Looking to try modern. This forum doesn't appear to be too active. Is there a really good Modern forum somewhere else?
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Looking to try modern. This forum doesn't appear to be too active. Is there a really good Modern forum somewhere else?
For modern, the forums over at mtgsalvation are much more active, although I'm generally not too impressed with the content over there.
You've got to sift through shit loads of, well, shit to find the goods but it's there. Some people actively playtest and have insightful things to say.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Dingo
There's a lot of dumb people over there--then again, The Source is not without its share of dullards either--but there's still some good discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Dingo
MTGS has the most discussion out of any place, but you have to sift through a lot of junk. It also has the ignore user feature which is amazing and will add years back to your life. I think my ignore user list is at a couple hundred people.
Reddit has a lot of junk as well, and there's no ignore user feature (unless you download mods?)
http://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/
http://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/
the spike reddit has higher quality posts, but not that much modern talk. the modern reddit has more modern posts, but most are low quality
Yeah, I'm pretty sad that there's no good forum for Modern either. I go to mtgsalvation to discuss a few decks I like, simply because there is no other option. But, it gets really frustrating because the quality of posts is way down (on average) compared to here. If you find any better place, let me know. It's also frustrating because there's only frequent activity for some types of decks. For example, I don't get many or any responses for new deck ideas I'm working on in a lot of cases, and responses for fringe decks are few and far between a lot of times.
Its very hard to get a discussion going on Titan Scapeshift pretty much anywhere as it always devolves into "Why aren't you playing RUG Scapeshift?"
MTGSalvation is a waste of time because 95% of people don't understand how Modern works in terms of mechanics, timings and skill cap required for a card/deck to perform. Thus, you will find that almost all the threads in Developmental are horrible block decks ported to Modern or people with budget concerns trying to make their brew seem legit.
Which also happens in Estabilished and Proven all the time. It's a struggle to find good content amongst the piles of spam posted by incompetent players or those trying to save up on their wallet because their aspiration is winning a 6-men FNM.
If you are experienced enough you should have developed an instinct in recognizing what's good and what's bullshit.
Avoid that forum like pest and stick to private discussions via Facebook/Twitter/whatever with good Modern players who carved themselves a fame out their successes. I confirm there is no good public substitute.
Looks like it's on us guys!
Gonna start testing a lot for GP Vancouver (coming up in 6 weeks) so I'll be trying to generate some useful ideas! All help is welcome, us Sourcers must stick together.
I'm a moderator on the Modern boards at MTGS and I want to speak to this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Piceli89
First off, the community there is huge, which almost guarantees that we have more crappy posts. On the Source, we have only 2-6 people viewing the Modern subforums at any given time. On MTGS, it's maybe 2-6 people on average per thread, with the larger threads regularly having a dozen active users and the overall forum having hundreds. With that many people, there is almost no way you won't see idiots, trolls, spammers, etc. You need only to look at r/spikes to see that in action. But that's just the price of any large community.
Second, although some posters definitely have no idea what they are talking about, many of them do, or are at least interested in discussing the decks. Conversations can be incredibly active and technical, especially in the Proven threads. Sure, you have guys who want to know how they can budget up a Junk list to take down their FNM for under $200, but you also have people who are genuinely interested in improving their decks. So whether you are looking for high volumes of active discussion, or lower volumes of high-expertise discussion, MTGS has that going on. Maybe there's a place for high volume, high expertise discussion, but I don't think such a place exists on the internet, let alone with respect to Magic or Modern.
Does MTGS Modern have some issues? Absolutely. But are those issues so bad or so unique to MTGS that it should be avoided entirely? Probably not. It's a large community, especially around Modern, and large communities always come with their share of problems and benefits. So if you don't mind dealing with those, it's definitely the place to be for primers, active format and deck discussion, accurate metagame data, etc.
I appreciate your very polite answer in the face of my not-so-polite argument, which was probably a product of the frustration I felt everytime I tried to kickstart a high-level discussion about certain cards in certain archetypes (although I'm active in the Blue Tron post for the most) and got very poor replies.Quote:
Originally Posted by ktkenshinx
You are right when stating that the compromise of having a huge community is dealing with a lowered quality but honestly it seems that MTGS is *really* just posts from people trying to budgetize things or without a grasp of how competitive games get played out.
I consistently query every topic in search for the next Big Thing, especially those in New and Developmental, and this impression is strenghtened each day.
What I fail to see is proper argumentation taking into account the current metagame, which is the factor everyone should prioritize, especially in a format where top dogs shift way more often than the slightly more stale Legacy (because of bans, because of local metagame, because of trends). Only a very few people build their points of view with this into account and I appreciate them a lot, but again- unfortunately they are one grain in the sand.
