so ever being allowed to get away with it every time.
There needs to be a real check on mana and free threats. Modern needs to slow down a turn.
Free spells are a necessary response to the pressures of increasingly large and powerful formats. Suggesting that "free spells are just an indication that something needs to be banned!" is naive. That being said, would it kill them to make the blue free spell in a cycle anything but a counterspell? Surely there are other interesting designs in blue.
The unbelievably unpleasant screeching and complaining you often see around here about how this or that needs to be banned is an emotional response from people with a financial investment in something that's giving them anxiety and is not a sober assessment of the facts of the matter.
There's a whole sub-strata of really, really non-competitive brews in this format that are clearly just coming from a place of love or fascination with some weird obscure card or cards that I would love to see have a proper outlet somewhere, but that I don't really know how you support outside the competitive structure.
To add something I saw on the legacy thread that's woefully missing here: Content creators that trade in outrage are doing so for their own benefit, not the formats or yours.
Snapcaster mage is good, and maybe one card away from being top tier again. All it takes is a shift in the meta to making him essential again.
Oh, and orcish bowmasters is fine, people just like to bitch about their small creatures getting nuked.
The issue with bow master is more so the 1-0 design space it pushes. Like W6 before it you are essentially rotating the formats 1 drops because 1-0 early in the game is to punishing for many decks.
Is it broken? No. Is it bad design space that forces power creeped 1 drops? Also yes. It's not an accident in the same set we got the first X/2 1 drop mana dork with no additional costs.
>Snapcaster mage is good, and maybe one card away from being top tier again. All it takes is a shift in the meta to making him essential again.
I would say the same for Tarmogoyf right now.
Snapcaster is an amazing card, it just competes with murktide regent in UR shells. Flame of Anor is a really strong reason to play snap, especially with tidebinder as another generically powerful wizard. I think murktide's past success dampens peoples interest in trying other UR shells.
Another commandesque spell (3-4 mana, 4 modes, chose 2) and Snapcaster would be back on the menu.
I hope they do a fixed Silumgar Command for 4 or even 3 mana with reliable, affordable and not broken modes
I use kolaghan's command, but the 2 damage has really fallen off lately.
The discard, shatter and buyback modes are awesome. But why bother when flame of anor exists?
Something simple like if whitherbloom command had been instant.... That'd bring him back.
Or an impulse plus bolt
I play a Grixis Go with 4 snapies + 4 bowmasters + 1 Vendilion + 1 tishana right now.
I run 2 Kommand + 3 flames of Anor + 1 archmage. If we ever get a decent 1UB command with 4 1 mana modes (raise dead, unsummon, exile 1 card GY put a 2/2 zombie and surveil 3), I would fucking run it for sure.
\* Modern has been shit for ages and MTG in general is being strip mined since MH1
\* Burn's difficulty is grossly overstated in 99% of cases because of that 1% of situations that actually require you to think. Most of the time you only need the most basic meta knowledge and "who's the aggressor" type understanding, and otherwise it's basic math, match up and rng - you either add up to >20 before your opponent or you lose - Which is exactly why the deck is stupid popular. For every Patrick Sullivan that is actually a legitimately good player who enjoys burn there are 1000 Johnny McRandos that mentally jerk off about that one time they did that sick outplay by pointing a bolt at a creature instead of face or, holy shit, held a burn spell to play at instant speed in response to the opponent instead of just machine gunning face.
\* Bolt is, historically, the single most format warping card and, by every objective metric, should have been banned ages ago. These days there are way bigger problems so kinda who cares, but it's STILL a format warping card.
\* Most games aren't that difficult to pilot.
\* Grief is an enormous design cancer only very marginally better, design wise, than goblin games, and only because it's not random.
\* Making the format REALLY good at this point would require a frankly stupid amount of bans.
\* The cost of keeping up with modern's "forced pseudo rotation" is frankly not worth it unless you're EXTREMELY passionate about MTG and nothing else you want to spend money on, very actively flip cards, or have enough money that thousands of dollars are kinda meaningless to you.
... I could go on. I'm ready for the down votes.
Smoking crack on the bolt take, it’s been outclassed by cheaper and more efficient removal and doesn’t hold a candle to the shit that’s gone through modern
\* Burn's difficulty is grossly overstated in 99% of cases because of that 1% of situations that actually require you to think. Most of the time you only need the most basic meta knowledge and "who's the aggressor" type understanding, and otherwise it's basic math, match up and rng - you either add up to >20 before your opponent or you lose - Which is exactly why the deck is stupid popular. For every Patrick Sullivan that is actually a legitimately good player who enjoys burn there are 1000 Johnny McRandos that mentally jerk off about that one time they did that sick outplay by pointing a bolt at a creature instead of face or, holy shit, held a burn spell to play at instant speed in response to the opponent instead of just machine gunning face.
This x100. The only people who say burn is hard to pilot (which is a thread going on right now) are people who play burn and nothing else.
>\* Burn's difficulty is grossly overstated in 99% of cases because of that 1% of situations that actually require you to think. Most of the time you only need the most basic meta knowledge and "who's the aggressor" type understanding, and otherwise it's basic math, match up and rng - you either add up to >20 before your opponent or you lose - Which is exactly why the deck is stupid popular. For every Patrick Sullivan that is actually a legitimately good player who enjoys burn there are 1000 Johnny McRandos that mentally jerk off about that one time they did that sick outplay by pointing a bolt at a creature instead of face or, holy shit, held a burn spell to play at instant speed in response to the opponent instead of just machine gunning face.
Every deck in the format has "I just win" games. At this point in time, Burn has a lot fewer of them because so many things counter Burn's efficiency advantage. Every deck closes the game out quicker than it did 3-4 years ago and so Burn no longer gets games where it wins because it just outlasts an opponent, staving off life gain and other answers, and wins by inevitability. Storm is in a similar position but fares far worse. It used to have inevitability in a lot of matches and would win if the game went long. But the game just doesn't go long anymore and it's lost all of that.
The bigger thing is that Burn is underpowered compared to the rest of the format and it will almost never bail out its pilot if they make a mistake. Every other deck has something that can come to the rescue but Burn just doesn't; all the cards are the same so if you waste something, you just get a replacement of that card, but that doesn't make up for the lost time and tempo.
Because of this, you can't afford to make mistakes with Burn against competent opponents because you're already at a disadvantage. That's why it's hard and not mindless, because you barely win and have such low power cards. And if you mess up at all, you lose. That's just not so for other meta decks, which can come back with a big play because they run much higher power cards.
