GP Richmond and its affect on legacy

[trevaftw]

So with GP Richmond hitting ~4300 players this past weekend do you think that this will hurt or help legacy at all? Some possible points to consider/discuss:

- Moderns largest gp is almost twice that of legacy
- There were only 221 people overlapping from GP Vegas
- does this mean modern is growing or is it about location (east coast) the TO (SCG), or the timing (after a modern pro tour)?
- How many of these people crossed over from legacy?
- How many of these people can we get to move to legacy?
- Are these mega 4k+ gps the future? If so, should they be changed in anyway?
- Does the top 8/16 indicate a healthy format?
- Did the un/bans help or hurt?

[Arsenal]

The fact that Modern is a FNM supported format is huge. All the FNM grinders have semi-frequent Modern tourneys to attend on a large-scale level. And this isn't even including all of the GP Trials that are being run. All of this tourney support (FNM, GP Trials, GPs) from Wizards is incentivizing people to pickup Modern (not that difficult a month ago, moreso now with the dramatic price spikes in the last few weeks) and I believe that many people that have picked it up have liked it.

Personally, I have FNM Modern at my LGS and we get 30+ players regularly. We have a core group of a dozen that also play Legacy competitively, but there's almost no support for that format outside of SCG Opens, so we grind with Modern because that's where the competition is. I like Modern a lot too, so I enjoy playing the format that just so happens to have a bunch of constant competition for it whereas finding regularly run Legacy events (sans SCG Opens) is liking finding the Holy Grail.

[Richard Cheese]

It strikes me as odd that an event with that many players in a format this new would have so few archetypes in the top 16. Were those results pretty indicative of the format as a whole?

[Higgs]

My understanding is, Modern is at a place similar to Extended in the early 2000s. People who've been playing for a few years have access to most of the card pool (the relevant cards at least) and it's a strict upgrade to Standard whilst not being broken like the eternal formats. So people can transition to Modern staright from Standard without significantly changing their card pool or their understading/gaming experience of Magic. Obviously I think old Extended is 10 times more interesting than current Modern but that's out of topic. The bottom line is, the large numberof players are not surprising given these factors and the large population of Magic players in 2014.

Will this have an impact on Legacy? I doubt so. In my area Modern is still pretty much dead and events are having a hard time attracting players. There needs to be two things for Modern to negatively impact Legacy imo:
1) Legacy players start attending Modern events instead, reducing the number of Legacy regulars - Which I doubt could happen at a large enough scale because most Legacy players are dedicated eternal players.
2) Modern events start attracting so many players that they start replacing Legacy events - This is possible in the long term and may already be happening in some places but I think Modern's own internal dynamics (price bubbles, increasing availability issues for newcomers, bans etc.) will prevent this from happening for some time.

[nedleeds]

It strikes me as odd that an event with that many players in a format this new would have so few archetypes in the top 16. Were those results pretty indicative of the format as a whole?

With no weekly regulars (either FNM style, or SCG style) there is almost zero churn in new decks. Even your 'brewers' don't have enough events to brew in, the 'new' decks usually pop off online. More so than most formats people just pick up a 75 for the one time per quarter they are attending a modern event.

[ironclad8690]

My understanding is, Modern is at a place similar to Extended in the early 2000s. People who've been playing for a few years have access to most of the card pool (the relevant cards at least) and it's a strict upgrade to Standard whilst not being broken like the eternal formats. So people can transition to Modern staright from Standard without significantly changing their card pool or their understading/gaming experience of Magic. Obviously I think old Extended is 10 times more interesting than current Modern but that's out of topic. The bottom line is, the large numberof players are not surprising given these factors and the large population of Magic players in 2014.

Will this have an impact on Legacy? I doubt so. In my area Modern is still pretty much dead and events are having a hard time attracting players. There needs to be two things for Modern to negatively impact Legacy imo:
1) Legacy players start attending Modern events instead, reducing the number of Legacy regulars - Which I doubt could happen at a large enough scale because most Legacy players are dedicated eternal players.
2) Modern events start attracting so many players that they start replacing Legacy events - This is possible in the long term and may already be happening in some places but I think Modern's own internal dynamics (price bubbles, increasing availability issues for newcomers, bans etc.) will prevent this from happening for some time.

2000s extendeds were the best, especially in the beginning. Most of my favorite legacy archetypes were invented back then, and it was a pretty balanced format.

[Adryan]

With no weekly regulars (either FNM style, or SCG style) there is almost zero churn in new decks. Even your 'brewers' don't have enough events to brew in, the 'new' decks usually pop off online. More so than most formats people just pick up a 75 for the one time per quarter they are attending a modern event.

That's just wrong because of Magic Online where Modern has 3 Daily Events per Day. Modern is just boring, and when i started playing Magic about 1,5 years ago i immediately started playing Legacy because i enjoy skill intensive games.

[Dragonslayer_90]

So with GP Richmond hitting ~4300 players this past weekend do you think that this will hurt or help legacy at all? Some possible points to consider/discuss:
1. does this mean modern is growing or is it about location (east coast) the TO (SCG), or the timing (after a modern pro tour)?
2. Does the top 8/16 indicate a healthy format?
3. Did the un/bans help or hurt?

1. I think GP Richmond's enormous attendance figure has to do with the fact that it was SCG who organized the tournament, the fact that is happened right after a modern pro tour (meaning the format was still pretty open), and because it's spring break season so I'm sure many college kids who usually wouldn't be able to go were able to because they had spring break following the GP.

2. Judging from the results of this tournament, No. Pod took most of the Top 8 spots. We will see if Pod ends up being the new boogeyman but I wouldn't be surprised if it does since the pod decks have game against most modern decks and have a good balance of power and consistency better than most modern decks, something that any good magic deck has really. It's hard to talk about the health of the format with only two tournaments to glean data from though so we will see what happens.

3. They have both helped and hurt the format. Banning Deathrite Shaman clearly curbed GBx's dominance in the format. BUT all it may have done is allowed Pod to finally come to the fore as the best deck in modern. We will have to see. On another positive note, the unbanning of Wild Nacatl and Bitterblossom is positive because it enables new competitve archetypes, even if they are under performing relative to more established modern archetypes.

[twndomn]

I don't get the popularity of Modern.

I understand the lack of popularity of Legacy, but not Modern.

Look at the Top 8, Twin + Affinity + Pod (TAP), with Pod x 5. Therefore, if your Modern deck cannot sweep Affinity infested board, you won't be fast enough. if your combo cannot be as consistent as Twin or Pod, your combo is not feasible, the format boils down to Combo A v.s. Combo B. If you dislike combo, the only option left is Affinity.

How could there be 4,000+ suckers for something like that?

[Arsenal]

I don't get the popularity of Modern.

I understand the lack of popularity of Legacy, but not Modern.

Look at the Top 8, Twin + Affinity + Pod (TAP), with Pod x 5. Therefore, if your Modern deck cannot sweep Affinity infested board, you won't be fast enough. if your combo cannot be as consistent as Twin or Pod, your combo is not feasible, the format boils down to Combo A v.s. Combo B. If you dislike combo, the only option left is Affinity.

How could there be 4,000+ suckers for something like that?

That is not how Modern operates. For this particular tourney, maybe, but not for the format as a whole. Also, a major meta shift occurred very recently with bannings/unbannings, so the format still needs a bit of time to adjust.

Also, Twin and Pod, while having access to combo kills, is unique in that their combo relies on creatures, doesn't go off until turn 4 at earliest, and that allows a lot of back-and-forth interaction between both players during all phases of the game. Also, many MPod lists are primarily Junk value decks with a backup combo plan, so classifying MPod as strictly combo isn't accurate.

And I'm fine with pure aggro (Affinity) being represented, aggro/combo (MPod), and combo/aggro (KPod and Twin), combo/control (Scapeshift) being represented. I just wish pure control (UWR or Tron) was in there, but UWR took down PT Valencia just a couple weeks ago, so pure control is very much an archetype still.

[twndomn]

That is not how Modern operates. For this particular tourney, maybe, but not for the format as a whole. Also, a major meta shift occurred very recently with bannings/unbannings, so the format still needs a bit of time to adjust.

Also, Twin and Pod, while having access to combo kills, is unique in that their combo relies on creatures, doesn't go off until turn 4 at earliest, and that allows a lot of back-and-forth interaction between both players during all phases of the game. Also, many MPod lists are primarily Junk value decks with a backup combo plan, so classifying MPod as strictly combo isn't accurate.

And I'm fine with pure aggro (Affinity) being represented, aggro/combo (MPod), and combo/aggro (KPod and Twin), combo/control (Scapeshift) being represented. I just wish pure control (UWR or Tron) was in there, but UWR took down PT Valencia just a couple weeks ago, so pure control is very much an archetype still.

That Is representative of a format as a whole. Are you trying to Undermine a 4,000+ players tournament, saying that is Not the format? World Series of Poker is about 6,000 players. Who are you kidding?

I have no problem classifying XYZ Pod as a combo deck. You can nip-pick all you want, that's your entitled opinion, but your excuse of arguing it otherwise is weak.

[Arsenal]

That Is representative of a format as a whole. Are you trying to Undermine a 4,000+ players tournament, saying that is Not the format? World Series of Poker is about 6,000 players. Who are you kidding?

I have no problem classifying XYZ Pod as a combo deck. You can nip-pick all you want, that's your entitled opinion, but your excuse of arguing it otherwise is weak.

ONE tournament and you declare the Top 16 to be the format? Your sample size is ONE. Are you being serious right now?

[testing32]

The biggest impact I see is SCG revisiting their tournament lineup to fit in Modern on Sundays. It makes sense for them and is just a matter of time. More cards being turned over and more players = more dollars. Modern FNMs, GPs, PTs and PTQs will ensure that the format sees a lot more play than legacy.

The biggest deal is that Wizards is committed to reprinting to keep prices down which will grow the modern player base. Legacy has a max which is capped by the number of dual lands. Modern won't have a cap.

I would suggest getting your modern mana base now (not fetches), if you haven't already.

[DragoFireheart]

ONE tournament and you declare the Top 16 to be the format? Your sample size is ONE. Are you being serious right now?

Of course he is. Why, it makes The Source more interesting making outrageous statements.

What, you want him to be reasonable? WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO RUIN FUN YOU COMMIE!?

[testing32]

That Is representative of a format as a whole. Are you trying to Undermine a 4,000+ players tournament, saying that is Not the format? World Series of Poker is about 6,000 players. Who are you kidding?

I have no problem classifying XYZ Pod as a combo deck. You can nip-pick all you want, that's your entitled opinion, but your excuse of arguing it otherwise is weak.

It doesn't matter what the format is right now. Wizards is watching modern like a hawk. They are committed to reprinting/unbanning/banning to keep the format fresh and healthy.

After the format finishes shifting, due to the bannings/unbannings, if it's not good they will fix it. Unlike legacy.

[Tammit67]

Richmond got so many players because : Hype surrounding bannings/unbannings while no other major tournament was publicly played, a Pro tour showcasing the possibilities of the format had just ended, SCG themselves were running/promoting/supporting, and it was East coast. And SCG fully committed to increasing prizes, getting adequate space, guaranteeing playmats/promos, keeping up to date with prereg numbers, and keeping cards in stock.

The format was more wide open than what you saw at the top tables: In my 15 rounds with 1 bye, I played affinity the most at 4 times, 2 melira pod decks, 1 kiki pod, 1 tarmo-twin, 1 RW twin, 1 Bg midrange, 1 BGw midrange, 1 UR storm, 1 URW control, 1 UR twin. Affinity was picked up by a lot of players because it is considered 'easy', was relatively cheap, and extremely powerful. Other decks I saw at the higher tables of day 2 were: Faeries, merfolk, tron, scapeshift, big zoo, little zoo, gifts, burn...

You have to consider that there is a perceived best deck in pod/affinity and that pros are going to gravitate towards decks that give them extremely diverse decisions/answers at a low cost matchup wise (Melira pod) or a very powerful linear deck with several high level ways to gain edges on people that crushes those who stumble or when you have a good draw (Affinity/Twin).

The top 8 was more indicative of what the best people in the room decided how they'd want to attack the questions posed by the Pro tour, not really a good sample of what the diversity of the format is. When most of CFB is on Melira Pod and several other big names are on Affinity, you can expect those decks to place well.

[ajfennewald]

It doesn't matter what the format is right now. Wizards is watching modern like a hawk. They are committed to reprinting/unbanning/banning to keep the format fresh and healthy.

After the format finishes shifting, due to the bannings/unbannings, if it's not good they will fix it. Unlike legacy.

Legacy regulates itself pretty well. It does not need the help of Wotc to keep it varied. I know someone is going to say but legacy is dominated by blue brainstorm decks which is true but there is a huge variety of them.

[DragoFireheart]

I know someone is going to say but legacy is dominated by blue brainstorm decks which is true but there is a huge variety of them.

The default MTG deck is blue. Seeing a lot of non-blue decks just means that homebrews are more popular.

[Arsenal]

I like how non-Modern players look at ONE Modern Top 16 and declare it to be the format. That's like some Standard kid looking at ONE Top 8 of a major Legacy tournament and declaring Legacy to be exactly that. Good stuff on thesource today.

[DragoFireheart]

That's like some Standard kid looking at ONE Top 8 of a major Legacy tournament and declaring Legacy to be exactly that.

To be fair, Legacy has less GPs so you can only look at one each year.

[testing32]

The default MTG deck is blue. Seeing a lot of non-blue decks just means that homebrews are more popular.

I think it means that scalding tarns are $90 a piece.

[Arsenal]

To be fair, Legacy has less GPs so you can only look at one each year.

Sure, but you'd look at whatever the "large-scale" event is for the respective format. So, I suppose Legacy would be SCG Opens? Those are at least held weekly/bi-weekly, so there's a bit more data to draw conclusions from (although that's still far too small of a sample size, imo) than a single Top 16.

It just floors me that ONE Modern Top 16 = the format.

[twndomn]

ONE tournament and you declare the Top 16 to be the format? Your sample size is ONE. Are you being serious right now?

My sample size is NOT one, you're the misunderstood person. Are you intentionally trying to Mislead people again?

The tournament is not of sample size one. The tournament is a point in time, just like how a poll is. This is a poll of sample size of 4,000+, it is very valid and very representative, more so than you can comprehend.

[Arsenal]

My sample size is NOT one, you're the misunderstood person. Are you intentionally trying to Mislead people again?

The tournament is not of sample size one. The tournament is a point in time, just like how a poll is. This is a poll of sample size of 4,000+, it is very valid and very representative, more so than you can comprehend.

The tournament is absolutely the sample size. The sample size is not the number of entrants. Are you being serious right now?

[twndomn]

The tournament is absolutely the sample size. The sample size is not the number of entrants. Are you being serious right now?

You're now just being funny, adding are you being serious right now doesn't make you any convincing. I'm not gonna waste time on you to give you a free statistic lesson, you should just google "statistic and poll" for your own sanity sake.

[Ellomdian]

It really isn't 'fair' to compare Vegas and Richmond directly. I could not find a reasonable flight for less than $350 to their shit-ass tiny not-a-real-city GP, and I live in one of the Top 5 Airline Hub Cities. I would be interested to know (not that they would ever publish this) how many participants they got from West of the Mississippi. Great job for demonstrating that the East Coast has Magic Players - again.

Then again, it isn't fair to look at the Top 16 and make sweeping generalizations. It's a little fascinating that Control (UWR) had a poor showing, especially a week after the PT, and when you don't have real control in a format, Goldfishing becomes important. Affinity has a decent goldfish but is a terrible Aggro deck, so you're left with whatever Combo/Midrange/Goodstuff (seriously, Goyf in Twin?) you want to run.

As for the OP:



- Moderns largest gp is almost twice that of legacy


Legacy has historically put up better averages than any other format (no seriously, look it up...) If the next Modern GP makes 3k people, we can start to interpret a trend.



- There were only 221 people overlapping from GP Vegas


Did you know that you can fly to Las Vegas, from pretty much anywhere in the country, for less than $100 given reasonable planning? Did you know that the same cannot be said for Richmond?



- How many of these people crossed over from legacy?


All of them. And since you physically cannot play more than one format of Magic or the DCI bans you for cheating, this is Bad (TM) for Legacy...



- How many of these people can we get to move to legacy?


Again, all of them. Our goal should be to get every single player who has ever touched a card to jump headfirst into Legacy, driving staple prices so high the people who have been playing all along get to retire when they sell out.




- Are these mega 4k+ gps the future? If so, should they be changed in anyway?


Sure, now that we've had 2 of them in a year, it must be the new trend. Every TO should plan for 3500+ players at every event in the middle of nowhere, regardless of promotion and player preference. It's just like how your local TO should plan every PTQ to have as many people as that one PTQ 3 years ago where the destination was amazing and the format was fun and the prizes were absurd.

I realize you were just trying to generate discussion, but your premise was awful, your target audience is admittedly biased, and your 'discussion' is poor cover for flamebait. It's damn near impossible to make statements about the health of a format after 2 events a week apart.

[Arsenal]

You're now just being funny, adding are you being serious right now doesn't make you any convincing. I'm not gonna waste time on you to give you a free statistic lesson, you should just google "statistic and poll" for your own sanity sake.

I love how your vast and expansive knowledge of statistics comes from Google. Buddy, you have no clue what you're talking about. Stop commenting on a format you don't understand and stop talking about your Google-level statistics.

[lordofthepit]

As someone who has been very proud of the attendance figures in Legacy to this point, I am very impressed by the turnout at this Modern GP. I think that the tally blew everyone's expectations away, including those of the TO (SCG).

Since Legacy GPs have historically (and recently until Richmond) been better attended than Modern GPs, it will be interesting to see if the increased numbers at Richmond are due to newfound interest in Modern from a wide playerbase, or whether it's due to the amazing efforts of SCG who heavily advertised this event, increased the prize structure, invited high-profile artists and Magic pros to booths and seminars, and gave away guaranteed promos upon registration worth more than the value of the entry fee itself. It is worth noting that that the Charlotte Limited event that SCG held last year broke all GP attendance records at the time, despite the fact that Limited events (other than Modern Masters) are pretty poorly attended.

I'd be very interested in seeing what kind of attendance the Legacy GP at New Jersey, also organized by SCG, gets. I expect the number of players there to also be huge, although not 4000+.

It's unlikely that SCG swaps any of its Legacy Opens for Modern this year, and I hope it never happens. If it ever does, I would still be able to play locally, but the local SCG Legacy Opens represent the pinnacle of competitive Magic to me (since I'm not willing to drive more than an hour to a Magic event). I'd scale back the time and money I spend on this game considerably, because I cannot see Modern being appealing to me in the foreseeable future (barring the reprinting of a large number of Legacy staples to become Modern legal, or a change in the number of sets which are legal in the format).

On a different note, Legacy attendance numbers are still high (and increasing on the SCG circuit). It's not surprising that Modern will eventually surpass Legacy in terms of overall player base (if it hasn't already), but the Legacy community is still very healthy, and I remain optimistic that tournament organizers around the country will continue to support Legacy. Whether this is in addition to or instead of Modern will probably depend regionally.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Rather than old Extended, Modern right now feels a lot to me like Legacy felt when it displaced Vintage, from time of creation up until maybe 2010, 2011. Although really in a process before that, that accelerated with Delver and completely broke open with True-Name.

But Legacy feels now like Vintage felt at the time it started dying off; the decks are drifting towards convergence, the same core of cards with only the trimmings really changing from list to list, blue-dominant with an oppressive fear of combo in the meta.

Modern feels like Legacy did when it displaced Vintage as the primary Eternal format; the decks are diverse and wildly different from each other. A number of powerful linear strategies and aggro decks are competing with a shifting set of aggro-control and midrange-control lists, and durdly-explosive engine decks. The combo decks are varied but none feel oppressive.

And while cards seem expensive, it's still vastly vastly more affordable than Legacy has become.

I am very worried about the long term viability of Legacy right now.