Although I'm not active on here since a lot time, TheSource may be way tinier in terms of attendance but the ratio of rotten apples is 1 out of 10; on MTGS I would say it is 8 out of 10.
---
Perhaps you should try to promote a policy of higher-quality interventions in the Competitive and Proven forums. Obviously within the range of not going fascist and blaming everyone who posts content not perfectly fitting in, but that could be a first step towards an improvement. Number-wise MTGS is indeed the biggest community and it could become a hub for top-level concepts if only the crap was reduced. Its bad reputation detracts competent players from joining in as they mostly limit to private discussions.
No worries. It's helpful to hear feedback from other players and I'm always happy to talk about the good and the bad (especially the bad!) regarding the MTGS Modern community.Quote:
Originally Posted by Piceli89
I think there are a few factors at play here. For one, there are definitely instances where MTGS did get to the next big thing before any other large site. The most recent example that stands out to me is RG Breach Valakut, a deck that saw a modicum of success on MTGO but met our criteria for Established promotion even before KTK. We had a primer and a discussion going on in that thread before it was really on the radar of any other forums or articles (to my knowledge, at least). Given that this deck eventually made it to a PT T8 after rising from MTGO obscurity, that's great news; the pilot of that deck even credited MTGS for some of the reasons that he picked up the deck in the first place. That said, I do understand that it can be hard to identify a deck like that when surrounded by decks like UW Heroic and Pitch Control that are clearly pretty far from competitive status.Quote:
You are right when stating that the compromise of having a huge community is dealing with a lowered quality but honestly it seems that MTGS is *really* just posts from people trying to budgetize things or without a grasp of how competitive games get played out.
I consistently query every topic in search for the next Big Thing, especially those in New and Developmental, and this impression is strenghtened each day.
...
Although I'm not active on here since a lot time, TheSource may be way tinier in terms of attendance but the ratio of rotten apples is 1 out of 10; on MTGS I would say it is 8 out of 10.
As to the ratio of terrible players to competent ones, I have found that a large part of this is attributable to Modern as a format. Legacy, a more expensive and older format, tends to cater to more experienced and mature players, the former because of the relative complexity of the format and the latter because of the price differences in the formats. This in turn leads to a more experienced and older player-based, which definitely plays out in the community. That's not to say that older players don't play Modern or that younger players don't play Legacy. But it is to say that the next hot thing of Modern can definitely attract younger players with less experience and maturity than a format like Legacy. Indeed, we need only look to the enduring conflicts between Modern and Legacy players to see why some of those older Legacy vets don't take Modern very seriously. That plays out in the quality of posts in the forum.
I view these points as related and want to address them together.Quote:
What I fail to see is proper argumentation taking into account the current metagame, which is the factor everyone should prioritize, especially in a format where top dogs shift way more often than the slightly more stale Legacy (because of bans, because of local metagame, because of trends). Only a very few people build their points of view with this into account and I appreciate them a lot, but again- unfortunately they are one grain in the sand.
...
Perhaps you should try to promote a policy of higher-quality interventions in the Competitive and Proven forums. Obviously within the range of not going fascist and blaming everyone who posts content not perfectly fitting in, but that could be a first step towards an improvement. Number-wise MTGS is indeed the biggest community and it could become a hub for top-level concepts if only the crap was reduced. Its bad reputation detracts competent players from joining in as they mostly limit to private discussions.
To me, metagame analysis and understanding is a critical part of being a meaningful contributor to a format. It's what separates the bad players from the good ones, and then again what separates the good ones from the great ones. That's particularly true in a format like Modern where so many in-game and deckbuilding decisions do come down to metagame and card pool knowledge. Moreover, the skills needed to analyze a metagame and translate that analysis into deck developments are the same skills that are needed to have a smart conversation about a deck itself.
But a big problem here is that Modern metagame data is not easy to come by and players everywhere have a poor understanding of the format. This is because shitty sites like MTGTop8, mtgdecks, TCDecks, topdecks, etc. all purport to describe the Modern metagame but do so in a way that is misleading or flat out disingenuous. SCG and ChannelFireball articles tend to be little better, with most of them doing a bad job at describing the Modern metagame or explaining its nuances.
We have tried to address this by running our own Modern metagame dataset and publishing those results in the forum. Starting in the next week, we are going to be even more intentional about how we do this, adding more graphs, more frequent forum updates, and overall a much more deliberate emphasis on how we present this kind of data. This ideally has three effects. First, it educates the playerbase and community and gets them critically talking and thinking in the way that we want users to critically talk and think on the forum. Second, it grounds the discussion in data that is meaningful and accessible, so we are all speaking the same language around the format. Finally, it makes the forum itself a more current and technical place to discuss Modern by providing information that isn't accessible elsewhere. This makes the place more attractive to other players and generally raises the level of conversation.