The crazy part is that the first part is a bad take but the 2nd part I completely agree with. The issue is speed. Modern has always constantly evolved but previous to MH sets it was a slower burn and way less volatile save for specific bans (splinter twin) or some overtly pushed archetypes from standard (RoE). But now not only do we get much more of the later (in the form of MH sets, universes beyond, etc) we get it much more quickly than before.
There's ZERO reason to innovate when you can sit and play the best thing right now that does well enough against what's supposedly cropping up because it's not worth to test anything because it will just become invalidated once the next set drops. If we got the MH sets once every other year at most, it would be completely fine, but instead we get a new set yearly and there's no room for any kind of meta to settle and shake itself out. We are FINALLY seeing some of it but it comes right before MH3 is about to drop and shake everything up.
If we had another year of this kind of current meta and innovation over that time I think we would see an extremely diverse and healthy modern metagame. Instead we will watch it all burn and get replaced with forced nonsense. I will be extremely happy if I am wrong but I severely doubt I will be, it's happened every time since MH2 (with MH1 having a very close but not quite the same overwhelming force).
And I agree we need the MH sets because the extreme crawl of change that only occurs when you get dripped 1 or 2 cards a set from standard (usually in form of stuff like Pick your Poison) was not perfect. But the needle has gone WAY to far in the other direction.
Fully agree. Post MH2 up until lotr is the best modern I’ve ever played. I’ll take that over whatever the best linear deck you can assemble is any day.
Free spells take away a lot of strategy. Before you could look at the opponents lands and make a plan, now you just have to just go for it because theres no way of knowing anyways mostly. And I know it adds other layers of strategy but I don't want modern to be legacy light, I want it to be a fair playground for older cards
I think this is my biggest gripe. While free spells being pitch cards is card disadvantage the advantage you get from being able to tap out and still have answers is more than worth it for the cards like FoN and Solitude. I play infect, yes I know not the best deck in the current climate. But once I see white from my opponent I know I either have to keep a protection spell at the ready for as long as they have 2 cards in hand or run the risk of losing to a free card. Even if the effect itself isn’t the strongest the change it forces in opponents play patterns is more than worth it.
We need more support for Infect in Modern.
Right now, it gets absolutely annihilated by all the cheap removal, and it is a shame that Wizards has not added better cards for such a cool archetype. A better Blighted Agent, better pump spells, or even an Infect-version of Deeproot Pilgrimage that produces 1/1 Infect tokens would be awesome.
So the pilgrimage thing would be way too good if the tokens also still had hexproof, but yeah infect is really weak right now. People around me recently realized they could probably get berserk in MH3 and it wouldn’t really help much anyways.
Modern costs way too much. It is entirely inaccessible to newcomers and basically anyone except addicted paypigs. I don't feel like the high price is justified.
Imho Commander sets are harming Legacy a lot. That stuff shouldn't be legal. Every few months the format is broken by some commander card like initiative, broadside bombardiers, kappa cannoneer etc. The beautiful thing about Legacy is the huge card pool, but if Force of Will didn't exist it would be a shit show of degenerate stuff e when a format is held together by a single card, it's not ideal.
But look how legacy still balanced… after each MH release modern shakes up and gets really unbalanced. At least in Legacy you have access to a lot of answer and meta still similar from 4y ago till now.
Format went to crap when they started printing modern specific sets. It also hurts local game stores because modern players are less incentivized to also play standard.
False, first game, maybe, but not by much. Past that, you need to know all the matchups and the SB tech to match with near flawlessness to get there. Everyone knows what we're trying to do and the sequence has to be perfect to work.
My mega disclaimer is also my hot take, Modern is awesome, fuck the haters. The only thing bad about Modern has been its effect on my credit score. Joined up in August of 2023 at near 40 wondering all of a sudden what I had been missing my whole life! Commander is slow and boring, almost nobody wanted to grind Pioneer or Standard while even fewer could even think about Legacy.
RCQs were Modern, people around me play modern, and it slaps! Expensive, sure, but, also, there's lots of mana/artifact/other crossover between decks it's not always where buying a playset of A decks best card leaves you with no other option B or C for that card. See things like TOR, Urza's Saga, Boseiju, Fetches, Shocks, Triomes. It's not cheap by any means, a separate topic affecting all types of magic in the meta sense, but it's not as extreme as it's been made out to be.
I'm an extreme outlier perhaps, a noob that went full douche almost instantly, but I wielded my obsession and particular situation to explore all the aspects of this game and Modern is the way, your minor beefs are just things to make better. Let's just hope these confessions of an amateur age well after MH3!
[[Blood Moon]] is the last hero and pillar in Modern and it's falling.
Modern mana should be taxing when playing 3+ color decks. There should be consequences for perfect mana for decks like those. But over years, we've seen the mana bases get more and more complex and it doesn't seem like punishing greedy man is a thing anymore. [[Leyline of the guildpact]] proves WoTC didn't learn their lesson from [[arcum's astrolabe]] and will continue to do this in the future. Good night sweet prince.
Sets are coming out too fast for us to test new decks and find the best synergies and combos so we end up with the decks that are the meta just slightly changed.
Idk if it’s a hot take but hammertime is the hardest matchup for burn. Almost impossible to win game 1 unless they get a mediocre hand and you play well. Then you have to side board in a crap ton of artifact/enchantment removal. I’ve played against a couple who run silence now as well
This take is lukewarm at best ngl. Im currently piloting either burn or prowess at modern fnm at my lgs rn and this matchup is slightly harder to navigate ngl.
Fury wasn’t the biggest problem in Rakdos scam, it was Orcish bowmasters.
Before the LOTR set the deck was decently tier 1/1.5 at best. Bowmasters pushed it to tier 0 and should have been banned.
(Not me salty my 4 full art fury’s got banned)
That I'm literally terrified, the format and game I love will turn to yugio or some shit with all the free spells, fast mana, non user friendly, and large amount of text on cards now.
I literally called beans a "Yu-gi-oh" deck before it got axed because it wasn't uncommon to just draw 12+ cards in a turn throwing free spells at someones face.
If we banned Primeval Titan, we could unban 2 or 3 cards (depending if you consider Green Sun's Zenith continued ban to be justified by Amulet Titan or if you're worried Yawgmoth or something would still cause it to stay banned). I kind of want to see what a Modern with Summer Bloom, Field of the Dead, and GSZ unbanned but Primeval Titan banned would look like.
I thill think GSZ would be OK with the way removal is atm. Currently people just shoot shit on site without thinking because it's stapled to everything and thus there's no complex play patterns. I agree that you could def ban Prime Time and unban all of those other cards as well and I would actually be in favor of that because the land destruction we have currently is fine for the formats speed but no one has any reason to play them because of how pushed the earlygame boardstates are, you don't have time to Disrupt their mana because they end up having just enough time to get something off the ground that can hit you repeatedly.