[Barook]

I see the results as a major threat to Legacy for various reasons:

1. Popularity - Modern is now in the second place of the most played format, even before Limited. I can see SCG dropping Legacy for Modern soon since Legacy prices keep on rising and thus, the profit margin keeps getting lower.
2. Players switching - I don't see that as a problem right now since the format sucks ass. But it can keep new blood from entering Legacy and going for its shitty, little cousin instead.
3. A big one - card prices. Modern drives the prices on Legacy staples like Zendikar fetches, Goyf, etc sky-high. Just look at these insane numbers (shamelessly stolen from Salvation -credit to Aazadan):


The increase on Modern prices in general was based off of T1 decks. I'll repost it because my thread is more about finding solutions for price stability than complaining over price increases. The datapoints a month ago were:
Jund - $1600
Burn - $475
UWR Midrange - $800
Living End - $500
UWR Control (Wafo Tapa) - $1000
RG Tron - $600
Affinity - $450
Splinter Twin - $800
BGx - $1850
Merfolk - $540
Melira Pod - $1000
Kiki Pod - $930
RUG Scapeshift - $700
UR Delver - $700

Average - $853

Those same decks now
Jund - $1845 (+15.31%)
Burn - $850 (+78.95%)
UWR Midrange - $1200 (+50%)
Living End - $525 (+5%)
UWR Control (Wafo Tapa) - $1150 (+15%)
RG Tron - $600 (no change)
Affinity - $535 (+18.89%)
Splinter Twin - $1903 (+137.86%)
BGx - $1765 (-5.6%)
Merfolk - $500 (-6.41%)
Melira Pod -$1210 (+21%)
Kiki Pod - $1100 (+18.28%)
RUG Scapeshift - $845 (+20.71%)
UR Delver - $1150 (+64.29%)

Average $1084 (+27.08%)

It takes Wizards two years to react with reprints. And they can't reprint everything at once. With their current "But think of the Collectors!"-stance, it's all going to hell sooner or later since supply can't meet demand.

[lordofthepit]

Rather than old Extended, Modern right now feels a lot to me like Legacy felt when it displaced Vintage, from time of creation up until maybe 2010, 2011. Although really in a process before that, that accelerated with Delver and completely broke open with True-Name.

But Legacy feels now like Vintage felt at the time it started dying off; the decks are drifting towards convergence, the same core of cards with only the trimmings really changing from list to list, blue-dominant with an oppressive fear of combo in the meta.

Modern feels like Legacy did when it displaced Vintage as the primary Eternal format; the decks are diverse and wildly different from each other. A number of powerful linear strategies and aggro decks are competing with a shifting set of aggro-control and midrange-control lists, and durdly-explosive engine decks. The combo decks are varied but none feel oppressive.

And while cards seem expensive, it's still vastly vastly more affordable than Legacy has become.

I am very worried about the long term viability of Legacy right now.

If Modern feels like Legacy did in 2005, it's because Legacy had essentially three archetypes back then.

We'd be concerned if a top 16 at any large Legacy event featured only 12 different decks. Here in Modern we have a large GP with only 4 different decks represented in the top 16.

If there are reasons to be concerned with the viability of Legacy, it sure isn't because decks are drifting towards convergence in comparison with Modern.

Most competitive Modern decks seem to cost $1000-2000 compared to the $1500-3000 for Legacy ones. I'm not sure I'd consider that vastly more affordable, although I never thought high entry to barrier was an indication of declining format health, neither for Legacy nor for Modern.

[Tea]

The main problems of the Legacy format:
1) WotC's card-design that is pushing the aggro-control archetype too much, e.g. TNN
2) the price of a two!!! colored manabase
3) one GP/year*continent really makes me angry

[Tammit67]

My sample size is NOT one, you're the misunderstood person. Are you intentionally trying to Mislead people again?

The tournament is not of sample size one. The tournament is a point in time, just like how a poll is. This is a poll of sample size of 4,000+, it is very valid and very representative, more so than you can comprehend.

If you are polling all 4000 people on what the best deck is in legacy, then yes you have a sample size of 4000.

But once you pit all those decks against each other at an event, you have 1 top 8 to draw conclusions from. If you want to say that this tournament's results are more significant because more people attended, sure... whatever.

Saying this is a poll is completely off base. Polls aren't about competition, they are about opinion. A poll would be "Ask 4000 people whether they would want to build a house out of plastic or wood or stone and record results". What we have here is "Have 4000 people build a house out of their preferred material and measure how long the house lasts before failing". They are not the same at all.

The tournament is sample size 1 as it is 1 tournament.

[nedleeds]

That's just wrong because of Magic Online where Modern has 3 Daily Events per Day. Modern is just boring, and when i started playing Magic about 1,5 years ago i immediately started playing Legacy because i enjoy skill intensive games.

It's been a few days since I got a skill intensive on here. Thanks man.

[dunk]

2000s extendeds were the best, especially in the beginning. Most of my favorite legacy archetypes were invented back then, and it was a pretty balanced format.

Yeah I think he is referring to the 2010 Extended; the one with Zoo, Faeries, Dark Depths, Dredge... that format was great. Sadly most of that format's pillars are banned in Modern.


Regarding the topic though I think that SCG just pulled a really nice marketing move. But yeah, I concede that Modern is a niche in which people can play most of their pet cards from previous years without having to invest too much into new cards. Leave the GP up to just Wotc though and I guarante that the attendance wouldn't have been higher than in previous GPs.

[DragoFireheart]

I like how my Tarmogoyfs are almost $200 or so now for each one.

[Arsenal]

Card prices of shared staples and future tourney support will be the two most obvious, immediate effects of Modern's success on Legacy.

[gregtron]

If Modern feels like Legacy did in 2005, it's because Legacy had essentially three archetypes back then.

We'd be concerned if a top 16 at any large Legacy event featured only 12 different decks. Here in Modern we have a large GP with only 4 different decks represented in the top 16.

If there are reasons to be concerned with the viability of Legacy, it sure isn't because decks are drifting towards convergence in comparison with Modern.

Most competitive Modern decks seem to cost $1000-2000 compared to the $1500-3000 for Legacy ones. I'm not sure I'd consider that vastly more affordable, although I never thought high entry to barrier was an indication of declining format health, neither for Legacy nor for Modern.

I don't see how a person could consider Kik-Pod and Melira-Pod to be the same deck, and definitely don't think that Tarmo-Twin, UWR Twin, and straight UR Twin are the same deck. That leaves us with a top 16 representing 8 different archetypes, with two more archetypes not on the list in 17th and 18th place.

The main difference in affordability is that Legacy cards, by and large, will never come down in price unless there's a big drop in tournament attendance that drives demand. In Modern they can just reprint whatever the fuck they like, and they should really start doing that as soon as I unload all 120 of my Zendikar Fetches.

[tinker]

I honestly don't think modern will affect legacy for several of reasons:
1) As more cards gets banned in modern, it'll turn away some people in the format, and it may have them looking at legacy format instead. Look at Jund, a deck which got more popular in legacy, once bloodbraid was banned in modern.
2) As a legacy player who has access to most of the staples in the format, I can play either format. Any card that is good enough for legacy will most likely be good enough for modern. For example, look at tarmogoyf, ensnaring bridge (painter servant deck), aether vial, fetchland, etc. Obviously there are certain modern staples (i.e. cryptic command, remand, path to exile, etc.) that we rarely play in legacy, but these cards will be affordable and controlled by wizard, which makes it easier for legacy player to purchase the cards.
3) You can play modern deck in legacy. Even though it might not be as competitive, modern deck can be played in legacy.This means that legacy won't go the vintage route, as vintage does require power cards. In fact, I think this is the most important message that we, as legacy player, should be giving out. Most people see dual lands, LED, FoW, etc., as barrier to the format. This prevents them from trying out the format and seeing what Legacy is truly about. We should be encouraging player to play with whatever deck they have, with a heads up notice of the ban list in legacy, to stir up interest in the format. This may result in the creation of new and interesting deck.

[lordofthepit]

I don't see how a person could consider Kik-Pod and Melira-Pod to be the same deck, and definitely don't think that Tarmo-Twin, UWR Twin, and straight UR Twin are the same deck. That leaves us with a top 16 representing 8 different archetypes, with two more archetypes not on the list in 17th and 18th place.

The main difference in affordability is that Legacy cards, by and large, will never come down in price unless there's a big drop in tournament attendance that drives demand. In Modern they can just reprint whatever the fuck they like, and they should really start doing that as soon as I unload all 120 of my Zendikar Fetches.

I'll take your word for it. I was just basing deck classifications off what my Modern-playing friends said on Facebook, since I don't know enough about the format to know the difference between Kiki and Melira

[Arsenal]

I'll take your word for it. I was just basing deck classifications off what my Modern-playing friends said on Facebook, since I don't know enough about the format to know the difference between Kiki and Melira

They're very different, but I get why people will lump them together. That's fine by me for classification purposes, same with Twin. But then Legacy players need to be willing to lump all of the SFM-TNN decks together and all of the Storm decks together, etc.

[lordofthepit]

They're very different, but I get why people will lump them together. That's fine by me for classification purposes, same with Twin. But then Legacy players need to be willing to lump all of the SFM-TNN decks together and all of the Storm decks together, etc.

Would you say the difference is comparable to Vengevine Survival vs. Ooze Survival? Or perhaps different variants of Nic Fit? I'd classify those as the same deck, whereas I consider Patriot and Esper Stoneblade to be different ones.

[Arsenal]

Would you say the difference is comparable to Vengevine Survival vs. Ooze Survival? Or perhaps different variants of Nic Fit? I'd classify those as the same deck, whereas I consider Patriot and Esper Stoneblade to be different ones.

The only similarities really is the turn 1 mana dork --> turn 2 Birthing Pod play. Beyond Birthing Pod and the mana dorks, everything is radically different. The respective combo kills are different, the creature base (aside from mana dorks) is pretty diff (does share Finks, so there's that, but Finks isn't used in KPod as a combo kill whereas MPod does use it in the combo kill), etc. I think the difference is a bit more pronounced than Vine vs. Ooze Survival, but it's along those lines, sure. KPod is very much a 4cc (no black) combo deck with almost no backup plan (sure, it can turn doods sideways and get there, but that's not what it's built for) whereas MPod (BGw) can just be a very good Junk value creature deck that all of a sudden combo kills you out of nowhere.

[gregtron]

The only similarities really is the turn 1 mana dork --> turn 2 Birthing Pod play. Beyond Birthing Pod and the mana dorks, everything is radically different. The respective combo kills are different, the creature base (aside from mana dorks) is pretty diff (does share Finks, so there's that, but Finks isn't used in KPod as a combo kill whereas MPod does use it in the combo kill), etc. I think the difference is a bit more pronounced than Vine vs. Ooze Survival, but it's along those lines, sure. KPod is very much a combo deck with almost no backup plan (sure, it can turn doods sideways and get there, but that's not what it's built for) whereas MPod can just be a very good Junk-style value creature deck that all of a sudden combo kills you out of nowhere.

I'd agree with all of that. I think a better comparison would be to ANT and TES in Legacy; Melira-Pod is more resilient and a bit slower to kill you, Kiki-Pod is a brutal combo deck that can present difficulties in overcoming hate. Props to the kid who won, for sure, because winning through two days of both Pod AND Twin hate is no small feat.

The Twin decks are a little harder to categorize by Legacy standards. I guess Splinter Twin is kind of like Modern's Sneak Attack and Show and Tell, in that it's a powerful enabler that you can hook up to one of several different creatures to win. It exists in different shells that use slightly different strategies to kill you, so UR Twin is kind of like Omnitell (one strategy in a control shell), RUG versions are more like mono-red Sneak Attack (highly-targeted control/lock pieces and a backup plan of just killing you with Inferno Titan/Tarmogoyf), and the UWR is more like... Well fuck I don't know, the analogy really falls apart here. At least all the versions still run Lightning Bolt, which is both is Modern's Force of Will and Modern's Lightning Bolt.

At least Abrupt Decay is Modern's Abrupt Decay, so the world makes some sense.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

If Modern feels like Legacy did in 2005, it's because Legacy had essentially three archetypes back then.

We'd be concerned if a top 16 at any large Legacy event featured only 12 different decks. Here in Modern we have a large GP with only 4 different decks represented in the top 16.

What the fuck are you talking about? There were ten different decks in the GP Richmond top 16. If you want to argue that all the Pod decks or Splinter Twin decks are the same (even then you don't get four though,) you also have to say that all the Delver/Stoneforge/Show and Tell decks in Legacy are the same, and then GP Paris had, what, five decks?

Only those decks had much more of an overlap in terms of what cards they played than the Modern top 16. When 14/16 decks start off with a Brainstorm/Force of Will blue suite you really kind of can't be taken seriously saying, "We'd be concerned if a top 16 had only 12 'different' decks."


If there are reasons to be concerned with the viability of Legacy, it sure isn't because decks are drifting towards convergence in comparison with Modern.

14/16 decks running Brainstorm, 14/16 decks running Force of Will, 12/16 decks running Ponder, 12/16 running Spell Pierce.

Compare with Modern where the most played card was Snapcaster Mage at 7/16.


Most competitive Modern decks seem to cost $1000-2000 compared to the $1500-3000 for Legacy ones. I'm not sure I'd consider that vastly more affordable, although I never thought high entry to barrier was an indication of declining format health, neither for Legacy nor for Modern.

Modern decks seem to be mainly in the $500-1500 range, and $3,000 is a pretty low cap. If you were to buy the GP winning list from Richmond straight-up from Starcity it would cost $1402, versus $4,330 for the Paris winning list.

[Hof]

Modern popularity boost comes mostly at the expense of Standard. This could be good for Legacy in the long run.
Legacy's two major problems right now are price inflation, and to a lesser extent TNN.

[Arsenal]

Like, people who don't play Modern look at KPod and MPod, think "both of them are running Finks! SAME DECK!!!!" when it's really "KPod resolving Finks = okay, no chance I die here. MPod resolving Finks = hmm... definite risk of dying here." The two decks are very, very different to those who actually play Modern competitively, but I can definitely understand how non-Modern players think KPod and MPod are the "same" deck.

[Koby]

Yeah I think he is referring to the 2010 Extended; the one with Zoo, Faeries, Dark Depths, Dredge... that format was great. Sadly most of that format's pillars are banned in Modern.


No way man, screw 2010 Extended. Gimme 2000 Extended, with such hits as:

Necropotence + Dark Ritual/Mana Vault/Demonic Consultation
Force of Will + Wasteland + Lord of Atlantis
Llanowar Elves + Quirion Ranger + Natural Order for ... Verdant Force
River Boa + Duress + StP
Counter-Slivers...
Turbo Land (ala Zvi)

I miss the good old days.

[btm10]

No way man, screw 2010 Extended. Gimme 2000 Extended, with such hits as:

Necropotence + Dark Ritual/Mana Vault/Demonic Consultation
Force of Will + Wasteland + Lord of Atlantis
Llanowar Elves + Quirion Ranger + Natural Order for ... Verdant Force
River Boa + Duress + StP
Counter-Slivers...
Turbo Land (ala Zvi)

I miss the good old days.

Those were the days indeed. Also ca. 2002 where you could Cunning Wish to Shadow Rift your Psychatog through for lethal.

[Tammit67]

Would you say the difference is comparable to Vengevine Survival vs. Ooze Survival? Or perhaps different variants of Nic Fit? I'd classify those as the same deck, whereas I consider Patriot and Esper Stoneblade to be different ones.

The difference is...

Kiki pod is looking to chain pod activations in 1 turn to set up kiki-jiki + resto/zealous conscripts/deceiver exarch. It is very much a combo oriented deck that is not looking as much to play the long game against opponents, but it will when its primary goal is stopped. Think vengevine survival: My plan is to combo you and if i am forced to do something other than that, it is an issue.

Melira pod is a value deck that can happen into combo situations. Its gameplan is playing a bunch of creatures with added benefit, like kitchen finks, voice of resurgence, ranger of eos, orzhov pontiff, reveillark, eternal witness, shriekmaw. It is looking to play a long grindy midrange match against a lot of the field, and maybe mmmaaayyyyyybbbbeeeee combo if the opponent is defenseless from dealing with the attrition. Think old genesis based survival that could loyal retainers for Iona: We going to grind until you can't stop me. If I am forced to combo, well, I can't do it fast or consistently enough with this set up, but I feel more stable in the face of opposition

[routlaw]

I like that the format is managed and regulated with an attempt to promote a variety of play styles, not just deck archetypes. Ramp, combo, tempo, aggro, control, midrange, engine, toolbox-if you have a playstyle that you enjoy playing, not only is there likely multiple viable decks you can play, there's a good chance that at least one of them is in or close to the top tier of the format.

For all the talk of how oppressive the DCI has been at banning things, there is really only one deck that got totally killed-Eggs. U/R Storm builds are as popular as ever and the 12-post ramp strategies do sort of live on in Tron and Scapeshift. However, to me as a player it is comforting to know that should something oppressive arise in the format, it will be dealt with. I don't have that same faith in the DCI for Legacy- it feels as if they are content to let anything go at this point and just trust the community will work itself out. This obviously works fine for a lot of people but it's hard not to argue that it doesn't cause the format to trend towards inbred fair decks vs. degenerate linears, i.e. Vintage.

[snorlaxcom]

First time playing modern on saturday with bw tokens I borrowed from a friend. I had 1 bye at least and the entry fee was easily offset by the consolation swag. I don't see myself investing or grinding in the format anytime soon, but I would still play in another large event nearby.

The legacy side events were fun and they still had that legacy atmosphere I have grown to appreciate. There were a number of legacy veterans, less experienced players, and people trying the format for the first time (~130 total). I think there is some room for legacy to grow. Yes, duals will continue to go up (don't forget about inflation), but proxy tourneys and shocks could a reasonable substitute while these kids work over the summer. I am also for the idea of store credit for fnm events.

[Lemnear]

I like that the format is managed and regulated with an attempt to promote a variety of play styles, not just deck archetypes. Ramp, combo, tempo, aggro, control, midrange, engine, toolbox-if you have a playstyle that you enjoy playing, not only is there likely multiple viable decks you can play, there's a good chance that at least one of them is in or close to the top tier of the format.

For all the talk of how oppressive the DCI has been at banning things, there is really only one deck that got totally killed-Eggs. U/R Storm builds are as popular as ever and the 12-post ramp strategies do sort of live on in Tron and Scapeshift. However, to me as a player it is comforting to know that should something oppressive arise in the format, it will be dealt with. I don't have that same faith in the DCI for Legacy- it feels as if they are content to let anything go at this point and just trust the community will work itself out. This obviously works fine for a lot of people but it's hard not to argue that it doesn't cause the format to trend towards inbred fair decks vs. degenerate linears, i.e. Vintage.

I'm confused. Wasn't the lack of any dedicated control strategy (thx to the banning orgy) the reason they kept on chopping in combo-Forest so those decks can not simply race Aggro (infamous turn 4 rule)?

Just because Creatures + Pod offers some synergy or a combo finish, doesn't turn it into a combo deck. The format is defined by miderange-value-creatures, no matter how many different names like "toolbox", "combo", "engine" or "midrange" you try to give for the same thing like Pod.dec. The format is more limited that you want to accept, or shall we now start naming RUG Delver and bUrg Tempo COMPLETELY different archetypes from now on?

Show me the "multiple viable decks" of control and combo then. I'm waiting.

[Koby]

Modern combo decks:

UR Storm
Goryo's Fury
Krack-Clan Ironworks
Ad Nauseam/Angel's Grace
Twin (altho more realistically, this is Control-Combo due to the compactness)

There seems to be more variety in Combo decks in Modern than there are true Aggro decks.

[Ellomdian]

I have a hard time taking the arguments about card availability seriously when I am selling Tarns today for what I bought Deltas for at the end of '12.

The thing about SCG running Modern Opens - there is very little incentive for them to do so now. Modern online card sales are damn near commoditized, and they are competing with your LGS's left-over standard inventory. SCG does a TON of business in the Legacy market, and it's part of the reason they decided to do Legacy opens.