So yes, we are totally aware of these issues that you point out and are working to fix them. I think that things have always looked different on The Source because there is a relatively high barrier to entry, both in format knowledge and access to Legacy cards, that has always kept discussion quality pretty high here. Because we don't have that barrier, we need to find other ways to improve the discussion quality that don't also exclude people. Metagame data, regular forum updates, and current primers are a great way to do this, and it's something we have been working on for months now. Things are WAY better now than they were a year ago.
The trick with Salvation is learning who is worth talking to, people like rickster can be blunt and harsh, but at lest he ain't fucking around. You can pick out these faces quickly and you can tell those who know what they are doing by the fact that they tend to post and then vanish when all the shit starts, only to come back when they have something to say or someone has quoted them with a valid point. Also, as said, there is the ignore list.
Those that plan to put in the time will shine, like a certain jack-o-lantern and his infatuation for Zoo. You see these faces, you ask them directly. You will get your answers.
If anything, I think the Legacy forums over there are worse. I just had a rant against Legacy elitist and their joy in watching Pod fall. Modern over there is bad, but Legacy needs someone to go on with a big black boot and just be ruthless with some of the attitudes I see in there. Having more funds doesn't mean you get to look down on those that are morning the loss of their money.
I also used to go on MTGS regularly but got fed up with the noise. I'm not sure forums can really handle that much traffic without forcing people to look through multiple pages of posts for something interesting. Piceli's right that too many of the forums devolved into discussions over budget decks, it happened to the couple threads I was actually paying attention to. You'd get random posts that list a variant of the deck without the expensive cards claiming that they've had "pretty good results so far on cockatrice" or some other equivalent valueless statement (happens here all the time too, "I've had promising results" is the herpes of magic forums) and then argue how it's fine to not use Tarmogoyfs or whatever in their deck.
The real problem with a forum and that many people is each post takes up an equal amount of space. Reddit at least has upvotes to put valuable statements up at the top, though that has its own array of problems too. Scrolling through pages of text really isn't worth it to me, especially when I have enough experience to know pretty quickly whether a deck will at least run okay by looking at the list.
That's one of the main things, though, regarding experience in players for something like the Source and MTGS. People on MTGS largely have a beginner's level of experience with magic and still post new piles of crap saying that they've had good results so far. People with a lot of experience can look at a deck's manabase, mana curve, and overall strategy and have an idea of what it can do, whereas people there seem to put square wheels on their deck and think it'll run smoothly.
Maturity/experience aren't easy to come by, and having so many posters really dilutes the amount of good posts. Heavy moderation on flaming is great, and keeps discussions civil, but how many times can you argue with budget concerns before you just give up?
Also, you can try Facebook. I joined a Modern Meta Master's thread on it and so far I have at least found a group of them who I respect and work with on various projects.
Just had a friend of mine invite me to that group as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by nodahero
The moderators on MTGS are more concerned about being policemen issuing infractions and catering to the frail egos of the lowest common denominator. I actually went by mtgs yesterday just to read about all the rage quitting over bans after not visiting for a half a year.
The "us vs them" attitude of the staff still remains. I'll be honest, I personally think its a joke that a user here feels the need to sig they are a moderator on MTGS while on a other site. It shows that they don't actually understand how the rest of the community looks at their site, and it shows that even not on their own site they are always trying to play the "authority card"
If you have the time in the world to waste. I guess you can waste it on MTGS. But if you actually have a life.... "Ain't nobody got time for that shit"
There are a quite a few bad moderators on MTGS, but AFAIK, ktkenshinx does his job well. I think they could be a little bit more lax with the "everything in the ban thread" attitude after an actual B&R update, but it's a really tough task, especially with that crowd.
I put that note in my signature so I can be totally transparent about my relationship to that site, and about my commitment to its forums and the format as a whole. The only card that I'm trying to play is the "I LOVE MODERN" card.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tormod
I fully understand that people have issues with MTGS which is one reason I am in this thread right now. Some of those issues are legitimate; it's a large community and there are some pretty ridiculous comments made and users who make them. But many of those issues are often overblown by others, in some cases without a lot of explanation. Yes we do a lot of moderation. It's necessary in a large community, especially given the types of post we are moderating. We have seen what the forum would look like without that strict moderation, especially with respect to posts about banlist talk and Legacy/Modern comparisons and bashing. That just leads to lots of trolling and flaming, or just distractions from the deck discussions at hand. That's one reason we are strict about it and the community is better off for it.