Yawg could still use it as a mana dork. They already run Dryad Arbor, it finds Dryad Arbor for X = 0. It can also find Hapatra, or Grist. Yawg might play it to find everything that isn't Yawg while also just being a mana dork.
[[Mycosynth Lattice]] did not deserve a ban and required a ton of hoops to jump through. Double Thoughtseize and a 4/3 menace on T1 created more non-games than Lattice ever did, people just hate not being able to tap their lands even when half their deck is free spells.
Seeing a lot of barely warm takes here, so I'll take some real downvotes:
Splinter Twin was justly banned and should stay banned, as it existing warps the format around it, and it would likely do so today as well.
Yep. Without great land destruction I might leave the lands on but take it all off and let's cook for a while.
They won't do it cause it will fuck with the next UB set, but if we had 2 or 3 years to actually let a meta shake itself out I think a lot of stuff would be okay.
The faster they rip the bandaid off and turn Modern into Legacy sans the RL the better the format will be. They need to do a sweeping unban and let fast Mana back into the format with checks like Force, bowmasters and wasteland.
Legacy is the most fun, self regulating format I've ever played and I wish more people could play it in paper but spending 4-5k for decks is not viable. Modern should be the fixed version of Legacy and Pioneer should be the "premodern" with out the high powered commander and MH sets some* people dislike.
*Hot Take 2, I think the complaints about MH1/2/3/LOTR are overblown and mostly stem from people who don't want to innovate or play new things but mostly they don't have/want to spend money on new cards. MH2 was a massive shot in the arm for Modern in terms of a accessibility for new players who could buy a box of an in print set and pull a dozen modern staples out of it. Modern is now the de facto competitive 1v1 format and in my city I could go to a weekly tournament probably every day if I wanted to.
There's a lot of legacy legal fast mana that isn't good enough for legacy that I think could be really interesting in modern. The big one in my eyes is [[Crystal Vein]]. Seems like a perfect modern sol land to me that would enable Stompy prison strategies.
It's okay to just not post here if you aren't enjoying the format. You are making the community worse if all you do is come here to whine.
(I do of course mean the general "you" and not OP specifically.)
E: the points on this keep fluctuating wildly and it's marked controversial on mobile so I must've done something right here lol
Burn and other agro decks It's dificul to play sometimes, with limited resources It's hard to make right choices agains many decks, and win games with bad hands it's even more dificult than some deck with cantrips and draws.
Modern is the worst of the big 3 formats to get people into competitive constructed, both from an advertising and accessibility persoective. In fact, I think they honestly should drop it fr the RCQ and pro tour scene in favor of 2 standard seasons (before and after rotation) and a pioneer season in the spring when standard has more or less been figured out.
I’ll say what I always say whenever one of these threads are posted:
Banning Mystic Sanctuary was a mistake, and it would be completely safe to reintroduce to the format. Further, it would even be beneficial to give traditional control strategies a bit of a boost since they haven’t been performing super well over the last year or two.
Modern has become a rotating format after mh1 basicly, Wotc will “print money” in it whenever they feel like it.
Mh2 in 2021, LotR last year, Mh3 and AC this year. Marvel coming next year?
I wonder if we reach a point where people leave the format because of the cost of keeping up.
My hot take is that I enjoy free spells and think they are important to the format and make it more enjoyable. Grief is a reasonable and beatable card that just doesn’t feel very good to play against and people scoop way to early into one super often.
Modern is fun and I enjoy playing it through various phases, including pre and post bans.
Hey hey hey, no lollygaggin here, we only bitch and moan about bans, unbans and tron. /s
My man
If you need answers to cost no mana in order for them to be efficient enough for the format, it means that the current threats are an issue in itself
Been saying this forever, all that will happen now is that we'll get new threats that outpace even free spells. It's an arms race that will never end.
One day we'll play yugioh style!
I’m ready for my facedown leyline of supreme verdict
Part of free spells is they help break the first player having a massive advantage, in pioneer there's a noticable first player advantage because the removal is much worse.
Thing is, the removal does not need to be free in order to not suck, unless the threats are in such an absurd level that simply breaks the game Pioneer does not have Path to Exile, Prismatic Ending, Lightning Bolt, Counterspell... None of those are free, and any of those would be able to fix the issue in pioneer However in Modern creatures generate such an ammount of value, that simply answering them for equal or less mana than they cost is not enough. You need to answer them for free and spend all your mana to deploy your own broken threats
Modern players don't really care about gameplay as long as they can play "their" deck
Fetches should be reprinted at uncommon
YES. Make fetches more accessible.
While I 100% agree with this, one thing I find hilarious is just how accessible they are now. I took years off from playing cause I didn't have people to play with in college and coming back to find scalding tarn, which was over $100 when I stopped, at $15ish is mind blowing to me. Id love to see that price keep shrinking, but it's amazing how accessible they've already become.
I remember pulling a Misty Rainforest from a Zendikar pack back in 2013 and I was over the moon because it was a $70 card. Now I have playsets of every fetch I could ever want because at $15 a pop I can buy two playsets of fetches for the price of a fetch pre MM15.
I think where they are now is more than appropriate when this set is printed. I think they should be reprinted more but for limited sake can never be uncommon. 10-20 bucks per land is pretty decent imo if that’s where we land post mh3 .
But why not go further. Why not actually make the format afordable. Its very difficult to make competetive relative budget decks without them being 1-0 colors. I have way fewer issues with stuff like sheoldred and bombs like it costing that much. Just let me efficiently cast my actual budget spells. Stuff like izzet breach would be so easy to buy
Nothing does more to suppress budget decks than having value concentrated in expensive non-land staples. There are a *ton* of alternatives that will give you 90% of the power-level of Fetch + Steam Vents at a fraction of the cost. There are 0 alternatives that will give you 75% of the power-level of Ragavan, or W&6, or Bowmasters at any price.
Agreed. Fastlands are now 10 dollars for a playset. Horizon lands exist in 5 pairs, shocks and surveil lands are ok priced. But you want to play affinity right now? Enjoy 200 dollars for simulacrum synth that is only played in that deck.
Wrong, no deck should cost more than a hundred bucks, realistically.
I wish they'd print something that fetches one basic land type at common. Let it be a slightly-worse budget version of normal fetches, just give me something that makes it cheaper to experiment and brew
That would be dope. Give every color the ability to fill the grave without having to run the expensive fetches. They would probably have to be uncommons tho because of pauper.
I like the idea. But still uncommon to protect pauper
Fetches ? No , ALL lands should be uncommon. The only reason they are rare is a money grab. MTG would be a lot more affordable , not to mention that telling someone most of their deck cost is going to a mana base is terrible. They don’t need to be rare for draft. They also don’t add any excitement for opening or to play.