[lordofthepit]

No way man, screw 2010 Extended. Gimme 2000 Extended, with such hits as:

Necropotence + Dark Ritual/Mana Vault/Demonic Consultation
Force of Will + Wasteland + Lord of Atlantis
Llanowar Elves + Quirion Ranger + Natural Order for ... Verdant Force
River Boa + Duress + StP
Counter-Slivers...
Turbo Land (ala Zvi)

I miss the good old days.

Extended circa 2000 was the most diverse format in constructed Magic. It was a bit combo-heavy and required frequent bannings, but the decks were really innovative and fun.

Extended in 2010 saw less play than Vintage when it wasn't PTQ season, and it literally died a few years later.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Show me the "multiple viable decks" of control and combo then. I'm waiting.
Okay how about the top 8 from the pro tour, which features UWr control alongside UR storm? This was 2 weeks ago. http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptbng14/top_8_decks

Also to be found there are affinity, pod, splinter twin (2 different versions, one with beatdown goyfs and the other with only combo) and a blue/red control deck that is pretty different than the UWr deck.

[lyracian]

What the fuck are you talking about? There were ten different decks in the GP Richmond top 16. If you want to argue that all the Pod decks or Splinter Twin decks are the same (even then you don't get four though,) you also have to say that all the Delver/Stoneforge/Show and Tell decks in Legacy are the same, and then GP Paris had, what, five decks?
I can not group Paris to less than 7 archetypes, Richmond has 5 archetypes.

GP Paris Top 16 archetypes
Tempo (RUG/BUG) x3
Control (Miracle/Lands) x3
Show n Tell (Sneak/Reanimiator) x4
Blade x2
Pod x1
Painter x1
Elves x1

GP Richmond Top 16 archetypes
Affinity x5
Pod x5
Twin x4
Scapeshift x1
Faeries x1

[JPoJohnson]

My understanding is, Modern is at a place similar to Extended in the early 2000s. People who've been playing for a few years have access to most of the card pool (the relevant cards at least) and it's a strict upgrade to Standard whilst not being broken like the eternal formats. So people can transition to Modern staright from Standard without significantly changing their card pool or their understading/gaming experience of Magic. Obviously I think old Extended is 10 times more interesting than current Modern but that's out of topic. The bottom line is, the large numberof players are not surprising given these factors and the large population of Magic players in 2014.

Will this have an impact on Legacy? I doubt so. In my area Modern is still pretty much dead and events are having a hard time attracting players. There needs to be two things for Modern to negatively impact Legacy imo:
1) Legacy players start attending Modern events instead, reducing the number of Legacy regulars - Which I doubt could happen at a large enough scale because most Legacy players are dedicated eternal players.
2) Modern events start attracting so many players that they start replacing Legacy events - This is possible in the long term and may already be happening in some places but I think Modern's own internal dynamics (price bubbles, increasing availability issues for newcomers, bans etc.) will prevent this from happening for some time.

The third impact (not sure if it was said at another point in this thread) is the fact that Modern staples that are also legacy staples will climb in value faster than just a legacy staple. Scalding Tarn is a prime example of this already being sold for $100. Tarmogoyf reaching upwards of $200. Making legacy decks more expensive.

[Grand Superior]

Not to diminish the Modern format, but I firmly believe that much of GP Richmond's success comes from the perfect storm of the event occurring just weeks after a Modern Pro Tour and a few months before Modern season, the event being at a reasonably accessible east coast location, the format having near unprecedented support from Wizards, and StarCityGames promoting, facilitating, and hosting the event. Of course the popularity of the Modern format is responsible too, but there are other factors at play here. Consider the fact that Legacy, despite having next to zero support from Wizards (and hell, infecting the format with the disease that is True-Name Nemesis), was able to have 1,700 players at GP Washington DC and 1,580 people at GP Paris. I personally think that Legacy's numbers are more impressive, all things considered.

Having said that, I am concerned that this will only result in Wizards realizing that their, for lack of better term, "babying" of the Modern format is working and will only increase the already huge support for the format and basically reduce Eternal format support to nothing. I'm scared of the day that we no longer have Legacy Grand Prix events. That's what bugs me most about the Modern format. I'm perfectly okay with Modern existing and it thriving, but keep Legacy alive and let it coexist with Modern. Unfortunately, Modern's success will only make this less and less likely.

A little off topic, but what surprised me about watching GP Richmond's coverage was just how combo-tastic the Modern format is. It certainly seems like far more games in Modern end via a combo kill (whether it be Grapeshot, mountains+Valakut, or infinite creatures, among other things) than in Legacy, even if that flies in the face of what one would expect. If people labouring under the misconception that Legacy is where every game is a combo-fest and believe that Modern is any different, then they're in for quite a rude awakening.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Okay how about the top 8 from the pro tour, which features UWr control alongside UR storm? This was 2 weeks ago. http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptbng14/top_8_decks

Also to be found there are affinity, pod, splinter twin (2 different versions, one with beatdown goyfs and the other with only combo) and a blue/red control deck that is pretty different than the UWr deck.

To the extent this is true, I have no idea, but I have been told the meta game at pro tours are a bit different than normal

That being said, there is still brewing to be done, and there probably is a good Bitterblossom/Wild Nacatl deck that hasn't been made yet, if halfway through modern season we are seeing nothing but Pod/Affinity/UWR, then we can discuss stale boring meta games.

[JPoJohnson]

Not to diminish the Modern format, but I firmly believe that much of GP Richmond's success comes from the perfect storm of the event occurring just weeks after a Modern Pro Tour and a few months before Modern season, the event being at a reasonably accessible east coast location, the format having near unprecedented support from Wizards, and StarCityGames promoting, facilitating, and hosting the event. Of course the popularity of the Modern format is responsible too, but there are other factors at play here. Consider the fact that Legacy, despite having next to zero support from Wizards (and hell, infecting the format with the disease that is True-Name Nemesis), was able to have 1,700 players at GP Washington DC and 1,580 people at GP Paris. I personally think that Legacy's numbers are more impressive, all things considered.

Having said that, I am concerned that this will only result in Wizards realizing that their, for lack of better term, "babying" of the Modern format is working and will only increase the already huge support for the format and basically reduce Eternal format support to nothing. I'm scared of the day that we no longer have Legacy Grand Prix events. That's what bugs me most about the Modern format. I'm perfectly okay with Modern existing and it thriving, but keep Legacy alive and let it coexist with Modern. Unfortunately, Modern's success will only make this less and less likely.

A little off topic, but what surprised me about watching GP Richmond's coverage was just how combo-tastic the Modern format is. It certainly seems like far more games in Modern end via a combo kill (whether it be Grapeshot, mountains+Valakut, or infinite creatures, among other things) than in Legacy, even if that flies in the face of what one would expect. If people labouring under the misconception that Legacy is where every game is a combo-fest and believe that Modern is any different, then they're in for quite a rude awakening.

And the most successful modern decks have a strong aggro backup plan since their combos are creature-tastic.

[Lord Seth]

To the extent this is true, I have no idea, but I have been told the meta game at pro tours are a bit different than normal

That being said, there is still brewing to be done, and there probably is a good Bitterblossom/Wild Nacatl deck that hasn't been made yet, if halfway through modern season we are seeing nothing but Pod/Affinity/UWR, then we can discuss stale boring meta games.Actually, a deck with Bitterblossom did make it into the Top 16 of the Grand Prix. You can see it here (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=64246).

[Barook]

I think the situation we're in does actually mirror the beginning of the end for Vintage in some ways - decks are getting more and more expensive and supply of essential staples is limited. Sure, it isn't the P9, but the duals are and remain the bottleneck of the format, along with some other RL staples. E.g. Underground Sea hovers around 220$ for now (SCG is 250$ and out of stock) and Polluted Delta is 105$.

And it certainly doesn't help that the format Wizards dumps more and more dumb blue shit into format, forcing more and more people into blue, thus further increasing demand for blue staples and prices for those, making the format more and more expensive.

Once SCG decides to drop Legacy support, we're going to enter dark times.

[TheArchitect]

And the most successful modern decks have a strong aggro backup plan since their combos are creature-tastic.

That's the thing. Modern decks are having more combos in them but really UR storm, Griselbraned/fury of the horde and ad nauseum are the only real "true combo decks" I've seen in modern. Anything with pod or twin just look like creature based mid range decks with a combo thrown in them. A lot of the time I imagine they are just beating down with cliques, exarchs or kitchen finks while they sling lightning bolts or decays at problem cards. And Scapeshift is no more a combo deck that UWr Miracles is; its a control deck that wins with one big card (entreat/scapeshift) or it just beats with snapcasters.

[twndomn]

Oh please....

If you look at the Top 16 of Richmond, where're the planeswalkers? 2 out of top 16 decks run that card type. If you look at the 443 decks that made day 2, only WUR Control 4% + Jund 5% + Obliterator Rock 4% + GB Rock 3% + (3+2)/2 = 2.5% of Zoo decks + 3% of Tron + 1% of WB token run planeswalkers, that's 22.5%.

Legacy gets to use Koth of the Hammer for God's sake, how cool is that? If Modern's really gonna become the format people go for, it has a long road ahead.

[Lemnear]

Okay how about the top 8 from the pro tour, which features UWr control alongside UR storm? This was 2 weeks ago. http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptbng14/top_8_decks

Also to be found there are affinity, pod, splinter twin (2 different versions, one with beatdown goyfs and the other with only combo) and a blue/red control deck that is pretty different than the UWr deck.

You missed my point. There was stated, that Modern offers MULTIPLES of DIFFERENT archetypes for Combo AND Control but all I see for months is Twin/Kiki, UWR burn.dec and a few Pyromancers Ascension that qualify for both mentioned strategies. That's not MULTIPLES if you ask me. That's bold advertising. Nothing more

[Barook]

Oh please....

If you look at the Top 16 of Richmond, where're the planeswalkers? 2 out of top 16 decks run that card type. If you look at the 443 decks that made day 2, only WUR Control 4% + Jund 5% + Obliterator Rock 4% + GB Rock 3% + (3+2)/2 = 2.5% of Zoo decks + 3% of Tron + 1% of WB token run planeswalkers, that's 22.5%.

Legacy gets to use Koth of the Hammer for God's sake, how cool is that? If Modern's really gonna become the format people go for, it has a long road ahead.
I fail to see how Planeswalker usage is an indicator for a good/healthy format. With that logic, Standard would be the best format ever since it's a massive Planeswalker circlejerk.

[Lord Seth]

That's the thing. Modern decks are having more combos in them but really UR storm, Griselbraned/fury of the horde and ad nauseum are the only real "true combo decks" I've seen in modern. Anything with pod or twin just look like creature based mid range decks with a combo thrown in them. A lot of the time I imagine they are just beating down with cliques, exarchs or kitchen finks while they sling lightning bolts or decays at problem cards.Splinter Twin used to be more of a combo deck in that it focused on just getting the combo together, but it's moved more towards a tempo strategy. The purpose of the deck is less about assembling the combo and more about threatening the combo, forcing your opponent to choose between trying to hold back their cards to stop in case you combo off or dealing with the creatures that attacking you right now.


And Scapeshift is no more a combo deck that UWr Miracles is; its a control deck that wins with one big card (entreat/scapeshift) or it just beats with snapcasters.
Scapeshift is not a control deck. A control deck takes control of the game, and once it's done that, hits the opponent with something like Entreat the Angels or a Jace the Mind Sculptor to seal the deal. Scapeshift just wants to hold off the opponent for long enough to get its 8 lands together (or if it's on the Prismatic Omen plan, 6 lands) and cast Scapeshift . It doesn't care about taking control of the game; it just wants to survive long enough to cast its combo card and win.

[sloppyjoe]

Once SCG decides to drop Legacy support, we're going to enter dark times.

I really think that the only thing that will both save the relative format we know as Legacy from purgatory and also rescue Modern from its blandness will be a gradual (or rapid, who knows) reprinting of non reserve list stuff. Eventually resulting in a format called "modern" or if WOTC gets some balls, they scrap "modern" and call it Legacy minus the reserve list. Then they support the hell out of it as it eventually solves two huge problems. Couple this with the unbanning of all the goodies on the "modern" ban list as well and you have a format that we can play into our 70's

Now everyone loses out on their duals, but we get all of the things that make Legacy what it really is; Karakas, Wasteland, Force of Will, Brainstorm, Hymn to Tourach, Show and Tell, Stifle, ONS fetches, all of the goblins that make goblins a deck and a bunch of other stuff. Basically close to overextended.

Sure we might lose Storm decks, Dredge, decks like MUD and Elves would take a hit, Moat, Tabernacle, High Tide etc.

I'm pretty sure 90% of legacy players would play this format initially, and eventually 95% would come around. probably 80% of modern players would play it, with another 10% coming around (if they get the reprint machines humming), and wizards could turn "Legacy Masters" into a once a year set, reprinting stuff, and using 20% ish of the set to introduce "new Legacy/modern" cards to help nudge the metagame (rather than ban hammering), thus printing themselves money, legally.

This is not a solution, it is a compromise , but it is what is best for the game, long-term.

[testing32]

Modern will kill Legacy. It's just a matter of time. This GP will be one of the steps to the end.

[Meekrab]

This is not a solution, it is a compromise , but it is what is best for the game, long-term.
The best thing for the game, long-term, is for Hasbro to hire a sufficiently creative team of lawyers and cast Mulligan targeting the reserve list.

[Scott]

Modern will kill Legacy. It's just a matter of time. This GP will be one of the steps to the end.

There will always, always be lots of people who want to play a competitive format that uses cards from Magic's entire history.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Actually, a deck with Bitterblossom did make it into the Top 16 of the Grand Prix. You can see it here (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=64246).

I stand by my statement

[btm10]

There will always, always be lots of people who want to play a competitive format that uses cards from Magic's entire history.

I don't play or follow Modern, so I can't comment on its growth or lack thereof. I can say with certainty that if it ever becomes anywhere near as difficult to play Legacy competitivly as it is to play Vintage competitivly, I will switch back to Vintage as my primary format. I don't think Modern alone can kill Legacy for the reason you've stated. But Modern and Vintage together can.

[civet five]

I don't want to take away from the success of the tourney, but my own 2 cents:
1) recent Pro Tour
2) spring break
3) SCG heavily promoting and supporting the event
4) good weather after weeks of shitty ass weather - people could travel
5) east coast

SCG themselves had set the cap at 5k people and they didn't really come close, so I think in some ways they were disappointed as to the turnout. But I think if they had it in a major city, like DC where people can fly to easily, I think they could have gotten another 500-1000, especially for people west of the Mississippi.

As to the effect on Legacy - prices of overlapping staples has been hurting. One of the few gaps in my collection are full playsets of Zendikar fetches (I have 2-3 of each, since I try to spread out my fetch bases to make it less obvious) and the prices are getting painful to fill them out. I think that the lesson I've learned from picking up and subsequently unloading extra Onslaught fetch sets is that there's a pretty predictable pattern of value, and it can be invested against for gain. I even think shocklands are a worthwhile investment, because while they likely won't be $50, there will still be some amount of appreciation for them because they are fetchable. I wouldn't have thought Wastelands would go from $3 uncommon when Standard-legal to $100 card now. Rishadan Ports were always expensive because they existed in a block and Standards where they ran in every single deck, but they have held up surprisinginly well for only really being wanted in 2-3 decks. Tarmogoyf has continually doubled in price over the few years. Cards like Restoration Angel and Snapcaster Mage have a possibility of appreciating a lot because they are powerful and likely won't see reprints for a while.

[warfordium]

four whole pages and none of you slammed the OP on affect/effect (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/affect.html)? for shame. /quitstheseforums

[lordofthepit]

four whole pages and none of you slammed the OP on affect/effect (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/affect.html)? for shame. /quitstheseforums

Probably a good time to go over this:

1. "Affect" is usually a verb.
2. "Effect" is usually a noun.
3. If you're not sure whether you should invoke one of the exceptions to rules (1) and (2), you probably aren't aware of the other meanings.

[Lemnear]

four whole pages and none of you slammed the OP on affect/effect (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/affect.html)? for shame. /quitstheseforums

If we start to discuss typos and stuff rather than substance, this forum would have never evolved past the first 10 threads

[Grand Superior]

four whole pages and none of you slammed the OP on affect/effect (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/affect.html)? for shame. /quitstheseforums

Eh, I noticed it but realized that the subject matter was more important than a word misuse. It IS quite jarring, though, and is second only to "could of," "should of, "and "would of" as one of my English pet peeves.


There will always, always be lots of people who want to play a competitive format that uses cards from Magic's entire history.

Agreed. There's a level of majesty to the pre-8th edition cards that you can only experience (non casually) in Eternal formats. I tried to get into Modern in the past and I'm currently trying to get into it now but the format just doesn't have the same feel. Legacy and Vintage just lets you do so many cool and powerful things and Modern either just lacks that or has them sitting on the banned list. Again, I'm glad that Modern exists, but Legacy and Vintage should exist too.

[YamiJoey]

UW/UWR is easily one of the best decks in the format, as with Storm, and it made no showing at the top. Modern is like Legacy, but if everyone played the metagame at the same time. It changes incredibly fast for a format with no rotation, and is INCREDIBLY skill intensive. It is often harder to play than Legacy. If you make a mistake you cannot recover. Your opponents' cards and interactions are powerful enough to crush you, but your individual cards and card selection is/are bad on their own.

Synergy is HUGE in Modern, whereas in Legacy synergy is a side effect of the most powerful Spells being played together. This is especially true with Storm. You can kill people with like 3 cards in Legacy. In Modern you a) need to hit 20 - not 10 copies of your kill, and b) have almost zero good draw Spells outside of Manamorphose, which is only good with an active permanent. Every Spell in Legacy Storm is basically broken in Modern, short of the Tutor interaction, and Ad Nauseum being unplayable.

Birting Pod takes the place of Elves. It plays an aggressive midrange strategy, whereas Elves plays straight aggro, and has a combo kill. It plays a pseudo toolbox strategy in Pod and Chord, replacing Zenith and Order. You can then combo kill people around a turn slower than most combo decks. Your combo is more consistent because of that, but being Creature-based is also easier to interact with. The main difference here is that your games are less about explosive T1 and T2 plays in Modern, allowing the deck a small set-up time that you don't get in Elves. There's also additional interaction in Modern as people don't just go "Doesn't matter; have Force" and actually play a lot of cards to mess with plans.

One thing that was said on Stream was that this additional interaction causes bigger, fatter combos to be more relevant, hence why Kiki-Jiki is played on Modern, but also creates these odd situations where someone tries to win and are stopped. The second player tries to win and is stopped, and then you have a lone Inkmoth Nexus trying beat a Snapcaster Mage in what is essentially a race to the finish now that everyone has been crippled. It's then about making the most with very little.

So basically the opening turns are like a game of chicken, then T3-5 is like Legacy, then it's like Limited.

EDIT: I agree with the previously mentioned Planeswalker test. *Sleeves up Tamiyo and Gideon*

[Kurgern]

Modern will kill Legacy. It's just a matter of time. This GP will be one of the steps to the end.

ok,here we are.
There is always a dude to predict that the great apocalyps is upon us,a preacher who have forseen the seven plagues incoming.
you're not the first,you're not the last,i'm fine with that.
However,and i beg your pardon,the legacy world will not colapse soon or later.
You know why ?
Because human beings loves above all,power and greatness.
They like watching great sport's actions,powerfull cars/moto's racing,they loves great wines,they loves fine meals.
Humans loves what is best in life.
Thats why legacy will always be played around the world.
im pending between both world,i like modern and legacy,i'm playing both.
But i'm sick of fanboys,who cant just enjoy their favorite format without asking for the well deserved death of legacy.
Doing that you just show to the world your frustration.