Acknowledging that, we still have a ton of Modern discussion and development that goes on throughout the forum. We are also always trying to raise that conversation level, both through moderation of problematic posts and through giving the community the tools that it needs to improve (e.g. metagame data).
Ktkenshinx is one of the top 3 quality posters on any magic site, in my opinion. I actually only look up certain user's posts on MTGS now, due to my previously stated issues, but s/he's one of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tormod
This thread was wavering between staying on-topic and shifting to another bash-mtgsal thread pretty much from the beginning. What I find amusing is it probably would have stayed relatively on-topic if ktkenshinx hadn't defended mtgsal. :rolleyes:
Anyways... the last couple posts reminded me of these threads:
MTGS-Salvation-is-a-joke
MTGS-is-a-joke-check-this-out
There's a couple familiar faces in there.
I am pretty sure Lejay had a note in his sig that he was/is a moderator on a French Legacy forum for a while...
I don't understand the need to show transparency about your relationship-to or status-on another forum though. It seems to me the content of someone's signatures boils down to 3 categories:
- Things you are proud of
- Things you hate
- Things you find funny
I find every post on mtgsal but the OP of a spoiler thread mind-numbing, but what I've read of ktkenshinx's posts have always been well thought out and polite. When WotC was deciding between Modern and Over-Extended, his posts were always insightful. In fact, if WotC had decided on Over-Extended instead of Modern, I probably never would have gotten into Legacy. And until I can play Blood Moon on turn 1, I won't ever play Modern competitively.
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Blood Moon
52x Doesn't matter/lands
4x Simian Spirit GuideQuote:
Originally Posted by Phoenix Ignition
4x Blood Moon
4x Magus of the Moon
4x Serum Powder
34x Mountain
Clearly the better meta choice, :tongue:
4x Blood Moon
4x Magus of the Moon
4x Serum Powder
4x Desperate Ritual
4x Pyretic Ritual
26x Mountain
Wait, are we on to something? Guys I think we're on to something.
You forgot Simian Spirit Guide! Also, I am very bad at math!Quote:
Originally Posted by Phoenix Ignition
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Blood Moon
4x Magus of the Moon
4x Serum Powder
4x Desperate Ritual
4x Pyretic Ritual
36x Mountain
I'm really glad we found a way to keep this thread constructive!
Blood Moons are too expensive. Can I just use Magus of the Moon and Monastery Swiftspear. In testing I've found this to be promising.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
Those all look terrible! :tongue:
Either Rite of Flame or Chrome Mox need to be removed from the banned list.
I got started with competitive Magic playing All-In-Red for 7 year Extended.
4 Rite of Flame
4 Chrome Mox
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Seething Song
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Blood Moon
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Demigod of Revenge
4 Deus of Calamity
4 Empty the Warrens
2 Genju of the Spires
18 Mountains
That is what I want to play! WotC should ban Ascension so they can unban the fast mana I need to play my pet deck.
So much trolling :D
@Topic, I'm on MTGS and I only look in threads, where I know that there are good players who are knowing, what they are doing (and in which decks I'm interested, since sometimes people find cards, which are pretty good for the deck, where as I didn't even know they existed (e.g. Suffer the Past in Grixis)). Furthermore, I have some Private Chats with some guys for developing, reporting and talking. It is pretty decent. On the other hand there is a lot of trash there but of course you will have it, when you have such a big user base.
@ktkenshinx, really appreciate your work on MTGS, especially for collecting the tournament data, which is pretty difficult from times to times.
Greetings,
Kathal
Chancellor of the tangle
Tried it, meh. It was good with ssg to get a turn one chalice @1. Then it was dead in hand if drawn. This is essentially the same as ssg's exile. I didj't hit 7 mana too many times to actually get a monster out of it. Blood moon was of course part of the mix.
This is percisely why I am here. The moderation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tormod
EDIT: Although, up to this point, I only lurk.
Necro time, I guess. I just found this thread by googling "best modern mtg" and find it is still relevant as of 6/2018. I was just out on MTGS trying to get up to date info on Modern Goblins decks and what I found was a whole lot of nothing. Specifically, I saw a couple people in 1 on 1 conversations consisting of one liners, and even single words per post. Really? All of this would have been much more appropriate via PM. If this is what they call "Moderation" then I will forgo MTGS altogether!
I'd love to talk some Modern. This is an old topic and doesn't seem to be a lot of activity in it but I'll talk Modern if anyone else wants to. :)
So MTGS is the worst. Granted. But where do I go for modern? I'm trying to brew over here!