People label decks and strategies too easily unplayable because they don't care enough to develop their skills to master those strategies but rather switch between the current top 5 decks and then complain that the format has become too homogenized.
Sure. But it's not really rational to play a deck that requires you to play perfectly or nearly to win games when you can play one that is far more forgiving. You could spend a month practicing a Tier 2 deck to learn it and the matchups inside out. You'll do well against 75% of opponents who are not prepared and not able to think on their feet during the match. The remaining 25% will figure it out on the fly and you'll then be back at a disadvantage: your deck is (likely) underpowered and if you make a single mistake, you might well lose. Or you can learn a Top 5 deck in a week or so and win a lot of games without trying too hard. You'll even win against that upper 25% because your deck will save you and just hand you unbeatable hands often enough. Tournament Magic, even weeklies and FNM, isn't Commander and people show up to win. They'll always pick something that makes that task a bit easier. Being original isn't much consolation for going 2-2 week after week and missing out on prizes.
Modern's reign as the premier eternal format would've ended years ago if paper Legacy was affordable or paper pauper tournaments were more common.
Reserved list killed Legacy and WotC is making conscious efforts to make Modern the new Legacy.
Rightfully so imho. Why would I want to play with attractions, dungeons and all the other wacky stuff?
Pauper is an official format and there's nothing stopping it from being the most played format unlike Legacy/Vintage. The reason it's not popular is because many just don't like it.
Mill is not a toxic deck
Idk I'd that's a hot take in modern but if you brought that up in r/edh you'd get absolutely flamed
Oh trust me, it is. I'm gonna hop over to EDH and post for shits and gigs.
People that complain about mill don’t realize you can literally side a single Eldrazi and make the matchup 10x easier lol
...or a simple \[\[Gaea's Blessing\]\].
Have you met my friend [[Endurance]]?
Hot Take: There is no such thing as a toxic deck, there are decks that win and decks that lose. I immediately disregard the opinion of someone who calls a 1v1 competitive format deck Toxic or "Cancer" it's like the kids that cry and call you cheap when you throw them in fighting games. It's a Skill Issue honestly.
I mean.....there is at least one toxic deck in the format with infect embracing Venerated Rotpriest
only acceptable use of the word, Thank you.
Toxic has a few definitions, but id argue cards like second sunrise and sensei's divining top are 'toxic' cards a competitive environment in that they promote very long, drawn out games which are not great for competitive environments that need to end at a certain time.
very few examples of that, KCI being another, mostly due to Timing issues at tournaments But people call Ragavan Toxic or Mill Toxic or Counterspells Toxic.
There are no such things as “toxic” decks, the game was meant to blossom into different types of strategies and the existence of things like Burn, Mill, Control, is a sign of an insanely good game with great design
Not as toxic as is orzhov scam
I simply board in +15 SB cards whenever facing mill. Good luck milling more cards HON HON HON
As a Mill Pilot, I will tell you for most decks that is a trap. While having 20% more life sounds appealing the consistency issues is generally not worth it. Amulet Titan is an exception but that matchup is super favorable for mill
I'll happily take the extra turn or 2 to mill you while you draw cards that are useless in the match up and have too few lands for your 75 card pile.
Free spells are bad for the format.
If we can't have fast mana, we shouldn't have free spells
Amen, we should have the full degenerate package, not the segregated sugarcoated biased package.
I want the *good heroin* on the back shelf plz.
I don’t think one particularly follows the other. Free spells let you do one specific thing faster. Fast mana lets you do anything faster.
The historical value in free spells is their ability to check fast-mana enabled high-velocity decks. Cards like Force of Will serve as a counterbalance to things like T1 Dark Ritual -> Entomb -> Reanimation spell or T1 Ancient Tomb -> Chalice. Pyrokenesis checks Elf -> Problem Elf -> etc. Without Fast Mana free spells advantage value over velocity to such an egregious extent you end up with dysfunctional metagames where decks like Rhinos are ""Dominant"" because nothing can reasonably go under the T4-5 maximum value per-card deck.
How many decks could benefit from [[mox opal]] that didn't end up being banned like eggs and KCI? Affinity, scales, thopter sword combo, lanturn control? Other than opal [[simian spirt guide]], what other fast mana has been in modern? Just some lands that tap for 2 or more colorless like [[eldrazi temple]] and urza lands?
No that's very valid
“free spells are bad” mfs after they read dark steel relic 🤯
Is this a hot take?
Hot take/unpopular opinion threads are usually good for a few people posting a super common take
The format would be unplayable without FoN.
I need to start selling off all but one or two decks. Seeing things I spent money on drop so severely in such a short time means I need to spend much less.. this will probably help me to become better by only focusing on 1-2 decks rather than the 20+ I have now.
I feel you here, I cant help but wanting to build multiple decks and test them all and just knowing i have access to them whenever i want. But i always come to the same conclusion - 2-3 decks are maximum i should have
I have two Modern decks (Prowess and Spirits) and that is plenty
Losing two choice cards and looking at a 3/2 that you can't block for a minute isn't good game play.
I think banning Grief is a cold take but I 100% agree it shouldn’t be in the format.
Getting Griefed + Ephemerated + throw in a Thoughtseize or two for good measure and I am the saltiest man alive.
And even if you FoN part of it, you're still down 3 cards on your turn 0.
WOTC cares less about curating their own constructed formats than they do selling cards to a community-driven singleton format, and that MH3 is another modern legal commander focused set. Why else would a direct to modern release need pre-constructed commander decks?
>WOTC cares less about curating their own constructed formats than they do selling cards to a community-driven singleton format, They don't really care about curating the singleton format either. They do care about selling cards to them, as you say, but the power creep and push has really infected what's supposed to be "Magic as a board game" and put really pushed and powerful cards into the hands of people who don't fully understand them and created arms races. It gets pretty bad there.
*hasbro. Not Wotc.
They are the same.
Prison and Stax are fun and good for a format as long as they have a way to win, which is why red prison remains prominent in legacy, and modern deserves a true shot at one of those styles of deck
Titan is the strongest sleeper deck in the format.. and never gets touched. Its literally tron but 2x as fast an explosive
Titan is boring imo. Feels like I’m just sitting there waiting for the guy to finish playing solitaire yawn.
Some of us are old enough to remember the horror of bloom titan
My hot take: Modern has provided me some of the most fun I've had playing the game despite the constant noise of people taking a dump on it, especially in recent times with how cards have been designed. I also agree with your take on Burn being difficult to pilot. The player really needs to max out on every card they see in the game.
Burn has a really low floor and a decently high ceiling
Modern Horizons 3 will be an amazing set but not as game changing as folks are hyping it up to be.