[sco0ter]

I predict participant numbers will decrease, when people realize, that modern events look like this

http://imgur.com/a/SjcgE

lol

[YamiJoey]

ok,here we are.
There is always a dude to predict that the great apocalyps is upon us,a preacher who have forseen the seven plagues incoming.
you're not the first,you're not the last,i'm fine with that.
However,and i beg your pardon,the legacy world will not colapse soon or later.
You know why ?
Because human beings loves above all,power and greatness.
They like watching great sport's actions,powerfull cars/moto's racing,they loves great wines,they loves fine meals.
Humans loves what is best in life.
Thats why legacy will always be played around the world.
im pending between both world,i like modern and legacy,i'm playing both.
But i'm sick of fanboys,who cant just enjoy their favorite format without asking for the well deserved death of legacy.
Doing that you just show to the world your frustration.

Legacy is shit, long live the Mox

[danbuster35]

The biggest impact I see is SCG revisiting their tournament lineup to fit in Modern on Sundays. It makes sense for them and is just a matter of time. More cards being turned over and more players = more dollars. Modern FNMs, GPs, PTs and PTQs will ensure that the format sees a lot more play than legacy.

The biggest deal is that Wizards is committed to reprinting to keep prices down which will grow the modern player base. Legacy has a max which is capped by the number of dual lands. Modern won't have a cap.

I would suggest getting your modern mana base now (not fetches), if you haven't already.

How exactly did reprinting (Modern Masters) keep prices down? i.e. Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique, Cryptic Command, Dark Confidant. All it did was allow people to pay $10-12/pack or $250/box to gamble and try to get these cards cheaper. It did lower the price on fringe cards such as Spell Snare, Kitchen Finks, etc.

[Barook]

I predict participant numbers will decrease, when people realize, that modern events look like this

http://imgur.com/a/SjcgE

lol
Is that guy the Kami of the Crescent Moon?

[dunk]

I predict participant numbers will decrease, when people realize, that modern events look like this

http://imgur.com/a/SjcgE

lol

Way to win the thread. Luckily all Legacy players are in athletic shape and know how to wear their pants. Oh wait, only in Europe. Sorry America :/

[DragoFireheart]

Legacy is shit, long live the Mox

Yet you still post here.


I predict participant numbers will decrease, when people realize, that modern events look like this

http://imgur.com/a/SjcgE

lol


lol

I wonder what Legacy and Vintage look like?

[twndomn]

Kurgern and YamiJoey are in a poetic contest or something.

good luck to this degenerated thread.

Legacy - a format that is capped by the amount of Duals and FoW in supply.
Modern - a format in which many of the matches are combo a vs combo b, planeswalkers in less than one-third of all decks in any given tournaments, and at risk of having your deck banned at any given moments.

[testing32]

ok,here we are.
There is always a dude to predict that the great apocalyps is upon us,a preacher who have forseen the seven plagues incoming.
you're not the first,you're not the last,i'm fine with that.
However,and i beg your pardon,the legacy world will not colapse soon or later.
You know why ?
Because human beings loves above all,power and greatness.
They like watching great sport's actions,powerfull cars/moto's racing,they loves great wines,they loves fine meals.
Humans loves what is best in life.
Thats why legacy will always be played around the world.
im pending between both world,i like modern and legacy,i'm playing both.
But i'm sick of fanboys,who cant just enjoy their favorite format without asking for the well deserved death of legacy.
Doing that you just show to the world your frustration.

You sound like a vintage player 10 years ago.


How exactly did reprinting (Modern Masters) keep prices down? i.e. Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique, Cryptic Command, Dark Confidant. All it did was allow people to pay $10-12/pack or $250/box to gamble and try to get these cards cheaper. It did lower the price on fringe cards such as Spell Snare, Kitchen Finks, etc.

Prices went up because modern masters increased interest in the format and directly resulted in their two largest GPs ever. They will continue to reprint this stuff and make truckload of cash.

[Arsenal]

Kurgern and YamiJoey are in a poetic contest or something.

good luck to this degenerated thread.

Legacy - a format that is capped by the amount of Duals and FoW in supply.
Modern - a format in which many of the matches are combo a vs combo b, planeswalkers in less than one-third of all decks in any given tournaments, and at risk of having your deck banned at any given moments.

Yes, because ONE Top 16 = the format forever. And what does the use of Planeswalkers have to do with anything? That's such a random indicator of format health.

[kusumoto]

I predict participant numbers will decrease, when people realize, that modern events look like this

http://imgur.com/a/SjcgE

lol

Thanks for memories.

[Arsenal]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't understand how people who don't even competitively play Modern are commenting on the state of Modern based off of ONE Top 16. If you don't understand the difference between Kitchen Finks in Kiki-Pod vs. Project Melira, then how are you qualified to classify them as "the same deck"?

I mean, that'd be like some Standard-only player looking at some SCG Legacy Open Top 16 and declaring Legacy to be exactly that and nothing else. How would that go over on these boards?

[The_Dingo]

I'm pretty sure the fact that the Modern GP had record setting numbers doesn't mean very much. They basically bribed players to come play. I don't even play Modern but I considered borrowing a deck just to get my hands on that super sexy Batterskull, and the playmat isn't bad either.

[Megadeus]

I'm pretty sure the fact that the Modern GP had record setting numbers doesn't mean very much. They basically bribed players to come play. I don't even play Modern but I considered borrowing a deck just to get my hands on that super sexy Batterskull, and the playmat isn't bad either.

Considering that I have seen the play mat itself go for close to double the entry cost, I'd say it probably was worth it to borrow a deck if you were anywhere close. If I had the cash I probably would've done the same thing

[HSCK]

I'm pretty sure the fact that the Modern GP had record setting numbers doesn't mean very much. They basically bribed players to come play. I don't even play Modern but I considered borrowing a deck just to get my hands on that super sexy Batterskull, and the playmat isn't bad either.

I wasn't aware that covered hotel costs, travel, and time too. It's the largest constructed event ever, it's a pretty big deal.

[FTW]

enormous

That certainly describes the buttcracks

[Richard Cheese]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't understand how people who don't even competitively play Modern are commenting on the state of Modern based off of ONE Top 16. If you don't understand the difference between Kitchen Finks in Kiki-Pod vs. Project Melira, then how are you qualified to classify them as "the same deck"?

I mean, that'd be like some Standard-only player looking at some SCG Legacy Open Top 16 and declaring Legacy to be exactly that and nothing else. How would that go over on these boards?

To me it's akin to Legacy classifying the many different versions of Nic Fit as one deck. Different wincons, significantly different lists, even different engines, but Explorer/Therapy is there so...same deck?

Speaking as someone that has no Modern experience, I look at the list and I see a bunch of Birthing Pod decks, and a bunch of Twin decks and one that's kinda both. Even though I'm aware at some level that they probably all play pretty differently, it's hard not to make that generalization when you're just looking at deck lists. Since I'm not about to sit around on Cockatrice grinding Modern matchups to find the nuances of every deck, it's just easier to ask.

Maybe it's more fair to classify them as broad archetypes like we tend to do with Storm, Tempo, Aggro-Control, etc.

[Ellomdian]

... I firmly believe that much of GP Richmond's success comes from ... the event being at a reasonably accessible east coast location...

I wish this was true - I would have been there in a heartbeat. But neither Plane nor Train nor Automobile could get me from Denver to Richmond for less than $350, and as someone who lives in a major hub city that has flights to Europe occasionally for less than $150, it was damn near nausea-inducing.

Star City has shown historically a huge East-Coast bias in their events, and this one was no exception. If they had picked a real city, with a real airport, I have no doubt they would have easily hit the 5k cap.


Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't understand how people who don't even competitively play Modern are commenting on the state of Modern based off of ONE Top 16. If you don't understand the difference between Kitchen Finks in Kiki-Pod vs. Project Melira, then how are you qualified to classify them as "the same deck"?

I mean, that'd be like some Standard-only player looking at some SCG Legacy Open Top 16 and declaring Legacy to be exactly that and nothing else. How would that go over on these boards?

If someone with no Legacy experience looked at TPS and ANT, or any one of half a dozen Delver variants, and declared them to be basically the same thing, I would have a hard time arguing with them. As a matter of fact, I would have much the same reaction to someone who lumped Kiki and Melira in the same "Pod" category, or someone who said that adding Goyfs to your Splinter Twin list didn't make it a unique deck.

I think you are reaching a bit far claiming that no one involved in this discussion 'competitively' (god, I hate that word in this context) plays Modern. I mean, if you weren't at the GP or the PT, could you have competitively played the format in the last 6 months? Does the 8 man that fires at the LGS with a bunch of last-season's Standard players who don't like the current format count? What about the GPT win-a-box? What about the daily's online? Modern is an immature format. It is neigh-constantly in flux (one of the biggest complaints I have heard from most Legacy players) and it's identity is effectively defined by it's historical instability.

[Disciple of Skulls]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't understand how people who don't even competitively play Modern are commenting on the state of Modern based off of ONE Top 16. If you don't understand the difference between Kitchen Finks in Kiki-Pod vs. Project Melira, then how are you qualified to classify them as "the same deck"?

I mean, that'd be like some Standard-only player looking at some SCG Legacy Open Top 16 and declaring Legacy to be exactly that and nothing else. How would that go over on these boards?

I finally got out of my 2 year lurking status just to tell you that "metagame" and "top performing decks" are not the the same statistic.

If you want to find the best deck, a single tournament Top16 is not enough. The winning deck is not necessarily determined by the outcome of a single tournament. In order to determine the best decks you need to include a large sample size, as you clearly state in your posts.

Metagame is what people play. To determine a Metagame, a single tournament of larger size is sufficient to paint a picture of what people play. This information should still be taken with respect to local variances. But your opposition in this argument is fully correct that a tournament with over 4000 participants in a new/post banning format is an excellent indicator of what is being played in the modern format. The representation percentage of a deck states the Metagame and not the best deck, which you are so crucially persistent on.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gprich14/day2#4

[DragoFireheart]

AKA: the best deck is not what everyone else is playing.

[twndomn]

Yes, because ONE Top 16 = the format forever. And what does the use of Planeswalkers have to do with anything? That's such a random indicator of format health.

This might be news to you: vendors are trying to sell cards, Planeswalkers become a problem if their usage is standard only.

Arsenal is saying that people are not allowed to deduce anything about a poll collected from 4,000+ people about a particular topic at a particular point in time. Whoever taught him logic and statistic should give him another lesson.

Best deck is an urban legend. The best deck is the one you are most familiar, in any formats.

[Arsenal]

I finally got out of my 2 year lurking status just to tell you that "metagame" and "top performing decks" are not the the same statistic.

If you want to find the best deck, a single tournament Top16 is not enough. The winning deck is not necessarily determined by the outcome of a single tournament. In order to determine the best decks you need to include a large sample size, as you clearly state in your posts.

Metagame is what people play. To determine a Metagame, a single tournament of larger size is sufficient to paint a picture of what people play. This information should still be taken with respect to local variances. But your opposition in this argument is fully correct that a tournament with over 4000 participants in a new/post banning format is an excellent indicator of what is being played in the modern format. The representation percentage of a deck states the Metagame and not the best deck, which you are so crucially persistent on.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gprich14/day2#4

The metagame I care about will be composed of the top performing decks. For example, I fully understand that Dragon Stompy is played in Legacy and is technically a deck that exists in the overall Legacy meta, but I am not concerned with the value of the #43 deck in Legacy, I generally just care about the top 10 decks in a given format when I'm talking about "the metagame".

Also, the metagame you speak of is only valid for that specific tournament. The 2013 Magic Championship's meta was drastically different than GP Richmond's meta. To your point, "a single tournament of larger size is sufficient to paint a picture of what people play"... on that specific day. To try to make any concrete statements about the format based off ONE tournament is just rediculous. Even moreso when you have a bunch of non-Modern players making these "format defining" statements.

I never said anything about "best deck"... not sure why people are saying that I claimed something was/wasn't the "best deck".

EDIT: twndomn... I don't even know what else to say to you anymore about your insistence on claiming that the sample size is the number of entrants and that the tournament is a poll. This is getting to be annoying as you do not understand what you're talking about, yet continue to claim that I'm wrong when others have also told you how moronic your statements are. Just stop.

[twndomn]

To try to make any concrete statements about the format based off ONE tournament is just "rediculous" or "ridiculous" only to you. Everyone else sees the tournament as a valid representation about the state of the format.

I don't even know what else to say to you anymore about your insistence on claiming that the sample size is the number of entrants and that the tournament is not a poll. This is getting to be annoying as you do not understand what you're talking about, yet continue to claim that I'm wrong when others have also told you how moronic your statements are. Just stop.

[Arsenal]

To try to make any concrete statements about the format based off ONE tournament is just "rediculous" or "ridiculous" only to you. Everyone else sees the tournament as a valid representation about the state of the format.

Pretty sure I'm not the only one...


If you are polling all 4000 people on what the best deck is in legacy, then yes you have a sample size of 4000.

But once you pit all those decks against each other at an event, you have 1 top 8 to draw conclusions from. If you want to say that this tournament's results are more significant because more people attended, sure... whatever.

Saying this is a poll is completely off base. Polls aren't about competition, they are about opinion. A poll would be "Ask 4000 people whether they would want to build a house out of plastic or wood or stone and record results". What we have here is "Have 4000 people build a house out of their preferred material and measure how long the house lasts before failing". They are not the same at all.

The tournament is sample size 1 as it is 1 tournament.

[Disciple of Skulls]

What will give you a better understanding of a metagame? 5 tournaments with 200 participants or 1 tournament with 4000 participants? One grouping has a sample size of 1000, the other 4000. I would always trust the statistics given to you by a larger sample size...Even if you combine both sample periods, the resulting statistic is still dominated by the one event with a huge attendance. You would need to include 20 tournaments with 200 people attending to match the statistics gained from this one GP...

To your logic, you can never predict a metagame because you could always apply the logic "but only for that time period". Sure adaptations happen, but I can tell you that for the next large Modern event, you'd better prepared to face one of these decks taken from the GP Richmond Metagame Analysis:

Affinity 13.54%
Melira Pod 10.38%
Storm 5.64%
Jund 5.19%
Merfolk 4.74%
WUR Control 4.29%
GB Obliterator Rock 4.06%
UR Twin 4.06%
Tarmo-Twin 4.06%
WUR Midrange 3.61%
Hexproof Auras 3.39%
Big Zoo 3.16%
GB Rock 3.16%
Burn 2.93%
RG Tron 2.93%
Kiki Pod 2.26%
WUR Twin 2.26%
Ad Nauseam 2.03%
Living End 2.03%

Since the Metagame is of evolving nature, I can assume that there will be plenty of Shatterstorms and Ancient Grudges in sideboards only by looking at the top two placements of the analysis. I don't need to be a Modern expert to conclude this...

A collection of Top16 placements over multiple tournaments gives you information to construct a Tier structure amongst decks, but I have never attended a tournament that was only composed of Tier1 decks. To see what is being played you refer to the metagame, and there a attendance of 4000 players is a very good indicator to show what people bring to the table.

[Arsenal]

But just two weeks before, Zoo at PT Valencia accounted for some obscene amount of decks, something like 20+% (I'll try to find the article), but failed to place in the Top 8. If I'm testing for the next big Modern event, I'm not caring about what was played at the previous tourney, I'm caring about what was winning/placing at the previous tourney.

[Dragonslayer_90]

This might be news to you: vendors are trying to sell cards, Planeswalkers become a problem if their usage is standard only.

Arsenal is saying that people are not allowed to deduce anything about a poll collected from 4,000+ people about a particular topic at a particular point in time. Whoever taught him logic and statistic should give him another lesson.

Best deck is an urban legend. The best deck is the one you are most familiar, in any formats.

Have you ever heard of the standard deck called Cawblade?

As for the talk about comparing decks in legacy and modern metagames, I think what we should recognize is that often (but not always) consistently successful decks will often share a certain shell but actually have different strategies they adhere to. For example it, it is too easy to say that all the delver decks of legacy are the same just because they play a shell of cards that include FoW, wasteland, Daze, Delver, Brainstorm, and ponder. RUG carries out its tempo game by playing a threat and riding it to victory via mana denial which makes their soft counters back breaking. UWR tried to emulate this strategy at first but ultimately cut stifle to focus more on a midrange tempo plan via stoneforge package, now with TNN to make the deck insane. BUG is kind of what happens when you splice elements of Jund with Delver since the deck has the ability to play an attrition game if it wants to or needs to. The same can be said for pod decks in modern. Melira Pod is primarily a midrange value attrition deck with a combo kill as a back up plan while Kiki Pod is the reverse. While their strategies are different, they both play birthing pod shells with some card choices being the same like pod, chord, kitchen finks, etc.

tl;dr Don't call different decks the same just because they share a shell but actually have different game plans.

[Holiday]

The manabase for these Pod decks is so greedy! I wouldn't be surprised to players develop strategies to attack these weaknesses.

I'm not super familiar with Modern but they have access to cards like Ghost Quarter, Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon, and Fulminator Mage. That's just off the top of my head. I wonder what would happen if Wizards reprinted Wasteland?

As we've seen in Legacy, the Modern format will too adapt to hate on these top decks. One of the things I like most about MTG, seeing a format evolve.

[Arsenal]

My bad, Zoo was #1 at PT Valencia at 16.16% (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptbng14/metagame), yet failed to place in the Top 8. UWR Control, the eventual winner, was tied at #10 with Kiki-Pod at 2.52%. Storm, #12 at 3.03%, placed 7th.

Again, I care far less about what is being played on a given day than what is actually winning. The winning lists, regardless of meta positioning, determine what happens in the format, not the decks that shows up in full force, yet fail to deliver. Now if a deck is showing up in full force AND it's winning/placing, then I'm certainly going to pay attention to that deck. If it's showing up in full force, but not winning/placing, I'm going to pay far less attention that deck than I will other decks that aren't showing up in full force, but are winning/placing.

[twndomn]

Pretty sure I'm not the only one...

Aren't you the person who made the Ridiculous claim about sample size of one and than Slyly shifted your terminology to one top 16? Why don't you explain your shady behavior first, before you point your fingers at others?

[Arsenal]

Aren't you the person who made the Ridiculous claim about sample size of one and than Slyly shifted your terminology to one top 16? Why don't you explain your shady behavior first, before you point your fingers at others?

One tournament's Top 16 is a sample size of ONE. I don't know how else to explain this basic fact to you.

[Shawn]

Being concerned about what is winning is problematic with regards to the PT, considering it is a split format event.

[Arsenal]

Being concerned about what is winning is problematic with regards to the PT, considering it is a split format event.

This article pretty much sums up my feelings: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptbng14/metagame_day2

If you look at the Win % of decks and not just what the penetration is, you'd see that UWx Control had the highest Win % at 75.6% and Zoo had a horrendous Win % of 50.6%. If I was planning out my tourney, I'm going to care about what is winning and not about what happens to be showing up. If a deck shows up in full force at 20% of the field, but it's Win % is at 50%, I'm less concerned about that deck than I am about a deck that showed up at 5% of the field, but is ripping off wins at a 75% clip.

[Shawn]

Ah, the way you worded it made it sound like the winning deck was more important, not the deck with the highest win percentage. Makes sense when choosing a deck, but you still need to have experience against decks with high field percentages.

Sent from my SCH-R890 using Tapatalk

[Tammit67]

To try to make any concrete statements about the format based off ONE tournament is just "rediculous" or "ridiculous" only to you. Everyone else sees the tournament as a valid representation about the state of the format.

Of course it is a valid representation. But it is not the only representation.


I don't even know what else to say to you anymore about your insistence on claiming that the sample size is the number of entrants and that the tournament is not a poll. This is getting to be annoying as you do not understand what you're talking about, yet continue to claim that I'm wrong when others have also told you how moronic your statements are. Just stop.

He is not insisting that the sample size is the number of players. In fact...

My sample size is NOT one, you're the misunderstood person. Are you intentionally trying to Mislead people again?

The tournament is not of sample size one. The tournament is a point in time, just like how a poll is. This is a poll of sample size of 4,000+, it is very valid and very representative, more so than you can comprehend.

The tournament is absolutely the sample size. The sample size is not the number of entrants. Are you being serious right now?
Originally it seems you were the one to say the sample size of the event was 4000 and he said it was 1.