There is nothing like TMD or Source for Modern.
I try to stay active in the Source modern threads, along with a few others (notably Phoenix Ignition.) With a burgeoning Legacy scene locally it's hard to divide my attention, but I keep my toes in Modern. The way I stay on top of the format is basically YouTube (Jeff Hoogland, mtggoldfish with saffron olive, watching other streamers.) My current fascination is with UR Wizards.Quote:
Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit
As Dice Box mentioned, there isn't a dedicated Modern forum. Honestly, with so much coverage, is there even a need for one? The format is so tightly controlled by WOTC, unlike Legacy, that it's harder to brew in that format.
I'm actually not shocked there is no dedicated Modern Fourm. Have a look at TMD. A message board old enough to drink about a format that was exclusive at the time. The Source, a board that split from TMD many years ago for another format that's seen as exclusive.
Modern has come to power in the age of Facebook. A would bet a lot of Modern chat is there. The need for a site like this is a pre Facebook situation. The times have changed as have the points of contact. Your not seeing something like this because this is a relic of a changed landscape that sees traffic mostly because we are all older and are still comfortable with our set ways of doing things.
Edit.
I will pick up and post here more. I am really enjoying Modern and the decks I play are not represented here. I would be happy to talk about them some.
This seems accurate. I try to talk with other players at my LGS about The Source and they give me a blank stare. Having joined a bunch of years ago, this forum was the definitive place to talk Legacy. It didn't matter what people were saying at SCG/CFB, it mattered more 'what is The Source saying about such-and-such' because it included the global legacy scene's input.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
I still see modern as 'what to play if I can't play legacy', while most players at the LGS, an overwhelming majority, play Modern primarily. There is a crew of about 15 of us that are Legacy regulars, which is awesome, but not like the 40+ that are Modern regulars. I want The Source to be a good Modern forum so badly, because it's the last vestige of a truly connected Legacy (Magic) community. Discord has taken over for specific decks, but metagame analysis and historical context at-large are on this forum. I would love to continue having that connection.
There's no way around it, I'm old.
I think there's a bell curve for how useful a forum is versus how many people are on it. If you get too many people it'll just become a wash of incorrect comments, if you have too few you probably won't get enough interest in certain decks. MTGSal has too many people on it to be useful, every good suggestion comes with 10 bad ones. For new players it's really hard to tell good advice from bad, so there isn't a coherent direction to any discussion. Sadly, MTGthesource doesn't have enough people who care about Modern to really drive the discovery of new decks.
MTGthesource was at one point a bastion for amazing ideas and deck discussion, the site is probably the birthplace of a lot of great Legacy decks. As Legacy grew to what it is now, a lot of us who got most of our fun out of brewing new decks just left/quit/moved on. There isn't room for that kind of openness in Legacy anymore, so many of us moved to other things. That leaves the players who love the current meta in Legacy, which I won't say is wrong, it's just exactly what I don't like. A format defined by specific decktypes with little room to move in between. The reason I bring this up is because you can see the caliber of discussion going on now on MTGthesource, and it is sickening. I won't cite examples, just look at the Legacy Development section if you need them. It's pretty much just tribal bullshit at this point, either you're with the "I love new Legacy" team or you're against it, and if you don't like it fuck you.
There are a few of us Legacy refugees still here who, like mindless specters of a time long past damned to repeat our actions, still come to this site a few times a week. I blame it on my bookmarks toolbar and still thinking that MTG has something interesting waiting for me, but it's really just a lack of other good hobby forums to look at. I try to help in the Modern section if I think I can, although once decks become streamlined to a certain point I think my skill set is mostly used up. I'm in the process of getting rid of most of my collection since over the past few years, given the opportunity to drive to some event or hang out with my family I'll skip the event. In my weekly cube/old school/vintage play group no one cares about proxies, and I'd rather not carry a deck worth more than my car around. All but 1 of us has given up caring about Legacy, since Vintage usually gives better games to our tastes. I guess it's a culmination of factors that's slowly driving me out.
As for me and Modern, I'm of limited use since I won't play it again until some ban puts a nail in Krark-Klan Ironworks deck since I refuse to think such terrible thoughts about my opponents who I presume are decent people. 12 minute turns shouldn't be a thing.
We are, that is, the sort of people who come here for content as it tends to be presented here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Safety
We are the more traditional, long-form, type content. People actually do want that, but don't want to generate it, generally speaking. That's why Discord, Facebook and so on appeals in the short-term. But it's shallow sort of stuff.
I can't really help you out though, because I don't play Modern. I don't even get to play Legacy or anything else much lately, for that matter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phoenix Ignition
Quote:
Originally Posted by H