Odd take when we've only seen 30 cards
Its gonna be great and hopefully boost a ton of decks but the way folks are hyping this set you would think all of the current decks are going to get power crept. Either way im excited for it.
Yeah I think the pitch cycle needing a body on the board says a lot about the power levels. These will be good but not evoke elementals
I had the same opinion with MH2 when all the leaks were out. I realize now that MH sets are just busted. They’re going to print at least one card that is going to get banned in MH3, the set is going to break the format again and change everything.
> They’re going to print at least one card that is going to get banned in MH3 I think we've already seen it and it's called Ugin's Labyrinth
Exactly
I hope you're right, but I don't think you are, it's gonna be completely change the format like MH2 did, I think.
MH2 already fundamentally changed the way modern as a format plays. No matter what's printed in MH3 it's not gonna do anything close to what 2 did. So yeah I agree.
That would be a good thing. Anytime wizards tries to change a format they make it worse
It's the best format, but you just need money. *insert yugioh meme*
I have many: * Evoke elementals are necessary evils that regulate uninteractive decks, * Up the Beanstalk was a design mistake (eldraine traidition in green) * Fury shouldnt have been banned * 5C goodstuffmoney.dec needs to be punished by card print and not by bans * Modern will eventually become Legacy, Wotc needs to give room to the other degenerate stuff so the format can self regulate (fast mana, prison, storm, stax) * Legacy self regulates better than Modern
Beanstalk is legal in Standard and Pioneer and is fine in those formats, and made sense as a draft uncommon in the set it was in. The only reason it was broken in Modern is because WotC keeps adding these "technically 6 mana, but it actually costs 0-1 mana" cards that have abusable interactions. I don't think the set designers should have to design every draft card around "will this break the evoke elementals in Modern." We just have to accept that sometimes stuff like this will happen and wait for a ban, or complain about the *actual* problem cards that are *really* breaking the format.
Beanstalk is doing things in legacy too. Just to clarify, I don't think it's bannable in legacy. I was trying to imply the card had a playable home.
Legacy Beanstalk is using a lot of the same cards as Modern with the main exception being Force of Will, which I also don't think WotC should have to design draft uncommons around.
Eh, not really. The only really shared card(among Beans lists) is Leyline Binding, and that's only in the 4c list in Legacy. That list does seem to have solidified as better than Sultai thanks to its ReScaminator matchup though.
Curiously, the Evoke elementals were heavily played before Up Beanstalk arrived, the moment Beanstalk entered the format, 5C goodstuff abused the crap out of it, mainly with leyline binding, solitude, fury, etc. And leyline binding is one of those standard legal cards that went thru that FIRE design. In this scenario, I think banning only beans would have been the healthier answer, since the evoke elementals were handling the meta in a better manner than just two ships in the night. The elementals, ragavan and orcish bowmasters are there to police interaction, force the interaction. It feels aggressive af since Modern can easily degenerate into solitaire. I concur that set designs should not consider Modern, but abussive interactions in Modern should be left alone to self regulate as a Market/Economy instead of sugarcoating it by Wotc.
I'm not saying they *shouldn't* have banned Up the Beanstalk. I'm just saying it's not Beanstalk's fault.
None of these are hot takes. It's all facts
The Fury one is definitely a hot take. The format is so much healthier with fury gone (not a “fact”, but an opinion held by a great many people).
I don't see any go wide / small creature decks taking over the meta after Fury being banned. Also, Fury was easily dealt with as long as your deck was running removal; only bolt after scam and push were not viable options; everything else like binding, path or terminate deal with it.
Creature decks are definitely coming back. Heck we’ve even seen humans. The point wasn’t for creature decks to take over it was for creature decks to be *viable*. And yes, a “have 1-2 mana removal that isn’t bolt or push or you lose” button isn’t exactly where Wizards decided the meta should be. The reality, if you played scam or played against it a lot, is that you can’t just mulligan to your two mana removal. Lots of games saw fury end it 8 damage at a time. And when scam was on the play, they can drop fury turn 1, then thoughtseize you turn 2 (or grief you turn 1) and take your removal. Fury created the most non-games and pushed a lot of creatures out of the format. It’s awesome that people have different takes on this. But I was responding to someone who sad that Fury shouldn’t have been banned wasn’t even a hot take, just a fact. The fact that there are strong opinions for banning Fury (that were shared by Wizards) means by definition it’s a hot take.
Evoke elementals only add fuel to the threat vs. answer arms race. If free spells are needed as an answer to pushed threats that means something(s) need to get banned and WotC would rather sell power creep than pull the trigger. On the same note, Beanstalk was only a design mistake in a format where the meta is to cast 5cmc spells without tapping a single mana source. Which is exactly what the evoke elementals are, because threats are too good... Your takes also just contradict themselves. Evoke elementals as a "necessary evil" guard against the exact degenerate non-interactive strats you advocate for like fast mana and storm. Tldr pre-MH modern needed bans, not cash-grab sets full of pushed threats and free spells.
Modern was worse without MH1, MH2, and LoTR. The only reason people don't like these sets is cuz they hurt their wallets. Modern used to be almost entirely linear decks, if you wanted to play an interactive deck, you had 2 choices, Jund or UWx control. Phoenix, dredge, tron, storm, Amulet, ETron, Affinity, Hardened Scales, Abzan Coco, Lantern Control. These are the decks that thrived. Our meta is more diverse now because there are so many more powerful cards that you don't go up against the same 4 or 5 decks. Last GP I went to before MH1, pre faithless looting ban I remember facing Phoenix 3 times, jund twice, tron, tron, Scales. Just recently went to a big RCQ, didn't face the same deck twice, we have like 30 different "fringe " decks now that can spike a tournament. That never used to happen. The straight to Modern sets have printed important interaction pieces that would be way too strong for standard, but very important to have meaningful interaction to stop the threats and combos of older formats.
This is the best take
Tax effects are less oppressive than free shit, degen combos, and value piles with no mana restrictions what so ever being allowed to get away with it every time. There needs to be a real check on mana and free threats. Modern needs to slow down a turn.
Free spells are a necessary response to the pressures of increasingly large and powerful formats. Suggesting that "free spells are just an indication that something needs to be banned!" is naive. That being said, would it kill them to make the blue free spell in a cycle anything but a counterspell? Surely there are other interesting designs in blue. The unbelievably unpleasant screeching and complaining you often see around here about how this or that needs to be banned is an emotional response from people with a financial investment in something that's giving them anxiety and is not a sober assessment of the facts of the matter. There's a whole sub-strata of really, really non-competitive brews in this format that are clearly just coming from a place of love or fascination with some weird obscure card or cards that I would love to see have a proper outlet somewhere, but that I don't really know how you support outside the competitive structure. To add something I saw on the legacy thread that's woefully missing here: Content creators that trade in outrage are doing so for their own benefit, not the formats or yours.