Anyway... how is this a poll? Pick anyone of these definitions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll), and tell me how the GP is directly correlated to people's opinion/decision that a deck is best. 4000 people didnt vote Pod and affinity to the top of the event. No, player skill and matchups did that, and that's why it is not a poll.

[Arsenal]

The results from the tourney is the sample size. One Top 16 = One. The number of entrants is not the sample size. He said that this is a poll (lol) of "sample size 4,000+". I've been trying to explain to him that the number of entrants is not the sample size...

[YamiJoey]

It is an important factor. You could have a 90% win rate with decks (assuming anything 60%+ is a 'win') and only lose to Tribal Birds. If 60% of the field turns up with Tribal Birds it does not matter how good or bad that deck is. Its win percentage is irrelevant. You do not make Day 2 at that GP.

The actual meta is a huge factor when selecting a deck and deciding the health of the metagame. I have no idea what we're actually even talking about at this point, I think it's turned into an argument about who can exploit other people's grammar errors the most effectively and then deciding you win the argument by default and so you must be correct or whatever. You need percentage of play (the 4,302 people who entered) and its success rate in various ways; win percentage; people who made D2; what actually made it to the very top tables. If there were 4 Melira Pod decks and they all made T8 that's insane. If it was 50% of the field and made 50% of the T8, what does that say about the deck?

One of the most important things with these formats that have a huge card pool is knowing your own deck, and knowing how to interact with your opponents' decks. As a control player I make it my business to keep on top of these things, and you all should too if you intend to do well in the format. Experience is rewarded in bucket-loads. It's a hard format and you need to spend the day acting out mechanics of previous testing sessions. Most Modern variants of Legacy decks are ten-times harder to play because - as I said before - the cards are so god damned terrible. You will not win on the back of your four-drop if it all goes the way of the pear; your four drop is a 3/4 Flier with effectively no abilities. You are not Brainstorning every turn until they deal with your Jace.

[Arsenal]

Disciple's argument was that the "top performing decks" and the "metagame" were two different things. While I agree with him using the definitions he provided, I explained to him that I will not spend time testing against fringe decks simply because they exist in the format. I'm going to test against the winningest decks and/or decks that have consistently been placing over a long period of time. My "metagame" is entirely comprised of the top decks as that is what I expect to face off against and those are the decks I want the most matchup experience against. If I lose to a fringe deck I was unprepared for? Okay, you got me, I'll accept that risk if it increases my percentage points against the format's heavyweights. If I lose to a Twin deck, despite having a favorable matchup and doing a ton of testing against it? I need to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate things.

Also, I have never said anything about anyone's grammar, spelling, punctuation, or anything similar. I'm not sure where you're getting that from, but I certainly have never said "You didn't use a comma correctly, therefore, you're wrong".

[Dragonslayer_90]

Most Modern variants of Legacy decks are ten-times harder to play because - as I said before - the cards are so god damned terrible. You will not win on the back of your four-drop if it all goes the way of the pear; your four drop is a 3/4 Flier with effectively no abilities. You are not Brainstorning every turn until they deal with your Jace.

I disagree that lower card quality often makes Modern decks more skill intensive than their legacy counter parts. It really depends on which decks you are talking about. I think what you can say that the lower card quality does across the board for the most part is forces you to build your deck to function more off redundancy because you don't have much tools for good card selection (with brainstorm outside the card pool and top, ponder, preoradin banned). Look at Modern UWR Control. It's a deck with very little card selection. Snapcaster Mage is the only element of card selection in that deck. Compare this to UWr Miracles legacy, a deck that runs Top, brainstorm, ponder, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor in addition to some snapcaster mages. The is deck full of card selection because it wants to able to look for the right answers to any given game state in time. Unfortunately, we do not have the same luxury in modern. But that does not make miracles less difficult to play than modern UWR Control. In fact, I would argue that miracles' high degree of card selection makes it harder to play because now you have to think about what you are trying to find in xyz situation with top, jace, brainstorm, etc, but that's a whole other discussion entirely.

There is one exception I want to bring up: Pod. Pod is the exception to what I view as the problem the paucity of good card selection in modern because it provides repeatable card selection. I am firm believer that anything that provides you card selection whether it be tutors or cantrips allows you to exploit play skill the most. It lets you translate good play into wins more consistently than just trying to function off a high degree or pure redundancy and just hoping that your draws aren't bad enough that you don't have the right cards at the right time and lose the game because you got unlucky.

EDIT: I should add I think many pros are gravitating towards pod for modern events partly because it has so much flexibility with the card selection Pod provides.

[Arsenal]

I think you are reaching a bit far claiming that no one involved in this discussion 'competitively' (god, I hate that word in this context) plays Modern. I mean, if you weren't at the GP or the PT, could you have competitively played the format in the last 6 months? Does the 8 man that fires at the LGS with a bunch of last-season's Standard players who don't like the current format count? What about the GPT win-a-box? What about the daily's online? Modern is an immature format. It is neigh-constantly in flux (one of the biggest complaints I have heard from most Legacy players) and it's identity is effectively defined by it's historical instability.

Many people in this thread have admitted to not playing/understanding Modern, so I don't think I'm reaching at all when I say "people who do not play/understand Modern don't know what they're talking about when making a statement about Modern." That's like Johnny saying "I don't play/understand Legacy, but here's my opinion on Legacy's meta...", pretty sure you wouldn't give his opinion a whole lot of thought, right? Same thing in this thread. Just being honest.

My FNM gets 30+ dedicated Modern players each week and there have been numerous Modern events that my team has traveled to and won/placed within the last 2 months. The Mana Vault $5k had my guy Vinnie (Twin) place 9th out of 150+ and my guy Jack (Twin) won the GPT Richmond win-a-MM-box side event at the same venue. We recently went to a GPT Minneapolis where I went undefeated in the Swiss, and Vinnie (Twin) won the entire thing after cut to Top 4. My guy Dave (Affinity) made Day 2 of GP Chicago 2013. We are competitive Modern players that are fortunate enough to have insanely competitive FNM events with a large pool of absolute killers and we do well in pretty much every Modern event we go to.

So yes, there is a distinct difference between a competitive Modern player and a non-competitive Modern player, imo. I have the good fortune of playing against competitive Modern players weekly and there's a drastic dropoff in play skill that I've encountered between my team and the rest of the field.

[LOLWut]

I registered solely to point to my username to this:


It changes incredibly fast [Editor's translation: Instead of new cards and decks shaking up the format, we'll do it with bannings & unbannings!] for a format with no rotation, and is INCREDIBLY skill intensive. It is often harder to play than Legacy [Editor's note: :laugh:]. If you make a mistake you cannot recover. Your opponents' cards and interactions are powerful enough to crush you, but your individual cards and card selection is/are bad on their own.[Editor's translation: There are fewer decisions and players play past each other.]

[Richard Cheese]

Many people in this thread have admitted to not playing/understanding Modern, so I don't think I'm reaching at all when I say "people who do not play/understand Modern don't know what they're talking about when making a statement about Modern." That's like Johnny saying "I don't play/understand Legacy, but here's my opinion on Legacy's meta...", pretty sure you wouldn't give his opinion a whole lot of thought, right? Same thing in this thread. Just being honest.

My FNM gets 30+ dedicated Modern players each week and there have been numerous Modern events that my team has traveled to and won/placed within the last 2 months. The Mana Vault $5k had my guy Vinnie (Twin) place 9th out of 150+ and my guy Jack (Twin) won the GPT Richmond win-a-MM-box side event at the same venue. We recently went to a GPT Minneapolis where I went undefeated in the Swiss, and Vinnie (Twin) won the entire thing after cut to Top 4. My guy Dave (Affinity) made Day 2 of GP Chicago 2013. We are competitive Modern players that are fortunate enough to have insanely competitive FNM events with a large pool of absolute killers and we do well in pretty much every Modern event we go to.

So yes, there is a distinct difference between a competitive Modern player and a non-competitive Modern player, imo. I have the good fortune of playing against competitive Modern players weekly and there's a drastic dropoff in play skill that I've encountered between my team and the rest of the field.

So you're basically saying the whole format is Splinter Twin vs. Affinity. Got it.

[YamiJoey]

I disagree that lower card quality often makes Modern decks more skill intensive than their legacy counter parts. It really depends on which decks you are talking about. I think what you can say that the lower card quality does across the board for the most part is forces you to build your deck to function more off redundancy because you don't have much tools for good card selection (with brainstorm outside the card pool and top, ponder, preoradin banned). Look at Modern UWR Control. It's a deck with very little card selection. Snapcaster Mage is the only element of card selection in that deck. Compare this to UWr Miracles legacy, a deck that runs Top, brainstorm, ponder, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor in addition to some snapcaster mages. The is deck full of card selection because it wants to able to look for the right answers to any given game state in time. Unfortunately, we do not have the same luxury in modern. But that does not make miracles less difficult to play than modern UWR Control. In fact, I would argue that miracles' high degree of card selection makes it harder to play because now you have to think about what you are trying to find in xyz situation with top, jace, brainstorm, etc, but that's a whole other discussion entirely.

There is one exception I want to bring up: Pod. Pod is the exception to what I view as the problem the paucity of good card selection in modern because it provides repeatable card selection. I am firm believer that anything that provides you card selection whether it be tutors or cantrips allows you to exploit play skill the most. It lets you translate good play into wins more consistently than just trying to function off a high degree or pure redundancy and just hoping that your draws aren't bad enough that you don't have the right cards at the right time and lose the game because you got unlucky.

EDIT: I should add I think many pros are gravitating towards pod for modern events partly because it has so much flexibility with the card selection Pod provides.

Agreed. I said "Often" not "In every case". The faster the deck is, the harder it is to play in Modern as a very simple and breakable rule. Storm is the example I will keep coming back to, but until you decide to cast a Doomsday your game is much easier in Legacy.

Also; most of them gravitated towards Pod not because it's skill intensive and the best deck or whatever, but because when you have no idea what everyone is playing when you could face anything from UWR control, to Geist, to Storm, to Affinity, playing the deck that has a very good kill combo, with powerful cards and synergies, and doesn't fall apart to any given hate card is a very obvious and clean choice. It's why Kiki Twin did well. You play a control style game, switch to a tempo game, and can combo kill at any point.

Richmond is not a good indicator of the format as a whole. As was said many times throughout the day; there were way too many people to really get a grasp of the true metagame. People played things they could consistently win games with. Control is not dead, it's just difficult to win games when there's 4,000 players playing god knows what.

[Arsenal]

So you're basically saying the whole format is Splinter Twin vs. Affinity. Got it.

Uh... no. I simply pointed out my teammates' decks for reference. The format is most certainly not Twin and Affinity.

[HammafistRoob]

I really can't believe somebody really believes Modern is harder to play than Legacy. How many big Legacy events have you even won sir?

[CaptainTwiddle]

I really can't believe somebody really believes Modern is harder to play than Legacy. How many big Legacy events have you even won sir?

Honestly, I think the only two factors that make Legacy "harder" than Modern are: 1) The existence of Brainstorm as a ubiquitous, skill-intensive card, and 2) a larger total card pool, which requires a deeper knowledge of Magic's history. If Modern begins to diversify, I think the skill difference between the formats will all but disappear. Of course, there is the possibility that the format starts to implode, focusing around just a few archetypes instead, but if that happens, Wizards will take action to shake things up, as they've already proven they're willing to do.

Don't get me wrong, I love Legacy, but anyone who isn't acknowledging that Modern will surpass Legacy as the eternal format of choice in short order is being very shortsighted. While there has definitely been an increase in card values leading to an entry barrier to Modern, it is nowhere near that of Legacy on the whole and, unlike Legacy, there is actually action that Wizards can take to address that barrier. You can bet that there will be Modern Masters 2 and that it will have a significantly larger print run than MM1.

I really don't understand all the Modern haters. Sure, maybe the format isn't perfect right now, but don't you want it to get there? I really miss the feel of old Extended circa 2000-2004. Obviously, Modern isn't going to be identical to that format, but it may someday represent the diversity of that type of format and will hopefully provide as enjoyable a play experience.

[mcfarland]

While there are differing opinions on which format is healthier, I think we can all agree that Modern trumps Legacy when it comes to butt cracks. (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mrloganrhoades/man-goes-to-magic-the-gathering-tournament-poses-next-to-but)

[Edit: Not trying to derail the thread, but this guy is sort of genius.]

[lordofthepit]

I really don't understand all the Modern haters. Sure, maybe the format isn't perfect right now, but don't you want it to get there? I really miss the feel of old Extended circa 2000-2004. Obviously, Modern isn't going to be identical to that format, but it may someday represent the diversity of that type of format and will hopefully provide as enjoyable a play experience.

I would love Modern to resemble Extended ca. 2000-2004.

I'll note that Extended once had a clause that made the ABUR duals legal even after their base sets had rotated out, but for obvious reasons, this is never going to happen in Modern. I could get behind an old-school Extended or a Legacy lite with no reserved cards though.

[yugular]

I haven't read all the posts in the thread so sorry if this has been already said, but I don't see Modern vs. Legacy as strictly competing against each others. Growth of the modern format can also attract some people to Legacy and even though few people would leave Legacy for Modern, I have heard that there is this huge influx of new players in the game. If only 0.1% of the new mtg players are interested in Legacy it should cover the wholes that old Legacy players might leave as they move to Modern. Card availability is a much bigger issue than Modern for Legacy.

Some people are afraid of SCG ditching Legacy for Modern. I am from Europe and my picture of the open series circuit might not be as educated as many of you have, but what I am understanding is that SCG Open Legacy is very popular and profitable circuit. If SCG for some reason moves to Modern it wouldn't be the end of the world as they have already proven the popularity and profitability of such circuit, someone might be able to copy that and develop it further.

[ukyo_rulz]

I play and enjoy both formats. I think they are both fine. GP Richmond will obviously help Modern, but I doubt it will affect Legacy in any way. Legacy will live and die on its own merits. As for difficulty of play, I would give a slight edge to Modern. Both formats are skill-intensive but in Legacy I feel that there are more blowout games where one guy just completely overpowers the other. In Legacy I think games decided on early Wastelands, Hymns, Chalices or a fast combo with no resistance are super easy. Modern has these easy games too (Blood Moon) but not quite as many. This is just based on my personal experience.

[Quasim0ff]

Comparing modern to legacy is like comparing vintage to legacy.

Some cards are playable in both, but in no way are the formats comparable.

[lordofthepit]

I cannot see how Modern is a more skill-intensive format than Legacy overall. Granted, I'm sure I'd have problems if I tried to jump into Modern for several reasons: (1) it's a format that largely attracts professional players, (2) there is a very different metagame I'm not accustomed to, and (3) the challenging skills in that format on how to form a Birthing Pod chain are very different from those in Legacy. There are different points of emphasis in each format, just as Limited may be more challenging on your combat math and your ability to assess bluffs, but it cannot compare to Legacy in terms of other facets of the game (because they've largely been removed from the New World Order).

What are some of the cards which have been repeatedly cited as particularly skill testing? Brainstorm, Sensei's Divining Top, Cabal Therapy, Green Sun's Zenith, and Gifts Ungiven. Only the latter is legal in Modern, and often in a bastardized form where you search for two cards. There is a whole world of stack interactions of which Modern only enjoys a small sampling. There is an art to playing around effects like Wasteland, Rishadan Port, and/or Stifle, all of which pull you in different directions as you sequence your land drops. I'm sure anyone who plays Legacy regularly is familiar with the subtleties associated with each priority pass. I'm not saying these don't exist in Modern to some extent (perhaps even a large extent), and I certainly would believe that there are aspects where Modern is more challenging, but at the same time, there are many decisions to be made in Legacy that simply have no equivalent in Modern due to entire categories of cards not existing in that card pool.

[Barook]

Honestly, I think the only two factors that make Legacy "harder" than Modern are: 1) The existence of Brainstorm as a ubiquitous, skill-intensive card
Brainstorm can be sometimes skill-intensive, but more often than not, a trained monkey can Brainstorm in response to a Wasteland/Port, to topdeck an answer in response at instant speed or to hide key cards from discard. All these things take basically zero skill and actually lessen the skill requirement of said decks because it's basically auto-pilot. Just because you don't waste your Brainstorm on T1 like an idiot doesn't make Brainstorm a skill-intensive card - that's like arguing that you're a Grandmaster of Magic just because you don't Bolt your opponent's face on T1. Carefully setting up certain Brainstorms to optimize its value, that's skill, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

Sorcery speed library manipulation takes more thinking and planning ahead than keeping mana open for "In response, Brainstorm".

[DragoFireheart]

Comparing modern to legacy is like comparing vintage to legacy.

Some cards are playable in both, but in no way are the formats comparable.

This is true.

If my deck does well in Legacy, I'll get metagamed to hell and back or EXTREMELY rarely a card will get banned.

If my deck does well in Modern, there is a 99.9% chance it will get banned in some way.

[Barook]

This is true.

If my deck does well in Legacy, I'll get metagamed to hell and back or EXTREMELY rarely a card will get banned.

If my deck does well in Modern, there is a 99.9% chance it will get banned in some way.
Legacy has a much deeper card pool that allows the meta to handle stuff better. Imagine Sneak & Show in Modern - it would wreak havok left and right while in Legacy, stuff like Karakas keeps it in check. And if anything goes wrong, FoW can still play police.

While Wizards did do a shitton of stupid bans of Modern, it's kinda understandable that they ban dominant strategies. Stuff like 13 Jund decks out of 16 at a GP Top 16 are definitely not a sign of a healthy metagame, no matter how you spin it. However, instead of getting trigger-happy with the banhammer, they should get their shit together and introduce a bunch of cheap, maindeckable answers to various strategies that can police the broken in the same way FoW does it in Legacy, preferable in colors other than blue. That would also help to treat Legacy's severe case of cyanosis.

[gregtron]

I cannot see how Modern is a more skill-intensive format than Legacy overall....

It can be an extremely skill-intensive format. I'm most experienced with Melira Pod, which I found to be a difficult deck to learn to play even though my time in Legacy has almost entirely been spent comboing people out in some fashion. Even the linear decks are more difficult to play than they seem. How much life can a person gain before they can't be killed with a Scapeshift based on the lands that have been played? When does Affinity fall back to killing with poison instead of damage? Most of the decks are like that. Also the nature of sideboarding is pretty bizarre in Modern because of how powerful narrow answers can be to narrow strategies (which Modern is full of).

This is totally anecdotal, but something to think about. The last time I played Legacy, I was running ANT and died to a BUG player whose hand was Force, Force, Stifle, Spell Pierce, and whose Delver blind-flipped on turn 1. The round before that was against Elves, and ended up being just a couple of dudes goldfishing in front of each other. But the last time I played Modern there was a clusterfuck situation in which my opponent and I both learned that hitting me with an Inkmoth Nexus when I had Melira in play didn't do anything. Or an opponent who I killed with Cord of Calling while an Oblivion Stone activation was on the stack. In short, the Modern tournament was just more fun, more interesting, and definitely pushed me to play and think better. Even thinking back to the last time I played a non-combo deck in Legacy (GP DC I ran Esper Stoneblade) and it was still mostly autopilot. Maybe it's just because the decks and matchups are "fresher" to me, or maybe it's not. I don't know for sure, but I definitely enjoy playing Modern more than Legacy these days.


What are some of the cards which have been repeatedly cited as particularly skill testing? Brainstorm, Sensei's Divining Top, Cabal Therapy, Green Sun's Zenith, and Gifts Ungiven. Only the latter is legal in Modern, and often in a bastardized form where you search for two cards. There is a whole world of stack interactions of which Modern only enjoys a small sampling. There is an art to playing around effects like Wasteland, Rishadan Port, and/or Stifle, all of which pull you in different directions as you sequence your land drops. I'm sure anyone who plays Legacy regularly is familiar with the subtleties associated with each priority pass. I'm not saying these don't exist in Modern to some extent (perhaps even a large extent), and I certainly would believe that there are aspects where Modern is more challenging, but at the same time, there are many decisions to be made in Legacy that simply have no equivalent in Modern due to entire categories of cards not existing in that card pool.