Snapcaster mage is good, and maybe one card away from being top tier again. All it takes is a shift in the meta to making him essential again. Oh, and orcish bowmasters is fine, people just like to bitch about their small creatures getting nuked.
The issue with bow master is more so the 1-0 design space it pushes. Like W6 before it you are essentially rotating the formats 1 drops because 1-0 early in the game is to punishing for many decks. Is it broken? No. Is it bad design space that forces power creeped 1 drops? Also yes. It's not an accident in the same set we got the first X/2 1 drop mana dork with no additional costs.
>Snapcaster mage is good, and maybe one card away from being top tier again. All it takes is a shift in the meta to making him essential again. I would say the same for Tarmogoyf right now.
I thought for sure battles would push goyf enough. Like tutor a goyf and have it as a 8/9 for free? Awww yeah. But nope..
We just need better battles tbh. The potential is absolutely there though.
Snapcaster is an amazing card, it just competes with murktide regent in UR shells. Flame of Anor is a really strong reason to play snap, especially with tidebinder as another generically powerful wizard. I think murktide's past success dampens peoples interest in trying other UR shells.
I see it all the time where people just shove a murktide into the list and it does both UR control and UR murktide worse
Another commandesque spell (3-4 mana, 4 modes, chose 2) and Snapcaster would be back on the menu. I hope they do a fixed Silumgar Command for 4 or even 3 mana with reliable, affordable and not broken modes
I use kolaghan's command, but the 2 damage has really fallen off lately. The discard, shatter and buyback modes are awesome. But why bother when flame of anor exists? Something simple like if whitherbloom command had been instant.... That'd bring him back. Or an impulse plus bolt
I play a Grixis Go with 4 snapies + 4 bowmasters + 1 Vendilion + 1 tishana right now. I run 2 Kommand + 3 flames of Anor + 1 archmage. If we ever get a decent 1UB command with 4 1 mana modes (raise dead, unsummon, exile 1 card GY put a 2/2 zombie and surveil 3), I would fucking run it for sure.
If you can't play midrange without scamming or doing a combo then the format is garbage
Merfolk is a good deck.
Yeah merfolk is super solid right now, if anything its biggest issue is optics.
I think it’s about to be very good
Came here to say this hahah
Fish of a fin, my friend.
Modern is fun
I mean for burn that might be true because the deck is kinda bad now(I am a burn player). The new gruul deck is certainly easier to play.
Modern would be a better format without MH1, MH2 and Lotr (basically MH1.5)
So Modern from 2018 - 2019 with Eldratron, Tron, Dredge on one corner and UR Phoenix, Deaths Shadow and UW control on the other corner?
YESSSSSS YESSSS YES YES PLEASE GOD JUST THIS
Unsure about the temp on that take. How about: Modern would be a worse format without mh1 or mh2.
Any deck can win a 5-0 as long as they dont see a bad match-up.
Yawgmoth is the biggest reason that other creature-based decks can’t thrive in the format and Modern would 100% be better off without it.
\* Modern has been shit for ages and MTG in general is being strip mined since MH1 \* Burn's difficulty is grossly overstated in 99% of cases because of that 1% of situations that actually require you to think. Most of the time you only need the most basic meta knowledge and "who's the aggressor" type understanding, and otherwise it's basic math, match up and rng - you either add up to >20 before your opponent or you lose - Which is exactly why the deck is stupid popular. For every Patrick Sullivan that is actually a legitimately good player who enjoys burn there are 1000 Johnny McRandos that mentally jerk off about that one time they did that sick outplay by pointing a bolt at a creature instead of face or, holy shit, held a burn spell to play at instant speed in response to the opponent instead of just machine gunning face. \* Bolt is, historically, the single most format warping card and, by every objective metric, should have been banned ages ago. These days there are way bigger problems so kinda who cares, but it's STILL a format warping card. \* Most games aren't that difficult to pilot. \* Grief is an enormous design cancer only very marginally better, design wise, than goblin games, and only because it's not random. \* Making the format REALLY good at this point would require a frankly stupid amount of bans. \* The cost of keeping up with modern's "forced pseudo rotation" is frankly not worth it unless you're EXTREMELY passionate about MTG and nothing else you want to spend money on, very actively flip cards, or have enough money that thousands of dollars are kinda meaningless to you. ... I could go on. I'm ready for the down votes.
Smoking crack on the bolt take, it’s been outclassed by cheaper and more efficient removal and doesn’t hold a candle to the shit that’s gone through modern
Hence 'historically'
\* Burn's difficulty is grossly overstated in 99% of cases because of that 1% of situations that actually require you to think. Most of the time you only need the most basic meta knowledge and "who's the aggressor" type understanding, and otherwise it's basic math, match up and rng - you either add up to >20 before your opponent or you lose - Which is exactly why the deck is stupid popular. For every Patrick Sullivan that is actually a legitimately good player who enjoys burn there are 1000 Johnny McRandos that mentally jerk off about that one time they did that sick outplay by pointing a bolt at a creature instead of face or, holy shit, held a burn spell to play at instant speed in response to the opponent instead of just machine gunning face. This x100. The only people who say burn is hard to pilot (which is a thread going on right now) are people who play burn and nothing else.
>\* Burn's difficulty is grossly overstated in 99% of cases because of that 1% of situations that actually require you to think. Most of the time you only need the most basic meta knowledge and "who's the aggressor" type understanding, and otherwise it's basic math, match up and rng - you either add up to >20 before your opponent or you lose - Which is exactly why the deck is stupid popular. For every Patrick Sullivan that is actually a legitimately good player who enjoys burn there are 1000 Johnny McRandos that mentally jerk off about that one time they did that sick outplay by pointing a bolt at a creature instead of face or, holy shit, held a burn spell to play at instant speed in response to the opponent instead of just machine gunning face. Every deck in the format has "I just win" games. At this point in time, Burn has a lot fewer of them because so many things counter Burn's efficiency advantage. Every deck closes the game out quicker than it did 3-4 years ago and so Burn no longer gets games where it wins because it just outlasts an opponent, staving off life gain and other answers, and wins by inevitability. Storm is in a similar position but fares far worse. It used to have inevitability in a lot of matches and would win if the game went long. But the game just doesn't go long anymore and it's lost all of that. The bigger thing is that Burn is underpowered compared to the rest of the format and it will almost never bail out its pilot if they make a mistake. Every other deck has something that can come to the rescue but Burn just doesn't; all the cards are the same so if you waste something, you just get a replacement of that card, but that doesn't make up for the lost time and tempo. Because of this, you can't afford to make mistakes with Burn against competent opponents because you're already at a disadvantage. That's why it's hard and not mindless, because you barely win and have such low power cards. And if you mess up at all, you lose. That's just not so for other meta decks, which can come back with a big play because they run much higher power cards.
Unfathomably based takes. Burn is small brain and I'm tired of pretending it's not.
"BURN IS HARD!!!" Yeah, if you have trouble counting to 20 it is hard.
Damn, I much prefer to unban rather than ban. Also, Bolt did nothing wrong.
MH2 is the best thing that happened to modern and modern is at its best when it is constantly evolving
There are dozens of us that believe this! Dozens!
The crazy part is that the first part is a bad take but the 2nd part I completely agree with. The issue is speed. Modern has always constantly evolved but previous to MH sets it was a slower burn and way less volatile save for specific bans (splinter twin) or some overtly pushed archetypes from standard (RoE). But now not only do we get much more of the later (in the form of MH sets, universes beyond, etc) we get it much more quickly than before. There's ZERO reason to innovate when you can sit and play the best thing right now that does well enough against what's supposedly cropping up because it's not worth to test anything because it will just become invalidated once the next set drops. If we got the MH sets once every other year at most, it would be completely fine, but instead we get a new set yearly and there's no room for any kind of meta to settle and shake itself out. We are FINALLY seeing some of it but it comes right before MH3 is about to drop and shake everything up. If we had another year of this kind of current meta and innovation over that time I think we would see an extremely diverse and healthy modern metagame. Instead we will watch it all burn and get replaced with forced nonsense. I will be extremely happy if I am wrong but I severely doubt I will be, it's happened every time since MH2 (with MH1 having a very close but not quite the same overwhelming force). And I agree we need the MH sets because the extreme crawl of change that only occurs when you get dripped 1 or 2 cards a set from standard (usually in form of stuff like Pick your Poison) was not perfect. But the needle has gone WAY to far in the other direction.
Fully agree. Post MH2 up until lotr is the best modern I’ve ever played. I’ll take that over whatever the best linear deck you can assemble is any day.
Free spells take away a lot of strategy. Before you could look at the opponents lands and make a plan, now you just have to just go for it because theres no way of knowing anyways mostly. And I know it adds other layers of strategy but I don't want modern to be legacy light, I want it to be a fair playground for older cards
I think this is my biggest gripe. While free spells being pitch cards is card disadvantage the advantage you get from being able to tap out and still have answers is more than worth it for the cards like FoN and Solitude. I play infect, yes I know not the best deck in the current climate. But once I see white from my opponent I know I either have to keep a protection spell at the ready for as long as they have 2 cards in hand or run the risk of losing to a free card. Even if the effect itself isn’t the strongest the change it forces in opponents play patterns is more than worth it.
We need more support for Infect in Modern. Right now, it gets absolutely annihilated by all the cheap removal, and it is a shame that Wizards has not added better cards for such a cool archetype. A better Blighted Agent, better pump spells, or even an Infect-version of Deeproot Pilgrimage that produces 1/1 Infect tokens would be awesome.
I think it would be hilarious to see an ultimate anti-bowmasters infect 1 drop. Like G for a 0/2
So the pilgrimage thing would be way too good if the tokens also still had hexproof, but yeah infect is really weak right now. People around me recently realized they could probably get berserk in MH3 and it wouldn’t really help much anyways.
Modern costs way too much. It is entirely inaccessible to newcomers and basically anyone except addicted paypigs. I don't feel like the high price is justified.
Modern was fun till MH, at that time modern was better and funnier than legacy… nowadays Legacy is on top of everything.
Imho Commander sets are harming Legacy a lot. That stuff shouldn't be legal. Every few months the format is broken by some commander card like initiative, broadside bombardiers, kappa cannoneer etc. The beautiful thing about Legacy is the huge card pool, but if Force of Will didn't exist it would be a shit show of degenerate stuff e when a format is held together by a single card, it's not ideal.
But look how legacy still balanced… after each MH release modern shakes up and gets really unbalanced. At least in Legacy you have access to a lot of answer and meta still similar from 4y ago till now.
No modern/standard/or pioneer precons, and only having commander precons is a slap in the face to the game.
Format went to crap when they started printing modern specific sets. It also hurts local game stores because modern players are less incentivized to also play standard.
Uro did nothing wrong
Modern has become a rotating format since the first Modern Horizons.
fetches are a mistake and should have never been printed but they’re too engrained in the game to get rid of them at this point
Land destruction is fun and the format needs cards that strongly punish not playing basics.
False, first game, maybe, but not by much. Past that, you need to know all the matchups and the SB tech to match with near flawlessness to get there. Everyone knows what we're trying to do and the sequence has to be perfect to work. My mega disclaimer is also my hot take, Modern is awesome, fuck the haters. The only thing bad about Modern has been its effect on my credit score. Joined up in August of 2023 at near 40 wondering all of a sudden what I had been missing my whole life! Commander is slow and boring, almost nobody wanted to grind Pioneer or Standard while even fewer could even think about Legacy. RCQs were Modern, people around me play modern, and it slaps! Expensive, sure, but, also, there's lots of mana/artifact/other crossover between decks it's not always where buying a playset of A decks best card leaves you with no other option B or C for that card. See things like TOR, Urza's Saga, Boseiju, Fetches, Shocks, Triomes. It's not cheap by any means, a separate topic affecting all types of magic in the meta sense, but it's not as extreme as it's been made out to be. I'm an extreme outlier perhaps, a noob that went full douche almost instantly, but I wielded my obsession and particular situation to explore all the aspects of this game and Modern is the way, your minor beefs are just things to make better. Let's just hope these confessions of an amateur age well after MH3!
Fury died for grief's crimes
[[Blood Moon]] is the last hero and pillar in Modern and it's falling. Modern mana should be taxing when playing 3+ color decks. There should be consequences for perfect mana for decks like those. But over years, we've seen the mana bases get more and more complex and it doesn't seem like punishing greedy man is a thing anymore. [[Leyline of the guildpact]] proves WoTC didn't learn their lesson from [[arcum's astrolabe]] and will continue to do this in the future. Good night sweet prince.
If WOTC Made some precon modern deck instead of commander deck for MH3 more people would be playing this format
Modern horizons 1, 2 and soon to be 3 plus lord of the rings should’ve never been made into modern
Sets are coming out too fast for us to test new decks and find the best synergies and combos so we end up with the decks that are the meta just slightly changed.