The cards whose intricate interactions you know well might not exist in Modern, but that absolutely does not mean that a good knowledge of the stack and turns/phases isn't required to play Modern well. Modern is FAR more like Legacy than Standard in this respect. Both Pod versions, Storm, all the Gifts variants, UWR control, Faeries, the nutty Amulet of Vigor combo decks, Goryo's decks, and probably a lot more than I can remember off the top of my head all require advanced rules knowledge to properly pilot, AND all benefit greatly from a player's experience and knowledge. Even the "dumb" decks aren't e-z-p-z; for example, there's a huge difference between a really experienced Affinity player and some donk who's just turning his silver cards sideways.


Just coming from someone who loves both formats and will play either one over Standard any day of the week, Modern is a good format, and I would argue that it's a format that rewards tight play and decision making even moreso than Legacy does.

[catmint]

I have little experience in Modern and a lot on Legacy so maybe my view that modern is more difficult is biased. If you focus on spells, legacy is more difficult due to brainstorm, counterwars and some interactions are in general more trickier I think. However, the manabase is so fucked up in modern. Balancing life loss, tapped lands,... with your curve/mana requirements and possible upcoming interactions can be very tricky. These interactions come up a lot in every game and there is so much room for errors. Compare that to legacy where figuring which lands to play/fetch,.. feels 10 times easier than in modern.

[The Doctor]

The reason Legacy is skill testing isn't just about the cards you are playing. A lot of it has to do with your opponent's cards. Lets look at the example of Legacy vs. Modern storm. Yes, it is probably easier to goldfish a win in Legacy. However, in an actual game, you aren't playing against a goldfish. Legacy storm has to fight through much better disruption, and not just remands and thoughtseizes. It deals with cheaper countermagic, mana disruption like waste/stifle, taxing effects, etc. Lets ask ourselves: if Legacy Storm decks can go off so early and so easily, why don't more people win with it? Perhaps because it isn't nearly as easy to win with when you are actually playing against someone. There is a reason the deck needs to include cards like Duress or Silence in TES.

So yes, look at any individual deck playing by itself and Legacy may look easier to win with because of the power level of the cards. However, throw in an opponent. Throw in Wasteland. Throw in Force to fight through. Throw in Daze to play around. Be prepared for common taxing effects like Thalia. Make sure to not crack a fetch into a Stifle that may or may not be there. Suddenly, the games aren't so simple.

This is what separates Legacy from Modern. In Modern, there are far fewer axes to play on, meaning less angles of attack and less to be prepared for. As a result, the decks have a much easier time playing past each other because you don't have to care about what your opponent is doing.

[Higgs]

The reason Legacy is skill testing isn't just about the cards you are playing. A lot of it has to do with your opponent's cards. Lets look at the example of Legacy vs. Modern storm. Yes, it is probably easier to goldfish a win in Legacy. However, in an actual game, you aren't playing against a goldfish. Legacy storm has to fight through much better disruption, and not just remands and thoughtseizes. It deals with cheaper countermagic, mana disruption like waste/stifle, taxing effects, etc. Lets ask ourselves: if Legacy Storm decks can go off so early and so easily, why don't more people win with it? Perhaps because it isn't nearly as easy to win with when you are actually playing against someone. There is a reason the deck needs to include cards like Duress or Silence in TES.

So yes, look at any individual deck playing by itself and Legacy may look easier to win with because of the power level of the cards. However, throw in an opponent. Throw in Wasteland. Throw in Force to fight through. Throw in Daze to play around. Be prepared for common taxing effects like Thalia. Make sure to not crack a fetch into a Stifle that may or may not be there. Suddenly, the games aren't so simple.

This is what separates Legacy from Modern. In Modern, there are far fewer axes to play on, meaning less angles of attack and less to be prepared for. As a result, the decks have a much easier time playing past each other because you don't have to care about what your opponent is doing.

Probably unrelated to the thread in general but, it's also hard to win with storm-esque decks in Legacy because it's very easy to splash colors. You can never know what type of hate your opponents will bring from their deck's 3-4 colors, possibly artifcat/colored artifact or an extra splash from the sideboard. A mono-red deck can bring in black instant speed GY hate, a mono-green deck can bring in discard and mindbreak traps etc. etc.

[DragoFireheart]

Legacy has a much deeper card pool that allows the meta to handle stuff better. Imagine Sneak & Show in Modern - it would wreak havok left and right while in Legacy, stuff like Karakas keeps it in check. And if anything goes wrong, FoW can still play police.

While Wizards did do a shitton of stupid bans of Modern, it's kinda understandable that they ban dominant strategies. Stuff like 13 Jund decks out of 16 at a GP Top 16 are definitely not a sign of a healthy metagame, no matter how you spin it. However, instead of getting trigger-happy with the banhammer, they should get their shit together and introduce a bunch of cheap, maindeckable answers to various strategies that can police the broken in the same way FoW does it in Legacy, preferable in colors other than blue. That would also help to treat Legacy's severe case of cyanosis.

FoW is not on the reserved list.

[Dragonslayer_90]

While Wizards did do a shitton of stupid bans of Modern, it's kinda understandable that they ban dominant strategies. Stuff like 13 Jund decks out of 16 at a GP Top 16 are definitely not a sign of a healthy metagame, no matter how you spin it.

Heh? If you're referring to GP Detroit last year, there was a wide consensus among many pros that Jund was the best deck in the format. This does not mean it was actually the best deck. Yes it put a gross amount of players in the Top 16 GP Detroit, but look who eventually won out, the Melira Pod master Josh McLain. After that GP Jund continued to put up better numbers than any other deck but it was always other archetypes taking the trophy. If it was the best deck why was it consistently not taking home first place finishes? Sounds like the format was able to handle so-called Jund dominance. This makes me wonder whether Jund was more popular than actually good. It is very likely it was over represented in relation to how good it actuallly was. But since it continued to put up good numbers the format got stagnant so Wizards decided to nerf the deck again, as they do with any deck doing well really.

[twndomn]

Of course it is a valid representation. But it is not the only representation.


He is not insisting that the sample size is the number of players. In fact...


Originally it seems you were the one to say the sample size of the event was 4000 and he said it was 1.

Anyway... how is this a poll? Pick anyone of these definitions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll), and tell me how the GP is directly correlated to people's opinion/decision that a deck is best. 4000 people didnt vote Pod and affinity to the top of the event. No, player skill and matchups did that, and that's why it is not a poll.

There's no point focusing on top 16, top 16 is in no way representative of what people are playing in Modern. If we consider each archtype as a candidate in a poll, ideally you want to classify all 4,000+ participants' choices, understand which candidate did each participant vote for. If you think about it, that is what happened. Of all the modern players in the world, 4,000+ of them cared enough to pick a deck out of all the Modern decks floating on the Internet, and went to a tournament with it.

Fortunately, Wizard is kind enough to classify all the participants' choices who made day 2; hence, of the 400+ players, we know which deck did each of them vote for. Sure, you can argue that the result of the remaining 400+ is the result of skill and match-ups, I would agree on that aspect. However, isn't it fair to say that the choices these 400+players made are more valuable than the other 3,600+ players anyway?

[YamiJoey]

I really can't believe somebody really believes Modern is harder to play than Legacy. How many big Legacy events have you even won sir?

I've won less total Modern events than I have Legacy, actually. I find Modern an infinitely harder format. With Legacy I get to just do degenerate things and basically have access to every Spell in my deck from T3-4 onwards. In Modern I have to kill my opponent with the cards I see.

[Arsenal]

There's no point focusing on top 16, top 16 is in no way representative of what people are playing in Modern.

The above statement by you is a complete reversal from your original statement on Modern found on page 1 of this thread:


Look at the Top 8, Twin + Affinity + Pod (TAP), with Pod x 5. Therefore, if your Modern deck cannot sweep Affinity infested board, you won't be fast enough. if your combo cannot be as consistent as Twin or Pod, your combo is not feasible, the format boils down to Combo A v.s. Combo B. If you dislike combo, the only option left is Affinity.

How could there be 4,000+ suckers for something like that?

[lordofthepit]

Brainstorm can be sometimes skill-intensive, but more often than not, a trained monkey can Brainstorm in response to a Wasteland/Port, to topdeck an answer in response at instant speed or to hide key cards from discard. All these things take basically zero skill and actually lessen the skill requirement of said decks because it's basically auto-pilot. Just because you don't waste your Brainstorm on T1 like an idiot doesn't make Brainstorm a skill-intensive card - that's like arguing that you're a Grandmaster of Magic just because you don't Bolt your opponent's face on T1. Carefully setting up certain Brainstorms to optimize its value, that's skill, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

Sorcery speed library manipulation takes more thinking and planning ahead than keeping mana open for "In response, Brainstorm".

Just because Brainstorm is a great card even if you fuck it up doesn't mean there aren't a lot of nuances to it. It's trite to say save your Brainstorms for the mainphase, crack a fetch. But then you see great players like Tom Martell use his Brainstorms aggressively end of turn at GP Indy when he was constrained on mana and flush with cantrips, and somehow, he has to end up justifying this to a bunch of people who think they're experts just because they read a few articles from Karsten and AJ Sacher (great articles, BTW).

What if you Brainstorm in respond to discard, and you want to protect your best cards while wanting to shuffle away some chaff? What if you want to crack a fetch, but your opponent might cast Clique to force you to draw back another copy? What if he goes into his turn and fateseals you with Jace? Do you expose the dead Miracle card in your hand to the discard spell on the stack in the early game, or do you put it back into your library so that you're more likely to hit it later? Do you save Brainstorm to pitch to Force of Will, as it's the only blue card in your hand, or do you hope to hit a replacement blue card and be able to shuffle away two blanks in your hand? Do you search right now to hit your third land drop when not under significant pressure, or do you wait another turn to ensure you don't get locked (an aspect of this card that applies uniquely to Brainstorm and not other cantrips)? Do you save your Brainstorm for as late as possible so you can shuffle away two dead cards later, or do you run out your fetchland turn 1, cast an EOT Brainstorm, and play your basic on turn 2 for a Counterbalance with the top card of your library set up?

There are way too many subtleties with the card to assume everyone Brainstorms optimally. I'm sure I screw it up several times each match. Reducing the logic to "draw 3, put back two, shuffle" is much like claiming Cabal Therapy is "name the card they have that would hurt you".


It can be an extremely skill-intensive format. I'm most experienced with Melira Pod, which I found to be a difficult deck to learn to play even though my time in Legacy has almost entirely been spent comboing people out in some fashion. Even the linear decks are more difficult to play than they seem. How much life can a person gain before they can't be killed with a Scapeshift based on the lands that have been played? When does Affinity fall back to killing with poison instead of damage? Most of the decks are like that. Also the nature of sideboarding is pretty bizarre in Modern because of how powerful narrow answers can be to narrow strategies (which Modern is full of).

This is totally anecdotal, but something to think about. The last time I played Legacy, I was running ANT and died to a BUG player whose hand was Force, Force, Stifle, Spell Pierce, and whose Delver blind-flipped on turn 1. The round before that was against Elves, and ended up being just a couple of dudes goldfishing in front of each other. But the last time I played Modern there was a clusterfuck situation in which my opponent and I both learned that hitting me with an Inkmoth Nexus when I had Melira in play didn't do anything. Or an opponent who I killed with Cord of Calling while an Oblivion Stone activation was on the stack. In short, the Modern tournament was just more fun, more interesting, and definitely pushed me to play and think better. Even thinking back to the last time I played a non-combo deck in Legacy (GP DC I ran Esper Stoneblade) and it was still mostly autopilot. Maybe it's just because the decks and matchups are "fresher" to me, or maybe it's not. I don't know for sure, but I definitely enjoy playing Modern more than Legacy these days.



The cards whose intricate interactions you know well might not exist in Modern, but that absolutely does not mean that a good knowledge of the stack and turns/phases isn't required to play Modern well. Modern is FAR more like Legacy than Standard in this respect. Both Pod versions, Storm, all the Gifts variants, UWR control, Faeries, the nutty Amulet of Vigor combo decks, Goryo's decks, and probably a lot more than I can remember off the top of my head all require advanced rules knowledge to properly pilot, AND all benefit greatly from a player's experience and knowledge. Even the "dumb" decks aren't e-z-p-z; for example, there's a huge difference between a really experienced Affinity player and some donk who's just turning his silver cards sideways.


Just coming from someone who loves both formats and will play either one over Standard any day of the week, Modern is a good format, and I would argue that it's a format that rewards tight play and decision making even moreso than Legacy does.

I'm not saying Modern is an easy format, and I am sure there is a lot of skill involved, even more skill in some specific areas more emphasized in that format.

I would also claim Vintage is a more skill-intensive format than Legacy, despite the fact that Legacy is my favorite format, that Vintage is largely devoid of combat math, and that there are even more busted possibilities in Vintage in which your opponent was never in the game. That doesn't detract from the fact that there are a ton of difficult decisions to be made.

[Ellomdian]

Many people in this thread have admitted to not playing/understanding Modern, so I don't think I'm reaching at all when I say "people who do not play/understand Modern don't know what they're talking about when making a statement about Modern." That's like Johnny saying "I don't play/understand Legacy, but here's my opinion on Legacy's meta...", pretty sure you wouldn't give his opinion a whole lot of thought, right? Same thing in this thread. Just being honest.

My FNM gets 30+ dedicated Modern players each week and there have been numerous Modern events that my team has traveled to and won/placed within the last 2 months. The Mana Vault $5k had my guy Vinnie (Twin) place 9th out of 150+ and my guy Jack (Twin) won the GPT Richmond win-a-MM-box side event at the same venue. We recently went to a GPT Minneapolis where I went undefeated in the Swiss, and Vinnie (Twin) won the entire thing after cut to Top 4. My guy Dave (Affinity) made Day 2 of GP Chicago 2013. We are competitive Modern players that are fortunate enough to have insanely competitive FNM events with a large pool of absolute killers and we do well in pretty much every Modern event we go to.

So yes, there is a distinct difference between a competitive Modern player and a non-competitive Modern player, imo. I have the good fortune of playing against competitive Modern players weekly and there's a drastic dropoff in play skill that I've encountered between my team and the rest of the field.

Since you decided not to quote the entire thing...

It doesn't matter if you know there's a difference between Kiki Pod and Melira Pod - it matters if Timmy has 'fun' playing modern. If Timmy feels both decks suck donkey balls to watch and play, he's not going to play either of them. I actually give his opinion a reasonable amount of thought, because it seems like WotC is inclined to keep Modern 'fun' superficially, instead of allowing the inmates to run and rule the asylum.

Also, I read your post as "None of you understand Modern you NEWBS, I have an awesome playgroup who's lightyears ahead of everyone else, so you should just listen to my opinion as gospel!" - I hate to break it to you, but a GPT and a Side event win a box aren't really competitive environments - it's like spiking a Daily.


So you're basically saying the whole format is Splinter Twin vs. Affinity. Got it.

No, he's saying the format is healthy and there are a dozen viable decks and we are all just a bunch of uncultured swine with no legitimate impressions of the format. So, also patently false.

[Arsenal]

Since you decided not to quote the entire thing...

It doesn't matter if you know there's a difference between Kiki Pod and Melira Pod - it matters if Timmy has 'fun' playing modern. If Timmy feels both decks suck donkey balls to watch and play, he's not going to play either of them. I actually give his opinion a reasonable amount of thought, because it seems like WotC is inclined to keep Modern 'fun' superficially, instead of allowing the inmates to run and rule the asylum.

Also, I read your post as "None of you understand Modern you NEWBS, I have an awesome playgroup who's lightyears ahead of everyone else, so you should just listen to my opinion as gospel!" - I hate to break it to you, but a GPT and a Side event win a box aren't really competitive environments - it's like spiking a Daily.

So... 9th at a 150+ player $5k tourney isn't competitive either? Day 2 of a Grand Prix isn't competitive either? Wow... what's your definition of "competitive" if my team is taking down all of the local/regional stuff and placing high at the large-scale events? And I never called anyone a "Modern NEWB"... they are calling themselves that when they admit to not playing/understanding Modern (which many have so far in this thread).

And you are entitled to your opinion, but I honestly don't understand why/how you'd even have an opinion on something you have no understanding on. If a person who has changed hundreds of tires before tells me (a person who has never changed a tire before in their life) there's a good-better-best way of changing a tire, I'm going to listen to him because his words are spoken from experience, trial-and-error, etc.

If a person who hasn't played a game of Modern in their life declares "Modern is X, Y, Z" and someone who has hundreds of Modern matches under their belt in competitive environments says, "No, it's really not, and here's why...", who is more credible?

And Modern is fun to me. I don't even know what "superficial fun" is. Care to explain?

[Mewens]

To be fair, a lot of us are uncultured swine. I mean, I'm not; I'm more of an uncouth cur, but you know.

Sort of on-topic: Modern's looking a lot more interesting to me, as an uninvested outsider, than it did a year ago. There are some interesting interactions, many of the decks can change gears midgame when they need to, and the aggro is trickier than "swing, swing, swing, burn, gg." I also like that the format's a little more open to newer players; there's plenty of young college students at my FLGS that can swing enough income to claw together a Modern deck, but few able to do the same with a Legacy build.

But, it's still not Legacy, and it won't ever be, in the same way that Legacy will never be Vintage. Unless Wizards unbans all the cantrips and reprints FoW, the formats are just going to be fundamentally different. And that's OK; I'm just glad that Modern seems to finally be coming into its own. As long as Wizards can keep those distinctions, and as long as we assume most players are in Legacy for its unique interactions and not because they're elitist jackoffs, I'm not sure the Legacy community has anything to worry about. (... Outside of the Reserved List, etc., but most of those ailments are beyond the scope of Modern, really.)

[Tammit67]

There's no point focusing on top 16, top 16 is in no way representative of what people are playing in Modern. If we consider each archtype as a candidate in a poll, ideally you want to classify all 4,000+ participants' choices, understand which candidate did each participant vote for. If you think about it, that is what happened. Of all the modern players in the world, 4,000+ of them cared enough to pick a deck out of all the Modern decks floating on the Internet, and went to a tournament with it.
Sure, which is along the lines of what I mentioned when the idea of the tournament being a poll was first introduced.


Fortunately, Wizard is kind enough to classify all the participants' choices who made day 2; hence, of the 400+ players, we know which deck did each of them vote for. Sure, you can argue that the result of the remaining 400+ is the result of skill and match-ups, I would agree on that aspect. However, isn't it fair to say that the choices these 400+players made are more valuable than the other 3,600+ players anyway?

Not really. For an opinion poll, I'd rather have a larger sample size than a smaller one. If I'm asking about a perceived best deck for an event, it has nothing to do with how well people are doing on the day right?

Additionally, it is weird to me that you consider top 16 to not be representative of the modern meta, but day 2 to be representative. I'd continue that line to consider all of day 1 as a pretty good thing to look at.

Also strange you change stances from "Look at top 8, that's all modern is!" to "top 16 is in no way representative of modern". Regardless, top 16 or day 2 metagame is very much about how decks are performing, and much less about polling peoples' opinions.

If I was going to look at what the decks to beat, I'd start with day 2 pro tour and day 2 GP Richmond. When combining those, we see a landscape in flux with some very clear choices at the top (Pod decks/splinter twin/affinity/UWR) and some very good, more fringe players that cannot be discounted (Zoo/Scapeshift/like 5 different BGx decks/Infect/Storm/Ad Naus/Living end/Burn/delver/Faeries/Tron)

[JPoJohnson]

Sure, which is along the lines of what I mentioned when the idea of the tournament being a poll was first introduced.


Not really. For an opinion poll, I'd rather have a larger sample size than a smaller one. If I'm asking about a perceived best deck for an event, it has nothing to do with how well people are doing on the day right?

Additionally, it is weird to me that you consider top 16 to not be representative of the modern meta, but day 2 to be representative. I'd continue that line to consider all of day 1 as a pretty good thing to look at.

Also strange you change stances from "Look at top 8, that's all modern is!" to "top 16 is in no way representative of modern". Regardless, top 16 or day 2 metagame is very much about how decks are performing, and much less about polling peoples' opinions.