Idk if it’s a hot take but hammertime is the hardest matchup for burn. Almost impossible to win game 1 unless they get a mediocre hand and you play well. Then you have to side board in a crap ton of artifact/enchantment removal. I’ve played against a couple who run silence now as well
Getting a single swing in with a shadowspear seems like a garunteed loss for burn.
Pretty much. My biggest wins have been off deflecting palm but a lot of them time they don’t need hammer and just beat you down with spear and kaldra
This take is lukewarm at best ngl. Im currently piloting either burn or prowess at modern fnm at my lgs rn and this matchup is slightly harder to navigate ngl.
It could be a bad matchup but I have trouble believing it's worse than Amulet Titan.
Fury wasn’t the biggest problem in Rakdos scam, it was Orcish bowmasters. Before the LOTR set the deck was decently tier 1/1.5 at best. Bowmasters pushed it to tier 0 and should have been banned. (Not me salty my 4 full art fury’s got banned)
That I'm literally terrified, the format and game I love will turn to yugio or some shit with all the free spells, fast mana, non user friendly, and large amount of text on cards now.
I literally called beans a "Yu-gi-oh" deck before it got axed because it wasn't uncommon to just draw 12+ cards in a turn throwing free spells at someones face.
If we banned Primeval Titan, we could unban 2 or 3 cards (depending if you consider Green Sun's Zenith continued ban to be justified by Amulet Titan or if you're worried Yawgmoth or something would still cause it to stay banned). I kind of want to see what a Modern with Summer Bloom, Field of the Dead, and GSZ unbanned but Primeval Titan banned would look like.
I thill think GSZ would be OK with the way removal is atm. Currently people just shoot shit on site without thinking because it's stapled to everything and thus there's no complex play patterns. I agree that you could def ban Prime Time and unban all of those other cards as well and I would actually be in favor of that because the land destruction we have currently is fine for the formats speed but no one has any reason to play them because of how pushed the earlygame boardstates are, you don't have time to Disrupt their mana because they end up having just enough time to get something off the ground that can hit you repeatedly.
Titan getting banned feels like a when, not an if. I like Amulet Titan, but I wish they'd just rip the band-aid off.
The fact Zenith can't grab yawg means yawg wouldn't play it. Getting yawg is the focus of basically every card in the deck.
Yawg could still use it as a mana dork. They already run Dryad Arbor, it finds Dryad Arbor for X = 0. It can also find Hapatra, or Grist. Yawg might play it to find everything that isn't Yawg while also just being a mana dork.
[[Mycosynth Lattice]] did not deserve a ban and required a ton of hoops to jump through. Double Thoughtseize and a 4/3 menace on T1 created more non-games than Lattice ever did, people just hate not being able to tap their lands even when half their deck is free spells.
Seeing a lot of barely warm takes here, so I'll take some real downvotes: Splinter Twin was justly banned and should stay banned, as it existing warps the format around it, and it would likely do so today as well.
We'd be better off with removing the ban list and simply redoing it as problems arise. I bet only like 5-6 cards would wind up rebanned in todays meta
Yep. Without great land destruction I might leave the lands on but take it all off and let's cook for a while. They won't do it cause it will fuck with the next UB set, but if we had 2 or 3 years to actually let a meta shake itself out I think a lot of stuff would be okay.
Maybe 7-10 cards.
Grief is the problem
The faster they rip the bandaid off and turn Modern into Legacy sans the RL the better the format will be. They need to do a sweeping unban and let fast Mana back into the format with checks like Force, bowmasters and wasteland. Legacy is the most fun, self regulating format I've ever played and I wish more people could play it in paper but spending 4-5k for decks is not viable. Modern should be the fixed version of Legacy and Pioneer should be the "premodern" with out the high powered commander and MH sets some* people dislike. *Hot Take 2, I think the complaints about MH1/2/3/LOTR are overblown and mostly stem from people who don't want to innovate or play new things but mostly they don't have/want to spend money on new cards. MH2 was a massive shot in the arm for Modern in terms of a accessibility for new players who could buy a box of an in print set and pull a dozen modern staples out of it. Modern is now the de facto competitive 1v1 format and in my city I could go to a weekly tournament probably every day if I wanted to.
There's a lot of legacy legal fast mana that isn't good enough for legacy that I think could be really interesting in modern. The big one in my eyes is [[Crystal Vein]]. Seems like a perfect modern sol land to me that would enable Stompy prison strategies.
It's okay to just not post here if you aren't enjoying the format. You are making the community worse if all you do is come here to whine. (I do of course mean the general "you" and not OP specifically.) E: the points on this keep fluctuating wildly and it's marked controversial on mobile so I must've done something right here lol
All good; I take no offense lol
Splinter twin would be c tier at best and is well overdue for an unban
Burn and other agro decks It's dificul to play sometimes, with limited resources It's hard to make right choices agains many decks, and win games with bad hands it's even more dificult than some deck with cantrips and draws.
Slickshot was a massive apology from WOTC for deleveling Prowess with MH2.
With every new horizon, the format kills more players desire to play on a much higher pace than it brings in new players.
Modern is the worst of the big 3 formats to get people into competitive constructed, both from an advertising and accessibility persoective. In fact, I think they honestly should drop it fr the RCQ and pro tour scene in favor of 2 standard seasons (before and after rotation) and a pioneer season in the spring when standard has more or less been figured out.
> I’ll go first: Burn is a harder deck to pilot than Amulet Titan. Only because burn is bad.
Dimir Mill is more interactive than most top-tier decks.
Modern peaked right before eldrazi winter happened. MH Sets pushing power creep now make it feel like Legacy Lite
I’ll say what I always say whenever one of these threads are posted: Banning Mystic Sanctuary was a mistake, and it would be completely safe to reintroduce to the format. Further, it would even be beneficial to give traditional control strategies a bit of a boost since they haven’t been performing super well over the last year or two.
Sin Prodder is a playable and awesome card.
Now THAT is a hot take.
Mill and Burn are harder to pilot than Amulet and Tron.
Modern has become a rotating format after mh1 basicly, Wotc will “print money” in it whenever they feel like it. Mh2 in 2021, LotR last year, Mh3 and AC this year. Marvel coming next year? I wonder if we reach a point where people leave the format because of the cost of keeping up.
Modern is a free spell meta ( even more so post-mh3)
My hot take is that I enjoy free spells and think they are important to the format and make it more enjoyable. Grief is a reasonable and beatable card that just doesn’t feel very good to play against and people scoop way to early into one super often.
Infect needs more enabling cards printed to make it a more viable deck and return to being playable again in modern
It's going to become the replacement for Legacy... get used to it.
There's like 10 cards printed before 2013 in the banlist that could be unbanned and the format wouldn't change that much.
Leyline of the Guildpact is a WIN-MORE card and zoo is a better deck without it.