If I was going to look at what the decks to beat, I'd start with day 2 pro tour and day 2 GP Richmond. When combining those, we see a landscape in flux with some very clear choices at the top (Pod decks/splinter twin/affinity/UWR) and some very good, more fringe players that cannot be discounted (Zoo/Scapeshift/like 5 different BGx decks/Infect/Storm/Ad Naus/Living end/Burn/delver/Faeries/Tron)

This. Especially since you're going to see those fringe decks in the first couple of rounds at any large event regardless of entry price.

[twndomn]

Not really. For an opinion poll, I'd rather have a larger sample size than a smaller one. If I'm asking about a perceived best deck for an event, it has nothing to do with how well people are doing on the day right?


ok, but tournament organizer doesn't provide those data. No organizers of larget tournament would spend the men power to go over every single deck lists, unless it's LGS with less than 50. We are working on potentially biased data based on the limitation, with a big asterisk. We all know that.



Additionally, it is weird to me that you consider top 16 to not be representative of the modern meta, but day 2 to be representative. I'd continue that line to consider all of day 1 as a pretty good thing to look at.

Also strange you change stances from "Look at top 8, that's all modern is!" to "top 16 is in no way representative of modern". Regardless, top 16 or day 2 metagame is very much about how decks are performing, and much less about polling peoples' opinions.


I'm sorry that you've interpreted my jab/making fun of Modern regarding the top 8 as my conclusion. I should clarify that looking at top 8 or 16 with tournament of large size alone is not representative of any given constructed formats.

Who's gonna classify every single decks in day 1 and release those information? I've never seen data like that, if there is, let me know.

[dunk]

All formats are "skill intense". Cards give you options. Options are what leads to mistakes. A lot of "skill"-wins just come from opponents who timed their cards wrong. Of course that is a matter of skill, but most of the time it's just a matter of knowledge. You basically have to memorize every deck and most lines of play versus them. If a deck like Modern or Legacy offers more decks to play against than Draft or Standard you don't need to be more skilled to solve them, just be more patient and practice a lot. Naturally most players can't really evaluate situations correctly when facing them for the first time. That doesn't mean they are bad, just inexperienced.

Even from there on all formats feel very similar: Find the best deck (which often is the deck you are most comfortable with, at least that's the way it should be if it wasn't for randomly broken archetypes or cards) and learn about the rest of the format. With the best deck you can just skip 60% of random decks and concentrate on the other potential best decks, which you will face en masse once your record at any given tourney is better than 3-0 or 4-0.

And yeah, "best deck" is not an urban legend but mostly the truth, especially in shallow formats like Block or Standard. Right now though it's true for Modern (Pod) and Legacy (UW) as well. Interestingly, while looking totally different on paper, both decks share some similarities that carry them above the other decks: No really bad matchups, lots of redundancy and lots of options.

So to summarize: Preparing for the next Modern event I would definitely mainly prepare against Pod, Twin and probably Affinity as well as they are all strong and commonly played. These decks also have a lot of different lines of play which you have to prepare for, unlike a deck like Merfolk or Zoo which is usually pretty easy to defeat since it's so one sided in what it does.

[Dragonslayer_90]

And yeah, "best deck" is not an urban legend but mostly the truth, especially in shallow formats like Block or Standard. Right now though it's true for Modern (Pod) and Legacy (UW) as well. Interestingly, while looking totally different on paper, both decks share some similarities that carry them above the other decks: No really bad matchups, lots of redundancy and lots of options.



Curious as what you meant by "UW" as being the best deck in legacy. Are you referring to Blade decks or miracles? Both are good decks but are still pretty beatable. I still don't think there is a best deck in legacy even after TNN entered the format and decreased the number of tier one options. There is still only a slew of tier one decks that Top 8 fairly often, Tier 1.5 decks that top 8 every now and then, and tier 2 decks that top 8 once in a while when the metagame is right for them.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

But just two weeks before, Zoo at PT Valencia accounted for some obscene amount of decks, something like 20+% (I'll try to find the article), but failed to place in the Top 8. If I'm testing for the next big Modern event, I'm not caring about what was played at the previous tourney, I'm caring about what was winning/placing at the previous tourney.

But you may meet 20 % of Zoo decks on your way to Top16. Would you ignore them just becasue they're not in Top16?

[Megadeus]

This topic of "X format is more skill intensive than Y format" has basically turned into "When I was playing X format I had this corner case where I had to be a skilled player to fight my way out of a tight spot, therefore X format is more skill intensive than Y"

[Megadeus]

In Modern I have to kill my opponent with the cards I see.
So therefore modern is harder to play because you are at the mercy of the top of your deck? Sweet. I love formats with bunches of luck involved.

[twndomn]

And yeah, "best deck" is not an urban legend but mostly the truth, especially in shallow formats like Block or Standard. Right now though it's true for Modern (Pod) and Legacy (UW) as well. Interestingly, while looking totally different on paper, both decks share some similarities that carry them above the other decks: No really bad matchups, lots of redundancy and lots of options.

So to summarize: Preparing for the next Modern event I would definitely mainly prepare against Pod, Twin and probably Affinity as well as they are all strong and commonly played. These decks also have a lot of different lines of play which you have to prepare for, unlike a deck like Merfolk or Zoo which is usually pretty easy to defeat since it's so one sided in what it does.

I have to thank you for providing a negative example, as in what not to say.

Would you tell me paper is the "best option" in a rock-paper-scissor game? By the same token, why would you make the claim that there's a best deck? I dislike the terminology of shallow formats, it's rather subjective. I would call it a format with limited card pool.

The reason you're preparing against T.A.P. is because they are popular (of course I don't have enough data to support that). I do believe that decks naturally fall into tiers. Often, tier 1 decks are also the most popular decks, but not always. For example, Miracles might be a tier 1 deck, but I seriously doubt it's a popular deck. Hence, please don't confuse popular decks with the so called best decks. I am willing to go as far as tier 1 decks, but best is misleading in my opinion.

[Arsenal]

But you may meet 20 % of Zoo decks on your way to Top16. Would you ignore them just becasue they're not in Top16?

At PT Valencia, Zoo had a 16% penetration, but a horrendous 50% win rate. Unsurprisingly, Zoo did not do well and failed to place in the Top 8. UWx Control had a 5% penetration, but a murderous 75% win rate. Unsurprisingly, UWx Control did well and won the entire tourney. As I stated before, I'm caring about the decks that are winning, not about the decks that are simply showing up. If you spend your testing time differently, cool.

[Megadeus]

I feel like I would rather spend my time testing vs something that I actually expect to see. Sure, Zoo may not be particularly powerful, but if you know you have a roughly 1/5 chance of playing vs it per round, then it would be a good idea to test vs it, whereas UWx Control you would have a roughly 1/20 chance of playing it each round? I think I would spend time testing vs Zoo.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

At PT Valencia, Zoo had a 16% penetration, but a horrendous 50% win rate. Unsurprisingly, Zoo did not do well and failed to place in the Top 8. UWx Control had a 5% penetration, but a murderous 75% win rate. Unsurprisingly, UWx Control did well and won the entire tourney. As I stated before, I'm caring about the decks that are winning, not about the decks that are simply showing up. If you spend your testing time differently, cool.

It's not only about testing, but also sb and such. Would you ignore the "bad" deck, even if it makes 20% of field? (By "bad" I don't mean SixtyIslands.dec, but e.g. Zoo.) Because even though you won't meet them in Top16, they may stop you during Swiss.

[Arsenal]

It's not only about testing, but also sb and such. Would you ignore the "bad" deck, even if it makes 20% of field? (By "bad" I don't mean SixtyIslands.dec, but e.g. Zoo.) Because even though you won't meet them in Top16, they may stop you during Swiss.

I don't know how you test, but my group tests dozens of pre-board (play and draw) and dozens of post-board (play and draw) games, so when I say "testing", sideboard considerations are being taken into account.

As a UWR Control player, I'm not wasting my time on a deck with a 50% win rate as I feel my deck's card quality and experience will get me past those matches, no matter how numerous they may be. I really want to know how to gain % points against those 70-75% killers like Storm, UWR Control, etc regardless of how frequently I will be seeing those decks. Because if I do face a 50%, I have a fair chance of beating them. A 75% killer? I need all the help I can get.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I don't know how you test, but my group tests dozens of pre-board (play and draw) and dozens of post-board (play and draw) games, so when I say "testing", sideboard considerations are being taken into account.

I meant sideboard for that particular event...

So, again:
Would you ignore the "bad" deck, even if it makes 20% of field? (By "bad" I don't mean SixtyIslands.dec, but e.g. Zoo.) Because even though you won't meet them in Top16, they may stop you during Swiss.

[Tammit67]

At PT Valencia, Zoo had a 16% penetration, but a horrendous 50% win rate. Unsurprisingly, Zoo did not do well and failed to place in the Top 8. UWx Control had a 5% penetration, but a murderous 75% win rate. Unsurprisingly, UWx Control did well and won the entire tourney. As I stated before, I'm caring about the decks that are winning, not about the decks that are simply showing up. If you spend your testing time differently, cool.

But decks that show up, especially at 16% of the event, are part of the meta too! Are you advocating that testing against zoo is not as important as UWx?

Kinda curious you believe there is more to modern than just the decks that appeared in the GP's top 16, but you are uncaring testing against what, by your own admission, is the format you are testing for.

[Arsenal]

But decks that show up, especially at 16% of the event, are part of the meta too! Are you advocating that testing against zoo is not as important as UWx?

Kinda curious you believe there is more to modern than just the decks that appeared in the GP's top 16, but you are uncaring testing against what, by your own admission, is the format you are testing for.

As a UWR Control player, I'm not wasting my time on a deck with a 50% win rate as I feel my deck's card quality and experience will get me past those matches, no matter how numerous they may be. I really want to know how to gain % points against those 70-75% killers like Storm, UWR Control, etc regardless of how frequently I will be seeing those decks. Because if I do face a 50%, I have a fair chance of beating them. A 75% killer? I need all the help I can get.

I'll spend a bit of time with the fringe decks, but I'm devoting the lion's share of time to the 65%+ win killers. Also, if I'm seeing something frequently, I'll likely have an idea of what to do/what not to do. If I see something rarely, I'll probably have no clue what to do. I mean, not people know how to beat Storm, when to Tectonic Edge their 2nd red source, when to Spell Snare a Ritual and when to let it resolve, etc. Storm was like a 3% deck, but had a high win rate. I want to be prepared for those decks, not for a flood of "meh" decks that UWR Control has a naturally good matchup against.

[ThediscoPower]

At PT Valencia, Zoo had a 16% penetration, but a horrendous 50% win rate. Unsurprisingly, Zoo did not do well and failed to place in the Top 8. UWx Control had a 5% penetration, but a murderous 75% win rate. Unsurprisingly, UWx Control did well and won the entire tourney. As I stated before, I'm caring about the decks that are winning, not about the decks that are simply showing up. If you spend your testing time differently, cool.

Yes, but at the PT, pretty much all teams were super prepared to face Zoo, mostly because everyone thought that it would be one of the strongest deck in the room without actually knowing for sure as there was basicaly no time between the pt and the ban announcements, and this is why I would say that zoo failed miserably. People were either a. playing zoo with a way to win the mirror, b. playing a deck that can ignore zoo (read, storm or otherwise mediocre Blue moon) or c. packing 10 sideboard cards that kill zoo after side (and after probably conceding game 1). When that happens, it's hard to to do well when you're playing the deck everyone and their mothers is gunning for that weekend, however good your deck is. In that situation, you better at least play a bit against it if it's popular, don't you think?

Or, if you want, I find it somewhat funny that you would think that if a deck isn't in a given top 16 of a past tournament, you basicaly consider it to be a bye, or a deck you won't play against anyways because who would play that deck? it couldn't even make it to the top 16 last PT.

[lordofthepit]

Not that I claim to be an expert on the Modern format or anything, but would the top 16 of a mixed-format event even be that meaningful to analyze? I don't put stock into the top 16 Legacy decklists of SCG Invitational events for the same reason.

[Arsenal]

Yes, but at the PT, pretty much all teams were super prepared to face Zoo, mostly because everyone thought that it would be one of the strongest deck in the room without actually knowing for sure as there was basicaly no time between the pt and the ban announcements, and this is why I would say that zoo failed miserably. People were either a. playing zoo with a way to win the mirror, b. playing a deck that can ignore zoo (read, storm or otherwise mediocre Blue moon) or c. packing 10 sideboard cards that kill zoo after side (and after probably conceding game 1). When that happens, it's hard to to do well when you're playing the deck everyone and their mothers is gunning for that weekend, however good your deck is. In that situation, you better at least play a bit against it if it's popular, don't you think?

Or, if you want, I find it somewhat funny that you would think that if a deck isn't in a given top 16 of a past tournament, you basicaly consider it to be a bye, or a deck you won't play against anyways because who would play that deck? it couldn't even make it to the top 16 last PT.

I've repeatedly said I care about decks that are winning, not necessarily the decks that finish in the Top 16, there is a subtle difference. Win Rate % matters to me. If a deck has a 70% Win Rate, but fails to Top 8, I still am going to keep a closer eye on that deck than if a deck has a 50% Win Rate, but sneaks into the Top 8.

Now, if a deck has a 75% Win Rate AND finishes in the Top 8, then of course that'll be a "gauntlet" deck to test against, but my time is limited and if I have a couple extra hours, I'm going to devote the lion's share of it to testing against the killers (65%+) and less so on the "we show up, but perform poorly" decks.

I completely agree with you that Zoo's poor performance at PT Valencia could be because of all the reasons you cited. However, what of GP Richmond? Did the entire field metagame to hate out Zoo again?

[Zombie]

This "MY FORMAT IS MORE SKILL TESTING THAN J00RZ!!!1!" dickwaving is hilarious.


as long as we assume most players are in Legacy for its unique interactions and not because they're elitist jackoffs

This thread seems to be pretty full of that kind of behavior.

[Mewens]

This thread seems to be pretty full of that kind of behavior.

I'm pretty passive-aggressive; I usually just leave the shoes lying around and come back later to see who's been trying them on.

[ThediscoPower]

I've repeatedly said I care about decks that are winning, not necessarily the decks that finish in the Top 16, there is a subtle difference. Win Rate % matters to me. If a deck has a 70% Win Rate, but fails to Top 8, I still am going to keep a closer eye on that deck than if a deck has a 50% Win Rate, but sneaks into the Top 8.

Now, if a deck has a 75% Win Rate AND finishes in the Top 8, then of course that'll be a "gauntlet" deck to test against, but my time is limited and if I have a couple extra hours, I'm going to devote the lion's share of it to testing against the killers (65%+) and less so on the "we show up, but perform poorly" decks.

I completely agree with you that Zoo's poor performance at PT Valencia could be because of all the reasons you cited. However, what of GP Richmond? Did the entire field metagame to hate out Zoo again?

No, in Richmond, everyone pretty much showed up trying to beat combo decks, and massively stopped playing zoo altogether. And zoo hate. You could still find them around the place, and funnily enough, I don't know if you saw Chapin's article this week talking about last weekend, but he did say that just after the top 16 came Zoo and Storm decks. Contrary to what you are saying, according to Chapin, Zoo actually did okay in Richmond, even if zoo was not in contention for top 16, and much less for top 8. It did much, better than it did at the PT. It's just that when you look at the final 16 players, it's something that you will never see, because "doing well" is too often defined by top 8-16ing, when in reality, when you play a 15 round 4300 playing tournament, I would argue that even going x-3 is what I can define as "doing well". Noone remembers you, but you did well. So, to give a concrete answer, Storm was hated out this time, not Zoo, but Zoo did okay, but just did not top 16. They did not all go 0-3 drop-play at side events (which, btw, is another reason why this GP even did well. Playset of FoW for each Legacy event? Playset of Bobs for each Modern events? WHAT? In Montreal this weekend I'll have to play for BORN OF THE GODS BOOSTERS. BORN. OF. THE. FREAKING. GODS. BOOSTERS. OH. and a born of the gods uncut sheet. God knows I always wanted to have a born of the gods uncut sheet in my room).

[YamiJoey]

A deck that is 50% against the field could be 60% against your deck. You win a tournament by winning your 40%'s, not your 60%'s. (Or selecting your deck so that you basically only face 60%'s, but that's a different point.)

Seriously. Your deck could be 90% against the field, but if everyone turns up playing the 10% you lose to you need to know how to play that match-up. Or switch decks.

[Arsenal]

No, in Richmond, everyone pretty much showed up trying to beat combo decks, and massively stopped playing zoo altogether. And zoo hate. You could still find them around the place, and funnily enough, I don't know if you saw Chapin's article this week talking about last weekend, but he did say that just after the top 16 came Zoo and Storm decks. Contrary to what you are saying, according to Chapin, Zoo actually did okay in Richmond, even if zoo was not in contention for top 16, and much less for top 8. It did much, better than it did at the PT. It's just that when you look at the final 16 players, it's something that you will never see, because "doing well" is too often defined by top 8-16ing, when in reality, when you play a 15 round 4300 playing tournament, I would argue that even going x-3 is what I can define as "doing well". Noone remembers you, but you did well. So, to give a concrete answer, Storm was hated out this time, not Zoo, but Zoo did okay, but just did not top 16. They did not all go 0-3 drop-play at side events (which, btw, is another reason why this GP even did well. Playset of FoW for each Legacy event? Playset of Bobs for each Modern events? WHAT? In Montreal this weekend I'll have to play for BORN OF THE GODS BOOSTERS. BORN. OF. THE. FREAKING. GODS. BOOSTERS. OH. and a born of the gods uncut sheet. God knows I always wanted to have a born of the gods uncut sheet in my room).

Hmm... I didn't see/hear Chapin say that Zoo and Storm finished just outside of the Top 16. I do know that 17th was BG Rock and 18th was UW Control, so I'm not quite sure where Zoo and Storm fit into the equation. For a tourney this size, it would've been nice to see the Top 32 and not cutoff at a random Top 18.

EDIT: Just read Chapin's article. He does not say that Zoo was a contender at GP Richmond, in fact, he goes so far to say that the broadcast team was searching the tables for Zoo decks still in contention and couldn't find any. Not sure where you're getting the "according to Chapin, Zoo did okay in Richmond".

[Benjammn]

No, in Richmond, everyone pretty much showed up trying to beat combo decks, and massively stopped playing zoo altogether. And zoo hate. You could still find them around the place, and funnily enough, I don't know if you saw Chapin's article this week talking about last weekend, but he did say that just after the top 16 came Zoo and Storm decks. Contrary to what you are saying, according to Chapin, Zoo actually did okay in Richmond, even if zoo was not in contention for top 16, and much less for top 8. It did much, better than it did at the PT. It's just that when you look at the final 16 players, it's something that you will never see, because "doing well" is too often defined by top 8-16ing, when in reality, when you play a 15 round 4300 playing tournament, I would argue that even going x-3 is what I can define as "doing well". Noone remembers you, but you did well. So, to give a concrete answer, Storm was hated out this time, not Zoo, but Zoo did okay, but just did not top 16. They did not all go 0-3 drop-play at side events

Case in point: I lost my win-and-in during the final round to Josh McClain (7th) playing Little Zoo. I ended up in 35th after the breakers settled. I played against Storm 4 times (I believe, might be 3) this weekend and thrashed them every single time. Josh was the only Pod deck I played against, which is was a very significant anomaly for me that allowed me to do as well as I did. While Zoo was probably the wrong choice for GP:Richmond, I could see it preying on whatever decks spring up to fight Pod which very clearly has a bullseye on it's back now. I'll keep my eye on the format and see how I feel come the next time I feel like playing Modern (might be Minneapolis, not sure yet about that). I'll have to tweak my deck though; I kinda threw together a pile that worked okay but could have been a lot better.

[ThediscoPower]

Hmm... I didn't see/hear Chapin say that Zoo and Storm finished just outside of the Top 16. I do know that 17th was BG Rock and 18th was UW Control, so I'm not quite sure where Zoo and Storm fit into the equation. For a tourney this size, it would've been nice to see the Top 32 and not cutoff at a random Top 18.

EDIT: Just read Chapin's article. He does not say that Zoo was a contender at GP Richmond, in fact, he goes so far to say that the broadcast team was searching the tables for Zoo decks still in contention and couldn't find any. Not sure where you're getting the "according to Chapin, Zoo did okay in Richmond".


directly from the article :

SNIP...quoting an scg premium article...

[Arsenal]

directly from the article

Pretty sure you're not allowed to quote/link SCG Premium content on here?

But if you read the 5 paragraphs directly under his GP Richmond Day 2 Metagame table, it's all about how Zoo was/is poorly positioned, they couldn't find any Zoo decks still in contention at GP Richmond to feature match, and he theorizes that Zoo will be a meta player again, just not anytime soon.

Also, Zoo and Storm were right behind the 5 archetypes in terms of field penetration Day 2, not win %. I think you're confusing the two.

[ThediscoPower]

Pretty sure you're not allowed to quote/link SCG Premium content on here?

But if you read the 5 paragraphs directly under his GP Richmond Day 2 Metagame table, it's all about how Zoo was/is poorly positioned, they couldn't find any Zoo decks still in contention at GP Richmond, and he theorizes that Zoo will be a meta player again, just not anytime soon.

Also, Zoo and Storm were right behind the 5 archetypes in terms of field penetration Day 2, not win %. I think you're confusing the two.

oh snap, is that true for the quoting? hum i will delete it right away then, wasn't aware of that.

it's possible that I misread what he said (actually, rereading it right now, and I think you got it right), however I stand by my opinion on this, that testing against win pourcentages is probably not the best thing to do, and that I would test against what I think I will see the most. You don't just play against top 16 decks during all your rounds of a tournament, especially when there are a lot of them. They don't automaticaly go in the 0-x brackets either. it's like saying that at the first major tournament after GP Paris you would not test against Death and Taxes because it had a horrible win rate during the GP, so you consider that you won't have to face it/ win easily against it...

[Megadeus]

So if something in legacy like Lands has a 75% win percentage, but is less than 5% of the meta, you would rather test vs that rather than say like Show and Tell which would be like 15~% of the meta with a 50/50 win rate?

[gregtron]

oh snap, is that true for the quoting? hum i will delete it right away then, wasn't aware of that.

it's possible that I misread what he said (actually, rereading it right now, and I think you got it right), however I stand by my opinion on this, that testing against win pourcentages is probably not the best thing to do, and that I would test against what I think I will see the most. You don't just play against top 16 decks during all your rounds of a tournament.

You should be fine paraprhasing content, just not quoting it.

Definitely agree on how to do tournament prep. My group tries to weight first by most expected matches, then by difficulty of the individual matchups.

[Arsenal]

Interesting discussion. In order, I test for (1.) high penetration + high win %, (2.) high win % + low penetration, (3.) low win % + high penetration. Now, I don't always know the exact data for everything, so I often will guesstimate what I think is going to have low/high penetration (as an example, I think everyone thought that Zoo was going to see a marked decrease in penetration from PT Valencia to GP Richmond, and it did), but this generally what I do.

For example, I'm a UWR Control player in Modern. I have a natural edge versus one dimensional creature decks like Affinity and Zoo, but that edge is a liability versus non-creature decks like Storm and AdN. Therefore, I've been testing against Storm in order to better understand how to gain % points against them (particularly game 1 when I'm sitting on 8+ dead-ish cards) even though it may account for just 5-6% of the field. If I already have very favorable matchups vs. a deck that happens to have high penetration + low win % (read: Zoo), I usually elect to spend that time on gaining experience versus lesser played, but more deadly, decks that I have naturally unfavorable matchups with.

It's like sideboarding. If my maindeck already crushes Deck A, I probably am going to devote litte-no sideboard space for the Deck A matchup; I want to use that space to help in the bad matchups vs. Deck B, C and D, even if I'm going to see Deck A more often than Deck B, C and D. Same with testing time; I want to use that time to help in the bad matchups, even if I'm going to see it less frequently than I will a more favorable matchup.

[Richard Cheese]

You don't just play against top 16 decks during all your rounds of a tournament, especially when there are a lot of them.

You've never been to a big Standard event, have you?

[ThediscoPower]

You've never been to a big Standard event, have you?

well yes, standard doesn't behave that way at all, but I assumed we were talking about eternal formats tournaments, namely modern - legacy, where you have more than, say, 5 decks that can be considered playable, so I don't see why you would bring that up...

But yeah, last time I played a standard tournament, there were faeries everywhere, so there you go.

[dunk]

I have to thank you for providing a negative example, as in what not to say.

Would you tell me paper is the "best option" in a rock-paper-scissor game? By the same token, why would you make the claim that there's a best deck? I dislike the terminology of shallow formats, it's rather subjective. I would call it a format with limited card pool.

In rock-paper-scissor I would just tell you to go with what you are most comfortable with. Magic rarely works like that game though. It's not uncommon that there is one deck that is just better than any other deck, and it it's just by a small margin. What I refer to as "best deck" either has no matchup worse than 50% or has only one really bad matchup in a deck that folds to mostly everything else. And the latter is very rarely true.




The reason you're preparing against T.A.P. is because they are popular (of course I don't have enough data to support that). I do believe that decks naturally fall into tiers. Often, tier 1 decks are also the most popular decks, but not always. For example, Miracles might be a tier 1 deck, but I seriously doubt it's a popular deck. Hence, please don't confuse popular decks with the so called best decks. I am willing to go as far as tier 1 decks, but best is misleading in my opinion.

A tier 1 deck is among the best decks of the format. A deck can be tier 1 while still be underplayed. I think you are talking about "decks to beat" which don't necessarily have to be tier 1, although it's very common that good decks are also decks to beat. Zoo may have been a deck to beat at PT Valencia but it never was tier 1 to begin with - it didn't have the time to prove itself.



Curious as what you meant by "UW" as being the best deck in legacy. Are you referring to Blade decks or miracles? Both are good decks but are still pretty beatable. I still don't think there is a best deck in legacy even after TNN entered the format and decreased the number of tier one options. There is still only a slew of tier one decks that Top 8 fairly often, Tier 1.5 decks that top 8 every now and then, and tier 2 decks that top 8 once in a while when the metagame is right for them.

Yeah I was refering to Miracles.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

So, what's the real GP Richmond affect on Legacy?

http://i.imgur.com/vqIdAfI.jpg

[mishima_kazuya]

So, what's the real GP Richmond affect on Legacy?

http://i.imgur.com/vqIdAfI.jpg

Yea these pictures are very bad for the public image for MTG and I also don't want my non-MTG friends to associate me with overweight ass cracks.
But, some of yous need to seriously lose some weight. Geek or Nerd =/= excuse to not exercise and live healthy.




I have my flame shield ready, so flame away at me.

[TsumiBand]

Yea these pictures are very bad for the public image for MTG and I also don't want my non-MTG friends to associate me with overweight ass cracks.
But, some of yous need to seriously lose some weight. Geek or Nerd =/= excuse to not exercise and live healthy.




I have my flame shield ready, so flame away at me.

No, I agree.

Except for one or two incidents over the last several years we've managed to let the most unfortunate aspects of our community be more forward-facing than the awesomeness. This guy is going to make everyone forget about all the Bill Copes of the Magic world, in favor of the Nedrys.

If you're at the office, you don't have to put on a suit -- but tuck in your shirt and comb your hair, know what I mean? This isn't doing anyone any favors. Sure will make some sweet memes though, and hey as long as someone's laughing, it's gotta be funny!!!! Right?

[ukyo_rulz]

Sure will make some sweet memes though

http://oi58.tinypic.com/2mzcm81.jpg

[KevinSrednoselac]

Let's be real

Modern is at its peak, it will only grow less popular

Look at the prices, they are pretty damn similar to Legacy decklists, if not, more expensive than a good amount of legacy decks.

The fetch lands are getting more expensive than the Legacy fetch lands. Pretty soon when cards get banned (birthing pod, splinter twin). people will divert into legacy where they can still play with the cards they spent 200 dollars to get a playset of.

[Megadeus]

And then be disappointed when they figure out that their modern port probably isn't extremely viable?

[KevinSrednoselac]

It will go down?

[GoblinZ]

The result of GP Richmond frustrated me a lot...I donnot think I will get into Modern soon. Otherwise, I feel a little disappointed with legacy now, because I dislike the current meta, especially the meta in my local store...I divert to type 2 for some time, I know type 2 is boring but at least I can continue to win...

[Alfy]

I seriously doubt modern will become any less popular in the near future. Quite the contrary. On the other hand, I have found the format to be quite boring: some of the cards overlap with legacy but quite a few are barely standard+ in terms of power level. As a result, the quality of any one game depends a lot on what you and your opponent draws. You can play a whole game that feels like standard, or the game is a one-sided blowout, and only once in a while do you get a high quality, high powered game.

That's also why the format often feels non-interactive, with many decks playing their most powerful cards on different axes that don't quite meet, and why silver bullets are such killers: those bullets are of legacy calibre!

Well, it's only my point of view (but I have actually played modern a LOT online), although I keep reading pros are not fond of the format for pretty much the same reason.

[KevinSrednoselac]

A perfect example of the modern metagame right now is pretty much how caw blade was when baterskull was printed in standard. The funny part is that is what made me start playing legacy (go-figure)

[GoblinZ]

The modern players in my community are mostly those who cannot afford legacy and are unwilling to get into type 2 for the same reason( although standard is cheap, but it will cost more in a long run). Most of them were causual players before modern format existed and many of them play very poorly.As a result, the meta here is also wierd..The reason why I donnot want to play modern is partly because I really don't want to play in such an environment...

[Quasim0ff]

Let's be real

Modern is at its peak, it will only grow less popular

Look at the prices, they are pretty damn similar to Legacy decklists, if not, more expensive than a good amount of legacy decks.

The fetch lands are getting more expensive than the Legacy fetch lands. Pretty soon when cards get banned (birthing pod, splinter twin). people will divert into legacy where they can still play with the cards they spent 200 dollars to get a playset of.

You are very likely as far from the truth a you can possible be.

Modern is at an LOW at the moment - wait for modern PTQ season. This was a PT followed by a GP.

Fetches are getting reprinted eventually.

[lyracian]

Fetches are getting reprinted eventually.
Sure - Eventually. The question is how long with Wizards wait? 1,2 or 3 years?

With Modern Masters last year everyone at my FLGS was selling up Legacy and buying into modern; this year I have been selling loads of dual lands as people have decided to go back to Legacy. Even the Affinity player is happy since he can use artifact lands.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Fetches are getting reprinted eventually.

But when...?

[Lemnear]

So, what's the real GP Richmond affect on Legacy?

http://i.imgur.com/vqIdAfI.jpg

Hmmmm ... I'm more disgusted by the guy in front and his finger nails. What was HE thinking?

[Lejay]

It was on french TV yesterday on the garbage channel canal+ (4th channel).

[TorpidNinja]

So, what's the real GP Richmond affect on Legacy?

http://i.imgur.com/vqIdAfI.jpg

Never, in MtG history, have so many kettles called so many pots "black."

[Richard Cheese]

The pictures make me feel better about Legacy. I see very little of the those kinds of things (both the asscracks and the neckbeards) at big Legacy events.

Here's to the gentleman's format!

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/500x/47208431.jpg

[Arsenal]

The pictures make me feel better about Legacy. I see very little of the those kinds of things (both the asscracks and the neckbeards) at big Legacy events.

Here's to the gentleman's format!

You cannot be serious that you need to make fun of others in order to make yourself "feel better" about playing a trading card game about wizards and dragons. That's pretty pathetic.

[Higgs]

Wow. This and the bertoncini thread are TheSource imploding on itself with a mass hysteria of teenage instincts.

[Lemnear]

You cannot be serious that you need to make fun of others in order to make yourself "feel better" about playing a trading card game about wizards and dragons. That's pretty pathetic.

I doubt that was his intention at all.

MTG is a social game and that factor was the point that got me into the game and as Helene mentioned on Twitter, as a social community you have the fucking duty to maintain an environment where everyone feels good and accepted. It doesn't matter, if you play MTG or Poker; it doesn't matter what your size is ... there is a social standard and that requires you to not offend your environment.

I'll never see people dressed like shit and dodging showers on a Poker table, no matter their size. You can't pull off that shit and torture players aside and across you all day and think you are a victim.

This story got out of hand, but it puts the spotlight on something like everyone has whitnessed once they entered a 70+ player tourney.

[Arsenal]

I doubt that was his intention at all.

MTG is a social game and that factor was the point that got me into the game and as Helene mentioned on Twitter, as a social community you have the fucking duty to maintain an environment where everyone feels good and accepted. It doesn't matter, if you play MTG or Poker; it doesn't matter what your size is ... there is a social standard and that requires you to not offend your environment.

I'll never see people dressed like shit and dodging showers on a Poker table, no matter their size. You can't pull off that shit and torture players aside and across you all day and think you are a victim.

This story got out of hand, but it puts the spotlight on something like everyone has whitnessed once they entered a 70+ player tourney.

His message was essentially "See! Modern players are smelly, fat dudes. Thank God I play Legacy where you never encounter that! I feel so much better now!" Elitest. Douchey. All around poor taste.

[Lemnear]

His message was essentially "See! Modern players are smelly, fat dudes. Thank God I play Legacy where you never encounter that! I feel so much better now!" Elitest. Douchey. All around poor taste.

He took a meme for that, ergo I can't take that 100% serious but as a borderline funny joke. The issue is completely independent from formats and I hope we all can agree on that

We started a counter-hashtag ... feel free to post pictures of well-dressed men like reuben bressler playing the game under #classyMTG

[Arsenal]

He took a meme for that, ergo I can't take that 100% serious but as a borderline funny joke. The issue is completely independent from formats and I hope we all can agree on that

We started a counter-hashtag ... feel free to post pictures of well-dressed men like reuben bressler playing the game under #classyMTG

He made it a format-dependant issue when he stated that he feels better he plays Legacy, went on to give an anecdotal example as to why Legacy > Modern from a hygiene perspective, then capped it off with a snarky meme making fun of specifically Modern players.

[Lemnear]

He made it a format-dependant issue when he stated that he feels better he plays Legacy, went on to give an anecdotal example as to why Legacy > Modern from a hygiene perspective, then capped it off with a snarky meme making fun of specifically Modern players.

I noticed the discriminating point and I said, that this was out of place.

The whole topic still rises the question, if the game has a problem with social standards unlike other public games like poker, what the reasons are for that and if we, as a community, want to have such a picture painted or if we want a change

[Richard Cheese]

His message was essentially "See! Modern players are smelly, fat dudes. Thank God I play Legacy where you never encounter that! I feel so much better now!" Elitest. Douchey. All around poor taste.

Between this and the Affinity vs. Twin thing...you don't pick up on humor so easily do you?

You know I almost put Standard instead because it's probably more applicable, then we'd probably all be sitting around having a laugh.

[Arsenal]

Maybe you're not funny?

[Lemnear]

The base topic isn't funny at all, if even the media start to paint such a picture of the community and I feel ashamed among people who knows about me playing the game.

[Richard Cheese]

Maybe you're not funny?

I laughed at that, because as I typed out my last post I knew that would be the perfect response, and I think it's entirely possible. I think it's more likely that you just need to lighten up though. If you can't laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at?

Honestly, it's not like this game has historically attracted the Armani Exchange crowd or anything. It's by nerds, for nerds, and I don't really care if that's the public perception because I like nerds. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you do find yourself attracted to the game, you've probably been around that kind of stuff for years and it doesn't really bother you that much. I mean the ass crack thing is kinda gross, but I've hung out with worse, and it sure as hell isn't going to keep me from a big event. Shitty attitudes and rules lawyering are more off-putting than a fat guy with a good sense of humor.

Is hygiene a problem in the community? I guess, if it really bothers other players. Is it keeping new players from the game? Seriously doubt it. In the Venn diagram of "people who care a great deal about others' personal appearance" and "people interested in fantasy-themed tabletop gaming", there's probably a gap big enough to drive an oil tanker through.

[Arsenal]

I think it's more likely that you just need to lighten up though. If you can't laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at?

I have no problem laughing at myself. It's laughing at others in order to feel better that I have the problem with. You claim that you were just joking when you made disparaging comments about others and you felt better because of it... that still isn't funny.

[YamiJoey]

I laughed at that, because as I typed out my last post I knew that would be the perfect response, and I think it's entirely possible. I think it's more likely that you just need to lighten up though. If you can't laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at?

Honestly, it's not like this game has historically attracted the Armani Exchange crowd or anything. It's by nerds, for nerds, and I don't really care if that's the public perception because I like nerds. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you do find yourself attracted to the game, you've probably been around that kind of stuff for years and it doesn't really bother you that much. I mean the ass crack thing is kinda gross, but I've hung out with worse, and it sure as hell isn't going to keep me from a big event. Shitty attitudes and rules lawyering are more off-putting than a fat guy with a good sense of humor.

Is hygiene a problem in the community? I guess, if it really bothers other players. Is it keeping new players from the game? Seriously doubt it. In the Venn diagram of "people who care a great deal about others' personal appearance" and "people interested in fantasy-themed tabletop gaming", there's probably a gap big enough to drive an oil tanker through.

True. I've been around worse. I've been around people who make others feel so shit they kill themselves.

This is why I hate you.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

He made it a format-dependant issue when he stated that he feels better he plays Legacy, went on to give an anecdotal example as to why Legacy > Modern from a hygiene perspective, then capped it off with a snarky meme making fun of specifically Modern players.

Which is extremely bad, because... umm... why exactly? Aren't you the one that screams "diskriminashun" and "rasism" every time anyone makes a joke?

[Lemnear]

I laughed at that, because as I typed out my last post I knew that would be the perfect response, and I think it's entirely possible. I think it's more likely that you just need to lighten up though. If you can't laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at?

Honestly, it's not like this game has historically attracted the Armani Exchange crowd or anything. It's by nerds, for nerds, and I don't really care if that's the public perception because I like nerds. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you do find yourself attracted to the game, you've probably been around that kind of stuff for years and it doesn't really bother you that much. I mean the ass crack thing is kinda gross, but I've hung out with worse, and it sure as hell isn't going to keep me from a big event. Shitty attitudes and rules lawyering are more off-putting than a fat guy with a good sense of humor.

Is hygiene a problem in the community? I guess, if it really bothers other players. Is it keeping new players from the game? Seriously doubt it. In the Venn diagram of "people who care a great deal about others' personal appearance" and "people interested in fantasy-themed tabletop gaming", there's probably a gap big enough to drive an oil tanker through.

You've gone too far now. So every "nerd" is by definition an overweight, Social incompatible and smelly dood .. in that case i'm an Oil Tanker. Not everyone enjoys sweat drenched men outside of their gym as you seem to do. These unwillingness to create an adequate and welcoming atmosphere for everyone to enjoy is the reason the game has such a bad reputation and you'll rarely see girls playing. Tbh I would have never started the game if the community i had back then would only contain guys you described.

[Arsenal]

Which is extremely bad, because... umm... why exactly? Aren't you the one that screams "diskriminashun" and "rasism" every time anyone makes a joke?

No, I am not. I haven't posted anything re: discrimination until I responded to Richard Cheese's post.

[lordofthepit]

Hopefully, its main effect will be to remind players to pull up their pants and wear a belt if necessary.

[Stinky-Dinkins]

So, what's the real GP Richmond affect on Legacy?

http://i.imgur.com/vqIdAfI.jpg

If you slide a quarter in that crack and pull down on his arm prizes might come out of his mouth.

[Zilla]

Jesus fucking Christ you guys. How about some fucking civility? Seriously. I will set the building on fire. I'm closing this shit. You guys need to start treating each other with more respect. It's been years since this has been necessary, but if this kind of behavior keeps up, the mod staff is going to implement a scorched earth policy and start issuing temp bans to users who are insulting other members for any reason. You can disagree with people and still treat them with respect. Do it or get the fuck out.